Does Tsarnaev's newly acquired citizenship give him more rights and less avenues for questioning?

How does the enemy combatant designation work?

If there is a sleeper cell and Tsarnaev's hatred keeps him silent knowing there will be further plots, do we need to leave him alone if he invokes his right to an attorney?

The Russian Connection: What Can Moscow’s Tip Tell Us About The Boston Bombings?

“One of the things we have to be very careful about is trusting what the Russians tell us, because they have other equities involved. They want to show Chechnya’s part of Al Qaeda, when it’s not. They want to show things that help them politically that may not necessarily be true,” explained Swift. “So, we’ve got to be very careful about how we do our due diligence on the intelligence the Russians give us.”

Sestanovich raised the possibilty the Russians may not actually have had information about Tsarnaev being tied to Chechen rebels.

“Question: Did the Russians really have any information on him, or were they just fishing?” Sestanovich asked.


If Russia did indeed have legitimate concerns that Tsarnaev had contact with Chechen extremists, Swift said he’s quite sure which organization they would have been referring to: a small group of fierce Islamic fighters called the Caucasus Emirate.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/the-russian-connection-what-can-moscows-tip-tell-us-about-the-boston-bombings.php?m=1

Facial recognition software didn't work.

F.B.I. Interview Led Homeland Security to Hold Up Citizenship for One Brother

Department of Homeland Security officials decided in recent months not to grant an application for American citizenship by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, after a routine background check revealed that he had been interviewed in 2011 by the F.B.I., federal officials said on Saturday.

Mr. Tsarnaev died early Friday after a shootout with the police, and officials said that at the time of his death, his application for citizenship was still under review and was being investigated by federal law enforcement officials.

It had been previously reported that Mr. Tsarnaev’s application might have been held up because of a domestic abuse episode. But the officials said that it was the record of the F.B.I. interview that threw up red flags and halted, at least temporarily, Mr. Tsarnaev’s citizenship application. Federal law enforcement officials reported on Friday that the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Tsarnaev in January 2011 at the request of the Russian government, which suspected that he had ties to Chechen terrorists.

The officials pointed to the decision to hold up that application as evidence that his encounter with the F.B.I. did not fall through the cracks in the vast criminal and national security databases that the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. review as a standard requirement for citizenship. The application, which Mr. Tsarnaev presented on Sept. 5, also prompted “additional investigation” of him this year by federal law enforcement agencies, according to the officials. They declined to say how far that examination had progressed or what it covered.


Late last year, Homeland Security officials contacted the F.B.I. to learn more about its interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, federal law enforcement officials said. The F.B.I. reported its conclusion that he did not present a threat.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/tamerlan-tsarnaevs-citizenship-held-up-by-homeland-security.html?_r=0

2nd FBI case where they investigated suspect prior to incident.

Under FBI DIOG and U.S. Attorney General guidelines, there are strict prohibitions about running open-ended investigations into American citizens, or those legally in the United States, in the absence of a clear indicator of criminal activity or association with terrorism.


This is not the first act of terrorism that has highlighted the FBI's attempt to walk the line between preserving an individual's rights and doing everything it can to head off a potential attack.

The agency interviewed Carlos Bledsoe, who opened fire at an Arkansas Army recruiting station in 2009, multiple times before his attack. FBI agents questioned Bledsoe in Yemen, twice in Pittsburgh -- where they also asked him to submit to a polygraph test -- and again in Little Rock, Ark., where he moved after ducking appointments with the FBI.

It later emerged that Bledsoe developed his extremist leanings in his trips to Yemen and spent countless hours before the attack watching internet videos of American-born terrorist leader Anwar al Awlaki. Authorities also found an AK-47 and 1,400 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle following the attack, and a search warrant revealed "Google maps searches on U.S. and Jewish targets from Little Rock to Philadelphia," Miller said.

Yet before the attack he "hadn't broken any laws," Miller noted. "Absent his committing a crime, we're still a free country and he's still an American citizen entitled to his rights."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57580580/did-the-fbi-miss-a-chance-to-stop-tamerlan-tsarnaev/

Tamerlan thrown out of mosque for shouting at Imam who was praising MLK as a man to emulate.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of the mosque -- the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center -- about three months ago, after he stood up and shouted at the imam during a Friday prayer service, they said. The imam had held up slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of a man to emulate, recalled one worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad.

Enraged, Tamerlan stood up and began shouting, Muhammad said.

“You cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!” Muhammad recalled Tamerlan shouting, shocking others in attendance.

“He’s crazy to me,” Muhammad said. “He had an anger inside.… I can’t explain what was in his mind.”

Tamerlan was then kicked out of the prayer service for his outburst, Muhammad recalled. “You can’t do that,” Muhammad said of shouting at the imam.

Still, Tamerlan returned to Friday prayer services and had no further outbursts, Muhammad said.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75546585/

Jake Tapper tweets on the FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

@jaketapper: WH referred me to FBI re: Russian FSB asking US to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, which they did and then moved on; FBI radio silent

@jaketapper: Intel source tells me it's "rare" for Russians to reach out like that, to ask FBI to look into someone as they did with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

@jaketapper: Big q is why FBI didnt keep an eye on/talk to Tamerlan Tsarnaev after he returned from Chechnya last year. So far from FBI: crickets.

The KGB keeps better track of extremists in the US than the FBI does.

The significance of the trip was magnified late Friday when the F.B.I. disclosed in a statement that in 2011 “a foreign government” — now acknowledged by officials to be Russia — asked for information about Tamerlan, “based on information that he 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 senior law enforcement official said the Russians feared he could be a risk, and “they had something on him and were concerned about him, and him traveling to their region.”

But the F.B.I. never followed up on Tamerlan once he returned, a senior law enforcement acknowledged on Saturday, adding that the bureau had not kept tabs on him until he was identified on Friday as the first suspect in the marathon bombing case.



A Russian intelligence official told the Interfax news service on Saturday that Russia had not been able to provide the United States with “operatively significant” information about the Tsarnaev brothers, “because the Tsarnaev brothers had not been living in Russia.”

Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services, said he believes that Tamerlan may have attracted the attention of Russian intelligence because of the video clips he had posted under his own name starting in 2010, which were included on a list of banned materials by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

At that point, the agency had just begun routinely scrutinizing materials posted on social networks, and would most likely have sent a request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Mr. Soldatov, the author of “The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the K.G.B.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/boston-marathon-bombings.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp

@ShawnaNBCNews: There was applause in the newsroom as @PeteWilliamsNBC made his way

@pbsgwen: MT @ShawnaNBCNews: There was applause in the newsroom as @PeteWilliamsNBC made his way from the set to his office. #trustinpete

@CBSNews: JUST IN: No Miranda warning being given to suspect

@CBSNews: JUST IN: No Miranda warning being given to suspect because government is invoking the public safety exception, DOJ official says

@ABC: No Miranda warning will be given to suspect, public safety exception is being invokved for limited and focused interrogation

@nbcnightlynews: No Miranda warning will be given to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, instead, the gov't will invoke a legal rule known as the 'public safety exception'

@ggreenwald: @ClaraJeffery @GrahamBlog Obama DOJ already adopted this rule - said they would only use post-Miranda answers http://t.co/3Z4zWPgOMQ