Childlike Empress
Banned
Even if what she is saying is true then that would point to an intelligence failure. There is no doubt that the authorities do keep watch on a lot of people they consider to be a threat. It's well known here in the UK that they have a lot of extrmists under surveillance. The last thing it would point to is a conspiracy. If they were setting the brothers up as fall guys they wouldn't make contact with their parents. Just like they wouldn't have had people setting off the bombs in military uniform. I sometimes wonder just how credulous people have to be to fall for all these conspiracy theories.
You can explain it away all you want, it certainly is news (top story on SPIEGEL right now). The father is quoted as saying the FBI told the sons that they "know what you read, what you drink, what you eat, where you go" and that is certainly true for any person of interest given the surveillance possibilities these days. Of course, being brothers living together there was some clandestine element build in, but any serious planing, any online contacts and any buying of bomb material etc would have been extremely risky and should now be reconstructable. We'll see how that develops.
