Boston bombing suspect's friend Ibrahim Todashev killed in FBI shootout
(CBS News) The FBI was involved in a fatal shooting near Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday that killed a man with ties to the older brother suspected in last month's deadly terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon.
CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former FBI assistant director, reported on "CBS This Morning" that the man, Ibrahim Todashev, was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
The FBI has not commented on the relationship between Todashev and Tsarnaev.
Miller reported that FBI agents went to Todashev's apartment complex after midnight Wednesday morning to question him. Todashev had been on the bureau's radar since Tsarnaev was identified as a suspect in the bombing.
"He had been interviewed along with a number of other people in the apartment complex, but the interest in him was higher because of a couple of factors: He was in contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He had been to Boston to visit him, and he was planning a trip to Chechnya," Miller said.
FBI agents went to question him overnight after there were indications that he canceled that trip, Miller said.
"In the encounter in the apartment, something went wrong," Miller said.
In a statement Wednesday, the FBI said, "We are currently responding to a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent. The incident occurred in Orlando Florida. The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties. The suspect is deceased. We do not have any further details at this time. We expect to have more information later this morning."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police outside Boston in the days after the marathon bombings. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, remains in federal custody awaiting trial.
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BOSTON — A law enforcement official in Orlando, Fla., was involved in a fatal shooting during an interview with a man about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect, according to law enforcement officials.
The man, Ibragim Todashev, was being interviewed by at least one agent from the F.B.I. at the time of the shooting.
The F.B.I.'s Tampa field office released a short statement saying that it was “currently responding to a shooting incident involving an F.B.I. special agent” that had occurred in Orlando.
“The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties,” the statement said. “The suspect is deceased. We do not have any further details at this time.”
Early on Wednesday morning, officials at the F.B.I.'s headquarters in Washington dispatched a shooting-response unit to Florida to help investigators determine what had occurred, according to a law enforcement official.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the F.B.I. has sought to speak with people who knew Mr. Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar, in an effort to learn how they were radicalized and to rule out the possibility that they had accomplices.
As part of those efforts, the F.B.I. has questioned many members of the small community of ethnic Chechens in the United States.
Repeatedly since April 29, agents have interviewed a Chechen refugee and former rebel fighter, Musa Khadzhimuratov, of Manchester, N.H. Tamerlan Tsarnaev used a firing range in Manchester to practice shooting and bought fireworks in New Hampshire to extract the explosive powder used in the marathon bombs.
Mr. Khadzhimuratov, 36, and his wife, Madina, 32, say they had only brief social visits with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, including one a few weeks before the bombing. They say they knew nothing about his purchase of fireworks or guns and had no hint that he was plotting the Boston attack.
Some advocates for the Chechen community have expressed concern that Russian intelligence officers might be steering the F.B.I. to target Chechens in the United States who are hostile to Russia but have nothing to do with terrorism.
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Florida Man Shot by FBI Linked to Boston Bombing Suspects?
4:50AM Wednesday
May 22, 2013
(ORLANDO, Fla.) -- An Orlando, Fla., man being questioned by the FBI about his relationship with the accused Boston bombers was shot and killed Tuesday night by a federal agent who felt threatened, a law enforcement official told ABC News.
"There was some sort of aggressive movement that led the FBI agent to believe he was under threat and he opened fire," the law enforcement official said.
The dead suspect "was somebody who they were asking about his relationship with the Boston bombing subjects," the law enforcement official said.
A man claiming to be a friend of the suspect told ABC News' Orlando affiliate WFTV that the suspect's name was Ibragim Todashev.
The man killed by the FBI may have lived at one time in Boston, the law enforcement official said, adding that Tuesday night's shooting came as a surprise during a cooperative interview with the man.
In a statement, the FBI confirmed a shooting had taken place in the large Florida city and said, "the agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties."
"The suspect is deceased. We do not have any further details at this time. We expect to have more information later this morning," the FBI said.
Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stand accused of setting off a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three and injuring more than 260 others.
Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police days later, while Dzhokhar was injured and later captured.
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FBI kills man outside Universal Studios who knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev: report
Ibragim Todashev, who’d been repeatedly questioned by the FBI about his relationship with deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot dead in Orlando.
Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed by an FBI agent in Orlando on Tuesday May 21, 2013.
Julia Malakie/AP
Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly knew Ibragim Todashev through MMA.
The man FBI agents shot dead in Orlando late Tuesday night reportedly knew the older Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
"He used to talk on the phone with him (Tsarnaev)," said the man's friend, Khusen Taramov. "They talked last time a month ago. After the bombing, I couldn't believe it."
NBC News identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, who Tsarnaev knew through Mixed Martial Arts.
Khusn Taramiv, a friend of Todashev, said he had connections to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
"The FBI kept asking, 'What's the connection?' But there is no connection ... no connection."
Taramov claims that Todashev planned to return to his home country of Chechnya because he "knew this was going to happen." But he canceled his tickets because the FBI has asked him to stay, according to Taramov.
The FBI questioned Taramov earlier Tuesday but he was released, he said.
The shooting occurred near the Universal Orlando Resort.
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Two members of the FBI’s elite counterterrorism unit died Friday while practicing how to quickly drop from a helicopter to a ship using a rope, the FBI announced Monday in a statement.
The statement gave few details regarding the deaths of Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, other than to say the helicopter encountered unspecified difficulties and the agents fell a “significant distance.”
Last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. And in February, it rescued a 5-year-old boy held hostage for six days in an underground bunker in Alabama.
“Whenever things go really wrong, the FBI calls in the Hostage Rescue Team. It’s the government’s 911,” Coulson said.
Irvin Wells, a former FBI special agent who retired in 1990 after leading the Norfolk field office for three years, stressed that the Hostage Rescue Team is different from the FBI’s regular SWAT teams. He noted that agents assigned to a field office’s SWAT team also must perform other jobs inside the bureau, while agents assigned to the Hostage Rescue Team have no other duties.
The statement gave few details regarding the deaths of Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, other than to say the helicopter encountered unspecified difficulties and the agents fell a “significant distance.”
A law enforcement source told The Pilot the incident happened about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. The official blamed bad weather for the incident and said the agents – members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, based in Quantico – fell into the water. The official said he believed the agents died as a result of the impact rather than drowning.
Glenn McBride, a spokesman for the state medical examiner’s office, said it could be months before his staff can release a final cause and manner of death for the two agents. He said they must wait for the results of routine toxicology tests.
According to a Navy official, the agents were using a ship the FBI had leased from the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. No Navy personnel were involved in the exercise, the Navy official said.
An Army helicopter crashed into a similar ship in 2009 during another training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, killing one person and injuring eight.
In interviews Monday, the founder of the Hostage Rescue Team and other former special agents called the unit “elite” while outlining the difficult training exercises members must endure.
“It’s the most rigorous training regiment in law enforcement, probably in the world,” said Danny Coulson, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI who started the team 30 years ago and served as its first commander. “They have to be able to do any mission, at any time.”
Among other things, members of the Hostage Rescue Team are trained to rappel from helicopters, scuba dive and use explosives to break down doors and walls. When needed, the team can deploy within four hours to anywhere in the U.S.
“It sounds risky, and it absolutely is,” Coulson said. “They have the same skill sets as SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force.”
In all, the team has responded to more than 850 incidents involving terrorism, violent crimes and foreign counterintelligence, according to the FBI’s website.
Last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. And in February, it rescued a 5-year-old boy held hostage for six days in an underground bunker in Alabama.
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"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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Boy... HOW DID I KNOW those guys had something to do with that whole thing. I KNEW IT.
I had this gut feeling that when those guys died (they were part of the HRT) and thought I remembered something about when the HRT guys were involved directly with the arrest of one of the bombers.
Wow....
Look, I don't believe in coincidences any more.
