The CIA asked the top US counterterrorism agency to add the deceased Boston bombing suspect to a terror watchlist more than a year before the attacks, officials said on Wednesday.
The spy agency made the move after Russian officials contacted their CIA counterparts in September 2011 about concerns they had over the possible terror ties of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during a shootout with police last week.
Tsarnaev’s younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, has been charged with federal terror offences including the use of a weapon of mass destruction in the twin blasts on April 15 that killed three and wounded 264 people at the Boston Marathon’s finish line.
Because the older Tsarnaev was a legal permanent US resident, the CIA then shared the information with the appropriate federal departments and agencies, telling them that he may be “of interest” to them, a US intelligence official said.
The data, “nearly identical” to information the FBI received six months earlier in March 2011, included two possible dates of birth, Tsarnaev’s name and a possible name variant, the official added.
“No information was incorrectly entered in the watchlisting system, and all the information was shared precisely as the foreign government provided it.”
Tsarnaev’s name was added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, although it was unclear which agency placed it there. The National Counterterrorism Center maintains TIDE, the main US terror database.