Gra­ham Fuller is deny­ing the CIA link to Rus­lan. He’s not deny­ing that his daugh­ter was mar­ried to Rus­lan. And he’s not deny­ing that Rus­lan lived with him in Mary­land for a year. He’s just deny­ing that Rus­lan had any ties to the CIA:

Gawk­er
Ex-CIA Agent Denies Rumors of Ties to Rus­lan Tsar­naev
Max Rivlin-Nadler
4/27/2013 3:45pm

Gra­ham Fuller, a retired CIA offi­cer whose daugh­ter was briefly mar­ried to Rus­lan Tsar­naev (Uncle Rus­lan), has come out and flat­ly denied any CIA con­nec­tion to the Tsar­naev’s, call­ing the alle­ga­tions “absurd.”

Fuller’s daugh­ter, Saman­tha, was mar­ried to Rus­lan from the mid-to-late 1990’s, before divorc­ing. Rus­lan lived with the retired CIA offi­cer in Mary­land for a year, but Fuller saw no inter­est in pol­i­tics, pol­i­cy, or the CIA, from Rus­lan. “Like all Chechens, Rus­lan was very con­cerned about his native land, but I saw no par­tic­u­lar involve­ment in pol­i­tics,” Fuller wrote in an email to Al-Mon­i­tor.

“I doubt he even had much to say of intel­li­gence val­ue oth­er than talk­ing about his own family’s sad tale of depor­ta­tion from Chech­nya by Stal­in to Cen­tral Asia,” Fuller wrote. “Every Chechen fam­i­ly has such sto­ries.”

The sto­ry of the Tsar­naev fam­i­ly, which is still being hashed out through media and fam­i­ly inter­views (as well as gov­ern­ment reports and sus­pi­cions about the fam­i­ly), is an espe­cial­ly com­pli­cat­ed one that bridges the imme­di­ate­ly post-Sovi­et era to the present-day “War on Ter­ror.” Juan Cole traces the Tsar­naevs flight from Rus­sia to the fact that Anzor Tsar­naev (the father of the alleged bombers) had been a pros­e­cu­tor for the Sovi­et pros­e­cu­tor’s office — an unpop­u­lar posi­tion among eth­nic Chechens.

Cole writes:

‘We were,’ she [the aunt of the sus­pects] said, ‘lucky to get him out of Kyr­gyzs­tan alive,’ pre­sum­ably because rad­i­cal Mus­lims were try­ing to track him down and take revenge on him there.

If he had been a Sovi­et era pros­e­cu­tor, a lot of peo­ple in Kyr­gyzs­tan would have had a grudge with him. Hence his abortive attempts to flee first to Chech­nya in the ear­ly 90s and to Dagh­es­tan lat­er.

Cole hypoth­e­sizes that the two broth­ers, espe­cial­ly the old­er Tamer­lan, were ashamed of their father’s role in the Sovi­et repres­sion of eth­nic Chechens and were look­ing to rebel against their father. Thus, he con­sid­ers, the dis­so­nance between the father and sons, the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the broth­ers as they searched for an iden­ti­ty.

The Tsar­naev’s strad­dled sev­er­al dif­fer­ent worlds — ones that got them put on gov­ern­ment watch lists, and into the homes of retired CIA offi­cers; Ones where they were hound­ed by reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists, and ones where they became them. As the press and author­i­ties begin to sift through the fam­i­ly’s sto­ries, they’re going to find con­tra­dic­tions and dis­so­nance in a fam­i­ly that has seen the world change, dras­ti­cal­ly, in the past 20 years.

I am sus­pect of Wayne Mad­sen for var­i­ous rea­sons, but he may be on to some­thing here. I would like to see some foot­notes and doc­u­men­ta­tion:

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/04/26/the-ties-that-bind-washington-to-chechen-terrorists.html

(excerpts)
“The West­ern cor­po­rate media large­ly ignored an impor­tant sto­ry report­ed from Izves­tia in Moscow: that Tamer­lan Tsar­naev attend­ed sem­i­nars run by the Cau­ca­sus Fund of Geor­gia, a group affil­i­at­ed with the neo-con­ser­v­a­tive think tank, the Jamestown Foun­da­tion, between Jan­u­ary and July 2012. The U.S. media report­ed that dur­ing this six month time frame, Tsar­naev was being rad­i­cal­ized by Dages­tan rad­i­cal imam «Abu Dudzhan», killed in a fight with Russ­ian secu­ri­ty forces in 2012. Tsar­naev also vis­it­ed Dages­tan in 2011.

