Saudi Arabia reportedly sent written warning to US about Boston Marathon bombing Tamerlan Tsarnaev

[avaistheone1]

Source: The Telegraph

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wrote to the US Department of Homeland Security about the older Tsarnaev brother in 2012, a senior Saudi official says.

The official told the Daily Mail the warning was based on intelligence from Yemen and was separate to concerns raised by Russian intelligence.

He also revealed Tamerlan was refused an entry visa into Saudi Arabia for the Mecca pilgrimage in December 2011.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 and his younger brother Dzhokhar are accused of carrying out the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon, which killed three and wounded more than 264 at one of the world's premier sporting events.

Read more: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/saudi-arabia-reportedly-sent-written-warning-to-us-about-boston-marathon-bombing-accused-tamerlan-tsarnaev/story-fnddckzi-1226633224437

[woolldog]

1. Uh-oh

[kelliekat44]

33. Consider the source. nt

[newmember]

2. they acted alone

[Common Sense Party]

26. That's what we are supposed to believe.

[weaselbit]

3. right wing hack, click on his past articles

Article was written by David Martosko of "The American Media Institute". Here's a link to his previous work:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=David+Martosko. No name on the Saudi source. No official confirmation. No website for "The American Media Institute". History of radical right-leaning articles as evidenced by the link above. Story is not credible.

[hrmjustin]

14. Welcome to DU my friend!

[fleur-de-lisa]

16. Thank you for the link.

And welcome to DU!

[Tanuki]

22. good catch, outstanding first post!

Welcome, new DUer wealselbit!

[DallasNE]

4. If True, This Would Be A Smoking Gun

One DHS official says no letter was received from Saudi Arabia and another DHS official remembers the letter.

Three items make me add the "if true" tag. One, why is the exact date of the letter not mentioned. Two, earlier reports have said that Tamerlan was not interested in going to the Middle East because he didn't speak the language. Three, Russia did not warn the US based on travel outside of Russia -- just the phone conversation with his mom where Jihad was discussed.

Right now my approach is lets wait and see what develops but something just doesn't feel quite right about this. We should know for sure in the next couple of days.

[John2]

8. You are forgetting

number four. The urge for manufacturing of evidence because of a political agenda. So now the claim will be out of thin air evidence after they said there was nothing after receiving inquiries from the Russians. All it is doing is making one big headach once again for U.S. Intelligence just like with Iraq. That is why you don't trust people handling the U.S. Intelligence services.

[JI7]

5. are there any other sources, some of this sounds like the crap Beck and other wingnut conspiracy

types are spouting.

[David__77]

6. Saudi Arabia is good at sending terrorists, not information about them.

This is nonsense.

[Myrina]

18. Zing!

[FarCenter]

21. They wouldn't necessarily want a "loose cannon" running around.

Someone who was radicalized but not part of an organized and disciplined terrorist organization.

Given the CIA connections of his uncle, Tamerlan would be under considerable suspicion of being a double agent.

[DrDan]

7. link is a Rupert Murdock rag

[alp227]

11. No, the Telegraph is not a News Corp company.

"Murdoch rags" in Britain= The Sun tabloid, The Times of London

[cosmicone]

12. This is the Aussie Telegraph .. it is a Murdoch rag. n/t

[DrDan]

13. Australian Telegraph if I read that front page correctly

not Britain

If so, then Rupert owns it

[Douglas Carpenter]

9. possible but I doubt it. If this was carried out by bona finde terroirst operatives the

attack would have included some sort of coercive message. Terrorism is a tactic of political coercions. That is what makes it different than just murder or even mass murder. There was no attempt whatsoever to establish a message or convey an assumption that this action was carried out for blank, blank, blank, purpose or this was carried out with a demand that the United States must blank, blank, blank, or that the are avenging the blood of blank, blank, blank. Everything of this operation smacks of amateurism and ideological undevelopment and ignorance. This was not the actions of an ideologically developed entity. They acted alone without a shred of any understand of any purpose beyond some vague catch phrases.

[quadrature]

10. they(or he) visited Yemen? is that well established? nt

nt

[naaman fletcher]

15. The original source is the daily mail, I wouldn't believe it at this point. nt.

[snooper2]

17. SURE they did

[Puzzledtraveller]

19. So predictable some of these responses

and pathetic. Cover you ears, or bury your head in the sand it's all the same. You don't want to think it's possible OUR guys dropped the ball so you dismiss any evidence to the contrary as RW lies. Sad, really.

