Foreign

Obama Admin Paying for Labor Unions Worldwide

April 27, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Senate Republicans say the Labor Department appears to be spending millions in taxpayer dollars to establish labor unions and promote collective bargaining in foreign countries and is asking top Obama administration officials for a full audit.

The request was sent by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the leading Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the top Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“At a time when our federal budget is deteriorating rapidly … it is troubling to us that the department appears to be spending millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to establish labor unions and promote collective bargaining in foreign countries,” they said in a letter to acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris.

The purported activities were conducted by the agency’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs.

The bureau for the past several years has purportedly made numerous awards — worth millions of dollars — to the United Nations, the Solidarity Center and other similar groups, “whose stated objective is to help establish labor unions in foreign countries,” the senators said.

They also said the bureau recently awarded a Colombian labor organization $1.5 million to help workers improve their collective bargaining rights and $2.2 million to the Solidarity Center, an AFL-CIO organization, to strengthen unions in Haiti and Peru.

In addition, the bureau purportedly awarded a $1.5 million grant to an international development company in 2011 to assist labor unions in Vietnam engage in collective bargaining, the lawmakers said.

The letter was also sent to Government Accountability Office Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. The BILA did not return a request Saturday for a response.

The bureau’s stated mission is to “help ensure that workers around the world are treated fairly and are able to share in the benefits of the global economy.”

The agency also states it focuses on protecting workers’ ability to exercise their rights and addressing the workplace exploitation of children and other vulnerable populations.

Published April 27, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Russia had Wiretap on Boston Marathon Bomber

April 27, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON – Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.

In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011.

Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.

In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to the Boston area over the past 11 years.

Even had the FBI received the information from the Russian wiretaps earlier, it’s not clear that the government could have prevented the attack.

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.

In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington Field Office, where that investigation was based, declined to comment.

There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside the United States, officials said.

It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn’t share more information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence is being collected.

Nobody was available to discuss the matter early Sunday at FSB offices in Moscow.

Jim Treacy, the FBI’s legal attache in Moscow between 2007 and 2009, said the Russians long asked for U.S. assistance regarding Chechen activity in the United States that might be related to terrorism.

“On any given day, you can get some very good cooperation,” Treacy said. “The next you might find yourself totally shut out.”

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by U.S. authorities.

But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat’s former brother-in-law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a “big-time influence” as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim faith and decided to quit boxing and school.

After receiving the narrow tip from Russia in March 2011, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation into Tamerlan and his mother. But the scope was extremely limited under the FBI’s internal procedures.

After a few months, they found no evidence Tamerlan or his mother were involved in terrorism.

The FBI asked Russia for more information. After hearing nothing, it closed the case in June 2011.

In the fall of 2011, the FSB contacted the CIA with the same information. Again the FBI asked Russia for more details and never heard back.

At that time, however, the CIA asked that Tamerlan’s and his mother’s name be entered into a massive U.S. terrorism database.

The CIA declined to comment Saturday.

Authorities have said they’ve seen no connection between the brothers and a foreign terrorist group. Dzhohkar told FBI interrogators that he and his brother were angry over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the deaths of Muslim civilians there.

Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008 or 2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the family as Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter version of Islam.

Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified Misha. While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the officials said they have not found a connection between Misha and the Boston attack or terrorism in general.

Published April 27, 2013 / Associated Press

Bombers’ Mom a ‘Person of Interest’ As Name Turns Up on Terrorism List

April 26, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects is a “person of interest” to federal authorities seeking to learn who radicalized one or both of her sons, according to lawmakers, and a separate report said she was on a federal terrorism database some 18 months before the attack.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who had reportedly become more militant in her Muslim faith around the same time as her son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was added to the classified intelligence database known by the acronym TIDE at the CIA’s request. Two key lawmakers said authorities now want to know if she helped put her son, who died a week ago following a shootout with police in Massachusetts, on the road to radicalism.

“She is a person of interest that we’re looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts with other people or other terrorist groups,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, also pointed to Zubeidat as someone who may have led Tamerlan down the path toward Islamic extremism.

“The mother in my judgment has a role in his radicalization process in terms of her influence over him (and) fundamental views of Islam,” McCaul said.

Tsarnaeva was put on the database after Russia told the CIA the mother and son were religious militants preparing to travel to Russia, the AP reported. It has already been widely reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old suspect who died after a shootout with police in Massachusetts a week ago, was on the list.

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database contains between 500,000 and 1 million names of people on the radar of various national security agencies, but a person’s presence on the list does not automatically mean he or she is suspected of terrorist activity and does not automatically subject them to surveillance, security screening or travel restrictions.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said she was not planning to travel to the U.S. in the wake of one son’s death and the other’s arrest, though her ex-husband was planning to. But she told Fox News Friday that her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, was being taken Friday to a hospital in Moscow to treat what she described as “nerves, head, stomach and elevated blood pressure.”

Anzor Tsarnaev had planned to fly to the U.S. from the semi-autonomous southern Russian republic of Dagestan as early as Thursday. His sons, 26-year-old Tamerlan and 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are responsible for detonating two bombs at the Boston Marathon last week, killing three and injuring more than 180 people, according to federal law enforcement officials.

In a press conference on Thursday, Anzor Tsarnaev said he was coming to the U.S. to bury his eldest son and “find out the truth” — while his ex-wife, who sat beside him, questioned whether the attack even took place.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, believed to be the mastermind behind the attacks, died in a fierce gun battle with police four days after the deadly attacks. His body has not yet been claimed.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded in the gun fight with authorities, has been transported from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens in Ft. Devens, Mass., U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade said. He faces a charge of use of a weapon of mass destruction that could carry the death penalty.

Speaking to reporters from the mountainous southern Russian region of Dagestan, Anzor Tsarnaev said Thursday that he still isn’t convinced his sons set the bombs on April 15.

“I am going to the United States,” Tsarnaev said, punctuating his words by banging on the table. “I want to say that I am going there to see my son, to bury the older one. I don’t have any bad intentions. I don’t plan to blow up anything.”

The suspects’ mother, who has an outstanding warrant for shoplifting, is apparently not planning to make the trip. She expressed sympathy for the victims, yet questioned whether the bombing occurred, suggesting red paint was used to simulate blood on Boston’s Boylston Street.

“That’s what I want to know, because everybody’s talking about it — that this is a show, that’s what I want to know,” she told reporters. “That’s what I want to understand.”

The press conference Thursday came hours before New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the two planned to detonate their remaining explosives in New York’s Times Square.

Anzor Tsarnaev — who has previously said he believes his sons were set up, despite Dzhokhar’s alleged confession from his hospital bed — said he planned to leave as early as Thursday.

“I am not angry at anyone,” he said. “I want to go find out the truth.”

But Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told Fox News that it will take her ex-husband at least two days to decide whether he is able to make the trip. She said the two were en route to a hospital in Moscow and will make further decisions about travel from there.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva remains wanted on felony shoplifting and property damage charges in Massachusetts, according to court officials, and is concerned she could be arrested. Tsarnaeva said she had been assured by lawyers, however, that she would not be.

She said she now regrets moving her family to the United States.

“I thought America was going to, like, protect us, our kids, it’s going to be safe,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told reporters. “But it happened, opposite. My kids just — America took my kids away from me.”

Anzor Tsarnaev told reporters that Tamerlan stayed with him in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, during a trip his eldest son made in January 2012. Tsarnaev said they visited relatives in Chechnya and worked on an apartment in Makhachkala, but stressed that they were always together, including during trips to mosques. Tamerlan had made the trip primarily to obtain a Russian passport, he said.

