Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[stickdog99]

Lies, Lies, Lies

US authorities have admitted that the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect shot and severely injured by police gunfire just before his arrest was unarmed, disputing earlier official claims that he was heavily armed and fired shots from the boat in which he was hiding.

Accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “had no firearms” when he came under a barrage of police gunfire, despite statements by police officials following his capture that “he had fired from the boat” and that he was “captured with several weapons,” The Washington Post reported Thursday citing “multiple federal law enforcement officials.”

There were also reports that the gunshot wound the 19-year-old suspect suffered to his throat may have been “an attempt to kill himself as police moved in,” the report adds.

Moreover, despite claims by the US authorities that they “were desperate to capture” Tsarnaev to question him, the FBI has refused to explain what prompted the massive police gunfire, which has now been blamed for striking and injuring a police officer, in spite of earlier suggestions that he was shot by the suspect during a gunfire exchange with police, according to the daily.

Justifying the shooting of the unarmed suspect, however, another law enforcement official is quoted as saying, “You can’t second-guess what they were doing on that scene. Their own lives were in danger.”

Other local press reports have described the scene of police shooting just before Tsarnaev’s capture as “a war zone,” citing residents of nearby houses who witnessed the unfolding events out of their home windows.

[0_0]

Regarding the armored personnel carriers, I think it was 8bit who posted this article a couple weeks ago:

The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.

Add to this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September:

"[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”

These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”

link to full article

[Iamwhomiam]

Regarding the show of force ~ I tend to think there's only two ways to perceive it, and each depends upon one's perception of the police. One view is that of relief, imbued with a sense of security that the police are here to keep them safe from a bomber/shooter and I think we all know the other, fear. (based upon numerous anecdotal and first hand experiences and history)

[stickdog99]

If they can get you to believe this kid is a monster with just one anonymous story, what won't you believe?

He looks like the bad boy in a boy band. His version of wildness: driving his car backward down a one-way street at a prom party — an eerie foreshadowing of the Cambridge shootout in which a fleeing Dzhokhar reportedly drove a stolen SUV over his brother, Tamerlan.

“He was just this scrawny little kid who was always giggling and happy,” Juliette Terry, 20, an elementary school friend and part of a group with whom he attended prom, told The Wall Street Journal. “I can’t remember him saying a mean word in his life.”

Larry Aaronson, a high school teacher at Cambridge Rindge Latin School, told The Boston Globe, “If someone were to ask me what this kid is like, I would say that he had a heart of gold. He was as gracious as possible.”

Those are not the comments you would hear about the school shooters. They had histories of psychiatric problems, previous brushes with the law. Their teachers and classmates understood something was off. When the shootings occurred, those who knew them, or had encountered them, instantly suspected the culprit.

After the Boston bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to the campus gym at UMass Dartmouth, partied with soccer friends, and chatted calmly about the bombing. “He was saying ‘Yeah, you know, it’s really a tragedy it’s happening right now, it’s a sad thing,’” Zach Bettencourt, a fellow student, told NBC News.

So remote was the possibility that Tsarnaev was involved that Pamala Rolon, resident assistant in his dorm, told the Globe that, on looking at pictures of the suspect, “We made a joke like — that could be Dzhokhar. But then we thought it just couldn’t be him. Dzhokhar? Never.”

[compared2what?]

Regarding the show of force ~ I tend to think there's only two ways to perceive it, and each depends upon one's perception of the police. One view is that of relief, imbued with a sense of security that the police are here to keep them safe from a bomber/shooter and I think we all know the other, fear. (based upon numerous anecdotal and first hand experiences and history)

I perceive it as them using the stuff all the post-9/11 beefing-up-security funds bought them. Despite which, I don't perceive it as meaning an expansion of their powers and/or how they use them. Because that's only good for the state when it's run by people who have some way of controlling military/police forces that are empowered to do whatever they want with impunity.

Otherwise, it's both more clearly and more traditionally a threat to them than it is to the populace. And we don't have that kind of leadership now. So I expect police abuse of power and excessive use of force to remain roughly within known limits, right at the moment.

