Mon May 27, 2013
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/27/305627/death-of-fbi-agents-creates-controversy/
Two well-trained Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who were involved in the killing of a Boston bombing suspect have suspiciously died.
The FBI said in a statement that 41-year-old Christopher Lorek and 40-year-old Stephen Shaw were killed on May 17 as they fell out of a helicopter into water during a training mission off the coast of Virginia Beach.
US officials have blamed bad weather for the tragedy but some have questioned the credibility of the official account, considering it a cover-up.
They say the agents’ death adds to the suspicious death of a friend of the Boston bombing suspect, Ibragim Todashev, who was killed in his own apartment by an FBI agent.
Lorek and Shaw were part of the bureau's Critical Incident Response Group and were both members of the team investigating the Boston Marathon bombings in mid-April.
“You could always take it as one of an endless group of coincidences. We have so many [of them], when you look at the Boston investigation that these two individuals were involved in, everything had the stamp of CIA and FBI on it, from the first steps,” Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, told Press TV.
“What we have in the US is that we don’t report, we don’t have the least free press here. There are powerful dissident elements within our military, intelligence services and government that are under the control of... I’ll call them organized crime on a worldwide basis. If you refer to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of narcotics and trillions of dollars worth of financial crimes, it is simply organized crime, it is the understatement of all time,” he added.
The incident has reminded many of the dramatic death of top US commandos in Afghanistan, who lost their lives three months after their involvement in the alleged killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.
On August 6, 2011, the helicopter of the Navy SEAL Team VI was shot down in Afghanistan.
The families of Navy SEAL members have blamed the government for the tragedy, saying the shooting down of the helicopter and the subsequent cover-up was planned by the government.
They said that US President Barack Obama turned the SEALs group into a Taliban target after the administration revealed they had conducted the bin Laden raid.
The families also claimed Taliban militants had received leaked information from the US government regarding the landing site of the commandos’ helicopter.
Moreover, the SEAL Team VI members were reportedly flown to the landing site with a Vietnam-era Chinook helicopter rather than with their customary Special Forces choppers.
“There is absolutely nothing that is credible about that; this is not a mission they would have been on, this is not a helicopter they would have been on,” Duff pointed out.
Friday, May 31, 2013
FBI Spiked Chechen Jihadi Investigation
Palast reports from Kazakhstan
Greg Palast from Vice.com
Friday, 3. May 2013
[Astana, Kazakhstan] Following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, I received documents marked “SECRET” from the files of the FBI’s Washington field office. The information in those files will make you sick.
When the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, I grabbed those FBI files – and a plane for Kazakhstan, bullying cameraman Rocco D into joining me. [Rocco, no fool, won’t let me print his full name.]
After we landed, word came that two Kazakh teens, friends of the bombers, had been arrested by Boston police and, yesterday, charged with hiding evidence of the bombers’ guilt.
Here in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, televisions everywhere run endless loops of the bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, the screams, the blood, the victims... and the questions.
And first question: How do a couple of wholesome Call-of-Duty-playing American kids get the idea they should murder and mangle their neighbors to avenge the Muslims of Chechnya—whom the victims probably couldn’t find on a map?
The second question: How did America’s trillion-dollar intelligence apparatchiks wave off warnings from Russia about one of the bomber’s connections to the Chechen militants?
The answer regarding the intelligence failure is, to paraphrase the famous journalist Yogi Berra: it’s amazing what you don’t see when you don’t look.
And that’s related to the how young Muslim-Americans came to kill other young Americans over Chechnya.
According to the secret memo, long before the Boston bombing, even before the September 11 attack, the FBI shut down an investigation of a group that ran a summer camp in Florida for America’s Muslim teenagers.
No, we shouldn’t be spying on Islamic campers. However, besides the usual swimming and soccer, these youngsters were encouraged to join the Chechen jihad. The kiddies were treated to videos praising Chechen bombers (who seized a school and hospital then killed their hostages). The group also produced an educational film praising, “that compassionate young man, Osama bin Laden”.
Hey, it was a family affair. Camp Jihad was run by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), whose operation just outside Washington DC was directed in the US by a man the FBI called “ABL” – Abdullah Binladden, Osama’s brother.
