Fort Lauderdale Shooting: FBI Involvement in Another Act of Violence

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By James Henry

Source: Who.What.Why.

Two months before Esteban Santiago opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol at Fort Lauderdale’s airport Friday, killing five and injuring six, he underwent an “assessment” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

This procedure, which can involve intrusive investigations and interrogation, ended with the Bureau finding that Santiago had committed no crimes and had no ties to terrorism.

A growing number of these incidents exhibit the same disturbing feature: the FBI and/or other federal agencies had prior knowledge of the perpetrators. And there’s another common thread: the FBI’s ex post facto explanations of those interactions do not make a lot of sense. What is never raised is the possibility that the government’s actions are actually pushing already unstable people over the edge.

The phenomenon has become so common that even mainstream outlets like Fox News have taken to calling people like Santiago “Known Wolves.” However, the problem is usually framed as one of law-enforcement agencies “hamstrung” by “politically correct” culture and outdated “civil liberties” limits placed upon investigators. Issues of who should and who should not be given access to guns inevitably tops the discussion.

Despite all the focus on “known wolves” like Santiago, one line of questioning is seldom pursued: What exactly took place during their interactions with government investigators, and how likely is it that these government actions made violence more probable in the future?

Soon after the shooting, the FBI told reporters that two months earlier Santiago had walked into the Anchorage FBI office and made “disturbing” remarks about hearing voices, and being forced to watch ISIS videos. He seemed “agitated and incoherent,” while maintaining “that his mind was being controlled by a US intelligence agency.” They confiscated his gun, which was registered to him.

The FBI, after deciding he had broken no laws and had no terrorist ties, turned him over to the local police who had him hospitalized briefly.

Anchorage police Chief Chris Tolley said “Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believe he was being influenced by ISIS.”  Nevertheless, after undergoing some sort of psychiatric evaluation, he “was not adjudicated mentally ill” — and they returned to him his 9mm Walther.

Federal law-enforcement sources told NBC News that they believe it was the same gun he allegedly used in the airport shootings.

After the FBI’s “assessment” was complete, Santiago flew from Anchorage last week, ultimately ending his trip at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport.

Mind Control

While the very mention of “mind control” being conducted by a “US intelligence agency” conjures images of wild-eyed paranoia, and is thus discounted out of hand, there is in fact a long and sordid history of efforts by national security agencies to manipulate individuals for various reasons. “Psychological manipulation” may be a more apt term.

Indeed, there appears to be a pattern emerging: more and more disturbed individuals who commit mass atrocities had many prior interactions with national security agents.

Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the “UnaBomber,” was the victim of a CIA-funded MK-ULTRA psychological experiment when he was an undergraduate at Harvard University. Part of the experiment involved abusive and humiliating interrogations. Understandably, many familiar with the case have wondered whether this abuse led him to later commit acts of anonymous terror.

Similarly, is it possible that Santiago’s interactions with the FBI or some other federal agency pushed him to the tipping point?

The record shows that various federal agencies have taken investigative interest in Santiago over the last few years. He was investigated by “Homeland Security Investigations” for child pornography in either 2011 or 2012, law-enforcement sources told a local CBS affiliate in Miami. Three weapons and a computer were seized, but there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

A “US military official” also told NBC Nightly News that Santiago, a veteran who served during the war in Iraq, was “being tracked” by Army Criminal Investigation Command because of “psychological issues.”

The FBI, for its part, claims to have conducted an “assessment” of him after its interaction with Santiago in Anchorage in November.

We don’t know — and likely never will know — what those investigations looked like. The agencies involved almost never divulge “sources and methods.” We do know that as a result of his interaction with the FBI, Santiago was sent to an as yet unnamed mental health facility where he underwent some kind of “psychological treatment.” Since he was an Army veteran, it’s likely the Veterans Administration was involved.

An assessment, usually cited by the FBI as the “least intrusive” level of investigation done by the Bureau, can nonetheless be very intrusive. According to an ACLU fact sheet, FBI assessments can include:

collecting information from online sources, including commercial databases.

recruiting and tasking informants to gather information about you.

using FBI agents to surreptitiously gather information from you or your friends and neighbors without revealing their true identity or true purpose for asking questions.

having FBI agents follow you day and night for as long as they want.

The FBI can also conduct an assessment on an individual just to see if he or she would make a good informant — regardless of whether that person is suspected of a crime.

Could these government intrusions push an already unstable person further into paranoia or delusion? Conscientious investigators would surely take care not to “set off” paranoid individuals who have been targeted for investigation. But it is not hard to imagine careless or unscrupulous investigators pushing too hard — particularly if the investigation involved anything touching on “national security.”

Assessing What, Exactly?

It’s worth noting that the FBI had also conducted an assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the “mastermind” behind the Boston Marathon bombing who died in a gunfight with police.

Attorneys for his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015, wrote in court documents that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s interactions with the Bureau “were among the precipitating events for Tamerlan’s actions during the week of April 15, 2013.” Family members and “other sources” told Dzhokhar’s defense team that the FBI tried to pressure Tamerlan into becoming an informant.

Dzhokhar’s lawyers suggested that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s interactions with the Bureau could have “increased his paranoia and distrust.”

We also know that an undercover FBI agent goaded Elton Simpson to “tear up Texas” shortly before he and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, shot up a “Draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015. Hours before the event, the FBI sent a bulletin to local police warning that Simpson was “interested in the event.”

Even more troubling, there was an undercover FBI agent at the event communicating about security measures with a third individual, whom agents knew had been in contact with one of the shooters.

All this information was only made public because some of the agent’s text messages were quoted in court documents.

Arun Kundnani, lecturer on terrorism studies at New York University, told The Intercept about the incident:

The FBI uses informants and undercover agents to pressure suspected ISIS sympathizers into committing acts of violence, so that they can then be prosecuted. The Garland shooter case is the most striking illustration yet of the dangers of this approach. Essentially, it suggests the government may be manufacturing the very threat it is supposed to be countering.

The list goes on: Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub shooter; Ahmad Khan Rahimi, the NY/NJ bomber; Usaama Rahim, shot dead after he went after police with a knife in Boston; Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter; and Wasil Farooqui, who attacked two random people with a knife in Virginia  — all had interactions with the Bureau before seemingly going berserk.

FBI CYA

“The FBI failed there… The federal government already knew about [Santiago’s claim that the CIA was making him watch ISIS videos] for months, they had been evaluating him for a while, but they didn’t do anything,” the accused shooter’s brother Bryan Santiago told the Associated Press.

In what has become almost a boilerplate description of these assessments, the FBI told reporters that the FBI investigated Santiago, conducted “interagency checks” and did “database reviews.”

“During our initial investigation we found no ties to terrorism,” Special Agent Ritzman told reporters. “He broke no laws when he came into our [Anchorage] office making disjointed comments about mind control.”

But as we’ve seen time and again, it’s the FBI’s statements about its interactions with a soon-to-be-violent perpetrator that are disjointed. (Read this for an in-depth analysis and comparison of the FBI’s explanation of its interactions with one of the “Boston bombers” and the more recent “NY/NJ Bomber.”)

Note the specific reference to terrorism in the FBI statement. The implication is that Santiago could not have been investigated further because no direct link to terrorism was found. But he told them he had been watching ISIS videos, so there was a link.

In fact, the FBI routinely goes after people for similar activity. Since 9/11 the Bureau has been repeatedly accused of creating elaborate, time-consuming stings to entrap individuals who, the agency believes,,might commit an act of violence in the future — on no more evidence than social media rants and the like.

