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tv   PBS News Hour  PBS  April 19, 2013 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT

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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: the massive manhunt has ended for the two brothers believed to be behind the boston marathon bombings. one was killed earlier this morning, the second was taken into custody by police late today in a suburb of the city. good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. >> suarez: and i'm ray suarez. on the "newshour" tonight, we detail the violent chase to bring the suspects to justice, as swat teams cordon off wide swaths of the city and surrounding towns to capture 19-year-old dzokhar tsarnaev. >> brown: we explore what's known so far about the brothers suspected in the deadly attack. >> suarez: we examine how investigators are trying to figure out whether the brothers acted alone or were part of a larger terrorist organization. >> brown: and we look at how technology allowed police and
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the public to work together in identifying the suspects. >> suarez: plus, we get the perspective of mark shields and david brooks on terror's return to u.s. soil and the rest of the week's news. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> support also comes from carnegie corporation of new york, a foundation created to do what andrew carnegie called "real and permanent good." celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and friends of the newshour. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.
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>> brown: the search for a second suspect in the boston marathon bombing is over tonight. that caps an extraordinary day in a locked-down major american city, one brother killed in a shootout with police early this morning and a new final turn tonight: moments after authorities lifted the lockdown of the boston metropolitan area this evening, there were reports of a barrage of shots fired in watertown, a suburb just to the west of the city. then, swat teams in black vans and emergency vehicles sped past television cameras in large numbers, as bystanders cheered "go get him". state police said the 19 year- old suspect, dzhokhar tsarnaev, had fled on foot this morning and was still at large. there were evacuations of buildings near where he was believed to be cornered in a boat stored in a back yard. federal, state and local
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authorities lined the nearby streets, watching and waiting for an outcome. >> suarez: for more from boston about the latest we turn to farah stockman of the boston and two of our public media colleagues are joining us by telephone from watertown ... what did you see this evening as it entered the final chapter in the capture of dzhokar tsarnaev? >> well, this has been an extraordinary culmination of a day. for a longtime today, for several minutes, four, five, six, seven eight vehicles passed by this area. i'm on nichol street in east watertown. they sped to franklin street. at franklin street they made a left and there they were joined by other police forces surrounding a home there where the individual they were looking for, they felt was hiding. he was indeed hiding underneath
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a tarp. there was an efforts, i was told, by two police officers aknown mussy -- anonymously that they wanted to capture him alive. they fired tracer bullet into the air. i don't know if there was a gunfight as reported. i do understand that the suspect incurred injuries but some type of altercation, perhaps some type of gun fight ensued. >> suarez: do you know if there was an attempt to bring hostage negotiators to the scene to try to talk tsarnaev out of position he was in? >> i don't know the answer to that question. talking to police officers anonymously, they were under ordered not to talk to the media. however, i know some of these individuals. i know some of these cops and they said they just wanted to be over with and they indicated that the police officers within ought scene were makingse are ty
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were making progress and they expected it to be over with soon. sure enough, within a half hour it seemed to have ended with the capture a the suspect. >> suarez: are they take him to a nearby hospital. >> they are. i'm trying to determine which hospital. he was carried away in a vehicle not with blue lights flashing but in a vehicle where the windows were covered, a black vehicle, could have been one of several that passed by just moments ago speeding toward a deaf nation i'm not sure of. -- deaf destination -- destination i'm not sure of. i'm trying to determine the name of the hospital.
