Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  According to a report by the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee issued in April 2015: “Customs and Border Protection [CBP] failed to place Tamerlan Tsarnaev into secondary screening upon exiting and re-entering the United States. Additionally, it is unclear as to whether a CBP JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] officer notified the FBI Agent who had conducted the Tamerlan Tsarnaev assessment regarding his travel.”2 In other words, U.S. security authorities missed the boat.

  Now, more than four years after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s sojourn in Russia has remained a mystery. But a close look at the facts surrounding his 2012 trip, as well as his contacts in Boston, point strongly to Russian involvement in the terrible tragedy that occurred in Boston. I have already demonstrated, with the 1999 bombings and other attacks in Russia, how the Kremlin, through its extensive infiltration into the underground insurgent movements in the North Caucasus, has used terrorism to further its own political goals. I believe the Boston Marathon case is another example of this strategy, this time exported to the United States.

  The Tsarnaev Family

  By all accounts, the Tsarnaevs, originally from Russia’s North Caucasus region, were a highly dysfunctional family whose efforts to forge a successful life in the Boston area failed miserably. As author Masha Gessen has pointed out, history was not in their favor. The volatile and politically uncertain nature of the Soviet Union, and then Russia, resulted in constant moves for the parents, Anzor and Zubeidat—back and forth from Central Asia to the North Caucasus, then finally to the United States. Neither Anzor nor Zubeidat was able to adjust to the transitions. Unfortunately, their four children, Tamerlan, Dzhokhar, and two sisters, were the victims of what eventually became almost pathological behavior, particularly on the part of Zubeidat. She and her husband quarreled constantly, while Tamerlan, the adored first child, showed growing signs of extreme narcissism, violence, and impulsivity.3

  I focus here on Tamerlan because he, of the two brothers who committed this terrible crime, was without doubt the one in charge. As we know, Tamerlan was killed when his brother ran over him with a car during a confrontation with police four days after the bombings, while Dzhokhar was found guilty of multiple murders at a trial in Boston which began in March 2015. He was sentenced to death, a sentence that is being appealed. In Chechen culture, the older brother always has the dominant role, and Dzhokhar was seven years younger. Dzhokhar worshipped his brother and did everything he said, despite the fact that he, Dzhokhar, seemed to have adjusted much better to life in Boston than Tamerlan had. More importantly, it was Tamerlan, not Dzhokhar, who became the “object of interest” on the part of the Russian security services, well before the FBI allegedly knew who was.

  Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was a Muslim, a member of the Avar ethnic group, from Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya in the North Caucasus. Her husband Anzor was a Chechen who was born and grew up in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, where hundreds of thousands of Chechens were deported by Stalin in 1944. After marriage in Siberia, the couple moved to Kyrgyzstan and then in the early 1990s to Chechnya, but the war there forced them to move back to Kyrgyzstan. In the late 1990s, they relocated to Makhachkala with Tamerlan, born in 1986, Dzhokhar, born in 1993, and two daughters. But the region was then so rife with violence that had spilled over from Chechnya that the Tsarnaevs decided to seek a new life in the United States. The Tsarnaevs gained asylum as Chechen refugees, arriving in the United States just a few months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This was, as Gessen notes, a new era, “when the United States stopped viewing Chechen rebels as freedom fighters and started seeing them through Russian optics, as likely Islamic terrorists.”4

  Tamerlan stayed with relatives in Kyrgyzstan after his family moved to Boston and did not join them there until 2003, when he was sixteen. Their home was a small third-floor apartment—crowded, noisy, and chaotic. Tamerlan entered the local school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin, as a sophomore and began training as a boxer. In 2009, Tamerlan reached the national boxing competition in Salt Lake City, but then he was denied the possibility to compete at that level because he was not yet an American citizen, and his boxing career came to an abrupt halt.

