the effect of this dynamic can quickly detach itself from larger strategic mission, especially missions with ambiguities, counterinsurgency. .. first of all, it is a moral. the warriors job is to stop the other side from using violence and when that side stops doing

it, then you are done. the job is not to kill the other side as you sometimes have to kill the people on the other side to dissuade them from coming and doing what they are doing. the object it is not to be killing people. that is not a proper objective. it is just inhumane. >> coming up next encore booknotes originally taped in december of 2001. peter bergen discusses his book, "holy war, inc." inside the secret world of osama bin laden. draws on extensive interviews with terrorist leaders including osama bin laden. they describe terrorist operations aims in popularity in the middle east and asia. it also shows how terrorist organizations are funded and how they operate by the library me like a modern-day corporation. c-span: peter l. bergen, author of "holy war, inc.: inside thet secret world of osama bin laden," you say on page 31,

'further clouding our understanding of bin laden isde the fact that a vast amount hast been written about him, a good deal of it rubbish." >> i think you know you call a spade a spade and rubbish is rubbish. there have been a lot of reports that he was womanizing and drinking when he was a teenager in beirut. it's hard to disprove a -- it's very hard to disprove something that didn't happen. but as far as i can tell, he was a sort of religious teenager. there were reports he was funded or trained by the c.i.a. these are -- fail all sorts of commonsense tests apart from everything else. if you were the c.i.a. case officer who ran bin laden, most of these people retirement age now, you got a $20 million book contract right there. when conspiracies happen and the iran-contra, these kinds of things, people talk about them. the notion that the c.i.a. was involved in training or funding bin laden, who has, a, had a lot of his own money, b, was

pathologically anti-american from an early age, it defies common sense. >> you named the publications and went to the specific point they were making. "jane's intelligence review," that bin laden obtained an intelligence degree in the united states and you called it respect bable, why would they publish something like that? >> largely because his family is largely incommunicado and ,e's public emy largely incommunicado and you know, he's public enemy number one, you can write anything tha kind of occurs to you. and, i mean, i think the bar- about you know, if let's say, jane's intelligence review is writing about, let's say, jimgee woolsey or some well-known intel you know, they would be able tot check these things. i mean, they would find outwel where did mr. woolsey go toth school. and, you know, jane's just repeated something that was soru of hearsay and, you know, it's a very good publication, but i hearsay and it's a very good publication, but i wasn't trying to single them out. i'm just saying there's been a lot of stuff written about bin laden, not all accurate. >> you mention yousseff

bodansky, who had a bestseller for a while. >> yeah. >> you say misinformation about bin laden can be found in a tome by bodansky who enjoys the title of expert in the task force on terrorism. do you know what that is? >> yes. >> he describes a teenaged bin laden invited to beirut womanizing, getting involved in brawls. never did that? >> not according to people who know. >> he describes a deeply religious leader and that t.w.a. 800, which killed 230, was a joint operation between iran and bin laden. no proof that ever happened. >> i mean, you know, t.w.a. 800 went down for reasons that the ntsb or national transportation safety board and the f.b.i. concluded was an accident. but trying to pin bin laden for

t.w.a. or iran, i don't think it's responsible for somebody who works for congress. >> how did you go about making sure -- and you have so many connecting point in this book -- it was accurate? >> i tried to like any book, there are probably errors, you know, in there, but, you know, i try to be somewhat responsible about what i put in or -- basically the threshold had to be sufficiently high. you know, having worked at cnn, for, say, working at cnn. i mean, what -- that's the tradition i come out of. so, i try to sort out some of the myths and some of the rumors and try to really actually report and go and meet the people and knew bin laden or were involved in his group in some way or the people who were tracking him. rather than relying on second resources. obviously, i do rely on second resources but i try to rely on those that are either reputable

publications or books or, you know, trial transcripts. i think court testimony is a very useful -- in the embassy bombing attacks the subsequent manhattan trial, there was about, i don't know, must be every page generated 150 -- every day generated 150 pages of testimony. and there were about 70 days, so there was a wealth of information in those court transcripts. i used those and trying to talk to as many people on as many different sides as possible, whether they were american government officials, people sympathetic with bin laden, arab journalists who met with him or knew about him, pakistanis. the way is to get a complete picture. >> you went to his father's village. >> yeah. >> when did that happen? where is it? what did you find? >> it's a beautiful place in a remote area of yemen in eastern yemen. and it looks perhaps a little bit like arizona. it's sort of the mesas almost as cliffs and honey-colored

cliffs and at the end of one of these valleys you can find this town, which is bin laden's ancestral village. it's about 5,000 people. you go there as a westerner, you're kind of a big deal. all the kids in the village just start running after you. you know, it's not a place that's regularly visited. bin laden left -- bin laden's father left the village when he was a young man to seek his fortune in saudi arabia but the family retained some links to the village. they gave money for irrigation projects and there is a house there which is the bin laden street, which is this rambling old, decrepit place which has an extended family, some distant relatives of osama bin laden and is so big that part of it is a british school. i went there with john burns of "the new york times," a wonderful reporter, and we went to go and talk to some of the