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>> suarez: did the perimeter of the home shrink during the evening? it was said they were zeroing in on a location they suspected the man was hiding and boston was allowed to get back on to the roads and people were allowed to leave their homes again. are those two things related? had police finally figured out where this guy was? >> you asked the right question. i spoke to a number of residents who seemed confused and bemused by it. i spoke to an individual name bob koslow. he left his home after the order was lifted trying to find some place to buy gross -- groceries. of course, nothing is opened. when he returned yellow tape was everywhere because of this later develop. he returned coming back to his home after being told he could leave he was told he could not enter. so he and several people were behind aielloereter where --
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behind a yellow perimeter where this situation developed. the police had no idea what was happening but they suddenly, you know -- they found that he was hiding underneath a tarp and they rushed to that area. interestingly, it's the same area where i was last night at 2:00 in the morning, the exact same area. >> suarez: so the gun fight, the chase and then the cornering of dzhokar tsarnaev also placed within a fairly confined area. you are not very far right now from where the shootout began this morning? >> that's right. it's suggests that he never really got that far. though police searched this area, it's clear that he was here all along. they searched a 20 block radius area and expanded that to a four mile radius area, and it's clear that he was in this area all
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along. >> suarez: phillip martin of wpbf -- wgbh in boston. thanks a lot. we're joined by farrah stockman of the "boston globe" did it take a couple minutes to learn it was finally over? >> it's been a real emotional roller coaster. it's been quite a week in boston. i don't think the city has seen a week quite like this. >> suarez: you were in the area where the tsarnaev family ofs today. this is an area under scrutiny when people began to realize that these were the two main suspects in the marathon bombing. were people on the block, in the area where you live, just sort of stunned by the whole thing? >> yeah, it was totally bewildering. it was a huge crowd of people because they were evacuating the whole block. people woke up to knocks on the
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door from cops telling them to leave. for some weird reason i smelled smoke there. i don't know why it smelled like smoke. yeah, it was a really confusing day. and for the people that knew him, for the people -- the neighbors and friends who had gone to school with him, gone to high school with the younger suspect it was just a shock. everybody was gathered there waiting to see what would happen until the cops came with a city bus and took the neighbors away. >> suarez: did people have the hard time squaring the media accounts they were hearing of someone who was a suspect in the notorious crime with the pretty assimilated young guy they had gotten to know as he grew up in the area? >> absolutely. you heard the glowing statements about the younger brother all day by teachers, people who wrestled with him. i think in the last year since
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he has been in college he might have become more of a partyer he -- partyer. he seemed to be hanging out with a crowd smoking marijuana, tweeted a lot of lyrics and about going to parties. this was a kid that did not strike people as the kind of person who would do this. the older brother, on the other hand, seems to have been a bit more -- maybe a bit more radicalized more openly. my hunch is we'll find out that the older brother kind of pulled his little brother in. >> suarez: farrah, thank you for joining us. thanks for having me. >> suarez: we're joined by bruce gellerman of wbur radio from watertown. we've been following this all day. what did you see as the police
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cordon began to tighten around dzhokar tsarnaev? >> well, i was there at 1:30 this morning. i live in watertown. we started blocking off streets. but there weren't a lot of police and they kept moving back and forth trying to cover one street and then the other. i got down to within a few houses of where the shooting had taken place. there was a bit of confusion, at least they didn't seem to know what was going on. they told me to get out of area. they were -- they told me to shut off the phone. they were afraid it was going to ignite an ied if they were in the area. it progressed to the lockdown of the whole city and boston and they set up a press area in one of shopping mauls here and -- malls here and starting to bring in massive amounts of law enforcement, 1,000, maybe 1500
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people there and 200 or 300 reporters. a lot of trucks settling. and then it started to getting to a drone. we kept on delays in press conferences and then you couldn't ask questions. they would just read statements. they had the governor there, the mayor there and the head of the police department and the state police. then they told us to go away. >> suarez: we have a half minute left. was there a sense as it was reaching the final moment that's a corner had been turned, that this was almost over? >> yes. after they lifted the lockdown order all of a sudden they have these shots and they seemed to absolutely have found him. and now they do and the cheers went up and now it's over. >> suarez: bruce, just a short time ago it's been confirmed
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three other people were taken into custody in new bedford not far from where dzhokar tsarnaev attends college at a branch of university massachusetts system. do we know about that? >> i don't. if you put pieces of the puzzle they told us they were looking at a lot of daisa bases -- databases, so i thought they were looking for links to him. >> suarez: the mayor of boston, thomas menino tweeted a short time ago just a very simple message, we got him. did you get that tweet, bruce? >> yes, the cheers went up. the car went up to mount auburn and another cheer and could you feel it was a great relief it was over. >> suarez: bruce gellerman a reporter for wbur radio in boston. thanks for joining us. >> you're welcome, ray.
