FBI, Homeland Security Have Explaining To Do

by Steve

I hate to rain upon the Obama administration’s jingoistic feel-good narrative about the outcome of the Boston manhunt, but let’s be clear about something: both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have a lot of explaining to do about why the older brother wasn’t more aggressively tracked since his return from Russia last summer.

When the Russians reach out to you in 2011 with concerns about someone and asks for information, and then he travels there and spends six months for largely unknown reasons, that should have been the first flag. If that wasn't enough, he returns and posts pro-Al Qaeda videos to YouTube and suddenly changes his dress away from western norms. That taken together should have been enough for the Bureau or DHS to monitor him, yet they admit today they only tracked him for a couple of months, after which he apparently fell off the grid until the bombing, thereby missing the recent clues that he returned to western dress of late (according to NBC News). Even a minimal continued "check-in" on him over the last 6-9 months would have let him know he was still on the radar screen.

Sorry Mr. President, but your team dropped the ball.