[URL="http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/11/9006/print/"]Boston Bomber Carjacking Unravels Part I of II
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Quote: [SUP][1][/SUP]"Danny"
An exclusive WhoWhatWhy investigation has found serious factual inconsistencies in accounts provided by the only witness to the alleged confession of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
Why does this matter? Because this witness is the sole source for the entire publicly accepted narrative of who was behind the bombing and its aftermathand why these events occurred.
In case we've forgotten how convoluted and murky the story initially seemed, let's recall how:
-Tamerlan Tsarnaev, on a US security watch list since 2011 after the Russians provide a warning to American intelligence, goes overseas and allegedly exhibits further problematic behavior [SUP][2][/SUP].
-In April, 2013, a savage attack is unleashed at the Boston Marathon, disrupting an iconic American event. Innocent people lose limbs and lives, America is traumatized anew, and a large American city is "locked" down" while normal processes and procedures are abandoned. We are told that Tsarnaev and his younger brother are responsible for all thisand for the cold-blooded execution of a campus police officer several days later.
Yet our sense of certainty that the Tsarnaevs did thisand did it alone, with no one else, including America's security apparatus, knowing a thingis actually dependent largely on the say-so of one person, one witness.
Thus, the problems we have uncovered with the witness's testimony (as represented by law enforcement) now raise questions about almost everything concerning what has been described as the largest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
Truth and Its Pants
As the classic saying goes, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." That is perhaps even more true in these days of Twitter and Facebook and instant blogging. When a big news story breaks, the first reports are often rife with misinformation based on a combination of innocent mistakes, sloppiness, conjecture, and poor communication. Yet it's also true that during those first 24 hours pieces of inconvenient truth may emerge that will soon be denied or even suppressed as the messy facts get neatly fashioned into an "official story."
Such was the case with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy: sheriff's deputies converging on the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas reported finding an entirely different type of gun than the one ultimately said to have been the murder weapon. And doctors at Parkland Hospital claimed initially that a shot had hit President Kennedy from the front, before they were told in no uncertain terms that they were mistaken, and a narrative formed around all the shots coming from behindand only from the Depository.
Truth seekers know, from experience, to pay close attention to how a narrative changes in the first hours, days and weeks following an event of significance. And nowhere would that be truer than when the source of the changing story is the principal witness.
Meet "Danny"
The identification of the alleged Boston bombers, now a virtually unchallenged "fact," is based largely on a single event: the supposed carjacking of a young man whose identity is still masked from public scrutiny. The public's understanding of what took place is based on this anonymous person's oft-cited claims to have witnessed a dual confession from Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who boasted of having committed both the bombing and a later murder of an MIT police officer.
According to the widely accepted story of the horrific events of April 15-19, 2013, three days after the Marathon bombing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer was shot and within minutes, a young man in a Mercedes SUV was carjacked, across the river in the Brighton section of Boston. Police and media accounts have Tamerlan Tsarnaev abducting a young Chinese national (known publicly only by the pseudonymous first name "Danny"). In these accounts, Tsarnaev tells Danny that he was responsible for both the Boston bombing and the MIT shooting. [SUP][3][/SUP]
The alleged carjacking led to a law enforcement shutdown of the greater Boston area, a huge manhunt, and subsequent confrontations in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, was seriously wounded by multiple gunshots while hidden in a boat, before being apprehended by police.
In the current "official" narrative, the Tsarnaev brothers took Danny on a wild 90-minute ride that traversed the Boston area and involved stops to extract money from Danny's bank account and then to buy gas for the brothers' planned escape from the Boston metro area.
It was during a stop at a gas station, the story goes, that the younger brother went inside to pay for the gas. While the older brother was momentarily preoccupied with a GPS device, Danny made his escape and was soon sharing with law enforcement his claim that he had heard the crucial confession.
But a 10-month investigation by WhoWhatWhy has found major inconsistencies in Danny's story inconsistencies that call into question whether the authorities now prosecuting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for murder are leveling with the American people.
The Consensus Narrative
The consensus narrative of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, which began appearing in the media as early as the morning of April 19, goes something like this:
Quote:For several days after the violence of Monday, April 15which killed three people and injured another 264an uneasy public waited nervously for word of who was behind the savage attack. The authorities were under intense pressure to produce results. The hours and days ticked by.
Then, suddenly, action! At 5pm on Thursday afternoon, the FBI released pictures of two suspects. At approximately 10:20, violence exploded anew, in a different and wholly surprising direction. On the quiet nighttime streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, an MIT campus police officer, Sean Collier, was apparently executed in cold blood by the panicked Tsarnaev brothers in a botched effort to get his gun. And then another newsflash: a young Boston man had been carjackedand after a bizarre, circuitous drive around the area, escaped to tell an astonishing tale: his captors had confessed to him their responsibility for both the Marathon bombing and the killing of Officer Collier.
That turn of events ushered in a cavalcade of developments almost too rapid to follow. It justified the unprecedented military and law enforcement "lockdown" of Greater Boston and the intense manhunt that riveted the world and brought the Boston bombing story to a quick and dirty conclusion. In the early morning hours of April 19, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a firefight. His younger brother Dzhokhar escaped, but was discovered that evening hiding in a boat parked in a backyard, and was apprehended in critical condition after authorities fired a barrage of shots into the boat.
This frontier-justice resolution of a national tragedy eventually led to a huge rally featuring the vice president as the key speaker, praising the bravery and responsiveness of the security state. A specialty beer and a charity event were fashioned around the tragic young officer, bike rides and a host of tributes to the "first responder" followed.In the end, everyone could feel good about their country, about the "heroism" of the lowly, underpaid campus cop, about the vaunted efficiency of their law-enforcement agencies. Stressed-out Bostonians, and Americans everywhere, could be reassured that all was well in the land.
That is the generally established narrative. But after studying the various accounts provided by "Danny" to the media and law enforcement, WhoWhatWhy has found substantial inconsistencies on a range of points.
Taken together, those inconsistencies demonstrate at minimum essential unreliability, and perhaps something much more troubling…from a key witness offering damning life-or-death evidence in the worst terrorist attack since 9/11.
Is Danny some pathological liar seeking fame? Or is he someone more sympathetic and perhaps vulnerablea foreign-national entrepreneur, with an uncertain immigration status, being squeezed by law enforcement to help quickly tidy up a messy disaster that caught our multi-billion-dollar-a-year national security apparatus off guard?
Where was Danny Carjacked? Danny said: Brighton Avenue, Allston (across the river from Cambridge) [B]Conflicting version:[/B] 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Street, Cambridge [SUP][4][/SUP], the Middlesex County District Attorney initially said. How Long Was Danny Held Hostage? Danny said: 90 minutes (reported by The Boston Globe, NBC and CBS). [B]Conflicting version 1: [/B]30 minutes [SUP][4][/SUP]according to a joint statement by Middlesex acting district attorney Michael Pelgro, Cambridge police commissioner Robert Haas and MIT police chief John DiFava:
"Authorities launched an immediate investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. The investigation determined that two males were involved in this shooting.
"A short time later, police received reports of an armed carjacking by two males in the area of Third Street in Cambridge.
"The victim was carjacked at gunpoint by two males and was kept in the car with the suspects for approximately a half hour." [B]Conflicting version 2: [/B]"a few minutes," according to the Boston Globe and this report by the Associated Press [SUP][5][/SUP], citing the Cambridge Police Department:
"Police said Friday at a Watertown news conference that one of the brothers stayed with the carjacking victim for a few minutes and then let him go."
Pervaiz Shallwani of the Wall Street Journal, one of the very few who was able to see at least part of the Cambridge police report, supports this shorter time span when he writes:
"Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers accused of the bombing, crossed the Charles River into Boston and stole a Mercedes SUV at gunpoint, briefly holding the driver hostage, according to an excerpt from the Cambridge Police Department report filed by the driver and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."
How Did Danny Gain His Freedom? Danny said: He escaped when Tamerlan, seated next to him, was momentarily distracted, according the Boston Globe, NBC and CBS. Conflicting version 1: He simply got out of the car when both brothers were outside the car, having left him alone, according to WMUR. [B]Conflicting version 2:[/B] The Tsarnaev brothers never held Danny as a captive, according to the Associated Press and Cambridge Police Department. They simply detained him for a few minutes, then left him by the roadside, essentially confiscating his vehicle. In this scenario, he had almost no interaction with the brothers, raising questions as to whether they would have confessed to the two crimes before taking off with his car. [SUP][6][/SUP]Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Tamerlan's Location When Danny Escapes? Conflicting version 1: Tamerlan was at the gas pump.
Note: the conversation below includes paraphrasing of Danny's comments in an ABC (WMUR) interview with Nick Spinetto, April 22, 2013 [SUP][7][/SUP]. We replaced the paraphrases with Danny's actual comments whenever they were flashed on the screenpresumably from a transcript of Spinetto's interview with Danny. While they are very similar to Spinetto's paraphrasing, we used the on-screen comments from Danny for greater precision.
Quote:Spinetto: (On camera) Well, the carjacking victim is actually shaken to the core after being taken hostage by the Boston Marathon bombers. Today, he and I spoke at length. For safety reasons, he asked us not to reveal his name, but he did describe in vivid detail his capture by the wanted terrorists, those brutal minutes he thought he would die and, ultimately, his brave escape. Spinetto: (Voice over scene) Shortly after MIT police officer Sean Collier was killed, authorities received reports of an armed carjacking only minutes away. Monday, that carjacking victim was ready to tell his story, but not ready to do an on-camera interview. The man says it was Thursday night around 11, he was in his car pulled over to the side of the road, when a man approached holding a gun to the passenger side window.
