Boston police wasn't told FBI got Russia's warning
The F.B.I. did not tell the Boston police about the 2011 warning from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombings, the city’s police chief said Thursday during the first public Congressional hearing on the attack.
Boston’s police commissioner, Edward Davis, said that though some of his officers worked with the F.B.I. on a Joint Terrorism Task Force, they did not know about the Russian tip or the bureau’s subsequent inquiry, which involved an interview with Mr. Tsarnaev and his parents.
Had his department learned about the tip, in which Russian officials said that Mr. Tsarnaev had intended to travel to Russia to connect with underground groups, “we would certainly look at the individual,” Commissioner Davis told the House Homeland Security Committee. He noted that F.B.I. officers found no evidence of a crime and closed the case. He said that he could not say whether he would have reached a different conclusion, but that his officers would “absolutely” have taken a second look at Mr. Tsarnaev.
Commissioner Davis said he recognized the sensitivity of intelligence received from other countries. “But when information is out there that affects the safety of my community, I need to know that,” he said.
In a statement later on Thursday, the F.B.I. said that the squad that carried out the assessment of Mr. Tsarnaev in 2011 included some Boston Police Department officers, and it suggested that they could easily have read the information collected about him in a database that every member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force has access to.
But the statement also noted that the Boston task force conducted about 1,000 assessments in 2011, a workload that made it unlikely that each assessment could get close attention from every task force member. Also, Mr. Tsarnaev lived in Cambridge, not Boston.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who is a former federal counterterrorism prosecutor, said he was concerned that a decision not to share information among agencies - widely blamed for the failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - might have been a factor in the Boston bombings.
“We learned over a decade ago the danger in failing to connect the dots,” Mr. McCaul said. “My fear is that the Boston bombers may have succeeded because our system failed. We can and we must do better.” NY Times
FACTS & FIGURES
The parents of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan have vigorously denied accusations that their sons were behind the bombing.
They have accused the U.S. authorities of framing Tamerlan and Dzhokhar - Mr. Tsarnaev described the death of his son as an 'inside job, while Mrs. Tsarnaeva claimed that the government 'wanted to eliminate' Tamerlan. Daily Mail
A New Hampshire state legislator has said the federal government caused the Boston Marathon bombing, which was first reported by miscellanyblue.com, a liberal-leaning website.
State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) told a conservative talk show host Tuesday that she knows the federal government was behind the attacks because Jeff Bauman, a bombing victim who helped identify the suspects, was not "screaming in agony" after both his legs were blown off. Huffington Post
TamerlanTsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police on April 19, three days after the bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260 at the Boston Marathon, sparking an intense manhunt until police apprehended his younger brother. ABC News
The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried nearly three weeks after he died following a long search for a location that would accept his remains, but the police didn't say where the body was taken or when it was buried, according to Wall Street Journal.
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