A coroner says autopsies have been completed on two teenage brothers in northwest Ohio who had been reported missing this week.

But authorities aren't releasing the results yet as they continue their investigation.

The brothers were found dead Thursday near the small town of Ottawa after a third teen directed authorities to their bodies.

The 17-year-old who was taken into custody in Columbus pleaded not guilty to a grand theft auto charge Friday in juvenile court. Prosecutors say they anticipate filing additional charges.

The three teens lived in a trailer home in Ottawa with their mothers.

Putnam County Sheriff Mike Chandler says the bodies of 14-year-old Blaine Romes and his 17-year-old brother, Blake, were found in different locations.

A new study finds that many graduates feel overqualified yet underprepared to make the transition from school to work.

G-7 finance ministers are tackling bank reform and gave a green light to Japan's efforts to galvanize its economy.

Do you really turn off your smartphone, tablet or computer before takeoff and landing?

A shudder went through Wall Street after revelations that Bloomberg reporters had used private information from the company’s data terminals to break news.

The Virginia woman whose actions led to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev being buried about 30 miles north of her Richmond home said the angry backlash from local officials, some cemetery neighbors and online critics has been unpleasant, but she has no regrets.

"I can't pretend it's not difficult to be reviled and maligned," Martha Mullen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "But any time you can reach across the divide and work with people that are not like you, that's what God calls us to do."

Tsarnaev, 26, was quietly buried Thursday at a small Islamic cemetery in rural Caroline County. His body had remained at a Worcester, Mass., funeral parlor since he was killed April 19 in a gunfight with police, days after the bombings that killed three and injured more than 260 in downtown Boston. Cemeteries in Massachusetts and several other states refused to accept the remains. With costs to protect the funeral home mounting, Worcester police appealed for help finding a place to bury Tsarnaev.

Mullen said she was at a Starbucks when she heard a radio news report about the difficulty finding a burial spot for Tsarnaev.

"My first thought was Jesus said love your enemies," she said.

Then she had an epiphany.

"I thought someone ought to do something about this -- and I am someone," Mullen said.

So Mullen, a mental health counselor in private practice and a graduate of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, sent emails to various faith organizations to see what could be done. She heard back from Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, which arranged for a funeral plot at the Al-Barzakh cemetery. "It was an interfaith effort," she said.

Mullen, a member of the United Methodist Church, said she was motivated by her own faith and that she had the full support of her pastor.

"Nobody is without sin," she said. "Certainly this was a horrific act, but he's dead and what happened is between him and God. We just need to bury his body and move forward. People were making an issue and detracting from the healing that needed to take place."

There was little talk of healing among Caroline County officials and the cemetery's neighbors, however, and even some members of the area's Islamic community were incensed that they were not consulted about the burial in advance.

Imam Ammar Amonette, of the Islamic Center of Virginia, said that his group was never consulted and that Mullen had reached out to a separate group, the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond.

"The whole Muslim community here is furious. Frankly, we are furious that we were never given any information. It was all done secretly behind our backs," Amonette said, adding that it "makes no sense whatsoever" that Tsarnaev's body was buried in Virginia.

"Now everybody who's buried in that cemetery, their loved ones are going to have to go to that place," he said.

The Islamic Society of Greater Richmond didn't respond to an email seeking confirmation that it was involved in the burial.

Some readers responding to online reports about the burial and Mullen's role were supportive, others sharply critical.

Jaquese Goodall, who lives less than a quarter-mile from the cemetery, was unhappy that Tsarnaev was buried there.

"If they didn't want him in Boston, why did they bring him all the way down here against our wishes?" said Goodall, 21. "I am worried because his people may come down here to visit and there will be a whole lot of problems from him being here."

Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa was concerned, too, that the grave site could become a target for vandals and a shrine for those who sympathize with Tsarnaev.

"I know of no Virginia law enforcement agency that was notified," Lippa said. "No one in county or state government was aware of this."

Floyd Thomas, the chairman of Caroline County's board of supervisors, considered Tsarnaev's possible burial a black mark against the county where President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was cornered and killed 148 years ago.

"We feel as far as this particular burial is concerned, we feel the same way that most of the people in the county feel -- most of the way America feels. We're very angry over the bombing ... that's not something that's supposed to happen," he said.

"We don't want the county to be remembered as the resting place of the remains for someone who committed a terrible crime."

Peter Stefan, director of the Worcester funeral home where Tsarnaev's body was held, had some sympathy for the Caroline officials.

"What I really didn't care much for was the fact that the city or town wasn't notified," he said. "Once the family takes over, it's their responsibility. But there's a moral issue here."

Local officials asked Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to look into whether any laws were broken in carrying out the hushed burial. If not, there's likely nothing they can do.

"If there were, I think we'd try to undo what's been done," Thomas said.

 Lane Kneedler, an attorney who represented the Virginia Cemetery Association when the law was drafted to regulate for-profit cemeteries in the late 1990s, said private and church burial grounds are not regulated by the state and only have to meet local zoning requirements. He said that once a cemetery is approved and operating, only its owner controls who is buried there.

The cemetery where Tsarnaev is buried contains 47 graves, all covered Friday with reddish-brown mulch except for two that appeared newly dug and were unmarked. On one of the new graves lay a vase full of roses at one end and a single red rose at the other end. The other new grave was bare.

State police cruisers, county sheriff's cars and black unmarked sedans with their emergency lights concealed cruised back and forth past the cemetery, officers inside them eyeing everything for any sign of trouble as reporters on the ground and those in helicopters high overhead broadcast the gravesite's location to the world.

Meanwhile, Tsarnaev's death certificate was released Friday. It shows he was shot by police in the firefight the night of April 18, run over and dragged by a vehicle, and died a few hours later on April 19. Authorities have said his younger brother, Dzhokhar, ran over him in his getaway attempt.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later and remains in custody. The brothers are accused of setting off two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs April 15 near the marathon finish line, an attack that killed three people and injured more than 260. The brothers are also suspected in the shooting death days later of an MIT police officer.

Their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., took responsibility for the body after Tamerlan's wife, Katherine Russell, said she wanted it released to her in-laws. He said his nephew was buried in the Doswell cemetery with the help of a faith coalition.

"The body's buried," he said. "That's it."

Steady drips of information about a horrific night in Libya are fueling Republican arguments and ads designed to fire up the conservative base and undercut the Democrats' early favorite for president in 2016.

Strategists in both parties disagree on the issue's power to influence elections next year and beyond. But after eight months of trying, Democrats are still struggling to move past the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Democrats insist that an independent inquiry, the dismissal of several State Department officials, and nine congressional hearings leave little new to say on the matter. But Friday turned up the sort of nuggets that feed conservative activists' belief that a major scandal may be at hand.

Newly revealed communications show that senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used a few days after the Benghazi attacks. These senior officials expressed concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Libya.

The White House has contended it only made stylistic changes to the intelligence agency talking points, in which Rice suggested that spontaneous protests over an anti-Islamic video set off the deadly attack. The new details suggest a greater degree of political sensitivity and involvement by the White House and State Department.

Rice and others eventually acknowledged that the Benghazi assault was a premeditated terrorist attack. Republicans say her Sept. 16 televised remarks were just the start of administration efforts to mislead Americans about what happened.

The incident was heavily politicized from the start, occurring less than two months before President Barack Obama's re-election and while Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary of state.

The former New York senator and first lady, who infuriates many conservatives, ranks high in speculation about Democrats in the hunt for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Friday brought a fresh round of conservative broadsides against Clinton, Obama and the administration's handling of the Benghazi matter.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a possible Republican presidential contender, wrote in The Washington Times restating his view that Obama should have fired Clinton.

Campaigning later in Iowa, Paul said he thinks the attack "precludes Hillary Clinton from ever holding office."

The conservative group American Crossroads released a 90-second video asking if Clinton was "part of a cover-up." The video, like emails and letters from several other groups, asked for political donations.

Benghazi hands Republicans some political opportunities, although none without complications. It may be difficult for average voters to sift through the chronology, assess blame or even follow the logic of GOP arguments.

For instance, claims that Clinton and others ignored calls for greater diplomatic security in Libya might be linked to the four American deaths.

But accusations about the post-attack talking points, which sometimes seem to dominate the current debate, have nothing to do with possibly preventing the deaths, thus robbing them of that moral heft.