The victim said: "the man asked if I knew about the Boston bombing explosion. He said: I did that.'"
Court documents released Monday afternoon state: "the man with a gun forced the victim to drive to a second location, where they picked up a second man. The two men put something in the trunk of the victim's vehicle." The contents are thought to be the ammunition and explosives used in a battle with police later that night. The carjacking victim says he was forced into the front passenger seat as one brother drove. Now a hostage, he says: "They asked me where I'm from. I told them I'm Chinese. I was very scared. I asked them if they going to hurt me. They say they won't hurt me. I was thinking, I think they will kill me later." But if that was their plan, they wouldn't get the chance. The victim told us: "My car is running out of gas, so they want to have some gas." Spinetto: (On camera) The carjacking victim says that he drove, here, to this Shell station on Memorial drive. While one brother went inside to pay for the gas, the other pumped… and that's when the victim took off. Spinetto: (Voice over scene) Of his daring escape, he says: "I thought it was a very good chance for me to run. So, I made a judgment. I use my left hand to unbuckle my belt, my right hand to open door… I jump out of the car, run away across the street. The guy… outside the car tried to catch me… use his hand. Tried to catch me but I ran very fast. Couldn't capture me because I run very fast. I heard them they said (expletive) when I get to run. I'm still… I can't stop recording that moment when I was running out of the car… I was running… I was worried. It was very scary at that moment. For me, I'm so lucky."
Conflicting version 2: Tamerlan was in the car. Note: This version comes from an interview with Danny by CBS News' John Miller.
Quote:Miller: So, when you get to the gas station, tell me what everybody does. Who does what, first, and then what happens? Danny: Okay, so, when we get it to the gas station… hm… Jahar [Dzhokhar] get out of the car, he took my… credit card, trying to pump using my credit card. I was very lucky, the pump, it was only cash only. So, he look, looked at my window, say, asked me, [he] say: "It's cash only!" So, Tamerlan asked him to pay some cash inside. John Miller: So he has to go in the store. Danny: Jahar has to go into a store. John Miller: So now it's you and Tamerlan in the car. Danny: I was with Tamerlan, so, I think it's a very good chance for me, you know, there's only one person in the car right now… and uh, I was, uh, trying to watch what, uh, Tamerlan is doing… uh, I was trying to find the gun… I didn't see the gun because the gun was put in the pocket of the, of the door. John Miller: Now, is Tamerlan sitting next to you in the car? Is he standing outside the car? Danny: He was sitting next to me. He was on the, uh, driver's seat, I was on the passenger seat. John Miller: So this, you think, this is your chance. Danny: This is my chance. So, I was… struggling, you know, should I do this? Should I do this? Becau [sic]… another good thing for me is the door was unlocked. The only thing I have to do is, use my left hand to unfasten the seatbelt, use my right hand to open the door. John Miller: So, the thing that you've been rehearsing in your mind, three steps, is now down to two. Danny: Down to two, yeah. So, that's [unintelligible] I found that Tamerlan used both his hands, like, play, like, doing some GPS thing, or something. So, I think it's very good for me.
[YouTube version: [SUP][8][/SUP] includes comment that Tamerlan was "fiddling" with GPS.] John Miller: So he's got, he's got the gun in the side pocket of the door, he's got a GPS, his brother's in the gas station, and you say… the time is now. Danny: Yeah, yeah…the time is now, you know. John Miller: So how do you do that in your head? Do you say, 123…? Danny: I was, I was counting- I was counting, I went, 1234. And I… just do it! And ah, I did it. John Miller: So what happens? Danny: I jump out of the, jump, jump out of the, the vehicle, and I close the door, and I can feel, Tamerlan was trying to grab me, he didn't touch me, but I could feel him trying to grab me. John Miller: And now you're runnin'. Danny: I was run. I was runnin', I was running.
Conflicting version 3: The New York Times version
As if it weren't enough to discover these totally incompatible versions of whether he was carjacked at all, and if so, for how long, and whether he escaped or was released, there is yet another variation, courtesy of the "newspaper of record," The New York Times, the preferred go-to place for official leaks.
The article [SUP][9][/SUP] appeared on April 20 under the bylines of two Washington-based, veteran national security reporters.In the piece, almost entirely based on a narrative delivered to the world's most influential news organization by an unnamed source identified only as a "senior law enforcement official," the official explains that
"It was only after the suspects decided not to kill the owner of a sport utility vehicle that had been carjacked and instead threw him out of his car around 1 a.m. a decision that ultimately undid their plans to elude the authorities that they re-emerged on the authorities' radar."
It is certainly interesting that in this interview, presumably viewed as crucial, and conducted within a day or so of the carjacking, a highly briefed official would get "wrong" such a central fact as Danny's manner of parting with the brothers.
The Times account may have been the first "official" story of what happened. It would be many days before Danny's revised account of a dramatic escape would emerge. (If the Times ever published an explanation of how it got this so "wrong" in comparison with the eventual official narrative, we could not find it.)
Also, in Danny's revised account, there is no mention that the suspects "decide[d] not to kill" him. Indeed, he said they made clear from the outset that they would not harm him. Putting together elements of these two different accounts, one could conclude that, in fact, the hijackers always meant not to harm him but only to use his car to escape what they took to be their own certain deaths if they remained in town during a police manhunt spurred by a "cop killing" that they had reason to think they would be accused of. ***
Spinetto's interview with Danny tracks with the New York Times' version, and it is based not on a second-hand account from an unidentified law enforcement source but on a direct interview with Danny. So we thought it essential to ask Spinetto what he made of all this.
Yet when WhoWhatWhy contacted Spinetto, he told us he could not speak with us unless the station manager at the Hearst-owned WMUR, Alisha McDevitt, approved. In an email, McDevitt wrote: "We will not be able to approve this request."
To sum up, we see three very different versions. Version 1: Danny was essentially let go by his "captors" Version 2: The brothers cared so little about him that he was left alone in the car, and then "escaped." Version 3: He "bravely" escaped when Tamerlan let his guard down and was momentarily distracted.
The one thing we notice about the evolution of the Danny narrative is that the original story did little to support the notion that the brothers were cold-blooded, ruthless killers. Simply put, the story that is now cast in stone makes much more sense if the goal was to create an impression of the brothers as ideologically driven terrorists and the murderers of an innocent police officer.
First Report of a Confessionand to One or Both Crimes?
The first "dual confession" report [SUP][10][/SUP] we could find, from the Associated Press, came early on the afternoon of April 19, from Edward Deveau, police chief of Watertown, the scene of a wild car chase during which Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly lobbed explosives at his pursuers before being gunned down.
The carjacking victim was released unharmed at a gas station in Cambridge, sources said. He told police the brothers said they were the marathon bombers and had just killed a campus officer.
By the next day, more news outlets (see this [SUP][12][/SUP] and this [SUP][13][/SUP]) were picking up the dual admission.
However, the Criminal Complaint, filed on the 21[SUP]st[/SUP], which states [SUP][14][/SUP] that Tamerlan admitted to Danny their role in the bombing, notably says nothing about an admission to having killed Collier.
The man pointed a firearm at the victim and stated, "Did you hear about the Boston explosion?" and "I did that."
On April 22, Nick Spinetto interviews Danny [SUP][15][/SUP] for WMUR and ABC. Interestingly, Spinetto has Tamerlan admitting to the Marathon bombing, but, as with the Criminal Complaint, there is no mention of killing Officer Collier. This omission seems highly newsworthy on its own. [SUP][16][/SUP]Officer Sean Collier
On April 25, late in the evening, the Boston Globe published on boston.com [SUP][17][/SUP] an article based on an interview with Danny by its reporter Eric Moskowitz, the most detailed account to date [SUP][18][/SUP]an account that has subsequently become the "official" carjacking narrative. It characterizes Tamerlan Tsarnaev's actions as follows:
"Don't be stupid," he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier.
"I did that," said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev "And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge."
In interviews a few days after the Globe article, Danny's story had gelled. His account to CBS's John Miller is substantially similar to a contemporaneous interview with NBC's Matt Lauer.
The question is, what happened between Danny's first interview and the subsequent ones that led to the changed narrative?
Research assistance: James Henry
Coming up in Part II: A closer look at Danny and his story
It was never a believable story in so many of its aspects. this just adds more proofs to that IMHO. Sadly, this is one false-flag operation that most Americans have swallowed hook, line and sinker! It will take enormous work to break that magic spell, sadly. It will be a small group of what most will consider 'conspiracy theorists' who will know the truth...while the majority will be manipulated deeper into the Police State based on this and other fabricated events/lies. The murder [in 'self defense'] of the surviving brother's friend in Florida while unarmed and surrounded by several hostile 'questioning' FBI men is, to me, the second most unbelievable part of a totally unbelievable story. The mismatch of the intact torso of the older brother after the 'firefight' and his autopsy photos showing multiple wounds and gashes to his chest and head are a dead giveaway that the official story is not correct...but the MSM won't even 'go' there. There are so many other contradictions, most mentioned above in this thread.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
There remain so many questions about the Boston event that I'm surprised no one has decided to specialise in building a detailed picture and raise all these questions.
Not least amongst these questions is the role played by the strangely named Craft International. Why were they there, what was their role, and above all WHO hired them? Who actually authorised their participation?
