- I was at the office
in the FBI building.
And my BlackBerry went off,
and it was Ed Davis calling me,
the Boston police commissioner.
And he said, "Rick,
we've had two large explosions
near the finish line
of the Boston Marathon."
"Send your b*mb techs,
send your evidence techs,
and your SWAT teams
as quickly as possible."
- Witnesses
describe the explosions
as "one coming
right after the other"
and "sounding like thunder."
- Of course, we had the TV on.
Started to see the news unfold.
- This happened
a short time ago.
- People were
very, very scared.
They didn't know
what was gonna happen next.
- We knew we had visual
depictions of the bombers.
We just had to figure out
who they were.
We are releasing photos
of these two suspects.
They are identified
as Suspect 1
and Suspect 2.
- I remember
a lot of people saying,
you know, "This is bigger
than you think it is.
More of this is coming.
This isn't the end."
- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.
Drug busts,
mob stings,
t*rror1st takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze!
- FBI.
- FBI!
- Action!
- But they don't know
the half of it.
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking
agent to agent.
This is "FBI True."
- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year
veteran of the FBI.
She worked on cases
that included
organized crime and terrorism
and took part in multinational
investigations
into drug trafficking
and money laundering.
Coppola finished her career
with the Los Angeles division
running two offices,
supervising investigations,
and providing undercover
security for special events.
- So the three of you
have a common bond,
and that was
the Boston bombing.
- April 15th, 2013.
It was a Monday.
It was Patriots' Day.
- Rick DesLauriers is
a 26-year veteran of the FBI.
As deputy assistant director
of the Counterintelligence
Division at FBI Headquarters,
he led
international operations
and espionage investigations.
DesLauriers
finished his career
as special agent in charge
of the Boston field office.
- Patriots' Day Monday
is a huge holiday in Boston.
The Red Sox play.
- Welcome to morning baseball
from Fenway Park,
where it's also Patriots' Day.
- And then
there was the Boston Marathon.
all: Three, two, one.
- And they're off!
- The runners are coming
through all the towns
and coming into Boston.
There's huge groups of friends
going to watch the marathon.
It's a big, big holiday.
- Sergeant John MacLellan
served as a patrol officer
in Watertown, Massachusetts,
for 30 years.
In 2015, he was awarded
the Medal of Valor,
the highest national award
for a public safety officer.
- I was at the office
in the FBI building,
and at about 3:10
of that afternoon,
the BlackBerry
of one of my ASACs--
assistant special agents
in charge--
who was sitting next to me
went off.
And she handed me
her BlackBerry,
and it said
two large explosions
near the finish line
of the Boston Marathon.
So I ran downstairs.
And as I'm walking down
to my office,
my BlackBerry went off,
and it was Ed Davis calling me,
the Boston police commissioner.
And he said,
"Rick, send your b*mb techs,
"send your evidence techs,
send your SWAT teams
as quickly as possible."
And I did
what anybody would do.
I went down to my office,
turned on the TV.
- Good afternoon.
We are
interrupting programming now
because there has
apparently been an expl*si*n
near the finish line
at the Boston Marathon.
This happened
a short time ago.
You're now seeing raw video
that has just come in
to our newsroom.
- I see
these two geysers of smoke
coming up from Boylston Street.
- Witnesses report what they
believe were two explosions.
- I said, oh, my God, something
horrible has happened.
- I had just arrived
maybe two weeks before
from San Juan,
so I was brand new
to the ET squad.
And this is happening,
and I just couldn't believe it.
- Nancy Aguilar started
her career in law enforcement
as a linguist for the Drug
Enforcement Administration.
As an FBI special agent,
she worked
counterterrorism operations
from
the Washington field office,
where she investigated
t*rror1st threats
and online radicalization
in the Middle East
and Central Asia.
- I remember being in the SCIF.
And of course,
we had the TV on with no sound,
with the volume off.
And all the agents,
we all get up
and just start following it.
- We have been talking
to Boston authorities,
and they have not
been able to tell us
how many people
have been injured
or whether there have
been any fatalities.
