Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

[A'isha]

So you think their picture was being passed around because they thought he was a handsome guy or something?

No, it's because his picture was spread all over the internet, and ostensibly some nameless law enforcement agent emailed a copy of that picture that was all over the internet, asking for information about their identities. They weren't suspects, the Feds weren't "seeking" them, and the investigation was already centered around the two men from the security camera photos (one of whom was described by Jeff Bauman) which authorities were talking about the day before this email was sent.

The Post jumped the gun because they assumed that the two suspects that the authorities had mentioned the day before that they were focusing on were the two men in the picture of the high schoolers that was being passed around, when they weren't.

None of which alters the fact that ABC did confirm the Posts's claim that the investigation was for a time focusing on Barhoun.

You have no indication whatsoever that the investigation ever "focused" on him, or that they considered him a "possible bomber". As I said above, the email was circulated after it was already known that the investigation was focusing on two men in the security camera footage (who we now know are the Tsarnaev brothers). Your own cite even implies that the only reason the law enforcement email was sent was because of the internet buzz about the image.

 

[A'isha]

No, they certainly were seeking him.

They absolutely were not.

What on earth makes you think that they had learned of the Tsarnaev brothers at that time?

The Post themselves admit it in their article:

In the photos being distributed by law-enforcement officials among themselves, one of the men is carrying a blue duffel bag. The other is wearing a black backpack in the first photo, taken at 10:53 a.m., but it is not visible in the second, taken at 12:30 p.m.

“The attached photos are being circulated in an attempt to identify the individuals highlighted therein,” said an e-mail obtained by The Post. “Feel free to pass this around to any of your fellow agents elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, officials have identified two potential suspects who were captured on surveillance videos taken shortly before the deadly blasts, law-enforcement sources told The Post yesterday.
Authorities know the names of the two men, but do not have enough evidence to make an arrest for Monday’s attack, which killed three and wounded 176, the sources said.

It was not immediately clear if the men in the law-enforcement photos are the same men in the surveillance videos.

As we found out when the surveillance footage was released, it wasn't.

EDIT: Even that short except shows how poor the Post is at journalism. They have one source saying that the authorities are emailing a picture of people that supposedly they're trying to identify, and another source saying that the authorities have two suspects captured on surveillance footage and that the authorities know those suspects' names. Then the Post says that they aren't sure if the men in the photos are the same as the men in the surveillance videos. Well, duh, no they aren't, because if the authorities supposedly know the names of the men in the videos but are trying to find out who the men in the photos are, they obviously can't be the same people!

 

[GWCarver]

They absolutely were not.



The Post themselves admit it in their article:



As we found out when the surveillance footage was released, it wasn't.

EDIT: Even that short except shows how poor the Post is at journalism. They have one source saying that the authorities are emailing a picture of people that supposedly they're trying to identify, and another source saying that the authorities have two suspects captured on surveillance footage and that the authorities know those suspects' names. Then the Post says that they aren't sure if the men in the photos are the same as the men in the surveillance videos. Well, duh, no they aren't, because if the authorities supposedly know the names of the men in the videos but are trying to find out who the men in the photos are, they obviously can't be the same people!

The surveillance videos were the Lord and Taylor videos of the guy with the backward white cap. At least that is the way we understood it at the time.

 

[A'isha]

The surveillance videos were the Lord and Taylor videos of the guy with the backward white cap. At least that is the way we understood it at the time.

Who turned out to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Eyewitness information from Jeff Bauman helped investigators single his black-hatted brother Tamerlan out in their searches of the video, which helped them find the footage of the white-hatted Dzhokhar as well.

 

[zeggman]

You're flat-out going to refuse to acknowledge that there are crazy people out there, who could very well be stalking this kid. As we speak.

This after I PROVED to you that there are indeed crazy people out there that do crazy stuff - as in the woman who mistook someone for Casey Anthony and nearly killed her. A thousand miles away from where Casey Anthony actually was.

There are crazy people out there who could be stalking you. There are crazy people out there who could be stalking me. Allowing such a remote possibility to inspire fear which prevents us from leaving the house is idiotic.

I've asked before, but haven't seen an answer: is the other "bag man" so fearful that he is housebound? If not, why not?

