Breaking: Explosion Reported at Boston Marathon's Finish Line

[Peter Lemkin]

By Mark Hosenball and Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI interviewed suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in early 2011, it said in a statement late Friday, following a tip from a foreign government that he was "a follower of radical Islam" and was preparing to leave the United States to join underground organizations.

The FBI said its interview two years ago of Tsarnaev and his family, along with checks of travel records, Internet activity and personal associations, "did not find any terrorism activity" at the time.

But the revelation is the first evidence that the Tsarnaev family came to U.S. security officials' attention after they emigrated to the United States about a decade ago, and it could raise questions about whether the government missed potential warning signs about the behavior of two brothers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died overnight in Boston in a shootout with police. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was taken into custody on Friday evening in the Boston suburb of Watertown after a dramatic, day-long manhunt, Boston police said.

The FBI statement did not disclose which foreign government asked it for information about the brothers and their family. But Tamerlan was widely reported to have made a trip to Russia last year.

The brothers and their family were ethnic Chechens, whose small republic's attempts at independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union were brutally crushed by Moscow. Both brothers, however, were born in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, the FBI statement said, and Dzhokhar was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

The revelation that the elder Tsarnaev was on U.S. law enforcement authorities' radar screens seemed likely to raise uncomfortable questions for the Obama administration about whether it could have done anything to detect and stop the plot.

"It's new information to me and it's very disturbing that he's on the FBI radar screen," Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN late Friday.

It is not known when the Boston Marathon bombings were planned, or whether there were clues that could have allowed authorities to pre-empt it.

National security and law enforcement authorities said on earlier Friday that they had not turned up any evidence that the Tsarnaevs had contacts with al Qaeda or other militants overseas.

Rep. Peter King, New York Republican and member of the House intelligence committee, said in a statement that there "was no federal intelligence or chatter prior to the marathon bombings," a reference to militant communications often picked up in advance of an impending attack.

The U.S. officials said they were leaning toward the theory that the bombings were motivated by Islamic extremism, although that remained unproven.

WERE THE TSARNAEVS WORKING WITH OTHERS?

Violent plots involving a single individual or small groups who self-radicalize and have minimal dealings with other militants can be extremely difficult to detect in advance, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials and private experts.

The revelation about the FBI contacts with the elder Tsarnaev came as U.S. officials told Reuters that investigators are scouring government data banks to determine if spy and police agencies missed potential clues that might have alerted them to the two brothers.

Another top priority for investigators is to determine whether the brothers had any confederates either inside the United States or overseas, one U.S. official said. This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Three people were taken into custody for questioning in New Bedford, Massachusetts, police said on Friday. Two men and a woman are being questioned by the FBI "on the assumption there is an affiliation with" Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Lieutenant Robert Richard of the New Bedford Police said.

One official said the possibility that the U.S. government had information that should have raised questions about the Tsarnaev brothers before the attack could not be ruled out. Other officials said they were unaware that such material had turned up.

In several recent cases, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies failed to put together clues that, in hindsight, might have led them to pre-empt a plot.

In 2009, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hassan killed 13 people and wounded another 32 at Fort Hood, Texas. Prior to the shooting spree, Hassan had email contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric and leader of al Qaida's affiliate in Yemen who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike.

U.S. authorities had investigated Hassan's emails, but concluded they posed no threat of violence.

The father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "underwear bomber" who tried to bring down a U.S. jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, reported suspicions about his son's activities to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria. But Abdulmutallab's U.S. visa was never revoked.

A report by the Senate intelligence committee heavily criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for failing to act on available information in that case.

But Brian Jenkins, a respected terrorism expert at the RAND Corp., dismissed the idea that the Boston bombings represented an intelligence failure.

People will inevitably ask, "did we miss something in intelligence?" said Jenkins, speaking before the news of the 2011 FBI interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev become public.

"Some people will label it an 'intelligence failure.' But that's because people have come to expect 100 percent security," he said.

[Peter Lemkin]

Boston Bombing: "Justice has Won"
Posted on April 19, 2013 by willyloman

by Scott Creighton

"CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won,"

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still alive. They took him into custody a few hours ago. I hope his parents and his brother's widow can take some solace in that.

