MAKHACHKALA, Russia—When Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived here in the capital of the Dagestan region to get in touch with his roots early last year, one of his first stops was a mosque known for its adherence to the fundamentalist Salafist strain of Islam. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close NewsTeam Islamist Makhmud Nidal, second from right above, met with Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev several times in the Dagestan region early last year, a Russian official says, before dying in a shootout with security forces on the outskirts of Makhachkala in May 2012. 
 
 But Mr. Tsarnaev, who a year later allegedly planted the Boston Marathon bombs with his brother Dzhokhar and died after a shootout with police, got a cool reception from some of the Islamists he hoped to bond with. He greased his hair with olive oil and wore dark eye makeup, apparently in an effort to affect contemporary jihadist fashion, according to Mohamad Magomedov, who struck up a friendship with him at the mosque. That look isn't popular in more-traditional Dagestan. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close The Lowell Sun/Associated Press Tamerlan Tsarnaev 
 
 While Mr. Tsarnaev did find a circle of friends, some congregants at the Salafist mosque dismissed him as strange. Others said they feared his brashness would attract even more attention to them from Russian authorities. 
 
 "There are some people who take things too far," said one congregant. "Everyone is being watched." 
 
 For several weeks, investigators in the U.S. have been looking into whether Mr. Tsarnaev's six-month sojourn in Dagestan last year further radicalized his views, connected him to known jihadists or provided him with the explosives expertise to plant the bombs that on April 15 killed three people near the finish line of the Boston Marathon and injured more than 200. 
 
 But Mr. Tsarnaev's friends and family in the U.S. say his religiosity was already fully formed by the time he took his trip to Dagestan in February 2012. And people who spent time with him during the visit, as well as Russian security officials who watched the mosque closely, say that if the brash Mr. Tsarnaev went to Dagestan seeking to earn his jihadist stripes, he didn't get very far. 
 
 "He attracted a lot of attention because it was clear he was from somewhere else, and he didn't try to hide that," said Mr. Magomedov. "His attitude was, 'that's the way I am—so what?' " 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev's father, Anzor, said the style issues nearly boiled over into a fist fight after some congregants accused Tamerlan of playing dress-up. 
 
 In Dagestan, the tensions between Islamist insurgents and the government are very real. Mr. Tsarnaev's visit coincided with a push against rebels by Russian security forces, who during the past year and a half wiped out several fighter groups they blamed for several terrorist attacks across the Caucasus region and in Russia. 
 
 The conservative mosque Mr. Tsarnaev attended on Kotrova Street was founded by Nadirshakh Khachilaev, who aided the current head of al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, during a 1997 trip to Dagestan. 
 
 Mr. Khachilaev himself was shot to death outside his home in 2003, a killing that Islamists say was ordered by security forces, but that Russian authorities say is unsolved. The mosque, to this day named after him as the al-Nadiria mosque, has grown to become a meeting place for Salafists and, security officials say, extreme Islamists whose comings and goings are closely monitored. 
 
 Penetrating the world of Islamist insurgents in Dagestan can be difficult, since its members are highly suspicious of infiltrators. The Islamist underground in Russia's Caucasus is focused on creating an independent Islamic state and doesn't share the global ambitions of some international terror groups. Its leaders, who say their targets are Russian, have publicly disassociated themselves from the Boston attack. 
 
 In Makhachkala, Mr. Tsarnaev met several times with Makhmud Nidal, a member of a rebel group that operated in the area, an official close to the situation said. Mr. Nidal was on the run from Russian police, but Mr. Tsarnaev managed to meet with him secretly at an apartment in the Separatorny neighborhood of Makhachkala, said an official who saw the security-service dossier on Mr. Nidal. 
 
 Lawmakers said Thursday the Boston Marathon bombings revealed failures in the nation's counterterrorism agencies, including intelligence-collecting from Russian authorities and managing U.S. databases of potential terrorists. Devlin Barrett reports. Photo: AP. 
 