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There was, as seems to now be the style at these false flag events, a mysterious "bomb exercise" that ran alongside the marathon itself.
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The whole thing stinks to high heavens.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Quote:Why "Danny" Matters
The carjacking victim is an important figure in this singular national dramaand presumably could be a key witness if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's case comes to trial.
With Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to seek the death penalty, it is a good bet that the government is looking for the younger Tsarnaev to settle for a guilty plea in return for avoiding execution. If that comes to pass, we may never hear his testimony on what took place and why. Even if he does end up testifying, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may find it prudent not to tell the whole truth, since he will surely be intent on engineering a sentencing deal. Under the more likely plea-bargain scenario, the mysterious carjacking victim, known to the public only as Danny, may never have to testify either. With one brother dead, the other presumably trying to avoid execution, and another potential person of interest, a friend of the Tsarnaevs named Ibragim Todashev, shot dead while in FBI custody, the prosecution may have no need to put Danny on the witness stand. In that event, the story he has already toldor, rather, the dominant narrative of several he has providedwill remain the final word on who committed the bombing and the MIT homicide.
Clearly, this witness's unique role makes him worth scrutinizing. [SUP][3][/SUP]"Danny" in silhouette, interview with CBS News
Why Is Danny Still Anonymous?
On April 25, 2013, the Boston Globe published [SUP][4][/SUP] what became the most complete account of Danny's involvement in the events of April 18. The article recounted how the Chinese national, a male, age 26, with an engineering Masters from Northeastern, returned to China after getting his degree, then came back in early 2013 and co-founded a tech startup. He lived in an apartment near MIT with a roommate, had a new Mercedes SUV, and liked to go for nighttime drives in and around Boston to unwind.
In an exclusive interview, Danny told the Boston Globe's Eric Moskowitz that he had been working late on April 18, and then went for a drive, which was for him a customary way of blowing off steam. He was in his leased SUV, which he'd had for just two months since returning from China, and which had only 2500 miles on it. After driving for about 20 minutes, he saw police heading toward MIT. He said that his housemate, a female, texted him in Chinese that something was going on at MIT. But he ignored the text. He finally stopped to check the text, in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston at 60 Brighton Avenue, across the river from Cambridge.
At that moment, a car pulled in behind him, and a young man wielding a pistol approached. Danny was forced to let the assailant (and soon, a second young man) into his car. He drove them around the greater Boston area, provided cash from his bank account, and then, while one brother was paying for gas, managed to escape and tell his story to police.
In a situation like this, one might think that Danny would welcome a chance to tell his story. At a minimum, many people would admire him for his bravery in escaping from armed carjackers. It also seems like it would have been a priceless promotional opportunity for Danny's new startup. It's hard to think of someone with a budding business who wouldn't embrace an opportunity to get his brand out everywhere. Furthermore, the downside seemed minimal. One of his carjackers was dead, and the other badly wounded and in custody.
So why not be identified?
In his first interview [SUP][5][/SUP], with ABC affiliate reporter Nick Spinetto, Danny indicates that personal safety is the rationale for his wanting anonymity:
Today, he and I spoke at length. For safety reasons, he asked us not to reveal his name, but he did describe in vivid detail his capture by the wanted terrorists, those brutal minutes he thought he would die and, ultimately, his brave escape.
In a subsequent interview with the Boston Globe, on the other hand, Danny indicates [SUP][4][/SUP] that modesty was the rationale for his anonymity:
Danny, who offered his account only on the condition that the Globe not reveal his Chinese name, said he does not want attention. But he suspects his full name may come out if and when he testifies against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
"I don't want to be a famous person talking on the TV," Danny said, kneading his hands, uncomfortable with the praise he has received from the few friends he has shared the story with, some of whom encouraged him to go public. "I don't feel like a hero…I was trying to save myself."
However, when I later had a chance to interview Eric Moskowitz, the Globe reporter who produced the most detailed account to date of the carjacking, he provided me with yet another reason why Danny wanted to remain anonymous: that he didn't want his mother to be worried about him. Danny's father, he had explained to Moskowitz, knew about the carjacking, but his mother didn'tand he hoped to keep her from finding out by masking his identity in news stories.
It's not clear how his mother and others close to him back in China would not at least wonder given press reports that identified the carjacking victim as Chinese, aged 26, recently returned from China, with an engineering Masters from Northeastern, a new Mercedes SUV, and a tech startup. They are also the very details, after all, which made it possible for Moskowitz to locate Danny in the first place.
A few days later on the Today Show [SUP][6][/SUP], Matt Lauer summarized Danny's reasons for wanting to remain anonymous:
"Well, even now that he knows that…uh…you know, that they're both, one is dead and one is in custodyas you can see, he didn't want his identity revealed, he has said he will testify in the trialgladlyand he knows he'll be identified at that time, but for now he wants to stay under the radar."
Danny's desire for anonymity became even muddier when he offered an entirely different explanation in a CBS News interview. In that exchange, Danny's face was obscured and his voice altered. CBS Senior Correspondent John Miller addressed the identity issue in a post-interview chat with a program host:
"I asked him about why he wanted to be disguised, and he said, you know, I don't know if there is anyone else out there from this plot, if these guys have friends, if I'm going to be a witness at some trial, but at this point I'd rather keep my identity concealed."
Miller, himself a former FBI spokesman who practically coached Danny through his interview, must have realized how silly this sounded and pointed out that he knew of no witness who had been targeted by terrorists.
"And that's certainly understandable, although in the history of terrorism, I can't think of a case where the terrorist organization has targeted a witness."
This in itself was something of a red herring since, according to the official account, the Tsarnaev brothers were "lone wolves" without any confederates on the loose. [SUP][7][/SUP]Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (left), Tamerlan Tsarnaev (right), surveillance image
A Media Strategy for Danny
In my attempts at sorting out some of the ambiguities surrounding Danny, I turned to the Globe's Moskowitz, who had probably interacted the most with the mysterious source. Although he initially indicated he was too busy to see me, my persistence eventually won me a meeting with the reporter on May 22 in the Globe's cafeteria.
I was particularly interested in learning how it was that Danny's story, rather than being shared with all journalists, ended up being essentially curated by a handful of reporters from large, establishment news organizations. I was also interested in sorting out numerous confusing and conflicting elements of Danny's tale.
What follows is a detailed accounting of my efforts to understand the whys and wherefores of the key witness in "settling" the Boston Marathon bombing mystery.
First, I asked Moskowitz what he could tell me about the "story of the story." Here is what he said:
Within 48 hours of the carjacking, producers for the major TV networks had obtained Danny's license plate and then somehow traced it to himalthough how is unclear since it was a leased vehicle owned by a dealership. Danny declined to talk to the TV people but, unsure how to handle the media inquiries, he reached out to his former master's adviser at Northeastern University. The adviser consulted Ralph Martin, Northeastern's general counsel, who happened to be a former District Attorney of Suffolk County, which includes Boston.
Martin advised that if Danny was seeking fame, he should give interviews to TV. But if he wanted thoroughness, he should talk to the Globe. Danny's academic adviser then spoke to a friend of his, an urban planner for the city of Cambridge, who had a longstanding relationship with Moskowitz (Danny's thesis adviser knew Moskowitz, too), and the planner contacted him on the Monday after the carjacking.
That is how the sole print journalism access to the key witness in this extraordinary event was handed to a junior Globe reporter with no real investigative or crime experience, rather than to one of the veteran gumshoes who populate the Globe newsroom.
It was nice of the Globe to let Moskowitz keep his scoop. From a pure morale standpoint, this reflects well on the paper's management. But given the serious questions that should have been asked of Dannyand weren'tit probably has not served the larger interest. Of course, Globe editors probably made a correct calculation that the situation was so delicate that, rather than lose it, they would cooperate with the scenario as it was unfolding, rather than demand a switch to a more senior, potentially more hard-nosed and skeptical reporter.
***
Danny's thesis adviser told Moskowitz that Danny would call him. But he didn't.
After an internal debate at the Globe about whether it was worth antagonizing a prized source, Moskowitz set out to identify and locate Danny himself. Moskowitz says he provided the sketchy biographical details about Danny to his brother, who knows Mandarinand who found Danny's comments about matters of interest to Chinese students on a Chinese language website. The comments included his name and email address. Another friend got him into Danny's apartment building and he knocked on the door.
There was no answer at first, but then the door cracked open. The reporter identified himself and asked for "Danny" by his real Chinese name. The man at the door said, "He's here," and Moskowitz says he responded, "I'm just glad you're OK."
Danny let him in and the two talked, as Moskowitz tells it, "about everything other than the event. I kept him talking." They discussed Danny's master's thesis and how Moskowitz knew Danny's professor from his reporting on urban issues.
Moskowitz told me he dared not broach the subject of an interview at the time, but did so later by email.
***
Moskowitz said he found Danny extremely skittish, in general. He chalked it up to his essential nature, maybe to cultural differences. "If he's embarrassed or thinks he will disappoint, he disappears," he said. [SUP][8][/SUP]James "Jamie" Fox, criminologist, Northeastern University
Danny, however, was in command enough to want a mentor on handeven one he barely knew. That mentor was another Northeastern professor, a criminologist named James "Jamie" Fox, an often quoted and media-savvy fellow with his own blog on the Globe website. Purportedly also introduced to Danny via the thesis adviser, Fox quickly offered himself as an intermediary to the media. He would become a key figure in this storypresent and active when Moskowitz interviewed Danny for the Globe.
One of Danny's conditions for the interview with Moskowitz was that Professor Fox would be there.
