[explosion, screaming]
- 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."
[alarm blaring]
"Send your bomb 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."
[crowd shouting]
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist 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.
[indistinct radio chatter]
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.
[tense music]
♪
- 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.
[starter pistol fires] - 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.
[bells ringing, cheering]
[announcer listing names]
- 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.
[screaming]
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 bomb 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 explosion
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.
[child screaming]
- 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 terrorist 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 explosion.
- 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 explosion 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 explosion,
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.
[sirens blaring]
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 bomb 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.
[crowd shouting]
We were scouring the crime scene
because we couldn't call it a terrorist 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 explosive material
as well as shrapnel--
nails, screws, bolts,
things like that would rip into somebody.
We found evidence of shredded backpacks
with explosive material on them at both bomb 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 terrorist attack.
[explosions]
[screaming]
- 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 bomb 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...
[explosion]
You see the concussive effects from the first bomb 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 bomb go off.
[explosion, screaming]
You see just horrible destruction.
Horrible destruction.
[alarm blaring, crowd shouting]
- What the fuck happened?
- Holy shit, a bomb. - A bomb?
- 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 explosion,
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.
[reporters yelling]
- 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 murder 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 gunshot wounds.
So now we're learning
that there were multiple gunshot 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 murdered 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 murdered 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 shit.
[gunfire]
- We're seeing police running, guns drawn,
and we have heard multiple gunshots.
- The suspect was already out of the vehicle,
and there's gunshots coming in at us.
[gunfire]
- 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.
[dramatic music]
♪