Bin Laden Declared War in 1997; It Took America Four Years to Hear It
In 1997 CNN filmed Bin Laden's first televised declaration of war, and almost no one noticed; what actually woke America up was two embassies bombed in 1998 — he didn't want many people watching, he wanted many people dead.
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He read his exile in Afghanistan as the Prophet's migration to Medina
Bergen says Bin Laden understood his expulsion from Sudan and his eventual landing in Afghanistan as a reenactment of the Prophet's migration from Mecca to Medina — and the Prophet was not only a religious figure but a military leader who fought twenty-seven wars. The self-projection carried obvious hubris. When he landed in Jalalabad in May 1996 he was already bankrupt, stateless and disowned by his family, and plenty of people at the State Department thought he was finished. He was received by Yunus Khalis, a warlord who had fought the Soviets; the Taliban then took over Jalalabad and still gave him a hero's welcome, because he had genuinely fought bravely against the Soviets in the 1980s.
— Peter BergenHe picked CNN because CNN was the Twitter of its day
Bin Laden had already issued declarations of war in Arabic and no one paid attention. His London contact was simultaneously talking to CNN, the BBC, 60 Minutes and CBS, and in the end he chose CNN. Bergen's explanation: CNN had made its name on the Gulf War and was the most advanced means of transmission at the time — ‘CNN was the X or the Twitter of that era.’ Bin Laden came from a Wahhabi family that did not even hang photographs on the walls, and in his early years he refused to be filmed; by this point he had changed. This was not vanity, it was strategy — he believed he had an obligation to warn before he acted.
— Peter BergenBefore going into the mountains they were told not even to bring a watch
The crew stayed at the zero-star Spingar Hotel in Jalalabad, waiting and waiting. Bin Laden's media adviser informed them: no equipment of any kind. Their camera was worth fifty thousand dollars, but ‘there was no room for negotiation.’ One night a carload of armed men came to collect them, drove first toward Kabul, then turned into the Tora Bora mountains, switching vehicles, blindfolding them, searching them at multiple layers. Bergen judged part of it to be security theatre. It was already midnight when they reached the mud hut. At that point he did not even know what Bin Laden looked like — photographs in circulation were extremely rare then; Robert Fisk had taken one in Sudan in 1993.
— Peter BergenSix foot four, and he spoke as if reading a phone book
Bin Laden walked in, six foot four, extremely thin, with the bearing of a cleric rather than a table-thumping revolutionary. He spoke in Arabic with a translator. Bergen describes his speech as ‘like reading a phone book’ — monotone, no inflection, very hard to read. The interview lasted about an hour; they drank a cup of tea, took photographs, and he was gone. What Bergen was thinking at the time was: this is all very interesting, but in a mud hut at six thousand feet, with the Taliban having dragged Afghanistan back to the Middle Ages, no telephone system, only early Thuraya satellite phones — how do you turn this into something actionable?
— Peter BergenThe episode's most valuable primary material was treated as no news
After the May 1997 interview aired it drew almost no attention — Bergen says its place in the news at the time was lower than Monica Lewinsky's. Because at that point Bin Laden appeared not to have done anything yet. In February 1998 Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri merged operations, signed the joint ‘World Islamic Front’ statement, and issued a militant fatwa declaring the killing of Americans and of those who help Americans a duty and a reward. Bergen stresses: neither man had formal religious training; Bin Laden could recite all six thousand verses of the Quran, but a fatwa is a ruling of religious law, and they could not issue one themselves, so they needed Sheikh Rahman — then serving time in an American prison for a mid-1990s terrorist plot in New York — to grant authorisation from his cell.
— Peter BergenTwo embassies bombed within nine minutes showed the rules had changed
On 7 August 1998 the US embassy in Nairobi was destroyed by a truck bomb: 224 dead, more than four thousand five hundred wounded, the overwhelming majority Africans, many of them Muslims. Bergen points out: bombing one American embassy is already hard; bombing two within nine minutes is another order of magnitude. And they deliberately chose a Friday, when the mosques are fullest. The logic of terrorist organisations before this was Brian Michael Jenkins' 1975 line — you want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead; the IRA would even phone in a warning before bombing a pub. What Bin Laden and al-Qaeda wanted was a lot of people dead and a lot of people watching at the same time.
— Peter BergenThe CIA set up a station for one man, and hired women on purpose
In 1993 Gina Bennett, a young State Department analyst, wrote the first classified warning about Bin Laden, now declassified and surprisingly detailed. In January 1996 the CIA created a unit for a single individual for the first time, headed by Michael Scheuer, a history PhD. He considered himself abrasive, and in hiring he preferred women — because counterterrorism was then seen as a second-tier assignment and the real talent went to the Soviet Union, Iraq and Iran; and because women smoked less, did not tell war stories, and analysed better. The unit was known internally as ‘the Manson family.’ Scheuer and John O'Neill of the FBI's New York field office loathed each other intensely.
