There are gaping holes in the official story of the Boston bombings.
We are asked to believe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by the Russian government as an extremist Dagestani or Chechen Islamist terrorist, and they were so concerned about it that in late 2010 they asked the US government to take action. At that time, the US and Russia did not normally have a security cooperation relationship over the Caucasus, particularly following the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. For the Russians to ask the Americans for assistance, Tsarnaev must have been high on their list of worries.
In early 2011 the FBI interview Tsarnaev and trawl his papers and computers but apparently – remarkably for somebody allegedly radicalised by internet – the habitually paranoid FBI find nothing of concern.
So far, so weird. But now this gets utterly incredible. In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up. He is then able to proceed to Dagestan – right at the heart of the world’s heaviest military occupation and the world’s most far reaching secret police surveillance – again without being intercepted, and he is able there to go through some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. He then flies out again without any intervention by the Russian security services.
That is the official story and I have no doubt it did not happen. I know Russia and I know the Russian security services. Whatever else they may be, they are extremely well-equipped, experienced and efficient and embedded into a social fabric accustomed to cooperation with their mastery. This scenario is simply impossible in the real world.
We have, by the official account, the involvement of the two Tsarnaev brothers, the FBI and the Russian security services. The FBI have a massive recent record of running agent provocateur operations to entrap gullible Muslims into terrorism. The Russian security services have form on false flag Chechen bombings. Where the truth lies may be difficult to dig out. But the above official version is not true.
Crab,
Ever been on the receiving end of bullshit? And where do we seriously disagree anyway?
No I refer to the blast site outside Forum Cafe and Starbucks.
OK, so in your vast experience how many windows SHOULD’VE been shattered?
Aftermath of the Oslo bomb.
http://designyoutrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/1515.jpg
I suppose that was another “false flag” attack that never really happened.
Hi Kempe,
No need to get so excited. Today was for me unofficial troll-a-troll day. Thanks for acknowleging it.
How do you manage to get so cross you write like that? Do you train?
Now let me reply to you I’m not claiming “vast experience”. I do claim to have eyes, a relatively old but functioning brain and a memory. I don’t feel I need vast experience or a troll permit to point-out the bleeding obvious.
I refer to the blast site outside Forum Cafe and Starbucks because that’s where many crowd-sourced pictures clearly show a backpack detonated. Maybe you did’nt open these? Look at the backpack on the ground in front of the railings then look at the signs on the buildings.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2310596/Boston-bombings-latest-FBI-use-phone-records-identify-suspect.html
And I’ll repeat myself. Crowd-sourced images which haven’t passed through the MSM filter are very clear regarding backpacks and organised groups of individuals.
http://imgur.com/a/Nx8EU
Against this pile of photo evidence from several different sources I have the name-calling and non-arguments of this blog’s resident trolls. WTF do you expect me to conclude?
Now take some deep breaths.
Nobody really knows that’s why speculation in the public domain is healthy.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev making it all the way through Russia is evidence of nothing. Chechens and other Caucasians have representatives (including influential politicians) in Russian cities to make all their legal troubles go away. This was seen when Rasul Mirzaev from Dagestan killed a young man outside of a Moscow nightclub a couple of years ago. He would have walked away, but – because of the internet – Russian nationalist groups took interest. The local Dagestani population tried to defuse this by saying he was a Jew, but it turns out that Russian nationalists were not buying that excuse. So Rasul had to turn himself in to receive some slap on the wrist because the authorities were afraid of another riot. All Tamerlan had to do was call some Chechen politician in Moscow and he would have none of the troubles your friend had in St. Petersburg.
@ Urk,
Sorry for the slow response but I am in a different time zone.
Before I posted I had spent 2 whole days investigating these events on-line. By way of background I am a retired professional person who, until a few years ago would never have dreamed of visiting many of these sites or of writing as I did above. I was a fairly conservative fellow, the kind who cheered when Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald and agreeing that the bastard didn’t deserve a trial. Hell, I would even have found Craig Murray a bit too radical.
