Martin Bashir has made his name, and his cash, with two of journalism's biggest ever scoops - Princess Diana's admission to him on Panorama of "three in the marriage", and Michael Jackson's calm description of youthful sleepovers that led to a trial of media circus proportions.
Timothy McVeigh offered no apology for his actions, telling his victims' relatives to "Get over it"
Evidently not a man to overlook objects of enduring fascination, he contented himself with narrating this investigation into the motivations of the US's biggest home-grown murderer in US history, Timothy McVeigh, proponent of the Oklahoma Bombings in 1995.
Following his execution in 2001, McVeigh can no longer account for his actions, so this is the next best thing, the compilation of 45 hours' worth of recording of McVeigh giving his explanation - given to journalist Lou Michel for his book American Terrorist, what Michel called "an oral blueprint of what turned one young man into one of the worst terrorists in American history".
Except there was no explanation, no shame, no nothing. McVeigh made it clear "If there is hell, I'm not going", and "I feel no shame" "I've accepted my death" "I've accepted that it is in my human nature to kill".... "The mission was accomplished." As for his own impending execution, "I feel content and peaceful."
Officials dealing with McVeigh at the time of his arrest remarked on his "calm, polite disposition"
Whereas at the time it was the scale of the crime that was so overwhelming, in reconstructing the chain of events, it was the minutiae of detail that became freshly shocking - the choice of building made by looking in the phone book, the purchase of separate components for the 7,000lb bomb, the waiting for the traffic lights to turn green once he had lit the fuse before he parked his truck outside the doomed building.
He even laughed at the memory, recalling, "that was the longest two minutes of my life," and it was that almost inaudible chuckle that was the creepiest thing of all - along with his boast that he stayed calm, "jogged, didn't run" once he'd left the bomb about to go off, sent 168 people to their death, and many more to a life of disquiet.
So that, essentially, was that, and I'm not sure any victims' relatives would have felt any better for listening to this vacuum of self-examination where remorse, guilt, or at least shame, should have existed. It did feel that, with 45 hours of McVeigh's articulate assertions at their disposal, programme makers could have dug a little deeper for something underlying the simplistic "mission accomplished", however much this was defiantly blocked by the man himself.
Nevertheless, the clever reconstructions were very effective in marrying McVeigh's physical movements to his audible memories, and his collected, self-possessed, well-spoken demeanour was chillingly, horribly compelling.