FBI Handling of Russia Boston Bomber Tip Draws Scrutiny

The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, asked the FBI and other security agencies for all documents on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers linked to the bombing. Tsarnaev's 2012 trip to visit his parents in Russia's North Caucasus region, a hotbed of Islamist separatist movements, may have been missed by the FBI because his name was misspelled on airline records, said Senator Lindsey Graham.

"So it never went into the system that he actually went to Russia," Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said today on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." Graham subsequently told Bloomberg News that an FBI official informed him that Tsarnaev was on a federal travel watchlist, so he would have been identified if his name had been spelled correctly.
Tsarnaev died after being run over by an SUV driven by his brother as he sought to escape a police manhunt in Watertown, a Boston suburb. The younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was charged today by federal prosecutors with conspiring to use and using a weapon of mass destruction -- improvised pressure-cooker bombs - - to kill, a charge that carries a possible death sentence.

Lawmakers' Briefing

FBI Director Robert Mueller will testify to a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing tomorrow afternoon, said Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana.

Members of the House are scheduled to get a classified briefing on the bombing tomorrow, according to a notice sent to lawmakers and obtained by Bloomberg News. Sean Joyce, deputy FBI director, Rand Beers, homeland security under secretary, and Matthew Olsen of the National Counterterrorism Center will discuss the case with representatives from both parties.

While the Russian inquiry and Tamerlan's Tsarnaev's subsequent behavior might have provided warning signs, the elder brother "remained at liberty in this country to conduct the Boston attack, and it took days to publicly identify him as a suspect," according to a letter released today and signed by McCaul and Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who heads the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

"Somewhere along the line, it's fair to say why didn't the FBI follow up on" the earlier information, King said in an interview on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown."

2011 Investigation

In 2011, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev after receiving a request from a Russian intelligence service that said he was a "follower of radical Islam" whose plans to travel to Russia raised fears that he intended to join "unspecified underground groups," the FBI said on its website.

The FBI, which interviewed Tsarnaev, said it found no evidence of terrorist activity at that time.
White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the FBI's actions.
"They investigated it thoroughly and did not find terrorist activity, domestic or foreign," Carney said today.
Not all Republicans have been critical of the FBI's work on the case, and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, urged restraint.

It's "way too early" to say whether the FBI lapsed in its investigation, Boehner said today in an interview on Fox News. Congressional committees will help determine whether the bureau "dropped the ball or didn't drop the ball," he said.
Civil Liberties
In addition, Boehner said Americans have civil liberties that limit the investigative reach of government authorities.
"There's a fine line, if you are in America and you have a legal status, you're protected by American rights," Boehner said. "It's a fine line that they have to walk, and we're going to have to make a determination how well they walked that line."
Graham, who initially raised questions about the handling of the case, said today the FBI did a "pretty good job" of looking into the initial lead. That request came from Russia's FSB, the internal security agency.
The current FBI-led probe is paying close attention to a six-month trip Tsarnaev took in early 2012 to the Russian regions of Dagestan, where his parents now live, and the family's ethnic homeland Chechnya, areas that have been embroiled in Islamist separatist movements.

The FBI didn't follow up with a second interview after Tsarnaev returned to the U.S. in mid-2012.
Misspelled Name

The failure by the Russian airline Aeroflot to spell Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name correctly may have caused U.S. counterterrorism officials to miss his Russia trip, Graham said.

Tsarnaev subsequently expressed more extreme Islamic views. In January, he disrupted a sermon at the Islamic Society of Boston, raising concerns among the congregation, Anwar Kazmi, a member of the group's board of trustees, said in an interview yesterday. In his outburst, Tsarnaev objected to the idea that both Martin Luther King Jr. and the Prophet Muhammad could be mentioned in the same context as sources of inspiration, Kazmi said.

Graham said that after 2012 and 2013, when Tsarnaev became more radical, the FBI had limitations on what it could do under existing laws. He said this episode shows that Congress may need to "revisit our laws."
Inquiry Closed
The FBI closed its 2011 investigation after it had "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," the agency said in a statement.
After interviews with Tsarnaev and his family, "the FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011," the bureau said.
Tsarnaev, a legal permanent U.S. resident, did have an application for U.S. citizenship placed on hold after the FBI had questioned him. He had been arrested in 2009 on an assault and battery charge and wasn't convicted, according to Stephanie Guyotte, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex County, Massachusetts, district attorney.
The FBI did a "very thorough" job, responded to the foreign intelligence service and asked for further clarification about its information, Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
"Unfortunately, that intelligence service stopped cooperating," he said.

Information Request
Graham, at a news conference at the Capitol, said he was told by the FBI that Russia didn't respond to its request for additional information. During a 45-minute phone call with an FBI official last night, Graham said he questioned why the bureau didn't monitor Tsarnaev's Internet activity because "it's pretty clear this guy was expressing radical Islamic views."

Graham said he was told "the system is not as robust as you'd think." The FBI official said the legal authority to monitor such activity is limited, absent information that corroborated the Russian tip, he said. Congress should study the episode to determine if the FBI should be given more legal authority for monitoring, he said.
In their letter, McCaul and King said Tsarnaev "appears to be the fifth person since Sept. 11, 2001, to participate in terror attacks despite being under investigation by the FBI."

Earlier Cases

They cited Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born al-Qaeda cleric killed in a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen; David Headley, a Pakistani-American convicted for involvement in a 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack; Carlos Bledsoe, a Muslim convert who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for shooting two soldiers at a military recruiting center in 2009; and Army Major Nidel Hassan, charged in the deadly 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage.
Those cases "raise most serious questions about the efficacy of federal counterterrorism efforts," they wrote in the letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller; Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

"We are going to refrain from commenting at this time," said Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Clapper.
The documents requested by McCaul and King may show what information the Russian authorities initially provided and whether there was any further intelligence after Tamerlan's visit.

Russia has one of the most aggressive Internet-monitoring systems in the world. Every Internet service provider in Russia by law has to be wired to the FSB, which allows monitoring of e- mails, web traffic, and credit-card transactions automatically of anyone in Russia or any traffic passing through the country, such as to a radical website hosted there. The Russian authorities may have been aware of Tamerlan's communications since they had flagged his name for attention.

To contact the reporters on this story: Terry Atlas in Washington at tatlas@bloomberg.net; Roxana Tiron in Washington at rtiron@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

Source: BLOOMBERG NEWS