[stickdog99]

Fog of War Caused Cops to Fire on Helpless Unarmed Kid

Although police feared he was heavily armed, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing had no firearms when he came under a barrage of police gunfire that struck the boat where he was hiding, according to multiple federal law enforcement officials.

...

Law enforcement officials described the 30 minutes before the arrest of Tsarnaev as chaotic. One characterized it as “the fog of war” and said that in a highly charged atmosphere, one accidental shot could have caused what police call “contagious fire.”

Officers from several agencies gathered around the Watertown house as darkness fell. The FBI was in charge of the scene, but there also were officers from the Massachusetts State Police, local police and transit police.

“They probably didn’t know whether he had a gun,” said one law enforcement official, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. “Hours earlier, he and his brother had killed a police officer, shot another officer and thrown explosives out of their cars as the police were chasing them. They couldn’t assume that he did not have a gun and more explosives.”

The FBI declined to discuss the exact sequence of events that led officers to open fire on Tsarnaev’s hiding place and whether the dozens of bullets that struck the boat caused any of his gunshot wounds.

A spokesman for the FBI said law enforcement agents were tracking an extremely dangerous suspect who had used guns and explosives on a public street to avoid arrest.

“Law enforcement was placed in an extraordinarily dangerous situation,” said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. “They were dealing with an individual who is alleged to have been involved in the bombings at the Boston Marathon. As if that’s not enough, there were indications of a carjacking, gunfire, an ambushed police officer and bombs thrown earlier. In spite of these extraordinary factors, they were able to capture this individual alive with no further harm to law enforcement. It was a tremendously effective outcome under dire circumstances.”

[Jerky]

Remember a time when police would speak aloud such sentiments as "We don't want another Oswald!"?

[seemslikeadream]

The uncle of the two suspected Boston bombers in last week’s attack, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller

funny that

[FourthBase]

The uncle of the two suspected Boston bombers in last week’s attack, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller

funny that

Well, hello there, rabbit. Nice to find you in this hole.

Jesus fucking christ!

Edit: Wait, wait, wait...obligatory: Link!?

[Iamwhomiam]

Regarding the show of force ~ I tend to think there's only two ways to perceive it, and each depends upon one's perception of the police. One view is that of relief, imbued with a sense of security that the police are here to keep them safe from a bomber/shooter and I think we all know the other, fear. (based upon numerous anecdotal and first hand experiences and history)

I perceive it as them using the stuff all the post-9/11 beefing-up-security funds bought them. Despite which, I don't perceive it as meaning an expansion of their powers and/or how they use them. Because that's only good for the state when it's run by people who have some way of controlling military/police forces that are empowered to do whatever they want with impunity.

Otherwise, it's both more clearly and more traditionally a threat to them than it is to the populace. And we don't have that kind of leadership now. So I expect police abuse of power and excessive use of force to remain roughly within known limits, right at the moment.

"I perceive it as them using the stuff all the post-9/11 beefing-up-security funds bought them."

Well, that's in fact what we witnessed; what it was.

"Despite which, I don't perceive it as meaning an expansion of their powers and/or how they use them." ~ Nor do I. A demonstration of force, showing what is possible and what could be.

"Because that's only good for the state when it's run by people who have some way of controlling military/police forces that are empowered to do whatever they want with impunity."

Right. And we're still far from seeing that realized, at least here in the US. At least for some of us.

"Otherwise, it's both more clearly and more traditionally a threat to them than it is to the populace. And we don't have that kind of leadership now. So I expect police abuse of power and excessive use of force to remain roughly within known limits, right at the moment."

I agree. Thank goodness! Unfortunately. Less would be better.

I was speaking only about public perception, not that of the police.

But it might do good to look into who last contracted with the City of Boston to supply their surveillance, if we're to rigorously examine cui bono.

[stickdog99]

Unanswered Questions

What did Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev do after the Marathon bombings?

The most pertinent concern after the Boston attack was where the perpetrators might be hiding or if they'd already managed to escape. What we know now is that until the FBI released pictures of the suspects on Thursday evening, the Tsarnaev brothers were not hiding at all, but rather going about their days as if nothing had happened. The elder Tsarnaev returned home, where according to his wife's lawyer, it seemed that nothing was amiss, and it wasn't until she saw her husband's face on TV that she knew something was wrong. Even more baffling is that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to school at U Mass Dartmouth the next day, hung out on campus, and "partied." A fellow student claimed he told her "tragedies happen all the time."

How they hatched a plan — a sloppy and incomplete one, judging by what followed — once the FBI publicized their photographs remains to be seen.

Why was MIT officer Sean Collier killed?

At 10:20 p.m. on Thursday, the active manhunt started: Police received reports of gunshots in the vicinity of Vassar Street and Main Street on the MIT campus, and ten minutes later found officer Sean Collier dead of multiple gunshot wounds in his patrol car. Collier's gun remained in its holster, and there was no sign he had fired any shots. Early reports struggled to find any reason for the killing of Collier, sometimes placing the murder in the same sentence as a convenience store robbery that happened around the same time. (We'll get to that.)

The New York Daily News stated that Collier volunteered at the same gym the elder Tsarnaev frequented, but noted that it was unlikely they ever crossed paths. This morning CBS senior news correspondent John Miller reported that the working theory is that the brothers were looking to get Collier's gun and ambushed him. In this theory, the "three-way lock" on the holster Collier was wearing proved too complex for the brothers and explains why it was found at the scene.

(stickdog's note: Yes, the fact that the gun was not taken offers convincing evidence that Collier was killed for his gun.)

Still in question is which one of the brothers killed Collier, as it remains unclear when exactly they met again after the bombing. The criminal complaint against Dzhokhar makes no mention of Collier or the MIT shooting, potentially signaling that Tamerlan, since killed, was responsible.

Which brother was the carjacker?

After the MIT shooting, according to the criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an unidentified individual approached a black Mercedes SUV around midnight on Thursday, tapping on the passenger-side window before holding the driver at gunpoint. The man asked the victim, "Did you hear about the Boston explosion?" and said, "I did that," forcing the victim to drive to another location, where he picked up the other suspect.

The Wall Street Journal reported that "one of the brothers jumped out of a Honda Civic and reached in through the front passenger side window of the SUV, opened the door and pointed a silver colored semi-automatic pistol at the driver. The gunman then ordered him to drive to Watertown and was followed by the Honda." When they arrived in Watertown, "The two brothers then removed luggage from the Honda and loaded it into the trunk of the Mercedes."

But the complaint doesn't identify which of the brothers performed the initial carjacking, nor who drove the Honda and was picked up later.

What happened to the carjacking victim?

NBC News and Politico reported that the brothers let him out of the car because he "wasn't an American," while Dzhokhar's criminal complaint states merely that the victim "managed to escape" while the suspects went to a convenience store. The victim also said that apart from boasting about the bombing in English, they spent the rest of the time speaking in Russian and he could only recognize the word "Manhattan." He has not been identified by name.

"The Tsarnaevs stopped at three ATMs and got $800 cash from one of them, using the SUV owner’s bank card," the Washington Post reported. "A surveillance camera at one bank recorded images of a young man resembling Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dressed in a gray hooded jacket. Denied cash at other ATMs, the suspects dropped off the vehicle owner at a gas station."

But police maintain that he got away when the bombers did something that makes no sense at all: "Cambridge Police told [the Los Angeles Times] that the Mercedes driver escaped when the brothers went inside a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge to buy snacks." Dzhokhar was even captured on surveillance footage, later mixed up with a separate 7-Eleven robbery.

"Turns out the suspects had driven up to the Shell station to go inside to make some purchases," said Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas. "They had taken the phone away from the victim of the carjacking; so when they went into the station, he jumped out of the car, and ran next door [to the Mobil station nearby] and made the report." (According to the New York Post, "Dzhokhar dropped the food — Red Bulls, chips and candy — when the owner caught him trying to shoplift.")

But what about the 7-Eleven?

Initial reports that the suspects robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store flooded the media in the early mess of the manhunt, and spurred some analysis about how the seemingly irrational act characterized the suspects' psyches. Soon after the incident, however, the story of the Tsarnaevs' hold-up was refuted by a spokesperson for the company, although she did say there was a robbery at the 750 Massachusetts Avenue location at around 10:30 p.m., immediately after the murder of Collier. While the brothers had their own convenience store mishaps, as described above, they did not stick one up.