According to Moskowitz, some of the lack of clarity in his account of what transpired on the night of April 18 may have resulted from frequent interruptions by Professor Fox and by what seemed to him to be interview-steering by the criminologist.
As for Danny, Moskowitz described him as "guileless." "He told me his ATM password," he said.
Fox Guarding the Henhouse
Moskowitz told me he didn't feel comfortable introducing Danny to me, but that Fox might be able to arrange it.
If Danny was guileless, Fox was anything but.
In my brief dealings with the professor, and my attempts to get him to arrange an interview for me with Danny, I found him consistently determined to control access to Danny. He told me he would "try" to arrange it, but that it would be up to Danny, and then insisted that if an interview were to take place he would probably need to be present. And, after promising to make a concerted effort to arrange such an interview in the short window of time before I had to leave Boston, Fox appeared to lose interest. He ended up ticking off a series of laughable excuses.
Finally, he got back to me. He said that Danny was reluctant to meet with me. He said that Danny had read some of my early writing on the Boston case, and was displeased because I had noted how several of the young characters in the story appeared to drive expensive cars.
Mostly, though, Fox said that "Danny" was just nervous about meeting with meand Fox seemed to me a bit nervous about "Danny" meeting with me, too. The long and short of it is that I have never heard from Danny, and never again from Fox.
The Case of the Incurious Criminologist
Troubled by Fox's role in the story, which hardly squared with what one might expect from a criminologistwhose principal concern is studying crime, not squiring mysterious witnessesI researched his statements on the bombing story.
In this [SUP][9][/SUP] CNN video, Professor Fox, like some kind of Boston Zelig [SUP][10][/SUP], is standing beside the only other carjacking witness, an immigrant gas station attendant to whom "Danny" ran for help. This is during an interview of the attendant by CNN's Piers Morganit is not clear why Fox is standing next to this man.
Fox turns out to be less the investigator than the fiery orator.
In one of his blogs, about the purported difficulty in finding a cemetery that would inter Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body, he wrote [SUP][11][/SUP]:
"I truly understand and appreciate why many folks want nothing to do with the corpse of a man who apparently hated America and our way of life."
"f and when [Dzhokhar] Tsarnaev were scheduled to die, his name and image would be plastered all over the news, further increasing his undeserved celebrity in the minds of those on the political fringe who view our government as evil and corrupt."
"The bombing seems to have been an attack against American life, not specifically American lives. Those killed and injured were unfortunate surrogates of the intended target: America and the freedoms we enjoy."
It's a mouthful given how little we knew at that time about any of thisand even how little we know almost a year later.
John Miller, PR Man for the FBI, Among Other Things
Fox was hardly the only well-situated figure who moved to promote what looks like an agreed-upon "consensus narrative." Consider CBS's John Miller, one of the TV reporters who got access to Danny.
That's the same John Miller who reported the strange and long-delayed (May 16) exclusive [SUP][14][/SUP] about how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, grievously wounded and bleeding badly, nevertheless managed to pull himself up and scrawl a confession-cum-manifesto on the wall of the boat in which he was hiding.
That's the same John Miller who left journalism in 2002 and spent the next eight years in government national security posts, including helping Chief William Bratton establish counterterrorism and criminal intelligence bureaus at the Los Angeles Police Department, serving as the top spokesman for the FBI, and then going to work for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [SUP][15][/SUP], which oversees both the FBI and CIA.
Thus, John Miller has close relationships with key people at the very agency whose actions call everything into question about this story.
Summing Up
As we see, a small group of journalists and one criminologist have effectively acted as gatekeepers to this mystery witness. Yet, as we reported in Part I [SUP][2][/SUP], the story told by the central witness in the Boston Bombing case does not add up. Have the gatekeepers not noticed?
We spelled out some of the many discrepancies that appear to undermine the tidy notion that the facts of the Boston Marathon bombing were settled within days of the heinous event. Perhaps it would be helpful to sum up the inconsistencies:
Danny was afraid for his life.
Danny was not afraid for his life.
Danny's car was taken from him and he was ejected almost immediately.
Danny was carjacked for 30 minutes.
Danny was carjacked for 90 minutes.
Danny's captors told him they would not harm him.
Danny's captors told him they had planted the Marathon bombs and killed the MIT cop and would harm him if he did not play ball.
Danny's captors told him to get out of his car and took off without him.
Both of Danny's captors got out of the car and virtually ignored him.
One of his captors remained in the car and Danny escaped when the man fiddled with a GPS, although the moment he opened the car door, the man made a futile grab at him.
Danny wanted anonymity because he was mostly worried about his own safety.
Danny wanted anonymity because he didn't want his mother to worry.
Danny wanted anonymity because he didn't want to appear heroic.
One has to give Danny a tremendous benefit of the doubt to believe that he would get that confused about momentous events in which he was the central player, telling such different versions of a story whose details, one would imagine, had been seared into his memory.
Note to Danny: We'd be glad to hear your side. Please contact us.
Note to readers: for background on other aspects of the Boston Marathon bombing story, please see this [SUP][16][/SUP], this [SUP][17][/SUP], this [SUP][18][/SUP], this [SUP][19][/SUP] and this [SUP][20][/SUP]. For lingering doubts about the murder of the MIT officer, see this [SUP][21][/SUP]. For more on the murder of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's friend, Ibragim Todashev, and FBI harassment of people who have sought to raise doubts about the official story, see this [SUP][22][/SUP].
In the meantime, consider the following:
Without the murder of the MIT policeman, followed by the carjacking confession reported by Danny, we would have no solved crime, no evidence linking anyone to the horrific Boston Marathon bombing except some grainy video of two guys wearing backpacks in a sea of other backpack-wearers near the source of the explosion. The assumption many of us make that the Tsarnaevs planted those bombs is just that: an assumption that, in the absence of the reported confession, has no evidence behind it.
Thanks to the media's consensus narrative, we think we saw or heard proof. But we didn't. We heard people saying there is proof, and we saw ambiguous footage that we were told established proof.
While this too-tidy scenario certainly calmed the public, it may also have poisoned a cherished principle of American justice: the notion of "innocent until proven guilty."
According to the consensus narrative, Tamerlan Tsarnaev commandeered a private car, and was soon joined by his younger brother. Tamerlan spontaneously informed their hostage that they were behind both the bombing and the shooting of the police officer. The hostage then escaped from the car, and relayed what he heard to police. But, in fact, beyond the testimony of a gas station owner that a man came running up and said he had been carjacked, we do not know what else of this is true.
Crucially, we do not knowthat Tamerlan Tsarnaev actually confessed to either the Boston bombing or the murder of Officer Collier. We only think we know this to be true because we have been told there was a witness. Yet we do not even know who that crucial witness is. We are left with the word of "the authorities" that this quasi-phantom, his identity protected by, and his remarks filtered through, handpicked intermediaries from the traditional media, is telling us the truth.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
14-03-2014, 10:20 AM (This post was last modified: 14-03-2014, 11:16 AM by Peter Lemkin.)
Lauren Johnson Wrote:John Miller, PR Man for the FBI, Among Other Things
Fox was hardly the only well-situated figure who moved to promote what looks like an agreed-upon "consensus narrative." Consider CBS's John Miller, one of the TV reporters who got access to Danny.
That's the same John Miller who reported the strange and long-delayed (May 16) exclusive [SUP][14][/SUP] about how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, grievously wounded and bleeding badly, nevertheless managed to pull himself up and scrawl a confession-cum-manifesto on the wall of the boat in which he was hiding.
That's the same John Miller who left journalism in 2002 and spent the next eight years in government national security posts, including helping Chief William Bratton establish counterterrorism and criminal intelligence bureaus at the Los Angeles Police Department, serving as the top spokesman for the FBI, and then going to work for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [SUP][15][/SUP], which oversees both the FBI and CIA.
Thus, John Miller has close relationships with key people at the very agency whose actions call everything into question about this story.
I hadn't known this before. It's quite damning isn't it - a reporter who was previously a national security type. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Lauren Johnson Wrote:John Miller, PR Man for the FBI, Among Other Things
Fox was hardly the only well-situated figure who moved to promote what looks like an agreed-upon "consensus narrative." Consider CBS's John Miller, one of the TV reporters who got access to Danny.
That's the same John Miller who reported the strange and long-delayed (May 16) exclusive [SUP][14][/SUP] about how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, grievously wounded and bleeding badly, nevertheless managed to pull himself up and scrawl a confession-cum-manifesto on the wall of the boat in which he was hiding.
That's the same John Miller who left journalism in 2002 and spent the next eight years in government national security posts, including helping Chief William Bratton establish counterterrorism and criminal intelligence bureaus at the Los Angeles Police Department, serving as the top spokesman for the FBI, and then going to work for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [SUP][15][/SUP], which oversees both the FBI and CIA.
Thus, John Miller has close relationships with key people at the very agency whose actions call everything into question about this story.
I hadn't known this before. It's quite damning isn't it - a reporter who was previously a national security type. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house...
Yeah, many in the MSM not only do the bidding of and avoid not-to-be-reported facts the intelligence/military/police/bankster/congressional/corporate secret state want - many of them actually work or worked for them officially. Not only wheels with wheels, but revolving doors within revolving doors......persons scratching each other's backs in a giant daisy-chain circle. ::prison::
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Quote:The US government's latest report on the Boston Marathon bombing is so full of revealing information buried in plain sight, it seems as if an insider is imploring someoneanyoneto dig deeper. It reads like the work of an unhappy participant in a cover-up.
