April 27, 2013

Did Tsarnaevs get asylum through Deep State nepotism and string-pulling?

One of the funnier angles of the last week has been how so many Establishment figures are so deep into an Emma Lazarus-induced psychosis over the evils of non-open borders that they've chosen to double-down on defending the Tsarnaevs' 2002 asylum in the U.S. against mere questioning by a few Republican politicians.

As I noted recently, the editor of the NYT Editorial Page wrote,
"And when did the United States start excluding immigrants from dangerous places? Seems to me that [the Tsarnaevs] fall into the categories of “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” not to mention “wretched refuse” of teeming shores and the “homeless, tempest-tossed.""

But, the tiny number of Chechens in the U.S. is illustrative of the fact that the Obama Administration and previous Administrations have had an aversion to letting in Chechens, who, as we have seen, have a long track record of tending to be aggrieved, volatile, and formidable. 

Moreover the elder Tsarnaevs' recent return to Russian Dagestan suggests that their asylum in the U.S. was fraudulent.

So, out of all the Chechens in the world, how did the Tsarnaevs get asylum in the U.S..?

Well, why is their Uncle Ruslan in the United States? Why does Ruslan Tsarni, the brother of Anzor Tsarnaev, live in a nice house outside Washington D.C.?

Mad Cow Morning News has been following the Ruslan Tsarni story and it's pretty interesting. The site claims Uncle Ruslan used to be married to Samantha Ankara Fuller, who, it asserts, is the daughter of Graham E. Fuller. Mr. Fuller gave a talk on Turkey at Boston U. in 2006 and his bio read:
He received his BA and MA at Harvard University in Russian and Middle Eastern studies. He served 20 years in the Foreign Service, mostly the Muslim World, working in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982 he was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at CIA, and in 1986 Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, with overall responsibility for all national level strategic forecasting. 
In 1988 Mr. Fuller left government and joined the RAND Corporation where he was a Senior Political Scientist for 12 years. His research focused primarily on the Middle East, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and problems of ethnicity and religion In politics. His studies for RAND include a provocative 1991 study on the geopolitical implications of the Palestinian “Intifada”; a series of studies on Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Algeria; the survivability of Iraq; the “New Geopolitics of Central Asia” after the fall of the USSR; and problems of democratization and Islam. 

Now, there are a lot of people named Samantha Fuller, but ... Samantha Ankara Fuller sounds like she could be the daughter of an American expert on Turkey, since Ankara is the capital of Turkey. (By the way, Sibel Edmonds made an insinuation against Mr. Fuller in her allegations of a Turkey-related corruption ring in the American government, but that's a wilderness of mirrors if there ever was one.)

Keep in mind that a lot of people have connections to the CIA. Barack Obama, for example, grew up with a lot of one-degree-of-separation connections to the CIA, but then so did I.

Uncle Ruslan is the source for the claim that a red-headed Armenian convert to Islam named Misha exercised a malign Rasputin-like influence over Tamerlan. Armenians in Boston, however, say a red-headed Armenian convert to Islam would, uh, stand out, and they can't recall any such individual.

Mad Cow points out that Uncle Ruslan is in the Central Asian energy business. A 2005 press release when he joined Big Sky Energy Corporation said:
Mr. Ruslan Tsarni, a U.S. citizen, has over 10 years of professional experience in oil and gas legislation and corporate law. Previously, Mr. Tsarni served as Corporate Counsel of Nelson Resources Limited Group of companies, as well as Managing Director of several of its operating subsidiaries, responsible for all matters relating to corporate governance and placements and filing requirements under the securities regulations of Toronto Stock Exchange and AIM. He worked with financial institutions and banks on raising funds for acquisition and development of the assets operated by Nelson's subsidiaries, as well as managed legal and administrative matters for all such subsidiaries. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Tsarni worked as Head of Legal Affairs of Golden Eagle Partners LLC where he developed downstream and upstream oil and gas businesses in Kazakhstan and served as Managing Director of its wholly owned subsidiary Tobe LLP. From 1998 to 1999 Mr.Tsarni worked as Senior Associate with Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn providing legal advise to major multinational companies on different aspects of Kazakhstan legal issues on development of mineral resources, corporations, taxation, currency, customs, employment, banking, bankruptcy and trade marks. From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant for Financial Markets International LLC and Arthur Andersen LLP contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals to state and private companies.

Golden Eagle Partners, where Uncle Ruslan was head of legal affairs from 1999-2001, was a contractor of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. That's interesting, but shouldn't be overblown: Halliburton does business with a lot of companies.

But, the broader point is that Uncle Ruslan is connected. Maybe I'm being cynical, but my impression is that in the Central Asian oil and gas legal affairs business, it's less what you know than who you know. And Uncle Ruslan seems to know a lot of people, both in Central Asia and in America. 