Another curious discrepancy in the FBI report: the agency claims that Santiago said in November he didn’t want to hurt anyone, but since he had recently been arrested for domestic violence, there was reason to suspect he was capable of such action.

Maybe “mind control” is too strong a term to describe what these individuals experienced at the hands of government investigators. But whatever is going on in the shadows, it is not ending well for the rest of us.

Boston Marathon Bombings’ Guilty Verdict Exposed as a Gross Travesty of Justice

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By Joachim Hagopian

With the official government narrative of the 9/11 attack filled with a plethora of lies that have since been subsequently exposed, the next biggest “war on terror” event on US soil that the feds failed to stop was the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. And now the lone living suspect from that horrific crime that killed three people, left 17 limbless and injured 264 victims (though that number’s been accused of being purposely inflated) has now been found guilty of all 30 counts after the jury’s 11 hour deliberation earlier this week. As we mark the second anniversary of this tragic event and the second and final phase of the trial beginning on Monday that will decide the fate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – whether he’ll live out the rest of his life in prison or be put to death, a critical review of preceding events and developments surrounding his high profile, extremely significant case seems both timely and much needed.

Despite Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleading not guilty to the 30 counts (17 carrying the death penalty) he was charged within a week after the April 15th bombings last year, his lead defense attorney Judy Clark several days ago conceded to the jury that her client was guilty in her closing argument. Apparently blaming the dead brother whose due process was denied became Dzhokhar’s only defense strategy. The defense team insisted that he was coerced and bullied by his older brother into committing alleged acts of terrorism. Considering no real solid proof other than photos placing Dzhokhar and older brother Tamerlan both wearing backpacks at the scene of the crime where the two bombs exploded was even presented at the trial, no justice for either the Tsarnaevs nor the many victims can possibly come from this guilty verdict.

If the purpose of the US judicial system in criminal trials is to ensure that all factual evidence surrounding an alleged crime or crimes be accurately and fairly presented so that the jurors can properly assess the best semblance of the truth as presented by both prosecution and defense in order for the jury to adjudicate and decide a defendant’s true guilt or innocence, this trial was a complete travesty of justice. And if a basic tenet of the justice system in the United States holds that a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty, then again this verdict outcome is an obscene farce and a shameful joke exposing America’s justice system for its gross injustice. Just as the 9/11 commission failed to adequately address and answer dozens of questions that its official narrative failed to deliver, and years earlier the Warren Commission failed JFK and America, so does the prosecution’s case of evidence of Tsarnaev’s guilt fail to be convincing, much less provide definitive and unequivocal proof that the 21-year old Chechen American with his brother committed the Boston Marathon crimes.

And the prime reason why is that so much of the testimony and so called evidence was based on the FBI and local law enforcement’s dishonest versions of events that were based near exclusively on the government’s one star witness’s faulty, changeable, non-credible accounting of events. The identity of this sole witness that even through the trial was never revealed, testified in court by his fake name “Danny.” Later it was learned that Danny’s real name was Dun Meng. A Chinese national finishing his masters at Northeastern University in engineering, during his alleged carjacking, Meng claimed that the deceased brother Tamerlan confessed that he and his younger brother were responsible for both the Marathon bombings as well as the murder of the MIT campus policeman.

Throughout his trial testimony, the key witness maintained constant eye contact with what seemed almost like his handler, Northeastern University criminology professor James Fox. Fox clearly acted as Meng’s coach and gatekeeper ensuring that Fox would be present in a tentative interview with WhoWhatWhy journalist Russ Baker though it turned out Fox made sure it never happened. In a television interview with the immigrant gas station attendant that Meng ran to when he escaped, it was Fox once again guarding his henhouse, making sure the attendant stayed on script, an odd role for a criminology professor. But in a case where the entire story was badly scripted by the feds, necessitating absolute control over all outgoing information to the public, Professor Fox was merely playing his part. And that part also included state propagandist. Samplings from articles he wrote for the Boston Globe, starting with his response to the difficulty of finding a cemetery that would accept Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body, he wrote:

I truly understand and appreciate why many folks want nothing to do with the corpse of a man who apparently hated America and our way of life… If and when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were scheduled to die, his name and image would be plastered all over the news, further increasing his undeserved celebrity in the minds of those on the political fringe who view our government as evil and corrupt… The bombing seems to have been an attack against American life, not specifically American lives. Those killed and injured were unfortunate surrogates of the intended target: America and the freedoms we enjoy.”

When the strength of the state’s evidence to convict and execute a man relies solely on one incognito witness whose tightly controlled testimony repeatedly kept changing depending on whom he talked to, how can a guilty verdict be considered legitimate or fair? Virtually the entire guilt or innocence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rested on what this one alleged witness claimed, yet he kept changing his story on numerous occasions despite his gatekeeper’s best intentions.

The other so called incriminating evidence used against Dzhokhar was a bogus, totally unbelievable written confession that he is purported to have written in the dark on the inside wall of the boat he was hiding out in. Dzhokhar was supposedly laying there nearly bleeding to death from the alleged gunshot exchange with police a few hours earlier. Yet on video footage the young man is seen emerging unassisted from the boat appearing bloodless and uninjured only to be admitted minutes later to the emergency hospital room in critical condition suffering from a deeply sliced neck wound that prevented him from speaking for weeks. How did that happen while in police custody? And that came after a swarm of police shot a slew of bullet holes into the boat while Tsarnaev supposedly lay there gravely injured.

Just as the French authorities made sure that no prisoners were allowed to be taken alive in the alleged Hebdo Paris crime spree in January, nor in Osama bin Laden’s alleged execution in Pakistan in 2011, nor in the JFK assassination, that barrage of gunfire into that boat by FBI and/or local police was also intended to kill the only suspect. That way the government’s complicity, criminal involvement and subsequent cover-up would have conveniently been eliminated – wiped clean of any messy complications in the form of a suspect trial and the truth inadvertently leaking out. So the US government proceeds with a pseudo-trial that kept the defendant silent and unable to ever present his side of the story. In effect, he may as well have been silenced by the bullets intended to kill him.

Another of the dozens of discrepancies in this case is over how and when older brother Tamerlan actually died. A series of photos of a naked and handcuffed Tamerlan were taken as the police placed him into custody and inside a patrol car. Both CNN and the Boston Globe reported that Tamerlan was alive in police custody. Yet the feds’ official line was that after the brothers robbed a 7-Eleven, Tamerlan was killed in the Watertown shootout with the police while Dzhokhar backed the car over him as he made his temporary getaway. It can only be one or the other. The photos don’t lie. Cops do.

For so many incredulous inconsistencies to actually be accepted as convincing “evidence” while so many discrepant facts directly contradict state evidence, and then the “no questions asked” defense and mainstream media throughout the trial passively swallowing it hook, line and sinker in its rush to convict Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (trial being over in less than a month with 95 witnesses) is utterly preposterous and again, a complete and total miscarriage of justice. For nearly two years all the potential defense witnesses were constantly harassed, deported, jailed, and even killed, thus, virtually silencing any chance of a fair defense for Dzhokhar.

