second one. we ve seen from rich stockwell s excellent description that it s the plastic bag that was cleared but the cooler is still in question. i m not there. i leave that to rick to describe. the top officials we ve been speaking with are not very concerned about this and stress this is precautionary and the response is somewhat different and i think it would have been different if the times square bomb incident did not take place last weekend. they ve ramped things up and the bomb squad was immediately dispatched as a precaution, just given the climate and the location of what we re dealing with. there is an overall sense inside the nypd that this is precautionary only. with the officials i ve been speaking with i ve only been told of one package, described as a lunch cooler, lunch box, with a handle on it. and it was left in a pedestrian
this investigation is exploding in directions as trying to make sense of how it exploded into horror. reporter: police and rescue squads searching for terrorists. this was the horrific picture moments after witnesses say a white van turned and barrelled down a popular pedestrian walk way jammed with restaurants, shops and tourists from all over the world. according to eyewitnesss the van raced along clearly targeting people for a third of a mile. all of a sudden there was this tidal wave of people running towards us. it wasn t just a small number. it was a large number of people.