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It was a counterterrorism training exercise that the two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite hostage rescue unit had completed dozens of times before: rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a ship at sea.
But as Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw began their descent on Friday onto a ship roughly a dozen miles off the coast of Virginia, the helicopter suddenly tilted because of a strong gust of wind. As the pilot tried to steady the aircraft, the two men, holding onto the ropes and loaded down with gear, lost their grips and fell.
By the time they were rescued from the water, one of them was dead. The other died soon after.
The episode, announced Sunday by the F.B.I., was the first time that an agent has died in the line of duty since December 2011. In the past 12 years, six others have been killed. The F.B.I. has about 14,000 agents.
Special Agents Lorek and Shaw are believed to have died from blunt trauma, according to a senior law enforcement official who provided details based on an initial investigation by the bureau. “Everything is still being looked at, but so far this is where the investigators think we are,” the official said. “Every part of this is under review.”
Special Agent Lorek, 41, had been a member of the hostage rescue unit, based in Quantico, Va., for six years. He was deployed to Alabama in February as part of a team that helped rescue a 5-year-old boy who was being held in an underground bunker. Special Agent Lorek provided support to the team that entered the bunker and killed the man holding the child hostage. Special Agent Shaw, 40, joined the unit two and half years ago.
The men, both married and fathers of two, lived near Quantico with their families. The bureau’s hostage rescue unit was created before the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It was formed to provide the federal government with the ability to respond to an episode similar to the one that had occurred at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed after being taken hostage.
Over the years, the unit, which has a little fewer than 100 agents, has responded to roughly 850 episodes, including the bombings at the Boston Marathon last month. In that instance, agents from the unit were sent from Quantico after the attacks to deal with finding other explosives in the city. They have also responded to episodes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The hostage rescue team is part of the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group, a militarylike unit that is “ready to deploy anytime, anywhere” to crises like hostage rescues and terrorist attacks. Its agents often wear uniforms similar to soldiers and carry high-powered assault rifles. The most prominent photo on the F.B.I.’s Web site for the group shows two armed agents hanging off the side of a flying helicopter.
“We mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men,” the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Sunday. “Like all who serve on the Hostage Rescue Team, they accept the highest risk each and every day, when training and on operational missions, to keep our nation safe.”
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Well, somehow I KNEW there was more to this story.... WAY more....
Man who knew Boston bombing suspect was reportedly unarmed when shot
Published May 30, 2013
FoxNews.com
May 4, 2013: This police mugshot provided by the Orange County Corrections Department in Orlando, Fla., shows Ibragim Todashev after his arrest for aggravated battery in Orlando. (AP)
A Chechen man who was fatally shot by an FBI agent last week during questioning about one of the Boston bombing suspects was reportedly unarmed.
One law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Ibragim Todashev, 27, lunged at an agent and overturned a table prior to being shot. The official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife, echoing a second law enforcement official with knowledge of the ongoing investigation.
At the time of the May 22 shooting, Todashev was being interviewed about his possible connection to a triple murder in Waltham, Mass., on Sept. 11, 2011. Law enforcement officials said he had acknowledged involvement in the murders and had implicated Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Todashev, a former Boston resident who knew Tsarnaev, was not suspected of involvement in the April 15 Boston bombing.
Todashev’s father, who lives in Chechnya, told the Daily Beast website following the shooting that he didn’t believe the FBI’s account of the incident.
“My son could never commit a crime, I know my son too well,” Abdul-Baki Todashev told the website. “He worked helping disabled people in America and did sports, coached other sportsmen. The FBI made up their accusations.”
FBI officials, in a statement released Wednesday, said the matter is being investigated by an internal review team.
“The FBI takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said in a statement Wednesday. “The review process is thorough and objective and conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances.”
An advocacy group is also demanding a civil rights investigation into Todashev’s death. A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday his group is asking the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division to open a probe into how Todashev died.
