According to NBC News, the FBI was alerted as recently as last November by Russia’s security services regarding serious new concerns about one of the Boston bomber brothers. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while spending half a year with his family back in the city of Makhachkala, in the Republic of Dagestan, made six visits to see an Islamic terrorist in a mosque.
A case file on Tsarnaev was sent over to the FBI, and the Russians pleaded with the agency to check the guy out. The FBI never called back.
They interviewed the nice young man in 2011, after Russia had raised earlier concerns that he was becoming a radical Islamist, but found nothing “derogatory” against him and did not pursue the case further.
“Derogatory?” Really? That’s FBI speek nowadays for crazed Muhamadians looking to mass murder American civilians?
How different was the FBI’s failure in this case from that famous 2001 flop, when they ignored alerts from field agents about a bunch of Arabs taking flight lessons who asked to skip the part about landing their plane?
Not so different at all, since the New York Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security put a “hold” on Tsarnaev’s citizenship application, after a routine background check came up with the 2011 FBI interview. Why didn’t the FBI show the same level of interest in the FBI interview? And why was he allowed to stay in the country at all? He’s not a citizen, you don’t owe him a nice life in the Land of the Free – if you suspect him enough to deny him citizenship – kick him the heck out!
Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN the other day: “Either our laws are insufficient or the FBI failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists and we need to up our game.”
In my view, the Patriot Act has already gutted the constitution sufficiently. What else are they going to take away, on top of habeas corpus? Americans are already enduring so much deprivation of their civil rights – the problem is not the laws, it’s bad police work.