 The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed Friday in a shootout with police, travelled to Russia in 2012, he may have done so under an alias. Rogers praised the FBI’s handing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as “very prudent and very thorough” – and pointed out that the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev before his sojourn in Russia. The purported leader of the separatist and Islamic extremist group is Doku Umarov, a Chechen Islamic militant in Russia whose ordering of numerous attacks on civilians has earned him the nickname Russia's Usama bin Laden.  WASHINGTON — With one suspect dead and the other captured and lying grievously wounded in a hospital, the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings turned on Saturday to questions about the men’s motives, and to the significance of an overseas trip one of them took last year. Investigators are exploring potential links between Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and an extremist group known as the Caucasus Emirate, sources tell Fox News. Mr. Obama also met with his national security team for an update on the investigation. never followed up on Tamerlan once he returned, a senior law enforcement official acknowledged on Saturday, adding that its investigation did not turn up anything and it did not have the legal authority to keep tabs on him. Investigators are now scrambling to review that trip, and learn about any extremists who might have influenced, trained or directed Tamerlan while he was there. Under the public safety exception, however, I do believe that the FBI has a period of time to try to determine what threats there are today – we don’t know if there’s other (explosive) devices, we don’t know if there’s other people (involved in the plot). Members of Congress expressed concern about the F.B.I.’s handling of a request from Russia before the trip to examine the man’s possible links to extremist groups in the region.
– As the Boston Marathon bombing investigation continues, the FBI is really zeroing in on dead suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev's six-month trip to Russia last year, the New York Times reports. The elder of the Tsarnaev brothers visited two predominantly Muslim republics in the country's north Caucasus region—Chechnya and Dagestan—both of which are home to strong militant separatist movements. Russia had warned the FBI that Tsarnaev was a "follower of radical Islam" back in 2011, but law enforcement officials did not deem him a security risk; now some members of Congress are unhappy at the way the tip was handled in advance of Tsarnaev's overseas trip, considering he may have had connections to extremist groups in the area. It was after that trip that he started posting jihadist videos. As federal investigators rush to review the trip (which Tsarnaev's father says was simply to renew his son's Russian passport) and any extremists Tsarnaev may have connected with in Russia, one former senior FBI official calls it "a key thread for investigators and the intelligence community to pull on." But at the time, the FBI never followed up on Tsarnaev after he returned to the US, because it did not have the legal authority to do so after uncovering nothing of note in its initial investigation. The FBI investigation did, however, prevent Tsarnaev from becoming a US citizen; the Department of Homeland Security opted to hold his petition for further review. Sources tell Fox News that investigators are looking into possible connections between Tsarnaev and the Caucasus Emirate, a separatist and extremist Islamic group whose Chechen leader is known as "Russia's Osama bin Laden." And today on Meet the Press, Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said Tsarnaev may have made the Russia trip under an alias.