It's likely that some people who pick up on this will develop a Ch-Ch-Ch-Cheney-Chechen conspiracy theory about how the Boston bombings really were, in some extremely complicated fashion, all about an oil pipeline or something like that.

But I think the Uncle Ruslan story is most relevant to getting a better grip on how the Tsarnaevs got asylum in the U.S.: I bet Uncle Ruslan got one or more of his American Deep State connections to pull some strings for his brother's family.

In general, that's symptomatic of how our immigration system works. The American Establishment has decided that there's nothing more evil than the American people having an opinion on which would-be immigrants to let in and which to keep out (to the New York Times editorial board, that's more or less eugenics which is more or less the Holocaust). But, somebody has to decide who gets in and who doesn't, so since Americans aren't supposed to do it, the decision often winds up in the hands of immigrants themselves, often nepotistic recent immigrants such as Uncle Ruslan.

UPDATE: Ex-CIA honcho Graham E. Fuller has confirmed that his daughter was married to Uncle Ruslan in the later 1990s, but says he, personally, only met Ruslan's brother, the Demolition Dad, once, and that his daughter was the Bomb Brothers' aunt-in-law only while they were young.

29 comments:

  1. "Former CIA officer: ‘Absurd’ to link uncle of Boston suspects, Agency"

    http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/04/5090/former-cia-officer-absurd-to-link-uncle-of-boston-suspects-agency-over-daughters-brief-marriage/

    "Retired CIA officer Graham Fuller confirmed to Al-Monitor Saturday that his daughter was previously married to an uncle of the suspects in the Boston Marathon attacks, but called rumors of any links between the uncle and the Agency “absurd.”

    Graham Fuller’s daughter, Samantha A. Fuller, was married to Ruslan Tsarnaev (now Tsarni) in the mid-1990s, and divorced in 1999, according to North Carolina public records. The elder Fuller had retired from the agency almost a decade before the brief marriage.

    “Samantha was married to Ruslan Tsarnaev (Tsarni) for 3-4 years, and they lived in Bishkek for one year where Samantha was working for Price Waterhouse on privatization projects,” Graham Fulller told Al-Monitor by email Saturday. “They also lived in our house in [Maryland] for a year or so and they were divorced in 1999, I believe.”

    “I, of course, retired from CIA in 1987 and had moved on to working as a senior political scientist for RAND,” Fuller continued.

    Fuller said his former son in law was interesting but homesick, and moved back to Central Asia after the divorce.

    “Like all Chechens, Ruslan was very concerned about his native land, but I saw no particular involvement in politics, [although] he did try to contact other Chechens around,” Fuller continued. “He also felt homesick and eventually went back to Central Asia after the divorce. His English was shaky. (We always spoke Russian together).”

    A story on the Internet implying “possible connections between Ruslan and the Agency through me are absurd,” Fuller said.

    “I doubt he even had much to say of intelligence value other than talking about his own family’s sad tale of deportation from Chechnya by Stalin to Central Asia,” Fuller said. “Every Chechen family has such stories.”

    The elder Fuller said he had made several visits to Central Asia to do research on post-Soviet political developments, and visited Samantha and Ruslan there. “Our visit is briefly mentioned in my recent memoir, Three Truths and a Lie, as well as their marriage celebration in [Maryland],” he wrote.

    A former Russian history and literature major at Harvard, Fuller said he was always interested in Soviet minorities and found Ruslan interesting. Fuller also pointed to a March 2000 article (.pdf) he and a colleague wrote in Foreign Affairs, “Russia’s Ruinous Chechen War.”

    Ruslan Tsarni has said in media interviews that there was a strong rift between his family and that of his brother Aznor, over what Ruslan described as the growing religious fanaticism of Aznor’s wife, Zubeidat, and that the families had not spoken for several years. Aznor and Zubeidat’s sons Tamerlan, 26, and Dzhokhar, 19, are suspected of carrying out the April 15th Boston Marathon bombings.

    Fuller said he thinks he met Aznor Tsarnaev once, fleetingly, in Kazakhstan. His daughter, he said, knew the family better, but when Tamerlan was just a toddler, and Dzhokhar not yet born."

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  2. When I first learned of Graham Fuller's existence after reading his "How to Learn a Foreign Language," I got the impression that he was a wonkier, suit and tie wearing version of Rick Steves. Later on, I discovered him as an old fashioned WASPy arabist and apologist for Islam. Now I learn his daughter married into a family of Islamic terrorists and shady ex-Soviet power brokers? Wow.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  3. But I think the Uncle Ruslan story is most relevant to explaining how the Tsarnaevs got asylum in the U.S.: Uncle Ruslan got one or more of his Deep State connections to pull some strings for his brother's family.

