Saturday, April 27, 2013

Boston Fog

Jake Tapper interviewed a Boston cabbie who says he picked up the Tsarnaev brothers at the Malden, MA train station on Sunday morning before the attack along with their backpacks..



Assuming the men the cabbie saw were indeed the brothers does it say anything about where they were coming from on Sunday morning before the bombing with the pressure cookers in their backpacks?  The Malden station is north of Boston on an MBTA line that terminates in Haverhill, near the New Hampshire border.  Evidently they were heading back to the Cambridge apartment on Norfolk Street by cab since as the map shows they would have had to go into the downtown area to catch a train back northwest. 

The cabbie says he dropped them off at Kendall Square, near MIT.  Were they practicing good spycraft by being last seen there instead of dropped off near their apartment about 3/5ths of a mile northwest?  That would have forced them to hoof it the rest of the way home with the heavy bomb backpacks unless they were heading somewhere else or had a car stashed.  If they had a car stashed in Kendall it may suggest they didn't want to have it seen in the Malden train station parking lot, unless they were low on gas. But if they were low on gas they certainly seemed to have train and cab fare.           

Would any of those movements suggest they had some out-of-the-way bomb making factory for final testing or perhaps had just received the bombs from a dead drop or an actual person somewhere to the north?   Surely the authorities are way ahead on this question, such as viewing security tape in the stations on the Haverhill line to see where they got on and off.  Since they had no transportation it would seem strange they would have the backpacks filled with pressure cookers with them, again suggesting they were meeting someone. 

Ironically, sources are now telling Fox News that the bombs were not models that could be made from instructions in Inspire magazine, suggesting they had help and that more people might be involved.  

Meanwhile the carjackee is telling his story and we now know his nationality--Chinese.  "Danny" recounts the moment Black Hat approached and what was said:
“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier. “I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
But White Hat wasn't there at the time.  No evidence against him on that one. 

Later the carjackee explains how he got away, which is a gripping tale.  He mentioned praying several times, suggesting he might be a Chinese Christian.  And it's interesting--the comment attributed to them earlier about not killing him because he wasn't American doesn't appear anywhere in Danny's story.  Clearly he felt he would be killed and that's why he escaped (as opposed to early reports saying he was released).  There's also nothing in the story about Black Hat dropping the magazine and showing him a bullet in his gun, although it does indicate the "I am serious" comment.  It would seem strange for a gunman to do such a thing anyway, but where did that come from if not the victim, unless some of the story has been compressed.  

Other things still don't make sense.  For instance, Hot Air points to this interview between Wolf Blitzer and the Watertown Police Chief, who states that White Hat was firing at officers from the boat, which triggered their blitz of apparent return fire captured on home video.  Yet earlier reports said they had only one weapon, while the New York Times said they had an M4 automatic weapon.  If White Hat had no weapon that means the officers were all firing at him in the boat without first being fired upon. But with three officers recently shot and the fog of the incident that wouldn't be surprising, especially considering they might have suspected he was wearing a suicide vest.

Exactly where the SUV was ditched before White Hat went to ground is also still unclear along with whether or not police gave chase immediately.  This blogger has a nice summary. Speaking of suicide vests, initially we were told Black Hat was wearing one and had engaged it, but if that's so why did the police 'tackle him' after he ran out of ammo as he was coming at them with guns ablaze through the bomb smoke like some kind of Rambo figure?  Logic says they would have just taken him out.

All of which puts emphasis on eyewitness video in these kinds of situations to keep stories straight.

Eyewitness video wasn't always available, though.  The biggest domestic terrorist attack aside from 9/11 previous to this was the Oklahoma City bombing, which featured a manhunt for the mysterious "John Doe Number Two", a person whom eyewitnesses described as of Middle Eastern or American Indian origin.  As reports unfolded over the following days local news media claimed that according to officials who had seen the various surveillance video tapes near the front of the Murrah Building a second person was seen in the Ryder truck.  And yes Alex Jones is featured briefly in the above video and it was apparently compiled by a 9-11 truther, but the footage from local TV is real and has seemingly been withheld from the public as Jones alludes. 

John Doe Number Two disappeared from the official narrative several months after the attack, taking with him any possibility of a foreign connection in the minds of the public (leaving ambiguous speculation from the likes of McVeigh's lawyer, certain journalists and a terrorism expert named Richard Clarke).  It is now cemented into the narrative as a right wing domestic terror act with no outside influence.

A year and a half after later another disastrous event occurred off the coast of Long Island.  This event also included some home video, taken on a camcorder or some such archaic device during the event, but it too was stashed away shortly thereafter and has never been seen again.  Such is the breeding ground of conspiracies.

Now, whether there's any outside connections with Boston or whether the date of the takedown--coming on the anniversary of the Murrah bombing--is just a grisly coincidence, is something time may one day tell.  Or not.

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