remaining cousins who were there. >> what does it mean if you're from yemen? what's that -- in that part of the world over there, where is it located? what borders yemen? >> to the south it's the arabian sea and to the north saudi arabia. so, a lot of yemennies went to saudi arabia to get -- yemen is i think the poorest country in the middle east, probably, and so you get a lot of immigration, and one of the people who immigrated was mohammed bin laden, the father of osama. but he was part of a pretty big movement. one thing that's interesting, bin laden's organizations, you'll find some of the key people are saudis but they actually have yemeni backgrounds like bin laden himself. for instance, the person regarded as the mastermind of the u.s.s. cole in yemen last year is someone whose family origin nays in yemen, grew up

in saudi arabia like bin laden against the soviets. >> how close is yemen to afghanistan? >> quite some distance. you'd have to fly about 1,500 -- i'm guessing -- 1,500 miles, 1,000 miles, perhaps. >> what's the population of yemen? >> the population of yemen is 17 million, 18 million. one interesting thing is that they -- am i getting confused? i think the number of guns in yemen might be that number and the population -- >> i remember statistics 65 million guns and 18 million people. >> that's exactly right. 65 million guns, 18 million people. yemen is similar to afghanistan. i mean, physically it's very beautiful, mountains, it's deserts, it's tribal. there is quite -- been quite a tourist industry in yemen except that has been impacted obviously by terrorist events and kidnapping of tourists.

but it's -- one of the seven wonders of the world is the bazaar in the city of yemen, i think literally. it's like stepping back into the middle ages. you see camels, wearing blinkers and they're making sesame oil in these giant mortars and you see -- it's like a scene out of some medieval painting. but it's real, happening now. and it's -- it's a wonderful place. unfortunately, you know, bin laden's group managed to function pretty well there. they were able to bomb the u.s. cole, there were plans earlier in june to bomb the u.s. embassy there. it remains a place where pockets of al qaeda exist, although the government is being quite cooperative with the united states government in terms of trying to close down al qaeda there. >> you point out in the book there was an attempt at bombing the sullivans ship.

>> yeah. >> when did that happen and how much of that do we know now? how much of it is public? >> i mean, quite a lot. the u.s. sullivan, a dress reher sag for the cole, and that occurred on january 3, 2000, towards the end of ramadan. in that particular year. basically, the bombers overloaded the boats with explosives an it sunk. but they learned from their mistakes and did the u.s.s. cole. but sullivan's attack was -- the planned attack was going to be part of a terrorist spectacular involving the bombing of los angeles international airport, lax and tourist sites in jordan and all of these things were going to be related for the millennium and none worked out either because of the incompetence of the plotters or good police work. it shows, a, al qaeda has had its share of failures, as it

were, lucky. but, b, it shows the israeli grand-scale plans. this was a plan to not simultaneously but within the same time period blow up an airport in america, blow up a u.s. warship in yemen and blow up places associated with american tourists in jordan. and it would have been pretty devastating. >> where do you think u.s. intelligence has been in all this? >> well, i mean, you know, it's very easy to monday morning quarterback because obviously september 11 was the biggest failure of intelligence gathering in american history. and no one can argue with that fact. on the other hand, it has to be said that u.s. law enforcement and the intelligence community were -- knew that bin laden was a pretty serious character quite early on, as early as 1995, the prosecutors in the southern district of new york, which is basically handling a lot of terrorism cases, the initial trade center in 1993, for instance, they were asking people -- you know, in

terrorism trials, do you know bin laden? that was in 1995. and, you know, lawyers who were in the case at that time said they were kind of mystified why -- who was this osama bin laden? even they knew a lot about the case, why were prosecutors asking about him? his name was surfacing in 1995 for american prosecutors because his name was cropping up too often, i think, is what happened. and by 1996, the u.s. state department is calling the most significant financier of islamic extremism in the world and had a detailed white paper about who this guy is, he has training camps in afghanistan, sudan, and also i think right about the same time the c.i.a. founded its own separate unit devoted to bin laden, which is interesting. there was a counterterrorist center within the c.i.a. and, you know, to have set up this specialized unit which allowed to function apparently in -- given quite a lot of latitude to function without

having to deal with the washington bureaucracy so much. you know, so, i mean, the united states government was well aware that bin laden was a very dangerous man. on september 10, you know, he was already on the 10 most-wanted list an had a $5 million reward on his head, unprecedented. it's easy to say that was a huge failure. on the other hand, i mean, both statements are true. it was an intelligence failure but also u.s. government had put a lot of effort into going after him. the fact is that he -- his group is sui generous, very unusual, in the sense it was very disciplined and very organized. and if you think about the terrorism that happened against american targets in the 1980's, they were -- it was the marine barracks bombing that killed more than 200 americans in 1983. that was -- but it was nothing -- never on the scale, you know -- the thing about this group is they kept making their plans more and more complex and

deadly as time went on. one can only hope that the trade center represents the apex. >> before i go on, let me ask you some questions about you. >> yeah. >> where were you born? >> i was born in minneapolis. >> what year? >> 1962. >> how long did you live there? >> my parents -- we -- my parents and the family moved to paris when i was 3. and then we moved to london when i was 5, 5 or 6. >> how long did you stay there? >> lived in london basically my entire life, went to high school in yorkshire, the north of england, went to the university of oxford, then came -- returned to the united states after i left university. >> and why did you go to oxford? why did you stay? >> i studied history. >> what kind of history? >> modern history, which also begins with the anglo-saxons. why did i go there? i mean, it's an incredibly beautiful place. it was a wonderful time to go. >> new college?

