Original subtitles

- There has apparently been an explosion

near the finish line at the Boston Marathon.

- We knew we had visual depictions of the bombers.

We just had to figure out who they were.

- People were scared.

I remember a lot of people saying,

this isn't the end.

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- Officer down. Officer down.

- People were screaming, dogs barking.

It was just--it was just crazy.

- We're seeing police running, guns drawn,

and we have heard multiple gunshots.

- And Jeff dives on top of him and starts wrestling.

I'm like, Sarge, bombs! Get off him!

- We're asking people to shelter in place.

- We needed to know who radicalized them.

Are there any other actors overseas

that are perhaps manipulating, coordinating?

- Going street by street, house by house,

was a massive, massive undertaking.

Holy shit.

And we--we didn't have them.

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

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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.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent to agent.

#

This is "FBI True."

#

- We are interrupting programming now

because there has apparently been an explosion

near the finish line at the Boston Marathon.

- This was a terrorist attack.

We knew we had visual depictions of the bombers.

#

We didn't know who they were.

- People were very, very scared.

They didn't know what was gonna happen next.

Everybody was on high alert.

I was an overnight officer.

I worked from 11:30 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.

When my wife woke me up at 10:30 p.m.

to jump in the shower, she told me--

she said, "Honey, um, there was a--

there was an officer murdered tonight in Cambridge."

- Jeff Sallet, who was former Associate Deputy Director

of the FBI, called me, woke me out of bed and said,

"Boss, um, did you see the story

"about the murder of this campus police officer

at Massachusetts Institute of Technology?"

I said, "Yeah, I saw that when I got home."

I said, "That's really, really strange."

Jeff said, "Boss, our bombers are the ones

who murdered-- murdered that police officer."

They wanted a second gun. So they decided--

they saw Sean Collier sitting there,

and knocked on the window, put the gun to his head,

and shot him point blank in the head.

They tried to grab that weapon out of Sean Collier's holster.

And even though he was there dying, basically,

right there, Sean was so heroic and courageous.

He held onto that gun so hard

that they couldn't get it out of that holster,

even after he had been shot.

And they gave up and they fled.

- At 10:48 this evening, shots were fired.

We did see the MIT police chief here,

and he confirmed that one of his officers was down.

- So I went into work,

and that's when we also found out

that there was a carjacking.

- They carjacked a car driven by Danny Meng,

who was from China.

And they took him hostage, basically,

and they were preparing to head to New York City.

They pulled into a gas station.

And Danny Meng made the conscious decision,

and a heroic decision, to flee the car,

and fled to a different gas station across the road,

to the gas station attendant,

saying that they had told him that they were

the Boston Marathon bombers.

- The vehicle was a brand-new Mercedes.

And we all wrote it down in our notebooks

and headed out onto the street.

- When did you figure out, or when did you guys know,

that this was all coming together?

- About a half hour into my shift,

I was out on the road, and, um, we get a tone.

If they want, uh, total radio silence,

they put out this tone,

and then the dispatcher starts to speak.

Very rare that it happens, very, very rare.

But the tone goes off.

- I was in my vehicle.

Officer Joey Reynolds was on one side,

I was on the other side, and we were coming in.

And he says, "Sarge, I'm right behind that vehicle.

What do you want me to do?"

I said, "Joey, I'm pulling up behind you.

Light 'em up."

As soon as I took a left turn, the suspect was already

out of the vehicle, straight, straight out,

just shooting right into the windshield.

Joey never got a chance to pull them over.

The vehicle stopped, they just got out

and started firing at him.

The first move that Joey Reynolds made that night,

the move, he got that part exactly right.

He stepped on the brake, put it in reverse,

put his head under the engine...

And just gunned it. All of a sudden,

I see the cruiser just coming back--

back towards me, and he's out of the vehicle.

I can hear him firing shots.

And I'm looking down the street now,

and I see the Mercedes

and another vehicle in front of it,

and all the doors were open.

I--I'm looking at six open doors,

and I'm like, you know,

did six people get out of these vehicles?

I'm like, what do we have? What's going on?

And there's gunshots coming-- gunshots coming in at us.

I didn't know where it was all coming from.

- You saw one guy first, right?

- That's it. I only saw one out.

It was just game on from there.