What I have found on many of these alternative sites are not nut-jobs but frequently apparently young enthusiasts diligently seeking to get to the truth, primarily through analysis of the official photographs (one such link provided above in a prior post).
The consensus opinion now appears to be that the first bomb (more of a smoky firecracker) neat the finish line at Lens Crafter shop was a fake to literally provide a smoke screen for the ‘injured actors, including the amputee actor. The second bomb, planted in a backpack, was real and killed 3 and wounded over a hundred.
The reason it was done this way must be speculative, of course, but a rational explanation is that the first provided great, grisly photographs for the newspapers and TV (cf the amputee in the wheelchair). More deeply, however, it was performed in such an obvious, almost amateur way that made it easily detected. Since these fakes were the first pictures to be released they provided a field day for the genuine cynics who were able to show that the injured were actors. Then when the truly injured from the second bomb began to appear, the primary investigators were discredited as cranks and ‘conspiracy theorists’. Worse, they are seen as disgusting, insensitive people whom decent people (like you, and a former me) would find repulsive and not listen to or have anything to do with.
To turn to your specific points. The designated “hero”, Carlos Arredondo is something of an oddity. In several of the photographs after the first ‘blast’ he can be seen with his back to the injured actors holding his hat and USA flag. See, for example: http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1602&start=375 and there are many more such (official) pictures. He’s not tending to the injured at all until well after the flash bang. Meantime, if you look around these pictures, you will see that the double amputee was lying unattended holding one shattered leg in the air for some considerable time while others around him were being attended to. Unbelievable.
“The guy in the wheel chair is not an actor, his name is Jeff Bauman Jr”. Maybe, but a Jeff Bauman Jr reported in his social page that he was fine and had not been injured. Maybe there were two Mr Jeff Bauman Jnrs attending the event, but others have tentatively identified the wheelchair man as a soldier who lost his legs in Afghanistan three years ago.
Many questions. And still no one has addressed my question as to why the poor amputee – after having lain unattended for a considerable period – instead of being treated by the medicos who were there, or immediately transferred to an ambulance, was pulled into a wheelchair by our peace-activist hero then wheeled past the waiting cameras at the finishing line?
Whatever the answers to these questions anyone with an open mind should look at the early photographs of the first explosion to see if actors were involved. If so, then the two patsies could not have perpetrated the whole event.
Wow – the conspiracy theorists are out in force. You do encourage them, Mr Murray!
You are right, the Russian security services’ role makes no sense. It wouldn’t seem normal for them to request the FBI’s assistance to deal with a suspected Dagestani extremist. And then to let that suspected extremist wander back in an out of Russia unhindered. Maybe he wasn’t unhindered, though. Maybe he spent the first missing months of his 6-month trip being done over in a Russian basement. That might be enough to radicalise him, even if he wasn’t already. That and living the next few months without an income in the guerrilla war zone that is Dagestan. Might teach him that life can be a bit cheaper than your average Bostonian would believe.
The FBI’s role makes perfect sense, however. Anybody who knows anything about investigations would realize that your average case can throw up a very large number of persons of interest. So it’s not surprising when it turns out that suspects had previously been “on the radar”. In fact, it would be more surprising if they hadn’t. But US security and investigation agencies do not have the capability to track such an exponentially growing list of “persons of interest” that a huge case like homeland security will generate. That would be the job of a police state and the Russians will be much better at it. US agencies are designed to either track down and prosecute particular people who have already committed crimes or to investigate particular areas of crime to find targets that they can prosecute. They can’t keep track of a whole section of the population that are labeled a potential threat. So it’s totally not surprising that someone could at one time be interviewed by the FBI and then not too long after “be allowed” to gather enough materials for a homemade bomb. What are the FBI supposed to do? Keep all potential suspects under 24-hour surveillance? Again, that’s what the Russians are good at and despite some recent worrying steps in that direction, the Americans are not there yet.
