[Free Beacon] In the case of the Boston attack, intelligence reports found the FBI missed several chances to prevent Tamerlan Tsarvnaev and his bother, Dzhokhar, from detonating two pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line. The reports cited failures by the FBI to share information across federal, state, and local agencies about Tamerlan's suspected terrorism ties in the years leading up to the attack.
The reports revealed that the Russian Federal Security Service alerted the FBI in March 2011, two years prior to the bombing, that Tamerlan subscribed to "radical Islam" and was preparing to travel to Russia to join "unspecified groups." The FBI-JTTF in Boston questioned Tamerlan, but ultimately closed the case after determining he had no links to terrorism.
US citizen travels to RU to join "unspecified group" in Chechnya, but there is "no link to terrorism." Yea ok, we've got it.
Tamerlan traveled from New York to Russia later that year, triggering an alert, but he was not considered a high priority among the 100 other names deemed a national security threat traveling that day. When Tamerlan reentered the United States six months later, authorities never detained him because his name was spelled wrong in the federal alert system.
The FBI never shared this information with state and local law enforcement prior to the bombings.
Meanwhile, local authorities were investigating a Sept. 11, 2011, triple murder in Waltham, Mass., in which Tamerlan was a suspect. All three men had their throats slit from ear to ear, their corpses precisely positioned with marijuana sprinkled on top, leading authorities to believe it was connected to a large-scale drug operation. Neighbors told police that Tamerlan might have information on the incident given that he was a close friend of one of the murdered men, Brendan Mess, but authorities never questioned him.
Likewise, none of this information was shared with the FBI prior to the Boston attack. Maltz, who was the special agent in charge of the DEA's Special Operations Division at the time, said if the FBI and Boston JTTF had shared the Russian intelligence on Tamerlan in 2011, his department would have looked more closely into him as a murder suspect, potentially leading to an arrest two years before the bombing took place.
Not sharing sources and source information (either witting or non-witting sources) appears to be a common theme with the bureau.
"I'm not saying this would have prevented the bombing, we'll never know that, only God would know that, but what I do know is that we never had a chance," Maltz said.