No 'Manifesto' But New Clues to 'Frustrated' Boston Suspect: Sources

Just over a month after Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a standoff with police, investigators said they have begun to piece together a picture of what he did during a six-month visit last year to Dagestan, a volatile region in southern Russia that is home to Tsarneav's parents as well as a violent struggle with Islamist insurgency.

American investigators believe Tsarnaev traveled to Dagestan seeking to make contact with militant groups, but for reasons that remain unclear, he was either unable or unwilling to join their ranks.

As they peel back the layers of the man accused of working with his younger brother to set off a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon April 15, investigators said they are finding a frustrated young man who felt out of place in the United States.

They said Tsarnaev appears to have been largely self-radicalized before arriving in Dagestan in search of a lifestyle that may not have met his expectations either, according to U.S. officials close to or briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The officials described Tsarnaev as a typical lone wolf.

While Tsarnaev's radicalization appears to have deepened during his time in Dagestan, investigators have not found a particular contact there or a "manifesto," on his computer or elsewhere that would explain why he and his younger brother Dzhokhar allegedly placed bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the officials said. Hours after Tamerlan was killed in the police shootout, Dzhokhar was apprehended and remains in custody.

While officials stressed the investigation is still ongoing, they have also found no signs that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was affiliated with an international terror organization like al Qaeda. Similarly, they have found no evidence to suggest he was directed to strike the U.S. by anyone he met in Dagestan. They have not found any signs of suspicious contacts during Tsarnaev's trips to visit his father's family in Chechnya, which has also battled an Islamist insurgency, and probes into Tsarnaev's father's rumored ties to Chechen security officials have also not revealed anything of concern, the officials said.

Tamerlan Associate Joined Militant in 'The Forest', But Not Tamerlan

Tsarnev's closest known militant contact in Dagestan appears to have been a young man namedMahmud Mansur Nidal, officials said. The two were often seen together leaving a Salafist mosque, popular with fighters, in Makhachkala.

But while Nidal eventually went off to join a militant group -- what locals call going "into the forest" -- investigators say they have uncovered no evidence that Tsarnaev joined him. Nidal would eventually be killed in a police raid after returning to visit family.

Tsarnaev had also been in touch over the internet with a Russian-Canadian convert to Islam and suspected militant named William Plotnikov, but officials say they have no evidence to suggest the two ever met in person. Contrary to previous reporting, investigators say they do not believe Tsarnaev dropped off the map after Plotnikov was killed by police in July, shortly before Tsarnaev left Russia to return to the United States.

Investigators have also taken a hard look at Magomed Kartashov, Tsarnaev's distant cousin and the founder and leader of a Islamist group called the Union of the Just. The group is anti-American and campaigns for the application of Sharia, or Islamic law.

The cousins met several times during Tsarnaev's stay in Dagestan. Kartashov's lawyer, Patimat Abdullaeva, told ABC News by phone that the two did discuss religion, but she insisted Tsarnaev was the one with extremist views. Kartashov is in prison for an unrelated matter -- waving an Islamist flag during a wedding procession -- but his lawyer says Russian investigators have interviewed him there about his interactions with Tsarnaev.

Magomed Magomedov, another member of Union for the Just, told ABC News he also saw Tsarnaev several times last year, at the mosque and around Makhachkala, but could not remember their discussions about religion. He described Tsarnaev as being aloof and out of place in Dagestan.

"He was sticking out, it was obvious he is not local. He liked to draw attention with his expensive and fancy clothes. His haircut was something no one has seen before," he said.

That description matches the picture that investigators are painting of Tsarnaev. They said when Tsarnaev arrived in Dagestan, his flashy appearance and demeanor immediately set him apart.

He also apparently drew attention to himself by claiming to know more about Islam than he really did. According to investigators, Tsarnaev would often recite things he had read or seen on the internet, often confusing those he was trying to impress.

"He was driving people crazy," one official said.

The officials said he was not as strict a practitioner of Islam as he claimed to be.

While his younger brother and alleged co-conspirator Dzhokhar has been described as the family pothead, one official said Tamerlan was also fond of marijuana, spending hours high on the couch in Massachusetts where he did not have a steady job.

The FBI has met with Tsarnaev's parents at least once. Officials said they are still planning to meet with nine or 10 other individuals, including with Tsarnaev's extended family, childhood friends, and contacts at the mosque. Those meetings were described as "tying up loose ends" rather than suspicious leads.

Amid Tensions, U.S.-Russia Play Nice on Boston Investigation

The American officials praised the unusual level of cooperation they've received from their Russian counterparts.

