President Bush is in Chicago tonight
for a speech to city business leaders.
Organizers of an antiwar rally
timed to coincide with his visit
are expecting one of the biggest turnouts
since before the invasion of Iraq.
Experts put the cost of policing the President's visit
at $1.5 million.
I remember the president said something to me like,
"Here goes, Larry," and he stepped out.
There he is.
For most people,
When a plane touches down and taxis, there is a feeling of relief.
But for us in the detail, it's a time when we know we're on,
and... the tension starts to build.
A million things you have to worry about come into your head.
You get ready to do your job.
I had a team of agents that arrived there two weeks in advance,
And they'd been liaising with the Chicago Police Department.
Our intelligence had been communicating with the FBl.
We had gone over survey reports.
We all have one in our pocket. We study it constantly for each site.
We'd gone over evacuation routes,
Building security, backup, medical,
Everything at least a dozen times.
Chicago could be a tough city in terms of protests,
Just like Portland or Seattle.
I was just focused on getting him in and out as quick as we could.
We planned to get him to the Sheraton. He'd make the speech.
Then we'd leave from O'hare again at 8:40 that night.
When we arrived in Chicago,
I rode in the limo with President Bush.
We were still doing a little work, which was unusual.
He was in Chicago to talk about the economy.
I had made a pass- what I thought a final pass-
at the speech the night before.
He had reread it, and he said,
"Ellie, we need to work on this some more. "
Our economy was struggling.
Oil prices were through the roof.
We were facing a lot of opposition on all fronts
In terms of our policy in Iraq.
But, as always, he was confident
that our policies were correct.
It was just a matter of time.
Chicago hates Bush! Chicago hates Bush!
You can't keep a presidential visit
to a city the size of Chicago a secret.
These various activist groups had plenty of time to organize as well.
Shame on you!
It's their constitutional right to assemble and protest.
I mean, regardless of what I feel about it,
it's their right to do that, and I expect that to happen.
In this particular instance, what was a big concern to me
was that within the larger organizations
there were some more militant groups that were completely underground-
violent individuals that would pose a threat to security.
No more Bush! No more Bush!
I had just been rotated into the press pool.
My vehicle was, I believe,
three vehicles behind the president's limo.
And even with the White House escort, it got ugly.
Everywhere I ever went with Bush,
we would run into protesters,
but this time was different.
I mean, this time it seemed to me there was real hate.
There was a lot on the White House plate-
Iraq, Korea, Iran, plus all the domestic stuff.
It was like everybody held Bush
personably responsible for all of it.
When we turned onto La Salle,
And I saw the number of protesters and the number of cops,
I thought, "there is no way they're going to be able to keep control. "
The two operative words in the First Amendment
are to be peaceful and law-abiding.
These people broke barrier lines.
They became violent.
They put the welfare of themselves, the people around them,
and more importantly the president of the United States
in jeopardy by exhibiting this kind of behavior.
So when that happened, basically we were in a situation
where the gloves had to come off.
That's what had to happen at that point.
Get off me!
I certainly respect everyone's right to protest,
but if someone anytime gets that close to the president,
that's not a demonstration anymore, that's a threat.
When that motorcade stopped,
that was an emergency situation.
In fact, I had my agents in the backup car make their weapons ready.
I had never seen anything like that-
people actually making contact
With the presidential car.
I mean, that was a major, major security breach.
It was the angriest group of protesters
I've ever seen in my entire experience
of working with the president.
I was terrified. And I looked over,
and the president was as calm as he could be.
And he said, "you know, Ellie,
I don't mind them having their opinions.
I just wish they could demonstrate peacefully. "
We were stretched out personnel-wise
along the entire motorcade route.
And at this particular point in time we were just outmanned.
To me it's like a heart surgeon-
when a major artery is clogged,
you have to find another artery A.S.A.P.
or there's going to be some serious trouble.
And that's what we did.
We do have five alternate routes in play if need be.
We did exercise one of those routes. We contacted the motorcade.
We had to break up the protesters
and get that route going, and we did do that.
I was very relieved to get him into the hotel,
which was a secure environment compared to outside.
The building was well covered.
It did have an elevation which concerned me slightly,
but we'd, of course, secured all the buildings
in the surrounding area, the adjacent buildings.
We also had multiple I.D. checks in place
in case any protesters tried to pose
as G.O.P. volunteers or media
so they could get inside and cause a disruption.
We say stop the killing,
stop the bombing, stop the torture,
And stop bankrupting our neighborhoods and communities
to pay for a war based on lies.
All right, we want two groups
At Monroe and La Salle by 5:00 P.M.
No later, or we'll miss it.
What the fuck, man?
After what happened with the motorcade,
we sent some officers in among the protesters
to try and identify the ringleaders.
An individual was stopped in Federal Plaza.
Our undercover officers did stop him.
We detained him because he had an unusual amount of information
about the president's movement that day.
Unfortunately, we had no grounds to detain him at that point,
but we were concerned that he was one of several people
planning to breach the security cordon.
How many kids did you kill today?
Hey, Bush, what do you say?
How many kids did you kill today? Hey, Bush-
We won't take it no more.
- We want money for housing. - Not for war.
We won't take it no more. We want money for testing.
Not for war.
No blood for oil! No blood for oil!
There were four main rallying points
for demonstrators throughout the city.
My worry was that they were all now planning
to converge on the Sheraton.
We'd issued permits for the demonstrators
which would allow them to come within three blocks.
After what was going on, there was no way I was going to let that happen.
We had to get the protesters pushed back
a significantly further distance away from the Sheraton
to basically keep the president secure.
