The FBI never told the Boston police or the Massachusetts State Police about possible Russian terror connections of the suspected Marathon bombers until three and half days after the attack, law enforcement officials testified today before the House Homeland Security Committee.

"My fear is that the Boston bombers succeeded because our system failed," said committee chairman Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas).

Boston police commissioner Ed Davis told McCaul that his department was not told before the bombing that the FBI had opened an investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, or that Tsarnaev had traveled to the North Caucasus in 2012, even though he had three detectives and a sergeant assigned to the Joint Terror Task Force with the FBI.

"Would you have liked to known that?" asked McCaul.

"Yes," said Davis, although he said later it was not clear that the knowledge would have prevented the bombings.

In a statement released today, the FBI said the Boston police department not only had access to the shared counter-terrorism incident management system, but the BPD "specifically had representatives assigned to the JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] squad that conducted the 2011 Assessment of deceased terrorism suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev."

"State and local law enforcement personnel, analysts and FBI personnel at Fusion Centers who have the appropriate security clearances are afforded the same unrestricted access as their FBI colleagues," the FBI said. The FBI said it conducted some 1,000 assessments in the Boston area alone the same year as Tsarnaev's.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fbi-fire-boston-pd-bombing-suspects/story?id=19142952#.UYvDW6LtWSo

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