Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [Hardcover]

Peter L. Bergen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2001

On September 11, 2001, the world in which we live was changed forever. The twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down, one side of the Pentagon burst into flame, and more than six thousand men, women, and children lost their lives in the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil. As shocking as it was, it had been long in the making: The assault was the most sophisticated and horrifying in a series of operations masterminded by Osama bin Laden and his Jihad group -- an organization that CNN's terrorism analyst Peter Bergen calls Holy War, Inc.

One of only a handful of Western journalists to have interviewed the world's most wanted man face to face, Peter Bergen has produced the definitive book on the Jihadist network that operates globally and in secrecy. In the course of four years of investigative reporting, he has interviewed scores of insiders -- from bin Laden associates and family members to Taliban leaders to CIA officials -- and traveled to Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom to learn the truth about bin Laden's al Queda organization and his mission.

Immense in scope and unnerving in its findings, "Holy War, Inc." reveals:

How bin Laden lives, travels, and communicates with his "cells." How his role in the crushing defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan made him a hero to Muslims all over the world -- and equipped him to endure a long and bloody siege. How the CIA ended up funding -- to the tune of three billion dollars -- radical, anti-American Afghan groups allied to bin Laden. How the attacks that foreshadowed the destruction of the World Trade Center -- among them the bombings of the American embassies in Africaand the warship USS "Cole" in Yemen -- were planned and executed. The dimensions of bin Laden's personal fortune, and why freezing his assets is both futile and nearly impossible. The ideology of bin Laden's number two, the man who has influenced him most profoundly in his holy war -- the Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri. What we can expect from Islamist extremists in the future.

Above all, Peter Bergen helps us to see bin Laden's organization in a radically new light: as a veritable corporation that has exploited twenty-first-century communications and weapons technologies in the service of a medieval reading of the Koran and holy war. "Holy War, Inc." is essential reading for anyone trying to understand tomorrow's terrorist threats and the militant Islamist movements that could determine the fate of governments -- and human lives -- the world over.

Both author and publisher will donate a portion of the proceeds from this book to United Way's September 11th Fund for the relief of victims of the World Trade Center attacks.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's a lot of new information in this well-written examination by CNN's terrorism expert on the man believed to be behind the events of September 11, though some of its revelations have already been reported elsewhere in the media. What distinguishes this account is its depth: Bergen has long tracked the Islamic world the book opens with the account of his 1997 interview with bin Laden, the terrorist's first TV interview and it shows. He sheds light on several outstanding questions, arguing, among other things, that it's unlikely Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks, and that it's a myth that the CIA directly funded and trained bin Laden during the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. According to Bergen, the CIA gave its money to Pakistan and then let that country's intelligence agency decide what to do with it, which was to fund those they viewed as the most strictly Islamic groups among those opposing the Soviet Union. He also adds some details about bin Laden's rise from his wealthy childhood in Saudi Arabia to his current career, and the global spread of Al Qaeda's terrorizing tentacles. The information on what is known about September 11 added hurriedly after the original manuscript was completed, as Bergen admits gives the book a slightly jagged feel. But those looking for a balanced, comprehensive look at bin Laden and his crew as well as an answer to the now preeminent question "why do they hate us so much?" will do well to start here. (Nov. 13)Forecast: Given the piling up of books about bin Laden, etc., on bestseller lists, it's a foregone conclusion that this will join them, with first serial to Vanity Fair and selection by the major book clubs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As CNN terrorism analyst Bergen avows, this journalistic study of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network was rushed to publication and thus lacks some editorial smoothness in its delivery. Nevertheless, this book offers a mature, balanced description of bin Laden's background; a concise summary of the organization of the al-Qaeda terrorist network as it has developed in the Middle East, Europe, and America; and a brief narrative of terrorist events through September 11. Bergen asserts that bin Laden's hostility emanates from his religious opposition to an American military presence in Saudi Arabia, American policy toward Israel, and the "un-Islamic" behavior of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Bergen personalizes his story with an account of his 1997 interview with bin Laden and the contacts he made with bin Laden's militant Islamic associates. Here, an interesting story drifts a bit from bin Laden to accounts of al-Qaeda operations. Bergen has, however, pulled together a significant amount of solid information, which he presents with perception and without grand swings of passion. This is an important initial glimpse of bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the associated Taliban of Afghanistan and is strongly recommended for all libraries. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (November 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743205022
• ISBN-13: 978-0743205023
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,410,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist; the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C.; a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security and CNN's national security analyst. In 2008 he was an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and he has worked as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a range of American newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, TIME, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, Newsweek, Washington Times and Vanity Fair. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic. His story on extraordinary rendition for Mother Jones was part of a package of stories nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award. He has also written for newspapers and magazines around the world such as The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Prospect, El Mundo, La Repubblica, The National, and Die Welt. And he has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television, Discovery Television and CNN.

Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified before several congressional committees. He is a member of the National Security Preparedness Group, a successor to the 9/11 Commission and is the editor of the AfPak Channel, a joint publication of Foreign Policy magazine and the New America Foundation that can be found at www.foreignpolicy.com/afpak.

Bergen has traveled repeatedly to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to report on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. His most recent book is The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda. New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes, "For readers interested in a highly informed, wide-angled, single-volume briefing on the war on terror so far, "The Longest War" is clearly that essential book." Tom Ricks also writing in the Times described the book as "stunning."

His previous book was "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader" (Free Press, 2006). It was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2006 by The Washington Post. "The Osama bin Laden I Know" was translated into French, Spanish and Polish, and CNN produced a two hour documentary, "In the Footsteps of bin Laden," based on the book. Bergen was one of the producers of the CNN documentary, which was named the best documentary of 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists and was nominated for an Emmy.

Bergen is also the author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden. (Free Press, 2001). Holy War, Inc. was a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into eighteen languages and was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2001 by The Washington Post. A documentary based on Holy War, Inc., which aired on National Geographic Television, was nominated for an Emmy in 2002. Bergen was the recipient of the 2000 Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship and was the Pew Journalist in Residence at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2001 while writing Holy War, Inc.

In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden's first television interview, in which he declared war against the United States for the first time to a Western audience. In 1994 he won the Overseas Press Club Edward R. Murrow award for best foreign affairs documentary for the CNN program "Kingdom of Cocaine," which was also nominated for an Emmy. Bergen co-produced the CNN documentary Terror Nation which traced the links between Afghanistan and the bombers who attacked the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993. The documentary, which was shot in Afghanistan during the civil war there and aired in 1994, concluded that the country would be the source of additional anti-Western terrorism. From 1998 to 1999 Bergen worked as a correspondent-producer for CNN. He was program editor for "CNN Impact," a co-production of CNN and TIME, from 1997 to 1998.

Previously he worked for CNN as a producer on a wide variety of international and U.S. national stories. From 1985 to 1990 he worked for ABC News in New York. In 1983 he traveled to Pakistan for the first time with two friends to make a documentary about the Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of their country. The subsequent documentary, Refugees of Faith, was shown on Channel 4 (UK).

Bergen has a M.A. in Modern History from New College, Oxford University. He won an Open Scholarship when he went up to New College in 1981. Before that he attended Ampleforth. He was born in Minneapolis in 1962 and was raised in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

141 of 155 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keep your cool, November 14, 2001

By 

Douglas Picket (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Hardcover)

This is the ticket if you want reality. But it shows us how evil the terrorist is, how unconscious! These terrorists come to life in this book in that it shows you how they actually do believe in their cause. I now am convinced Laden thinks he is doing gods will, but how he became that way is beyond me. I cannot go into all the details here but you need to read this to understand how the situation came about, there are many facts here, including CIA and USA policies I would never of guessed that left me aware. I want to also recommend another good book like this but also predicted the WTC events and the Bio war and a few other events that have come to pass as well as more predictions. Karl Mark Maddox's SB 1 or God

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Readable journalistic overview, June 12, 2002

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Hardcover)

If you don't know the difference between al-Qaeda and the Taliban (and before September 11 ‛01, I sure did not) or if you're a little fuzzy about where Yemen is in relation to Afghanistan, this an excellent book. Peter Bergen is CNN's terrorism analyst and an experienced reporter. He uses a wide range of sources including his own experience to describe the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. There's even a map of the Middle East that you can refer to as you read.

