Bombing suspects’ mom also in terror database
(BostonGlobe) – The CIA asked for the Boston terror suspect and his mother to be added to a terrorist database in the fall of 2011, after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that both had become religious militants, according to officials briefed on the investigation. About six months earlier, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, also at Russia’s request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism.
The revelation that the FBI had also investigated Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and the CIA arranged for her to be added to the terrorism database deepened the mystery around the family.The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who immigrated to the Boston area in the past 11 years. Tsarnaeva, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has appeared on television interviews since the attacks and reversed her decision to return to the U.S. after the bombings, has said her sons could never have been behind the deadly attacks and believes they were framed.
(RT.com) – Anzor and Zubeidat Tsarnaev are expected to come to the United States to “find out the truth” behind their sons’ alleged involvement in a terror attack. On Wednesday, they met with diplomats from the US Embassy in Moscow in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala. Zubeidat claimed they both spoke to FBI representatives, though her statement has not been confirmed.
After the meeting, Anzor said at a press conference in Makhachkala he would travel from Russia to the US to bury Tamerlan. “I am going to the United States. I want to say that I am going there to see my son, to bury the older one. I don’t have any bad intentions. I don’t plan to blow up anything,” he said, adding, “I am not angry at anyone. I want to go find out the truth.”
Speaking at the press conference, Zubeidat blamed the US for killing her son.
“He was alive! Why did they need to kill him? Why? They got him alive.”
The mother said she wished her sons had never moved to the US, and if she goes there she will consider renouncing her US passport.
Zubeidat Tsarnaev said she has not yet decided whether she will go to the US; she is reportedly facing arrest if she enters the country. The clerk of the Natick District Court earlier confirmed to ABC News that Zubeidat failed to appear at a court hearing last year to resolve charges that she stole $1,600 worth of merchandise from a Lord & Taylor department store.
Zubeidat Tsarnaev worked as an aesthetician out of her Cambridge apartment
a serious generation gap.
And it’s nice to see that the FBI and CIA communicate as effectively as ever with each other, something that the creation of the fascist-sounding Department of Homeland Security was supposed to solve.
Would question that. Considering that Dzhakhor was naturalized on his own as an adult and not earlier in conjunction with his mother’s reported naturalization when he was a minor.
This from the comments in the Finding Misha article Booman cited is just stunning:
Crikey. Had a brief look around and it seems to be legitimate, in fact the ageing father is apparently currently using an email address in a domain registered a mere two days before the bombing, assuming I am reading the WhoIs record correctly. Circumstantial, to be sure, but still… As tangled webs go this one is either a complete coincidence or a total nightmare for the intelligence community; or both.
Have no idea how legit it is, but here’s the link to piece abstracted from in that article.
It presents a good case for why the mysterious “Misha” could be fictional.
Then there’s this:
Did Edmond’s speak a few days ago and urge caution in trying to understand the bombing?
Since we’re going all in for circumstantial correlation there’s this too:
From her own comment to the above article:
It is an interesting angle, the Magnitsky list thing. And uncle Ruslan being a bit spooky just raises the ante, one can certainly understand the split in the family under the circumstances. Personally I still see the Tsarnaev brothers as psychologically out of control on some level; putting them beyond the reach or credible influence of outsiders.
On the other hand the only motive for the younger brother that makes the remotest sense to me is money; the fraternal loyalty claim just seems a bit far-fetched.
A question I had earlier and is more nagging now that Ruslan’s residence in Maryland goes back to the 1990s is why his asylum seeking brother and his family settled outside Boston. Would be interesting to know who supported his request for asylum.
Graham Fuller has an interesting history. From Wikipedia:
Interesting January 2011 read from Sibel Edmonds.
Strikes me the two brothers, the father and uncle, may have split around the time the elder Kadryov was assassinated in Grozny, which would explain their apparently conflicting allegiances, remembering that Tamerlan stayed behind with uncle Ruslan in Kazakhstan in 2002 while his parents emigrated.
My nagging doubts are:
Even allowing for uniformly inaccurate reporting from law enforcement and media alike the basic framework of credible motives after the bombing has not been presented. One is forced to conclude that these two are a pair of ninnies; yet they successfully planned and executed the act itself all on their own.
