Connections: Welcome to Spooksville by R Renny
November 29th 2013
Tsarnaev Family connections
Anyone who has spent some time looking into the Tsarnaev family knows that they are not just your average immigrants. This family has some serious ties to the CIA.
Ruslan Tsarni – the famous uncle of the brothers who went on TV on Friday morning and told the gathered journalists on camera that Dzhokhar should give himself up "and ask for forgiveness" – was married to the daughter of Graham Fuller – the former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and CIA officer. Graham Fuller was working for the CIA for two decades, during which he also served as National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia. One of his most notorious acts during that time was penning a memo that, according to the New York Times, later became the basis for the Iran-Contra scandal. He also served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA. In addition, Fuller has long made the argument that Islam is a potentially useful geopolitical tool for the United States to manipulate for their own ends. He has been quoted as saying, "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."
As it turned out, Ruslan was married to Fuller’s daughter in the 1990s, for some time living in the same household as Fuller himself. In an official SEC filing from 2005 it was revealed that Ruslan Tsarni had worked as a consultant for USAID, ostensibly an independent federal agency which is little more than an adjunct of the US State Department and is a known front for deep cover CIA agents in various geostrategic corners of the globe. At the same time in the mid-1990s, Tsarni incorporated a company called the "Congress of Chechen International Organizations" which recently unearthed documents show was providing material support to Chechen terrorists, including Sheikh Fathi, who, according to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, was a "military commander in the violent jihadist movement in Chechnya" and a "preacher of violent jihad."
Ruslan Tsarni – the famous uncle of the brothers who went on TV on Friday morning and told the gathered journalists on camera that Dzhokhar should give himself up "and ask for forgiveness" – was married to the daughter of Graham Fuller – the former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and CIA officer. Graham Fuller was working for the CIA for two decades, during which he also served as National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia. One of his most notorious acts during that time was penning a memo that, according to the New York Times, later became the basis for the Iran-Contra scandal. He also served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA. In addition, Fuller has long made the argument that Islam is a potentially useful geopolitical tool for the United States to manipulate for their own ends. He has been quoted as saying, "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."
As it turned out, Ruslan was married to Fuller’s daughter in the 1990s, for some time living in the same household as Fuller himself. In an official SEC filing from 2005 it was revealed that Ruslan Tsarni had worked as a consultant for USAID, ostensibly an independent federal agency which is little more than an adjunct of the US State Department and is a known front for deep cover CIA agents in various geostrategic corners of the globe. At the same time in the mid-1990s, Tsarni incorporated a company called the "Congress of Chechen International Organizations" which recently unearthed documents show was providing material support to Chechen terrorists, including Sheikh Fathi, who, according to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, was a "military commander in the violent jihadist movement in Chechnya" and a "preacher of violent jihad."
Dagestan connections
It was also suggested by some sources that Tamerlan, who was able to travel to and from Russia and to fly to Dagestan from Moscow without any problems, although his name was on a terrorist watch list of the CIA, was probably working for the CIA or another agency as well. His six-months-long stay in Dagestan and alleged attendance of a Jamestown Foundation workshop would certainly support this notion.
There are conflicting reports of how Tamerlan spent those six months between January and July 2012. His parents insist that he was mostly sleeping, reading books and helping his father to rebuild an old apartment that his parents had in Makhachkala. His father gave the reason for Tamerlan’s travel to Dagestan being the necessity to renew his passport. According to Anzor, Tamerlan’s Kyrgyz passport was supposed to expire in July 2012, and Tamerlan decided to apply for a Russian passport instead. However, officials from the federal migration service in Dagestan said that Tamerlan had only applied for the new passport at the end of June, and never picked it up, as he flew back to the US on July 17, 2012.
The Georgian intelligence reported that he attended "training" at the Jamestown Foundation, connected with the Caucasus Fund. Both have ties to CIA and their main objective is to fund and support the Muslim extremists or ‘separatists’ in the Caucasus region.
