By
Russ Baker on May 23, 2013
All
one has to do is consider the eyewitness accounts of the shootout in
Watertown to realize that the Tsarnaev brothers were almost certainly
not—as a surprisingly large number of people posting comments on this
site and around the Internet seem to believe—harmless naïfs who did
nothing wrong. Whether or not they planted the bombs at the 2013 Boston
Marathon, whether or not they acted alone or in concert with others,
whether they were ideologues or dupes, it seems evident that they were
involved in some kind of violent adventure culminating in the death of
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the shooting and apprehension of his brother
Dzhokhar.
I spent Wednesday of this week talking to residents of the streets
where the shootouts took place, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt
that both brothers were there, were armed, and threw bombs at police.
Nonetheless, many aspects of the story remain unclear, and decidedly
troublesome. And getting to the bottom of this complex story is not just
an option—we cannot afford as a society to have large traumas of this
sort come and go without clarity. Otherwise, we are all dupes, of one
kind or another.
We’ve raised reasonable questions about the events surrounding the
Marathon bombing in previous articles, from the presence of mysterious
black-clad security men with well-stuffed backpacks at the race to the
FBI and CIA’s awareness of the Tsarnaev family long before April 15,
2013. (See
this,
this and
this.)
Now, some might say that nothing else matters as long as police got
their men. However, it is often in the details, the “weeds,” if you
will, where we find that a narrative can be useful as far as it goes and
yet terribly misleading in terms of what it all means. As we’ve noted,
many much-loved historical narratives turn out to be little more than
carefully crafted myths around a few core facts.
Our media and our leading interpreters of events explain everything
in terms that the unsophisticated can easily grasp. Yet in the real
world, happenings may take place for a welter of reasons that even those
directly involved may not be aware of.
It is with this in mind that we’ve been down in the weeds.
The “Confession”
If there’s one thing out of all the “facts” that emerged in the early
hours and days after the bombing that cemented the Tsarnaevs’ capital-G
Guilt, it was, unquestionably, the killing of MIT police officer Sean
Collier on the night of Thursday, April 18, three days after the
explosions at the Marathon.
At the time of Collier’s shooting, the FBI had just released video of
two unnamed “persons of interest”
walking with backpacks—shown amid many other people walking with
backpacks. The still-anonymous Tsarnaevs were nothing more than people
with whom the FBI wanted to talk. No hard evidence had been released
that connected them to the bombing itself.
Within hours of the FBI video release, everything went nuts. First
came word of “officer down” at MIT. Then, quickly, news of a carjacking.
Then police swarming everywhere. Then a shootout and the death of one
suspect, followed by a lull, and then the discovery and near-death of
the second suspect.
Soon came the narrative to explain much, if not all. The suspects in
the video had been behind both the bombing and the killing of the police
officer. We knew that because the carjacking victim had escaped, and
told police and later selected media how his captors had confessed to
him.
Boston Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz gained cooperation from the still-unnamed hostage (nicknamed “Danny”). Here’s a portion of
Danny’s tale, in which the elder Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, confessed during the carjacking:
[snip]
“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as
Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
We’ll have more to say about the carjacking in a subsequent article.
But for now, the key thing to remember is that in some ways, the
shooting of Officer Collier immediately before the carjacking and the
alleged confession in the car—to both crimes—were absolutely essential
in creating the first profile of the Tsarnaevs as murder-minded
individuals, not just two guys on a video wearing backpacks.
Collier as Officer Tippit
Besides playing a central role in establishing a case against the
brothers, Collier’s death also served a powerful symbolic purpose in the
official narrative, with a huge memorial service for the MIT officer on
April 24, addressed by Vice President Biden. Throughout, the spotlight
has been on Collier as Hero—a kind of ritualistic hagiography devoid of
any inclination to investigate the actual circumstances of his death.
For students of history, however, this part of the narrative had a
familiar ring. Exactly half a century ago, another traumatic event took
place: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The big break in
that case came several hours later, when a police officer, J.D. Tippit,
was shot and killed. Soon, one of the many employees in a tall building
on Kennedy’s parade route, Lee Harvey Oswald, was connected to both
events. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had recently spent time in Russia.
Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been under scrutiny by the FBI before the
crime.
In both cases, it was the killing of a police officer that
turbocharged the police pursuit—and that, once the suspect was
apprehended, convinced the public quickly that the police had their man.
Until the shooting of officer Collier, the Tsarnaevs were just two
guys seen on a video wearing backpacks. And until the Tippit shooting,
Oswald was just one of many employees in a building that most
eyewitnesses felt was not even the source of the shots that killed
Kennedy.
