The January 6th Pipe Bombs

An Investigator's Analysis

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It seems I start every new article with a warning this might be my most controversial to date, but since my last Substack article about the police shooting at the Capitol on January 6^th received over a thousand views, maybe you like controversial. I’ll continue the trend with this January 6^th adjacent piece about the pipe bombs discovered at the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on January 6th 2021, with an emphasis on the DNC event since it seems the most mysterious and controversial.

I’ll warn you upfront I am not making any conclusions about what happened because there is so much information and/or evidence that is not in the public domain to make an informed guess about what really took place. Instead, I will try to take a dispassionate look at the prevailing theories and discuss what makes sense (or not) from an investigator’s standpoint. I’ll also note for the record that while I was an FBI agent for 25 years, I retired several years before 2021 and have no inside information about the investigation.

FACTS

According to the FBI, sometime between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on January 5th, an individual wearing a hoddie, mask, and a unique pair of Nike tennis shoes placed a pipe bomb outside both the RNC and DNC headquarters, (https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs-in-washington-dc/pipe-bomb-update-jan2023.pdf/view.) Both buildings are near the U.S. Capitol. The picture of the hooded subject, and this part of the story received wide attention in the ensuing three years. The reward for his/her capture is up to $500,000. Three years later there is very little official new information from the FBI, (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-pipe-bombs-jan-6-dnc-rnc-headquarters/.)

The next day, January 6^th, twenty minutes before Congress was to begin the process of certifying the 2020 presidential election at 1 p.m., and just as a large group of protesters made their way from the Washington Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol after President Trump’s speech about the election, Karlin Younger, who lived in a close by neighborhood, found a pipe bomb in a parking lot adjacent to the RNC headquarters. She notified a security guard, who called police. Conservative outlets note that Younger worked for Pendulum, a company that is alleged to have ties to the intelligence community. Strangely, when she found it, the kitchen timer on the device was set to go off in exactly twenty more minutes, or 1:00 p.m., just as Congress was getting started.

Then at 1:05 p.m., a “passerby” with a backpack saw a pipe bomb outside of the DNC headquarters and notified a Washington Metropolitan Police officer (MPD) and a U.S. Secret Service (USSS) agent or officer outside, who eventually reported it to Capitol Police. (I’m going to say LEOs frequently below to denote “law enforcement officers.”) That two devices had been placed in two different locations seventeen hours earlier and then discovered twenty-five minutes apart, just as Congress was gathering to certify the controversial 2020 elections, seems extremely coincidental.

Recently, a video of the encounter between the individual with the backpack and LEOs was release by a member of Congress, and it creates more questions than it answers.

I’m going to caveat here that the most explosive reporting about this event comes from extremely conservative media outlets, which doesn’t make their allegations untrue. Especially since several of their sources are on the record, including the Congressman who released the video, (Thomas Massie). It’s possible that the mainstream media is waiting for additional sourcing, or as we’ve seen in the past with some of their other non-reporting, maybe they are merely curiously uncurious.

I’m also going to comment here, but not name them, that some FBI “whistle blowers” are sources for several of the conservative news stories. Keep in mind they are all former employees who either left the FBI and/or were terminated under clouds of suspicion, so their points of view might be jaded. Only one claims to have worked on the investigation, (my own source says he highly likely did not,) another had an analytical position in a weapons of mass destruction billet (a broad topic,) but it’s unclear if he had anything to do with the investigation, and a third I know did not work on the investigation but claims to have sources. This doesn’t mean they are wrong.

That all said, let’s look at some things that do not appear in dispute. The individual who discovered the DNC headquarters pipe bomb is seen on video casually talking with both the MPD and USSS agent/officer for several minutes after discovering the device, before just as casually leaving the scene, (https://revolver.news/2024/01/secret-service-foreknowledge-or-criminal-negligence-damning-new-evidence-surfaces-fbi-january-6-pipe-bomb-story/.) Normally, one would think discovering a pipe bomb anywhere would be of immediate concern, yet neither the reporting party nor the LEOs appeared concerned. It doesn’t look like law enforcement interviewed him or got identifying information before he left either.

