Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e06 Episode Script
Martin Luther King Day Plot
The people of Spokane, Washington wake up to a shocking terror threat.
Somebody put a bomb out there to intentionally kill people.
The device is found on the parade route at the Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity Day march.
It was similar in concept to a Claymore mine.
It takes a certain blend of evil intent and technical prowess to be able to construct a device like this.
This was actually a terrorism event.
The terrorist is a self-radicalized lone wolf.
He was very active on white separatist websites.
Kevin Harpham plotted his attack and stalked his victims.
You can just see, basically, his mindset that, "These are the people I want to hurt.
These are the people I want to kill.
" The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force quickly launches an investigation to track down the bomb maker.
This would have been more deadly than the Boston attack.
It would have just been like a war zone had that bomb detonated like he planned.
It could have been one of the worst domestic terror attacks in American history.
The end goal is to disrupt society the best they can.
You cannot take a shot at people you know, there's gonna be some kind of repercussion.
True stories of the worldâs deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force conducts a manhunt for a domestic terrorist with deep ties to white supremacy.
The Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity Day march in Spokane, Washington.
To kill as many people as possible.
The United States is one of the worldâs dominant economic and military powers.
It's also a target for a multitude of threats.
Keeping pace with these threats is a challenge the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force undertake on a daily basis.
While many believe international and Islamic extremism is the most immediate threat to Americaâs safety, the greatest danger may actually come from within Americaâs own borders where far-right extremists and domestic terrorism pose a steady threat of violence.
Joseph Harington is the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, and an expert on domestic terrorism.
The difference between international terrorism and domestic terrorism is that domestic terrorism has its primary focus on the society here in the United States, and people that don't agree with the way the government is functioning now, or the way our culture is operating.
Studies have shown that domestic terrorists are often right-wing extremists and self-radicalized lone wolves guided by terrorist propaganda published online.
The difficulty with a lone wolf is just identifying them before any sort of a significant act occurs.
FBI Special Agent Joe Cleary is a member of the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force in Eastern Washington.
Primarily in Spokane, it's domestic terrorism, white supremacy, extremism.
Spokane is one of the second-most populated cities in the state of Washington.
Itâs 280 miles east of Seattle, and about 20 miles from the Washington-Idaho border.
Recognized for having won the national title of "All-American City" three times, itâs also one of the least diverse cities in America.
Of its 220,000 residents, 90% are Caucasian.
Frank Harrill was the FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent for Eastern Washington.
Spokane is a fairly large metropolitan area and has a tremendous amount of natural beauty and strength.
Unfortunately, this region in particular has been associated with a number of white supremacist groups and other turmoil from the domestic terrorism front.
Even with this history of racial tension, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day is celebrated with pride at an annual parade.
It is a pretty big deal in Spokane, there's thousands of people come to this parade.
Spokane is predominantly Caucasian, but it's nice to see at these Martin Luther King Day parades and other community events, it's nice to see the diversity.
And it had never been the subject of Never any intelligence that suggested an attack was ever going to occur.
Not that we weren't vigilant and not that local authorities weren't vigilant, but this was that day.
On the morning of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day, event staff are getting ready for its annual unity march.
Mark Steiner, a city employee, is assigned to work the parade route.
We're walking through the parking lot, picking things up, and then we're doing a perimeter sweep-around on the sidewalk.
And we got to the very far corner of the lot of our responsibility, and the guys had passed a backpack that was sitting on the ground.
And it was right next to a cement garbage can, and then a wall.
I picked it up.
I said, "Hey, guys, look what I found.
" Of course, they come running over, thinking they're gonna grab it, open it up and we're gonna split what's inside of it.
That's the honest truth.
So, we were playing tug-of-war with the backpack, and then finally I just let him have it.
And he opens it up, and I see him pull out a t-shirt, and then he moves another t-shirt, and then all of a sudden, he freezes, and his eyes went like this, and you just know.
And I'm going, "You've gotta be kidding.
" I said, "Let it go.
" I have to see this for myself.
I move the t-shirt out of the way and I see some wires, and I'm going, "Wow.
" Mark Steiner immediately calls 9-1-1.
While Mark and his co-workers wait for police to arrive, they cordon off the area, getting between the backpack and the oncoming crowds.
We set up a perimeter, and didn't let anybody even come within probably 20 feet of that corner.
Forty-five minutes later, the police arrive, and instruct Mark and his crew to leave the scene.
Meanwhile, the FBI and the Spokane sheriffâs bomb squad are also alerted to the threat.
So, myself and several other members of the JTTF responded to Washington and Main in downtown Spokane.
When I arrived on scene, the Spokane County and City Bomb Squad had taped off the area.
Bomb Squad Commander Matt Lyons of the Spokane County Sheriffâs Office is one of the first responders.
Considering it was the Martin Luther King Day Parade, we need to treat it like it's real, we need to diagnose what it is, whether it's an IED or not.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are homemade bombs that come in various forms from small pipe bombs to highly sophisticated explosives.
The Spokane bomb squad set up about 300 feet away from the backpack.
Mark Fox has been a bomb tech for the Spokane Sheriffâs office for 18 years.
He sends in a remote-controlled bomb disposal robot to investigate the backpack.
That way, we could look at it a little bit more closely and inspect it, to try to determine what it actually is.
When we were examining it, we saw lots of clothes and stuff.
We see the wires.
There was an automotive-type fuse visible on the outside.
So, it's like, "What's this? This is not normal.
" There was something covered in fabric, and white, like, athletic tape.
The wires went inside, but we're starting to see, at least some parts, of what you would see in an IED.
The wires, I think we're more thinking, with exposed wires, something that would be remote-detonated, if it were a device.
At this point, the bomb squad stops down and works with Spokane police to expand the perimeter out even further.
We need to get whoever has the controller far enough away that they're not able to detonate the device.
And we also called in a dog, and the dog searched the immediate area, where we were at.
Anytime you deal with a device, there's always a possibility of having a secondary, or a tertiary device as well.
Once the immediate vicinity is cleared for secondary devices, the robot continues to try and get a better look at the contents of the backpack.
We had identified what we thought was a power supply, a battery, and we're very concerned at this point.
The job for the robot is made more difficult by the amount of tape and fabric used to hold the device together.
The squad elects to disrupt the device with a water shot from the robot.
We usually try to preserve what we can preserve for evidence.
I mean, obviously, our safety's the primary concern.
But after that, our next concern is collecting evidence.
And that was successful.
Then, we continued to recon after that shot, looking around, "Okay, now we can see much more of the device.
" The wires and t-shirts are more exposed, but the tape is still obscuring the actual device.
We did reach a point where we could go no further.
It was just too intricate of a detailed operation to do with the robot, and at that point I had to suit up Marc, and send him downrange to finish what we call, "the render safe procedure.
" Marc Fox, dressed in a bomb-disposal suit, approaches the device.
When I first started, the first couple of times I went on a device I "You know what, this thing could go off and kill me.
" I kind of made my peace with my God, and I trust my training.
So that's kind of where I'm at as a bomb tech.
You have the skills, and you have the training, and you just You got to make your peace, and let your training take over, and take you where you need to go.
Bomb suits offer many layers of protection, but a large blast can still be lethal.
And it was clearly, at that point, an IED.
We knew what it was.
We knew that this was a very significant event, and that as we got into a little bit more depth of what the device was, that it would've been catastrophic, had it gone off.
Marc carefully examines the IED and begins to disassemble the device.
And there were still wires attached to the initiator and stuff, so I cut those wires and separated everything out.
With the device rendered safe, the true reality of what it's capable of comes to light.
This particular device was more directional.
The way that it was positioned, the parade was supposed to go right by there.
So, you figure four lanes worth of people wide, as they're walking, and the device goes off on a cross-section, across them, you're going to have a lot of casualties.
The FBI is briefed on the initial findings at the scene.
The assumption was, this was a terrorism event.
So, just based on the situation, once the device was rendered safe, it became our jurisdiction.
And myself and other members of the JTTF began processing the scene.
Joseph Harington was the United States Assistant Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington and is an expert on domestic terrorism.
The way the investigators proceeded was to try to eliminate the unlimited number of suspects down to a person or persons that might have been responsible for planting this backpack bomb.
We interviewed well over a hundred individuals who were at the march, and no one, to the person, saw anything.
We reviewed hours and hours and hours of videotape, and not one videotape showed the subject placing the device or carrying the device in a backpack to the scene.
So, that was a strikeout, unfortunately.
The FBI also begin to process the scene.
And the device had been disrupted by the water cannon and the backpack had been tipped over and the contents had been knocked loose, so that I could see, as I was on my hands and knees with other agents picking up It looked like fishing weights that had spilled out.
And they were green.
