The Evidence of a Wider Plot in the Tsarnaev Trial

As the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial barrels ahead, in the third day already unveiling the prosecution’s surveillance video and the mystery witness “Danny,” whose name turns out to be Dun Meng, many questions still remain which point to the existence of a third party, or a third party organization.

The most tantalizing indicator, of course, is that we now know someone, a woman, was with Tamerlan when he bought five pressure cookers at Macy’s in Boston.  The pair were captured in a Macy’s store surveillance video.  Law enforcement is trying to determine if the woman is Katherine Russell, Tamerlan’s widow, who is now under active investigation. 

ABC News:

The widow of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects is under active investigation and could face potential criminal charges related to the deadly blast, law enforcement officials told ABC News.

Ms. Russell, remember, is coincidentally a granddaughter of Skull and Bones, her father being the son of Richard W. Russell, listed in Eric Samuelson’s Skull and Bones membership list. And not just Skull and Bones, but possibly a descendant of William Huntington Russell (1809 – 1885), a co-founder of Skull and Bones, the famous feeder club for the CIA. Skull and Bones – CIA alumni include Charles S. Whitehouse, US Ambassador to Laos, George H.W. Bush, William Sloane Coffin, and William F. Buckley.

That is on top of Tamerlan’s uncle Ruslan just happening to be the son-in-law of CIA, Iran-Contra scoundrel Graham Fuller, yes, that Graham Fuller, and Ruslan himself a USAID cover for CIA. USAID in Chechnya does not hire social workers.

How many crazy coincidences can you have in one crime? Remember the Tsarnaev brothers were pretty much just working class kids.  Regardless of whether or not the woman in the Macy’s video is Russell, the mere exposure of the fact that someone was with Tamerlan, not his brother, leaves a gaping hole in the two-lone-perpetrators theory.  Even if it was not Russell, who was it? Will the defense even call attention to the video, and suggest that the brothers were not acting alone?  If not we’ll know it’s a kangaroo court.

It stands to reason: if the defense’s main argument is that Dzhokhar was under the influence of his older brother, it is a small step to ask the next question.  Under whose influence, perhaps, was Tamerlan?

The video surveillance compilation presented by the prosecution splices still images into various pieces of surveillance video along a timeline, starting from when the suspects round the corner at the Whiskey Steakhouse, to them fleeing down Boylston Street.  But it conveniently omits the video segment of a man with an earpiece apparently tracking the brothers around the corner at the Whiskey (at minute 3:20 in this video.) If the man is simply a bystander who happens to make a communication as soon as the brothers pass, why did the FBI digitally mask his face before releasing the video to CNN? The faces of no other bystanders are masked, and in images released by the FBI the faces of thousands of people are splashed across the Internet.

The promised scene of Dzhokhar setting down his backpack is believable enough, but what is less believable is that the backpack weighs 30 pounds. Dzhokhar handles the backpack as if it contains notebooks and a sandwich, not two 15 pound barbells worth of steel and gunpowder.

Much was made of a still photo allegedly captured by Marathon runner David Green, in which Dzhokhar can be seeing fleeing with the crowd.  Green’s capture of an image of the suspect was heralded as a stroke of good fortune.  Green’s oft-told story is that he, a marathon runner finished with the race, caught the shot in a moment of luck after the second bomb went off. But in the video- still photo compilation which is shown to the jury, a photo emerges which is much like Green’s but cannot be Green’s, because the angle is slightly different. Green never mentioned anything about taking two photos, and in fact told the New York Daily News: “It was one shot and it was the shot that counted”.

Was someone else taking the photos besides Green? The original Green photo was ridiculed as being a Photoshop job, hiding the backpack, although in the moving video it is clear neither of the brothers have their backpacks. Dzhokhar is in front of a brick wall in the original Green photo, but in the prosecution’s current version he is in front of a wooden door.