Often that relationship is plagued by lingering Cold War-era mistrust, but officials described how both sides have poured over linkage maps together, with the Russians sharing their knowledge and analysis, even suggesting individuals that the American side may want to interview. That, they say, is different from the past when the Russians offered little more than terse responses to American requests for information.

Indeed, that mistrust may have hindered early attempts to investigate Tsarnaev in 2011, when Russia asked the United States to look into what it suspected were Tsarnaev's plans to join extremist groups abroad. The FBI found nothing to support those claims, but said Russia did not follow up when the bureau asked for more information. That communication gap has become a target for a group of American lawmakers who plan to visit Russia next week to investigate the bombing.

"If there was a distrust, or lack of cooperation because of that distrust, between the Russian intelligence and the FBI, then that needs to be fixed and we will be talking about that," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats who is leading the Congressional delegation, told ABC News by telephone.

While the officials described their cooperation with the Russians as "unprecedented," they grumbled privately that they have been unable to do a methodical step-by-step investigation like they are used to doing in the U.S., or even in other countries where they have long-standing cooperation. American investigators from the FBI have been unable to travel to Dagestan without permission from the Russian authorities.

Still, they insist they have been able to confirm much of what they have been told by Russian government officials from what one official vaguely described as "other channels."

ABC News' Dada Jovanovic contributed to this report.

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After vote on gay youth, Scouts face more turmoil

In this Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012 file photo, Zach Wahls waves after addressing the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. The Eagle Scout, a 21-year-old activist raised by lesbian mothers in Iowa, has been a leader of the campaign to end the BSA's no-gays policy. In the wake of the Thursday, May 23, 2013 decision, he said his group, Scouts for Equality, would continue to press for lifting the ban on gay adults, while also monitoring how the BSA implemented its new policy for gay youth. We'll act as a watchdog, he said. "If any gay youth feel they're experiencing harassment or discrimination, we want to be there for them." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Boy Scouts of America will get no reprieve from controversy after a contentious vote to accept openly gay boys as Scouts.

Dismayed conservatives are already looking at alternative youth groups as they predict a mass exodus from the BSA. Gay-rights supporters vowed Friday to maintain pressure on the Scouts to end the still-in-place ban on gay adults serving as leaders.

"They're not on our good list yet," said Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group. He said the HRC, in its annual rankings of corporate policies on workplace fairness, would deduct points from companies that donate to the Boy Scouts until the ban on gay adults is lifted.

In California, gay-rights leaders said they would continue urging passage of a bill pending in the Legislature that would make the BSA ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks because of the remaining ban.

The Boy Scouts' chief executive, Wayne Brock, pleaded for theScouting community to reunite after the divisive debate that led to Thursday's vote by the BSA's National Council. The proposal to lift the ban on openly gay youth — while keeping the ban on gay adults — was supported by about 60 percent of the council's 1,400 voting members.

However, Brock's plea failed to sway some conservative religious leaders whose denominations sponsor many Scout units and who consider same-sex relationships immoral.

"Frankly, I can't imagine a Southern Baptist pastor who would continue to allow his church to sponsor a Boy Scout troop under these new rules," Richard Land, a senior Southern Baptist Conference official, told the SBC's news agency, Baptist Press.

Land advised Southern Baptist churches to withdraw their support of Scout troops and consider affiliating instead with the Royal Ambassadors, an existing SBC youth program for boys that combines religious ministry with Scouting-style activities.

Baptist churches sponsor Scout units serving more than 100,000 of the BSA's 2.6 million youth members.

The Assemblies of God, which oversees units serving more than 2,000 Scouts, said it could no longer support such units and suggested its own Royal Rangers youth group as a "positive alternative."

John Stemberger, a conservative activist and former Scout from Florida who led a group opposing the policy change, said he and his allies would convene a meeting next month in Louisville, Ky., to discuss creation of a "new character development organization for boys."

"We grieve today, not because we are faced with leaving Scouting, but because the Boy Scouts of America has left us," Stemberger said. "Its leadership has turned its back on 103 years of abiding by a mission to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices."

There is a template for forming a conservative alternative to a major national youth organization. American Heritage Girls was formed in 1995 as a Christian-oriented option to the Girl Scouts of the USA, and it now claims more than 20,000 members.

From the left, gay-rights supporters — including President Barack Obama — generally welcomed the move to accept openly gay Scouts, but urged the BSA to take the further step of welcoming gay adults as leaders.

White House spokesman Shin Inouye said Obama "continues to believe that leadership positions in the Scouts should be open to all, regardless of sexual orientation."

Rich Ferraro of GLAAD, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said his group would continue a campaign to discourage corporate giving to the Boy Scouts until the ban on gay adults is lifted.