According to another source, Dagestan's Centre for Combating Extremism, when Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited the republic, staff members of the Centre for Combating Extremism registered him and opened a card of operational records. The source has reported that in April 2012, the Centre's agents repeatedly saw Tamerlan Tsarnaev together with 18-year-old Makhmud Nidal, who at that time "had been under surveillance" for about a year. Nidal was killed one month later in a raid by the Russian Special forces.
It was not revealed whether Tamerlan had visited the prohibited websites or contacted any suspicious person. However, according to the source's version, the archives revealed that in early 2011, the FSB has requested the FBI to present materials about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in connection with the detention in Dagestan of Canadian citizen William Plotnikov (he was killed in the special operation held on July 14, 2012 – two days before Tamerlan left Dagestan).
Some believe that Tamerlan’s intention was to join the separatist fighters in the woods of Dagestan, but after his only two contacts – Nidal and Plotnikov – died, he decided to go back to the US. We don’t know if that really was his intention, but we know that he was followed by the Russian forces all the way in Dagestan. After the killing of Plotnikov, according to Novaya Gazeta, the Russian police came to Tamerlan’s father house and asked where Tamerlan was. Anzor told them that everything was fine and Tamerlan went back home to the US. The Russians didn’t believe him and were looking for Tamerlan for the next few days, until they found out he flew out of Mineralnye Vody airport on a flight to Moscow on July 16, 2012.
Further reading:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Russian Trip
Uncle Ruslan's Aid to Terrorists from CIA Officials Home
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Makhmud Nidal and William Plotnikov
Novayagazeta
There are conflicting reports of how Tamerlan spent those six months between January and July 2012. His parents insist that he was mostly sleeping, reading books and helping his father to rebuild an old apartment that his parents had in Makhachkala. His father gave the reason for Tamerlan’s travel to Dagestan being the necessity to renew his passport. According to Anzor, Tamerlan’s Kyrgyz passport was supposed to expire in July 2012, and Tamerlan decided to apply for a Russian passport instead. However, officials from the federal migration service in Dagestan said that Tamerlan had only applied for the new passport at the end of June, and never picked it up, as he flew back to the US on July 17, 2012.
The Georgian intelligence reported that he attended "training" at the Jamestown Foundation, connected with the Caucasus Fund. Both have ties to CIA and their main objective is to fund and support the Muslim extremists or ‘separatists’ in the Caucasus region.
According to another source, Dagestan's Centre for Combating Extremism, when Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited the republic, staff members of the Centre for Combating Extremism registered him and opened a card of operational records. The source has reported that in April 2012, the Centre's agents repeatedly saw Tamerlan Tsarnaev together with 18-year-old Makhmud Nidal, who at that time "had been under surveillance" for about a year. Nidal was killed one month later in a raid by the Russian Special forces.
It was not revealed whether Tamerlan had visited the prohibited websites or contacted any suspicious person. However, according to the source's version, the archives revealed that in early 2011, the FSB has requested the FBI to present materials about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in connection with the detention in Dagestan of Canadian citizen William Plotnikov (he was killed in the special operation held on July 14, 2012 – two days before Tamerlan left Dagestan).
Some believe that Tamerlan’s intention was to join the separatist fighters in the woods of Dagestan, but after his only two contacts – Nidal and Plotnikov – died, he decided to go back to the US. We don’t know if that really was his intention, but we know that he was followed by the Russian forces all the way in Dagestan. After the killing of Plotnikov, according to Novaya Gazeta, the Russian police came to Tamerlan’s father house and asked where Tamerlan was. Anzor told them that everything was fine and Tamerlan went back home to the US. The Russians didn’t believe him and were looking for Tamerlan for the next few days, until they found out he flew out of Mineralnye Vody airport on a flight to Moscow on July 16, 2012.
