The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden

by Peter L. Bergen

Overview

The world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today.

In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals.

In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982170530
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Series:	Bestselling Historical Nonfiction
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	270,356
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Peter Bergen is the author or editor of nine books, including three New York Times bestsellers and four Washington Post best nonfiction books of the year. A Vice President at New America, Bergen is a professor at Arizona State University and a national security analyst for CNN. He has testified before congressional committees eighteen times about national security issues and has held teaching positions at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Sphinx Without a Riddle?

ONE SPHINX WITHOUT A RIDDLE?

A sphinx without a riddle.

—Bismarck on Napoleon III

Around the time of the 9/11 attacks, relatively little was known about Osama bin Laden. In the rare television interviews that al-Qaeda’s leader had given before then he came across as largely inscrutable, with only an occasional thin, enigmatic smile playing across his lips. He had gone to considerable lengths to keep information about his private life hidden, which wasn’t surprising since he had grown up in Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies in the world. He also led an organization, al-Qaeda, whose very existence was a well-kept secret for a decade after its founding in the late 1980s. The bin Laden family, one of the richest in the Middle East, had also largely avoided scrutiny. Was the leader of al-Qaeda a sphinx without a riddle?

In recent years a great deal of information has surfaced to illuminate bin Laden and the inner workings of al-Qaeda. First there is the small library of documents found in bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound that were released in full only in late 2017, amounting to some 470,000 files. Secondly, many bin Laden associates have finally shown a willingness to talk. The result is that a decade after his death, it is now possible to appraise him in all the many dimensions of his life: as a family man; as a religious zealot; as a battlefield commander; as a terrorist leader; as a fugitive. He was born a young man of contradictions, and he kept adding to them: he adored his wives and children, yet brought ruin to many of them. He was a multimillionaire, but he insisted his family live like paupers. He projected a modest and humble persona that appealed to his followers, but he was also narcissistically obsessed about how his own image played out in the media, and he ignored any advice from the leaders of al-Qaeda that conflicted with his own dogmatic views. He was fanatically religious, yet he was also willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam, despite the fact that some verses of the Koran emphasize the protections afforded to innocents, even in times of war. He inspired deep loyalty, yet in the end, even his longtime bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, bin Laden failed to achieve any of his strategic goals.

Al-Qaeda’s leader is one of the few people of whom it can truly be said changed the course of history. Who could have predicted that in the two decades following the 9/11 attacks he masterminded, the United States would wage various kinds of military operations in seven Muslim countries—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—at the cost of more than $6 trillion and more than seven thousand American lives? In addition, tens of thousands of soldiers from countries allied to the United States died, as did hundreds of thousands of ordinary Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Syrians, and Yemenis who were also killed during the “war on terror.”

But just as it has taken many years to get a better understanding of the man who launched the 9/11 attacks, it has taken two decades to assess the successes and failures of both al-Qaeda and the United States in the long conflict that followed. This is not to suggest any moral equivalence between the two—but rather to explain where each side miscalculated the other’s intentions and actions.

Al-Qaeda did have some tactical successes. Before the 9/11 attacks it deftly exploited its safe haven in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to train thousands of militants. On 9/11 al-Qaeda carried out the first significant foreign attack against the continental United States since the British burned the White House in 1814. Al-Qaeda used the opportunities presented by the Iraq War to recruit a new generation of militants, planting the seeds for ISIS. And al-Qaeda expanded its affiliated groups from Africa to Asia.

There were also serious American policy failures. They include letting bin Laden escape at the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, which allowed him to lead his organization for another decade, and the conflation of al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein, which helped make the case for the Iraq War, a war that ultimately produced the very thing it was supposed to prevent—an alliance between al-Qaeda and Iraqi Baathists.

But bin Laden and al-Qaeda also had many failures of tactics and strategy. For one thing, the United States eventually came up with an increasingly effective tactical playbook against al-Qaeda and other jihadist militant groups—a playbook that largely, if imperfectly, worked, relying on armed drones, a much-expanded intelligence community, and Special Operations Forces raids. It’s a playbook that presidents as different as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all embraced to varying degrees and that kept the United States largely safe from jihadist terrorism since 9/11.

During the two decades after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda and its affiliates failed to successfully carry out a large-scale lethal terrorist attack in the United States.I Al-Qaeda’s failure to strike the United States after 9/11 was neither inevitable nor predictable, especially in the first years after the attacks, when bin Laden and the organization he led continued to plot against Western targets.