Next, we observe the nonchalant response from law enforcement as they casually inspect the device up close and then call it in to Capitol police. (My own training in dealing with explosives was, “get the hell away ASAP.”) We observe them on video allowing citizens, including young children, to pass by in close proximity to the device. Very strangely, we learned several months after January 6^th that Senator and VP–elect Kamala Harris was inside the DNC headquarters at the time, which is why MPD and USSS were standing by in the driveway.  (More on that below.)

We see in close-up pictures of both devices, that they appear to have kitchen timers as part of the firing train. The kitchen timers are for one hour, which is problematic for the FBI’s theory that the devices were left in place seventeen hours earlier. The Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, testified in June 2023 to Congress after he retired, that he could not explain the timer issue although he agreed it did seem like the devices could not have been set to go off seventeen hours after they were planted with a one-hour kitchen timer. An FBI whistle blower claims the DNC device was inert, (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/12/jan-6-pipe-bombs-rnc-dnc-were-inoperable-says-ex-a/.)

D ‘Antuono also testified that despite the hooded man/woman believed to have set the devices being on his/her phone on the evening of January 5^th, the Verizon data that might have identified him/her via geo-location had been corrupted. Finally, he testified he did not know if the individual who discovered the DNC device was ever interviewed. Pretty basic stuff for the senior most field FBI agent in charge of the investigation not to know, in my opinion.  

A The Blaze reporter, Steve Baker, recently reported that Congressional staffers have told him that the “passerby” who found the DNC pipe bomb was actually a plainclothes or undercover U.S. Capitol Police Officer. Baker was in the Capitol on January 6^th reporting, as he claims numerous other journalists were, on the events of the day. Baker has been told by the Department of Justice for many months that he is a subject of their January 6^th investigation and that he can expect to be arrested and charged for taking part in the riots, although the dates for his imminent arrest keep changing, (https://www.theblaze.com/columns/analysis/revealed-a-plainclothes-capitol-cop-found-the-dnc-pipe-bomb.) His lawyers believe his arrest could be retaliation for his reporting.

The Federalist and Washington Times report that according to an FBI whistleblower, (the same one above who I’ve been told did not work directly on the investigation,) said the FBI has identified the car of the hooded individual who the FBI believes planted the bombs on January 5^th after tracking him/her via a metro card through the subway, and into Virginia,  (https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/25/the-fbi-knows-what-car-was-used-in-j6-dnc-pipe-bomb-but-refuses-to-identify-prime-suspect/.)

KAMALA HARRIS

In a January 17^th interview with CBS, Senator and VP-elect Kamala Harris said that on January 6^th, she was in a meeting in the Capitol, in the morning, and then she was taken to a secure location where she watched the events unfold in horror with her husband, (https://www.cbsnews.com/video/kamala-harris-on-the-job-ahead/.) Being generous, this was a deceptive answer to the question posed by Jane Pauley about what happened that day. It left the impression she was still at the Capitol where she was taken to a secure location. (I recommend you watch the interview in the link to see her body language when she makes the statement.) Months later, Harris would admit that although she was at the Capitol, in the morning, she then left and went to the DNC headquarters nearby well before 1:00 p.m., (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/04/doj-kamala-harris-jan-6-519505.)

As noted above, she was at DNC headquarters at 1:05 p.m. when the pipe bomb was discovered. This raises numerous questions, none of which have been answered. First, as a sitting United States Senator on January 6^th, one would think she’d have been in attendance for the joint session of Congress to observe certification of her own historic election. Why did she skip it?

Second, Harris was already under USSS protection which is why agents/officers were with her at the DNC headquarters. Yet, faced with the possibility of a deadly bomb going off, there was seemingly no rush to immediately evacuate her. The USSS won’t comment on when and/or how she was evacuated. Third, USSS protectees don’t go anywhere without a comprehensive security sweep, particularly for explosives, before their arrival.

The DNC pipe bomb was not hidden, it was beside a bench in front of the building, allegedly for seventeen hours. It has been reported that a security sweep took place, so it is difficult to envision how the device was missed. On the same video released by Congressman Massie, another individual can be seen sitting on the bench where the pipe bomb was recovered, just prior to the person with the backpack reporting the devise to MPD and USSS. Several journalists theorize this individual could have planted the device shortly before it was discovered, though we don’t have evidence of that.