They were fishing weights but they're covered with a green substance and it was sticky, and the smell was terrible.
When I got home that night, my wife made me take my jacket off and throw it away because the smell was so terrible.
The evidence is brought back to the FBI office in Spokane and photographed independently before being sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for further examination.
What the materials told us at the scene as we analyzed them, and that evening in the office, is that an individual or a group with tremendously evil intent had constructed and placed a very sophisticated device in the path where marchers were massed to inflict mass casualty and grievous injury and death upon scores of people.
What was so striking about this event was there was no pre-attack indicator, no intelligence to suggest that an individual or a group had any planned intention to attack this or any similar event.
Sometimes, that's present.
In this case, it was a bolt from the blue.
And we all knew that the clock was ticking, that an individual or group that had done something like this was going to strike again.
The evidence collected on the parade route had been sent to the FBI Quantico lab.
Their report reveals critical pieces of evidence.
Some of those items included some t-shirts.
There was also a car opener remote control device.
There were items including fishing weights and batteries.
Findings from the lab also reveal the source of the green substance coating 128 quarter-ounce fishing weights found at the scene.
The suspect had taken fishing weights and laced them with a marshmallow cream to make 'em stick to And he also laced them with a rat poison and fecal matter.
The rat poison is an anti-coagulant, and the fecal matter, of course, would've caused infection.
The suspect was trying to shoot these projectiles into the crowd in hopes that the covered fishing weights would either have the person bleed out or get an infection.
It truly gives you a window into his mindset, that he was trying to cause as much pain and suffering as he could.
Into a crowd of children, families, just out there marching on Martin Luther King Day and celebrating diversity.
They would not only have harmed and injured, but I believe, would've killed dozens of folks.
It would've been a horrific event.
Its electronic components were devised so that whoever was using the device could determine whether it was armed or disarmed at the time.
Even though its appearance may be crude, it takes a certain blend of evil intent and technical prowess to be able to construct a device like this.
The investigation now focuses on potential leads and witnesses.
We were contacting individuals, researching individuals we thought might have been responsible or could have been responsible.
That did not bear fruit, but those were dozens, if not hundreds of contacts.
With no human intel, the agents hope that leads come from the device itself.
All we had, really, was the evidence taken at the scene.
The device itself and the components of the device.
We're gonna try to source where all these components came from.
Where did these fishing weights come from? Where did the backpack come from? What are these t-shirts he has in the backpack? Where are those from? We can locate where he purchased these items, then maybe we get a break in identifying the subject.
The FBI spread out to the surrounding areas, searching for stores that carry components found in the device.
We started in Spokane.
We went to numerous Walmarts, numerous Big R ranching stores, wherever we could find these fishing weights and these batteries.
Eventually, we increased our circle.
We went farther north of Spokane.
We went east into Idaho.
We had agents down in the Tri-Cities area, toward Oregon, looking for components of the device.
One tip came from the t-shirts.
There were three or four t-shirts in the backpack, and one of the t-shirts talked about a school north of Spokane in Chewelah, and talked about a fun run.
either it's his red herring, or this subject may have some affiliation with the Colville/Chewelah area.
There's plenty of land up there that's undeveloped.
If you wanna be off the grid, north around Colville is a great place to be.
Colville is a city in Stevens County, Washington, an area about 60 miles north of Spokane.
Following the lead on the t-shirts, investigators visit shops in the area.
An agent named Craig Noyes went into a Big R ranching store in Colville, and his assignment was to look for as many 6-volt batteries as he could with the same manufacturing code that matched the two batteries from the device.
The batteries are a match.
After some additional workup, they discovered they were manufactured in China and that they were somewhere upwards of, maybe, 10,000 of these batteries with this serial number located in the area.
So, while it was a lead, it wasn't a huge significant lead.
He then took it upon himself to go to the Walmart in Colville across the street and asked for the fishing weights.
He could try to match the fishing weights to the quarter-ounce fishing weights that we had in our device.
And they actually did sell that fishing weight, the same fishing weight that matched the ones found in our device.
It was just through old, dogged, gumshoe police work that officers ended up finding fishing weights that were similar to, or matched the fishing weights that were found in the backpack.
And that was a significant event, because now we've found similar fishing weights that sold in, of course, the area where the t-shirts were from.
With three significant pieces of evidence, the t-shirts, batteries and fishing weights originating from the same area, the FBI concentrate their efforts on Walmart.
We got a subpoena to the store and the store provided us some sales records from two months before the event occurred.
They searched all the records of 20 stores in north Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana, looking for any time they sold more than 20 fishing weights at a time, of those quarter-ounce weights.
And they got back to us and said, "Well, there was three times we've sold a number that high or higher.
It all happened in the Colville store, within one week in November of 2010.
" We found out that on November 1st, somebody had purchased 30 fishing weights and marshmallow cream.
Unfortunately, they used cash to make the purchase, and, unfortunately, the cameras were down that day.
So, there was no videotape and no financial record of who made that purchase.
We also found that the next day, somebody went back and bought 60 more fishing weights.
Again, they paid cash.
If they pay cash, we don't know who that person is.
We were a little disappointed, you could say.
However, we also found out soon thereafter, that on the 7th of November, somebody came back and bought 40 more fishing weights.
And they also bought marshmallow cream.
This time, that person used a debit card.
So, armed with the debit card purchase, we were able to track, through the use of a subpoena, who the cardholder was that made that last purchase of fishing weights and marshmallow cream.
And once we got the results back from the subpoena, we now had a name.
It was Kevin Harpham of Colville.
And that was a huge event, because now we had a name.
And you got to remember, the day this event occurred, there were unlimited number of suspects.
The FBI then started to do more and more investigation.
Armed with a name, intelligence assets seek to find out more about Kevin Harpham.
We did a deep dive on Kevin Harpham.
We did a lot of public source searching, and we found out he was in the military, he was a member of the Army for three and a half years.
He was stationed at Fort Lewis.
He had high marks in high school and went on to get a certificate in being an electrician.
As we further investigated Kevin Harpham, we found he was not married, never been married, was born and raised north of Colville in the Addy, Washington area.
Interesting enough, we also found out that even though he's buying 130 fishing weights, he did not have a fishing license, which was unique.
By most accounts, 36-year-old Kevin Harpham seems to live a pretty mundane existence, but investigators soon uncover a secret identity.
We used cyber-investigative techniques and determined that, at one point, Mr.
Harpham, using the moniker Joe Snuffy, had commingled his real identity.
Joe Snuffy had replied to admin requests for his real name.
Investigators are able to access that post online.
As we delved further into Kevin Harpham's online personality, we found that he was very active on white supremacy and white separatist websites, especially The Vanguard News Network.
Joe Snuffy posted over 900 times about white supremacy, white separatists movements, his hatred for interracial marriages, things like that.
That really gave us a window into his mindset.
He talked about stockpiling weapons, stockpiling food, talked about the collapse of the government.
So, we thought this might be a good lead, this could be somebody that we should look further into.
A viable suspect with ties to white supremacy, who purchased three of the same items found in an explosive device, has been identified, but itâs still not enough to make an arrest.
We're not ready to arrest him, but we know he is likely going to attack somebody or something else or some group.
And we don't know his timeline, but clearly he has the motive, he has the technical expertise, and he does not know that he has been detected by the FBI.
So, we establish a 24/7 surveillance regimen.
Our fear was he was going to come back and do it again.
He's going to bomb a black church.
We didn't know.
So, you couldn't have him doing that.
So, if he was going to come back into Spokane, we were going to just have to arrest him on probable cause.
The missing piece, as always, is being able to put him at scene of the bombing.
We have him buying fishing weights, but we can't connect him to the backpack.
The FBI receives news from the lab in Quantico regarding additional evidence.
So, what we are able to determine, through great FBI lab work, and again, this goes back to the great work of the Spokane bomb squad, we are able to recover, or the lab is, a degraded piece of DNA from the handle of the backpack.
The DNA discovery is a critical break in the case, but Harpham has never been convicted of a felony and has no DNA on file.
The FBI must devise a plan to acquire it by other means.
The FBI knew that Kevin Harpham had served in the military, and we were also aware that the military maintains what we call biological samples for the identification of soldier remains.
Acquiring DNA from the blood samples one provides as a military member has only been done three times ever, and it's a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
It requires Secretary of Defense approval.
So, we reached out to the Department of Defense to see if we could get a sample of Kevin Harpham's DNA.
They were cooperative, but said they couldn't do that without a court order.
I put together a motion, requested the court look at the motion and issue an order.
The district court judge here in the Eastern District of Washington, approved the motion and signed the order.
And so, we presented that order to the Department of Defense, back in Maryland.
Thanks to the hard work by the U.
S.
