Late Boston Marathon Suspect Was on Terrorism Watch List
More details have emerged on how U.S. intelligence agencies
handled warnings about one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects well
before the attacks. The National Counterterrorism Center added Tamerlan
Tsarnaev to the government’s main terrorism watch list more than a year
ago at the CIA’s request. The move came after the Russian government
relayed concerns about Tsarnaev to the CIA, as it had also done with the FBI. The FBI
had interviewed him but had found no evidence of wrongdoing. On
Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended the FBI’s
claim it did everything it could with the information it had at the
time.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "You know, all of these — all of these issues are obviously under investigation. What we do know is that the FBI took action in response to that notification, investigated the elder brother, and investigated thoroughly, and came to the conclusion that there was no derogatory information, no indication of terrorist activity or associations, either foreign or domestic, at that time."News that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on the intelligence radar is spurring calls for federal agencies to re-examine their priorities, particularly a focus on sting operations that critics say constitute entrapment. In an editorial, The Washington Post writes: "The FBI has devoted considerable resources to sting operations against people it judges to be terror suspects, sometimes on what look like dubious grounds. ... [I]t’s not clear that a sometimes far-fetched plot would have gone forward without the encouragement and help of FBI informants."
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