Intel System Broken: US 'Going Backwards in National Security'

Photo Credit: Vjeran PavicFrustration is mounting among congressional Republicans who say the U.S. intelligence system remains broken more than a decade after authorities failed to stop Osama bin Laden.

Reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon attack, was placed on a terrorism watch list at the request of the CIA a year before the bombings has heightened fears of an intelligence failure with parallels to 9/11.

GOP lawmakers say the same information-sharing problems that hobbled the CIA and FBI in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks have resurfaced in the Tsarnaev case.

“I have no idea who bears the blame. I just know the system is broken,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday after White House officials briefed senators on the investigation into the Boston attacks.

“The FBI and the CIA have great people, but you know [we are] going backwards in national security,” he said. Russian intelligence officials separately warned the FBI and CIA about Tsarnaev’s 2011 trip to Russia, where he may have reached out to militant Islamic groups in Dagestan.

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