Candy Crowley opened the Congressional "State of the Union" panel by providing her assessment that the national security infrastructure "worked" prior to the Boston Marathon bombings.
Specifically, Crowley said it did not appear that authorities failed to share information or "connect the dots" with the Tsarnaev brothers:
CANDY CROWLEY: [...] Here's what I'm gathering from the show today talking to folks in office and out of office observing from an expert point of view, it doesn't look as though there were really dots that were not connected. It looks as though it worked even though it ended up horribly. Give me all your alls' takes, start over here, on whether -- are you troubled by anything? Or do you think there was basically there was not much more that could have been done?
The facts surrounding Crowley's assertion seem to suggest otherwise.
Both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, were present on the TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment) list.
Critics have suggested Tamerlan Tsarnaev's presence on the TIDE list should have alerted the customs border agent as he left the country to travel to Russia in 2012. Customs could have then interrogated Tsarnaev and shared the resulting intel with the CIA.
Others have submitted the FBI should have been more proactive in their investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Full segment: