Peter Bergen Bio

Peter Bergen is vice president for global studies and fellows 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-five languages, and documentaries based on them have been nominated for two Emmys and won the Emmy for best documentary.

Bergen also serves as the director of Arizona State University’s Center on Intelligence and National Security and co-director of its Future Security Initiative. 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, 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.