Personal

Peter Bergen is a native of Minneapolis, born in the year 1962. He grew up in London and did his master’s in Modern History at New College, Oxford University, where he received an open scholarship. He also studied at Ampleforth before joining Oxford. He is married to Tresha Mabile. She is a documentary producer and writer.

Profession

Bergen started his career at ABC News in the year 1985 and stayed on till 1990. Prior to his stint at ABC, he did his first documentary on the plight of Afghan refugee in Pakistan, Refugees of Faith, which was telecast on Channel 4.  Later he joined CNN as a producer of both national and international stories. Bergen produced the first television interview of Osama Bin Laden in the year 1997 for CNN in which Bin Laden had declared war against US for the very first time on international television. He was the program editor in 1997 and 1998 for the show CNN Impact, which was jointly produced by TIME and CNN. He also worked as producer cum correspondent at CNN from 1998 to 1999, before accepting his new role of producing national and international stories.

Achievements

Peter Bergen has done reports focused on national security and counterterrorism in various American magazines and newspapers. He is also the editor of ‘The New Republic’. He was also the correspondent for Discovery Television and National Geographic Television. The popular scholarly journal, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism has Bergen as a member of its editorial board. He has also testified in many congressional committee gatherings. He is also part of the Homeland Security Project, which was started as a successor to the 9/11 commission. He also serves as editor at AfPak Channel, which is jointly published by New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine.  He was honored with the Edward R. Murray award by the Overseas Press Club in the year 1994 for the best documentary on foreign affairs concerning his program in CNN, Kingdom of Cocaine. This was also nominated for an Emmy Award.

Peter Bergen has published four books so far. His first book, ‘Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden’ published in 2001 was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include ‘Man Hunt’, ‘The Longest War’, and ‘The Osama Bin Laden I Know’, which was named as the best non-fiction book of 2006 by Washington Post.