>> new college. yeah. and which is across the street. and new college is founded in 1369 or whatever, i think, so not -- but, you know, i had a great time there. i didn't really -- there weren't that many requirements to work, so -- and everybody -- you know, it was funny because at that time the english government paid for you to go to university. they gave you -- now you have to pay something yourself, but at that time not only was the education free, but they gave you spending money. so, it's kind of a very different philosophy than the kind of -- of course now the british government is asking people to pay, but it's still relatively speaking inexpensive. >> british or american citizen? >> i'm american. >> did your parents move back here with you? >> my mother stayed in england for another, i guess, 10 years, and then she's moved to washington relatively recently. and my father lives in the united states as well. >> when you came here from oxford, where did you go? >> i moved to new york.

>> what did you do? >> i became a messenger or had a job called desk assistant, which meant dog gi at abc news. and that was my first job. it was a good way to get to know manhattan and take packages here and a good way to get to know the business because just by process of osmosis you kind of began to learn about business. there's no reason to employ somebody, no matter where they went to school, if they don't know -- so, that was the opening job you get. then, you know, you kind of get promoted as you go along. >> how long did you stay at abc? >> five years. >> what did you end up being at abc? >> i worked -- my job was at "20/20" where i was production assistant, associate producer, whatever, on different projects. i had -- "20/20" was a nice place to work, very nice people. and i was able to get -- i met ronald reagan and nancy reagan after ronnie reagan had

retired, which is pretty amazing as a kid to spend a day with him. he was exactly how i -- he was exactly how everybody said he would be, very charming and very pleasant. and nancy seemed to completely run the show. >> and when did you decide to leave abc and where did you go? >> i got a job offer at cnn, early in 1990. from my boss, pam hill, at the time. she was setting up a unit at cnn to do documentaries, investigative pieces, etc. and i decided to go there. it turned out to be quite good timing because of the gulf war then happening and it was a great time to be at cnn. and i feel very lucky i was at cnn in a way because, you know, if you're interested in news, where else better to be? i mean, that's what they do. >> so, in 1990, you would have been how old? >> 27. yeah. >> you've been there ever

since? >> yes. except writing a book two years ago. >> go back to the first time you ever thought about osama bin laden. >> i think the first time i thought about it seriously was an article by judith miller and jeff gertz in "the new york times," right about the time the state department released this detailed fact sheet about him. i thought, that's kind of interesting because it always seemed to me the bombing of the world trade center -- you know, when you're a prosecutor, there's a rather narrow set of things you're looking for. who bombed the trade center? that was solved by the trials. but who was behind it wasn't asked seriously, it didn't seem to me, perhaps because it wasn't necessary or whatever, but there was something odd about the people, coming from peshawar, pakistan, seemed to have money from somewhere, they must have had training to build the explosives. who is doing all that? didn't just show up in brooklyn and know how to build a huge bomb. it turns out the more you look at that case, the more it was

clear it was an al qaeda operation. >> what year was this? >> the reason that i -- when i read the article was 1996. the judith miller-jeff gertz piece just said -- looked at these middle eastern businessman, including hussein and said who are they? i went to my bosses at cnn, pam hill and john lane, and said i think we should look at this guy. they had previously encouraged documentary that i was involved in which looked at the trade center bombing and the connections to afghanistan. so, they encouraged me to go and do the -- try and find out if we could meet with bin laden. >> and? >> and. well, i mean, that was quite a performance. it was a -- we went to -- initially i called this contact in london. and i said we were interested. he said fine.

i said i want to chat on the phone. so, i went to london and spent about a week with him. and basically kind of laid out that we would give bin laden a fair hearing. >> again, what year? >> this is early 1997. and about a month -- i met somebody who would take us to bin laden. but there was a screening process. they wanted to make sure we weren't agents of the american government in some way. they wanted to make sure we would give him a fair hearing, explained we would give everybody a fair hearing. and about a month later i went back to washington, i got calls saying you're on, and myself and the correspondent, peter arnett, went, and met up with our cameramen and two other people who knew kind of related to bin laden and they took us to pakistan where we kind of kept going through a series of different hoops. finally we get to afghanistan,

the final hoop. woe ear in jalalabad, not too far from tora bora, where al qaeda is presently holed up. >> had you been to afghanistan before that? >> yes. >> when? >> i went in 1993 for quite some time. the war in afghanistan between forces of -- there was a civil war. even afghan communists were defeated. kabul is the capital, and it had basically survived the communists without being destroyed. the afghans destroyed it. principally, the prime minister at the time who was probably the only prime minister in history to be shelling his own capital on a daily basis. i was there, and we interviewed some people, and that was in the context of trying to find out how the trade center bombers in 1993, you know, what that -- their connection was to

the afghan war against the soviet union ended up being. in 1997, i'd been once before and 1997 was the second time i went. >> did you sense at that time and based on your study at oxford and the history and all that, this was a bigger thing than most people were paying attention to? >> no, i don't think so. i did all the things that i've done because i was interested in them rather than thinking this is going to turn into a big story. i got interested in afghanistan and pakistan in 199 when i was a student at university. we made a documentary about refugees. >> who were you doing this for? >> we did it for ourselves and showed it on channel 4 in england. we got together, and the two people i was with -- we didn't know anything but kind of the innocence engendered by, you know, being young and optimism and -- we sort of thought we could do this. we shot it on film and it was shown on english television.

