Posts and comments by BMGers petr, kbusch, and, yes, Ernie Boch III have posed important questions about the conduct of the manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, including how it was that the 19-year-old Dzhokhar was able to hide out in a boat in someone’s back yard, apparently for hours, while 9,000 cops were overrunning Watertown.
Another question occurred to me that arises out of what happened a couple of days earlier: everyone knows by now that, as a result of inquiries by a “foreign government” (presumably Russia), the FBI ran a background check on the older Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, in 2011 – not so very long ago. What did they do?
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.
So the FBI had not only looked over everything they could find about this guy, they also actually talked to him and unspecified members of his family. Heck, maybe they talked to Dzhokhar.
Anyway, my question is this: once the FBI had those pretty-good-quality shots of the Tsarnaev brothers at the Marathon, how is it possible that someone in the FBI – let’s say the people who actually interviewed Tamerlan two years ago – didn’t recognize him? Once those photographs had been found and enhanced, shouldn’t every FBI agent – especially every agent in Boston – have been looking hard at them before they were released to the public to see if they knew the guys? And if they did that, why didn’t someone realize that one of the guys was someone they had interviewed just a couple of years ago because a “foreign government” was worried he was becoming radicalized? Shouldn’t people like that stay on some sort of short list, so that even if the FBI doesn’t find enough on them to act immediately (as was apparently the case with Tamerlan), they don’t have to reinvent the wheel if it later turns out that one of those guys really was bad news?
And I hate to say it, but if the FBI had realized who they were dealing with before they publicized the photos, maybe they could have simply arrested him and avoided all the insanity of the ensuing chase … including the death of Officer Sean Collier. Because when you think about it, the two pieces of really dumb luck that led the police to realize the Tsarnaev brothers were in Watertown – the fact that the brothers showed up in video footage from a convenience store that coincidentally had just been robbed, and the fact that the guy whose SUV they carjacked left his cell phone in the car, rather than having it in his pocket – could easily not have happened, and the brothers could easily be far, far away by now.
bostongrant says
OK, so you’re the Russian Consulate and you get a visa request by a 20 something guy who’s related to a Chechnyan former activist who wants to visit for several months. You ask your counter-terrorist friends at the FBI to check the dude out before granting the visa. Maybe you troll it a little bit by saying he’s got some militant jihadi tendencies just to get their attention.
FBI runs a background check and finds not too much. Russia grants visa. Probably checks him out from time to time while he’s in Russia to figure out what he’s up to but finds zilch. Do you think that if he was at some sort of training camp that the Russians wouldn’t have figured that out on their turf? Oh yeah, and the FBI agent who interviews him maybe got transferred to LA or someplace and has interviewed hundreds of guys since them, many more memorable than Tamerlan.
I don’t think there’s much to see here.
Jasiu says
I listened for a very short while this morning to On Point (WBUR) where this was being discussed and the point was made that these sorts of requests from foreign governments number in the thousands per year, with much the same result (if I have the number wrong, that is my fault). If I have time later, I’ll try to find the segment.
Unfortunately, with all of the media hype, they make it look like this was a rare situation that should have stuck out like a sore thumb when, apparently, it wasn’t.
2weeksy says
IMPORTANT FACT: the FBI was given a description of Suspect 2 withing two hours of the bombing!
An Eywitness at the marathon watched Suspect 2 walk up to the crowd and set down a bag on the sidewalk. Eyewitness made close eye contact with Suspect 2 before Suspect 2 walked off leaving the bag. Eyewitness then had his legs amputated by the blast that erupted from the bag. Despite his injuries, Eyewitness gave a description of Suspect 2 to investigators at the hospital. He described Suspect 2 as a young WHITE male.
HOW MANY RADICALIZED YOUNG WHITE MALES ARE THERE IN ALL OF NEW ENGLAND THAT ARE ALSO ALREADY ON THE FBI’S “LIST”?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The truth is this crime was solveable by sunset on Monday. The FBI failed to check their own files and instead waited for video analysis while they basked in the glory of the media’s klieg lights.
FREE ERNIE, FREE ERNIE, FREE ERNIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
mike_cote says
Ernie should be treated as an enemy combatant, IMHO. Besides he hates Gingers.
kirth says
You didn’t use enough capital letters to be persuasive, and there’s NOT EVEN ONE EXCLAMATION POINT IN YOUR COMMENT!!!!!!!!!
How can we take you seriously?
mike_cote says
If I am not feeding trolls, then I am probably trying to find some way to reference Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings, and making spelling mistakes while doing it.
whosmindingdemint says
All your questions are good David (and Ernie) but I also continue to wonder about the unsolved triple homicide in Waltham in 2011 where one of the victims was tamarlan’s close friend – according to the Globe. He was already on the FBI radar at that time. They died of knife wounds to the neck and the bodies were covered with marijuana. Tamarlan said in 2010 I think that he did not have one American friend. The Waltham apartment was occupied by 5 men – 3 of whom were killed. One of the surviving roommates drove a Benz. Tamarlan drove a Benz.
The weird statement made with the marijuana could obviously make the whole thing drug related – or could be the work of a zealot who has a passion for big “statements”
David says
as well.
