Plot Synopsis

Narrated by Alana De La Garza, THE FBI DECLASSIFIED is a one-hour docuseries that features FBI agents and analysts taking viewers behind the scenes of some of the biggest cases they've solved during their careers. Through never-before-seen footage and in-depth interviews, each episode focuses on a different investigation and showcases the cooperation between the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Plus, agents and analysts reveal the thinking, teamwork, technology, techniques and pure gut instinct that goes into solving a critical case.

In the series opener, "Saving Ethan," FBI agents and analysts take viewers inside a real-life race against the clock mission to save a 5-year-old boy held hostage by an armed gunman. The episode gives viewers unprecedented insight into the tactics investigators used to rescue a young boy kidnapped in rural Alabama. Jimmy Lee Dykes jumped on a packed school bus in Midland City, AL on Jan. 29, 2013. Dykes shot and killed the driver and kidnapped little Ethan Gilman. Dykes took the child to a heavily fortified underground bunker he had spent months constructing. The FBI says his mission was to take hostages to use as pawns in an attempt to share his anti-government grievances with the world. FBI agents and analysts knew they had a limited window of time to breach the bunker and rescue Gilman. Could they pull it off?
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After a nine-month break, THE FBI DECLASSIFIED returned with new episodes on Wednesday, August 18, 2021 at 10pm ET/PT on CBS. In the summer premiere, "Enemy of the State," the high-stakes investigation began when FBI agents learned that Edward McLarnon, an anti-government conspiracy theorist, wanted to buy weapons to kill a federal judge, a former Massachusetts attorney general and a social worker. McLarnon was on a pathway to violence against the judicial system, agents say, and they were on a race against time stop a potential domestic terrorist. To do so, agents had to put their own lives on the line and go undercover to earn McLarnon's trust.