The speech was about the economy,
but, really, in the speech
was another warning to North Korea.
We'd had this wonderful glimmer of hope,
And then the Sea of Japan incident
put our relations with Kim ll-Jong back into the deep freeze.
We had intelligence at the time
that they were about 18 months
from being able to direct nuclear warheads at American Cities.
They defied the U.N.
Along with Iran.
And the president wanted to make sure
that he was not misunderstood,
that all options were on the table,
that we would use force if necessary.
And we had to somehow find
the language for that in the speech.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to this very special meeting
Of the Economic Club of Chicago.
I'd like to alert you that, because of the large number of protesters,
Chicago P.D. have forbidden anyone to be outside
In the streets around the hotel
for 20 minutes after the president leaves the room.
All cars and taxis will be prohibited
from being in the area,
and foot traffic only will be allowed.
What does a police state look like?
This is what a police state looks like!
What does a police state look like?
This is what a police state looks like!
What does a police state look like?
This is what a police state looks like!
What does a police state look like?
This is what a police state looks like!
What does a police state look like?
Film them!
We'd transitioned a lot of officers into riot gear;
that showed the protesters that we did mean business.
When that motorcade was compromised,
they were very happy with themselves.
I think it actually empowered them more,
and that made them all the more unruly.
Again, this put a lot of tension in the air.
I knew we would need to exercise a lot of restraint,
and...
we just felt that...
it was a very delicate situation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The president of the United States.
Thank you all very much.
It's, uh...
it's a windy day out there, which is a...
good day for a windy speaker.
I- I'm honored to be your guest
here at the Economic Club of Chicago...
It was a very warm room,
and the crowd loved him.
President Bush was at his best in front of a live audience.
This is one of America's great cities.
And one of the reasons why
Is because you have a great mayor in Richard Daley.
We're from different political parties,
but we have some things in common.
We both married above ourselves.
You know, I don't think my...
best jokes made it into that speech.
Uh...
Karl Rove always said the president shouldn't appear to be too funny,
But I disagree with that.
I think that it doesn't demean
The office of the Commander In Chief
to have a good punch line now and then.
We both have famous
and influential... brothers.
Our dads spent a little time in politics.
And we love our country more than we love our political parties.
Whenever Bush would give a speech,
he would do this down-home, kind of a country-boy thing,
and he was really good at that,
which is kind of strange considering that he's the son of a president.
He knew what people thought of him on some level,
and I think he knew how to work that.
He...
he was very skilled
at using the fact that people underestimated him.
We have a responsibility
to meet great dangers to our country
wherever they gather.
One by one
we're showing these merciless killers
the meaning of justice.
Bring the war home!
- Iraq, Iraq is not alone! - Bring the war home!
Iraq, Iraq is not alone!
Bring the war home!
- Iraq, Iraq is not alone! - Bring the war home!
When the president was making his speech,
I was seriously concerned that the sheer weight and numbers of protesters
meant that we'd be looking at a siege-type situation.
We had over 12,000 people on the streets,
and a lot of them were starting to converge around the hotel.
I think there's a new breed of anarchist.
These are the people that have the mentality that anything goes.
And it's a sad fact, but the only way
to deal with this kind of individual is with brute force.
No justice, no peace.
Fuck the police.
No justice, no peace.
Fuck the police. No justice, no peace.
And we're dealing with North Korea as well.
It's a regime that has expelled international inspectors...
and is attempting to defy the world
through its nuclear weapons program.
The United States
and other nations
will confront this threat as well.
We have no aggressive intent...
no argument with the North Korean people.
We're interested in peace...
on the Korean peninsula.
As we deal with the dangers of our time,
different circumstances require different strategies.
Yet, our resolve in each case will be clear.
We will not permit any regime
to threaten the freedom and security
of the American people
or our allies and friends around the world.
When you're writing speeches for the president,
it's kind of like playing tennis
with a really gigantic racket, you know?
You have all this power in your hand.
You just have to be sure to hit the ball softly.
We're meeting the challenges to America.
We're strengthening our economy,
and we're taking the battle to our enemies.
By the courage and by the enterprise
of the American people,
this great nation will prosper.
And there's no doubt in my mind
this great nation will prevail.
May God bless you all,
And may God bless America.
Stop the war! Burn it down!
Move back from the barricade!
We're not going to move!
Move back beyond lllinois street!
You have to understand, we asked these people to move back.
They did not. Not only did they not move back,
they were spitting at our officers.
They were doing every single thing they could
to push their buttons and to incite them.
I... absolutely not.
We took the appropriate action.
On my command, push and spray!
Push and spray!
He was in a good mood. His speech went well
and he had a sort of informal meet and greet
with some of the guests that were there.
as soon as we could, we took the president
to a holding area, which is the norm.
It gives us a chance to check in
and address any last-minute security issues.
It also gives the president some time
to make any phone calls he needs to make
and check in with members of his staff.
I was very uncomfortable
with the president doing the rope line
that he was scheduled to do on the way out,
probably because of the events earlier in the day-
the motorcade being stopped.
I thought we should pass on this one
and I made my feelings known.
He told me that I was the only person around him
that ever told him no.
But...
he was determined to do it.
The speech had gone well. He was in a good mood.
He did not want to disappoint the people who had showed up to meet him.
I checked ahead with my agents on the main entrance.
Everyone there had been searched and "magged. "
They'd been through the magnetometer, which means no one had a weapon.
Everything that we, the Secret Service, could do had been done.
But sometimes you just have a feeling.
Not necessarily a...
rational feeling that you could base on anything concrete,
but I just...
had a bad feeling about that rope line.
