Boston: FBI admits missed warning signs over Tamerlan

THE FBI was under growing pressure last night to explain how it missed warning signs over Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Federal investigators knew two years ago that Russian intelligence suspected Tsarnaev of terrorist activities.

Both Democrats and Republicans have demanded to know why the FBI closed its investigation into him after interviewing him in 2011, and how crucial pointers to his jihadist leanings were missed.

The Senate intelligence committee has also ordered a review and will hold hearings into the issue, which could begin as soon as today.

Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House of Representatives homeland security committee, has written to the Obama administration seeking a full account of the apparent intelligence failure and pointing out that Tsarnaev “appears to be the fifth person since September 11, 2001, to participate in terror attacks despite being under investigation by the FBI”.

The incidents “raise the most serious questions about the efficacy of federal counter-terrorism efforts”, Mr McCaul said in the letter to the US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller.

The FBI was tipped off to Tsarnaev two years ago by the Russian government. He was interviewed and no further action taken, although the Russian warning was enough to put a block on his hopes of becoming a US citizen.

While his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was granted US citizenship in September last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s application stalled.

He went on to spend six months purportedly visiting his father in Makhachkala, Dagestan – a hotbed of Islamic militancy – last year. The trip went unnoticed by the FBI because, as the agency’s chief has told US senator Lindsey Graham, the Russian airline, Aeroflot, mis-spelled his name on a passenger manifest.

Yet all travellers in and out of the US are also tracked by their passport numbers and immigration permits – which, in Tamerlan’s case, was a green card.

When he returned to the
US, family and friends noted that he had become heavily radicalised.