For those who haven’t chased the links yet, here’s a few good ones:

The FBI web­site (hey, I was­n’t afraid to go there) and exact lan­guage about the inves­ti­ga­tion of Tamer­lan:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/2011-request-for-information-on-tamerlan-tsarnaev-from-foreign-government

(snip)
“Once the FBI learned the iden­ti­ties of the two broth­ers today, the FBI reviewed its records and deter­mined that in ear­ly 2011, a for­eign gov­ern­ment asked the FBI for infor­ma­tion about Tamer­lan Tsar­naev. The request stat­ed that it was based on infor­ma­tion that he was a fol­low­er of rad­i­cal Islam and a strong believ­er, and that he had changed dras­ti­cal­ly since 2010 as he pre­pared to leave the Unit­ed States for trav­el to the country’s region to join unspec­i­fied under­ground groups.

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI 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, and edu­ca­tion his­to­ry. The FBI also inter­viewed Tamer­lan Tsar­naev and fam­i­ly mem­bers. 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 FBI request­ed but did not receive more spe­cif­ic or addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion from the for­eign gov­ern­ment.”
—————–

A spokesman on “Meet The Press” Sun­day said the FBI dropped the inves­ti­ga­tion due to no sig­nif­i­cant threat. That clear­ly con­tra­dicts the par­ents who say that there was repeat­ed FBI con­tact for at least 3 years:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/20/bombing-suspects-mother-fbi-monitored-older-son-at-every-step/

“One of the two men sus­pect­ed of being behind the Boston Marathon bomb­ings was under FBI sur­veil­lance as a sus­pect­ed “extrem­ist” for at least three years, accord­ing to his par­ents.

As ques­tions were raised about how well known Tamer­lan and Dzhokhar Tsar­naev were to fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors, their moth­er, Zubei­dat Tsar­nae­va, said that the FBI had spo­ken to the fam­i­ly reg­u­lar­ly: “They were telling me that Tamer­lan was real­ly an extrem­ist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me what­ev­er infor­ma­tion he is get­ting, he gets from these extrem­ists’ sites.” She added that the police were mon­i­tor­ing her son “at every step”.
—————————

“Rus­sia Today” has an inter­view with for­mer FBI trans­la­tor and whistle­blow­er Sibel Edmonds

http://rt.com/op-edge/boston-suspect-russia-chechnya-154/

(snip)
“Sibel Edmonds: Actu­al­ly, we pre­dict­ed that the unnamed for­eign coun­try [West­ern media didn’t name the source imme­di­ate­ly] was in fact Rus­sia, two days ago. We have too lit­tle facts, too much false infor­ma­tion and spec­u­la­tions. But just look at the peri­od they are talk­ing about. When you lis­ten to the suspect’s moth­er, she’s talk­ing about a peri­od of three to five years. Accord­ing to FBI offi­cials, they received this infor­ma­tion, this warn­ing, in 2011. So we have that incon­sis­ten­cy right there. The oth­er impor­tant incon­sis­ten­cy that we should pay atten­tion to is the mother’s descrip­tion of FBI man­ner­isms and con­ver­sa­tion with the sus­pects and the fam­i­ly when they were vis­it­ing them for the last three to five years. That fits exact­ly the recruit­ment style of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. When you go to the sus­pects, and one moment you’re say­ing “We know you’re decent, we know you’re doing noth­ing wrong, we know you’re good”, and the next minute they’re say­ing “You can be dan­ger­ous”, right after receiv­ing that infor­ma­tion from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, to threat­en them with that infor­ma­tion for what pur­pose – to recruit them as infor­mants or for oth­er agen­das.”
(snip)
“So, if you start putting these in con­text and also add the fact that Rus­sia has been the biggest obsta­cle for the Unit­ed States to get in and direct­ly attack Syr­ia – that’s when you start to see the big­ger pic­ture and that’s what the peo­ple should be pay­ing atten­tion to. And as far as the per­cep­tion, up until recent­ly you had indi­vid­u­als like Bolton, Armitage… in a group called The Friends of Chech­nya, and they have been around for a while. Again, the false infor­ma­tion that is being put forth by US media is that since the fall of the Sovi­et Union the Unit­ed States has refrained from inter­ven­ing in the Rus­sia-Chech­nya sit­u­a­tion. And that is pure­ly false. Since mid-1990’s, the US direct­ly, or through Turkey has been arm­ing, train­ing, man­ag­ing, orches­trat­ing not only Chechens but also oth­er fac­tions in the region – and we are look­ing at Cen­tral Asia and the Cau­ca­sus. And of course the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is ful­ly aware of this.”
———————–

Here’s an excel­lent arti­cle from “The Guardian” in 2004 about the Neo-cons arm­ing Chechen fight­ers:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/usa.russia

(snip)
“By the same token, the BBC and oth­er media sources are putting it about that Russ­ian TV played down the Beslan cri­sis, while only west­ern chan­nels report­ed live, the impli­ca­tion being that Putin’s Rus­sia remains a high­ly con­trolled police state. But this view of the Russ­ian media is pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of the impres­sion I gained while watch­ing both CNN and Russ­ian TV over the past week: the Russ­ian chan­nels had far bet­ter infor­ma­tion and images from Beslan than their west­ern com­peti­tors. This harsh­ness towards Putin is per­haps explained by the fact that, in the US, the lead­ing group which pleads the Chechen cause is the Amer­i­can Com­mit­tee for Peace in Chech­nya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled “dis­tin­guished Amer­i­cans” who are its mem­bers is a roll­call of the most promi­nent neo­con­ser­v­a­tives who so enthusas­ti­cal­ly sup­port the “war on ter­ror”.

They include Richard Per­le, the noto­ri­ous Pen­ta­gon advis­er; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Con­tra fame; Ken­neth Adel­man, the for­mer US ambas­sador to the UN who egged on the inva­sion of Iraq by pre­dict­ing it would be “a cake­walk”; Midge Decter, biog­ra­ph­er of Don­ald Rums­feld and a direc­tor of the rightwing Her­itage Foun­da­tion; Frank Gaffney of the mil­i­tarist Cen­tre for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy; Bruce Jack­son, for­mer US mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer and one-time vice-pres­i­dent of Lock­heed Mar­tin, now pres­i­dent of the US Com­mit­tee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, a for­mer admir­er of Ital­ian fas­cism and now a lead­ing pro­po­nent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the for­mer CIA direc­tor who is one of the lead­ing cheer­lead­ers behind George Bush’s plans to re-mod­el the Mus­lim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heav­i­ly pro­motes the idea that the Chechen rebel­lion shows the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic nature of Putin’s Rus­sia, and cul­ti­vates sup­port for the Chechen cause by empha­sis­ing the seri­ous­ness of human rights vio­la­tions in the tiny Cau­casian repub­lic. It com­pares the Chechen cri­sis to those oth­er fash­ion­able “Mus­lim” caus­es, Bosnia and Koso­vo — imply­ing that only inter­na­tion­al inter­ven­tion in the Cau­ca­sus can sta­bilise the sit­u­a­tion there.”
————————-

A screen grab of Twit­ter, not sure of the authen­tic­i­ty but here’s what it says:

https://twitter.com/J_tsar

Jahar ‏@J_tsar 16 Apr
@therealAbdul_ #heavy I’ve been look­ing for those, there is a short­age on the black mar­ket if you wan­na make a quick buck, nuff said..
—————————

And let’s add this to the mix- one cell of a Russ­ian spy ring was oper­at­ing out of Boston:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/29/nation/la-na-russian-agents-lives-20100630

(snip)
“One sus­pect wrote columns for a Span­ish-lan­guage news­pa­per in New York. Anoth­er ran an inter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing and man­age­ment firm in Boston, while his wife sold high-priced real estate near Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. Yet anoth­er drove a shiny blue BMW to his invest­ment bank­ing job in Seat­tle; he reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed his sta­tus on LinkedIn, a social net­work­ing site.
(snip)
Don­ald Howard Heath­field and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, the alleged spies in Boston, filed reg­u­lar expense reports to Moscow Cen­ter, head­quar­ters for Russia’s for­eign intel­li­gence agency, called the SVR.
“Got from Ctr. 64500 dol­lars, income 13940, inter­est 76. Expens­es: rent 8500, util­i­ties 142, tel. 160, car lease 2180, insur­ance 432, gas 820, edu­ca­tion 3600,” plus med­ical, lawyers’ fees, meals and gifts, mail­box­es, com­put­er sup­plies, and so on, they wrote in one, accord­ing to an FBI affi­davit.”
———————

Alleged bombers
FBI “han­dlers”
Chechen her­itage
Neo-con arm­ing of Chechen fight­ers
Black Mar­ket Twit­ter talk
Russ­ian spy ring oper­at­ing in Boston

Mix and stir.
—————

One thing is for sure; Rus­si­a’s Putin will like­ly have renewed pub­lic sen­ti­ment on his side in his cam­paign against Chechen fight­ers.

