Boston marathonReport critical of intelligence, law enforcement Boston Marathon information sharing

A 37-page report released by the House Committee on Homeland Security, asserts that the FBI and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) all failed properly to coordinate and investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the years before his involvement in the deadly bombing attack at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

As theBoston Globe reports, although the report does not explicitly blame any particular agency, “it paints a damning portrait of a lack of coordination between them.” More importantly, “it casts doubt on assertions by the FBI and other agencies that greater attention on Tsarnaev would not have prevented the bombings.”

“There were opportunities in which greater sharing of information might have altered the course of events, the report goes on to say, “Such failures must not be allowed to persist.” This last part raises controversy due to the admission by these agencies that there was little they could have done in this case to change the outcome.

The Committee goes on to point out that “Customs and Border Protection officials missed opportunities to detain Tsarnaev for questioning at JFK Airport in New York, even though alerts were triggered when he booked air travel to and from Russia in 2012.” Astoundingly, these alerts went as far as to include instructions that “detain is mandatory.”

In response, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said that, “We acted upon the information provided to us by the Russians in 2011 and did everything legally possible at the time to ascertain whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev posed a threat. We took a number of steps including conducting an interview with him and his family but found no derogatory information.” Additionally, “An official at the Department for Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, said the agency ‘has already taken steps to identify and address coordination issues raised as a result of the investigation.”

TheGlobe adds that prior to the release of the report “a partisan fight broke out on the committee, sapping support and potentially blunting the effect of its findings. Key Democrats on the committee criticized majority Republicans who control the investigation for not following proper procedure for including classified intelligence material.”