CAIR spokesman Hassan Shibly says he wants to know if excessive force was used or whether Todashev's rights were violated.
A medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide.
I'm all for stopping terrorists, and not putting them in jail for long periods of time (if they have murdered anyone or had a hand in it) - but at the same time, I don't think that random people with random names who MIGHT be "guilty by association" ought to be killed out right while unarmed.
Give me a break. They killed an unarmed, might-have-been-connected-possible-terrorist because a cop or agent "felt scared" and they were armed, the guy wasn't?
That's like them shooting me if I'm unarmed because I made a threatening remark at them. It's bullshit.
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Law enforcement can't get its story straight in the worrisome case of Ibragim Todashev. Conor Friedersdorf
Reuters
What led an FBI agent, or some other law enforcement official, to shoot and kill an unarmed man in Orlando, Florida? The man, Ibragim Todashev, was being questioned about the Boston bombing, as well as an unsolved 2011 triple murder that he may or may not have confessed to committing. Does that sound sketchy? Don't blame me. Once he died, law enforcement started releasing anonymous, conflicting explanations so dubious that they warrant an inquiry all by themselves.
Did the dead man have a knife? A gun? A sword? None of those? Let's run through a timeline of what we've been told, and then assess all the information that the FBI hasn't released about the killing.
May 22, 2013
Ibragim Todashev is shot in the early morning hours. At least three law enforcement personnel, including at least one FBI agent, were reportedly present. Later that day, The New York Times quotes "officials" from either the Massachusetts State Police or the FBI. They say that after two hours of questioning in his apartment, Todashev "exploded and leapt at" an FBI agent. A second "law enforcement official" told the Times that "the shooting occurred after Mr. Todashev had admitted his role in the killings" -- the 2011 triple murder -- "and had also implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. The official said he had begun writing out a statement when he asked to take a break."
The quote from the second official:
They got him to confess to the homicides, and they say, 'Let's write it down,' and he starts writing it down. He goes to get a cigarette or something and then he goes off the deep end. I don't know what triggered him, and he goes after the agent.
The same day, the Orlando Sentinelreports, "Federal officials said he lunged at the agent with a knife during questioning, and the agent opened fire."
The Associated Press also reported that "law enforcement officials say a man was shot while he was being questioned in the Boston Marathon bombing case after he lunged at an FBI agent with a knife," adding, "The FBI initially said the agent fired the fatal shot, but later in the day the bureau left open the question of who was responsible." And Dave Couvertier, "a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's Tampa field office," toldYahoo News that an FBI team would be dispatched from D.C. to investigate the shooting, and that the FBI agent "sustained non-life-threatening injuries."
The FBI also put out a statement on May 22:
The FBI is currently reviewing a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent. Based on preliminary information, the incident occurred in Orlando, Florida during the early morning hours of May 22, 2013. The agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual. During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.
A friend of the dead man, Khusen Taramov, told a TV station, "They were talking to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they're going to bring him back. They never brought him back."
That brings us to the last story of that day, time-stamped after 8pm by the Associated Press, which reported: "Three law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 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."
May 23 The Orlando Sentinelreports that "an FBI review team from Washington was in Orlando on Thursday investigating the death of Ibragim Todashev," and that they'd be questioning "witnesses who were at the Orlando condo when the shooting occurred early Wednesday morning, including two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law-enforcement officials."
The story ads that "the FBI agent who fired the lethal shot, who has not been publicly identified, is from the agency's Boston division," and "an autopsy was expected to be completed Thursday, but the report will not be made public for several weeks -- if not months -- because the case is under criminal investigation." The FBI team investigating the killing is reported to be 13 agents strong.
May 24
The dead man's father, Abdul-Baki Todashev, speaks from Chechnya:
My son was in full cooperation with the F.B.I. but they just murdered him after an almost 8-hour-long questioning. Before this trouble I thought America was a free democratic country, where unlike in Russia, laws worked. I was deeply mistaken--now I think Russia is a golden place compared to the United States. My attitude for America flipped 180 degrees in one minute.
