Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C; an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security; CNN's national security analyst, and author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden. (Free Press, 2001). Holy War, Inc. was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into eighteen languages. A documentary based on Holy War, Inc., which aired on National Geographic Television, was nominated for an Emmy in 2002.

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 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 that aired around the fifth anniversary of 9/11. 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.

Former White House counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, reviewing "The Osama bin Laden I Know " in the Washington Post wrote “What made [Bin Laden] into history's most successful terrorist? Peter L. Bergen has written what will long be a "go-to" resource for those seeking answers to such questions…The result is a detailed, well-researched narrative that persuasively answers dozens of questions that are still painfully relevant…[a] fine volume.”

Bergen has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, TIME, The Nation, The National Interest, Washington Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Prospect. He has also worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and Discovery Television and is a contributing writer for Mother Jones. He is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified before congressional commitees. From 2002-2006 he taught at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden's first television interview. He was the recipient of the Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship in 2000 and a Pew fellowship in 2001 for Holy War, Inc, and 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.

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.

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. Before that he attended Ampleforth. He was born in Minneapolis in 1962 and was raised in London.