The key question about bin Laden is: Why did he build an organization dedicated to the mass murders of civilians? It’s a question I have been probing since I met bin Laden in 1997 as the producer of his first television interview. There was no single event that turned bin Laden from the shy scion of one of the richest families in the Middle East into the architect of the 9/11 attacks. Rather, bin Laden went through a gradual process of radicalization that first began during his teenage years when he became a religious zealot.

The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in 1979, when bin Laden was twenty-two, turned him into a leading financier of Muslim volunteers from around the globe who were drawn to the Afghan holy war. Eight years later bin Laden led his followers into battle against the Russians. From that battle emerged al-Qaeda, a group dedicated to spreading jihad, holy war, around the world. The introduction of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops into the holy land of Saudi Arabia in 1990 turned bin Laden’s latent anti-Americanism into a passionate hatred of the United States. He started conceiving of the Americans as his main enemy while he was living in exile in Sudan during the first half of the 1990s. His expulsion from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 angered him further against the United States, and in the late 1990s the planning for the 9/11 attacks began in earnest.

There was nothing inevitable about bin Laden’s transformation over the course of decades from a quiet, humble, religious young man into the leader of a global terrorist network who was intent on killing thousands of civilians. This book is an attempt to explain how that transformation happened.

I. The only lethal terrorist attack in the United States in the two decades after 9/11 that had any direct connection to al-Qaeda was when its branch in Yemen coordinated with a Saudi air force officer who killed three U.S. sailors at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida on December 6, 2019. It wasn’t clear whether this attack was directed by al-Qaeda from Yemen, or whether the Saudi officer came up with his own plan and he simply kept al-Qaeda apprised of it as it matured.

Table of Contents

A Note on Transliteration ix

Bin Laden Family Tree x

Prologue: Hopes and Dreams and Fears xiii

Part I Holy Warrior

1 Sphinx Without a Riddle? 3

2 Zealot 7

3 Jihad 23

4 AI-Qaeda 45

Part II War with the U.S.

5 Radical 57

6 "The Head of the Snake" 67

7 A Declaration of War 74

8 The U.S. Slowly Grasps the Threat 100

9 The War Begins 112

10 The Road to 9/11 138

Part II On the Run

11 Striking Back 155

12 The Great Escape 171

13 Al-Qaeda Revives 180

14 The Hunt 192

15 A Lion in Winter 209

16 Operation Neptune Spear 219

17 After bin Laden 230

A Note on Sources 249

Notes 253

Selected Bibliography 343

Acknowledgments 365

Index 371

Editorial Reviews

08/02/2021

CNN national security analyst Bergen (Trump and His Generals) adds intriguing new details to the story of Osama bin Laden in this solid, well-sourced biography. He visits bin Laden’s ancestral home in Yemen; traces the origins of his wealth to his father’s construction company in Saudi Arabia; and reveals that his father’s death in a plane crash helped push bin Laden to embrace fundamentalist Islam. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden raised millions of dollars to support the Afghan war effort, recruited Muslim fighters from around the world, and brought in construction equipment to build better roads for the mujahideen. Bergen dispels the myth that the CIA supported the formation of al-Qaeda (though the agency did funnel $3 billion in aid to Afghan fighters) and sharply critiques the slowness of America’s response to the terrorist group’s rise. He also delves into the 1998 attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, the planning for 9/11, bin Laden’s escape from the mountains of Tora Bora when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and the raid that killed him in 2011. Documents seized in that raid reveal that at the time of his death, bin Laden believed his strategy for bringing down America had failed. Surprising insights (as a young man, bin Laden loved Bruce Lee movies and drove a white Chrysler with red leather seats) and fluid prose enrich this authoritative portrait of the terrorist leader and the movement he inspired. Foreign affairs buffs will be fascinated. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year by The Los Angeles Times and Kirkus Reviews

"Meticulously documented, fluidly written and replete with riveting detail... Equally revealing about the Americans and their pursuit of him." — The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"Of the raft of books that are marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its aftermath, few are likely to be as meticulously documented, as fluidly written or as replete with riveting detail as Peter Bergen’s The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden... A page-turner." — The New York Times Book Review

"The portrait [Bergen] draws is intimate and detailed."— The Washington Post

"The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden does much more than reveal a human side to a mass murderer, offering the general reader an authoritative and convincing portrait of a man whose misdeeds changed all our lives in many ways, none for the better." — The Guardian

"Comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling." — H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World

"The author’s encyclopedic familiarity with his subject and his interviews with almost every key player are complemented by a succinct, almost laconic, writing style... An excellent primer for the general reader... The author’s mastery of the detail gives him an unmatched authority and he makes decisive pronouncements on some controversial issues." — The Cipher Brief