Anzor Tsarnaev, who said his relatives were receiving threats in Dagestan, said Tamerlan never showed particular interest in the plight of the Chechen people or its two recent wars.

On Wednesday, Anzor Tsarnaev confirmed to Fox News that FBI and Russian authorities had visited him, adding that FBI officials were polite while asking him questions.

The Tsarnaev family emigrated to the U.S. a decade ago, but both parents returned to Russia last year. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a U.S. citizen last year, but Tamerlan had not yet earned citizenship.

Also Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the bombings should spur stronger security cooperation between Moscow and Washington, adding that they also show that the West was wrong in supporting militants in Chechnya.

“This tragedy should push us closer in fending off common threats, including terrorism, which is one of the biggest and most dangerous of them,” Putin said during his annual call-in show on state television.

Putin warned against trying to find the roots for the Boston tragedy in the suffering endured by the Chechen people, particularly in mass deportations of Chechens to Siberia and Central Asia on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s orders.

“The cause isn’t in their ethnicity or religion, it’s in their extremist sentiments,” Putin said.

Fox News’ Amy Kellogg and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Muslim Preacher Tells Followers: Getting Welfare Cash For Holy Wars Is Easy And Right

April 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A Muslim preacher has been secretly recorded explaining to followers how to receive government assistance they can use to fund a Muslim holy war.

Calling it a “Jihadi Allowance,” cleric Anjem Choundary, 45, has four kids, brings in £25,000, or just under $39,000 U.S. in benefits himself, and says that this is the way it is supposed to work according to Islamic law.

Recorded by both the U.K. Sun and Telegraph, Choundary says:

“We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, we take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway.
“The normal situation is to take money from the [non-Muslims] isn’t it? So this is the normal situation.”
“They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening.”
“Ah, but you see people will say you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the Kuffar (non-Muslim) So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”

Choudray goes on in a separate videos to mock English workers performing 9 to 5 jobs, and tells followers that some of the most famous Islamic figures worked only one or two days a week.

“The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that,” he says, according to The Telegraph. “People will say, ‘Ah, but you are not working.’”

“But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-believers].”

“So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”

He the tells a crowd of about 30 followers: “We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming.”

“These people are like a tsunami going across Europe. And over here we’re just relaxing, taking over Bradford brother. The reality is changing.”

By Robert Johnson

Video of Anjem Choundary

Boston Bombers Were Set to Bomb Times Square Next

April 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had Times Square in their sights before law enforcement authorities put an end to their bloody terror spree, according New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“New York was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Bloomberg said he received confirmation of the chilling second phase of their plot from the FBI. “The fact is, New York City remains a prime target for those who hate America and want to kill Americans.”

“New York was next on their list of targets.”- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the brothers, Muslims from Dagestan, a breakaway republic in Russia, hatched their plot to attack Times Square while driving the streets of Cambridge last Thursday in a Mercedes SUV they had carjacked from a man who later escaped. Kelly called the New York plot “spontaneous,” and said they had six bombs with them in the car, some of which they hurled at police cars hours later when they were being pursued in a chase that culminated in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death.

One of the bombs the brothers had in the stolen car was a pressure cooker bomb, identical to one used in the marathon attack, and packed with gunpowder and shrapnel, Kelly said. Both Kelly and Bloomberg noted surveillance cameras, a contentious subject in New York, played a key role in solving the bombing in Boston, Bloomberg’s hometown. Still, the mayor said there was no way of knowing if the brothers could have pulled off a second attack in America’s largest city.

“We don’t know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston,” Bloomberg said. He said he did not know of a specific target within Times Square.

Times Square was targeted by Muslim terrorist Faisal Shahzad in a failed 2010 plot. Kelly said at least one Tsarnaev brother was photographed in Times Square last year, first on April 18 and then later on an unspecified day in November.

Kelly said the plot was revealed in a bedside interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he remains in fair condition. The 19-year-old suspect spoke to FBI agents intermittently over a 16-hour period before a federal judge showed up at the hospital and read him his Miranda rights, after which he clammed up, according to law enforcement sources.

The brothers are suspected of setting two bombs at the finish line of the race April 15. Three people were killed and more than 200 injured. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty if convicted in the attacks, which he said were prompted by the brothers’ religious beliefs and anger over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mom Wears Burqa to Rescue Kidnapped Son in Egypt

April 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Through the slit of the burqa she wore to blend in on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, Kalli Atteya waited and watched until the boy climbed off the school bus. When she saw him, she moved quickly, grabbing his arm and steering him toward the waiting motorized cart.”Get in,” she said to the 12-year-old, who recognized his mother’s piercing blue eyes and obeyed wordlessly.Soon, they were speeding toward a safehouse where they would wait for three weeks before returning to the U.S., and ending a 20-month ordeal that began with another abduction — one the boy, Khalil Mohamed “Niko” Atteya, did not accept willingly. His father, Mohamed Atteya, who is wanted by the U.S. authorities, is accused of luring the mother and son to his homeland, then snatching the boy and leaving Kalli Atteya and her sister on the side of a desolate road between Cairo and Port Said on Aug. 1, 2011.

“My Dad forced me to be Muslim, which I did not want to do,” Niko, who has been back in Pennsylvania for more than a month, told FoxNews.com.

A world away, he had a determined mother who would spare no expense and even risk her own safety to save her boy. After a torturous struggle that included false leads, false hopes and more than $100,000 spent, Kalli Atteya finally showed what the love and determination of a mom can do

“I was really nervous, but I was bound and determined to take my son,” she told FoxNews.com during an interview in Chambersburg, Pa., near where Atteya and her son now live.

With the help of a local guide, the 45-year-old mother had tracked her only child and her ex-husband, a man she had married more than a dozen years earlier, after meeting him at the Harrisburg, Pa., restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher. Mohamed Atteya, 38, who speaks Arabic, English and Chinese, and is wanted by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security Service for making false statements and providing forged documents to obtain a U.S. passport, had no idea his tenacious ex-wife was on his trail.

“I followed him,” Kalli Atteya said. “I mean, I came really close to him several different times. [Mohamed] didn’t recognize me, but my son did and when he saw me for the first time, he turned pale.”

When the time came, neither mom nor son hesitated.

“My first reaction was [to wonder] if that was my mom or not, and then I saw her eyes,” Niko said. “I thought, ‘Thank God. I’m going to finally get out of here. I’m going to be free.’”

These days, Niko is preparing to be home-schooled soon and begin his long reintegration process. He hopes to one day play football on his junior high school team and is grateful to be back in America. His mother is happy, too, though there is the constant fear that Mohamed Atteya will again appear in their lives, tracking down his son and trying once again to drag the boy back to Egypt and force him to live as a strict Muslim.

“My son told me [it was] to make him a Muslim,” Atteya replied when asked why she thought her ex-husband snatched the boy. “He said that we lack the morality and the values that their system has. And he said that Americans were so violent, he said we are a rotting society.”

“I saw him and walked right up to him, grabbed him by the arm and said, ‘Get in.'”- Kalliopi ‘Kalli’ Atteya

Kalli Atteya’s fears are stoked by the vivid memory of the downward spiral of their marriage that culminated in the cruel betrayal that almost cost her her son.

It was in 1999 when Kalliopi “Kalli” Panagos fell hard for Mohamed Atteya. Within a year, they married and moved to nearby Chambersburg. But trouble began shortly after Niko’s birth in July of 2000.