Properly contextualized, the particulars in the report point to:
A Boston FBI agent seemingly recruiting and acting as Tamerlan Tsarnaev's control officer, interacting personally with him, preventing on multiple occasions serious investigations of Tsarnaev's activities, and then pleading ignorance to investigators in the most ludicrously improbable manner.
The likelihood that the blame game between the US and Russia over who knew what, and when, regarding Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his activities, masks a deeper geopolitical game which may very well point to the sine qua non of most such strugglesthe battle for the control of precious natural resources.
The sheer inability of well-meaning US government officialswho either may know or suspect that the "official" account of the Boston bombing, with the Tsarnaev brothers as lone wolf terrorists, is utterly falseto come out and state their true beliefs. The most recent report is an example of the necessity of reading between the lines.
***
The other day, we explained a key point missing from most coverage of the Boston Bombing story: that the US government may have been in contact with the alleged bombers before the Russians ever warned about them.
Now, it seems, the plot thickens further. As the mass media predictably overwhelms the public with a fanciful scenario in which we all are "Boston Strong" and everything ends well, we believe the citizenryand the victims of the bombingdeserve better.In our previous story, we were working from a leaked article about a forthcoming government report on the bombingwhose central message was that the bombing might have been prevented if only the Russians had not held back still more information beyond what they had provided to US intelligence. In other words, "Putin did it."
Since then, the report itself has been released. It is the coordinated product of probes by Inspectors General from a number of intelligence agencies and other governmental entities. Actually, what's been released is not the report itselfjust an unclassified summary filled with redactions. Even so, it is enormously revealing, as much for what it does not say as for what it does.
***
Be advised that this is not a short read. Our take is an in-depth look at how the government loads the dice for its own purposes. As such, it is necessarily complicated, with layers of obfuscation that need to be peeled away. But if you want to get some inkling of what might actually lay behind the Boston Marathon Bombing, read on.
Let's start by taking a look at the summary report.
On Page 1 you will find this paragraph:
Quote:In March 2011, the FBI received information from the FSB alleging that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva were adherents of radical Islam and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was preparing to travel to Russia to join unspecified underground groups in Dagestan and Chechnya. The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston (Boston JTTF) conducted an assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev to determine whether he posed a threat to national security and closed the assessment three months later having found no link or "nexus" to terrorism.
So, in March 2011, the FBI received information from the FSB (Russian internal security service, comparable to the FBI), warning about terrorist threats posed by the Tsarnaev family.
We have long been told that this Russian warning was the first time the Tsarnaevs were on the US government's radar.
But wait. Go to Page 18 of the summary report, and take a close look at Section V, under a heading "INFORMATION OBTAINED OR FIRST ACCESSED AND REVIEWED AFTER THE BOMBINGS."
That heading seems to suggest that what follows in Section V was unknown to American law enforcement prior to the bombings. The first item in the listand the only one to be redactedis of primary interest:
Quote:This information included certain [approximately two lines redacted] to show that Tsarnaev intended to pursue jihad…
After that paragraph comes a sub-section labeled JANUARY 2011 COMMUNICATIONS. The entirety of that section, including a lengthy footnote, has been redacted.
Reading a government report with redactions is like reading tea leaves in the bottom of a dirty cup. You can't know for sure what's been suppressed, but you can hazard some educated guesses about why certain material was deemed too dangerous for the public to know.
In this case, you have to ask: Why would the first item in Section V and the entire subsection labeled "January 2011 Communications" be suppressed. The answer may lie in a story that appeared in the New York Times last week. Based on a leak exclusive to the Times, the story quoted a "senior government official" who claimed that the Russians had withheld some key information when it informed the US about the Tsarnaevs' jihadist leanings in March 2011information that might have made the US government pay more attention to the Tsarnaevs, and so perhaps could have helped avert the Marathon bombing.
As we previously noted, much earlier, back in 2013, the New York Times reported another leak. That leak asserted that US authorities had been in contact with the Tsarnaevs as early as January 2011. If true, this assertion would be enormously consequential, because it would mean the Tsarnaevs were known to US authorities two months before American intelligence learned from the Russians that the Tsarnaevs might be terrorists.
As far as we know, no one in the media ever followed up on this leaked assertion. When we queried the Times about it, the paper never replied. Nor has the Times ever published a correction. Now, it is possible that the official who provided the Times with that earlier leak was mistaken, or that the Times got the date or the facts wrong and did not want to admit its error in public.
But it's hard not to see a link between that leaked assertion and the government's redaction, in the just released summary, of the entire section labeled January 2011 Communications. What is in that section that's so disturbing to the censors in the American intelligence community?
One possibility is that the US censors are not so concerned about the information in those "communications" as in the way that information was obtained.
Russia Eavesdropping on American Telephone Conversations?
If they are concerned about something relating to January communications captured by the Russians, it could be because the "communications" appear to have been phone conversations purportedly between Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidatboth of whom were, in early 2011, living in the United States. (In the recent leak to the New York Times, the "senior US official" mentioned that the Russians had withheld certain informationspecifically including that Tamerlan and his mother spoke of "jihad" in a telephone call.)
It would of course be news if the Russians were capturing domestic American telephone conversations, and if they were so interested in the Tsarnaevs that they launched a very risky and complicated operation to eavesdrop on that family's communications within US borders.
This real possibility can be further contextualized. The Boston area has long been a hotbed for spy-vs-spy intrigue. With top military research going on at Cambridge-based MIT and other area institutions, that's not surprising.
Consider that the Tsarnaevs lived in Cambridgehome to members of a ring of Russian spies that was broken up shortly before the Tsarnaevs came under scrutiny. Remember that the US rolled up a spy ring in June of 2010after monitoring it for a decade, and that an exchange of prisoners quickly followed. An American mole inside Russian foreign intelligence, Col. Alexander Poteyev, who was back-channeling to American intelligence while simultaneously directing the stateside ring from Russia, fled to the US before the arrests. His role was obscured by American officials; and his identity was only revealed when a Russian court later found him guilty in absentia.
Few Americans remember Poteyev's role, or any of the other more remarkable "details." Indeed, US media coverage of the Russian spy ring story quickly focused on the sexiness of one of the characters, Anna Chapman, who returned to Russia as part of the exchange and became a lingerie model, corporate spokesperson, and national icon.
Anna Chapman on the cover of Russia's Maxim
However, US officials dismissed the ring itself as a "sleeper cell" that actually accomplished nothing.We wonder if this is true. Did the Russians really go to such enormous efforts over a decade and achieve nothing substantive? More on this in a moment, but for now, consider the notion of an active Russian spy ring in the Tsarnaevs' Massachusetts backyard as a basis for further thinking.
Given the "shocking" exposure of the Russian ring, it is equally shocking to contemplate that, less than a year later, the Russians have gone from spying to "helping" the USby notifying American intelligence of potential terrorists in our midst. Either that, or the Russians were notifying the US out of self-interest, to ensure that yet another anti-Russian terrorist did not succeed in jihad on Russia's turf.
To us, frankly, neither explanation is wholly satisfying. It seems there is more going on.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev an "Asset"?
Was the US itself monitoring the Tsarnaevs at the same time the Russians were? Of even more interest, did US authorities, as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense suggests, seek to turn Tamerlan Tsarnaev into an asset?
The defense's claim that the FBI triedbut failedto get Tamerlan to work for the US is hard to accept, not because the FBI doesn't regularly try to recruit immigrants like the Tsarnaevs through a carrot-and/or-stick approach, but because it's hard to imagine the FBI failing in such an endeavor. The "failure" part of the defense claim seems like a concession to the likelihood that detailed information about FBI recruitment would not be admissible in such a case. Also, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lead federal public defender is accomplished at getting her clients charges reducedin this case, presumably to avoid the death penaltynot at exposing giant falsehoods perpetrated by her government.
If the defense is half-rightthat the feds pushed Tamerlan Tsarnaev to become an operativewould they simply have accepted, willingly, if he said, "No, thanks"? Intelligence and security services don't tend to take no for an answer, and traditionally have played very rough with those who decline. So it is unlikely that a foreign national like Tamerlan Tsarnaevwhose family arrived less than a year after 9/11 and who was given "derivative asylum status"could simply decline to cooperate. (Family members, including Tamerlan, were later made Lawful Permanent Residentswith the hope of full citizenship. And as we shall see, the FBI agent whose job was to interact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev later said he had no objection when Tamerlan was being processed for citizenship, suggesting that he was not unhappy with Tamerlan in the least.)
For context on whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have agreed to cooperate, consider the FBI's tactics with people from the Tsarnaevs' extended circle who did not cooperate, as reported in this earlier piece we did.
Moreover, one line in the summary report is telling:
Quote:The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston (Boston JTTF) conducted an assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev to determine whether he posed a threat to national security and closed the assessment three months later having found no link or "nexus" to terrorism.
Surely if he were working for the US and involved with anti-Russian activities, he would rightfully be found to "have no link to…terrorism"inasmuch as terrorism (so far as the FBI is concerned) would likely be defined as a threat only to US national security.
Also, as the report summary notes, the Russians repeatedly pinged the Americans, presumably because they saw no serious action taking place. They provided information to the FBI in March 2011, and similar material to the CIA in September. (The report states flatly, and without emphasis, that the FBI had failed to share intelligence with the CIAa suspiciously common practice that dates back to the John F. Kennedy assassination if not earlier).