May 25
Citing "officials briefed on the investigation," The Boston Globereports that the dead man "was shot in the kitchen of his apartment after overturning a table and attacking the agent with a blade," adding, "two law enforcement officials said that the Boston FBI agent felt he was in grave danger when Todashev attacked him and that he fired in self-defense." The "regional medical examiner" who had the body wouldn't reveal how many times Todashev was shot, saying "we can't release any information on that case." That same friend, Khusen Taramov, is quoted saying that the dead man had a serious knee injury and that "agents had kept tight control over him at prior interviews."
May 29
Remember that knife? Forget about it. "FBI sources say Ibragim Todashev, a friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlen Tsarnaev, was unarmed when he was shot and killed by an FBI agent during questioning at an Orlando apartment last week," says an Orlando television station.
The story goes on:
Officials said Todashev pushed a table and possibly threw a chair.
Sources said a sword was inside the apartment, but the weapon was moved to the corner of the room before questioning began. Law enforcement said when Todashev lunged, the FBI agent believed he could have possibly been going for his gun or the sword in the room, and that's when the agent opened fire.
Ibragim Todashev, an Orlando, Fla., associate of one of the Boston bombing suspects, was not armed when he was involved an alleged violent confrontation with an FBI agent that resulted in Todashev being shot to death in his apartment, law enforcement sources told ABC News...Officials initially told ABC News and other news outlets that a knife was involved in the confrontation... A samurai sword was in the room, which may have accounted for some of the initial confusion over whether a weapon was involved, sources added.
One law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Wednesday that Todashev lunged at the agent and overturned a table. But the official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife. A second official also said Todashev was unarmed.
An official said that according to one account of the shooting, the other law enforcement officials had just stepped out of the room, leaving the FBI agent alone with Todashev, when the confrontation occurred.The shooting followed hours of questioning by the law enforcement officials that had begun the night before.
May 30
The Orlando Sentinel is one of several outlets to note that a Florida chapter of CAIR is calling for the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department to investigate the shooting. CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly says the dead man was hit by bullets seven times, including once in the head.
Though early accounts from unnamed federal law-enforcement sources claimed Todashev might have been armed with a knife, the latest version, released by a Fox affiliate in Boston, reported that Todashev lunged with a sword at the agent.
Shibly said there was a sword at the apartment, but it was mounted on the wall, ornamental and had a dull blade and a broken handle.
Tentative Conclusions
It is difficult to understand how, having shot the man dead, the multiple law enforcement personnel on scene could've gotten the details wrong. Discrepancies can creep into an account of a stressful situation. But how can there possibly be confusion about whether the suspect was a) wielding a knife, per the original story; b) unarmed, per subsequent versions; c) or lunging with or toward a samurai sword? We're supposed to believe that multiple law enforcement personnel went to a man's apartment, confirmed via his own confession that he participated in a triple murder with an alleged terrorist, and still left him within reach of a samurai sword? And that, after he lunged toward one agent with the sword, or else lunged toward the sword, or an officer's gun, or something, there was so much confusion that it was reported for days that the suspect attacked with a knife? Come on. Law enforcement couldn't get its story straight.
At best, an incompetently handled suspect was given access to a weapon so dangerous it justified using deadly force in response. Perhaps that's all this is. Or perhaps it will turn out that Todashev was wrongfully killed. The facts known to the public are worrisome enough that an independent inquiry is justified. In addition, this case illustrates why the FBI ought to be required to record all of its interrogations, using video when possible and at least audio in all circumstances.
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Graphic Warning for those with aversions to dead bodies.... I'll move the image to the bottom.
Father of man FBI shot claims his son was executed
Published: May 30, 2013 10:38 AM
By The Associated Press MAX SEDDON (Associated Press)
Photo credit: AP | Abdul-Baki Todashev holds a photo he claims is of his dead son Ibragim Todashev, during a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 30, 2013.