There is no video of these guys planting bombs. They claimed these two lingered and watched the suffering they caused then walked casually away yet there is a photo of at least one of them running away with everyone else.

The only thing that actually turned out to be completely accurate, was this guy's warning to us, which still stands in my book.

This young man's older brother is dead and there are 4 others who are dead and scores who have been maimed for life. An entire city was under martial law for 12 hours causing untold harm to people and businesses alike while taxpayers coughed up countless millions of dollars for what amounted to the largest drill in U.S. history.

Cops broke into people's homes violating their right to be secure in their persons and property.

Is that how "justice" is done?


There is no evidence of these two planting any weapon and in fact the only video the FBI produced seems to have been tampered with.

There are reports that the FBI had been in contact with Dzhokhar for at least a year prior to these events and yet they were not prevented?

This little sideshow was cobbled together to distract the American public from serious unofficial investigations into what happened in Boston the other day. Now people will automatically accept the guilt of these two young men with no other evidence needed.

On RT today they interviewed their mother who announced the ground breaking news that the FBI had been in contact with her boys for years and the host of the show just blew that off and asked her if the car chase didn't prove their guilt.

The car chase. I have yet to see an Action News helicopter video of that chase and even if I did I doubt anyone can tell who is actually in the vehicle.

We can only take the cops at their words about the whole thing.

So does that prove anything about their guilt or innocence in itself? Only if you believe everything a cop says.

I don't know what happened but I know this… if they had video of one of those kids dropping a backpack and it going off a minute later, that video would have been on every channel at every minute of the day for the last two days. It wasn't so they don't. It really is that simple.

And if they don't have that video, then they are lying about having it. And if they are lying about that, I don't believe a thing they say.

They distracted a nation with their little road show and they got to impose martial law for half a day and play with all their shiny Patriot Act toys.

One thing I noticed over and over again on the message boards among the people who bought into all this crap was people saying they couldn't understand why these kids who had so much going on would do something like this out of the blue. They wanted them taken alive so they could finally understand it.

Perhaps that is what the marketing experts who run this country's political wing were hearing in all their focus groups so they decided to take him in alive so they could tell us some made up story and the idiots out here would believe it.

Perhaps that senator is going to get his wish and they will hold him as an enemy combatant and he will set the precedent for that.

Either way, the official story is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still alive, most of the injured victims are getting out of the hospital resting at home and Boston is no longer under martial law. Soon enough there will be something else for the unofficial investigators to focus on and the odd pictures of Craft International hanging out around the bomb sites with the strange white haired man and his two backpacks will fade into memories of ops gone bye.

The ending could have been worse I suppose but we will have to see how this operation will be used against us in the future.

It's still Friday though and thus, the forecast from this guy still holds true. We will see what turns up in the guy's apartment and how they try to link him to other groups or the internet or whatever.

[David Guyatt]

Well, well. Similarities to Madrid and London eh?

Updated Friday, April 19, 9:10 p.m.

The FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsaerov, the elder of the brothers suspected in the Boston bombings, in 2011, two U.S. law enforcement officials told ProPublica Friday evening. The FBI agents conducted the inquiry into suspected extremist or terrorist activity at the request of a Russian security agency, the officials said.


"Yes he was interviewed," a U.S. law enforcement official said. "Nothing derogatory came of it. We reported it back to the other agency, but never got anything as far as further communications from them. There was never any reason to do anything else."


Tsaerov's mother has told media outlets that the FBI had contact with her about her son's potential involvement in extremism five years ago, but the law enforcement official said authorities were only aware of the inquiry in 2011. Other media outlets also reported the 2011 interview late Friday.

Tsaerov's mother has told media outlets that the FBI had contact with her about her son's potential involvement in extremism five years ago, but the law enforcement official said authorities were only aware of the inquiry in 2011. Other media outlets also reported the 2011 interview late Friday.


In past cases in the United States and overseas, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have identified, followed or investigated suspects who were later implicated in attacks or plots. Experts point out that security forces simply do not have enough personnel to constantly watch every potential extremist who comes to their attention. Hard decisions have to be made.


