House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) offered some details on the investigation into the Boston bombings late Tuesday after an FBI briefing.
“The device itself has tracers with explosives,” he said. “The device itself has built in ball bearings. There are signatures to these things and they can be traced back to the origin and so that forensics is taking place right now.”
He said he expects more information “in the next couple of days.” Of the likely explosive material, he said, “Most likely it was black powder. Gunpowder.”
He also explained how the FBI is approaching the investigation.
“They were going down two ledes: one a possible cellphone detonation. The second would be a pressure cooker with a timer on it,” McCaul said.
“The device is in [U.S. Marine Corps Base] Quantico, it’s being reviewed for forensics. And they can do incredible stuff. So I’m very optimistic at the end of this forensics we’re going to know a lot more about he origins of this bomb, where the materials came from. And that’s going to shed a lot more light in terms of [whether the attack was] foreign or domestic.”
Asked if the two explosive devices were similar, he said, “My sense is they probably are.”