Daniel Hop­sick­er has a new post about the Tsar­naev broth­ers’ fam­i­ly. It sounds like they come from a well “con­nect­ed” clan.

And now we’re learn­ing that author­i­ties are look­ing into whether or not Tamer­lan Tsar­naev was involved with a triple-mur­der that took place on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2011. The three vic­tims were all asso­ciates of Tsar­naev through his mixed-mar­tial arts gym. Police dis­cov­ered drugs (pot) and thou­sands of dol­lars on top of the bod­ies so it’s dif­fi­cult to infer a motive even if we assume it was Tsar­naev that com­mit­ted the mur­ders. The arti­cle spec­u­lates that his gym-friend was sell­ing pot to Tamer­lan’s pot-head younger broth­er and this pro­voked the killings. Who knows, but if Tsar­naev was involved with those mur­ders and there real­ly was a drugs/money angle to the killings, it’s worth not­ing that dis­cov­er­ing that an appar­ent Islamist is involved with asso­ciates in the drug trade isn’t exact­ly unprece­dent­ed.

The mur­ders would have been a few months before Tamer­lan’s trip to Rus­sia. You have to won­der what exact­ly any puta­tive mas­ter plan­ners would have been hop­ing to achieve? Were they going to even­tu­al­ly claim respon­si­bil­i­ty after the two were extract­ed from the area? Or was no one ever going to find out who did it or why? If this was a planned attack by a Chechen group it was just unusu­al by being a Chechen attack against the US it’s also unusu­al because al-Qae­da Islamist mil­i­tants nor­mal­ly take cred­it for an attack. Oth­er­wise, what’s the point? Is al-Qae­da pro­gress­ing to Jok­er-like meta-ter­ror? Ter­ror for ter­ror’s sake? There’s so much evi­dence point­ing towards out­side help, but the plan itself just did­n’t make that much sense. One pos­si­bil­i­ty is that it’s also intend­ed to send a mes­sage to Rus­sia about the 2014 Olympic games. But if so, that’s quite an aggres­sive pos­ture by the Chechen group giv­en that one would have already expect­ed the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to take an inten­tion­al­ly extra-harsh stance against the Chechen groups as secu­ri­ty becomes a top Russ­ian pri­or­i­ty. This is def­i­nite­ly an odd­ly aggres­sive ter­ror­ist attack that’s dif­fi­cult to inter­pret.

It looks like inves­ti­ga­tors are zero­ing in on the pri­ma­ry rad­i­cal­iz­ing influ­ence in the old­er broth­er’s life: a mys­te­ri­ous friend name Misha that taught him all about reli­gion. An inter­est in Infowars.com and the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion was also devel­op­ing dur­ing this peri­od:

Boston Bomb­ing Sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev Influ­enced By Mys­te­ri­ous Rad­i­cal
ADAM GOLDMAN, ERIC TUCKER & MATT APUZZO April 23, 2013, 4:49 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the years before the Boston Marathon bomb­ings, Tamer­lan Tsar­naev fell under the influ­ence of a new friend, a Mus­lim con­vert who steered the reli­gious­ly apa­thet­ic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, fam­i­ly mem­bers said.

Under the tute­lage of a friend known to the Tsar­naev fam­i­ly only as Misha, Tamer­lan gave up box­ing and stopped study­ing music, his fam­i­ly said. He began oppos­ing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He turned to web­sites and lit­er­a­ture claim­ing that the CIA was behind the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Jews con­trolled the world.

“Some­how, he just took his brain,” said Tamerlan’s uncle, Rus­lan Tsarni, who recalled con­ver­sa­tions with Tamerlan’s wor­ried father about Misha’s influ­ence. Efforts over sev­er­al days by The Asso­ci­at­ed Press to iden­ti­fy and inter­view Misha have been unsuc­cess­ful.

Tamerlan’s rela­tion­ship with Misha could be a clue in under­stand­ing the motives behind his reli­gious trans­for­ma­tion and, ulti­mate­ly, the attack itself. Two U.S. offi­cials say he had no tie to ter­ror­ist groups.

Through­out his reli­gious makeover, Tamer­lan main­tained a strong influ­ence over his sib­lings, includ­ing Dzhokhar, who inves­ti­ga­tors say car­ried out the dead­ly attack by his old­er brother’s side, killing three and injur­ing 264 peo­ple.

...

Based on pre­lim­i­nary writ­ten inter­views with Dzhokar in his hos­pi­tal bed, U.S. offi­cials believe the broth­ers were moti­vat­ed by their reli­gious views. It has not been clear, how­ev­er, what those views were.

As author­i­ties try to piece togeth­er that infor­ma­tion, they are touch­ing on a ques­tion asked after so many ter­ror­ist plots: What turns some­one into a ter­ror­ist?

The broth­ers emi­grat­ed in 2002 or 2003 from Dages­tan, a Russ­ian repub­lic that has become an epi­cen­ter of the Islam­ic insur­gency that spilled over from the region of Chech­nya.

They were raised in a home that fol­lowed Sun­ni Islam, the religion’s largest sect. They were not reg­u­lars at the mosque and rarely dis­cussed reli­gion, Khozhugov said.

Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamer­lan met Misha, a slight­ly old­er, heavy­set bald man with a long red­dish beard. Khozhugov didn’t know where they’d met but believed they attend­ed a Boston-area mosque togeth­er. Misha was an Armen­ian native and a con­vert to Islam and quick­ly began influ­enc­ing his new friend, fam­i­ly mem­bers said.

...

Tamer­lan loved music and, a few years ago, he sent Khozhugov a song he’d com­posed in Eng­lish and Russ­ian. He said he was about to start music school.

Six weeks lat­er, the two men spoke on the phone. Khozhugov asked how school was going.

“I quit,” Tamer­lan said.

“Why did you quit?” Khozhugov asked. “You just start­ed.”

“Music is not real­ly sup­port­ed in Islam,” he replied.

“Who told you that?”

“Misha said it’s not real­ly good to cre­ate music. It’s not real­ly good to lis­ten to music,” Tamer­lan said, accord­ing to Khozhugov.

Tamer­lan took an inter­est in Infowars, a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry web­site. Khozhugov said Tamer­lan was inter­est­ed in find­ing a copy of “The Pro­to­cols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” a piece of anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture claim­ing a Jew­ish plot to take over the world.

“He nev­er said he hat­ed Amer­i­ca or he hat­ed the Jews,” Khozhugov said. “But he was fair­ly aggres­sive toward the poli­cies of the U.S. toward coun­tries with Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions. He dis­liked the wars.”

...

And here’s an arti­cle on the Cam­bridge mosque Tamer­lan attend­ed where he pre­sum­ably met Misha and its sis­ter mosque in Boston. The Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston mosque in Cam­bridge is Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi’s old mosque. It’s cur­rent man­aged by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s “Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety” and the FBI has part­nered with the mosque for years to engage in out­reach pro­grams. It also sounds like there have been a num­ber of invit­ed speak­ers in the past that would be like­ly to share Misha’s views on music:

Mosque that Boston sus­pects attend­ed has rad­i­cal ties
Oren Dorell, USA TODAY4:57 p.m. EDT April 23, 2013

Ter­ror sus­pects, fugi­tives and rad­i­cal speak­ers have passed through the Cam­bridge mosque that the Tsar­naev broth­ers are known to have vis­it­ed.

