SUMMARY: The deadly weekend shooting at a San Diego synagogue appears to be the latest in a series of hate-driven domestic terror attacks across the U.S. This time, the killer left a manifesto praising other recent assaults. How is the Trump administration responding, and is it enough to quell the growing threat? Amna Nawaz talks to Nick Rasmussen of the McCain Institute for International Leadership.
SUMMARY: Christopher Paul Hasson, a Coast Guard officer and self-proclaimed white supremacist, is facing drug and weapons charges after federal agents discovered a stockpile of firearms and ammunition at his Maryland home. Also found was a list of his apparent targets, including Democratic politicians and journalists. Amna Nawaz talks to the Anti-Defamation League's Oren Segal about the threat.
SUMMARY: Events in Charlottesville last week prompted the tech community to take steps against hate speech. Companies like Google have stopped hosting white nationalist websites, and Facebook and Twitter have shut down known white nationalists' accounts. Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that the tactics used to silence neo-Nazis online could be used against others in the future.
SUMMARY: The national fallout continues after three people died and multiple people were injured in the chaos of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. The NewsHour's PJ Tobia and Mark Scialla join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss why many see the rally as a turning point, as well as to offer a look at the “Antifa” counter-protesters.
SUMMARY: Hari Sreenivasan takes a deep look at the nation's divide following Saturday's deadly incident during a white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as what the Trump administration needs to do with Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and George Selim, a former Department of Homeland Security official.
SUMMARY: The violent events in Charlottesville, where white supremacist groups came out of the shadows, seem to have brought rising American tensions over race and racism to a head. Hari Sreenivasan gets perspectives from Leonard Pitts Jr. of The Miami Herald, Carol Anderson of Emory University, and Mark Potok a former senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SUMMARY: As politicians and influential business leaders weigh in on President Trump's comments on Charlottesville, how is the American public responding? Political correspondent Lisa Desjardins joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll about the clashes and the President's comments, how lawmakers of his own party are speaking out, plus Confederate statues at the Capitol.
SUMMARY: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville on Saturday as hundreds of white nationalists and alt-right activists clashed with police and counter-protesters. It was the second rally to protest the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia joins Hari Sreenivasan from Charlottesville.
SUMMARY: As locals grappled with the aftermath of a white nationalist rally that left three people dead on Saturday, Mayor Michael Signer wasted no words on denouncing President Donald Trump for what he says is his culpability in the violence. But a white nationalist leader told The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia that the radical left is at fault.
SUMMARY: Rallies on Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia that were reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan gatherings shook people who have for generations fought for civil rights in Virginia and across the country. Activist, writer and educator Leontyne Peck with the University of Virginia’s President’s Commission on Slavery unpacks the weekend’s events with Hari Sreenivasan.
SUMMARY: Despite the nation’s focus on Islamic terrorism since 9/11, homegrown, right-wing extremists have also killed dozens of Americans. Peter Bergen, the director of the National Security Studies program for New America, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the toll of homegrown terrorism in light of the Charlottesville white nationalist rally car attack.
SUMMARY: A gunman opened fire Wednesday in Alexandria, Va., during a morning practice for the Congressional Baseball Game. The gunman, who died from his injuries sustained during the attack, shot Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, and four others. Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff for an update on the reaction from Capitol Hill.
SUMMARY: The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing was the largest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. A new documentary on the PBS series American Experience takes a fresh look at the events and motivations that led to the attack by Timothy McVeigh, and finds resonance for today. Jeffrey Brown interviews director Barak Goodman.
MAN: There's heavy damage done.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): April 19, 1995.
MAN: About a third of the building has been blown away.
JEFFREY BROWN: A Ryder rental truck with 5,000 pounds of explosives ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; 168 people were killed, 19 children among them.
WOMAN: Who has come in here and done this terrible thing?
BARAK GOODMAN, Director, “Oklahoma City: I knew very little of the story. I mean, I remember — like a lot of people remember that day, and the image of that building, you know, with its face blown off, an image that we weren't used to or accustomed to at the time.
JEFFREY BROWN: Barak Goodman is the director of the film “Oklahoma City.”
BARAK GOODMAN: While I think a lot of people remember this as a simple story of a lone terrorist committing an act, it actually has very deep roots. And when we pulled on those roots, a whole ‘nother story sort of appeared.