What the Americans do have is a few parts of agencies that are increasingly riding roughshod over the constitution and civil liberties in a frantic and misguidedly patriotic effort to address the “terrorist threat”. This includes those “honeypot” traps where undercover agents try to groom potential Islamic extremists and then arrest them for a planned attack that would not have existed if it were not for the undercover agents. Perhaps Tamerlan was approached in this kind of way but unknown to the FBI he was aso at the same time making all too real plans of his own? That would be egg on the FBI’s face, for sure.
Or perhaps some part of the American agencies had an interest in developing Tamerlan as an informant on his Dagestani or Islamist contacts, unaware of his bomb plans. Again, why would they be aware? They must have contact with quite a few unsavory characters and can’t keep them all under constant surveillance without evidence of crime. But still, wouldn’t look good…
DavidH
I think that’s all entirely sensible comment. Though I am not sure if Tamerlan were abused by the Russian security services in some way that would push him to blow up Americans (I know both groups are largely Christian but…) Like you I wonder if this was an FBI agent provocateur operation gone horribly wrong, as one was bound to given the number they are doing. I don’t tend to agree with those who think it was a deliberate bombing by the US authorities, or a hoax. But I do not rule out the possibility that Tamerlan thought he was being run by a Chechen group but in fact was being run by the Russian FSB – that seems to me not improbable.
Craig,
I like that one. Not improbable, to be sure.
BTW – thanks for this website. A breath of fresh air and always worth reading. Wonderful bunch of people you have posting as well, for the most part…
Meanwhile (see Dreoilin above) the Canadians have foiled a terrorist atrocity plot shock horror of their own, The BBC was reporting last night that the Canadians believe this one was initiated by a quote Al Qaeda group in quote Iran. I didn’t catch the Iran reference in this morning’s R4 news, so maybe someone spotted that the connection between AQ (Salafists, Sunni) and Iran (Shi’a), whose mutual loathing is a matter of extensive record, might be considered a little tenuous.
Watching this space…
“But I do not rule out the possibility that Tamerlan thought he was being run by a Chechen group but in fact was being run by the Russian FSB – that seems to me not improbable.”
Which would fit rather well with hassle-free visits to Russia. Indeed.
OT – Blocking Script
Just made a minor update to greatly improve the nickname matching of this script. I have also removed the block button from a users own posts and users are now unable to block Craig or Jon. I think it is definitely worth upgrading.
btw, the write access of the script is extremely limited, so the only way to save the troll name data is through custom browser preferences. I have no idea what the limitations of these are. So I only recommend blocking those who repeatedly offend, not the one off spammers. If someone wants to test the limitations, please let me know how much data can be stored before encountering problems.
The updated script can be found at the same link of my original post: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/04/the-official-tsarnaev-story-makes-no-sense/#comment-404193
Mango:
“according to an FBI officer who gave an interview yesterday “the explosives were difficult to compound, and there are accomplices who helped in this”.”
I have my doubts about this. From my 14-year-old self comes the memory of using a certain weedkiller* in combination with a a common condiment in order to make things go bang (no, officer, nothing you’d be interested in, just teenage idiocy) The explosion pictured, with the characteristic persistent clouds of white smoke, looks remarkably similar to that memory. Pretty unstable, though – better to just have one person mixing it…
*freely available in the UK then, but less so now, happily.
On another forum I visit there used to be an admin who would silently edit posts of others. Sometimes the posts then said the opposite of what had originally been said (that happened to me). That doesn’t happen here but could a simple [Mod: Edited for clarity/spelling] or similar be added if any non author initiated change is made to the original text?
In a thread which discusses whether what we are seeing is the unvarnished truth it is a little disconcerting if the thread itself gets modified even with the best intentions. A simple note on the post clears things up.
Dunno if this has been addressed yet, but it turns out that old Uncle Ruslan who publicly dissed the brothers, is a bit of a “player” himself:
“Ruslan Tsarni, a well-connected oil executive, is currently involved in an international criminal investigation into a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive alleged to have absconded with $6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.”
“The day after the massive manhunt in the Boston area that led to the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Radio Free Europe and Kyrgyz Service correspondent Timur Toktonaliev traveled to Tokmok.
