Anthony Gucciardi

In an exclusive interview, I just finished speaking with key Boston Marathon eyewitness and running participant Alastair Stevenson, who has confirmed to me that drills were taking place the morning of the Boston Marathon complete with bomb squads and rooftop snipers.

Alastair’s initial statements towards the Alabama news publication regarding the Boston Marathon training exercises ignited a firestorm within the alternative media, despite being only around two sentences in length. Now, Alastair has been given a forum to voice the entirety of what he saw as a participant and coach during the Boston Marathon — something that Alastair says he has never seen before despite participating in much larger races around the world.

As you can watch in the video above, Alastair detailed what went on before the race began:

“At the start at the event, at the Athlete’s Village, there were people on the roof looking down onto the Village at the start. There were dogs with their handlers going around sniffing for explosives, and we were told on a loud announcement that we shouldn’t be concerned and that it was just a drill. And maybe it was just a drill, but I’ve never seen anything like that — not at any marathon that I’ve ever been to. You know, that just concerned me that that’s the only race that I’ve seen in my life where they had dogs sniffing for explosions, and that’s the only place where there had been explosions.”

And Alastair is speaking from serious experience. As a veteran of marathons and a coach at the University of Mobile in Alabama, Alastair knows about how marathons traditionally go down.

The interview with Alastair clarifies his former statements regarding the presence of bomb squads and bomb sniffing dogs that went mega viral on the web, and also serves to better understand what the reality is behind this situation. As Alastair details, there was definitely a drill taking place the morning of the marathon, and it appears police were likely aware of a dangerous threat that required a large degree of action to counteract.

This post originally appeared at storyleak.com