We also do not have
any indication at this moment
of what might have
caused this expl*si*n.
- I was out with a couple
of friends on our motorcycles.
I got a text message
saying that there was
two explosions at the marathon,
and I went straight home.
I literally was sick
to my stomach.
- We are, uh--
we are seeing this videotape
for the first time,
as you are.
People apparently down.
- It was crazy.
I used to run
the Boston Marathon every year.
And to be in my office
and see it on my TV,
thinking to myself, oh, my
gosh, I could have been there.
- A few minutes later, the
FBI deputy director called me.
And he asked me, you know,
what did I know about this?
I know that
in a situation like this,
when you
tell the director something,
the director is going
to tell the attorney general,
the attorney general
and the director
are gonna tell
the National Security Council,
and
the National Security Council
is gonna tell the president.
- Earlier today, I was briefed
by my Homeland Security team
on the events in Boston.
The American people will say
a prayer for Boston tonight.
- I was being very careful
of what I was telling him
because we didn't know anything
at that time.
We hadn't gone down
to collect evidence yet.
We thought it might have been
an industrial expl*si*n
of some kind.
- We don't yet
have all the answers,
but we do know that multiple
people have been wounded,
some gravely, in explosions
at the Boston Marathon.
- You know,
if it was a manhole expl*si*n,
if we had a can explode
on one of the electrical poles.
- April 15th is Tax Day,
so we thought
maybe it's some domestic
tax protesters, you know.
So we thought maybe it's
a domestic terrorism event.
- No one really knew what
was going on at that point,
but I knew
there was a lot of people hurt.
And no matter what it was,
it was horrible for Boston.
- I've spoken
to FBI Director Mueller
and Secretary of
Homeland Security Napolitano,
and they're mobilizing
the appropriate resources
to investigate and to respond.
- People were
very, very scared.
They didn't know, you know,
what was gonna happen next.
- Thank you very much.
- So to that point,
Rick, what was your next steps?
- The first step was really
securing the crime scene.
There were two separate blasts,
about 400 or 500 feet
from each other,
along Boylston Street.
The first blast went off
at the finish line,
and the other one went off
about 12 or 15 seconds later
in front of a restaurant
called the Forum Restaurant
on Boylston Street.
And so, we knew we had
two separate incidents,
and we had
to secure the perimeter.
We went down,
and it was just a scene of
horrible, horrible destruction.
The crime scene stretched
about a quarter of a mile
down Boylston Street,
one block either side
parallel to Boylston Street.
We had evidence on top of cars,
on top of windows,
on top of buildings--
everywhere.
All the victims who had
been severely injured
had been taken
to local hospitals,
so it was eerily quiet
at that time.
We knew
we had three fatalities:
Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu,
and Martin Richard.
We had approximately
26 individuals
who suffered
grievous lower bodily injuries.
But one of the things
that benefited us
is that at the end of
a finish line for a marathon,
you have
a lot of medical personnel.
There was a large medical tent
set up right there
to treat runners who were
coming in with typical things
that you would experience
in a marathon:
dehydration, ankle sprains--
things of that nature.
Because of
that medical presence there,
because of the great work
by Boston EMS,
if they survived
the initial blast,
nobody else died.
And that was a real miracle.
In the first hours
after the bombing,
the immediate evidence
was being brought
to the Westin Copley Hotel
just because it was very close
to the b*mb sites.
We quickly realized
that bringing evidence
that is contaminated by bodily
fluids and things like that,
a hotel is not
an appropriate place
to process
or store that evidence.
We went to our friends
at the MBTA,
who control
the Black Falcon terminal.
Black Falcon
is a cruise ship terminal
for the city of Boston.
It's on the waterfront, so
it's a very secure location.
And we found that
this was a perfect place
to set up
the evidence processing
for analysis by the FBI experts
down there.
We held a press conference
the first night
at the Westin Copley Hotel.
You had hundreds of
law enforcement officers there.
You had the media there.
It was just chaos.
- At 2:50 p.m. today,
there were
simultaneous explosions
that occurred along the route
of the Boston Marathon,
near the finish line.
