CBS News reporter Clarissa Ward risked her life by going undercover to report on two westerners fighting as jihadists for rebel groups in Syria.
Her reports, one of which was aired in the United States last night with the second being broadcast tonight (Wednesday), involve a former member of the Dutch army and an American "from the Midwest."
Ward spent "only hours in Syria last week" to obtain her stories, but she began working on them in June after making online contact with the Dutchman known as Yilmaz.
Ward said she felt "comfortable and secure" on her trip but CBS has not elucidated on her security arrangements. One of the executives who approved her trip was Steve Capus, who was president of NBC News when that network's correspondent, Richard Engel, was abducted in Syria in 2012.
Capus said: "It would not have been right to shut this down completely simply because of (the beheadings). If anything, it slowed us down for all the right reasons."
In her preview to her report on the CBS website, Ward reveals that the American jihadist "goes by the nom du guerre Ibn Zubayr" and "fights with Jabhat al Nusra, a rebel group that has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaida." She writes:
"Zubayr was an ordinary teenager in the US, playing high school sports, growing up on Hollywood movies and attending college. When he decided to study overseas in the Middle East [three years ago], everything changed.
He became politicised by the war in Syria, and decided he couldn't return home. Instead, he joined the jihad and has become radicalised by what he sees as a war on Islam, led by the United States."
Capus told HuffPo's writer: "I do think our audience wants to know who we are fighting against... and what their motivations are... How could they carry out such atrocities?"