How­ev­er, in doc­u­ments leaked from the Geor­gian Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs’ Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Depart­ment, Tsar­naev is pin­point­ed as being in Tbil­isi tak­ing part in «sem­i­nars» orga­nized by the Cau­ca­sus Fund, found­ed dur­ing the Geor­gian-South Osset­ian war of 2008, a war start­ed when Geor­gian troops invad­ed the pro-Russ­ian Repub­lic of South Osse­tia dur­ing the Bei­jing Olympics. Geor­gia was sup­port­ed mil­i­tar­i­ly and with intel­li­gence sup­port by the Unit­ed States and Israel, and the Amer­i­can sup­port includ­ed U.S. Spe­cial Forces advis­ers on the ground in Geor­gia. The Geor­gian intel­li­gence doc­u­ments indi­cate Tsar­naev attend­ed the Jamestown Foun­da­tion sem­i­nars in Tbil­isi.

The Jamestown Foun­da­tion is part of a neo-con­ser­v­a­tive net­work that re-brand­ed itself after the Cold War from being anti-Sovi­et and anti-Com­mu­nist to one that is anti-Russ­ian and “pro-democ­ra­cy.” The net­work not only con­sists of Jamestown and the Cau­ca­sus Fund but also oth­er groups fund­ed by the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) and George Soros’ Open Soci­ety Insti­tute (OSI).
***
“The Jamestown Foun­da­tion is a long-stand­ing front oper­a­tion for the CIA, it being found­ed, in part, by CIA direc­tor William Casey in 1984. The orga­ni­za­tion was used as an employ­er for high-rank­ing Sovi­et bloc defec­tors, includ­ing the Sovi­et Under­sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the UN Arkady Shevchenko and Roman­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial Ion Pacepa. The Russ­ian domes­tic Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Bureau and the SVR for­eign intel­li­gence agency have long sus­pect­ed Jamestown of help­ing to foment rebel­lions in Chech­nya, Ingushetia, and oth­er north Cau­ca­sus republics. The March 21 Tbil­isi con­fer­ence on the north Cau­ca­sus a few days before the Moscow train bomb­ings has obvi­ous­ly added to the sus­pi­cions of the FSB and SVR.

Jamestown’s board includes such Cold War era indi­vid­u­als as Mar­cia Car­luc­ci; wife of Frank Car­luc­ci, the for­mer CIA offi­cer, Sec­re­tary of Defense, and Chair­man of The Car­lyle Group [Frank Car­luc­ci was also one of those who request­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment to allow for­mer Chechen Repub­lic ‘For­eign Min­is­ter’ Ilyas Akhmadov, accused by the Rus­sians of ter­ror­ist ties, to be grant­ed polit­i­cal asy­lum in the U.S. after a veto from the Home­land Secu­ri­ty and Jus­tice Depart­ments], anti-Com­mu­nist book and mag­a­zine pub­lish­er Alfred Reg­n­ery; and Cas­par Wein­berg­er’s Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Pub­lic Affairs Kath­leen Troia «KT» McFar­land. Also on the board is for­mer Okla­homa GOP Gov­er­nor Frank Keat­ing, the gov­er­nor at the time of the 1995 Mur­rah Fed­er­al Build­ing bomb­ing.
***
——————

Here’s the wikipedia page for The Jamestown Foun­da­tion, and yes, Bill Casey was involved:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jamestown_Foundation

The Jamestown Foun­da­tion has exten­sive cov­er­age on the net, with links to oth­er right-wing foun­da­tions.
***

And here is a link to a Dai­ly Mail.UK arti­cle :

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

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

A let­ter to the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty alleged­ly named Tsar­naev and three Pak­ista­nis as poten­tial jihadis wor­thy of U.S. inves­ti­ga­tion
Red flags from Sau­di Ara­bia to have includ­ed Tsar­naev’s name and infor­ma­tion about a planned explo­sive attack on a major U.S. city

Sau­di for­eign min­is­ter, nation­al secu­ri­ty chief both met with Oba­ma in the oval office in ear­ly 2013

By David Mar­tosko and Amer­i­can Media Insti­tute
PUBLISHED: 22:46 EST, 30 April 2013 | UPDATED: 11:43 EST, 1 May 2013

com­plete arti­cle at link

@SWAMP–

The sto­ry you cit­ed might well indi­cate a double/triple agent sce­nario.