[leftynyc]

24. Well, exuuuuuuuse me for not

believing unnamed sources from a country that finances terrorism all over the world reported in a paper owned by murdock. That you do believe it without question says just as much.

[DrDan]

31. some of us do have doubts when the source is a murdock rag

while, apparently, some are quick to add another feather to their tin-foil hats

wonder which is more sad and pathetic . . .

[Crowman1979]

20. Our government has a problem with ignoring explicit warnings.

Does the underwear bomber ring a bell? Especially when his father went to the US Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son was going to blow up a plane.

I guess some people in our government want to keep that DoD/Homeland Security contractor money rolling in.

Yet our government keeps going after vague and unconfirmed threats.

[cheapdate]

23. What do you want? Freedom or security?

You can't have them both.

Obviously, the FBI is subject to some limitations. Resources and manpower are not unlimited and their use must necessarily be prioritized. We still retain some semblance of a free society. You can't achieve perfect security without abandoning the freedoms and liberties that we expect.

The direction that articles like this lead to is toward more surveillance and more aggressive violations of civil liberties by the government.

Shit happens. I have no compelling reason to believe that the FBI was not doing it's job. They may receive ten thousand such "tips" a month, I don't know.

[Archae]

25. The author of this piece is the Dominican Republic hooker "scandal" writer from the Daily Caller.

The authorship of today's report doesn't inspire much confidence either. Its primary author, Daily Mail U.S. politics editor David Martosko, just recently arrived at the paper after a stint as executive editor of the Daily Caller. Martosko's tenure at the conservative news outlet was marked by a series of "bombshell" stories that were wildly overhyped and ultimately fell apart. His parting gift to the Daily Caller was a salacious and poorly vetted story claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) had patronized prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. As the story slowly disintegrated, Martosko wrote a series of articles defending the Daily Caller's reporting, even as other news outlets came forward and said they passed up the story because it just wasn't credible. Shortly after Martosko departed for the Daily Mail, it was reported that the Daily Caller's sources had been paid to lie about Menendez, leaving Martosko's former colleagues to try and clean up the mess he'd left behind.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/01/reasons-to-be-wary-of-the-daily-mails-saudi-let/193853

[lilwoofer]

27. It'd be interesting to see the written warning itself

just sayin'....

[hrmjustin]

29. Welcome to DU my friend!

[skip fox]

28. Reasons To Be Wary Of The Daily Mail's Saudi Letter "Exclusive"

Here's Media Matter on these jokers:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/01/reasons-to-be-wary-of-the-daily-mails-saudi-let/193853

[leveymg]

30. Update to the DailyMail report: Saudi Gov't denies reports.

Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington now DENIES his nation warned the United States about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012

Saudi embassy in Washington D.C. issues denial of account of a senior official who talked to MailOnline

By David Martosko and American Media Institute

PUBLISHED: 22:46 EST, 30 April 2013 | UPDATED: 11:43 EST, 1 May 2013

The Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. today denied its government warned the U.S. about accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. According to a highly placed source who spoke to MailOnline, the Saudis sent a written warning about Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012. That was long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds. The official told MailOnline about a written warning from the Saudi government to the Department of Homeland Security, and said he had direct knowledge of that document.

But the Middle Eastern nation's embassy in Washington died that account on Wednesday. It issued a statement which read: 'The Saudi government had no prior information about the Boston bombers. Therefore, it is not true that any information, written or otherwise, was passed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other US agency in this regard,' an embassy statement statement claimed. 'The Saudi government also does not have any record of any application by Tamerlan Tsarnaev for any visa to Saudi Arabia.'

The Saudis' warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen. Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also allegedly denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the source said. Tsarnaev's plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2317493/Saudi-Arabian-ambassador-Washington-DENIES-nation-warned-United-States-Tamerlan-Tsarnaev-2012.html#ixzz2S4SYk9FJ

[DallasNE]

32. This Is Hardly A Retraction

They repeated the alleged report rather than retracting it so it makes the news again. I have my doubts that the Saudi embassy had any contacts with this obscure source. The wording of the denial looks rather amateurish.