All language subtitles for FBI.True.S04E01.720p.WEB.h264-EDITH_eng

Times Square
on a beautiful Saturday,

it is packed.
There was a T-shirt vendor

who saw an individual get out
of a car,

and take a lighter and toss it
in the passenger seat.

- And then you heard this
little pop-pop-pop-pop.

- All that glass,
all those bits and shards

that are from 20 stories,
30 stories high.

They're going to come
crashing to the ground.

This is a bomber.

Are they going to activate
some other bombs?

Find the guy.
Stop the next act.

- We need to pull
every single camera.

He's on a plane.

- Clock is ticking.
- Get that plane back now!

In the FBI,
we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts, mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

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.

- Guys, it's so great
to see you.

Haven't seen you in,
like, a minute.

- Kristy Kottis
is a 24-year veteran of the FB.

She worked gangs,
crimes against children,

as well as human
and drug trafficking.

- Pete where were you
on May 1st, 2010?

- I was in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

- Peter Licata was one
of the FBI's top bomb experts.

He dealt with more than 300
Improvised Explosive Devices

on missions to Iraq.

In 2010, he led
the Weapons of Mass Destruction

Squad for New York City.

My counterparts
in the NYPD bomb squad,

they tell me we got
a thing going on Times Square.

You probably want to start
rolling this way.

I got a call,
not unusual

because it always happens
either on a Friday or Saturday

when you're getting
ready to relax.

The assistant special agent
in charge called up,

"Can you respond
as the on-scene commander?"

- Greg Ehrie was recruited
from the US Air Force

to join the FBI,

where he worked organized crime
and intelligence cases.

In 2010, he was
Supervisory Special Agent

for the New York Domestic
Terrorism Squad.

- At this point, we had been
doing a lot of bomb threats

- We've been through
this before.

This is not our first time.

And so everyone knows
what their mission is.

- Richard Frankel got his start
in the FBI

investigating the infamous
Gambino crime family.

After the attacks on 9/11,

he moved into national securit.

By 2009,
Frankel was responsible

for domestic terrorist threats

for the FBI's New York
field office.

- So you're first on scene.
What do you see?

- It's Times Square
on a beautiful Saturday,

right around when shows
are letting out,

shows are coming in,
it is packed.

I look for my team.
I look for my counterparts,

and the first thing goes,
what do we have here?

And what they tell me is
there was a T-shirt vendor

right on the corner of
45th and Broadway

who saw an individual get out
of a car, a Nissan Pathfinder,

and take a lighter and toss it
in the passenger seat.

- And then you heard this
little pop-pop-pop-pop!

Which was almost like
a firecracker

going off and stuff.
And then sparks inside the car,

you could see them.

- At that point,
the T-shirt vendor

sees a fire start
to engulf the car.

- And when that happened,
everyone started running.

Go, go!
Everybody back up!

Everybody back up!

Come on, keep going back.
Just keep moving.

- The FDNY, they see two red,
five-gallon gasoline jugs

in the back seat
of this of this SUV.

They see some fusing systems.
They see some pyrotechnics,

a.k.a. firecrackers,
consumer grade firecrackers.

They see three propane tanks
in the cargo area of this SUV.

And then they see a really long
gun locker.

And they're like,
this isn't a normal car fire.

We've got something more.

- So based on your experience
as a bomb tech

looking at this device,

you're recognizing how powerful
this would have been

if it went off.
How powerful are we talking?

- Catastrophic.

You have Times Square.
You have 45th Street.

You have to worry about
the fragmentation

from the vehicle,
the device itself.

And then what we call secondary
and tertiary fragmentation.

Which is all that glass.

All those bits and shards
that are from 20 stories,

30 stories high.

They're going to come crashing
to the ground

and not just
at 45th and Broadway.

We're talking all the way up
the east side on 45th Street.

We're talking around the block

and we're talking all the way
back down to the Hudson River,

going down the west Side.

In order to get a view
of the device,

you use a remote-controlled
robot to do a reconnaissance

for you to get a look
at the hazard

without putting a bomb tech
in harm's way.

First thing you do
is you make the device safe,

a.k.a. render it safe
neutralizer,

which means you separate
any fusing system

or the switch from
the energetic or the explosives.

Then once we have the explosive
isolated,

we can put it in a vehicle
or a flatbed

and we can haul it out of there.