 

[zeggman]

I'm not sure he's concerned with facts at this point.

I would dispute whether or not the Columbine killers considered themselves outcasts, but as Doghouse Reilly noted, it's off-topic.

The more information comes out, the more confident I am that the facts support the main on-topic point I was making: this attack was inspired by two Muslims who joined the global jihad.

 

[Magenta]

I don't think so -- sort of.

I don't believe that the information about the cap, hoodie and jacket was released in any press briefing or through any official means. However, I do recall hearing about those details a day before the photos were released (on Wednesday, amid the false rumors of the arrest), so these details must have been leaked by someone.

Whether the leak was intentional on the part of the FBI or not is just a matter of guesswork. (My guess is not, but it's no better than anyone else's guess.)

You're right. CBS apparently reported this on Twitter on Wednesday morning. From the NYT article I linked previously the FBI had been deliberating about going public with images and I guess things were starting to get out of hand.

One of the striking things about this case is the management of information dissemination with lots of "sources" supplying information seemingly pre-empting "official sources".

ETA: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, at least, appears to have acted fairly normally on Wednesday, according to this account in the Boston Globe:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spent an apparently normal day Wednesday at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he was a sophomore, according to a school official, working out in the gym, then sleeping in his dorm room that night, while law enforcement officials frantically scanned photos trying to identify the men who planted deadly bombs at the Boston Marathon on Monday.

Card swipes told officials that Tsarnaev, described as a good and typical student who played intramural soccer, was on campus Wednesday, but it was not clear if he had been there earlier in the week.

A student, who did not want to be identified, also said she saw Tsarnaev at a party on Wednesday night that was attended by some of his soccer friends.

Link

:

 

[zeggman]

One of my questions has apparently been answered -- they didn't "release the owner of the carjacked vehicle," he escaped:

"About five hours after federal investigators published photos of the the two suspects taken at the Boston Marathon, police say, they killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Thursday night and carjacked a Mercedes SUV nearby.

Cambridge Police told The Times that the Mercedes driver escaped when the brothers went inside a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge to buy snacks."

Dimbulbs.

I still wonder why they shot the M.I.T. guard (a simple terrorist act?) and why they stole a car when they already had a car ("It's only a matter of time before they're looking for our car"?), but when two guys can't figure out that one of them can buy snacks while the other stays with the hostage ("You always buy Cheetos. I hate Cheetos"?) they seem more and more like whatever the terrorist version of Keystone Kops would be.

 

[Magenta]

One of my questions has apparently been answered -- they didn't "release the owner of the carjacked vehicle," he escaped:

"About five hours after federal investigators published photos of the the two suspects taken at the Boston Marathon, police say, they killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Thursday night and carjacked a Mercedes SUV nearby.

Cambridge Police told The Times that the Mercedes driver escaped when the brothers went inside a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge to buy snacks."

Dimbulbs.

I still wonder why they shot the M.I.T. guard (a simple terrorist act?) and why they stole a car when they already had a car ("It's only a matter of time before they're looking for our car"?), but when two guys can't figure out that one of them can buy snacks while the other stays with the hostage ("You always buy Cheetos. I hate Cheetos"?) they seem more and more like whatever the terrorist version of Keystone Kops would be.

They were in two cars when in encountered in Watertown, according to the Watertown police chief. More on the SUV driver:

NBC News contacted the driver of an SUV who allegedly was carjacked by the brothers hours before the shootout. The driver, who asked that his identity not be revealed, said he escaped after the brothers drove his car to a gas station in Watertown. He described them as “brutal and cautious.”