DEBKA Net Weekly–an online intel­li­gence newsletter–has opined that the bombers had been recruit­ed by U.S. intel­li­gence to pen­e­trate the Cau­casian Jiha­di move­ment.

That MIGHT be what we’re look­ing at here.

Oth­er things to remem­ber: Watch the “terror/jihadi” scene being used to desta­bi­lize Oba­ma, as I pre­dict­ed would hap­pen in shows record­ed between his elec­tion and his inau­gu­ra­tion.

In addi­tion, remem­ber that the Mus­lim Brotherhood/jihadi cadre is being used as a proxy force.

That was the case in Afghanistan and the Balka­ns.

It con­tin­ues to be the case in the Cau­ca­sus.

Rather like the Axis force of WWII, who were the West­’s hit men against the USSR, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood com­bat­ants are viewed by the transna­tion­als (fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies in par­tic­u­lar) as the vehi­cles for grab­bing hold of the mineral/fossil fuel rich areas of the cen­tral Earth Island. Those cur­rent­ly belong to Rus­sia and Chi­na.

When they turn against the U.S., they do so with the con­nivance of the GOP/Underground Reich fac­tion of U.S. intel­li­gence.

Bizarre in appear­ance at first glance, this should not seem so remark­able upon reflec­tion.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans died fight­ing in WWII. That did­n’t both­er the Amer­i­can fas­cists. They only resent­ed Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt, whom they felt got the U.S. in on the wrong side in World War II.

Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush Sr. and the rest of “the fra­ter­ni­ty,” as James Stew­art Mar­tin called them in “All Hon­or­able Men” took care of that after the guns fell silent.

https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-578-darkness-at-sunrise/

https://spitfirelist.com/books/all-honorable-men/

Best,

Dave Emory

Thanks Dave, I’m track­ing with your line of thought and will fol­low your links.

Mean­while, here is the orig­i­nal Izves­tia arti­cle, trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal Russ­ian. Note towards the end it states that The Jamestown Foun­da­tion asked that the Olympics not be held in Sochi. I sub­mit this mere­ly for the record, as I believe Izves­tia is a state-run news orga­ni­za­tion:

http://izvestia.ru/news/549252

Tamer­lane Tsar­nae­va recruit­ed via the Geor­gian Foun­da­tion

One of the orga­niz­ers of the ter­ror­ist attack in Boston, stud­ied at the work­shop held in con­junc­tion with the Geor­gian spe­cial ser­vices Amer­i­cans

Читайте далее: http://izvestia.ru/news/549252#ixzz2S9OVZeQ2

At the dis­pos­al of “Izves­tia” has doc­u­ments Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Depart­ment Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Geor­gia, con­firm­ing that the Geor­gian orga­ni­za­tion “Fund of Cau­ca­sus”, which coop­er­ates with the U.S. non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion “Jamestown” (the board of direc­tors of NGOs pre­vi­ous­ly entered one of the ide­ol­o­gists of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki), was engaged in recruit­ing res­i­dents North Cau­ca­sus to work in the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States and Geor­gia.

Accord­ing to the reports of Colonel Chief Direc­torate Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Depart­ment Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Geor­gia Gre­go­ry Chan­turia to the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs Irak­li Garib­ashvili, “Cau­casian fund” in coop­er­a­tion with the Foun­da­tion “Jamestown” in the sum­mer of 2012 con­duct­ed work­shops and sem­i­nars for young peo­ple of the Cau­ca­sus, includ­ing its Russ­ian part. Some of them attend­ed Tsar­naev Tamer­lane, who was in Rus­sia from Jan­u­ary to July 2012.

“Cau­casian fund” writes Tchan­turia was estab­lished Novem­ber 7, 2008, just after the Geor­gian-Osset­ian con­flict, “to con­trol the process­es tak­ing place in the North Cau­ca­sus region.” Accord­ing­ly, the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence case was brought intel­li­gence oper­a­tions called “DTV”. Main pur­pose is to recruit young peo­ple and intel­lec­tu­als of the North Cau­ca­sus to enhance insta­bil­i­ty and extrem­ism in the south­ern regions of Rus­sia.