He also predicted that the presence of openly gay boys in Scout ranks would undermine the viability of the adult ban as those youth turn 18 and seek leadership posts.

"The BSA now will have to look gay teens in the eye, boys who've been involved in Scouting for years, and tell them they're not going to be able to grow into adult leaders," Ferraro said. "Those conversations will be difficult and shouldn't be had."

Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, a 21-year-old activist raised by lesbian mothers in Iowa, has been a leader of the campaign to end the BSA's no-gays policy. He said his group, Scouts for Equality, would continue to press for lifting the ban on gay adults, while also monitoring how the BSA implements its new policy for gay youth.

"We'll act as a watchdog," he said. "If any gay youth feel they're experiencing harassment or discrimination, we want to be there for them."

For some parents of Scouts, the entire membership debate has been emotionally draining, and the decision to accept openly gay youth left them disenchanted or confused.

Wes Comer, whose family attends an Apostolic Pentecostal church near Knoxville, Tenn., that considers homosexuality sinful, had been wrestling with whether to pull his eldest son out of the Scouts if the no-gays policy was abandoned.

"To be honest, I'm torn at this point," Comer said Friday in an email. "I'm not sure exactly what our decision will be."

"If I place this situation in the context of my religious beliefs, I'm forced to ask myself, 'Would I turn a homosexual child away from Sunday school? From a church function? Would I forbid my children to be friends with a gay child?' I can't imagine a situation where I would answer 'yes' to any of those questions. So how can I in this one?" he wrote.

Yet he said was "extremely disappointed" in the entire debate, and suggested that the BSA "has dealt itself a mortal blow."

Another Scouting father, Don Mack, of Waconia, Minn., said he and his 10-year-old son will be leaving Cub Scouts after the current year is done and his son gets his Arrow of Light Award.

Mack, a Scout himself as a boy and a self-described conservative Christian, has been a Cub Scout leader for about five years. Now, because of the vote to admit gay youth, he and his son both want out. And they'll be looking for an alternative program that offers similar character-building benefits as the Scouts.

"We home-school, and my wife and I teach our son you need to stand up for what's right, even if that means sacrifice or getting hurt in the process," Mack said. "It was not an easy choice for us to make because our family believed in the mission Scouting has to offer. I kind of feel like my best friend died."

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Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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Online:

Boy Scouts of America: http://www.scouting.org/

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Follow David Crary on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/craryap .

Arizona jury foreman says believed Jodi Arias was abused

Safe room mandates remain rare in tornado states

MOORE, Okla. (AP) — After living nearly 20 years in their one-story brick home, Sherry and Larry Wells finally won the lottery — for a state rebate on a home storm shelter, that is. A contractor finished installing the concrete bunker beneath the slab of their garage in early May. About three weeks later, the shelter saved their lives when a tornado that killed 24 people tore through their neighborhood.

Should residential storm shelters be mandatory in the midst of Tornado Alley? Absolutely, says Sherry Wells, "it's the best thing ever."

But not a single state currently requires them in homes. And not many communities do so either, though officials in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore are now considering it.

Despite the life-saving potential of personal storm shelters, the cost remains a deterrent. So, too, does a general resistance to government mandates in politically conservative states such asOklahoma, where tornadoes are most prevalent. Even the director of an association of storm shelter manufacturers, based in Texas, is opposed to a storm shelter mandate for new homes.

"Any time a governmental entity says 'thou shalt' and tries to take an individual decision into the public domain, it's going to get pushback, and you're also going to raise the cost of things," said Ernst Kiesling, executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association and a retired civil engineering professor Texas Tech University.

The science of storm shelters has advanced considerably since Dorothy failed to make it to the tornado cellar at Aunty Em's Kansas farm in the 1938 movie the Wizard of Oz. Some shelters still are dug underground in the backyard. But they are increasingly made with specially fabricated concrete and steel doors to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency specifications. And they aren't necessarily underground. In some cases, closets or bathrooms are being fortified to double as "safe rooms" that can withstand furious winds even if the rest of the house is blown away.

In 2011, Oklahoma announced the SoonerSafe incentive program, offering federally financed rebates of up to $2,000 to residents who install storm shelters. The state uses a lottery-style drawing to select rebate winners from among the thousands of online applications. Sherry Wells said she won this year. She and her husband decided to get the biggest shelter available— a vault-like box with wooden benches — at a cost of $4,800. The project was so freshly finished that the Wells hadn't even submitted their rebate forms when the tornado hit on Monday.

"If it wasn't for the hand of God and the cellar, we wouldn't be here," Wells said as she sorted through the rubble of her home Thursday.