I reiterated my concerns to him,
and he looked at me and said,
"Larry, is there a problem?"
I remember saying...
"No, sir, there's no- there's no problem. "
Good to see you.
Howdy. How are you?
Very inspiring, Mr. President.
Thanks. Nice to see ya.
- Gonna sing in a minute. - That's what I heard.
Thank you. Hey there.
Nice to see you all.
- Hey there. - God bless.
- I'm praying for you. - Thank you. Thanks.
When the president looks you in the eye and shakes your hand,
there is no one else in the world.
He devotes himself to you 100o/.
And that's where he was that night.
He was shaking hands with the people of Chicago.
Good to see you all.
Good to see you. Hi there.
What's your name? Nice to meet you.
What do you think?
I look for anything that seems out of place,
Anything that looks wrong.
Some agents look at hands.
I look at eyes,
and I look for that stare, for that look that says,
"I'm not a big fan of the president. "
- Good to see you. - Good morning.
Hey there. Thank you.
- President Bush. - Hi. Thanks for wearing that shirt.
- Good to see you, sir. - Good luck to you, sir.
Thank you. How are you all doing?
And then I saw Danny Williams.
Danny Williams was a guy who'd been following the president.
He showed up to any event that he could afford to get to.
He was one of these environmental nuts.
This guy had a screw loose.
He should never have been allowed on the rope line.
So I felt very relieved when we dealt with him
before he had a chance to make a scene.
Thank you.
Get down!
Shots fired! Shots fired!
Here he is! He's here!
Gotta get out of here. Somebody shot him.
I moved my hands along his body to see where he had been hit.
He was bleeding from his chest, and he was having trouble breathing.
So I tried keep the airway passage open,
And I was just praying that he would keep breathing
until we got to the hospital.
Stay calm. Stay calm.
This guy is 7-0! This guy is 7-0!
Stay back! Stay right here!
Nobody leave! No one leaves till I say it's clear!
Nobody move! Nobody move!
Stay back! Everybody stay back!
Hit the ground.
Nobody leave! Nobody leave!
We're just getting reports of a shooting incident
at the Chicago Sheraton
where President Bush has been speaking.
It's not clear if the president himself has been hit,
but apparently there are casualties.
The Secret Service's job is to protect the president.
The moment they fail at that, it comes to me.
My job, and the Bureau's job,
is to find the attacker and bring him to justice.
As far as I was concerned, the gunman was there somewhere.
And the odds of catching the person or persons responsible for this
were going down by the second.
The Secret Service believed initially
that the shots had been fired from within the rope line...
but all the guests had been searched.
And soon it emerged that several of the witnesses on the rope line
indicated that the shots had come
from one of the tall buildings overlooking the Sheraton.
Every available officer was out searching the area for a suspect,
but we had no idea what he or she looked like.
then, three minutes after the shooting,
officers saw an individual run
from one of the buildings overlooking the hotel
and into the building next door- 420 North Park.
The SWAT team was sent over,
and the individual was detained at gunpoint.
We'd run him out by the time they got him back
to Metropolitan Correctional Center.
He'd actually been stopped by Chicago P.D. earlier in the day.
His name was Frank Molini. He was 28,
pretty much a full-time activist.
He had been kicked out of the University of lllinois in Chicago after a year.
He was part of a group of protesters
that were subject of an NSA wiretap
back in 2004,
kids who had planned a break-in
during the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004.
He broke through the cordon into a restricted area
when the president was speaking.
Right there we had something to charge him with.
They cuff me and throw me in a van,
take me down to the detention center.
I just sat silent,
let 'em ask all the questions in the world they wanted.
I wasn't going to help 'em out.
I just didn't want to cooperate.
If you believe in the death penalty,
he was a candidate.
You know, he...
he had been responsible for over 100,000 deaths,
and if he had been... tried
in a war crimes tribunal and found guilty...
then... he would have been a candidate.
Okay, move it through here. move it through.
I didn't know if he could hear me or not,
but I tried willing him to stay alive,
to keep breathing, keep breathing until we got to the hospital.
we were there so quick that the hospital had not completely finished
clearing out an area, securing it for the president.
And we got him inside the hospital,
and... the medical staff took over.
And I just... just...
kept... saying,
"please, please... please don't let him die. "
Who's been injured?
- Can you tell us anything? - Anything you got.
Basically, we have this information:
he's been hit twice. He's being treated for his injuries.
That's literally all I can tell you about the president at this time.
- It's the president? - The president.
Did he say anything?
We was all in the emergency room,
and the Secret Service people came in and said, "get out, get out. "
And then they said, "get the hell out. "
So that's when I got up out of there.
What is the state of the president? Is he conscious?
- Is he bleeding? - They brought the president in.
That's when I seen him. He was on a stretcher
and he was unconscious. He wasn't talking a lot.
They shot Bush. They shot the president!
- They shot Bush! - Bush has been shot!
We determined that the shots were fired
from the 20th floor of 422 North Park.
Immediately, we locked that building down.
We seized the surveillance footage
from both the building and the city cameras.
We got the employee list from the building.
We wanted to know the names of everyone who worked there,
or who had been in and out of the building within the past week.
Like at any crime scene, you'll have
the local law enforcement, your first responders.
In this case, you had the Chicago field office
of the FBl on the scene immediately.
The E.R.T. from D.C.-
that's the Evidence Response Team-
they fly in.
They get there in about 90 minutes,
and they start going through the evidence.
And then they start sending stuff
to their forensic lab
at Quantico, which is where I was.
So we started getting stuff within a few hours.
They identified the room that the shooting took place in.