“In order to finance the orga­ni­za­tion was deter­mined month­ly amount of $ 33 mil­lion lari (660 thou­sand). Since the estab­lish­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion before 1 Jan­u­ary 2013 the amount allo­cat­ed in the end amount­ed to 4.058 mil­lion GEL (81.1 mil­lion), “- wrote in a report Tchan­turia.

The doc­u­ments referred to, and the work of the “Cau­casian fund” in the three bor­der areas of Azer­bai­jan and Dages­tan — Bal­a­can, Zakatal­sky and Kakh.

In addi­tion, Colonel coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Tbil­isi reports that secu­ri­ty forces in Chech­nya through Geor­gia “Cau­casian fund” and fund “Jamestown” are sym­pa­thet­ic to the Geor­gian peo­ple, who are invit­ed to var­i­ous events in the repub­lic under the inno­cent pre­texts. In these sem­i­nars, the Rus­sians are recruit­ing and prepar­ing acts of ter­ror­ism.

Deputy head of the NGO “Agency of the socio-polit­i­cal ini­tia­tives” Tatiev Iles, who over­sees the North Cau­ca­sus Fed­er­al Dis­trict, said that the activ­i­ties of the “Cau­casian fund” rais­es too many ques­tions.

- Where in Geor­gia, which exists on the loans, the extra mon­ey for some funds? — Ask the expert. — I do not exclude that this fund is affil­i­at­ed with the Depart­ment of State in the North Cau­ca­sus.

The head of the New York office of the Insti­tute for Democ­ra­cy and Coop­er­a­tion Andranik Migranyan, who learned about the “Cau­casian fund” from the “News”, believes that the activ­i­ties of the orga­ni­za­tion, as it is depict­ed in the doc­u­ments that fits into the pol­i­cy of the Geor­gian author­i­ties.

- Saakashvili admin­is­tra­tion is con­duct­ing an overt anti-Russ­ian line — says the ana­lyst.

Direc­tor Gen­er­al of the Nation­al Strat­e­gy Coun­cil Valery Ham­sters argues that exag­ger­at­ed the force of exter­nal ene­my in Geor­gia may be ben­e­fi­cial to the man­age­ment of the North Cau­casian republics.

- I think the dan­ger is exag­ger­at­ed Geor­gian fac­tor — the expert believes. — Per­son­al­ly, I have no doubt that Geor­gia only deals with the intro­duc­tion of its spies and recruit Russ­ian cit­i­zens.

A mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty com­mit­tee Ana­toly Elect­ed even promised accord­ing to their abil­i­ty to con­nect to the inves­ti­ga­tion of the “Cau­casian fund.”

- Doc­u­ments of which you speak, like the truth. Real friend­ly moves by Geor­gia and the U.S., we do not see, their goal is to make Russ­ian state, which can be con­trolled, — the Elect­ed.

Jamestown Foun­da­tion has repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed its inter­est in Geor­gia and the state of affairs in Rus­si­a’s North Cau­ca­sus. In 2007, the Foun­da­tion held a sem­i­nar “The Future of Ingushetia,” which was attend­ed by for­mer fight­ers of Aslan Maskhadov.

In March 2010, the Jamestown Foun­da­tion asked the IOC to not hold the Olympic Games in Sochi, cit­ing the trag­ic events of the Cau­casian War of XIX cen­tu­ry.

In 2011, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists Fund pre­dict­ed that Geor­gia in the com­ing year will take a lead­ing role in the Cau­ca­sus and Rus­sia will be seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion as a “region­al leader”.

The Russ­ian For­eign Min­istry has repeat­ed­ly respond­ed to the ongo­ing pol­i­cy of the fund, hand­ing over a protest note to U.S. in Moscow.