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>> brown: how did we get to this point? we have the recap of the day. >> reporter: 19-year-old dzokhar tsarnaev escaped the early morning gun battle in suburban boston that killed his 26-year- old brother tamarlen. that set into motion an unprecedented manhunt as a small army of local, state and federal officers fanned out through boston and its suburbs. the city was brought to a near standstill. more than one million people were urged to shelter in their homes. schools and mass transit were closed; amtrak service was shut down into the city. massachusetts governor deval patrick spoke at 8:00 am. >> there is a massive manhunt under way. a lot of law enforcement involved in that. to assist that we have suspended all service on the m.b.t.a., our public transit service, and this will continue until we think it's safe to open all or some of that. we're asking people to shelter in place-- in other words to stay indoors with their doors locked and not to open the door
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for anyone other than a properly identified law enforcement officer. and that applies here in watertown where we are right now. also cambridge, waltham, newton, belmont and, at this point, all of boston. all of boston. this is a serious situation. we're taking it seriously. we're asking the public to take it seriously as well and to assist law enforcement by following these simple instructions. we've got every asset that we can possibly muster on the ground right now. they are doing a terrific job and working in concert with each other but we are going to need the public to help us help them stay safe. >> reporter: in washington, the president convened a briefing in the white house situation room with almost a dozen top aides. the search focused on watertown, massachusetts, just west of downtown boston. the string of events began yesterday afternoon when fbi
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agents showed images of two then unnamed suspects, pictured at monday's bombing, and called them armed and dangerous. a harrowing night then began a short distance from the site of monday's bombings. just before 10:30, a security camera apparently captured reported on the campus of m.i.t., in cambridge. authorities say a campus police officer, 26-year-old sean collier, was shot and killed by the two suspects. the tsarnaevs then car-jacked a mercedes s.u.v. elsewhere in cambridge police say. the two men took the driver to three a.t.m.s machines until they got cash before releasing him. police pursued the s.u.v. into watertown. that's where heavy gunfire and explosions were heard, captured on smartphone video. >> i heard a loud boom and then a rapid succession of pop, pop, pop. it sounded like automatic weapons. and then i heard the second explosion. and then there was the smell of
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something burning in the air. we were still going toward it and then residents from the window shouted, "hey, it's gunfire. don't go that way." >> reporter: superintendent timothy alben of the massachusetts state police: >> the pursuit went into a residential neighborhood not far from here, where there was an exchange of gunfire between watertown police, m.b.t.a. police officer and suspects in that s.u.v. during the course of that pursuit, several explosive devices were discharged from that car at the police officers. in the exchange of the gunfire we believe that one of the suspects was struck and ultimately taken into custody. a second suspect was able to flee from that car, and there is an active search going on at this time. >> reporter: police shot tamerlan tsarnaev. he was pronounced dead a short time later at an area hospital. >> this was a trauma arrest. multiple injuries, probably we
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believe a combination of blasts, potentially gunshot wounds. >> how many gunshot wounds? >> unable to count. >> multiple gunshots? >> yes. >> i'm sorry i didn't hear the rest of that. >> and probably a blast injury also. >> blast meaning what? >> an explosive device, possibly shrapnel, a thermal injury. >> can you describe where it was? >> it was pretty much throughout the trunk, it was multiple wounds. >> would it be consistent with perhaps a bomb strapped to the chest, would it be consistent with that? >> unclear. i think the medical examiner will be able to conclusively say that, but there were signs of more than just gunshot wounds. >> reporter: the brothers were of chechen heritage and came to the u.s. around ten years ago. a circuitous path took them through dagestan, a volatile region in southern russia. 26-year-old tamerlan reportedly was a hip-hop fan, and a gold gloves boxer. in an online spread of photos that showed him boxing, he was quoted saying, "i don't have a single american friend, i don't understand them." verthee
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hopes of securing a u.s. olympic team berth. the younger dzokhar graduated from the prestigious cambridge rindge and latin school two years ago and was enrolled at university of massachusetts at dartmouth. he became a naturalized american citizen last year on september 11th according to several news organizations. a high school acquaintance spoke to reporters. >> i don't know what happened, not sure what set him off like this. i didn't meet his brother. i am really caught off-guard by this. >> reporter: another high school friend talked to abc news. >> my school is very diverse, he didn't really talk with an accent, he was pretty american, i guess. he had a lot of friends, relatively well-known. >> reporter: on a russian social networking site dzokhar arte
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as islam and he'd apparently linked to islamic and other websites calling for chechen independence. late this morning, an uncle of the brothers spoke to reporters from his home outside washington. ruslan tsarni said he had not seen either man in years. >> i've been following it from day one but never ever would imagine that somehow the children of my brother would be associated with that. so it is atrocity. we're devastated. we're shocked. again i don't know, this family does not know how to share that grief with the real victims. >> reporter: tsarni said the family was muslim, and ethnic chechens. he was unaware what, if any, military training the men had, or what led them to allegedly commit the crimes. >> if that happened, most
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likely, somebody radicalized them. but it's not my brother. who just moved back to russia, who spent his life bringing bread to their table, fixing cars, fixing cars. i say dzokhar if you are alive, turn yourself in. and ask for forgiveness! from the victims, from the injured, and those who left. ask forgiveness from these people. we're not requiring forgiveness in this family. he put a shame... he put a shame on the... on our family, on the tsarnaev family. he put a shame in entire chechin ethnicity. because everyone now names a play with word chechen. so they put that shame on the entire ethnicity. so that's what i would say-- turn yourself in. and whatever one, i mean, put yourself at discretion of those who here.
