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 is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.
Peter BergenAt one point people in al Qaeda were actually drawing monthly paychecks when they were based in Sudan.
Peter BergenIn February I secured permission to enter Osama bin Laden's compound in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, where he was killed and where he had lived for the last half-decade of his life; the first, and only, journalist to do so.
Peter BergenAnd in the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound surrounded by his wives and children and far from the front lines of his holy war.
Peter Bergen