But those with some expertise in the world of the mindless jihad masters and the issuance of pretentious fatwas will find this rather limited, I would imagine. We don't really get "Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden," but rather are provided with a narrative distilled from numerous news accounts augmented with Bergen's interviews and travel experiences. Essentially, we stay outside the organization (but so did the CIA). Furthermore, Bergen's "Holy War, Inc." characterization of al-Qaeda as a kind of multinational corporation is exactly the sort of catchy, but superficial and misleading designation that irritates the cognoscenti. Al-Qaeda does not turn a profit, nor does it look to turn a profit. It exists on funds raised from charities, from donations from Muslim fat cat businessmen, from bin Laden's inheritance and from funds siphoned from various commercial enterprises, both legal and illegal, and from what it can beg, borrow and steal. It would perhaps be more accurate to designate al-Qaeda as a Mephistophelian service organization. Perhaps "The Black Crescent" would be an appropriate agnomen.

Nonetheless, to Bergen's credit this is not the usual sort of "rush to judgment" volume churned out by book publishers to take advantage of a major news event. Bergen had the book finished in August and apparently was working on the proofs when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11. At that point of course the book was reshaped and spun to tie in with that event so that Bergen's interview with bin Laden (aired on CNN May 10, 1997) forms part of a Prologue entitled, "How to Find the World's Most Wanted Man."

The strength of the book is in its readability and in the sense that Bergen gives us of what it is like to be an international journalist today (and for those out in the field, it is dangerous to be sure). Characteristically, Bergen describes his trek to and into Afghanistan including the wearing of blindfolds during the last leg to bin Laden's hideout. This personal experience view continues throughout the book and is one of the book's strengths--although of course Bergen does want to make sure we understand that he is more than a "put on the make up and read the cue cards" sort of journalist.

What Bergen notices, and what he reports to us, tell us as much about Bergen as about the world of the terrorist. He reports on the food and what the taxi drivers say. He notices the terrain, the weapons, the dress of the men he meets, and he gives us a good feel for the conditions he and other journalists encounter. What is missing, at least from my point of view, is a cohesive overall understanding or perspective. Perhaps the events are so new, and the trees of the forest so mesmerizingly vivid that it is impossible as yet to discern the larger picture.

But Bergen does attempt a larger understanding. He compares al-Qaeda to the infamous Assassins, founded as an Ismailian sect in what was then Persia in 1090. Supposedly under the influence of hashish, the Assassins brought death and destruction on Christian Crusaders for upwards of two hundred years. (It remains to be seen how long al-Qaeda lasts.) I found it revealing to learn that the head of the Assassins was referred to as "the old man of the mountain" (according to Webster's Second International), just the sort of personage that bin Laden would idolize and try to emulate.

Bergen also attempts a little political philosophy by critiquing Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis in the Afterward, but not very successfully, I might say, since the tribal and fundamentalist world view of the Taliban and al-Qaeda supporters really is in a monumental collision with Western modernity.

Bottom line: this is a good book, a little superficial and a little thin, but then, so's the news.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holy War, Inc., April 20, 2002

By 

James Patterson (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Hardcover)

