Terry L. Nichols was even more “committed” than Timothy J. McVeigh to blowing up an Oklahoma City federal building nine years ago and played a bigger role in the crime, a prosecutor said Monday in closing arguments at Nichols’s state-court trial. “Nichols was the biggest contributor,” Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Lou Keel told the jury. “He did everything possible to make sure Timothy McVeigh could blow up that building.” Keel said it was Nichols who methodically planned the deadly bombing with McVeigh, funding the conspiracy and acquiring the bombing components that McVeigh detonated on April 19, 1995, in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people. The men, prosecutors alleged during the trial, were motivated by a shared hatred of the federal government and plotted to avenge the 1993 federal raid on an armed religious cult near Waco, Tex. In 1997, Nichols and his former Army buddy McVeigh were convicted separately for the deaths of the eight federal law enforcement officials who died in the explosion. McVeigh has already been executed for that crime, but — to the disappointment of some relatives of the victims — Nichols was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Full Story