When the Kazakh friends of the Boston bombers were arrested, I went back to that “SECRET” memo. It fell into my hands in November 2001, just two months after that “compassionate young man” Osama killed thousands in my office building (I once worked at the World Trade Center).
Why would my own government spike an investigation that might have saved lives in New York in 2001 [and in Boston in 2013]?
My producer at BBC Television called the FBI. They did not deny the authenticity of the secret documents. Well, then, if the US government has evidence someone may be illegally recruiting killers for Chechnya (as well as the Bosnia war), why in the world would you shut down the investigation and hide the findings?
The official answer was even more chilling than the secret memo itself. The spokesman told us at BBC:
"There are lots of things only the intelligence community knows and that no one else ought to know."?
Well, what else are we not supposed to know?
We got the answer on November 9, 2001, when I received a call at BBC's Newsnight desk in London from a US intelligence agent via a “clean” phone. The spook confirmed that, beginning as early as 1995, the CIA and other US spy agencies were told to stand down from investigating the bin Laden family in both the US and in France.
Several insiders repeated the same story: US agencies turned a blind eye to the bin Laden-terrorist-Chechen-jihad connection out of fear of exposing the US government’s half-assed—and half-illegal—support for these terrorists.
Our government gave ABL a pass (and safe passage back to Saudi Arabia) because Presidents Clinton and Bush were more than happy that our Saudi allies were sending jihadis to Afghanistan, then, via WAMY, helping Muslims to fight in Bosnia then, later, giving the Russians grief in Chechnya.
The problem is that terrorists are like pigeons – they come home to roost. As Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who provided crucial help to our investigation, told me, “It would be unseemly if [someone] were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA… What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.”
It’s utterly unlikely the young Boston bombers were on the CIA payroll, but it’s more than likely the elder brother’s connections here in Central Asia could be traced back to US-protected killers of years past.
The sleight-of-hand to keep public eyes off the US juicing Chechen terror is almost fun to watch. There’s surprisingly little official scrutiny of the media’s new heart-throb, Ruslan Tsarni, the bombers’ uncle. The Washington Post, praising Uncle Ruslan’s “I LOVE AMERICA” schtick, noted,
“[Ruslan’s] performance will be sewn into the rotation of TV news from here on out. Later, on MSNBC, Tom Ridge spoke highly of the message of ‘promise and hope’ sent by Tsarni.”
I would venture to guess that this was not the first time Mr. Ridge, first director of the US Department of Homeland Security, had heard Ruslan’s messages given Ruslan’s founding the Congress of Chechen International Organizations and his lucrative work here in Kazakhstan as a USAID contractor and oil industry lawyer.
There is zero—and I mean zero—evidence that Uncle Ruslan or the CIA hired these two sad-ass kids in Boston to blow up their neighbors. The point here is that the FBI is too concerned about making sure that “no one else ought to know” about our government plays footsie with terrorists—and too unconcerned about the blow-back that blows up in Boston.
Greg Palast investigated terror attacks on the US for BBC TV.
Readers can download Bush Family Fortunes, Palast’s BBC documentary, without charge, at www.gregpalast.com/bffdownload/
Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.
Greg Palast from Vice.com
Friday, 3. May 2013
[Astana, Kazakhstan] Following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, I received documents marked “SECRET” from the files of the FBI’s Washington field office. The information in those files will make you sick.
When the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, I grabbed those FBI files – and a plane for Kazakhstan, bullying cameraman Rocco D into joining me. [Rocco, no fool, won’t let me print his full name.]
After we landed, word came that two Kazakh teens, friends of the bombers, had been arrested by Boston police and, yesterday, charged with hiding evidence of the bombers’ guilt.
Here in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, televisions everywhere run endless loops of the bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, the screams, the blood, the victims... and the questions.
And first question: How do a couple of wholesome Call-of-Duty-playing American kids get the idea they should murder and mangle their neighbors to avenge the Muslims of Chechnya—whom the victims probably couldn’t find on a map?
