FBI agent kills man linked to Boston bombing suspects

[Bruce Dazzling]

...



...

HoL,

I noticed that you've been making numerous off-topic posts in multiple threads.

Please keep your posts on-topic going forward.

Thanks,

B.D.

[Burnt Hill]

To claim otherwise reminds me of Burnt Hill's suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's behavior after the Boston bombing was damning because he behaved exactly as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

And it didn't occur to him to post something like "holy moses, I was right there, I could have been killed"?

[dada]

"And it didn't occur to him to post something like "holy moses, I was right there, I could have been killed"?"

That reminds me of when the fake Paul McCartney wasn't upset enough when asked about John's murder the next day. The real Paul would've cried or something.

[compared2what?]

To claim otherwise reminds me of Burnt Hill's suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's behavior after the Boston bombing was damning because he behaved exactly as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I thought that was Beeline, and that his point wasn't that innocent behavior was incriminating but that it wasn't exculpatory.

But what do I know.

[pianoblues]

Published on This Can't Be Happening! (http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1778)

Home > Is the FBI Now in the Execution Business?
Is the FBI Now in the Execution Business?
Wed, 06/05/2013 - 11:26
You Have the Right to Remain Silent...as the Grave:
by:
Dave Lindorff



Anyone who was a fan of the old ABC TV series “The Untouchables” or of the later series, also on ABC, called “The FBI,” would know something is terribly fishy about the FBI slaying of Ibragim Todashev.

According to the FBI, Todashev, 27, who was an acquaintance, or friend, of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, was shot and killed by an FBI agent who was interviewing the young man, at his home, at midnight, allegedly because Todashev had suddenly attacked him, causing the agent to feel threatened.

There are an astonishing number of conflicting versions of this official story, involving a variety of different weapons and multiple explanations for how it happened. These versions variously had Todashev threatening the agent with a sword, a knife, a chair, a pipe, a metal pole or even a broomstick. But one thing that stands out is that the agent in each version was alone with Todashev, who was suspected of having been an participant, with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in an as yet unsolved September 11, 2011 slaying of three suspected young drug dealers in Waltham, Mass. at least one of whom was also a friend of the Tsarnaev brothers.

The critical word here is “alone.”

Watchers of those FBI TV programs know that FBI agents always work in pairs. This is not just Hollywood. It’s FBI policy.

Ibragim Todashev and autopsy photo showing FBI agent's "kill shot" to the head during a midnight household "interrogation"Ibragim Todashev and autopsy photo showing FBI agent's "kill shot" to the head during a midnight household "interrogation"



Indeed, when my father was informed back in 1969, by a colleague at the University of Connecticut School of Engineering where he was a professor, that the FBI was investigating me for my anti-war activities, the colleague, an arch-conservative backer of the US war in Vietnam, said that “two FBI agents” had come to his office to inquire about my activities (he had been outraged that the agents had come to him and not to my father for information about his son!).

It was also a pair of FBI agents who came, unannounced, to my dorm room at Wesleyan University a year earlier, when a group of us students had been hiding my roommate’s older brother, a Marine who had deserted from the service on a visit home from Vietnam whom we later helped escape to Canada and ultimately Sweden. In fact, so common were the visits by agents to anti-war activists that we on the left back in those days used to laugh that the FBI guys always looked like Jehovah’s witnesses when they’d knock on your door on a visit, traveling in pairs and wearing their neatly pressed suits.

Jokes aside, though, there is a reason that FBI agents work in pairs. It’s not that they can’t handle themselves in a confrontation, though safety no doubt is part of it. It’s that lying to a federal law enforcement agent is a felony -- one that is very easy to prosecute and win conviction on and that has long proved useful for locking people up when conviction for a bigger crime might be difficult -- but it is necessary to have a witness to make such a case. Two FBI agents means that there is always a witness to such lying -- one that a jury will be inclined to believe.

So how did it come to pass that when Todashev made his alleged lunge -- armed with knife, sword, chair, pipe, broomstick or whatever -- at the FBI agent in question, that agent was alone in the apartment with him?

We’re asked to believe that the other agent (two actually, as there were reportedly three of them involved in a five-hour interrogation at the house earlier that night), and several Massachusetts state cops who were also along in Orlando, Florida for the questioning of Todashev, had inexplicably just “left the room” for some reason. That's a lot of people all needing to relieve themselves at the same time!

