When the smoke clears, what will be the real explanation why American intelligence and law enforcement authorities did not act on the Russian's tip about (Boston murderer) Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

The Sequester.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought

Seriously, you are better than that.

Or not?

I’m just taking a guess, but I imagine the FBI and CIA get all kinds of intel to the point where they don’t know what to keep tabs on.

What are you going to do when you’re essentially trying to investigate and take action on all of these claims?

I am honestly thinking middle management at the place is very focused on budgets right now and not tracking down leads. Maybe some intelligent analysts were trying to say something, but if you have been at a large organization were management is planning layoffs, nobody has an eye on the ball above the people in the trenches.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought
The communication between FBI and the Russians took place in 2011, before the mandated budget controls (not cuts) determined by sequester.
Too bad. I never took you to be a party line dude.

@josie My bad then dude. I thought the communication was more recent than that.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought
Don’t worry about it. It’s only a Q and A site.

I’m giving the GA to “the sequester” for the best laugh of the week so far. Of course, it’s barely past midweek, but still: credit where credit is due.

Seriously, though, I think it’s a combination of factors: too much data, too many crazies with too much time on their hands, and a certain amount of “how can we possibly investigate all of this shit?” And I think it’s a valid observation of bureaucratic arrogance: “We’re the Fucking FBI. We don’t take tips from Russians; we investigate (some) Russians.”

Since the brothers hadn’t actually “done” anything in the USA up to last week, what was there to investigate, really? That’s one of the reasons why I’m less worried about “cameras on every street corner” than some other civil libertarians. Who’s going to watch all of the cameras? What is there to see, hour after hour, day after day? Who can track down every weird thing that happens in every frame of film? And they might help, after the fact, to track down the whodunnit – just like all of the cellphone photos and videos that were taken by all of the spectators on the day of the race. (Of course, where would those cell phones and cameras have been if that hadn’t been the day of the Boston Marathon?)

I doubt we’ll ever know. We’re already hearing the excuses, I did know, it didn’t happen on my shift. Janet Napolitano has already said there was nothing in any database to suspect a problem when we know that this guy was placed on a watch list. That would seem to be a contradiction but the administration has no problem with that. Six months from now, you will be able to ask this same question with no better results than you have now.

“A senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the information says ‘the issue with Russia is that the initial information was extremely thin.’ The Russians believed he was ‘becoming radicalized.’
“ ‘There were no details, no examples, no threads to pull,’ the source said. ‘Because of the rather light nature of the information we did go back to them and asked can you tell us more. We never heard back.’
“ ‘They did not give a case report back when the United States inquired,’ said another source with knowledge of the investigation.
“Officials have said that the FBI investigation went as far as it could based on the vague information. ‘I think we did everything within our legal authority to vet this individual. When all was said and done there was nothing to link him to terrorism,’ a law enforcement official said.”

Source.

Why trust the Russians?

They did act on it. The Russians only contacted the FBI once about 2 years ago. The FBI acted by calling Tamerlan Tsarnaev in and interviewing him. They learned he was a devout Muslim but found no evidence he was connected in any way to terror networks or plotting any illegal activity. As far as we know today, that analysis was right at that time. Under US law, it’s not OK to jail someone for being a fundie religious nutcase. The FBI asked Russian authorities for more information about why they were concerned about the guy. They never received a reply.

Later, the Russians contacted the CIA about Tsarnaev. The CIA looked into it, found the FBI had interviewed him, and got the info that investigation had produced. They then contacted the Russians again asking them what concerns on their side were prompting them to ask. Again, there was no answer. So they dropped it too.

Unfortunately, in the one report that might have raised eyebrows when Tsarnaev traveled to Russia and visited Chechnya, his name was entered with a misspelling due to a clerical error. So the computer didn’t match him up and he slid under their electronic surveillance.

That’s what we know as of now. Stay tuned. There will be more, and probably some of what we think we know now will turn out to be wrong.

Polemics against taxes.

High-quality FBI work requires enough people with good salaries.

But we can’t assign an agent to follow around every reported crazy, tracking their every move.

People have to realize that the government can’t take care of you and protect you from everything and everybody. It is just like having a police force in your community. They don’t stop crimes. Not really. They investigate crimes and gather evidence to try and see that justice is served. The investigating is where the FBI may have dropped the ball. Did they? I don’t know. How much did they investigate and how far were they allowed to go? I’d love to hear from them on the matter.

@bkcunningham The authorities actually do stop a lot of terror attacks, but there would be a hellish price to pay for the sort of government intrusion it would take to stop every single one. Where the sweet spot lies is what I was hoping to get analyzed in this question.

@Dutchess_III – No, but the FBI can employ people visiting US mosques every Friday.