U.S. Rep: Better Cooperation With Russia Could Have Prevented Boston Marathon Bombings

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A Democratic congressman told The Boston Globe on Thursday that Russian intelligence officials believe the Boston Marathon bombings could have been avoided if U.S. authorities had acted on their warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnev’s desire to join an Islamic insurgency. 

Rep. William Keating (D-MA) told the Globe that officials of the Russian Federal Security Service showed him specific information that had convinced them Tsarnev “had plans to join the insurgency back in” Dagestan, a region bordering his native Chechnya in Southern Russia.

“You can see with the level of these details that in fact if we had had better information sharing, there’s a very strong chance that things could have changed, and [the bombings] could have been avoided,” Keating told the Globe from Moscow.

Keating met with counterintelligence officials in Moscow as part of a congressional delegation addressing counterterrorism cooperation. 

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