Читайте далее: http://izvestia.ru/news/549252#ixzz2S9OqujNp
***—————-
———————

And just to show that desta­bi­liz­ing Rus­sia and the North Cau­ca­sus is a bi-par­ti­san effort, here is some crit­i­cism from the Wikipedia arti­cle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jamestown_Foundation

Crit­i­cism
It has been alleged that Jamestown is a neo­con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da dri­ven think-tank with ties to the CIA and Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. The eXile colum­nist Phil­by Burgess com­ment­ed: “Most of the bit­ter­ly anti-Russ­ian jour­nal­ists who pub­lish with these rightwing lob­bies are from the small coun­tries sur­round­ing Rus­sia, and they are ani­mat­ed by a deep hatred of their for­mer conqueror.”[18]

The Jamestown Foun­da­tion cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly rejects all claims that link it with the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive or any oth­er spe­cif­ic ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment. In the past, Jamestown’s board of direc­tors has includ­ed Dr. Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki, for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor to U.S. Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter.[19] Jamestown’s cur­rent board includes Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion Senior Fel­low Bruce Riedel, who has served in the Bill Clin­ton White House and in 2009 was tasked by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to over­haul U.S. pol­i­cy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.[20] On Decem­ber 8, 2011, Ambas­sador Daniel Ben­jamin, State Depart­ment Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Coor­di­na­tor for the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion praised Jamestown for its research and analy­sis of ter­ror­ism issues. In his keynote address giv­en at Jamestown’s Fifth Annu­al Ter­ror­ism Con­fer­ence, Amb. Ben­jamin remarked: “Because of its [Jamestown’s] com­mit­ment to seri­ous schol­ar­ship and analy­sis on ter­ror­ism issues, I can’t think of a more appro­pri­ate place to do an end-of-year reck­on­ing on Al-Qae­da – an assess­ment that is par­tic­u­lar­ly time­ly after such a remark­able year.”[21]

In 2007 Moscow accused the research insti­tute of spread­ing anti-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da by host­ing a debate on vio­lence in the Rus­si­a’s tur­bu­lent region of Ingushetia. Accord­ing to a state­ment by the For­eign Min­istry of Rus­sia: “Organ­is­ers again and again resort­ed to delib­er­ate­ly spread­ing slan­der about the sit­u­a­tion in Chech­nya and oth­er republics of the Russ­ian North Cau­ca­sus using the ser­vices of sup­port­ers of ter­ror­ists and pseu­do-experts. Speak­ers were giv­en carte blanche to spread extrem­ist pro­pa­gan­da, incite eth­nic and inter-reli­gious discord.”[22] The Jamestown Foun­da­tion respond­ed by say­ing that Rus­sia felt threat­ened by it and was try­ing to intim­i­date it. Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Glen Howard claimed that “they’re intim­i­dat­ed by the pow­er of the free word and this goes against the state manip­u­la­tion of the media in Russia.”[22]

Gra­ham Fuller recent­ly gave an inter­view for the BBC (in Turk­ish) where he dis­cussed writ­ing a ref­er­ence let­ter for Fetul­lah Gulen when Gulen was fac­ing depor­ta­tion. Fuller also reit­er­at­ed his asser­tion that the move­ment has no ties to the CIA:

FORMER TOP CIA OFFICIAL REVEALS GULEN RELATIONS

Dai­ly Sabah
Pub­lished : 23.06.2014 15:29:40
Updat­ed : 23.06.2014 15:42:15

ISTANBUL – Speak­ing to the BBC on Fri­day , for­mer top CIA offi­cial, Gra­ham Fuller, admit­ted that he wrote a ref­er­ence let­ter for the Gülen move­ment leader, Fethul­lah Gülen, after the FBI resist­ed grant­i­ng him per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy sta­tus between 2006 to 2010.

The for­mer top offi­cial and Mid­dle East expert, yet claimed that there was no rela­tion between the Gülen move­ment and CIA, dur­ing the BBC inter­view on his new­ly released book “Turkey and the Arab Spring: Lead­er­ship in the Mid­dle East.”

“The biggest crit­ic direct­ed towards the move­ment is their lack of trans­paren­cy.” Fuller stat­ed when asked about the move­ments recent sit­u­a­tion. “They have been regard­ed as a destruc­tive and dan­ger­ous move­ment for decades but their psy­chol­o­gy is chang­ing now after the attack of the Kemal­ist state regime is over, they could not join the army and were not assigned to impor­tant posi­tions. This pic­ture is chang­ing now.”

