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Unconnected dots

With last week’s one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing comes the realization that it might not have occurred had U.S. intelligence agencies merely heeded warnings from Russia.

Months before the bombing killed four people and injured hundreds, Russia’s intelligence agency alerted its U.S. counterparts that brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were involved in terrorist activity.

But U.S. officials apparently did not take the warning seriously. Some have complained to members of Congress that Russian officials did not respond to requests for additional information. That may well have been because the Russians did not want to divulge their methods of collecting intelligence, of course.

So a year ago, the Tsarnaev brothers went about their deadly business without interruption. U.S. intelligence agencies had not even notified Boston police about the two.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it became clear U.S. intelligence agencies had failed ‘to connect the dots’ concerning al-Qaida. It is becoming increasingly clear, as Congress continues to look into the Boston bombings, that the same thing happened last year.

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