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Tamerlan Tsarnaev Placed in Database Perceived as Weak, Even by DHS

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As the blame game starts on the Boston Marathon bombing, someone (maybe a blabby Senator?) made it public that the CIA asked to have Tamerlan Tsarnaev added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database last year.

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

The agency took the step after Russian authorities contacted officials there in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was killed last week in a confrontation with police — was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist and could be planning to travel overseas. The CIA requested that his name be put on a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center.

That database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a data storehouse that feeds a series of government watch lists, including the FBI’s main Terrorist Screening Database and the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list.

Officials said Tsarnaev’s name was added to the database but it’s unclear which agency added it.

We got a look at the TIDE database last year when Tom Coburn reviewed whether fusion centers do useful work. Here’s what that report said about TIDE:

While reporting information on an individual who is listed in the TIDE database sounds significant, the Subcommittee found that DHS officials tended to be skeptical about the value of such reporting, because of concerns about the quality of data contained in TIDE.156

156 Although NCTC describes its TIDE database as holding information on the identities of known and suspected terrorists, DHS officials – who interacted with TIDE data on a daily basis, as they reviewed reporting not only from state and local law enforcement encounters but from encounters by DHS components – said they found otherwise. “Not everything in TIDE is KST,” DHS privacy official Ken Hunt told the Subcommittee, using a shorthand term for “known or suspected terrorist.”

“Would you buy a Ford?” one DHS Senior Reports Officer asked the Subcommittee staff during an interview, when he was asked how serious it was for someone to be a match to a TIDE record. “Ford Motor Company has a TIDE record.”

[snip]

Ole Broughton headed Intelligence Oversight at I&A from September 2007 to January 2012. In an interview with the Subcommittee, Mr. Broughton expressed the concern DHS intelligence officials felt working with TIDE data. In one instance, Mr. Broughton recalled he “saw an individual’s two-year-old son [identified] in an [Homeland Intelligence Report]. He had a TIDE record.” Mr. Broughton believed part of the problem was that intelligence officials had routinely put information on “associates” of known or suspected terrorists into TIDE, without determining that that person would qualify as a known or suspected terrorist. “We had a lot of discussion regarding ‘associates’ in TIDE,” Mr. Broughton said.

[my emphasis]

This is not to say that Tamerlan shouldn’t be in TIDE.

Rather, it says there’s so much other crap in TIDE, that it isn’t perceived as very useful — at least not by the people at DHS the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations interviewed.

This is the problem with overcollection of data: it adds a bunch more hay to the haystack for the time you want to start looking for a needle.

The Dzhokhar Complaint

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As I noted in the last thread, the complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been released.

The affidavit supporting the complaint was sworn yesterday evening at 6:47, not in Boston, but in Brookline.

It charges Dzhokhar with two counts: unlawfully conspiring to use a WMD (which is a terrorism charge) and maliciously destroying, by use of an explosive, property used in interstate and foreign commerce, resulting in death. The WMD charge is completely consistent with past charges, though it is used more consistently with Muslim terrorists than with white terrorists (though it was used, then plead down, against the Spokane MLK bomber, who used a bomb similar to the one Dzhokhar allegedly used).

The complaint describes what surveillance footage of Dzhokhar shows just after he dropped his knapsack on the ground outside the Forum Restaurant:

The Forum Restaurant video shows that Bomber Two remained in the same spot for approximately four minutes, occasionally looking at his cell phone and once appearing to take a picture with it. At some point he appears to look at his phone, which is held at approximately waist level, and may be manipulating the phone. Approximately 30 seconds before the first explosion, he lifts his phone to his ear as if he is speaking on his cell phone, and keeps it there for approximately 18 seconds. A few seconds after he finishes the call, the large crowd of people around him can be seen reacting to the first explosion. Virtually every head turns to the east (towards the finish line) and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm. Bomber Two, virtually alone among the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm. He glances to the east and then calmly but rapidly begins moving to the west, away from the direction of the finish line. He walks away without his knapsack, having left it on the ground where he had been standing. Approximately 10 seconds later, an explosion occurs in the location where Bomber Two had placed his knapsack.

[snip]

I can discern nothing in that location in the period before the explosion that might have caused that explosion, other than Bomber Two’s knapsack.

There are a few more details about the bombs and aftermath of interest.

The complaint appears to depart from some reports from Watertown cops, in that it reports both brothers took the Mercedes SUV together to the shootout. (Read the complaint to hear the chilling exchange with the Mercedes owner.)

