>> home for joining us on a day when honestly any one in about five different big, national, leave-the-news stories would have every network newscast to itself were it not for all the other big national lead-the-news stories that are breaking today, vying for that top of the news position. the national republican party today abandoned mark sanford , who used to be the governor of south carolina and was a presidential hopeful at one point. today, his party abandoned his effort to get back into office in congress. that kind of politics story might very well lead the national news, but not on a day like today. today we got arrests and a confession and at least an implicit explanation in the murder of those two prosecutors in kaufman county , texas. the assistant d.a. killed in january, the d.a. himself, and his wife killed in march, as of today, finally, we know who did it. or at least who has confessed, and it is not what people expected to hear in this case. on a normal news day, that kind of thing might lead the national news. but also today, the white house announced that it, too, has received a letter in the mail that's tested positive for the poison ricin. this comes one day after a republican senator from mississippi received a letter yesterday. the late breaking news is a mississippi man is under arrest for sending both of those letters. we know what the letter said, we know who is in custody, we are now just waiting for the final lab results on what exactly was in those letters. in the midst of that worry, there were several other suspicious letter or package incidents reported in a number of other places in the country, including one letter that shut down carl levin 's office in michigan. another incident involving white powder in an envelope in wisconsin, that has been cleared now, but at one point in the afternoon that led to a quarantine order at that health center with dozens of people being quarantined on site. again, any of those stories might be front-page news and beyond on any normal news day. today's anything but a normal news day. today's also, of course, the day we have been waiting for for 124 days now. today is the day that the u.s. senate decided on the appropriate national response to the elementary school massacre of 20 first graders at newtown, connecticut. today, the u.s. senate decided that the appropriate national response to that massacre should be nothing. they want to do nothing in response to that, and so they filibustered. this is huge news. the president speaking on the matter from the white house not long after the vote, one of the most powerful and angry speeches that barack obama has ever given as president of the united states . newtown families and tucson survivors standing with the president at the white house when he made those remarks. many of them today were looking on in the senate as the background checks bill was filibustered. there's a lot to explain what happened there in that story and what happens next. this is, clearly, the biggest policy story in this president's second term thus far, by far it is. but also in the midst of all of this, still today, the country is riveted to the continuing news out of boston after the bombing of the boston marathon two days ago. the first thing you need to know what happened today in the news about boston is some of what you may have heard today out of boston was flat-out wrong.
>> again, i have a boston source, fran townsend has a second source, in fact, an arrest has been made on wednesday. here's what fran's source said, an arrest has been made based on two different videos showing images of the suspect. i was told the video enhancement showed a dark-skinned male placing the package at the second explosion site and backing away.
>> an arrest has been made, a dark-skinned male placing the package and backing away. everybody freak out, and, of course, everybody did kind of freak out much of the afternoon with that information. fox news reported a suspect is in custody in the boston marathon bombing. associated press reporting that a suspect is in custody. the hometown boston globe breaking the news on twitter, quote, breaking, arrest in boston marathon bombing. and the link, you can see the link there, see the way the link spells out, refresh equals true. in this case, untrue. we at the show have been glued to the boston globe 's website this week, they are doing stupendous work, but when the big headline says "marathon bomb suspect in kurzdy" and it's next to the little headline saying there is no bombing suspect in custody, what you have is not an evolving story, what you have is a mess. you have falsely reporting on a really important matter driving a frenetic news cycle all day today, and the pushback from law enforcement was plain and a little bit pointed. from the boston police department , despite reports to the contrary, there has not been an arrest in the marathon attack. the fbi went a step further. quote, over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports that have been inaccurate. since these sources, excuse me, since these stories often have unintended consequences , we skt media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting. so, no suspect in custody today in the boston marathon bombing. there was no arrest. that did not happen. that doesn't mean there wasn't real news from the investigation today. we do know the investigators have been carefully going through a large amount of visual evidence from the scene, pictures and video, right, they say they are looking for people who might have been carrying large black nylon backpacks or duffel bags. nbc news confirmed investigators are seeking at least one person who was seen on security video from a department store near the finish line. nbc reporting tonight that the man was seen leaving the bag that he was carrying near the site of the second explosion. among the evidence they are considering is this photo from nbc 's boston affiliate whdh. you can see the spot shadow there. the photo appears to show a bag sitting on the curb and after the explosions, the bag is gone. any number of things could explain why the bag is gone. is this a clue, is this a signal, or is this noise? we do not yet know. investigators are beginning it piece together crucial information about the bombs themselves. metal containers and in one instance a pressure cooker stuffed with bits of metal intended to become scraps of metal. they found a lid of a pressure cooker on the roof from the blast. today, a report that new information is available about what was used to ignite the bomb. they say it was the kind of battery that you typically find in little remote-controlled cars made in china and sold by the many thousands. investigators have also recovered a circuit board used to wire the explosives. nbc is being told by investigators in boston now they do have solid leads in terms of trying to find out who did this. it seems like there was real progress in the investigation today, including some very specific information about some physical evidence that, of course, will be tracked down as best as possible. but overall, if you were following the news out of boston today, it was really quite chaotic. reporters gathered at a federal courthouse in boston for an fbi briefing and it was confusing. was a suspect in custody and being brought to the courthouse for some reason? when it became clear nobody was in custody but the reports were still out there lingering and people were wondering, well, if there's smoke is there fire here, maybe did law enforcement have some other information to share, in the middle of that scrum and reporters and people just collected at the courthouse, the courthouse ended up getting cleared itself and it was not apparent for awhile why they did that. authorities later said it was a bomb threat that caused the evacuation of the courthouse and the surrounding area and a bomb threat is always scary, perhaps more so right now, but while that was going on today at the federal courthouse in boston , while all the media was gathered there wondering if the inaccurate reports were going to turn out to maybe be accurate, while this was happening today, it added to the media-generated chaos. joining us now, pete williams , who i should tell you, is in the same building i am in but is at another camera because he needs to be close to his desk phone. it truly is that kind of day in the news, pete . thank you very much for being here.
