The FBI didn’t tell the Boston PD that they were investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev until after two bombs exploded at the Booston Marathon.
According to ABC , the FBI had performed a cursory investigation into Tsarnaev prior to the Boston bombing . Boston police commissioner Ed Davis said that he had three detectives and a sergeant assigned to the Joint Terror Task Force, but the FBI still didn’t tell the BPD about the investigation.
Time Magazine reports that the FBI didn’t find anything during their investigation and closed the file.
Davis said that he would have liked to have been told about the investigation but added that he wasn’t sure if it would have changed the outcome in Boston.
Davis said: “(My detectives) tell me they received no word about that individual prior to the bombing … The FBI did (the investigation) and they closed the case out … I can’t say I would’ve come to a different conclusion based on the information at the time.”
Davis, who testified today before the House Homeland Security Committee, also said that the Boston PD didn’t receive one call from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth after an image of 19-year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was made public.
Sen. Joe Lieberman criticized the FBI for withholding the information saying that state and local officers are valuable asset to stop homegrown radicals.
Lieberman said: “When you’re dealing with homegrown radicals, the community around them is going to be your first line of defense. State and local law enforcement will always have a better knowledge of the neighborhood, the institutions the people are going to be involved with.”
The FBI has not commented on Davis’ testimony.
