we have to begin tonight s show with breaking news out of washington state. from a city of to cane, the fbi reveals today an abandoned backpack discovered yesterday along the intended route of spokane s martin luther king day parade, the fbi thinks today that backpack was not just a suspicious package. it was the real deal. the fbi saying that that backpack contained, quote, a potentially deadly destructive device. likely cape bible of inflicting multiple casualties. now, importantly, this device did not detonate at the spokane, washington, mlk day parade. the convention center workers who found the backpack, these three people saw it and recognized that wire sticking out of the unattended backpack could be a bad thing, those three city workers saw the backpack, they thought it was suspicious, and they told police about it. thank god they did. when the police saw what it was, they notified the bomb squad. the bomb squad moved in.
is this i know you have been reporting on it for the spokesman review, is the community starting to become aware that this happened, has there been community response thus far? i m thinking especially in light of what happened in tucson? absolutely. it is just now beginning to sink in. we get a suspected explosive device alerts a lot. and almost the time they came out to be a bag with somebody s dirty laundry in it. but in this case, once it was learned it was a bomb, folks are starting to reflect and look at it and obviously it is starting to sink in. thomas clouse, our reporter for the spokesman review doing some very good detailed aggressive early reporting on this story. mr. clouse, thank you for helping us make this nationally known. thank you for joining us tonight. you bet, rachel. again, this device found at the outskirts or near the parade route of the mlk day parade yesterday in spokane, washington. not a suspicious package but the fbi reporting a potentially le
we have to begin tonight s show with breaking news out of washington state. from a city of spokane, the fbi reveals today an abandoned backpack discovered yesterday along the intended route of spokane s martin luther king day parade, the fbi thinks today that backpack was not just a suspicious package. it was the real deal. the fbi saying that that backpack contained, quote, a potentially deadly, destructive device. likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties. now, importantly, this device did not detonate at the spokane, washington, mlk day parade. the convention center workers who found the backpack, these three people saw it and recognized that wire sticking out of the unattended backpack could be a bad thing, those three city workers saw the backpack, they thought it was suspicious, and they told police about it. thank god they did. when the police saw what it was, they notified the bomb squad. the bomb squad moved in.
device found near a federal courthouse in the city last year? yeah, in march. i think it was march 23rd a device was found outside the federal courthouse, which coincidentally is across the street from our office. but in that case they did not release the information for several days. they never issued photographs of the device. they did not come out with the same level of concern that they did with this device. is there any indication that you have now, either positive or negative indication that law enforcement sources think there s any connection between what appears to be this attempted bombing at the mlk day parade yesterday and any previous incident? well, publicly they are saying no. in fact, haird said they have no leads to any other incident at this time. but it is definitely something they look at, the fbi doesn t do anything without looking at its path. thomas clouse, one more question for you. has there been significant community response to this in spokane? is this
dan, how much information is the fbi letting out about this? well, not a whole lot, shep, which is typical in cases like this. the joint terrorism task force of eastern washington is investigation. they do say it was a very lethal, very real threat. and describe this device as an ied which we all know is improvised explosive device. not unlike what our troops in iraq and afghanistan are encountering. they say it was inside this swiss army backpack. in addition the suspect left several stevens county relay for life. treasure island spring 2009. the fbi has put up $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. shep? shepard: those are random t-shirts. is the thought here the obvious one that they were targeting the mlk day parade. that is the thought. that s why they are taking this so seriously. that s why they are putting out this reward. i have got to tell you we talked to several locals about the reaction. they were just in shock from the mayor who spoke at the event down