From there, he reported that the extended Tsarnaev family is well-known there, even beyond their local community.
“It is not known if there was anything more than a personal connection,” the story reported, “but organized crime boss Aziz Batukaev, who is also an ethnic Chechen, lived next door to the Tsarnaevs. Batukaev grew up and lived in Tokmok, but is now in Chechnya.”
What can it all mean?
http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/22/was-boston-bombers-uncle-ruslan-with-the-cia/
@Cheebacow
When I reported that the script was working fine, I had unfortunately only tested the ‘block’ function. Last night I decided (more out of curiosity than anything else) to test the ‘unblock’ function. That didn’t work for me.
So this morning I have disabled Greasemonkey (which, as you know, I can enable or disable with one click, and that’ll do me fine for now.) But thought I should mention it.
I wonder will we hear any more about this after a couple of days?
Boston bombers: FBI hunting 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/boston-bombers-fbi-hunting-12-strong-1844844
(and I’m sick and tired of looking for the word “alleged” and not finding it)
“In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up.”
One of the things puzzling me about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s trip to Dagestan is how he got there. The easiest way for an American (though he was only a green-card holder) would be through Europe to Georgia and Azerbaijan, from where, as a person whose passport must already have Chechen and Dagestan stamps, I assume he could have flown into the airport at Makhachkala a lot easier than others, like myself, might have got there. He could also have flown in from Kyrgyztan, another country where his family had lived. Remember he set off in January and did not arrive there till March. There are certainly missing pieces in the jig-saw. It seems unlikely from the following article that he was ‘recruited’ while on that trip last year.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/searching-for-home-drew-tamerlan-tsarnaev-to-city-where-violence-is-common-and-religion-is-key-20130422-2iap9.html
Chechens, as the article says, are not at war with the US.
It could be something quite simple that triggered this attack, like being refused US citizenship, which was something it seems – for some inexplicable reason from my point of view – he sought.
@CheebaCow
Only saw your post at 23 Apr, 2013 – 9:09 am now. I don’t know if it affects what I said above, but I’ll find out. 😉
The younger brother had just been granted citizenship though.
Dreoilin – a little more on Canada. Seems 2 have now been arrested.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/22/world/americas/canada-terror-plot-thwarted/
Anon, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, may have been adored by his younger brother, I know my younger brother idolized me. But I did say ‘something quite simple like’. Who knows what triggers an irrational act?
“al Qaeda elements in Iran” ???
OT: Watching BBC News today it seems the UK government has finally woken up to the strong possibility of losing Scotland for real.
Anon: Re Scottish fiscal independence : why do you think Osbo was blubbing?
Agree with Craig’s assessments that the “facts” do not add up.
There is a list of oddities about the alleged perpetrator’s behaviour at Mother Jones:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/eleven-most-mystifying-things-tsarnaev-brothers-did
…which adds some other paradoxical points.
I doubt we’ll ever know the truth.
The FBI Fosters, Funds and Equips American Terrorists
http://www.corbettreport.com/the-fbi-fosters-funds-and-equips-american-terrorists/
O/T
Important developments on Syria with the UK’ Israel and US in lock-step:
“The UK is increasingly concerned there is evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.”
“Foreign Secretary William Hague said the claims must be investigated and the perpetrators held to account.”
“Meanwhile, soil samples gathered from random sites in Syria, have been smuggled to the UK for testing, British intelligence sources told the BBC.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22156178
“Israel confirms Syria regime used chemical weapons against civilians”
“To the best of our professional understanding, the regime has used lethal chemical weapons on a number of occasions, including the incident on March 19,” the head of the Research Division at Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Itai Baron, said at conference of the Institute for National Security Studies.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-confirms-syria-regime-used-chemical-weapons-against-civilians.premium-1.517077
“U.S. intelligence: Syria’s Assad used chemical weapons”
“Information relates to two incidents that occurred in the Damascus area in March; Washington has reiterated that the use of chemical weapons by Syria regime would constitute a ‘red line’.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-intelligence-syria-s-assad-used-chemical-weapons.premium-1.514411