BOSTON — The mosque attend­ed by the two broth­ers accused in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing has been asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er ter­ror­ist sus­pects, has invit­ed rad­i­cal speak­ers to a sis­ter mosque in Boston and is affil­i­at­ed with a Mus­lim group that crit­ics say nurs­es griev­ances that can lead to extrem­ism.

Sev­er­al peo­ple who attend­ed the Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston mosque in Cam­bridge, Mass., have been inves­ti­gat­ed for Islam­ic ter­ror­ism, includ­ing a con­vic­tion of the mosque’s first pres­i­dent, Abdul­rah­man Alam­ou­di, in con­nec­tion with an assas­si­na­tion plot against a Sau­di prince.

And its sis­ter mosque in Boston, known as the Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston Cul­tur­al Cen­ter, has invit­ed guests who have defend­ed ter­ror sus­pects. A for­mer trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advo­cates treat­ing gays as crim­i­nals, says hus­bands should some­times beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zion­ists and Jews, accord­ing to Amer­i­cans for Peace and Tol­er­ance, an inter­faith group that has inves­ti­gat­ed the mosques.

The head of the group is among crit­ics who say the mosques teach a brand of Islam­ic thought that encour­ages griev­ances against the West, dis­trust of law enforce­ment and oppo­si­tion to West­ern forms of gov­ern­ment, dress and social val­ues.

“We don’t know where these boys were rad­i­cal­ized,” says the head of the group, Charles Jacobs. “But this mosque has a cur­ricu­lum that rad­i­cal­izes peo­ple. Oth­er peo­ple have been rad­i­cal­ized there.”

Yusu­fi Vali, exec­u­tive direc­tor at the Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston Cul­tur­al Cen­ter, insists his mosque does not spread rad­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and can­not be blamed for the acts of a few wor­shipers.

“If there were real­ly any wor­ry about us being extreme,” Vali said, U.S. law enforce­ment agen­cies such as the FBI and Depart­ments of Jus­tice and Home­land Secu­ri­ty would not part­ner with the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety and the Boston mosque in con­duct­ing month­ly meet­ings that have been ongo­ing for four years, he said, in an appar­ent ref­er­ence to U.S. gov­ern­ment out­reach pro­grams in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.

The Cam­bridge and Boston mosques, sep­a­rat­ed by the Charles Riv­er, are owned by the same enti­ty but man­aged indi­vid­u­al­ly. The imam of the Cam­bridge mosque, Sheik Basy­ouny Nehela, is on the board of direc­tors of the Boston mosque.

Dzhokhar Tsar­naev and his broth­er, Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, attend­ed the Cam­bridge mosque for ser­vices and are accused of set­ting two bombs that killed three peo­ple and injured at least 264 oth­ers at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indi­cat­ed that either mosque was involved in any crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. But mosque atten­dees and offi­cials have been impli­cat­ed in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty.

• Abdul­rah­man Alam­ou­di, who signed the arti­cles of incor­po­ra­tion as the Cam­bridge mosque’s pres­i­dent, was sen­tenced to 23 years in fed­er­al court in Alexan­dria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facil­i­ta­tor in what fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors called a Libyan assas­si­na­tion plot against then-Sau­di crown prince Abdul­lah. Abdul­lah is now the Sau­di king.

• Aafia Sid­diqui, who occa­sion­al­ly prayed at the Cam­bridge mosque, was arrest­ed in Afghanistan in 2008 while in pos­ses­sion of cyanide can­is­ters and plans for a chem­i­cal attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in deten­tion and shot at mil­i­tary offi­cers and FBI agents, for which she was con­vict­ed in New York in 2010 and is serv­ing an 86-year sen­tence.

• Tarek Mehan­na, who wor­shiped at the Cam­bridge mosque, was sen­tenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for con­spir­ing to aid al-Qae­da. Mehan­na had trav­eled to Yemen to seek ter­ror­ist train­ing and plot­ted to use auto­mat­ic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston sub­urbs, fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors in Boston alleged.

• Ahmad Abousam­ra, the son of a for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety Boston Abdul-Badi Abousam­ra, was iden­ti­fied by the FBI as Mehan­na’s co-con­spir­a­tor. He fled to Syr­ia and is want­ed by the FBI on charges of pro­vid­ing sup­port to ter­ror­ists and con­spir­a­cy to kill Amer­i­cans in a for­eign coun­try.

• Jamal Badawi of Cana­da, a for­mer trustee of the Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in the 2007 Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al in Texas over the fun­nel­ing of mon­ey to Hamas, which is the Pales­tin­ian wing of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

What both mosques have in com­mon is an affil­i­a­tion with the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety, an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed in 1993 that describes itself as an Amer­i­can Islam­ic revival move­ment. It has also been described by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in court as the “overt arm” of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which calls for Islam­ic law and is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Hamas, a U.S.-designated ter­ror group.

Crit­ics say the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety pro­motes a fraught rela­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, expressed in part by the pat­tern dis­cussed by Amer­i­cans for Progress and Tol­er­ance in which adher­ents are made to feel cut off from their home coun­try and to iden­ti­fy with a glob­al Islamist polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty rather than with Amer­i­ca.

Zhu­di Jass­er, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Islam­ic Forum for Democ­ra­cy, says the rad­i­cal teach­ings often fol­low a theme of recita­tion of griev­ances that Islam has with the West, advo­ca­cy against U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy and ter­ror­ist pros­e­cu­tions, and efforts “to evan­ge­lize Islam in order to improve West­ern soci­ety that is sec­u­lar­ized,” he says.

Jass­er, a vet­er­an of the U.S. Navy and author of the 2012 book A Bat­tle for the Soul of Islam: An Amer­i­can Mus­lim Patri­ot Fights to Save His Faith, says the teach­ings make some fol­low­ers feel “like their nation­al iden­ti­ty is com­plete­ly absent and hol­low, and that vac­u­um can be filled by (rad­i­cal) Islam­ic ide­ol­o­gy, which is suprema­cist and looks upon the West as evil.”

The Cam­bridge mosque was found­ed in 1982 by stu­dents at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Har­vard and sev­er­al oth­er Boston-area schools, accord­ing to a pro­file by the Plu­ral­ism Project at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. Its mem­bers found­ed the sis­ter mosque in Boston in 2009.

The lead­er­ship of the two mosques is inter­twined and the ide­ol­o­gy they teach is the same, Jacobs says. Ilya Feok­tis­tov, direc­tor of research at Amer­i­cans for Peace and Tol­er­ance, says much of the mon­ey to cre­ate the Boston mosque came not from local Mus­lims but from for­eign sources.

More than half of the $15.5 mil­lion used to found the Boston mosque came from Sau­di sources, Feok­tis­tov said, who cites finan­cial doc­u­ments that Jacobs’ group obtained when the mosque sued it for defama­tion. The law­suit was lat­er dropped.

But Vali said the vast major­i­ty of total donors were in the Unit­ed States and that “no dona­tions were accept­ed if the donor want­ed to have any deci­sion-mak­ing influ­ence (even if benign).”

Vali char­ac­ter­ized Amer­i­cans for Peace and Tol­er­ance and its founder, Jacobs, as anti-Mus­lim activists who spread “lies and half-truths in order to attack and mar­gin­al­ize much of the local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and many of its insti­tu­tions.”

“It’s the new McCarthy­ism in full swing,” he said.

Sheik Basy­ouny Nehela, the imam of the Cam­bridge mosque, which is locat­ed across the Charles Riv­er from Boston, is on the board of direc­tors for the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Boston, which runs the Boston mosque. The Tsar­naevs attend­ed the Cam­bridge mosque.

A state­ment issued by the Cam­bridge mosque say the Tsar­naev broth­ers were “occa­sion­al vis­i­tors” and the mosque’s office man­ag­er, Nic­hole Mossalam, said nei­ther broth­er expressed rad­i­cal views. “They nev­er exhib­it­ed any vio­lent sen­ti­ments or behav­iors. Oth­er­wise, they would have been report­ed,” Mossalam said.

The Cam­bridge mosque says Tsar­naev, 26, who died Thurs­day night in a shootout with police, “dis­agreed with the mod­er­ate Amer­i­can-Islam­ic the­ol­o­gy” of the mosque. Tsar­naev chal­lenged an imam who said in his ser­mon that it was appro­pri­ate to cel­e­brate U.S. nation­al hol­i­days and was told to stop such out­bursts, the mosque said in a state­ment.