>> you bet.
>> what do we know about what authorities have been able to find from combing through the pictures and videos in the two days since the bombing?
>> well, i think you've summarized it well. the holy grail for them was to see someone setting down a heavy backpack or duffel bag , a black nylon bag, that they believe this relatively heavy bomb was carried in. they think it weighed about 20 pounds, setting it down at the scene of one or the other of the bombings, and then getting away. they believe they have found a picture like that, first from the store surveillance camera that you noted, but they since have been able to triangulate that or get other views of it from other pictures and recordings that people who are in the area have sent them. people who have sent them pictures not knowing what exactly was to be found on them, so, they see a face, they just don't know who that face is. they are trying to figure out that person. they want to find that person and talk to them and find out what their story is. another possible lead here is the fact that the person was in the pictures talking on a cell phone . so, that gives them a second avenue to pursue here. they can get all the cell phone records for the hundreds and hundreds of people in the area at the time using their cell phones and see if that can give them an additional source of information to find out who this person was. so, that's their most promising avenue right now.
>> pete , in terms of the physical forensics of the explosives themselves, are we yet able to say whether it was definitively one pressure cooker bomb, whether both bombs were of the same type, are we able to be any more definitive in the way we describe those explosives?
>> you know, they still are not saying for sure, the latest bulletin i saw is they are holding back on saying the second one was a pressure cooker bomb. the interesting thing is you see these pictures here is that the bomb pieces were not blown to bits. they were seriously deformed, but the pieces are quite large. this is another indicator that the explosive was probably smokeless powder or gun powder , which is in the order of explosives, a relatively low energy one. if it had been a higher explosive like tatp or dynamite, you'd have seen the pieces blown into smaller pieces. so, that's another plus for investigators in that they can see these relatively large pieces, chase down exactly the kind of pressure cooker , batteries, wires, and see where that leads. these things may be easier said than done. the battery, for example, is made by a chinese company, but as you noted earlier, they are common. they are all over the united states . the wire you can see the name on there is made in china, too. you put all these things together, though, they point in another direction. these circuits on the ground, they are trying to decide what they were, were they pieces of an electronic timer or were they pieces of some kind of remote receiver, and i think that's what they are trying to find out.
>> pete , do we know yet why there may have been such confusion today whether there had been an arrest and somebody in custody, it, obviously, turned ut not to be true, but for a long time this afternoon it wasn't just news outlets seeming to make it up, they were citing law enforcement sources telling them that an arrest had been made. do we have any insight as to why that happened or whether it was just total miscommunication?
>> i don't know. i'm sure these people, you know, they are good journalists. i'm sure they were told this by sources, i just can't say how heavily vetted it was. my guess is, and this is strictly a guess, probably, this is an educated guess , i should say, maybe they initially thought they knew who these people in the pictures were, maybe they were checking out more than one person. maybe they did go talk to somebody or a witness and that was misinterpreted as, oh, they are about to arrest someone, oh, they've arrested someone. that's just a guess, though.
>> the fbi 's statement refuting those inaccurate reports today, this is part of the reason i asked, warned wrong information like this often has unintended consequences . the way they worded it meant they think this has unintended consequences that could be disruptive to the investigation. are you hearing from any sources this sort of misinformation and the kind of scrum and confusion that happened today actually is any sort of impediment to law enforcement getting their work done?
>> well, it's something of a -- several of them told me todays is something of a disruption, because they sort of have to stop and drop everything and try to figure out what's going on. you know, it doesn't disrupt everybody. somebody out there looking for small pieces of something probably doesn't have to stop to worry about it, but it is something that people have to stop and attend to and try to figure out what's going on. so, my guess is that's probably what they are talking about.
>> nbc news justice correspondent pete williams . pete , thank you for your valuable time tonight and thank you for not jumping on the bandwagon today when everybody else did.
>>> all right, i can also tell you tomorrow in boston president obama is going to be in boston , and we now know that he's going to be there with the first lady, both president obama and michelle obama are going to be together at an interfaith service for victims of the boston marathon attack. it's at the cathedral of holy cross in boston starting at 11:00 a.m . tomorrow. we can confirm they are going to be there, the both of them. we will be right
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