But then the propaganda lies built into this case from the start were designed to convict the brothers as the patsy fall guys all along. Going back to the JFK assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald, every false flag operation has its unwitting stooges who are used by the feds as props to take the sole blame. From President Obama to the FBI to their propagandist presstitutes, they were all publicly weighing in their guilty verdicts no sooner than the release of the photos that within days of the bombings identified the two brothers as the only prime suspects, thus prejudicing the entire case, effectively swaying Americans into believing that the one suspect still alive was guilty long before his trial ever began. And we know based on both Obama and the FBI’s track records that they both are constantly lying through their teeth and obviously cannot be trusted.  The overwhelming majority of American citizens per last August’s CNN poll, an all-time high of 87%, of Americans simply do not trust their own government, knowing that they are constantly being lied to every day. And with so many blatant holes in the state’s case, anyone half aware and informed of what’s been allowed to go down in the Boston Marathon bombings case would be near 100% certain that the government is once again producing an over-the-top false narrative designed to hide its own criminality. But then the US federal government’s become a militarized dictatorship, part of an international crime cabal that uses state propaganda as effectively as the Nazis ever did.

All kinds of unexplained anomalies are rampant throughout this case. A number of paid mercenaries from Craft International, a paramilitary private security contractor out of Texas (not unlike notorious Blackwater/aka Xe/aka Academi) were also spotted in photos wearing those same black colored government-issued-like backpacks. The question of whether any of them laid their backpack and its contents on the ground never quite came up in the trial. Apparently these guys were part of a Homeland Security training exercise that just happened to be training at the exact same time and place as the so called terrorists on that Boston Marathon day. Think about those odds, kind of like America’s entire national air defense on 9/11 conveniently being absent, purposely diverted to training exercises in the Atlantic just so the 9/11 false flag could be executed as planned. In Boston the unmistakable heavy presence of the military and special ops personnel assembled en-masse instantly on the scene after the marathon explosions is yet another giveaway indicating that the feds had something if not everything to do with this tragedy.

Clearly it was a training exercise alright, Bostonians was used as a guinea pig litmus test for assessing how a large US urban population of over a million people would react to a first practice, simulation dry-run of martial law in America, conveniently prepping us for what’s to come. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act upheld by the US Supreme Court a year ago now permits the US military to invade our homes without warrant, arrest us without charges, and imprison us indefinitely without trial, legal representation or due process. After the marathon bombings the feds’ stand down order issued over an expansive, densely populated metropolitan area to remain in their homes while a massive police state-army dressed and armed for war against its own people without warrants entered thousands of homes with automatic weapons drawn in the largest, monster-scale manhunt in US history searching for one teenager from a family with whom the feds were already very familiar.

Perhaps the most respected independent news team that’s been diligently investigating the Boston Marathon bombings the last two years – WhoWhatWhy – has asserted that older brother Tamerlan was most likely an FBI informant. Through court motions last year Dzhokhar’s defense team submitted evidence that the FBI had approached the older Tsarnaev brother in an effort to recruit him to spy on his fellow Boston Chechen and Muslim community. The US intel community has a verifiably long history both here and around the globe of seeking out troubled youth and young people like the Tsarnaevs as informants in its worldwide clandestine operations.

The FBI and CIA’s common misuse of paying informants to entrap others globally into joining plots of terrorism was well documented in researcher-author Trevor Aaronson’s book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Between 9/11 and 2011 he confirmed that 508 defendants were recruited by informants paid up to $100,000 in multiple sting operations. In fact, in all but only three high profile cases were the FBI and their informants not involved. Again, this demonstrates that the US government’s calling card around the world reads “Terrorism-R-US,” just another M.O. for squandering hard earned taxpayer dollars to keep its invented “war on terror” very much ongoing and alive forever.

What seems most probable are efforts by the FBI to recruit Tamerlan to become a snitch in the neocons’ self-serving war on terror. Yet this piece of crucial evidence has been purposely withheld from all court proceedings and MSM’s dubious, half-ass coverage. 26-year old Tamerlin was a down on his luck, unemployed boxer whose dream of Olympic gold had been shattered, married to a nurse’s aide working 60 hours a week to make ends meet. Yet WhoWhatWhy states that just two days prior to the bombings, Tamerlan could afford sending his mother in Russia $900 cash along with paying for the backpacks (or were they government issued?), ammunition and bomb-making materials. Yet this critical piece of information was also prohibited from further inquiry during the trial.

Of course the FBI predictably denied any Tsarnaev solicitation to become an informant. Prior to last month’s trial, the US Circuit Court judge presiding over the case explicitly ordered that the brother’s involvement with FBI not be allowed to enter his courtroom during the trial. It remains to be seen if Judge George A. O’Toole will permit the defense to present this critical information during the upcoming sentencing phase. Because the government has so much to hide and has failed to address so many discrepancies in the case for obvious high stakes reasons, it probably won’t be included, which of course only reinforces what many of us already know, that this trial is but a sham for police state propaganda and truth suppression.

Of all the receipts for typical everyday items purchased, the only receipts found in Tamerlan’s pockets were receipts for his self-incriminating bomb-making materials. That’s almost like finding the unblemished passport belonging to the lead 9/11 box-cutter a couple blocks from the towers’ ashes the day after, or the Hebdo gunman’s wallet with ID left carelessly on purpose in the cab so those terrorists could instantly be identified. This calling card pattern smacks of yet another inside job rendition with the same shabby, grubby fed fingerprints carelessly smudged all over it.

Another inconsistent weakness in the prosecution’s case was the sophistication required for making the “pressure-cooker” bombs used at the marathon. Supposedly Tamerlan learned off an al Qaeda internet website where the article’s authors mention the directions being beyond the scope of a novice. Throughout the trial, the prosecution team would go back and forth promoting the notion of the bombs’ complexity whenever it served their purpose. For example, as the reason used to justify the FBI interrogating Dzhokhar for two days straight without reading him his Miranda rights, the FBI suspected that others were also involved, partially based on the bombs seeming more than homemade-like. Yet whenever it would come up as a reason to mitigate seeking the death penalty, the notion of lone wolves would get drummed home every time.

The traces of bomb materials in Tamerlan’s apartment underwent the same flip floppy logic as a transparent prosecution ploy used to convict the younger brother. Three times the feds changed their tune on traces of the bomb material being found in the apartment and whether the brothers had outside help or not. These discrepancies consistently went unchallenged by the defense during the trial as if pre-scripted to let the shady government off the hook in its back and forth rendition of “truth,” protecting the feds’ cover-up lies of discrepancy in order to allow the US government to get away with its incriminating part.

The one thread of unfailing consistency throughout this entire two year story is the constant inconsistencies and the countless conspicuously avoided bottom line questions that smack of inside cover-up. Initially the Tsarnaevs were not the suspects. Apparently once the photos of the Tsarnaev brothers at the Boston Marathon were made public asking for help in identifying their names, overheard on a Boston police scanner and then scooped up immediately by social media network sources, the names Mike Mulugeta and Sunil Trapathi were erroneously identified as the suspects. The fact that the FBI knew who the two men in those photos were because they had previous dealings with them enough to place them on a no fly list, the FBI willfully lied to America pretending it needed the public’s assistance to identify them. And then the police put out false names of innocent people as suspects. Mike Mulugeta reportedly was shot dead though any actual accounts confirming his death are completely absent. However, East Indian American and Brown University student Sunil Trapathi who had been reported missing since mid-March was found floating face down in pond water in Providence, Rhode Island about a week after the Marathon explosions. What little information about his suspicious death was released through his family and the question of whether the death resulted from foul play is still largely unknown.