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>> reporter: the men's aunt, maret tsarnaev had a different take: she spoke to reporters in toronto. >> my first call to fbi they couldn't have done this. where are the evidence. all your showing is the footage. two guys are walking and i found it strange. tevarlan is walking in the front, djokhar is walking in the back, why wouldn't they come together? you know just together, as brothers as i used to know them. >> reporter: the men's father, who lives in russia, told the associated press that his son dzokhar "was a true angel. he is such an intelligent boy. we expected him to come on holidays here." >> suarez: and now some analysis of today's events in two discussions we recorded earlier this evening, before the younger suspect was captured in a backyard in watertown. >> brown: for more, i'm joined by: i'm joined by "new york times" reporter michael schmidt. mark hosenball of reuters and bruce hoffman, director of the center for security studies at georgetown university. making schmidt, you'een
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watching at the f.b.i. is up to. we heard a bit about the two brothers. what are investigators most focused on now to fill in the picture? >> they're really just, you know, in a basic game just trying to find this guy and trying to exploit all the different tools and techniques that they have through the interviews that they've been conducting today and particularly through the information provided by the man who was in that car that was hijacked. he's the only person that we know of that's had direct contact with the suspect in recent days, that's talked to the authorities. and they're trying to exploit all that information for whatever clues may be there in the hopes of trying to find out where the suspect may be. >> brown: so are there any particular leads at this point that you're following that are of particular interest to them? >> no, there are different things about whether the suspect may have been heading towards new york or the suspect may have been heading towards connecticut or he was in a car. but we -- they haven't taken those any further. and they're just still looking fotryi
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eastern massachusetts as much as possible in the hopes of possible in the hopes of finding something. but i think they're pretty stumped right now. >> brown: mark hosenball, what do you think the clues might be that investigators are looking at here or abroad? >> well, what i've been looking at is who are these guys? what are their connections? why did they do it? from the sounds of things, you know, everybody wants to know what the motivation is. the authorities do seem to think they are some kind of islamic militants. but then the question is do they have confederates or accomplices either in the united states or abroad. if they have confederates in the united states that raises the question of who are these confederates? have they gone underground? could they commit further attacks from hidden lairs? as i understand at the moment investigators believe that, in fact, this is not an al qaeda operation. it's not clear how these guys became radicalize bud they don't
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seem to think that they have any significant overseas connections and they don't seem to think, as i think you quoted somebody there earlier, that they have any accomplices in the united states. so from the sounds of things they're a couple of what they call in the trade "loan wolves" who dreamt this all up on their own. who probably radicalized themselves perhaps over internet who may have even gotten the designs of their bombs over the internet and such people because they don't do the kinds of things that would attract the attention of intelligence agencies they're very hard to spot in advance. >> brown: bruce hoffman, what do you think they should be looking at now? what is the interesting part here? >> first and foremost the authorities will be combing through the computers to find out if they were in contact with anyone either in the united statesor overseas. if they were downloading for instance the sermons of anwar al-awlaki who's one of the deceased leaders of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, he's hadf
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many westerners and also looking for any foreign travel. >> brown: with great caution here, because there's so much we don't know, but the two brothers are ethnic chechens. that's an area, bruce hoffman, that has been rife with a lot of turmoil but we don't have any particular evidence that links them to that, right? >> no, not necessarily, we don't. there's been, i think, two interesting data points-- and that's all they are, perhaps coincidental, perhaps not-- but over the past eight month there is's been arrests in late february in france of three chechens charged with plotting terrorist attacks in spain and last august the dagestanny, chechen and turk plotting astacks in spain against british and american targets. there may be a link, it may be coincidence, but it could be that. movements are turning more to non-arab muslims to recruit and carry out terrorist operations. >> brown: michael schmidt, have you heard anything that connects anything on the chechen angle? ething tgs in
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actively pursued at small >> yes, it's something they're very focused on. they're very focused on whether there's a nexus abroad. whether it's coming from there or elsewhere, whether there were militants in pakistan or elsewhere in the middle east that may have helped spurn these individuals to do what they did. but at this point i -- similarly to how they're having trouble finding the suspect i think they're also having trouble figuring out has caused them do this. but at the same time we have to realize this incident happened on monday and we are just a few days after it and it may be weeks if not months until we find out what led them to do this so i think there's a bit of patience that we all have to have as much as we all are anxiously trying to get to the bottom of it. >> brown: mark hosenball, what would you add to that? specifically where they're looking senate >> well, again, they're looking at all these places.one of the e
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looking at as well is whether the u.s. government -- what the u.s. government knew about these guys, if anything, before this event happened. in the past -- for example, the case of the guy who tried to attack on christmas day in 2009 with the bomb in his underwear it turned out that that guy's father a month earlier had been to the u.s. embassy in nigeria and warned them his son was hanging around with very bad people. the u.s. embassy sent a cable to the state department, the c.i.a. guys there sent a cable to the c.i.a. saying this is a very weird story about this guy but nobody seems to have paid much astongs even though they have evidence of perhaps that guy, the umar farouk abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber off a plane they never used it. now they're going back here with these guys to see what they might have known or not known about these guys. it's not clear what they did or didn't know. they had immigration following
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but do they have other information that were clues that were overlookd? that's one of the things we're looking at. we don't know what they got, if anything. >> brown: bruce hoffman, who were they talking to? how does one pursue all these leads and what kind of resources does the american government have to marshal to pursue them? >> again, certainly any communication on the computer will be enormously important and in the attempt of tamerlan, who may have had traveled abroad where he may have gone and who he would have met with. but it all bips down where and how were these individuals radicalized and were there connections? we haven't heard much of the third suspect taken into custody this morning. that may be an enormous link to this as well. >> brown: or not. >> or not. precisely. >> brown: the lone wolf type i think we heard referred to earlier, that has to be -- that's part of the pursuit as well to see who they are and how they might have gotten. >> president pat