  Tamerlan, who Gessen says started dressing like an “Italian gigolo,” dropped out of community college, married a young American woman named Katherine Russell, and quickly fathered a baby with her. As Gessen puts it: “By 2011 Tamerlan was neither a boxing champion nor a music star nor even a college student, but a twenty-four-year-old father living with his parents, his siblings, and his own family in a three-bedroom apartment.”5 He made a bit of money delivering pizzas and selling pot. In the words of Scott Helman and Jenna Russell, the authors of Long Mile Home, “Tamerlan had been unsuccessful at virtually every one of his endeavors in America.”6 In other words, he was a perfect target for recruiters of would-be terrorists.

  Tamerlan’s Journey Into Radicalism

  Meanwhile, tensions were rising within the Tsarnaev household, partly because the family was constantly broke and on public assistance, and also because Anzor (who made a small living repairing cars) had developed serious health problems. In 2011, the parents started divorce proceedings and Anzor began to make plans to move back to Dagestan. Tamerlan, with no steady job and his wife working as a home healthcare worker, found himself alone caring for their baby and started cruising the Internet. According to Long Mile Home, Tamerlan pasted a link on his Facebook page to an article from an online Chechen news agency which claimed that the U.S. government was engaged in an all-out war against Muslims and urged them to take up arms against America.7

  In addition to the internet, it is possible that Tamerlan became attracted to militant Islam because of contacts he made in the Boston area. The Chechen, or North Caucasian, diaspora in the area was small and hardly a hotbed of radicalism. Although highly religious Chechens, devoted to Islam, might well have felt sympathy with the rebels back home who were fighting the Russians, this did not ordinarily translate into the desire for a global jihad against the West. But there may have been exceptions.

  Tamerlan had a Chechen acquaintance, Viskhan Vakhabov, who emigrated to the United States in 2004 and could have influenced him in some way. Tamerlan called Vakhabov on his cell phone just after he had shot and killed an MIT patrol officer in the hours following the bombings. Vakhabov was interviewed by the FBI and reportedly gave inconsistent statements. He was called as a witness at the trial of Dzhokhar but refused to appear, citing his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.8 We know nothing more about him.

  Another émigré friend of Tamerlan was Magomed Dolakov, a Russian who first entered the United States in June 2012 and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts the next month. He met Tamerlan at a local mosque in August 2012 and continued his acquaintance with him. Dolakov was known to the Russian FSB: he had been detained by its officers on more than one occasion in Russia. When interviewed by the FBI after the bombings, Dolakov said that Tamerlan had expressed radical views and told him that he was planning on joining the mujahidin. Although Dolakov saw Tamerlan just three days before the bombings, at which time he had gone to his house and then to the gym with him, he did not appear at Dzhokar’s trial because authorities could not locate him.9 Dolakov’s interview with the FBI shortly after the bombings was cited at the trial but was not made publicly available, despite the fact that he would clearly have been a key witness at the proceedings.

  It is important to note that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, has “illegals” posing as Americans, green-card holders, or tourists throughout the United States. Their job is not only to collect intelligence but to infiltrate and indoctrinate vulnerable people.10 Thus the SVR might have used either Vakhabov or Dolakov to rein force in Tamerlan any tendencies he had toward radicalism. This could also have been the role of the mysterious “Misha,” an Armenian man whose name came up often as a friend of Tamerlan, and who allegedly had considerable influence on him. According to on
e expert on Russian Islamists: “Misha may very well have recruited Tamerlan as the circumstances were favorable. Tamerlan came from a nation that is entirely Muslim. The only thing that was required from the recruiter was to convince Tamerlan of the injustice that some people inflict on Islam worldwide.”11

  Significantly, Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, the brother of Anzor, who lives outside Washington, D.C., also mentioned “Misha,” an Armenian who Ruslan claimed had radicalized Tamerlan beginning in 2009. Tsarni told CNN on April 25, 2013 that he was so concerned about Tamerlan being brainwashed that he even asked a friend from Cambridge to look into the problem.12 And Tamerlan’s parents also acknowledged after the bombings that Misha, a Russian speaker, was a frequent visitor to their house and had a strong religious influence on Tamerlan and their family. According to Tamerlan’s mother, Zubeidat: “I wasn’t praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim.… Misha, who converted [to Islam], was praying.”13

