WASHINGTON — Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told Congress yesterday that federal law-enforcement agencies failed to tell him of warnings by the Russian government two years ago about marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s terror links.
“If we knew all of these things that have come out since then, we would have taken a hard look at these individuals,” Davis said in the first of what is expected to be many congressional hearings on the bombing.
Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, are suspected of planting two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 250. Dzhokhar is in police custody. Tamerlan died during a gunfight with cops.
Massachusetts homeland-security official Kurt Schwartz told the committee yesterday that seven state troopers assigned to a Department of Homeland Security fusion center were also not informed of the Tsarnaev suspicions.
“At no time prior to the bombing did any member of the Massachusetts State Police or the fusion center have any information or knowledge about the Tsarnaev brothers,” Schwartz said.
The FBI disputed the claims, stating that Boston police had a member on the Joint Terrorism Task Force squad that investigated Tsarnaev and that the information was available to police on a shared computer site.
The FBI said the fusion center also had access to the computer system. Former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who once chaired the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, told the panel the bombing was preventable.
“The homeland-security system . . . failed,” he said.