In both cases, the shooting of the police officer did not make a lot
of sense in the context of the “main event” – but nevertheless gave the
pursuit a jolt of adrenaline. Only later would crucial details of the
narrative be changed—at a time when few would notice.
A Myth
In the case of Oswald, serious doubts would emerge as to whether he had killed Officer Tippit.
In the case of Officer Collier, if we look carefully, we can see that
the script was rewritten after most people stopped paying attention.
Early reports left the impression that Collier had some kind of active interaction with his killers.
Here’s the Associated Press from that night:
Cambridge police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s office says the officer was responding to a report of a disturbance when he was shot multiple times.
Here’s the MIT News—the publication of the university’s administration—several days later:
On the evening of Thursday, April 18, MIT Police Officer Sean Collier was shot and killed in the line of duty following an altercation at the corner of Vassar Street and Main Street on the MIT campus.
And
here’s the
Los Angeles Times on April 23, five days after Collier’s death:
They came upon Collier outside a gas station and convenience store near the MIT campus in Cambridge.
He was apparently shot multiple times, but had left a safety device on
his holster that the suspects could not unlock to retrieve the weapon.
It was unclear which brother shot the
officer, the officials said. However, authorities have obtained a
surveillance photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dressed in a gray hoodie, at
the store.
This is a false story, circulated days after the events. Collier was
not outside
a gas station and convenience store. Dzhokhar certainly appears to have
gone into a gas station/convenience store later that evening, but
Collier was not there and no murder took place at that time. Collier did
not respond to a disturbance. He did not approach anyone. In fact, it’s
likely he never even knew who shot him.
To this day, hardly anyone in the general public is aware of this
glitch in the narrative. Yet it is very important. Because if the
initial story had been, “unknown persons came up behind a police officer
sitting quietly in his patrol car and shot him for no apparent reason,
not even taking his firearm” – that would no doubt have triggered a very
different media response.
Keeping up the Hero Story
It was for some reason very important to
someone that the death of this police officer be projected on a massive screen. Consider the content and tone of
this, from the Boston Herald:
Thousands of students and law enforcement
officers from across the country have packed the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology campus to honor fallen MIT Police Officer Sean
Collier who was remembered as a joy-filled, caring and compassionate man
who believed kindness could change society.
MIT set aside 15,000 seats at Briggs
Field and every one was filled, with law enforcement officers making up
two-thirds of the heartbroken audience.
Here’s the Atlantic Wire:
MIT held a public memorial service
Wednesday afternoon for fallen officer Sean Collier on their Briggs
Field, where the 26-year-old university police officer was remembered
for his commitment to the school community, his love of country music,
and his dedication to his job. Vice President Joe Biden closed the
ceremony’s remarks, offering words of condolence to the family from the
perspective of someone who had also lost a child—before offering a
scathing indictment of the Tsarnaev brothers’ terrorism.
MIT
cancelled classes for the service, which brought together
members of the MIT community, law enforcement officers, and public officials. A private funeral was
held Tuesday. Yesterday,
CBS News reported that Collier may have been killed because the Tsarnaev brothers wanted his gun.
Yet, even after it was clear that Collier had done nothing more than
sit in his car while someone came up behind him and shot him, the
authorities were still feeling it necessary to lay it on thick. On April
25, a week after Collier’s death, the
New York Times was reporting
“I [still] consider him a hero,” Boston’s
police commissioner, Edward Davis, said in an interview this week. “It
was his death that ultimately led to the apprehension. The report of the
shot officer led to all those resources being poured in.”
A cop had been shot, “all those resources” were poured into that
general vicinity, and a juggernaut had been launched. There was nothing
that would reverse it. Indeed, a month after Collier’s death, a
Cambridge, MA, brewery
announced it was issuing a special “Collier Stout” in his honor.
Why were we more upset over Collier’s death than other deaths of law
enforcement personnel? Because it was linked, in the public’s mind, with
the assault upon America itself at the Marathon. The killing of
Collier, we were told, was an act against us all. “Boston Strong.”
“America Strong.” In a sense, when we wore those ribbons, attended those
mass ceremonies, we were mourning, yet again, our loss of innocence in
the face of a world that seems to be spinning out of control.
Why Was Collier Killed?
Here’s what we were told at the time of that memorial service:
Until now, it is not been clear why the officer – who was laid to rest today at a private funeral service in his hometown of Stoneham, Massachusetts – was shot dead.
The officer was slain execution-style as he sat in his patrol car at the MIT campus in the suburb of Cambridge.