Detail of David Green photo showing Dzhokhar fleeing bombing, past the wooden door

Photo shown to jury in surveillance video, Dzhokhar flush with wooden door

Video shown to jury by the prosecution

Even if we lay those issues to rest, and grant the prosecution’s assertion that the brothers had backpacks and put them down, so did other men, never adequately explained by the police, nor what they were doing running away without their backpacks. Then the stubborn fact that neither of the brothers’ backpacks match the one released by police in a photo, showing a square logo on the top flap. The brothers’ backpacks were also a different color from the one shown by police.

From Reddit discussion uncovering paramilitary men missing backpacks Where does this go? A well-known journalist who distrusts the official story told me that the brothers almost certainly were involved on some level. Riding with police and reporters who were there, he said it is just too unlikely that so many police could be collaborating on the basic events of the night, and he opined they were truthful. There was shooting going on back and forth with the brothers, although the officer hit was possibly hit by friendly fire.

Was the plan for the brothers to participate in a drill, and put the backpacks down at a certain time and place? When they saw the jaws of the trap snap shut, did they decide to make a run then go down shooting? It is intriguing that authorities were conducting what was announced as an exercise that morning at the starting line, involving bomb-sniffing dogs and rooftop snipers.

There is a cryptic note presented by the prosecution from Dzhokhar, which said: “They will spend their money and they will regret it and then they will be defeated.”

Could this have meant the brothers were being paid by handlers? It is important to remember Tamerlan was an alien and had possible deportation at any time to use as a club against him, never to see his daughter again.

The carjack victim, now unmasked as Dun Meng, was convincing enough as a man thinking someone was trying to kill him. Nevertheless it is curious that he has told conflicting stories of his escape from Tamerlan, in one version Tamerlan being in the car, in the driver’s seat, when Meng makes a break out the passenger door, in the other Tamerlan being outside the car pumping gas. One would think one would remember a detail like that when you think you are about to die.

Surveillance video: Dun Meng escape

As well, the defense, if you can call it that, would be remiss to not, at the very least, subpoena cellphone records just to confirm that it was Tamerlan that Dzhokhar was talking to four minutes before the first bomb went off, as shown in the prosecutor’s surveillance montage.

That video montage, notably, does not support a repeated contention to the media, by the FBI and Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick, that Dzhokhar did not “react” when the first explosion went off, as he clearly suddenly looked in the direction of the blast like everyone else, then fled. Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick said on Meet the Press in 2013:

“The videotape is not something I’ve seen, it’s been described to me, in my briefings, but It does seem to be pretty clear that this suspect took the backpack off, put it down, did not react when the first explosion went off and then moved away from the backpack in time for the second explosion. It’s pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly, as it was described to me.”

There also remain the facts that:

– The brothers at one point were apparently trying to surrender, but the police were having none of it, as they yelled “We didn’t do it!” from behind their vehicle in the dark in Watertown.

– That the existence of the incriminating note in the boat Dzhokhar was hiding in was announced a full month after the capture, even as the media reported every other incriminating detail. On this score it is only a matter of time before a true handwriting sample from Dzhokhar surfaces and Internet sleuths will compare the handwriting.

– Then there is the strange video which cannot be ignored of a naked man looking very much like Tamerlan in custody, and identified by his aunt as him. A woman who may have changed the man’s diapers said without hesitancy: “That’s Tamerlan.”

– Oh yes, and let’s not forget that poor chap in Florida, Todashev, Tamerlan’s friend, who caught three bullets in the back while unarmed and so now will never be able to tell anything he knew.

It is the FBI’s own prevarications and this murderous behavior which is most damning. The FBI claimed that it did not know the brothers before April 15, 2013, when in fact it had interviewed them numerous times, along with the family.

Not only did it know them, it let Tamerlan slip to Chechnya in 2012, even as he was on at least two terror watch lists. The FBI attributed the error to a name misspelling somewhere along the line, as if an Edward Snowden could elude Homeland Security and leave the country just by misspelling his name on a document.

