Time: Four Enduring Mysteries About the Boston Bombings

[avaistheone1]

Two weeks after the Boston marathon bombings killed three people and injured hundreds more, one suspect is dead and another is in custody and charged with a capital crime. The basic outlines of the story of the Tsarnaev brothers seem clear. Yet recent news reports and comments from members of Congress underscore that critical questions about their alleged crimes remain unanswered, complicating the emerging debate over what lessons America should draw from the horror on Boylston Street. Here are the most pressing:


Did They Really Act On Their Own? During his initial interrogation, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly said that he and his brother Tamerlan acted alone, motivated by anger over America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that they learned how to construct their bombs online. Officials have disclosed no evidence to the contrary, but there are hints of a more complex plot. By some accounts, their bomb detonators–exploded via remote controllers for toy cars–required a sophistication that the Tsarnaev brothers didn’t otherwise show when, for instance, they failed to wear disguises to the marathon site, or when they carelessly allowed a hostage to escape. “There was some outside counsel to these individuals on how to build and how to detonate,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told Fox News last week, although a national security source also told Fox that the toy-car detonator is not a known al Qaeda technique...snip

How Much Does Vladimir Putin Know? Some lawmakers believe the Russian government is being coy about its intelligence on the Tsarnaev family. “I think they do know more than they’re telling us,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN yesterday. Those suspicions have hardly been allayed by this weekend’s revelation that Russia informed U.S. officials only recently about recorded phone conversations, including one in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, discussed “jihad.” Those conversations were the basis for the warning by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago. After the FBI’s three-month investigation sounded no alarms, however, Russia didn’t respond to the bureau’s request for more information...snip

Did U.S. Intelligence Officials Fail to ‘Connect the Dots’ Again? A more dogged pursuit of leads and better intelligence sharing could have prevented the September 11 attacks, and some lawmakers now wonder if the same goes for Boston. The FBI investigated Tamerlan in 2011 after Russia’s initial warning that he’d grown enchanted by Islamic radicalism, but the bureau closed its file on him after finding no “derogatory” information. Even if the FBI had no legal grounds to continue surveilling Tsarnaev without more specific information, however, some critics suggest that local law enforcement could have kept an eye on him...snip

Who Is ‘Misha’ and Where Is He? Tamerlan’s relatives say that his sharp turn toward Islam, while perhaps fostered in part by disappointment over his stalled boxing career, was encouraged by a man the Associated Press describes as a “mysterious radical”–a bearded man known only as “Misha.” “This person just took his brain. He just brainwashed him completely,” Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni tells CNN. Misha is a Muslim convert who urged Tamerlan to quit boxing, stop studying music, and adopt a sharply anti-American worldview. The Associated Press and other news outlets have thus far been unable to locate Misha, an older, heavyset Armenian native with a reddish beard whom Tamerlan reportedly met in 2008 or 2009. According to the Daily Beast, the feds have now identified “Misha,” though it’s unclear whether they have spoken to him yet. They are no doubt eager to. With so many questions about the terror in Boston still lingering, investigators are desperate to talk to anyone who might have answers. Update: Last night Christian Caryl reported meeting with a man in Rhode Island who he says is Misha; the man says he “wasn’t [Tamerlan's] teacher, and that he is “cooperating entirely” with the FBI.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/29/four-mysteries-about-the-boston-bombings/#ixzz2S1LWQbsu

[MADem]

1. Misha lives in Rhode Island.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/An_Important_Story_Nobody_Will_Read

A thirty-nine-year-old man of Armenian-Ukrainian descent, Allakhverdov is of medium height and has a thin, reddish-blond beard. When I arrived he was wearing a green and white short-sleeve football jersey and pajama pants. Along with his parents, his American girlfriend was there, and we sat together in a tiny living room that abuts the family kitchen.

Allakhverdov said he had known Tamerlan in Boston, where he lived until about three years ago, and has not had any contact with him since. He declined to describe the nature of his acquaintance with Tamerlan or the Tsarnaev family, but said he had never met the family members who are now accusing him of radicalizing Tamerlan. He also confirmed he had been interviewed by the FBI and that he has cooperated with the investigation:

I've been cooperating entirely with the FBI. I gave them my computer and my phone and everything I wanted to show I haven't done anything. And they said they are about to return them to me. And the agents who talked told me they are about to close my case.
An FBI spokesman in Boston declined to comment on an ongoing case. Allakhverdov's statements, however, seemed to bear out recent reports that the FBI have not found any connection between "Misha" and the bomb plot.