More bogus, planted propaganda against the brothers shortly after they were identified as the prime suspects was the FBI claim linking them to the triple murder case in Waltham, Massachusetts that took place on September 11th, 2011. Only during the trial did it come out that there existed absolutely no evidence that Tamerlan was involved. Yet the systematic damage of misinformation supporting the brothers’ guilt was already done, ensuring that in the court of public opinion the Tsarnaevs were guilty as charged right from the get-go.

Here the Tsarnaev brothers were supposedly on a no fly list acting as more evidence supporting prior contact with intelligence agencies, yet Tamerlan was permitted to fly to known terrorist hotbed Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan from January 21, 2012 to July 17, 2012. His family members insist he spent his entire time with family, among them a distant cousin who heads a non-violent organization critical of Western policies toward Islam. Yet his visit was used by prosecution as so called evidence that the older brother was “radicalized” there and came home an inspired terrorist seeking revenge on America.

New York Times article dated April 20, 2013 suggests that Tamerlan was first approached by the FBI in January 2011 after a return trip from Russia. Russian intelligence services that monitored phone calls in Chechnya warned the FBI in March 2011 that Tamerlan was becoming a potential threat. Thus two plus years well in advance of the bombings, the FBI was already cognizant of Tamerlan’s extremist leaning activities. Yet the FBI allowed him to travel yet again to Russia despite being on a no fly list and less than nine months after his return from that final trip abroad, the Boston Marathon bombings occurred. This damning piece of government evidence makes the feds minimally guilty of criminal gross negligence if not actually a criminal accomplice.

Yet another despicable chapter to this tragic saga is the FBI’s murder of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s friend in Florida. Within weeks after the Boston bombings, an unarmed Ibragim Todashev was shot by an FBI agent previously reprimanded for excessive force as an Oakland police officer. Initially the FBI lied about the circumstances, falsely claiming Todashev wielded a knife. The victim’s family is suing the FBI for $30 million. Even after admitting the lie about the victim brandishing a weapon, the Justice Department (overseeing the FBI) and a Florida prosecutor cleared the murdering FBI agent of any wrongdoing. The official government’s response that in effect supports such egregious acts of violence toward innocent civilians strongly indicates that the victim knew too much and the crime syndicate’s answer for people aware of the feds’ evildoing is to systematically assassinate those who might incriminate the federal government. Neutralizing perceived threats is standard operating procedure.

As an aside, the Tsarnaev brothers’ uncle who went public shortly after the bombings blasting his nephews as “losers” was married for several years in the 1990’s to the daughter of well-known CIA career officer Graham Fuller. Fuller is the CIA architect for creating the Mujahedeen movement that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, the same outfit whose leader Osama bin Laden emerged as the so called 9/11  al Qaeda mastermind.  Fuller was a committed advocate for using Islamic fundamentalists as US proxy war mercenaries. Another coincidence that the CIA VIP’s son-in-law and his nephews came from Chechnya, a hotspot for separatist Muslim terrorist activity?

Once again the United States government appears to be at least complicit in another state crime against its own citizens… and then applying a media blackout to any real investigative reporting that would ask the dozens of questions to get to the truth. Even the defendant’s legal representation abandoned Tsarnaev’s right to a fair trial, and by co-opting to act in accordance with the government’s “no questions asked” implicitly applied gag-rule, it too is complicit in this heinous crime for neither seeking the truth nor any real justice for either the defendants or the scores of victims. The US crime cabal and its fabricated “war on terror” is perpetuated globally, both on US soil and around the world as an ongoing crime against humanity. The truth behind 9/11 is in-our-face, and so is the truth behind these Boston bombings. The criminals in Washington must pay for their crimes.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.

Tsarnaev Guilty of 30 Counts in Boston Bombing Show Trial

show tri·al

noun
noun: show trial; plural noun: show trials
  1. a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice.

Yesterday Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts he was charged for in the Boston Marathon bombing trial. For those following the case who think critically, this came as no surprise not because of any hard evidence proving Tsarnaev’s guilt, but because on the second day of the trial Tsarnaev’s attorney Judy Clarke declared Tsarnaev was guilty in her opening statement saving the state the time and effort of having to prove its case and answer numerous glaring unanswered questions such as the ones asked by WhoWhatWhy and 21st Century Wire.

Now that this particular show trial is over, the government and corporate media will attempt to brush all uncomfortable questions under the rug and, as with JFK, WACO, Oklahoma City Bombing, Columbine, 9/11, Sandy Hook, etc., it will be left to independent researchers and journalists to search for the truth.

For more information about the Boston bombing that the government/corporate-stream media has largely ignored, read this compendium of research and analysis from the Memory Hole blog: http://memoryholeblog.com/2014/04/13/boston-marathon-bombing-a-compendium-of-research-and-analysis/

Former CIA Official Lied in Boston Bombing Cover-Up

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By Daniel Hopsicker

Source: MadCowNews

Former top CIA official Graham Fuller lied in a press interview about his former son-in-law, Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of “The Brothers Tsarnaev,” Tamerlan, now dead, and Dzhokhar, soon to go on trial in Boston for allegedly planting a homemade pressure-cooker bomb packed with shrapnel near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. 

“A story on the Internet implying possible connections between Ruslan (Tsarni) and the Agency through me is absurd,” Fuller said in an Apr 27 2013 story headlined “Former CIA officer: ‘Absurd’ to link uncle of Boston suspects, Agency,” in Washington-D.C.-based Al-Monitor, which bills itself as the “Pulse of the Middle East.”

Fuller was responding to an exclusive report published here headlined “Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?”,which he and reporter Laura Rosen churlishly refused to credit, calling it merely a “story on the Internet” even as they labored to debunk it. Yet it was reported and re-published so widely in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror attack that Fuller felt compelled to respond.

Well,  compelled to respond may be a little strong. Still, respond he did, in an interview which marshalled arguments to indicate questioning whether Ruslan Tsarni’s connection with the CIA had been through his famous former father-in-law were not just an exercise in futility. They were absurd

Just to be clear, there is zero evidence to indicate either Uncle Ruslan Tsarni or the CIA hired the Tsarnaev Brothers to blow up Boston.  There is, however, abundant evidence that elements of the U.S. Government have been playing footsie with Chechen terrorists, presumably to divert Russia from committing the kind of rash Neo-Communist Gangster stuff they’d be doing already unless we’re very very  careful.

Here’s a troubling question: If it was blow-back from that campaign which blew up in Boston—throwing covert U.S. support at Chechen terrorists—do you think anyone in the U.S. Government is eager to let the American people in on that no-doubt classified-for-reasons-of-national-security secret?

Why, the very idea seems—to use Mr. Fuller’s word—absurd.

Uncle Ruslan meets ‘the boys’

In his interview, Graham Fuller admitted that a second bombshell disclosure in an exclusive Apr 26, 2013, report headlined Boston bombers’ uncle married daughter of top CIA official, also was true: The Tsarnaev Brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, was his former son-in-law.

Tsarni was married to Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha between 1994 and sometime near the dawn of the millenium, Fuller grudgingly admitted.  Still, he insisted,without explanation, that suggestions that law enforcement should be checking to see if Ruslan Tsarni had “hooked up” with the CIA through Fuller were “absurd.”

It was an odd assertion. At the very moment he was making it, investigators with the FBI—who remained convinced the Tsarnaev Brothers had outside help and support—were in an intensive manhunt to find foreign connections to the case.  Asking questions about links between Ruslan, the CIA, and the bombers would not be seen as out of bounds. Or would they?

Of course, statements by former top CIA officials should be taken with a large grain of salt. Double the salt allowance if the “former” official is still engaged in intrigue in Central Asia.