And so there was a lot of forensic evidence in that room.
You know, a sniper is in a hurry.
He's acting fast, and he's going to make mistakes.
And those mistakes are what you want
because those are evidence.
It was a very promising scene forensically,
because you had a lot of evidence.
You had...
hair and fiber
and... literally shell casings. You had an open window.
There were a couple hundred fingerprints from that room.
Then what you're trying to do is match that
with what they call a "person of interest. "
I was going back to my car
down on lake,
and these cops just, like, came out of nowhere,
jumped out of the car, threw me up against this gate,
you know, being all aggressive, asking me for my I.D.
I showed it to 'em, and they put me in cuffs,
threw me in the back of the car
and took me in and started asking me all these questions.
They saw I was a vet.
They assumed I was there for the protest.
I told them I wasn't.
Told them these people had a right to protest if they wanted to.
My dad did, right after David got killed.
But I just never chose to get caught up in that stuff.
It didn't make no sense to me to be out there
screaming and yelling at Bush when he wasn't going to listen no way.
The last time I saw the First Lady,
we were speaking about how eager she was
for the president to leave office very soon,
and their time together after.
When she arrived at the hospital,
she had her...
ever-present dignity,
but you could tell, of course, that she was devastated.
I was being constantly informed by the doctors.
I knew it was quite grave.
I knew that his chances were slim at that time.
We stepped into the elevator,
and I felt Mrs. Bush scanning my face
for any clue,
any sign of how things were going.
And I couldn't speak.
Okay, I have a short statement.
The president suffered two bullet wounds.
The first entered just under the right armpit.
It traversed about three inches of the chest wall,
then ricocheted off the fifth rib and exited.
The second damaged the aorta
and passed into the left lower lobe of the lung.
That bullet has now been removed.
The president is about to undergo a surgical procedure
to repair some of the inferior aorta.
Although his injuries are very serious,
Dr. Wu has said he's never seen such a strong heart
in a man of the president's age.
So the outlook is good, very good.
That's all.
The gun was found in the bottom
of a garbage chute in the building.
It was a US-made sniper rifle,
which is certainly an extremely strong piece of evidence,
although there were problems.
It's very tricky, actually,
to find fingerprints on a gun,
because a gun is very oily,
the handle of a gun is often textured,
and fingerprints just...
aren't easily found on guns,
even though you might think they are, from the movies.
The serial number of the gun had been removed.
So this suggested that this was done
by someone who was very professional.
4:00 A.M., we had about 300 people in custody.
The truth is, the sheer volume of detainees
that we had as a result of the material-witness statutes
made the task very very difficult.
You know, in a normal homicide investigation
motive is very helpful
in narrowing down a list of potential suspects.
But... in this case, two hours before the shooting,
we... saw over 10,000 protesters,
displaying what, in many cases,
was overt hatred for the president himself.
Sure, the vast majority of those were peaceful protesters
exercising their rights under the constitution,
but among them were also some much more militant individuals-
people like Frank Molini who somehow got hold of information
about the president's schedule,
which should not have been out in the public domain.
The Bush administration had tried
to trash civil liberties.
So as a protest movement, we had to get smarter.
We had to go for what we called
"intelligence-led protests. "
We had...
to get information like this,
because Bush had made it so impossible
to have a meaningful protest,
that having this information allowed us
to make ourselves seen.
I saw some Secret Service guys talking to the cops.
And then, all of a sudden,
it seems like the cordon was too close to the hotel.
This was just the pattern that always happens in Chicago.
You have a permit to protest,
and Bush just stomps all over them.
As the fight started,
I ran through the police line,
and nobody stopped me.
I was trying to get in any building opposite the Sheraton,
and I tried a few doors that were locked.
And then finally I found this revolving door
that was open, and I went in.
And the minute I got in, I just completely lost my nerve
'cause there was this guy coming at me.
So I just turned around and went right back out and ran.
I had the banner on me,
and I planned on going to a building opposite
and hanging this banner so that Bush would be forced to see
how we feel as a people.
When we realized Molini couldn't have pulled the trigger,
we turned our attention to another man
who broke through the cordon within seconds of Molini.
We'd identified the man in the white baseball cap as Samir Masri.
He was picked up at a vehicle checkpoint,
trying to leave the downtown area about an hour after the shooting.
I knew, right when they looked at my ID, they knew.
My family's from Yemen, but I'm an American citizen.
I was born in Detroit.
I'm a Lions fan.
They didn't read me my rights. They didn't offer me a lawyer.
They didn't tell me anything about why they were questioning me.
They told me that they knew my father was a terrorist as well.
He was arrested after 9/11 because, when he came here from Yemen,
it was on a tourist visa, and he decided to stay.
Millions of people overstay on their tourist visa.
Millions. I mean, that doesn't make it right,
but it also doesn't make them a terrorist.
Bush and Ashcroft deported
my mother, my father and my brother,
and that's why I was here protesting.
They said that if I didn't cooperate,
I could be declared an enemy combatant.
I could lose my rights to a civil trial.
We weren't just rounding up people.
We had probable cause every single time.
Also many of the suspects were detained
due to the description of a non-white male seen on the 20th floor
of 422 North Park earlier in the day.
We needed to establish if this was the same man
seen leaving the service area under the building
three minutes after the shooting
or the man who was seen leaving the building
as Molini tried to go in;
or if it was Casey Claybon,
seen crossing lake street a couple of minutes prior to his arrest.
That day I'd been looking for work.
I went down to the veteran one-stop center.
I was a mess.
I broke up with my wife.
Couldn't stand to be around my parents.
Caught back up using drugs again.