A little over 3,000 residential storm shelters are registered in Moore, a city of about 56,000, said community development director Elizabeth Jones.

Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis wants to propose a city ordinance requiring all new homes to have storm shelters. But realistically, he said, city officials may be able to require them only in new assisted living facilities and apartment complexes because of cost concerns. Contractors will be part of the conversation with the City Council to see whether a broader requirement is possible, Lewis said.

"We want to be competitive," he said. "We don't want to price them out of the market."

Asked at a news conference if a similar mandate might be considered statewide, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin quickly shot down the suggestion.

"We aren't going to require people to do anything, but if someone chooses to do that, we certainly encourage it," Fallin said.

In the aftermath of a devastating tornado two years ago, the Joplin City Council in southwest Missouri considered several code and policy changes for homes but ultimately decided against a safe room requirement, City Manager Mark Rohr said.

"I think there's a viewpoint that that's a personal determination to make," Rohr said.

About 7,500 homes were damaged or destroyed in the May 2011 Joplin tornado. Rohr said 84 percent of homes have been rebuilt, fixed or have permits pending. While the city doesn't require safe rooms, it recommends that people "shelter in place" in the event of a storm — either in a basement, an interior closet or a safe room — rather than leaving to try to make it to one of several community storm shelters being built at Joplin schools.

Some local governments have taken a partial step toward a residential storm shelter mandate. A Wichita, Kan., ordinance adopted in 1994 requires storm shelters in existing mobile home parks with at least 20 homes and in new parks with at least 10 mobile homes. A 2000 ordinance adopted in Wichita's home of Sedgwick County also required storm shelters for all new mobile home parks with space for at least 10 homes.

Alabama is the only state that requires new schools to be built with safe rooms, according to the National Storm Shelter Association. But similar mandates could come in the future. Kiesling said a draft of the 2015 update for the International Building Code calls for new schools to have storm-safe areas. Many states and cities incorporate those building standards into their own laws.

Although several schools in the Oklahoma City area already have safe rooms, the two elementary schools that were destroyed by Monday's tornado did not have them. Seven children died in one of those schools.

Yet the question remains. If the government were to mandate safe rooms in schools or homes, would people actually use them?

With a tornado visibly approaching their Moore home, 20-year-old Maritza Marin fled by vehicle with her mother, father and a younger sister. They drove several blocks away, then returned to see a neighbor's red car dumped onto what once was her bedroom. Marin said their home had no storm shelter. She likes the mayor's proposed requirement, but she's not sure she would use a storm shelter if she again found herself facing a tornado.

"I think it would be good to have a shelter, but if you can run away from one, it's better," Marin said.

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'Unusual condition' seen before Conn. train wreck

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The engineer of the commuter train that derailed last week in Connecticut observed an "unusual condition" on the track before the wreck, federal officials said Friday without explaining what the condition was, though they did say repair work was done last month in the area of the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board has previously ruled out foul play but it has not yet determined a cause of the May 17 crash that injured more than 70 people and disrupted service for days on the railroad used by tens of thousands of commuters north of New York City.

But the NTSB did say Friday that a joint bar, used to hold two sections of rail together, had been cracked and repaired last month and that rail sections in the area of the derailment have been shipped to Washington for further examination. Adam Lisberg, an Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman, said the joint bar was replaced.

Metro-North railroad is conducting an inspection and inventory of all the joint bars on its main tracks, NTSB said.

The eastbound train from New York City derailed during evening rush hour in Bridgeport, came to a stop and was struck about 20 seconds later by a westbound train, NTSB said. The westbound engineer applied the emergency brakes before striking the eastbound train, NTSB said.

The eastbound engineer told investigators he saw an unusual condition on the track as he approached the area, NTSB said.

It's not clear what caused the crash but repair work done in the area weeks before it may have weakened the track, George Cahill, an attorney representing six Metro-North workers injured in the crash, said this week. He also expressed concern that wheels on the new trains were too tight.

NTSB said it has completed the on-scene phase of the investigation and will now analyze the information gathered. Investigators have collected photos, video and other evidence, completed mechanical inspections of the rail cars, the track and signal system, interviewed employees, witnesses and first responders and documented the accident site, NTSB said.

Attorneys for a 65-year-old woman injured in the crash said they have filed a lawsuit alleging negligence by Metro-North.

Attorney Joel Faxon said the suit was filed Friday in federal court in Bridgeport to gain access to witnesses and allow victims and their families to be involved in the investigation. He said it was the first federal lawsuit stemming from crash.

He said his client, Elizabeth Sorensen of Bridgeport, remains in critical condition with a brain injury and multiple bone fractures.