JEFFREY BROWN: The film delves into the rise of white nationalist militias in the 1980s, and two later events that galvanized the country and deeply influenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh: the siege of Ruby Ridge in 1992, when the FBI and U.S. Marshals confronted Randy Weaver at his home in rural Idaho, resulting in the deaths of Weaver's wife, son and a U.S. Marshal.
And the following year, Waco, Texas, when federal agents, responding to reports of weapons stockpiling, attempted to arrest the leader of a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians. A firefight broke out, killing 10, including four ATF agents. And after a 51-day standoff, the complex went up in flames as agents moved in with tear gas. More than 70 people died.
During the long standoff, then 24-year-old Army veteran Timothy McVeigh had been watching nearby.
WOMAN: Timothy McVeigh had already apparently been very concerned about what had happened at Ruby Ridge. So he came down to Waco and sold bumper stickers with pro-gun, anti-government slogans.
He saw the raid as clear evidence of what the government would do to try to confiscate guns and persecute gun owners.
The FBI and Oregon State Police have arrested several people in connection to the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. One person was killed.
Ammon Bundy, Ryan C. Bundy, Brian “Booda” Cavalier, Shawna Cox and Ryan W. Payne were all arrested Tuesday night along Highway 395 between Burns and John Day, Oregon, police said.
Everyone arrested Tuesday night will face felony charges, according to law enforcement.
Officials said one person suffered non-life threatening injuries. The injured person was reportedly transferred to a local hospital.
The arrest of Ammon and Ryan Bundy along with three others took place around 4:30 p.m. PST. Shots were fired during the arrest.
Law enforcement said no additional information will be released at this time about the deceased person.
In a separate event in Burns, Oregon State Police arrested Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Arizona. They did not give details about the nature of the arrest. The FBI have also confirmed that Peter Santilli, age 50, of Cincinnati was arrested in Burns.
St. Charles Health System in Bend confirmed a helicopter had been dispatched to Harney County and is on standby awaiting to transport patients to its level II trauma center. The hospital is on lockdown.
Ammon Bundy and a group of armed activists and militiamen stormed the empty headquarters of the remote wildlife refuge in Oregon on Jan. 2 to protest the impending imprisonment of two ranchers convicted of arson on federal land.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss domestic terrorism in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting, the continuing political debate over gun control, as well as the shape of the GOP presidential contest.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Back in the U.S., it has been a full week of news. The San Bernardino shooting once again sparked a political debate on guns and terror, while Paul Ryan ended his first month as speaker of the House of Representatives with a major policy speech.
That brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen.
So, another week, another shooting. Now we are learning from the FBI that they are considering this a terrorist incident. They’re going to focus on it that way.
And we’re already hearing, Mark and David, comments for different kinds of solutions from different sides of the political aisle, David.
Republicans are saying too much focus on guns, the administration isn’t doing enough to fight terrorism. Do you see any kind of consensus coming together?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Well, I don’t see why it’s an either/or thing. It’s additive, not alternative.
The guns, you know, I don’t see why people need to be carrying these kinds of guns, the guns that were used in this kind of attack. And so it seems to me some sensible legislation, I don’t know if it will help prevent this. As I have said all along, there are 250 million guns in this country. It’s hard to control gun usage. Nonetheless, it couldn’t hurt.
But what’s unique about this is that it was sort of ISIS-inspired, not ISIS-run, but sort of ISIS-inspired. And that leads to two conclusions. First, ISIS has charisma. If you are a certain sort of person with some sort of mentality, suddenly, you want to latch on and swear allegiance to ISIS, apparently, and then go out and kill people.
And so giving — taking away some of ISIS’ charisma by handing them some defeat on the battlefield, the way we did to al-Qaida in Iraq, seems to me an important task.
The second thing is, this is religious. We are going to have many more religious attacks than we have had in the past, because there are going to be more religious people in the world and attacks. And that doesn’t mean they are motivated by religion. They are motivated by a politicized form of religion.
It’s not a real faith, but it’s a politicized form. You say, you go to my group, and then there are all those evil people in another group. And I’m going to go shoot up some of those evil people in the other group.