we did a documentary on afghanistan women. the prime minister weren't able to get the religious parties together. so, i -- my interests started with being interested in the country, the places rather than sort of an interest in terrorism. >> so, go back to your -- 1997, you're on your way, you're in pakistan, on your way to -- you're in afghanistan. >> right. >> how long did all that take, by the way, from the time you leave to the time they got you in the country? >> i don't know. it must have been -- each of these phases, by the time we actually -- i mean, it must have taken at least two weeks from washington to meeting bin laden. i'd say at least two weeks. >> and it's just you and peter arnett and the camera person? >> yeah.

the camera person was a at least rahman had been to afghanistan before. and they were the exactly right people in case something -- arnett had been in many war situations, obviously. they were the right people to have around if anything did go wrong. one of the things that went wrong almost immediately is the week before we went to see bin laden, the taliban banned the photography of any kind of person. so, we were in a quandary about whether to go to the country illegally because we didn't have visas, because if you applied for a visa they'd ask what you were doing. we decided not to apply for a visa and go in and take our chances. and like a lot of things that were never clear in afghanistan, it was never clear to me the taliban knew we were

there to interview bin laden and sanctioned it or that they just couldn't care less. they weren't that interested in who we were. you're pretty obvious if you're living in jalalabad in a hotel for several days, not really doing anything. ice like, who are these people? but they never really asked us. it was kind of odd. >> how did you get to the man himself? >> that was -- that was -- we had a meeting with his media advisor, who looked at our camera equipment and said, "you can't take any of this," because they were concerned about bin laden's security and an electronic device that might give away his location. they were paranoid, basically, so, he said, you can do your interview but it will have to be with your equipment. no point in arguing the matter. i mean, it was either that or no interview. so, we had a sort of series of different trucks -- we had a van, then a sort of jeep, and we were blindfolded and it was

the middle of the night, and, you know, we went through various concentric rings of security around bin laden. we were searched in a professional manner. they basically made it clear at a certain point if we had a tracking device, if we told them now it wouldn't be a problem but if we told them later it definitely would be a problem. >> were you afraid from your own life? >> no. they weren't going to screw around with us. rather than being frightened i was thrilled, not thrilled, but happy this was coming off. i spent a lot of time trying to organize this and we were there. we didn't know how it would end, but we'd all spent a lot of time and effort trying to get to that point. so, the fact we were now going up the mountain, we were in -- we didn't know exactly where we were, but i'm pretty sure we were in the white mountains where that al qaeda base is located, somewhere near there. >> and how long were you -- i

mean, what time of day did you travel and how long did you travel at a given time? >> they arrived at dusk so it must have been around 5:00 p.m. and i -- we weren't allowed to even take watches so we had no idea what time it was exactly. but i estimate it was sometime before midnight when bin laden finally showed up. and he wasn't going to hang around. he just wanted to do the interview and go. he was with his entourage. >> how many in his entourage? >> i think -- i counted a total of maybe 30 people i saw over the course of the night, maybe around him. in the direct entourage there were maybe, i don't know, 10. >> armed? >> yeah. everybody was armed and, you know, some spoke pretty good english. >> what was your sense of the kind of people you were around? were they smart people? >> well, i think they divided into two groups. there were some kind of people who seemed not that smart who were, like, kind of the protection people, home run more -- they seemed like foot

soldiers, and there were middle eastern faces and some african faces. then there were some people in charge, who spoke very good english, seemed to be saudi. there was a translay who spoke impeccable english. and he appeared to have been a cleric. and, yeah, so i think they divided up into kind of the people who were just, you know, kind of the muscle and the people who were running the show. >> the interview itself taped for how long? >> about an hour. we -- peter arnett and i had worked up a lot of questions for bin laden, and he department want to answer anything about his personal life -- his family, his finances. he just wanted to talk about why he was declaring war against the united states, which was the reason we were there. it wasn't about his family history. we were trying to figure out who this guy is, why does he want war against the united states. in a nutshell, his main gripe

is the continued presence of american troops in saudi arabia, which he regarded as infidels, trespassing on the holy land. >> what did you see up close in person that you can't see on video? >> i think he -- there's almost a feline aspect. he's not a very macho kind of guy at all. hi's more -- he's more -- he was pretty low key, and he didn't strike me as being very charismatic. i don't speak arabic, so maybe there's more charisma when you understand him in the native tongue. but he doesn't have this, like, you know, light bulb-like personality or doesn't swagger. he was very -- he was almost, you know, you could barely hear him speaking because he was so low-key. i think he had a cold at the time. but he just came off as being mild-mannered. >> and what did cnn do as the

