...al-Suri is as famous to terrorists as he is unknown to the general American public. Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker penned the only substantive American profile of him in 2006, but apparently only had access to portions of "The Call." al-Suri "is highly intelligent, well read, focused, intense, no sense of humor, [and] speaks Arabic and Spanish and French, very little English" said Peter Bergen, a senior fellow at The New America Foundation and author of two influential books about Al Qaeda. In 1997, Bergen became one of the only Western journalists to interview al-Suri. "He seemed like a real intellectual," Bergen said, "but also a man of action..." LINK


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