Bin Laden interviewer at local event
Peter Bergen at U of S Hoban forum
Peter Bergen didn't know what to expect when three armed men loaded him into a curtained van in the mountains of Afghanistan, blindfolded him and drove him up a dried-up riverbed to a mud hut in the middle of the night in 1997.
What he got was an on-camera interview with the 6-foot 4-inch bearded leader of what would prove to be one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, a well-spoken, intelligent man who talked with a grave seriousness - Osama bin Laden.
"I thought he might be sort of a fist-pumping revolutionary. He presented himself much like a cleric; he was kind of low key," Mr. Bergen said before he addressed a crowd of more than 400 people at the University of Scranton's 2012 Honorable T. Linus Hoban Memorial Forum on Thursday. The event was hosted by the Lackawanna Bar Association.
The best-selling author, renown foreign correspondent and one of the few Western journalists to ever interview bin Laden, relayed detailed information on the man about whom he has written multiple books.
"He basically declared war on the United States, of course, in the interview, which is the first time he'd sort of said something like that to Westerners," Mr. Bergen said. "In the back of my mind, in the back of all our minds, was, well how do you do that? It's easy to say but, how do you attack the United States from Afghanistan?
"And the answer came a little over a year later with the embassy attacks of Tanzania and Kenya, where they killed more than 200 people."
Mr. Bergen also discussed his latest book, "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden: from 9/11 to Abbottabad," in which he analyzes bin Laden's movements post-9/11, the CIA's hunt for the terrorist leader, President Barack Obama's actions as a decision maker, the evolution of U.S. special forces, the use of coercive interrogation and the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.
The analysis also covers the Navy SEAL operation in Pakistan which ended in the demise of bin Laden in a family compound.
"I think that anti-heroic ending is indicative of where bin Laden was and where al-Qaida was. It wasn't a spectacular martyrdom. He didn't fight back," Mr. Bergen said.
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