Attorney's office and FBI headquarters, the Department of Defense did provide a comparison sample of Kevin Harpham's DNA, which was then brought to the FBI lab.
With a sample of Kevin Harphamâs DNA at the FBI lab, the agents are now hoping for a match.
The FBI lab in Quantico matched the DNA that was found on the backpack to Kevin Harpham's DNA from his biological sample when he was in the military.
With the DNA match, the investigation now switches from "Who did this?" to "Okay, Kevin is our subject.
How do we get him in custody safely?" The FBI has a green light to make an arrest, but have serious concerns.
After conducting 24/7 surveillance on Harpham, they determine that a breach on the house could be too dangerous.
Kevin Harpham lived in a remote area of Stevens County, on a large, I believe it was a ten-acre parcel.
Given the nature and circumstances of this case, there was a concern for the personal safety of the FBI agents themselves.
Mr.
Harpham did not leave that cabin for, virtually, any reason.
In fact, he posted online about his ability to live on just a few dollars a month, and make bulk purchases at big warehouse stores.
He really stayed in this cabin, this mountainside cabin, and stewed in his own toxic stew of racial ideology.
There was fear of possible standoff with Mr.
Harpham and we did not want anything like that.
Arrests of subjects like these have a long history of ending badly for a lot of people, and we were acutely aware of that at the time.
We involved the HRT, as it's known, from the very early days, once we identified Harpham as the subject, once we saw where he lived, and once we knew that he was armed to the teeth.
The FBI reach out to the HRT, the FBIâs Hostage Rescue Team, to figure out the logistics of making the arrest.
Cases like these that are this high profile, we usually bring in a national asset like the Hostage Rescue Team.
They're the best of the best.
We didn't want to risk anything going bad or sideways.
They can deploy snipers and observers and watch Kevin for several days to get a pattern of life, and safely decide when and where to effect the arrest.
Once the HRT are deployed, they observe Harphamâs every move.
They borrowed construction gear and equipment from Stevens County, which is the county in Colville.
And they set up a work site, which allowed them to move people in and out of the area without being noticed.
HRT told us, "If you can ruse him out safely, that's the best bet.
We don't want to do an assault on the house, if we can.
It's safest to ruse a subject out.
" The FBI has Harpham in their sights, but have to come up with a good plan to get him out of his cabin.
They must lure him into neutral ground to take him into custody while avoiding a barricade or shootout.
We began to try to get a pattern of life for what he did during the day.
We were able to get court orders to monitor his internet protocol traffic and his phone traffic.
We couldn't get his content.
We didn't have a Title III Warrant, but we were able just to see the numbers he called, and the numbers that called in to him and the websites he visited.
And with that, we could pretty much understand what he did during the day.
We found out that he got up around nine or ten in the morning, he would stream music, and then he would get online and search Craigslist looking for a vehicle to buy.
Harpham was searching Craigslist and may have been searching for his way out of town.
He knew, or sensed, or thought that the noose was tightening and the circle of the investigative web was, eventually, going to center on him.
At least, that's what I think.
He was looking for a car, a four-wheel drive vehicle, in the wintertime, in the north, to drive to Canada.
We keyed off that.
We learned that and designed a fake advertisement.
We did that by posting Craigslist ads similar to the cars he was trying to buy.
We just mimicked his type of car and his price point, and used that, basically, as a dangle for him to call, hoping he would call our ad and not somebody else's.
Thankfully, Kevin actually sent an email to our ad and saying, "My name is Kevin Harpham.
I live up in Colville.
Here's my number.
I'm interested in buying your vehicle.
Can I call you tomorrow?" Once we received the nibble from Kevin, we thought, "Okay, fish on.
We might have something here.
" We had an agent in our office named Norma Losa, act as Peggy, who was the person selling the vehicle, call Kevin and say, "Yes, the car is still for sale and if you're interested, meet me at the Costco parking lot in north Spokane tomorrow at ten.
" There was a lengthy discussion, they discussed how much, and Kevin said, "Yes, I'm on my way.
I'll be there.
" Myself and Frank Harrill were saying, "Okay, Norma.
That's great.
" We're kind of giving her hand signs like, "Okay, we have what we need.
" Norma cannot get off the phone.
Kevin just kept talking and talking.
We laughed later that not only was he a lone wolf, but he was a very lonely wolf.
By the end of the call, Harpham agrees to meet Peggy at a Costco parking lot in North Spokane the following day.
The HRT are notified and begin to plan how to safely execute his arrest.
The next day, the HRT wait for Kevin Harpham to leave his house, while other members of the team mobilize at a makeshift construction site, waiting for him to cross their path.
HRT got on the radio.
Their observers saw Kevin getting into his vehicle as he proceeded down from the mountain.
As Kevin Harpham drives the mountain in his vehicle, the HRT operators, dressed as construction workers, were trying to look busy and Kevin drove by the front-loader, which is being driven by an HRT operator.
That front-loader then slowly began to follow Kevin as Kevin proceeded down the road toward the highway.
The HRT block the road with construction equipment right before the entrance of the highway.
There was an HRT operator holding a stop/go sign.
Kevin stopped at the sign, and the operator said, "Will you roll your window down, please? And, can you turn your engine off, please?" And Kevin did.
The operator said, "Just give me a minute.
We're going to get this moved and you can proceed on your way.
" At that point, the operator walked behind a large white van, which was parked on the side of the road about 30 yards from Kevin Harpham.
That was the sign for a HRT operator who was trained in explosives to detonate two flash bangs, which had been buried in the dirt next to Kevin's passenger window.
On the explosion, it was a very loud bang, a very bright light.
It seemed to affect Kevin.
He was a bit concussed.
That was the signal for six HRT operators to get out of the white van that was parked near Kevin and open the door and pull him from the vehicle and safely arrest him.
As soon as the explosion was detonated, the front-loader that was driven by the HRT operator took the scoop or the pail of the loader and he smashed it on the trunk of Kevin's vehicle.
As Kevin was trying to regain his wits, his vehicle was lifting in the air as the front-loader was pushing it down from the trunk.
He was taken totally by surprise, in shock, and unharmed.
Once he was in custody and that was put on the radio, Agent Butler and I proceeded to the scene and took custody of Mr.
Harpham.
The first thing he said was, "These people are trying to kill me.
Can you save me?" And I told Kevin, "Yes.
We're from the FBI, and we're here to help you.
You're going to be okay now.
" He was very shaken, very scared, but he was safe, he was fine.
The FBI arrest Harpham just six and a half weeks after the bomb had been discovered.
The investigation now turns to charging Harpham and search warrants are executed for his residence and other locations heâs associated with.
Once Kevin Harpham was safely in custody, HRT then proceeded to his cabin.
They had brought bomb techs in as well for fear of booby traps.
They spent at least a few hours clearing his house for any type of device or booby trap, and then they rendered it safe.
They said, "Okay, this is a safe house.
It's ready for it to be searched.
" They donât find the bomb factory they are expecting, but a few items are sent back to the FBI lab for examination.
After the search of Kevin Harpham's house, several agents went to his father's house.
It was clear from just stepping foot inside his father's shop that this is where Kevin Harpham built the device.
We found the remote-control car starter, which Kevin was going to use as a detonating device.
We saw the pipe that he'd cut in half.
We saw rat poison, similar to the rat poison that was recovered at the scene.
The wood, he built the wood box and placed the device inside the box.
The wood matched.
It was clear that this is where Kevin Harpham built the bomb.
The FBI lab also reports on the items found in Harphamâs cabin.
We collected tools, including pliers and screwdrivers.
The FBI lab analyzed tool marks from the improvised explosive device, to the tools that were used to cut the wires.
There was a crimping device and some pliers that the FBI's lab identified as being found at Kevin's residence, to the crimp marks on the wires found on the IED.
The search at his house wasn't that fruitful.
However, there was one item of interest that was located at his house.
It was a digital camera, and he had deleted all the photos off the camera but our tech agents in Seattle were able to pull them out from the deleted files, and on that camera, were pictures of him basically taking selfies of himself at the march, him marching in the march, and him taking pictures of, basically, his intended targets.
There's one photo that we recovered from Harpham's digital camera that was chilling, to say the least.
It was a photo that Kevin took of an African-American family, a mother with three of her children and a niece, standing by a statue of Lieutenant Colonel Mike Anderson, who was an astronaut, who is a Spokane native, and he died in the Columbia explosion.
This family is standing there by the statue, smiling, getting ready for the parade to start, and there's a picture that Kevin took of that family, and you can just see basically his mindset that, "These are the people I want to hurt.
These are the people I want to kill.
" It really sends a chill through your spine looking at that photo.
In a strange twist, soon after Harpham is arrested and his face appears on the news, the FBI receives a call from a woman who marched in the parade.