And so to me, when you have that kind of religious, political fanaticism, it’s going to take religious voices to combat it and say, we love our people in our group, but we have to treat other people outside our group with the theology of the other, with justice. And so we have to win the battle of ideas. And that has been true since 9/11 and it’s still true today.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you see a consensus coming around, either one of these ideas, Mark?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: I don’t. I endorse David’s assessment, especially on religion.
Judy, after Newtown, the last deadliest mass killing in this country since — of the dimensions that we had in San Bernardino this week, there was a sense of personal tragedy in the United States, the loss of — the slaughter of the innocence, the murder children and educators, but there wasn’t a sense of terror, there wasn’t a sense of widespread fear.
Since Paris, I think it’s fair to say, politically, the Democrats have been tone-deaf. They have not responded, in a sense. And it’s interesting, because Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most credentialed of the national candidates in this whole area, she did respond by calling this an act of terrorism even before the FBI did.
But the response — and I agree totally on guns. It’s an outrage. It’s indefensible, the vote in the Senate yesterday, to tell how far we have come from Newtown, there was not a single vote that changed.
SUMMARY: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three. The federal jury chose to sentence the 21-year-old to death by lethal injection over life in prison without possibility of release. Judy Woodruff talks to Emily Rooney of WGBH to learn more about the reactions from victims and their families.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death today; 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted by a federal jury last month of the April 2013 bombings that killed three bystanders near the finish line of the annual race.
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, later killed a policemen during a manhunt. The elder Tsarnaev died in a gun battle with police. The jury chose death over the only other option, life in prison without possibility of release.
After the penalty was announced, the U.S. attorney who led the prosecution and a bombing victim spoke.
CARMEN ORTIZ, U.S. Attorney, District of Massachusetts: Today, the jury has spoken, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will pay with his life for his crimes. Make no mistake. The defendant claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims. This wasn’t a religious crime and it certainly doesn’t reflect true Muslim beliefs. It was a political crime designed to intimidate and to coerce the United States.
KAREN BRASSARD, Boston Bombing Survivor: Today feels different only because it’s — it is more complete, I guess, is how I’m going to say it. I know that there is still a long road ahead. There’s going to be many, many, many more dates ahead, but right now it feels like we can take a breath.
SUMMARY: At the 20th anniversary, we look back at the Oklahoma City bombing. Public television station OETA shares reflections from survivors and victims’ families, and Judy Woodruff talks to former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, former Director of Homeland Security of Oklahoma Kerry Pettingill and Barry Grissom, U.S. attorney for the district of Kansas, for lessons learned from the attack.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, a moment that shocked the nation and changed the way we think about threats at home.
Two minutes past 9:00 on the morning of April 19, 1995, downtown Oklahoma City is torn apart.
MAN: I went under the table when the ceiling started falling in. And that’s what saved me, I guess.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A Ryder truck loaded with a diesel fuel and fertilizer bomb blew up next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, cutting it in half; 168 people, including 19 children in its day care center, died. More than 650 were injured.
On April 21, Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh and another former soldier, Terry Nichols, were arrested, and later formally charged with the bombing.
Two days later, then President Bill Clinton came to comfort the city and the country.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: For we will stand with you for as many tomorrows as it takes.
(APPLAUSE)
JUDY WOODRUFF: McVeigh and Nichols, members of far right-wing anti-federal-government groups, timed the attack for the two-year anniversary of the fiery end to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians. That breakaway religious sect, in Waco, Texas, had staged a 51-day standoff with law enforcement, which ended with an FBI-led assault on the heavily armed compound; 76 members of the group died that day.
In 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on 11 federal counts of murder and conspiracy. He was sentenced to death and executed in 2001. Nichols was later found guilty on federal charges of conspiracy and manslaughter and 161 state counts of first-degree murder. He is serving multiple life sentences in a Colorado federal prison.
The anniversary will be recognized throughout the coming weekend in Oklahoma City, and there will be much attention on how survivors and families are faring.
Our colleagues at the PBS station OETA produced a documentary called “Resilience” and spoke with many of them. It was done in conjunction with The Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Here’s an edited excerpt.
