In the weeks after a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the FBI dedicated more than 50 agents to one task: Finding the person who had planted a pair of pipe bombs near the Capitol.
Again and again, agents thought they were closing in on the culprit.
Early on, they questioned a Capitol Hill-area gym employee who had purchased the same Nike shoes as a person captured in grainy security camera footage crisscrossing the area the night before the riot. Then they suspected a man who had been spotted snapping photos of locations outside the Republican and Democratic Party headquarters before the bombs were placed there. Later, agents found an actual bombmaker — he just turned out to be the wrong one.