Cases that have brought criticism of U.S. authorities include the failure to more closely investigate leads about Maj. Nidal Hassan, the accused shooter in the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, and about David Coleman Headley, a central figure in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Snip...

Cautiously from Aangirfan:

SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2013


TSAEROVS WORKED FOR THE CIA?


Tamerlan Tsarnaev, above, was killed. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the other Boston marathon bombs suspect, was captured


Did the Boston Bombers work for the CIA in Chechnya?


In 2011, the FBI reportedly interviewed Tamerlan Tsaerov, the elder brother.


The FBI conducted the inquiry at the request of a Russian security agency, officials said.


Boston Bombing Suspects Echo Home-Grown Terrorists in Madrid, London Attacks


"Yes he was interviewed," a U.S. law enforcement official said. "Nothing derogatory came of it."


The brothers had traveled in recent years to Russia, officials said.


Tamerlan was in Moscow in July 2012, according to a U.S. law enforcement official.


Hassan, subjected to CIA mind-control?


Major Nidal Hassan, the accused shooter in the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, was very well known to the FBI prior to the massacre.


Prior to the massacre, an FBI investigation concluded that Hassan's emails exchanged with al Qaeda's Anwar al-Awlaki were innocent and that he was not a threat.


AL-AWLAKI secretly worked for the CIA


Headley


David Headley, who planned the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was very well known to the US security services prior to the attacks.


Headley had worked for the US Drugs Enforcement Administration and he had boasted to a close friend that he also worked for the CIA.


DAVID HEADLEY - 'DRUG DEALER AND CIA AGENT'


Aswat, alleged mastermind of the 7/7 London bombings


The UK police claimed that Haroon Rashid Aswat had made telephone calls to the alleged London bombers.


They then declared that Aswat was of no interest in the bomb investigation.


Former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus claims that the alleged London bombing mastermind Haroon Rashid Aswat "works for the MI6".

Is there a pattern forming here?

[David Guyatt]

Suspect No.2 was found hiding in a boat in the back garden in a suburb of Watertown, by the house owner, who walked up and looked inside and saw the suspect in hiding. He wasn't shot. He called the police. They established a cordon, and a shootout lasting one hour ensued.

The suspect was taken to hospital where his injuries are being treated. The gunshot injuries are said to have occurred during the shootout two days ago.

So, a shootout lasting one hour and the suspect is apprehended alive and without further injury.

Am I getting this correctly?

[David Guyatt]

Laterally, for some reason, I'm reminded of k.t. Frankovich's harrowing account of the behaviour of military types in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew.

The entire first person account deserves to be read.

I have just read the whole piece and it is deeply, deeply shocking. I think you word flabbergasted fits here. Perhaps cattle might be more accurate.

[Magda Hassan]

Suspect No.2 was found hiding in a boat in the back garden in a suburb of Watertown, by the house owner, who walked up and looked inside and saw the suspect in hiding. He wasn't shot. He called the police. They established a cordon, and a shootout lasting one hour ensued.

The suspect was taken to hospital where his injuries are being treated. The gunshot injuries are said to have occurred during the shootout two days ago.

So, a shootout lasting one hour and the suspect is apprehended alive and without further injury.

Am I getting this correctly?

The house owner apparently saw blood marks on the boat cover and went over to have a look. Saw a man in there with blood on him and went inside and called the police. Don't know if Dzhokhar was armed or not but home owner not shot at. I think they were also using stun guns. But who knows really?

[Peter Lemkin]

Suspect No.2 was found hiding in a boat in the back garden in a suburb of Watertown, by the house owner, who walked up and looked inside and saw the suspect in hiding. He wasn't shot. He called the police. They established a cordon, and a shootout lasting one hour ensued.

The suspect was taken to hospital where his injuries are being treated. The gunshot injuries are said to have occurred during the shootout two days ago.

So, a shootout lasting one hour and the suspect is apprehended alive and without further injury.

Am I getting this correctly?

The house owner apparently saw blood marks on the boat cover and went over to have a look. Saw a man in there with blood on him and went inside and called the police. Don't know if Dzhokhar was armed or not but home owner not shot at. I think they were also using stun guns. But who knows really?

