TerrorismRussia declined to share with the FBI all it knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Tamerlan, center, with brother Dzokar, moments before bombing // Source: illinois.edu

A report by the inspector general of the U.S. intelligence community – which comprises seventeen different intelligence agencies — and the inspectors general from DHS and the CIA, says the Russian government did not provide the FBI with information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. The FBI says that a more detailed information from Russia would likely have resulted in a more thorough examination of him two years before the attack.

The New York Times reports that in 2011 Russian officials had told the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer” and that he “had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”

The FBI, following its initial investigation, made several requests to the Russian security services for information about Tamerlan, but the Russians declined to do so.

The inspector general’s report follows his examination of how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have prevented the bombing.

The FBI’s initial investigation of Tamerlan turned up no evidence ti implicate him in terrorist intentions against U.S. targets, and the consensus among U.S. law enforcement officials was that he posed a far greater threat to Russia.

The IG report notes that it was only after the bombing took place last April that the Russian security services shared additional intelligence about Tamerlan with the FBI, including information from a telephone conversation the Russian authorities had intercepted between Tsarnaev and his mother in which they discussed Islamic jihad.

“They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and based on everything that was available the F.B.I. did all that it could,” a senior American official who was briefed on the IG review  told the Times.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have not found evidence tying the Tsarnaev brothers to an international terrorist organization. FBI agents traveled to Dagestan in 2012, but found nothing showing he received training or encouragement from terrorists.

“At this point it looks like they were homegrown violent extremists,” the senior official told the Times. “We certainly aren’t in a position to rule anything out, but at this point we haven’t found anything substantive that ties them to a terrorist group.”

The IG report has not been made public, but some of its findings will likely be released before Tuesday, the first anniversary of the bombings.

The Times notes that the review is similar to an FBI internal review conducted after the bombing. The FBI review found that FBI agents had been restrained from examining Tamerlan more extensively and thoroughly because of federal laws and Justice Department guidelines which prevent agents from using surveillance tools like wiretapping when conducting an investigations like the one conducted on Tsarnaev before the bombings.

“Had they known what the Russians knew they probably would have been able to do more under our investigative guidelines, but would they have uncovered the plot? That’s very hard to say,” one senior official said.

The FBI internal report did say, however, that Boston area FBI agents could have conducted a few more interviews when they first examined the limited information they received from Russia in 2011. Also, the report recommended that the FBI and local law enforcement agencies develop ways to cooperate more closely and share information more effectively.