The complaint describes apparent gunshot wounds to Dzhokhar’s head, neck, legs, and hand. If these are indeed gunshot wounds, it indicates more gunshot wounds than has been previously revealed by the FBI.

Finally, the complaint describes finding what appears to be the clothes Dzhokhar wore at the Marathon — his white hat and black jacket. They also found some BBs there.

Update: neil on asks a question a lot of people are asking: why include the carjacking when it wasn’t charged?

Remember, this is a complaint. All it has to do is prove probable cause for arrest. It doesn’t have to lay out all the evidence or charges (though indictments don’t have to provide all that much detail either).

But the carjacking is important because it records one of the brothers (it doesn’t specify which one, but for a variety of reasons I suspect it is Tamerlan) admitting to being the marathon bomber. Then, it describes the carjackers proceeding to use a pressure cooker bomb against the Watertown cops that is very similar to the pressure cooker found at the marathon. Without the carjacker episode, you’ve only got video evidence against Dzhokhar, and not even that definitive evidence. But with the carjacking, you tie it to a confession and further physical evidence.

Update: NYT has made the transcript of his appearance before the judge available.

“Could Not Be Independently Confirmed”

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There’s a dispute brewing between the Tsarnaev brothers’ mother, Zubeidat, and the FBI about whether or not they called Tamerlan Thursday morning and told him he was a suspect.

Their mother went so far on Sunday to claim that the FBI had contacted her elder son after the deadly bombs exploded at the marathon. If true it would be the first indication that the FBI considered him a suspect before Boston descended into violence on Thursday.

At FBI headquarters in Washington, spokesman Michael Kortan stood by the bureau’s public statement of two days ago in which the bureau described a 2011 FBI interview of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Kortan said the 2011 interview was the only FBI contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI statement from two days ago says that the FBI did not learn of the identity of Tamerlan and his brother until Friday after the gun battle in which Tamerlan was killed.

The mother’s claim could not be independently confirmed, and she has made statements in the past that appeared to show a lack of full understanding of what occurred in Boston.

[snip]

Tsarnaeva said her elder son told her by telephone that the FBI had called to inform him that they considered him a suspect and he should come in for questioning. [my emphasis]

I can imagine a lot of reasons for the dispute: Tsarnaeva is confused, the FBI is lying (though why they’re so keen to admit their vaunted facial recognition couldn’t find Dzhokhar, I don’t know), or Tsarnaeva is working an angle to — as many Chechens are doing — argue that this is somehow kind of a setup.

But I thought it worthwhile to point out what AP did with this report: it presented the dispute, repeated the FBI’s talking point claiming they had only contacted Tamerlan in 2011, and then said Tsarnaeva’s claim could not be independently confirmed.

As if the FBI claim could be.

Which of course it couldn’t. Even if they were willing to share Tamerlan’s file and the communications they had with the Russians, they wouldn’t do so until far later in the discovery process. And the centrality of foreign liaison communications with the Russians to this question would make the documents the most sensitive kind of classified document.

I’m not saying I believe the mother over the FBI; let’s wait to see what other evidence we get (and see whether the FBI tries to explain why it set off a manhunt rather than use the facial recognition tools we taxpayer spent billions to buy). But it’s worth noting that even in spite of this Administration’s blatant abuse of secrecy, the press is still treating their undocumented claims as verified.

Meanwhile, Across the Globe…

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In West, TX, the Mayor says the death toll will likely reach 35-40, including 10 first responders.

“We are out there searching the rubble, looking in each and every house. We are trying to locate each and every citizen,” Mayor Tommy Muska said in a telephone interview with The Times.

Muska said he arrived at the count of 35 to 40 dead because all other residents and first-responders in the area have been identified. Among those who were missing and believed dead, he said, were as many as six firefighters and four emergency medical technicians.

In Baghdad, in the second major pre-election terror attack (the other was on Monday, before the Marathon attack), 32 people died in a cafe bombing.

A suicide bomber set off his explosive belt inside the cafe on Thursday night. The cafe was packed with young people enjoying water pipes and playing pool.

Some bodies were found in a back street as people were thrown out of the cafe by the powerful explosion.

What’s happening in Boston is horrible (though undoubtedly exacerbated by the 24-hour crappy cable coverage and the decision to tip the perpetrators and set off this massive manhunt).

But I’m hearing a lot about this Boston tragedy being unique. The only thing that makes it unique is the media response.