The second question: How did America’s trillion-dollar intelligence apparatchiks wave off warnings from Russia about one of the bomber’s connections to the Chechen militants?
The answer regarding the intelligence failure is, to paraphrase the famous journalist Yogi Berra: it’s amazing what you don’t see when you don’t look.
And that’s related to the how young Muslim-Americans came to kill other young Americans over Chechnya.
According to the secret memo, long before the Boston bombing, even before the September 11 attack, the FBI shut down an investigation of a group that ran a summer camp in Florida for America’s Muslim teenagers.
No, we shouldn’t be spying on Islamic campers. However, besides the usual swimming and soccer, these youngsters were encouraged to join the Chechen jihad. The kiddies were treated to videos praising Chechen bombers (who seized a school and hospital then killed their hostages). The group also produced an educational film praising, “that compassionate young man, Osama bin Laden”.
Hey, it was a family affair. Camp Jihad was run by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), whose operation just outside Washington DC was directed in the US by a man the FBI called “ABL” – Abdullah Binladden, Osama’s brother.
When the Kazakh friends of the Boston bombers were arrested, I went back to that “SECRET” memo. It fell into my hands in November 2001, just two months after that “compassionate young man” Osama killed thousands in my office building (I once worked at the World Trade Center).
Why would my own government spike an investigation that might have saved lives in New York in 2001 [and in Boston in 2013]?
My producer at BBC Television called the FBI. They did not deny the authenticity of the secret documents. Well, then, if the US government has evidence someone may be illegally recruiting killers for Chechnya (as well as the Bosnia war), why in the world would you shut down the investigation and hide the findings?
The official answer was even more chilling than the secret memo itself. The spokesman told us at BBC:
"There are lots of things only the intelligence community knows and that no one else ought to know."?
Well, what else are we not supposed to know?
We got the answer on November 9, 2001, when I received a call at BBC's Newsnight desk in London from a US intelligence agent via a “clean” phone. The spook confirmed that, beginning as early as 1995, the CIA and other US spy agencies were told to stand down from investigating the bin Laden family in both the US and in France.
Several insiders repeated the same story: US agencies turned a blind eye to the bin Laden-terrorist-Chechen-jihad connection out of fear of exposing the US government’s half-assed—and half-illegal—support for these terrorists.
Our government gave ABL a pass (and safe passage back to Saudi Arabia) because Presidents Clinton and Bush were more than happy that our Saudi allies were sending jihadis to Afghanistan, then, via WAMY, helping Muslims to fight in Bosnia then, later, giving the Russians grief in Chechnya.
The problem is that terrorists are like pigeons – they come home to roost. As Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who provided crucial help to our investigation, told me, “It would be unseemly if [someone] were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA… What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.”
It’s utterly unlikely the young Boston bombers were on the CIA payroll, but it’s more than likely the elder brother’s connections here in Central Asia could be traced back to US-protected killers of years past.
The sleight-of-hand to keep public eyes off the US juicing Chechen terror is almost fun to watch. There’s surprisingly little official scrutiny of the media’s new heart-throb, Ruslan Tsarni, the bombers’ uncle. The Washington Post, praising Uncle Ruslan’s “I LOVE AMERICA” schtick, noted,
“[Ruslan’s] performance will be sewn into the rotation of TV news from here on out. Later, on MSNBC, Tom Ridge spoke highly of the message of ‘promise and hope’ sent by Tsarni.”
I would venture to guess that this was not the first time Mr. Ridge, first director of the US Department of Homeland Security, had heard Ruslan’s messages given Ruslan’s founding the Congress of Chechen International Organizations and his lucrative work here in Kazakhstan as a USAID contractor and oil industry lawyer.
There is zero—and I mean zero—evidence that Uncle Ruslan or the CIA hired these two sad-ass kids in Boston to blow up their neighbors. The point here is that the FBI is too concerned about making sure that “no one else ought to know” about our government plays footsie with terrorists—and too unconcerned about the blow-back that blows up in Boston.
Greg Palast investigated terror attacks on the US for BBC TV.
Readers can download Bush Family Fortunes, Palast’s BBC documentary, without charge, at www.gregpalast.com/bffdownload/
Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.
Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?
Posted on April 22, 2013 by Daniel Hopsicker
http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/22/was-boston-bombers-uncle-ruslan-with-the-cia/
The uncle of the two men who set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, who struck the only grace note in an otherwise horrific week, worked as a “consultant” for the Agency for International Development (USAID) a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by agents of the CIA, in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.
“Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni of Montgomery Village Md., whose name was the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter last Friday for his plain-spoken condemnation of his two nephews, has had a checkered business career, that began well before he graduated (as Ruslan Z Tsarnaev) from Duke Law School in 1998.
Tsarni, a well-connected oil executive, is currently involved in an international criminal investigation into a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive alleged to have absconded with $6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.
The story begins with The London Sunday Times on May 8, 2011, which reported the sale of the personal home of England’s Prince Andrew to billionaire Kazakh Oligarch Timur Kulibayev, who “controls that country’s oil industry and happens to be married to the daughter of its autocratic President Nursultan Nazarbayev.”
What does that have to do with "Uncle Ruslan?" Let's take a look.
"Can't tell your Oligarchs without a scorecard"
Headlined "Prince's home in 'laundered cash' inquiry," the story raised several red flags.
One was that the President-for-Life’s son-in-law had paid $5 million over the asking price to purchase Prince Andrew’s home, which raised eyebrows.
Red flags and eyebrows were raised still further, in these times of global near-depression, at the conspicuous oligarchic consumption (read: bad taste) exhibited when the Kazakh President-for-Life’s daughter-for-life Goga Ashkenazi celebrated her 30th birthday with a lavish party before the scandal hit.
Goga, who made her appearance in a Swarovski crystal-encrusted, backless lace dress, attended by Prince-for-Life Andrew, was entertained by fire-eaters, peacock-feathered stilt-walkers, and a girl swinging on a trapeze pouring vodka into ice sculptures shaped like naked male and female torsos.
There was even a woman suspended in a bird cage (true) who was there to direct guests to strategically-placed vomitoriums (alas, not true) strewn about the mansion grounds.
Enter "Uncle Ruslan"
But the biggest red flag, the one pertinent to murder in Boston, was Oligarch Kukibayev's use of money laundered through a network of offshore companies to attempt to hide his purchase of Prince Andrew's crib, which emerged during a legal battle between another billionaire Kazakh oligarch, Mukhtar Ablyazov, and BTA Bank, from which Kazakhstan claims Ablyazov embezzled a very cool $6 billion dollars.
And this is where “Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni comes in.
The purchase of the Prince's estate was put together, according to prosecutors in Italy and Switzerland, by a group of oil executives who comprise “a network of personal and business relationships” allegedly used for “international corruption," reported The London Telegraph.
Tsarni, called “a US lawyer who has had dealings in Kazakh business affairs,” by the Sunday Times, clearly appears to be a member of that network.
The Sunday Times reported, “A statement by Ruslan Zaindi Tsarni was given in the High Court in December, claiming that Kulibayev bought Sunninghill and properties in Mayfair with $96 million derived from a complex series of deals intended to disguise money laundering.”
“Tsarni alleged that the money came from the takeover of a western company, which had been used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh state.”
A Big Big Sky's the Limit
The “western company” used to launder the money which the Sunday Times referred to is Big Sky Energy Corporation, where Ruslan Tsarni was a top executive.
Big Sky, which used to be known as China Energy Ventures Corp, is a now-bankrupt US oil company run by S.A. (Al) Sehsuvaroglu, a long-time executive of Halliburton, which had oil leases in Kakakhstan’s Caspian Basin.
Tsarni was Big Sky’s Corporate Secretary and Vice President for Business Development. He joined Big Sky in 2005.
A press release announcing his appointment stated:
“Mr. Ruslan Tsarni, a U.S. citizen, has over 10 years of professional experience in oil and gas legislation and corporate law. Previously, Mr. Tsarni served as Corporate Counsel of Nelson Resources Limited Group as well as Managing Director of several of its operating subsidiaries.
“From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Tsarni worked as Head of Legal Affairs of Golden Eagle Partners LLC.