Biggest conversation we had when I first got to Iraq
was, "how are we going to be looked at when we get back home?"
You know, are we going to be looked at as heroes,
or these fools over there fighting for Bush?
You know, that's what was going on through my mind that day.
You know, these people are not looking at us as heroes.
We look like fools to them.
I was being informed in the course of the evening,
along with Mrs. Bush...
but I don't think I really understood
the extent of the injuries
until about 1:30 in the morning
when I called up and said, "how's my boss doing?"
And the nurse started crying, and I think that was when I knew.
I immediately went to the chapel
to talk to Mrs. Bush and to pray with her.
The country entrusts us to protect our president.
That's our job.
You don't do "a pretty good job" of protecting the president.
You either do it, or you don't.
And the Secret Service failed that day,
and I failed.
This is not official, but a source
inside the hospital has confirmed-
We are hearing from a source inside the hospital that-
The word from Northwestern Hospital...
...is that the 43rd president, George W. Bush...
- ... is dead. - ... died.
- ... died a short while ago.
He was 61.
Vice President Cheney is in a secure location.
We don't know where he is,
but will presumably take the oath of office shortly
to become the 44th president of the United States.
The word from Chicago is that-
...to become the 44th president...
We did manage to question most of the people
who left 422 North Park around the time of the shooting.
But there were a few people who didn't come forward,
including the man seen leaving
at the time Molini tried to get into the building.
We showed the tapes to the security guards,
but they didn't recognize him.
So we searched through the employee list.
It's true that we did start to look at Islamic names first,
but, as we see it, it's not racial profiling as some have suggested.
It's just a common sense approach to a situation of this kind.
Turned out this man had recently got a job
with an I.T. firm on the 18th floor.
We identified him as Jamal Abu Zikri.
The forensics guys went to work on Zikri's apartment,
basically recovering anything that could contain
fibers or a trace that could link Zikri
to 422 North Park or to the weapon.
But my main focus was how Zikri did at interview.
In what was obviously
a very tense atmosphere-
going into the Metro Correctional Center,
up to the fourth floor,
into the "A" interrogation room-
everyone was rather distraught,
rather tense.
And there in the room sat a man
who appeared to have
no emotional turbulence whatsoever.
Conspicuously cool.
I went in with the intention of having just a pleasant conversation with him,
just to get a measure of him,
to get a feel for him.
And my immediate impression
was that this was a man with no conscience whatsoever.
He read as a sociopath, essentially-
no identifiable emotion
behind what he was saying,
no visible state of mind.
He seemed completely unaffected by my questions.
We might have been talking about wallpaper samples
rather than the shooting of a president.
he didn't seem to be too concerned
with being singled out for questioning.
I think he understood
that his proximity to the event
was the reason he was there.
But he seemed baffled by the idea
that we would consider him an actual suspect.
I found that he was- if anything,
he was overacting his innocence.
I didn't believe a word he said.
After we had just sort of established
what I took to be the timbre of the conversation,
I went ahead and just sort of tried to blindside him with that,
and just asked him as casually as I could,
you know, "So, you good with guns?"
and he said, "No. "
and I said, "You ever used a gun?"
he said, no, he never had.
and I said, "Listen, Jamal...
you're not doing yourself any favors here.
We have photos at your home of you holding a rifle. "
and he said, "Oh, that.
That's from my military service back in Syria.
Everyone had to do it,"
as if, oh, that slipped his mind.
My impression is that the Syrian draft
is not something that one would forget quite so easily.
A source with the FBl here in Chicago tells us
the suspected assassin is, in fact, a Syrian man-
Jamal Abu Zikri.
We don't know for a fact where exactly he's being held
at this particular point in time,
but we do know that he has been taken into custody,
and we have gotten confirmation that he is of Syrian descent.
We also know that authorities are...
The pressure on every journalist
to find out just who the hell they had arrested,
and who the prime suspect was, was intense.
and I think whoever ultimately leaked it,
whether it was an FBl guy or a cop or whoever, I don't know-
whoever leaked it probably did it
because they were so angry that Bush had died.
Minutes after it got out that he was Syrian,
I went into a teleconference with the CIA director of domestic intel,
and he told me that Mike Haydon had called.
He wanted an urgent review of all Syrian intelligence.
He wanted us to take a look at every Syrian national
who'd been back to Damascus within the last six months.
Now, I come out of this teleconference
and I'm pinching myself
'cause this is not the way I want to go.
And one of our agents, Ted Fenzell, runs up to me,
and he says, "Rob... the president's on the line. "
I'm thinking this is some kind of a sick joke.
I'm ready to punch him in the face, and he says to me,
"No, Rob, President Cheney's on the line. "
And President Cheney says,
"Rob, I know you got a lot to do,
but take another look at Assad.
Go over this again. See if it links to him in any way. "
And I say to him, "Mr. President,
we have nothing that points in this direction.
This is just the media jumping to conclusions. "
And he says, "I know, I know,
but take another look at it,
and if you see any obstruction from Damascus,
I want to be the first to know. "
Publicly, the Syrians were saying they were cooperating,
they were doing all they could,
but privately they were stonewalling.
that morning, I had had a request
for Zikri's military service detail
flatly refused by the Syrian Defense Ministry.
Of course, the White House guys were all over this.
Even Cheney was down in the weeds on this one.
So when the Syrians turned down our request,
I knew that they were really going to feel the heat.
The Secretary has decided to recall
the US ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobie
for urgent consultations
following the brutal murder of President Bush.
Ambassador Scobie delivered a message to the Syrian government
expressing our deep concern as well as our profound outrage
over this heinous act of terrorism.
