White House and House Speaker Boehner defend FBI’s pre-bombing handling of “Suspect Number 1” — Other Republicans are on the attack over the FBI’s apparent mishandling of the case

The FBI is in full damage control mode after several blunders connected to its handling of information and on-going investigation of the now-deceased “Suspect Number 1" in the Boston Marathon bombing have come to light 

According to a lengthy and detailed report in Bloomberg News, among the missed items that might have contributed to the success of the alleged terrorists’ bombing at the Boston Marathon was the FBI’s apparent failure to take note of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s 2012  trip to Russia (“FBI Handling of Russia Boston Bomber Tip Draws Scrutiny” by Terry Atlas & Roxana Tiron, 4/22/13, Bloomberg News [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-22/fbi-handling-of-russia-boston-bomber-tip-draws-scrutiny.html]).  So far there has been no explanation why this happened, even though Tsarnaev's name was on a federal travel watch list. However, it has been mentioned that this particular trip might have been “missed” by the FBI because Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name had been “misspelled” on Russia’s Aeroflot airline records.

FBI Director Robert Mueller will testify to a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing tomorrow afternoon; and it’s expected that certain members of the House of  Representatives will get a classified briefing on the bombing tomorrow, according to a notice sent to lawmakers – according to the report in Bloomberg News,  Sean Joyce, deputy FBI director, Rand Beers, homeland security under secretary, and Matthew Olsen of the National Counterterrorism Center will discuss the case with congressional representatives from both parties.

The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, asked the FBI and other security agencies for all documents on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers linked to the bombing. According to a letter released today and signed by McCaul and Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who heads the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. “While the Russian inquiry and Tamerlan’s Tsarnaev’s subsequent behavior might have provided warning signs, the elder brother ‘remained at liberty in this country to conduct the Boston attack, and it took days to publicly identify him as a suspect’....”

According to Bloomberg News, White House spokesman Jay Carney today defended the FBI’s actions, saying, “They investigated it thoroughly and did not find terrorist activity, domestic or foreign.” In addition, not every Republican was immediately critical of the FBI’s work on the case – House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, urged restraint, indicating that it’s ‘way too early’ to say whether the FBI lapsed in its investigation and that congressional committees will help determine whether the FBI  “dropped the ball or didn’t drop the ball.”