Did the Russians decide that FBI inaction meant the Bureau had recruited Tamerlan, and either had not notified the CIA or had not done so through official channels? In October, in any case, the CIA passed the Russian intelligence along to a range of agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. It also passed it along to the FBI, as if it did not know that the FBI itself already had the information from half a year earlier. Finally, the information was passed on to the National Counterterrorism Center, which put Tamerlan Tsarnaev on a terrorist watch list.
Incredibly, even after this, when Tamerlan traveled to Russia three months later, exactly as the Russians said he would, and while on that terror watch list, US authorities did nothing.
Here's what the Report Summary says about cooperation:
Quote:This lead information was investigated by the FBI through the Boston JTTF. Representatives from the DHS, CIA, and other federal, state, and local agencies work directly with FBI-led JTTFs across the country, including in Boston.
Notice the waffling. The summary authors state a standard principle: FBI-led investigation units "work directly" with other federal and local agencies. They explicitly do not say that the FBI did so in this case. And how could they? Because the FBI clearly did not.
Mind you, this is WhoWhatWhy's attempt at coherently and accurately summing up the content of the Summary Report. It is instructive that those who prepared the report did not feel the need to emphasize these rather glaring and seemingly deliberate "failures"and instead basically give the FBI and US government a free pass for their cover-up.
From Russia…With Truth?
It's also worth considering what the Russians themselves told a visiting Congressional delegation barely six weeks after the bombing, and what they showed them: the warning letter from Moscow. Keep in mind as you read the particulars, how much more forthcoming the Russians have been than their American counterparts. This is from an account by Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) to the Washington Post:
Quote:Keating said the letter gave Tsarnaev's date of birth, his cellphone number, information about his boxing career, weight and Golden Gloves matches. It talked about his wife and mother, giving the mother's Skype number. The up-close look at Tsarnaev's life raised questions, which went unanswered, about how the FSB had accumulated so much information about a family in Boston.
Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA)
So at least some members of Congress were deeply suspicious of our government and its awareness of Russian activities in the US (as well as Russian capabilities for spying on residents of the United States within our borders). However, in the Summary Report, what the Russians gave to the Americans has been pared down:
Quote:The Russian authorities provided personal information about both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, including their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, and requested that the FBI provide the FSB with specific information about them, including possible travel by Tsarnaev to Russia.
The Summary report leaves out the other details, but does include a caveat that somehow characterizes the material as less valuable (though both errors would normally be overcome by standard procedures):
Quote:Importantly, the memorandum included two incorrect dates of birth (October 21, 1987 or 1988) for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the English translation used by the FBI transliterated their last names as Tsarnayev and Tsarnayeva, respectively.
Only later do we read that an FBI agent had no difficulty resolving these issues.
Frustrated Inspector Generals, Complying, but not Too Happily
The Inspectors General go on to say that, in considering whether information that existed prior to the bombings was at that time "available" to the U.S. government, the OIGs did look at the Russian information, but also "took into account the limited facts known to U.S. government agencies prior to the bombings and the extent of the government's authority under prevailing legal standards to access that information." [Italics added for emphasis]
So they began their inquiries with two predispositions: (1) that the government had very little information available on its own, and (2) that completely contrary to Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA abuses, US agencies are scrupulously careful about how they collect private data on individuals.
The Inspectors General also made clear what side they were on, a bad thing for a justice system:
Quote:[T]he OIGs were mindful of the sensitive nature of the ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions related to the bombings, and were careful to ensure that the review would not interfere with these activities. We carefully tailored our requests for information and interviews to focus on information available before the bombings and, where appropriate, coordinated with the U.S. Attorney's Office conducting the prosecution of alleged bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Presumably, a truly independent investigation would involve coordinating with anyone who had information to impart, including Dzhokhar's defense.
In a rare outburst hinting at how they were hobbled, the OIG's write:
Quote:As described in more detail in the classified report, the DOJ OIG's access to certain information was significantly delayed at the outset of the review by disagreements with FBI officials over whether certain requests fell outside the scope of the review or could cause harm to the criminal investigation. Only after many months of discussions were these issues resolved, and time that otherwise could have been devoted to completing this review was instead spent on resolving these matters. [Italics added for emphasis]
And there's this important note, at the beginning of a section called "CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS":
Quote:In this section, we summarize the chronology of events relating to the U.S. government's knowledge of and interactions with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, members of his family, and other associates before the bombings. Many of the activities and events that occurred during the period discussed below cannot be included in this unclassified summary.
That's just a sampling of the Inspector Generals' cries of impotency. One of the three objectives stated by the Inspectors General in their summary is to determine "Whether there are weaknesses in protocols and procedures that impact the ability to detect potential threats to national security." But if that was never the underlying game, then the Inspector Generals are victims in this as well. They hint as much:
Quote:Redactions in this document are the result of classification and sensitivity designations we received from agencies and departments that provided information to the OIGs for this review. As to several of these classification and sensitivity designations, the OIGs disagreed with the bases asserted. We are requesting that the relevant entities reconsider those designations so that we can unredact those portions and make this information available to the public.
Good luck with that.
FBI Special Agent Schlemiel
As the report notes, an FBI counterterrorism officer
Quote:conducted database searches, reviewed references to Tsarnaev and his family in closed FBI counterterrorism cases, performed "drive-bys" of Tsarnaev's residence, made an on-site visit to his former college, and interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents.
The question is obvious: Why no effort to monitor the Tsarnaevs' covertly? What about, instead of warning them that they were under suspicion, keeping a close and quiet watch on them? Isn't that how you would proceed if you wanted to find out what a suspected terrorist was up to?
Instead of raising this point, the OIG summary questions why the FBI did not make even more noise, including interviewing others who knew the family. Then it notes the FBI agent's failure to query every database, but points out that such an additional effort would not likely have garnered much new information. And while acknowledging that the FBI failed to share information with other agencies, it gives the Bureau an out by lamely saying that if other agencies had known where to look it a shared database, they might have happened upon the information.
One of the most interesting statements in the summary report is surely this:
Quote:The DOJ OIG also determined that the CT Agent did not attempt to elicit certain information during interviews of Tsarnaev and his parents, including information about Tsarnaev's plans to travel to Russia, changes in lifestyle, or knowledge of and sympathy for militant separatists in Chechnya and Dagestan. The CT agent told the DOJ OIG that he did not know why he did not ask about plans to travel to Russia...
The rest of this paragraph is blacked out. In fact, that's the first redaction you come to in the whole report. For some reason, the OIGs do not make more of thisthough it demonstrates that the FBI counterterrorism officer failed to ask the questions that mattered most.
And when the CT officer's supervisor told him to write to the Russians seeking more information, the FBI man included in his letter that Tamerlan, then in his mid-twenties, was a "former prosecutor." (!)
When Opacity Is a Virtue
It is not hard to see how introducing a plethora of such small obfuscations into a "Summary Report" can keep even expert readers from focusing on the larger issues in play. And when the readers are less-than-expert representatives of the mass media, the tactic is even more effective. A review of articles about the report in major newspapers makes this abundantly clear.
The report concludes that a Customs and Border Patrol officer most likely notified the FBI when Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia in 2012. The Customs officer also flagged Tamerlan so his record would be visible for his own colleagues when Tsarnaev re-entered the country.
For some reason, that notification was turned off before Tsarnaev returned. (This is not to be understatedMichael Springmann, a former US consul to Saudi Arabia, has repeatedly stated that his efforts to prevent jihadists from traveling to America were somehow overridden at higher levels')
In Tamerlan Tsarnaev's case, the Customs officer told IG investigators that he had most likely consulted with the FBI agent before Tsarnaev's record was made invisible to Customs personnel. Because of this, Tsarnaev was not subjected to a so-called "secondary inspection" (an uncomfortable process which this reporter has been through in the past). The report does not properly underline this point about the disturbing failures to monitor Tsarnaevindeed, the way the report is written makes it all too easy to gloss over such "details."
FBI officials interviewed by the Inspectors General played good cop/bad cop with them. While the FBI counterterrorism officer's superiors made clear that they would have ramped up activity and interest if they had learned of Tamerlan's visit to Russiaincluding reopening their investigation of the manthe local Boston CT agent insisted he "would not have done anything differently."
This kind of inconsistency makes it all but impossible to get to the bottom of things, and the IGs don't seem to have tried hard.
Everything about this case suggests that we might want to learn more about the Boston FBI agent and his most unusual behavior. Was he wildly incompetent and reckless, or operating under some kind of instructions? Unfortunately, the names of such significant personnel are almost never made public.
Amazingly, after all this, and just months after Tamerlan's return from Russia in 2012, Tamerlan applied for US citizenship. Even more striking, that same unidentified FBI agent who knew so much about Tamerlan nevertheless stated: "There is no national security concern related to [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] and nothing that I know of that should preclude issuance of whatever is being applied for."
A US Citizenship and Immigration Services officer says he actually met with the FBI agent and told him that Tsarnaev was on track to be granted citizenship. Despite all that knew, the FBI agent apparently had no objection.
In its conclusion, the Inspectors General write,
Quote:Based on all the information gathered during our coordinated review, we believe that the FBI, CIA, DHS and NCTC generally shared information and followed procedures appropriately. We identified a few areas where broader information sharing between agencies may have been required….
And, finally:
Quote:In light of our findings and conclusions summarized above, the participating OIGs found no basis to make broad recommendations for changes in information handling or sharing. We nonetheless identified some areas in which existing policies or practices could be clarified or improved.