SUMMARY: In the second week of the Boston Marathon bombing trial, jurors heard emotional testimony from a victim who lost both legs and the FBI presented stitched-together surveillance video tracing the suspect’s path to and from the bombing. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Emily Rooney of WGBH about a note scrawled by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev while he was hiding from authorities in a boat.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This was an eventful week in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is charged with the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013. He’s facing 30 federal charges, 17 of which carry the death penalty.
Hari Sreenivasan in our New York studios has an update.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The week started off with testimony from victims and their families. It also included revelations for the first time of a full message that a wounded Tsarnaev scrawled on a bullet-riddled boat just before he was caught by a manhunt. And the trial showed off new surveillance video from the day of the attacks on Boylston Street.
Emily Rooney of WGBH-Boston has been covering the trial, joins me again tonight.
Is started out with some emotional testimony this week. Who did you hear from?
EMILY ROONEY, WGBH News: We did, Hari.
The person we heard from that really stuck out in everybody’s mind was a young woman named Jessica Kensky. She came into court wearing a skirt. You could see two stumps coming out from underneath the skirt. It’s the first time that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev recognized anybody. He’s been completely disengaged, doesn’t look to the witness box, which is only about eight feet to his right.
The father of an Ohio man accused of plotting an attack on the U.S. Capitol is a "mama's boy who never left the house," his father says.
Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, who used the Twitter alias Raheel Mahrus Ubayda, was arrested outside a Cincinnati gun store Wednesday after purchasing two automatic weapons and 600 rounds of ammunition.
Authorities say he planned to set off pipe bombs outside the Capitol, then shoot lawmakers and staff as they fled to safety.
Cornell's father, John, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that his son had converted to Islam in recent years and had found "peace in the religion."
John Cornell, who said his son is not a violent man, said Christopher frequently endured abuse due to his religious beliefs. He said Christopher lived in his parents' apartment and worked occasional part-time jobs.
"Everything you're hearing in the media right now, they've already painted him as some kind of terrorist," John Cornell told the Enquirer. "They've painted him as some kind of jihadist. ... (Christopher) is one of the most peace-loving people I know."
The elder Cornell told CNN he believes much of the blame falls on the informant who led the FBI to Christopher Cornell. "I believe he was really vulnerable and I believe he was coerced in a lot of ways," John Cornell said.
He said he and his wife are heartbroken and love their son more than ever.
"He may be facing life in prison," John Cornell told CNN. "Do you know how devastating that is?"
FBI Special Agent T.A. Staderman described some details of the alleged plan in the seven-page complaint supporting charges of attempting to kill a U.S. government officer and possession of a firearm.
Federal authorities said the public was never in any danger because investigators were closely monitoring the activities of the suspect during the inquiry.
Tom Willingham, president and CEO of Point Blank Range & Gun Shop in Cincinnati, said he was approached by FBI agents and asked him to help them arrest someone they suspected of wanting to commit a terrorist act on U.S. soil. "Nobody knew enough to be scared," Willingham told the Enquirer.
After the gun store employees ran Christopher Cornell's name through the national background check system to ensure he had no criminal record — "Not anyone can come in and buy a gun and walk out," Willingham said — Cornell bought the rifles and ammunition. He was arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot.
Cornell is accused of using cyberspace to plot to assassinate congressional employees and attack the U.S. Capitol for his personal jihad. He was charged with attempted killing of U.S. government officers and possession of firearms in furtherance of an attempted crime of violence.
Christopher Cornell was a wrestler at Cincinnati's Oak Hills High School, graduating in 2012. Principal John Stoddard issued a statement describing Cornell as a "typical student" who was not a discipline problem.
"His teachers were shocked at the news of his involvement in this situation," the statement said. "Teachers ... remember Christopher as a quiet, but not overly reserved, student who would participate in class and did not withdraw from his class work."
Schoolmate Jake Flick told NBC News that Cornell began to change during his senior year
"He would say the weirdest stuff about the government," Flick told NBC, adding that Cornell was very interested in "anarchy."
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): During the past week, there have been at least three separate attacks launched by what are referred to as lone wolf terrorists, who are often inspired by propaganda from groups like ISIS.
Last Monday in Quebec, a man who had converted to Islam and had become radicalized purposely crashed his car into two soldiers, killing one of them, before he was shot dead.
