I am seeing too much poor reporting on the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI put out a statement on Friday that said that they had looked into Tamerlan Tsarnaev “in early 2011” at the request of “a foreign government” that we know now to be Russia. Here is how the FBI explained it.
The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.
In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.
I don’t know why they couldn’t give us specific dates instead of saying “early in 2011” and “in the summer of 2011,” but we have a ballpark idea of when the request came in, when they did their investigation, and when they gave the Russians the conclusions of their investigation. We haven’t seen a complete list of Tamerlan’s travel to and from Russia, but we know he traveled there in January 2012 and stayed in Dagestan for about six months. We know that someone using his name created a YouTube page one month after he returned from that trip to Dagestan. We know this from, among other things, the reporting in today’s New York Times.
After Tamerlan’s visit to Dagestan and Chechnya, signs of alienation emerged. One month after he returned to the United States, a YouTube page that appeared to belong to him was created and featured multiple jihadist videos that he had endorsed in the past six months. One video featured the preaching of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani, an important ideologue in Chechnya; another focused on Feiz Mohammad, an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher based in Australia. He also created a playlist of songs by a Russian musical artist, Timur Mucuraev, one of which promoted jihad, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists.
Yet, in the same article, we read this:
Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services, said he believed that Tamerlan might have attracted the attention of Russian intelligence because of the video clips he had posted under his own name, some of which were included on a list of banned materials by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.
Let’s do some chronology.
In “early 2011” the Russians asked us about Tamerlan Tsarkaev.
We investigated him and gave the Russians the results of our investigation “in the summer of 2011.”
Tsarkaev traveled to Russia in January 2012.
He returned from Russia in six months later.
He (allegedly) created a YouTube account a month after that.
There is no way that the YouTube account is what spurred the Russians to request an investigation because he created it approximately fourteen to seventeen months after the Russians made the request.
This is also relevant to the timing of Tamerlan’s supposed radicalization or increased interest in Islam. We read that he adopted more traditional Muslim dress and grew a beard after he returned from his trip, but now we know from the FBI that the Russians alleged “in early 2011” that he was “a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010.”
Finally, I also want to note the discrepancy in the FBI’s statement which says that the Russians were concerned because Tamerlan appeared “prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” Yet, so far as we know, he didn’t actually travel to the region for ten to twelve months. Did having the FBI grill him and his parents about his activities in the spiring of 2011 cause him (or his handlers) to delay his trip?
In any case, the reporting by the New York Times is sloppy. Why quote Andrei Soldatov and refer to him as “an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services” if you know that his conjecture is completely wrong and in opposition to the laws of time and physics?
they have their meme- Muslim terrorist…
they will not be deterred from that.
nevermind that they were in this country for 10 years….
where did they get their weapons?
no…they want their meme, along with trying to de-White them…..
I’m just sayin’.
You could title any blog post with Bad Reporting on and then the given subject. I think bad reporting is probably the biggest reason we can’t govern ourselves effectively.
Unfortunately, the ubiquitous “both sides do it” meme that the media love only seems to be applied to politics; which is a complete abdication of their responsibility. It is never applied outside that small focus. After all, we always have to be the cowboy in the white hat.
Your chronology.
In 2011, the Russians “asked us about Tamerlan Tsarkaev”?
It looks like it’s more about the Russians telling us of their suspicion of Tamerlan rather than some casual question.
The larger issues are why does the KGB know more about this guy/are more concerned about him than our intelligence agencies?
second, why did our people let him slip off their radar after being warned by the Russians, and knowing he traveled there in 2012?
LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/tamerlan-tsarnaevs-citizenship-held-up-by-homeland-security.htm
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Well, one obvious reason that the Russians would know more about him than we do is because he is Chechen. The Chechen community in Boston is probably watched more closely by the Russians than by us because we don’t/didn’t have much reason to care about them but the Russians did/do. USA Today reports that there are probably no more than 200 Chechens in the whole country, most of whom are settled in Boston, so the Russians probably have little problem keeping track of all of them.
Yes, but the brothers had been here for what, ten years? did the Russians suspect Tamerlan was a terrorist when he left Chechnya at age 15 or 16?
Russia did allow him to return for an extended visit and then leave. So, either they were unconcerned about him or remained concerned but only if he was in-country. Generous of Russia to alert us in the first place given hostility DC officials routinely express towards Russia.
I don’t know if it’s bad reporting or just lazy reporting. Starting with the bombing reports to the lazy way they are reporting the Mirandizing of the bombing suspect it seems to come down to they don’t have the energy or interest in going through the entire story and all the facts and putting together the complete picture.
Just trying to fill column inches or their slot on cable news.
