Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen

Peter L. Bergen (born 12 December 1962) is journalist, author, who appears as a terrorism analyst on CNN. He is known for conducting the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997.

Biography

Bergen was born in Minneapolis and raised in London. He attended the elite boarding school Ampleforth College, known as the Catholic Eton, and studied Modern History at New College, Oxford. In 1983, whilst still at Oxford, he made a documentary with two friends about the Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The documentary was aired on British television and sparked his interest in the region. After graduating in 1984, Bergen became a journalist. From 1985 to 1990 he worked for ABC News in New York. In 1993 he visited Aghanistan as part of a documentary investigating the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. Like several other journalist cum terror experts, Bergen formerly worked on the US ‘war on drugs’, before moving onto the ‘war on terror’. In 1994 he received am award for working on the CNN documentary Kingdom of Cocaine which was about the Cali cartel in Colombia. In March 1997, whilst still a producer for CNN, he conducted the first television interview with Osama bin Laden for CNN. In 1999 he resigned from CNN to write his first book Holy War Inc. The manuscript was submitted only 10 days before September 11th.

Bergen is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law & Security. He was formerly an Adjunct Professor in South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). At SAIS he was teaching a “fair number of people from the military and U.S. government” , including two Lieutenant Colonels in the Marines who were due to be posted to Fallujah and Anbar Province after completing the class. Bergen is in the process of applying for a PhD at the London School of Economic.

Publications

Books

Peter L. Bergen, Holy war, Inc.: inside the secret world of Osama bin Laden (New York, Free Press, 2001), (ISBN: 0743205022; 9780743205023)

Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I know: an oral history of al-Qaeda's leader (New York, Free Press, 2006), (ISBN: 0743278917; 9780743278911)

Affiliations

Paul Cruickshank|Sam Dealey|James Meek – researched The Osama bin Laden I know

Resources

• PeterBergen.com
• Faculty page at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
• Biography page at the New America Foundation
• Bergen: Bin Laden, CIA links hogwash

Contact information

Mailing Address

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Mailbox NR

79 JFK Street

Cambridge, MA 02138 Contact

Phone: 617-495-2812

Email: Peter_Bergen@ksg.harvard.edu