Christopher says
…is the talk I’m hearing from national Republicans, Peter King and Lindsay Graham come to mind, of treating him as an enemy combatant which leads to at best a denial of due process and at worst torture. Plus whatever imminent threat that might trigger a Miranda exemption seems to have passed now, though I do wonder if he for sure wasn’t Mirandized. Who actually cuffed him? The reason I ask is because if I had cuffed him I would have Mirandized him on the spot out of habit, later official word notwithstanding. There is no evidence that they are al-Qaida, or even Chechen rebels in which case I don’t know what they want with us. For all we know they are just a couple of jerks who wanted attention for seeing how much damage they could cause.
fenway49 says
they say he’ll be tried in normal civilian courts. If that worked for McVeigh, it will work for this guy too. The Constitution of the United States is not be discarded for the sake of expediency.
jconway says
Unfortunately, so he will be eligible for the death penalty. Wish state law couldn’t be superseded like that.
Christopher says
I believe he is being charged with a federal crime and federal law is supreme. At least for now he’s probably more valuable alive anyway.
Jasiu says
A cop I knew once told me that when he was the arresting officer that he never read the Miranda rights because he wasn’t the one who would be doing the interrogation. What you see on TV is just for the drama.
My understanding of what he said was that unless and until you are asking questions, it isn’t necessary. I was also told that if the person under arrest decides to talk without being questioned, before the rights are read, anything they say is admissible.
I’d be interested to know if this is accurate from anyone who knows more than I do.
And note that I do understand the difference between what I’m saying here and the public safety exception.
fenway49 says
as a case, stood for the proposition that, due to the potential for coercion, the right against self-incrimination is hollow if defendants are subject to “custodial interrogation” without having been notified of the right and of their right to have an attorney present during questioning.
In the nearly fifty years since Miranda was decided, bodies of caselaw have been developed defining what constitutes “custody” and what constitutes “interrogation.” Generally speaking, it’s correct that if there are no questions (or nothing deemed by the courts the functional equivalent), voluntarily made statements by the defendant will be admissible. Courts even have accepted situations where the defendant was pumped for information by a plant, a cop posing as a fellow prisoner, for instance. The idea was that the element of coercion present in, say, the interrogation room, was missing.
Long before Miranda, my friend’s great-grandfather was an NYPD detective on an anti-Mafia squad. When mob guys ended up in the hospital, he’d dress as a priest and “confess” them. Their shock and anger was palpable when the real priest walked in after him.
Christopher says
NBC is reporting that the defendant is cooperating. There has been an initial hearing at bedside whereat the federal magistrate explained all the rights regarding self-incrimination and counsel and appointed defense counsel accordingly when Tsarnaev indicated he could not afford a lawyer. Rachel Maddow just now read the transcript from this hearing including the silent nods and headshakes of Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev also says that he and his brother had no ties to any organization or government, that they plotted on their own motivated by religious fervor, and found how to make their bombs on the internet.
tudor586 says
it’s our responsibility to question the law enforcement response, and point out ways in which things could have been done better. This post starts that important work. I think the FBI could have done a better job of enlisting the assistance of the public–e.g. by communicating better. And lifting the stay-home order directly led to detection of the perp. One guy who needed a smoke accomplished more than the army of law enforcement officers did in a whole day–insofar as detection is concerned.
kirth says
If the homeowner had not stayed indoors during the shelter in place period, and had gone out to his boat at first light, the suspect might well have been alert enough to shoot him. I know this is speculation, but it’s no more hypothetical than the implication that the shelter order was unnecessary.
oceandreams says
to try to be informed before playing Monday morning quarterback without the facts. Some of the people here who are angrily wondering why the FBI didn’t have a file on the older brother after the Russian-government-requested interview — one that would easily have identified him by photograph — would also be among those in other circumstances raising the issue of civil liberties violations targeting someone due to the “baseless” accusations of a government known to have no respect for individual freedoms. Do you want the FBI keeping a permanent file on every person interviewed at the request of any foreign government, so that just like those with arrest records they are instantly identifiable in the event of a crime? OK then, but then understand the implications of that.
It is absolutely fair to ask why the older brother was not determined to be a threat when the Russians thought he was, and why if he was questioned there was no ability to connect this with the photos. I expect these questions will be addressed. I do not think it fair to jump to conclusions before hearing the answers.
Finally, I agree with kirth. We have absolutely no idea what would have happened had the shelter-in-place not been instituted. It’s pretty likely the suspect would have been stronger in the morning than the evening, and potentially more able to kill boatowner or take him hostage.
What if he had been able to take other hostages while outside of the search area trying to flee? Given the events of the prior evening, that was certainly a plausible scenario.
jconway says
Which frankly is all Ernie, David in this post, and anyone else has been doing. But I guess, in a way, it’s cathartic and in Ernie’s case allowed him to feel smarter than the experts.
David says
that it’s not legitimate to raise questions following an event like the one we just had in Boston? Is any question about how things played out by definition “Monday morning quarterbacking”? Even oceandreams, in the comment you claim to be agreeing with, doesn’t go that far.
As far as I can tell, I’m not jumping to any conclusions – I don’t see any stated in my post. And this isn’t about “catharsis.” It’s about trying to understand why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Do you think the Tsarnaevs were the only two guys in the country with those kinds of thoughts in their heads?
bluewatch says
He was wearing sunglasses and a hat. He’s hard to recognize from the videos and pictures. Don’t know why his young brother didn’t wear sunglasses also.
David says
Geez. If that’s all it takes to slip by the FBI, our problems are bigger than I had realized.
whosmindingdemint says
What a terrible movie!