I haven’t seen anyone in the media question why the FBI had to turn to the public in order to identify the suspects in the photos. Tamerlan had been interviewed by the same FBI office (Boston) that was investigating the Marathon bombings. Don’t they have a list of local possible Islamists? Why didn’t they look at the photos of people on that list before they made the photos public? (News stories say they only identified Tamerlan when they took his fingerprints, which means that the only effect releasing the photos had was making the Tsarkaevs bolt.)
When it comes to terrorism, the FBI is still not able to put 2 and 2 together, same as with 9/11. Creating the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to change that.
Timelines are the simplest tool that reporters and ordinary people can use to sort things out. But very few ever bother; preferring the jumble of confusing and conflated facts and rumors.
The events of Thursday and Friday are still a jumble.
Under the Bush administration, junior tried to out-do Reagan in Russia bashing with his foreign policy ambassadors Condoleeza Rice and later John Bolton. The democratization of the old Soviet Union satellite states was a staging ground to wrestle sovereign nations out of Russian influence sphere. This had shown to be a big failure and the US needs the Red Bear to transport military goods in and out of Afghanistan.
See also article in 1999 where Bush and Rice warn the Russians on Human Rights (sic) and their war on “freedom-fighters” in Chechnya.
BTW I don’t think Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were aware the Cold War is over. The rhetoric in the UN and Security Council was more bashing than cooperating in a fruitful discussion for a compromise – see Syria massacre. Our British ally added more irritation under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and today’s Cameron. I could imagine Vladimir Putin thinking FU2. After the fact, our leaders want to make amends and start to cooperate on international terror isssues. Big boys!
Be aware the Tsarnaev family are trying to hide their origin and country of residence. The uncle gave misrepresentation and many blogs just copy verbal statements. A spokesperson for Putin in Russia mentioned the Tsarnaevs traveled to the US via Ankara on Turkish passports. Others have said the Tsarnaevs traveled from Kyrgyzstan on that nation’s passports. So far I tend to believe the family lived in Dagestan during the 90s, moved to Kyrgyzstan in 2000, obtained Kyrgyzs passports (bribe?) and traveled to the US.
“Twenty-six-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, near the border with Kazakhstan, and the surviving
19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Dagestan, according to an uncle interviewed in Tokmok.”
Was the mother deported after her arrest for shoplifting in 2010 and deported to Kyrgyzstan/Dagestan? On January 12, 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev flew from New York to Moscow, a regular target of Chechen rage; he didn’t return until seven months later. He spend time with his father Anzor in Dagestan. The father Anzor Tsarnaev is not in any form repentant about the terror acts of his sons.
Because of the crazies in the US government, I do hope Dzhokhar passes away in the Boston hospital as he is very seriously wounded. I don’t want to see the social media hanging party where our members of Congress participate. Let the intelligence agencies dig through all the evidence and learn once again their lessons from the past. My estimate is the elder Tamerlan is the trained terrorist, traveled to Dagestan in 2012 and made the pressure cooker bombs. His wife Katherine Russell and 3-year old child have not seen much of him in the past 15 months.
Where are the Tsarnaev brothers really from?
There is another report that said Tamerlan spent most weekends with his wife and her family in RI.
As to origins and when he entered the US, wouldn’t Dzhorkhar’s naturalization papers be the most reliable source?
Has anyone questioned how Tamerlan supported himself? Paid for trip(s) to Russia. Or with the departure of his parents back to Dagestan, what was Dzhokhar’s means of support?
Then this from The Guardian’s Boston bombing suspects: what we know:
Yet other reports have the father leaving the US some years ago (actual year varies) and the mother back and forth for several years.
I think I understand the problem, Booman.
There’s nothing wrong with the chronology. According to Fred Weir’s article for the Christian Science Monitor
http://news.yahoo.com/us-russia-missed-chances-intercept-tamerlan-tsarnaev-155330203.html
in the statement you question, Soldatov was referring to the period WHILE Tamerlane was in Russia and AFTER he returned from Russia, i.e. 2012.
If you read it carefully, the FBI statement says that in 2011 at the request of a foreign government (i,e. Russia) they questioned Tamerlan & family memnbers, found nothing, and Russia was informed, “before the matter was subsequently put to rest”.
But Weir goes on, then Russian security inexplicably “also dropped the ball, apparently failing to pick up the elder Tsarnaev or even question him during a lengthy visit to Russia the next year.”
So now we are into 2012. The next paragraph details how the Chechen security service claims to have no information of “these people” appearing in the republic’s territory [i.e. during the 2012 trip], and a senior security source, presumably from FSB in Moscow, also denying any knowledge of them. Then the article brings in Andrei Soldatov, who says “a bureaucratic foul up probably explains how Tamerlan slipped away.” Obviously this refers to the trip to Russia.
“There is a department inside the FSB that’s responsible for monitoring social networks,” he says.
“Both Tsarnaev brothers were active on the Internet … Russian language websites … Russian-language psotings on YouTube, “which could have triggered the FSB’s interest.