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type of terrorism has gone one way or the other. it has turned out to be general lone wolves, autodidacts in bomb making and weaponry, self- radicalized but all this sounds remarkably like the situation and scenario after the july 7, 2005 bombings. relatives spoke of the bombers the same way earlier. reporters described their process of radicalization as being something that was more isolated than it turned out to be so as mike cautioned it's just too soon to know. >> brown: bruce hoffman, mark hosenball and michael schmidt, thank you all very much. >> suarez: we now examine the sophisticated tools law enforcement used to find the suspects, and how technology allowed crowdsourcing to become part of this major investigation. we are joined by richard falkenrath of the chertoffou
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he's a former deputy homeland security adviser and special assistant to president bush. he is also a contributing editor at bloomberg tv. and will oremus, a staff writer for slate and lead blogger for "future tense," where he reports on emerging technologies, tech policy and digital culture. will oremus, what is reddit and how in this case did it become a tool for the use of law enforcement. >> reddit is an online message board who has just rocketed to popularity in the past two years it's a place where anybody can go if they just sign up and post a message about pretty much anything they want. messages are divided into pa bunch of different topic threads called subreddits and in the course of the boston bombing case a couple reddit users have developed a thread called "find boston bombers" dedicated to try to help the authorities do their job. first they were trying to find suspects, then they were trying to help locate where the suspect might be once the f.b.i. had circulated photos of them and they've gotten a few things right and a lot of things wrong in the process and it's stirring
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up controversy about their role. >> suarez: richard falkenrath, you can understand the appeal of enlisting hundreds of people to help the police but do you also lose a little control? in effect unleash peer-to-peer sleuthing with people talking to each other rather than to the cops? >> you lose more than a little bit of control and, frankly, i'm skeptical this crowd source information was that useful to the investigators on the inside. they have tools themselves that are pretty sophisticated. they've done this before and they are working, frankly, with far greater amount of data than the crowd source analysts were working with. and i think the statement yesterday from the f.b.i. special agent in charge of the investigation was really quite telling that he found this activity troublesome and led to an enormous amount of unhelpful speculation and misidentifications. >> suarez: in this case, two young fellows, salah adean and
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his friend yassin were identified on the covers of nationally published newspapers as major suspects here. will oremus, walk us through some of the blind alleys that this kind of investigative technique walked the investigation down. >> so, over the course of the past few days on reddit there has been one potential suspect after another who rises to prominence on the site and everyone starts delving into a certain photo to see if that could be the person. the format of reddit is such that anyone can post anything but everyone gets to vote on which post rises to the top of the page. the positive outcome of that is a that if there's something that's posted that valid, that's interesting that will go to the top of the page. everybody will see it and start investigating that lead. now, the down side is sometimes it's the most sensational thing that rises to the top of the page and it's not always right.
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so one of the first people they honed in on on this reddit was - - they called him blue robe guy. that was guy wearing a blue fleece. i guess robe sounded more sinister. they were dissecting his appearance, his location at the marathon finish line. of course he was not involved at all. two people that were investigated by the crowd on reddit ended up on the front page of t "new york post." they, too, were innocent. i don't think that's reddit's fault and maybe that's the "new york post's" fault but it does'm a fa size the way in which these public crowd source investigations can result in harm for people who happen to be mistakenly identified. >> suarez: but falkenrath, once the photos were released we had people searching their own photos and were able to fill in their whereabouts once they knew what they were looking for. in one notable case, a very sharp high quality h.d. photo of dzhokhar tsarnaev moving from the scene as other people are
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running from in the terror, he's walking to the corner and turning the corner and we see anymore very high fidelity which i'm sure helps investigators in some sense figure out where he went after the explosions. >> well, ray, recall that well before the authorities released the photographs of the two individuals they had requested that people in the vicinity of the explosion submit all their digital imagery to the f.b.i. for analysis. so one would certainly hope that the person who had that high definition photograph had supplied it to the f.b.i. well before he found it and decided to publicize the fact. >> suarez: are there new techniques and new machines that save police from having to go frame by frame through videos? leaf through photographs that can look for a suspect very quickly through enormous data files? richard? >> yes, there are. something i have a fair bit of experience with in my time at the n.y.p.d.. but the new techniques to do
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analysis are having trouble keeping up with the massive increase in the amount of data that comes in the door in an investigation like this. so there is truly a phenomenal amount of digital imagery, unstructured digital imagery that comes in as a result of crowd source collection so the analysis technology, they're struggling to keep up with the collection technologies and that's one of the basic problems they have. there was there will still be an investigator going frame by frame through the key feeds for the purpose of identifying which one is the best and who really to zero in on. >> suarez: after investigations, will oremus, there are often what are called after-action assessments. should the tech world be doing one now about its role in helping uncover or not the two suspects in the marathon bombing case? >> oh, they are. they absolutely are. and the media world as well. there's a lot of debate about whether this type of crowd- sourced sleuthing by armchair investigators does more harm than good. i think's certainly potential
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for it to do good in some cases. there was a case a year or two ago where reddit users were able to help solve a hit-and-run accident. someone with great knowledge of cars was able to identify the taillight, identify the make and model of the car, helped police solve the crime. but this is a very different scale of crime and i think the reddit users are finding out that investigations are a lot harder than they might have thought. and that the harm along the way can be severe. there so there's been spro special election in the media, the tech world and reddit itself. to their credit a lot of reddit users are saying "are we really helping?" but it's a diverse community of people. there are tons of people on the site. some people are saying hey, let's get out of this business and leave it to professionals. others are saying no, look, we may have gotten it wrong here but maybe we'll get it right next time. >> suarez: to be continued. will oremus of slate and richard falkenrath, thanks both of you for joining us.