Even if he was armed, he didn't shoot at the homeowner and there was NO need for the police to shoot at him. He was trapped, surrounded, injured and without food and water. They could EASILY have gotten him without firing a shot..but it is NOT the mindset now of any Police or Military! We are at war, remember! I also don't see how an hour firefight could not have killed him or injured him further. A wood boat might hide where his body was, but bullets would go through the wood without problem. The whole story is being presented falsely....they also didn't read him his Miranda rights. Its riddled with lies, deceptions, over-reaction and likely false-flag aspects. The MSM are, as expected, following the hymn book and treating all 'official' information as the absolute and only truth. :what:

[Jeffrey Orling]

It's hard to understand the motives of these youngsters. From the MSM garbage there is no hint to them being radicalized and political. If one wants to get all conspiratorial... then..

These guys were recruited to assist in the war on terror and they would play the role of bombers at the Marathon exercise. They would simply be carrying not to be detonated bombs in their backpacks... plus they has been given some weapons and grenades... maybe.

At the marathon, the drill was switched to *live* by FBI or rogue hired security such as Craft... who did have bombs and dropped them and they were detonated. The suspects took off realizing that they not only had been duped but could be caught with bombs and weapons and so forth... the intent... caught dead or alive with the bombs.

In this fantasy... they can't go to the *authorities* because it was the *authorities* who hired them and so they could only run and try to escape.. which would be impossible.

The thousands of images would bring too much scrutiny to the entire investigation and so after the event... in the hunt to get them the authorities closed everything down so there would be as few if any witnesses to the hunt as possible. The 19yr old was discovered alive and everything was on live TV and so unless he came out blazing shooting... they would have to take him alive. Apparently he was wounded and too weak and too scared to want to die in a hail of bullets so he gave up. Now the FBI has the guy and we will get a reason for what he did. Obviously if he was a patsy he will not be allowed to say this. So some sort of extreme pressure will be on him to cop to some plea as a terrorist... and be sent to max security forever.

The freaky thing was how the authorities closed down Boston, Amtrak transport into the place... public transport and got everyone cowering in the homes... whihe thousands of paramilitaries hunted for a wounded 19 yr old. The show of force was telling. The control of the media and the population was chilling.

The takeaway is that we need to give up more rights and freedom to not be blown to bits walking down the street.

[David Guyatt]

It's hard to understand the motives of these youngsters. From the MSM garbage there is no hint to them being radicalized and political. If one wants to get all conspiratorial... then..

These guys were recruited to assist in the war on terror and they would play the role of bombers at the Marathon exercise. They would simply be carrying not to be detonated bombs in their backpacks... plus they has been given some weapons and grenades... maybe.

At the marathon, the drill was switched to *live* by FBI or rogue hired security such as Craft... who did have bombs and dropped them and they were detonated. The suspects took off realizing that they not only had been duped but could be caught with bombs and weapons and so forth... the intent... caught dead or alive with the bombs.

In this fantasy... they can't go to the *authorities* because it was the *authorities* who hired them and so they could only run and try to escape.. which would be impossible.

The problem with this fantasy Jeff, is that it is credible.

This is not to say that is what really happened, but, I remain deeply suspicious of a number of elements of the story. MY first and greatest concern is the simple fact that there was a bomb exercise going on when this is not normal in marathons. The second thing that causes me to raise my eyebrows was the 7 mile non fly zone. Why? The only thing that makes sense to me is to keep media cameras away, so that the story could be controlled by the authorities. Thirdly, why did personnel from Craft International arrive in two unmarked cars at the 2nd shootout, that resulted in nothing obvious, but was a very definitive shootout -- I heard dozens of weapons being discharged. So did Fox News reporters. Maybe Craft were also present at the final shootout. Who knows, there's no TV or film footage to show us.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here's a nefarious narrative emerging.

Basically: don't trust "internet detectives", because "only official forces of law and order" can be "trusted" to identify the "true killers".

It's a Sunsteinian variation of: unless we call it a conspiracy, then it's a "conspiracy theory".

Psyops seizing the opportunity to affect the mass psyche.