Big Sky was on somebody's watch list
“From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals in state and private companies.”
According to a source who worked for many years as a journalist at Platts Oilgram News, a respected oil industry trade publication, good corporate governance was not a Big Sky priority.
“Nelson, Big Sky, Ablyazov, Kulibayev and the rest were all on my watch list for intelligence connections and pay-offs of various kinds at Platts,” stated the source, who requested anonymity.
The news corroborates other reports beginning to emerge about the family and its abundant connections.
A "connected" family?
Before the Tsarnaev family moved to the United States a decade ago, they lived in the northern Kyrgyz town of Tokmok, near the border with Kazakhstan, which is home of the country's largest ethnic Chechen community.
The day after the massive manhunt in the Boston area that led to the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Radio Free Europe and Kyrgyz Service correspondent Timur Toktonaliev traveled to Tokmok.
From there, he reported that the extended Tsarnaev family is well-known there, even beyond their local community.
“It is not known if there was anything more than a personal connection,” the story reported, “but organized crime boss Aziz Batukaev, who is also an ethnic Chechen, lived next door to the Tsarnaevs. Batukaev grew up and lived in Tokmok, but is now in Chechnya.
Halliburton executives, suspected CIA assets, Chechnyan crime bosses, oligarchs stealing billions from banks and laundering money with seeming impunity, fire-eaters, peacock-feathered stilt-walkers, and a girl swinging on a trapeze pouring vodka into ice sculptures shaped like naked male and female torsos…
If there hadn't been two of them, the investigation would already be pointing to a single misfit, a lone nut bomber.
Those of you who read the stories published here know their value better than I can describe.
The investigative reporting on the impact of drug money on US political life and our economy found here are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. Without your help the effort cannot continue.
Order our books and documentaries, and donate what you can!
About Daniel Hopsicker
Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist dubious about the self-serving assertion of U.S. officials that there are no American Drug Lords.
http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/22/was-boston-bombers-uncle-ruslan-with-the-cia/
The uncle of the two men who set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, who struck the only grace note in an otherwise horrific week, worked as a “consultant” for the Agency for International Development (USAID) a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by agents of the CIA, in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.
“Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni of Montgomery Village Md., whose name was the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter last Friday for his plain-spoken condemnation of his two nephews, has had a checkered business career, that began well before he graduated (as Ruslan Z Tsarnaev) from Duke Law School in 1998.
Tsarni, a well-connected oil executive, is currently involved in an international criminal investigation into a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive alleged to have absconded with $6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.
The story begins with The London Sunday Times on May 8, 2011, which reported the sale of the personal home of England’s Prince Andrew to billionaire Kazakh Oligarch Timur Kulibayev, who “controls that country’s oil industry and happens to be married to the daughter of its autocratic President Nursultan Nazarbayev.”
What does that have to do with "Uncle Ruslan?" Let's take a look.
"Can't tell your Oligarchs without a scorecard"
Headlined "Prince's home in 'laundered cash' inquiry," the story raised several red flags.
One was that the President-for-Life’s son-in-law had paid $5 million over the asking price to purchase Prince Andrew’s home, which raised eyebrows.
Red flags and eyebrows were raised still further, in these times of global near-depression, at the conspicuous oligarchic consumption (read: bad taste) exhibited when the Kazakh President-for-Life’s daughter-for-life Goga Ashkenazi celebrated her 30th birthday with a lavish party before the scandal hit.
Goga, who made her appearance in a Swarovski crystal-encrusted, backless lace dress, attended by Prince-for-Life Andrew, was entertained by fire-eaters, peacock-feathered stilt-walkers, and a girl swinging on a trapeze pouring vodka into ice sculptures shaped like naked male and female torsos.
There was even a woman suspended in a bird cage (true) who was there to direct guests to strategically-placed vomitoriums (alas, not true) strewn about the mansion grounds.
Enter "Uncle Ruslan"
But the biggest red flag, the one pertinent to murder in Boston, was Oligarch Kukibayev's use of money laundered through a network of offshore companies to attempt to hide his purchase of Prince Andrew's crib, which emerged during a legal battle between another billionaire Kazakh oligarch, Mukhtar Ablyazov, and BTA Bank, from which Kazakhstan claims Ablyazov embezzled a very cool $6 billion dollars.