"The suspect in the photos for that particular 7-Eleven robbery looks nothing like the suspects," said the company spokesperson. "The police or someone made a mistake. Someone was confused." The screw-up likely stemmed from the fact that the report of the 7-Eleven robbery occurred just before Dzhokhar was seen on-camera, Red Bull in hand, at the Shell.

The Cambridge Police confirmed to Daily Intelligencer today, "Those [initial] reports were incorrect. We had an UNRELATED armed robbery at that store but the suspects were not involved. The surveillance photos were from a Shell Gas Station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge."

How was Tamerlan killed while Dzhokar escaped?

During the firefight that ensued just before 1 a.m. — pictured here in detail by a witness whose apartment overlooked the street — police claim that Tamerlan moved toward officers while firing, but eventually ran out of ammunition and was tackled. It was then that his brother reportedly drove the stolen SUV through the scene, running over and dragging his brother, according to authorities.

However, there is not yet an official coroner's report on the incident, and doctors have refused to comment on the cause of death, leaving it to the medical examiner.

Where did Dzhokar go?

After he ditched the SUV and fled on foot from the shootout, it is not known what Dzhokhar did next. Potentially wounded from the gunfight, it's possible he went straight to the boat in the backyard on nearby Franklin Street, where he was later discovered wounded, and hid for almost all of Friday. If he made other stops along the way, we don't yet know. Dzhokhar is now said to be cooperative and responding to investigators' questions from the hospital, where he will hopefully fill in the missing pieces.

But in lieu of that, James Alan Fox's Danny Boy story will fill in more than enough blanks for us.

[DrEvil]

Dr. Evil, your response is irrational, a distraction, and a waste of time, like far too much of this thread. Enough, really, it's unconscionable. The point I am making is elementary and should be blatantly obvious to anyone reading in good faith, and I made it perfectly clearly. I am not going to repeat it.

Okay - I'm going to try to make my point one more time, and then I'll shut up.

But first a disclaimer: I have no firm opinion either way on what's really behind this case.
I think it stinks to high heaven, but I just don't know.

Stop jumping to absolute conclusions based on, at best, circumstantial evidence. It's the same point I've been trying to make pretty much every time I have called you out:

You don't know any more than anyone else in this thread about this case, but you are already absolutely sure in your conclusions. Every little detail that doesn't fit the picture is instantly interpreted in the worst possible light. More rigor, less intuition. You're being just as irrational and unconscionable as I am.

And why are my speculations about mundane explanations for some things worth less than your speculations about something not being right. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy.

And one more thing for general consumption: Presstv.it is a state-owned Iranian broadcaster. I would trust them about as much as Fox News and Alex Jones put together (Among other things they're in the habit of having holocaust deniers on the air).

[stickdog99]

Why Such Secrecy about Private Military Contractor’s Men Working the Event?

Speaking as an investigative reporter with almost 40 years’s experience, I can say that when government officials won’t talk, they’re generally hiding something embarrassing or worse.

I tried, and nobody will talk about those Craft International Services private security personnel who were widely observed and photographed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, wearing security ear-pieces, hats and T-shirts bearing the company’s skull logo, and all wearing the same dark coats, khaki pants and combat boots, some carrying what appear to have been radiation detectors. (I got no hard answers, though there were some inadvertent hints given.)

I first contacted a man identifying himself as Jack Fleming, a public affairs person with the Boston Athletic Assn., sponsor of the marathon. Fleming advised me that “If you want to ask about that you should contact the Commonwealth (of Massachusetts) Executive Office of Public Safety.”

I called that agency and spoke with the public information office there, a man named Terrell. He first said, "Did you call the Marathon organizers?" When I replied that I had, and that they had said to call his office, he replied, "They did?" Then he said, “You should call the City of Boston Police Department. They released a security plan to some media organizations.”

