David Montgomery, Sari Horwitz and Marc Fisher have put together a good article on how the intelligence community set up their operation in the aftermath of the Boston bombings and then went about their investigation. But I have some questions. The first thing that bugged me when the FBI held their briefing in which they provided video footage of the two suspects, was that they didn’t include any footage of either suspect dropping a backpack at the site of the explosions. I understood that the priority was to make an identification and so the pictures that were chosen were those most likely to lead to an identification. But why not show the evidence that they were guilty, too?

During the first FBI press conference on April 16th, Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers’ only mention of video was a reminder for businesses and individuals to preserve their footage. At the April 18th press conference, when the surveillance video was revealed, DesLauriers said, “Suspect 2 set down a back pack at the site of the second explosion just in front of the Forum Restaurant.”

If you look at the latest piece at the Boston Globe, you will see further corroboration of that fact.

And Governor Deval Patrick said surveillance video from the attack shows the suspect putting his backpack down and moving away in time to avoid being injured by the blast of the bomb inside it.

Speaking Sunday on NBC, Patrick said the video clearly puts 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the scene of the attack.

Patrick says the video is ‘‘pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly.’’

He said he hasn’t viewed all the surveillance tapes but has been briefed by law enforcement about them.

Here’s what is bothering me. I believe Governor Deval Patrick and I believe Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers when they say that this video exists and they have seen it. My question is why haven’t I seen it. Additionally, what took investigators so long to find the footage?

Yes, I know that it took time to collect the footage and sift through it. But the first thing they would do is get any footage of the actual explosions and then look for the person that put down the back pack. Yet, here is how the process is described in the Washington Post:

Quickly, the authorities secured a warehouse in Boston’s Seaport district and filled the sprawling space: On half of the vast floor, hundreds of pieces of bloody clothes were laid out to dry so they could be examined for forensic clues or flown to FBI labs at Quantico in Prince William County for testing. In the other half of the room, more than a dozen investigators sifted through hundreds of hours of video, looking for people “doing things that are different from what everybody else is doing,” Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview Saturday.

Yes, fine, you are looking for suspicious activity and behavior, but the first thing you are looking for is footage of the explosion sites and anyone who might be caught placing the back pack there. Right?

The work was painstaking and mind-numbing: One agent watched the same segment of video 400 times. The goal was to construct a timeline of images, following possible suspects as they moved along the sidewalks, building a narrative out of a random jumble of pictures from thousands of different phones and cameras.

It took a couple of days, but analysts began to focus on two men in baseball caps who had brought heavy black bags into the crowd near the marathon’s finish line but left without those bags. The decisive moment came on Wednesday afternoon, when Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D) got a call from state police: The investigation had narrowed in on the man who would soon be known as Suspect No. 2, the man whom police captured Friday night bleeding and disoriented on a 22-foot boat in a Watertown driveway.

Patrick said the images of Suspect No. 2 reacting to the first explosion provided “highly incriminating” evidence, “a lot more than the public knows.”

I admit that it would take a very long time to figure out that two individuals arrived with back packs and left without them, but only if you didn’t have footage of one of them placing his back pack at one of the explosion sites just moments before it went off. This account makes it sound like they first identified Subject Two (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) by his reaction to the bombing and not by, you know, him being on tape placing the bomb.

It is easier to see how Suspect One was connected to Suspect Two. You may have seen graphic pictures of one of the victims being carried away with his lower legs blown off. His name was Jeffrey Bauman and once he awoke from surgery he was able to write enough down on a piece of paper to attract FBI investigators to his bedside. There, they were told by Bauman that the bagman had a black cap and sunglasses. That means that Bauman was a victim of the first bomb set by Subject One (Tamerlan Tsarlaev). From there, investigators knew what to look for.

As investigators reviewed images, the young men in the black and white baseball caps came to stand out from the rest, [Boston Police Commissioner Edward] Davis said.

By Wednesday afternoon, [Gov. Deval] Patrick said in an interview Saturday, investigators had narrowed in on images of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the most likely suspect. “It was a remarkable moment when they narrowed in on Suspect Number 2,” he said.

I’m still having trouble over why there was any doubt about who the most likely suspect was when they had footage of him planting the bomb. If they had that footage on Wednesday (or even on Tuesday) then this doesn’t make much sense:

During a briefing Thursday afternoon, President Obama was shown the photos of the suspects by senior members of his national security team. Senior administration officials said that although Obama was not asked to approve release of the images by the FBI, the president offered a word of caution after viewing them. Be certain that these are the right suspects before you put the pictures out there, he advised his national security team, according to the administration officials.

Did the president not get to see the footage of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placing the bomb, either? Because, if he did, then why would he want assurances that they had the right guy?

In any case, they had their suspects but they couldn’t figure out who they were.

Davis said he was told that facial-recognition software did not identify the men in the ball caps. The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs’ images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation.

The facial recognition software totally flunked. I can accept that. But didn’t the Special Agent in Charge for Boston show these images to his officers, some of whom would presumably have interviewed Tamerlan two years ago? Unless the relevant agents had retired, been fired, or been transferred, it seems like someone should have recognized the face.

I am not positing some conspiracy here, other than to suggest that we are not getting straight answers on some pretty important elements of this story. The FBI should release their proof that they have footage of Suspect Two placing his back pack at the scene of the second bombing and also show us his inappropriate reaction to the first bombing. If they don’t, this thing will grow conspiracy theories faster than you can say Lee Harvey Oswald.

And, by the way, Oswald also spent time in Russia, was visited by the FBI, and killed a local cop after the commission of his crime. Remember?

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