“Three months after our boy was born, he left,” Kalli Atteya told FoxNews.com. “He moved back to Harrisburg, and he dated many, many women. I tried to save my marriage but it didn’t work. Basically, he married me for a visa.”

After years of failed reconciliation attempts, the couple divorced in 2005. Mohamed Atteya briefly stayed in Harrisburg before moving to China, where he focused on his exporting business. Niko remained with his mother, who stayed in contact with her ex-husband.

“Mohamed always had a thing for moving everywhere all the time,” Kalli Atteya said. “But we talked all the time. He would tell me he still loved me — to string me along, I guess.”

Some six years later, during the height of the Egyptian revolution, Mohamed Atteya convinced his ex-wife to come with their son to meet his dying mother. Kalli was reluctant, but finally agreed, and her sister, Maria Panagos, came along for support.

WANTED – Anyone with information regarding Mohamed Atteya should contact U.S. State Department officials at (855) 847-4377 or DSSMostWanted@state.gov.

“He kept pushing and pushing until I finally relented,” Kalli Atteya said. “I didn’t want his mother to die without seeing her grandson.”

During the second night of their stay in Egypt, Mohamed began asking for his son’s passport, Kalli recounted. Several times, he tried to take him off for a “man talk,” she said. Then, on Aug. 1, 2011, Mohamed Atteya made his move as the group traveled from Cairo to Port Said. He complained of car trouble and forced Kalli and Maria Panagos out of the car in extreme heat, leaving Niko, himself and a driver to speed away.

“Mohamed threw me off to the side and ran to the car,” she said. “I remember seeing [Maria] dragging behind the car as my son pounded on the windows. It was so unreal to me. At that very moment, I knew this was all preplanned.”

Local authorities were less than helpful, and with no idea where her former husband had taken their son, Kalli turned to a Norwegian company for help. With each new bit of hope came a new charge until she had spent more than $100,000, depleting her savings and funds borrowed from relatives. Still, she seemed no closer to reuniting with her son.

Kalli Atteya, who had already visited Egypt three times since the seeing her ex-husband drive off with their son, returned again in October, more determined than ever to bring back her boy. A local man whom she does not want to identify helped her find them and pull off the rescue.

But Kalli will feel safer when the man she once loved is locked away and can no longer haunt the dreams of her and her son.

State Department officials told FoxNews.com they are aware of Atteya’s case, but declined to provide further details due to privacy concerns.

“One of the Department’s highest priorities is the welfare of U.S. citizens overseas,” the statement reads. “This is particularly true for children, who our most vulnerable citizens.”

Attorney Jeffrey Evans, who lobbied a local district attorney to file charges against Atteya, acknowledged the possibility of his return to the U.S. in search of Niko.

“I do think it is a possibility because what he accomplished while here to set up the abduction was pretty impressive,” Evans said of Atteya’s alleged forgery on Niko’s birth certificate and passport.

But Evans said he’d also never bet against Kalli, who is now working toward finishing her master’s degree in special education now that she can again focus on bettering herself.

“If there was ever a testament to the power of a mother’s love, she embodies that,” Evans said. “She persevered through some very dark times. She showed a tenacity that not many would have. She really is something special.”

By Joshua Rhett Miller / Published April 25, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Syria Used Chemical Weapons

April 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday the U.S. intelligence community believes the Syrian regime used the chemical weapon sarin, a revelation that immediately raised the question of whether a “red line” had been crossed in the country’s civil war.Hagel confirmed the intelligence assessment, which was detailed in a letter to select members of Congress, while speaking to reporters on a visit to Abu Dhabi. The administration swiftly released those letters, which said U.S. intelligence determined with varying degrees of confidence that “the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.”

The White House stressed that this was not enough to confirm how the nerve gas was released — though acknowledged it is “very likely” to have originated with the regime of Bashar Assad — and pressed the United Nations for a “comprehensive” investigation. The letter from the White House director of the Office of Legislative Affairs to leading members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the assessment was based in part on “physiological samples.”

Secretary of State John Kerry further confirmed that there were two documented instances of chemical weapons use.

The assessment is likely to prompt calls for more serious consideration of intervention. President Obama has said the use of chemical weapons would be a “game-changer” in the U.S. position on intervening in the two-year-old Syrian civil war. Obama said last August that “a red line for us” would be the movement or use of chemical weapons, adding “that would change my calculus.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested Thursday the “red line” had been crossed. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., also said the assessment is “deeply troubling and, if correct, means that President Obama’s red line has certainly been crossed.”

But Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said more information is needed.

“Precisely because the president takes this issue so seriously, we have an obligation to fully investigate any and all evidence of chemical weapons use within Syria,” she said in a statement. “That is why we are currently pressing for a comprehensive United Nations investigation that can credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place. We are also working with our friends and allies, and the Syrian opposition, to procure, share and evaluate additional information associated with reports of the use of chemical weapons so that we can establish the facts.”

Asked if this crossed a “red line” for the U.S., Hagel likewise said they are still trying to assess.

“It violates every convention of warfare,” he said.

Published April 25, 2013 / FoxNews.com /The Associated Press contributed to this report.

RED-FLAG ‘FAILURE’? Concern That Bomber on Terror Lists Was Ignored

April 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The CIA had Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name put into a terror watchlist after being contacted by Russian authorities in 2011, sources told Fox News — raising more questions about why the Boston bomber’s trip to Russia the following year didn’t raise more red flags.

Sources say the Russians contacted the FBI once in March 2011, and several months later they contacted the CIA about Tsarnaev.

In October 2011, the CIA sent information to many federal agencies and to “the watchlisting system” about him, the sources say. That step ultimately put him on the vast TIDE database of people potentially tied to terrorism cases.

The FBI has said previously that it was told Tsarnaev was a “follower of radical Islam” and was preparing to travel to a foreign country to join unspecified underground groups. The FBI said that it responded by interviewing Tsarnaev and family members, but found no terrorism activity.

In early 2012, Tsarnaev would travel to Russia for six months. The nature of that trip is still unclear.

Two top Republican senators are now calling for a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings, as lawmakers question whether enough was done to prevent the attack.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, requested the hearing Wednesday, saying “it has become increasingly apparent that more questions need to be answered regarding the failure to prevent this tragedy.”

The senators cited the reporting by Fox News and others that Russian officials contacted the U.S. government at least twice in 2011 with concerns about Tsarnaev, the Chechen who two years later would carry out last week’s deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon, as an example of an instance that merits further investigation.

“In a string of apparent intelligence-sharing lapses, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was able to slip through the cracks and carry out this devastating attack,” the senators said.

Authorities suspect Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, of using improvised explosives to kill and maim runners and spectators near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 200 injured in the April 15 attack.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed days later in a shootout with police. His 19-year-old brother escaped but was captured alive Friday night and now faces a charge of use of a weapon of mass destruction that could carry the death penalty.

The brothers immigrated to the United States about a decade ago with their family. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a U.S. citizen last year, but Tamerlan had not yet earned citizenship.

Senators, after being briefed on the case Tuesday, said the U.S. government had “multiple contacts” with Russia about the older Boston bombing suspect, but those lawmakers wouldn’t offer any more details.

Fox News was told the FBI tried to determine if Tsarnaev had any ties to terrorism, but those efforts apparently proved inconclusive.

“We did everything we could,” one FBI source said, and their assessment was based on the “totality of the evidence.”

The FBI insists, despite suggestions to the contrary, that it was contacted only once by the Russians about Tsarnaev.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said Wednesday that the U.S. made three inquiries with Russia about Tsarnaev and got no response.

Lawmakers and investigators are taking a close look at Tsarnaev’s trip to Russia in January 2012. His father says his son stayed with him in Dagestan.