And she said, "I took photos of my children and my niece and I have a photo with Mr.
Harpham in the background if you'd like to have it.
" It was amazing to see, because it's basically the reverse of Kevin Harpham's photos.
Kevin Harpham is lurking in the background.
Again, you put the two photos together, and it puts a chill up your spine.
It's scary how close it came to being a tragedy, and innocent people like that, innocent children being killed or injured.
Very, very disturbing.
I recall those photographs and he had sort of a sinister smile on his face.
He was proud of himself for being in the march at a distance, and what he planned to do, clearly, was to detonate it, 1,000 feet back, 500 feet back, way out of the zone of lethality.
He was carrying with him a camera that could do great video shots too, in order to take trophy images in video, that he would, later, likely use in the circle of white supremacists that are willing to commit that kind of violence.
We don't know what Harpham was going to do with it.
What was clear, though, is that he was joining the march and gleefully, almost, in these pictures, capturing images of those he intended to maim and kill.
With all the evidence collected against Harpham, U.
S.
Attorney Joe Harington is set to go to trial.
We were prepared to go to trial, and we'd been working diligently for many months, since the day of the event.
Witnesses were lined up.
As the U.
S.
Attorney's Office, we were prepared.
I'm confident that we had enough proof to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we were prepared to go.
Kevin Harpham's attorney contacted me a week before the trial was to begin, and he advised me that Kevin wanted to enter a plea of guilty.
So, we negotiated a plea agreement and he plead guilty, rather than going to trial.
A week before his trial, Harpham pleads guilty to a hate crime and an attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Kevin Harpham was charged with attempted terrorism counts, because remember, this was an attempt, that the actual event didn't occur.
We negotiated with input from Washington, D.
C.
and the National Security Division, and lots of discussion with the FBI and the U.
S.
Attorney's Office.
Kevin Harpham entered a plea agreement to a term of imprisonment, somewhere between 30 and 32 years.
The actual term was left up to the judge.
And the judge determined that, in this case, based on the facts and circumstances, the appropriate sentence was the high end of the agreed range, which was 32 years.
I think it's important to look at the victims any time you charge crimes.
When you're talking about a hate crime, especially a hate crime that's conducted in a Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity March, I think we had to acknowledge that conduct.
And that's why it was important to charge a hate crime, but it was also an act of terrorism, clearly.
Thank goodness the IED didn't go off because there would've been mass casualties.
Harpham, a lone wolf, had found his voice online where a willing and captive audience encouraged his hateful posts.
A lone actor like Harpham, in a terrorist plot, is a difficult challenge for law enforcement.
Kevin was the typical lone wolf.
I hate to use that term, because it sort of glorifies the position, but Kevin was a loner.
The difficulty with a lone wolf is just identifying them, before any sort of a significant act occurs.
Kevin Harpham presented, for us, at that time, one of the most vexing types of cases to solve.
He was an individual actor, who didn't presage the event in any way.
He didn't express to anyone his intent to do this.
There was no indicator of this evil intent.
There were some flaws in his plan, but not many.
And so, it was an incredibly taxing investigation from that perspective.
Had this device detonated like Kevin Harpham planned, this would have been more deadly than the Boston attack.
He practiced this.
He detonated it a few months before.
He used paper targets.
He knew what he was doing, and he wanted to cause as much mayhem and death and destruction as he could.
And he would have been very successful.
It would have just been like a war zone, had that bomb detonated like he planned.
It's impossible to say what made Kevin Harpham.
He appeared to have a relatively normal upbringing in a rural environment, but at some point, he became steeped in white supremacist ideology, racial separatism, and then gradually devolved into this cocoon-ish existence, where the perfect blend, the unfortunate blend of ignorance, of hate and fear stewed together to form this evil killer.
And that's what he was, an evil, cowardly killer, who was willing to join a march, and videotape the slaughter of women and children.
The FBI lab rebuilds his bomb to test its strength and videotapes the results.
On the video, the FBI lab put a metal filing cabinet maybe several yards away from the device, and when it detonated, those fishing weights perforated both sides of the metal cabinet and continued to fly on.
There were trees hundreds of yards away, and those fishing weights actually hit the trees.
To me, it kind of looked like It looked like a swarm of bees, basically going at a very fast rate.
And it ended up penetrating a bunch of mannequins and a bunch of lockers.
And had those been humans, obviously, they would've had some fatalities there.
Eight months after the sentencing of Harpham, Agent Cleary visits him in prison, hoping heâll be able to clear up some unanswered questions.
In November of 2017, myself and Detective J.
C.
Collins went to Lompoc Federal Correctional Facility and interviewed Kevin Harpham.
He is no longer represented by an attorney and he was willing to talk to us.
And we spent a few hours talking to him about his mindset, what made him do this, and, basically, how did he do it? Mr.
Harpham told us on the day of the event, he had gone down actually two days before, and scouted the location, and found the perfect location to put his bomb.
On the day of the event, he said he got there about two hours early.
He parked about a mile and a half away from the march, and he was wearing full disguise.
He also grew out his beard.
So he put on sunglasses, a different hat, a different jacket, and he took the backpack with the bomb in it and he said he put several t-shirts in the backpack to basically hide the sharp corners of the device, to make it look soft, like it would be clothing.
And he took a roundabout route through Riverfront Park to get to the parade route.
And he left the scene, he went back to his vehicle, he shaved his beard in his car, changed his clothes, waited till about 9:30, and then came back a different route, back to the march.
And as he approached the march area, he saw that there was commotion and a few police cars.
At that point, he realized his device had been found.
So, he actually went in to where the gathering was being held and the "I Have a Dream" speech was being given, and following the speech, he marched with the marchers on the new route that the police had rerouted.
He told us that he brought his camera and was planning on taking pictures and actually planning to videotape the device exploding.
He wanted to watch it happen over and over again.
But since he was unable to, of course, effect his attack, he decided just to take photos of people on the route, and so, he could relive it later with just his intended targets.
Near the end of our interview with Mr.
Harpham, he said he has 21 years left of his 32-year sentence, and he's staying in shape, and he's looking forward to getting out in his late sixties.
But, he informed myself and Detective Collins that there will be a reckoning, and his work is not done, and he still is a soldier for the white supremacy cause.
I think the thing that shocked me the most about this whole thing is the level of hatred that must be in the heart of the perpetrator to do this.
This took a long process to conceive it, to build the device, to plant the device, the planning, everything that went into it.
And knowing this is was parade with children, and To not care, to not understand that what you're about to do And something's missing in him.
There was nothing in him that said, "You know what, I shouldn't be doing this.
This is horrible.
I don't even know these people.
" Even after 25 years of law enforcement, I find that shocking.
The case of Kevin Harpham is a good example of extremism in all forms, and that's really the evil here.
It takes many forms.
It can be Islamic extremism.
It can be whatever you want to label Kevin Harpham.
It's an individual who lives at the fringe and then is willing to act violently to act out on whatever extremist belief he or she may hold.
What I'm saying there is, there is no difference.
I think every member of the investigative team, and I think Joe Cleary and Joe Harington share this, Kevin Harpham was committed to what he believed was this perverted cause and would have struck again and perhaps even again, were he not intercepted and stopped even after that first attack.
Clearly, this was a committed individual that had crossed the Rubicon.
There was no going back.
He was committed and would likely die in this cause.
My takeaway from this was just how well everybody worked together.
The members of the JTTF, agents from headquarters like Craig Noyes who came out and assisted and found the vital evidence.
The Spokane and City Bomb Squad preserving the evidence that allowed us to catch our break.
And even the city employees that found the device, like Mark Steiner.
He called 9-1-1, and really, he's a true hero in this case.
He put his own life on the line.
He maintains his distance probably only 20, 30 yards from this device, which probably would have killed him had it been detonated, to save others from walking too close to it.
And he stayed out there as long as he could until the police showed up and secured the area.
So, really the hero in this story is him and his fellow employees that found the device and put themselves in harmâs way to clear the area.
Who really thinks of terrorism coming to your backyard? And that's what happened.
I'm not so worried about myself, and, obviously, I was basically sticking a radio antenna inside a bomb that had wires.
That's not very bright, but when it comes to the people that live here, that's where you get very upset.
Just think about that.
Children are in these marches, and stuff.
I'm almost at a loss for words, because I get a little mean when it comes to stuff like that.
I'd rather you know, give me five minutes with him, kind of thing.
That's serious, I'll get a little choked up, so This really was the perfect expression of "see something, say something.
" Three individuals that had no role in security, saw something that they believed was out of place, inspected it, decided that it didn't belong there, and did exactly what they should have done: called the police and allowed professionals to evaluate it.
Nobody got killed, and to me, that is the best day you can have, and I feel good about that.
