Anomalies in the FBI’s Account of the Boston Marathon Bombings
Anomalies in the FBI’s Account of the Boston Marathon Bombings
None of the following proves that what actually happened at the Boston Marathon was different from what the FBI says happened. But the fact that terrorist events make the public more obedient to the rulers (as indicated by the understandable willingness of everybody in Boston and surrounding towns to remain indoors when instructed to do so by the authorities, in the name of public safety) constitutes a cui bono (to whose benefit?) reason for at least being skeptical of the FBI’s account of things. Specific reasons for sketicism are recounted here, and I will add postcripts if and when more become apparent.
The FBI’s video evidence for the guilt of the Marathon bombing suspects is presented in a Fox News video here (and the FBI site’s video here) that includes surveillance photo images of the suspects and a news conference given by the FBI. Two things are notable about this press conference:
1. The FBI spokesman says emphatically that no other images than the ones displayed by him in this press conference should be used by anybody, because it would only confuse things.
2. The video shows the two suspects at the scene (presumably) of the explosions wearing black backpacks [the authorities had previously reported that evidence from bomb residue indicated the bomb had been inside a black bag of some kind] that supposedly contain bombs, but–and this is extremely strange–there are no images of the suspects subsequently NOT wearing these same backpacks. (In one section of the FBI video it may look as if the suspect wearing a white hat has no backpack on but as he disappears from view on the left one can see the backpack slung on his right side.) In other words there is no evidence that these suspects placed their backpacks on the ground and then walked away. For all one can tell from these images, the two suspects merely were at the location of the bombing wearing backpacks, much as many other people. We are given no reason for singling out these two particular individuals from the others in the area wearing black backpacks. Why not?
It is not as if no other people in the area were wearing black backpacks. What about THIS GUY shown in this video? This video (I wonder how long it will remain online) shows a man at the scene initially with a black backpack and subequently without it, and his backpack has markings found in the remnants of the bomb explosion. It shows the man suspiciously looking in a different direction from everybody else in the crowd around him. Furthermore he is wearing the same outfit (black top, tan pants) that Navy SEALs wear. How come the FBI doesn’t want people to look at this video, with actual evidence that its subject may have been a bomber, and wants us to look only at images that do not constitute evidence the subject may have been the bomber?
Did the FBI single out the two Chechen men as the suspects for a very different reason than the one they told the public? They told the public they singled out these men based only on the video images. The public was led to believe that the FBI had no knowledge at this time of who the men were, not even what their names were. We were led to believe that there was no prior connection between the FBI and these completely unknown (to the FBI) individuals.
But it turns out (based on this CBS News story days after the FBI press conference) that the FBI knew these individuals very well. The FBI had actually interviewed** the elder brother suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, two years ago.
Here’s another anomaly. According to Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis the authorities had no advance warning of any terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon this year. Yet there was far more security–including bomb-sniffing dogs, sharp shooters on roofs and announcements that “this is just a training exercise”– at this year’s marathon than at previous ones, as reported by this local television newscast (in this video) shortly after the Marathon explosions. How come?
Why did the two Chechen brother suspects behave* as if they were guilty? One explanation, of course, is that they were indeed guilty of setting off the Marathon explosions. But this is not the only explanation. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: After the FBI interviewed the elder brother two years ago it decided these two young men were the kind of people who could be induced by an undercover FBI agent posing as a radical Muslim to do something stupid, like planting a terrorist bomb. (We know that the FBI does this kind of thing, as reported here and here for example.) Suppose, however, that by April of 2013 the FBI was a bit embarrassed by all of the reporting of its “saving” Americans from evil terrorist bombings “just in the nick of time” when it was the FBI itself supplying some stupid dupe with the “bomb” in the first place. Suppose the FBI felt it was time for a real bomb to go off, to reinvigorate that “old time obedience” to America’s rulers that 9/11 had so wonderously produced but was now wearing thin. Suppose the FBI managed to persuade the Chechen brothers to be present at the Marathon with backpacks, but that it couldn’t persuade them to set off bombs. Suppose the FBI arranged for somebody else (such as the man with the backpack wearing a SEAL-type outfit) to set off the bombs. And suppose that the Chechen brothers, upon seeing on T.V. that they were doomed as the accused terrorists no matter what they did, decided that if they were doomed they may as well at least be martyrs for the cause, strap something with shrapnel (that the FBI undercover agent had provided to them) around their bodies, and go down fighting as martyrs.
