US News

Russia didn’t share crucial info on Boston bombers

The Russian government failed to hand over crucial information about one of the Boston Marathon bombers, preventing the FBI from raising further scrutiny that may have prevented the devastating attack, a new report said.

Officials in Moscow initially told federal investigators in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a “radical” who was prepared to travel overseas and join “unspecified groups” but when the FBI sent follow-up questions to Russia they were ignored, The New York Times said, according to an inspector general’s review.

One of the key pieces of information, unveiled after the 2013 bombing, was that Tsarnaev had a phone conversation with his mother in Dagestan where he floated the idea of waging Jihad against the United States.

The inspector general’s review, from the Office of Intelligence Community, is focused on how the marathon bombing plot could have been stalled by law enforcement agencies.

It found that the Russian authorities shared the key information only after the tragic bombing took place.

“They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and based on everything that was available the F.B.I. did all that it could,” an American official told the Times.

It was still not clear, however, that authorities would have been able to thwart the attack if the additional information was provided.

“Had they known what the Russians knew they probably would have been able to do more under our investigative guidelines,” one official told the Times.

“But would they have uncovered the plot? That’s very hard to say.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police. Authorities believe he planned the bombing — which killed three and injured more than 200 — with his brother Dzhokhar.

The younger brother is currently in a federal detention facility and is facing the death penalty for his role in the attack.

Authorities do not believe that the Tsarnaev brothers were tied to any terrorist organization.

Tamerlan had traveled to a violent region of Dagestan in 2012 but it does not appear he received any aid of training from terrorist organizations.

The report also said that the FBI should more effectively share information with state and local authorities, the Times said.

Officials said that the FBI has already adopted several of the recommendations and has been talking to police from around the country recently on how information can be more efficiently shared between agencies, the Times said.

The review was not released publicly and the details were described to the paper by several senior American officials.