And I'll always feel good about that.
Somebody put a bomb out there to intentionally kill people.
The device is found on the parade route at the Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity Day march.
It was similar in concept to a Claymore mine.
It takes a certain blend of evil intent and technical prowess to be able to construct a device like this.
This was actually a terrorism event.
The terrorist is a self-radicalized lone wolf.
He was very active on white separatist websites.
Kevin Harpham plotted his attack and stalked his victims.
You can just see, basically, his mindset that, "These are the people I want to hurt.
These are the people I want to kill.
" The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force quickly launches an investigation to track down the bomb maker.
This would have been more deadly than the Boston attack.
It would have just been like a war zone had that bomb detonated like he planned.
It could have been one of the worst domestic terror attacks in American history.
The end goal is to disrupt society the best they can.
You cannot take a shot at people you know, there's gonna be some kind of repercussion.
True stories of the worldâs deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
This cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force conducts a manhunt for a domestic terrorist with deep ties to white supremacy.
The Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity Day march in Spokane, Washington.
To kill as many people as possible.
The United States is one of the worldâs dominant economic and military powers.
It's also a target for a multitude of threats.
Keeping pace with these threats is a challenge the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force undertake on a daily basis.
While many believe international and Islamic extremism is the most immediate threat to Americaâs safety, the greatest danger may actually come from within Americaâs own borders where far-right extremists and domestic terrorism pose a steady threat of violence.
Joseph Harington is the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, and an expert on domestic terrorism.
The difference between international terrorism and domestic terrorism is that domestic terrorism has its primary focus on the society here in the United States, and people that don't agree with the way the government is functioning now, or the way our culture is operating.
Studies have shown that domestic terrorists are often right-wing extremists and self-radicalized lone wolves guided by terrorist propaganda published online.
The difficulty with a lone wolf is just identifying them before any sort of a significant act occurs.
FBI Special Agent Joe Cleary is a member of the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force in Eastern Washington.
Primarily in Spokane, it's domestic terrorism, white supremacy, extremism.
Spokane is one of the second-most populated cities in the state of Washington.
Itâs 280 miles east of Seattle, and about 20 miles from the Washington-Idaho border.
Recognized for having won the national title of "All-American City" three times, itâs also one of the least diverse cities in America.
Of its 220,000 residents, 90% are Caucasian.
Frank Harrill was the FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent for Eastern Washington.
Spokane is a fairly large metropolitan area and has a tremendous amount of natural beauty and strength.
Unfortunately, this region in particular has been associated with a number of white supremacist groups and other turmoil from the domestic terrorism front.
Even with this history of racial tension, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day is celebrated with pride at an annual parade.
It is a pretty big deal in Spokane, there's thousands of people come to this parade.
Spokane is predominantly Caucasian, but it's nice to see at these Martin Luther King Day parades and other community events, it's nice to see the diversity.
And it had never been the subject of Never any intelligence that suggested an attack was ever going to occur.
Not that we weren't vigilant and not that local authorities weren't vigilant, but this was that day.
On the morning of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day, event staff are getting ready for its annual unity march.
Mark Steiner, a city employee, is assigned to work the parade route.
We're walking through the parking lot, picking things up, and then we're doing a perimeter sweep-around on the sidewalk.
And we got to the very far corner of the lot of our responsibility, and the guys had passed a backpack that was sitting on the ground.
And it was right next to a cement garbage can, and then a wall.
I picked it up.
I said, "Hey, guys, look what I found.
" Of course, they come running over, thinking they're gonna grab it, open it up and we're gonna split what's inside of it.
That's the honest truth.
So, we were playing tug-of-war with the backpack, and then finally I just let him have it.
And he opens it up, and I see him pull out a t-shirt, and then he moves another t-shirt, and then all of a sudden, he freezes, and his eyes went like this, and you just know.
And I'm going, "You've gotta be kidding.
" I said, "Let it go.
" I have to see this for myself.
I move the t-shirt out of the way and I see some wires, and I'm going, "Wow.
" Mark Steiner immediately calls 9-1-1.
While Mark and his co-workers wait for police to arrive, they cordon off the area, getting between the backpack and the oncoming crowds.
We set up a perimeter, and didn't let anybody even come within probably 20 feet of that corner.
Forty-five minutes later, the police arrive, and instruct Mark and his crew to leave the scene.
Meanwhile, the FBI and the Spokane sheriffâs bomb squad are also alerted to the threat.
So, myself and several other members of the JTTF responded to Washington and Main in downtown Spokane.
When I arrived on scene, the Spokane County and City Bomb Squad had taped off the area.
Bomb Squad Commander Matt Lyons of the Spokane County Sheriffâs Office is one of the first responders.
Considering it was the Martin Luther King Day Parade, we need to treat it like it's real, we need to diagnose what it is, whether it's an IED or not.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are homemade bombs that come in various forms from small pipe bombs to highly sophisticated explosives.
The Spokane bomb squad set up about 300 feet away from the backpack.
Mark Fox has been a bomb tech for the Spokane Sheriffâs office for 18 years.
He sends in a remote-controlled bomb disposal robot to investigate the backpack.
That way, we could look at it a little bit more closely and inspect it, to try to determine what it actually is.
When we were examining it, we saw lots of clothes and stuff.
We see the wires.
There was an automotive-type fuse visible on the outside.
So, it's like, "What's this? This is not normal.
" There was something covered in fabric, and white, like, athletic tape.
The wires went inside, but we're starting to see, at least some parts, of what you would see in an IED.
The wires, I think we're more thinking, with exposed wires, something that would be remote-detonated, if it were a device.
At this point, the bomb squad stops down and works with Spokane police to expand the perimeter out even further.
We need to get whoever has the controller far enough away that they're not able to detonate the device.
And we also called in a dog, and the dog searched the immediate area, where we were at.
Anytime you deal with a device, there's always a possibility of having a secondary, or a tertiary device as well.
Once the immediate vicinity is cleared for secondary devices, the robot continues to try and get a better look at the contents of the backpack.
We had identified what we thought was a power supply, a battery, and we're very concerned at this point.
The job for the robot is made more difficult by the amount of tape and fabric used to hold the device together.
The squad elects to disrupt the device with a water shot from the robot.
We usually try to preserve what we can preserve for evidence.
I mean, obviously, our safety's the primary concern.
But after that, our next concern is collecting evidence.
And that was successful.
Then, we continued to recon after that shot, looking around, "Okay, now we can see much more of the device.
" The wires and t-shirts are more exposed, but the tape is still obscuring the actual device.
We did reach a point where we could go no further.
It was just too intricate of a detailed operation to do with the robot, and at that point I had to suit up Marc, and send him downrange to finish what we call, "the render safe procedure.
" Marc Fox, dressed in a bomb-disposal suit, approaches the device.
When I first started, the first couple of times I went on a device I "You know what, this thing could go off and kill me.
" I kind of made my peace with my God, and I trust my training.
So that's kind of where I'm at as a bomb tech.
You have the skills, and you have the training, and you just You got to make your peace, and let your training take over, and take you where you need to go.
Bomb suits offer many layers of protection, but a large blast can still be lethal.
And it was clearly, at that point, an IED.
We knew what it was.
We knew that this was a very significant event, and that as we got into a little bit more depth of what the device was, that it would've been catastrophic, had it gone off.
Marc carefully examines the IED and begins to disassemble the device.
And there were still wires attached to the initiator and stuff, so I cut those wires and separated everything out.
With the device rendered safe, the true reality of what it's capable of comes to light.
This particular device was more directional.
The way that it was positioned, the parade was supposed to go right by there.
So, you figure four lanes worth of people wide, as they're walking, and the device goes off on a cross-section, across them, you're going to have a lot of casualties.
The FBI is briefed on the initial findings at the scene.
The assumption was, this was a terrorism event.
So, just based on the situation, once the device was rendered safe, it became our jurisdiction.
And myself and other members of the JTTF began processing the scene.
Joseph Harington was the United States Assistant Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington and is an expert on domestic terrorism.
The way the investigators proceeded was to try to eliminate the unlimited number of suspects down to a person or persons that might have been responsible for planting this backpack bomb.
We interviewed well over a hundred individuals who were at the march, and no one, to the person, saw anything.
We reviewed hours and hours and hours of videotape, and not one videotape showed the subject placing the device or carrying the device in a backpack to the scene.
So, that was a strikeout, unfortunately.
The FBI also begin to process the scene.
And the device had been disrupted by the water cannon and the backpack had been tipped over and the contents had been knocked loose, so that I could see, as I was on my hands and knees with other agents picking up It looked like fishing weights that had spilled out.
And they were green.
They were fishing weights but they're covered with a green substance and it was sticky, and the smell was terrible.