But now, according to CBS News, police
believe the officer was ambushed by the Tsarnaev brothers in a botched
attempt to take his gun to boost their arsenal of just one real gun and a pellet gun.
We have been told that, perhaps, the brothers wanted his gun.
Yet, they did not take it. The police chief explained that maybe they
could not get it out of his holster, because it was found still in the
holster. But it is also possible that whoever shot him was not
interested in taking his gun.
It is also important to understand that the CBS News
coverage—including the dubious claim that Collier was killed in an
attempt to get his gun, and the belated story that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
scrawled a confession on the interior walls of a boat while he lay
bloody and grievously wounded – is helmed by John Miller, CBS Senior
Correspondent, who between journalistic stints served as the top
spokesman for the FBI. In other words, it is an FBI insider who is
guiding the narrative. Of course, the FBI itself has serious credibility
problems, including the fact that it failed to disclose that it knew
exactly who the Tsarnaevs were, long before the bombing. (On May 22, an
FBI agent shot and killed
Ibragim Todashev,
another person of Chechen origin connected to the story and the
investigation—whom a friend claims had recently warned him that he felt
he was in the process of being framed; and who reportedly had, at the
time of his death, just confessed.)
As we previously noted, all of these shootings warrant a closer
look—including why so many shots were fired at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as he
lay wounded in that boat, firing not a single shot, and given the
potential importance of him as a witness.
All of this must be addressed. But for the purposes of this article,
let’s stay focused on Officer Collier’s death—and the circumstances
surrounding it.
Why Would the Brothers Have Been on the MIT Campus?
Nobody seems to know. Would they have been there because they knew
they would find an officer sitting in his car between buildings? If not,
it means the brothers randomly passed through this unlikely area and
happened upon Collier in his unlikely spot, snuck up behind him, killed
him, and then—took nothing.
Why Collier Was Where He Was
Why was Collier even sitting in his police car at that time?
According to news accounts, Collier was parked near the intersection of
two streets in Cambridge for the purpose of preventing illegal shortcuts
through campus.
Here’s the
Boston Globe’s account:
About 9:30 p.m., Collier was on routine
patrol. He was parked by the corner of Vassar and Main streets. It was a
spot where motorists would sometimes take a chance, making an illegal
shortcut through campus to avoid a red light.
“We ask patrols to sit there,” DiFava
explained. It prevents the forbidden cut-throughs and it provides a
high-profile presence for the MIT community.
Something crucial is missing from this account. Collier was not
parked on the street. He was parked on the pavement, a distance from the
corner, between two campus buildings. When I asked students about the
scenario Chief DiFava presented, they were baffled. They didn’t recall
patrols sitting between those buildings, and it was not apparent how or
why anyone would save a minute at a red light by climbing the pavement
and driving between buildings.
With crazed terrorist bombers on the loose, why
was this
officer sitting where he was? I hoped to clear this up with Chief
DiFava. Especially since DiFava is not just MIT’s police chief, but also
the chief of MIT “facilities operations.” Thus, he had oversight of
facilities including the many sensitive research facilities scattered
around the campus, some close to where Collier died.
At the campus police station, I was first told that he was…in
Guatemala. Why Guatemala? Why go so far away to a foreign country at the
very time that everyone most wanted to talk to him? In any case, I was
soon informed that he had been in Guatemala, but just returned. But he
had left again. Now he was in Washington. Why Washington? Something to
do with the case? But again I was told he was back, but out on business
off campus.
Then I was told that maybe he was not off campus, but that in any
case, he preferred not to talk. I wondered why that would be, when he
had already shown a willingness to talk. Then I was told that I needed
to go through the MIT central authorities. Was it the chief who did not
want to talk, or was he told not to?
I tried to talk to the Emergency Medical Technicians, students who
volunteer to handle campus emergencies, and whose colleagues showed up
with their ambulance at the scene of the shooting—they declined and I
left. And then I got this email from MIT’s Executive Vice President for
Communications:
Mr. Baker,
I have heard from a number of people at
MIT that you have been on campus today wanting to ask people questions
about the week of the marathon.
Your approach—visiting very busy people
in person unannounced to ask them about this painful subject—is not
productive, and in some cases, it has proved upsetting. I need to ask
that you please follow the guidance that my colleague….. gave you over
the phone today. You should email her whatever questions you have, and
we can go from there.
Can you agree to this, please?
The Video
Significantly, we’ve been assured that the Tsarnaevs were Collier’s killers.
