Congressmen find few Boston attack clues in Russia

The head of a U.S. congressional delegation said Sunday that its meetings in Russia showed there was "nothing specific" that could have helped prevent the Boston Marathon bombings but that the two countries need to work more closely on joint security threats.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who led the six-member delegation, described discussions with Russian parliament members and security officials as productive. Some of the meetings, he said, were made possible by American actor Steven Seagal.

Seagal, who attended the news conference in the U.S. Embassy, is well connected in Russia. He met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, and last week paid a visit to Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman who rules Chechnya, a province in southern Russia that has seen two brutal wars between federal troops and Chechen separatists since 1994.

Those wars spawned an Islamic insurgency that spread across the Caucasus region, including to neighboring Dagestan, now the center of the violence. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is accused of carrying out the Boston bombings with his younger brother, spent six months in Dagestan last year.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Russian security officials told the delegation they believed that Tsarnaev and his mother had been radicalized before moving to the United States in 2003.

His account was disputed by Rep. Steven Cohen (D-Tenn.), who said he understood the radicalization took place much later, when the family was living in Boston.