Peter Bergen (born December 12, 1962 in Minneapolis) is an British-American print and television journalist, author, and CNN's national security analyst. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. 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 three books: Holy War, Inc., The Osama bin Laden I Know, and The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda (Jan. 2011).[1]
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Bergen was born in Minneapolis but grew up in London.[2] He attended Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire before receiving an Open Scholarship to New College, Oxford, in 1981 where he earned an M.A. in Modern History.
Bergen is the director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, DC. He is also a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security and CNN's national security analyst. In 2008 he was an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University between 2003 and 2007.
Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and has testified before several congressional committees, including the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is a member of the National Security Preparedness Group, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, and is the co-editor of the AfPak Channel, a joint publication of Foreign Policy (magazine) and the New America Foundation.[3]
He was the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club in 1994. His first book, Holy War, Inc. has been translated in 18 languages, and both it and his second book, The Osama bin Laden I Know, 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.[4] His most recent book is The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (Free Press, Jan. 2011), it is an encompassing overview of the war on terror.
Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a range of American newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, 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 The New Republic. His story on extraordinary rendition for Mother Jones was part of a package of stories nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award.[5] He has also written for newspapers and magazines around the world such as The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Prospect magazine, El Mundo (Spain), La Repubblica, The National (Abu Dhabi), and Die Welt. He has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and Discovery Television, and CNN. On May 2, 2011, shortly after it was reported that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Bergen stated on CNN, "Killing bin Laden is the end of the War on Terror. We can just sort of announce that right now."[6]
He is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile.