Russia caught bomb suspect on wiretap
Associated Press
Apr. 28, 2013
By EILEEN SULLIVAN and MATT APUZZO
WASHINGTON
(AP) – Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation
in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed
jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the
U.S. government finally received details about the call.
In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia
who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.
The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed
earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate
a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.
As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had
concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With
no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and
closed the case in June 2011.
Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar,
detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston
Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was
killed in a police shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.
In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States
information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. The
Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to
the Boston area over the past 11 years.
Even had the FBI received the information from the Russian wiretaps
earlier, it’s not clear that the government could have prevented the
attack.
In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a
conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad,
according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with
reporters.
The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but
he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, according to
the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the
U.S.
In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus
region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire,
a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington Field Office, where that
investigation was based, declined to comment.
There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot
inside the United States, officials said.
It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn’t share more
information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including
the U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence
is being collected.
The FSB said Sunday that it would not comment.
Jim Treacy, the FBI’s legal attache in Moscow between 2007 and 2009,
said the Russians long asked for U.S. assistance regarding Chechen
activity in the United States that might be related to terrorism.
“On any given day, you can get some very good cooperation,” Treacy
said. “The next you might find yourself totally shut out.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in
terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by
U.S. authorities.
But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat’s
former brother-in-law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a
“big-time influence” as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim
faith and decided to quit boxing and school.
After receiving the narrow tip from Russia in March 2011, the FBI
opened a preliminary investigation into Tamerlan and his mother. But
the scope was extremely limited under the FBI’s internal procedures.
After a few months, they found no evidence Tamerlan or his mother were
involved in terrorism.
The FBI asked Russia for more information. After hearing nothing, it
closed the case in June 2011.
In the fall of 2011, the FSB contacted the CIA with the same
information. Again the FBI asked Russia for more details and never
heard back.
At that time, however, the CIA asked that Tamerlan’s and his mother’s
name be entered into a massive U.S. terrorism database.
The CIA declined to comment Saturday.
Authorities have said they’ve seen no connection between the brothers
and a foreign terrorist group. Dzhohkar told FBI interrogators that he
and his brother were angry over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the
deaths of Muslim civilians there.
Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008
or 2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the
family as Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter
version of Islam.
Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified
Misha. While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the
officials said they have not found a connection between Misha and the
Boston attack or terrorism in general.
Associated Press writer Adam Goldman in Washington
and Michael Kunzelman in Boston contributed to this report.