"Well-written and meticulously researched book draws heavily on the treasure trove of material that was captured by the US Navy Seal team that carried out the raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad lair that resulted in his death." — The National

"Well written. Its prose is crisp and clean. Its style will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike...The result is an enjoyable and informative read." — Washington Free Beacon

"A compelling, nuanced portrait of America’s erstwhile public enemy No. 1... Throughout, Bergen turns up revealing details and sharp arguments against received wisdom... Essential for anyone concerned with geopolitics, national security, and the containment of further terrorist actions." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Bergen adds intriguing new details to the story of Osama bin Laden in this solid, well-sourced biography....Surprising insights and fluid prose enrich this authoritative portrait of the terrorist leader and the movement he inspired. Foreign affairs buffs will be fascinated." — Publishers Weekly

"Bergen's detailed, incisive, and clarifying biography is an invaluable work marking 9/11's twentieth anniversary.... Recounts bin Laden's ruthless rise to power, al-Qaeda’s early successes, and bin Laden's last bitter years, leading to an excellent summary of bin Laden’s effect on American and international politics." — Booklist

From the Publisher

03/01/2021

Drawing on fresh documents and exclusive interviews with family members and associates, CNN analyst Bergen (The United States of Jihad) limns The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden (60,000-copy first printing). From retired U.S. Army Major General Eder, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line chronicles 15 mostly unacknowledged women, from a Dutch resistance fighter to an American tennis champion, who made a difference during World War II. In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, former Guardian journalist English shows how a Weimar-era doctor's collection of artwork by psychiatric patients inspired emerging artists, which led to a Nazi backlash against so-called degenerate art and the patient-artists themselves, who were eventually gassed in a run-up to the Final Solution. Evans's Maiden Voyages moves from celebrities in first class to professional women in second class to desperate émigrés in steerage—not to mention crew members—to reveal how the golden age of ocean liner travel changed women's lives (60,000-copy first printing). As seen in Costa biography finalist Kavanagh's The Irish Assassins, republican militants in 1882 Dublin murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke—Britain's chief secretary and undersecretary for Ireland, respectively—which ended their secret negotiations to achieve peace and independence for Ireland. Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, Levine details the battle that raged between Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson as The Failed Promise of Reconstruction became evident. In Once More to the Sky, Raab collects the 10 Esquire pieces he wrote between 2005 and 2015 about the construction of One World Trade Center, adding an epilogue and including Woolhead's four-color photographs throughout. In The Ambassador, British American biographer Ronald (Condé Nast) digs deep into Joseph P. Kennedy's controversial tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's (75,000-copy first printing). Former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and director of the Antiquarian Horological Society, Rooney is the author to tell us About Time—that is, the history of timekeeping worldwide.

Library Journal

★ 2021-06-19
Journalist and national security analyst Bergen delivers a compelling, nuanced portrait of America’s erstwhile public enemy No. 1.

Osama bin Laden, whom the author interviewed long before he became a household name, was an enigmatic and contradictory man: He was rich but insisted on living ascetically—a fact that drove a son of his away in adulthood—and though he had the bearing of a quiet cleric, he engineered the deaths of countless thousands of people, and not just on 9/11. Bergen resists psychobiography while examining some of the facts of his family life that shaped his personality. He barely knew his father, whom his mother had divorced, and he idealized a remote, dusty corner of Yemen, his family seat, even as it gave birth to an offshoot of Islam that worshipped Christian saints alongside Muslim ones. In the last weeks of his life, bin Laden was consumed with the fear that, hidden away in a compound in Pakistan, he was missing out on what he felt should have been a leadership role in the Arab Spring movement—and never mind that it had little to do with his religious fundamentalism. Throughout, Bergen turns up revealing details and sharp arguments against received wisdom: one moment finds bin Laden treating his white beard with Just for Men hair dye; another introduces readers to one of his wives, a “poet and intellectual who…played a key, hidden role in formulating his ideas and helping him prepare his public statements.” Though intelligence presumes him to have delegated the work to lieutenants, Bergen shows bin Laden micromanaging the 9/11 attacks and subsequent operations as the Bush administration bungled its efforts to find him. Meaningfully, the author notes that waterboarding and other torture of captured al-Qaida operatives yielded almost no actionable intelligence, and he disputes the claim that the Pakistani intelligence service shielded bin Laden from American discovery, discounting what has become the near-official narrative.

Essential for anyone concerned with geopolitics, national security, and the containment of further terrorist actions.

Kirkus Reviews