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>> brown: we'll continue our coverage of developments in this breaking story throughout the evening, online, where you can watch a live stream of events as they occur from boston. and still ahead, shields and brooks with their thoughts on boston and more. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: the search for survivors from a fertilizer plant explosion persisted today in the small town of west, texas with word 60 people are still unaccounted for. search and rescue workers sifted through the mangled, burned out remains of buildings consumed by wednesday night's explosion. until this morning, the death toll was unknown, but texas public safety officer jason reyes gave this figure. >> it is with a heavy heart that i can confirm 12 individuals have been recovered from the fertilizer plant explosion. the deceased have been taken to the dallas forensics lab for proper identification. to date there have been approximately 200 reported injuries. >> sreenivasan: reyes added that
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he couldn't say how many of the dead were first responders. >> a bomb just went off in here. it's pretty bad. we got a lot of firemen down. >> sreenivasan: one was identified as captain kenneth harris, a 30-year veteran of the dallas fire department who was off duty but lived near west and responded to the scene. authorities have now searched and cleared 150 buildings and have another 25 to examine. meanwhile, federal investigators started collecting debris and other evidence to find a cause. >> i have friends here, i have relatives down the road and you cant get in touch with them so that's why i'm here, just to see if they're even alive. >> sreenivasan: this afternoon texas senators john cornyn and ted cruz toured the devastation. cornyn said there are still 60 people missing. >> we know that there are a number of people unaccounted for and right now authorities are going to the hospitals and making sure they know where people are so they're in the process, there are a number ofne
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others unaccounted for. and there are injured, more than 150 so we're in the process of making that determination. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, the first remembrances of the victims began last night, as locals gathered for a candlelight vigil at st. mary's church. authorities have also said there is still no sign of a criminal connection in the plant explosion. it's been a violent 24 hours in iraq as the country prepares to hold provincial elections on saturday. mortar fire and bombs targeted two groups of worshippers north of baghdad as they were leaving friday prayers. nine people died and 29 others were injured. overnight, a suicide bombing at a popular cafe in the capital killed 36 people and wounded dozens more. today, the families and friends of the deceased came to a hospital morgue to collect their loved ones' bodies. former pakistani president pervez musharraf is now in
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police custody after being taking refuge at his home on the outskirts of islamabad. the ex-military ruler is facing treason charges for firing senior judges while he was in power. musharraf was arrested a day after fleeing the high court in a black s.u.v. as angry lawyers yelled after him, calling him a traitor. musharraf insists his arrest is politically motivated. serbia and its former province of kosovo reached a tentative deal today to normalize relations. the pact-- brokered by the european union-- aimed to settle the status of kosovo's serbian minority, which does not recognize the ethnic albanian leadership. kosovo declared independence from serbia in 2008. a deal could clear the way for serbia to start negotiations toward e.u. membership. nicholas maduro was sworn in today as venezuela's new president. he was confirmed the winner in sunday's election by a slim majority, after which his main challenger, henrique capriles, demanded an audit. maduro's supporters wore red and lined the streets of caracas leading to the national assembly where he took the oath of office. the crowds also honored hugo
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chavez, who hand-picked maduro as his successor before he died. the federal aviation administration issued a statement today clearing all boeing 787 dreamliners to fly again by next week. the planes have been grounded for more than three months because of a battery system prone to overheating. boeing redesigned the system and the f.a.a. approved the changes. the grounding has cost boeing an estimated $600 million. the boy scouts of america said today they will ask their national council to vote on a proposal that would permit gay boy scouts but continue to ban gay leaders. the organization, which has long banned gays, said the new direction is based on survey results from the scouting community. the vote is scheduled for late may. on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average gained 10 points to close at 14,547. the nasdaq rose more than 39 points to close at 3,206. for the week, the dow lost 2%. the nasdaq fell 2.7%. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff.