Talal Eid, a Mus­lim chap­lain at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, says focus­ing on indi­vid­ual rad­i­cals that prayed in a build­ing is unfair.

“In 2011, the two broth­ers were right under the nose of the FBI and they did­n’t find any­thing,” Eid said, who nev­er met the Tsar­naevs. “How do you want me as an imam to know enough to tell them they are not wel­come here? How can I fig­ure out those peo­ple have that kind of crim­i­nal intent?”

The Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety says on its web­site that it is inde­pen­dent of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. How­ev­er, ear­ly Broth­er­hood lit­er­a­ture is con­sid­ered “the foun­da­tion­al texts for the intel­lec­tu­al com­po­nent for Islam­ic work in Amer­i­ca,” the web­site states.

Jacobs says claims of mod­er­ate Islam do not square with the mosque’s clas­sic jiha­di texts in its library and its host­ing of rad­i­cal speak­ers.

Jacobs said Ahmed Man­sour, his co-direc­tor at Amer­i­cans for Peace and Tol­er­ance, found writ­ings by Syed Qutb, the for­mer leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt, and oth­er jiha­di texts at the Cam­bridge mosque’s library when Man­sour went there in 2003. Qutb pio­neered the rad­i­cal vio­lent ide­ol­o­gy espoused by al-Qae­da.

Yusuf al Qaradawi, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood spir­i­tu­al leader who espous­es rad­i­cal views in videos col­lect­ed by Jacobs’ group, was list­ed as a trustee on the Cam­bridge mosque’s IRS fil­ings until 2000, and on the mosque’s web­site until 2003, when he addressed con­gre­gants via record­ed video mes­sage to raise mon­ey for the Boston mosque, accord­ing to a screen­shot of the announce­ment that Feok­tis­tov pro­vid­ed.

But Vali said Qaradawi was list­ed as an hon­orary trustee years ago only because his schol­ar­ship and high esteem in Mus­lim cir­cles would help with fundrais­ing.

Yasir Qad­hi, who lec­tured at the Boston mosque in April 2009, has advo­cat­ed replac­ing U.S. democ­ra­cy with Islam­ic rule and called Chris­tians “filthy” poly­the­ists whose “life and pros­per­i­ty … holds no val­ue in the state of Jihad,” accord­ing to a video obtained by Jacobs’ group.

Vali said Qad­hi was a guest of a non-prof­it that was rent­ing space at the Boston mosque and changed his views since that video was made.

...

Oh wow, accord­ing to a 4/19 post­ing of nn Alex Jones video that NH state rep­re­sen­ta­tive post­ed on on Glenn Beck­’s Face­book wall John Ker­ry was actu­al­ly involved with plan­ning the Boston Marathon bomb­ings! But don’t wor­ry too much about fur­ther ter­ror­ist plots com­ing from the Sec­re­tary of State’s office. The fact that state rep­re­sen­ta­tives are post­ing Alex Jones videos on Glenn Beck­’s Face­book wall strong­ly indi­cates that the ter­ror­ists have already won

NH State Rep. Sug­gests Boston Bomb­ing Was ‘False Flag’ Con­spir­a­cy
Ben­jy Sar­lin 4:49 PM EDT, Tues­day April 23, 2013

A Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in New Hamp­shire post­ed a video by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones on Face­book last week sug­gest­ing the Boston marathon bomb­ing was a “false flag” oper­a­tion car­ried out by the US gov­ern­ment.

Rep. Stel­la Tem­blay ®, a mem­ber of the state’s 400-per­son House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, post­ed the video on Glenn Beck­’s Face­book page on April 19 with an accom­pa­ny­ing mes­sage:

Just as you said would hap­pen. Top Down, Bot­tom UP. The Boston Marathon was a Black Ops “ter­ror­ist” attack. One sus­pect killed, the oth­er one will be too before they even have a chance to speak. Drones and now “ter­ror­ist” attacks by our own Gov­ern­ment. Sad day, but a “wake up” to all of us. First there was a “sus­pect” then there was­nt. Infowars broke the sto­ry and they knew they had been “found out”

Reached by phone, Tem­blay told the local Fos­ter’s Dai­ly Demo­c­rat that she had sus­pi­cions of some kind of plot involv­ing Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry, Sau­di nation­als, and “black ops” sol­diers at the scene of the marathon. Sev­er­al of these ele­ments have popped up both in Jones’ work and var­i­ous Inter­net fever swamps since the bomb­ing.

Offi­cials told the Wash­ing­ton Post on Tues­day that Djokhar Tsar­naev con­fessed to car­ry­ing out the attacks in tan­dem with his broth­er, telling author­i­ties they were upset with Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy towards the Mid­dle East.

Tem­blay has a his­to­ry of spread­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Last year she e‑mailed out a video claim­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was not a cit­i­zen, accord­ing to the Huff­in­g­ton Post, promp­tiong a Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­league to label her “an embarass­ment to us as a cham­ber.”
...

Since it’s prob­a­bly safe to say that this state rep­re­sen­ta­tive is a big fan of Rand Paul and she appears to have so height­ened con­cerns over the US’s drone poli­cies, some­one had bet­ter warn her to avoid googling “drones + Rand Paul” for the next week or so:

Now Rand Paul Thinks It’s OK To Kill U.S. Cit­i­zens With Drones On Amer­i­can Soil?
by Matt Wilstein | 12:41 pm, April 23rd, 2013

Remem­ber when Sen. Rand Paul (R‑KY) stood up on the Sen­ate floor for near­ly 13 hours in an ide­o­log­i­cal protest of the Oba­ma administration’s hypo­thet­i­cal author­i­ty to use drone tech­nol­o­gy to kill U.S. cit­i­zens on Amer­i­can soil? Well, now he’s say­ing killing a cer­tain U.S. cit­i­zen on some spe­cif­ic Amer­i­can soil in Water­town, Mass­a­chu­setts last Fri­day may not have been the worst thing in the world.

Dur­ing an inter­view with Neil Cavu­to on Fox Busi­ness Net­work Mon­day night, Paul attempt­ed to make a dis­tinc­tion between the Amer­i­can “sit­ting in a café” exam­ple he has often cit­ed and the “immi­nent threat” faced by Boston bomb­ing sus­pect Dzhokhar Tsar­naev Fri­day night. “I’ve nev­er argued against any tech­nol­o­gy being used when you have an immi­nent threat, an active crime going on,” Paul said. Though his next exam­ple offered up a dis­turbing­ly low bar for the preda­tor drone option. “If some­one comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dol­lars in cash,” he said, “I don’t care if a drone kills him or a police­man kills him.”

“It’s dif­fer­ent,” Paul con­tin­ued, “if they want to come fly over your hot tub or your yard
just because they want to do sur­veil­lance on every­one and watch your activ­i­ties.” But again, he added, “if there’s killer on the loose in a neigh­bor­hood, I’m not against drones being used.”

Paul’s com­ments in light of the Boston suspect’s arrest are a far cry from his staunch­ly anti-drone stance just last month. At the very begin­ning of his fil­i­buster, Paul deliv­ered the words below, which appear to direct­ly con­tra­dict his state­ments from last night.

“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sound­ed from coast to coast that our Con­sti­tu­tion is impor­tant, that your rights to tri­al by jury are pre­cious, that no Amer­i­can should be killed by a drone on Amer­i­can soil with­out first being charged with a crime, with­out first being found to be guilty by a court.”

...

It looks like Russ­ian con­cerns in 2011 over Tamer­lan’s Islamist inter­ests were shared by the CIA

Wash­ing­ton Post
CIA sought to have Boston bomb­ing sus­pect put on ter­ror­ist watch list

By Greg Miller and Sari Hor­witz, Updat­ed: Wednes­day, April 24, 3:14 PM

The CIA asked the main U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism agency to add the name of one of the sus­pect­ed Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials.

