In the wake of the tragic event in Volgograd, reposting the below thought-provoking April 2013 piece on the also tragic Boston bombing

Cui Bono? Vladimir Vladimirovich? - Re Boston Bombing

ITEM 2a: Ken Jensen: Cui Bono? Vladimir Vladimirovich? Unpublished, April 20-21 (via ACFR NewsGroup No. 2143, April 27, 2013)

Cui Bono? Vladimir Vladimirovich?

When it comes to terrorist events like the Boston Marathon bombings, it often pays to think in speculative ways and to ask oneself obvious questions.  As with murders, the first and best one of these, adapted to current circumstances, is “who benefits most from what transpired at the Boston Marathon and subsequent mayhem?” Here follows one such exercise of answering that question.

In the case of Boston, an experimental answer to “cui bono?” might be “Vladimir Putin.”  If nothing else, he certainly got a nice boost from events by the Tsarnaevs’ being Chechen, something he hardly deserves given Moscow’s past and present antics in the Caucasus. It leads to the further question “What if the Boston bombing was Putin’s (or the FSB’s or “Russia’s”) doing?”  How could that have happened and why?

The Sochi Winter Olympics are coming up in 2014, and Putin will have to put on a major effort to keep anything untoward from happening in the greater neighborhood, which is, as we know, full of anti-Russian and Islamist elements. Putin’s effort is very likely to involve extremely ugly incidents of Russian repression.  The Russians are not known to be quiet and tidy repressors, after all. It will not do for the international community of nations coming to Sochi to become upset about what Putin feels compelled to do.  Some may pull out, either in fear of getting caught in the crossfire or in protest against atrocities. Others may back the “rebels” and embolden them.

So what better could happen for Putin than a terrorist incident in the U.S. involving, ostensibly, dissident elements from the Caucasus? Wouldn’t that make the crackdown easier and create a certain amount of international sympathy for Moscow?  Not an overwhelming amount, maybe, but perhaps enough to get the Russians through Sochi.

We know that in 2011 some foreign state inquired of the U.S. regarding the “political” activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  If that state was Russia (which is pretty much assumed now), why, then, did it allow Tsarnaev to enter and stay on Russian territory for six months in 2012? Family said it was to renew his Russian passport.  Six months to renew a passport? Of course, Moscow could have let him in to tail him as a known anti-Russian and Islamist of Chechen origin and see what he did, with whom he met, etc.

On the other hand, it may have crossed the FSB’s mind that Tsarnaev, as a relatively recently convert to Islamist, could be turned to an even more useful purpose. He had immediate family in Dagestan (mother and father) and in the U.S. (a wife and child and brother). Threats of harm to those family members could have been used to make Tsarnaev pliable.  Alternately, FSB agents who had infiltrated certain Chechen or Dagestani circles in the “Caucasus Emirate” could have convinced him that it was in the interests of the cause to do something in Boston.

Tsarnaev could have been trained in bomb-making and terrorist trade-craft, given money, and sent on his way.  Such training could have been done in Moscow, or the Caucasus, or even Afghanistan or Pakistan (where affiliates of the Caucasus Emirate has strong connections), depending on his handlers’ connections and abilities to appear convincing dissidents.

If Moscow proceeded even less than skillfully, Tsarnaev could have been set up in such a way that would leave very few FSB fingerprints on the operation.  Recall that the explosive devices used were primitive and well within the abilities of a “lone wolf” to create. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev made no attempt to disguise themselves, nor did they have either an escape plan or assistance in escaping.  The latter may have been promised, which might explain the mayhem that ensued once their photographs were made public. They may well have felt they had to fight it out for martyrdom’s sake. All the better for the FSB.

Keep in mind that Putin’s offer to cooperate with U.S. authorities in investigating the bombing (in the form of a phone conversation with Barack Obama) came Friday morning and was reported in the media before noon.  Accordingly, Putin’s offer came after Tamerlan was killed. Watertown was locked down and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was still at large. On the (unsure but possible) assumption that Dzhokhar knew less (possibly MUCH less) than his older brother, the timing of the call after Tamerlan’s death would have been the most beneficial for Moscow.  (Putin might also have been assured that Dzhokhar would not allow himself to be taken alive. Or, if he was, that deniability wouldn’t be problem.)

All of this does not in the slightest convince this writer that the aforementioned was what REALLY happened. The notion is plausible, nothing more.   In things like this, every lead has to be followed.  We saw only the other morning that the Tsarnaevs’ Uncle Ruslan has claimed that he was told by someone that Tamerlan was “brainwashed” into becoming a jihadi by a Muslim convert of Armenian descent, and also that Tamerlan’s radicalization occurred in the United States, not during his stay in Russia.  Lots of Armenians in Watertown, Massachusetts, what?  Of course, Uncle Ruslan may have a thing about Armenians.  The Wall Street Journal, this morning, contains a well-researched piece on the Tsarnaev family that suggests that Mrs. Tsarnaev was radicalized either before or at the same time as her son Tamerlan, and that this occurred while both were in Boston.  Was it “do-it-yourself” or assisted?

It will be important for all sorts of reasons to know how Tamerlan Tsarnaev was radicalized, where it occurred and when. Clearly, it would be most troubling if he had been radicalized in the U.S. The scant current evidence is rather more suggestive of that than an international conspiracy.  But most important is finding out what he did for six months in Russia.

Here follows something received from one of my best “informed sources” that helps explain why one might consider the “theory” above:

“Regarding your ‘cui bono’ theory: The possibility of provocation or manipulation by the Russian FSB or other government-backed actors is not necessarily quite as far-fetched a scenario as it might at first appear. For example, in his recent book on the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999, Hoover’s John Dunlop explores the possible connection of contemporary political upheavals in Russia to possible FSB complicity in the apartment bombings, blamed by the government on Chechens. The subsequent "Riazan incident," in which a bomb was found and defused, was later explained by the FSB as having been their own training exercise. The head of the FSB at the time? Vladimir Putin, who soon after vaulted to power. (Reichstag fire, anyone?) The famous and horrific episodes at the Nord-Ost Theatre in 2002 and at the school in Beslan in 2004 have raised serious questions about possible FSB complicity from no less serious figures than the late journalist Anna Politkovskaia and the (also horribly late) former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.”

An Aside: Another, less bizarre theory, is that Chechen dissident elements were egregiously offended by the deal the U.S. cut with Russia on terrorism on May 26, 2011.  Not only was anti-terrorist cooperation agreed to, but the U.S. at the same time listed Chechen Doku Umarov of the Caucasus Emirate as a “specially designated global terrorist” and specifically called him a danger to both the U.S. and Russia.  See U.S. Executive Order 1322.  Was this enough to inspire a terror attack in the U.S. in the Chechen and/or Islamist cause? Perhaps it was.