Federal Bureau of Incompetence

Since I have been off of the blogosphere for over a week I know what I am about to post is somewhat dated, but it is the one item I most wanted to comment on, so here it goes.

I find any praise of the FBI for their handling of the Boston massacre, before during or after not only unwarranted but counterproductive. Since this is now becoming old news I'll just point out some relevant points.

Before

It is obvious that the deadly duo were on the FBI's radar. They, after all, interviewed the older brother and evidently did not find him to be a serious threat. This despite the fact that he posted extreme jihadist videos on his You Tube page. In other words they either did not even monitor his social network sites or simply ignored what was there. Either way they failed to identify a real threat and failed to monitor his activities.

During

This in itself could be written off as someone just "falling through the cracks" which can and does happen in a large organization. However and this is a big however, once the Boston bombing occurred and the FBI took charge of the case, within a couple of days they, the FBI, had pictures of suspects which they were distributing to law enforcement even before they released it to the public. One would assume they would release these photos to their own agents, and one would assume that the agent(s) who interviewed the older brother less than two years before should have recognized the older brother as someone they interviewed about possible terrorist "sympathies", right? You would think that but obviously, for whatever reason nothing happened.

I want to re-empathize this. One of the largest man hunts in American history is underway, the FBI is in charge. They have a picture of a suspect whom their own agent(s) from the same field office in the locality where the crime occurred interviewed the suspect for terrorist related suspicions two years prior and he was not only not picked up for questioning he was obviously not identified. How can that be possible?

Then there is the question of why they waited so long to distribute the pictures to the public. For whatever reason law enforcement could not identify the suspects, suspects who we know were planning further attacks which at the very least the FBI would have to assume was possible. When, after a quick check through their available resources, they could not identify the men whom they had photo/video of, why did they not immediately put out the images asking for the public's help? It was rumored that law enforcement had picture(s) of suspect(s) at least twenty four hours prior to them releasing them, yet they did not put these images out for millions of potential witnesses to look at? Why? If they were wrong, the persons of interest would immediately come forward and proclaim their innocence, thus taking this lead off of the table. But instead, for at least twenty four hours the FBI held onto the image(s) of the terrorist. Why?

After

The most irritating aspect of all this is the praise the FBI is getting for their "quick" actions after they released the photos/videos of the suspects. Really? What did they do? Actually they did nothing. If the guy who was car jacked by the brothers had not escaped and sounded the alarm. If they had killed him or kept him while they made their escape, then the brothers would have gone to New York and potentially set off bombs in Time Square. The FBI did not capture them in some "manhunt", they and we just got lucky that their captive escaped and sounded the alarm.

Now we have three other morons who are being charged with helping the bombers post event. Well that is nice. Fifteen days after the explosion, twelve days after "suspect 2" sent text messages to one of his buddies "jokingly" admitting his part in the bombing, they arrest these guys for destroying evidence. Now that is quick police work there.

I find it utterly humiliating as a US citizen that a nineteen year old kid can "lock down" an entire metropolitan area for a day and we somehow think that this is some great accomplishment by our premier law enforcement agency. To me it is the height of incompetence at every juncture of this sad event.