Indeed they had released that plan to the Boston Globe. Based upon the information it got from the police the article the Globe ran, did report that the Police had deployed “air patrols, K9 units, and more than 1,000 uniformed officers and soldiers along the 26-mile course and the finish line,” but it made no mention of the private contracting of soldiers-for-hire, which is what Craft International does (see the Craft website). News agency Reuters reported, meanwhile, that a top official for the Massachusetts state Homeland Security Department, Undersecretary Kurt Schwartz, told a group at Harvard U. that his agency had “planned” for a possible bombing attack on the marathon, even running a “table-top” exercise about such an event a week before the race.

I called the Boston Police to ask if they had hired the Craft International personnel who were observed at the scene just before and after the bombing, and was told by the public affairs office there that “Anything having to do with the investigation of the bombing would have to be referred to the FBI Boston Division office.” When I pointed out that I wasn’t asking anything about the investigation, but was simply asking who had hired the security personnel from Craft International, the answer was simply repeated: “You’ll have to ask the FBI.”

So I called the FBI, and got a public affairs person there named Amanda Cox. Her initial response to my question was, “I do not have any information on that.”

I then said I had been referred to her by the Boston Police Department, and said that photos of the scene after the bombing had shown Craft International personnel conversing with FBI agents. She then put down the phone, and I could hear her turn to a supervisor and ask, her voice muffled, “This guy’s asking about the Craft Security Consultants -- who hired them and what they were doing.”

I next overheard the muffled voice of another woman to whom she had been speaking reply, “I think you could safely say, ‘I do know we worked with a lot of people who worked on security at the marathon...’” After that I couldn’t make out what was being said.

Cox later returned to the phone, and instead told me, “I’d refer you to the company on any information about who hired them.” (Taken together the overheard conversation and the official answer from Cox would at least seem to confirm that Craft's people were hired for the event, and that the FBI knows a lot more than it is willing to say about them.)

Next I called Craft International. The company has no phone number listed on its website -- just a general email address of info@thecraft.com (to which I wrote to asking for information, but which elicited no response)--but I found one listed for their headquarters office at 2101 Cedar Springs Rd., Suite 1400, Dallas, TX, in a listing on the company published in a directory in Bloomberg Businessweek, This entry noted that the company, in addition to “providing security, defense, and combat weapons training services for military, police, corporate and civilian clients in the US and internationally,” also “offers corporate and private and civilian training services...” The number, published in a business magazine, was clearly meant as a contact for potential customers to call.

A woman answered the phone brightly with the company's name. However, when I identified myself as a reporter, and said I was wondering if someone could tell me who had hired personnel from the firm to work at the Boston Marathon, she responded with a flummoxed: “Um, I um, don’t really have any information on that. I’m just an answering service.”

I replied, “Look, the number I called is listed as the number of the company’s corporate headquarters at 2101 Cedar Springs Road. You’re not an answering service.”

At that point she said, “Let me see who I can transfer you to.”

However, after a long pause, she was back, and said, “The answer I’ve been given is that you should go to the website, where there’s an email address you can write to with your question.”

I had already done that, I told her. She then said she couldn’t help me and hung up.

I also called the US Department of Homeland Security, but a women named Angela who answered the press office number for this public government agency (she refused to provide her last name despite being the public information office) said the DHS media office was “only taking inquiries sent in by email.” I sent in an inquiry asking if any unit of the DHS had hired Craft International to provide security at the Boston Marathon, but so far have received no response.

As things stand, since it's highly unlikely that Craft International, a private for-profit enterprise founded by the late ace Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle, would have "hired" itself to police the Marathon gratis, it seems pretty clear that we had rent-a-special forces-soldier people, hired by some agency, at the scene of the bombing ahead of the bombing.

And we have no reporting on this in the mainstream corporate media.

Why? I have no answer to that.

I did write to Andrea Estes, the lead writer of the Globe’s piece on police security planning mentioned above, who is described in her bio on the Globe’s website staff page as an “investigative reporter specializing in government accountability.”

I called and left a message on her phone, and sent her an email, asking if she had looked into the Craft Security personnel, to see who hired them, what they were doing at the race finish line, and why they appeared be carrying radiation detectors. She has so far not responded to my request for information and assistance concerning anything she had done or learned about this, or whether she had looked into it at all.

Certainly there is a big accountability question. A bunch of them actually. Here are a few:

* If Craft International people were hired, who hired them and why?

