Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen
Bergen orating during a seminar in 2007
Born	(1962-12-12) December 12, 1962 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Journalist and author
Website	www.peterbergen.com

Peter Bergen (born December 12, 1962) is an American print and broadcast journalist, author, documentary producer, think tank executive, professor, and CNN's national security analyst. In 1997, Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience. Bergen has written or edited seven books: Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (2001), The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006), The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda (2011), Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad (2012), Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion (2013), Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy (2014), and United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists (2016). Three of the books were New York Times bestsellers and they have been translated into twenty languages.

Background

Bergen was born in Minneapolis and grew up in London. He attended Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire before receiving an Open Scholarship to New College, Oxford, in 1981, where he graduated with a degree in Modern History.

Career

Bergen is a Vice President of New America, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C.. He also serves as New America's Director of the International Security, Future of War and Fellows Programs. He is a Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University where he is the co-director of the Center on the Future of War, a research fellow at Fordham University's Center on National Security, and CNN's national security analyst. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and has testified before multiple congressional committees, including the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is a member of the Homeland Security Project, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, and also of the Aspen Homeland Security Group. He is the editor of the South Asia Channel and South Asia Daily, online publications of Foreign Policy magazine.

Holy War, Inc. (2001), a New York Times bestseller, and The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006) were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post. Documentaries based on both books were nominated for Emmys in 2002 and 2007. His third book, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (2011), a New York Times bestseller, an overview of the War on Terror, was named by the Guardian and Newsweek as one of the key books about terrorism in the past decade. The Longest War also won the Washington Institute's Gold Prize for best book about the Middle East and was named by Amazon, Kirkus and Foreign Policy as one of the best books of 2011.

Bergen's 2012 New York Times bestseller is Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad. The Washington Post named Manhunt one of the best non-fiction books of 2012, and The Guardian named it one of the key books on Islamist extremism. The book was awarded the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan Award for best non-fiction book of 2012 on international affairs. Manhunt was the basis of the HBO documentary film, "Manhunt", which won the Emmy for the best documentary of 2013. Bergen was Executive Producer of the film. Bergen was awarded the Stephen Ambrose History Award in 2014.

Bergen co-edited with Katherine Tiedemann Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion, a collection of essays about the Taliban that was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. He co-edited with Daniel Rothenberg Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. In 2016, Bergen published United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists. HBO adapted the book for the documentary film Homegrown: The Counterterror Dilemma.

Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a variety of American newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Time, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and writes a weekly column for CNN.com. His story on extraordinary rendition for Mother Jones was part of a package of stories nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award. He has also written for newspapers and magazines around the world such as The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Prospect, El Mundo (Spain), La Repubblica, The National (Abu Dhabi), and Die Welt. He has worked as a correspondent for the National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, and CNN. He co-produced with Tresha Mabile the National Geographic Channel documentary, American War Generals (2014).

Bergen was the recipient of the 2000 Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship and was the Pew Journalist in Residence at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2001 while writing Holy War, Inc. He was a fellow at New York University's Center on Law & Security between 2003 and 2011, and was a contributing editor at The New Republic for many years.

In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden's first television interview, in which he declared war against the United States for the first time to a Western audience. In 1994 he won the Overseas Press Club Edward R. Murrow award for best foreign affairs documentary for the CNN program "Kingdom of Cocaine," which was also nominated for an Emmy.

Bergen co-produced the CNN Documentary, Terror Nation, which traced the links between Afghanistan and the bombers who attacked the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993. The documentary, which was shot in Afghanistan during the civil war there and aired in 1994, concluded that the country would be the source of additional anti-Western terrorism. From 1998 to 1999, Bergen worked as a correspondent-producer for CNN. He was program editor for "CNN Impact," a co-production of CNN and TIME, from 1997 to 1998.

Previously he worked for CNN as a producer on a wide variety of international and U.S. national stories. From 1985 to 1990 he worked for ABC News in New York. In 1983, he traveled to Pakistan for the first time with two friends to make a documentary about the Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of their country. The subsequent documentary, Refugees of Faith, was shown on Channel 4 (UK).

In 2015, Seymour Hersh criticized Bergen for "view[ing] himself as the trustee of all things Bin Laden." Bergen appeared on The Daily Show on February 2, 2016 to discuss his book United States of Jihad.

Bergen is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile. They have two children.

Bibliography

• United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group. 2016.
• Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 2014. (Co-editor with Daniel Rothenberg)
• Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2013. (Co-editor with Katherine Tiedemann)
• Manhunt : The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad. New York, NY: Crown. 2012.
• The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda. New York, NY: Free Press. 2011.
• The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader. New York, NY: Free Press. 2006.
• Holy War, Inc. New York, NY: Free Press. 2001.

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

• Statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Impact of ISIS on the Homeland and Refugee Resettlement. 19 November 2015.
• Statement to a Joint Hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Rise of Radicalism: Growing Terrorist Sanctuaries and the Threat to the U.S. Homeland. 18 November 2015.
• Statement to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution. Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorism Implications of Targeted Killing. 23 April 2013.
• Statement to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. After the Withdrawal: The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 19 March 2013.
• US House Armed Services Committee on Emerging Threats. Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat Since 9/11. 25 May 2011.
• Statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security. Threats to the American Homeland: An Assessment. 24 May 2011.
• Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Other Extremist Groups in Pakistan. 15 September 2010.
• Statement to the House Homeland Security Committee. The Evolving Nature of Terrorism Nine Years after the 9/11 Attacks. 19 November 2009.
• Statement to the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. Afghanistan and Pakistan: Understanding a Complex Threat Environment. 4 March 2009.
• US House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Intelligence. Reassessing the Evolving al-Qaeda Threat to the Homeland. 4 March 2009.
• US House Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Intelligence. Reassessing the Threat: The Future of Al Qaeda and its Implications for Homeland Security. 30 July 2008.
• Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Confronting al Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan and Beyond. 30 July 2008.
• Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Assessing the Fight Against al Qaeda. 9 April 2008.
• US House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Afghanistan on the Brink: Where do we go from Here? 15 February 2007.

DOCUMENTARIES

• Homegrown: The Counterterror Dilemma, HBO, 2016. Executive Producer. Adapted from Bergen's book United States of Jihad.
• American War Generals, National Geographic, 2014. Executive Producer, Producer, Writer.
• Manhunt, HBO, 2012. Executive Producer. Won 2013 Emmy for Best Documentary. Based on Bergen's book of the same name.
• The Last Days of Osama bin Laden, National Geographic, 2011. Correspondent.
• Mission Ops: Assignment IEDs, Discovery, 2007. Correspondent.
• In the Footsteps of Osama bin Laden, CNN, 2006. Producer. Nominated for 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary. Based on Bergen's book The Osama bin Laden I Know.
• Al Qaeda 2.0, Discovery, 2003. Correspondent.
• Blinding Horizon, National Geographic, 2002. Correspondent.
• Holy War, Inc., National Geographic, 2001. Producer. Nominated for 2002 Emmy for Research. Based on Bergen's book of the same name.

See also

• Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden — HBO film based on The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad.

External links

• Official website
• Faculty page at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
• Biography page at New America
• List of publications at New America
• The Year of the Drone at New America
• Peter Bergen on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Bergen on Holy War, Inc. (December 16, 2001)