Making Sense of It All
When your instincts tell you that a major effort is underway to make sure no one gets to the bottom of things, you're inclined to look for larger explanations. To wit: Could some kind of larger geo-strategic battle relate to the Boston bombings, with the on-the-ground players mere pawns?
We'll have more to say later about the larger circle of national-security-community figures that has surrounded Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for years. But for now, we want to step back a little.
Given the tendency of spy services to play elaborate games with a long view, it is reasonable to wonder whether the Russians had more in mind than just being helpful when they notified the US that it ought to look at the Tsarnaevs.
Could the notice to the FBI have been a warning that the Russians knew the US was already in contact with the Tsarnaevs? Given the possibility that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was supposed to infiltrate anti-Russian jihadists, that essentially puts the two intelligence services on the same side in this matter. Or were the Russians worried that the Americans were playing a double game, seemingly hunting jihadists while simultaneously using those jihadists to put pressure on the Russians in their majority-Muslim, oil-bearing southern flank?
There is also the possibility that, as with the US mole in Russian intelligence, Colonel Potayev, both sides thought they were controlling the Tsarnaevs. This would have made them players in a still more dazzling game. Pull out your old spy novels for this one.
Consider, as one must, what would be worth such extraordinary measures? What would justify so many redactions in a Summary Report? What would compel a bunch of Inspectors General, purportedly responsible for getting to the bottom of things, to participate in a whitewash?
What else but an issue of "national security"?
And since, as we know, there were no actual terrorist attacks or credible near-attacks on US soil between 9/11 and the Marathon bombings more than a decade later, these "national security" concerns might logically relate to something else. We hate to sound like a broken record, but keeping the lights and computers on and the cars moving pretty well approximates national security these days. And we all know what powers the gridand where the next big oil and gas hub is after the Middle East deposits are tapped out. It's the Caucasus region, the southern portion of the old Soviet Union, which encompasses a bunch of places where the US and Russia have been duking it out in recent years, including notably, Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Dagestan and Chechnya. The first three of these are loci of military operations which saw the US and Russia on opposite sides, and the last two are restive, heavy-Muslim-majority Russian Republics with which the Tsarnaevs are associated.
If all this sounds improbable, let's focus for a moment on several seminal moments many of us have forgotten or never knew:
1992, when a group under George HW Bush, helmed variously by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, decided that the end of the Soviet Union presented an opportunity for the US to seize permanent status as the world's only superpower, with the right and expectation to intervene anywhere, globally, at will.
2000, when members and confidants of that same group of neocons, now temporarily out of power, but operating via the Project for a New American Century, warned that the American public would never go along with such interventions "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing eventlike a new Pearl Harbor."
2001, when, according to former NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, he was shown a Top Secret memo laying out seven countries the US was prepared to invade with 9/11 as the justification. In an exclusive video interview with WhoWhatWhy, Gen. Clark expanded on that, emphasizing the role oil plays in US military policy.
It will take a lot more research to determine whether the story neither government is likely to tell is really about a titanic struggle for the earth's wealth. But, given historical precedents, it would not be so far-fetched.
Indeed, it is only the official story of the Boston Marathon bombing which sounds far-fetched.
Brilliant and disturbing article [above] by Russ Baker! Better worry folks.....THEY are lying to us, and killing us and the Planet while they lie! Most of what now happens is false-flag in one sense or another.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The police and FBI, et al. are not protecting us - they are literally killing us!
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[TD="width: 84%"]New questions in FBI Boston bombing witness killing: Agent Who Killed Tsarnaev Pal at Grilling had Brutal, Corrupt Past
By Dave Lindorff[TABLE="width: 100%"]
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[TD="width: 40%"]Headlined to H1 5/14/14[/TD]
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By Dave Lindorff
Todashev's FBI killer, seen here as an Oakland cop at a corruption trial ( by ThisCan'tBeHappening)
Almost a year after an FBI agent shot and killed, under suspicious circumstances, a crucial witness in the Boston Marathon bombing case during a botched midnight interrogation in an Orlando apartment, serious questions are being raised about the FBI agent who fired seven shots into Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev last May 22.
Two investigations, one by the FBI itself and one by the Florida Attorney General's office, exonerated the FBI in the shooting death, claiming the agent, never identified, had been acting in self-defense, when Todashev allegedly ran at him with a raised broom handle.
Now, in an excellent piece of investigative journalism, the Boston Globe has uncovered the identity of the agent, 41-year-old Aaron McFarlane, who joined the Bureau in 2008 after retiring on a $52,000 lifetime annual disability pension from a short stint as an officer in the Oakland Police Department.
Aside from the question of why someone who passed through the rigorous training program the FBI runs for its recruits at Quantico, VA would also qualify for a lucrative pension, it turns out that McFarlane also has a pretty checkered past at Oakland's Police Department -- a police department that has such an extraordinary record of corruption and brutality, that since 2012 it has been operated under the supervision of a federal court "compliance director," whose job is to see that officers don't brutalize residents or violate their civil rights.
McFarlane, the Boston Globe reported, did more than that as an Oakland cop. The paper reports that during his four years with the Oakland Police, he was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations. the paper found also that McFarlane, as a defense witness in a corruption trial, pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions from the prosecutor in that case, which involved officers .
The trial in question was the biggest corruption scandal in Oakland's history. Filed in 2000, the case involved four police officers who called themselves the "Riders," who were accused of beating and kidnapping people, making false arrests, planting evidence and falsifying police reports. The case ended up being short-circuited with no convictions under a settlement that had the city of Oakland paying damages of $10.9 million to victims and with the department going into receivership.
According to the Globe's report, the court transcript shows that when prosecutor David Hollister tried to ask McFarlane on the witness stand about a police report he had filed which appeared to have been falsified in order to "drum up a reason to arrest a man," McFarlane pleaded the Fifth. Hollister told the Globe that the report in question "at first blush certainly appears to be criminal. I think on its face, Officer McFarlane should probably have some concerns about whether or not he violated Section 118.1 of the Penal Code in filing a false police report."
Hollister also questioned McFarlane about another arrest he had made the same night of a man who suffered an unexplained head injury while being transported to jail. McFarlane said he "did not know" how the man in his charge was injured.
The city of Oakland also paid two settlements, for $22,500 and $10,000, in brutality cases brought against McFarlane and a fellow officer by two men who claimed they had been badly beaten by the two officers.
McFarlane's record of apparent brutal behavior as a cop in Oakland is relevant to the Todashev case because it could explain why Todashev, who had agreed to talk with McFarlane in Todashev's apartment, but later, according to Agent McFarlane, jumped up, ran to the front of the apartment, and then allegedly returned from the foyer brandishing a broomstick.
Unmentioned in the FBI's story line of what happened, which was accepted at face value in the investigation conducted by the Orlando Florida State's Attorney Jeffrey Ashton, was a bruise and a bloody contusion noted by the Orlando coroner on Todashev's left cheek, right on the outside of the eye socket. The coroner said that injury was evidence of a "hard blow" to the head.
Was McFarlane, in that midnight interview, resorting to the behavior that got him in trouble in the Oakland Police Department?
Neither Ashton nor the FBI are commenting on the Globe's article. Ashton never did actually interview McFarlane or the other FBI agent who, inexplicably and in violation of FBI procedure, was not even in the apartment, but was outside during the entire interrogation, keeping a friend of Todashev's from witnessing anything that was going on with his friend. Ashton instead had to rely on written answers about what happened provided by the FBI from the two men.
Hassan Shibly, a lawyer and executive director of the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) Florida office, said he has sent a letter today to the US Department of Justice, the FBI and the Florida State's Attorney's office, demanding to know "whether the extensive history of substantial allegations of police corruption, misconduct, abuse, and civil rights violations made against the FBI agent who shot and killed" Todashev were known to them, as well as "why the state and federal investigations failed to mention" that McFarlane "had a history of settlements and allegations against him regarding misconduct under color of law."
Clearly if McFarlane resorted to the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying under oath about apparent falsification of evidence against a suspect he had arrested, and had been the subject of brutality suit settlements as a cop, it would raise grave questions about the integrity of his account of what happened late on May 21 in Todashev's apartment, when he was being interrogated by McFarlane.
As Shibly writes in his letter (a copy of which was provided to TCBH!):
"How do we know that the officer and FBI agent did not
engage in misconduct that ultimately led to the killing of IbragimTodashev?
"How credible and thorough are the DOJ and State Attorney's investigations-which relied heavily on testimony given by individuals who may have engaged in police misconduct, civil rights abuses, and evidence falsification-particularly when the DOJ and State Attorney's investigations make no mention of the questionable history of the officer and agent involved?
Shibly also asks the FBI to explain whether it simply did not know about McFarlane's Fifth Amendment plea in a corruption case and about his violent history in the Oakland Police Department, in which case "how can the public trust that the FBI is doing a competent job when hiring agents on whom the liberty and security of our nation depends?" Alternatively, he asks, if the FBI did know McFarlane's history and didn't see a problem with hiring him, he asks, "How then can the public trust the liberty and security of our nation to an agency that allows individuals with questionable backgrounds into sensitive positions."
It's a good question. In a real democracy, there would be a Senate investigation into this case.
Certainly the death of Todashev, whom the FBI claims was the closest friend of the elder brother suspected of having masterminded the Boston bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a serious blow to the investigation of that case.
But there is a darker possibility: that Todashev was being pursued and pressured, and was ultimately killed by the FBI, because he had information about the elder Tsarnaev's relationship with the FBI--information that at a minimum could have embarrassed the Bureau, or that might even have shown the FBI to have been involved in some kind of "sting" operation gone wrong in Boston. The FBI, after all, has had undercover agents or informants involved in some 40 purported "terror" plots that it has "disrupted" since September 11, 2001. Was the Boston bombing supposed to have been another?
