All language subtitles for FBI.True.S06E11.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

- They wanted society
to collapse.

They have real weapons.

- This was a perfect storm.

- The Base advocated
to violently target

Jewish Americans,
African Americans.

- This individual may have

illegally crossed
into the U.S.

- He was prior military.

He wanted to engage
in violence.

This was something that we
needed to look at immediately.

- We've flipped the switch.

He's talking about the
killing of African Americans.

- We're talking about people
from all over the country

with weapons engaging
in training for violence.

You put an undercover
involved in this,

that's the safety of an agent.

To go up to 24/7 in the woods
on multiple subjects,

and they all have guns--

Now we've got to go in there?

- They start honing in

on this Second Amendment rally
in Virginia.

We can shoot into the crowd
and see what's going to happen.

- 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.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

- You're all right.

- It's good, very good.

- Tom, what were you doing
when this case started?

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

She worked gangs,
crimes against children,

as well as human
and drug trafficking.

- So I was an executive
at headquarters.

I ran the domestic terrorism
program for the FBI.

And so I was looking at
all cases across the country

and around the world.

- For over 20 years,
Tom Sobocinski

worked international
and domestic terrorism.

- The FBI is always
looking for individuals who

are about to commit violence.

It's very complicated.

I mean, anybody who goes online
sees a massive amount

of speech about
things they hate,

things they want to do
to other people.

And so for the FBI, it is
how do we search through all

of that to find out
those that actually

want to do that violent act.

We found out that there
was an individual who

wanted to get groups together.

He wanted to do these
various levels of attack.

- Summer of 2019 is
kind of when

we started tracking
Norman Spear,

which is a Twitter account.

- Rachid Harrison
joined the FBI

after working as
a Special Agent with the DEA.

He works international
and domestic terrorism.

- Norman Spear advocated
for The Base.

Norman Spear advocated
to violently target

Jewish Americans,
African Americans.

This wasn't just
like hate speech.

This was talking about creating
cells across the country,

organizing in real life,
not just behind the keyboard.

- The ideology is a real--
it's a secondary thing for us.

It's like, why is
somebody racist?

It's hard to figure that out.

And does it matter
for me as an FBI agent?

One people! One nation!

End immigration!

- Do I need to know
why he's doing this,

or do I need to know
what he's planning to do

and what the crime is?

And for us, it's what
he's planning to do

and what that crime is
that I need to stop him on.

He is saying, I want
to blow up something,

I want to go after
the infrastructure,

I want to violently take
down the U.S. government.

For us, that raised the bar.

- We are gearing up
for a military campaign.

We need recruits,
military recruits,

not voting,
not community building,

none of that bullshit.

War--that's what our aim is.

- So we then started
to try to figure out

who the real people were
behind these online sites.

We, as the Bureau,
started looking around

to figure out who he was,
where he was.

Is he real?
Is that his name?

Is he even in the U.S.?

Where are the servers?

We eventually found out Norman
Spear was Rinaldo Nazzaro.

- And you were getting
some of this information

from individuals that were
actually inside The Base.

- Absolutely.

I will say that a large
percentage of these individuals

that we ultimately look at
and arrest,

people that they live with,
work with,

and are aspirationally
linked to,

they call us up
and say, hey, listen.

This is who I am.

I have these issues.

But this person,
this person is somebody

you need to worry about.
- Yeah.

- The FBI takes that seriously.

- So we've got this guy,
Norman Spear, Rinaldo Nazzaro.

What are you seeing?

- So in The Base, we
saw people physically

making plans to get together.

We saw them talking
about weapons.

We saw them procuring weapons,
having weapons,

discussing explosives,
training.

None of that's illegal.

Combined with that they want to
learn and do and teach all that

to do violent attacks,
that combination made us say,

OK, this is one that
we're now seeing move

from this potentially
aspirational, online space

into these folks
physically exist,

they appear to be
getting together,

and they appear to be
focused on actually

doing a violent attack.

- Early August 2019, we have
a really great undercover

that gets into the group.

When the undercover got
vetted into the group,

Norman Spear was the recruiter.

Everybody that joined
the organization

came through Norman Spear.

He vetted everybody.

The undercover, he
had to get vetted

on an encrypted chat group.

- What are some of the
questions they ask?

I'm curious, what's the
vetting process like?

Like, what do you ask
somebody to join a hate group?

- They like to know
what their descent is.

Are they of European descent?

- Their religion, their view
on the White ethnostate.

- They were very good
about their OPSEC.

When they would communicate
with each other,

they always used
encrypted apps.

They didn't talk on the phone.

- Yeah, but they're
not that good.