The agency took the step after Russ­ian author­i­ties con­tact­ed offi­cials there in the fall of 2011 and raised con­cerns that Tamer­lan Tsar­naev — who was killed last week in a con­fronta­tion with police — was seen as an increas­ing­ly rad­i­cal Islamist and could be plan­ning to trav­el over­seas. The CIA request­ed that his name be put on a data­base main­tained by the Nation­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter.

That data­base, the Ter­ror­ist Iden­ti­ties Data­mart Envi­ron­ment, or TIDE, is a data store­house that feeds a series of gov­ern­ment watch lists, includ­ing the FBI’s main Ter­ror­ist Screen­ing Data­base and the Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Administration’s “no-fly” list.

Offi­cials said Tsarnaev’s name was added to the data­base but it’s unclear which agency added it.

The CIA’s request came months after the FBI had closed a pre­lim­i­nary inquiry into Tsar­naev after get­ting a sim­i­lar inquiry about him from Russ­ian state secu­ri­ty, accord­ing to offi­cials, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Law enforce­ment offi­cials said that the request to the FBI in 2011 orig­i­nat­ed from fears by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment that Tamer­lan was a threat to Rus­sia and would com­mit a ter­ror­ist act in Rus­sia — not the Unit­ed States. The request came from Russ­ian fed­er­al police to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

“There was a con­cern he might have some kind of ties to ter­ror­ism,” said FBI spokesman Paul Bres­son. “We did every­thing legal­ly that we could do with the lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion we had. After we did, we found no deroga­to­ry infor­ma­tion.”

The FBI gets hun­dreds of sim­i­lar requests a year from for­eign gov­ern­ments, said a law enforce­ment offi­cial. The find­ings were report­ed back to Rus­sia and Russ­ian author­i­ties were asked if they had any more infor­ma­tion for the Unit­ed States to inves­ti­gate about Tamer­lan and they did not.

“They were sat­is­fied,” said the offi­cial. “We had checked on their infor­ma­tion. And no fur­ther infor­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed.”

...

Looks like they are whit­tling away at more sus­pects:

Report: FBI shoots and kills man in Flori­da con­nect­ed to Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect
By Arturo Gar­cia
Wednes­day, May 22, 2013 9:34 EDT

Fed­er­al agents shot and killed a man linked to one of the sus­pects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bomb­ing attack after “some­thing went wrong” dur­ing ques­tion­ing, CBS News report­ed Wednes­day morn­ing.

The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion vis­it­ed the man, iden­ti­fied by CBS and an Orlan­do news out­let as 26-year-old Chech­nyan nation­al Ibrag­im Toda­shev, ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing. WKMG-TV report­ed that Toda­shev was being observed by the Bureau because of a past asso­ci­a­tion with Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, a sus­pect in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing case who was killed in a fire­fight with police on April 19.

CBS News senior cor­re­spon­dent John Miller report­ed that “some­thing went wrong” while Toda­shev was being inter­viewed by agents. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed on Twit­ter that he became vio­lent dur­ing ques­tion­ing.

In a state­ment released to Miller, the FBI con­firmed that there was a shoot­ing involv­ing an agent who “encoun­tered the sus­pect while con­duct­ing offi­cial duties” in Orlan­do, but offered no fur­ther details.

“Back when [Toda­shev] used to live in Boston, they used to hang out. Not hang out — he knew him,” a friend of Todashev’s, Khusen Taramov, told WKMG. “They met a few times, because [Toda­shev] was a MMA fight­er and [Tsar­naev] was a box­er. They just knew each oth­er. That’s it.”

Miller report­ed that Toda­shev and oth­er res­i­dents of his apart­ment com­plex were ques­tioned by author­i­ties, but that Toda­shev was under more obser­va­tion because he vis­it­ed Tsar­naev in Boston and at one point planned to trav­el to Chech­nya.

“He had a tick­et to New York. From there, he was going to go home,” Taramov said to WKMG, adding that the Bureau was “push­ing him to stay, say­ing, ‘We want to inter­view one last time.’”

Tsarnaev’s broth­er, Dzhokhar Tsar­naev, is in fed­er­al cus­tody after being arrest­ed in Water­town, Mass­a­chu­setts, on April 20.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/22/report-fbi-shoots-and-kills-man-in-florida-connected-to-marathon-bombing-suspect/

—————————–

Lots of fight­ers involved in this Boston bomb­ing case.

Tamer­lan was a box­er who trained at MMA gyms.

The guys that were killed with a knife with drugs dumped on them also trained at a MMA gym.

Now this oth­er Chechen MMA fight­er is shot by an FBI agent.

Here’s anoth­er ver­sion of the sto­ry:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/22/fbi-boston-bombing-killed-orlando/2350065/

“The FBI agent was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal with non-life-threat­en­ing injuries.

The vic­tim, an eth­nic Chechen, was an acquain­tance of bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, accord­ing to a friend, Khusn Taramiv, who spoke to WESH-TV.

Taramiv said his friend knew Tsar­naev because they were both inter­est­ed in mar­tial arts.”

*
“Tamariv told WESH-TV that he and the vic­tim were ques­tioned for about three hours by the FBI on Tues­day and that agents then want­ed to inter­view Toda­shev alone.

“They told me they’re going to bring him back,” Taramiv said. “They nev­er brought him back. He felt inside he was going to get shot.”

He also said FBI agents had been fol­low­ing him and Toda­shev for sev­er­al days.

Toda­shev was arrest­ed by Orlan­do police on May 4 on charges of aggra­vat­ed bat­tery in con­nec­tion with a fight in a park­ing lot.”
—————–

“He felt inside he was going to get shot”

Hmmm.
It would take a hell of a lot for an FBI agent to draw on a poten­tial sus­pect that may have valu­able infor­ma­tion.
‑Or maybe this was a “mop-up” oper­a­tion.

I’ve been spend­ing some time look­ing at all the con­spir­a­cy sites on the Boston bomb­ings, while most of them are out there, one valid point that did come up regards the sec­ond explo­sion. There was a com­plete derth of report­ing on this event, even though there was plen­ty for the fin­ish line explo­sion, not 200 yards away.

Now it appears that there were also two Mass. State Troop­ers present when Toda­shev was shot:

http://nation.time.com/2013/05/22/fbi-agent-fatally-shoots-man-in-orlando/

”
Toda­shev, a 27-year-old mixed mar­tial arts fight­er, was fatal­ly shot ear­ly Wednes­day at his Orlan­do home dur­ing a meet­ing with the agent and two Mass­a­chu­setts state troop­ers, author­i­ties said. The agent was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal with injuries that were not life-threat­en­ing.

Three law enforce­ment offi­cials, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said ini­tial­ly that Toda­shev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife. How­ev­er, two of those offi­cials said lat­er in the day it was no longer clear what had hap­pened. The third offi­cial had not received any new infor­ma­tion.”
(snip)

The FBI gave no details on why it was inter­est­ed in Toda­shev except to say that he was being ques­tioned as part of the Boston inves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, two offi­cials briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion said he had impli­cat­ed him­self as hav­ing been involved in the 2011 triple-slay­ing in a Boston sub­urb that author­i­ties believe may have been con­nect­ed to Tamer­lan Tsar­naev. The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to release details of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

***
And from CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22/justice/florida-fbi-shooting-boston/index.html

“Details emerged Wednes­day about how Toda­shev had Tsar­naev’s phone num­ber in his cell phone, said the source.

Both men were mem­bers of the mixed mar­tial arts forum Sherdog.com, along with Russ­ian-Cana­di­an box­er-turned-jihadist William Plot­nikov, the source said.

Last month, CNN report­ed that Plot­nikov and six oth­ers died in a July 2012 fire­fight with Russ­ian forces in the south­west­ern repub­lic of Dages­tan, while Tsar­naev was vis­it­ing the region, accord­ing to a source briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion.”
(snip)
“Taramov said he him­self was ques­tioned by the FBI for three hours Tues­day night. Asked what he was asked, Taramov said, “Dif­fer­ent kind of ques­tions like ‘what do you think about bomb­ings,’ ‘do you know these guys,’ blah blah blah, what is my views on cer­tain stuff.”

He said Toda­shev was not a rad­i­cal. “He was just a Mus­lim. That was his mis­take, I guess.”