President Cheney has ordered the USS Nimitz
back to the eastern Mediterranean.
State and Defense Department officials
refused to rule out air strikes against Damascus. Likely targets include-
Joining me now is Tariq Khoudry,
one of the most outspoken critics
against the Ba'athist regime
of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Mr. Khoudry, are you not surprised
that a Syrian national may actually have been involved
in this assassination?
Oh, not at all. This is a state-sponsored assassination-
Syrian state-sponsored assassination-
just like they did with Rafiq Al-Hariri,
the prime minister of Lebanon.
That's a strong statement, sir.
What kind of specific information do you have on which to base it?
I've seen official documents that back this up,
such as the Syrian intelligence hit list.
And I've seen it with my own eyes,
and Al-Hariri's name was there.
A hit list including politicians
from not only the Middle East but the United States?
I believe so.
There were many names beside the Lebanese officials.
There were names of Sharon,
President Bush, Vice President Cheney.
And I know this was done with the blessing of Bashar Al-Assad himself.
He had an agenda. Everybody knew it.
He would have said that the Syrian secret service
was responsible for fixing the Super Bowl
if he thought that that would get Assad kicked out sooner.
Cheney had been obsessed with Syria
and getting rid of Assad for years.
I think that the Syrian secret service
did assassinate the Lebanese prime minister.
I don't think there's much question about that.
But to then say
that they are responsible for killing Bush, that's quite a leap.
And after a couple of days,
I think Cheney realized he was never going to sell
the Syrian story to Congress,
so he turned his attention closer to home.
In an emergency closed session this morning,
Congress voted unanimously
to approve a series of amendments to the Patriot Act.
President Cheney said the new measures, dubbed "Patriot lll,"
will give the FBl more powers
to predict and prevent acts of terrorism
and improve security for federal officials.
Patriot lll gave us better tools
to go after suspected terrorist organizations,
homegrown radical groups,
which might harm our national interests.
It broadened the definition of terrorism.
There are those who would criticize the Patriot Act.
But, frankly, the president of the United States was assassinated.
So...
in my view we weren't doing enough.
Fellow citizens,
in this national vigil of mourning
we show how much America loved this good man
and how greatly we will miss him.
there was a kindness, simplicity,
and goodness of character
that marked all the years of his life.
The cheerful spirit that carried him forward
was more than a disposition.
It was the optimism of a faithful soul
who trusted in God's purposes
and knew those purposes to be right and true.
And it was the vision and the will of George Bush
that gave hope to the oppressed,
shamed the oppressors,
and overcame evil with good.
He was a providential man
who came along just when our nation and the world
most needed him.
Fellow Americans,
here lies a graceful and a gallant man.
I was honored to be asked
to write the eulogy for President Cheney.
I wanted to convey
President Bush's moral commitment.
He had...
that power,
that strength of leadership
that I believe was invested in him by God.
We received an anonymous letter pre-9/11
from someone in the Bridgeview community,
Chicago's Palestinian neighborhood.
It suggested that several members of the local mosque
had attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
After 9/11, they were interviewed
and put under intensive surveillance for two full years.
But all we had were the original flights to Pakistan.
We could find no proof that any of them
had ever crossed into Afghanistan,
no evidence of any kind to suggest
that this was some kind of a plot,
and nothing to connect either one of them with Al-Qaeda.
But then, just into the third week of the investigation,
one of my agents, Kate Nicholls,
came running down the corridor with a photograph
from the time of the Bridgeview investigation.
In the photograph was Zikri
with a Yemeni national named Khaled Leqawi
who we believe was in Chicago on a recruiting mission
in the spring of 2001.
And, sure enough,
Zikri was on a plane to Pakistan
in April of 2001.
In the second week of questioning,
I mentioned Leqawi,
and... he gave me
that same stonewall, blank shrug.
Didn't know the man, wasn't familiar with the name.
I pressed harder. "Leqawi-
you're sure you don't know that name?"
"No, never heard it before. "
Then I showed him the photograph,
and...
he froze a moment.
and then there was this...
sudden collapse of confidence.
I said, "Listen, Jamal...
I know you were in Afghanistan, you know?
I just want you to tell us. "
And he sat there for a moment,
perhaps considering his options,
and then he said, "Okay.
All right, I was there. "
I first heard from a guy
in the Trace and Fiber Department down the hall,
and they had found
gunshot residue on his jacket.
Gunshot residue is what we call...
associative evidence.
It's not discriminating evidence,
meaning that it's...
you can't really convict somebody of...
firing a gun based on gunshot residue.
It's only sort of a backup.
And then, it got to my department,
and a colleague of mine
said he had a match, a fingerprint match.
and what he had was a partial print
from the crime scene.
and... he found
nine points of comparison
to Zikri's print from the database.
So I thought it was promising,
but not the sure-fire evidence
that we needed.
It was...
nine points of comparison.
Uh...
people have been convicted on less.
The Attorney General's office in D.C. was ready
to charge Zikri as soon as they heard about the trip to Afghanistan.
So when the forensics evidence came in, that was it.
There were still other lines of inquiry, yeah,
other suspects that we were following up,
but they immediately diminished in importance
in the face of such compelling forensic evidence.
Earlier today,
an indictment was unsealed in Federal Court
in the Northern District of lllinois,
charging Jamal Abu Zikri
with the assassination
of the president of the United States with a rifle.
As outlined in the indictment,
Mr. Zikri took part in Al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan,
and conspired with others to commit this brutal act.