Despite violence there, Anzor Tsarnaev said Sunday that his son did not want to leave and had thoughts on how he could go into business. But the father said he encouraged him to go back to the U.S. and try to get citizenship. Tamerlan Tsarnaev returned to the U.S. in July.

His mother said that he was questioned upon arrival at the airport in New York.

“And he told me on the phone, ‘Imagine, mama, they were asking me such interesting questions as if I were some strange and scary man: Where did you go? What did you do there?'” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva recalled her son telling her at the time.

Fox News’ Mike Levine and Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tax-Funded Jihad

April 24, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Tamerlan Tsarnaev - American Life of Boston bombing suspect

One of the men behind last week’s deadly attack on the Boston Marathon had received Massachusetts welfare benefits until recently — during the same period that the alienation he apparently felt as a Chechen in America coincided with a growing embrace of radical Islam.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his family were living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits as recently as last year, the Boston Herald reports, though it remains unclear what kind of benefits they were receiving.

State officials confirmed to the newspaper late Tuesday that Tsarnaev, who was killed during a gun battle with police on Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter.

His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured Friday night and charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. The 19-year-old could face the death penalty if convicted.

The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s welfare benefits ended in 2012 when the family stopped meeting income eligibility limits. His wife’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home, the newspaper reports.

“The brothers were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time of the incident and have not received any transitional assistance benefits this year,” Massachusetts Health and Human Services communication director Alec Loftus told the newspaper in a statement. “The Tsarnaevs’ parents are former recipients of transitional assistance benefits, and both Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev received benefits through their parents when they were younger. Separately, Tamerlan and his family received benefits until 2012, when the family became ineligible based on their income.”

The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance works “to assist low-income individuals and families to meet their basic needs, increase their incomes and improve their quality of life,” the agency’s website says.

The benefits offered include food assistance, job assistance, emergency shelter, help for victims of domestic violence, cash aid for families with children, emergency assistance for the elderly and disabled.

Loftus declined to specify to the Herald the type and amount of assistance Tsarnaev and his family were receiving.

Published April 24, 2013 /FoxNews.com

Media Blame US for Boston Bombings, Ignore Radical Islam Ties

April 24, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Comedian George Carlin famously joked about the seven words you couldn’t say on air. Add two more – “Islam” and “Muslim” – but only if you use them in a negative context.

In the week following the terror attack on the Boston Marathon, lefties and their media clones have been desperate to point out the attack had nothing to do with those two scary words.

After all, journalists and pundits have had time to reflect on the bombing – from the safety of their posh offices and not Boston’s crowded hospitals. The brothers were just poor and misunderstood. It can’t be their fault.

The Brothers Tsarnaev have set media tongues a-wagging looking for someone to blame other than Muslims – like Americans.

Famed newsman Tom Brokaw took up the blame America crusade on Sunday’s NBC “Meet the Press,” discussing “motivation” like he was in an entry-level acting class.

Today in American we have a media so obsessed with feeling good about themselves, that America can’t have a conversation about the dangers of radical Islam.

According to Brokaw, we’re to blame. “I think we also have to examine the use of drones that the United States is involved in and – and there are a lot of civilians who are innocently killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq.”

Why? American “presumptuousness,” a crime which now merits the death penalty in certain Islamic circles.

The Washington post claimed on Tuesday that “Boston Marathon bombing suspects elude labels.” Oh? How about radical Islamic terrorists? Radical Muslim terrorists?

According to AP, “U.S. officials said Tuesday, adding another piece to the body of evidence they say suggests the two brothers were motivated by an anti-American, radical version of Islam.”

The media felt they knew better.

At MSNBC, they must be hanging gymnastics medals after the contortions it put its staff through.

When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked a Georgetown professor about “some radicalized YouTube clips” on the older brother’s YouTube page, she received a classic response.

Prof. Charles King told her: “Well, and keep in mind that on his, on the elder brother’s, Tamerlan’s YouTube channel, there are an equal number of rap videos.” When Georgetown professors start commenting on the content of rap videos, it’s fair to say they’re clueless. Or tragically unhip.

Another MSNBC host continued that smokescreen theme, comparing the bombers to famous murderers.

On Tuesday, Alex Wagner said if the brothers had acted alone, “it ends debate regarding whether to try him as an enemy combatant,” wrote Mediaite. “With no ties to foreign terrorist networks, there would be little difference between him and so-called homegrown and lone wolf terrorists including Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski.” Only neither of those was motivated by a global belief system linked to hundreds or thousands of terror attacks.

Perhaps, instead of being PC, they might address the issue of radical Islam, especially since two Muslim men were just arrested for a Canadian terror plot.

The media are doing law-abiding American Muslims no favors by refusing to acknowledge a problem – radical Islam – that threatens them as well. But note the term, “radical Islam.”

It is not being overly PC to admit that millions of American Muslims don’t go blowing up their neighbors. Since I have Muslim neighbors, I appreciate that fact.

On Monday, Politico’s Josh Gerstein claimed that “the Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ geopolitical leanings are still largely a mystery.”

He clearly didn’t watch a week filled with news where we learned the older of the Tsarnaev brothers had visited Russia’s terrorist-filled Dagestan. And that Russia had asked the U.S. to investigate his ties to radical Islam. Oopsie.

One of The Atlantic’s “reporters” even did her best to minimize the skill of the terrorists to downplay the attack. “The more we learn of Boston bombers the more they seem like bumblers. And there’s the rub: any idiot can terrorize, doesn’t require genius,” tweeted Garance Franke-Ruta Tuesday.

Boston health authorities say 264 people were treated at local hospitals, along three killed.

Evil? Yes! Bumblers? Hardly.

Then there were those who couldn’t let that old crisis go to waste. So they used a terror attack on Americans to promote…gun control. New Yorker editor David Remnick told the “Charlie Rose” show that guns were part of the problem.

“We see yet another act which might have been a Hell of a lot more difficult to pull off with effective gun control.” Remnick is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get it in logic.

Even my friend, lefty radio host Thom Hartmann used the bombing to attack “all forms of religious fundamentalism that lead to violence.” Thom, like most liberals, isn’t especially tolerant of religion and said this was “a good opportunity for us to have a conversation about modernity versus Bronze Age gods.” Nothing says open-mindedness like calling Christianity “Bronze Age gods.”

What it all adds up to, is a media so obsessed with feeling good about themselves, that America can’t have a conversation about the dangers of radical Islam. It’s a world tailor made for people like nutty columnist David Sirota (OK, that’s like saying “wet ocean”). Sirota, you’ll recall, hoped that the bombers might be “a white American.”

As it turns out, it didn’t matter. The media just report what they want anyhow.

Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

Share Your Thoughts Below

Liberal Bob Beckel: Hold off on Muslim Students Coming to US

April 23, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

Liberal member of Fox’s The Five opines that Muslims are actively recruited by terrorists, so until we can get a handle on the worldwide problem.

Beckel said, “I think we really have to consider, given the fact so many people hate us, that we’re going to have to cut off Muslim students coming to this country for some period of time so that we can absorb what we’ve got and look at what we’ve got and decide whether some of the people here should be going — be sent home or sent to prison.”

Beckel wondered how many who are currently here harbor resentment toward the United States.

“They come from countries where they are, frankly, brainwashed about the United States from the beginning. Their leaders don’t like the United States.”

Liberal media are back-stepping Beckel’s comments trying to convince audiences that his is a minority view in liberal circles.

