[Harlow:] All right. Investigating an explosion of any type requires a lot of patience, meticulous gathering of evidence. That's where the ATF or the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Post-Blast Investigative Training Comes in. You can imagine what they're going through right now, given all that has transpired in New York City in the last 24 hours. CNN will take you inside of the ATF Lab, where they learn what they look for after an explosion. Watch.
[Unidentified Male:] Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole. When we go to a scene, whether it's an explosion or a fire, you know, we don't go in with any preconceived notions. I can talk to you and tell you what it feels like. But until you see actually see it firsthand, you really don't understand. The training that we are putting on here, dealt with giving the first responders and investigating agencies the tools that they need to be able to conduct an investigation. When the items are sifted and collected for evidence, they're categorized. Are they something that is common use, or if not, they may be part of the actual explosive device. Collecting evidence, you know, to be sent to the lab for processing. It also can give you an idea of what type of explosives may have been used.
[Unidentified Female:] Once it is submitted to the laboratory, we take all of the information we gather from running it on these different instruments, and all of that data together allows us to determine what the explosive is. In addition to looking for the explosives, we're looking for components. Anything we can link the suspect to the device or the device back to the suspect.
[Unidentified Male:] The end result is we all want to figure out, number one, is a criminal event and if it is a criminal event who did it?
[Harlow:] Just giving you an eye into some of what goes into looking at these devices. I should note that's the ATF is the FBI right now is the lead on this. We know this pressure cooker found last night on West 27th Street is at Quantico. Right now, let's bring back to my panel, Bob Baer, former CIA Operative with me. Bob, obviously, the fact that this was not detonated gives them so much information. Not only fingerprints but what the wiring tells us, what instructions were followed from, say, Inspire Magazine or something else, we just don't know, to build it. As they disassemble this, what are they looking for? What are the key things they're looking for?
[Bob Baer, Former Cia Operative:] They're going to be looking how the phone was rigged up to the black powder if that's what it was. They're going to be looking for wiring. They're going to be looking for, you know, the cell phone itself. Is it prepaid? I imagine it was. But at this point, if I were doing the investigation, what I'd look for is where the prepaid cell phone was and in other cells in the vicinity. If somebody had a cell in their other pocket, for carrying the pressure cooker, you would show that tracking. And it's amazing what, you know, these people will continue to use two cell phones and keep one in the pocket, or if it was bought in New Jersey, for instance. They can tell so much about this. I mean, you know, any time you use a cell phone, you're leaving an incredible trace behind you, which is which be found efficiently. They know how to do this now.
[Harlow:] Juliette Kayyem, to you, when you're looking at what appears to be as our Shimon Prokupecz has reported, the same individual on 23rd Street and 27th Street within a matter of minutes last night, and what sounds like clear surveillance video showing the face, walk us through what's going on right now in terms of the delicate balance that they're walking, between, you know, apprehending this person, but also seeing are they connected to a wider web before they take this person down.
[Kayyem:] Well, their priority is apprehending these persons. The only question now is, what's the safest way to do so? And the best possible circumstance, the NYPD and FBI would are going to sort of cross reference the facial recognition. Look through all of their files, cross reference with the JTTS, Joint Terrorism Task Force, there's any other databases. There's probably over two dozen to scrub the facial recognition against. And that their hope is that, they keep this it internal, not that they want to keep the public out of it but only because the safest way to get someone is surprise, right? Because what you don't but if you end up, as we had to do here in Boston, sort of crowd sourcing it, the people who your looking for may end up turning it around and getting violent as they tried to escape or get out of the city, as we saw here. So there's no ideal situation in these circumstances, but what you're trying to do is minimize the harm to anyone else. And determine who this person and then any other people. But they want to catch him. There's no question about it. There might be a larger network but they're not going to survey him for too long. The fear being that he would go underground and you miss him.
[Harlow:] All right. And I want to bring Shimon back in here, as well, who broke this news for us, and Tom Fuentes. Shimon, to you, you haven't seen this video but it's been described to you by a number of law enforcement officials. They have a clear view of this person's face, anything that they said to you about what stands out about this person?
[Prokupecz:] I think they're kind of surprised by how they were able to identify him and see him.
[Harlow:] Really?
[Prokupecz:] And I think there was some surprise. I think some folks sort of, you know, the whole thing with the two men that walk over to the duffel bag, I think some have chuckled at that. There is some thinking behind that but...
[Harlow:] In what way, what do you mean they chuckled?
[Prokupecz:] I think they just think it's perhaps an odd kind of coincidence. Like no one really thinks these two men were involved.
[Harlow:] Why is that?
[Prokupecz:] I think I don't know. I think it's based off their investigation, you know. We also say like, Evan Perez had spoken to a couple people about this, too, described the video to him. On it sort of in its initial appearance, you know, perhaps they thought maybe the other two men were involved. But I think, law enforcement has pretty much moved away from that. And again, there so much that has been going on today and so much that they've found out. I think they've made so much progress. So I think that's, you know, sort of their that's where they are right now in sort of their thinking.
[Harlow:] As they try to identify this person, they may already identify them, we don't know. Tom Fuentes, talk me through with the experts at the FBI, who is lead on the investigation now, what they're doing in terms of the facial recognition technology is so great at this point in time, that they could take a snapshot of that surveillance video which are the clear image of the face according to Shimon, and they've run it in their database, right? And they see, you know, do they find any matches? Do they find any hit?
[Fuentes:] Well, maybe, but that facial recognition software is not perfect and specially, it can be thwarted if the individual wearing glasses, and wearing or has facial hair, wearing a hat pulled down. It obliterates some of the reference points on the face, that facial recognition measures, to try to match one face to another individual's face. And the more of a frontal view you have, the more accurate it will be, if the person is clean shave and no sunglasses, no hat, but we don't know all of that at this point. So it can be helpful, it's just not foolproof. So as I said, I'm a little bit unclear on if they have an actual identity of the individual and are looking for him now, or maybe already have that person and are surveilling that person to see if he leads to other co-conspirators. I'm a little unclear if they've gotten that far at this point in the investigation.
[Harlow:] Tom Fuentes, stay with me. Juliette, Shimon, Matthew Horace with ATF, we got to get a quick in here much more on this major development in our breaking news, straight ahead after this.