THEORIES

All of this leads to the question as to who benefits from these pipe bombs, be they real or inert, being placed (and then discovered,) near the RNC and DNC headquarters sometime before 1:00 p.m. on January 6^th? Consider the following:

SOMEBODY ASSOCIATED WITH JANUARY 6^TH PROTESTERS

A prevailing theory, and the simplest explanation is that the pipe bombs were part of the larger January 6^th violence designed to garner the most attention against the “rigged” election that took down President Trump, and try to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president. This theory works whether the devices were real or inert because while there was certainly violence at the Capitol, there were no explosives or use of firearms by the protesters.

Then U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said he believed the devices were planted to draw police resources away from the Capitol, making the eventual planned assault easier to pull off. This makes a lot of sense but does not explain why Senator Kamala Harris was at DNC headquarters, or why she was not evacuated immediately after the pipe bomb was discovered.     

LONE WOLF

This is a plausible theory I frankly think is not getting enough attention. Many bombers, (See Rudolph, Kaczynski, and Ivins below,) tend to be loners and pull off their crimes for reasons that make sense only to them. The rally at the Ellipse and the march to the Capitol were well known before the fact. If you’re a wannabe bomber looking for attention this was a high-profile event, and you got the attention you were looking for.

Whoever planted the pipe bombs had to know that in an age of cameras everywhere, especially close to the Capitol, they were likely to have their image captured. Faking that you were planting the bombs on the night of January 5^th knowing you’d likely be caught on camera, and that they might be found before 1:00 p.m. on the 6th, and returning shortly before 1:00 p.m. the next day, makes some sense from an operational standpoint. In other words, the individual may have tricked the FBI into believing the devices were planted on the 5^th and not the 6^th.

There are holes in this theory, including the reports that at least one of the devices (DNC) was inert but the other may have been real (the RNC device.) There is also the unexplained coincidence that both devices were found by persons within twenty-five minutes just as Congress was meeting. Lone wolves don’t work with others.    

DEMOCRATS OR THE DNC

The theory here is that in the run up to January 6^th, partisan democrats were well aware of President Trump’s “stop the steal” efforts, and eager to paint him and his followers as right-wing extremists bent on “destroying democracy.” Cries after the fact that the assault on the Capitol was “worse than 9/11, worse than Pearl Harbor, and worse than the Civil War,” tend to corroborate this thinking. So too do incomplete facts surrounding the then Speaker of the House’s (Pelosi) alleged refusal ahead of time to allow the National Guard to assist with security, as requested by police and the Sergeant at Arms of the House.

The mostly partisan January 6^th House Committee’s, 841-page report, (the two Republicans were chosen by Democrat Nancy Pelosi, not House Republican leadership per tradition,) only mentions the pipe bomb incidents in an appendix. But what if the protests planned for the Capitol turned out less violent than what they did? That the Capitol was never breached and the assembly by Trump supporters turned out to be mostly peaceful?  

A pipe bomb that could have killed the incoming historic democrat vice president seems like a big deal to leave out of a plot described as worse than…fill in the blank. Did somebody associated with the democrats, or the DNC hatch a plot to ensure the events of January 6^th were as bad as they hoped they would be? And then ignore the pipe bomb incident after the fact when the protests themselves made their point?

A TRAINING DEVICE

This theory includes the two devices, at least one of which has been described as potentially inert, were actually training devices that were used that day to see if law enforcement, (or a bomb dog) would locate them. If true, it might explain why law enforcement did not appear concerned when the individual in the backpack reported them, or why there was no apparent effort to move Senator Harris away from the scene immediately. And, if The Blaze story is correct, why a plainclothes Capitol police officer discovered the device. It might also explain why kitchen timers that could only be set for an hour were part of the firing train; because they were never part of an actual device or plot.

