Prof. James Petras: Boston Bombings: Detonator to Mobilize the Entire US Security Apparatus!

May change the world for the worse. The relation between the suspected Boston Marathon bombers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Massachusetts State Police (BP) is a point of contention and controversy. The FBI, at first, claimed no knowledge of the bombing suspects, but later was forced to admit having received at least two sets of intelligence reports, one from Russian officials, and another from the CIA, identifying one of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as a potential security threat, linked to a Chechen terrorist organization. Testimony from Tsarnaev mother and father indicates that the FBI was active in following, harassing and interrogating the suspect before the bombing. Despite general directives from the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, mandating US security to aggressively pursue Islamist terrorists, the FBI claims to have made no effort to follow up on the Russian and CIA security alerts, especially after Tamerlan Tsarnaev returned from Russian state of Dagestan last year, where he allegedly met six times with a known Chechen terrorist, Gadzhimurad Dolgatov, in a fundamentalist Salafi mosque. The official government and corporate media versions claim the FBI may have overlooked the security risk posed by Tsarnaev. Congressional critics argue that the FBI was negligent in following up leads provided by the Russians and the CIA. A more likely explanation is that the FBI was actively engaged with Tsarnaev and deliberately encouraged the conspiracy for self serving purposes. The most benign hypothesis is that the Boston office of the FBI had set the pair of brothers up for a sting operation, in order to revive the flagging fortunes of the war on terror, foisted on a war weary and economically depressed American public. The FBI in Boston has a long and notorious history of working with and protecting certain leaders of organized crime, in return for information about targeted rivals: The most notorious example is the FBI's 20 year partnership with one of Bostons most feared gangland killers, James Whitney Bulger, where the mobster was provided with protection and collaboration, in return for his information about a rival crime family and other competitors. In 2012, Bulger was finally indicted for 19 murders, mostly committed under FBI protection, although one of his closest mob partners claim he murdered 40 people in his lifetime.