interview -- with the interview once you were finished? >> we went back and we edited -- we didn't -- we put the text of the entire interview on the internet, but we -- i mean, we edited it down into a 20-minute really profile of who is this guy and what is he doing or what has he done, what is he accused of doing? we used the best stuff in the interview. the interview was -- you know, you've seen bin laden. he can ramble on a lot about stuff that isn't germane in a way, but -- so, that interview, this profile aired in may of 1997. >> this is really off the site, but every time i see these stories about folks like you going into the mountains and hours on the road, one question never answered, where do you get your gas? >> they were driving us. >> where did they get it? you ever run out of gas over there? >> i guess they must keep gas in the car. there aren't -- i mean, there

aren't many gas stations in afghanistan. that's a good question. i don't know where -- they certainly were driving around a lot at night. they must keep cans in their jeeps or whatever. but i -- it hadn't really occurred to me. but -- >> go back to mohammed bin laden, the father. >> yeah. >> back to yemen. what year did he go to saudi arabia? >> 1930. and he founded the family company in 1931, and then the kingdom of saudi arabia was founded in 1932. although, you know, the saudi family had been sort of gathering pieces of the puzzle to make the kingdom. but -- and he became very close to king faad and was able to build palaces and the family renovated mecca and medinah. >> what year did he die? >> 1967. >> 1967. >> when bin laden was 10. >> how many wives did he have? >> only four at any given moment, but i think my understanding is perhaps up to

10 or 11. >> and how many children total did he have? >> around 50. >> and where did osama bin laden fit into that? >> he's supposedly the 17th son. he's the only son of one of the mothers, so there was a syrian mother and bin laden has two full sisters, but the family is pretty large. i mean, you know, 50 siblings of one stripe or another. and now, of course, there's another generation, so those -- those kids have all had kids, so somebody was saying to me that there are like 200-plus first cousins who now make up the bin laden family. >> and osama bin laden himself he talked -- you talk about in the book, had a fourth wife after you saw him or was that -- >> yeah. a fourth wife in early 2000. >> how do they -- when you have four wives, how do you deal with them? >> well, the koran says -- you're supposed to take as many wives as you can support, and

four is the maximum. obviously, bin ha had the resources to support four wives. who those wives are exactly -- the most recent one is a yemeni, but there's not a hell of a lot of information about them. there is a son who is the oldest who has sort of rejected his father and a young daughter in saudi arabia who may be 4. >> what do you know about his mother? she was syrian? >> yeah. she apparently divorced osama's father at some point and remarried. she's in pretty close touch with her son, has visited him in the sudan when he was there between 1991 and 1996 and was at her grandson's wedding which happened early this year in afghanistan. so, she keeps in touch with her son. >> any idea what she's like? >> no. >> ever seen a picture of her? >> no. i mean, one thing you've got to understand is the notion of sort of -- i mean, the notion of a picture of osama's wife, you know, or an interview with osama's wife or something like

that is just -- you know, it's not going to happen. >> what countries in the world did osama bin laden live in? >> well, afghanistan, pakistani, sudan, saudi arabia. >> where did he get his education? >> saudi arabia. at the -- he studied economics and public administration. >> and when did he get his money? >> his father died in 1967. all the kids are pretty young, but even osama's oldest brother at that time would have been only 20. so, the family company was sort of put in trust, and the estate was only divided in the 1980's. and bin laden apparently got about $35 million. and i know that because i talked to somebody somewhat privy to the division of the estates less than -- estimates are he had a lot more than that. but $35 million is $35 million. then at a certain point he becomes probably the biggest businessman in sudan between 1991 and 1996, this really intense period of -- in the

book, "holy war, inc.," it really was, in the sense he had this huge array of businesses from tanneries to bakeries, to banks to construction businesses, trucking companies, import, export, basically cornering the market in sudan ese agriculture products. but at the same time running these military camps and so, you know, it -- when i called the book "holy war, inc.," that was one of the reasons. i also play on the murder, inc., notion, but bin laden comes out of a business background. he studied economics. his family -- his business is very successful. he established himself as a big businessman in sudan. the al qaeda, the business of terrorism, almost was set up in a pretty rational manner. you know, there were political arms and religious arms and business arms and media arm and -- i mean, all that's gone now, of course, because al qaeda is about to go out of business for the long term.

>> what's osama mean in english? >> lion. >> what does al qaeda mean? >> "the base." >> when did he start it? >> 1989. you know, the base of the base, as it were, is that after the soviets withdrew in february of 1989 from afghanistan -- you know, bin laden recruited people from around the world for hole di wars and they all had some sort of military experience and rubbed shoulders and got to know each other. this international cast of holy warriors, as it were, they change their governments in their native countries like egypt or -- ferment rebellion in other places or eventually impact the united states. so, al qaeda became the basis for -- al qaeda sort of sprang out of all those people who traveled to afghanistan. >> go to the -- back to the reason he heads to the united states. >> yeah. >> when can you -- when did you figure it all actually started? >> it starts on a date, august