Democrats note that an independent inquiry found that the State Department badly mishandled security needs in Libya. But it blamed officials no higher than the assistant secretary of state level.

Republican strategist Kyle Downey said Benghazi has exposed a trove of Democratic vulnerabilities, which might grow as inquiries continue.

He said Republicans should use the findings to challenge the competence, truthfulness and judgment of Clinton, Obama and other administration officials.

Republicans, Downey said, should let the politics play out in terms of which charges gain the most traction.

Some strategists say the Benghazi narrative may prove more valuable for congressional Republicans in next year's elections than in 2016. House Republicans, in particular, can seize on Benghazi to motivate their base and donors, and to fend off possible primary challenges from the right.

Democrats say Republicans are exploiting the Benghazi deaths, and voters won't like it.

"Republicans are a desperate party right now, trying to do whatever they can to dirty up the president to make some gains in 2014, and to dirty up Secretary Clinton because they're terrified she'll walk into the White House," said Democratic consultant Doug Thornell. "This is an attempt to keep their base together and motivated" after Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.

Thornell predicted Benghazi will prove no more useful as a political "scandal" than did the highly criticized "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking program and the federally subsidized but ultimately doomed Solyndra energy company.

White House press secretary Jay Carney has spent hours trying to dismiss GOP accusations, including those that Obama sought to hide the fact that Islamic terrorists were behind the Benghazi attack.

"The whole effort here by Republicans to find some hidden mystery comes to nothing because the president called it an act of terror," Carney told reporters Friday.

Benghazi may remain a white-hot topic in many conservative regions and talk shows for some time.

At Wednesday's hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told relatives of the four Americans killed in Benghazi that her constituents "think about you all the time."

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Follow Charles Babington on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbabington

Law enforcement officials hunting a man suspected of killing his wife and two young daughters in Northern California have sought help from neighboring agencies.

In an ongoing search, officers from at least a dozen state and federal law enforcement agencies fanned out on Friday across an area of rugged terrain along California's remote north coast where they believe 45-year-old Shane Franklin Miller has taken cover.

Miller, considered armed and extremely dangerous, knows well the tree-lined canyons of Humboldt County where he grew up. Investigators found his pickup truck abandoned near Petrolia, about 200 miles west of the home that Miller shared with his wife, Sandy, 34, and daughters, Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 5.

"It's very strategic how we're moving through that forest area," said Lt. Dave Kent of the Shasta County Sheriff's Office.

Miller is suspected of slaying his family Tuesday night in the rural community of Shingletown, then fleeing to Humboldt County, where low fog and dense brush offer plenty of cover. His mother told The Associated Press she had no idea whether her son and daughter-in-law had suffered marital problems or why Miller might turn on his family.

Kent said detectives continue to search the home where the killings occurred for evidence and clues as to where Miller might have been headed.

In 1996, Miller was convicted of felony cultivation of marijuana in a county known worldwide for the high quality pot grown in the same hard-to-reach forests authorities now are combing.

In 2002, Miller was charged with making and selling marijuana for distribution, being a felon in possession of a firearm, possessing a machine gun and money laundering, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun and served 46 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, court records show.

Year after year, the clock ticked by and the calendar marched forward, carrying the three women further from the real world and pulling them deeper into an isolated nightmare.

Now, for the women freed from captivity inside a Cleveland house, the ordeal is not over. Next comes recovery — from sexual abuse and their sudden, jarring reentry into a world much different from the one they were snatched from a decade ago.

Therapists say that with extensive treatment and support, healing is likely for the women, who were 14, 16 and 21 when they were abducted. But it is often a long and difficult process.

"It's sort of like coming out of a coma," says Dr. Barbara Greenberg, a psychologist who specializes in treating abused teenagers. "It's a very isolating and bewildering experience."

In the world the women left behind, a gallon of gas cost about $1.80. Barack Obama was a state senator. Phones were barely taking pictures. Things did not "go viral." There was no YouTube, no Facebook, no iPhone.

Emerging into the future is difficult enough. The two younger Cleveland women are doing it without the benefit of crucial formative years.

