Looking at terrorism from the inside out

In 1996, Osama bin Laden was a name on a white paper making the rounds in Washington D.C. The first World Trade Center bombing was three years old. By the end of the year, his organization, al Qaeda -- `The Base' -- would explode a truck bomb outside of the Khobar Towers military base in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans stationed there. The wounded numbered in the hundreds.

By 1997, he was, to the eyes of the world, al Qaeda, and by March, Peter Bergen was sitting next to him in a cave in Afghanistan. Bergen says it "felt like sitting next to a cardboard cutout."

To Peter Bergen, there is nothing unusual about his work. "I wouldn't say I'm any smarter than your average newspaper reader. They have their thing to worry about, and I have mine." For Bergen, his thing just happens to be terrorism, his specialty getting inside the heads of the men who, as the old adage says, are terrorists to some, freedom fighters to others. As a reporter and producer, CNN on-air expert and professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Bergen has become uncannily successful at this breed of high-risk journalism. His latest book, The Osama bin Laden I Know, prompted Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism head under both Clinton and Bush, to write in The Washington Post, "Bergen has created something unique: a chronological history of bin Laden." In a field where interpretations crisscross analyses in a sometimes feverish race to have the final word on terrorism, Bergen offered something that is often neglected: experience on the ground. Alongside a team of SAIS student researchers, he searched for, as he says, "anyone who had ever known bin Laden." As the book came together, he and his research team had 48 years of records, trial transcripts, interviews and off-the-cuff conversations from bin Laden's employees, teachers, family, interviewers, followers, admirers and denigrators. In short, they had, in Clarke's words, the "go-to resource" for Osama bin Laden and the world he had helped create.

It was a slightly different world that hooked a younger Bergen on the Middle East. He was 19 and an Oxford student when he first visited Pakistan to make a documentary on refugees fleeing Afghanistan's corrosive war with the Soviets. Like any kid, Bergen "overlooked the obstacles. In retrospect, it was a good decision." The documentary aired on Britain's Channel 4 and Bergen felt a rush, but not from seeing his name on the screen. Instead, it was Pakistan. "I was absolutely fascinated." He left for New York soon after, taking a production assistant's job at ABC News, where he ran for coffee but "stayed happy being there." The job transformed into work for ABC's 20/20, producing reports from Pakistan.

In February 1993, a Ryder truck packed with explosives blew a hole through four levels of the North Tower of the World

Trade Center, killing six and injuring scores. As America was jarred awake, Bergen began digging and sifting through the warning signs, the information about the plotters, the theories about conspirators. Out of this came a documentary for ABC on the bombings, and a theory.

"These were not just disaffected cab drivers from Brooklyn. I believed that they were involved in the war effort in Afghanistan, that perhaps they had benefited from training in the camps there." So Afghanistan beckoned, and Bergen arrived, filming an hour-long documentary for CNN on the terrorist threat being born there. He says, "I like to think it still stands up today." It's often been like this for Bergen -- his theories and reports hitting their targets.

By 1996, when bin Laden began to be a name that meant something in Beltway circles, Bergen had another theory. "I believed that bin Laden might have been the de facto leader in the bombings on the World Trade Center, using his influence and money." Bergen joined up with Peter Arnett, veteran of Vietnam and Persian Gulf war reporting, to try to meet bin Laden for a CNN interview. "We had to work through their media adviser, who lived in London, then sit and wait in East Afghanistan while they talked it over."

Sitting in a secret location in March 1997, Peter Arnett became the first Western journalist to interview Osama bin Laden. Bergen was the producer. "Perhaps it was the language barrier, but when I listened and watched bin Laden, I just didn't get it. He spoke in a monotone, he had no charisma." Confronting the man who would, only four years later, become arguably the world's most famous terrorist, Bergen just couldn't muster a reaction. "He was opaque."

Returning to the United States, Bergen discovered his hunch had been partly true. "We found out that bin Laden hadn't ordered the World Trade Center bombing, but the man responsible, Ramzi Yousef, had trained at one of his camps in Sudan."

Bergen continued his research and broadcasting work as the years continued, and he was continually struck by how open al Qaeda was becoming. In the same year as the interview, "it was already no secret that bin Laden was planning an attack on the United States." He saw signs with nearly every piece of information he encountered, every interview he held, until, in 2000, he predicted a terrorist attack on the US in the summer of 2001. He wrote up his information and sent it to John Burns, the New York Times chief Middle East foreign correspondent. "I told him the big one was coming down the pipeline." Burns wrote an article that the Times held over for editing on Sept. 9, 2001. By the time it was ready for print, planes had hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"You just have to pay attention to what these guys are saying." It's a mantra he repeated then and repeats now. Even as The Osama bin Laden I Know is still generating reviews, Bergen is already helping to produce a documentary based on the work, and is also working on a book looking into al-Qaeda after September 11. Bergen admits no special skill to his work, with its chilling accuracy. "The difficulty is just digesting all the info that's there.