7, 1990. not that it happened overnight. bin laden had been anti-american for a long time. >> where was he living then? >> saudi arabia. that was the day president bush announced operation desert shield, which meant the introduction of several hundred thousand americans into saudi arabia. bin laden -- there were women -- that was his worst, women soldiers trespassing on the holy land in saudi arabia and that was terrible as far as bin laden was concerned. the reason that it's -- one thing that makes it very clear to me -- several things, is, you know, eight years later to the day, bin laden's men blow up two u.s. embassies in africa within nine minutes of each other, and that was sending a very clear signal. this august 7 moment was critical because eight years later that causes bin laden's sort of biggest terrorist outrage to date. he was sending a message. he's been very consistent about, you know, these people are from the -- with alliance

with the prophet mohammed. it's explicit in the videotape, his guilt in the trade center where he mentions this kind of thing or -- all of his public statements usually mention it. >> go back to the beginning again. >> yeah. >> you said he had been given $35 million and we've seen all kinds of figures along the way. how much do you think he's been worth over the years after the construction company and -- >> yeah. it's hard to tell. i mean, he's always had access to some money but at the end of the day it's a bit of a red herring in the sense that, you know, you can't -- it's not about money. it's about belief. the people he recruits to him aren't paid. they're volunteers, not mercenaries. and the people who die in these operations clearly can't -- there's no amount of money you can give to somebody like mohammed atta to persuade him to fly a 747 into the world trade center.

i think the money has been important but not vital to bin laden's project. what's been vital is his ability to transfer a lot of rage against the united states perhaps taking the sort of localized rage of people against -- you know, there are all sorts of governments which are authoritarian and corrupt, etc., etc. but making the analysis, it's all the united states' fault for all these problems and getting people to go along with that idea and being able to organize them and recruit them and giving them the training to become quite deadly. that's bin's genius, it's not his money. >> have you met ayman al-zawahiri? >> no. he kept a low profile. >> he's number two. >> yeah. >> do you think he's alive? >> he shows up in the videotape, the trade center where bin laden takes response for the trade center. ice hard to tell. there were reports he was dead and they seem not to be that accurate. >> but family? >> yes. the family is dead. apparently they took out a

death notice in some egyptian newspaper. so -- >> you say you met atef. >> no. i didn't meet with him. i corresponded with him. >> who was he? >> the now deceased military commander. but when i was dealing with him, i wasn't quite sure if he was the military commander or not. i thought he was a media advisor. but he's one and the same person. we corresponded after the attacks on the u.s. embassies in africa, and the subsequent cruise missiles strikes against bin laden's camp in afghanistan and i was trying to get another interview. we corresponded by fax from the kabul post office to my hotel room in pakistan. and in the end, the message came that it wasn't -- they just didn't think it was a good idea. >> what about this book? when did you get the idea to do this book? it was finished in august. >> yeah. >> of course now you've changed it a lot by the time i got my hands on it. >> i got the idea to write the book -- i always wanted to write a book, and it just

seemed like a good -- i was interested in the subject, was the main thing to me. and that kind of subject is -- you know, bin laden is an interesting -- obviously was an interesting -- he's an interesting personality and phenomenon. of course starting it i had no idea we'd be talking about september 11 or events like this. but i just thought if i was interested in a subject and that somehow other people would be too. and, you know -- i mean, i think it's a general proposition, i think that's a good way to operate. i mean, if i'm -- if you're not -- if the writer isn't interested particularly, then who else is going to care? i mean, you have to be -- you have to think it's an interesting subject. you have to be engauged in it. >> let me ask you some minor book questions. >> yeah. >> when you wrote it and finished in august of this year, how many copies were they going to publish? >> i'm not sure, but they read the manuscript and said they'd double projections. now, doubling it from a probably very low number, you

know, it would have been -- i don't know. >> free press. what, 10,000, 15,000? >> i think they were going to double it from 10,000 to 20,000, hypothetically. they said they would double it to something beyond what they previously thought. >> the book was done and you had it at the publisher in august? >> it wasn't done. i handed in my manuscript and it needed work on august 30. >> so, what happened on september 11? >> i think at a certain point i spoke to my editor, rachel clayman, and said to her -- i don't know if it was on the 11th or not. but we talked about, you know, what are we going to do? and, you know, obviously the thing to do was of all the times to get the book out it was now. for all people, bin laden could have been shmidladen. it was a beautiful day and suddenly this thing happened. it was almost inexplicable. the fact is it was explicable

to some degree. as soon as the second plane hit, to me, who else would have had the motivation and the kind of organization to pull this off? so, we talked -- i mean, rachel, my editor, was -- was -- i condition remember very much of the conversation because there were so many things going on, but we basically agreed, we just have to get this done. and rachel very kindly came down to washington for about four or five days, and we just basically worked. i mean, at a certain point, it's like you can't have these conversations over the phone. you just have to be with your editor. we just worked around the clock to get it out. >> you've gone as far as to add this note at the bottom of the flap -- both author and publisher will donate a portion of this book to the united way. what's the percentage? >> yeah. some routine percentage, industry standard. >> but what happened about the printing of this book? how many copies did you originally print?