Tamerlan and his sisters emigrated a year or so after their parents and younger brother came to the US in 2002. At least that’s the story and wasn’t it Ruslan that claimed they stayed behind with him? Not sure anything he says should be taken as fact.
Have to agree that it’s a stretch to believe they made the bombs all on their own.
Dzokhar allegedly took his car from the garage on Tuesday. Would discount the mechanic’s statement that he was acting nervous as he was seen the next day at school and acting normal. Curious though that Tamerlan would have told him that he was Turkish.
Allowing for the possibility that they didn’t expect to be caught and once their faces were flashed around the world and they panicked, shot a cop, and carjacked a car, why did they then drive around town for 90 minutes?
They weren’t satisfied with the car-jacking victim’s maximum withdrawal amount of $800 from the ATM. But they don’t seem to have understand how ATMs work unless they were trying different accounts on different ATM machines.
So we’re told. As if the brothers were newly “off the boat.” Wouldn’t the car that couldn’t be linked to them for at least a few hours been as valuable as “Danny’s” ATM/credit cards in making a getaway? And if that was their half-baked idea, why would they have identified themselves as the bombers to “Danny?”
They were after cash and more than $800 worth. Between that and their failure to bolt earlier it seems the days after the bombing don’t make much sense from their perspective.
Too busy “high fiving” themselves for three days to think of anything else, and then “oh shit” when their faces appeared on TV followed with panic moves. Perfectly plausible scenario — one that we’ve seen many times in the past by criminals.
Seems a vote for “stupid” which with these two is certainly an attractive option.
That link of yours on Gülen is a real eye-opener; here’s a slightly less conspiratorial but equally disturbing feature on Gülen and how his American charter school empire has been carved out largely on the taxpayer’s dime:
Quelle surprise.
Apparently the Turkey and Islamic expect Graham Fuller doesn’t understand Gulan’s reputation in Turkey either.
See Oui’s comments for more on those two and additional information on Rulan’s ex-wife.
Bearing in mind the green card application was decades ago, no?
Fuller claims he had nothing to do with Gulen’s visa application and green card; only wrote a letter to the FBI in 2006 in support of him.
From the WSJ 2010:
No sale there. Occam’s Razor suggests Mr. Gülen and his whole pan-Arabic aspiration is squarely in Fuller’s wheelhouse and perfectly aligned with his life-long thesis of utilising threads of Islam to hinder Russia. He’s an unreconstructed cold warrior of some standing.
I’m not saying that necessarily has any bearing on this case, however, except to make the Tsarnaev’s a more prickly proposition for all concerned.
Have to agree. There’s more there there. The Gulen Movement charter schools in this country are troubling. Somewhat more so to me than the charter school movement in general, and that’s none too good IMHO. Would dismiss it entirely wrt the Tsarnaev brothers if not for two dots with full acknowledgement that they may simply be more noise:
Didn’t know the Tsaraev’s were Sufis; where did you discover that? And as for the claim to be Turkish we know they spent at least a wee bit of time there on their way to the US, no? I wonder what their travel documents were, frankly, when making these journeys. Have read a lot of chatter in passing of Chechen Islamist militants getting assassinated in Turkey and nobody is shy about fingering Russia:
Just background, to be sure, but that along with the Gulen connection, kind of implies that the US and Russia might be playing a deadly game in Turkey over Chechen exiles, and recently too. It would be interesting to put some of these recent Chechen assassinations up against our Tsarnaev time-lines just out of passing interest.
Reported in The Guardian.
For all the FSB, FBI, CIA attention to Tamerlan and his mother, have the strong sense that the “why” is personal and not political or religious.
The notion that these two were acting on some private crusade is affirmed by their apparent isolation. I am struck by the mother, however, as a disturbed and disturbing influence for whom Islam might include some personal score settling of some kind.
As for the agencies, the FSB comes out the winner here as far as I can see; whether that was just the luck of the draw remains to be seen.
The only thing that just doesn’t fit, for me, is the time between the bombing and the FBI public identification via images; I realise you think they were just stupid but they did try, unsuccessfully, to get their car out of the workshop. It fits a narrative where some plan they were depending on had misfired; perhaps involving money and flight, the two things they got caught attempting to obtain. Just sayin’. Flight is a very powerful human instinct.
They didn’t want Danny’s car, they wanted his money. They already had a perfectly good and apparently unidentified car.
