How Could The FBI Not Have Recruited Tamerlan Tsarnaev When It Was Trying to Recruit Usaamah Rahim

I wrote the other day that Tamerlan was an FBI informant. There may be no way we can ever know that for certain because the FBI will never disclose this. No one outside of the FBI can ever learn what is occurring in the FBI informant dealings.

Remember it was quite unusual for us to know that Whitey Bulger, Stevie Flemmi, Sonny Mercurio, Sammy Berkowitz and some others were top level informants. We learned that because Flemmi figured if he admitted that he could get himself and others gangsters out of a federal racketeering charge by saying he did work with the FBI and it promised him he could do any type of crime up to hitting someone and it would be all right.

His disclosure which was already known to members of the Justice Department came as a great surprise to the public. Judge Mark Wolf a no-nonsense judge who is hard to intimidate delved into the FBI Boston office files like no other judge in America had ever done to any other FBI office. The FBI was caught between a resolute judge (rock) and an evil informant (hard place) so it could not hide its dealings with these informants. It would cleverly turn the issue later with the help of the media into one of a rogue agent or two slipping all the blame onto them when the whole FBI knew what was going on and the whole FBI deserved the blame.

The Boston FBI office was hung out on the line because the FBI had no choice but to do this. We are told this is the one bad office. But how do we know? We have no idea what is occurring in the other 55 FBI field offices. We cannot look into their informant files to see who they are protecting. We cannot learn how many of their informants are involved in continuing criminal activities but we can believe that what occurred in Boston was routine throughout the country since agents and bosses are routinely transferred in and out and Washington headquarters routinely inspects the performance of each office.

One reason to suspect Tamerlan was an informant is that none of the others members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force were advised the FBI had information from Russia of his terrorist tendencies. That would be how the FBI operates – get the information and then try to use it to flip a person. If that was accomplished the person would go into its informant program and the identity of him kept secret. It would at a minimum be extremely naïve to think the FBI did not try to  recruit him.

Usaamah Rahim the man killed the other day by the FBI had a Facebook account. Here is what he wrote on November 27, 2012, about the FBI.

“Damn FBI calling my phone! They just want any opportunity to drag a Muslim into some DRAMA … He wanted to meet up with me and “Talk.” HA! I said about WHAT? He said “Sir, we have some allegations regarding you …” I said “REALLY?” What ALLEGATIONS? He said “Well sir, thats what I wanted to meet up with you about. I came by your house a few times, but kept missing you.” I said, “If you want to summon me, you summon that COURT ORDER if your allegations you claiming are true, otherwise, BEAT IT” and then I hung up … funny, I was just telling my brother I heard some clicking noises on my phone. Every Muslim needs to treat these government cronies the same way I did, because if you let them get close, trust me, they’ll have you making statements about things that could get you jail-time, that in fact, you were preaching AGAINST i.e. violence and terrorism. Try again, monkey-boys …”

If the FBI was attempting to squeeze something out of Rahim back in 2012 why would it have not been doing the same thing with Tamerlan back in 2011 when it first was notified by Russia, or, in 2012 when it learned he had gone off to Russia if it had not already tried before that.

The FBI has continually denied Tamerlan was an informant.  But when it is anxiously trying to “talk” to guys like Rahim why did it do such a cursory job with Tamerlan.  Here’s the government’s report on this:  

“In March 2011, the FBI received information from the FSB alleging that Tamerlan Tsarnaev . . . was preparing to travel to Russia to join unspecified underground groups in Dagestan and Chechnya. The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston (Boston JTTF) conducted an assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev to determine whether he posed a threat to national security and closed the assessment three months later having found no link or “nexus” to terrorism.” 

We have read that the FBI had information prior to that time about Tamerlan. If so, it had to have some idea about his association with terrorisim. But the worst of it is this, if Tamerlan were not an FBI informant which we will never know for sure one way or the other, then the FBI ability to identify potential informants stinks. It let the guy who committed the biggest terrorist act since 9/11 slip through its fingers.