Two years before the Boston Marathon bombing, the Russian government concealed key information on one of the killers that might have thwarted the attack, a new report charges.
Kremlin officials intercepted a phone conversation in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev discussed Islamic jihad with his mother, but they withheld the information from the FBI, according to the U.S. inspector general report that comes as the one-year anniversary of the bombing approaches.
Had the FBI been privy to the red-flag phone call, it would have prompted the bureau to take an extensive look at Tsarnaev, according to The New York Times.
'Had they known what the Russians knew, they probably would have been able to do more under our investigative guidelines, but would they have uncovered the plot? That's very hard to say,' one senior U.S. official told The Times.
But Russian officials rebuffed several requests from the FBI to share more information about Tsarnaev's radical activities in the years leading up to the April 15, 2013, Boston bombing, the report says.
'They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on [Tsarnaev] back then,' a U.S. official briefed on the report told The Times.
After the bombing that killed three people and injured 264, the Russians finally forked over to the FBI the information it had on the 26-year-old Tsarnaev.
The inspector general's review was ordered to see how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have prevented the bombing.
Following the attack, Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 20, who helped him pull off the attack, was captured and faces the death penalty if convicted.
In 2011, Russian officials warned the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev 'was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer' and 'had changed drastically since 2010.'
Back then, the Russians believed Tsarnaev was preparing to travel to the Caucasus region of Russia to join unspecified underground groups, the report says.
When FBI officials pressed the Russians for more information, they were ignored, the report says.
At the time, U.S. law enforcement officials concluded that Tsarnaev posed a greater threat to Russia.
Federal investigators found little evidence linking the brothers to international terrorist groups.
The report comes at a time when relations between the U.S. and Russia have become increasingly strained over the crisis in Ukraine.
Members of Congress are scheduled to be briefed on the review on Thursday.
whutchinson@nydailynews.com
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