It is odd that the Obama administration knew in advance about the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon yet took no preventative action. It is even odder how a Saudi national identified at the scene went from being a person of interest to no one.
The country is reeling from the latest terrorist attack which killed three Americans and injured hundreds more at the Boston Marathon on April 15th. Two brothers who became radical Islamists have been implicated; Tamerlan Tsarnaev 26 who was killed after an overnight shoot-out with police and his 19-year old brother Dzhokhar who was caught shortly after the bombing.
The Obama administration knew ahead of time about the brothers ties to radical Islam. Russia warned the U.S. in 2011. The Russian government intercepted a communication between the bombers mother Zubeidat Tsarnaev and someone who was probably her son Tamerlan discussing jihad. The U.S. government added both names to its Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE database. Later Tamerlans phone number was traced to numbers that came up in two other investigations into terror suspects according to a Senator who attended classified briefings about the Boston bombings. The FBI interviewed Tamerlan but cleared him finding nothing conclusive. Russian officials next tried to get the CIA to look into Tamerlan sending the CIA a warning letter about him. Apparently their concerns were ignored by Leon Panetta then head of the CIA and now known for gutting the defense department as Secretary of Defense.
Tamerlan frequented radical Islamist websites that promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories and advocated violence against the West. The brothers uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev who has not spoken with the brothers since 2010 called the men losers. Their parents came from an area in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe that has become home to radicalized Islam. Their father Anzor Tsarnaev is Chechen and their mother Zubeidat is Avar both minorities in the conflict-torn Caucasus region. The brothers grew up on welfare as children and Tamerlan received welfare for his family through last year. Their mother says she believes the bombings were staged and fake. She is wanted on charges from 2012 for shoplifting and property damage in Massachusetts.