Excusing the FBI for not preventing the Boston Marathon Bombing by shadowing Tamerlan Tsarnaev …
According to the Associated Press …
Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.
The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.
As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011. <Source>
Most people imagine that the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI are more competent than they really are.
Especially since Tamerlan called his mom from the United States and discussed going to the Middle East to participate in Jihad -- but he wasn't interested because he couldn't speak the language.
Even though common sense tells you that there are not enough human translators to even screen much of the information being collected. Like most police departments, the real information comes out in the investigation after the fact.
Death by political correctness, moral equivalency, and multiculturalism in a land where some politicians blame America first …
If there is anyone to blame for the failures of intelligence or law enforcement agencies it is the democrats who decimated intelligence budgets years ago and made it impossible to employ criminals and dirtbags as informants. And, heaven help us should we monitor the activities of any religious institution even though there is a connection to a religion that supports terrorism – and has individual worshipers who have a personal link to terrorist activities.
There is the politically correct explanation; given with a little help from the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld …
Then there is the truth …
We blew it because of bureaucratic inefficiency and ineffectiveness – translation into a more politically correct explanation -- we prioritize our resources according to our political leadership and there just wasn’t enough manpower as we ran around the world looking for the protesters who perpetrated the 9/11 attack at Benghazi, Libya.
Bottom line …
The real culprit is not the FBI, it is the Department of Homeland Security. A behemoth agency created to insure that actionable intelligence was shared among formerly stove-piped agencies who did not play well with each other. The people who are sucking up billions of dollars and using high-technology to build “fusion centers” where representatives or their designees (in political-speak) can liaise and get the latest threat profiles. When the Russians tell you about a potential terrorist in your midst – and the terrorist flies to Russia for six months – and returns without red flags popping up all over, something is seriously wrong with the system.
The bullshit about a no-fly list being a good tool is crazy. One, because of the multiplicity of people with the same name; two, because real terrorists or savvy criminals travel with forged documents using alias names; three, and most importantly, there is no way to accurately transliterate foreign Arabic names into English without error. Hence: Mohammed al-dirtbag might be listed as Muhammad aldirtbag ibn dirt-bag.
The first step to recovery is to fire Janet Napolitano whose credentials are limited to being an attorney and a border state Governor and State Attorney General. We need a leader who understands terrorism, crime, the military and how to protect the United States – not make excuses for illegal aliens.
By the way, why aren't we revoking the refugee visa held by the Mother who is spewing Jihadist and anti-America crap? If she was smart, she would surrender to U.S. authorities or disapear in Russia, never to be seen again in a land with zero tolerance for Chechen terrorists.
-- steve
“Nullius in verba.”-- take nobody's word for it!
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw
“Progressive, liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Democratic Socialist -- they are all COMMUNISTS.”
“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell “Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (The people gladly believe what they wish to.) ~Julius Caesar “Describing the problem is quite different from knowing the solution. Except in politics." ~ OCS