When I got home that night, my wife made me take my jacket off and throw it away because the smell was so terrible.
The evidence is brought back to the FBI office in Spokane and photographed independently before being sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for further examination.
What the materials told us at the scene as we analyzed them, and that evening in the office, is that an individual or a group with tremendously evil intent had constructed and placed a very sophisticated device in the path where marchers were massed to inflict mass casualty and grievous injury and death upon scores of people.
What was so striking about this event was there was no pre-attack indicator, no intelligence to suggest that an individual or a group had any planned intention to attack this or any similar event.
Sometimes, that's present.
In this case, it was a bolt from the blue.
And we all knew that the clock was ticking, that an individual or group that had done something like this was going to strike again.
The evidence collected on the parade route had been sent to the FBI Quantico lab.
Their report reveals critical pieces of evidence.
Some of those items included some t-shirts.
There was also a car opener remote control device.
There were items including fishing weights and batteries.
Findings from the lab also reveal the source of the green substance coating 128 quarter-ounce fishing weights found at the scene.
The suspect had taken fishing weights and laced them with a marshmallow cream to make 'em stick to And he also laced them with a rat poison and fecal matter.
The rat poison is an anti-coagulant, and the fecal matter, of course, would've caused infection.
The suspect was trying to shoot these projectiles into the crowd in hopes that the covered fishing weights would either have the person bleed out or get an infection.
It truly gives you a window into his mindset, that he was trying to cause as much pain and suffering as he could.
Into a crowd of children, families, just out there marching on Martin Luther King Day and celebrating diversity.
They would not only have harmed and injured, but I believe, would've killed dozens of folks.
It would've been a horrific event.
Its electronic components were devised so that whoever was using the device could determine whether it was armed or disarmed at the time.
Even though its appearance may be crude, it takes a certain blend of evil intent and technical prowess to be able to construct a device like this.
The investigation now focuses on potential leads and witnesses.
We were contacting individuals, researching individuals we thought might have been responsible or could have been responsible.
That did not bear fruit, but those were dozens, if not hundreds of contacts.
With no human intel, the agents hope that leads come from the device itself.
All we had, really, was the evidence taken at the scene.
The device itself and the components of the device.
We're gonna try to source where all these components came from.
Where did these fishing weights come from? Where did the backpack come from? What are these t-shirts he has in the backpack? Where are those from? We can locate where he purchased these items, then maybe we get a break in identifying the subject.
The FBI spread out to the surrounding areas, searching for stores that carry components found in the device.
We started in Spokane.
We went to numerous Walmarts, numerous Big R ranching stores, wherever we could find these fishing weights and these batteries.
Eventually, we increased our circle.
We went farther north of Spokane.
We went east into Idaho.
We had agents down in the Tri-Cities area, toward Oregon, looking for components of the device.
One tip came from the t-shirts.
There were three or four t-shirts in the backpack, and one of the t-shirts talked about a school north of Spokane in Chewelah, and talked about a fun run.
either it's his red herring, or this subject may have some affiliation with the Colville/Chewelah area.
There's plenty of land up there that's undeveloped.
If you wanna be off the grid, north around Colville is a great place to be.
Colville is a city in Stevens County, Washington, an area about 60 miles north of Spokane.
Following the lead on the t-shirts, investigators visit shops in the area.
An agent named Craig Noyes went into a Big R ranching store in Colville, and his assignment was to look for as many 6-volt batteries as he could with the same manufacturing code that matched the two batteries from the device.
The batteries are a match.
After some additional workup, they discovered they were manufactured in China and that they were somewhere upwards of, maybe, 10,000 of these batteries with this serial number located in the area.
So, while it was a lead, it wasn't a huge significant lead.
He then took it upon himself to go to the Walmart in Colville across the street and asked for the fishing weights.
He could try to match the fishing weights to the quarter-ounce fishing weights that we had in our device.
And they actually did sell that fishing weight, the same fishing weight that matched the ones found in our device.
It was just through old, dogged, gumshoe police work that officers ended up finding fishing weights that were similar to, or matched the fishing weights that were found in the backpack.
And that was a significant event, because now we've found similar fishing weights that sold in, of course, the area where the t-shirts were from.
With three significant pieces of evidence, the t-shirts, batteries and fishing weights originating from the same area, the FBI concentrate their efforts on Walmart.
We got a subpoena to the store and the store provided us some sales records from two months before the event occurred.
They searched all the records of 20 stores in north Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana, looking for any time they sold more than 20 fishing weights at a time, of those quarter-ounce weights.
And they got back to us and said, "Well, there was three times we've sold a number that high or higher.
It all happened in the Colville store, within one week in November of 2010.
" We found out that on November 1st, somebody had purchased 30 fishing weights and marshmallow cream.
Unfortunately, they used cash to make the purchase, and, unfortunately, the cameras were down that day.
So, there was no videotape and no financial record of who made that purchase.
We also found that the next day, somebody went back and bought 60 more fishing weights.
Again, they paid cash.
If they pay cash, we don't know who that person is.
We were a little disappointed, you could say.
However, we also found out soon thereafter, that on the 7th of November, somebody came back and bought 40 more fishing weights.
And they also bought marshmallow cream.
This time, that person used a debit card.
So, armed with the debit card purchase, we were able to track, through the use of a subpoena, who the cardholder was that made that last purchase of fishing weights and marshmallow cream.
And once we got the results back from the subpoena, we now had a name.
It was Kevin Harpham of Colville.
And that was a huge event, because now we had a name.
And you got to remember, the day this event occurred, there were unlimited number of suspects.
The FBI then started to do more and more investigation.
Armed with a name, intelligence assets seek to find out more about Kevin Harpham.
We did a deep dive on Kevin Harpham.
We did a lot of public source searching, and we found out he was in the military, he was a member of the Army for three and a half years.
He was stationed at Fort Lewis.
He had high marks in high school and went on to get a certificate in being an electrician.
As we further investigated Kevin Harpham, we found he was not married, never been married, was born and raised north of Colville in the Addy, Washington area.
Interesting enough, we also found out that even though he's buying 130 fishing weights, he did not have a fishing license, which was unique.
By most accounts, 36-year-old Kevin Harpham seems to live a pretty mundane existence, but investigators soon uncover a secret identity.
We used cyber-investigative techniques and determined that, at one point, Mr.
Harpham, using the moniker Joe Snuffy, had commingled his real identity.
Joe Snuffy had replied to admin requests for his real name.
Investigators are able to access that post online.
As we delved further into Kevin Harpham's online personality, we found that he was very active on white supremacy and white separatist websites, especially The Vanguard News Network.
Joe Snuffy posted over 900 times about white supremacy, white separatists movements, his hatred for interracial marriages, things like that.
That really gave us a window into his mindset.
He talked about stockpiling weapons, stockpiling food, talked about the collapse of the government.
So, we thought this might be a good lead, this could be somebody that we should look further into.
A viable suspect with ties to white supremacy, who purchased three of the same items found in an explosive device, has been identified, but itâs still not enough to make an arrest.
We're not ready to arrest him, but we know he is likely going to attack somebody or something else or some group.
And we don't know his timeline, but clearly he has the motive, he has the technical expertise, and he does not know that he has been detected by the FBI.
So, we establish a 24/7 surveillance regimen.
Our fear was he was going to come back and do it again.
He's going to bomb a black church.
We didn't know.
So, you couldn't have him doing that.
So, if he was going to come back into Spokane, we were going to just have to arrest him on probable cause.
The missing piece, as always, is being able to put him at scene of the bombing.
We have him buying fishing weights, but we can't connect him to the backpack.
The FBI receives news from the lab in Quantico regarding additional evidence.
So, what we are able to determine, through great FBI lab work, and again, this goes back to the great work of the Spokane bomb squad, we are able to recover, or the lab is, a degraded piece of DNA from the handle of the backpack.
The DNA discovery is a critical break in the case, but Harpham has never been convicted of a felony and has no DNA on file.
The FBI must devise a plan to acquire it by other means.
The FBI knew that Kevin Harpham had served in the military, and we were also aware that the military maintains what we call biological samples for the identification of soldier remains.
Acquiring DNA from the blood samples one provides as a military member has only been done three times ever, and it's a very difficult hurdle to overcome.
It requires Secretary of Defense approval.
So, we reached out to the Department of Defense to see if we could get a sample of Kevin Harpham's DNA.
They were cooperative, but said they couldn't do that without a court order.
I put together a motion, requested the court look at the motion and issue an order.
The district court judge here in the Eastern District of Washington, approved the motion and signed the order.
And so, we presented that order to the Department of Defense, back in Maryland.
Thanks to the hard work by the U.
S.
Attorney's office and FBI headquarters, the Department of Defense did provide a comparison sample of Kevin Harpham's DNA, which was then brought to the FBI lab.