  Zubeidat’s sister Shakhruzat Suleimanova testified at Dzhokar’s trial about how drastically changed Zubeidat’s appearance seemed the last time she visited Dagestan not long before the bombings. Suddenly Zubeidat went from colorful clothes that flattered her figure to a black burqa and hijab: “She came and she was all covered up. We were all shocked. We were all in pain. We were very scared. We never had people like that in our family.”14 This apparently was a result of Misha’s influence, too.

  Elmirza Khozhugov, the former husband of Tamerlan’s sister Ailina Tsarnaeva, testified for the defense at the trial of Dzhokhar on live video from Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan. He claimed that Tamerlan had been heavily swayed toward radical Islam by a conservative Muslim named Misha, who often visited the Tsarnaev apartment in Cambridge and discussed Islam with Tamerlan: “I wouldn’t call it formally a lesson, but he was teaching him and suggesting books to read … expressing his own views about that faith to Tamerlan.”15 Khozhugov added that Tamerlan stopped boxing, taking acting classes, and even listening to music after Misha convinced him that those activities were not in keeping with Islam.

  Misha, it turns out, was Mikhail Allakhverdov, who was tracked down a few weeks after the bombings by the American journalist Christian Caryl.16 Misha was living in Rhode Island with his elderly parents after moving from Boston a couple of years earlier. Misha did not want to discuss Tamerlan with Caryl, except to say that “I wasn’t his teacher. If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this.” He also asserted that the FBI had interviewed him and they were about to close his case. But questions remain. Why had Misha converted to Islam and started to attend mosque daily at the time he met Tamerlan, though he came from a Christian family that had no connection to Islam? Significantly, Caryl noted that when he came to interview Misha, he was greeted not only by Misha’s family, but also by his girlfriend, who was wearing shorts and shook his hand, something unheard of among devout Muslims, as Misha professed to be to the Tsarnaevs. And why did Misha spend so much time with Tamerlan, who was twelve years his junior, and his family? Inexplicably, Misha did not appear as a witness at Dzhokar’s 2015 trial.

  The FSB on Tamerlan’s Trail

  Tamerlan was on the radar of the Russian security services as far back as 2010. (Unconfirmed reports say that Tamerlan was mentioned to the FSB by a radical Islamist, William Plotnikov, a Russian-born Canadian, who had moved to Dagestan and was interviewed by the FSB in 2010. Supposedly Plotnikov, a boxer, had earlier been in contact with Tamerlan over the Internet.)17 On March 4, 2011, the FSB sent the FBI a message, mentioned above, requesting information on Tamerlan. Here is what the FBI press office stated on April 19, 2013, six days after the bombings: “In early 2011, a foreign government [i.e., Russia] asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”18

  In fact, the message from the FSB, still classified as secret, said much more than that. In May 2013, members of the House Committee on Homeland Security, including its chairman Mike McCaul and Boston congressman William Keating, went to Moscow to seek more information about Tamerlan and his six-month trip to Russia in 2012. Congressman Keating, who I later interviewed by telephone, told me that the delegation met with FSB officials and asked to see the March 2011 memorandum.19 These officials refused to give the lawmakers a copy but did agree to read it out loud. Here is what the House Committee later reported:

  In the letter, the Russian government expressed concern that he [Tamerlan] had become radicalized and that he might return to Russia and join extremist groups there. While lacking compelling derogatory information on exactly why he posed a threat, the letter contained detailed biographical information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, including physical addresses, marital status, [and] online social media profiles, and discussed his history as a boxer. The letter also noted that he had previously hoped to travel to the Palestinian territories to wage jihad, but decided not to go because he did not speak Arabic. The letter requested that the FBI notify the Russian government if Tamerlan Tsarnaev attempted to travel to Russia.20

