Terrorism

When you want cogent thinking about terrorism, you go to Steve Coll. Which is what I did this morning:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you think al-Qaeda is planning an "October surprise," an attack on an American target, here or overseas, in order to influence the election?

Steve Coll: AQ leaders, maybe because they spend a lot of time trapped and bored in safehouses, seem to be obsessed with calendars. They like anniversaries and they pay attention to elections abroad. So I'm sure they… more

Steve Coll discusses his new book The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, in which he details the complicated family history of Osama bin Laden, one of 54 children born to Mohammed bin Laden. LINK to video, audio, and transcript.

Osama bin Laden remains at large seven years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- and the United States is “incredibly unlikely” to capture or kill the al-Qaida mastermind anytime soon.

That was the assessment of Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism analyst who interviewed bin Laden in 1997, in a speech Friday morning at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

“We know he’s in the northwest border region [of Pakistan], which is like saying we know he’s somewhere in Virginia,” Bergen told the… more

"When you hit the Haqqanis, what you hope for is a phone call from a grieving relative to somebody else you want to kill," said Al Qaeda expert Peter Bergen.

The "signals intelligence" intercepts "lead you to the next target," said Bergen, who once interviewed Osama Bin Laden. LINK

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... Now that U.S. Special Forces have the green light to go into Pakistan without permission from Islamabad, will be it a game changer in the hunt for Osama bin Laden?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It might help. I mean, what you really need to get -- change the game is really good intelligence about where Osama bin Laden is. That hasn't happened now for almost seven years. LINK to transcript

The more relevant question trembling behind these two others isn't pretty, but it's clear as ice: Will ground zero be attacked again? The answer is just as plain: Bet on it. Peter Bergen, who has studied and written about bin Laden and Al Qaeda for many years -- a fellow at NYU's Center on Law and Security and a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (and a CNN national-security analyst... -- told me, "If you talk about… more

Terrorism experts Lawrence Wright and Peter Bergen have separately tracked splits between al-Zawahri and Muslim clerics. The fissures even include the man, known as Dr. Fadl, who first shaped the al-Qaeda doctrine and was once closely allied with al-Zawahri. Fadl's insistence that Muslims be uncompromising and brutal has given way to more moderation and compromise. LINK

Al-Qaeda expert Peter Bergen believes the terrorist threat to Western countries will come from Europe. Alienated young educated Muslims in Europe were behind the 9/11 attacks, and subsequent bombings in Europe. Other planned attacks in Europe have been foiled since, along with efforts to sell stolen fissile material that could be used for terrorist bombs. LINK

Extremists come in small groups to train in Pakistan, including many of those involved in recent terror plots in Europe, said Peter Bergen, one of the leading experts on al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda operates a large and professional media operation in the Pakistani mountains, churning out videos. LINK

In the past seven years, has the U.S. gotten closer to finding Bin Laden, containing al-Qaida or stabilizing Afghanistan?

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and journalist, and Peter Bergen, author of The Osama Bin Laden I Know, discuss whether progress has been made in the region. LINK to audio