Boston bombing suspect awake, answering questions

Last Updated 8:49 a.m. ET

BOSTON The surviving Boston bombing suspect is conscious and responding in writing to authorities, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. Officials did not reveal further details on what they are asking, or what his responses are.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was in serious condition Sunday, two days after being pulled bloody and wounded from a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard. The capture came at the end of a tense day-long manhunt that began with his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, dying in a gun battle with police.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remains hospitalized under heavy guard. He is being treated at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where 11 victims of the bombing were still hospitalized.

Officials say Tsarnaev is recuperating from a bullet wound in the leg and in the neck, rendering him unable to speak. They could not comment on whether or not the neck wound was self-inflicted.

Federal prosecutors are working on bringing charges but there was no immediate word on when Tsarnaev might be charged and what those charges would be. The twin bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180.

U.S. officials said the elite interrogation team would question Tsarnaev, a Massachusetts college student, without reading him his Miranda rights, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.

Senior correspondent John Miller told "CBS This Morning" that investigators are focused at the moment on the "public safety exceptions" -- questioning the suspect on matters of immediate threats.

"It's basically, 'Where did you make the bombs? Are there any more explosives out there? Any more cells? Are there any more people?'" said Miller.

"And while I'm told he's being cooperative, I'm also getting the sense -- and I want to be careful of too many specifics here -- that he's not saying there's a whole second wave of plots or plotters here. Still there are places where there may be explosives and other things to find, it sounds like."

But Miller stressed that is it is still early in the investigation, and the process of questioning Tsarnaev -- who can only respond by writing - is slow. "Things could develop or change," Miller said.

American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule.

The federal public defender's office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged. Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, said he should have a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."

In a statement, several GOP lawmakers - Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. - called the decision not to immediately Mirandize Tsarnaev "sound and in our national security interests." However, they expressed concern that "exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda could very well be a national security mistake. It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect."

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Investigators believe that two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings were likely planning other attacks, based on the cache of weapons uncovered, the city's police commissioner, Ed Davis, told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. He said authorities found an arsenal of homemade explosives after Friday's gun battle between police and the two suspects.

"We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene -- the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had -- that they were going to attack other individuals," Davis said. "That's my belief at this point."

The scene of the gun battle was loaded with unexploded bombs, and authorities had to alert arriving officers to them and clear the scene, Davis said. One improvised explosive device was found in the Mercedes which the brothers are accused of carjacking, he said.

"This was as dangerous as it gets in urban policing," Davis said.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Sunday that surveillance video from Monday's Boston Marathon attack shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping his backpack and calmly walking away from it before the bomb inside it exploded.

Patrick also said that he has no idea what motivated the suspects. Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," Patrick said it's hard to imagine why someone would deliberately harm "innocent men, women and children in the way that these two fellows did."

Patrick also said law enforcers believe the immediate threat ended when police killed one suspect and captured the other.

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers - ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area - had help from others. The president urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.

On Sunday, family and friends attended a wake at a funeral home in Medford, Massachusetts, for Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant worker, who was one one of the three people killed in the marathon bombing. A private funeral is scheduled for Monday.

Eight-year-old Martin Richard of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood and 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a Boston University graduate student from China, also died in the attacks. BU is holding a memorial service for Lu on Monday.

On Sunday, a Boston synagogue opened its doors to worshipers from Trinity Church, which sits in the shadow of the Marathon finish line and remains closed. An interfaith service will also be held Sunday near the finish line where people set up a make-shift memorial as police cleared away debris from the bombing. The Rev. Nancy Taylor of the Old South Church said worshipers will be showing solidarity with the bombing victims.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley was offering a Mass to pray for those killed and injured in the attack and manhunt for the suspects. The service will also honor police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and doctors who saved lives.

The all-day manhunt Friday brought the Boston area to a near standstill and put people on edge across the metropolitan area.

The break came around nightfall when a homeowner in Watertown saw blood on his boat, pulled back the tarp and saw a bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding inside, police said. After an exchange of gunfire, he was seized and taken away in an ambulance.

Raucous celebrations erupted in and around Boston, with chants of "USA! USA!" Residents flooded the streets in relief four days after the two pressure-cooker bombs packed with nails and other shrapnel went off.

During the long night of violence leading up to the capture, the Tsarnaev brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, severely wounded another lawman and took part in a furious shootout and car chase in which they hurled homemade explosives at police, authorities said.

Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said one of the explosives was the same type used during Monday's Boston Marathon attack, and authorities later recovered a pressure cooker lid that had embedded in a car down the street. He said the suspects also tossed two grenades before Tamerlan Tsarnaev ran out of ammunition and police tackled him.

But while handcuffing him, officers had to dive out of the way as Dzhokhar drove the carjacked Mercedes at them, Deveau said. The sport utility vehicle dragged Tamerlan's body down the block, he said. Police initially tracked the escaped suspect by a blood trail he left behind a house after he abandoned the Mercedes, negotiating his surrender hours later.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is tracing the weapons to try to determine how they were obtained by the suspects.

Chechnya, where the Tsarnaev family has roots, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.

Investigators have not offered a motive for the Boston attack. But in interviews with officials and those who knew the Tsarnaevs, a picture has emerged of the older one as someone embittered toward the U.S., increasingly vehement in his Muslim faith and influential over his younger brother.

The Russian FSB intelligence service told the FBI in 2011 about information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam, two law enforcement officials said Saturday.

According to an FBI news release, a foreign government said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev appeared to be a strong believer and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to a region in Russia to join unspecified underground groups.

The FBI did not name the foreign government, but the two officials said it was Russia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly.

The FBI said that in response, its agents interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and relatives, and did not find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity. The bureau said it looked into such things as his telephone and online activity, his travels and his associations with others.

An uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers said he had a falling-out with Tamerlan over the man's increased commitment to Islam.

Ruslan Tsarni from Maryland said Tamerlan told him in a 2009 phone conversation that he had chosen "God's business" over work or school. Tsarni said he then contacted a family friend who told him Tsarnaev had been influenced by a recent convert to Islam.

Tsarni said his relationship with his nephew basically ended after that call.

As for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, "he's been absolutely wasted by his older brother. I mean, he used him. He used him for whatever he's done," Tsarni said.

Albrecht Ammon, a downstairs-apartment neighbor of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Cambridge, said in an interview that the older brother had strong political views about the United States. Ammon quoted Tsarnaev as saying that the U.S. uses the Bible as "an excuse for invading other countries."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said. He was married with a young daughter.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The college was evacuated Friday, but officials said residence and dining halls will reopen Sunday.