Ex-FBI explosives expert, famed whistleblower says bureau's J6 pipe bombs lab analysis 'a mess'

A former FBI scientist, explosives expert and respected whistleblower—who exposed forensic fraud at the bureau’s national laboratory—says the Jan. 6 pipe bombs don’t look like they were made to explode and the FBI’s original lab analysis needs to be probed by Director Kash Patel and Congress. 

“Frankly, this report is a mess,” Fred Whitehurst, the first successful FBI whistleblower in history, told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Whitehurst’s landmark whistleblowing in the 1990s exposed forensic fraud at the FBI crime laboratory, which eventually subjected it to outside oversight for the first time. During his service at the FBI, he was regarded by the bureau as the foremost expert on explosives. He led the probe into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing during which he uncovered evidence that the FBI was manipulating forensic evidence. 

Just the News reported on Monday that the January 6 pipe bomb analysis conducted by the FBI's explosives laboratory found the devices were filled with chemical building blocks of black powder, each was equipped with a 60-minute kitchen timer, and each had destructive potential. However, neither device exploded, and they were discovered about 16 hours after the FBI claimed they were planted outside both the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters. 

A look at the bombs' explosive mixtures, fusing

But, Whitehurst says, the FBI analysis obscures what he believes is the true impression of the FBI’s explosives analysis, that neither bomb was “going to blow up.” 

“The materials—potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal—if they're not in the right proportions, and I mean the right proportions, and I don't see where anybody has told me that they are in the right proportion, they're not going to blow up,” Whitehurst said. “You might as well have had a crock of flour in that pipe.”

“And so to say that it was … a destructive device, without knowing that. If they had known that, they would have … just definitely said it,” he added.

Whitehurst also raised questions about the pipe bombs’ reported “fusing system,” which utilized bunches of steel wool in each device. The explosives expert said that using that amount of material would likely render the devices inoperable. 

“The reason you use steel wool, at least one or two little strands of it, is because the circuit going through the larger wires doesn't really heat them. But, when you've got that same voltage across a small wire, you got the same current you're putting through it, it heats it up, and it catches, you know, catches on fire—it gets it closed,” Whitehurst said. 

“But, what I'm seeing in the pictures is, is this wad of steel wool,” he continued. “There's enough steel wool there… all it's going to do at the most is warm that steel wool. It's not, you know, from my doing that… it's not going to glow at all. It's just going to get a little bit warm.” 

“So the device that they put there, the pictures they show me, that's not going to be a fuse,” he concluded.  

Both devices never exploded and were discovered about 16 hours after the FBI claimed they were planted outside both major party headquarters. 

The document package turned over by Patel to the House Judiciary Committee and its special Jan. 6 investigative subcommittee also raised significant new questions about the FBI's original timeline, Just the News reported on Monday. 

You can read the FBI's pipe bomb analysis below:

Timeline, details don't add up, Loudermilk says 

The memos contained interviews with a key witness who told the bureau the RNC device still had 20 minutes remaining on its timer when she discovered it on Jan. 6. This conflicts with the timeline the FBI provided to the public, which said the bomb at the RNC was most likely planted the night before, after 8:00 PM.

To the chairman of the special House Judiciary Subcommittee investigating Jan. 6 and the pipe bomb incidents, the details do not add up. 

“I'm not buying the story anymore that they were there on the fifth,” Chairman Barry Loudermilk told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show on Monday. 

Like Whitehurst, Loudermilk also said the FBI lab report raised questions about the bombs’ viability. 

“The other thing is, were there enough…was there enough explosives in the devices to actually cause a massive explosion? That's one of the things we're looking at in these reports, which kind of leads us to believe maybe there wasn't, but there definitely were explosives,” Loudermilk said.

Loudermilk said that the current fact pattern, and contradictions between the witness statements and the FBI’s timeline, all lead congressional investigators to consider alternative theories about the ultimate purpose of the bombs.

Different theories still viable

One of those theories is that the pipe bomb was part of a law enforcement training exercise on the same day as the Capitol riot. 

“Now follow me on this, this series of logic here. When would you build a bomb that's not designed to go off, but every element of it is to make you think it will, or make a bomb sniffing dog think that it is a live bomb?” Loudermilk asked. “That's a training exercise. So, that also opens the door to that. Was this possibly part of a training exercise?” 

History could be repeating itself

Like Loudermilk, Whitehurst said that the FBI’s report leads him to suspect that the maker of the bombs may have never intended them to go off and that the FBI’s crime lab may be reverting to the same habits upon which he first blew the whistle more than three decades ago.  

“I'm left with […] a suspicion […] Did somebody really want this to go off, or did they want the FBI Laboratory explosives devices and hazardous devices examiner to say we have two disrupted destructive devices, and nobody's going to question it,” he said. 

“I'm left with the impression that I got years ago, 35 years ago, somebody is trying to manipulate the trier of fact rather than educate the trier of fact,” Whitehurst added.