OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Novelist Gore Vidal plans to attend the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a man with whom he shares some views about the federal government.

Vidal, whose works include "Burr," "Lincoln" and "The Last Empire," said he began corresponding with McVeigh when the bomber wrote him about Vidal's 1998 article in Vanity Fair on "the shredding" of the Bill of Rights.

"We've exchanged several letters," the author said. "He's very intelligent. He's not insane."

McVeigh is to be executed May 16 at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for the 1995 bombing of a federal building in which 168 people died.

"Do I approve of it?" Vidal asked of the bombing. "Of course I don't," he told The Oklahoman in Saturday's editions.

But the 75-year-old writer said he and McVeigh, 33, have similar views about the erosion of constitutional rights and about the federal government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, that left 80 people dead.

"This guy's got a case — you don't send the FBI in to kill women and children," he said.

"The boy has a sense of justice," Vidal said. "That's what attracted me to him."

Vidal said he will write an article for Vanity Fair about the execution and may write a movie about McVeigh "and those of us who object to the tyranny of the U.S. government against its people."

A man whose daughter died in the blast is giving up his opportunity to witness the execution. John Taylor, 70, of Oklahoma City, was one of 10 victims chosen at random by computer to attend the execution.

"We just felt we've given Mr. McVeigh enough of our time," Taylor told the newspaper. "We've given him six years of our lives. We don't want to give him another second."