Excerpt
SUMMARY: In Boston, a memorial service honored a police officer killed during the manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, while new information was released about the bombing suspects. Judy Woodruff talks with Jerrold M. Post of the George Washington University and Jessica Stern of Harvard University about how people turn to radical violence.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Meanwhile, the scene of the Boston Marathon attack, Boylston Street, reopened to the public.
And in the investigation, the Associated Press quoted unnamed U.S. officials who said the bombs were triggered by rudimentary remote controls. Some of the gunpowder in the devices may have come from this store in New Hampshire, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev bought $400 dollars worth of fireworks in February.
WOMAN: He just wanted the biggest, loudest stuff that we have in the store, pretty much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The surviving Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar, has reportedly told investigators that the brothers learned to make the pressure cooker bombs from an online magazine called Inspire. It's published by al-Qaida's affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula and includes a section called "Open Source Jihad" that explains bomb-making techniques.
The ideology that apparently sparked the attack remained on display on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's YouTube page, links to videos from, among others, an Islamist fighter in the North Caucasus.
This afternoon, The Washington Post reported that the CIA asked to place Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name on a watch list more than a year before the attacks. It wasn't immediately clear when his name was added to the list. But The Post said it happened after the FBI closed its initial inquiry.
For more on what may have turned two young men into violent terrorists, I'm joined now by Dr. Jerrold Post, who had a 21-year career at the CIA, where he founded the Center for Analysis of Personal and Political Behavior. He's now a professor of psychiatry, political psychiatry and international affairs at George Washington University. And Jessica Stern, who is a lecturer at Harvard and former National Security Council staffer who's interviewed dozens of terrorists to try to understand what motivates them.
Significant excerpts
JERROLD POST, The George Washington University: And there are three, and this coincides with what Jessica said earlier. First, we are the victims. Secondly, they, the West, and especially United States and Great Britain, but also Israel, are the victimizers, and therefore defensive jihad is justified and required against those who are doing this to us.
And that's a powerful message. And you have people who have -- the brothers were characterized as losers by their uncle, who are not doing so well in their lives, and that he had given -- had lost his dream to be an Olympic boxer, that his parents had left and were back in Dagestan. All of these together may have helped move him into this sphere where -- from passivity and helplessness to activity to aggression.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what about the -- staying with you, Jessica Stern, just a moment, what about the ideological or the religious, Islamist strain of this? I mean, for example, are there passages from the Koran? Or is it extreme language that veers off in another direction?
JESSICA STERN, Harvard University: Well, what we have found is that it's often people who are most ignorant about Islam who can pick and choose passages, actually, from any religion that would seem to support a holy war.
And right now there's a canned ideology, a jihadi ideology that seems to be very appealing to the kind of alienated and lonely and lost young men that Jerry Post is talking about, that canned jihadi ideology right there. Some of them are converts.
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