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>> brown: and we close the week and this most unusual day of news with the analysis of shields and brooks, syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist david brooks. mark, i used the word "extraordinary" at the top of the program. a major american city in lockdown. your thoughts on seeing that. >> well, i mean, it's obviously reminiscent of 9/11 and a reminder of what this sort of a national trauma in particular a regional trauma can do to a nation. i mean, we followed new york, the attack on new york and the attack on washington which obviously were far greater in volume and suffering but by going into two wars and changing the way we live in this country. and you can see right now, i mean willingness of people to accept boston becoming a ghost town, basically. >> brown: but 9/11 was a while ago. have we forgotten that sense in our own cities? >> i don't think so judging by the reaction. t a
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see a debate from people who know what they're talking about about the wisdom of shutting down a region to chase one 19- year-old. i mean, it could be an overreaction. we'll wait and see. also, when you go to places that suffer from these sorts of attacks-- israel and other places-- one of the things they tell you is that the resilience and the importance of normalcy. so say in israel during the intifada days when there would be an attack in a cafe, the cafe would be open the next day. so the idea was to keep society normal. not to minimize what's happened but to keep society as normal as possible and so i'm not sure we're achieving that with the media coverage and shutting down entirely. >> brown: but that's what you mean about the potential impact on the larger psyche. >> you want to be a resilient society and to be a resilient society you want as much normalcy as possible. >> brown: what do you think about that? >> well, resilience in the people of boston, praise from the president, the governor, the mayor and just about everybody
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tells, especially at the ceremony at the holy cross cathedral on thursday and virtually every commentator has spoken about the pluck, the mettle, the intestinal fortitude, the toughness of the people of boston so at some point it becomes a little bit self-fulfilling. if everybody thinks we are, we're going to be and we are, damn it, we'll show them. i think that seems to be the very unrepresentative, unscientific sample that hazard has appeared at least before television cameras and microphones. >> brown: but at a ceremony, the one you mentioned, the president speaks, we've had these before, this is when we look for a certain kind of leadership, right? >> right. and i think all the leaders have done a nice job, deval patrick, the president, the mayor. you can be proud of people stepping up. the other thing that strikes me is you go go through these phases of a type of violence, we don't know what motivated these people. you've had a lot of violent act by loaners, by people who have slipped through the cracks of society, school shootings, thesd
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so once upon a time it was anarchists then it was bigger the rohr organizations. this might be atomized lonely dissending individuals so that's a different kind of society and producing a different kind of nut job. >> brown: we've talked about what we know and most of what we don't know. is it too early to talk about political consequences? it wasn't too early for some to bring it up already today talking about potential impact for example, on immigration laws. >> i think we had ann colter saying it's too a bad suspect number one won't be able to be legalize bid marco rubio. obviously in a sarcastic observation, a knock on rubio for his leadership on the immigration bill. i don't think there's any question that it -- boston had a
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negative impact on the vote on the manchin-toomey compromise on gun control until the senate and i think the fear and legitimate fear on the part of those in political office is that it will embolden candidates like steve king in iowa who's kind of xenophobic, anti-immigrant candidate to challenge for the republican senate nomination and move the die and the debate and depending upon what the effect is on the senate, where there seems to be strong support, not deep but strong -- wide support for the immigration bill, the impact on the house. if you're scared stiff as a house republican, you're going to be challenged in a primary. if the primary determines who wins those districts. this could make them more timid in supporting immigration. >> i'm a little bit dubious. these people have been here a while.
