CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Police officers from across the country and other mourners turned out by the thousands Wednesday for a public memorial service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor a campus officer who authorities say was killed by two brothers suspected of detonating two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon last week.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials said Wednesday that the CIA had added the name of the dead marathon bombing suspect - Tamerlan Tsarnaev - to a U.S. government terrorist database 18 months before the Boston explosions.
U.S. officials also said Wednesday that the surviving suspect - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - acknowledged to the FBI his role in the attacks but did so before he was advised of his constitutional rights to keep quiet and seek a lawyer.
It is unclear whether those statements before the Miranda rights warning would be admissible in a criminal trial and, if not, whether prosecutors even need them to win a conviction. Officials said physical evidence, including a 9mm handgun and pieces of a remote-control device commonly used in toys, wasrecovered from the scene.
For Wednesday’s memorial, dozens of metal detectors were set up at the entrance to Briggs Field on the MIT campus, and authorities shut down sections of Cambridge, including the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge that connects Cambridge to Boston and part of Memorial Drive, a riverside thoroughfare.
Authorities say the campus officer, Sean Collier, 27, was shot and killed during an encounter with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who are accused of setting off the pair of bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 others at the marathon.
Vice President Joe Biden, whose first wife and young daughter were killed in a car accident in 1972, also spoke at the ceremony, telling Collier’s parents that he knew from experience how the family was suffering.
Biden praised the nation’s ability to recover from such terror attacks, saying, “We have suffered. We are grieving,” before adding, “But we are not bending.”
Hours earlier, in Boston, Boylston Street - the scene of the blasts and the busy hub that forms the northern boundary of Copley Square - was reopened to the public as the city continued to seek a semblance of normal nine days after the bombings.
For Susan Christiansen, 69, Wednesday meant a morning walk along Boylston Street with her dog and three of her neighbors. They tried to recall from the surveillance video images they had seen in the media how the bombers had moved through the area before and after the April 15 attack.
“Gosh, those people with the bombs were walking the same way we were walking,” Christiansen said, before turning to one of her companions, Sonia Hauser, 50. “Don’t youfeel, kind of, just wary?”
The living suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told authorities that his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, only recently recruited him to be part of the deadly attack, two U.S. officials. The CIA, however, named Tamerlan to a terrorist database 18 months ago, officials said.
The U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press were close to the investigation but insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case with reporters.
The CIA’s action came about six months after the FBI investigated Tsarnaev at the Russian government’s request, although the FBI found no ties to terrorism, officials said.
The CIA’s disclosure Wednesday about the terrorist database was significant because officials have said the U.S. intelligence community had no information about the bombing suspects leading up to the Boston blasts. That one suspect’s name was in a terrorism database for 18 months before the attack was expected to drive congressional inquiries about whether the U.S. government adequately investigated tips from Russia that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a security threat.
The database, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, is managed by the National Counterterrorism Center and feeds into terror watch-lists like the one that bans suspected terrorists from boarding airplanes.
Tamerlan, whom authorities have described as the driving force behind the plot, was killed in a shootout with police. Dzhokhar is recovering in a hospital from injuries suffered during a getaway attempt.
A spokesman for the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Wednesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body is still in the medical examiner’s custody. He wouldn’t comment about whether Tsarnaev’s wife has asked to claim the body.
Authorities also had said previously that Dzhokhar exchanged gunfire with them Friday night before they captured him inside a boat covered by a tarp in a suburban Boston neighborhood backyard. But two U.S. officials said Wednesday that he was unarmed when captured, raising questions about the gunfire and how he was injured.
Investigators have said the brothers appeared to have been radicalized through jihadist materials on the Internet and have found no evidence tying them to a terrorist group.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told the FBI that they were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the killing of Muslims there, officials said.
How much of those conversations will end up in court is unclear. The FBI normally tells suspects they have the right to remain silent before questioning so all their statements can be used against them.
Under pressure from Congress, however, the Department of Justice has said investigators may wait until they have gathered intelligence about other threats before reading those rights in terrorism cases. The American Civil Liberties Union has expressedconcern about that.
Regardless, investigators have found pieces of remote-control equipment among the debris and were analyzing them, officials said. One official described the detonator as “close-controlled,” meaning it had to be triggered within several blocks of the bombs.
They also recovered a 9mm handgun believed to have been used by Tamerlan Tsarnaev from the site of the gunbattle last Thursday night that injured a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer, two U.S. officials said.
The officials told the AP that no gun was found in the boat. Boston police Commissioner Ed Davis said earlier that shots were fired from inside the boat.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s public defender had no comment on the matter Wednesday.
The suspects’ parents, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, plan to fly today to the U.S. from Russia, the father was quoted as telling the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. Family members have said they want to take Tamerlan’s body back to Russia.
In Russia, U.S. investigators traveled to the predominantly Muslim province of Dagestan and were in contact with the brothers’ parents, hoping to gain more information.
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Goode, Jess Bidgood, Timothy Williams, William K. Rashbaum, Michael Cooper, Michael S. Schmidt, Eric Schmitt, Serge F. Kovaleski, Michael Schwirtz, Wendy Ruderman, John Eligon, Dina Kraft, Andrew Roth and David M. Herszenhorn of The New York Times; and by Lara Jakes, Matt Apuzzo, Rodrique Ngowi, Donna Cassata, Julie Pace and Edith M. Lederer, David Crary, Bridget Murphy, Bob Salsberg, Lynn Berry, Kim Dozier, Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker, Pete Yost and Eileen Sullivan of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/25/2013