Two days later, another gunman with a similar story killed a soldier standing guard at a war memorial in Ottawa. He later raced into the Parliament building, before being shot dead.
Then Thursday, in Queens, New York, a man who had posted comments sympathetic to the jihadists used a hatchet to attack four rookie police officers posing for a picture on the street. He, too, was shot dead.
Today, on the Sunday talk shows, the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees commented on the attacks.
CHARLIE ROSE (talk show host): What kind of threat does that pose to our own national security?
REP. MIKE ROGERS: Huge, and getting worse.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: These attacks and the multiplicity of attacks in 2014 show that their propaganda is having some effect.
HARI SREENIVASAN: For more about all this, we are joined now from Boston by Jytte Klausen. She is a professor at Brandeis University and the Founder of the Western Jihadism Project, which tracks the activity of Islamist extremists in the West.
So, I want to ask, what is behind these lone wolf attacks?
JYTTE KLAUSEN, Brandeis University: Well, we call them lone wolves, but, in most cases, they have been connected to networks and peer groups and militants for some time.
And they carry out the attacks by themselves, but they are not actually lone wolves, in the sense that they had just become radicalized off the Internet or something like that. It — of course, there are exceptions to this general rule.
But, right now, there is a call out from the Islamic State group, sometimes referred to as ISIL, to carry out attacks on — on people who represent the Western states.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Boston, Fort Hood, Kansas City, Oklahoma City. What happens when random mass violence strikes home? What do we call it, and how do we prosecute it?
This week, Lisa Monaco, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, spoke out on that topic in a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School. And she joins me now.
Welcome to the NewsHour again.
LISA MONACO, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism: Hi, Gwen.
GWEN IFILL: Today, the attorney general, Eric Holder, gave a speech at the observances in Kansas City, in which he talked about this kind of domestic terror as an affront to the nation.
Is it terrorism?
LISA MONACO: Well, Gwen, I think what I talked about in Cambridge on the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings just a few days ago was that violent extremism has been with us in many forms, unfortunately even 19 years ago this week in Oklahoma City.
So, it comes in many forms. And what we need to do is bring community efforts together to counter it.
GWEN IFILL: I do want to talk about what the solutions are. But also I think what we call it matters too, right? You used the term attack on the homeland to describe the Boston Marathon bombings. You’re a Boston native. Obviously, it hit close.
That is particularly vivid language, but still not the T-word.
LISA MONACO: Right.
Well, I think we can get caught up in labels. I think, as the attorney general spoke out quite movingly, as you indicated, today in Kansas — and our hearts go out to the people of Overland Park. They are investigating that matter and looking at it as a hate crime.
The bomb-disposal technicians huddled with the fire chief and the Transportation Security Administration supervisor on the tarmac of Northwest Florida Regional Airport. The chief and the supervisor told the technicians that luggage screeners thought they had spotted two bombs in suitcases belonging to passengers on a departing plane.
Operators of a CTX machine, or luggage scanner, spotted the first in a rollaway bag on a conveyor belt. The bag had been matched to a passenger. A review of surveillance video from the terminal showed its owner talking in a familiar way to another man.
That man’s bag, also thought to hold a bomb, was “out there” — the T.S.A. supervisor gestured toward luggage trailers on the asphalt near a gate.
So began an exercise in the Advanced Improvised Explosive Device Disposal course, a quietly busy American military school intended to help thwart a weapon indelibly linked to terrorism and war; the makeshift bomb, the type of weapon that had been used days before in the Boston Marathon attack.
This exercise, held on the Florida Panhandle the night before the police closed in on the marathon suspects in Massachusetts, had been scheduled since January. But its timing was not lost on its participants.
Tracy Stage, the airport’s deputy director, watched the drill and said the value of the training had been brought home by what happened in Boston. A weapon of unconventional war had shown itself once again to be a domestic killer.
The students and instructors, mostly military veterans of combat tours in Afghanistan or Iraq, had seen the bloody effects of bombing campaigns abroad. They had years of experience disabling improvised devices, examining blast sites and searching for evidence among burned wreckage and human remains.
The events in Boston seemed to surprise none of them. Several said they expected to see more makeshift bombs in the United States, where, in certain circumstances, particularly in rural areas, military ordnance disposal technicians could be called to work beside civilian law enforcement agencies.