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they're american schools, reasonably assimilated judging by their twitter feeds and i think the immigration debate is going to take over itself. i've become much more pessimistic, even in the senate. so -- but i doubt this will play into that. that will be a big separate debate over a series of weeks or months. >> brown: what about gun control? byny measure that was the political story of the week, the defeat in the senate, including the push for stronger background checks. what happened? >> yeah, i was surprised. >> brown: you were? >> yeah. at least some sort of weak background checks and what we've learned was there's long been a structure in our gun control laws and when sandy hook happened we think the underlying political structure is changed but it wasn't changed. if you're in red state-- whether you're a democrat or republican- - there's no advantage to voting for it. mostly because the people who oppose guns vote on that issue. the people who oppose gun control vote on that issue. the people who support the gun ol ms sue
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icaalulus in those states is still all against reform and the political mobilization never reached those areas. >> brown: so it was all politics? >> i think there were real changes. we talk about cowardice and -- but there was some real courage. i mean, there were a lot of senators, western senator, mark udal, michael bennett, tom udal, new mexico, colorado, ron widen and historically john qwester in montana, tim johnson in south dakota, states that historically had not been sort of a writeoff. you didn't vote for gun control because the gun culture community was too strong there. the hunting community. so ron brown and seen the had an interesting piece that he could see this emerging as a national issue. there were 21 states where both senators voted for the manchin- toomey gun control amendment and
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they represented 261 electoral votes. there were 17 states where both senators vote against it. they're smaller, more rural and less popular states and to the degree that marco rubio for example, if he would be the republican nominee in 2016 he'd have trouble in the suburbs of philadelphia. he'd have trouble in winning women's votes, having been strongly against gun control. so the possibly of it being a national issue. the other mistake that was made in my judgment that nobody i think has addressed publicly is that the democrat have a golden opportunity. once 13 republicans said they would lead a filibuster. that's when they should have thrown down the gauntlet and said "okay, you want to have a fill buster? let's have a filibuster on background checks and we'll go day and night and put the face on the opposition to gun control on that issue." and i think you would have won it. i really. do viser re
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and the democratic leadership made a different decision. >> brown: the president came out very angry at the white house. he said 90% of americans favor the background checks, the majority of senators favor it. he was saying democracy has been foiled. sounds like he's trying to play to what mark's talking about to build some kind of outrage. >> i think he was genuinely angry. he was generally moved by what happened. spending so much time with the families so i think he was genuinely angry but it is a fact or a nature of our politics that when you have a dedicated minority going against a broad coalition defending a compromise piece of legislation that none of them are entirely happy with, that dedicated minority often beats the broad and fragile majority and i think that's what happened here and that may happen with immigration. >> but when the president said he still wants to come back with this, senator manchin says it still has some life. families vow to keep it alive. are they wrong? >> manchin and toomey was a step. >> it was a step.
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>> and you have to start there and make sure it's not a cultural issue, the east coast and west coast telling the country what to do. you have to start with the red states and go outward. >> suarez: brown brup you're suggesting it may have life? >> manchin and toomey took a risk politically. i think, jeff, that this is an issue and it's fascinating to me. we've seen same-sex marriage emerge as just a bare majority issue in the past three months. and the flood of people running to support it. i mean, heidi hide camp, the new democrat from north carolina heitkamp who voted against the background checks. i'm willing to bet in north dakota there are more people who are for a background check than who are for same-sex marriage and i think it cams back to what david has said. there isn't on the pro-gun control side a political infrastructure. there aren't volunteers in the l.g.b.t. community-- lesbian gay bisexual transgender community--
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there's political activity. there are those willing to get involved in the campaign. but there isn't that and there is on the anti-gun side and that's what has been missing from the pro-gun control side is really shock troops and people willing to volunteer in the field and right checks. >> brown: just in our last 45 seconds, today you were writing how guns and immigration sort of will show us the future of politics, particularly on the right. >> immigration is the big one. if the republicans do not -- and this is a bitterly divided party on immigration, growing more divided. the opposition growing in the republican ranks, if they shoot down this immigration reform that will really doom the party. that's the big one this year. >> brown: that's bigger than guns? >> yes. >> brown: david brooks, mark shields, thanks very much. >> thank you, jeff.
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>> brown: and to recap developments in the boston bombings manhunt. late tonight the second bombing suspect was taken into police custody and headed to the hospital in serious condition with unspecified injuries. the 19-year-old was holed up in a boat in a watertown, massachusetts, backyard. earlier this morning his brother was killed in a shootout with police. moments ago authorities spoke to reporters. >> we're so grateful to be here right now. we're so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case. for those families that lost loved ones or suffered injuries they have to live with the rest of their lives, for a police officer, a young man starting a career at mit, and a police officer with the m.b.t.a. who almost lost his life and from neighborhoods that lived in fear for an entire day, we're eternally grateful for the outcome here tonight.
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we have a suspect in custody. >> suarez: and that's the newshour for tonight. on monday we'll bring you the latest on marathon bombings plus arguments from the supreme court. i'm ray suarez. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. washington week can be seen later on most pbs stations. we'll see you online and follow a timeline of event. we'll be here again monday evening. have a nice weekend. thank you for joining us, good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.
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>> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive life. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib, brought to you by -- >> thestreet.com. interactive financial multimedia tools for an ever changing financial world. our dividend stock adviser guides and helps generate income during a period of low interest rates. real money helps you think through ideas for investing and trading stocks. action alerts plus is a charitable trust portfolio that provides trade-by-trade strategies, online, mobile, social media. we are thestreet.com. >> feeling blue. ibm weighs heavily on the dow. and although stocks finish higher on the day, it turns out to be the worst week of the year. and that mood permeated seemingly everyone as a massive manhunt in boston played out in front of

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