“It seems likely that this FSB department may have flagged some comments made by Tamerlan, and forwarded a request to the FBI for more information” [remember, this is in 2012] But perhaps, that one FSB department noticed something, but did not provide greater details to the FBI, and also didn’t inform other FSB departments. That’s fairly typical,” he adds.’
I think Weir must have spoken to Soldatov by phone, because I haven’t found those statements in print. But I did find an article by Soldatov & Irina Borogan and an interview with him by Alexei Loginov in the Kommersant. These articles are in Russian.
If you read between the lines, and ask yourself “cui bono?”, I think it is Putin and the FSB. What Soldatov is saying is that this incident almost forces the US to work with the FSB. The Russians have been trying to get the US on their side against “militant Islam” since Putin came to power if not earlier; and despite 9/11 and everything else, we have resisted that. He speaks of the upcoming Olympic Games in Sochi, and that unless we forbid Americans to go there, “the U.S. intelligence services would be forced to go begging to the Lubyanka.”
http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=12866
In the Kommersant interview, he makes the point that judging from Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s website, this doesn’t sound like it emanated from al-Qaeda, and there is no mention of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Middle East. Everything is strictly about Chechnya and the North Caucasus. And also that no group has taken responsibility.
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2175425/print
The US has not been involved in that area. So to me this is one of the most striking contradictions of the story.
Great comment and information, however the jihadists are international and so are Sauda Arabian influence and funds. Search for the terms Salafist and Wahhabism. The Arabian Afghan mujihadeen moved into Serbia, Kosovo and Chechnya. Multiple 9/11 hijackers fought and trained in Chechnya. In The Netherlands, the first nationals traveled to Chechnya to participate in the war for independence from Russia and later set up a local terror cell, the Hofstad Group. There were two Mosques in the Netherlands teaching fundamentalist Wahhabism funded by Saudi charities. One was in Eindhoven where Samir Azzouz followed the teachings. Today there are more than 100 Dutch nationals fighting under the black flag in Syria for the Sunni expansion under leadership of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia.
The FSB policy on the risk of terror acts by the Tsarnaevs has some similarity with the Mossad and 9/11, once the US is attacked, the American people will understand our need to be tough on the (Palestinian) terrorists. So the War on Terror openes a new chapter and the Obama administration will beg forgiveness for missing the warning signs.
Yes you are right. In fact, the rise of the Mujahideen was supported by American and British intelligence, in the first place, to defeat Russia in Afghanistan. And it worked. Except … be careful what you wish for.
The origins of the War in Chechnya are completely different, they go back to almost two centuries of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus, but in 1999 the Wahabis showed up in Chechnya and Dagestan, making a bad situation even worse. That of course was also the time of Putin’s rise to power, and of the Second Chechen War that restored Russian control over Chechnya.
When it’s Russia expanding across a continent, it’s imperialism. When the United States does the same, it’s Manifest Destiny.
There are dozens of peoples that the Russian Empire absorbed without those peoples constantly rebelling. It’s not as if the Russians imposed their own religion or way of life on the peoples whose land the Russian Empire expanded into. The Chechens are just particularly uppity.
How would Americans like it if Native Americans living on “reservations” declared independence of their reservations from the United States?
The concept of “Manifest Destiny” has been widely criticized by many Americans from the early days right up to the present, with regard to Mexico, Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico. Similarly, the repression and genocide of American Indians has been widely protested here, and you could fill a library with the books written on this subject. You should look into the history of Indian resistance, and legal strengthening of tribal sovereignty since the 1960s.
In terms of power disparity, a comparison with the so-called “small peoples” of Russia would be more relevant.
Such situations are not limited to Russia and the USA, they are found all over the world with indigenous peoples.
I would particularly call to your attention the writings of Prof. Robert K. Thomas, a Cherokee, on internal colonialism, and of Prof. John Mohawk, a Seneca.
For example
http://www.bitahnii.com/Historical%20Documents/People/Bob%20Thomas/Robert%20K.%20Thomas%20Colonialis
m.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Utopian-Legacies-History-Conquest-Oppression/dp/1574160400
The biggest problem with your comparison is that in the late 1980s and 1990s many republics of the former USSR did become independent. While it is true that Chechnya was not a republic, the difference is nowhere near as great as with Indian tribes in the United States.
I am not taking a position on Chechnya, I am just pointing out that there are deeper issues involved than your facile comparison would allow for.
As you can learn from John le Carré, or from the story of Oswald in Russia, when an intelligence service appears uninterested in something they ought to be interested in, the most likely explanation is that they are indeed very interested but they don’t want to give the other side any clue that they are.
I think that may well have been the case here, with both the FBI and the Russian FSB each trying to figure out what the other side’s interest in this guy was, and what the other side was really up to. The Tsarnaev brothers were the useful idiots.
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