In March , that alert was set to no longer display on the computer screens of border protection agents working at JFK immigration counters. Therefore, on July 17, , all Tamerlan Tsarnaev had to do was hand the immigration officer his green card, take a picture, and get fingerprinted, and he was back in the United States. There was no secondary inspection.
How is this possible? He passed along the information about the terror watch list alerts via "email, orally, or by passing a 'sticky note. The House Homeland Security report offers an even more withering assessment: "This lack of communication represents a failure to proactively share information that could potentially save lives. She believes that the federal government offered Tsarnaev a chance to become a U.
Boston has unique experience with the FBI informant program. There is precedent for the government protecting criminal activity of its own informants.
James "Whitey" Bulger was a murderous criminal mobster. In , he began cooperating with the government and became a "Top Echelon Informant. And I sat through the Whitey Bulger trial every single day; the summer of Whitey. I was there. I mean, it was staggering. Bulger murdered people while he was an informant. The FBI protected him. In , Bulger was finally indicted.
But before he could be arrested, Bulger ran; his FBI handler had tipped him off. Bulger successfully evaded capture for 16 years before he was finally arrested in June After the attacks of Sept. McPhee says the new focus also made its way into the federal informant program. And what they did, which was genius, was they recruited Muslims who had taken the civil service just to come up become police officers.
And the program was wildly successful. One measure of that success: Nearly half of more than recent federal terrorism convictions came from informant-based cases. The use of informants in counter-terrorism cases is also highly controversial. Federal informants have been directly involved in several high-profile attempted and successful terrorist attacks.
The most spectacular of these cases involves David Headley. In , he pleaded guilty to masterminding the Mumbai terrorist attack that killed more than people. Headley is Pakistani-American. In the mids, he was arrested for drug trafficking.
But Headley did not abandon his own extremist views. He told friends he celebrated al-Qaida's attack on New York, which lead the FBI to open the first of several investigations into Headley.
His wife grew so concerned, she went to the U. Embassy in Lahore to report her husband. They never took action against him. Headley's case is extreme, but there are thousands of federal informants whose activities are difficult for Congress to monitor. In , an audit of the DEA's confidential informant program found the agency itself "did not appropriately track all confidential source activity. Massachusetts U. Stephen Lynch is calling for greater oversight of informant programs.
In April , he filed the Confidential Informant Accountability Act , citing crimes committed by other federal informants, including one who had been arrested in 43 states. Lynch: "Good luck to him on the remaining seven states. Zero credibility. The bill would also require law enforcement agencies to report, just report, all serious crimes committed by their confidential informants. Including an accounting of the total number of each type and category of crime.
There are currently 18, informants working for the DEA. At the FBI, there could be more than 15, German is also a former FBI special agent and worked undercover on domestic terrorism cases for 16 years from to Do the math. German: "Informants are the bread and butter of law enforcement — always have been, always will be. So the idea was FBI agents, we need to have better information about what's going on.
But because the entire Muslim community was viewed as suspect, basically any Muslim that the government had some leverage over could be coerced into becoming an informant. However, German says it's unlikely that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a federal informant.
But he also adds, "The idea that the FBI would approach an individual who is in the immigration process to encourage them to become an FBI informant with the — not the promise of — but at least dangling the idea that that might be beneficial to their interests, certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities and would probably be likely.
The document contains sections that teach FBI agents to recruit Muslim informants by exploiting "immigration vulnerabilities," and that agents should have a "firm grasp on immigration law. The FBI is not allowed to make explicit offers of citizenship to potential informants. In , then-U. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued guidelines on confidential human sources that said, "No promises or commitments can be made, except by the United States Department of Homeland Security, regarding the alien status of any person or the right of any person to enter or remain in the United States.
However, German says, "The implication is often that they can, right? The FBI is trying to give that person the impression that they can help them.
And whether that's true or not, the FBI is allowed to lie to somebody. This is where things get even murkier. Its goal is to "ensure that immigration benefits are not granted to individuals and organizations that pose a threat to national security. CARRP casts a wide net. Immigration officials will not say exactly how many people fall under the program, but last year Buzzfeed reported that between to , the case files of over 19, people from 18 Muslim-majority countries were rerouted through CARRP.
More importantly, CARRP gives law enforcement agencies significant say in the immigration proceedings for any person of national security concern. The FBI is an important partner in the security and background check process conducted on all individuals requesting an immigration benefit, and USCIS considers relevant information obtained through or provided by the FBI.
DHS did not answer our inquiries. In August , following his six month trip to Russia, Tamerlan Tsarnaev submitted his application for U. Documents and routing slips in the file indicate that Tsarnaev's naturalization application was processed through CARRP.
USCIS would not respond to questions pertaining to CARRP processing of Tsarnaev's naturalization application, saying it does not comment on the internal handling procedures of specific cases.
For example, his six-month trip to Russia in Tsarnaev reported that trip on his naturalization form, but back in , Tsarnaev was first allowed into the United States as the son of an asylum seeker. USCIS considers such travel as evidence of immigration fraud. People can get deported even if they hold a green card. The spokesperson does not directly address Tsarnaev's travel to Russia in but says "temporary or brief travel usually does not affect permanent resident status. He appeared for his final naturalization interview and civics tests in January , just five months after he began the application process.
I haven't seen any gone through in less than a year, and sometimes I've seen them take two years. A spokesperson for USCIS says, "All immigration benefit requests are handled on a case-by-case basis, and individual case processing times vary widely depending on resolution and adjudication of all eligibility factors. Each case, CARRP or otherwise, is decided on its own merits according to existing laws, regulations, and USCIS policies, and with a commitment to ensuring national security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.
Why would I give him citizenship? He is wonderful. Give him citizenship. Following each request, law enforcement officials sent back replies to USCIS stating, "There is no national security concern related to [Tamerlan Tsarnaev]. It makes no sense. A mundane explanation: The Boston FBI had no objection to Tsarnaev becoming a citizen because it had closed its assessment of him on June 24, They had found nothing at the time to connect Tsarnaev to any "nexus of terrorism.
In April , inspectors general of the U. Intelligence Community, the CIA, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security released an unclassified summary of their report on federal information handling prior to the Boston Marathon bombing. The report concludes that Tamerlan was given his final naturalization interview on Jan.
It says no decision about his citizenship was made at that time because USCIS was waiting for court records related to a prior assault and battery charge. In , Tsarnaev had been arrested in Cambridge for slapping his girlfriend. The charges were dropped. The inspectors general report contains this remarkable passage: "The USCIS officer told the [Homeland Security inspector general] that had the court records been processed before [January] Why would the inspectors general of the U.
One page contains what looks like the screenshot of a computer window. Tsarnaev did not complete naturalization interview until Jan.
There is no single argument being made by Tsarnaev's supporters. Some are claiming that he is the victim of a massive government conspiracy, possibly as part of a "false flag" operation, while others are grounding their support in something far different : "Is it just me or does anyone else think jahar is kinda cute?
A YouTube video with more than , views claims to prove that Tsarnaev was framed using Photoshop; one photograph purporting to prove Tsarnaev's innocence has been retweeted nearly times. There are also claims that video shows the suspect's ostensibly deceased older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, being detained by police, and that the iconic photograph of wheelchair-bound Jeff Bauman was actually a soldier named Nick Vogt who was effectively acting as part of the conspiracy.
One supporter suggested that Tsarnaev, who officials say has confessed his culpability in the attacks, is guilty but should go free anyway. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later?
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