I jumped out--out of my vehicle and engaged.

We have a button in our vehicle to get the AR-15,

so I pushed the button.

I grab at it, I pull it, and it doesn't come out.

It's like a nightmare. I can feel the bullets

hitting off the vehicle.

I'm like, I gotta get-- I gotta get out of here.

I have no cover.

So I threw it in drive, opened the door,

and I just started walking with the vehicle.

The vehicle just keeps creeping forward,

and I have a tree to my left.

As soon as I start to run for the tree,

I hear an explosion.

- It wasn't a gunshot any longer.

- No, no. I didn't know what it was.

So I--I'm firing from the tree.

I see him like-- like this, like a hook shot.

And then when it hit the ground,

it's like, ding, da-ding.

I was like, oh!

All right. Okay.

Now I know what's going on.

So I go, "Joey, run."

We get down.

When that went off, that was crazy.

It was so loud.

The percussion was crazy.

I mean, I literally put my gun back in my holster

to try to clear my eyes.

- And I'm just hearing more gunshots right now.

Um, and I'm smelling something in the air

that smells like gunpowder or burning rubber.

I'm just staying down, um, using a car as shelter.

- Every vehicle that had a car alarm was going off.

The people were screaming, dogs barking.

It was just--it was just crazy.

The average gun battle is eight seconds

in the United States.

They're usually very short.

This was very prolonged.

- We're seeing police running, guns drawn,

and we have heard multiple gunshots.

- The gun battle went on for eight minutes.

- But how did it end?

- Sergeant Pugliese, he was done working,

heard the call come in and said, you know what,

I'm gonna cruise up there, and if they need my help,

you know, I'll be there to help them.

And when he came there,

the gunfight was just going on and going on.

We--we couldn't get any closer to these guys.

But when Sergeant Pugliese came,

he says, you know what, I think I can get

a little closer if I jump a couple of fences.

He really drew the kid out.

And they were, like, six to eight feet

away from each other, shooting at each other.

- That's crazy.

- When Pugliese runs out of bullets,

he runs out of bullets.

The kid looks at his gun,

throws it at Pugliese,

then turns around.

Instead of going away from us,

he's coming right back at us.

He's got nine bullets in him.

And I said, I'm gonna kill you.

I'm gonna drop you. And he--

literally, he was probably ten feet from me.

And Pugliese just touches his shoulder.

Comes from behind, touches his shoulder,

and the kid just collapses.

And Pugliese dives on top of him

and starts wrestling him.

I'm like, Sarge, bombs!

Get off him! Get off him!

I was thinking, he's gonna wait for us to get on top,

and he's just gonna blow us up.

- Right, like a suicide bomber.

- And I hear Joey Reynolds says,

"Sarge, watch out. Here he comes."

I looked up and the Mercedes was coming back at us.

And I said, "Sarge, look out."

I push off the body,

and the Mercedes goes right over them.

And it looks like the body got stuck underneath it.

Back of the Mercedes lifted up and spit it--

spit the body right out.

And we run over to the body,

and, um, he was severely injured.

- And we get, Sarge, one of ours, is down.

We got--we got an officer shot.

And I'm like, oh, my God, you're kidding me.

So I run over, and I see Reynolds

and Timmy Menton working on a police officer.

It's an MBTA officer, Dic Donohue.

And he was pumping.

I mean, the blood was coming out of him so fast.

They started compressions the minute he stopped breathing.

After getting in one of the biggest firefights

of their-- probably their career,

and then they're saving a police officer's life

within the next five minutes.

- That's what you guys are trained for,

and it's amazing.

- Those--those guys were-- were amazing.

They really were.

- So once the Mercedes leaves the scene,

do you know what happens next?

- Yeah. So the--the Mercedes goes

through the intersection where all the police--

police officers were at the end of the street.

- Where the firefight happened?

- Right. It goes up a side road and disappears.

We had a trooper that followed it,

and when he got to the top of the street,

the vehicle was empty.

So I sent two K-9 units immediately up.

- So Rick, what do you do next?

- The body was taken to a local hospital.

- We spent about ten, 15 minutes

trying to resuscitate this patient.

At 1:35 in the morning, uh, he was pronounced.

- We did a quick capture fingerprint test on him,

and that immediately identified him

as Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

He had been on the FBI's radar screen

prior to the bombings.

