A New York Police officer stands guard at the corner of the New York Stock Exchange in New York April 19, 2013, as part of heightened security in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. 
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI interviewed suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in early 2011, it said in a statement late Friday, following a tip from a foreign government that he was "a follower of radical Islam" and was preparing to leave the United States to join underground organizations. 
 
 The FBI said its interview two years ago of Tsarnaev and his family, along with checks of travel records, Internet activity and personal associations, "did not find any terrorism activity" at the time. 
 
 But the revelation is the first evidence that the Tsarnaev family came to U.S. security officials' attention after they emigrated to the United States about a decade ago, and it could raise questions about whether the government missed potential warning signs about the behavior of two brothers. 
 
 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died overnight in Boston in a shootout with police. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was taken into custody on Friday evening in the Boston suburb of Watertown after a dramatic, day-long manhunt, Boston police said. 
 
 The FBI statement did not disclose which foreign government asked it for information about the brothers and their family. But Tamerlan was widely reported to have made a trip to Russia last year. 
 
 The brothers and their family were ethnic Chechens, whose small republic's attempts at independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union were brutally crushed by Moscow. Both brothers, however, were born in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, the FBI statement said, and Dzhokhar was a naturalized U.S. citizen. 
 
 The revelation that the elder Tsarnaev was on U.S. law enforcement authorities' radar screens seemed likely to raise uncomfortable questions for the Obama administration about whether it could have done anything to detect and stop the plot. 
 
 "It's new information to me and it's very disturbing that he's on the FBI radar screen," Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN late Friday. 
 
 It is not known when the Boston Marathon bombings were planned, or whether there were clues that could have allowed authorities to pre-empt it. 
 
 National security and law enforcement authorities said on earlier Friday that they had not turned up any evidence that the Tsarnaevs had contacts with al Qaeda or other militants overseas. 
 
 Rep. Peter King, New York Republican and member of the House intelligence committee, said in a statement that there "was no federal intelligence or chatter prior to the marathon bombings," a reference to militant communications often picked up in advance of an impending attack. 
 
 The U.S. officials said they were leaning toward the theory that the bombings were motivated by Islamic extremism, although that remained unproven. 
 
 WERE THE TSARNAEVS WORKING WITH OTHERS? 
 
 Violent plots involving a single individual or small groups who self-radicalize and have minimal dealings with other militants can be extremely difficult to detect in advance, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials and private experts. 
 
 The revelation about the FBI contacts with the elder Tsarnaev came as U.S. officials told Reuters that investigators are scouring government data banks to determine if spy and police agencies missed potential clues that might have alerted them to the two brothers. 
 
 Another top priority for investigators is to determine whether the brothers had any confederates either inside the United States or overseas, one U.S. official said. This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. 
 
 Three people were taken into custody for questioning in New Bedford, Massachusetts, police said on Friday. Two men and a woman are being questioned by the FBI "on the assumption there is an affiliation with" Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Lieutenant Robert Richard of the New Bedford Police said. 
 
 One official said the possibility that the U.S. government had information that should have raised questions about the Tsarnaev brothers before the attack could not be ruled out. Other officials said they were unaware that such material had turned up. 
 
 In several recent cases, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies failed to put together clues that, in hindsight, might have led them to pre-empt a plot. 
 
 In 2009, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hassan killed 13 people and wounded another 32 at Fort Hood, Texas. Prior to the shooting spree, Hassan had email contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric and leader of al Qaida's affiliate in Yemen who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike. 
 
 U.S. authorities had investigated Hassan's emails, but concluded they posed no threat of violence. 
 
 The father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "underwear bomber" who tried to bring down a U.S. jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, reported suspicions about his son's activities to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria. But Abdulmutallab's U.S. visa was never revoked. 
 
 A report by the Senate intelligence committee heavily criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for failing to act on available information in that case. 
 
 But Brian Jenkins, a respected terrorism expert at the RAND Corp., dismissed the idea that the Boston bombings represented an intelligence failure. 
 
 People will inevitably ask, "did we miss something in intelligence?" said Jenkins, speaking before the news of the 2011 FBI interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev become public. 
 
 "Some people will label it an 'intelligence failure.' But that's because people have come to expect 100 percent security," he said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Paul Simao and Stacey Joyce) ||||| WASHINGTON -- Five days before two bombs tore through crowds at the Boston Marathon, an intelligence report identified the finish line of the race as an "area of increased vulnerability" and warned Boston police that extremists may use "small scale bombings" to attack spectators and runners at the event. 
 
 The 18-page report was written by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, a command center funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security that helps disseminate intelligence information to local police and first responders. 
 
 The "joint special event assessment" is dated April 10. It notes that at the time there was "no credible, specific information indicating an imminent threat" to the race. 
 
 FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack 
 
 "The FBI has not identified any specific lone offender or extremist group who pose a threat to the Boston marathon," the report reads. 
 
 Two officials read parts of the report to a Washington Bureau reporter. 
 
 Since the blasts, the FBI has acknowledged that agents had interviewed one of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in 2011 but determined that he did not pose a threat. Customs agents were aware that Tsarnaev had traveled to Russia in 2012, but decided that he didn't require additional questioning when he returned to the U.S. later that year. 
 
 What was known to the FBI and other agencies before the Boston bombings was being examined by the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday in the first of a series of hearings investigating the attacks. 
 
 Top police officials in Boston testified to the panel that the FBI never shared with local law enforcement agencies that Tsarnaev had visited Dagestan and that FBI and Russian officials were concerned he and possibly his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, might become radicalized extremists. 
 
 PHOTOS: Grief, comfort at Boston memorials 
 
 “We would have liked to have known,” said Edward F. Davis III, commissioner of the Boston Police Department. But, he said, “we were not aware of the two brothers, we were not aware of their activities.” 
 
 In fact, Davis testified, it was more than three days after the April 15 bombing, after Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhokhar was on the run, before he learned about the Tsarnaevs. 
 
 “We didn’t look at the brothers until after the shootout,” he said. 
 
 But he said he was uncertain what his local intelligence officers would have made of Tamerlan’s 2011 trip to Dagestan, noting that the FBI interviewed him but found nothing suspicious and that Russian officials did not tell the FBI why they were interested in him. 
 
 “We would certainly have looked at the information,” Davis said. “We would certainly have talked to the individual.” But, he added, “I can’t say I would have come to a different conclusion” than the FBI. 
 
 PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon 
 
 Kurt N. Schwartz, Massachusetts undersecretary for homeland security, added that “at no time were we told about the brothers.” 
 
 Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, at one time chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said that if the FBI had shared the information on the Tsarnaevs, it “could have prevented all this from happening,” referring to the three killed and 260 injured at the marathon. 
 
 Local communities, he said, “are going to be your first line of defense. So I’d say the fact that neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security notified the local members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force is really a serious and aggravating omission. 
 
 “Nobody bats 1,000 percent, it's true,” he said. “How do you explain it? People are imperfect.” 
 
 House Homeland Security Committee member Peter King (R-N.Y.) agreed, recalling that FBI officials also never told the New York Police Department that they were aware of an unfolding plot to bomb Times Square before an arrest was made there. 
 
 “The failure to share information is absolutely indefensible,” King said. 
 
 PHOTOS: Bombings splashed across nation's front pages 
 
 [Updated, 10:49 a.m. PDT May 9: Police Commissioner Davis said his department did not realize that the bombers were Russian immigrants until early on the morning of April 19, after Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was “processed” by the FBI. At that point, he said, federal agents advised local officials about their earlier investigation of the older brother on behalf of their Russian counterparts. 
 
 “All this has to be reviewed,” Davis said about why his department was kept in the dark about the Tsarnaev brothers. “All that has to be looked at very closely, and I guess in hindsight if you can connect all the dots during that first interview, there might have been an open case and we would all have known about it.” 
 
 He added, “clearly we can and must do more” in having various law enforcement agencies work together – a major shortcoming that was attributed to how the Sept. 11 hijackers escaped detection in this country. 
 
 TRANSCRIPT: Dzhokar’s bedside hearing 
 
 Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said, “my fear is that the Boston bombers succeeded because our system failed. We must and can do better.” 
 
 He added, “The idea that the feds have this information and it’s not shared with the state and locals defies why we created the Homeland Security Department in the first place.” 
 
 Davis said of the Tsarnaev brothers, “These criminals are reprehensible deviants, nothing more.” He added, “These terrorists tried to break us. What they accomplished was exactly the opposite.”] 
 
 PHOTOS: Boston bombing suspects 
 
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 Brian.Bennett@latimes.com 
 
 Richard.Serrano@latimes.com
– Law enforcement officials have confirmed that it was Russia that told the FBI to investigate the slain Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, the AP reports. The FBI interviewed Tsarnaev, following up on the tip that he was a "follower of radical Islam," but didn't deem him a security risk at the time, reports Reuters. The FBI had said only that a foreign government had provided the intel, but two law enforcement officials, speaking anonymously, later revealed the Russian FSB intelligence security service as the source. The Tsarnaev brothers are ethnic Chechens—though they never actually lived in Chechnya—and Tamerlan visited Russia for six months last year, reports CNN. After getting the tip, the FBI not only talked to Tamerlan but checked out his travel history and web postings. The agency says it "did not find any terrorism activity." His mother says her elder son had embraced Islam but not religious extremism, and she was aware of his contact with the FBI. "How could this happen?" she asked on CNN. "They were controlling every step of him. Now they are saying this is a terrorist act." (Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with police, had an American wife and toddler.)