Taramov said his friend had told him he had a bad feel­ing about the direc­tion the inves­ti­ga­tion was head­ing.

“He felt like there’s going to be a set­up ... bad set­up against him. Because he told me, ‘They are mak­ing up such crazy stuff, I don’t know ... why they doing it. OK, I’m answer­ing the ques­tions, but they are still mak­ing up some, like, con­nec­tions, some crazy stuff. I don’t know why they are doing it.’ ”

———————

Now they don’t real­ly know if there was a knife attack or not.
Bull­crap.

An FBI agent and two State Troop­ers can’t han­dle one guy?
They would have had a writ­ten set of ques­tions and answers and most like­ly had tape rolling. It sounds like the author­i­ties are back­ing-and-fill­ing.

Michael Isakoff report­ed on MSNBC this morn­ing that Toda­shev HAD NOT signed a con­fes­sion.
Per­haps it was the action of a des­per­ate man who may have been involved in the Boston area knife killings, but this sto­ry is rot­ten.
There is no appa­rant motive.

Now we have the Cana­di­an named Plot­nikov thrown into the mix. Being on an inter­net forum is not close con­tact, but it looks like some­one is try­ing to build the case.

@Swamp: And now it looks like inves­ti­ga­tors are back­ing away from any poten­tion­al Tamerlan/Plotnikov meet­ing dur­ing Tamer­lan’s trip to Dages­tan. Tamer­lan appar­ent­ly was palling around with a fel­low that did end up join­ing a mil­i­tant group and the two were seen leav­ing a Salafist mosque fre­quent­ly which is notable giv­en Ibrag­im Toda­shev’s father’s report­ed close rela­tion­ship to the Sufi strong­man Kady­rov. Inves­ti­ga­tors appear to be increas­ing­ly set­tling on the ‘lone wolf’ angle:

No ‘Man­i­festo’ But New Clues to ‘Frus­trat­ed’ Boston Sus­pect: Sources
ABC News
By KIRIT RADIA (@KiritRadia_ABC)
May 24, 2013
MOSCOW

Just over a month after Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev was killed dur­ing a stand­off with police, inves­ti­ga­tors said they have begun to piece togeth­er a pic­ture of what he did dur­ing a six-month vis­it last year to Dages­tan, a volatile region in south­ern Rus­sia that is home to Tsarneav’s par­ents as well as a vio­lent strug­gle with Islamist insur­gency.

Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors believe Tsar­naev trav­eled to Dages­tan seek­ing to make con­tact with mil­i­tant groups, but for rea­sons that remain unclear, he was either unable or unwill­ing to join their ranks.

As they peel back the lay­ers of the man accused of work­ing with his younger broth­er to set off a pair of bombs near the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon April 15, inves­ti­ga­tors said they are find­ing a frus­trat­ed young man who felt out of place in the Unit­ed States.

They said Tsar­naev appears to have been large­ly self-rad­i­cal­ized before arriv­ing in Dages­tan in search of a lifestyle that may not have met his expec­ta­tions either, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials close to or briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion. The offi­cials spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

The offi­cials described Tsar­naev as a typ­i­cal lone wolf.

While Tsar­naev’s rad­i­cal­iza­tion appears to have deep­ened dur­ing his time in Dages­tan, inves­ti­ga­tors have not found a par­tic­u­lar con­tact there or a “man­i­festo,” on his com­put­er or else­where that would explain why he and his younger broth­er Dzhokhar alleged­ly placed bombs at the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon, the offi­cials said. Hours after Tamer­lan was killed in the police shootout, Dzhokhar was appre­hend­ed and remains in cus­tody.

While offi­cials stressed the inves­ti­ga­tion is still ongo­ing, they have also found no signs that Tamer­lan Tsar­naev was affil­i­at­ed with an inter­na­tion­al ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion like al Qae­da. Sim­i­lar­ly, they have found no evi­dence to sug­gest he was direct­ed to strike the U.S. by any­one he met in Dages­tan. They have not found any signs of sus­pi­cious con­tacts dur­ing Tsar­naev’s trips to vis­it his father’s fam­i­ly in Chech­nya, which has also bat­tled an Islamist insur­gency, and probes into Tsar­naev’s father’s rumored ties to Chechen secu­ri­ty offi­cials have also not revealed any­thing of con­cern, the offi­cials said.

Tsarnev’s clos­est known mil­i­tant con­tact in Dages­tan appears to have been a young man named Mah­mud Mansur Nidal, offi­cials said. The two were often seen togeth­er leav­ing a Salafist mosque, pop­u­lar with fight­ers, in Makhachkala.

But while Nidal even­tu­al­ly went off to join a mil­i­tant group — what locals call going “into the for­est” — inves­ti­ga­tors say they have uncov­ered no evi­dence that Tsar­naev joined him. Nidal would even­tu­al­ly be killed in a police raid after return­ing to vis­it fam­i­ly.

Tsar­naev had also been in touch over the inter­net with a Russ­ian-Cana­di­an con­vert to Islam and sus­pect­ed mil­i­tant named William Plot­nikov, but offi­cials say they have no evi­dence to sug­gest the two ever met in per­son. Con­trary to pre­vi­ous report­ing, inves­ti­ga­tors say they do not believe Tsar­naev dropped off the map after Plot­nikov was killed by police in July, short­ly before Tsar­naev left Rus­sia to return to the Unit­ed States.

Inves­ti­ga­tors have also tak­en a hard look at Magomed Kar­tashov, Tsar­naev’s dis­tant cousin and the founder and leader of a Islamist group called the Union of the Just. The group is anti-Amer­i­can and cam­paigns for the appli­ca­tion of Sharia, or Islam­ic law.

The cousins met sev­er­al times dur­ing Tsar­naev’s stay in Dages­tan. Kar­tashov’s lawyer, Pati­mat Abdul­lae­va, told ABC News by phone that the two did dis­cuss reli­gion, but she insist­ed Tsar­naev was the one with extrem­ist views. Kar­tashov is in prison for an unre­lat­ed mat­ter — wav­ing an Islamist flag dur­ing a wed­ding pro­ces­sion — but his lawyer says Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tors have inter­viewed him there about his inter­ac­tions with Tsar­naev.

Magomed Magome­dov, anoth­er mem­ber of Union for the Just, told ABC News he also saw Tsar­naev sev­er­al times last year, at the mosque and around Makhachkala, but could not remem­ber their dis­cus­sions about reli­gion. He described Tsar­naev as being aloof and out of place in Dages­tan.

“He was stick­ing out, it was obvi­ous he is not local. He liked to draw atten­tion with his expen­sive and fan­cy clothes. His hair­cut was some­thing no one has seen before,” he said.

That descrip­tion match­es the pic­ture that inves­ti­ga­tors are paint­ing of Tsar­naev. They said when Tsar­naev arrived in Dages­tan, his flashy appear­ance and demeanor imme­di­ate­ly set him apart.

He also appar­ent­ly drew atten­tion to him­self by claim­ing to know more about Islam than he real­ly did. Accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, Tsar­naev would often recite things he had read or seen on the inter­net, often con­fus­ing those he was try­ing to impress.

“He was dri­ving peo­ple crazy,” one offi­cial said.

The offi­cials said he was not as strict a prac­ti­tion­er of Islam as he claimed to be.

While his younger broth­er and alleged co-con­spir­a­tor Dzhokhar has been described as the fam­i­ly pot­head, one offi­cial said Tamer­lan was also fond of mar­i­jua­na, spend­ing hours high on the couch in Mass­a­chu­setts where he did not have a steady job.

The FBI has met with Tsar­naev’s par­ents at least once. Offi­cials said they are still plan­ning to meet with nine or 10 oth­er indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing with Tsar­naev’s extend­ed fam­i­ly, child­hood friends, and con­tacts at the mosque. Those meet­ings were described as “tying up loose ends” rather than sus­pi­cious leads.

The Amer­i­can offi­cials praised the unusu­al lev­el of coop­er­a­tion they’ve received from their Russ­ian coun­ter­parts.

...