The father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to a Boston Marathon bombings suspect says agents killed his son “execution style.” Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs on Thursday of his son, Ibragim, in the morgue with what he said were six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of the head. He said the pictures were taken by his son’s friend Khusen Taramov. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Photos
MOSCOW - (AP) -- The father of a Chechen immigrant killed while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to a Boston Marathon bombings suspect says agents killed his son "execution style."
At a press conference Thursday in Moscow, Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs 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 Ibragim Todashev was killed during a violent confrontation last week while being questioned about his ties to slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as well as about a 2011 triple slaying in Massachusetts.
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Does that look like the face of a guy that took one to the back of the head?
This story is really odd, and obviously something very fishy went on ... but if his dad's claims of "six gunshot wounds to the torso and one to the back of the head" are true, wouldn't there be more damage to the head?
Sorry for getting graphic, but everything about this is weird.
I don't know the details and I don't think anyone knows for sure how many rounds were fired at this point.
Depends on the weapon used though, a 9 mm slug to the back of the head might not have gone through. I have some doubts about that, I've shot a LOT of 9mm rounds into all kinds of things.
Standard issue for the FBI is either a Glock 22 or 23, from what I understand and remember. I don't know if that is accurate any more, but it's what I knew at one time. Those are .40 cal if I remember..... which means someone taking a hit to the skull would probably be... ummm... have a much more graphic image of himself on the Internet.
If you get my drift.
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U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group’s followers, according to officials.
The operation succeeded, at least temporarily, in thwarting publication of the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine distributed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When it appeared online, the text on the second page was garbled and the following 20 pages were blank. The sabotaged version was quickly removed from the online forum that hosted it, said independent analysts who track Islamist militant Web sites.
Al Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine Praises Boston Bombings, Takes Credit For Inspiring Suspects
Al Qaeda’s most recent issue of its propagandist magazine, Inspire, focuses almost exclusively on the Boston Marathon bombings, celebrating the suspects and taking credit for providing inspiration for the attack that killed three and wounded hundreds more.
Referring to the events as the “Blessed Boston Bombings (BBB),” the magazine’s many writers depict the “success” of the April 15 attacks throughout the publication’s 40 pages.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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Police response training planned, but bombs hit first
By Maria Cramer
| Globe Staff
June 08, 2013
The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits.
Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe.
But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion. The chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings disrupted plans for the exercise, initially scheduled for this weekend, forcing police to postpone. Now officials must retool aspects of the training.
“The real thing happened before we were able to execute,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the planned exercise. “We’ve already been tested.”
This would have been the third year for Urban Shield, a 24-hour federally funded training exercise meant to test the response of police and other public safety personnel in a large-scale emergency, such as a toxic spill or a natural disaster.
‘The main goal of this was to arrest as many of the people as possible and absolutely identify where the [supposed] cache of bombs was being kept.’
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Last fall, a slew of agencies including Boston police and other police departments, the Coast Guard, and the MBTA joined forces to confront a simulated armed bank robbery in which the robbers were trying to escape with hostages.
For this year’s training, the agencies wanted to test the investigative skills of their detectives, as well as their ability to work with detectives in other cities, and share intelligence, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the planned exercise were confidential.
The training, funded by a $200,000 Homeland Security grant, will probably be rescheduled to early next year, said Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan, whose agency was slated to participate.
He said he anticipates the new training scenario will be similar to the one already planned.
“Why wouldn’t we do it?” MacMillan said. “Just because we had one event doesn’t mean that we might not have another one. And it behooves us to continually work together to investigate these types of incidents.”
Cheryl Fiandaca, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, said the agencies had no choice but to postpone this year’s Urban Shield.
“The resources and logistics of putting something of this magnitude together in light of what just happened would be challenging,” she said. “To put together an exercise that would be a really valuable training and teaching tool we need more time.”
Officials from a dozen agencies had been meeting for months to plan the scenario. They behaved much like movie producers, recruiting students from Northeastern University and the Boston Police Academy to play the parts of terrorists and witnesses.