Boston bombing identification attempts on social media end in farce

Users' enthusiasm to assist law enforcement through crowdsourcing leads to cases of mistaken identity on Reddit

Peter Walker
The Guardian, Friday 19 April 2013 19.55 BST
Jump to comments (57)

Users of Reddit and 4chan used FBI handouts to search for clues to the Boston bombing
Boston bombing: users of Reddit and 4chan used FBI handouts such as this picture to search for clues. Photograph: AP

To enthusiasts it has shown the unparalleled power of modern connectivity and crowdsourcing. The less convinced term it "a million useless monkeys making a million useless speculations" or, more damning still, a game of "racist Where's Wally[sic]"

Whatever the eventual conclusion to the hunt for the Boston marathon bombers, law enforcement experts as much as social media gurus will be analysing the role played by community websites in assisting or perhaps hindering efforts to identify and track down those responsible.

Debate on the Boston blasts has centred on a pair of hugely popular but quite technologically basic bulletin board-type sites, Reddit and 4chan. Before Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were identified, users of both pored endlessly and publicly over photographs and videos of the packed crowd at the marathon finish, hunting for clues.

There was a particular mass of this on Reddit, which operates a system in which readers' votes push items up a ranking list. Much of this involved crudely computer-drawn circles highlighting people in the marathon crowd who happened to be carrying a rucksack or, to a Reddit user's eye, looked suspicious in some other way. It seemed that being non-white was often a cause for suspicion.

The efforts of these "self-deputised internet detectives", as one journalist called them, saw unwelcome attention focus on several people who, it soon emerged, had nothing to do with the bombings. Some of the speculation bordered on the farcical. One bag-toting presumed suspect, named "Blue Robe Guy" by users, was accused of such actions as "trying to look nonchalant".

But there were serious repercussions. A Moroccan-born 17-year-old, Salah Eddin Barhoum, and his friend, Yassine Zaime, were highlighted incorrectly as potential suspects on Reddit, and later on the front page of the New York Post. Barhoum's father said later he was worried for the safety of his son and the rest of his family.

Even when authorities issued pictures of the Tsarnaevs, without names, the potentially harmful tide of misinformation did not stop. Reddit users quickly, and wrongly, identified the younger of the pair as Sunil Tripathi, a reportedly depressed Brown University student who disappeared in March.

There was a similar mass of fevered speculation at 4chan, a pointedly anarchic site which began as a discussion point for Japanese animation. The grandly-styled "4chan think tank", a mass of photographs and videos of the bomb scene with people highlighted for reasons such as looking in a different direction to everyone else, was so clearly ludicrous it soon spawned a parody on the very same website.

Amid the chaos, however, there were signs of both self-regulation and also the sheer power of information on such an industrial scale. Reddit users reminded others about Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused of involvement in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. When the FBI circulated photos of the Tsarnaevs, moderators began deleting images of anyone else. Posters then began tracking the brothers' progress using their own photos, including a chilling image of the white-hatted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev standing just yards from the youngest victim of the blasts, eight-year-old Martin Richard.

It is undeniable that, in some instances, crowdsourcing can be hugely powerful. Earlier this year a Reddit user posted a photo of a car's front headlight, the only clue left at the scene of a hit-and-run. A knowledgeable reader was able to pin down not just the model but the precise year.

The greatest paradox is that the most significant single clue for police seems to have come from a very old-fashioned piece of detective work: first-hand testimony from a brave eyewitness. One of the iconic images of the bombs' aftermath was Jeff Bauman, 27, being taken away in a wheelchair, the bottom half of his legs shattered. As soon as Bauman awoke from sedation, his brother has since recounted, he was able to give FBI investigators a vital description of a man who dropped a bag at his feet shortly before the explosion.

Police face "a double edged sword" in dealing with the mass of information after such a public crime, said Peter Kirkham, former detective chief inspector with the Metropolitan police.

The benefits come when police can release images of a particular suspect and use the internet and social media as a gigantic wanted poster. The difficulties arise beforehand, he said: "Unless you see someone doing something you know is part of the act of the crime, you cannot say, 'That's my suspect.' You will not see suspicious behaviour from video footage, let alone still pictures. People have their own pet theories, based on racism or another prejudice, as to why something is suspicious. That's how names get out, which devastates people's lives and distracts law enforcement."