US Attorney General Mr John Ashcroft will decide this week if the execution of the Oklahoma bomber will be shown on closed circuit television.
The idea was suggested after more than 250 survivors or family members of Timothy McVeigh's victims asked to be witnesses at the execution.
Ashcroft said the government is considering how to "minimise" McVeigh's ability to use a televised execution to draw attention to himself.
His execution is scheduled for May 16th at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution area can only accommodate eight survivor witnesses.
The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people and was the worst act of mass murder in US history.
The attorney general's statement is the first indication the US government backs the controversial idea of televising the McVeigh execution - the first federal execution since 1963.
McVeigh endorsed televising his execution in a letter to an Oklahoma City paper earlier this year.
In letters from prison and in a recently published book, McVeigh suggested that he set the bomb in retaliation for the government's 1993 assault on a religious extremist's compound near Waco, Texas.
PA