    Might explain somewhat Uncle Ruslan's public rage--maybe he's thinking "I used my influence to bring them here and this is how they repay me?"

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  4. http://on.rt.com/22ubo6

    She's bomb mom for sure now.

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  5. So yet another person of interest with deep CIA connections. Like, oh, Barack Obama's mother and grandparents. Not that THAT particular story was allowed to be told.

    Remember back in the day when the organized Left hate hate hated the CIA more than anything? Well one Gramscian takeover later and now they totally cool with it.

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  6. I WANT MORE CHECHEN IMMIGRATION.

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  7. Of course CIA-Chechen connections more generally have been claimed for a long time, notably by the Russians. The belief is that the CIA has covertly supported Chechen rebels/separatists as a move against Russia, similar to its support of the Afghan mujahideen against the USSR.

    "Russia's Chechen chief blames CIA for violence"

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/24/us-russia-chechnya-cia-idUSTRE58N5S120090924

    "The Kremlin-backed chief of Russia's turbulent Chechnya region said his forces were fighting U.S. and British intelligence services who want to split the country apart, according to an interview published Thursday.

    Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving license of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led.

    Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence.

    "We're fighting in the mountains with the American and English intelligence agencies. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam, they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state," he said."

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  8. "US Policy Elites and Chechnya"

    http://web.archive.org/web/20110830094633/http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/exit-strategies/us-policy-elites-and-chechnya/

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  9. My main thought on reading stories like this is that this isn't my country anymore. I don't know when it happened, but it was stolen.

    Now it belongs to any Central or South American who can sneak across the border and sit tight until the next amnesty. It belongs to people in all parts of the world who have a sob story to tell (or can make one up). It belongs to global jet-setters and robber barons and their families and friends. It even belongs to people like Barack Obama, who may have been born here but then lived abroad enough to think of the USA as just another country they might choose to live in (and rule) for a while.

    It belongs to every human being on earth -- except the guy who was born here to American parents, who doesn't even have a passport because he's never particularly wanted to be anywhere else, and who doesn't have a single connection in D.C. He's the one person who has no say in how the country is run or who is allowed into it.

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  10. funnier

    ww - I don't find any of it funny.

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  11. Why, it's absolutely ridiculous to speculate about any ties that might have existed between Central Asian Muslims and the USG, working against Moscow. That could never happen.


    (Smirk.)

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  12. Cail Corashev said that this isn't my country anymore.

    Hunsdon replied: Sir, you are a xenophobe, a racist, a nativist, a hater, anti-Semitic, indifferent to wise womynz of color, and quite possibly Christian and heteronormative to boot.

    Welcome to the club. we're still working on our secret handshake, and the special hats are on backorder.

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  13. Well, now we know why the uncle called the bomber kids losers shortly after the bombing.

    Become an international lawyer with connections in Russia, marry a moderately-high status American girl, sponsor your kid brother and his family to come to America. Kid brother makes a living fixing cars in the back of a rug store, nephews become stoners and welfare-collecting layabouts.

    And that was before the nephews kill a few people and injure hundreds.

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  14. Steve, do you find any of the following peculiar:

    --Reports said that Dhjokhar had sustained an apparent self-inflicted gun shot wound.
    --Reports later said he had been unarmed.
    --A commander to the men who surrounded and captured him told them "Do not return fire." Why?
    --Dhjokhar was initially said to have gunshot wounds to the leg and mouth/neck. Now he is said to have many more wounds. Perhaps they all were sustained in the earlier battle between the brothers and police?
    --The Tsarnoff father told the press that "All Hell would break lose" if Dhjokhar were killed. This comment seemed to precede confirmation of Tamerlan's death.

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  15. Cail Corashev said that this isn't my country anymore.

    Welcome to the club. we're still working on our secret handshake, and the special hats are on backorder.


    Yeah. Welcome, CC, to the sixth circle of hell. We're getting internet next month.

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  16. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Cheney!
    Turn and grab the oil
    Ch-ch-Chechens!
    Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
    Ch-ch-ch-ch-Cheney!
    Start another war
    Ch-ch-Chechens!
    Where's your shame
    You've left us up to our necks in it
    Time won't change them
    But you can't trace time

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  17. Ah yes oil pipelines!

    It was a common belief that the invasion of Afghanistan was to facilitate the the building of a pipeline. Twelve years on how is that pipeline coming along?

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  18. It was a common belief that the invasion of Afghanistan was to facilitate the the building of a pipeline. Twelve years on how is that pipeline coming along?

    The Jewish colonization of the West Bank of the Jordan is proceeding apace, thank you very much!

