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I got a phone call one day and it was a producer from Meet the Press. It was a couple of years after I retired from the FBI.

She asked me if I was aware of the DC sniper case and of course I was, the whole nation was.

People were watching this case unfold in real time and that increased the fear factor.

When I arrived at the NBC studio they asked me if I would go to another studio and do ongoing commentary on this case.

People were terrified they wanted to know what was going on. I went up to that particular studio and there was a huge plate glass window behind me.

My backdrop was the United States Capitol. It was a beautiful, crisp, fall day. I recalled during one of the breaks. I stood up and went over the window and looked out.

It was strangely quiet down at the mall which is usually bustling with people especially on a Sunday.

Local people, tourists and enjoying the monuments and the trees were gold and red, just gorgeous. But something was missing. People.

They were in hiding and who could blame them? People were getting shot in the head at gas stations sitting at a bus stop. It was terrifying.

Between October 2nd and October 24th, 2002, 13 people had been shot. 10 of them died. Nobody saw anything.

A tip to the police early on said they saw a white van speeding away so that's what everybody was looking for.

But what I told the audience and all of America was if you hear a gunshot, don't look for a white van, look all around and take note of what you do see.

In fact, what they should have been looking for was a 1990 blue Chevy Caprice.

What we didn't know when I appeared on the show was that two men were responsible for all these snipings. One was named John Muhammad, the other Lee Malvo.

Early on, it was believed that the younger one was influenced, even brainwashed by the older guy. I believed it too. But I recently watched a documentary called Eye Sniper.

Told through the eyes of one of the shooters, Lee Malvo.

What I was interested in was the mindset, the personalities, the behavior, the motivations of the two shooters. What was going on between them?

I now have very different opinions about the case and what happened. So now that I have this new information, I had to wonder was Lee Malvo manipulated and brainwashed by this older paternal figure, John Muhammad? Or was he a willing accomplice?

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