Boston Marathon Bombing Cover-Up: A Conversation with Michele McPhee

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For nearly four years, WhoWhatWhy has written repeatedly about the Boston Marathon bombing. In dozens of investigative articles, we have shown how the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) official version of the tumultuous events of April 2013 did not make sense.

Now, longtime Boston investigative journalist Michele McPhee argues persuasively in her new book, “Maximum Harm,” that the feds have been keeping important information about this tragedy from the public.

In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast with Jeff Schechtman, McPhee fingers Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an FBI informant gone rogue. She talks about compelling evidence that the Tsarnaev brothers were not the bombmakers, and asks how Tamerlan was able to travel back and forth to Russia despite being on two government watch lists and having no apparent financial resources.

She also discusses the role that the US intelligence community played in covering up the key fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was one of its protected “assets.”

If you’ve been following this story here on WhoWhatWhy, this is a must listen.

Editor’s Note: see here for our in-depth book review of Maximum Harm.

Click HERE to Download Mp3

Full Text Transcript:

As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to a constraint of resources, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like and hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.

Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy. I’m Jeff Schechtman.

Almost four years ago to the day, on April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards apart, near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon. 3 people were killed, several hundred others were injured, including sixteen who lost limbs. Beyond these facts, the story of the Tsarnaev brothers and the complex web of events that led to that day are very much an open question. The more or less official narrative long touted by authorities of the lone wolf Muslim extremist has long since been discredited. The story that is emerging of what really might have happened in Boston has some eerie parallels to today’s headlines: Russia, the FBI, FBI informants, counterterrorism agents not informing the FBI, etc. And now a new book by longtime Boston-based investigative journalist Michele McPhee brings new light to the story and reinforces what many have been trying to point out for many years. Michele McPhee has been nominated for three Emmy awards for investigative journalism and works as a Boston-based producer for Bryan Ross’s investigative unit at ABC News. She’s the host of the Daily Radio Talk Show and wrote an award-winning column for the Boston Herald. She’s the author of numerous books and articles, and it is my pleasure to welcome Michele McPhee here to talk about her latest work: Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, the FBI and the Road to the Marathon Bombing. Michele, thanks so much for joining us.

Michele McPhee: What an introduction! Thank you so much for having me.

Jeff Schechtman: As you began to try and uncover the layers and layers and layers of this story, to what extent did you work back from the official narrative and try and uncover or was that something that essentially went out the window pretty early on as you began to find out more and more about what had transpired vis-à-vis the Tsarnaev brothers?

Michele McPhee: As early as April 18, 2013 and many will remember that as the day that the FBI released the photos of suspect White Hat and suspect Black Hat. It seemed odd. The press conference was abrupt, local law enforcement had complained that the FBI released the images to television reporters and to the public before they consulted with anyone in any of the surrounding towns. But as early as Tuesday, you might recall that the FBI overtook a hangar at the Black Falcon Terminal, a cruise terminal here in Boston. There, they were going through reams and reams of evidence, most importantly photos and videos taken from the scene. On Tuesday, I got a phone call from multiple forces talking about an altercation that took place in this evidence hangar. What had happened was there were a number of FBI agents that were sitting at one of these terminals off in a corner and they appeared to be comparing photos of suspect Black Hat and suspect White Hat to photos, including a mugshot of people who looked like the older brother: Tamerlan Tsarnaev. There was a verbal altercation at the terminal. There were accusations hurled. You knew, once again, the FBI knew and you didn’t share it with us. From that point forward, there were just non-stop murmurings about whether or not the FBI knew exactly who the marathon bombers were and once again, they weren’t sharing. You may recall that Boston has a long and sordid history of infuriating local law enforcement with cases like Whitey Bulger and Mark Rossetti, who were FBI sponsored informants who were essentially given a free pass to continue to commit crimes as grotesque as murder, and Whitey Bulger did.

Jeff Schechtman: What is it about Boston and the arrangements that exist there between the police, the FBI, other law enforcement that seems to constantly lead back to these cases happening?

Michele McPhee: I don’t know what it is about Boston, but I know that it keeps happening. This particular case was egregious, especially when Sean Collier was assassinated in cold blood. Of course, in Maximum Harm, I’m not blaming federal officials in any way for what took place on April 15, 2013. Informants have always been a necessary evil in order to combat everything from biker gangs and organized crime, and most recently after 9/11, terrorism. It’s necessary to make these unholy alliances with confidential informants in order to take down these terrorists. Nobody is blaming the government for what took place on April 15, but certainly, if they know who the Tsarnaev brothers were, I think it really raises an eyebrow. I’m incredulous and I know a lot of other people are, that the FBI talks about an open case against Tamerlan Tsarnaev in March of 2011. In fact, just this week, the FBI very strangely released a single report about one of the visits they had made to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s home in 2011 and talking about how he was desperate to become a citizen. But what the FBI didn’t tell us at the time was why they didn’t recognize Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Now you and I, we’ve been in this profession for a while, if you interviewed somebody, face to face multiple times and then their picture emerges as a suspect in the marathon bombing, don’t you think that you would remember what they look like?

Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit about the fact though, that the FBI seemed to lose control of their informant in this case, particularly when one looks at the trips back and forth that Tamerlan Tsarnaev took between Russia and the US and moving back and forth with complete impunity.

Michele McPhee: Well, in some reports it was a different agency altogether for that sort of travel. Remember, the FBI cannot operate overseas and the CIA cannot operate domestically, but when you look into Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s history from his arrival in the United States in 2002, he had a connection to the CIA via his uncle. We all remember, perhaps the uncle that came out and declared his nephews were losers. He was sort of a national celebrity for a little bit just because he was outspoken about what his nephews had done. Well, Ruslan Tsarnaev in 2002, was married to Samantha Ankara Fuller, who was the daughter of a CIA official named Graham Fuller. 

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