PUBLIUS

Share Your Opinion About This Story below

Wife of Dead Islamic Terrorist ‘Brainwashed’

April 22, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

Federal investigators want to speak with the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Muslim convert and mother of their 3-year-old daughter, according to the Rhode Island woman’s attorney.Investigators went to the suburban Rhode Island home of Tsarnaev’s in-laws Sunday evening, where Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, 24, has been staying. Lawyer Amato DeLuca told The Associated Press that she did not speak with them and they are discussing how to proceed.

“I spoke to them, and that’s all I can say right now,” DeLuca said. “We’re deciding what we want to do and how we want to approach this.”

DeLuca also provided new details on Tsarnaev’s movements in the days following the bombings, saying the last day he was alive that “he was home” when Russell left for work. When asked whether anything seemed amiss to his wife following the bombings, DeLuca replied: “Not as far as I know.” He said she learned her husband was a suspect in the bombings by seeing it on television and did not elaborate.

“I saw her like a few months ago and she was just totally transformed. She was not the same person at all.”- Former classmate of Katherine Russell

DeLuca said Russell did not suspect her husband of anything, and that there was no reason for her to have suspected him. He said she had been working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week as a home health care aide. While she was at work, Tsarneav, 26, cared for their toddler daughter, DeLuca said.

“When this allegedly was going on, she was working, and had been working all week to support her family,” DeLuca told The Associated Press, adding that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was off at college and she saw him “not at all” at the apartment they shared with her mother-in-law.

All-American girl drops out and converts to Islam for terrorist husband

On Friday, the woman’s mother handed reporters a statement referring to the “horrible tragedy” that occurred at the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 176 others.

“Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child,” the statement read. “We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred. In the aftermath of the Patriots’ Day horror, we know that we never really knew Tamerlane [sic] Tsarnaev. Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted. Please respect our family’s privacy in this difficult time.”

Russell, according to reports, was “totally transformed” by Tsarnaev after meeting him. By age 21, she had married him and borne his daughter, Zahara, who is now 3 years old, the Daily Mail reports. She also converted to Islam and underwent a change so profound that few friends truly understood the sizable shift.

“I saw her like a few months ago and she was just totally transformed,” one former classmate told the newspaper. “She was not the same person at all.”

Another former classmate said the “All-American” girl had been “brainwashed” by her super-religious husband.

“Nobody understands what happened to her,” she told the newspaper of Russell. “None of us would have dreamed that she would marry so young or drop out of college and have a baby or convert or be part of any of what’s happened … She’s just not the same person at all.”

In 2004, Katherine Russell began studying at North Kingstown High School, where she was a member of the dance team and was recognized for a drawing of a cat in 11th grade. She also competed with fellow classmates during the school’s class color day.

“The thing that’s so shocking is that there was nothing at all that made Katherine different,” another classmate told the Daily Mail. “Her parents are nice people, her sisters are great girls. But she met this guy, I guess, and everything changed.”

Russell later met Tsarnaev while she was a student at Boston’s Suffolk University. Soon thereafter, she converted and her priorities seemingly changed, as she left the school in 2010 without graduating. Months earlier, in July 2009, Tsarnaev was arrested for allegedly assaulting Russell, who described Tsarnaev to authorities as a “very nice man,” the newspaper reports.

Russell, in her high school yearbook, provided a quotation that would seemingly coincide with the extremist views of her late husband.

“Don’t take anything for granted,” Russell wrote, before quoting a line from David Bowie’s Quicksand. “Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief … Knowledge comes from death’s release.”

Published April 22, 2013 / FoxNews.com /The Associated Press contributed to this report.

House Wants Administration’s Intelligence on Tamerlan Tsarnaev

April 21, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A Republican-led House committee is asking the Obama administration for all information on the Boston bombing suspect once suspected of engaging in terrorist activities, saying the tragedy marks another intelligence failure and raises “serious questions about the efficacy of the federal counter-terrorism efforts.”

The letter was sent Saturday by the House Committee on Homeland Security to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, National Intelligence Director James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

In the letter, Committee Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul says bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev appears to be the fifth person since 9/11 to participate in a terror attack, despite being under FBI investigation.

McCaul, R-Texas, said the incidents “raise the most serious questions about the efficacy of the federal counter terrorism efforts.”

Tsarnaev, 26, was killed early Friday morning in a police shootout. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured by police that night and remains in the hospital.

The older Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2011 before a six-month overseas trip, including time in Russia. In addition, he posted jihadist material on his social media site.

On Saturday, two U.S. law enforcement officials said the FBI was acting on information from the Russian intelligence security service that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam.

“Yet Tsarnaev remained at liberty in this country to conduct the Boston attack, and it took days to publicly identify him as a suspect,” wrote McCaul, who wants the information by Friday.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a committee member who also signed the letter, asked on “Fox News Sunday”: “Why didn’t the FBI go back and look at this?”

Still, the agency got some bipartisan support Sunday for its intelligence work and finding the bombing suspects.

“The FBI did its due diligence” Rep. Mike Rogers said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent, also suggested Tsarnaev could have made overseas trips under an alias.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told NBC the FBI and related agencies need more resources.

“We need to invest in the resources necessary for law enforcement,” said Durbin, who acknowledges the Boston attacks might be a call for a review of U.S. intelligence efforts.

Two bombs place Monday near the Boston Marathon finish line killed three people and injured more than 180 others.

McCaul identified the others in the terrorist category as Anwar al Awlaki, David Headley, Carlos Bledsoe and Nidal Hasan.

He said Faruq Abdulmutallab also attempted a terror attack despite being identified to the Central Intelligence Agency as a potential terrorist. The so-called “underwear bomber” attempted to blow up a U.S. airliner on Dec. 25, 2009.

Al Awlaki was an American-born Al Qaeda member killed in a 2011 U.S. drone attack in Yemen. Headley is a Pakistani-American who pleaded guilty in 2010 to participating in terror attacks including the 2008 Mumbai, India, attacks that killed 164 people.

Bledsoe was born in Tennessee and converted to radical Islam before a 2009 attack on a military recruiting station in which he fatally shot an Army private.

Hasan, born in Virginia, is the Army officer accused of fatally shooting 13 people in 2009 at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas.

Published April 21, 2013 / FoxNews.com /The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Boston Marathon Suspects Islamic Terrorists, Not Chechen Separatists

April 20, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: Terror expert Steve Emerson spoke with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly Friday about suspects’ possible motives in the Boston Marathon terror attacks. The following is a summary of the information he shared with her:

Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism reviewed videos posted on the YouTube channels of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev.

Both brothers had YouTube channels in the United States and in Russia. Emerson’s group reviewed about half of the 22 videos posted on the U.S. channel. The videos were viewed by a small number of people. One video received 5,000 views, another just 1,000 views.

Based on the content of the videos, which feature Bin Laden, calls to kill Americans, Jews, Christians and exhortations to establish a world-wide caliphate, it is clear that these message are not directed just at Chechens. “They are directed primarily against all non-Muslims and are very similar to the Al Qaeda videos we’ve seen in years past.”

The two brothers clearly want “to express a message that they totally sympathize with the jihadist cause. These were jihadists, they were not just Chechen separatists.”

Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and the executive producer of a new documentary about the Muslim Brotherhood in America “Jihad in America: the Grand Deception.”

By Steven Emerson / Published April 19, 2013

Muslim Terrorists Killed and Captured

April 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A day-long dragnet for the second of two brothers believed to be behind Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing ended Friday night, with police capturing the suspect covered in blood and hiding in a boat in the backyard of a man who called 911 after becoming suspicious of activity on his property.

