Intelligence Community Impacted On The End Of Al Qaeda's Magazine 'Inspire'

A page from the first edition of Inspire, an online recruitment tool for jihadists that touts itself as the first magazine to be issued by al Qaeda in English. Al Qaeda in Yemen published a second edition of the magazine on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010. Washington Times

As al-Qaeda Magazine Goes Quiet, Intelligence Analysts Also Lose A Valuable Resource -- Washington Post

Al-Qaeda’s glossy online magazine, Inspire, hasn’t been seen since its creators were killed in a U.S. drone strike last fall, but the terrorist group’s loyalists aren’t the only ones lamenting its demise.

U.S. intelligence analysts miss the publication, too, at least to the extent that it provided a window into the thinking of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen-based group is known.

“It was something that helped us gain insight into the group,” said a U.S. defense official involved in tracking AQAP, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The publication’s apparent demise is “an intelligence loss for us,” the official said.

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My Comment: If our intelligence community is dependent on what a slick web journal/magazine published on Al Qaeda .... we are in more trouble than what I thought.