I react­ed when Gülen was on the brink of depor­ta­tion

“When I wrote the ref­er­ence let­ters to Gülen for U.S. res­i­dence per­mit, there were many Islam­o­pho­bics and Kemal­ists leaked into the Turk­ish embassy in Wash­ing­ton who favor the depor­ta­tion of Gülen since they thought he posed a nation­al threat for the U.S.I react­ed against that.” Fuller said explain­ing his let­ter.

“I did not think Gülen or his move­ment would pose any threat against the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the U.S. as it was the most mod­er­ate and pos­i­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the con­tem­po­rary Islam­ic thought in the world.” Fuller added.

“I regard the move­ment as a very pos­i­tive force among oth­er Islam­ic move­ments. I did not know what kind of data FBI had, but I saw that the con­cerns were ground­less, I would write anoth­er let­ter again if required, I also wrote let­ters for oth­er Mus­lims that took refuge in the U.S. dur­ing those days. I nev­er saw any sign of a pos­si­ble rela­tion between Gülen and CIA.” Fuller stat­ed.

...

There were a cou­ple of new twists today in the case against Dzhokhar Tsar­naev, includ­ing a man that was report­ed­ly called by one of the Tsar­naev broth­ers on the night they killed Sean Col­lier that Dzhokhar’s attor­neys want to call as a wit­ness (but who would also report­ed­ly plead the Fifth if called). There’s also a man that spent time with the broth­ers three days before the bomb­ing that has com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared:

Boston.com
Tsar­naev Friend Can’t Be Called As Wit­ness. Because No One Can Find Him.

By Hilary Sar­gent
Boston.com Staff | 04.28.15 | 12:38 PM

A Russ­ian man who spent time with Dzhokhar and Tamer­lan Tsar­naev just three days before the broth­ers det­o­nat­ed two bombs near the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon can­not be found by either pros­e­cu­tors or defense attor­neys.

A tran­script of a con­ver­sa­tion that took place before jurors entered the court­room Mon­day iden­ti­fies the man pho­tographed at the Wai Kru mar­tial arts gym on April 12, 2013 as “Mr. Dolakov.” This man’s iden­ti­ty had not pre­vi­ous­ly been dis­closed. Oth­er asso­ciates of Tamer­lan Tsar­naev men­tioned dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion were iden­ti­fied as “Mr. Vakhabov” and “Mr. Kar­tashov.”

Pros­e­cu­tors Aloke Chakravar­ty and William Wein­reb dis­cussed “Mr. Dolakov,” who Tsarnaev’s defense attor­neys had hoped to call as a wit­ness.

THE COURT: Who’s Dolakov?

MR. WEINREB: Dolakov is anoth­er friend of Tamer­lan Tsarnaev’s.

THE COURT: U.S. friend?

MR. CHAKRAVARTY: U.S. friend. He was a for­eign stu­dent. He’s from the Cau­ca­sus but he’s not Chechen. He knew him—knew Tamer­lan some­what but not very well. Mr. Vakhabov knew him bet­ter because he lived here for a lit­tle bit longer togeth­er. But they did var­i­ous activ­i­ties togeth­er includ­ing, the Fri­day before the bomb­ing, they went to the gym togeth­er. He also went to the mosque.

Defense attor­ney Miri­am Con­rad explained to Judge George O’Toole that “Mr. Dolakov” was nowhere to be found.

“Can’t find him. Nei­ther can the gov­ern­ment,” Con­rad told the court. “Maybe he just wants to move on with his life.”

Wai Kru’s own­er, John Allan, told Boston.com he remem­bers being asked to help law enforce­ment iden­ti­fy “Mr. Dolakov” in the days and weeks after the bomb­ings.

“They were look­ing for him mad hard,” Allan said.

Allan also recalled that when “Mr. Dolakov” arrived at the gym, “Tamer­lan intro­duced him as his broth­er.”

Because they aren’t able to locate Dolakov, defense attor­neys want to intro­duce notes from his FBI inter­view, accord­ing to an exchange record­ed in the tran­script.

“Mr. Kar­tashov” was described in the tran­script as anoth­er indi­vid­ual who the defense team hoped to call to the stand. It isn’t clear why Kar­tashov won’t be tes­ti­fy­ing.

Wein­reb explained to O’Toole that these wit­ness­es “are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to the defense because they tell a nar­ra­tive of Tamer­lan Tsarnaev’s rad­i­cal­iza­tion, and they date it to a point ear­li­er than when they believe Dzhokhar Tsar­naev was rad­i­cal­ized, and that’s very impor­tant to their the­o­ry of the case.”