“It’s not a matter of if,” said Capt. Joseph Polanin, the commanding officer of Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal, which offers this advanced course to seasoned technicians. “It’s a matter of when.”
The school Captain Polanin commands trains ordnance disposal technicians in all four American military services, as well as foreign military students.
The course, which lasts three weeks and trains about 375 students a year, is open only to experienced military technicians and students from federal agencies; it does not admit foreign students, however, because much of its instruction is classified. The curriculum sharpens skills that might be used overseas or in the United States.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): New York City was supposedly going to be the next target of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg disclosed that during a news conference today.
Bloomberg said FBI officials were told by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that he and his brother decided spontaneously to attempt an attack on Times Square last week.
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly filled in other details of the plan after Bloomberg spoke first.
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, I-New York City: He told the FBI apparently that he and his brother had intended to drive to New York and detonate additional explosives in Times Square. They had built these additional explosives, and we know they had the capacity to carry out these attacks.
POLICE COMMISSIONER RAYMOND KELLY, New York City: They discussed this while driving around in a Mercedes SUV that they had hijacked after they shot and killed an MIT police officer in Cambridge, Dzhokhar said.
That plan, however, fell apart when they realized that the vehicle that they hijacked was low on gas and ordered the driver to stop at a nearby gas station. The driver used the opportunity to escape and call the police. That eventually led to the shoot-out in Watertown, where the older brother was killed in an exchange of gunfire with the police.
Up until that point, the two brothers had at their disposal six improvised explosive devices. One was a pressure cooker bomb similar to the two that had exploded at the marathon. The other five were pipe bombs.
SUMMARY: Federal investigators searched a home in Tupelo, Miss., in the hunt for who sent politicians letters tainted with ricin. Gwen Ifill talks to Kimberly Kindy of The Washington Post and Marilyn Thompson of Reuters about strange twists in the investigation, including conflict between a karate teacher and an Elvis impersonator.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now an update on the probe into a poison pen mystery.
Federal investigators swarmed a Tupelo, Miss., home last night, hunting for the sender of ricin-tainted letters mailed to government officials.
The home belongs to Everett Dutschke.
EVERETT DUTSCHKE, Resident of Mississippi: Everybody has something suspicious in their house, but, no, there is nothing that is related to these letters.
GWEN IFILL: Dutschke has not been arrested, and no charges have been filed. Last night's search came after yesterday's sudden twist, when a first suspect was released.
Without explanation, federal prosecutors dropped all charges against Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss. An FBI agent testified that a search of Curtis' home found no evidence of the dangerous substance. Curtis, who was released yesterday evening, said he told investigators all along that he was innocent.
PAUL KEVIN CURTIS, Former Suspect: I respect President Obama. I love -- love my country and would never do anything to pose a threat to him or any other U.S. official.
GWEN IFILL: But it turns out Curtis has some history with Dutschke, who once threatened to sue him. Dutschke, seen in this 2007 photo with Sen. Roger Wicker, one of the officials who received the poisoned letters, also maintains he didn't mail them.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): In Washington and around the country, authorities chased reports of suspicious letters and packages today. At the U.S. Capitol, police briefly evacuated parts of two Senate office buildings, but they offered little information.
OFFICER SHENNELL ANTROBUS, U.S. Capitol Police: Capitol Police is responding to a suspicious envelope. We're currently conducting an investigation.
HARI SREENIVASAN: In all, there were three questionable packages, including one sent to Alabama Republican Richard Shelby. And at the White House, the Secret Service intercepted a letter.
JAY CARNEY, White House Press Secretary: There was a letter sent to, addressed to the president that at an off-site mail facility was noticed to have contained a suspicious substance, and tests were undergone -- undertaken.
HARI SREENIVASAN: New accounts said the letter tested positive initially for ricin, a deadly poison. So did a letter to Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker that surfaced yesterday at a Senate mail facility in Maryland.
But officials cautioned, initial tests are often wrong, and more conclusive testing was in progress. The FBI did say both envelopes were postmarked from Memphis, Tenn. and contained a message that read -- quote -- "To see a wrong and not expose it is to become a silent partner to its continuance." They were signed, "I am K.C. and I approve this message."