Further reading:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Russian Trip
Uncle Ruslan's Aid to Terrorists from CIA Officials Home
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Makhmud Nidal and William Plotnikov
Novayagazeta
The Special Agent in Charge
The question we have to ask is – if he was recruited by the CIA who would have known? Apart from his CIA recruiter, who could have had that knowledge? One of the people that know a lot about spies in the Boston area is Richard DesLauriers, the former Special Agent in Charge of the Boston Marathon Bombing investigation.
DesLauriers joined the FBI as a special agent in 1987 and went straight into spy work. After a few years in New York and D.C., he returned to Boston in 1997 ultimately supervising the FBI’s counterintelligence programs in the Northeast. In March 2008, he was promoted to head the FBI’s counterintelligence operations and espionage investigations as deputy assistant director.
As the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence he was given the unenviable assignment of rolling up Operation Ghost Stories. The Obama Administration, prodded by the powerful new CIA chief Leon Panetta, decided to deliver on a long-standing desire of the agency’s clandestine service to free four agents who had been jailed by the Russians. Looking around for something to trade for them, the Administration settled on the Russian sleepers, foreign agents being watched by the FBI while operating in America. The plan was to arrest and trade the 10 Russian sleepers in the U.S. for the four agents being held in Moscow.
The case would require DesLauriers to coordinate hundreds of people in different agencies, successfully arrest the spies without alerting them beforehand, and collect enough evidence of the spies’ activities to ensure they could be convicted.
But the toughest part could have been getting FBI field agents to work with the CIA. Operation Ghost Stories was one of the FBI counterintelligence division’s biggest successes. For more than a decade, agents had been running wires and surveillance on the 10 "illegals," Russian nationals who were living and working in the U.S. under deep cover and without the protection of diplomatic immunity.
So when the FBI counterintelligence division was told that it should roll up one of its most successful operations against unsuspecting spies and give them a free ticket home in exchange for some captured CIA agents, not everyone was happy.
Read more: Richard Deslaurier: Special Agent in Charge
In the end, the operation was successfully completed and the spies were exchanged at the airport in Vienna, only eight days after the FBI director Robert Mueller named DesLauriers to run the Boston FBI office on July 1, 2010.
There is few things we can take out of this story:
A. DesLauriers must have had an exceptionally good knowledge of the way the CIA and other intelligence agencies operate. He did what the CIA asked him to do, he provided the Russian spies in exchange for their own people. But he also took all the glory for the detaining of the Russian spies, thus taking the counter-intelligence platform away from the CIA and was subsequently rewarded with a promotion.
B. the Russians must have been really angry – they lost the whole spy network that was established in the US for a decade – and they had to give up some CIA agents they detained.
C. not everyone in the FBI thought it was a good idea to exchange a decade long work of hundreds of agents for four CIA agents who probably deserved what they got.
In other words, there were many unhappy people in both the CIA and FBI, as well as in Russia after this operation.
Let’s put A into perspective now.
When DesLauriers saw the connections of the Tsarnaev family (and he sure did with 25 years of experience in that field) and Tamerlan’s unrestrained ability to travel to Russia and Dagestan – wouldn’t his first question be to the CIA "hey, guys, does this one belong to you?" They would have probably said no, but he definitely doesn’t look like a person who would just take a "no" answer and not investigate further.
According to many of his colleagues "He comes across as a bit bookish," says the former senior Justice Department official. Obsessed about being read into the details of the cases, DesLauriers "could be criticized for overdoing it," says Slattery, meaning his friend is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to being prepared.
In other words, we can be sure that he knew all that was possibly known about the 2 brothers, within a few days after identifying the Tsarnaevs. He would meticulously go through every detail of their lives, trying to figure out what went wrong and where, looking for clues and connections. Not stopping until he knew it all.
As the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence he was given the unenviable assignment of rolling up Operation Ghost Stories. The Obama Administration, prodded by the powerful new CIA chief Leon Panetta, decided to deliver on a long-standing desire of the agency’s clandestine service to free four agents who had been jailed by the Russians. Looking around for something to trade for them, the Administration settled on the Russian sleepers, foreign agents being watched by the FBI while operating in America. The plan was to arrest and trade the 10 Russian sleepers in the U.S. for the four agents being held in Moscow.
