It's become extremely difficult to speak to active ISIS members now. I was speaking to them in 2015, and the last one was killed in a drone strike.

If we cover a court case involving a murderer, we would still seek out the side of that murderer, even as we realize that what people say is going to be self-serving.

One of ISIS' biggest propaganda coups was the beheadings of the aid workers and journalists. Is [Emni], the group that is exporting fighters overseas, also the one that was holding James Foley and John Cantlie and Kayla Mueller?

The systemic failure in the media in covering ISIS is that the majority of reporters are doing it in a semaphore fashion.

People who have left the group talk about how a religious inspiration took them to ISIS. It was their feeling of being marginalized as Muslims in the society where they were living, and then buying into the promise of a caliphate and of a Muslim land that is governed as in the time of the prophet. I have yet to meet anybody, or speak to anybody, who was not religiously motivated at some level.

It seems to me that a 9/11-style attack is impractical.

I've had countless jihadis shut me down straightaway and say, "I'm not allowed to speak to any woman who is not my relative." But among the few I'm able to get through to, I think that being female makes me more approachable, soft, all the stereotypes of what female means.