The real world vs. the CSI syndrome

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

America was faced with a threatened weapon of mass destruction (WMD), in this case a chemical/biological device that was going to be used against a major U.S. amusement park on Easter – the busiest day of the year for this park with thousands of adults and children scheduled to enter this “happy place” in 48 hours, exactly when the terrorist threatened to release his device. The message describing how the WMD would be deployed and released against the public was contained in a home-made video tape sent anonymously to the amusement park’s security director, a video that when viewed revealed an unidentified male apparently dressed in laboratory protective clothing from the neck down, who in some detail demonstrated how he would assemble his deadly device from various components.  He also showed us a calendar and a large clock face with paper hands that when taken together, appeared to indicate the date (Easter) and the time, 9:00 (a.m. or p.m.?) that the weapon would be unleashed on the unsuspecting park guests and staff.

As an FBI profiler, I was part of the team that had the ticket on this case. Our job: Is it real or a hoax? If real, we needed to find the potential killer and stop him before he committed mass murder. And we had less than two days to do it.

We first had a conference call with various FBI officials, representatives from The Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Army’s chemical/biological response team, local police and amusement park officials, and other necessary advisors. Imagine if you will a telephone conference call with over 25 people on the line, one of whom had a barking dog in the background! “Close the park for the day,” suggested one official. “The park never closes,” said the park’s security representative. Just like a bomb threat case, even if found to be a hoax, the would-be terrorist, having learned what the response to such a threat would be, like the proverbial Pavlovian dog, could then do what he wanted the next time to elicit a similar response. “But what if it’s real?” said another. “How can we let people enter the park under a death threat?”  Our quandary: If we announce the threat to the public, the terrorist has won without ever having to set foot in the park, and he could simply renew his threat every day, not to mention the copy cats across the country that such a public announcement would likely spawn. But if we didn’t make the threat public -- well, if you didn’t, then people could die. We knew that words, images, and the fear that such threats can generate are some of the more effective weapons of terrorists.

As we watched and re-watched the threatened killer’s video, now on a continual five-minute loop on the large TV in front of us, I thought I saw something. “Look,” I said. “When he takes an item out of that polished chrome ice bucket I think I see his reflection on the side of the bucket for a split second.”

I grabbed the videotape and ran from the FBIHQ command center to the photo lab on another floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C. I quickly told the photo supervisor what I needed him to do. “Give me a photograph of the frame where you can see this guy’s reflection in the side of the ice bucket, and blow it up as large as you can.” In a matter of minutes, though it seemed like hours, I had a hazy picture of a man’s reflection in a curved “chrome mirror.” Although he appeared to be wearing lab gloves and protective clothing, the photo enlargement now showed the barely discernable face and neck of a man, a man wearing a shirt and tie; someone totally unprotected from the neck up from the deadly agents that he was supposedly handling in the video.                 

“Gotcha,” I said to myself and ran back to the conference room. In the meantime the discussion had continued, with scientists suggesting that a WMD made from the components indicated in the video could not be assembled outside of a highly technical lab, while intelligence agents disputed this fact and explained how simple household items, like those in the video, could be used to assemble such a diabolical device.

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