Israel Matzav: Like mother, like son?

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Like mother, like son?

The CIA added Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat to the terror watch list in 2011.

Previously U.S. officials have said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan. But in March 2011, the Russians asked the FBI to look into Tsarnaev and his mother because of concerns they were religious militants who planned to travel back to Russia, the official said.

The FBI found nothing to link either person to terrorism, and the FBI closed the investigations in June 2011. Then, the Russians in the fall sent the same warning to the CIA. The CIA asked the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to add the mother’s and son’s names to its huge, classified database of people known to be terrorists and those who are suspected of having terror ties, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.

Being in that database does not mean the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 names in the database. Intelligence analysts add names and partial names to TIDE when terror-related intelligence is shared with them.

Tsarnaeva said it would not surprise her if she was listed in a U.S. terror database.

“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she told the AP from Dagestan. “I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism.”

Note the politically correct third paragraph. Political correctness is behind the failure to take proper precautions in the Tsarnaev case. This is from Breitbart.com's Big Peace.

Of particular concern is that around the same time the FBI was informed about Tsarnaev, the Obama administration’s policies handling terrorism relating in any way to Islamic extremists changed.

PJ Media’s Patrick Poole noted in May, 2012 that the FBI training manual's counter-terrorism lexicon made no mention of terrorism in regards to al Qaeda, Hamas, jihad, Islam, or the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The fact is religion has been expunged from counterterrorism training,” said counterterrorism specialist with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Sebastian Gorka to the Washington Times. He added, “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad.”

In October of 2011, an organization called “Muslim Advocates,” a group composed of fifty-seven Muslim advocacy groups from across the country, signed and sent a letter to high level Obama administration officials. They urged the administration to enact a widespread purge within law enforcement departments and agencies of any materials that could be deemed biased or discriminatory against Muslims.

The letter was sent to then-Counterterrorism and Deputy National Security Advisor (now CIA Director) John Brennan, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough.

Read the whole thing.

The Boston Marathon terror attack and the news that members of the Tsarnaev family were marked as potential terrorists ought to raise a huge red warning flag for the United States. Either the US must kill its political correctness or the political correctness will kill it.

Labels: Boston, Boston Marathon, CIA, FBI, Islamic terrorism, political correctness