Even the most experienced investigators are still trying to decide whether the Boston marathon bombs were carried out at the hands of domestic or foreign attackers.
“All of the talking heads that discuss this incident and incidents like it, if your experience and your expertise is Middle East terrorism, it has the hallmarks of al Qaeda or a Middle East group,” said former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, in a CNN article.
He continued: But “if your experience is domestic groups and bombings that have occurred here, it has the hallmarks of a domestic terrorist like Eric Rudolph in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombings.”
The inability to settle that question is proving frustrating to investigators. After all, officials had named Timothy McVeigh as a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombings within one day of the incident. And within two days of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, investigators had named al Qaeda.
Mr. Fuentes, citing his own experiences, couldn’t clarify further.
“I’ve been to both [types of attacks],” he said, in CNN. “I’ve run bomb scenes in Iraq and also in the U.S. It has the hallmarks of both domestic and international, and you can see either side of that.”
His statements come at a time when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the bombings seemed to be an isolated incident.
“While there is no current indication to suggest that the events in Boston are indicative of a broader plot, out of an abundance of caution, DHS continues to keep in place enhanced security measures at transportation hubs, utilizing measures both seen and unseen,” she said Tuesday, as reported by Yahoo News.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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