The court tran­script also revealed the exis­tence of a third indi­vid­ual who Tsarnaev’s attor­neys hope to call as a wit­ness.

In the tran­script, defense attor­ney Judy Clarke expressed con­cern that “Mr. Vakhabov” will plead the Fifth Amend­ment if called to tes­ti­fy.

What crime Vakhabov may have com­mit­ted is unclear. But Wein­reb offered a hint, telling the court:

“I think it’s undis­put­ed that Tamer­lan Tsar­naev con­tact­ed him on April 18th, I believe, between the time that Offi­cer Col­lier was mur­dered and the time that Dun Meng was car­jacked.”

An exhib­it entered into evi­dence by defense attor­neys shows a phone call made at 8:17 p.m. on April 18, 2013 from a phone used by one or both Tsar­naev broth­ers to the cell phone num­ber of Viskhan Vakhabov.

Vakhabov, 29, is list­ed as a Cam­bridge real estate agent online. He did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment.

...

651 pages of pre­vi­ous­ly con­fi­den­tial files on Tamer­lan Tsar­naev and Ibrag­im Toda­shev were released under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. That’s a lot of infor­ma­tion, but with only 206 of the pages released in their entire­ty, it looks like the pri­ma­ry fact that out­side observers are tak­ing from this large release of data is that there’s prob­a­bly still quite a bit of infor­ma­tion on this event that would raise the eye­brows of out­side observers:

Boston Globe
Fed­er­al files leave ques­tions about Marathon bomber, friend
Gov­ern­ment says it han­dled their immi­gra­tion cas­es prop­er­ly; files are heav­i­ly edit­ed

By Maria Sac­chet­ti Globe Staff
Feb­ru­ary 29, 2016

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev passed the US cit­i­zen­ship test three months before he and his younger broth­er det­o­nat­ed two bombs at the Boston Marathon, accord­ing to fed­er­al immi­gra­tion records obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act.

His test results, with cor­rect answers to ques­tions about slav­ery, the Con­sti­tu­tion, and the Louisiana Pur­chase, are in 651 pages of pre­vi­ous­ly con­fi­den­tial files on the bomber and his friend Ibrag­im Toda­shev. Both men were killed in sep­a­rate inci­dents after the April 15, 2013, bomb­ings.

The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed redact­ed files to The Boston Globe after mul­ti­ple requests span­ning three years. Only 206 pages were released in their entire­ty, so it remains unclear why the gov­ern­ment grant­ed the friends legal res­i­den­cy and put them on the path toward US cit­i­zen­ship.

But the records show that months before the bomb­ings, Tsar­naev went to the John F. Kennedy Fed­er­al Build­ing in Boston, swore his alle­giance to the Unit­ed States, and denied any links to ter­ror­ism. The records also show that Toda­shev told immi­gra­tion offi­cials he had left Mass­a­chu­setts in Sep­tem­ber 2011, the same month he alleged­ly helped Tsar­naev kill three men in Waltham.

Until now, the gov­ern­ment had declined to release the files, cit­ing ongo­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. But the mys­tery stirred debate about why immi­gra­tion offi­cials grant­ed Tsar­naev and Toda­shev refuge in the first place, and whether offi­cials missed warn­ing signs about their crim­i­nal activ­i­ty as their cas­es pro­gressed through US Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices.

On Sun­day, the agency issued a state­ment say­ing the cas­es were processed cor­rect­ly.

...

If fed­er­al offi­cials raised secu­ri­ty con­cerns about Tamer­lan Tsar­naev or Toda­shev, they did not dis­close them in the heav­i­ly redact­ed immi­gra­tion files. Instead, the files sketch a por­trait of Tsar­naev and Toda­shev, both eth­nic Chechens from Rus­sia, as men strug­gling with unem­ploy­ment and pover­ty while try­ing to cement their ties to the Unit­ed States, Tsar­naev through cit­i­zen­ship and Toda­shev through a green card. They had so lit­tle income that the gov­ern­ment waived their immi­gra­tion appli­ca­tion fees, offi­cials said.