Here’s
a report from the afternoon of Friday, April 19, from the Associated
Press—probably the major source of information for the nation’s media,
essentially stating that the Tsarnaevs committed the shooting:
WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Two suspects
in the Boston Marathon bombing — identified to The Associated Press as
coming from the Russian region near Chechnya — killed an MIT police
officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive
devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of
violence that left one of them dead and another still at large Friday,
authorities said.
Nine days later, on April 28, we see this from the Boston Globe’s
mega-narrative of the sprawling affair:
Authorities say video from a surveillance camera shows the suspects
approaching Collier’s car from the rear as he sat in his cruiser.
Collier was shot five times, including twice in the head, officials
said.
“The suspects.” In a long article about the Tsarnaevs, it is reasonable to conclude that the
Globe means the Tsarnaevs.
It is all much more unclear. On April 25, several days before the Globe published the bit above, the
New York Times offered a crucial but underplayed distinction:
While there is video of two men
approaching Officer Collier’s car, three law enforcement officials said,
it does not clearly show their faces. But investigators now believe the
brothers killed the officer to get another gun.
The
Times reports that the video does not establish with
certainty the identity of Collier’s murderers. Yet the next sentence
accepts as a certainty that it was the brothers.
Murkier and Murkier
In a story full of weird twists, here’s another: one of the first
responders to the scene at MIT was himself later shot in Watertown. In
the early accounts,
we were told:
One of the first responders to the scene
of the officer’s death was police officer Richard Donohue, who had gone
through the police academy at the same time as Officer Collier.
A few hours later, he would be critically wounded in the Watertown shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers.
What are the odds? Of all the law enforcement people who could get
shot in Watertown, only Donohue was. Unlike Collier, Donohue was a
Boston transit policeman—but the two were good friends.
And then,
more….We
learned later that Donohue was hit not by the Tsarnaevs, but by “
friendly fire.”
That is, an early witness on the scene of the mysterious shooting of
Officer Collier shortly thereafter became himself the victim of a
strange shooting— by fellow law enforcement officers.
Donohue survived and,
according to the Boston Globe on May 19, is saying nothing about that night because he … can’t:
Officer Richard “Dic” Donohue of the MBTA Transit Police remembers almost
nothing of the night he was shot during chaotic gunfire on a normally quiet
Watertown street, or of the murder of his close friend, MIT police Officer
Sean Collier, hours before in Cambridge.
An editor at
The Globe told me they’d received tremendous
grief from police for reporting the fact that Donohue had apparently
been shot by fellow officers. This despite the fact that the paper
hardly focused on that, initially reporting it in an article where it
was
almost mentioned in passing.
Nonetheless—or perhaps because of the sensitivity, we’ve seen
surprisingly little coverage of this angle by the local and national
media.
***
I did end up submitting questions to MIT; I received a short note back that said, in part,
John DiFava is not available to speak with you. But I can give you answers to some of your questions.
John is Director of Facilities Operations and Security and also the Chief of the MIT Police Department.
That was the only answer. The letter continued:
And regarding your question about the
night Officer Collier was killed: I would refer you to the Middlesex
DA’s office. As with all homicide investigations in Cambridge, that
office is heading up the investigation. Like you, we at MIT seek answers
to what happened on that night. Those answers will come once the DA’s
office has filed charges.
The Middlesex County DA’s office told me they couldn’t talk because….it’s an “ongoing investigation.”
The truth is, in these kinds of situations, the investigators, AKA
the prosecution, has an agenda—to get a conviction—and holds just about
all the cards.
We don’t know whether the Tsarnaev brothers did kill Collier,
although it would be easy to assume they did. Still, we have trouble
coming up with an easy motive or a logical reason for them to have been
at that place at that time. We wonder about the lack of candor in this
matter. As to whether there is another explanation, the reality is that
there may always be others who benefit from chaos and fear.
In any case, if the deaths of people like Sean Collier—or the bombing
victims–are truly not to be in vain, it will be because open-minded
people work to get to the bottom of things, not because those with an
agenda exploit their deaths—or countenance a possible cover-up of the
facts of the case. A clear investigative role exists outside of law
enforcement. We’ll do what we can, and we welcome informed tips and
insights.
Posts
If
you have ever seen more blatant evidence of a liberal-leftist-agenda in
the mainstream media please let me know. We have all by now heard of
the riots in Swedish “immigrant” suburbs that are now a week old. We
have heard that these riots were caused by the slaying of a 69 year old
man and continue because of general unrest with unemployment rates in
the area. These unruly “youths” are burning cars and breaking out
windows. They are burning buildings and throwing stones and molotov
cocktails at police and emergency personnel. If you are to watch or read
mainstream liberal media there is one word that they seem to frequently
omit from the story…
other while arguing about the program’s finale.
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