Ex-CIA Official Fuller: Astonished To Find Himself Two Degrees Of Separation From Accused Bombers

Graham Fuller, a former top official with the CIA, is publicly denying any connection to the two men accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings other than by happenstance of his daughter's marriage to their uncle. Fuller tells Opposing Views that his daughter was married to the accused bombers' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, for a few years back in the 1990s and that the couple lived in his home for about a year. He even acknowledges meeting the accused bombers' father at least once in Kazakhstan, but beyond his connection to the family by marriage, any insinuation of his knowledge of the bombers' activities is "absurd."

“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,” said Fuller, who retired from the CIA in 1987. “They also lived in our house in [Maryland] for a year or so and they were divorced in 1999, I believe.”

He described Ruslan as an interesting son-in-law, but said he was homesick and moved back to Central Asia after the couple divorced.

“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 said. “He also felt homesick and eventually went back to Central Asia after the divorce. His English was shaky. (We always spoke Russian together).”

Fuller said he thinks he met father of the suspects, Aznor Tsarnaev, once in Kazakhstan, but he admitted his daughter knew the family better.

Of the Boston bombing, Fuller said: “I for one was astonished at the events, and to find myself at two degrees of separation from them.”

“I doubt [Ruslan] 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 noted. “Every Chechen family has such stories.” Josef Stalin deported all Chechen men, women, and children from the Caucasus to Central Asia in February 1944.

The Opposing View's story notes that Fuller was a former CIA officer in Turkey and Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council under former President Ronald Reagan before he retired from the CIA in 1987. His career in the CIA lasted 27 years before he joined the Rand Corporation according to Wikipedia. He also served as the CIA's station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan. Fuller is credited with authoring a "think-piece" while at the CIA which led to the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration under which arms were illegally sold to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages and the proceeds of the arms were diverted to fund the Contra rebels seeking to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

A former FBI translator/whistle blower, Sibel Edmonds, quickly pointed out that Fuller is on her rogue gallery of persons she learned that were under investigation by the FBI while she was employed there, which included former congressmen, including former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, who she accused of taking bribes from Turkish authorities. She claims the Justice Department prevented persons like Fuller from being prosecuted for breaking U.S. law under a little-used State Secrets exemption. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft took her case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent her from pursuing her whistle blower case under the State Secrets exemption. Edmonds says she presented Fuller as one of the "top culprits in [her] State Secrets Privilege Case" for what she described as "CIA-NATO terror operations in Central Asia and Caucusus since the mid-1990s. Interestingly, Tsarni started working for USAID in the mid-1990s. Edmonds complains that "not a single media outlet . . . was willing to touch this." See this interview of Edmonds uploaded to YouTube discussing Fuller and the Tsarnaev brothers.