They scouted warehouses and homes around Chelsea and Winthrop that could be used as a terrorist safe house.
The basic plot was this: Half a dozen members of Free America Citizens wanted to gauge police response to a bomb scare. They would plant hoax devices, then stay on the scene to watch and record the bomb squad and detectives as they responded, as a dry run to a larger attack.
The participating detectives, however, would not have known they were being watched. They would only be told that they were responding to an urgent terrorist threat. The goal of the training was for them to figure out the motives of Free America Citizens as they investigated the case, the official said.
The planned exercise has eerie similarities to the police investigation that led to the capture of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose images were caught on video cameras and who were captured after a car chase and shoot-out with police.
In the training scenario, investigators participating in Urban Shield would have to track down footage of the bombers caught by street surveillance cameras and the phones of “witnesses.”
They would have to call on intelligence analysts to figure out which terrorist cell might be threatening the city.
In the scenario, the terrorists would flee police in stolen cars they would dump in cities outside Boston, which would compel detectives from different jurisdictions to cooperate and share intelligence.
One major clue would have been the body of one of the terrorists found near a stolen car, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There were also false leads to keep investigators guessing, the official said.
“We’d have detectives running ragged,” the official said. “The main goal of this was to arrest as many of the people as possible and absolutely identify where the cache of bombs was being kept.”
Fiandaca, the police spokeswoman, declined to say what a new training might look like.
“We can’t talk about what we’re doing for emergency preparedness,” she said. “The people who participate in this don’t know what the scenario is.”
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Lawmakers say FBI thwarts inquiry
By Bryan Bender and Noah Bierman
| Globe Staff
July 10, 2013
Representative William Keating (right) at a hearing in early May on the Marathon bombings.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Representative William Keating (right) at a hearing in early May on the Marathon bombings.
WASHINGTON — Members of a congressional committee Wednesday accused the FBI of stalling an inquiry into the Boston Marathon bombings, saying the bureau had no grounds for withholding what it knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the attacks.
“The information requested by this committee belongs to the American people,’’ said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. “It does not belong solely to the FBI.”
The frustrations, aired publicly after FBI officials rebuffed an invitation to appear before the committee, stemmed from the FBI’s unwillingness to detail how it handled a security review of Tsarnaev nearly two years before the Marathon bombings. Critics have suggested the FBI may have missed a chance to prevent the bombings.
“I went to Russia and was given more information,” said committee member William Keating, a Bourne Democrat who has been seeking information about Russian warnings to American authorities about Tsarnaev’s increasing radicalism dating to 2011.
“The FBI continues to refuse this committee’s appropriate requests for information and documents crucial to our investigation into what happened in Boston,” McCaul declared as he opened a committee hearing. “I sincerely hope they do not intend to stonewall our inquiry into how this happened.”
Tsarnaev died after a firefight with police in Watertown within hours of being identified as a suspect.
His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, faces charges of using weapons of mass destruction to kill four people and injure more than 260 others.
The FBI interviewed the elder Tsarnaev in his Cambridge home in the spring and summer of 2011 but concluded he was not a threat and closed its inquiry.
The bureau apparently did not reopen the case, despite additional warnings from Russia later that year, the subsequent decision by the CIA to add him to a database of potential terrorist suspects, and a tip in 2012 from the Department of Homeland Security that Tsarnaev traveled to Russia.
On Wednesday, the FBI strongly denied it was being uncooperative with Congress. It has said in the past that local authorities in Boston had access, in the years before the bombings, to the same information about Tsarnaev on its computers as FBI agents.
“We are not stonewalling,’’ FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. “We have briefed [the] committee on several occasions and will continue to do so as necessary.”
Bresson said the FBI did not provide a witness for the Wednesday hearing in order to avoid compromising the legal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 30 charges in his first appearance in federal court in Boston.