And then very shortly thereafter determined

he had a younger brother

named Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

That was the eureka moment

where we knew the identity of the bombers.

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- So Nancy, we've identified two individuals.

- Right. We go in digging mode,

analytical mode, and we start putting in

in older databases, social platforms.

We're just trying to dig as much as we can.

What can we find from these individuals?

- Had these two brothers been known to the FBI before?

- Yes.

The Russian intel services had sent Boston a lead in 2011.

Very general lead saying, basically,

watch for Tamerlan Tsarnaev

and Zubeidat Tsarnaev.

These two individuals are showing radicalization.

- And who is Zubeidat?

- Yes, Zubeidat is the mother.

We needed to know, well, who radicalized them?

Are there any other actors overseas

that are perhaps manipulating, coordinating, facilitating?

So many questions, so many intel gaps.

And we're working 24/7 to try to answer it.

- Suspect number one was killed in a shoot-out,

and then the other has escaped.

There is a massive, massive manhunt underway.

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- What happens next?

How do we know where Dzhokhar goes?

- When I arrived at the command post,

it was probably about-- maybe 3:30 in the morning,

in the predawn hours.

Governor Patrick decided to order a shelter in place.

- We're asking people to shelter in place.

In other words, to stay indoors

with their doors locked, and not to open the door

for anyone other than a properly-identified

law enforcement officer.

- Which is one of the first times,

I think, this has ever been imposed

upon a major metropolitan area in the United States

in response to a terrorism attack.

- Excellent.

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- And that allowed law enforcement

to begin a grid search of Watertown,

going street by street, house by house,

to try to locate Dzhokhar.

It was a massive, massive undertaking.

#

- And then information had been developed

that Dzhokhar had been a student

at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

And so we had two FBI hostage rescue teams.

One of the teams went down to UMass Dartmouth

and executed a search of the dorm room.

We thought that that was our best opportunity

to capture Dzhokhar.

After a few minutes passed,

the hostage team leader got on the radio

and said, "No, Dzhokhar is not here."

And that was the lowest point, and we didn't have him.

The friends intentionally disposed of evidence

and were subsequently charged with obstruction of justice.

We were all just absolutely exhausted at that point.

We'd been getting two or three hours of sleep a night

for days, so I said, it's time to switch out.

We're gonna switch out teams.

I've got to go home and get some rest.

The shelter in place was lifted late that afternoon.

- In light of the, uh, status of the investigation

here in Watertown and the, um,

developments in the course of the day,

the stay indoors request is lifted.

- The news comes out and says at 6:00,

okay, everybody can go outside now.

One of our residents, David Henneberry,

he has a boat in his yard that's covered in shrink wrap.

He says, "I see my shrink wrap, it's flapping in the wind,

"and I go over, and there's blood on it.

"And I climb up the ladder, and I look, and there's a body.

There's a body in the boat."

And he calls 911.

- Once they determined that Dzhokhar was in there,

the boat was surrounded.

- Shots break out then.

And I think something like a hundred shots

were fired into that boat.

I'm driving home, and I'm listening to WBZ,

and they're saying "Shots fired in Watertown.

Shots fired in Watertown."

And I just got off the next exit

and headed back into Watertown.

There was a state police and FBI helicopters up above,

taking photographs.

They had their infrared FLIR radar system.

You could see the outline of Dzhokhar,

the heat signature of his body laying inside the boat.

What we didn't know is whether he had more bombs,

so we didn't know whether he was gonna

blow himself up in the boat.

There were four or five flash-bangs

that were thrown in.

And it was pretty dramatic.

Somehow Dzhokhar survived, which is pretty remarkable.

- The FBI Hostage Rescue Team took the lead

and tried to negotiate Dzhokhar out of the boat.

Eventually Dzhokhar did emerge,

and he was arrested.

- And that's when I had the most intense feeling

of relief I've ever had in my life.

- With Dzhokhar being found in the boat,

didn't you guys do an exception

where the Miranda Rights weren't read to him?

- That's true.

The director of the FBI called me and said,

"Do not read Dzhokhar his Miranda Rights,"

because there is an exception to the Miranda Rights rule

where you are allowed to question a subject

about any other imminent threats that he's aware of

before you have to read him his Miranda rights.

