As additional information on the Boston Bombers becomes available, it becomes obvious that the U.S. government dropped the ball.
Not only did the older Boston bomber brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, have radical ties, a public YouTube channel devoted to Islamic terror, and had been investigated previously by the FBI, but now Reuters reports that Tamerlan had also been on a highly classified U.S. government database of people it views as potential terrorists.
The sources said Tamerlan Tsarnaev's details were entered into TIDE, a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, because the FBI spoke to him in 2011 while investigating a Russian tip-off that he had become a follower of radical Islamists.
The FBI found nothing to suggest he was an active threat, but all the same placed his name on the "Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment" list. The FBI has not said what it did find about Tsarnaev.
But the database, which holds more than half a million names, is only a repository of information on people who U.S. authorities see as known, suspected or potential terrorists from around the world.
Because of its huge size, U.S. investigators do not routinely monitor everyone registered there, said U.S. officials familiar with the database.
Other Information Coming To Light
Boston Globe reports the second bomber, younger brother to Tamerlan, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has admitted to authorities he and his brother detonated the bombs at the Boston Marathon hich killed three and injured hundreds of others.
NYT reports the bombings were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs.
In other developments today, an official at a New Hampshire fireworks store said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had bought fireworks there in February. The official speculated that the brothers were interested in the explosives inside. Residents and businesses began to move back into the Boylston Street area where the bombs went off. And two of the brothers’ victims, 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the blasts, and 27-year-old MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who authorities say was assassinated by the brothers, were remembered at private funeral services.
Boston Herald reports "Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned."
[Update]- Boston Globe reports: Russian authorities alerted the US government not once but ``multiple’’ times over their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- including a second time nearly a year after he was first interviewed by FBI agents in Boston -- raising new questions about whether the FBI should have focused more attention on the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, according to US senators briefed on the probe Tuesday. [End Update]
Questions Unanswered:
Media claims the investigation has not led to other suspects or ties with known terrorist groups, yet the media doesn't address the two men associated with the younger Boston bomber Dzhokhar, who were taken into custody on the Friday Dzhokhar was captured, then released and picked up the very next day by ICE agents.
Nor is the media questioning who the two females that were taken away in a consulate car from an unnamed country that same morning, one of which was also taken into custody on Friday night, then released.
South Coast Today reported at the time:
An FBI spokeswoman could not provide any information on the two men, both of whom were led away in handcuffs around 3:50 p.m. Saturday, or anything related to the apartment, citing the “ongoing” nature of the investigation.
[...]
Efforts by The Standard-Times to identify the van's consulate did not provide any answers, and the FBI spokeswoman had no information about it. A U.S. Department of State spokeswoman said her agency was “not privy” to the investigation and referred The Standard-Times back to the FBI.
No one seems to be addressing the comments made by Mayor Tom Menino where he claimed the Boston bombers were working alone, then stated that another arrest was made and another pipe bomb was located.
That amounts to five other people, taken into custody or removed from the equation as a result of the investigation into the Tsarnaev brothers and that is just what we know about, yet the media, for all their reporting, has barely touched those issues other than to say "ICE did not say whether they are suspected in any other crimes" and "A federal prosecutor’s spokeswoman declined comment."