The case would require DesLauriers to coordinate hundreds of people in different agencies, successfully arrest the spies without alerting them beforehand, and collect enough evidence of the spies’ activities to ensure they could be convicted.
But the toughest part could have been getting FBI field agents to work with the CIA. Operation Ghost Stories was one of the FBI counterintelligence division’s biggest successes. For more than a decade, agents had been running wires and surveillance on the 10 "illegals," Russian nationals who were living and working in the U.S. under deep cover and without the protection of diplomatic immunity.
So when the FBI counterintelligence division was told that it should roll up one of its most successful operations against unsuspecting spies and give them a free ticket home in exchange for some captured CIA agents, not everyone was happy.
Read more: Richard Deslaurier: Special Agent in Charge
In the end, the operation was successfully completed and the spies were exchanged at the airport in Vienna, only eight days after the FBI director Robert Mueller named DesLauriers to run the Boston FBI office on July 1, 2010.
There is few things we can take out of this story:
A. DesLauriers must have had an exceptionally good knowledge of the way the CIA and other intelligence agencies operate. He did what the CIA asked him to do, he provided the Russian spies in exchange for their own people. But he also took all the glory for the detaining of the Russian spies, thus taking the counter-intelligence platform away from the CIA and was subsequently rewarded with a promotion.
B. the Russians must have been really angry – they lost the whole spy network that was established in the US for a decade – and they had to give up some CIA agents they detained.
C. not everyone in the FBI thought it was a good idea to exchange a decade long work of hundreds of agents for four CIA agents who probably deserved what they got.
In other words, there were many unhappy people in both the CIA and FBI, as well as in Russia after this operation.
Let’s put A into perspective now.
When DesLauriers saw the connections of the Tsarnaev family (and he sure did with 25 years of experience in that field) and Tamerlan’s unrestrained ability to travel to Russia and Dagestan – wouldn’t his first question be to the CIA "hey, guys, does this one belong to you?" They would have probably said no, but he definitely doesn’t look like a person who would just take a "no" answer and not investigate further.
According to many of his colleagues "He comes across as a bit bookish," says the former senior Justice Department official. Obsessed about being read into the details of the cases, DesLauriers "could be criticized for overdoing it," says Slattery, meaning his friend is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to being prepared.
In other words, we can be sure that he knew all that was possibly known about the 2 brothers, within a few days after identifying the Tsarnaevs. He would meticulously go through every detail of their lives, trying to figure out what went wrong and where, looking for clues and connections. Not stopping until he knew it all.
Did he find out an FBI connection?
There was an effort to blame the FBI for their failure to prevent the bombings from the get-go. Mama Tsarnaeva said in the first phone call "the FBI controlled him for 3 or 5 years, they knew what he was doing". The Russians claimed they had notified the FBI already in 2011 that Tamerlan was dangerous. Was the FBI really in the know or did someone play a little dirty game with them?
As the FBI director, Robert Mueller, confirmed before the House Judiciary Committee in June, the Russian alert was not the first time the elder Tsarnaev brother crossed the FBI’s radar.
As the FBI director, Robert Mueller, confirmed before the House Judiciary Committee in June, the Russian alert was not the first time the elder Tsarnaev brother crossed the FBI’s radar.
"His name had come up in two other cases,"
Mueller said in response to questions from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
"Those two other cases, the individuals had their cases closed. So, he was one or two person [sic] away."
Mueller did not elaborate on the nature of the prior investigations where Tsarnaev's name had arisen. However, an FBI official told POLITICO they were not related to terrorism. The official, who asked not to be named, also said the agent who conducted an "assessment" of Tsarnaev in response to the Russian warning in 2011 found the previous references and was aware of them.