- Did they find anything in the boat with him?

- He had written a jihadi manifesto

inside the cabin of the boat.

#

- So what happened next?

- Dzhokhar was hospitalized,

so I think it was a day or so before we--

he was ready to be interviewed by FBI agents.

But the FBI agents spent, I'd say,

a couple of days interviewing him

before Carmen Ortiz, the United States Attorney,

said that we're not gonna get anything more out of him.

At that point, we Mirandized him.

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- So after everything is said and done,

did the city take a big sigh of relief?

What happened?

- As I drove back to head home,

people were pouring out of the businesses.

Just waving American flags, cheering law enforcement.

It was one of the most moving things I had seen

in my 26-year career in the FBI.

- It was nice to be part of something

that brought some pride to the police department

and to the--to the state.

- That's what led to Boston Strong.

That phrase, it was--was borne out

of the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy and investigation.

- Nancy, what do you do next?

The immediate threat is done. - Mm-hmm.

- We don't know if they have anybody else,

any associates that are still working with them.

- Precisely, yes. There were so many intel gaps

that we had to move quickly.

- So Nancy, what did you identify?

- The father, Anzor,

he was not really a big father figure.

The mother, she first emigrated to the United States

with Dzhokhar back in 2003,

leaving behind Tamerlan and his two sisters,

Bella and Alina, who traveled here in 2003.

And they all got their permanent residence.

- In the Boston area? - In the Boston area.

- So when the family got here,

did they assimilate into regular society?

- Yes. They--they assimilated well.

Dzhokhar was going to school.

Tamerlan was a boxer.

Tamerlan was going out to nightclubs,

he was partying, just being a normal, Americanized Chechen.

- They didn't appear to be radicalized.

- But Zubeidat wasn't too happy with his behavior,

so she slowly started to tell him that

that was not consistent with Islam.

- So during the bombing,

where was Zubeidat and Anzor in 2013?

Were they still in the US, or they were gone?

- They were gone. The Russian services captured

a conversation between Zubeidat Tsarnaev

and Rizman Amamakiv, the ex-husband of Bella.

And they talk about

how Tamerlan is very ready for jihad.

And Zubeidat, she expresses how she herself

would like to die a martyr.

She knew that Tamerlan was on the path

to conduct an attack.

She knew his ideology was strong enough

that he was ready to-- to engage in jihad.

We started also finding a distant cousin

of Tamerlan's is the leader of the Union of the Just.

And they are not, per se, a terrorist organization,

but they advocate against the United States.

Our investigation was never able to determine

if he had been recruited by Al-Qaeda

or the Union of the Just.

- So there was some sort of radicalization going on,

but not to maybe a certain group?

- Exactly. We couldn't--

- At this point, pinpoint that. - We couldn't pinpoint it.

- But we didn't know if Zubeidat and Anzor knew

what Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were gonna do.

- Exactly.

- The federal jury convict Dzhokhar

of crimes of mass destruction and terrorist activities,

and impose the death penalty upon him,

which I think speaks to the gravity of the crimes

that he and his brother committed.

It's sort of interesting when you think about

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial.

His legal team didn't even try to argue guilt or innocence.

They more or less conceded it as guilt.

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- Were the friends involved at all?

- It took a team of FBI agents in hazmat suits

about four or five days

of wading through a rainstorm at a landfill.

But we found evidence

that they had specifically disposed of

for the purposes of impeding the federal investigation.

So both of those Kazakhstani friends were subsequently

charged with obstruction of justice.

- Based on what we learned from the Boston Marathon,

now the FBI has established a risk threat tool

that sort of alerts us if we have a subject

who's potentially going to mobilize in the United States.

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- You always think about those who lost their lives.

You think about Krystle Campbell,

Lingzi Lu,

Martin Richard,

all the lives that were impacted by this.

Sean Collier gave his life for the city of Boston

and the city of Watertown, but he saved lives himself.

He saved lives.

- Absolutely a hero.

- Danny Meng did the right thing.

And David Henneberry did the right thing.

- Every single person who was there,

even the--you know, the civilians that were there

that became first responders,

I mean, they'll never forget any of this stuff.

That's--it's not over for a lot of people, you know?

It's not just a story, you know?

It's--it's their life.