For the link, appreciate that.
Actually, if I thought they were “just stupid,” their known post-bombing actions wouldn’t seem so odd. We should also probably allow for the possibility that Tamerlan had some brain damage due to his years boxing.
One question to ponder is why was the car in the garage when they planned to bomb the Marathon? And let’s not forget that it was Dzhokhar that was anxious to get the car out of the garage.
Why did Tamerlan go to Dagestan in 2012? Why did the family leave Kyrgyzstan? Anzor said that Tamerlan wanted to return to his homeland. But that would have been Kyrgyzstan and not Dagestan. Anzor also said that he told Tamerlan to go back to Boston. Did he also inform him that Kyrgystan was closed to the family? Did he learn that Dagestan was no better or worse than Boston for himself?
Was he indifferent to life or death? But if he was to die, he didn’t want to do so anonymously? Or would he do so in a way that was guaranteed to shine a light on someone that led to his distress? Distress that was building over a number of years. It appears that he sought comfort in religion, girls, and a return to the boxing gym and competition. While the religion might have seemed positive to his mother as it led him to stop smoking and drinking, it created conflict with his father and uncles. One girlfriend became history when she called the cops on him and he married the other one, probably after she became pregnant. He fizzled out in boxing. His parents marriage crumbled and his was if not troubled, then stressful. He doubled down on religion.
Was he envious of his brother who was doing well in the US? Envious enough to trick him into joining him in setting off a smoke bomb at the Marathon? But loved him enough in the end to make himself the target of the cops so that his brother could get away?
So the system did what it was designed to do? Emphasis added:
If Napolitano had mentioned this a few days ago it would probably have been given a lot of attention; it completely contradicts the self-serving assertion that Tsarnaev didn’t “ping” the system on his return. It’s a lot easier to collect and store information than figure out what to do with it; ask any corporation.
Boston bombers’ uncle married daughter of top CIA official
http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/26/boston-bombers-uncle-married-daughter-of-top-cia-official/
I searched all records at Ancestry.com for the name “Tamerlan Tsarnaev.” My top several records concerned Ruslan Tsarnaev, living in North Carolina, and his wife Samantha A Fuller, also known as Samantha Ankara Tsarnaev, later his ex-wife.
Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_Digestion_and_Biogas_Association
http://www.adbiogas.co.uk/about-adba/history/founders/?id=14
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/sectors/energy-and-environment/news/adba-proposes-creation-of-carbon-cr
edit-trading-platform/1007675.article
Lord Redesdale
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-redesdale/3271
Samantha Fuller, Policy and Development Manager, Zebec Energy
http://www.adbiogas.co.uk/about-adba/our-people/board/
http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Samantha-Fuller/1331634466
Samantha Fuller, development & policy manager, AdGen Energy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cleantech-summit/samantha-fuller
Samantha has been part of the energy industry for over 10 years. The first half was focusing on the investment and corporate finance in the city (JP Morgan and DrKW). She spent six years on trading floors providing analysis and investment advice to fund manager clients covering EU and emerging market utilities, infrastructure and some gas companies. She then joined Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) [http://www.embassyofireland.co.uk/home/index.aspx?id=82255] as an in-house analyst reporting directly to the chief executive. She turned her focus to biogas and was the development manger that took Barkip, Scotland’s biggest biogas plant, through to financial close. Samantha then joined InSource Energy, an SSE-Carbon Trust joint venture, before moving to her current position at AdGen Energy.
Adds a whole additional element of complexity to it doesn’t it?
How about this?:
So while we’re looking for a bald, red-bearded Armenian the Russians are claiming Tamerlan was getting a dose of anti-Western Islamism from a CIA recruiting franchise in Dagestan. Nice. If anyone’s keeping score looks like the CIA is losing this round.
Not ready or willing to go down the Alex Jones rabbit hole.
But in spite of the fact Jones’ site posted this it seems to directly contradict his wild notions about “false flags.” The US would certainly have avoided patsies with such a spooky pedigree, wouldn’t they? Unless they were implausibly stupid.
Superficially confirms the “false flag” conspiracies. Where you and I see connections that would make these two totally unacceptable patsies, they only see connections.
The FBI closing the Tamerlan case after he leaves the US while the CIA is still “interested” has all the hallmarks of a more complex relationship with the suspect on the CIA’s part than previously admitted.
