6.James Marinelli — Direct

JAMES MARINELLI: James Marinelli, M-A-R-I-N-E-L-L-I.

JAMES MARINELLI: Good morning.

JAMES MARINELLI: I work at the FBI in Boston.

JAMES MARINELLI: Special agent.

JAMES MARINELLI: Seventeen years.

JAMES MARINELLI: I'm currently assigned to the white collar squad.

JAMES MARINELLI: I do.

JAMES MARINELLI: Before -- you know, before being -- before becoming an agent you go down to Quantico, you do a period of time for initial training, and then there's various in-service training after you join a field office, and on-the-job training is continuous.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes.

JAMES MARINELLI: There was training at Quantico in, you know, the bureau's procedures and policies, and then just on-the-job training from, you know, doing various searches and things for cases.

JAMES MARINELLI: I mean, primarily it's all -- you know, it's about how you collect the piece of evidence. So you have to, you know, be careful when you take it. You log it: Write down, you know, date and time, where you got it from, things like that.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes, I did.

JAMES MARINELLI: Starting on the day of the bombing.

JAMES MARINELLI: I was -- well, I was on Boylston Street within 30 minutes.

JAMES MARINELLI: At that point we were -- you know, the order was just to get down there. We were looking for some direction, trying to figure out what went on. Pretty quickly we -- there was a rally point at California Pizza Kitchen, which is at Huntington -- I think it's at Huntington and Ring Road. So investigative personnel gathered there. And in the meantime, they were setting up, I believe, a command post at the Westin Hotel.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes. First I went to California Pizza Kitchen and then was directed over to the Westin.

JAMES MARINELLI: Well, the reason I was sent over there, and a number of us were sent over there, is because they were going to start to try to gather surveillance video from the businesses along Boylston Street, so I went up there to go meet with Rich Claflin, who was going to work that effort from our standpoint. There was also Boston police and state police there.

JAMES MARINELLI: They were gathering a list of businesses to contact. And, you know, initially there was -- you know, the Forum restaurant was mentioned as one that needed to be collected, so myself and another task force officer volunteered to go down and get that.

JAMES MARINELLI: Well, we didn't go right to the Forum restaurant. Obviously there was -- one of the crime scenes was right in front of the restaurant. We were on the corner of Ring Road and Boylston and we were waiting for the owner of the Forum restaurant to come meet with us.

JAMES MARINELLI: It did. Yup. We waited there. We were then -- we couldn't go directly into the front for the same reason I just stated, and we were led around -- around the crime scene area to the back of the restaurant. We entered through an alley and down into the basement.

JAMES MARINELLI: Well, again, we ended up with Mr. Gouges -- he knew the restaurant. That's where the video surveillance system was. He had an office down there and the video surveillance system was down there. So he led us directly down there to collect the video.

JAMES MARINELLI: No, the cameras were, I believe, through the restaurant. There was one also out -- directed toward Boylston Street in front of the restaurant. But the actual -- the system that runs -- the video system itself was down in the basement. So there's a CPU down there, there were monitors down there. The cameras were posted throughout the restaurant.

JAMES MARINELLI: I believe so. We weren't really looking at the monitors per se, but I remember that they were down there. And, yes, they would show what the cameras are showing.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes. That was the CPU. So there was actually a computer unit that was recording the video.

JAMES MARINELLI: Well, first Mr. Gouges pointed out to us -- directed us to where it was. He then offered to contact the gentleman who actually did the installation. It was a recent installation. And he, you know, offered to put us in touch with the gentleman that installed it so that we could make sure we didn't disturb anything by taking it.

JAMES MARINELLI: It did happen. He facilitated a phone call between myself and Gene Scaff, who was the person -- it was his company that installed the video. And I spoke to him just to make sure we were looking at the proper unit, the one that was actually recording the video, and ask him about anything that we might need to make sure that we can replay the video later.

JAMES MARINELLI: We unplugged the computer just to, you know, preserve it in place, and then we disconnected everything from the CPU, and we took the CPU and the power cord with it. There was also a thumb drive or a dongle plugged into the back of it, and that was -- that partly ran the video system. That had, I guess, some of the code that ran the system.

JAMES MARINELLI: Correct.

JAMES MARINELLI: We took that back to the Westin where our command post was set up, and we also had a room set up for evidence collection.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes; I checked it into evidence myself. There were some of our evidence response personnel in there. They're the experts in handling evidence. So we took it to them, they checked it in, and we turned it over to them.

JAMES MARINELLI: I believe it was. We knew just from the position of the video that that was an important video to review. And so we had stated that. You know, we called -- you know, we spoke to someone at the command post and we said, "This needs to be reviewed right away." So I believe they started to review it onsite, if not, they may have taken it right back to the office and reviewed it.

JAMES MARINELLI: Yes.

JAMES MARINELLI: Thank you.

JAMES MARINELLI: Thank you.