Whether he was able to set
this device off or not,

it doesn't matter.
The bomb didn't explode,

but this is still a bomber.

- So all these thoughts
are starting to race

through my head.
Now the temperature's

gone up even more,
because you're thinking,

it's not a pipe bomb,
which is damaging enough.

How big could this be?

- It was just a couple
of short years ago,

you had the Mexican
consulate bombing.

You had a bombing
at the Times Square

recruiting station
just around the corner.

You had a potential attack on
the New York City subway system.

- Our job since 9/11
has been to prevent

an act of terrorism in New York
and elsewhere.

And we can't let this happen
a second time on our watch.

- I'm starting to think
at this point,

okay, where's the subject?
Who was driving the car?

Because are they going
to activate some other bombs?

And in my head, I literally
am thinking of a stopwatch

being clicked. because now,
the hunt is on.

The JOC is now
completely up and running.

You've got analysts,
you've got surveillance teams,

you've got lawyers from both
the U.S. Attorney's office

and the FBI.

The entire task force
is up and running

and it's 24-7.

I'm on the phone
with Greg, with Pete,

with everyone saying,
is there any other bomb?

Is there any other actor here
in the United States

that we have to worry about?
And the mission was,

find the guy. Stop the next act.

Everyone was about the mission

- Remember Times Square, busy.

People are moving around.
It's not evacuated yet.

Who came out of that car
and went somewhere?

We need to pull
every single camera.

You know, I need to see a face.
Who came out of that car?

- Wasn't there some information
that we ran down

because it was video
of a man changing his clothes?

- We are currently examining
video that shows

a white male in his 40s

in Shubert Alley,
looking back in the direction

of West 45 Street.

He also was seen shedding
a dark-coloured shirt,

revealing a red one underneath.

This happened about
a half block

from where the vehicle
was parked.

- Looks like he's coming
from the car.

Very suspicious.
Goes down an alley.

- It's a clue.

So we start to focus in
on that very quickly.

That became
a person of interest.

So we are getting some
information that's coming in.

The license plate,
because it was obvious,

we got that one.

- We run it. What do we get?

- Comes back to a body shop
over in Brooklyn.

So let's get people out
to that body shop,

find out what we know.
But remember, everywhere we go,

even if it doesn't look good,
you're assuming

this is a terrorism
organization.

This is a bomber.
This is somebody who's armed.

So you can't just go
willy nilly.

I remember them dragging
the owner of this body shop

out of bed, you know,
and talking to him.

He was able to very quickly say
it belonged to a pickup truck

that he still had right there.
He said, I thought the plates

were still in the car.
So we know that's a dead end.

So I remember banging Pete
and his folks hard to say,

"Give me something from here."

There's a set of keys

that somebody had left,
didn't know what they were to.

- We're looking for what
we call trace evidence,

which are fingerprints, hairs,
fibers, any DNA,

the lighter and the keys
that are found

on the floorboard of the seat.

- Pete was able to relay to us
the VIN number,

the one in the windshield
was obliterated.

And at some point, very quickly,
when you were going to move

the car, somebody was able
to get the VIN

from the frame underneath.

- Finding the VIN...
- Huge.

- Huge, and that is almost
a turning point in our mind

because we're like,
we can solve this.

- The VIN number came back to,
I remember, to an 18-year-old

who had sold the car
to somebody.

We start sending people out
and it was over in...

- Connecticut.
- Connecticut, it was up

in Connecticut.

So we sent a group
of people up there,

and she tells us she got a call
from somebody who said,

"I'd like to buy the car."
And he looked at it.

He paid cash.
But the brother stops

and is talking to our agents
and says,

"You know, he never
gave us a name."

The person who bought the car
did make the mistake.

He gave them a phone number.
So we start running that down.

- You've got the phone number,
you run it...

- Yeah, numerous calls
to Pakistan,

specifically on the...
Right before the bomb

was put in place.
Now it's, okay. Game is on.

We know this
is an act of terror.

The focus now is find
this individual

and who else is connected.

And then we found
a clip of video...

- And you will see that
the Muslim war has just started.

- Right now, we have the VIN,

the license plate,
the phone number.

- We start running
all the numbers

with our other government
agency friends.

We run that and we found
the person who bought the car

did make numerous calls
to Pakistan.