A major flaw here is that it seems impossible the confusion about a training device accidentally left at both the RNC and DNC headquarters, would not immediately be cleared up with the rest of the law enforcement community. It doesn’t explain how they were fortuitously discovered twenty-five minutes apart just as Congress was meeting. It also doesn’t explain the guy/girl in the hoodie the night before which would be unnecessary to a training scenario to find the bombs. And, why let the FBI run with a high-profile investigation for three years just to save yourself from embarrassment that training devices were not found ahead of time? Also, it seems probable the FBI, with all their resources, would have solved the training device scenario quickly.

AN FBI/LAW ENFORCEMENT PLOT

The prevailing belief among conspiracy theorists is that the FBI and/or LEOs were in on it. It’s also the least likely explanation in my opinion. People who believe this also believe every neo-Nazi protester is actually an undercover “fed” and that Ray Epps, who plead guilty to a misdemeanor, was an FBI informant that instigated the assault on the Capitol. To believe this theory, you must believe they had a motive big enough to engage in a very dangerous game because getting caught would be fatal to an organization.

Pretend for a minute that there were enough partisan FBI agents and other LEOs who decided it was in the organization’s interest to hatch a scheme to plant pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters; What’s the end game? It’s going to help President Trump stop the certification of Joe Biden as president, and they liked Trump better? Two planted pipe bombs certainly don’t foretell that is a likely outcome. For an operation like this to be planned, enough senior LEOs would have to agree ahead of time such an operation was a worthy effort.  A major consideration with such a plan was how it might end. A very foreseeable ending is exactly what happened; A three year-long unsolved investigation that doesn’t paint law enforcement in the best light. After all, they had to know they can’t solve their own conspiracy, right?  

Then these bright people would also have to be assured that the hundreds of investigating agents and other LEOs would never unravel the plan, and if they did, they’d all be convinced to keep quiet about it. Keep in mind that to our knowledge, even none of the FBI whistle blowers weighing in on the investigation are making this claim. Reminds me of the old adage that two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. That the FBI and law enforcement was in on the pipe bombs plot is frankly ridiculous.

I’ll end this section with this: From the time of the Olympic Park bombing in 1996 until Eric Rudolph was identified and caught (including for other bombings,) was seven years. It took eighteen years to identify and catch Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. It took seven years to identify Bruce Ivins for the Anthrax attacks of 2001, albeit he was not a traditional bomber. In the early 2000s I was the supervisory investigator on the bombing of a county courthouse and while we had a good idea who did it, there was never enough evidence to prosecute the individual. These were all complicated cases with false trails and misidentified subjects that took years to unravel. It appears the RNC and DNC headquarters pipe bomb case is one as well.      

CONCLUSIONS

In my opinion, of the five theories postured; the January 6^th plotters, a lone wolf, or somebody affiliated with the democrats/DNC did it, make the most sense, although all have investigative holes. A training scenario gone astray is possible, but unlikely. That the FBI and law enforcement were in on it makes the least, and possibly no sense as far as I’m concerned. I have a most likely scenario (including who I think might have done it,) but, like a good investigator I’m keeping an open mind, and I want to know what you think. Who planted the two pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters on January 6^th and why?

What I’m watching: NFL playoffs even though my team is out. Also, reruns of Columbo, which I reference often in my books.

What I’m listening to: Have you heard the snappy earworm Amazon commercial featuring the jazz-rock band Chicago’s song 25-or-6-to 4? It’s from the 1969 album, Chicago, and yeah, I have it and all their albums so pulled it out (on vinyl.)

What I’m reading: Lee Goldberg’s DREAM TOWN. Next up, my buddy Lawrence A. Colby’s new book TARGET AREA.  https://shorturl.at/lqsI9

What’s next: I’m about two-thirds of the way finished with Book 2 in the Detective Kiki Diaz thriller series FAIRFAX STATION, which I hope to have out by early summer. (Cover reveal coming soon.) If you have not read Book 1, ROSSLYN STATION you’ll want to check that out on Amazon at https://amzn.to/4aA1r0K. Still hoping to have at least one CJ Hawk - FBI Thriller out this year as well. And, I have three topics in mind for future Substack articles, so stay tuned.  

Make sure and check out everything I am working on at my website www.fxregan.com, especially the page marked “New.” Follow me on X (Twitter) and Instagram @FXRegan.