* If it was the Boston Police or the FBI that hired them, why won’t they just say so? Simply hiring outside security help should not be a secret, and could in no way affect the investigation into the bombing and the captured suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, so why the secrecy about that? Given all the police presence, and the size of the FBI's Boston division, why did they need those extra guys from a private rent-a-soldier firm?

* If it was not the Boston Police or the FBI, what agency did hire the company, and why?

* If it was the state’s Homeland Security Dept. or or the state Executive Office of Public Safety, or perhaps more likely, the US Department of Homeland Security, did they notify the FBI that they had done so, and tell the agency what had prompted them to do this? 


* The big overarching question when it comes to who hired Craft International is, what possible gain in security could have been achieved by adding what appears to be seven guys (or perhaps a few more who didn’t appear in photos) from a private security firm when the Boston Police had in place over 1000 armed security people from their office and the National Guard, and when, as became evident immediately after the bombs went off, a large number of FBI personnel were also on hand?

Unless, of course, the Craft Security people were aware of something that we, the public, including the race participants and spectators, and perhaps even the police and FBI, were not aware of.

Transparency is critical to accountability. At this point, it is clear that we have had a massive failure of the national security state. Despite the fact that the FBI was aware of concerns about Tarmelan Tsarnaev, and the fact that the CIA had him on a watch list, he appears to have been able to work on line to learn how to build a powerful homemade bomb, to obtain the materials, including a substantial quantity of black powder, to build a number of them, and, allegedly with the help of his younger brother Dzhokhar, to place them near the finish line and detonate two of them, killing three people and injuring as many as 200. That’s a huge intelligence fail.

It would be an even bigger fail if it turns out that some agency had awareness of a credible threat and that it hired Craft International personnel to prevent it. We clearly need to know, and have a right to demand to know, who hired those men and why. After all, at a minimum, on the face of things, they did an abysmal job of preventing a bombing right in front of their supposedly well-trained noses.

And of course, as I wrote earlier, there is also another question, which is really disturbing: The image of the exploded backpack released by the FBI and identified as the remains of the pack that was carrying one of the two pressure-cooker bombs, prominently displays a white square on a black background. This is not a doctored photograph; it’s the photograph that was released by the FBI. There are also at least two photos depicting one of the Craft International men who is wearing a black backpack identical to several of the other Craft International personnel. The same white square is also visible on the top of his pack.

There does not appear to be any such white marking -- square or otherwise -- on the top of the black backpack worn by Tarmelan Tsarnaev, as observed in several security photos taken of him (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was shown carrying a smaller white or light-colored pack, slung over one shoulder). Check out the images below of Tarmelan, the exploded bag and the Craft International character:

FBI image of exploded pack with white square, white square on Craft guy's pack, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (left.) with pack but clearly no white square marking

I am not drawing any conclusions from any of this, but I will say that when government agencies at all levels and a private contracting firm are all this obtuse and secretive (and in some cases even deceptive) about what should be a simple question -- who hired these men? -- my suspicions are aroused.

Somebody’s clearly hiding something.

And by the way, why aren't the mainstream media asking about this? Are corporate media journalists so intimidated about being labeled “conspiracy nuts” that they can't do their jobs? At a minimum, this goes to the question of accountability. It also goes to the question of inter-agency communication or lack of it. And given what we know about how many times the FBI has been an active encourager and enabler of terror plots which it later thwarts and claims credit for preventing, there’s the question, too of potential official culpability. Furthermore, when an horrific incident like this is used to justify such new threats to our Constitutional freedom as an unprecedented martial law-style lockdown of an entire 1-million-person metropolitan area and a precedent-setting deliberately Miranda-free, attorney-free interrogation of a hospitalized, gravely wounded and sedated suspect, it is critical that the whole story be told, not just the official one.

[seemslikeadream]

The uncle of the two suspected Boston bombers in last week’s attack, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller

funny that

Well, hello there, rabbit. Nice to find you in this hole.

Jesus fucking christ!

Edit: Wait, wait, wait...obligatory: Link!?

right down the road apiece

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36281&start=30

[stickdog99]

Danny Boy's Language Barrier Explains All Official Inconsistencies