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Boston Bombing Suspects Had Planned July 4th Attack Boston Bombing Suspects Planned Fourth of July Attacks, Source Says
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON − The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that, as he and his brother plotted their deadly assault, they considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July, according to a law enforcement official. This article is by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti, Michael S. Schmidt and Scott Shane.
But the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the official said. WASHINGTON — The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that, as he and his brother plotted their deadly assault, they considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July, according to two law enforcement officials.
The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they anticipated and so decided to accelerate their attack to the Boston Marathon on April 15, Patriots Day in Massachusetts, from July, according to the account that Dzhokhar provided authorities. They picked the finish line of the marathon after driving around the Boston area looking for alternative sites, according to this account. But the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the officials said.
In addition, Mr. Dzhokhar told authorities that he and his brother viewed the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric who moved to Yemen and was killed in September 2011 by an American drone strike. There is no indication that the brothers communicated with Mr. Awlaki before his death. The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they anticipated, and so decided to accelerate their attack to the Boston Marathon on April 15, Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, from July, according to the account that Dzhokhar provided authorities. They picked the finish line of the marathon after driving around the Boston area looking for alternative sites, according to this account.
In addition, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told authorities that he and his brother viewed the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric who moved to Yemen and was killed in September 2011 by an American drone strike. There is no indication that the brothers communicated with Mr. Awlaki before his death.
Mr. Tsarnaev made his admission on April 21, two days after he was captured while hiding in a boat in a nearby backyard, to specially trained F.B.I. agents who had been waiting outside his hospital room for him to regain consciousness.Mr. Tsarnaev made his admission on April 21, two days after he was captured while hiding in a boat in a nearby backyard, to specially trained F.B.I. agents who had been waiting outside his hospital room for him to regain consciousness.
After he woke up, they questioned him, invoking what is known as the public safety exception to the Miranda Rule, a procedure authorized by a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision which in certain circumstances allows interrogation after an arrest without notifying a prisoner of the right to remain silent. After he woke up, they questioned him, invoking what is known as the public safety exception to the Miranda Rule, a procedure authorized by a 1984 Supreme Court decision which in certain circumstances allows interrogation after an arrest without notifying a prisoner of the right to remain silent.
The new details about what Mr. Tsarnaev has told the authorities emerged as the F.B.I. moved forward on Thursday with trying to determine how the brothers were radicalized and the role that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife may have played in the plot or helping the brothers evade the authorities after the attacks. The new details about what Mr. Tsarnaev has told the authorities emerged as the F.B.I. moved forward on Thursday with trying to determine how the brothers were radicalized and the role that Tamerlan’s wife might have played in the plot or in helping the brothers evade the authorities after the attacks.
As part of those efforts, the authorities have sought to determine whether fingerprints and DNA found on bomb fragments were from Mr. Tsarnaev’s wife, Katherine Russell. According to two other law enforcement officials, Ms. Russell’s fingerprints and DNA do not match those found on the fragments.
Federal authorities are skeptical of Ms. Russell’s insistence that she played no role in the attack or in helping the brothers elude the authorities after the F.B.I. released photos of them. That skepticism has been stoked by Ms. Russell’s decision in recent days to stop cooperating with the authorities.
The F.B.I. has also decided to send more agents to Russia to assist with the investigation, according to one law enforcement official. The bureau has been relying on a couple of agents it has based in the United States Embassy in Russia to serve as an intermediary with the authorities there.
American and Russian investigators in Dagestan, in the turbulent Caucasus region of southern Russia, have been trying to determine what Tamerlan Tsarnaev did during a six-month visit to Dagestan last year. On Thursday, Representative William Keating, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the investigators believed that Mr. Tsarnaev met with one known militant, Mahmoud Mansur Nidal, as first reported in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
“I’m comfortable that on that trip, he reached out to members of the insurgency in Dagestan,” said Mr. Keating, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. He said that there was no evidence so far that Tamerlan Tsarnaev succeeded in formally joining the insurgency, led by a group calling itself the Caucasus Emirate, or that he received explosives training in Dagestan.
At a news conference on Tuesday, President Obama did not rule out a foreign link but suggested that the Tsarnaev brothers appeared to be “self-radicalized” and that local, homegrown terrorist plots were harder to detect and prevent than those originating overseas.
Mr. Obama said American counterterrorism efforts have put pressure “on these networks that are well-financed and more sophisticated and can engage and project transnational threats against the United States,” but that “one of the dangers that we now face are self-radicalized individuals who are already here in the United States.”
Investigators believe that the views of the two brothers grew more radical over time, and were influenced at least partly by the Internet sermons of Mr. Awlaki. Separately, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators that he and his brother learned to build the pressure-cooker bombs from reading Inspire, the onlinemagazine published by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The magazine’s first issue — which included an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” — gave instructions about how to carry out crude, low-cost terrorist attacks.
The man officials have identified as the creative force behind Inspire, an American citizen named Samir Khan, was killed in the same missile strike in Yemen that killed Mr. Awlaki.
The new details of what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told authorities fill out a growing portrait of what the grievously wounded young man told investigators from his hospital bedside.
In the course of questioning him about whether he knew of any other active plots or threats to public safety, Mr. Tsarnaev also admitted that he had been involved in laying the bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 at the finish line of the marathon. He told investigators that he knew of no other plots and that he and his brother had acted alone, and he said he knew of no more bombs that had not been detonated.
Since then, investigators have been seeking to verify Mr. Tsarnaev’s statements as part of the wide-ranging investigation into the lives of the two brothers, speaking with people who knew them and looking at everything from items they left behind in their homes and, in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, his dorm room, to the lengthy digital trail they left through their e-mails and posts on social media sites.

William K. Rashbaum and Serge F. Kovaleski contributed reporting from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last name of a contributing reporter. Serge F. Kovaleski contributed reporting, not Serge Schmemann.