That the Russians now claim, via Georgian counter-intelligence of all places, that he was at a Caucasus Fund workshop in Tbilisi during this time must be causing no end of despair. Your move, Langley.
Seems to think the Izvestia story is total bollocks.
Has the FBI changed its story that it closed the Tsarnaev file in mid 2011? The CIA picked up the case from its own separate tip from Russian authorities and did no more with it than put Tamerlan on its voluminous TRIP list.
Discounted that Russian report that Tamerlan attended a CIA training operation.
Nevertheless the story showed up in Isvestia, not that it counts for much.
So now we’re told that the Russians had a more or less incriminating wiretap on Tamemrlan and Zubeidat, at least briefly. And it seems she and Anzor have skipped. Can’t say as I blame them, but still…
This from Huffpo is more intriguing to me:
FSB watching the FBI in early 2011? Am assuming (perhaps not a smart thing to do in this case) that Zubeidat was in Dagaestan when these two phone call were intercepted. (Before she returned to the US in time for her shop lifting spree in June 2012.) An early report stated that both she and Anzor were lawyers in Kyrgyzstan. Quite an accomplishment considering that she had four(or five?) children. It seems to be established that all her children were born in Kyrgyzstan; so, that means they lived there for at least fourteen years with the last ten after independence. Why did they leave? Was the stop in Dagestan to get Russian passports?
Is it coincidental that Russian authorities became interested in her shortly after uncle Ruslan weighed in against the President of Kyrgyzstan in that lawsuit?
Some very tangled webs. Graham Fuller offered information today that his daughter and Ruslan were married for three or four years and divorced in 1999 and that Ruslan had no interest in intelligence stuff. Plus Dzhokhar hung out with two students from Kazakhstan, one of whom drove a BMW with a “Terrorista #1” license plate — but we’re assured that is unrelated.
The Zubeidat timeline, I was just trying to figure it out from reports here, here and here and agree it is unclear where she would have been at the time though between February and September it is implied she was in the US for the separation and divorce.
Seems Anzor and Zubeidat may have grown to be on opposite sides of the Islamic political divide imposed on Chechnya and Dagestan by the resurgence of Russian control through Kadyrov and his son. It was mentioned, “His son-in-law’s brothers all work in the police force under Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, he said.” As for Ruslan, he seems to have thrown his lot in with the West, big time. He must have been involved as counsel in this kerfuffle at about the same time while working with Golden Eagle Partners LLC in Kazakhstan.
You’re right about their trip to Dagestan in 2001-02, apparently:
Now we know the FBI and the FSB were doing overlapping snooping on the mother. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, frankly, but I thought the Isvestia story on the same day as the rounding up of 140 Chechen “suspects” near Moscow was cheeky, at least.
Now, instead of clarity, the reports in our media seem confusing and somewhat contradictory. Who’s ringing this bell? Doesn’t seem like our much maligned intelligence establishment can even establish a credible time-line, never mind plot a conspiracy. Putin’s bunch seem to be getting the best mileage from this story so far, though that could just be cheerful opportunism.
Apparently we have found and spoken with “Misha:”
And a sigh of relief from the FBI, one supposes.
Families do tend to blame a child’s or sibling’s friend(s) or lover for negative changes in a child or sibling. In this case ignoring the fact that the friend hadn’t been seen for three years.
On recent Novaya Gazeta investigative journalism on Tamerlan’s stay in Dagestan:
An interesting insight which fleshes out the Tamerlan time-line in Russia quite a bit, notwithstanding speculative claims. Also debunks previous Isvestia story as total red herring.
Interesting. If a bit too tidy. Answers why the FSB were interested in Tamerlan in late 2010 or early 2011. And after releasing Plotnikov wouldn’t have been too concerned not to receive a response from the FBI.
But weren’t we told that several months after the FSB inquiry to the FBI that they also contacted the CIA? And this led the CIA in late 2011 to place Tamerlan and his mother on what they call the TRIP list?
This caught my attention:
Wouldn’t that have been the third inquiry and second one submitted to the CIA? And as the blogger points out:
Would add that with the death of Plotnikov on July 13, 2012, why more alarm bells didn’t go off? Good coverage of William Plotnikov from August 2012.
Tamerlan returned to the US on July 17, 2012.
Thanks for the link!