Free Republic

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions prior to a Russian government warning in March 2011 that said he appeared to be radicalizing, FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Congressional testimony this week. The earlier references have led some lawmakers to question whether the FBI acted too quickly in closing an assessment of Tsarnaev's potential ties to terrorism done in response to the Russian request. In a little-noticed exchange before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, Mueller acknowledged that the Russian alert was not the first time the elder...

Sarah Palin addressed Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference Saturday morning, skewering Obama voters, the NSA, and Washington culture in general, and throwing a good-natured elbow to her “friends” at Saturday Night Live while she was at it. “It seems so Orwellian around here,” Palin said. “Before 1984, terms like ‘leading from behind’ meant following. The other day the White House testified before Congress, bragging that they used the ‘least untruthful statement.’ Where I come from that’s called a lie.” “Yes, officials lied, and government spied,” Palin rhymed. “In Benghazi, government lied, and Americans died. These...

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of...

The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits. Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be...

In a Spanish-language interview Sunday with the network Univision, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform group, made his strongest statement yet that legalization of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants must happen before any new border security or internal enforcement measures are in place, and will in no way be conditional on any security requirements. “Let’s be clear,” Rubio said. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization...

Behold the single strangest interview ever given by a governor with at least a possibility of running for the presidency at some point. Both the Boston Herald and Politico highlight the inebriation Deval Patrick indulged after the Tsarnaev brothers had been neutralized as their leads, but the Governor of Massachusetts could be forgiven for celebrating a bit afterward. But what was he doing while the state’s capital city was on lockdown? Taking a nap — until Barack Obama demanded to know what was going on:

To understand the rage and news from Turkey and the alleged “Turkish Spring” being promoted by some websites and commentators, one has to have a deep understanding of the friends and enemies the nation of Turkey has acquired in eighty plus years of independence and Westernization thanks to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the West, the British still resent the Turks for their unwillingness to take up arms against the Nazis in World War II. Believe it or not, some Germans hold the same animosity because a Turkish alliance with Nazi Germany would have crushed the Allies in Europe and the...

The first of these phone calls have revealed some curious information. During the call, the 19-year-old spoke of his supporters, according to ABC News. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told his mother that people are sending him money and that someone opened a bank account for him. When his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, asked if he is in pain, Tsarnaev replied in Russian: “No, of course not. I’m already eating and have been for a long time,” according to a translation by Channel 4 in the UK, which first aired the audio. “They are giving me chicken and rice now, everything is fine,”...

Too short to excerpt. This is a must watch video. Dzhokhar and mama both saying to each other not to say anything. The brothers were supposed to fly to Dagestan on the day the FBI released their pictures.

<p>Al Qaeda's most dangerous franchise is threatening the U.S. with renewed attempts at homeland terror attacks, while urging radicalized Americans to launch strikes like the Boston bombings and poison mail cases on their own.</p> <p>The dual-pronged "Message to the American Nation" comes from a top militant in Yemen's al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and was both warning to the U.S. and call to arms for homegrown jihadis.</p>

Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, was shot in his Florida home on May 22 in a violent confrontation with an FBI agent. The FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers questioned the Boston bombers' collaborator Todashev about his ties to the late Boston Marathon bombers, as well as a triple throat slashing/slaying in Massachusetts two years ago (that the Boston bombers have been implicated in). ABC News reported last week that Todashev became violent as he was about to sign a confession that he and the Boston jihad bombers were the murderers of the three Jewish boys...

The failure of the Russians to share information critical to the protection of U.S. civilians may have led to a U.S. attempt to recruit an FSB agent who was in a position to tell the U.S. more than was being obtained officially. There are now reports in the Russian press that the FSB agent in question had traveled together with U.S. investigators to the North Caucasus. In any case, Ryan Fogle, a CIA agent working under diplomatic cover, was arrested on May 13. A video of the arrest was shown on Russian television and Russian officials took the gratuitous and...

The father of Ibragim Todashev, who was shot by an FBI agent a week ago while being quizzed over his links to the Boston bombers, revealed the extent of his son's injuries in gruesome photographs of his dead body today. Outspoken Abdul-Baki Todashev called for an investigation and possible legal action against the agent involved at a press conference in Moscow where he showed the images of his son's body lying in a morgue with up to seven gunshot wounds, including one to the back of the head. His angry calls for justice came as a report claimed the 27-year-old...

This story is going around the usual circles, but there are a few things wrong with it. First of all Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was actually arrested by an MBTA SWAT Team. The FBI tried to negotiate his surrender and he was eventually taken into federal custody. Considering how many people were involved in the actual arrest and how many agencies got involved, we’re talking about a lot of personnel that were in some way around. Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw were members of a hostage rescue team. I’m having trouble finding any legitimate news sites, not counting the usual...

What led an FBI agent, or some other law enforcement official, to shoot and kill an unarmed man in Orlando, Florida? The man, Ibragim Todashev, was being questioned about the Boston bombing, as well as an unsolved 2011 triple murder that he may or may not have confessed to committing. Does that sound sketchy? Don't blame me. Once he died, law enforcement started releasing anonymous, conflicting explanations so dubious that they warrant an inquiry all by themselves. Did the dead man have a knife? A gun? A sword? None of those? Let's run through a timeline of what we've been...

A Chechen man who was fatally shot by an FBI agent last week during an interview about one of the Boston bombing suspects was unarmed, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. An air of mystery has surrounded the FBI shooting of Ibragim Todashev, 27, since it occurred in Todashev’s apartment early on the morning of May 22. The FBI said in a news release that day that Todashev, a former Boston resident who knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during an interview with several law enforcement officers. The FBI has provided few other details, saying that the matter is being...

BOSTON (WHDH) -- Monday, according to reports. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the neck, but is apparently able to speak again. He spoke to his mother for the first time since his arrest. The conversation between Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, lasted six minutes. Tsarnaeva was promised one phone call per month as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continues to recover. “I am absolutely fine, my wounds are healing. Everything is in God’s hands. Be patient. Everything will be fine,” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told his mother, according to Bloomberg News. “I couldn’t stop myself from crying,”...

ORLANDO, May 24, 2013 – Online social networks can reveal alot. Including information about the relationshps of Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter and Chechen, that was fatally shot at his Orlando townhouse. During a meeting with FBI agents during which Todashev was allegedly being questioned about a triple murder that Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a suspect in, Todasheve was shot and killed, raising numerous questions in the minds of neighbors and revealing an interesting daisy chain of online links. Todashev lived, and was killed, in the Windhaven condominium complex located in Orlando, Florida, near the Universal...

Rattlesnake Logic Now the news media will spend days trying to determine why these men did what they did in Boston. They will want to know what America did to make these brothers so angry with us. They will want to know why these men were not arrested before they did something unlawful. The media will be in a tizzy about the new era of home grown radicals and about how they could live among us and still hate us. Here in west Texas, I have rattlesnakes on my place. I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I...

Within hours of the Boston Marathon blasts, government officials and Muslims in Boston called each other to offer assistance. These calls were the fruits of years of cultivating such relationships in an effort to ultimately prevent the very type of attack Boston experienced April 15. But the calls following the explosions were not about the unfolding investigation. Representatives from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security offered support to Muslim communities in case they suffered backlash or threats,