Here’s an inter­est­ing take from a crime reporter:

http://www.patriotledger.com/crime/x83398290/MATT-CONNOLLY-FBI-report-on-death-of-Ibragim-Todashev#axzz2UEKZEz8N

Post­ed May 23, 2013 @ 12:40 PM
MATT CONNOLLY: FBI report on death of Ibrag­im Toda­shev

Read more: MATT CONNOLLY: FBI report on death of Ibrag­im Toda­shev — Quin­cy, MA — The Patri­ot Ledger

At 5 p.m. Wednes­day, Charles Bright, spe­cial agent in charge of the FBI’s Orlan­do office, made the fol­low­ing statement:“We regret to announce the death of Ibrag­im Toda­shev who died ear­li­er today as a result of being shot three times by FBI Spe­cial Agent Rick O’Shea. The cir­cum­stances of this unfor­tu­nate inci­dent are as fol­lows.

Since the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Tsar­naev broth­ers as the ter­ror­ists in the Marathon Ter­ror­ist Attack the FBI has been ques­tion­ing peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Tamer­lan Tsar­naev. One of these per­sons was Ibrag­im Toda­shev who was known to be an asso­ciate of Tamer­lan and lived with him in Boston. Since April 19, 2013, he has been ques­tioned by the FBI sev­en times con­cern­ing his involve­ment in that attack. There has been no evi­dence con­nect­ing him with the attack.

On Tues­day, May 21, 2013, two Mass­a­chu­setts State Troop­ers, John Lucky and Paul Strong, arrived in Orlan­do along with FBI Spe­cial Agent Rick O’Shea. They were inter­est­ed in inter­view­ing him about the homi­cides of three men killed in Waltham Mass­a­chu­setts, in 2011. They, by pre­arrange­ment with Mr. Toda­shev, met with him at his apart­ment in the Orlan­do hous­ing com­plex where Mr. Toda­shev lived with his girl­friend, Anna Muschkovick. Accom­pa­ny­ing those men were two FBI agents from the Orlan­do office, Nemo Puitovic and Bar­ley Straight as well as two detec­tives from the Orlan­do police depart­ment, Gray Red­din­ton and Gary Tia­mi.

They arrived at the loca­tion of Mr. Toda­shev at 10:00 p.m. The men and Mr. Toda­shev engaged in a con­ver­sa­tion con­cern­ing his where­abouts when he was in Boston at the time of the Waltham homi­cides along with oth­er ques­tions about his rela­tion­ship with Tamer­lan Tsar­naev. Dur­ing that dis­cus­sion Mr. Toda­shev excused him­self to go to the bath­room. Agent O’Shea fol­lowed him there and the oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cials remained in the liv­ing room.

The bath­room was accessed through the main bed­room. Agent O’Shea said as soon as Mr. Toda­shev reached the bath­room, he turned around and attacked Agent O’Shea. Agent O’Shea was aware of Mr. Toda­shev’s back­ground in mar­tial arts and the attack was pow­er­ful and unex­pect­ed knock­ing Agent O’Shea onto the bed. There Agent O’Shea felt Mr. Toda­shev reach­ing for his FBI issued weapon and strug­gle occurred over its con­trol. Dur­ing that time, Agent O’Shea man­aged to keep con­trol of the weapon and fired six shots into Mr. Toda­shev.

The com­mo­tion caused by this strug­gle caused the oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cers to respond but the inci­dent had end­ed by that time. This inci­dent occurred at approx­i­mate­ly 11:45 p.m. an hour and 45 min­utes after the inter­view with Mr. Toda­shev began.”

SAC Bright then answered the ques­tions from the news media that had gath­ered there.

Of course the above is fic­tion. That is what should have hap­pened. How Mr. Toda­shev met his untime­ly demise has to be a rel­a­tive­ly straight for­ward event. Instead of the above we have a team of FBI experts descend­ing on Orlan­do from DC. Every­one accepts this a nat­ur­al. Every­thing has to be washed and scrubbed before the peo­ple are allowed to know any­thing about it. The sol­diers have to be lined up in a row.

What will hap­pen next is we will then get the state­ment from the FBI which will be to this effect:

“Ibrag­im Toda­shev was shot some time in the evening of Tues­day May 21, 2013, by an FBI Agent from Boston who was inter­view­ing him along with two Mass­a­chu­setts state police offi­cers and oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cials. Dur­ing that inter­view Ibrag­im Toda­shev attacked the FBI agent putting his life in jeop­ardy and act­ing in self-defense Toda­shev was killed. The inves­ti­ga­tion to date shows that the FBI agent act­ed prop­er­ly and in accor­dance with all the rules of the FBI gov­ern­ing self-defense. This mat­ter is under inves­ti­ga­tion and there will be no fur­ther infor­ma­tion until the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed. But let us assure you the FBI act­ed in a prop­er and respon­si­ble man­ner at all times.”

Then, of course, we’ll hear from unnamed offi­cials with inside infor­ma­tion oth­er things that relate to the inci­dent. There will be a knife in some sto­ries, in oth­ers it will be a club, and in oth­ers a lamp. We’ll be told about a con­fes­sion to mur­ders and per­haps some sug­ges­tion he was involved in the Marathon Ter­ror­ist Attack.

I hope I’m wrong but I expect the last thing we’ll hear is what real­ly hap­pened because if we were going to know that it would have already come out. It’s a sim­ple sit­u­a­tion with a half-dozen law enforce­ment wit­ness­es. Why the delay? Why the silence?

Matt Con­nol­ly is a for­mer long-time deputy dis­trict attor­ney in Nor­folk Coun­ty under William Delahunt. He lives on Cape Cod. Read his blog, The Tri­al of Whitey Bul­ger. Check out our sto­ries about Bul­ger

——————–

Sev­en Freakin’ agents/troopers were there...

And in the lat­est twist, the father of Ibrag­im Toda­shev — the man shot by the FBI agent — just held a press con­fer­ence where he showed 16 pho­to of the his son’s body includ­ing 6 bul­let wounds to the tor­so and one to the back of the head. The pho­tos have yet to be authen­ti­cat­ed:

Father of man FBI shot claims his son was exe­cut­ed
By MAX SEDDON
Asso­ci­at­ed Press / May 30, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — The father of a Chechen immi­grant killed in Flori­da while being inter­ro­gat­ed by the FBI about his ties to a Boston Marathon bomb­ings sus­pect said Thurs­day that the U.S. agents killed his son ‘‘exe­cu­tion-style.’’

At news con­fer­ence in Moscow, Abdul-Baki Toda­shev showed jour­nal­ists 16 pho­tographs that he said were of his son, Ibrag­im, in a Flori­da morgue. He said his son had six gun­shot wounds to his tor­so and one to the back of his head and the pic­tures were tak­en by his son’s friend, Khusen Taramov.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly pos­si­ble to authen­ti­cate the pho­tographs.

The FBI says 27-year-old mixed mar­tial arts fight­er Ibrag­im Toda­shev was killed last week dur­ing a vio­lent con­fronta­tion in his Orlan­do home while an FBI agent and two Mass­a­chu­setts state troop­ers ques­tioned him about his ties to slain Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, as well as about a 2011 triple slay­ing in Mass­a­chu­setts.

Three law enforce­ment offi­cials said ini­tial­ly that Toda­shev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife, although two of them lat­er said it was no longer clear what had hap­pened.

Greg Com­cowich, a spokesman for the Boston FBI, declined to com­ment Thurs­day on the elder Todashev’s claim that his son was unarmed.

Abdul-Baki Toda­shev said the pho­tos were emailed to him by Taramov, who appar­ent­ly was at the morgue to iden­ti­fy the body. The father said Taramov was part of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty hold­ing the body for the fam­i­ly until they could retrieve it.

The father said Taramov told him that U.S. agents inter­ro­gat­ed him on the street while five offi­cials inter­ro­gat­ed Toda­shev in his Flori­da house for eight hours on May 22, the night he was shot. He said his son was ‘‘100 per­cent unarmed.’’

Todashev’s father said his son moved to the U.S. in 2008 on a study exchange pro­gram and met Tsar­naev at a box­ing gym in Boston in 2011, about a year before he moved to Orlan­do. He said the two were ‘‘not par­tic­u­lar­ly close friends.’’