- And during this time,
we also have a Pakistani Taliban

group releasing a video
taking credit for the bomb,

even though it didn't explode.

- Up until this point,
it's a criminal case.

But once you now see Pakistan
and you see it on the phone,

we now have a whole new
host of tradecraft

that we can use.

Um, we've got
the military there.

You know, their criminal
and counterintelligence

investigators are with us.

You can start seeing who
on the other side

was being talked to.

And now reverse that

and see who they're talking
to in the United States.

- Pete, did this bomb
have an IED signature

that you recognized
from a certain...

Like, these are used
in Afghanistan.

These were used in Pakistan.

- You have a locker
that's weighing over about

200 pounds, full of some
type of fertilizer mixture

with propane tanks
and gasoline cylinders

and all this stuff.

A signature of what was
happening overseas.

Al Qaeda has posted several

videos providing
step-by-step instructions

on how to construct a car bomb

using propane tanks
and gasoline.

- So it's like, okay,
what did this guy think

he or she was going to do?

And it's now starting to scale
in our mind's eye,

the technical expertise
of this individual.

So we went to rural
Pennsylvania.

We found a similar vehicle.

We were in an isolated,
desolated area,

very rural, not anyone around.
And we built a device,

over 200 pounds of ammonium
nitrate and fuel oil detonating.

It was a devastating device.

Now, you picture that
in the middle of Times Square

at six-something on a Saturday.

- When Pete and his team
set off that live shot,

that bomb...

we all looked at that
and said, "What if?"

- So we've got the phone number.

- We run that, and a young
analyst comes up and says,

"Hey, that number was listed
on a customs form

a year or two before,
and it comes back to somebody."

So in other words, somebody had
come into the United States,

gone through customs and listed
that number as a contact.

And that was Faisal Shahzad.

. We got something.

Now we have something real.

The bomb squad.
They're still working the bomb

and getting any information
that you can.

Analysts now focus
on Faisal Shahzad.

Get us everything.

- And there was
a clip of video...

- Jihad is the obligate duty
in Islam of every Muslim.

This attack on
the United States

will also be a revenge attack
for all the Mujahideen.

- So now we have oh,
this is really

looking like our person,

- We actually went out
and found

where the firecrackers
were bought.

- We started to receive
some of that video feed

and that wound up being
Faisal Shahzad.

It was again,
collecting that evidence

to get that paper
to get him arrested.

- We know who he is.
We know where he is.

We've got the surveillance team
out there,

and they're following
Faisal Shahzad in Connecticut.

- Again, you're looking,
is he going to meet

with somebody?
Is there somebody else?

Is there another SUV
out there that's rigged?

Is there something else
out there?

The temperature's rising.

- All the Muslim Arabs

that have been martyred,

I will take revenge
on their behalf inshallah.

And I really wish
that the hearts of the Muslim

will be pleased with
this attack and inshallah.

- Surveillance team
is following him around

and in the JOC,
behind the scenes,

we're talking to Rich.
We're talking to the special

agent in charge.
And as he's going around,

what if he gets out of a car?

What if he pulls up
into a school parking lot?

What if he gets out
carrying a backpack?

Do we arrest him?
Do we have enough to arrest him?

We have to engage him.

Is this going to be
a bomber that we have to stop?

We're putting agents
in harm's way.

- Right.
- They're going to potentially

come face to face
with somebody

who just planted a bomb
in Times Square.

So all these thoughts
are going on.

And at one point,

he comes out of his residence...

He is in his SUV,
a white Isuzu Trooper,

drives to a mall.

He parks in a parking lot.
We're making decisions

literally on the spot live.

And he gets out of the car
wearing, I think,

shorts and a t-shirt.
So our comfort level

at least goes down.

But we come up with the idea,

"Hey, while he's in this mall,
we don't know how much

time we have.
Get that keychain

that we found in
the Nissan Pathfinder

in Times Square.

- You mentioned there was
another set of keys.

Were those keys found in the car

or like in the ignition
on the seat?

- I think they were found
on the floorboards.

He just threw things
in the car

in the middle of Times Square.
Dumb mistake, right?

- Right.
- So we go up to Connecticut

and we try the second
set of keys

in the lock of his car.

So now we know the lawyers
are happy.

We can arrest this person.

- So we're back
at the command post

and we know he went back
to his residence

and everything our surveillance
is telling me,

we know that he's still inside.

