Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) cautioned against concluding that the FBI and CIA "dropped the ball" on their investigation Tamerlan Tsarnaev Wednesday on "Piers Morgan."
Schiff said both requests by Russian intel to the FBI and CIA were "very similar," and the FBI attempted to follow up with Russian intelligence several times after they investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev to no avail:
PIERS MORGAN: [...] has this been a massive ball dropped collectively by the FBI and now the CIA?
ADAM SCHIFF: Piers, I don't think people should leap to that conclusion. Both because I don't think we have seen the evidence that that is in fact what happened. And because the investigation is still very early. When the FBI got this information from the Russians, they went out, did an interview, did a pretty thorough look at this subject of the Russian concern. They then went back to the Russians and said we haven't been able to find anything. What have you got? Give us some guidance here. The Russians didn't respond, went back to them a couple more times and got no further information from the Russians. So what they did check out, they weren't able to verify in any way. And I don't think that should lead us to conclude that somehow the FBI dropped the ball. Also, these claims that there were multiple requests by multiple -- by the Russian government to multiple agencies, from what I gather, there were only two requests, and if they were not identical, they were nearly identical. So I think people should avoid this rush to judgment of a bureau that frankly has been doing spectacular work in the investigation since the event. And I haven't seen an indication yet they failed to do the work they should have before the event.