CIA ex-in-law of Bomb Brothers confirms one of my theories

Eighties-ish: Robert De Pacino, Joan Jettski,
Baby Kaboom, Uncle Mahamad Harmon

Earlier today, I recounted Mad Cow Morning News' report that the Bomb Brothers' Uncle Ruslan, the widely admired straight-talking tough guy who lives in Maryland, used to be married to the daughter of Graham E. Fuller, who describes himself on his website:

Uncle Ruslan

Graham E. Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, a former senior political scientist at RAND, and a current adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of numerous books about the Middle East, including The Future of Political Islam. He has lived and worked in the Muslim world for nearly two decades. 

Wikipedia also claims Fuller was CIA station chief in Kabul and instrumental in starting the Iran-Contra Affair.

Graham Fuller, ex-Agency and
ex-father-in-law of Uncle Ruslan

So, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was just following a family tradition when he married an upper middle class American doctor's daughter. American women can't get enough of these Tsarnaev men, can they? 

In an e-mail to The Back Channel, Fuller confirmed that his daughter had been married to Uncle Ruslan, who is a lawyer big in Central Asian oil and gas negotiations, but the pair got divorced in 1999. 

Fuller made an interesting observation about his ex-in-laws that supports my surmise of a few days ago that the pan-Islamism of the Bomb Brothers and the Bomb Mom was one logical (but not logically necessary) outcome of their propensity for inter-ethnic marriage:

According to Fuller, the suspects’ mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was not an ethnic Chechen herself, but Dagestani, and so the family spoke the couple’s common language Russian, not Chechen, at home. “People who lose their native language (identity) sometimes are more fanatic in some respects,” he observed.

I suspect that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar might have been content with Chechen nationalism, with its impressive history of violence, but their mixed ancestry and Tamerlan's American convert wife made pan-Islamism a more appropriate outlet for their aggressive energies.

By the way, Fuller's new book is a memoir. Here's his blurb for it:

Three Truths and a Lie.

This latest book by author Graham E. Fuller is the compelling tale of Luke, a Korean adoptee who comes to an American family at age one and who gradually loses his life's way - to die from crack cocaine at age 21. It is also a story of his adoptive father, a CIA officer, who offers an unsparing and vivid account of his own efforts - wise, misguided, passionate, naive, creative, ultimately unsuccessful - to save his son. 

Luke is warm, likeable, funny, quick to win friends - and a skilled deceiver, able to impress others with a seeming maturity and urbanity. But the image he works to create for himself is increasingly belied by the realities of his life. Fuller writes of his poignant quest through multiple crises to understand who Luke really was - against the black hole Luke's life created for his family around him - and the search for meaning. The fast-moving action unfolds against a broad international backdrop from Afghanistan to Latin America. 

We explore the mysteries of adoption, identity, addiction - and grace.