Hannibal crosses the Alps; Fuller fords his Rubicon

And that’s before discounting fstill further for being widely and infamously known as the man who convinced the Reagan Administration that it would be a neat idea to send a callow Marine Lt. Col. named Oliver North with a cake under one arm and some TOW missiles under the other to a meet-and-greet in Tehran with the Ayatollah.

But back to the body blows being thrown against the credibility of anyone with the temerity of reporting the obvious…

“Fuller retired from the agency almost a decade before the brief marriage,” sniffed Laura Rosen, the reporter  selected to give him a sympathetic hearing.

“I, of course, retired from CIA in 1987,” Fuller offered helpfully, suggesting his Agency past had receded into the far reaches of recorded history, a dimly-remembered time located somewhere just this side of Hannibal crossing the Alps.

If Fuller retired, moved to Florida, and taken up golf while decked out in the vibrant hues of lime-green and canary-yellow sweater-slack combinations favored in the Florida golfing fraternity, he might have a point.

That was not, alas, how Fuller chose to spend his dwindling years. Even today he keeps stirring the pot in Central Asia, a long-time player in what previous generations called the Great Game.

He’s a consultant at Rand Corp; and he’s written a prodigious number of books with Great-Game-y titles: “Turkey & the Arab Spring;” “The Arab Shia’a;” “The Future of Political Islam;” “Turkey’s Kurdish Question;” “The Geopolitics of Islam & the West. “

Kazakh-style crony capitalism, illustrated

Ruslan Tsarni’s former father-in-law isn’t his only link to the CIA. There’s also his decades-long work history, discovered in a press release from a dodgy oil-related company with no assets and a ridiculous name whose President had been somehow lured away from a life-long career with Halliburton.

It reveals that Tsarni had worked in Central Asia for the Agency for International Development (USAID)—a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by the CIA, including a two-year stint in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.

At a time when vast natural resources and enormous fortunes were ‘in play’ during the economic free-for-all in the “Stans” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 24-year old Ruslan Tsarni was already a ‘player.’

Ruslan Tsarni is once again working (since 2010) working for USAID. Oddly enough, Russia, the country competing with the US for influence in the region, unceremoniously kicked USAID out of the country just months before the Boston Bombing terror attack, for, according to a Putin spokesmen, encouraging his political opposition.

Ruslan Tsarni & the Congress of Chechen International Organizations

In his interview with Laura Rosen, Fuller uncorked a whopper. Said Fuller,“Like all Chechens, Ruslan was very concerned about his native land, but I saw no particular involvement in politics [although] he did try to contact other Chechens around.”

Perhaps Fuller felt that no one would notice. Perhaps he felt immune to fact-checking, a sentiment common among Reagan-era CIA officials. But whatever his motivation, he has been caught in a provable lie.  Ruslan Tsarni, as Fuller well knows, has been up to his neck in Central Asian political intrigue for decades. 

On August 17,1995, while Ruslan Tsarni and Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha were still virtual newlyweds, Tsarni incorporated a company in Maryland called the “Congress of Chechen International Organizations.” 

Ruslan Tsarni was listed as the company’s resident agent. The group sent aid to Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, including thousands of pairs of combat boots, coordinating its efforts with another so-called “charity,” Benevolence International, designated “financiers of terrorism” by the Treasury Department before being shut down by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

The company’s listed address, 11114 Whisperwood Ln. Rockville MD., was the home address of former top CIA official s Graham Fuller.

Today, the home remains listed in his wife’s name.

“An impromptu press conference aired live on network television”

With worldwide attention on the upcoming trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, what facts could possibly be being deliberately de-selected and hidden from view?

In “Long Mile Home” a book about the Boston Marathon Bombing by two Boston Globe reporters,  everything they have to say about Ruslan Tsarni isn’t much:

“On the Friday morning after Tamerlan was  killed, with police still hunting for Dzhokhar, investigators and reporters found their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, a corporate attorney living outside Washington D.C.

When he emerged after speaking to FBI agents inside his home, he walked up to television cameras and reporters gathered outside looking for the latest in what had become the biggest story in the world. In an impromptu press conference aired live on network television, Tsarni offered condolences to the bombing victims, denounced his nephews, and ordered Dzhokhar to turn himself in.

Asked to explain what provoked the brothers to attack, Tsarni said, “Being losers. Hatred for those who were able to settles themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else—anything to do with religion, with Islam –that’s a fraud. It’s a fake.”

Asked how he felt about the United States, Tsarni said, “I respect this country. I love this country.”

An opinion writer for the Washington Post called his words “inspiring,” and said his press conference was “a moment we all needed.”

The New Yorker said he “looked like he might hunt his nephew down himself.”

That’s it. That’s everything they wrote about Ruslan Tsarni. Nothing about his work overseas for USAID. Nothing about being the former son-in-law of a top CIA official, or about running an organization out of his house that was sending aid to Chechen terrorists. Most of all nothing about his being—at the same time he was calling his nephews “losers”— a guy involved, according to the London Telegraph, in the biggest bank fraud in history.

By anyone’s standards, that’s a lot not to report. The authors must be proud.

“Uncle” Ruslan Tsarni is the elephant in the living room

“News,” someone once wrote, “is selection.”

And selection is always  based on an ideology and an agenda. Just something to remember the next time you’re reading, or watching, the ‘news.’

As jury selection proceeds in Boston in the upcoming trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the most pressing question about the attack remains one which is so obvious even Time Magazine is asking it: Did They Really Act On Their Own? 

The logical place to start would be with Uncle Ruslan, who’s been married to the daughter of a former top CIA official who remains a”player” in Central Asia’s Great Game.  But, of course, it ain’t gonna happen.

Whether by accident or design, Ruslan Tsarni played the same role in the aftermath of the Boston terror attack played after the 9/11 terror attack by Rudi Dekkers,  manager of Mohamed Atta’s flight school in Venice. And just like Rudi Dekkers before him, his pronouncements were received uncritically.

The mainstream media fawned all over him. He was soon being called “Uncle Ruslan. He  became the primary go-to source on the suspects, peddling his brief about the perfidy and all-around loser nature of his two nephews, one of whom, who he’d helped raise and bring to America, had just been killed in a hail of gunfire with police.

There were no tears for Uncle Ruslan. He was “protected,” and no doubt glad for it.

When Graham Fuller fibbed about Ruslan’s political activities, was it out of personal loyalty, or in support of a larger operation which had Ruslan Tsarni leading every 24-hour news cycle for more than a week during the biggest story of the year? Is there anyone in America who still thinks this happens by accident?

What does this say about the CIA’s ability to mold news coverage of a major event?

Already a valuable asset, Uncle Ruslan hadn’t even executed his most valuable task yet. Tsarni would soon be single-handedly responsible for leading the entire mainstream media of the Western World on a two-week long wild goose chase. Like a Pied Piper for the electronic age, he led the world away from whoever had actually punched the Tsarnaev Brothers ticket to jihad, towards something that didn’t even exist, “a chubby red-haired Armenian Muslim exorcist named Misha.”

More on this in our next story.

Uncle Ruslan’s  network for “international corruption”

When he was pontificating daily on live network television, why had no one thought to ask him about his contemporaneous  involvement in what London newspapers had begun calling “the biggest bank fraud in history?”

That’s the other side, the well-connected oil executive-side, of Ruslan Tsarni, that remains hidden. When one reporter had the bad manners to ask him what he did, Tsarni got touchy, and would say only, “I work for a living.”