“We got him,” Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted moments later, as neighbors gathered to form a gauntlet of cheers while a phalanx of police cars departed the scene.

Police moved in on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Friday evening after a tip led them to the home on Franklin Street, where he apparently had been hiding in the back yard. Neighbors said they heard more than 30 shots one likened to “a roll of firecrackers shooting off.” Police swarmed the scene, and several explosions, possibly police concussion grenades, were heard after a robot moved in on the boat. Less than two hours later, at about 9 p.m., the suspect, believed to have been injured in a wild shootout that spanned Thursday night to Friday morning, was being taken to Beth Israel Hospital.

No police were injured when shots were fired by the boat.

“We are so grateful to bring justice and to bring closure to this case,” Massachsetts State Police Col. Tim Alben said moments later, at a staging area set up down the block from the crime scene. “We have a suspect in custody.”

Sources told Fox News the shed and the boat had been searched earlier, but a local man noticed a door to it had been opened, saw blood on the tarp and called police.

“It was a call from a resident of Watertown,” Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said. “We got that call, and we got the guy.”

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said Tsarnaev was in serious condition and was found “covered with blood.” He did not come out from inside the boat willingly, despite the efforts of negotiators, Davis said.

“We assume that those injuries came from the gunfire the night before,” Davis said. He also said Tsarnaev did not have any explosives with him when he was taken into custody.

The hiding place was found just moments after police said their hunt for Tsarnaev, one of two radical Muslim brothers suspected in Monday’s attack, had gone cold and urged people to “go about your business.”

“We are so grateful to bring justice and to bring closure to this case. We have a suspect in custody.” – Mass. State Police Col. Timothy Alben

Shortly after the capture was announced, Watertown residents poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.

“Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job,” said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.

Early in the day, police told residents of several city neighborhoods, especially Watertown, to stay inside. School was canceled, bus and train service suspended and people were even told not to venture out for work. But those restrictions were lifted at the news briefing Friday night about 15 minutes before the gunshots were heard.

The boat Tsarnaev hid under was just outside the tight perimeter where Black Hawk helicopters patrolled the sky and police went door-to-door hunting for him, police said. Police say he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev placed the deadly bombs, at least one of which was made from a pressure cooker packed with explosives and shrapnel, at the race, killing three and injuring more than 180. The sibling suspects are from Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders Chechnya, but have been in the U.S. for as much as a decade..

On Thursday night, hours after the radicalized Muslims were fingered by the FBI and their images circulated around the world, they killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer and carjacked an SUV from a man who later escaped. The brothers led police on a chase through city streets that included a wild shootout that saw some 200 shots fired and the suspects hurling pipe bombs from the SUV. Bizarrely, police discounted earlier reports that the brothers had robbed a 7/11, saying although it had been robbed, and they had been caught on surveillance video, they were not the robbers.

The pursuit went into Watertown, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was shot several times in the gunfight. But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev somehow slipped away, running over his already wounded brother as he fled by car, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Hospital Deaconess Medical Center Friday morning. But at some point following the shootout and car chase, the younger brother fled by foot, according to State Police, who said Friday night they don’t believe he now has access to a car.

During the pursuit, a MBTA transit police officer was seriously injured and transported to the hospital, according to a news release. He was identified as Richard H. Donahue Jr., 33, and was at Mount. Auburn Hospital in critical but stable condition.

The suspects’ bloody rampage claimed the life of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 26, who was found shot to death in his squad car at 10:20 p.m. Thursday in what Davis termed a “vicious assassination.” Moments after the shooting, the brothers carjacked the Mercedes SUV from Third Street in Cambridge and forced the driver to stop at several bank machines to withdraw money. The driver later told police that the brothers had bragged to him that they were the marathon bombers, law enforcement authorities said.

“The guy was very lucky that they let him go,” Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio said.

It was when police were working to activate the tracking device on the stolen SUV, that other patrol officers spotted it in nearby Watertown, touching off the dramatic chase.

FBI Special Agent Rick Deslauriers said Friday night the FBI pored though thousands of tips, and chased down countless leads in the intense probe following the terror attack on Monday.

“The was a truly intense investigation,” Deslauriers said. “As a result of that justice is being served for each of the victims of these crimes.”

Click here for more from MyFoxBoston.com.

Published April 20, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, Jana Winter, Mike Tobin, Mike Levine, Griff Jenkins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Multiple Explosions Heard as Boston Police Surround Home In Bombing Manhunt

April 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Multiple explosions echoed from inside a house as police in Boston massed inside a perimeter set up to contain the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

The situation was fluid, and the latest development came in the city’s Watertown section after a chaotic night of mayhem that included the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer and a shootout with police, authorities said early Friday.

Police believe the two suspects from Monday’s terror attack are brothers, possibly from Chechnya, according to sources who spoke to Fox News. The man on the loose was identified as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass. They are believed to have been here for ‘several years,’ sources said.

Schools are closed, train and bus service is suspended and police were telling residents of neighborhoods including Cambridge, Waltham, Watertown, Newton, Arlington and Belmont to stay indoors. Police have formed a wide perimeter and believe the suspect is on foot, armed and dangerous, inside.

“Suspect No. One is dead, Suspect Two is on the run,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said at a Friday morning press conference. “There is a massive manhunt underway.”

The dead suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot multiple times in a gunfight with police Thursday night and pronounced dead at a hospital.

The suspects apparently surfaced just hours after the FBI released their imaged late Thursday afternoon, shooting the police officer, robbing a convenience store, carjacking a man who later escaped and engaging in a wild shootout with Boston police, in which they hurled explosives from their stolen car.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said on Twitter that one of the two suspects was killed and that the at-large suspect, labeled by the FBI as “suspect two” in the marathon bombing, was “armed and dangerous.”

Authorities urged residents in Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge and the Allston-Brighton neighborhoods of Boston to stay indoors. All mass transit was shut down.

“We believe this to be a terrorist,” Davis said in a press conference. “We believe this to be a man who’s come here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.”

The Middlesex district attorney said the two men are suspected of killing the MIT police officer on campus late Thursday, then stealing a car at gunpoint and later releasing its driver unharmed. Hours earlier, police had released photos of the marathon bombing suspects and asked for the public’s help finding them.

The suspects threw explosives from the car as police followed it into Watertown, according to the district attorney’s news release. The suspects and police exchanged gunfire, and one of the suspects was critically injured and later died while the other escaped.

During the pursuit, a MBTA transit police officer was seriously injured and transported to the hospital, the news release states. He was identified as Richard H. Donahue Jr., 33, and was being treated at Mt. Auburn Hospital..

Hours earlier, police had released photos of the marathon bombing suspects and asked for the public’s help finding them. A new photo of the suspect on the loose was released later showing him in a grey hoodie sweatshirt. It was taken at a 7-Eleven in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston.

A federal law enforcement official told Fox News they are looking into whether the bombing suspects may have been from overseas and had overseas military training.

Dozens of officers and National Guard members descended on Watertown shortly after the shooting outside a building on MIT’s campus in Cambridge, according to the Associated Press.

Authorities were calling for somebody to get on the ground and put their hands up and a loud thud was heard after someone shouted “fire in the hole,” the news agency reported.

Witnesses told The Associated Press they heard multiple gunshots and explosions at about 1 a.m. Friday. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents were in the neighborhood and a helicopter circled overhead.

State police spokesman David Procopio told news agency, “The incident in Watertown did involve what we believe to be explosive devices possibly, potentially, being used against the police officers.”

Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston where a suspect in the marathon bombings was taken and later died said they treated a man with a possible blast injury and multiple gunshot wounds. They wouldn’t say if the patient they treated, who came in with police, was the suspect in the black hat from marathon surveillance footage.

Earlier Friday, Cambridge police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s office said the MIT officer was responding to a report of a disturbance when he was shot multiple times late Thursday. He later died at a hospital. His name was not immediately released.

Procopio said the shooting took place about 10:30 p.m. outside an MIT building. The area was cordoned off and surrounded by responding law enforcement agencies, according to a posting on the university’s website.

The shooting came little more than three days after the twin bombings on the Boston Marathon that killed three people, wounded more than 180 others and led to an increase in security across the city.

Click here for more from MyFoxBoston.com.

Click here for more from WCVB.com.

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, Jana Winter, Mike Tobin, Mike Levine, Griff Jenkins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

FBI Releases Video, Photos of Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects

April 18, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

The FBI has identified two suspects in Monday’s the Boston Marathon bombing, releasing photos and video showing them and asking the public to help locate them.The suspects, one of whom wore a a dark baseball-style cap and the other who wore backwards white baseball-style cap, appear to be in their twenties and were captured on footage near where one of two explosions killed three and injured 176. In video that appears to be from a surveillance camera and which was shown by the FBI, both suspects are walking west on Boylston Street, near the finish line and where the explosions occurred.

“Someobody out there knows them as friends, coworkers. Although it may be difficult, we are counting on those [people] to come forward.” – Rick DesLauriers, FBI

“We consider them to be extremely dangerous and armed,” said FBI Special Agent Rick DesLauriers. “With the media’s help, we know the public will create a critical role in locating these suspects.

“The nation is counting on those with information to come forward,” he added, urging anyone who recognizes the men to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or go to the bureau’s website for online tips.

DesLauriers said investigators first focused on one man, then realized he appeared to be working with another man.

“Through the last day or so, we developed a single person of interest,” DesLauriers said. “Indeed, though that process we have identified a second suspect. We believe they are associated.”

The second suspect was seen dropping a backpack as both walked single file on Boylston Street, where both of the bombs exploded, DesLauriers said. It is believed that was the second bomb, which went off 12 seconds after the first one, at about 2:50 p.m.

It could not be determined from the photos whether the suspect terrorists were homegrown of foreign, but DesLauriers said the pictures will be distributed internationally.

“Someobody out there knows them as friends, coworkers,” DesLauriers said. “Although it may be difficult, we are counting on those [people] to come forward.”

Authorities believe at least one of the bombs was a sealed pressure cooker laden with explosives and shrapnel, and may have been concealed in a backpack. Before the release of the images, amateur sleuths around the world have been examining widely circulated photos from the crowd, isolating on people with backpacks, but officials have warned against such speculation.

A mangled pressure cooker lid found atop a nearby building is believed to have been part of one bomb, and it and other pieces were being analyzed at an FBI lab. A battery and several pieces of shrapnel were also recovered and undergoing analysis. Fox News learned that the circuit board suspected of being used to detonate at least one of the bombs has been recovered, and that FBI investigators were also analyzing cellphone tower records to identify positive hits for signs of calls that may have been placed to trigger both explosions remotely.

Authorities are also interested in a battery believed to be used in one of the bombs, telling Fox News it was likely purchased with a remote control toy and then extracted the battery to use in the bomb. That could potentially make it easier to zero in on a suspect.

According to a FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin, the deadly shrapnel that caused the deaths — including of an 8-year-old boy, and critical injuries to 17 — included nails, BBs and ball bearings. The other device “was also housed in a metal container, but investigators could not say if that was also a pressure cooker.

An investigative source also told Fox News that there is a “significant social media footprint” on the bombings that is providing new leads to investigators. More than 30,000 social media messages were collected within a one-mile radius of the finish line in the 48-hour period surrounding the explosions – with “Twitter and Facebook lighting up” after the attack. The social media generated what are called link analysis charts – which showed “the relationships between social media messages that met investigative criteria.” Investigators are especially interested in messages that seemed “out of place or coded,” sources told Fox News.

Monday’s horror unfolded just before 3 p.m., shattering a festive atmosphere several hours after the legendary race began on the city’s 238th annual Patriots’ Day. In the aftermath, officials found bomb remnants, shrapnel and shredded backpacks believed to have concealed the deadly payloads.

Investigators are also examining if the bombs could have been assembled near the scene of the explosions, The Wall Street Journal reports, quoting a law enforcement official. The official says this possibility is being considered because transporting improvised devices over a significant distance could trigger a premature detonation.

Scores of victims remained in hospitals, but the death toll has not risen since Monday. The doctors from Boston Medical Center credited some recent advances to dealing with trauma from techniques used in Iraq and Afghanistan. For one, doctors and first responders used component therapy instead of a lot of IV fluids. Component therapy can be used to promote blood clotting.

Published April 19, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Rick Leventhal, Jana Winter, Catherine Herridge and Mike Levine contributed to this report.

Terrorism at Boston Marathon

April 16, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon that killed at least three and injured at least 144 is believed to be an act of terrorism, senior White House officials told Fox News.Two explosions tore through the finish line of the world-famous race just before 3 p.m., going off simultaneously as throngs of onlookers watched runners complete the 26.2-mile trek. The timing of the blasts immediately sparked suspicions of a deliberate act.

“When multiple devices go off, that’s an act of terrorism,” a senior administration official told Fox News, just moments after President Obama delivered a statement to the nation and did not use the word ‘terror.’

Authorities searched an apartment in the nearby Boston suburb of Revere as part of the investigation into the explosions. FoxNews.com saw federal, state and local law enforcement entering the building late Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

Sources confirmed to FoxNews.com that the apartment being searched in connection to the bombings is on the fifth floor of the building.

A source close to the investigation confirms to FoxNews.com the man whose apartment was searched is considered a person of interest in the case, and is the same person of interest Fox News confirmed earlier authorities are guarding at a local hospital.

The source stressed that the person of interest is not a suspect, and said he suffered serious injuries in the explosion.

The FBI has a lot of leads and “a lot of work to do” in the investigation, a law enforcement source said. The source said the investigation is “very fluid” and the FBI is looking at many, many people.

Investigators were seen leaving the Revere house early Tuesday carrying brown paper bags, plastic trash bags and a duffel bag, according to the Associated Press.

The Pakistani Taliban, which has threatened attacks in the United States because of its support for the Pakistani government, denied any role in the marathon bombings Tuesday.

The group’s spokesman, Ahsanullah Ahsan, denied involvement in a telephone call with The Associated Press. He spoke from an undisclosed location.

Federal investigators said Monday no one had claimed responsibility for the devastating attack on one of the city’s most famous civic holidays, Patriots’ Day.

“There is no suspect,” Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said Monday amid reports of the person of interest. “There are people we’re talking to.”

A first responder source confirms to Fox News that five total explosive devices were found in the Boston area, including the two that exploded. Authorities spent the next several hours sweeping the area for additional devices.

Davis said at an evening press conference the bombing killed “at least three,” and multiple reports said one of the dead was an 8-year-old boy. A source tells the Associated Press the boy’s mother and sister were also injured as they waited for his father to finish the race.

A first responder source tells Fox News all of the victims were either bystanders or marathon runners, and that two of the deceased were adults.

In addition to the deaths, more than 144 people were injured – including up to 10 with amputated limbs and 17 critically.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, Alasdair Conn, chief of emergency services, said: “This is something I’ve never seen in my 25 years here … this amount of carnage in the civilian population. This is what we expect from war.”

