“The FBI needs to explain in more detail why it failed to realize that the older Boston bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a terrorism risk.
By the FBI’s own admission, the FBI was warned about Tsarnaev in 2011 by a foreign government (presumably Russia).
The foreign government told the FBI that Tsarnaev had become “a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer and that he had changed drastically … as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecificied underground groups.”
In response to this warning, the FBI says it checked databases and interviewed Tsarnaev and other family members in the summer of 2011 but found no evidence of “terrorism activity.”
Then the FBI says it “requested more information” about Tsarnaev from the foreign government but never received it.
Less than two years later, Tsarnaev is suspected of masterminding a successful terrorist attack on the city of Boston that killed three people and injured nearly 200.
So the FBI has some questions to answer.
Namely:
- Given the explicit warning, why didn’t the FBI continue to monitor Tsarnaev?
- Why didn’t the FBI follow up with the foreign government when it didn’t get the additional information it requested?
- How common is a warning from a foreign government about a specific person like this? Does the FBI get thousands of them?
- What made the FBI effectively clear Tsarnaev — and what might the FBI change to avoid making this mistake again?
- Will the FBI conduct a full investigation into what happened?
Here’s the key section of the FBI’s statement….”
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