The FBI undoubtedly knew Tamerlan was in Chechnya, becoming increasingly radicalized, because the Department of Homeland Security report on the Marathon bombing tells us that the Moscow office of the FBI had intercepted “electronic communication” between Tamerlan and William Plotnikov, the Canadian jihadi who was killed in a gun battle with Russian security forces two days before Tamerlan departed the region (page 15 of report, “The Road to Boston: Counterterrorism Challenges and Lessons from the Marathon Bombings.”)

The FBI’s own behavior, as well as other factors like the clear attempt to kill Dzhokhar and never let him see trial, points to the brothers being involved as patsies of some sort, perhaps playing secret agent, and being told to be at certain places at certain times. Some have pointed out that the bombs were fairly sophisticated, in their power and destructiveness, and were likely beyond the reach of an amateur bomb-maker.

Police attempt to kill defendant while hiding in boat

The murder of Sean Collier is not cleared up much by the video presented by the prosecution, which shows two men, who are not identifiable in the video because of the dark and great distance, approaching Collier’s patrol car and killing him. An MIT student witness, Nathan Harman, in his testimony alternately switched from the pronoun “he” to “they,” according to CNN. Coaching? Nevertheless Harman at this point seems credible enough. He identified Dzhokhar directly as a man with a “big nose.” There is no reason to think he is lying. But could a look-alike team of assassins easily be found to do this job? Remember, we already know the FBI lied about at least one thing.

An inconvenient moment of candor took place when MIT police Sargent Clarence Henniger, who was the first on the scene of the Collier shooting, revealed in an interview with Boston’s WBUR radio that FBI agents were already watching the house in which Tamerlan lived in Cambridge even before he was identified Thursday night, four days after the bombing.  Four days had elapsed before the Bureau released the first surveillance photos of the suspects and asked the public for help in identifying them. Henniger said:

“The word was out regarding the suspects. We knew that his house was under surveillance, and the feds were all over the city of Cambridge.”

The FBI found this admission alarming enough to issue an official denial of Henniger’s claim, saying, “No one was surveilling the Tsarnaevs and they were not identified until after the shootout. Any claims to the contrary are false.” But when pressed, Henniger stuck to his story, saying “to some degree I’m sure [the FBI] knew.”

The brothers’ mother and father have both steadfastly maintained that the brothers were “set-up”: The mother told Russia Today, as reported by Reuters:

“He (Tamerlan) was ‘controlled’ by the FBI, like, for three to five years…They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to.”

The mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said:

“They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him…I am, like, 100 percent sure, that this is a set-up,”

The brothers’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told Russia’s Channel One television:

“I do not believe that my sons could have planned and organized the terrorist act, because they knew U.S. national security services were keeping an eye on them…They (the security services) said ‘We know what you eat, what you read on the Internet.'”

Indeed, the Boston Globe reported in March of 2014 that Dzhokhar’s defense team had asserted that Tamerlan Tsarnaev “had been encouraged by the FBI to be an informant and to report on the Chechen and Muslim community…”  In a 23-page court filing, the attorneys requested records of any contacts between the FBI and Tsarnaev relating to this.

The overriding fact to all of this, of course, is that after two years in isolation and with God-knows-what being done to him, Dzhokhar is described by people who know him as being a shell of himself, and in newspaper accounts as all but comatose.  During one day’s proceedings the AP described the defendant as “slouched in his seat and [showing] little reaction as the case unfolded.”  A former high school wrestling teammate of Dzhokhar’s recently told the Boston Globe, of a recent court appearance by Tsarnaev, that he seemed like a “different guy” who had a different “body language.”  Is Dzhokhar doped up?

The public must insist that Dzhokhar take the stand, as he is doomed anyway, and will get the death penalty no matter what his lawyer does. If there were other plotters, there is only the hope that there is a braincell left somewhere deep which will blurt out the wrong thing for the prosecution. His initial plea was not guilty, after all.  The event marked a warp-speed increase in the demonization of Muslims in America, and the introduction of the first ever, voluntary, city-wide lock-down whenever a man with a gun is loose. A very convenient tool for dealing with pesky anti-wall Street-type protesters.

Dzhokhar must take the stand, as a dead man to clear his name. Whatever he did, he and his brother did not do alone, and America must know the truth.