it has been on the bestseller list. >> i think it's -- they announced a print around 250,000. that doesn't mean anything. i mean, that doesn't mean you're going to sell 250,000. there might be a lot sent back. i know more about publishing than i used to now, which is if you -- at a point you're going to print more than you -- because the worst thing is not to have it in the shops when you need it. but i think -- i hope i'm doing something of a service in the sense that it -- the book may help people understand -- you know, september 11 did not emerge out of a vacuum. this guy has been planning these kind of attacks against american targets since the early 1990s and his organization has been involved against the americans the early 1990's. unfortunately what happened, the attacks have gotten more complex and more deadly and it was kind of an accelerated curve upwards of attacks. and, you know, it -- hopefully

the book will make that clear. i think if you read the book, when you put it down, i hope you find -- you say to yourself, now i kind of understand how that wasn't entirely out of the blue. i think that bin laden, by the way -- i think september 11 -- he wanted to provoke some sort of trash of civilization. it was a total failure. the stribing thing to me, you can't justify the september 11 attacks in islam. there is no language to justify it. and bin laden doesn't even try and justify it. when he says -- when people ask why the assault on american citizens, he says, well they pay taxes and therefore they're complicit. that's hardly a religious justification. his message is zero resonance or very lit until the muslim world. you have not seen millions of people getting on the streets saying osama, osama, osama. the demonstrations have been tiny and every middle eastern government has lined up to help against bin laden because they understand he's a threat to

them. the videotape, if there was any doubt he was involved, that would expunge it. it makes it clear that he's a rather -- i don't know. it's hard to find the words. but certainly a -- it's -- his jovialy on the videotape was pretty unpleasant and he is -- i tell you what, brian, what i think about him. we've seen a lot of his type in the past century, which is i know how to create the perfect omelet, it doesn't matter how many eggs are necessary to break to make that omelet. and we've seen that again and again and again. whether that was whoever, those are different people. bin laden's victims are his victims. but they all share one absolutely common thing, which is i know how to create paradise on earth, and i'm absolutely certain about it, and if other people done understand it, you know, sort of -- they're wrong. not only that.

we should be able to kill them. and you see that again and again. the worst person in my view is the person who thinks that they can -- that they have the perfect answer, because they almost without -- they think they're going to create paradise on earth if their solutions are implemented. they tend to create hell on earth. anybody without certainty is almost certainly wrong, and before we do a lot of damage. >> what is in the book that would help people understand a post-bin laden period, a post al-zawahiri period? shaykh rahman, a couple of his sons killed? >> a couple. one has been killed apparently. >> he's in jail here? >> he's in minnesota. yeah. shaykh rahman. i think after bin laden and -- i think that -- they were such an unusual phenomenon. i don't see -- i think when bin laden and his top leadership are eliminated or captured or whatever and the terrorist training camps in afghanistan are closed permanently, which

are they are in the process of being, you'll revert to a situation that existed before, which is terrorism is a major irritant, but it wasn't like a major security threat facing the united states, which came on september 11. >> what did you think of the decision on the part of this government to go after the network? >> i think they've done a brilliant job. it's very hard to fault them on anything. i mean, it -- you know, it is clear from bin laden's statements that he possibly possesses some sort of radioactive weapon, not an atomic weapon, but with this group, all bets are off. a very aggressive effort to kind of get them -- i mean, it's quite clear, bin laden has no qualms about killing muslims, in-- civilians, including muslim civilians. the u.s. embassy attacks killed 200 africans, and tanzania and kenya are a lot more muslim.

he killed more muslims than americans up to september 11. he doesn't have -- you know, there are no -- there are no checks for bin laden. there's no -- i think, you know, he -- he and his followers are ready to do as much damage as they can. so, at that point it's a matter of self-preservationment i'm not a militaristic sort of person, but if there's ever a reason to go to war, the catastrophic death of thousands of civilians and doing it in an aggressive way, how can you fault that? >> going back to when we started talking about your life, abc. what did you call that first job? >> desk assistant. >> just a desk assistant. you were a gopher? >> gopher, yeah. >> and how many years was it there again? >> that was in 1985. >> 1985 to 2001. what's this impact on your life? >> this? >> this book, your knowledge about that part of the world, this story. are you back with cnn full-time?

>> no. no, no, no. i like to continue working with cnn sort of in a part-time capacity. i've worked for 15 years now for other -- for -- and to the extent it would be possible to be independent, i'd like to do that and write other books and perhaps other articles, but the impact of this book on my life? i hope i can write another book. >> what about the impact of this whole story? >> well, it's been very -- i don't know. it's been very hard sometimes because, you know, the events -- i was here in washington on september 11, and the whole thing was -- i don't know. it was very dreadful, really. the whole -- i find it -- and -- >> where were you when it happened? >> i was at home. my father was watching television and told me a plane had hit the trade center and i thought heff joking, but i came down and saw it, then the second plane it, and as soon as that happened, i called up keith mcallister, the national editor of cnn, and his office had just said, "come here

immediately." it was pretty obvious to anybody who followed these thins it was bin laden. i took a cab in, and it was -- i remember the day. it was unclear about what happens happening, what were the targets. i remember there was a report that the state department was perhaps on fire or had been bombed, then the pentagon was on fire. all these reports. somebody -- another report came in, much stronger, more urgent report, you know, the entire tuer of the trade center -- tower of the trade center had collapsed. and my ethiopian cabdriver, i'll never forget it, burst into tears. i burst into tears, actually, as well. you knew how many people -- i mean i thought i knew how many had died in the attack. it was very hard to go on. but, you know, i went to cnn and was talking to one of the correspondents there, and i was saying, yeah, maybe cnn isn't such a smart place to be either. i mean, you know, who knows? it wasn't clear -- wasn't clear what the objective was. i mean, so, it was a very

