The inattention of the Bush administration to the threat from al Qaeda had results. Shortly before 9/11, Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, turned down FBI requests for some 400 additional counterterrorism personnel. — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
Anne Richard, a senior U.S. State Department official, testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing in November 2015 that any Syrian refugee trying to get into the United States is scrutinized by officials from the National Counterterrorism Center, FBI,… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
So Pakistan is a country that I'm very fond of and have spent a lot of time, but it is a country where conspiracy… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
The Trump administration launched the cruise missile strikes in Syria, an act of war, without a U.N. resolution or Congressional authorization. — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway. — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
Abedi appears to be one of the many thousands of Western Muslims who have embraced militant Islam, often as a way of trying to… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
Trump has claimed he knows more about ISIS than America's leading generals. Clearly, this is also total nonsense; he doesn't seem to have done… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
If you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
As early as 1993, members of bin Laden's group had been planning an attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
The reality is that Trump's focus on immigrants is to misconceive of the terrorist problem that exists in the United States. — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
ISIS despises the Russian government for its support of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and so it's no surprise that ISIS began targeting Russia… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
Keeping a relatively small, predominantly U.S. Special Forces presence in Afghanistan to continue to train the Afghan army past December 2016 is a wise… — Peter Bergen Copy Share Image
