Just over 15 years ago, a young producer accompanied CNN reporter Peter Arnett to an isolated mud hut in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. The man they found there became the most notorious terrorist of all time. Osama bin Laden wasn’t particularly well known in 1997, but he certainly made headlines when he declared jihad on America on national television.
“Due to its subordination to the Jews, the arrogance of the United States regime has reached the point that they occupied Arabia, the holiest place of the Muslims, who are more than a billion people in the world today. For this, and other acts of aggression and injustice, we have declared jihad against the U.S,” Bin Laden told CNN. This week marks one year since bin Laden’s death at the hands of Seal Team 6. The young man who produced that first CNN interview with Bin Laden has marked the anniversary with a new book that examines the ten-year search for the world’s most wanted man. Peter Bergen is the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden, from Nine-Eleven to Abbottabad.”