April 22, 2013 • 9:57AM

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), has sent a letter to the FBI, DHS, and DCI Clapper, asking very pointed questions as to why nothing was done to keep alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev under surveillence, after the Russian intelligence service warned the U.S. about him.

"My understanding is, Russian intelligence service contacted the FBI and said, you have an individual that has potential ties to extremism," McCaul said on CNN's "State of the Union" program this morning. "That he was interviewed by the FBI in 2011 and let go. And after that time, is what's very interesting, is that the older brother travels back to Russia. His father lives in the Chechen region. He spends six months there. He comes back."

"One of the first things he does is puts up a YouTube website throwing out a lot of jihadist rhetoric," McCaul continued. "Clearly, something happened in my judgment in that six-month timeframe. He radicalized at some point in time. Where was that and how did that happen? I'm very concerned. That six months is very important."

"So, why is the FBI interview important? Because if he was on the radar and they let him go — he's on the Russian's radar — why wasn't a flag put on him, some sort of customs flag? I've done this before. You put a customs flag up on the individual coming in and out. And I'd like to know what intelligence Russia has on him as well. I would suspect that they may have monitored him when he was in Russia." When CNN host Candy Crowley asked, what if they didn't find anything, why should they flag him, McCaul answered that "it's important enough to have a foreign government tie him to extremism.... This man is ... not a U.S. citizen, his brother is. He actually applied for citizenship, and the Department of Homeland Security put that on hold based upon his FBI interview. So, there were concerns about this individual, and yet, when he travels abroad and gets to a very dangerous part of the world, nothing seems to be done."

The American people need to understand why Chechnya is important, McCaul said. "The Chechen rebels are some of the fiercest jihadist warriors out there.... They're angry with Russia, but they have also made an alliance with al Qaeda. They [American people—ed.] have to understand that they've [rebels—ed.] worked with al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One of my constituent's sons was killed in Iraq by nine Chechen rebels. So, they're in the fight. And so, he [Tamerlan] goes over there, the tools of trade of warfare for al-Qaeda are precisely the devices that he built, this cooker pressure device, explosive device."

"There are reports that they had suicide vests on. You don't learn that overnight. I personally believe that this man received training when he was over there and [that] he radicalized from 2010 to the present. And then, nine months after he comes back from the Chechnya region, he pulls off the largest terror attack since 9/11."

McCaul said that the bigger question right now, is whether there is more to this cell. "Is it just these two, or [should we] cast a wider net to see if anyone else is out there that may be tied to the cell in the United States?... I think, as it pertains to the homeland, the biggest concern is 'what do we have inside this country?'"

April 22, 2013 • 10:40AM

As to why U.S. intelligence agencies seem to have a blind spot regarding Chechen terrorists, FBI whistle-blower Colleen Rowley points to the neo-con gaggle who were the Chechen terrorists' best friends in the U.S., those who constituted themselves as the "American Committee for Peace in Chechnya" (APAC), later substituting "Caucasus" for Chechnya. Rowley cites an article, "The Chechens' American friends: The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own," by John Laughland, published in The Guardian on September 8, 2004, which lists those who tried to exonerate Chechen terrorism and brutality by blaming Russian President Putin.

"These include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines." Rowley adds that a number of these also took money from the MKO while it was officiallly listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

Rowley further points to the ties between al Qaeda and Chechen leader al-Khattab (a crony of Shamil Basayev, both of whom EIR identified in 1999 as key operatives in the British-run "Afghansi" terrorist networks). She notes that convicted terrorist Moussaoui was fighting for, and recruiting for, al-Khattab, according to information provided by French intelligence in August 2001. The FBI refused to search Moussaoui's laptop before the 9/11 attacks, because the FBI did not consider the Chechen separatists as a terrorist organization for purposes of FISA, and the FBI didn't recognize that Moussaoui's ties to al-Khattab also linked him to al-Qaeda. Rowley also identifies the "blockbuster" discovery by former New York Times reporter Phil Shenon, published in the Daily Beast on Sept. 4, 2011, of an April 2001 FBI memo which highlighted the ties between al-Khattab and Osama bin Laden, which memo was ignored during the bungled pre-9/11 Moussaoui investigation.

To this grouping, we might also add the Obama team, which has worked intimately with the Islamic jihadists against Syria, who prominently include the Wahhabi Chechens.

EIR Exposed British-Saudi Sponsorship of Chechen Terrorists

April 22, 2013 • 2:57PM

The creation of a Chechen terrorist network by British and Saudi forces, as a tool against Russia and other Asian nations, was the subject of a series of EIR articles in the 1990s. Among the major profiles, available at www.larouchepub.com, was "Russia's North Caucasus republics: flashpoint for world war," published in the September 10, 1999 edition.

The British patronage of a Chechen separatist movement stemmed from Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher herself, working primarily through her ally Lord McAlpine, who conceived a project for a "Caucasus Common Market." The on-the-ground operatives were part of the "Afghansi" terrorist movement, which is funded and heavily manned by the Saudi Wahhabites.

After the Russians subdued the Chechen rebellion in 1996, the British shifted the operation to Dagestan, as was trumpeted in The Economist of July 18, 1998 in an article titled "Russia and Dagestan: Losing Control?" Again, the basis for the destabilization was the Wahhabite sect of Islam.

The notorious leader of the Chechnya-based guerrilla campaign, which spread into Dagestan, was Shamil Basayev, who is known for some of the most violent acts of the terrorist movement, including the mass seizure of hostages. Basayev was trained for his jihad in the Afghansi camps, as he reported in 1995, saying that he "was preparing for war with Russia a long time before the aggression against Chechnya began." Basayev also issued threats against China in 1998, declaring that if China referred to Chechnya as part of Russia, his group would launch support actions for the Uighur insurgency in China.

In the late 1990s, as the EIR article details, the Chechens continued to get major financial as well as political support from the British. In the late 1990s, kidnappings, bombings, and other forms of terrorism by the Chechen guerrillas threatened to set the Caucasus region on fire again.

In August of 1999, the Wahhabite guerrillas, led by Basayev, invaded Dagestan, but were repulsed by the Russian military.

Basayev was eventually killed in a bomb blast in Chechnya in 2005, but the guerrilla actions promoted by his sponsors continue, in a more subdued form, today.