difficult day, and then -- anyway, the main thing about it is that it sort of gives me no joy the book is going to be more widely read. it would be far better than what we -- one to have things that strike me about bin laden is he's a sort of james bond villain in a way. but if this is a real james bond movie, james bond would have come in and gotten rid of bin laden, the trade centers would be standing. unfortunately, life is not a movie. the trade centers fell and bin laden is, you know, able to get away with it, it seems. >> go back to the meeting you had with him in 1997. >> yeah. >> what are the other little things you remember from that meeting? >> circumstances? >> circumstances. >> at the end of the meeting he was -- he didn't want to hang around for very long but served us a cup of tea. i remember himself. he lingered basically to have some pictures taken and we got some other -- other shots of him. and he -- the -- peter arnett

interviewed saddam hussein during the gulf war, so peter arnett talked to him about saddam hussein. and he said, "saddam hussein is a bad muslim and sees kuwait for a's own self-aggrandizing." both of which are true statements. but he regarded hussein as a her tick. >> did you shake hands with him? >> i don't think so. i don't think so. i don't think it was ever -- the situation never came up whether it was the shake of a hand or not. he just sat down. i don't think we shook hands at all, no, come to think about it. i never real hi thought about it until now. >> what about the people around him? we talked about that earlier. did they know who you were, have a grasp of what you were going to do with it? >> i think so. the translator spoke excellent english, and a number of people understood it was cnn, understood it was an interview. >> did they watch cnn?

>> not in afghanistan. but in most places they have electricity. >> you report he bought a $7,500 satellite telephone in new york. >> from a new york company. >> but abandoned the use of the satellite telephone. >> he banned it maybe personally. his aides may have used that same satellite phone. he's not stupid and he understood that the voice print, his voice print is distinctive and, you know, the satellite sweep looking for this voice and -- in 1997, his colleague in london said that bin laden was not chatting away on his satellite phone. he's been the subject of a number of rather serious assassination attempts by his native government, so he's very security conscious. >> looking back in the couple minutes we have left. >> yeah. >> how would you grade the media during this period of time, and all that you knew about this, have you often looked at the set or read an article and said, bunch of misinformation? >> i think overall the media is

-- particularly after september 11, the media has done an amazing job. i think cnn has been doing a wonderful job, should be awarded pulitzers, "the washington post" has done a very good job. what's striking is if you do polls on the media, on september 10, the media was regarded as lawyers talking about gary condit and stuff, down 20%, and now we're doing the public's job, up 70%, 8%. i think it unleashed people to do the jobs they wanted. nobody wants to gary condit or that kind of stuff at the end of the day. >> what would you like to do next, specifically, what topic? what area? >> i would like to go back to afghanistan and find out what happened. i think when the smoke clears a bit, you know, and -- i mean, there are a lot of other things going on right now, but i think the opportunity to go back to afghanistan and talk to some of the players, find out how this all happened and sort of basically the part two of this book as it were. >> where would you go first?

>> well, i'd go to -- probably go to kabul just because you need to get the various permissions and talk to people there. >> who are you going to look for to talk to? >> the two people who will know a lot about the situation are dr. abdullah, who has been tracking the bin laden group for years because they were fighting them on the front lines with the alliance. and the people in kandahar, people who have information about what was the final disposition of where mullah omar was and what was the final -- where was bin laden? these are the people who are going to really know what happened on the ground. >> and what's your suspicion as to how the united states got the tape? >> that is a very good question. i just have no idea. i mean, they aren't saying, so it's -- it sounds like somebody left the house in a hurry and left the tape and maybe it was mislabeled. you know how often tapes get mislabeled. it was a mistake. somebody left it there. >> is there a moral to all this story?

>> people who have got -- people who believe that god is really on their side, you know, it's very unlikely that god has decided to get on your side. i don't think god works like that. and bin laden really believes that god got on his side. and that's -- i don't know. it's not a very useful way of looking at the world. if you believe god is on your side, you believe everything you do is divinely sanctioned and therefore everything you do is right. it's a very dangerous thing. >> this is the cover of the book. it's called "holy war, inc. -- redesigned booknotes web site features over 800 notable nonfiction authors interviewed about their books. there you can view the program seeks transcripts and use the searchable database and find links of the other's blogs web sites facebook pages and twitter feeds.

booknotes.org with a brand-new look and feel, helpful research tool and a great way to watch and enjoy the authors and their books. >> the book is subtitled the man, the myth an american story because they think and i hope i adequately show that the myth of johnny appleseed keeps getting reinvented generation by generation. in the late 1800's and early 1900's he was a symbol of the american innocence, the time before civil war had ravaged the land, before native americans had driven them into dismal reservation and whispered expansions with the way the suppose even the country once had been. two decades later after the temperance union had laid siege to hard cider johnny reemerged as spokesman for the helpful property. in the mid-1900's as we have seen the disney studio turned johnny into a sermon on brotherly love and selflessness. advertisements in 1950s and the 1960s praises financial