End-of-story,CIA-style.

Tsarni is implicated in an international criminal investigation that oddly enough also involves another name currently in the news: Britain’s Prince Andrew, who sold his run-down estate to a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive looking for asylum in London who paid Andrew $10 million more than it was worth.

Before he left Almaty for a more exciting life in London, the banker, with Tsarni’s help, had made off with a cool six billion dollars. Six billion. With a “B.”

More on this in our next story too.

When Graham Fuller was caught lying, it confirmed growing suspicions that huge chunks of the truth about the Boston Marathon Bombing—the biggest act of terrorism in America since the 9/11 attack— are deliberately being hidden from view.

In truth, news that another cover-up is underway comes as no great surprise. What is surprising is how much of cover-up, both in the 9/11 and the Boston Marathon terror attacks, was first identified here, in The MadCow Morning News, whose very name points out the surrealistic absurdity of contemporary American journalism.

Novelist Thomas Pynchon put it best: “If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”

The Boston Bombing Trial Starts, But Answers Aren’t on the Docket

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By Russ Baker

Source: WhoWhatWhy

We do not know what will come out of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but one thing we are pretty sure of: we will not get the real, complete story of what actually happened.

Keep this in mind: the prosecution’s job is not principally to fully explain the background of a crime that was committed. It is to convince a jury to convict. Also, in cases such as this, where a lot of questions about security state operations have been raised, the prosecution, as an arm of the federal government, will be under strict orders to win its case without unduly exposing “sources and methods.” That’s a  polite way of saying, “let’s keep the skeletons in the family closet.”

Lead defense counsel Judy Clarke’s job, and her historic role in past cases, has been to do whatever is necessary to ensure her client avoids the death penalty. Meanwhile, the defendant’s job, right now, is to do what his lawyer tells him. It’s not his job to object or say, “Hey, there’s more to this story.”

Clarke’s interest in exposing the truth is strictly limited to: A) using the threat of embarrassing the government or B) casting doubt on its narrative solely as a bargaining chip to keep her client off death row. She has no particular mandate to find out what really happened. Even by her own pronouncements, Clarke either believes her client is guilty or, perceives that the only practical way forward is to accept that her client will be found guilty.

So don’t hold your breath for explanations to some of the questions we’ve raised. They include:

-What actual evidence exists that these brothers made such a sophisticated bomb—which some experts say they could not have? If not, then they had help and did not act alone, as the government insists. Aren’t the identities and roles of other possible players germane?

-What actual evidence exists that these brothers had bombs with them—and detonated them? Pictures of the backpacks that exploded to some people don’t look like the ones the brothers were wearing.

-What actual evidence exists that these brothers shot and killed an MIT police officer? We’re told that video cameras captured the act, but we’re also told that the video doesn’t make a positive ID.

-Did they actually carjack a man, and if so, for how long and under what circumstances? As we have reported, the purported victim, whose identity has not yet been disclosed, substantially changed his story of what happened.

-Why did the brothers’ uncle, who was the son-in-law of an important CIA official, quickly announce (within hours of their death/apprehension) his suspicion that his nephews were indeed the Boston bombers, despite the fact they had never done anything like that nor indicated that they may do such a thing?

-And what about the other CIA associate, a college professor and former case officer who corresponded with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev about Chechnya? Soon after the bombing, the professor, Brian Glyn Williams, was quoted as saying “I hope I didn’t contribute,” an apparent reference to Dzhokhar’s alleged radicalization.

-Why did the FBI seemingly ignore warnings from the Russians that the elder brother was involved in radical activity?

-Why did the FBI harass rather than seek to obtain information from crucial witnesses?

-After being warned by the Russians, why did the FBI fail to monitor Tamerlan when he left the country to travel to restive regions of Russia where Islamists were active? And then how was it that an alert for him was lowered just before he re-entered the U.S.?

-Why has no one been allowed to talk to Dzhokhar to find out his version of events?

-Will the authorities ever explain why so many things that were leaked by the government to prejudice the public (and the jury pool) turned out to be untrue? The claim that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was guilty in a triple homicide in Waltham, Mass., is just one example. The police never questioned Tamerlan about the slayings, even though they knew he was close friends with one of the victims.

-Will the conflicting and dubious explanations about the FBI’s shooting of an unarmed Ibragim Todashev, friend of Tamerlan, in his Florida apartment while being interrogated, be resolved?

-What about claims that there were drills going on during or around the time of the Marathon—and why were there bomb-sniffing dogs at the finish line? Even the cautious Boston Globe noted that officials had planned a training drill eerily similar to what actually happened.

These are some of the things any fair-minded, thoughtful person would like to know.

But the whole thing appears to be sealed, a done deal. We’re hoping for revelations at the trial. But we aren’t expecting too many. The authorities don’t think we need to know much about our country and its doings in that shadowy arena called “national security.” So the chances of them wanting to enlighten us are depressingly slim.

Image Credit:
Boston Bombing. Photo collage by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy adapted from photos in the public domain or Creative Commons: 
Street Scene – WikimediaDzhokhar Tsarnaev – WikimediaWhite House meeting – WikimediaPolice – Flickr/A Name Like Shields…Vigil – Flickr/Mark Zastrow and Tamerlan Tsarnaev & Ibragim Todashev – DonkeyHotey paintings.

BOSTON UPDATE: FBI War on Marathon Bombing Witnesses Continues

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By James Henry

Source: WhoWhatWhy

The Boston Marathon bombing is much more important than has been acknowledged, principally because it is the major domestic national security event since 9-11 and has played a major role in expanding the power of the security state. For that reason, WhoWhatWhy is continuing to investigate troubling aspects of this story and the establishment media treatment of it. So even as it slips from the headlines, we will be exploring new elements of the story regularly as the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev approaches. 

***

Since the Boston Marathon bombing a year and a half ago, the FBI appears to be intimidating, harassing, and silencing friends and acquaintances of the Tsarnaev brothers. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers have noticed it too—they’re having trouble getting anyone to talk to them, recent court papers reveal.

In what WhoWhatWhy previously described as the FBI’s “war on witnesses”, the Bureau seems to be employing a scorched earth strategy of destroying anything that might be of use to the “enemy.”

On August 29, Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed a motion requesting a continuance for more time to prepare their defense, noting the fact that they were given only half the median preparation time that federal courts have allowed over the past decade for defendants on trial for their lives. (The judge did grant a two-month delay while refusing the defense request to move the trial out of Boston.)

The lawyers cited “outpaced requirements” in building a proper defense for their client: (1) the international nature of the investigation—including language and geographic barriers, (2) the large amount of evidence that has to be scrutinized, and most tellingly, (3) the climate of intimidation and fear created by the FBI’s investigative efforts since the bombing. They write:

Domestic defense mitigation investigation has been conducted amid a growing atmosphere of anxiety and agitation generated by highly-publicized arrests, indictments, prosecutions, deportations (and, in one instance, the FBI killing) of members of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s peer groups.

Most news reports brush over that last part. As if shooting to death an unarmed man involved in this case—as an FBI agent did to Tamerlan’s friend Ibragim Todashev—is not relevant to the difficulties the defense team has had in getting witnesses to talk to them. But even less extreme events are enough to silence potential witnesses, such as the mysterious closing of their bank accounts.

Prosecutors resisted this and an earlier attempt to have the trial delayed. The victims have a right to see justice done—swiftly, the thinking goes.