This case is being brought in part
because prosecutors and law enforcement agents
were able to share information
from a multiagency investigation
under the provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
The link between Jamal Abu Zikri and Al-Qaeda
shows once again the nature of the enemy
that we're facing in the War on Terror.
The last thing we need is to convey the impression
that terrorists can change our policies
through violence and intimidation,
that they can force the government of the United States to change course
if they inflict enough violence.
The FBl was desperate to link Zikri with others
because it was an embarrassment for them if they couldn't link him.
If they couldn't make it part of a conspiracy,
then it was more difficult to prove the terrorism motive,
which they deeply needed to do.
Even if my client had been to Afghanistan,
it may not be irrelevant, but it's certainly not material.
What it was really useful for was to propel forward
this conveyor belt of terrorism
that they needed to convince people
that this was the motive for the case.
I think the weight they gave it
is testimony itself to how weak the forensic case was.
Gunshot residue is notoriously unreliable.
And, in fact,
the prosecution witnesses admitted
that the GSR that was found on Jamal's jacket
could have been contamination-
someone else could have picked it up.
It's very easy to contaminate
gunshot residue evidence.
That means that the whole case
boiled down to one partial print.
Madam Foreperson, has the jury reached
a unanimous verdict on the case presented to you?
Yes.
Have you signed and printed your names?
Yes.
All right, if you will give the sheet to the bailiff.
Ms. Clerk, if you will read the verdict, please.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have returned the following verdict:
"The people of the United States of America
versus Jamal Mohammed Abu Zikri,
file number 02CRS281.
We, the 12 members of the jury,
unanimously find the defendant
guilty of the assassination
of President George Walker Bush,
with a rifle, this the 10th day of May 2008."
Signed by the foreperson, Cheryl Jones.
Is this your verdict, so say you all?
Yes.
Jamal is devastated by the outcome of this trial
and obviously we're all dismayed by the verdict.
But he wants to continue to fight.
And so, on Monday, I will be filing an appeal on behalf of my client.
My client's destiny in this case
was sealed from the minute that Brock stood up
at that DOJ press conference in October
and said the words, "Al-Qaeda assassin,"
and they knew that.
I mean, Al-Qaeda equals guilty.
And there was not one citizen in this country
that was going to
come to the proceedings
with an open mind after that.
I mean, they knew what they were doing.
Juries love forensic evidence,
and it's popularly believed to be
100o/ accurate
and free of bias.
People lie. Everyone knows that.
But a fingerprint match
is a great silent witness.
It's... it's definitive.
The reality
is a little different.
there isn't a forensics examiner in history
who hasn't somehow been compromised
by that pressure to get results.
They seemed to be working backwards in this case.
They had a hypothesis of guilt,
and then they tried to fit the evidence to prove that.
And that's not science.
I did my own analysis of the print from the crime scene.
I did it several times.
And it was reasonable,
but reasonable isn't good enough in this situation.
I was told that this case was
too big to...
leave unsolved in the lab,
and too big to lose in court,
and that basically I should...
put up or shut up.
My skepticism and...
objectivity wasn't needed,
it wasn't helping.
And that's what made my position untenable.
I resigned under protest
because I couldn't do my job properly.
Right up to the start of the trial, we had
over 300 investigators trying to identify, or find a link to,
any fellow coconspirators.
We didn't find any evidence
that he'd ever planned to do anything,
commit any acts of terrorism when he got back from Afghanistan.
At the time, politically, it was very difficult
for anyone in the agency or the administration
to accept that Zikri had acted alone,
that...
any one man could have planned and carried out this assassination.
But...
that was when we still believed that Zikri was the assassin.
Here in Rock Island, there's not a person
that doesn't have some connection to the war,
that doesn't have somebody in active service-
A father, son, daughter.
So when our boys go off to war,
they know that they have our support.
My father was in the Army.
I'm considered an Army brat.
My...
and I married...
a man that my father would be proud of.
He served in the first Gulf War, Desert Storm.
Was a decorated major.
And my sons followed in their father's footsteps.
Of course a parent worries.
Who wouldn't?
But it was the best thing that happened to Casey.
He was going down the wrong path,
experimenting with drugs,
and... the Army whipped him into shape.
I'm proud of my son.
I'm proud that he did
what was needed to protect us.
He had the guts and the courage to serve his country.
My experience in Iraq was slaughter.
We were fighting arrows with guns over there.
Once you take a life...
you know, you lose a piece of yourself.
You're basically just sitting around waiting for your turn.
When we left, we thought we was going over there because of 9/11,
and to look for these weapons of mass destruction, which we never found.
You know, so we had to tell ourselves something-
we were fighting for freedom,
freedom of the Iraqi people.
It was obvious that they didn't want us there.
No, they didn't want us there at all.
Casey had just gotten back from his tour,
and... That's when we got
our knock on the door-
that David had...
been hit by a roadside bomb
just outside of Mosul.
They said his Humvee turned over...
and...
that was it.
It's the hardest thing I'd ever dealt with.
We all dealt with it in our own way.
My husband and I tried to...
tried to console each other and be there for each other.
Casey just went off to himself.
I wanted him to come home so we could take care of him,
because I was not going to lose Casey
like I-
like I lost David.
My husband Al woke up early that morning,
told me he was going to Chicago to bring Casey back.
Casey said he was in Chicago looking for work,
but I knew he'd gone back on drugs.
I knew the president was going to be visiting that night,
but I didn't know anything about any protesters or anything like that.
I knew Casey didn't- wouldn't have anything to do
with any Cindy Sheehan kind of protesting,
or anything like that going on.
He didn't believe in it.
I'd heard on the news that Bush had been shot.
