Accused Marathon Bomber Influenced by Infowars

Accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a fan of Infowars, the conspiracy-theory website operated by Texas radio host Alex Jones, the AP reports.

Around the time that he was becoming "an ardent reader" of the al Qaeda magazine Inspire and other Jihadist literature, "Tamerlan took an interest in Infowars, a conspiracy theory website," write Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker and Matt Apuzzo.

Only a short time later, Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar allegedly detonated two explosives at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 150. Immediately after the bombing, Jones described it as a "false flag" attack.

Today Jones quickly attempted to distance himself from the alleged bomber, telling Buzzfeed "My show is anti-terrorism and my show exposes that most of the events we've seen have been provocateured."

Infowars, alongside its sister site PrisonPlanet, has theorized that, among other things, the 9/11 attack was an "inside job," victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary are "crisis actors," the movie The Dark Knight Rises predicted or warned of the subsequent shooting at a Colorado movie theater showing the film, tap water is drugged with anti-depressants, that bankers are hoarding gold, the Department of Homeland Security is purchasing an alarming amount of ammo for unspecified but nefarious reasons, the U.S. government is working in concert with Monsanto to control the world's food supply and manipulate citizens' genes, vaccines cause autism, and Osama bin Laden was not killed in 2011.

Investigators have not publicly stated that Tamerlan was a devoted reader of the Drudge Report, which frequently links to Infowars.

[AP]