The latest report on the Tardashev killing is even more curious (as if that could be possible) than the first report. Conor Friedersdorf provides one of the better summaries of questions the latest NYTimes report raises. NYTimes details:
“The shooting occurred after an F.B.I. agent from Boston and two detectives from the Massachusetts State Police had been interviewing Mr. Todashev for several hours about his possible involvement in a triple homicide in Waltham, Mass., in 2011, according to the law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.”
“Mr. Todashev, according to the F.B.I., confessed to his involvement in the deaths and implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. He then started to write a statement admitting his involvement while sitting at a table across from the agent and one of the detectives when the agent briefly looked away.”
“At that moment, Mr. Todashev picked up the table and threw it at the agent, knocking him to the ground.”
“While trying to stand up, the agent, who suffered a wound to his face from the table that required stitches, drew his gun and saw Mr. Todashev running at him with a metal pole, according to the official, adding that it might have been a broomstick.”
“The agent fired several shots at Mr. Todashev, striking him and knocking him backward. But Mr. Todashev again charged at the agent. The agent fired several more shots at Mr. Todashev, killing him.”
“The detective in the room did not fire his weapon, the official said.”
If such a scenario were ever presented in an action movie, even the dumbest audience would laugh derisively. However, isn’t pinning the Waltham Murders on Todashev and Tsarnaev similarly implausible?
There’s a good reason why the Waltham murders is a cold case. The crime scene suggested more a crazed killer(s) than anything else. Killer or killers known to one or more of the victims. For possibly good reasons the police rejected that hypothesis. That left terrorist inspired killings or drug related. Not withstanding the relatively rare method of killing, there wasn’t much in the lives of the victims to suggest they would be terrorist targets. That left drug related. And not just street level drug crime related. More like a professional hit, either pre-planned or spontaneous. Pros know what to take and what to leave behind. Amateurs don’t.
I’m reminded of The Almost Perfect Bank Robbery. The robbers knew which packs of bills had had their serial numbers recorded but they couldn’t bear to destroy them. Thus, only an almost perfect bank robbery.
The BPD ruled out robbery as a motive given the thousands of dollars left behind and seven pounds marijuana scattered around the apartment. So, for some unknown reason Todashev and Tsarnaev would slit the throats of three men and walk out without picking up the cash? Only lift a gun for some crime in the future?
The only real clue in this case is the seven pounds of marijuana. Too much if it were planted by a killer(s) to mislead authorities. Thus, one or more of the victims was dealing drugs. The extent of that activity is unknown. However, the $5,000 and seven pounds is fairly low-level. Low enough that it’s surprising the activity remained completely concealed from, well, everybody. Or maybe not so surprising considering that we don’t commonly associate white guys with drug dealing. Plus that would hardly lead to a drug related professional hit and seven pounds of marijuana would be too insignificant to tempt a pro (pros).
It’s possible that one or more of the victims had substantially stiffed “the man” and therefore, had to to be “rubbed out.” A trite drug crime movie scenario. An alternative is that the “visitors” that night let something slip that made it imperative to silence the men. Doesn’t eliminate Todashev and/or Tsarnaev as suspects, but only if there’s a lot more to their stories than we know today.
How do we know when the government is lying?
When it is telling us something.
Is there “a lot more to their stories than we know today?”
Bet on it.
Will we find out the truth?
Don’t bet on it.
Will the mass of Americans buy the lies?
Sure. Been buying since JFK. It’s a habit, now. Why change? Go cold turkey? Only when the lies are proven toxic, and that won’t happen until the whole house of cards collapses.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
US government lies and a majority of the public buying those lies didn’t begin with the assassination of JFK. The frequency of government lying seems to have exponentially increased when the national security state was enacted. Even there a lot of those lies are to mask ignorance, incompetence, and “oops.”
And in all fairness to Americans, the official version of the JFK assassination was only briefly accepted as accurate.
You write:
True. But the exponential increase of that lying did start there. That was also the place where the (so-called) peacetime national security state got its start. Why? How? Because the majority of the American people simply shrugged their shoulders at that big, big lie and went on about their…at that time quite profitable for most Americans…business.
And the lies continued.
The result of all of that lying?
Look at where we are today.
The crooked cop of the world.
Prosper?
Survive is about all we can do now. We have sold ourselves down a river of lies, and now we are left to patrol dangerous neighborhoods and grift whatever we can in the process while the inhabitants of those neighborhoods…quite justifiably in most instances…defend themselves against our world-wide depredations any way that they can do so.
“In all fairness to Americans!!!???”
In all fairness to Americans, most of us have surrendered to an evil system and all of us are suffering the consequences.