My heart just...
dropped...
and all I could do was pray.
I was trying to call my husband on his cell phone,
but I never got an answer.
I just wanted to know that our son was okay.
I was upset when I was locked up,
but it kind of ended up being a good thing.
It was a wake-up call for me.
Made me realize, like...
I had to get my shit together 'cause this wasn't me.
Everything that was going on in my life, that wasn't me.
I was sitting in the room by myself,
and they came in that morning and told me I could go.
First thing I did was
I went to a phone and called my mom.
She was crying like crazy.
I didn't really understand at first what was going on.
I thought maybe she had heard that I was...
you know, locked up.
Maybe she was scared for me or something.
Or I thought she was upset by,
you know, what happened to the president.
Then I realized it was my father.
I found out that morning...
some people walking their dogs
found my father in his car.
Felt like somebody's just, like, ripped my heart out.
There was so much shit I wanted to say to him, you know?
My dad had been sick for a long time-
for a long time, at least since he had got back from the-
You know, from the Gulf War,
when I was a little kid.
Then what happened to David,
that just pushed him right on over the edge.
'Cause he never talked about David.
He never once mentioned David.
He left me a note.
They gave me a copy.
He said, "Everything I stood for
and raised you to stand for has turned bad.
There is no honor in dying for an immoral cause...
for lies.
I love my country but I love God...
and the sons he gave me even more.
I must do the right thing by you and by David.
George Bush killed our David,
and I cannot forgive him for that. "
I never read it.
The man who wrote that note was not my husband.
That was an act of a desperate man...
who felt helpless, who felt powerless.
They told me,
"Don't worry, son.
We know it's not your father.
We already have the guy who...
who did it. He's Al-Qaeda. "
Casey Claybon was described
as a very troubled Iraq War vet
who probably had P.T.S.D.,
who had a long history of drug use.
And there were a couple of paragraphs on the third or the fourth page
of the "Chicago Sun-Times," and then that was it.
It all kind of got buried
with all of the talk of Syria and Al-Qaeda,
and it just kind of got swept under the rug.
And by then, we were into the trial.
You have to understand the context.
Casey Claybon was not the only person
trying to tell us who killed the president.
The United States is the home of the conspiracy theorist.
We received literally thousands of tips from within the US.
We investigated...
radical environmentalists, pro-choice groups,
the Revolutionary Communist Party of America.
Virtually every radical Islamic group
was posting claims of responsibility on their websites,
not to mention all the Bush-hating lunatics who were out that day.
We even had a white supremacist from Alabama
who tried to claim responsibility for it.
Turns out he wasn't even in Chicago that day.
It's true that we didn't prioritize
Aloysius Claybon as a potential suspect.
But in any investigation you have to look at what's in front of you
and decide where to direct your resources.
By the time we found Claybon,
Zikri was already in custody,
a guy who'd basically admitted
that he had provided material support for terrorism.
He fit the profile.
There was compelling forensic evidence
linking him to the crime scene.
And I'm fairly confident that any other investigator
would have drawn the same conclusions.
On July 4th, I received a phone call
from a special agent from the lllinois State Police.
He told me that Casey had found,
amongst his father's belongings,
a detailed map of downtown Chicago
marked up military-style.
He read for me
one specific paper
that he'd found amongst Aloysius's things.
And I recall, as he...
read it to me, I started to get a sick feeling
in the pit of my stomach.
Basically,
the document that Aloysius had was a survey report.
It detailed the exact motorcade route,
all the president's movements and security arrangements that day.
So it was like,
"Trailblazer onstage at 19:15.
Trailblazer exits Sheraton west entrance at 20:10,"
and so on.
The minute I read the note he left me,
I knew my father had killed bush.
I knew it.
Then when I found the map, I thought people would finally listen to me,
and I had to tell the truth.
That's what my father stood for-
truth and honesty.
You know, to try to do the right thing.
And I felt like this was the right thing to do,
even though I know it would cut right through my mom.
I knew the man they had convicted was innocent,
so I had to do it.
Aloysius Claybon knew where the Secret Service
was deployed. He knew the entrances, the exits.
He could work out where Bush was exposed,
and therefore where the vantage point would be.
For a long time we were unable to identify
the man seen crossing the service area beneath 422.
Now we believe the identity of this male
is probably Aloysius Claybon.
Now the survey report is not something that many people get to see.
There were 107 administration officials
or Secret Service personnel,
who either saw it or had access to it
up to 10 days ahead of the visit.
We have interviewed every individual
with access to this schedule.
Finding the source of the leak
is the focus of a massive investigation.
In my opinion, someone leaked it to the protest community,
including Molini,
and someone from there passed it on to Al Claybon.
People have said that the hatred on display that day
somehow gave the killer license to shoot Bush.
That's not really for me to comment on.
What I'm interested in as a federal investigator
is finding exactly who furnished the killer
with the information that allowed him to commit this crime.
Under the powers afforded us by Patriot lll,
we have kept a constant scrutiny
of e-mail traffic and telephone communications
of every protest group in relation to this matter.
And I remain confident that we will find the persons involved.
I think maybe because Al's dead
the authorities have just felt they can sit on the Zikri appeal.
I mean, let's face it-
They were unable to link Zikri to any accomplices.
All they had on him was that he had traveled
and taken some vacations to exotic locales,
and had attended the wrong summer camp.
But as far as most people are concerned,
either he's still guilty, or, if not, he at least flirted with terrorism.
So who cares if he's locked up?
My dad, he lived for the Army.
You know, he was proud of serving, proud of America.
And he lived for me and David.
I just think he felt...
he felt like Bush destroyed all that.