We're recommending to people
that they stay home,
that if they're in hotels
in the area
that they return
to their rooms,
and that they don't go anyplace
and congregate in large crowds.
That's all.
Thank you all very much.
- And then afterwards, the
leaders of the federal agencies
on the Joint Terrorism
Task Force,
along with Commissioner Davis
and Colonel Timothy Alban from
Massachusetts State Police,
we all gathered
with Governor Patrick.
We discussed
that this had the potential
to be
a terrorism investigation.
And Governor Patrick said
to us,
"We need somebody
to lead this investigation."
So I told Governor Patrick,
I said,
"The FBI, under the umbrella of
its Joint Terrorism Task Force,
is happy to take the lead
in this investigation."
And Governor Patrick
looked around the room,
and he said, "Is everybody
comfortable with that?"
And everybody said, "Yes."
I was in the process
of preparing to retire
from the FBI.
I'd interviewed for
a job position that morning.
I took four hours
of annual leave
and interviewed for a position.
And then, after that,
I went back into the office,
and the bombs went off.
I got home probably
about 11:00, 11:30 at night,
and I told my wife, I said,
"I stayed in this job too long.
I just stayed too long.
"I should have
gotten out sooner,
before something
like this happened."
You know, I knew
we had serious work to do.
I had to be a leader.
I had to be strong.
But for a few minutes there,
I just shook my head and said,
gosh,
I stayed too long in this job.
- It is a tough morning here
in Boston.
Actually, here is the front
page of "The Boston Globe"
that says "Marathon Terror"
with an incredibly
gruesome picture on the cover.
And I can tell you, Charlie,
just walking here this morning,
they have not cleaned up
the runners' route yet
because it is still
an active crime scene.
- Being in the FBI,
I know we're gonna take
a logical approach, right?
So you have your teams of
agents in the command center,
but then you have
folks on the ground.
What did the FBI find
at that point?
- We had hundreds
of FBI personnel coming in
from Washington field office,
where Nancy would've worked,
and New York, Albany,
New Haven.
I think every field office
east of the Mississippi
was contributing.
We were scouring
the crime scene
because we couldn't call it
a t*rror1st attack
until we collected
the evidence.
By the time Tuesday,
April 16th, rolled around,
we had collected enough
evidence off Boylston Street.
Pieces of backpacks.
Pieces
of pressure cooker bombs...
Which are pressure cookers
filled with expl*sive material
as well as shrapnel--
nails, screws, bolts,
things like
that would rip into somebody.
We found evidence
of shredded backpacks
with expl*sive material on them
at both b*mb sites,
so we knew that there were
pressure cooker bombs
inside backpacks.
So at that point, we were
comfortable making the call
that this was
a t*rror1st attack.
- When I got to the office
that morning of the 17th,
I was called
into our CART room.
That's the Computer Analysis
and Response Team.
We had a small CART room
in Boston.
And one of my supervisors there
said,
"Boss, look at this piece of
evidence. Look at this video.
We watched this 400 times
last night."
And he said,
"This video was taken
"from the Forum Restaurant,
where the second b*mb went off,
and we think we've identified
one of the bombers."
And it was a CCTV camera
sitting right over the front
door of the Forum Restaurant,
pointing out
towards Boylston Street.
You see the runners going by
in the background.
You see dozens
and dozens of people
sort of milling around
in front,
you know, enjoying themselves
and watching the race.
And then you see
an individual with a white hat
coming from eastbound
on Boylston Street,
from right to left.
He had a baseball hat with
the bill pointed backwards,
and he had a backpack
on his back.
And you watch him come, and he
just looks like anybody else.
He stands
right in front of the camera,
and he eventually drops
the backpack to the ground.
A few minutes later,
he takes a cell phone call.
He then hangs up on that call.
And then from the east,
on Boylston Street...
You see the concussive effects
from the first b*mb going off.
Everybody looks to the left,
like, what just happened?
This gentleman in the white
hat just calmly walks away.
And about five seconds after
he leaves the field of vision,
you see the second b*mb go off.
