Russian Intelligence Officials Called Boston Marathon Bombing Preventable - East Idaho News
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Russian Intelligence Officials Called Boston Marathon Bombing Preventable

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GETTY 41613 BMarathonBlast?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1370253564589Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. congressman says that Russian intelligence officials are convinced that the April bombings at the Boston Marathon were preventable, had American authorities acted on Moscow’s warning about one of the suspects.

Massachusetts Democrat William Keating, who has just returned from Russia with other lawmakers, says that U.S. intelligence agents apparently knew in 2010 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was ready to enlist in a terrorist cell in Dagestan, a southern region of Russia.

Keating told reporters that the head of Russian counterterrorism said “that if we had the level of information sharing and cooperation that is taking place right now, if we had had that back at that period of time, then the bombing might have been averted.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police four days after the Marathon bomb attacks that killed three people and left more 260 wounded. His brother, Dzhokhar, was taken into custody and charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.

Despite the terrorist attack last April 15, Keating, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that if the U.S. and Russia improve cooperation and information sharing  “there will be people in the future whose lives will be saved.”

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