Peter Bergen
Peter Lampert Bergen is an American journalist, documentary producer, historian, and author, best known for his work on national security and counterterrorism. He has written or edited ten books—three of which were New York Times bestsellers, and four were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by the Washington Post. The books have been translated into 25 languages. He has served as a producer of multiple Emmy-nominated documentaries. Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at the think tank New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen produced the first televised interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, in which bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience.
Background
Peter Lampert Bergen was born in Minneapolis and grew up in London, the son of Donald Thomas Bergen and Sarah Elizabeth Bergen. Her grandfather, Leonard Lampert, founded the Lampert Lumber Company. Peter Bergen was raised in his family's Roman Catholic faith. 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 in 1984.Career
Bergen is vice president for global studies and fellows at New America, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. and CNN's national security analyst.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 Future Security Initiative, and the director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence. He is a research fellow at Fordham University's Center on National Security.
He hosted the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen from early 2023 to early 2025. He has held teaching positions at Harvard Kennedy School 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, the leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified 18 times before US 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 Experts Group. Bergen is the chairman of the board of the Global Special Operations Foundation, a non-profit advocating for the interests of special operations forces. He is on the Advisory Council of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for Americans held hostage or "wrongfully detained" by states.
He was a fellow at New York University's Center on Law & Security between 2003 and 2011, was a contributing editor at The New Republic for many years, and editor of the South Asia Channel and South Asia Daily, online publications of Foreign Policy magazine from 2009 to 2016. He was the founding editor of the Coronavirus Daily Brief which operated during the pandemic.
Books
Holy War, Inc., a New York Times bestseller, and 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 Emmy Awards in 2001 and 2006.Holy War Inc. was translated into 17 languages. Jeff Stein in the Washington Post called Holy War "equal parts journalism, history, and whimsical travelogue." Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times states that Bergen "does a succinct job of pulling together a wealth of information into a coherent... narrative... that impresses upon the reader the crucial role that the Afghan-Soviet conflict played in radicalizing many Islamic militants... and replacing the notion of Arab nationalism with that of a larger Islamist movement." Bruce Hoffman wrote in The Atlantic that Holy War gives a "unique perspective... into bin Laden's mindset and behavior." For instance, he references bin Laden's education and work experience in his family's construction business that later informed his decisions on how to "transform Al Qaeda... into the world's pre-eminent terrorist organization."
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.
His third book, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda, a New York Times bestseller, gave an overview of the war on terror and 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.
Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times wrote that The Longest War is an "essential book" that provides a "succinct and compelling overview" of the war on terror. Thomas E. Ricks, also writing for the New York Times, declares that Bergen "covers it all," adding, "For years, I tried to read every new novel about how 9/11 affected our lives. None of the novels were as effective or moving as The Longest War, which is a history of our time."
Bergen's 2012 New York Times bestseller was 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. It was the 2012 Sunday Times Current Affairs Book of the Year. The book was awarded the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan Award for best non-fiction book of 2012 on international affairs. The book was the basis of the HBO documentary film, Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival winning the Grand Jury Prize Sundance 2013 and won the Emmy award for Outstanding Documentary in 2013. Bergen was the Executive Producer of the film. He was awarded the Stephen Ambrose History Award in 2014.
Manhunt was translated into 10 languages. Dina Temple-Raston in the Washington Post wrote Manhunt is "a real-life thriller that will be a must-read for years to come" and "crackles with insider details." Similarly, Duncan Gardham at The Telegraph called it a "rattling and thoroughly researched read on the last days of the world's most notorious terrorist." Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times favored the "fascinating... descriptions of internal debates within the Obama administration" in Manhunt, as well as the accounts of the work done by intelligence analysts to develop a method of tracking bin Laden down.
Bergen co-edited, with Katherine Tiedemann, Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion, a collection of essays about the Taliban 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.
File:2014-Oct-27 New America Peter Bergen John Nagl Daniel Green.jpg|thumb|280px|alt=Author John Nagle, in the midst of a point, gesturing with an open palm; flanked by Peter Bergen to the left and Daniel Greene to the right; in front of back-lit frosted blue glass panels; the backs of the heads of a few audience members are visible in the foreground|Left to right, Peter Bergen, John Nagl and Daniel R. Green, discussing Nagl's new book, Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice, at the New America Foundation, 27 October 2014In 2016, Bergen published United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists. It was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2016 by the Washington Post. HBO adapted the book for the documentary film, Homegrown: The Counterterror Dilemma.
In the New York Times, former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano wrote that "Bergen's book is the best one-volume treatment available on the current state of jihad in America." Michiko Kakutani, also in the Times, wrote that Bergen's "profiles of jihadists... leave the reader with a harrowing appreciation of the banality of evil" and "Mr. Bergen's detailed accounts of terror plots make for chilling reading." Zach Dorfman in the Los Angeles Times assessed that "Bergen takes a generally skeptical view of the growth of the post-9/11 national security state and of the fear-mongering about Islam that has increasingly transfixed the darker crannies of American politics."
Bergen's Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos was published in 2019. The Washington Post described it as "the best single account of Trump's foreign policy to date." In a 2019 interview at Fordham Law School, Bergen discussed the themes of Trump and His Generals. He examined the influence of senior military officers such as General James Mattis, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, and General John Kelly, and highlighted tensions between the generals and the president over strategic decisions, including the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Syria. He also addressed how the administration’s stance on NATO was shaped by Trump’s longstanding views about burden-sharing among allies and a broader desire to reduce American military commitments overseas.
Bergen published The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden in 2021. Named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and Kirkus Reviews, in the New York Times, Louise Richardson, vice chancellor of Oxford University, wrote that the book is “Meticulously documented…fluidly written…replete with riveting detail…" In The Guardian, author and journalist Jason Burke said the biography offered readers "an authoritative and convincing portrait of a man whose misdeeds changed all our lives in many ways, none for the better." Burke stressed how Bergen leveraged newly disclosed documents from the Abbottabad raid to present a nuanced portrayal of Osama bin Laden's private life.