This “explanation” for the creation of a situation allowing for a fatal two-man fight strains credulity to the breaking point. The FBI also claims that Todashev had already “confessed,” or was “about to confess” (whatever that means) to having been involved in the triple murder of the drug dealers, though that alleged confession (or pending confession) was, also incredibly, not recorded. Todashev was being questioned too, reportedly, about his links to the Tsarnaev brothers, and was thought to know about their alleged plans for marathon mayhem, so presumably keeping him alive to testify would have been very important to the pending federal case against the surviving younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

I would submit that it is simply not believable that such a suspect would not have been carefully guarded, carefully searched for weapons, and carefully secured in some fashion -- most likely with handcuffs, before being questioned. I would also submit that there is no way that one lone agent would have been left alone with him under any circumstances, and not just for security reasons, but because Todashev was supposedly being interrogated, and there had to be a witness to his answers besides just the agent doing the questioning.

On TV, we do see agents or cops playing the old “good-cop-bad-cop” game with suspects, but that is always in a locked interrogation room, where the suspect has been searched for weapons already, and where reinforcements are just outside the door, ready to rush into the room should things get out of hand. Maybe this agent was the “bad cop” who was going to beat the crap out of Todashev while the other agents and cops were not there to call him off, you say? But if that was the case, he would either have had to be a very confident black belt to be alone confronting Todashev, who was known by the FBI to be a mixed martial arts expert, or he would have had his gun drawn. Furthermore, if beating up Tsarnaev, or torturing him, was the plan, they would have already cuffed him and locked him to a chair or table, since there was no advantage to be had by leaving him loose and free to counter-attack or defend himself.

The agent’s response to being allegedly attacked by the apparently un-restrained and variously armed Todashev (the FBI is now admitting that the victim was unarmed [1] throughout the incident), was to draw his gun and kill the suspect with seven shots, including one fired, execution-style, to the back of the head.

Todashev, who had already been questioned, had already told a friend earlier that he was worried that he was being “framed” by the FBI. Does that sound like someone who would have willingly testified to guilt in a brutal triple murder?

I don’t know what happened at midnight in Orlando in Todashev’s apartment, but it seems clear to me that what the FBI is saying happened, and what it is claiming Todashev told them, is not what it was. The ACLU seems to agree and is calling for an "outside investigation" [2] of the FBI killing.

America under President and Drone Commander Barack Obama and a “Justice” Department headed by Eric Holder, is fast becoming a very dangerous place -- one that has much more in common with the Colonies under British rule than the one that the Founders envisioned when they appended the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Indeed, if, as it certainly appears, Todashev was executed by the FBI, it is a country that more closely resembles China or Nazi Germany than the free country we all were taught that we lived in.

[slimmouse]

America under President and Drone Commander Barack Obama and a “Justice” Department headed by Eric Holder, is fast becoming a very dangerous place -- one that has much more in common with the Colonies under British rule than the one that the Founders envisioned when they appended the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Indeed, if, as it certainly appears, Todashev was executed by the FBI, it is a country that more closely resembles China or Nazi Germany than the free country we all were taught that we lived in.[

I think this quote is well worthy of repetition. Its a shame the Presidents name is in there, since anyone worth his salt knows that the agenda certainly isnt set by the people who participate in the shameful lie that is our current so called democratic process.

What this means is that you could probably have cast your vote for your own personal choice for quite some time now, but where we are today would still be where we are. And the problem I have with that is that Im pretty sure that this isnt what people really want.

[beeline]

To claim otherwise reminds me of Burnt Hill's suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's behavior after the Boston bombing was damning because he behaved exactly as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I thought that was Beeline, and that his point wasn't that innocent behavior was incriminating but that it wasn't exculpatory.

But what do I know.

Yes, that was me. Not damning behavior, though, just that good criminals--those that don't get caught--will act innocent. Like if you rob a bank, you don't go to the neighbor's house afterwards visibly shaken and ask for a triple scotch on the rocks. Good criminals will just walk away, like nothing has happened whatsoever.

[pianoblues]

Good criminals will just walk away, like nothing has happened whatsoever.

With cap on backwards so everyone can see their face, claiming responsibility for murder to unidentified carjacking victims and making sure to confess in writing on a boat wall that only law enforcement has access to. What would motivate a good criminal to confess, before he's been charged with a crime?

[Burnt Hill]

"And it didn't occur to him to post something like "holy moses, I was right there, I could have been killed"?"

That reminds me of when the fake Paul McCartney wasn't upset enough when asked about John's murder the next day. The real Paul would've cried or something.

My point being that it was an unusual use of social media, being all cool when that person had been at the scene. His too coolness seemed out of place.
And my feelings about it were most likely accurate.

[Burnt Hill]

To claim otherwise reminds me of Burnt Hill's suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's behavior after the Boston bombing was damning because he behaved exactly as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I thought that was Beeline, and that his point wasn't that innocent behavior was incriminating but that it wasn't exculpatory.

But what do I know.

I see Beeline has accepted responsibility,
I know I shared the thought line and said at least that, though I am not searching back!
Thanks Beeline and c2w?

[compared2what?]

