FBI TRUE

: 60 years ago, September 15th, 1963.

: Exploding dynamite shattered Birmingham's

16th Street Baptist Church.

Four young girls dressing for the choir were killed.

: In 1995 the chief tells me they're talking about

reopening the 16th Street Church case.

: One man was convicted, but police believe several others got away.

: Klansmen like Bobby Frank Cherry,

and Tommy Blanton.

- This is absolutely the last time it can be investigated.

And I thought the best opportunity at the time

would be interview Cherry first.

: In the FBI we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts, mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it! - Freeze!

FBI.

- FBI! : Action!

: But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down?

We save that for each other.

when we're talking agent to agent.

This is FBI, True.

- Summer of 97, we're going to go interview Cherry

who was one of the original suspects in 63,

and was again a suspect in the seventies.

- Bob Eddy interviewed him and almost got a confession out of him in the seventies.

And we decided to take Bob Eddy,

as another shock factor.

- So where is Cherry at this point?

- He's living in Mabank, Texas.

We got there, and we sent a deputy out to his house

to pick him up, bring him to the sheriff's office.

So he comes in and he looks at Bob Eddy

and he's just like he saw an old friend.

Yeah.

- He said: "Bob, I thought you retired and was

raising cattle somewhere."

And Bob said: "you knew this would never go away.

You knew this would never go away.

we're back here to talk to you again."

He says: "well, my wife got a doctor's appointment

in an hour and a half."

Says: "that's as long as I can talk to you."

And I told him: "well, we'll be glad to try to get it finished in an hour and a half."

And he finally, after a hour and a half, come up,

he goes outside, tells his son to take his wife to the doctor.

And we talk for four hours.

- What does he say for four hours?

- He was bragging, talking about chasing women...

That he had nothing to do with the bombing.

That his wife was sick at the time, and he went home after

he was working at the Modern Sign Company making some

Confederate battle flags.

And that was his alibi that he couldn't have done

the church bombing.

He also said he had a broke back

and he couldn't carry such a big bomb.

I said: "well, how do you know it was a big bomb?"

- There you go! - And he didn't say anything about that.

The closest he came to confessing at that time

was he looked at some of the pictures.

And he said: "Man, gosh, doggone".

He says: "That's just like pulling the trigger on a gun.

You can't call that bullet back once it's left."

And I thought that we're all on the right track.

- Right. - We've got the right suspect.

- How do you end it with him?

- I told him: "Whether you tell us the truth

or somebody else tells us truth, we will get it."

What happens then?

- It wasn't very much longer that we get a call

from a Texas deputy.

He says: "Bob Cherry has given an interview

in the square of the town with his lawyer,

and I have taped it."

: Flanked by his attorney, and followed

by cameras, Bobby Frank Cherry, a former Klansman,

came here to answer questions about his past.

- Mr. Cherry had nothing to do with the bombing

in Alabama in 1963.

: But Cherry's old links to the Birmingham Klan

brought investigators here to question him again.

- He is saying: "the FBI is bothering me again.

It's been 30 years and they have been harassing me

all my life."

: Here, there is sympathy for a local man

who says police have hounded hm about the case for years.

: That's a long time to dredge up all that

and put that man through that.

I mean, ain't he 60-something years old?

: The time may be right for an old man

to make peace with his past.

But it may be too late to find the truth.

- When Bob Cherry called that press conference

and it was shown in Birmingham,

that's when the phone started ringing.

- Yes. The phone rings and I answer it, and it's

Teresa Stacy, Cherry's granddaughter.

And the first words out of her mouth are:

"thank God, somebody's doing the church case".

She related that on numerous family events that Cherry

would brag about blowing up the church.

- I get this call from Michael Goins who had worked

with Cherry in Dallas when he was cleaning apartments

and Cherry admitted being part of the group that bombed

the church that killed the girls.

There was a guy named Birdwell who was friends with

Cherry's son and was in the house the weekend before

and overheard Cherry talking to other men about the bomb

and the bomb being ready in the 16th Street Baptist Church.

All these people, I think, had really kind of thought

that that Cherry had gone to prison before.

And they came forward when they saw him on the news.

And then a year later was when we got the real break.

There was a woman Cherry had been married to.

She was his third wife.

We had been looking for her, but couldn't find her.

She was living in Montana and she saw a newspaper article

that had been written. - This big.

Just a very tiny one.

And called the FBI.

the most significant thing to me was that

she said Cherry's car broke down near the church.

She went to pick him up and he pointed out at the steps,

that area where he said that they planted the bomb.

And he talked about it and the fact that he had killed

before and he would kill again, those kind of things.

- Wow. - Tommy Blanton was a lot different.

Blanton was interviewed first about two weeks

after the bombing.

And when he was asked about what he was doing that weekend,

he said on that Saturday night, he went and picked up

his girlfriend, Jean, but he couldn't really remember

where all they went.

But then he said he had her home by midnight

that night and then went home and went to sleep.

Well, what Blanton didn't know when he was giving this story

is that they had had another witness at the church,

a lady named Glenn, Mrs. Kirthus Glenn.

She had seen Blanton's car behind the church

at 2:00 in the morning.

The dome light was on.

She was able to identify Robert Chambliss from photographs.

But they had Blanton's automobile, a 1957 Chevrolet--

With a 15-foot antenna.

- Yeah, with a huge CB antenna on it, easy to spot.

And then when the agent told him that we've got a witness

who put his car there at 2:00 in the morning, which was

plenty of time for him to get his buddies and plant

that bomb, he clams up and doesn't talk anymore,

goes home, calls his girlfriend, Jean.

And lo and behold, they get their stories together.

Now they know exactly where they went on that Saturday night,

who they saw, who they didn't see.

And in fact, he had her home at midnight.

But now, according to their stories, he fell asleep

on her sofa and didn't leave till 2:45.

Cherry's little statements that were admissions,

the lies that he gave to the FBI, we had enough

that we felt like that we could get an indictment

for Cherry and Blanton even though it was sure as heck no, no, sure bet.

At that point the statute of limitations had run from

a federal perspective.

So that's when we had to fish or cut bait.

And to do that, we had to move everything over to

a state grand jury that indicted these guys for murder.

This was a tragedy

of absolutely monumental proportions.

It has scarred the city of Birmingham for 30,

almost 37 years.

There needs to be some kind of closure one way or another

on this matter.

: In Birmingham, Alabama, bond was set today

for two white men charged in the 1963 church bombing

that killed four Black children.

A judge set bond at a maximum $200,000 each for

Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton Jr.

- We had a stronger case for Bobby Frank Cherry

but we were hoping that we could try them together and

Blanton's would be filled in a little bit by what Bobby Frank had done.

: From the file review, we found

that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had approved

recording conversations between Tommy and his wife Jea.

- These were tapes of bugs that were placed in Blanton's kitchen.

- The were National Security intelligence tapes.

And at that point in time, we weren't being able to use

them as criminal evidence.

- OK. - In 1963, the director

of the FBI had certain authorities for electronic surveillance and bugs.

It was a different law.

And so there was electronic surveillance everywhere.

: To the unpracticed eye,

there is nothing suspicious about this room.

Nevertheless, enclosed within the frame, behind the print,

is a complete battery-operated microphone and transmitter.

Not only can a conversation be plainly heard,

but a permanent record made.

One that can be used for future reference.