And this is where “Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni comes in.
The purchase of the Prince's estate was put together, according to prosecutors in Italy and Switzerland, by a group of oil executives who comprise “a network of personal and business relationships” allegedly used for “international corruption," reported The London Telegraph.
Tsarni, called “a US lawyer who has had dealings in Kazakh business affairs,” by the Sunday Times, clearly appears to be a member of that network.
The Sunday Times reported, “A statement by Ruslan Zaindi Tsarni was given in the High Court in December, claiming that Kulibayev bought Sunninghill and properties in Mayfair with $96 million derived from a complex series of deals intended to disguise money laundering.”
“Tsarni alleged that the money came from the takeover of a western company, which had been used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh state.”
A Big Big Sky's the Limit
The “western company” used to launder the money which the Sunday Times referred to is Big Sky Energy Corporation, where Ruslan Tsarni was a top executive.
Big Sky, which used to be known as China Energy Ventures Corp, is a now-bankrupt US oil company run by S.A. (Al) Sehsuvaroglu, a long-time executive of Halliburton, which had oil leases in Kakakhstan’s Caspian Basin.
Tsarni was Big Sky’s Corporate Secretary and Vice President for Business Development. He joined Big Sky in 2005.
A press release announcing his appointment stated:
“Mr. Ruslan Tsarni, a U.S. citizen, has over 10 years of professional experience in oil and gas legislation and corporate law. Previously, Mr. Tsarni served as Corporate Counsel of Nelson Resources Limited Group as well as Managing Director of several of its operating subsidiaries.
“From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Tsarni worked as Head of Legal Affairs of Golden Eagle Partners LLC.
Big Sky was on somebody's watch list
“From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals in state and private companies.”
According to a source who worked for many years as a journalist at Platts Oilgram News, a respected oil industry trade publication, good corporate governance was not a Big Sky priority.
“Nelson, Big Sky, Ablyazov, Kulibayev and the rest were all on my watch list for intelligence connections and pay-offs of various kinds at Platts,” stated the source, who requested anonymity.
The news corroborates other reports beginning to emerge about the family and its abundant connections.
A "connected" family?
Before the Tsarnaev family moved to the United States a decade ago, they lived in the northern Kyrgyz town of Tokmok, near the border with Kazakhstan, which is home of the country's largest ethnic Chechen community.
The day after the massive manhunt in the Boston area that led to the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Radio Free Europe and Kyrgyz Service correspondent Timur Toktonaliev traveled to Tokmok.
From there, he reported that the extended Tsarnaev family is well-known there, even beyond their local community.
“It is not known if there was anything more than a personal connection,” the story reported, “but organized crime boss Aziz Batukaev, who is also an ethnic Chechen, lived next door to the Tsarnaevs. Batukaev grew up and lived in Tokmok, but is now in Chechnya.
Halliburton executives, suspected CIA assets, Chechnyan crime bosses, oligarchs stealing billions from banks and laundering money with seeming impunity, fire-eaters, peacock-feathered stilt-walkers, and a girl swinging on a trapeze pouring vodka into ice sculptures shaped like naked male and female torsos…
If there hadn't been two of them, the investigation would already be pointing to a single misfit, a lone nut bomber.
Those of you who read the stories published here know their value better than I can describe.
The investigative reporting on the impact of drug money on US political life and our economy found here are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. Without your help the effort cannot continue.
Order our books and documentaries, and donate what you can!
About Daniel Hopsicker
Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist dubious about the self-serving assertion of U.S. officials that there are no American Drug Lords.
The Boston Bombing & The KGB
Robert Sterling, Konformist.com
Almost immediately after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, many people on the Internet (most notably Alex Jones of Infowars.com ) proclaimed the event to be a "False Flag" operation masterminded by US intelligence. This is certainly a plausible scenario, if one examines history. Still, if you ask "Cui bono?" to the events in Boston, the idea that the bombing was a KGB operation to justify a deeper push in Chechnya seems plausible as well. And if you dig a little deeper, the ulterior motive would appear to be oil.
