Plot Synopsis

Executive produced by Craig Turk, the co-creator of CBS's drama series FBI, and Anne Beagan, a veteran FBI special agent, FBI TRUE is a half-hour docuseries that provides a real-life look into a high-pressure world where split-second decisions can mean life or death -- with FBI agents reliving the heart-stopping moments of their biggest cases and revealing the real details only agents can tell. Each episode focuses on insider conversations between agents when they meet at the FBI's favorite bar, the Arts & Crafts Beer Parlor, just down the block from their New York headquarters. It's a hallowed place where law enforcement colleagues talk frankly about the triumphs, tragedies and real truths of their jobs. In this relaxed setting, they share hair-raising stories of dangerous missions carried out by the FBI in the United States and worldwide. With everything on the line, what choices did they make? How did they keep their cool with a kidnapped child's life on the line, or with a bomb ticking in an unknown location, or a terrorist on the loose? FBI TRUE features never-before-seen surveillance video, interrogations with hostage takers and terrorists, and personal photos from the agents' collections. This is the FBI like you've never seen, as agents disclose what happened, and how they felt while working on some of the biggest and most compelling crimes of our time, revealing their fears and exulting in their victories. Viewers will get a spine-tingling look inside the manhunt for a bomber responsible for injuring 30 people in Manhattan; the desperate search to find Hannah Anderson, a high school cheerleader kidnapped in California; the command center at Waco as agents helplessly watched women and children consumed by fire as the David Koresh's cult compound ignited; the complex search for the Beltway snipers in Washington, DC; the frustrating effort to find the terrorists who attacked the U.S. mission in Benghazi killing the ambassador; and the search for the brutal Boston mob leader Whitey Bulger. All 10 episodes of FBI TRUE's first season dropped on Tuesday, February 28, 2023 on Paramount+. FBI TRUE made its linear television debut on Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 9pm ET/PT on CBS. In the first episode, "Boy in the Bunker," the FBI Hostage Rescue team must save a five-year-old boy from an armed killer holding him captive in a bunker filled with explosives.

The sophomore season of FBI TRUE debuted on Tuesday, April 11, 2023 on Paramount+, as the streaming service released all 10 episodes of the new season. The second installment of FBI TRUE starts with never-before-heard details on the search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects in a two-part edition on the investigation. On April 15, 2013, two homemade explosions went off near the finish line of the marathon, leaving three dead and 280 injured. The bombs set off a hunt to capture those responsible. Now, 10 years later, in emotional agent-to-agent conversations, those intimately involved with the case reveal new details about what it was like to be in a deadly race against time. Retired special agent Richard DesLauriers, who headed up the FBI investigation into the bombing, is among those featured in the Boston editions.

The entire 10-episdoe third season of FBI TRUE dropped on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 on Paramount+. Through firsthand accounts, FBI agents relive the heart-stopping moments of their biggest cases and reveal the shocking details that only the agents on the inside can reveal. In the two-part Season 3 opener, "The Rise of Al Qaeda," three FBI agents suspect an injured bystander may well be one of the lead terrorists in the aftermath of the bombings of two US embassies in Africa. Once the FBI discovers a bomb factory connected to the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa, it exposes the vast reach of a little-known terrorist group called Al Qaeda.

The fourth season of FBI TRUE premiered on Tuesday, November 7, 2023 from 9-10pm ET/PT on CBS, with a double episode. Two-part stories then debuted weekly on Tuesdays on CBS.
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Season 5 of FBI TRUE debuted on Tuesday, October 15, 2024 on Paramount+, which released all 10 episodes of the new season. In the two-part season opener, "Showdown in the West," when federal authorities seize a renegade rancher's family cattle in 2014, heavily armed anti-government militias come to his aid and a dangerous showdown ensues. The FBI faces down a group of anti-government ranchers and heavily-armed militias who've taken over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. A car chase through the mountains ensues, and when one rancher refuses to surrender.