You see
just horrible destruction.
Horrible destruction.
- What the f*ck happened?
- Holy sh*t, a b*mb.
- A b*mb?
- At that point, I knew
we had one of the bombers.
Now that we have that evidence,
we go track westbound
from where he came
on Boylston Street.
We go to other businesses
along there--
every restaurant,
every clothing store
that had CCTV.
We collected that evidence.
Later that day,
we had evidence
of the individual
with the white hat
walking
with another individual,
similarly carrying a backpack,
who had a black hat on
with the bill pointed forward
and large sunglasses on.
So at that point, we called
them White Cap and Black Cap.
That was sort of the eureka
moment in the investigation.
We knew we had
visual depictions of bombers.
We just had to figure out
who they were.
- At this point,
John and Nancy,
do you have any information?
- We were just,
you know, on patrol.
You know,
it's a terrorism thing,
so everybody
was on high alert.
But we didn't know
what we were on high alert for.
I remember
a lot of people saying,
you know, "This is bigger
than you think it is.
"There's more people out there.
There's more of this is coming.
This isn't the end."
- The key decision point now
is,
what do we do
with this video evidence?
Do we hang onto it,
do we just keep it,
or do we show it to the world?
These were recognizable photos
to people
who knew these individuals.
But there are
two schools of thought:
that if you hold on
to the video evidence,
you don't tip your hand
and continue the investigation
through sort of you know,
some covert means
and some overt means.
The other side of the coin is
that if you have video evidence
and you're holding it,
what happens
if more bombs go off in Boston,
and more people die,
and you're holding
video evidence
that you could have shared
with the American public
but you didn't?
- Can you explain
the next steps you took?
- We wanted
to have a press conference
to release photographs
of these individuals.
I was joined by my law
enforcement team partners--
state, federal, and local--
on the podium.
Good afternoon.
My name is Richard DesLauriers.
I am the special agent
in charge
of the FBI's Boston Division.
And we gave out that evidence
to the American public.
After a very detailed analysis
of photo, video,
and other evidence,
we are releasing photos
of these two suspects.
They are identified
as Suspect 1 and Suspect 2.
They appear to be associated.
Suspect 1
is wearing a dark hat.
Suspect 2
is wearing a white hat.
Suspect 2 set down a backpack
at the site
of the second expl*si*n,
just in front
of the Forum Restaurant.
And we called
on the American public
to help us identify
these two individuals.
Somebody out there
knows these individuals
as friends,
neighbors, coworkers,
or family members
of the suspects.
Though it may be difficult,
the nation is counting
on those with information
to come forward
and provide it to us.
- Thank you.
Thank you.
- Well, after that press
conference, I drove home.
And when I got home
that evening,
I turned on the TV
and saw a story
about the m*rder
of a campus police officer
at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in Cambridge.
- Breaking news now.
An MIT officer has been shot
in Cambridge.
And according to authorities,
the officer was found
evidencing
multiple g*nsh*t wounds.
So now we're learning
that there were
multiple g*nsh*t wounds.
He was transported
to the hospital
and pronounced deceased.
- I said, my God,
that's a horrible tragedy.
This is very odd
for a campus police officer
to be m*rder*d in Cambridge,
which is a very safe area.
- No arrests have been made,
and the investigation
is ongoing.
- So I went to bed.
About 1:00 in the morning,
I got a phone call
from Jeff Sallet.
Jeff told me, "Boss,
you know, those individuals
"who m*rder*d that
campus police officer at MIT?
"They're our bombers, and
they're on the run right now.
"And they're in Watertown,
throwing more bombs at
the Watertown police officers."
I heard that,
and I said, holy sh*t.
- We're seeing police running,
g*ns drawn,
and we have heard
multiple g*nshots.
- The suspect was already
out of the vehicle,
and there's g*nshots
coming in at us.
- People were screaming,
dogs barking.
It was just--
it was just crazy.
- We're asking people
to shelter in place,
to stay indoors
with their doors locked.
- Going street by street,
house by house,
was a massive,
massive undertaking.
And it was pretty dramatic.
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