Here is an article from National Journal titled "What You Need to Know About Chechnya":
http://www.nationaljournal.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-chechnya-20130419
The most important sentence of this entire report: "Today, Russia continues to maintain a vital interest in the region for economic reasons: Access routes from Russia to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea go through Chechnya, as do oil and gas pipelines connecting Russia with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan."
This was a pretty important story from March that didn't get the coverage it deserved:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/21/russias-rosneft-surpasses-exxonmobil-to-become-worlds-biggest-oil-co/
Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company, became the biggest oil company in the world (exceeding ExxonMobil) after their latest huge acquisition of TNK-BP. The CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, is a "former" KGB spy.
This Atlantic article doesn't conclude conspiracy (probably because, according to establishment thought, conspiracies by powerful organizations don't happen) but it does show all the dots that need to be connected:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/what-you-should-know-about-chechnya-as-the-boston-story-unfolds/275156/
Here's the most important quote:
"To allow the Boston attacks to cast all Chechens as violent religious zealots is exactly what Putin needs. That will allow him to keep his deadly arrangement going. The supreme irony of Putin's PR strategy is that most Chechens share the democratic values of a Western civilization that completely disregards, and misunderstands, their struggle."
So here's the general model: Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil giant, has just become the world's biggest oil company through mass acquisitions. The end goal of the acquisitions is the big prize, the oil in the Caspian Sea, which Russia (like the US, Europe & China) wants to dominate. The problem, of course, is that Chechnya stands in the way of the oil. In order to get it, they must crush Chechnya. To stop any PR defense of Chechnyans, the bombing turns Chechnya into an officially sanctioned demon. Look for Putin to declare sympathy for America and support of the War on Terror, then launch an even bloodier offensive of Chechnya. Then look for Rosneft to make even huger and bigger deals over the Caspian oil.
Almost immediately after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, many people on the Internet (most notably Alex Jones of Infowars.com ) proclaimed the event to be a "False Flag" operation masterminded by US intelligence. This is certainly a plausible scenario, if one examines history. Still, if you ask "Cui bono?" to the events in Boston, the idea that the bombing was a KGB operation to justify a deeper push in Chechnya seems plausible as well. And if you dig a little deeper, the ulterior motive would appear to be oil.
Here is an article from National Journal titled "What You Need to Know About Chechnya":
http://www.nationaljournal.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-chechnya-20130419
The most important sentence of this entire report: "Today, Russia continues to maintain a vital interest in the region for economic reasons: Access routes from Russia to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea go through Chechnya, as do oil and gas pipelines connecting Russia with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan."
This was a pretty important story from March that didn't get the coverage it deserved:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/21/russias-rosneft-surpasses-exxonmobil-to-become-worlds-biggest-oil-co/
Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company, became the biggest oil company in the world (exceeding ExxonMobil) after their latest huge acquisition of TNK-BP. The CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, is a "former" KGB spy.
This Atlantic article doesn't conclude conspiracy (probably because, according to establishment thought, conspiracies by powerful organizations don't happen) but it does show all the dots that need to be connected:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/what-you-should-know-about-chechnya-as-the-boston-story-unfolds/275156/
Here's the most important quote:
"To allow the Boston attacks to cast all Chechens as violent religious zealots is exactly what Putin needs. That will allow him to keep his deadly arrangement going. The supreme irony of Putin's PR strategy is that most Chechens share the democratic values of a Western civilization that completely disregards, and misunderstands, their struggle."
So here's the general model: Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil giant, has just become the world's biggest oil company through mass acquisitions. The end goal of the acquisitions is the big prize, the oil in the Caspian Sea, which Russia (like the US, Europe & China) wants to dominate. The problem, of course, is that Chechnya stands in the way of the oil. In order to get it, they must crush Chechnya. To stop any PR defense of Chechnyans, the bombing turns Chechnya into an officially sanctioned demon. Look for Putin to declare sympathy for America and support of the War on Terror, then launch an even bloodier offensive of Chechnya. Then look for Rosneft to make even huger and bigger deals over the Caspian oil.
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