"By taking away their adolescence, they weren't able to develop emotional and psychological and social skills," says Duane Bowers, who counsels traumatized families through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"They're 10 years behind in these skills. Those need to be caught up before they can work on reintegrating into society," he says.

That society can be terrifying. As freed captive Georgina DeJesus arrived home from the hospital, watched by a media horde, she hid herself beneath a hooded sweatshirt. The freed Amanda Berry slipped into her home without being seen.

"They weren't hiding from the press, from the cameras," Bowers says. "They were hiding from the freedom, from the expansiveness."

In the house owned by Ariel Castro, who is charged with kidnapping and raping the women, claustrophobic control ruled. Police say Castro kept them chained in a basement and locked in upstairs rooms, that he fathered a child with one of them, and that he starved and beat his captives into multiple miscarriages.

In all those years, they only set foot outside of the house twice — and then only as far as the garage.

"Something as simple as walking into a Target is going to be a major problem for them," Bowers says.

Jessica Donohue-Dioh, who works with survivors of human trafficking as a social work instructor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, says the freedom to make decisions can be one of the hardest parts of recovery.

"'How should I respond? What do they really want from me?'" Donohue-Dioh says, describing a typical reaction. "They may feel they may not have a choice in giving the right answer."

That has been a challenge for Jaycee Dugard, who is now an advocate for trauma victims after surviving 18 years in captivity — "learning how to speak up, how to say what I want instead of finding out what everybody else wants," Dugard told ABC News.

Like Berry, Dugard was impregnated by her captor and is now raising the two children. She still feels anger about her ordeal.

"But then on the other hand, I have two beautiful daughters that I can never be sorry about," Dugard says.

Another step toward normalcy for the three women will be accepting something that seems obvious to the rest of the world: They have no reason to feel guilty.

"First of all, I'd make sure these young women know that nothing that happened to them is their fault," Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at age 14 and held in sexual captivity for nine months, told People magazine.

Donohue-Dioh says that even for people victimized by monstrous criminals, guilt is a common reaction. The Cleveland women told police they were snatched after accepting rides from Castro.

"They need to recognize that what happened as a result of that choice is not the rightful or due punishment. That's really difficult sometimes," Donohue-Dioh says.

Family support will be crucial, the therapists say. But what does family mean when one member has spent a decade trapped with strangers?

"The family has to be ready to include a stranger into its sphere," Bowers says. "Because if they try to reintegrate the 14-year-old girl who went missing, that's not going to work. That 14-year-old girl doesn't exist anymore. They have to accept this stranger as someone they don't know."

Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped in Austria at age 10 and spent eight years in captivity, has said that her 2006 reunion with her family was both euphoric and awkward.

"I had lived for too long in a nightmare, the psychological prison was still there and stood between me and my family," Kampusch wrote in "3096 Days," her account of the ordeal.

Kampusch, now 25, said in a German television interview that she was struggling to form normal relationships, partly because many people seem to shy away from her.

"What a lot of these people say is, what's more important than what happened is how people react," says Greenberg, the psychologist.

The world has reacted to the Cleveland women with an outpouring of sympathy and support. This reaction will live on, amplified by the technologies that rose while the women were locked away.

Yet these women are more than the sum of their Wikipedia pages. Dugard, Smart and other survivors often speak of not being defined by their tragedies — another challenge for the Cleveland survivors.

"A classmate will hear their name, or a co-worker, and will put them in this box: This is who you are and what happened to you," Donohue-Dioh says. "Our job as society is to move beyond what they are and what they've experienced."

"This isn't who they are," Dugard told People. "It is only what happened to them."

Still, for the three Cleveland women, their journey forward will always include that horrifying lost decade.

"We can't escape our past," Donohue-Dioh says, "so how are we able to manage how much it influences our present and our future?"

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AP Researcher Judith Ausuebel and AP Writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Jesse Washington on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessewashington

Nursing women at a major Army headquarters in South Carolina don't have to hide in a rest room if they want to breast-feed their babies or express milk for their young.

Women soldiers and civilian employees as well as spouses visiting the headquarters are celebrating the very low-tech room. This $100 million command center now has a room set up exclusively to support nursing mothers, just as moms everywhere celebrate Mother's Day on Sunday.