Peter Bergen's aptly titled book "Holy War, Inc", draws a stunning portrait of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. He depicts al-Qaeda as a multi-national terrorist network, with members everywhere from Egypt and the Philippines to Disney World and the suburbs of London. Bergen takes the reader on a fast-paced journey around the world to try to understand the minds of these Islamic militants.
Bergen's first contention is that Osama bin Laden is grossly misunderstood by the West. Bergen begins by dispelling various rumors circulating around bin Laden. For instance, it was falsely speculated that bin Laden received an engineering degree from an American University, teamed up with Iraq to plot the 1998 African embassy bombings, and was receiving funds from the CIA. The first step Bergen, a journalist by profession, takes to give the reader a clear understanding of bin Laden is to lay out the factual aspects of bin Laden's life.
Bergen argues that it was misunderstanding that led to, what he deems as, countless blunders in U.S. foreign policy, especially the actions of the CIA, with regard to the Muslim world in the 1980s. He does not go as far as to claim that the CIA "created" bin Laden and al-Qaeda, however he does argue that the CIA committed a "significant tactical error" in giving the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI, carte blanche authority over the distribution of about $3 billion to the Afghani resistance against the Soviets. The ISI, according to Bergen, mostly supported anti-Western mujahedin, including Pashtun General Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is a known associate of bin Laden.
Bergen does an excellent job of conveying the pervasiveness of al-Qaeda throughout the globe. He identifies many members in the United States, including a Disney World Employee, a California undergrad, a military advisor, Boston cab driver, and "several African-Americans." All the while he links the actions and influence of these people, and others on almost every continent, to acts of violence going back to the 1980s, in places including, but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tanzania, New York, Egypt, Afghanistan, Yemen, Kashmir, Kenya, and Sudan. Most poignant, is Bergen's small biography of Ali Mohamed, whom is describes as an al-Qaeda "sleeper" who was able to "penetrate one of the U.S. military's most secretive establishments and plot terrorist attacks on American soil."
"Holy War, Inc." does, however, have its shortcoming. In may places the writing seems thrown together and even sloppy at times. Bergen, in his afterword, apologizes saying that the book had to be revised and rushed to press after September 11th. Bergen also often takes the reader on tangent after tangent into everything from the lives of minor characters to camels copulating in the middle of the road. An additional, but perhaps unavoidable, difficulty is the alphabet soup of Muslim names that gets thrown at the reader. Presumably this book is targeted toward a Western audience and an attempt to mitigate the confusion over which Mohammed did what would have been helpful.
Toward the end of the book Bergen attempts to debunk Professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory. Bergen rejects Huntington's argument on empirical grounds and maintains that nationalism and power politics are still the best predictors of rivalry in the post-Cold War world. However, his feeble arguments make it grossly obvious that Bergen is a journalist and not a political scholar. He never actually addresses any of Huntington's core arguments, but rather simply lists several loosely interpreted counterexamples.
To finish his book, Bergen recommends several pragmatic steps that the United States needs to take to effectively battle al-Qaeda. First, the United States needs to leave behind its Cold War mentality and rethink everything, especially the employment of military force and the business of intelligence gathering. He argues that our reliance on electronic intelligence is not effective against a man like bin Laden who has stopped using telephones since 1997. Also, the U.S. should not rely as heavily on intelligence from the Pakistani ISI, since many members are sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The U.S. should therefore develop more human intelligence sources, specifically recruiting agents from the many rival tribes in Afghanistan, such as the Northern Alliance. Also, the world needs to be ever vigilant with the existing nuclear stockpile to ensure that nuclear material does not find its way into the hands of al-Qaeda. Bergen does not believe the problem would go away if bin Laden were to be killed, however he acknowledges that his organization would "be dealt a severe blow if bin Laden were ushered from the world."
Finally, Bergen argues that the best way to eliminate al-Qaeda is to "shut down permanently the Afghan training camps where the foot soldiers of Holy War, Inc. learn their deadly skills". It is these camps that turn unskilled, undisciplined Arab men into professional terror soldiers. Without the camps the recruits cannot easily learn how to make bombs or organize themselves into cells capable of carrying out elaborate plans.
"Holy War, Inc." is a good book for someone who wants to transcend the pro-Western rhetoric surrounding Osama bin Laden and simply get the straight facts. Peter Bergen's journalist flair allows the reader to take in a heap of information and draw their own conclusions. That is not to say that Bergen does not advocate his own opinions, but he does not allow his personal biases to obscure the facts. An enormous strength of this book is Bergen's in-depth knowledge of his subject matter. He personally travels all over the Muslim world to track down facts and interview key personalities. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning the facts about al-Qaeda , or anyone who would like to get some insight into the inner workings and motivations of Osama bin Laden.