it was seized from two speed boats over memorial day weekend. u.s. customs and border protection sent us the images and they tell us the air and marine team spotted one both north of the islands when they realized they were caught, they began dumping packages of cocaine into the water. they fired shots to disable the boat. three suspects were arrested and the boat, well, it sank. our fourth story outfront, a chilling threat to president obama tonight. authorities are testing the letter addressed to the white house for presence of ricin. investigators say the letter is similar to the ricin-laced letter sent to michael bloomberg and to his anti-gun group. our deb feyerick is outfront with more on the investigation. reporter: the anonymous ricin letters contain a warning, what s in this letter is nothing compared to what i ve got planned for you. three letters sent to three men at the forefront of the gun control debate. president obama, new york city mayor michael bloomberg, and th
before you get my guns. anyone wants to come to my house will be shot in the face. the right to bear arms is my constitutional god-given right and i will exercise that right to the day i die. piers, the person then goes on one step farther and this is even more scary, referring to the ricin tainted envelopes, he says what s in this letter is nothing compared to what i ve got planned for you. so authorities are really taking this case extremely, extremely seriously, not only because of the presence of traces of ricin but also because of this additional threat. just to clarify, deb, the fbi don t believe these two sets of ricin letters could be linked in some way. reporter: it doesn t appear. right now the two cases are being held separately. the one on the west coast in spokane, washington and the one on the east coast. president obama, sort of the link in this, because he receives letters from both people who were sending these letters. thank you very much indeed. bill bratton
if he has any useful information about the ricin letters. the ricin letters appear to have been sent with a shreveport, louisiana, postmark. the shreveport postal center reportedly handles mail from louisiana but also from texas and arkansas. so conceivably the letter might have been mailed in any one of those states. this news, today, of course comes on the heels of the other ricin-laced letters that were sent to president obama and other officials. last month the fbi arrested a mississippi martial arts instructor in connection with those letters. last week a washington state man was charged with threatening to kill a federal judge, also in a letter that was laced with ricin. and while we re on the subject, just yesterday a federal judge sentenced a north carolina man to prison for threatening president obama over twitter during the 2012 democratic national convention. the man admitted to using his twitter account to post five threats to president obama, including this one, plotting p
this is a small town, population about 4,500 people. tucked away in the northeast corner of texas. and fbi investigators have spent the better part, well into yesterday as well at this house yo see behind me. neighbors saw teams of fbi agents going in and out of house, bringing out electronic equipment. we ve seen fbi agents staked out here at the house throughout the night. they have not fbi officials have not released anything officially publicly about what exactly is going on, it seems like the focus of the ricin investigation is turned on to this neighborhood here in the town of new boston, texas. this is all stemming from the ricin letters sent to three places, including mayor mike bloomberg s office in new york city as well as president obama s office. ith important to point out, these letter were detected in an offsite facility, and they never got to mayor bloomberg or
government. all that mail is screened. ricin letters never get to the white house. the letter to mayor bloomberg never got to city hall. they re all screened in off-site facilities. so it sounds dangerous, but they re not a threat to the person to whom they re addressed. all right, our justice correspondent, pete williams, thanks. a few hours ago, president obama launched another battle with congressional republicans, this one over student loan rates. the president was flanked by college students in the white house rose garden as he warned interest rates on government-backed college loans will double july 1st unless congress fixes the problem. the president then took aim at a gop measure already passed by the republican-controlled house. it fails to lock in low rates for students next year. that s not smart. it eliminates safeguards for lower-income families. that s not fair. it could actually cost a freshman starting school this fall more over the next four