The victims and their families certainly deserve justice for this horrible atrocity. True justice should include a full accounting—something a hurried, one-sided investigation is not likely to produce. And of course Boston and the American public deserve, and need, the truth, whatever it may be.

Yet a close read of the motion document reveals FBI activities that seem more of an effort to conceal than to illuminate.

The FBI’s March to the Sea

Tsarnaev’s defense team makes reference to the most troubling—and most anxiety-producing—action by the FBI since the bombing: the shooting to death of Tamerlan’s friend, Todashev. (See our earlier story on the head-scratching circumstances surrounding that shooting, including the questionable history of the agent who pulled the trigger.)

Some of the FBI’s aggressive tactics described in the defense document look like outright intimidation. For instance, individuals “with lawful immigration status have been detained for hours and required to surrender their electronic devices upon re-entry to the United States.”

And take a look at this excerpt:

“The investigation has been further hampered by aggressive FBI follow-up tracking and questioning of potential witnesses, as well as by the unrelenting attention of the news media.”

It is one thing to be aggressively tracking and questioning individuals suspected of committing crimes, but to be doing this to presumably innocent witnesses reeks of intimidation. Witness intimidation is a tactic ordinarily associated with mafia or drug cartel defendants.

Notably, this “tracking” must have been brought to the attention of defense lawyers by witnesses themselves, indicating overt surveillance: “We’re watching you.”

Then, farther down in the document:

“These difficult circumstances are compounded by a continuing pattern of aggressive FBI re-interviewing of potential witnesses — on occasion within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator [emphasis added].”

Within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator? Is the defense team being watched too? (We reached out to Tsarnaev’s defense team hoping they could expand on that, but have not yet had a response.)

It wouldn’t be the first time the FBI was caught spying on defense lawyers in a high-profile terrorism case. Lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed allege that the FBI has been surveilling  them.

Whether legal counsel are being watched directly or simply getting caught up in the surveillance of Tsarnaev’s acquaintances, the effect is the same: the feds know who is talking to whom, and when.

That’s a Nice Immigration Status You Got There…

Witnesses who are not U.S. citizens—which describes the majority of Tsarnaev’s friends, family, and many in the local Muslim community—are particularly vulnerable to law enforcement manipulation. The threat of deportation is a clear and present danger to these individuals, “regardless of whether criminal charges are ever brought or proven against them,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers wrote.

Indeed, a handful of people loosely connected to the Tsarnaevs have already been deported, or had deportation proceedings initiated against them, despite having nothing to do with the Boston Marathon bombing. These include:

–   Konstantin Morozov: friend of Tamerlan, arrested and jailed pending deportation reportedly after refusing to wear a wire for the FBI as the Bureau sought information on one of Tamerlan’s Chechen friends.

–   Tatiana Gruzdeva: girlfriend of Ibragim Todashev, deported after speaking with Boston Magazine about the circumstances surrounding her boyfriend’s death.

–   Ashurmamad Miraliev: friend of Ibragim Todashev, was reportedly denied a request for an attorney while interrogated by FBI for over six hours, and transferred to an immigration detention center where deportation proceedings were initiated.

–   Khusen Taramov: friend of Ibragim Todashev, denied reentry to the United States after visiting Chechnya, despite having a Green Card.

Why hasn’t Boston’s “liberal” media made more noise about this? Arguably, the most newsworthy portion of Tsarnaev’s motion for continuance—potential witness intimidation—has been glossed over or ignored in most mainstream media accounts.

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reached out to the media and the public to expose the intimidation and harassment of Todashev’s friends and associates—and got a fair amount press coverage by their local media. The same cannot be said for the Boston area press.

Have they, albeit indirectly, been intimidated, too? The Boston media has historically had a close relationship with law enforcement, and when it ever so slightly challenged the police, found its usual (and needed) sources shut down.

However, if ever there was a moment for the local press to do the right thing, this is surely it.

The Boston Marathon Bombing’s Constructed Reality

By James F. Tracy

Source: Memory Hole

“The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event … For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.” Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922.

The careful coordination of information and visual representations governs the mass mind. The conditions for such are accentuated in times of perceived crisis. For a relatively brief period following the Boston Marathon bombing two sets of photographs emerged that actually depicted what appeared to have taken place at “ground zero,” where the first explosive device detonated. Each series of photos strongly suggests the execution of a mass casualty exercise.

The first set of photographs was taken by amateur sports photographer Benjamin Thorndike, whose employment as a financial advisor at FOC Partners on Boylston provided him with an ideal position. The second set was taken by graphic designer Aaron Tang, whose office is several doors down Boylston Street from FOC. In fact, Tang’s photos are especially revealing as they chronicle the unusual law enforcement and first responder reactions to the incident.

While Tang’s photos and personage are almost entirely absent from corporate news reportage and commentary, Thorndike and a handful of his more than two dozen photos receive sporadic consideration in the short-lived news cycle preceding 5:00PM on April 18, when the FBI revealed images of Tamarlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the vicinity of the finish line.

The federal government and its major media appendages would then employ this dubious evidence vis-á-vis the Tsarnaevs’ non-American otherness to essentially indict the brothers in the court of public opinion. The spectre of Muslim terrorism–an important propaganda element of the “war on terror”–further legitimated the declaration of martial law in the greater Boston area, culminating in the extrajudicial killing of Tamarlan and the near-murder (so far as the public is lead to believe) of Dzhokhar.

The Boston bombing’s “forgotten” photographs are worthy of further consideration as they suggest the ways in which major news media operate in a de facto censorial fashion with the federal government to highlight certain phenomena while simultaneously rendering important artifacts down the memory hole. The images’ misuse or sheer absence arguably contributed to a major tragedy and miscarriage of justice.

Thorndike’s credentials alongside his bird’s eye perspective of America’s most horrendous terrorist attack since September 11 are of tremendous significance. With this in mind one would think major media would have been clamoring to disseminate his eyewitness account and series of photographs worldwide. Indeed, following the event Mr. Thorndike made himself readily available to the media for interviews.

Although the Associated Press circulating a select few of Thorndike’s photos, LexisNexis and Start Page web searches for “Ben Thorndike” and “Boston Marathon bombing” between the dates April 15, 2013 to May 15, 2013 reveal photo credits in only three US print publications within two weeks of the incident–the New York Daily News (April 17) the Boston Globe (April 18) and the New York Times (April 27)[1] each of which used the photo below; one European paper, the Scottish Express, also used the photos in two pieces.[2] The Globe was the sole outlet to publish remarks from Thorndike extending beyond a soundbite.[3]

As for broadcast outlets, the same search for transcripts reveals only four stories referencing Thorndike, none of which extend beyond a reference or brief interview excerpt. CNN published seven of Thorndike’s photos on its website, yet referenced them only once in subsequent broadcasts.[4]

Mr. Thorndike asserts that he was at his office building on Boylston almost directly above where the first explosion erupted on April 15, 2013. “Almost momentarily when I got there, directly in front of me, right in my sight-line, the explosion went off,” he said. “Just out of reflex, I had the camera on, had it in sports mode, which means I can shoot rapid-fire.” As CBS Boston reported,

“Thorndike shot a sequence of 25 photos right after the blast that shows injured and stunned victims on the ground below. But it was the behavior of one man — seen running from the scene — that prompted Thorndike to contact the FBI.”

“His reflex is to sprint away that really caught my eye [sic]” Thorndike recalls. “Everyone else in the photo is stunned, shocked and frozen,” he said. “It’s either someone who is badly burned, panicked and running, or they’re running for another reason.”[5]

The important fact overlooked, however, that the observed man is running with all limbs intact from the epicenter of a harrowing blast and its purportedly lethal wave of shrapnel.

