Jihadi Magazine Inspire, Reaches Niche Market in the West

Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation, talks with anchor Marco Werman about Inspire, an online magazine that published a recipe for a pressure cooker bomb like the ones used at the Boston Marathon bombings.

“Inspire was a product designed for a very specific purpose which was reaching out to folks in the West and trying to inspire them to take violent action in the West on their own. It was a niche brand for a niche market, with a very distinct purpose,” Fishman says.

Fishman discussed Inspire’s contents, but not without some trepidation.

“We face a real moral dilemma, I think, as scholars that study this and as a media, because we have an obligation to tell the truth about the kinds of material that is out there, and that people are attracted to and potentially getting information from,” Fishman says. “But at the same time, there’s a real risk that people will become aware of things by conversations like the one we’re having.”