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said during a press conference that no suspect is in custody.

The first two explosions occurred at 2:50 p.m. – nearly five hours after the marathon began – about 50 to 100 yards apart, according to Davis. A third explosion occurred near the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in the Columbia Point section of Dorchester, several miles southeast of the marathon’s finish line, at around 4:15 p.m. Police could not say if it was related to the earlier explosions.

The horror unfolded as the city marked the 238th annual Patriots’ Day, commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Competitors and race organizers were crying as they fled the bloody chaos, while some witnesses reported seeing victims with lost limbs.

“Somebody’s leg flew by my head,” a spectator, who gave his name as John Ross, told the Boston Herald. “I gave my belt to stop the blood.”

Twenty-six people were transported to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, including a 3-year-old, who was then taken to a children’s hospital. A doctor at the hospital said at least two of the patients there are in critical condition and that some have burns and injuries that will likely require amputations.

“They just started bringing people in with no limbs,” said runner Tim Davey of Richmond, Va. He said he and his wife, Lisa, tried to shield their children’s eyes from the gruesome scene inside a medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners, but “they saw a lot.”

“They just kept filling up with more and more casualties,” Lisa Davey said. “Most everybody was conscious. They were very dazed.”

Witnesses heard booms that sounded like two claps of thunder near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel, according to multiple local reports. Video of the scene showed a number of emergency crews in the area tending to victims and blood on the ground near the finish line.

“I saw two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising,” Boston Herald reporter Chris Cassidy, who was running in the marathon, told the newspaper. “I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something…There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads.”

“There are a lot of people down,” said one man, whose bib No. 17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina. He was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg. A Boston police officer was wheeled from the course with a leg injury that was bleeding.

About three hours after the winners crossed the line, there was a loud explosion on the north side of Boylston Street, just before the photo bridge that marks the finish line. Another thunderous explosion could be heard a few seconds later.

Runner Laura McLean of Toronto said she heard two explosions outside the medical tent.

“There are people who are really, really bloody,” McLean said. “They were pulling them into the medical tent.”

Cherie Falgoust was waiting for her husband, who was running the race. “I was expecting my husband any minute,” she said. “I don’t know what this building is … it just blew. Just a big bomb, a loud boom, and then glass everywhere. Something hit my head. I don’t know what it was. I just ducked.”

While the White House does in fact believe terrorism was at play, lawmakers were increasingly reaching the same conclusion.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, reportedly said her understanding it “that it’s a terrorist incident.”

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., top Republican on that committee, also said that “as the evidence mounts that this was a terrorist attack, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies must do whatever is necessary to find and interrogate those responsible so we can prevent similar attacks.”

Authorities in New York, meanwhile, are deploying counter-terrorism vehicles around landmark sites in Manhattan, including prominent hotels, according to the New York City Police Department.
Nearly 25,000 people, including runners from around the world, competed in Boston’s celebrated 26.2-mile race, attracting huge throngs of onlookers, especially near the finish line.

“This is a horrific day in Boston,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement. “My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured. I have been in touch with the President, Mayor [Thomas] Menino and our public safety leaders. Our focus is on making sure that the area around Copley Square is safe and secured. I am asking everyone to stay away from Copley Square and let the first responders do their jobs.”

Anyone with information on the bombings is being urged to call Boston authorities at 1-800-494-TIPS.

By Jana Winter / Published April 16, 2013 / FoxNews.com /Fox News’ Ed Henry, Catherine Herridge, Mike Levine, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

2 Dead, Dozens Injured After 2 Bombs Explode at Boston Marathon

April 15, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

At least two people are dead and dozens injured – including up to 10 with amputated limbs – after at least two bombs tore through the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to the Boston Police Department.

The simultaneous explosions, and reports of two other unexploded devices found near the scene raised suspicions that the blasts, just before 3 p.m., could be part of a terrorist attack. Intelligence officials told The Associated Press two unexploded devices were being dismantled, and reports of a third “controlled” explosion near the JFK Library in the Columbia Point section of Dorchester, may have been an intentional detonation supervised by authorities. Competitors and race organizers were crying as they fled the bloody chaos, while some witnesses reported seeing victims with lost limbs.

“Somebody’s leg flew by my head,” a spectator, who gave his name as John Ross, told the Boston Herald. “I gave my belt to stop the blood.”

Witnesses heard booms that sounded like two claps of thunder near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel, according to multiple local reports. The horror unfolded as the city marked the 238th annual Patriot’s Day, commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Video of the scene showed a number of emergency crews in the area tending to victims and blood on the ground near the finish line.

Runner Laura McLean of Toronto said she heard two explosions outside the medical tent.

“There are people who are really, really bloody,” McLean said. “They were pulling them into the medical tent.”

Authorities in New York, meanwhile, are deploying counter-terrorism vehicles around landmark sites in Manhattan, including prominent hotels, according to the New York City Police Department.

Nearly 25,000 people, including runners from around the world, competed in Boston’s celebrated 26.2-mile race, attracting huge throngs of onlookers, especially near the finish line.

Click for more from MyFoxBoston.com

Published April 15, 2013

FoxNews.com /The Associated Press contributed to this report.

North Korea Warns Japan It Goes First

April 12, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

North Korea reportedly warned Japan that Tokyo would be the first target if Pyongyang decides to play its nuclear card.

The warning reportedly is in response to Tokyo’s standing orders to destroy any missile heading toward Japan, according to Korean Central News Agency. Japan has deployed PAC-3 missile interceptor units around Tokyo to protect its capital and is taking North Korea’s rhetoric seriously.

“We are doing all we can to protect the safety of our nation,” chief Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga said, though he and Ministry of Defense officials refused to confirm the reports about the naval alert, saying they do not want to “show their cards” to North Korea.

Japanese officials long have feared that North Korea not only has the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan’s main island.

“If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it’s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in South Korea. “And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people’s temperatures.”

“We will stand with South Korea and Japan against these threats. And we will defend ourselves,” he said.

Kerry also weighed in on an intelligence report that rocked Washington on Thursday and suggested that North Korea now had the knowhow to arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead — even if the weapons would lack reliability. Citing the Pentagon’s assessment, Kerry rejected the finding and said that Pyongyang still hadn’t developed or fully tested the nuclear capacities needed for such a step.

Speaking beside Kerry, South Korea Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se called for more United Nations action against Pyongyang if it commits another provocation.

He refused to comment specifically on the U.S. intelligence report, saying only that the North has “high nuclear and missile capabilities” but that it is still some time away from a nuclear bomb that is “small, light and diversified.”

Kerry offered strong words of solidarity for South Korea, and praised South Korea President Park Geun-hye’s “bright vision” of a prosperous and reunified Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons. By contrast, he said North Korea’s Kim, has a choice to make between provocation and returning to talks to de-escalate tension and lead to the end of its nuclear program

Both Yun and Kerry kept the door open for future negotiations with Pyongyang.

But both seemed to suggest that they were unlikely in light of the North’s increasingly bombastic threats, including nuclear strikes on the United States. Most experts say those are unfeasible based on the North’s current capacity and would never be explored seriously because the U.S. response would be overwhelming against a regime focused primarily on survival.

Kerry said any talks with North Korea have to lead toward denuclearization.

They have to be really serious,” Kerry said. “No one is going to talk for the sake of talking and no one is going to play this round-robin game that gets repeated every few years, which is both unnecessary and dangerous.”

Published April 12, 2013 / FoxNews.com /The Associated Press contributed to this report.

« Previous Page

Economy

Elections

Crime

Science Tech

Reader Responses