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The FBI Boston-Chechnya charade

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Message Pepe Escobar
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Source: Asia Times

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The Boston bombing was major blowback. That much is certain. The question is, what level of blowback? 

It could have been a covert op gone real bad. It could have been blowback from former ''freedom fighters'' -- in this case ethnic Chechens -- reconverted into terra-rists. It could have been straight blowback for United States foreign policy targeting Muslims, whether dispatching them to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Bagram, extraordinarily renditioning them, or target assassinating them. 

The FBI, predictably, is not admitting any of these three options. It sticks to a convoluted screenplay worthy of those cocaine-fueled Hollywood nights in the 1980s; a couple of bad guys who ''hate our freedoms'' because... they do.  

As I've written elsewhere in a sort of preamble for this article, there are inter-galactic holes in the story of the Tsarnaev brothers. Now we also know -- via their mother -- that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring elder brother Tamerlan for at least five years. In a subsequent interview to CNN's Piers Morgan, the mother actually talked, significantly, about ''counseling."  

At the same time, the FBI was forced to admit it had in early 2011 accepted a ''foreign government'' (code for Russia) request to take a closer look on Tamerlan. This, apparently, they did -- and found nothing terrorist activity-worthy. 

So what happened afterwards? Some IQ above 50 in the FBI must have noticed they now had access to a precious Chechen-American asset. So Tamerlan became an FBI informant. They could play him like a fiddle -- like so many patsies before. 

Yet if they didn't, the FBI can rightfully be accused of devastating incompetence (that would not be a first). Because what the FBI is saying is that they had no clue their asset was working on a bomb, was trying to test-drive it, or was carrying a suspicious backpack to the Boston marathon. 

What the FBI will never say is when was the last time they monitored/controlled/harassed Tamerlan. Remember, this is the same FBI that gave us The Fast and The Furious-style Iranian cum Mexican cartel plot to kill a Saudi ambassador  debunked in a matter of days. 

Tamerlan, of course, may have out-FBI-ed them all (not that hard) -- and after years of being monitored/harassed started working as a double agent. Apparently he left the US for Russia for a long period -- January to July 2012. Nobody knows exactly what he did; the FBI would love to prove he was engaged in terrorist tactical training. Still, if he was indeed a valuable asset, he could have been sent on a mission to infiltrate Chechen jihadis led by Doku Umarov in neighboring Dagestan. 

As for the ultimate, nuance-filled word on the extremely cozy relationship, since the 1990s, between Washington and Chechen terra-rists -- a taboo issue in US corporate media -- one should look no further than the awesome Sibel Edmonds, posting here

About that drill

The FBI has the power to impose on the US and the whole world a far-fetched ''young evil Chechens'' screenplay. So let's develop an alternative, credible scenario and see where that takes us. 

Instead of two bad (foreign) guys, totally Americanized, who suddenly were inoculated with rage ''against our freedoms'' by some jihadi indoctrination, mostly online, let's see who really profits from what happened in Boston. 

The Boston Globe was forced to ''disappear'' the information of a counter-terrorist drill -- including bomb-sniffing dogs -- taking place during the marathon. Picture the FBI telling its asset Tamerlan he would be part of the drill. Although a tough guy himself, his family could easily have been threatened if he did not cooperate. 

So Tamerlan was handed a black backpack with a fake pressure-cooker bomb inside and told to drop it in a determined place -- as one of the procedures included in the drill. And it's here that we have to be extra careful; there's no conclusive evidence to establish whether this was supposed to be only a drill, or was the bomb designed to explode. 

Let's assume tough guy Tamerlan and his impressionable brother Dzhokhar were actually responsible (no FBI in the picture). After so much planning there had to be an immediate escape route -- as in transportation, passports, money, plane tickets. There was nothing. Dzhokhar went to school, worked out in the gym, socialized, sent Twitter messages. 

There are absolutely no witnesses saying the brothers dropped the bombs. They did it because the FBI says so. And from there onwards, it's holes galore. They robbed a Mercedes at a gas station and let the driver go away -- not without telling him that they were the marathon bombers. Dzhokhar and the Mercedes manage to escape from a major gunfight, by-passing a massive police barrage -- but not without the Mercedes running over Tamerlan whose body was enveloped in explosives. Dzhokhar leaves a blood trail but he is not tracked by any dogs. 

And then there's the juicy martial law test drive; a whole city totally shut down, at immense cost, because of a fleeing teenager. Watch out, America, this is just the beginning. 

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
 

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