With a sample of Kevin Harphamâs DNA at the FBI lab, the agents are now hoping for a match.
The FBI lab in Quantico matched the DNA that was found on the backpack to Kevin Harpham's DNA from his biological sample when he was in the military.
With the DNA match, the investigation now switches from "Who did this?" to "Okay, Kevin is our subject.
How do we get him in custody safely?" The FBI has a green light to make an arrest, but have serious concerns.
After conducting 24/7 surveillance on Harpham, they determine that a breach on the house could be too dangerous.
Kevin Harpham lived in a remote area of Stevens County, on a large, I believe it was a ten-acre parcel.
Given the nature and circumstances of this case, there was a concern for the personal safety of the FBI agents themselves.
Mr.
Harpham did not leave that cabin for, virtually, any reason.
In fact, he posted online about his ability to live on just a few dollars a month, and make bulk purchases at big warehouse stores.
He really stayed in this cabin, this mountainside cabin, and stewed in his own toxic stew of racial ideology.
There was fear of possible standoff with Mr.
Harpham and we did not want anything like that.
Arrests of subjects like these have a long history of ending badly for a lot of people, and we were acutely aware of that at the time.
We involved the HRT, as it's known, from the very early days, once we identified Harpham as the subject, once we saw where he lived, and once we knew that he was armed to the teeth.
The FBI reach out to the HRT, the FBIâs Hostage Rescue Team, to figure out the logistics of making the arrest.
Cases like these that are this high profile, we usually bring in a national asset like the Hostage Rescue Team.
They're the best of the best.
We didn't want to risk anything going bad or sideways.
They can deploy snipers and observers and watch Kevin for several days to get a pattern of life, and safely decide when and where to effect the arrest.
Once the HRT are deployed, they observe Harphamâs every move.
They borrowed construction gear and equipment from Stevens County, which is the county in Colville.
And they set up a work site, which allowed them to move people in and out of the area without being noticed.
HRT told us, "If you can ruse him out safely, that's the best bet.
We don't want to do an assault on the house, if we can.
It's safest to ruse a subject out.
" The FBI has Harpham in their sights, but have to come up with a good plan to get him out of his cabin.
They must lure him into neutral ground to take him into custody while avoiding a barricade or shootout.
We began to try to get a pattern of life for what he did during the day.
We were able to get court orders to monitor his internet protocol traffic and his phone traffic.
We couldn't get his content.
We didn't have a Title III Warrant, but we were able just to see the numbers he called, and the numbers that called in to him and the websites he visited.
And with that, we could pretty much understand what he did during the day.
We found out that he got up around nine or ten in the morning, he would stream music, and then he would get online and search Craigslist looking for a vehicle to buy.
Harpham was searching Craigslist and may have been searching for his way out of town.
He knew, or sensed, or thought that the noose was tightening and the circle of the investigative web was, eventually, going to center on him.
At least, that's what I think.
He was looking for a car, a four-wheel drive vehicle, in the wintertime, in the north, to drive to Canada.
We keyed off that.
We learned that and designed a fake advertisement.
We did that by posting Craigslist ads similar to the cars he was trying to buy.
We just mimicked his type of car and his price point, and used that, basically, as a dangle for him to call, hoping he would call our ad and not somebody else's.
Thankfully, Kevin actually sent an email to our ad and saying, "My name is Kevin Harpham.
I live up in Colville.
Here's my number.
I'm interested in buying your vehicle.
Can I call you tomorrow?" Once we received the nibble from Kevin, we thought, "Okay, fish on.
We might have something here.
" We had an agent in our office named Norma Losa, act as Peggy, who was the person selling the vehicle, call Kevin and say, "Yes, the car is still for sale and if you're interested, meet me at the Costco parking lot in north Spokane tomorrow at ten.
" There was a lengthy discussion, they discussed how much, and Kevin said, "Yes, I'm on my way.
I'll be there.
" Myself and Frank Harrill were saying, "Okay, Norma.
That's great.
" We're kind of giving her hand signs like, "Okay, we have what we need.
" Norma cannot get off the phone.
Kevin just kept talking and talking.
We laughed later that not only was he a lone wolf, but he was a very lonely wolf.
By the end of the call, Harpham agrees to meet Peggy at a Costco parking lot in North Spokane the following day.
The HRT are notified and begin to plan how to safely execute his arrest.
The next day, the HRT wait for Kevin Harpham to leave his house, while other members of the team mobilize at a makeshift construction site, waiting for him to cross their path.
HRT got on the radio.
Their observers saw Kevin getting into his vehicle as he proceeded down from the mountain.
As Kevin Harpham drives the mountain in his vehicle, the HRT operators, dressed as construction workers, were trying to look busy and Kevin drove by the front-loader, which is being driven by an HRT operator.
That front-loader then slowly began to follow Kevin as Kevin proceeded down the road toward the highway.
The HRT block the road with construction equipment right before the entrance of the highway.
There was an HRT operator holding a stop/go sign.
Kevin stopped at the sign, and the operator said, "Will you roll your window down, please? And, can you turn your engine off, please?" And Kevin did.
The operator said, "Just give me a minute.
We're going to get this moved and you can proceed on your way.
" At that point, the operator walked behind a large white van, which was parked on the side of the road about 30 yards from Kevin Harpham.
That was the sign for a HRT operator who was trained in explosives to detonate two flash bangs, which had been buried in the dirt next to Kevin's passenger window.
On the explosion, it was a very loud bang, a very bright light.
It seemed to affect Kevin.
He was a bit concussed.
That was the signal for six HRT operators to get out of the white van that was parked near Kevin and open the door and pull him from the vehicle and safely arrest him.
As soon as the explosion was detonated, the front-loader that was driven by the HRT operator took the scoop or the pail of the loader and he smashed it on the trunk of Kevin's vehicle.
As Kevin was trying to regain his wits, his vehicle was lifting in the air as the front-loader was pushing it down from the trunk.
He was taken totally by surprise, in shock, and unharmed.
Once he was in custody and that was put on the radio, Agent Butler and I proceeded to the scene and took custody of Mr.
Harpham.
The first thing he said was, "These people are trying to kill me.
Can you save me?" And I told Kevin, "Yes.
We're from the FBI, and we're here to help you.
You're going to be okay now.
" He was very shaken, very scared, but he was safe, he was fine.
The FBI arrest Harpham just six and a half weeks after the bomb had been discovered.
The investigation now turns to charging Harpham and search warrants are executed for his residence and other locations heâs associated with.
Once Kevin Harpham was safely in custody, HRT then proceeded to his cabin.
They had brought bomb techs in as well for fear of booby traps.
They spent at least a few hours clearing his house for any type of device or booby trap, and then they rendered it safe.
They said, "Okay, this is a safe house.
It's ready for it to be searched.
" They donât find the bomb factory they are expecting, but a few items are sent back to the FBI lab for examination.
After the search of Kevin Harpham's house, several agents went to his father's house.
It was clear from just stepping foot inside his father's shop that this is where Kevin Harpham built the device.
We found the remote-control car starter, which Kevin was going to use as a detonating device.
We saw the pipe that he'd cut in half.
We saw rat poison, similar to the rat poison that was recovered at the scene.
The wood, he built the wood box and placed the device inside the box.
The wood matched.
It was clear that this is where Kevin Harpham built the bomb.
The FBI lab also reports on the items found in Harphamâs cabin.
We collected tools, including pliers and screwdrivers.
The FBI lab analyzed tool marks from the improvised explosive device, to the tools that were used to cut the wires.
There was a crimping device and some pliers that the FBI's lab identified as being found at Kevin's residence, to the crimp marks on the wires found on the IED.
The search at his house wasn't that fruitful.
However, there was one item of interest that was located at his house.
It was a digital camera, and he had deleted all the photos off the camera but our tech agents in Seattle were able to pull them out from the deleted files, and on that camera, were pictures of him basically taking selfies of himself at the march, him marching in the march, and him taking pictures of, basically, his intended targets.
There's one photo that we recovered from Harpham's digital camera that was chilling, to say the least.
It was a photo that Kevin took of an African-American family, a mother with three of her children and a niece, standing by a statue of Lieutenant Colonel Mike Anderson, who was an astronaut, who is a Spokane native, and he died in the Columbia explosion.
This family is standing there by the statue, smiling, getting ready for the parade to start, and there's a picture that Kevin took of that family, and you can just see basically his mindset that, "These are the people I want to hurt.
These are the people I want to kill.
" It really sends a chill through your spine looking at that photo.
In a strange twist, soon after Harpham is arrested and his face appears on the news, the FBI receives a call from a woman who marched in the parade.
And she said, "I took photos of my children and my niece and I have a photo with Mr.
