U.S.: Russia Withheld Intel on Boston Bomb Suspect

 

U.S.: Russia Withheld Intel on Boston Bomb Suspect

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324244304578475300856008018.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

 

By SIOBHAN GORMAN and EVAN PEREZ in Washington and ALAN CULLISON in

Makhachkala, Russia

 

Russia withheld a crucial piece of information from the U.S. before the

Boston bombings, U.S. officials say, bolstering a concern that distrust

between the two governments erased an opportunity to avert the disaster.

 

In 2011, Russia sent an alert to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about

alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted in part by text messages between

his mother and a Russian relative. The texts suggested Mr. Tsarnaev was

interested in joining militant groups that Russia blames for attacks in the

Caucasus region, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigations.

 

U.S. officials call these text messages the most important in a series of

missed signals between the two countries. One U.S. official characterized at

least one of the text messages as generally discussing jihad, but without

any specific mention of terrorism plans.

 

The U.S. officials say they learned about them roughly a week after the

April 15 bombings. Several officials say such precise information would have

led to a deeper examination of Mr. Tsarnaev, who died a few days after the

bombing in a police confrontation. His brother and alleged accomplice

remains in custody.

 

The information Russia withheld "would have allowed the bureau to open an

investigation where you could track [Mr. Tsarnaev's] communications," said

House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.). "To me,

that's where the ball really got dropped."

 

Previous terror plots in the U.S. exposed lapses in data-sharing among U.S.

agencies, and the official Boston review could still uncover such instances.

But so far in the Boston bombing, U.S. officials say, it appears that

intelligence-sharing went most awry between the U.S. and Russia. After the

Russian government made its 2011 query on Mr. Tsarnaev, the FBI three times

requested more information and received none, U.S. officials say. Mr.

Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. and a citizen of Kyrgyzstan.

 

The Kremlin said Russian security services gathered little information on

Mr. Tsarnaev, but officials in the province of Dagestan said they tracked

him during a six-month trip there in 2012. Russia never reported such

details to the U.S. While in Dagestan, Mr. Tsarnaev met with a known

militant, officials in Dagestan said.

 

U.S. officials say they don't know why the text messages weren't provided

earlier. They surmised Russia didn't provide other information because they

wanted to protect their sources or because they didn't give the information

much credibility themselves.

 

To be sure, U.S. law-enforcement officials say it isn't clear whether

knowing the content of the text messages would have changed what the FBI

learned in 2011 about Mr. Tsarnaev's turn toward radicalization. A senior

U.S. law-enforcement official also notes that the FBI, in sharing

information with the Russians, often withholds details that could reveal its

own sources and methods.

 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he couldn't comment on specifics, but

said that in 2011, "There couldn't have been detailed information on him

because he didn't live on Russian territory." He declined to comment on

whether Russian authorities have provided more detailed reports on Mr.

Tsarnaev to the U.S. since the attack.

 

Cooperation in the recent weeks has improved, both Mr. Peskov and U.S.

officials say, but remains incomplete. The U.S.-Russia relationship has been

strained by conflicting interests in Iran as well as clashes over U.S.

adoptions of Russian orphans-all feeding a relationship colored by years of

post-Cold War spying.

 

Tensions are also rising between the U.S. and Russia over Syria. On

Friday-days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian officials

in Moscow and raised concerns over Russian arms shipments to Syrian

President Bashar al-Assad-the Kremlin said it would go ahead with deliveries

of ground-to-air missile systems for the Assad government. The Wall Street

Journal reported Wednesday that the Russian government was preparing to make

such a delivery.

 

Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. intelligence services sought to

find common ground with their Russian counterparts, but soon discovered

their interests diverged, said Andrew Liepman, former deputy director of the

National Counterterrorism Center and a Central Intelligence Agency veteran.

The U.S. was focused on al Qaeda, and the Russians were focused on Chechnya.

 

"We took a Reaganesque approach to the Russians, where you need to verify

everything you get," said Mr. Liepman, who is now an analyst with the Rand

Corp. think tank.

 

A Dagestani official said security services first focused on Mr. Tsarnaev in

2010 after they arrested a suspected rebel sympathizer, William Plotnikov, a

Canadian who named Mr. Tsarnaev as an associate. Early in 2011, they

intercepted text messages that alarmed Russian officials, sent by Mr.

Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. Mr. Plotnikov was killed last July by

Russian security forces.

 

In an interview, Ms. Tsarnaeva said she often communicated with relatives by

text. She said she didn't know which messages might have alarmed the

authorities, but denies she knew about any intentions of her son to join a

rebel group.

 

On March 4, 2011, the Russian security service sent a formal request via the

U.S. embassy in Moscow asking the FBI to look into Mr. Tsarnaev, U.S.

officials said. At that time, the Russians didn't mention the texts and made

reference only to Mr. Tsarnaev's interest in joining "underground" groups, a

term that to U.S. ears could suggest political opposition, Dagestani

officials said.

 

The Russian request was forwarded to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in

Boston. There, FBI field agents and other officials translated the letter

and worked to identify Mr. Tsarnaev based on U.S. immigration and other

records.

 

Once they had identified Mr. Tsarnaev, a U.S. Customs agent entered his name

into a Treasury terrorism database. That system, known as the Treasury

Enforcement Communications System, sends alerts to U.S. security officials

when someone in the system is, say, preparing to travel by air.

 

Five days later, FBI asked the Russian Federal Security Service, known as

the FSB, for more information and received no response, one U.S. official

said. Officials say the information from Ms. Tsarnaeva's texts would have

allowed them to get wiretapping authority.

 

The FBI conducted a standard 90-day inquiry, including searches of public

databases, its own files, and those of other agencies, as well as a

voluntary interview, U.S. officials said. Mr. Tsarnaev provided his correct

birth date, which was different from the two provided by the Russians.

 

Under FBI guidelines, any suspicious activity could have prompted a

preliminary or even a full investigation. Agents found none and the FBI

closed the case in June.

 

On Aug. 8, the FBI made another attempt to get additional information from

the FSB, and received no response, a U.S. official said.

 

In late September, the FSB sent an identical request to the CIA through the

U.S. embassy in Moscow, officials said. The CIA didn't find anything of

concern and referred the information to the FBI because Mr. Tsarnaev was a

legal U.S. resident. The FBI made its third request to the FSB for more

information Oct. 7.

 

A few days before Mr. Tsarnaev's Jan. 12, 2012, Aeroflot flight to Russia, a

U.S. Customs official in the Boston task force received an alert from the

Treasury database that he was planning a trip, but took no action because he

wasn't seen as a danger.

 

Russian security services, however, had Mr. Tsarnaev in their sights. One

Dagestani official said that after Mr. Tsarnaev's arrival local police

determined he was staying in a ground-floor apartment his parents were

renovating in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala. Dagestani officials say he

tried to build contacts with radical rebel groups in the region, and met

with one Islamist fighter.

 

U.S. authorities heard none of this, Dagestani officials said. The

monitoring of Mr. Tsarnaev was the responsibility of regional security

officers, who are barred from contacting the FBI or CIA directly. When

officers in Makhachkala need information from the U.S., they are directed to

pass the request through Moscow.

 

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security

Committee, said knowledge of the intercepted messages "would have been good

enough to re-examine the individual."

 

After the bombing, the Kremlin said Russia had gathered no meaningful

information on Mr. Tsarnaev and little that would have helped the FBI

beforehand. In late April, Mr. Putin said Mr. Tsarnaev had been in the

country only "episodically" and that "Russian special services were to our

grave regret unable to give our American colleagues any information that

would have had any operational value."

 

On the U.S. side, officials say after Mr. Tsarnev was identified it took a

week for Russia to provide the FBI with information about the intercepted

text messages.

 

The directors of the FBI and FSB have been in regular communication in the

aftermath of the bombings and U.S. President Barack Obama has spoken with

Mr. Putin about the case. This week, both FBI Director Robert Mueller and

Mr. Kerry, the secretary of state, traveled to Moscow to press the Russian

government for more help.

 

A U.S. official, however, said the Russians still aren't fully cooperating,

and in particular haven't provided information from surveillance during Mr.

Tsarnaev's trip. Local authorities in Dagestan say Mr. Tsarnaev, perhaps

knowing he would be monitored, didn't use a mobile phone there.

 

==========================================

(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this

message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to

these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed

within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with

"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.

The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The

Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain

permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials

if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,

teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria

for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies

as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four

criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is

determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not

substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use

copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you

must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

 

THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS

PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.