Link

Journalist Seth Mnookin turned up at MIT then followed police to Watertown. He describes the chaos, including the "naked man's" encounter with the police:

The scene quickly turned into chaos. One of the suspects had been wounded in a gun battle with police a few blocks away—he later died—but the other had somehow escaped. (Richard H. Donahue, Jr., a thirty-three-year-old transit officer, was also wounded in the shoot-out; as of Friday night, he was in stable condition.) The Boston Police Department appeared to be the lead agency on the ground, but the officers were unfamiliar with the suburbs; because they’d been told to power off their cell phones (in case they inadvertently detonated a bomb), they weren’t able to use Google Maps to navigate the neighborhood’s warren of sharply angled streets. A voice on the scanner reported that the suspects had “stolen an S.U.V. from state police.” There were shouted warnings: Explosives were at the scene. The suspects had “long guns.” A police officer asked me for directions, and almost immediately another cop charged toward me, gun drawn, shouting, “Identify yourself! Identify yourself! Stay back!” And then, from someplace just out of my line of sight, I heard, “KEEP YOUR *********** HANDS WHERE THEY ARE. DON’T MOVE YOUR *********** HANDS. . . . DROP YOUR UNDERWEAR. GET ON YOUR HANDS AND KNEES.”

But they weren’t yelling at me. The shouting was directed at the “second suspect”—at least, according to the police at the time. By the time he’d been stripped and photographed, and the F.B.I. had arrived on the scene, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman was retracting that characterization. It appeared that he was just a guy who’d had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Link

 

[Shiner]

Implicating one-self.

Probably. I don't see the problem.

I don't understand why anyone would want to show support for this guy, unless they do support his actions.

 

[L.Y.S.]

Probably. I don't see the problem.

I don't understand why anyone would want to show support for this guy, unless they do support his actions.

Supporting human rights is terrorist sympathy?

 

[trustbutverify]

Probably. I don't see the problem.

I don't understand why anyone would want to show support for this guy, unless they do support his actions.

There's an elephant in the room...maybe I'm not the only one who notices it.

 

[trustbutverify]

Supporting human rights is terrorist sympathy?

One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

 

[Shiner]

A couple of minutes ago:




And that's what the douchebags who use the tag to tell the FBI to investigate people who use the tag seem incapable of getting. And they help making it trend, of course.

O.k. Now I get it. Ignore my previous post.

 

[L.Y.S.]

One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

The question is not one of supporting the person's actions, but rather, their fundamental rights as a persons. Of all the BS rhetoric commonly thrown on this forum, you're telling me that defending HUMAN rights is supporting terrorism? Why don't we just dissolve due process, and the right to a fair and speedy trial while we're at it. I'm sure that'll help justice move along swimmingly in this country.

 

[The_Fire]

One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

No. Just no.

People purposefully targeting civilians for maximum shockeffect = Terrorists.
People trying to avoid killing civilians while fighting for freedom/basic human rights = Freedom fighters.

 

[trustbutverify]

The question is not one of supporting the person's actions, but rather, their fundamental rights as a persons. Of all the BS rhetoric commonly thrown on this forum, you're telling me that defending HUMAN rights is supporting terrorism? Why don't we just dissolve due process, and the right to a fair and speedy trial while we're at it. I'm sure that'll help justice move along swimmingly in this country.

And what, exactly, does this junior high book report have to do with one person's terrorist being another person's freedom fighter?

 

[trustbutverify]

No. Just no.

People purposefully targeting civilians for maximum shockeffect = Terrorists.
People trying to avoid killing civilians while fighting for freedom/basic human rights = Freedom fighters.

Yes, sounds reasonable. To me.

 

[L.Y.S.]

And what, exactly, does this junior high book report have to do with one person's terrorist being another person's freedom fighter?

Perhaps I misunderstood you. What exactly did you mean?

 

[L.Y.S.]

Just to clarify some information that may have been potentially mentioned about the issue of Mirandizing. Federal investigators have already decided that this individual will be tried in a civil court under civil law, and that the said individual will not be tried under military law. A common misconception of several republican senators in their stent about trying Mr. Tsarnev as combatant, is whether or not the government can temporarily nullify citizen rights to extract intelligence. The Obama administration vehemently rejected these proposals and decided that a full and lawful investigation was the proper course of procedure.

In addition, there will be a special task force composed of individuals from various intelligence and military attachments questioning this individual. All of this will occur under the strict protections which are granted to American citizens. All of the information will not be usable during Mr. Tsarnev's court appearance, if he survives that long. The main objective is to find out "what" went wrong, and to find out the scale of the damage. If he and his brother were operating as lone agents of terror, or whether they were supported by others.

This isn't the whole thing about