Pri­or to last month’s bomb­ings, Toda­shev under­went an oper­a­tion for a sports injury and was on crutch­es, mak­ing it phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble for him to have been involved in the bomb­ings, his father said. He added that Toda­shev had recent­ly received a green card and was plan­ning to return to Chech­nya for the sum­mer last Fri­day, two days after he was killed.

...

What if Tamer­lan was being “pro­tect­ed” for the Waltham mur­ders because the FBI (or oth­er agency) was recruit­ing him, and Toda­shev knew that...

@SWAMP–

It’s pos­si­ble, how­ev­er I sus­pect the cov­er­ing up that is tak­ing place is due to the fact that the FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing an inci­dent that is blow­back from an ongo­ing jihadist covert oper­a­tion in the cen­ter of the Earth Island.

As I’ve indi­cat­ed in posts and com­ments, that op is being pur­sued by the GOP/Underground Reich ele­ment of CIA. Said ele­ment is by far and away the most pow­er­ful ele­ment of CIA.

It is not unusu­al for FBI and oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies to cut across a CIA op, which results in all sorts of anom­alies and con­tra­dic­tions.

That is almost cer­tain­ly what is going on here.

Toda­shev’s demise may involve any num­ber of sce­nar­ios.

He may have actu­al­ly signed a con­fes­sion, or part of a con­fes­sion and then decid­ed for mar­tyr­dom and against “rolling over” and com­mit­ted “sui­cide by cop.”

He may have been exe­cut­ed because he, too, was part of the above-men­tioned CIA/Underground Reich op in Chechnya/Dagestan/Earth Island.

I doubt we’ll ever know the full sto­ry.

It would not sur­prise me to learn that some of the Chechen/Dagestan jihadists being run by ele­ments of CIA have also net­worked with neo-Nazi groups and/or indi­vid­u­als. Tamer­lan was a “Truther.” The Truthers are a bunch of dupes con­trolled by Under­ground Reich. They are inex­tri­ably-linked to the far right.

My first take when hear­ing of the inci­dent (on Tax day and a Mass­a­chu­setts hol­i­day called “Patri­ots’ Day”) was that it was Aryan Nations/Posse Comi­ta­tus types.

It was very close to the anniver­sary of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and Waco.

In the run-up to the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, we saw Aryan Broth­er­hood-linked killings in Texas and Col­orado, as well as the dead­ly explo­sion of a fer­til­iz­er plant very close to Waco, Texas.

A para­medic has been arrest­ed for pos­sess­ing an explo­sive in a [sup­pos­ed­ly] uncon­nect­ed inci­dent.

I sus­pect there’s more to the Col­orado and Texas mur­ders than we have been told. A “Turn­er Diaries” stu­dent would emu­late the dic­tates of “The Order” and remain silent.

Against this same Earth Island/jihadist op back­ground is the chaos in Syr­ia and Lebanon.

As I’ve indi­cat­ed in the past, I think it is safe to con­clude that there is a proxy war going on in the Mid­dle East and Earth Island.

The petroleum/GOP/Underground Reich intel­li­gence fac­tion is uti­liz­ing Sun­ni proxy war­riors to pen­e­trate and con­trol the cen­ter of the Earth Island and Rus­sia is sup­port­ing Shi­ite Mus­lim ele­ments (Iran, Lebanon/Hezbollah, Syr­ia) to pro­tect its South­ern flank.

Again, I call atten­tion to the remark­able essay by Pro­fes­sor Robert E. Kaplan, on which you com­ment­ed recent­ly.

It is indeed one of the most impor­tant arti­cles in a long, long time.

It peels away lay­ers of obfus­ca­tion and cuts to the chase in a way that I can’t recall see­ing, at least not recent­ly.

BTW–I updat­ed that post yes­ter­day (5/31).

Best,

Dave

Did Mike Rogers, chair­man of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee lie on “Meet The Press”?

“REP. MIKE ROGERS (R‑MI, Chair­man, Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, For­mer FBI Agent): Yeah, well, it’s impor­tant to under­stand why, in fact, the FBI inter­viewed him in the first place. So they had infor­ma­tion from a for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice that they were con­cerned about his pos­si­ble rad­i­cal­iza­tion. And so they went from there, the FBI did their due dili­gence, and did a very thor­ough job about try­ing to run that to ground and then asks some more help from that intel­li­gence ser­vice to try to get fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, that intel­li­gence ser­vice stopped coop­er­at­ing. So what hap­pens is that case gets closed down.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51611247/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/april-deval-patrick-mike-rogers-dick-durbin-pete-williams-michael-leiter-michael-chertoff-tom-brokaw-doris-kearns-goodwin-peggy-noonan-jeffrey-goldberg/#.UX8UzSuAeSM

The media line has con­sis­tant­ly been that “The Rus­sians went silent after the ini­tial warn­ings about Tsar­naev”

Until today:

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/06/keating_russia_shared_todashev_info

Keat­ing: Rus­sia shared Toda­shev info
Sun­day, June 2, 2013
Print­Email Com­ments (37) .By:Erin Smith
..Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cials sent the U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion on the Chechen pal of Boston bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev — just after the marathon attack and a month before he was shot dead while being ques­tioned by author­i­ties about his ties to the bomb­ings.

U.S. Rep. William Keat­ing, who returned yes­ter­day from a trip to Rus­sia, said Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cials sent infor­ma­tion about 27-year-old Ibrag­im Toda­shev to their coun­ter­parts in the Unit­ed States before he was fatal­ly shot May 22 in Orlan­do, Fla., after what the FBI called a vio­lent con­fronta­tion.

Toda­shev was one of many Russ­ian nation­als named in the April 21 let­ter to U.S. offi­cials, said Keat­ing.

.Keat­ing said the mis­sive was not a warn­ing let­ter about Toda­shev, but he told the Her­ald his name came up dur­ing intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion shar­ing.

“It was just clear that his name was ref­er­enced among oth­ers in that let­ter. It could have been in response to the FBI ask­ing them what they knew,” Keat­ing said, adding it was unclear why Rus­sia shared the infor­ma­tion. “We’ll be able to get these let­ters.”

Keat­ing said he spent more than an hour with Russia’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism direc­tor and a top deputy at FSB, Russia’s equiv­a­lent of the FBI, who both can­did­ly shared infor­ma­tion on Tsar­naev, his asso­ci­a­tion with mil­i­tants and his vis­it to Rus­sia last year.

“I nev­er thought we’d get that lev­el of infor­ma­tion and coop­er­a­tion from the Rus­sians,” Keat­ing said.

Keat­ing acknowl­edged he learned “more spe­cif­ic” infor­ma­tion from the Rus­sians than FBI offi­cials, who have failed to show up for con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on the bomb­ings and have not pro­vid­ed brief­in­gs about Toda­shev.

The head of Russia’s coun­tert­er­ror efforts said he believed the Boston Marathon attacks could have been pre­vent­ed if the two coun­tries had been work­ing more coop­er­a­tive­ly before the bomb­ings, said Keat­ing.

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev first appeared on Russ­ian author­i­ties’ radar in 2011 after slain Cana­di­an jihadist William Plot­nikov named him as a fel­low extrem­ist under inter­ro­ga­tion — news first report­ed by the Her­ald on May 3.

Keat­ing said Russ­ian offi­cials claim Tsar­naev unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought to join mil­i­tants in Rus­sia, Pales­tine and the Mid­dle East and attempt­ed to slight­ly alter his name. Tsar­naev trav­eled to Chech­nya and Dages­tan in Jan­u­ary 2012 — nine months after the Russ­ian warn­ing — but Russ­ian offi­cials had no idea he was there because he trav­eled on a visa from Kyr­gyzs­tan, where he was born, accord­ing to Keat­ing.

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev was killed April 19 in a fire­fight with police in Water­town. His younger broth­er, Dzhokhar, was lat­er cap­tured and is now charged in the April 15 attacks at the Boston Marathon fin­ish line that killed 3 peo­ple and wound­ed more than 260.

—————–

Now, if they are report­ing Toda­shev’s name, it’s in ref­er­ence to Tsar­naev.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Keat­ing says that the report came to the “Coun­ter­parts in the Unit­ed States” on the same day (April 21) as Rogers appear­ance on “Meet The Press”.

Sure­ly there were oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions.