Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) recently distributed the 12th edition of Inspire — the professional-looking, glossy magazine with the stated intention of educating and encouraging lone-wolf jihadis in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.
This is important — and timely — for myriad reasons, not the least of which is because Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly obtained the instructions on how to make their homemade pressure-cooker bombs from the Inspire article entitled, “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
Three people — eight-year-old Martin Richard, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, and 23-year-old Lu Lingzi — were killed in the attack one year ago today. More than 250 others were injured. Were it not for the quick thinking and fast action of public safety responders and ordinary citizens who used belts, shirts, and other materials to create improvised tourniquets on the fly, the death toll could have been much worse.
Inspiration and Information
Every issue of the publication — all of which are distributed in PDF form via the Internet — contains a few common elements. The “Why did I choose al Qaeda?” segment is aimed at luring new recruits into the terrorist organization’s twisted mission, while the “Open Source Jihad” feature provides step-by-step instructions on how to conduct lone-wolf terrorist operations.
An issue last year had instructions for arson and wildfire as a terrorist weapon. Another issue had instructions for conducting small arms attacks. And, of course, the recipe for the Tsarnaev brothers’ bombs came from Inspire.
The latest issue of Inspire contains detailed guidelines on how to plan a car bomb attack using “including cooking gas cylinders” (read: propane tanks), 12-volt batteries, nuts, ball bearings, nails, and other simple household objects.
“This type of car bomb is used to kill individuals and not to destroy buildings,” the article states.
The article not only provides the bomb-making instructions — it also identifies potential targets. The author suggests that an attacker “look for a dense crowd” and places “flooded with individuals” such as “sports events in which tens of thousands attend, election campaigns, festivals, and other gatherings. The important thing is that you target people and not buildings.”
These people are as serious as a heart attack.
Another reason Inspire remains important today is the fact that it remains in operation at all — to paraphrase Mark Twain, that that news of the publication’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.
Since it was first published in 2010, a number of efforts have been made by the U.S. intelligence community — I’ll let you guess which TLAs were involved, and you’d surely be correct — to shut down Inspire. Notably, Samir Khan — at one point the editor of the publication — was reportedly killed by a “drone strike” in Yemen. The publication continued on in his absence.
A few years ago, British intelligence officers reportedly sabotaged the magazine by inserting cupcake recipes into the abovementioned article on making bombs in your mom’s kitchen. The cupcake strategy was, obviously, innefective as well.
American law enforcement officers are on the front line against terrorist attacks here at home. Contact your nearby Fusion Center so that your agency is regularly updated on open-source materials being consumed by would-be terrorists.