 The dossier reported the date, address and apartment number where the meeting took place, and that an informant reported that the two discussed ways that Mr. Tsarnaev might be able to help his rebel group. The dossier indicated that Mr. Tsarnaev offered to act as a financial go-between for an organization based in the U.S., the official said. 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev's conversations with Mr. Nidal appear to have been overtaken by events, officials said. In May 2012, Russian security services caught up with Mr. Nidal, killing him in a shootout at an apartment on the outskirts of Makhachkala. 
 
 Russian officials said Mr. Tsarnaev also was in touch, most likely over the Internet, with another member of the underground. William Plotnikov, a Russian-born Canadian citizen who had converted to Islam and came to Dagestan in 2010, was a boxer, like Mr. Tsarnaev. Mr. Plotnikov was detained and interrogated by Russian security forces in late 2010, but released after a few days and moved to a remote village. 
 
 Officials say no evidence has surfaced that he met Mr. Tsarnaev in Dagestan last year. In July 2012, Mr. Plotnikov was killed along with a group of other suspected militants in the forest outside his village in a firefight with Russian security forces. 
 
 Vitaly Plotnikov, Mr. Plotnikov's father, said in an interview this week that Canadian investigators recently told him they haven't found any association between his son and Mr. Tsarnaev. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators have searched the son's computer hard drive and told him "we don't have any evidence that they were in touch," he said. 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev's other contacts in Dagestan were avowedly less radical. He was regularly in touch with his third cousin, Magomed Kartashov, who is leader of an Islamist organization, Union of the Just, and spent several days with him in the north Dagestan city of Kizlyar last year, said Mr. Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat. 
 
 Mr. Kartashov's group is legal and publicly renounces violence. Still, Russian security services are questioning him about his relationship with Mr. Tsarnaev, said a person close to Mr. Kartashov, who was arrested last week by police in Kizlyar for leading what they said was an illegal rally at a wedding. He is being held on charges of fighting with police, the person said. 
 
 "I was very happy he was spending time with him," said Mr. Tsarnaev's mother. "Kartashov is a good man. He is against war, against killing, and that's what his organization is about." 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev's visit to Dagestan ended abruptly last summer. Just two days after the raid that killed Mr. Plotnikov, he departed Russia, leaving behind a new Russian passport; acquiring the passport was one reason he had made the trip, his parents said. 
 
 Mr. Magomedov, the friend from the mosque, said the bombing in Boston has puzzled people in Dagestan. "People here can't understand the logic of it," he said. "He was not radicalized here, there was no big change in his mentality," he said. "He left here the same as he came." 
 
 Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com 
 
 Corrections & Amplifications 
 
 In July 2012, Mr. Plotnikov was killed along with a group of other suspected militants in the forest outside his village in a firefight with Russian security forces. A previous version of this article said he was killed in June 2012. 
 
 A version of this article appeared May 10, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Islamists Rebuffed Bombing Suspect. ||||| WASHINGTON -- Five days before two bombs tore through crowds at the Boston Marathon, an intelligence report identified the finish line of the race as an "area of increased vulnerability" and warned Boston police that extremists may use "small scale bombings" to attack spectators and runners at the event. 
 
 The 18-page report was written by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, a command center funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security that helps disseminate intelligence information to local police and first responders. 
 
 The "joint special event assessment" is dated April 10. It notes that at the time there was "no credible, specific information indicating an imminent threat" to the race. 
 
 FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack 
 
 "The FBI has not identified any specific lone offender or extremist group who pose a threat to the Boston marathon," the report reads. 
 
 Two officials read parts of the report to a Washington Bureau reporter. 
 
 Since the blasts, the FBI has acknowledged that agents had interviewed one of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in 2011 but determined that he did not pose a threat. Customs agents were aware that Tsarnaev had traveled to Russia in 2012, but decided that he didn't require additional questioning when he returned to the U.S. later that year. 
 
 What was known to the FBI and other agencies before the Boston bombings was being examined by the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday in the first of a series of hearings investigating the attacks. 
 
 Top police officials in Boston testified to the panel that the FBI never shared with local law enforcement agencies that Tsarnaev had visited Dagestan and that FBI and Russian officials were concerned he and possibly his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, might become radicalized extremists. 
 