“We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the judicial process while it is ongoing,” Bresson said. “This involves ensuring both the government’s ability to conduct a successful prosecution as well as the rights of all parties involved, including the victims and the defendant, who, as it turns out, has a court appearance on the same day as this hearing.”
During a hearing on the bombings in the Senate, meanwhile, Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis renewed his calls for the FBI to reveal more information about potential terror threats to local police departments.
“If we do that, we’re much stronger as a nation,” Davis testified. “If we don’t, it puts our communities and my officers at risk.”
Davis also said the city needs more and better cameras on the streets, which is likely to spark renewed debate over privacy. He said that the city has traffic cameras downtown and on major roadways, but that there are were no cameras along the Marathon route at the time of the bombing.
But it was the hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee that drew the most attention on Wednesday.
Members were particularly frustrated by a July 3 letter to the committee from the FBI. The letter, reviewed by the Globe, said the bureau would not be responding to all the committee’s requests for information.
A key piece of information the committee wants is the original Russian warning to the United States in 2011, which said Tsarnaev might be planning to travel to Chechnya to meet with Islamist radicals.
“We don’t even have that copy [of the Russian warning] in this committee,” Keating said in an interview after the hearing.
The FBI has insisted that the Russian warning was vague, and that several of its requests to the Russians for more information went unanswered. But Keating said the Russians told him, during his own fact-finding trip to Russia in late May, that they don’t know what requests for information the FBI had referred to.
“Where’s the request?’’ Keating said. “Tell us the name, tell us the time, to whom that they have sent it to. What I want ultimately is a timeline — a very distinct timeline — of everything that happened.”
Keating, a former Massachusetts prosecutor, also said that he believes the FBI is using the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an excuse to not be more forthcoming.
He said he does not believe the FBI’s contention that revealing information about its earlier review of Tamerlan Tsarnaev would jeopardize the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
And he said he is not persuaded by the FBI’s previous responses that it investigated Tsarnaev in 2011 and closed its case after an initial inquiry.
“The answer we keep getting back is that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the case was closed,” Keating said. “Case closed, stopped everything, and, in fact, became an excuse for why other things weren’t done.”
Other panel members, Democrats and Republicans, were critical of the FBI’s level of cooperation.
“The fact that the FBI is not sharing information with this committee with jurisdiction over homeland security I think is just totally unacceptable,” said Representative Peter King, a New York Republican. “I think the FBI has a lot to explain for here.”
McCaul, the committee chairman, pledged to keep up the pressure on the FBI to cooperate.
“I said when I started this investigation that we were going to find out what happened, what went wrong, and how to fix it,” McCaul said. “And I will not be satisfied until we get the answers that the American people deserve.”
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Boston Bombings: Tamerlan Tsarnaev Claimed He Was Victim of “Majestic Mind Control”
By wkchildon • ( 3 ) from Vigilant Citizen:
Every time I ponder on the Boston Bombings, the events surrounding it, the history of the alleged terrorists and the way things went down, things do not compute. Everything is shrouded in mystery. The Tsarnaev brothers appeared to be too “Americanized” to hate America; The way both brothers went down is still unclear; Everyone who knew the brothers do not believe the official story; The Martial Law imposed on Boston was excessive. The random house searches by the US Military was disturbing.
A recent article in the Boston Globe now adds another strange piece to the puzzle: The eldest brother, Tarmelan Tsarnaev, was convinced that he was a victim of mind control. The article states: “He believed in majestic mind control, which is a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist,” explained Larking. “You can give a signal, a phrase or a gesture, and bring out the alternate personality and make them do things. Tamerlan thought someone might have done that to him.” The person inside him, as Tamerlan described it to Larking, “was someone who wanted to control him to make him do something.”
While news sources point to schizophrenia, the symptoms described in the news articles could be applied to a victim of Mind Control with a trigger-able alter persona. Read More @ VigilantCitizen.com
Yeah, that's it. It was government mind control. Enjoy your cell for the next 100 years while we ponder the subject.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
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