White House Handling Of Boston Bombing Draws Suspicion

The country is reeling from the latest terrorist attack, which killed three Americans and injured hundreds more at the Boston Marathon on April 15th. Two brothers who became radical Islamists have been implicated; Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed after an overnight shoot-out with police, and his 19-year old brother Dzhokhar, who was caught shortly after the bombing.

The Obama administration knew ahead of time about the brothers’ ties to radical Islam. Russia warned the U.S. in 2011. The Russian government intercepted a communication between the bombers’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, and someone who was probably her son Tamerlan discussing “jihad.” The U.S. government added both names to its Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, database. Later, Tamerlan’s phone number was traced to numbers that came up in two other investigations into terror suspects, according to a Senator who attended classified briefings about the Boston bombings. The FBI interviewed Tamerlan, but cleared him, finding nothing conclusive. Russian officials next tried to get the CIA to look into Tamerlan, sending the CIA a warning letter about him. Apparently their concerns were ignored by Leon Panetta, then head of the CIA and now known for gutting the defense department as Secretary of Defense.

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