— Peter BergenAnalysts and operators stuffed into the same station
Alec Station, named after Scheuer's son, was the first and only time the CIA set up a virtual station aimed at a single individual rather than an overseas station. Its innovation was putting analysts and operators together — inside the CIA those two lines are usually separate and mutually tense, and only combined could they plan operations directly off analysis. But Bergen flags the scale: initially only ten or twenty people, not some vast institution, and it ran into the embassy bombings not long after it was founded.
— Peter BergenHe misjudged America: an embassy is not the homeland
Bin Laden drew his conclusion from the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing — after 241 American servicemen died, Reagan withdrew within months. He assumed that if he applied enough pressure to Americans, America would pull out of the Middle East. Bergen says this was a serious miscalculation: an American embassy bombed overseas is a big deal, but it is not an attack on the American homeland, and a surprise attack provokes a fierce reaction, as Japan learned after Pearl Harbor. And he ran al-Qaeda like a dictatorship and would not take advice — many people told him not to attack America, that we already have an entire country in Afghanistan, the Taliban are in power, don't wreck a good thing.
— Peter BergenThe FBI got a full confession with a Coke and some respect
In the Nairobi bombing the suicide attacker jumped from the vehicle at the last moment, and after being injured walked into a hospital himself; the FBI found him quickly and he gave a full confession. Bergen says this is the key point: after 9/11 the CIA's coercive interrogation was almost entirely unnecessary. The FBI's method was simply interrogation — give a person a can of Diet Coke, give a little respect. He calls the CIA approach the method of ‘people who have watched too many movies,’ who assume the way to get intelligence is to apply torture.
— Peter BergenWhen Clinton announced the strikes, reporters had just watched Wag the Dog
Bergen tells a coincidence: the White House press corps, usually idle while travelling with the president on holiday, was that day watching Wag the Dog — a film about a US president staging a fake war in Albania to cover up a private-life scandal. At that very moment Clinton announced cruise missiles fired at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The backdrop was the Lewinsky affair; Hillary had found out and made him sleep on the couch, and he was on that couch in Martha's Vineyard. Bergen also says Clinton himself was in fact paying considerable attention to the Bin Laden file.
— Peter BergenAfter the Cole, they started believing they were invincible
In 2000 the US destroyer Cole, moored in the Gulf of Aden, was blown open by two suicide boats, leaving a hole the size of a house and killing 17 American sailors. It was the most advanced destroyer in the US Navy at the time, with a hardened steel hull. The Clinton administration did not really respond, and the incoming Bush administration did not either. Bergen says al-Qaeda concluded from this that it had immunity — ‘the worst thing in life is to believe your own propaganda’ — and decided America was a paper tiger. Earlier they had also plotted around the millennium to bomb another warship, the Sullivans, and Los Angeles International Airport, the latter aborted because a female customs officer noticed the suspect was drenched in sweat in December.
— Peter BergenIn their own words · checked verbatim
And they were they had never dealt with the media or had very and they really didn't understand how the media worked.
Peter Bergen7:26
But when he was talking, it was like he was reading the phone book. He was very kind of monotone.
Peter Bergen13:34
CNN was sort of the X or Twitter of the age. I mean, that was the most sophisticated way of communication at the time.
Peter Bergen17:47
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda wanted a lot of people dying and a lot of people watching, which was kind of a new development.
Peter Bergen23:02
How do you get somebody to say to tell you what you want to know? You give them a diet coke. You treat them with some degree of respect.
Peter Bergen37:55
the worst thing in life is to believe your own propaganda and they believe that the united states was a paper tiger
Peter Bergen41:58
even if you develop great intelligence have great information if if the person in charge won't believe it it's sort of useless
Peter Bergen43:59
Figures
| Bin Laden's height | six foot four | 13:34 |
| Death toll in the Nairobi embassy bombing | 224 | 34:48 |
| Wounded in the Nairobi embassy bombing | more than four thousand five hundred | 34:48 |
| US servicemen killed in the Beirut Marine barracks bombing | 241 | 35:50 |
| US sailors killed in the Cole bombing | 17 | 41:58 |
| When the CIA's Bin Laden unit was created | January 1996 | 29:40 |
| Length of Bin Laden's first television interview | about one hour | 13:34 |
| Altitude of the Tora Bora mountains | six thousand feet | 14:40 |
Glossary
- fatwa
- A ruling of religious law issued by a scholar of Islamic law; non-scholars have no authority to issue one.
- Alec Station
- The CIA's first virtual counterterrorism station aimed at a single individual, named after Scheuer's son.
- B-roll
- Supplementary footage intercut into television news; here, images of armed men firing weapons.
- PNG
- persona non grata — in diplomacy, a person declared unwelcome and required to leave the country.
How to listen
Founders and investors interested in the history of counterterrorism, how intelligence agencies operate, and the relationship between media and violent organisations; anyone who wants to understand organisational failure cases where the signal appeared long in advance and no one believed it.
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