All of us.
That’s about as “fair” as karma gets, and so it goes.
Later…
AG
Perhaps and perhaps not. Would seem to depend on how invested one is in the notion that JFK’s assassination perpetrated by a domestic government cabal that has been in control of our federal government since then.
Gore Vidal dates it from the beginning of the national security state after WWII. A review of all the ugly stuff that went on under Ike, convinces me that Vidal had it right.
The problem with much of what is considered conspiracies theories is that they leave out too much actual data in favor of speculation and close too many doors to possible (sometimes even more probable) scenarios. IMHO, the “9/11 truthers” wasted a lot of time barking up the wrong trees and acted so unhinged when challenged that they effectively discredited anyone else that dared to challenge the official narrative.
Vidal had it right. A cursory kook at Eisenhower’s farewell address says it all. But the “exponential growth” part started after the Permanent Government realized the real power of the until then nascent media lie machine.
Bet on it.
Question upon question regarding the JFK/Lee Harvey Oswald murders punked by the media into questionable “tinfoil hat” nutcase conspiracy theories while the evidence mounted and mounted, while the public put its collective ass in the air and said “Fuck me; I’m yours. Just don’t take away my profits!!!”
And here we are 50+ years later. Thoroughly fucked and worried about the possibility of socio-cultural STDs taking us down.
And you still question the efficacy of the big lie?
Please.
AG
A really big lie — that we know is a lie — was that the US defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan. That the USSR had nothing to do with it; and therefore, it was incumbent on us to engage in a new decades long war to defeat them.
All the alternative hypotheses to the official JFK assassination narrative have similarly deep flaws and insufficient evidence. I don’t have much difficulty believing the worst in people, that people engage in criminal conspiracies quite frequently or that many of US government institutions were corrupt in 1963 and are corrupt today. However, I’m mindful of the fact that beneficiaries of dreadful large events are rarely the perpetrators. And that the larger the number of participants in a conspiracy the sooner the truth leaks out.
Do I think Oswald acted alone? Not really. He also was a terrible candidate to work with others. Good patsy though. Everything about the crime in the critical minutes, hours, and days was controlled by Dallas authorities and locals. While it had national and international implications, my best guess is that the crime was local. The RFK assassination was done more professionally or luckily.
The similarities between the 9/11 Truthers and the JFK conspiracists are superficial.
There is no question that identifiable people hijacked planes and flew them into buildings. Who indoctrinated them? Who trained them? Who financed them? Why did we fail to stop them?
We don’t have to accept the official line on these questions, but the basic outline is clear.
With JFK, we have a clear case now that the official policy of the government was to prevent the American public from thinking that the Russian or Cubans might have had anything to with it because that could have led to pressures that would lead to a nuclear holocaust. To kill that idea, Oswald had to have acted alone and without communist assistance or even anti-communist assistance.
Thus, the investigation began with its conclusion, even though the facts didn’t fit the conclusion.
Certainly, with the Cuban Missile Crisis so fresh in our memory, a coverup was totally justified. But it had its price, which is the destruction of trust and the empowerment of the Big Lie.
You don’t have to agree that elements in the CIA guided the assassination of Kennedy to realize that the whole government was implicated in selling us an explanation that doesn’t hold water. They had good reasons, but we’ve suffered real costs.
That suggests that there was known USSR or Cuban involvement to cover up. That could have been a not unreasonable initial fear, but should have been quickly dispelled for lack of evidence.
Was the “Big Lie” allowed to live on for lack of evidence of the truth or for a more nefarious reason?
The 9/11 attacks occurred on a day that Cheney was running war games — those hijackers were either the luckiest criminal SOBs ever or they had internal US government help.
The thing about the JFK assassination is that it seems entirely plausible that Oswald was intentionally ‘sheep-dipped’ by a conspiratorial few to make the “totally justified” cover-up the inevitable first instinct and final exit strategy for all others concerned. That’s the scary part; not that the state is in the hands of an elite but that the system is sometimes susceptible to bold manipulation by a disproportionate few whether the elite like it or not. And there seems not much that can be done to remedy it at the time if the JFK assassination is any guide.
The 2008 credit crash would be another example. That’s what gives the 9/11 truther conspiracy narrative currency; not any specific evidence but a reasonable belief that our society is vulnerable to being gamed by a very few determined and ruthless actors.
Nicely said. So easy to forget that complex societies are made up of innumerable systems and while all are part of the whole, few are more than loosely connected to each other and the larger systems and any of them can malfunction or even collapse without having much impact on others. However, rather than viewing that as scary, it indicates system robustness.