How Pothead Terrorists Almost Outsmarted the Police

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The local police reacted heroically to the Boston terror bombings, and it is tragic that MIT police officer Sean Collier was a victim of the terrorists’ shooting spree. However, the inescapable conclusion, after the media get done praising local police reaction to the bombings, is that law enforcement at all levels broke down, leaving law-abiding citizens and the police themselves exposed and vulnerable to criminal and terrorist elements. So-called “Boston Strong,” a solidarity campaign with the community and the victims, is a concept that should have been in place to prevent terrorism from happening.

One of the officials who used to be in charge of homeland security for the state of Massachusetts is Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama Administration official who suddenly emerged on CNN after the bombings as an expert unable or unwilling to identify the terrorists as Islamic. It was a disgraceful performance.

As if the bombings were not bad enough, the emerging evidence is that the terrorist brothers were marijuana dealers before they took up jihadism, and that they avoided law enforcement while dealing drugs in the community and on campus. In other words, these terrorists were planning violence against Americans while breaking our drug laws, perhaps to finance their own terrorism. They made a mockery of the local police and the feds and almost got away, if not for their own reckless behavior after they were publicly identified, and a resident who spotted one of the fugitives in his backyard on a boat.

It was not a success story for law enforcement, no matter how much spin is applied by the media. And while Obama has expressed his sympathy for the victims, the federal government failed to stop the bombings in Boston when they already had information about the older brother’s foreign travels and jihadist activities. Obama’s administration has to explain how federal agencies like the FBI and CIA let the older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev travel in and out of a Muslim region of Russia where terrorist groups apparently openly plot against the West.

But the foreign travel isn’t the only controversy. In the latest sensational revelation, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that investigators believe the brothers helped finance their plot through drug sales, and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev personally “made money selling marijuana.” So when he was not traveling abroad, apparently to learn about terrorism, he was dealing drugs. He was probably the source of dope for his younger brother, who was reported to be a heavy pot smoker while a student enjoying a scholarship at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in turn, sold marijuana to other people on campus.

In addition to the reported marijuana smuggling and use, a triple murder in 2011 in Boston, in which marijuana was spread over the bodies, is now being re-investigated for a possible link to the older brother. One of the victims was a friend of his. All of the victims had their throats slit.

The older brother was a marijuana smuggler, but the younger brother was a pothead and a dealer. The Boston Globe says three people admitted buying drugs from the 19-year-old. “Several fellow students reported he earned at least some cash selling marijuana—at least the portion he didn’t smoke himself,” the paper reported. “There was a permanent stench of marijuana in his room,” said one person.

The dope aspect of the plot helps explain why they seemed to have no getaway plan, although we now learn they wanted to get to New York City to kill more people. Perhaps their minds were too scrambled to get to New York City. On the other hand, despite the reassuring claims from the media that authorities have found no evidence of foreign help, it is apparent that they did somehow master the art of making somewhat sophisticated bombs requiring timing devices. Perhaps other accomplices remain on the loose. We have no way to tell for sure, since the Obama Administration has read the captured brother his rights, making it less likely he will spill all the beans.

In another mind-boggling part of the story, the older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was so brazen in his commitment to jihad that he posted videos on Islamic terrorism on his YouTube page. This may sound like a stupid thing to do, except for the fact that law enforcement apparently wasn’t paying any attention to him by this point and he got away with it. This is yet another major hole in our defenses against terrorism.

On top of these fiascos, we also have the FBI picking up the wrong guy in the Ricin letters case.

Shockingly, there is no reason to believe the Tsarnaev brothers were unique. If they could so easily carry out terrorism on American soil, why can’t others do so? It is troubling to even consider this. But even as investigations continue, we know enough already to conclude that there are just too many holes in the system. How many other terrorists are out there among us? Perhaps they, too, are selling dope to finance their crimes against the American people. Perhaps they are now posting terrorism videos on YouTube.

After one of the brothers was killed and the other apprehended, the media praised federal, state and local law enforcement for their quick response to the terror. We all joined in the praise of those who are supposed to protect us. But these new developments, especially in regard to marijuana smuggling and the unsolved murders, puts law enforcement in an extremely different light.

On one level, the case seems bizarre. A USA Today story says, “Friends and classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev can’t grasp how the pot-smoking party boy they knew is the same young man now accused of carrying out a terrorist attack.” Left unsaid is the fact that dope’s effect on the brain is what may have led him into his brother’s terror activities. He was probably so wasted mentally on drugs that he became easily manipulated by his brother and cannon fodder for the Islamist revolution on American soil.

What happened in Boston is starting to look like what Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn tried to accomplish with the 1960s generation. Disillusioned young people, brainwashed with illegal mind-altering drugs and armed with weapons, were being taught to hate the American government and the police. Remember that communist terrorist Dohrn had said, “We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.”

Perhaps if the drug laws were being vigorously enforced in liberal Massachusetts, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have been picked up by the authorities before joining his brother in the Boston bombing. Perhaps his arrest could have led to his supplier, his own brother. But it looks like drugs were common on campus, and among students, and so everyone just looked the other way. The terrible triple murder case involving marijuana sprinkled on the victims apparently wasn’t very high on the priority list, either.

Now, however, as CNN reports, the killings are being reviewed by a “wider group of eyes,” with an eye on the older brother.

Let us hope the media open their eyes as well, not only to the terrorist threat, but to how dangerous drugs can play a role in violence, murder, and mayhem. Marijuana is not the harmless drug the media frequently claim it to be. It is a mind-altering substance that can play a role in creating communist or Islamic terrorists.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.