Peter Bergen Quotes
I've interviewed multiple people who know bin Laden... who tend to have a universal picture of what he's like, which is: modest, retiring, unassuming, kind of thoughtful - lots of things that don't fit with a mass murderer, which he is as well.
Bergen, Peter. Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden. Free Press, 2001.
Some of the Prophet’s followers by modern standards were very violent and urged attacks on innocent people in order to intimidate others. He was expelled from his Egyptian university and arrested, tried and found guilty of “holding religion in contempt”. Which is a crime in most Islamic countries. He also “insulted” the President. He is the first blogger to have been jailed in Egypt for the contents of his blog. See {585058}.
36 days later, September 11, he did strike, and at the World Trade Center. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing.
Peter Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst, New America's vice president, and as a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, was the first time that bin Laden was interviewed by Western media.
