Boston police chief tells Congress that feds never shared information on alleged Marathon bomber with city or state police

WASHINGTON -- Boston's top cop said Thursday that the feds did not share alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name with city and state police until after the April 18 shootout in which he was fatally injured.

The FBI and CIA had been watching Tsarnaev since 2011 when the Russian government warned them of possible involvement in extremist activity.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told members of the House Homeland Security Committee that his department "absolutely" would have followed up on Tsarnaev if it knew of the Russian warning and Tsarnaev's foreign travel.

Three Boston cops assigned to the regional, interagency Joint Terrorism Task Force told superiors federal partners had not tipped them on the case.

Massachusetts public safety head Kurt Schwartz, likewise said the state's intelligence center was not aware.

The lapse coincided with the August 2011 White House rollout of a new strategy to empower state and local agencies as the nation's eyes and ears in the fight against terror, with the Department of Homeland Security coordinating the effort.

"The idea that the feds have this information and it's not shared with the state and locals defies why we created the Department of Homeland Security in the first place," said panel Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

Witness and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who co-authored post-9/11 intelligence-sharing reforms, called it "really a serious and aggravating omission" and "one of the most signifiant and painful takeaways from the Boston terror attacks."

The federal agencies did not testify at the hearing, the first focused solely on the attack.

Lieberman said he believes it would have been "hard — but not impossible to have stopped the Tsarnaev brothers before the attacks."

"To put it bluntly, he said in prepared remarks, "our homeland defense system failed in Boston."

Lieberman said the biggest questions rest with Russian officials who would not provide any other intelligence on Tsarnaev’s activities overseas in 2011, and with Tsarnaev's family, friends, and worshippers at a Boston-area mosque he was barred from after a confrontation last year.

"The cost of silence, as we learned again on April 15, can be enormous," Lieberman said.

Former committee chairman Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), who held a series of controversial hearings on Muslim extremism, rapped the Obama Administration for non-use of the word "Islamist" in reference to the Boston case.

"As Chairman McCaul said, how are we going to know the enemy if we don't identify the enemy?" King said.

Fellow committee Republican Jeff Duncan of South Carolina later said that King "needs and apology from the mainstream media" after Boston attack," an apparent reference to scrutiny of King's hearings on Muslim extremism.

King also took another shot at the FBI, which waited as long as two days to alert New York authorities about brother Zhokhar Tsarnaev's post-arrest claims that the pair planned to attack New York as well.

King said the FBI criticized Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for releasing the information, and said the there was no threat to New York.

"They can't have it both ways," King said. "And to me that's a major breakdown in law enforcement."

On his introduction, Davis received an ovation from Committee members and most of the room's spectators - rare for a hearing on Capitol Hill.