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Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, vice president at New America, CNN national security analyst, professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the author or editor of ten books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers and four of which were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by the Washington Post. The books have been translated into twenty-four languages, and documentaries based on them have been nominated for two Emmys and won the Emmy for best documentary.
Bergen also serves as New America’s Director of the International Security and Future of War programs. He writes a weekly column for CNN.com. He is a member of the Homeland Security Experts Group and a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security. Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. For many years he was a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security. He has testified before US Congressional committees eighteen times about national security issues.
In 2011 he published The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda. The book won the Washington Institute’s Gold Prize for the best book on the Middle East. In 2012 he published Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad. It won the Overseas Press Club award for the best book on international affairs. HBO based the film “Manhunt” on the book, which won the 2013 Emmy for best documentary. In 2013 he published Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion, a collection of essays about the Taliban that Bergen co-edited. In 2014 he published Drone Wars, a collection of essays about drone warfare that Bergen co-edited. In 2016, he published United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, and HBO adapted the book for the film “Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma.” In 2021 he published The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden and, in 2022, The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.
Bergen has hosted, produced, or executive produced multiple documentaries for HBO, CNN, National Geographic, Showtime, and Discovery. Bergen co-produced CNN Films’ Legion of Brothers, which premiered at Sundance in 2017 and was released theatrically. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience.
Bergen has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines around the world, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Time, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Prospect, La Repubblica, Die Welt and Der Spiegel.
Bergen has a degree in Modern History from New College, Oxford. He is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile. They have two children.