Army spouse Dianna Troyer says she's excited the Army installation has allowed a lactation room, which she can use when attending family support dinners and events. Troyer thinks the room will encourage more women to nurse their infants.

DeKalb County authorities have closed a Mattie's Call for 88-year-old William McCranie. 

Texas authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Also, a West emergency volunteer who was a first-responder to the disaster has been arrested.

The two had a quarrel after a hearing about Boston.

Beyond the Air Force's embarrassing suspension of 17 nuclear missile launch officers lie two broader questions.

Do those entrusted with the world's most destructive weapons feel stuck in a dead-end career field, given the momentum toward more nuclear arms reductions? And is there a morale crisis among these officers?

This matters because the missiles — 450 of them standing in below-ground silos, ready for launch at a moment's notice — form a critical part of America's nuclear defenses. There is little room for error. Although none has ever been fired in anger, the risk of accidental launch or unauthorized intrusion is real.

In a rare look inside the secretive world of nuclear missiles, The Associated Press reported this past week that the deputy commander of operations for the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., complained to his officers about "rot" within their ranks.

In a confidential email obtained by the AP, Lt. Col. Jay Folds wrote of 17 launch officers, 10 percent of his force, being removed from duty for what he likened to incompetence. They are being given remedial training, with the goal of being back on duty within two months.

"If you have this many officers who failed, then how do you explain that and who should be held accountable for their failure?" Robert Gates, a former defense secretary, said Friday. "I think those questions clearly need to be answered."

When faced with similar questions during his Pentagon tenure, Gates fired the top two Air Force leaders in 2008. That followed a series of nuclear embarrassments, including the inadvertent transport of six nuclear-tipped missiles on a B-52 bomber, whose pilot did not know they were aboard when he flew from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

Gates said in an interview Friday before addressing graduates of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., that he was disappointed by the latest revelations but confident that Minot's weapons were not in jeopardy.

The Minot missile wing is responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 missiles, one-third of the Air Force's entire ICBM force.

Inside the missile launch capsules, so called because of their pill-like shape, two officers stand watch, authorized to turn the keys enabled by secret launch codes if the presidential order ever comes. They are 60 feet underground, electronically linked to 10 silos, each with one armed Minuteman 3.

That is a lot of responsibility for the young lieutenants and captains that the Air Force puts in these jobs. It's also an enormous challenge for their commanders to keep them on track — a challenge not always met.

In a March inspection the 91st wing was rated "marginal," the equivalent of a "D'' grade, when tested on launch skills.

Folds described a deeper problem, citing willful rule violations such as leaving open the multi-ton blast door to their launch compartment while one of the two crew members was asleep. Sleep breaks are authorized, but the open door is not, given the risk of losing control of the capsule to an unauthorized intruder.

Publicly, the Air Force insists that its missileers, as they are known within the service, are capable, trustworthy and committed. But Air Force Secretary Michael Donley also acknowledged in congressional testimony that he worries that talk of further shrinking the nation's nuclear force is having a "corrosive effect" on his troops.

Gen. Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff, said at the same congressional hearing that it's understandable that young missile officers may be demoralized by the realization that theirs is a shrinking field.

"You say, 'My goodness, there's only three (missile wings in the entire Air Force). There's no opportunity there,'" Welsh said. "That's actually not the case, but that's the view when you're" in one of those units.

Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer and now a national security scholar at Princeton University, said Friday that morale has dropped in part because the ICBM mission that originated in 1959, deterring the Soviet Union from attacking the U.S. or Europe, is less compelling than it was generations ago.

"This dead-end career is not the result of shrinking nuclear arsenals, but rather because the Cold War ended decades ago and because so few senior commander jobs exist within the missile specialty," Blair said. "Most crews can't wait to transfer out of missiles into faster-track careers such as space operations, but the Air Force doesn't make it easy."

Donley came close to blaming the White House for any malaise, saying that when officers see "the national leadership" contemplating more nuclear reductions "this does have a corrosive effect on our ability to maintain focus on this mission." He said "critics or others" contribute to this when they suggest getting rid of the ICBM force entirely.

This touches on a sensitive problem for the Air Force, which is inclined to defend its nuclear turf even as President Barack Obama has made clear his view that it is time to end America's heavy reliance on nuclear weapons.

"The massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the Cold War is poorly suited to today's threats, including nuclear terrorism," he said a year ago in Seoul. He noted that in 2011 he ordered his national security team to undertake a comprehensive review of nuclear forces and policies, which was completed last year.

"We can already say with confidence that we have more nuclear weapons than we need," Obama said.

The president is expected to announce this year his intention to make new nuclear reductions, and his defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, has publicly supported the eventual elimination of all of the Air Force's ICBMs. Hagel took that stand before he became Pentagon chief in February; he has not commented on it since then.

Hagel is scheduled to meet with Donley and Welsh on Monday to press for more answers on the lapses at Minot. He received a series of staff briefings on the matter in the days following publication of the AP story, and his press secretary, George Little, said Friday that Hagel "expects not to see this kind of problem again."

Concern over deterioration in the Air Force's nuclear mission is not new.

After Gates cleaned house in 2008, an outside advisory panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger issued a scathing report. It concluded, "There has been an unambiguous, dramatic and unacceptable decline in the Air Force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission." It put the blame mainly on Air Force leaders, not young officers.

"The readiness of forces assigned the nuclear mission has seriously eroded," the report said, adding, "We must restore pride among those who are performing the Air Force nuclear mission."

Gates said Friday the onus is on Air Force leaders to avoid decay in the nuclear force, now and in the future.

"The challenge facing the Air Force leadership, no matter what the size of the nuclear arsenal, is how do you sustain the morale and the intensity of the men and women who manage the nuclear enterprise," Gates said. "That's not an easy thing, especially during terrible budget times that they're encountering right now."

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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

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Robert Burns can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Russia withheld a crucial piece of information from the U.S. before the Boston bombings, U.S. officials say, bolstering a concern that distrust between the two governments erased an opportunity to avert the disaster.

In 2011, Russia sent an alert to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted in part by text messages between his mother and a Russian relative. The texts suggested Tsarnaev was interested in joining militant groups that Russia blames for attacks in the Caucasus region, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigations.

U.S. officials call these text messages the most important in a series of missed signals between the two countries. One U.S. official characterized at least one of the text messages as generally discussing jihad, but without any specific mention of terrorism plans.

The U.S. officials say they learned about them roughly a week after the April 15 bombings. Several officials say such precise information would have led to a deeper examination of Mr. Tsarnaev, who died a few days after the bombing in a police confrontation. His brother and alleged accomplice remains in custody.

The information Russia withheld "would have allowed the bureau to open an investigation where you could track [Tsarnaev's] communications," said House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.). "To me, that's where the ball really got dropped."

Previous terror plots in the U.S. exposed lapses in data-sharing among U.S. agencies, and the official Boston review could still uncover such instances. But so far in the Boston bombing, U.S. officials say, it appears that intelligence-sharing went most awry between the U.S. and Russia.

After the Russian government made its 2011 query on Mr. Tsarnaev, the FBI three times requested more information and received none, U.S. officials say. Mr. Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. and a citizen of Kyrgyzstan.

The Kremlin said Russian security services gathered little information on Mr. Tsarnaev, but officials in the province of Dagestan said they tracked him during a six-month trip there in 2012. Russia never reported such details to the U.S. While in Dagestan, Mr. Tsarnaev met with a known militant, officials in Dagestan said.

U.S. officials say they don't know why the text messages weren't provided earlier. They surmised Russia didn't provide other information because they wanted to protect their sources or because they didn't give the information much credibility themselves.

To be sure, U.S. law-enforcement officials say it isn't clear whether knowing the content of the text messages would have changed what the FBI learned in 2011 about Mr. Tsarnaev's turn toward radicalization. A senior U.S. law-enforcement official also notes that the FBI, in sharing information with the Russians, often withholds details that could reveal its own sources and methods.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he couldn't comment on specifics, but said that in 2011, "There couldn't have been detailed information on him because he didn't live on Russian territory." He declined to comment on whether Russian authorities have provided more detailed reports on Tsarnaev to the U.S. since the attack.

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Russia withheld details from U.S. officials about suspicions of Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, information that could have altered the course law enforcement followed, according to a published report.

In Iowa, he hops from one breezy ideological riff to the next, more often than not earning applause.