I am comfortable saying that
I'm glad they're not that good,

makes our job easier.

- Before I work
domestic terrorism,

I worked matters
relating to ISIS.

And one thing they were
very good at was propaganda.

Right?
- Yes.

- The Base made a point

to make sure their propaganda
was--you know, was good, right?

And this is an example
of something they

put out September of 2019.

- Let's be clear.
That's in the United States.

That's not overseas.

- It's--it's shocking, right,
to watch?

- Yes.

- We have an undercover agent
who is going

to go into a meeting with folks
who we know have weapons,

do want to destabilize
the government.

And for the agent who's
going to go do it,

that's going to be
a difficult day for him.

- In domestic terrorism,
the FBI is focused

on the prevention of violence.

The individuals in this
group were committed

to using violence
on a massive scale.

- So when he went down to
Rome, Georgia, to be vetted,

the cell down in Georgia
actually brought

all kinds of tech gear,
RF transmitters just

to kind of make sure
he wasn't wired up,

which he was, obviously.

They had these RF scanners
that were legitimate.

They actually did go off.

- And they chalked it up to the
fact that they were over some--

- High wires?
- Power lines.

And they kind of
just gave up on that.

And they said he
was good to go.

And that's how we
started in the group.

- What kind of plans were
they--were you hearing

that they were going to make?

Like, what were some of
their operational plans

to disrupt society,
the government?

- Attack certain individuals,
power plants

that would destabilize
the community

so that, then, this new
America would be reborn.

- They would focus
on people that you and I

would never think
about as potential victims.

The Georgia cell included
the undercover

on some of the activities

that the Georgia cell were
partaking in.

- There was a couple who were
engaged in political activity

that they disagreed with.

And so they really started
to focus in on killing them

to stop that activity.

- And then, when they
started naming people,

like they want to kill
or hurt person X,

we have to notify that
person that they've now--

there's a threat against them.

How do we notify them?

What do--do we offer
them protection?

Do we offer to move them?

You know, are they going
to go to the media?

I mean, all of these
factors come into play.

And it was dozens
of times a day.

- There's predicated subjects
down in Atlanta.

There's a hate camp.

- These are real people.

What made them different was
they're talking about training.

- They wanted people who had
prior paramilitary training,

law enforce people who
knew how to use guns,

knew how to use explosives.

- The undercover is very
tactically proficient.

He knew his firearms,
knew tactics,

knew defensive tactics.

And he even said, like,
these guys weren't perfect,

but it was very concerning
how good they were

at some of this stuff.

The undercover,
he meets individuals

that attend this camp.

After the training session,

we learn that we have
a Maryland cell.

The leader is a former
cavalry scout in the U.S. Army.

He's 33 years old.

He's obsessed with
his Chevy Colorado

ZR2 edition that's black.

He also went by the name Mark.

That's all we knew about him.

I end up working
with a state partner

to try to figure out
if we could identify

Mark with what we had.

Based on the fact that
he was obsessed

with this Chevy Colorado
ZR2 edition,

which comes to find out is
a diesel truck,

which they don't
make a lot of those,

we were able to put
together a partial VIN.

And we compared it to every
33-year-old in Maryland that

drove a black Chevy Colorado
that lived

around the Maryland-Delaware
border.

Came back with three results.

We showed the results
to the undercover.

And undercover said,
that's your guy,

Brian Mark Lemley,

33 years old,
lived in Elkton, Maryland.

He was our subject.

We were able to track
his devices.

And we were able
to see his travel.

Just after that, Ryan Thorpe,

a "Winnipeg Free Press"
reporter...

Found a flyer that said,

"Save your race.
Join The Base."

That was kind of their slogan.

He replied
to the email address.

Eventually,
he was vetted online.

Norman Spear went through an
interview process with him.

- Once he passes that
online vetting process,

he was put into a meeting
with Patrik Mathews.

- He was a military reservist
in Canada.

Ryan Thorpe is the one
who identifies him.

He puts that in the newspaper.

The next day,
the RCMP conducted

a search warrant of his home.

- It's reported that
they seized his firearms.

There was a piece of paper that
was crumpled up in the trash.

Mathews had documented almost
every mass shooting event

over the last decade, things
like how many were killed,

what their ethnicities were,
what their ages were.

He was not arrested.

- It's reported
that he was booted

from the Canadian military.

A couple of days later,
he was reported missing.

His truck was found on
the Manitoba-Minnesota border.

- We had information from
the Canadian government

that Mathews may have illegally
crossed into the U.S.

This is absolutely
a priority for us.

He was prior military.

He had the ideology that
we were concerned about.

He wanted to engage
in violence.

- This was something that we
needed to look at immediately.

- Mathews had potentially
come into the U.S.

Especially with
the information we had

about his past history,
his military background...

this quickly became a priority
for us, to try to find him.

- His truck was
found at the border.

He's probably in the U.S.

Who helped him, right?

So our most concerning
subject in Baltimore

and in the Maryland AOR
was Brian Mark Lemley.

He was the cell leader.

We knew that he was trying
to recruit more members.

For work, he was
a truck driver.

His pattern of life was going
down to Virginia every day,

leaving early in the morning,

and he would be back
in the evening.

Late August, right after
the time Mathews disappears,

Lemley drives to the
Michigan-Indiana border,

600 miles,

spends about two hours
in a hotel parking lot,

turns right back around
and drives about 700 miles

to Chincoteague Island,
Virginia.

That's a long trip.

It certainly raised suspicion
that he went that distance

and came back that same day
and didn't go home.

His mother had a place down
there on Chincoteague Island.

So maybe he was just
going down there for--

- To spend a lot of quality
time with his mom?

- Yeah. We didn't know
at the time, right?

Over the course
of the next week,

he's making trips down
to Chincoteague Island.

At this point, we just
had suspicions that maybe

Mathews was there with him.

- But we also had
suspicion that Mathews

was multiple other spots
at this time as well.

And so we were,
at the same time,

tracking down leads in several
states that we thought was him.

All the stuff we're
talking about,

the tracking him,
figuring out where it is,

those are FBI employees
that are sitting there digging

through that material,
going on 24 hours a day

throughout the country,
because we do think

there's somebody here who
is going to do something bad.

- One of the issues
we had was the fact

that we were tracking
Lemley, right,

we're tracking his phone.

We don't have a phone
for Mathews.

The device he had
in Canada was gone.

- Right.
- It was off.

It wasn't being used.

He probably tossed it.

We knew certain places and
specific location and times

that Lemley was in
Chincoteague Island.

We compared tower data
from those times

to the specific time
and place that Lemley

passed through the
Chincoteague Bay Bridge tunnel.

- That's a lot of analytical
hours right there.

- Well, then we had to get
a search warrant to do that.

- Yeah.
- We got the warrant.

And very clearly, we got
another device that came back.

We find out that it was
activated on August 31,

the same day that
Lemley had gone

to the Michigan-Indiana border
and came back.

We find out it was activated
at a Walmart in Ohio.

We go back to Lemley's
historical returns.

We find out that they
stopped at a Walmart in Ohio

at that same date and time
that that phone was activated.

That raised our suspicions
even more.

OK, maybe that is Mathews.

Maybe Lemley went
to go pick him up.

- Wow.
That's fantastic.

- A few days later--
this is early September.

There's another Hate Camp
down in Georgia.

And Lemley travels
to Chincoteague Island,

spends not too long,
just maybe an hour there,

and starts heading south.

We were able to pick up,
on footage,

of him driving through the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel.

And in that footage,
you can see Lemley

clear as day
in the driver's seat

and somebody
in the passenger seat.

From that photo, we believe
we have Mathews in that car.

They're on their
way to Georgia.

They go down to the Hate Camp.

We didn't know what
these guys are thinking,

what their future plans are.

When do we need to draw
the line, if that comes?

- So guys, when
they're at Hate Camp

and they're around
the campfire,

what are some of the motivating
rhetoric, if you will,

that they were saying
to their attendees?

- They, you know, believed that
certain people were converted.

And then there's this
special few group

of people who have gotten
this true insight

to how the world is
going to work.

And so they felt that
they were special,

that they were one
of the true ones

that saw how the world
really is and how it should be.

And so it gave them
a sense of purpose,

a sense of mission for what
they were trying to do.

The personalized end game
for them is all of these folks

weren't happy with
the lives they were living,

and they all wanted
something different.

I think the one thing
they wanted different

was something that
we kind of call acceleration.

They wanted society
to collapse.

- They believe that society
was bound to collapse.

- Anything they can do to
accelerate that collapse

for their cause
was good, right?

And they constantly
talk about the creation

of the white ethnostate, right?

I mean, that's a thing.

As we're collecting evidence
throughout this case,

they start getting more
specific on the types

of plots they want to commit.

And they center in on
this Second Amendment rally

that is going to occur
in January of 2020.

They viewed this rally
as their opportunity

to create conflict, and again,
in their words,

like,
accelerate civil disorder.

And they said things like,
we could cause conflict

with the police and the crowd.

We could shoot into the crowd
and see what's going to happen.