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Former ATF special agent in charge on search for motive behind Nashville blast

2020-12-26 | 🔗
Former ATF special agent in charge Bernard Zapor weighs in on developments in massive Christmas morning explosion in downtown Nashville.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pete, thank you Rachel. Well as we continue to learn more details from the explosion that rocked Nashville. Yesterday, city officials have called the blast an intentional act here with what it is and what it may be former special agent in charge of the ATF Bernard Zafe R. Thank you so much for being here. So considering the location the time earlier in the morning that there was warning there may have been shots fired and there might be remains on the site. What could we know and what are they hoping to learn at this moment as they investigate? Well, certainly, the investigative team right now has a substantial amount of information, so investigative management is the most critical thing for them at this point and they have a lot of things with the ATF national response team. The FBI evidence recovery teams of managing both witness statements and, as the evidence speaks, and they absolutely have to be committed to allowing the evidence to speak and not speculate at this point on motive that allows the information coming into
start a frame work as to the possibilities. Secondly, of course they still have remaining public safety concerns. They need to derive anything that would indicate there are other potential devices or potential suspects, and then they have. The fact of there may be other human remains to recover on the site, PETE Bernard, when you say let the evidence speak thats, an interesting phrase. I get what it means. What is the most important piece of evidence? They be looking for right now, theres going to be many direct things, so you have a component of the actual the bomb investigators that will go into the check, call analysis. They will do a number of recovery, as that team is working on its going to be speaking to the incident command and incident command is also getting all of the direct input from evidence. Thats coming from witness interviews from video, all of the outlying inputs are coming in, and so, ideally you have either a team or an individual that really thinks in the
abstract in much like a homicide investigation, its an after the fact event. So, as the evidence is coming in its starting to build a frame work of possibilities here in conjunction with that is the public safety role here to just see, if theres anything thats speaking to the fact that there may be other things and then, on top of all of that, I guarantee you. The investigators are doing the cyber search on this for every possibility, monitoring social media for comments beyond that, and all these things have to come into a central source, so these teams can develop theory in terms of motive intent and any current remaining threat. Pete Bernard, you know, I know in your profession. You live in the world of evidence. This is morning television. Sometimes we speculate go as far as you want, but what, based on what youre looking at right now professionally? What is it leading you toward, as you observe it, of what this might be about? Well, theres, some things that are obvious just based on whats available to the public.
You have a large vehicle borne improvised explosive device placed in a metropolitan area in terms of the strange broadcasting from this rv the fact that law enforcement was able to arrive on scene and begin an evacuation and then, of course, the things about the detonation time, and all of that I would stress again, it is absolutely important for the investigators to be motive agnostic at this point and let the information speak, I would guess that right now, investigators are starting to develop some pretty solid ideas of whats happening here and you know even say, for example, if it was an event where the person responsible was Emoli ated in this blast, they are still going out to the public for more information, because its very hard to do something like this in a singular event and its very hard to do this as an individual. Without making some connection, you have to buy supplies, you have to communicate, and so a lot coming in,
I will not speculate on this other than the fact that it is absolutely unique with the fact that there was the broadcasting of evacuation. I dont recall that in any previous historical events, the blast themself, although extensive damage, obviously that rv, could have been a massive vehicle born improvised explosive device. That really could have done significantly more damage, but then also its important. To remember the complexity of this thing. There is evidence and things that are going to be a tremendous amount of distance from where the actual blast is so thats. Why? You would have seen yesterday, investigators on rooftops and the need for downtown to have put a curfew and cordon off a really.
Transcript generated on 2020-12-26.