This might not be the first time something like this happened. As Gore Vidal discusses in great detail in his article in Vanity Fair about Timothy McVeigh:
‘Many an “expert” and many an expert believe that McVeigh neither built nor detonated the bomb that blew up a large part of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. [This video gives evidence of this.–J.S.] To start backward—rather the way the F.B.I. conducted this case—if McVeigh was not guilty, why did he confess to the murderous deed? I am convinced from his correspondence and what one has learned about him in an ever lengthening row of books that, once found guilty due to what he felt was the slovenly defense of his principal lawyer, Stephen Jones, so unlike the brilliant defense of his “co-conspirator” Terry Nichols’s lawyer Michael Tigar, McVeigh believed that the only alternative to death by injection was a half-century or more of life in a box. There is another aspect of our prison system (considered one of the most barbaric in the First World) which was alluded to by the British writer John Sutherland in The Guardian. He quoted California’s attorney general, Bill Lockyer, on the subject of the C.E.O. of an electric utility, currently battening on California’s failing energy supply. “‘I would love to personally escort this CEO to an 8 by 10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says—“Hi, my name is Spike, Honey.”’ … The senior law official in the state was confirming (what we all suspected) that rape is penal policy. Go to prison and serving as a Hell’s Angel sex slave is judged part of your sentence.” A couple of decades fending off Spike is not a Henley hero’s idea of a good time. Better dead than Spiked. Hence, “I bombed the Murrah building.”’
Postscript #1 April 20: More video images of the suspicious “SEAL” man that the FBI ignored.
*Postscript #2 April 20: It turns out that the Chechen brothers were not the ones who robbed the 7-11 store. Since the MIT police officer who was killed at this time was reportedly killed by the people who had robbed the 7-11 store it is not clear that the Chechen brothers were the ones who killed the MIT police officer.
**Postscript #3 April 20: A Globe and Mail article reports on the strange nature of the FBI’s interview of the elder Chechen brother:
‘The state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, about the FBI agents close questioning, “two or three times,” of Tamerlan. Anzor, who lives in a five-storey, yellow brick building in a working-class neighborhood of the city, recalled that the agents told his son, “We know what you read, what you drink, what you eat, where you go.” He said that they told Tamerlan that the questioning “is prophylactic, so that no one set off bombs on the streets of Boston, so that our children could peacefully go to school.”
‘Those comments, he said, disturbed him. “This conversation took place a year and a half ago. But there is a question, why would they talk about it then?”
Another report of FBI monitoring of the elder Chechen brother is here, in which the men’s mother says,
“They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act!Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!”
Did the FBI run Tamerlan and his younger brother as patsies? Were the two Chechens at the marathon because they thought they were helping the authorities carry out the drill that we now know was going on at the marathon?
Postscript #4 April 20: The Daily News reports that the younger Chechen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, went to UMass-Dartmouth where he was a sophomore and ‘attended a party two days after Monday’s bombing. He hit the gym. And he went to his dorm room at UMass-Dartmouth for a night’s rest, according to reports. “He was just relaxed,” a student who claimed to be at the same party Wednesday night as Tsarnaev told The Boston Globe.’ Does this seem like the behavior of a person who had just committed a heinous crime and who–since it was not a suicide bombing–would presumably be making his escape?
Postscript #5 April 21: The man whose car was allegedly carjacked by the Chechen brothers allegedly “told police the brothers said they were the marathon bombers and had just killed a campus officer.”