Harpham in the background if you'd like to have it.
" It was amazing to see, because it's basically the reverse of Kevin Harpham's photos.
Kevin Harpham is lurking in the background.
Again, you put the two photos together, and it puts a chill up your spine.
It's scary how close it came to being a tragedy, and innocent people like that, innocent children being killed or injured.
Very, very disturbing.
I recall those photographs and he had sort of a sinister smile on his face.
He was proud of himself for being in the march at a distance, and what he planned to do, clearly, was to detonate it, 1,000 feet back, 500 feet back, way out of the zone of lethality.
He was carrying with him a camera that could do great video shots too, in order to take trophy images in video, that he would, later, likely use in the circle of white supremacists that are willing to commit that kind of violence.
We don't know what Harpham was going to do with it.
What was clear, though, is that he was joining the march and gleefully, almost, in these pictures, capturing images of those he intended to maim and kill.
With all the evidence collected against Harpham, U.
S.
Attorney Joe Harington is set to go to trial.
We were prepared to go to trial, and we'd been working diligently for many months, since the day of the event.
Witnesses were lined up.
As the U.
S.
Attorney's Office, we were prepared.
I'm confident that we had enough proof to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we were prepared to go.
Kevin Harpham's attorney contacted me a week before the trial was to begin, and he advised me that Kevin wanted to enter a plea of guilty.
So, we negotiated a plea agreement and he plead guilty, rather than going to trial.
A week before his trial, Harpham pleads guilty to a hate crime and an attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Kevin Harpham was charged with attempted terrorism counts, because remember, this was an attempt, that the actual event didn't occur.
We negotiated with input from Washington, D.
C.
and the National Security Division, and lots of discussion with the FBI and the U.
S.
Attorney's Office.
Kevin Harpham entered a plea agreement to a term of imprisonment, somewhere between 30 and 32 years.
The actual term was left up to the judge.
And the judge determined that, in this case, based on the facts and circumstances, the appropriate sentence was the high end of the agreed range, which was 32 years.
I think it's important to look at the victims any time you charge crimes.
When you're talking about a hate crime, especially a hate crime that's conducted in a Martin Luther King Jr.
Unity March, I think we had to acknowledge that conduct.
And that's why it was important to charge a hate crime, but it was also an act of terrorism, clearly.
Thank goodness the IED didn't go off because there would've been mass casualties.
Harpham, a lone wolf, had found his voice online where a willing and captive audience encouraged his hateful posts.
A lone actor like Harpham, in a terrorist plot, is a difficult challenge for law enforcement.
Kevin was the typical lone wolf.
I hate to use that term, because it sort of glorifies the position, but Kevin was a loner.
The difficulty with a lone wolf is just identifying them, before any sort of a significant act occurs.
Kevin Harpham presented, for us, at that time, one of the most vexing types of cases to solve.
He was an individual actor, who didn't presage the event in any way.
He didn't express to anyone his intent to do this.
There was no indicator of this evil intent.
There were some flaws in his plan, but not many.
And so, it was an incredibly taxing investigation from that perspective.
Had this device detonated like Kevin Harpham planned, this would have been more deadly than the Boston attack.
He practiced this.
He detonated it a few months before.
He used paper targets.
He knew what he was doing, and he wanted to cause as much mayhem and death and destruction as he could.
And he would have been very successful.
It would have just been like a war zone, had that bomb detonated like he planned.
It's impossible to say what made Kevin Harpham.
He appeared to have a relatively normal upbringing in a rural environment, but at some point, he became steeped in white supremacist ideology, racial separatism, and then gradually devolved into this cocoon-ish existence, where the perfect blend, the unfortunate blend of ignorance, of hate and fear stewed together to form this evil killer.
And that's what he was, an evil, cowardly killer, who was willing to join a march, and videotape the slaughter of women and children.
The FBI lab rebuilds his bomb to test its strength and videotapes the results.
On the video, the FBI lab put a metal filing cabinet maybe several yards away from the device, and when it detonated, those fishing weights perforated both sides of the metal cabinet and continued to fly on.
There were trees hundreds of yards away, and those fishing weights actually hit the trees.
To me, it kind of looked like It looked like a swarm of bees, basically going at a very fast rate.
And it ended up penetrating a bunch of mannequins and a bunch of lockers.
And had those been humans, obviously, they would've had some fatalities there.
Eight months after the sentencing of Harpham, Agent Cleary visits him in prison, hoping heâll be able to clear up some unanswered questions.
In November of 2017, myself and Detective J.
C.
Collins went to Lompoc Federal Correctional Facility and interviewed Kevin Harpham.
He is no longer represented by an attorney and he was willing to talk to us.
And we spent a few hours talking to him about his mindset, what made him do this, and, basically, how did he do it? Mr.
Harpham told us on the day of the event, he had gone down actually two days before, and scouted the location, and found the perfect location to put his bomb.
On the day of the event, he said he got there about two hours early.
He parked about a mile and a half away from the march, and he was wearing full disguise.
He also grew out his beard.
So he put on sunglasses, a different hat, a different jacket, and he took the backpack with the bomb in it and he said he put several t-shirts in the backpack to basically hide the sharp corners of the device, to make it look soft, like it would be clothing.
And he took a roundabout route through Riverfront Park to get to the parade route.
And he left the scene, he went back to his vehicle, he shaved his beard in his car, changed his clothes, waited till about 9:30, and then came back a different route, back to the march.
And as he approached the march area, he saw that there was commotion and a few police cars.
At that point, he realized his device had been found.
So, he actually went in to where the gathering was being held and the "I Have a Dream" speech was being given, and following the speech, he marched with the marchers on the new route that the police had rerouted.
He told us that he brought his camera and was planning on taking pictures and actually planning to videotape the device exploding.
He wanted to watch it happen over and over again.
But since he was unable to, of course, effect his attack, he decided just to take photos of people on the route, and so, he could relive it later with just his intended targets.
Near the end of our interview with Mr.
Harpham, he said he has 21 years left of his 32-year sentence, and he's staying in shape, and he's looking forward to getting out in his late sixties.
But, he informed myself and Detective Collins that there will be a reckoning, and his work is not done, and he still is a soldier for the white supremacy cause.
I think the thing that shocked me the most about this whole thing is the level of hatred that must be in the heart of the perpetrator to do this.
This took a long process to conceive it, to build the device, to plant the device, the planning, everything that went into it.
And knowing this is was parade with children, and To not care, to not understand that what you're about to do And something's missing in him.
There was nothing in him that said, "You know what, I shouldn't be doing this.
This is horrible.
I don't even know these people.
" Even after 25 years of law enforcement, I find that shocking.
The case of Kevin Harpham is a good example of extremism in all forms, and that's really the evil here.
It takes many forms.
It can be Islamic extremism.
It can be whatever you want to label Kevin Harpham.
It's an individual who lives at the fringe and then is willing to act violently to act out on whatever extremist belief he or she may hold.
What I'm saying there is, there is no difference.
I think every member of the investigative team, and I think Joe Cleary and Joe Harington share this, Kevin Harpham was committed to what he believed was this perverted cause and would have struck again and perhaps even again, were he not intercepted and stopped even after that first attack.
Clearly, this was a committed individual that had crossed the Rubicon.
There was no going back.
He was committed and would likely die in this cause.
My takeaway from this was just how well everybody worked together.
The members of the JTTF, agents from headquarters like Craig Noyes who came out and assisted and found the vital evidence.
The Spokane and City Bomb Squad preserving the evidence that allowed us to catch our break.
And even the city employees that found the device, like Mark Steiner.
He called 9-1-1, and really, he's a true hero in this case.
He put his own life on the line.
He maintains his distance probably only 20, 30 yards from this device, which probably would have killed him had it been detonated, to save others from walking too close to it.
And he stayed out there as long as he could until the police showed up and secured the area.
So, really the hero in this story is him and his fellow employees that found the device and put themselves in harmâs way to clear the area.
Who really thinks of terrorism coming to your backyard? And that's what happened.
I'm not so worried about myself, and, obviously, I was basically sticking a radio antenna inside a bomb that had wires.
That's not very bright, but when it comes to the people that live here, that's where you get very upset.
Just think about that.
Children are in these marches, and stuff.
I'm almost at a loss for words, because I get a little mean when it comes to stuff like that.
I'd rather you know, give me five minutes with him, kind of thing.
That's serious, I'll get a little choked up, so This really was the perfect expression of "see something, say something.
" Three individuals that had no role in security, saw something that they believed was out of place, inspected it, decided that it didn't belong there, and did exactly what they should have done: called the police and allowed professionals to evaluate it.
Nobody got killed, and to me, that is the best day you can have, and I feel good about that.
And I'll always feel good about that.