 PHOTOS: Grief, comfort at Boston memorials 
 
 “We would have liked to have known,” said Edward F. Davis III, commissioner of the Boston Police Department. But, he said, “we were not aware of the two brothers, we were not aware of their activities.” 
 
 In fact, Davis testified, it was more than three days after the April 15 bombing, after Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhokhar was on the run, before he learned about the Tsarnaevs. 
 
 “We didn’t look at the brothers until after the shootout,” he said. 
 
 But he said he was uncertain what his local intelligence officers would have made of Tamerlan’s 2011 trip to Dagestan, noting that the FBI interviewed him but found nothing suspicious and that Russian officials did not tell the FBI why they were interested in him. 
 
 “We would certainly have looked at the information,” Davis said. “We would certainly have talked to the individual.” But, he added, “I can’t say I would have come to a different conclusion” than the FBI. 
 
 PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon 
 
 Kurt N. Schwartz, Massachusetts undersecretary for homeland security, added that “at no time were we told about the brothers.” 
 
 Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, at one time chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said that if the FBI had shared the information on the Tsarnaevs, it “could have prevented all this from happening,” referring to the three killed and 260 injured at the marathon. 
 
 Local communities, he said, “are going to be your first line of defense. So I’d say the fact that neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security notified the local members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force is really a serious and aggravating omission. 
 
 “Nobody bats 1,000 percent, it's true,” he said. “How do you explain it? People are imperfect.” 
 
 House Homeland Security Committee member Peter King (R-N.Y.) agreed, recalling that FBI officials also never told the New York Police Department that they were aware of an unfolding plot to bomb Times Square before an arrest was made there. 
 
 “The failure to share information is absolutely indefensible,” King said. 
 
 PHOTOS: Bombings splashed across nation's front pages 
 
 [Updated, 10:49 a.m. PDT May 9: Police Commissioner Davis said his department did not realize that the bombers were Russian immigrants until early on the morning of April 19, after Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was “processed” by the FBI. At that point, he said, federal agents advised local officials about their earlier investigation of the older brother on behalf of their Russian counterparts. 
 
 “All this has to be reviewed,” Davis said about why his department was kept in the dark about the Tsarnaev brothers. “All that has to be looked at very closely, and I guess in hindsight if you can connect all the dots during that first interview, there might have been an open case and we would all have known about it.” 
 
 He added, “clearly we can and must do more” in having various law enforcement agencies work together – a major shortcoming that was attributed to how the Sept. 11 hijackers escaped detection in this country. 
 
 TRANSCRIPT: Dzhokar’s bedside hearing 
 
 Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said, “my fear is that the Boston bombers succeeded because our system failed. We must and can do better.” 
 
 He added, “The idea that the feds have this information and it’s not shared with the state and locals defies why we created the Homeland Security Department in the first place.” 
 
 Davis said of the Tsarnaev brothers, “These criminals are reprehensible deviants, nothing more.” He added, “These terrorists tried to break us. What they accomplished was exactly the opposite.”] 
 
 PHOTOS: Boston bombing suspects 
 
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 Brian.Bennett@latimes.com 
 
 Richard.Serrano@latimes.com
– An 18-page report that emerged days before the Boston Marathon proved chillingly accurate in its warning: It said the race's finish line was an "area of increased vulnerability," noting a threat of "small-scale bombings" by extremists, the Los Angeles Times reports. But the report, from the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, which receives Department of Homeland Security funding, said there was "no credible, specific information indicating an imminent threat." Yesterday, Boston's police chief said the FBI hadn't informed police about any concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Meanwhile, Russian locals tell the New York Times that Tsarnaev was already invested in jihad when he arrived in the country for a visit. Russian investigators on Sunday questioned Tsarnaev's cousin, himself a Salafi Islamist leader, asking if he had foisted his extremist views upon Tsarnaev. The cousin said Tsarnaev was the one pushing militancy—even as the cousin argued against it, locals noted. Indeed, in Dagestan, Tsarnaev sported oiled hair and eye makeup associated with jihadists, a friend tells the Wall Street Journal. "He was not radicalized here; there was no big change in his mentality," said the friend. "He left here the same as he came."