FBI

MSNBC circling the wagons? This NewsBuster is in no position to say that the FBI made a mistake by deciding not to monitor Tamerlan Tsarnaev after having interviewed him in 2011, acting on inquiries from Russian intelligence regarding his possible radical Islamic ties.

But by the same token, MSNBC host Alex Witt is in no position to say the FBI didn't make a mistake.  Yet Witt has pre-emptively proferred an excuse for the FBI's decision.  Speaking with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff on her show this afternon, Witt, alluding to the FBI's decision not to monitor Tsarnaev, declared: "hindsight is 20-20."  View the video after the jump.

On Sunday’s edition of ABC’s The Week, Martha Raddatz managed to conduct a six minute-long interview with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (N.J.) without asking a single question about an FBI investigation into allegations that he slept with underage prostitutes while in the Dominican Republic. Instead Raddatz lobbed softball questions at Menendez about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance during the Benghazi hearings, immigration reform, Chuck Hagel, and the upcoming Senate race in New Jersey.

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell reacted:

On Tuesday, three weeks after the deadly terrorist strike on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, two House Republicans sent a letter to Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing "incidents dating to April" that evidence "a pattern of threats" against the late Amb. Chris Stevens, many of them "new revelations" such as the fact that "Libyans working as private security guards at the U.S. compound were warned by family members in the weeks before the assault to quite their jobs because of rumors of an impending attack."

Yet Post editors placed the story on the matter, headlined "Probe in Libya moving slowly," on page A10 of the October 3 paper. In the same article, Birnbaum and Gearan quote from one Walid Faraj, "a member of the militia that local officials tasked with securing Americans in Beghazi" who "said he saw the attack nearly from start to finish." Faraj insists he has yet to be interviewed by either American or Libyan investigators. "Since that day, nobody has called, nobody cared," Faraj told the Post. "How is it the Americans didn't anticipate anything?"