    No blood for oil!

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  19. When I first learned of Graham Fuller's existence after reading his "How to Learn a Foreign Language," I got the impression that he was a wonkier, suit and tie wearing version of Rick Steves. Later on, I discovered him as an old fashioned WASPy arabist and apologist for Islam. Now I learn his daughter married into a family of Islamic terrorists and shady ex-Soviet power brokers? Wow.

    -The Judean People's Front



    Are you forgetting about the Zionist connection to Chechen terrorism?

    http://original.antiwar.com/colleen-rowley/2013/04/21/chechen-terrorists-and-the-neocons/

    (...)
    For instance, see this 2004 article in the UK Guardian, entitled, “The Chechens’ American friends: The Washington neocons’ commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own.”

    Author John Laughland wrote: “the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled ‘distinguished Americans’ who are its members is a roll call of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror.’

    “They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be ‘a cakewalk’; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.”

    (...)

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  20. "No blood for oil!"

    Empirically, the Iraq War turned out to be "No oil for blood."

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  21. Cail Corishev: It belongs to every human being on earth -- except the guy who was born here to American parents, who doesn't even have a passport because he's never particularly wanted to be anywhere else, and who doesn't have a single connection in D.C. He's the one person who has no say in how the country is run or who is allowed into it.

    If it's any consolation, you'd probably feel even worse if you did like to travel. It is a wonderful (pleasurable, fascinating, frustrating, maddening...) thing to be a foreigner - for a finite period. Traveling is a joy, even staying away long enough to enter ex-pat territory is a goodness. But an intrinsic part of that joy, and a joy unto itself, is coming home in the end.

    That unique pleasure once began at touchdown, and expanded in the first step off the plane: the freedom and ease of being among one's own, where everything that "goes without saying" is understood, where one re-enters that "parochial" sphere which is the necessary locus for living a human life in wholeness, and for understanding what is "outside" at all. ("Global citizens" are freaks from Nowhere. A human being, like wine, should have terroir.)

    That's all gone now. I make an effort to fly in and out of the smallest regional international airports when traveling, not only to sidestep the TSA clown shows at their worst, but because sometimes an echo of that lost pleasure of return can be felt there. At the Mega-Ports these days, the passport agent's "welcome home" just sounds snide or sardonic.

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  22. You may be interested to know that another Chechen named Ruslan - this time Ruslan Khasbulatov, Speaker of the Russian Parliament - tried to overthrow Yeltsin in 1993.
    He was unsuccessful, but in case he succeeded, he made a secret pact with Turkey in which Turkey would be given the go-ahead to invade Armenia - and Russia would not interfere. Turkey wanted to finish off Armenia.
    This is a true story. It was confirmed by the Greek Ambassador to Armenia in his book Caucasus, and by US and French intelligence.
    See here: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/2531/

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  23. fnn said: Are you forgetting about the Zionist connection to Chechen terrorism?

    Is it possible for you to discuss anything without resorting to Jew obsessed non-sequiturs?. No matter what the the topic of discussion, you're contribution seems to be "oh yeah, well Jews/neocons/Zionists did X."

    The point of my post was to express my surprise that a seemingly anodyne, minor non-fiction author is actually a connected CIA. I didn't accuse him of fomenting Chechen terrorism, nor did I disparage the WASPs. There is more to life than ethnic politics.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  24. Early on, I read a story that said the the Tsarnaev asylum application was written by the aunt--meaning Ruslan's wife. Now the Ruslan/Samantha marriage doesn't seem to overlap with the younger brother's arrival in the US--but many dates on the timeline don't seem very firm. And many divorced couples remain civil toward each other, so the Fuller connection could hold some meaning.

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  25. Is it possible for you to discuss anything without resorting to Jew obsessed non-sequiturs?. No matter what the the topic of discussion, you're contribution seems to be "oh yeah, well Jews/neocons/Zionists did X."

    When the topic of discussion is U.S. immigration control or the country's engagement with the Muslim nation, how likely is it really that Jews would be a non sequitur?

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  26. Empirically, the Iraq War turned out to be "No oil for blood."

    In fairness, Steve, there's not a whole lot of evidence oil for blood was ever our rulers' calculus.

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  27. It was a common belief that the invasion of Afghanistan was to facilitate the the building of a pipeline. Twelve years on how is that pipeline coming along?

    The Jewish colonization of the West Bank of the Jordan is proceeding apace, thank you very much!

    No blood for oil!


    And the prospects of an oil pipeline from Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) to Israel have improved considerably.

    Suckers!

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  28. foreign Expert4/28/13, 7:24 PM

    The Fullers are probably a Mayflower family .

    ReplyDelete

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