Peter Lampert Bergen is an American journalist, documentary producer, think tank executive, professor, and author, best known for his work on foreign policy, national security and counterterrorism.
He has written or edited eleven 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 BergenFULL NAME, Cfr.org. Accessed July 30, 2023. was born in Minneapolis and grew up in London, England,Biography. PeterBergen.com. Retrieved November 19, 2014. the son of Donald Thomas Bergen and Sarah Elizabeth (née Lampert) Bergen. Her grandfather, Leonard Lampert, founded the Lampert Lumber Company.Lampert Lumber Company website, LampertLumber.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. 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. He is in the PhD program in the History & Politics department at the University of Portsmouth (UK).
Career
Bergen is vice president for global studies and fellows at New America, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C.Peter Bergen. New America and CNN's national security analyst."Anti-Government Protests in Pakistan", CNNPressRoom. Accessed July 30, 2023.
As of 2026, 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,Peter Bergen. ASU.edu. Accessed July 30, 2023. and also the director of the Center on Intelligence and National Security.
As of 2026, Bergen is the chairman of the board of the Global Special Operations Foundation, a non-profit advocating for the interests of special operations forces, which together with US Special Operations Command, organizes the annual SOF Week conference in Tampa attended by some 25,000 members of the global special operations community.Global SOF Foundation Executive Team, GlobalSOFFoundation.org. Accessed July 30, 2023. 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 is a member of the Corporation of the Perkins School in Watertown, MA, which educates deaf/blind children and young adults. According to The Washington Post in 2026, "A CNN journalist spent years reporting on al-Qaeda. Now he’s handing over a massive archive. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Peter Bergen donated more than 150,000 pages of documents to Georgetown University."
As of 2026, 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 about national security issues, including the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He has held teaching positions at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard UniversityPeter Bergen AspenInstitute.org and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.Strategic Studies Faculty. SAIS-JHU.edu. Accessed July 30, 2023. He was a research fellow at Fordham University's Center on National Security from 2012 to 2025About Us. Center on National Security and a fellow at New York University's Center on Law & Security between 2003 and 2011.Al Qaeda Now: Networks, Strategies, Goals, The Center on Law and Security website. Accessed July 30, 2023. He hosted the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen from 2023 to 2025. He was a contributing editor at The New Republic for many years,Peter Bergen profile, NewRepublic.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. and editor of the South Asia Channel and South Asia Daily,South Asia. ForeignPolicy.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. 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. He was also a member of the Homeland Security Experts Group.Aspen Homeland Security Group Members, AspenInstitute.org. Accessed July 30, 2023.
Books
Holy War, Inc. (2001), a New York Times bestseller,"Books of the Times; How bin Laden Became a Global Celebrity", NYTimes.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. and The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006) were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post.Book World Holiday Issue, WashingtonPost.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. Documentaries based on both books were nominated for Emmy Awards in 2001 and 2006.Holiday Guide: Books of the Year, The Washington Post. Accessed July 30, 2023.
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.Journalists-in-Residence , International Reporting Project at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
His third book, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (2011), a New York Times bestseller,Hardcover Nonfiction, nytimes.com. February 6, 2011. Accessed July 30, 2023. gave an overview of the war on terror and was named by the Guardian"The Longest War By Peter Bergen – review", TheGuardian.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. and Newsweek"The Essential War on Terror Books", Newsweek.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. 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.Book Prize, WashingtonInstitute.org. Accessed July 30, 2023. and was named by Amazon,The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda, Amazon.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. Kirkus2011 Best of Nonfiction: Current Affairs, KirkusReviews.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. and Foreign PolicyFP's Favorite Reads of 2011, ForeignPolicy.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. 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 bestsellerMay 20, 2012 Hardcover Non-Fiction. NYTimes.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. was Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad."Bin Laden's End, From the Beginning", The New York Times. Accessed July 30, 2023. The Washington Post named Manhunt one of the best non-fiction books of 2012,Best of 2012: 50 notable works of nonfiction, WashingtonPost.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. and The Guardian named it one of the key books on Islamist extremism.Jason Burke: the key books on Muslim extremism, The Guardian. November 7, 2012. Accessed July 30, 2023. It was the 2012 Sunday Times (UK) 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.Cornelius Ryan Award, opcofamerica.org. Accessed July 30, 2023. The book was the basis of the HBO documentary film, Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden,Manhunt, HBO.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival winning the Grand Jury Prize Sundance 2013 and won the Emmy award for Outstanding Documentary in 2013.Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for bin Laden, Emmys.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. Bergen was the Executive Producer of the film. He was awarded the Stephen Ambrose History Award in 2014."Rutgers' Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award Goes to Peter L. Bergen, Journalist Who Produced Famous CNN Interview with Osama bin Laden", Rutgers.edu. Accessed July 30, 2023.
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.Talibanistan, Global.OUP.com. Accessed July 30, 2023. He co-edited, with Daniel Rothenberg, Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.Drone Wars, Cambridge.org. Accessed July 30, 2023.
In 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.Homegrown, HBO.com. Accessed July 30, 2023.
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 (both executed, foiled or failed) 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."