Shibly notes that CAIR, which is conducting its own investigation of the Todashev shooting, had already been aware of McFarlane's identity, and knew about his checkered history of brutality and possible corruption as an Oakland cop, but he says the organization "but did not publicly release any such information to avoid jeopardizing any possible government investigations."
Elena Teyer, Todashev's mother-in-law, believes that McFarlane, a relatively inexperienced FBI agent who was dispatched from the Boston office to follow and question Todashev in Florida, was selected for the job precisely because of his police record of brutality and corruption, which she says meant he was "on the hook in order to save his job" at the FBI.
She says further evidence that there was a plan to kill her son-in-law was that the Bureau arranged for the arrest by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), on a bogus charge of visa violation, of Todashev's live-in girlfriend, visiting Russian college student Tatiana Gruzdeva a fews days prior to the killing, and that a second agent physically removed a witness from the area outside the apartment half an hour before the killing of Todashev. That witness, a Green Card-holding legal Chechen immigrant named Husain Taramov, was barred by the US from returning to the US after he returned to Russia for Todashev's funeral. (With both Taramov and Gruzdeva, who was deported to Russia last fall, both removed permanently from the US, there were no witnesses for Ashton or the Justice Department to interview about the shooting except the agent who fired the shots and the Boston State Trooper who had been with him.)
Teyer, a Russian immigrant, US citizen, and retired veteran of the US Army, suggests the FBI wanted Todashev killed because he knew too much about Tsarnaev and his relationship with the "corrupted FBI." As I wrote earlier, the pattern of bullets that McFarlane fired at Todashev -- three to the upper middle of his back, one to the chest, two to the upper left arm and one into the top of the head, slightly to the rear of the crown, suggest not that he was shot in defense while charging at McFarlane and a Boston State Trooper also in the room, but that he was shot in the back multiple times while in the foyer attempting to flee the apartment -- perhaps from a brutal beating.
As a police detective I showed the coroner's report to pointed out, the bullets to the raised arm suggest that Todashev, hit three times in the back, may have realized he could not escape, and that he had turned, raising his left arm either defensively (he was a skilled martial arts expert and was right-handed), or along with his other arm in a sign of surrender. The last two shots had to have been the one to the chest, which blew out his aorta and would have been instantly fatal, and the shot to the head, which went straight through the center of the brain lodging in the cerebellum area -- also a shot that would have been instantly fatal.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
The American Civil Liberties Union (Massachusetts) recently filed a complaint in the United States District Court of Massachusetts requesting US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and the FBI turn over documents related to the secretive operational structure and function of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).
They also demanded other records relating to the shooting of Ibragim Todashev by the FBI in his Florida home in May 2013.
The complaint states the ACLU first attempted to obtain the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA), which were ignored with respect to the JTTF records, and denied with regard to the Todashev documentation. At the time of the request in December 2013, the government claimed the release of Todashev's records would potentially compromise the on-going investigation into his death.
According to the ACLU, as the results of the Todashev investigation have since been made public, it believes the government no longer has grounds to refuse access to records in the case.
One aspect of Todashev's case that may be of particular interest to an organization such as the ACLU concerns the level and methods of surveillance placed on him, in the month prior to his death.
Pressure and surveillance
Ibragim Todashev first encountered the FBi on April 20, 2013 when he was questioned about his friendship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev and possible links to the Boston marathon bombings. This initial questioning occurred as a result of an alert generated by the ORION database on Todashev.
Over the next four weeks he was subjected to continual phone calls from Federal agents, and was interrogated several times, often for many hours at the FBI's local Florida office. This pattern was repeated with Todashev's girlfriend, Tatiana Gruzdeva, his estranged wife Reni Manukya, and several of his friends and acquaintances. According to the letter:'The FBI uses UAVs in very limited circumstances to conduct surveillance when there is a specific, operational need. UAVs have been used for surveillance to support missions relating to kidnappings, search and rescue operations, drug interdictions, and fugitive investigations.'
It continued:
'Since late 2006, the FBI has conducted surveillance using UAVs in eight criminal cases and two national secutity cases.'
The letter also confirmed that drones had also been authorized for deployment in three other cases, but had not actually been flown.
The date of the correspondence could prove to be significant. If the FBI claims it has only ever used drones for surveillance twice in cases of 'national security', one of those cases is likely to be Ibragim Todashev's. Again, what was so particular about Todashev and why did the Bureau feel it was necessary to monitor him in such a way?
New records emerged this week that, although heavily redacted, shed further light on some of the cases of drone surveillance listed above.
Muckrock gains some insight...
The documents were obtained by Muckrock as part of its drone census project. They revealed how drones had been deployed to a monitor a 'large scale dog fighting operation' and a child kidnapping/hostage crisis case in Alabama. They were also considered for use as part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation into Mexican cartels, although no confirmation exists as to whether they were deployed in that case or not.
On May 9 2012, a UAV deployment was actioned at short notice to assist with a kidnapping, murder and unlawful flight investigation. The mission was lauded as a 'signal achievement in the history of the FBI':
The case is thought to be that of Adam Mayes, who had been placed on the FBI's 'ten most wanted' list on the same day.
The FBI and state investigators found Mayes and two young girls on May 10 - the day after a drone was deployed to a kidnap/murder/unlawful-flight investigation - in the woods a few miles from Mayes's home in Mississippi.
Media reports all noted that the search was only brought to fruition when a Highway Patrol officer 'spotted a small blonde child peeking over a ridge'. The use of a drone to assist with the manhunt was never reported, and the Bureau refused to confirm whether their 'signal achievement' ever came from the Mayes case.
If all that wasn't enough, Muckrock's records also revealed something else: something very disturbing. Despite the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) having urged the FBI to inform it of drone deployments in US domestic airspace, the Bureau may forego that request in 'exigent circumstances.' In other words, certain drones which the FAA describe as 'the same as manned fixed-wing aircraft' - aeroplanes - can be secretly deployed without informing the relevant authorities of any safety details surrounding flight paths/altitudes etc.
Under such circumstances, what could possibly go wrong?
Todashev waits...
While the FBI admits to its use of UAVs in 'very limited circumstances,' precisely what some of those circumstances are still remains a mystery. When Motherboard asked the Bureau to clarify details surrounding the latest batch of records, Special Agent Ann Todd confusingly stated:
'Other than the hostage crisis site in Alabama, we have not publicly identified specific cases where we have used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)'
The FBI appears to have forgotten some of the very information it has already made public.
None of the documents released in the last six months provide any details about drone deployments in the two cases of 'national security,' and if history is anything to go by, obtaining that information will not be easy.
The FBI has resisted all reasonable attempts to discover more about the Bureau's drone program, and continues to remain secretive and highly selective in the information it does release. The ACLU has a chance, but will the Bureau play ball?
Unfortunately, the likelihood of discovering why a drone was used to monitor Ibragim Todashev seems further away than ever.
The Bureau also placed him under intensive round-the-clock surveillance: a situation of which Todashev himself was well aware.
'When we left the house, he would point out cars to me. When we go to the workplace or we go hang out with him, he show me in the street, 'Look, look, they're following us.''
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Todashev's, also commented on the Bureau's surveillance:
'When Ibragim was nearby ... three to five cars and we knew it. Every time we go somewhere, they follow us.'
New information indicates that not content with simply monitoring Todashev using traditional methods, the FBI took their surveillance one step further.
Drones
According to recently released reports, Todashev was also subject to aerial surveillance, more commonly known as 'drone surveillance.' The admission was made by an Orlando Task Force Officer who had been monitoring Todashev for the previous four weeks, and was reportedly outside his apartment on the night he was killed.
He revealed that when Todashev became involved in an altercation in a carpark (he allegedly knocked another man unconcious), the incident was filmed from above with the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UVA), or drone, whilst officers monitoring from the ground looked on and did nothing.
Regardless of the agents' reasons for inaction, this new detail is important as it leads to an inevitable question. Why was Todashev subject to one of the FBI's most secretive and highly criticized methods of surveillance?
The Bureau barely even acknowleged the existence of its drone program until very recently. It's considered particularly controversial, not least because of the widespread concerns it violates fourth amendment rights. The FBI believes it can conduct drone surveillance without the nuisance of obtaining warrants, and has done so on every mission it has ever flown.
FBI use of UAVs
It was in June 2013 that then FBI director, Robert Mueller, finally admitted before the Senate House Committee the FBI does, in fact, use drones for surveillance over domestic US airspace.
He attempted to allay concerns about the program by insisting the Bureau's drone use is exclusive, stating that:
'our footprint is very small, we have very few and of limited use'
Mueller refused to provide details about the Bureau's operational protocols on the use of drones, how many/what types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are actually in its possession, or the true cost of the program thus far.
However, on October 30 2013, the U.S. District Court in D.C. ordered the FBI to release its drone documents on a rolling basis to Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), who had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request following Mueller's admission. The documents contained high levels of redactions, but appeared to confirm the ex-Director's previous statement on the limited use of drones.
One of those documents was a letter the Bureau had sent to Senator Rand Paul in July 2013, in response to concerns over drone use.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
[SUP][1][/SUP]"Danny"
[SUP][3][/SUP]
[SUP][6][/SUP]Tamerlan Tsarnaev
[SUP][16][/SUP]Officer Sean Collier
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