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev came to Amer­i­ca as a teenag­er in 2003, after secur­ing a visa in Turkey. His fam­i­ly had bounced between Kyr­gyzs­tan, Kaza­khstan, and Dages­tan in south­ern Rus­sia before set­tling in Cam­bridge.

In August 2012, after a 178-day trip to Rus­sia, Tsar­naev stopped by the Cam­bridge office of Cen­tro Lati­no, a now-defunct non­prof­it, for help in apply­ing for cit­i­zen­ship. He did not stand out; the orga­ni­za­tion helped hun­dreds of immi­grants of all back­grounds fill out the forms every year.

...

In his appli­ca­tion, Tsar­naev wrote that he want­ed to change his first name to that of an ear­ly Islam­ic schol­ar, Muaz — a move crit­ics lat­er said should have spurred the gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate fur­ther. He also dis­closed a 2009 arrest for assault­ing a for­mer girl­friend, and that he was receiv­ing gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits and had recent­ly trav­eled over­seas.

On Jan. 23, 2013, immi­gra­tion offi­cer David McCor­ma­ck inter­viewed Tsar­naev and test­ed his Eng­lish and knowl­edge of US his­to­ry and gov­ern­ment. He answered six civics ques­tions cor­rect­ly to pass: He knew that Africans had been slaves, that there are 27 con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments, and that the Unit­ed States bought Louisiana from the French in 1803. He also iden­ti­fied “Joe Biden” as the vice pres­i­dent, said Con­gress makes fed­er­al laws, and that the colonists fought the British over “high tax­es.” He cor­rect­ly read a ques­tion about vot­ing and wrote the answer: “Cit­i­zens can vote.”

His sole error was to say that the fed­er­al court, and not the Supreme Court, is the high­est court in the Unit­ed States.

After­ward, the immi­gra­tion offi­cer checked the box next to the sen­tence that said: “You passed the tests of Eng­lish and US his­to­ry and gov­ern­ment.”

But instead of mark­ing the box that said, “Con­grat­u­la­tions! Your appli­ca­tion has been rec­om­mend­ed for approval,” the offi­cer checked the next box, which said, “A deci­sion can­not yet be made about your appli­ca­tion.”

Rea­sons for the delay are unclear in the file pro­vid­ed to the Globe. Ear­li­er, a fed­er­al report had said that Tsarnaev’s cit­i­zen­ship appli­ca­tion was delayed because the gov­ern­ment did not have his crim­i­nal court records from the 2009 case.

But those records are in the file pro­vid­ed to the Globe. Home­land Secu­ri­ty con­firmed on Sun­day that records in the file obtained by the Globe show that Tsar­naev fur­nished those records to the immi­gra­tion offi­cer and that the offi­cer had rec­om­mend­ed him for cit­i­zen­ship, pend­ing a supervisor’s review because of his crim­i­nal his­to­ry.

All that stood between him and US cit­i­zen­ship was a supervisor’s approval, which was required, and a final swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

Todashev’s file shows he applied for a green card twice. He received asy­lum short­ly after arriv­ing in the Unit­ed States in 2008 from Rus­sia. The file shows he lived in Penn­syl­va­nia, Geor­gia, and Mass­a­chu­setts, stay­ing in Chelsea, Water­town, Cam­bridge, and final­ly All­ston before mov­ing to Flori­da.

In May 2011, a top immi­gra­tion offi­cial in Atlanta, Paul Onyan­go, denied his green card appli­ca­tion because Toda­shev had not pro­vid­ed court records from a crim­i­nal road-rage inci­dent in Boston. The offi­cial said he would not refer Toda­shev for depor­ta­tion, how­ev­er, which Home­land Secu­ri­ty said was typ­i­cal in such sit­u­a­tions.

The next year, Toda­shev tried again. He was issued a green card on Feb. 5, 2013, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty. But short­ly after the bomb­ings, a top immi­gra­tion offi­cial sent the Boston immi­gra­tion office a memo titled “with­hold­ing of adju­di­ca­tion” — sug­gest­ing a shift in his case.

The rea­son is unclear, because the record is redact­ed.

“The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed redact­ed files to The Boston Globe after mul­ti­ple requests span­ning three years. Only 206 pages were released in their entire­ty, so it remains unclear why the gov­ern­ment grant­ed the friends legal res­i­den­cy and put them on the path toward US cit­i­zen­ship.”