NYT quotes anonymous official: Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a drug dealer [View all]

[temmer]

Here's a remarkable piece in the NYT still trying to "connect the dots" between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Waltham triple murder in 2011 - notwithstanding the obscure confession and even more obscure killing of Ibragim Todashev.

This piece is pure gossip IMO, with the usual "officials speaking under the condition of anonymity". It also doesn't address the scandalous behavior of the FBI in the aftermath of Todashev's killing. I suspect distraction.

One law enforcement official said the murders were part of a “drug rip-off.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the authorities were able to put together “a lot of circumstantial pieces” that they used to pressure Mr. Todashev into implicating himself and Mr. Tsarnaev.

Investigators have been helped by DNA evidence taken from Mr. Tsarnaev after his death that they are using as part of the Waltham investigation, according to the official, who believes that local investigators did not have such forensic evidence before the bombings. Another friend of Mr. Mess said that after the bombings, investigators told him “they have info that may have placed Tam with Brendan the day before or night of the killings.”

An F.B.I. agent investigating the bombings interviewed Mr. Todashev about Mr. Tsarnaev in his Orlando, Fla., apartment in May and he began to provide information about the Waltham case. To get him to talk, the investigators “made him believe he’s done, and the only way he could help himself is confess and lay out the details of what had happened,” a law enforcement official said. Mr. Todashev “flipped out” and attacked the agent and was then shot at least a half-dozen times in circumstances that still remain unclear.

The senior law enforcement official said that at the time Mr. Todashev was shot, two Massachusetts state police investigators had left the room to inform a prosecutor that Mr. Todashev was admitting he and Mr. Tsarnaev had carried out the Waltham murders. This official said that Mr. Tsarnaev “was more of a wannabe drug dealer than a big one. He was dealing dope, marijuana, low-level stuff.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/us/boston-bombing-suspect-is-said-to-be-linked-to-2011-triple-murder-case.html?src=twr&pagewanted=all&_r=0