To claim otherwise reminds me of Burnt Hill's suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's behavior after the Boston bombing was damning because he behaved exactly as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I thought that was Beeline, and that his point wasn't that innocent behavior was incriminating but that it wasn't exculpatory.

But what do I know.

Yes, that was me. Not damning behavior, though, just that good criminals--those that don't get caught--will act innocent. Like if you rob a bank, you don't go to the neighbor's house afterwards visibly shaken and ask for a triple scotch on the rocks.

But if you put your little black mask in your pocket and turn your bag around so that the "SWAG" doesn't show before you ring the doorbell, then that's okay, right?

Good criminals will just walk away, like nothing has happened whatsoever.

...

Oh.

[compared2what?]

Good criminals will just walk away, like nothing has happened whatsoever.

With cap on backwards so everyone can see their face, claiming responsibility for murder to unidentified carjacking victims and making sure to confess in writing on a boat wall that only law enforcement has access to.

Without prejudice one way or the other wrt whether or not those things happened and/or what it means if they did:

The latter two wouldn't be examples of the same thing, since both occurred after they were publicly identified. (Meaning: Under such extreme circumstances, extreme behavior isn't necessarily a sign of guilt. Kind of the flip side of the same coin.)

But at least as I understood it, the cap-on-backwards thing is exactly the kind of "normal" conduct that Beeline was saying doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

What would motivate a good criminal to confess, before he's been charged with a crime?

They have ways of making you talk. So that's also not conclusive, if true.

[pianoblues]

They have ways of making you talk. So that's also not conclusive, if true.

"If true"...In Jewell's ( the guy originally suspected of the Atlanta Olympic backpack bombing) case against components of mainstream media, their reporting speculation as fact was considered justifiable because once he'd been suspected, he'd become a public figure.

Not much conclusive has yet been presented at all about this case yet, that I've read anyway...

It is odd-at-best to me that the written on wall of boat confession, began to be purported and reported only after the FBI hauled the boat away. Ways of making you write? A confession? While bleeding, being shot at and smoke bombed?

[compared2what?]

They have ways of making you talk. So that's also not conclusive, if true.

"If true"...In Jewell's ( the guy originally suspected of the Atlanta Olympic backpack bombing) case against components of mainstream media, their reporting speculation as fact was considered justifiable because once he'd been suspected, he'd become a public figure.

That actually conflates two three a bunch of separate but related questions about whether or not what they reported was false and defamatory and to what extent they were at fault for it if it was. But without getting into too much detail, public figures are considered to have a higher burden of proof for establishing fault than private persons because they voluntarily expose themselves to scrutiny.*** And the court held that Richard Jewell was a voluntary limited-purpose public figure because they considered the interviews he'd given to the media after the bombing back when he was still an eyewitness/hero to have been enough to make him one.

That's a distinction with a real difference in first-amendment terms, because the first part of it is absolutely key to the extra-protected-speech privileges that attach to criticisms of government officials. And there's really not that much wrong with it, per se. The other part of it -- ie, the ruling -- is bad, stupid and maybe harmful law. But it's not really comparable.

Whatever the case: If what you're saying is that repeating unverified, publicly reported speculation about a named person's involvement in a criminal conspiracy doesn't somehow end up justifying itself, I agree. (Crisis actors.)

Not much conclusive has yet been presented at all about this case yet, that I've read anyway...

Completely agree.

It is odd-at-best to me that the written on wall of boat confession, began to be purported and reported only after the FBI hauled the boat away. Ways of making you write? A confession? While bleeding, being shot at and smoke bombed?

Can't really rule out the possibility that he scrawled some three-word phrase that meant something to him on the wall that the cops interpreted as an admission of guilt and then represented to the press that way, or whatever. But I definitely don't take it for granted that reports about that are accurate. Or possibly even remotely true.



Might be a flaw in that reasoning, but fwiw, there it is.
__________________

***ON EDIT: And because what they do has more public consequences so it's more in the public interest to discuss their actions, blah, blah, blah. It's not really easy (for me) to summarize, and I probably got it wrong.

[hiddenite]

Put a new Mark Ames article on the bombings thread , last paragraph ;

"Last year, when Tamerlan and his father visited Chechnya, they spent time in two towns with relatives — Chiri-Yurt, and Urus-Martan. Why does this matter? Because everyone has been claiming that none of this matters, dumbing down a conversation that already started at a remarkably low baseline. Evoking the world that made the Tsarnaev brothers isn’t meant to prove that every Chechen is a Wahhabi terrorist; rather, it’s meant to show you a glimpse of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s reality, the world that shaped them. It’s a world totally alien to most of us — not a facile good/evil world, or a world made for weepy Spielberg films. Unfortunately, the people who know this world least of all are the same ones policing the conversation about the Boston Marathon bombings."


seems apt