If they were not related to terrorism, what were the cases related to – drugs, police corruption, fraud, money laundering? Tamerlan was one or two people away from the investigated person, he was not a suspect of anything. But he knew some interesting people. Was there any attempt to recruit him as an informant? He was an immigrant and a Muslim, and he was in contact with many people who would have been of interest to the FBI, especially in relation to drugs, steroids and other ‘business’ that is run in the gyms.
During DesLauriers tenure as the head of the Boston office, the FBI was running lot of sting operations directed at Muslim people. One of them was the well-known case of Tarek Mehanna who was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda, providing material support to terrorists (and conspiracy to do so), conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, conspiracy to make false statements to the FBI, and two counts of making false statements. All of that a result of an FBI entrapment. Mehanna’s sentencing statement is a powerful denouncement of the methods the FBI is using to entrap people who would not commit any crime if it wasn’t for the FBI.
Read to Judge O’Toole during his sentencing, April 12th 2012:
"In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful. Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The "easy" way, as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell.
As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day.
The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard-and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell"
As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day.
The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard-and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell"
Will we ever know?
DesLauriers announced he was stepping down from his position as the head of the Boston’s FBI office on June 11, 2013, two days before the above mentioned Congressional hearing. He said he has accepted a position as vice president of corporate security with Penske Corp., a transportation services company, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Reference: Boston FBI Head Steps Down
What was the reason he resigned from his position? Was he aware of the game played on his agency? Did he find out a connection of Tamerlan to the CIA that he was told to dismiss, because of "national security"? Or did the investigation discover something else? Tamerlan working as an informant for the FBI? Or working for a foreign government?
Moreover, did anyone else know about it? Ibragim Todashev? Mama Tsarnaeva? Katherine?
Todashev was someone who could have told us a lot about Tamerlan, his connections within the local gyms, the martial arts community, and maybe he even knew if Tamerlan was an informant. We will never find out.
The killing of Todashev, the complete gagging of the whole family, excluding the CIA uncle Ruslan, the withholding of the files by the prosecution, the SAMs inflicted on Dzhokhar and the intimidation of all Chechens living in the Florida community – all of that points to one reasonable explanation – there is something in the life of Tamerlan that is not allowed to see the light of the day.
And the boy in the prison cell is the hostage that ensures it stays that way.
Reference: Boston FBI Head Steps Down
What was the reason he resigned from his position? Was he aware of the game played on his agency? Did he find out a connection of Tamerlan to the CIA that he was told to dismiss, because of "national security"? Or did the investigation discover something else? Tamerlan working as an informant for the FBI? Or working for a foreign government?
Moreover, did anyone else know about it? Ibragim Todashev? Mama Tsarnaeva? Katherine?
Todashev was someone who could have told us a lot about Tamerlan, his connections within the local gyms, the martial arts community, and maybe he even knew if Tamerlan was an informant. We will never find out.
The killing of Todashev, the complete gagging of the whole family, excluding the CIA uncle Ruslan, the withholding of the files by the prosecution, the SAMs inflicted on Dzhokhar and the intimidation of all Chechens living in the Florida community – all of that points to one reasonable explanation – there is something in the life of Tamerlan that is not allowed to see the light of the day.
And the boy in the prison cell is the hostage that ensures it stays that way.
Related Posts:
Defense lawyers, Senators and the media: All are refused access to vital information in the Boston Bombing case due to the 'ongoing investigation'. Why?
What inside knowledge is driving the official push for answers in the Boston bombing investigation?
NIP: Have the FBI and top Boston officials been caught lying...AGAIN?
Defense lawyers, Senators and the media: All are refused access to vital information in the Boston Bombing case due to the 'ongoing investigation'. Why?
What inside knowledge is driving the official push for answers in the Boston bombing investigation?
NIP: Have the FBI and top Boston officials been caught lying...AGAIN?
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We actively encourage comments, discussion and debate on this site! Please remember to keep it relevant and be respectful at all times.