  One question that immediately arises is why and how the FSB had gathered so much information on Tamerlan and his family, given that they had lived outside Russia for several years. Clearly, the FSB had earmarked Tamerlan for surveillance, but for what purpose? Did the Russian security services send this memorandum as a sort of “fishing expedition” to find out what the FBI knew about him? They gave the wrong birth date for Tamerlan: Why? Was it just a careless error?21

  After receiving the March 2011 warning about Tamerlan from the FSB, the FBI initiated an investigation. Here is what the FBI press office later reported:

  In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government [Russia] in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.22

  In April 2017, the FBI released a report on an interview its agents had with Tamerlan on April 22, 2011. Tamerlan told them that, although he attended a mosque regularly, he had no interest in radical Islam and did not engage in violence.23 But after following up on the interview by sending the FSB three requests for more information, the FBI did not hear another word from the FSB about Tamerlan or his visit to Russia. (According to Congressman Keating, the FSB insisted to his delegation that they had never received requests from the FBI for further information on Tamerlan, but that appears to be not the case. The FSB apparently just ignored the requests.) The FSB did, however, send a message to the CIA in September 2011, reiterating the earlier message to the FBI about Tamerlan. As a result, the CIA had the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) add Tamerlan’s name to its watch list, but since, as mentioned earlier, his date of birth and the transliteration of his name were incorrect, he slipped through the cracks.24

  One thing is clear: had the FBI known of Tamerlan’s trip to Russia, things would have played out very differently. According to an Intelligence Community report issued in April 2014, the special agent in charge of the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force said that if she had learned about Tamerlan’s Russia trip, it would have “changed everything.” And the LEGAT (FBI legal attaché in Moscow, who was the first to receive the FSB’s March 2011 memorandum) characterized Tamerlan’s travel as “huge” and said that, if he had known about it, he would have requested the
FBI and CIA to do a reassessment of Tamerlan and to pressure the FSB for more information on him.25

  It was not until several days after the bombings that the FSB communicated again with the Americans, suddenly sending the FBI and CIA transcripts of two telephone conversations Tamerlan had in 2010—one with his mother and one with an unidentified person from the North Caucasus. These transcripts have not been made available outside the U.S. intelligence community, but the North Caucasian mentioned by the FSB reportedly turned out to be Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen who had been close to Tamerlan in Boston before moving to Orlando, Florida.26

  This last FSB message was apparently what prompted the FBI to re-open an unsolved 2011 triple murder, outside Boston, of three young men who were friends of both Todashev and Tamerlan. The FBI burst in on Todashev in Orlando in May 2013 and started interrogating him. After allegedly confessing to the murders, and Tamerlan’s involvement in them, Todashev suddenly became violent and was shot dead by an FBI agent. Whether Todashev’s confession was truthful, and Tamerlan was actually a participant in the murders, is unclear. Authorities have apparently concluded that the killings were drug-related and not directly connected to the bombings. But with Todashev dead, it is unlikely we will ever know why the FSB put him on the FBI’s radar screen after the bombings.27

  Tamerlan in Russia

  There has been no credible explanation of Tamerlan’s decision to go to Russia in January 2012, leaving his wife and baby daughter behind, apparently with little money. How did Tamerlan get funds to pay for the costly air ticket to Moscow and back, or for his travel from Moscow to Makhachkala, Dagestan? (Congressman Keating, when I asked him, suggested that maybe Tamerlan had money from selling marijuana, but whatever he earned from that enterprise he presumably used to help support his wife and daughter.)28 Why did Tamerlan tell people he was returning to Russia to get a Russian passport and yet did not follow through in doing so? Tamerlan’s father told reporters after the bombings that his son also had gone to Dagestan to attend a cousin’s wedding, “but it did not work out.” In fact, the wedding had taken place before Tamerlan arrived.29