So we're going to get
our FBI SWAT team

stacked at the door,
which means they're going to be

ready to go and crash the door.

I actually start the briefing
and as I'm briefing,

I get tapped on the shoulder
by a member of the JTTF,

the federal air marshal liaison.

He goes, "Rich,
I gotta talk to you."

I'm like, "Listen,
I can't talk to you now.

We're going to go."
I go, "We got surveillance

on him," and we start arguing.

"JTTF, FBI, we think this guy
is in the apartment."

He goes, "Faisal Shahzad
is not in his room.

He's at the airport.
He's on a plane."

Everything our surveillance
is telling me,

we know that he's still inside.

Faisal Shahzad
is not in his room.

- Somebody says,
"Where's the car?"

He's driving a white
Isuzu Trooper. It's not there.

- I believe there was another
white vehicle nearby.

So when the change
of the eye happened,

they didn't even think
that the vehicle would move

because there's still
another white vehicle

in that general location.

So the federal
air marshal liaison.

He goes, "Rich,
I gotta talk to you.

He's at the airport.
He's on a plane."

I got the documentation here.

That's his passport number.
That's his date of birth.

The only thing we don't have
is the picture."

He's like, "This is the guy.

He's on a plane.
Get that plane back now!"

- Inshallah eight years
has passed by in Afghanistan

and you'll see that
the Muslim war has just started.

- I make it from 14th Street
to JFK in, like 18 minutes.

- Legend.
- No, he didn't.

- Greg, you dispute the fact.
- I dispute this.

- I made it in 18 minutes.
- He got there very fast.

He got there in very good time.
- I had troopers

actually tell me I drove well.

A trooper never tells
an FBI agent they drove well

unless he did something
like that.

So we get out of the car,
we all go running in

into Terminal 4,
I believe it was.

- it's a footrace now.
It's a straight on sprint.

He gets to the airport,
he gets on the plane.

They shut the door,
- And that plane is,

by all accounts now,

basically going to be entering
international space.

We have to know,
are there guns?

Are there bombs?
Are there any other bad guys?

We have to know
this immediately.

- Imagine you're on the plane.
You're Faisal Shahzad,

and you think you're home free.
Doors close.

You know, please prepare
for takeoff.

- Engines wind back down,
plane turns around.

You go back to the gate.

- I think it was Customs
and Border Protection.

They went on board, I think,
with a couple of Port Authority

cops and brought Faisal Shahzad
off the plane.

And they've now,
for the first time, I think,

in the history of JFK,

taken somebody off
of an airplane

that had already left the gate.

So at this point,
we have to take care

of what's going on in New Haven.

But we want to do it smart
and safe

because that place
could be wired.

- Bomb techs go ahead
and they start

clearing for hazards, tripwires,
booby traps.

Then that's passed
to the command post,

going, "Alright. We're good."

- And then you got
the three suits from, you know,

the Joint Terrorism Task Force,

who then take him into a room
to begin the interview.

And again, this is not supposed
to be a Mirandaed interview.

The interview basically
is public safety.

And I said to the to the agent
and the detectives,

"Do not Mirandize him.
I want him to waive

presentment to the courts.

I want him to waive
the attorney.

I want him to waive
everything he can

and that he wants to speak to us
in private."

And he goes, they go back in
and said, "Yep, he does.

And by the way, we kind of
can't shut him up.

He keeps wanting to tell us
what's going on."

- So we have the homerun
already.

We have, the human being,

we have the parts that
we believe hr's associated with.

All this does is now put that
final nail in the coffin

and put the final,
"Happy birthday, Faisal.

We gotcha..."
- Exactly.

- ...on the cake
for the prosecutor to go,

"We've got our guy, and there's
no doubt in anyone's eye.

- A suspect is now in custody

and is being questioned.

The American people
can be assured that the FBI

and their partners
in this process

have all the tools
and experience they need

to learn everything we can.

And that includes what, if any,

connection this individual
has to terrorist groups.

Shahzad surprised
a NY courtroom,

telling a judge that he wanted
to plead guilty

in what was expected to be
a routine arraignment.

He said he would plead guilty
and 100 times more.

- 53 hours from the lighting
the fuse to being under arrest.

The fact that the JTTF
worked the way it did.

It was as it should be.

Subtitling: difuze