Thorndike turned the photos over to FBI investigators, who repeatedly interviewed him concerning what he observed. The FBI was tight-lipped concerning the investigation, and what some media termed the “running away man” depicted in the photographs who remains unidentified.

Thorndike’s photographs of what transpired at “ground zero” of the Boston Marathon bombing event contrast sharply with the widely-circulated video footage from the Boston Globe, where the videographer appears to purposely arch the camera away from alleged bombing victims and activity on the sidewalk.

Although more than 260 individuals supposedly suffered injuries as a result of the bombings,[6] the high resolution photographs of both Thorndike and Tang indicate no more than three-to-four dozen persons in the immediate vicinity of the initial explosion, most of whom remain mobile in the immediate aftermath and are soon eclipsed in number by law enforcement and medical responders.

According to the CBS Boston report, “Thorndike and his co-workers fled soon after the photos were taken.” This is perhaps an unusual observation since journalists given that within seconds of the detonations the Boston Police locked down surrounding buildings in order to strictly control media access to the unfolding event. [See, for example, video here at 0:07-2:24].[7] CBS also curiously reports, “All the other bay windows in the office were blown out except the one where Thorndike stood.”[8]

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{Photo Credit: Benjamin Thorndike]

In terms of broadcast, with the exception of the more detailed interview highlighted above by CBS Boston, the novice photographer is given a soundbite on ABC and NBC newscasts, as the photos are presented and lightly touched upon.[9] For example, like Thorndike, NBC’s Pete Williams similarly references the man emerging from the center of the initial blast. “[Y]ou can see the impact of the blast has partially ripped his clothes away,” Williams remarks.[10]

Thorndike’s photos are also brought up twice on one specific CNN program by the cable channel’s “law enforcement analyst” Mike Brooks, who explains how the visual evidence from a typical crime investigation is handled. “What [federal law enforcement] have done,” Brooks remarks, is that

they will take this picture, any video that is along that route, and they will try to put together a timeline. Going back before, during and after and what they’ll do is they’ll take this video, and they will send it to Quantico. The FBI lab at Quantico has an engineering section. I have used them on a number of my cases to help enhance video and the technology has increased so much, you know, over the years–”[11]

What the FBI in fact proceeded to do with the assistance of major media was almost the exact opposite–focusing on the Tsarnaevs to the exclusion of all other agents and phenomena–and foregrounding these images alongside those of purported evidence and the injured to forthrightly incriminate the Tsarnaevs. The overall effect of this gross manipulation was evident in the jubilation exhibited by Boston residents upon Tamarlan’s murder and Dzhokhar’s capture; mass ecstasy eerily akin to the effect of a public lynching.

Events such as momentous political assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf, Oklahoma City, and 9/11 have suggested that government-corporate manipulation of the public for broader political ends is not difficult to achieve. Control over an event and the select use of stimuli elicits certain desired responses. This is particularly the case in a society that exercises almost unquestioning allegiance toward what Erich Fromm termed “anonymous authority.” The Boston Marathon bombing event suggests the end result of this blind faith; how such finely tuned stagecraft can mobilize a mass mentality to the degree that it misinterprets the implementation of martial law as a genuine representation of a public will.

Notes:

[1] Bev Ford, Greg B. Smith, and Larry McShane, “Police Narrow in on Two Suspects in Boston Marathon Bombing,” New York Daily News, April 17, 2013; Brian MacQuarrie, “Spectator’s Picture [sic] of Scene Draws Attention,” Boston Globe, April 18, 2013; Katharinie Q. Steelye and Ian Lovett, “After Attack, Suspects Returned to Routines, Raising No Suspicions,” New York Times, April 28, 2013.

[2] “Boston Terror Link to N-bomb at Olympics,” Scottish Express, April 21, 2013; “Did Hamza [sic] Inspire Boston Bombers?” Scottish Express, April 28, 2013.

[3] Sera Congi, “Photographer Discusses Images of Boston Marathon Bombing Blast,” CBS WBZ TV Boston, April 17, 2013.

[4] “After the Explosion: Moment by Moment,” CNN, April 17, 2013.

[4] Congi, “Photographer Discusses Images of Boston Marathon Bombing Blast.”

[5] Ibid.

[6] James F. Tracy, “The Boston Marathon Bombing’s Inflated Injury Tallies,” Global Research, May 11, 2013.

[7] PlasmaBurns, “Heroes Are Scripted – Boston Lies,” YouTube, January 11, 2014.

[8] Congi, “Photographer Discusses Images of Boston Marathon Bombing Blast.”

[9] Brian Williams, Anne Thompson, et al., “NBC News for April 16, 2013,” NBC; “Images of Bomb and Torn Backpack, Pressure Cooker with Ball Bearings,” ABC News Transcript, April 17, 2013; Anderson Cooper, Tom Fuentes, et al., “Reports On Bombing Arrest; Justice Department: No Arrest Made,” CNN, April 17, 2013; Mark Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, et al., “NBC News for April 17, 2013.”

[10] Lauer, Guthrie, et al., “NBC News for April 17, 2013.”

[11] Cooper, Fuentes, et al., “Reports On Bombing Arrest; Justice Department: No Arrest Made,” CNN, April 17, 2013.

For more information, read The Boston Marathon Bombing: A Compendium of Research and Analysis 4/13/14

Handy chart for conspiracy theorists (with new Boston Bombing updates)

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By Russ Baker

Originally posted at WhoWhatWhy

Lazy and imitative journalists and academics like to bandy around the term “conspiracy theory.” It is a one-size-fits-all putdown. But those who are unafraid of the real world know that conspiracies happen, and not only on House of Cards.

Conspiracies are prosecuted every day in courthouses throughout the land. As for outfits like the FBI and the CIA, journalism’s job is to continuously forget all the abuses and outright illegalities perpetrated over the years by these institutions, and to treat their claims with respect and trust.

The use of “conspiracy theory” is highly selective. When powerless people say that the CIA is doing something like illegally entering others’ computers, they are conspiracy theorists. But when Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says it, she’s…well, a senator condemning an illegal act by the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Sometime back, we ran a piece here in response to an op-ed in the New York Times that poked fun at those of us who don’t trust everything the authorities say about the Boston Marathon bombing. (We’ve had a few more things to say on that subject, such as this and this.)

Now, we’re pleased to present a little graphic that our friends at SwayWhat put together to illustrate a point: 63 percent of Americans believe at least one thing that someone else has labeled a “conspiracy theory.” The question always is, who’s doing the labeling? Anything involving more than one person committing a crime and conspiring in secret to do it is a conspiracy. Therefore, anyone who posits that 19 hijackers were behind the 9/11 attack is in fact a “conspiracy theorist.”

Of course, what exercises The New York Times most is when ordinary citizens smell a conspiracy in some kind of governmental cover-up which the mainstream media has failed to explore. Despite evidence of previous U.S. government involvement in conspiracies and cover-ups galore (from Watergate to Iran-Contra), the mainstream media is predictably shocked when someone suggests it might be happening again.

Enjoy.

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Editor’s note: Check out Russ Baker’s site for an excellent two part expose on newly uncovered anomalies surrounding the Boston Bombing cover up:

Boston Bomber Carjacking Unravels. Part 1 of 2

Something Dead Wrong Here: Investigating the Mysterious and Central Character, “Danny.” Part 2 of 2