Peter Bergen, Manhunt
Featured Book
he full story of the most expensive manhunt ever conducted
Osama bin Laden was responsible for what is probably the most devastating attack to occur on U.S. soil, outside of the Civil War. So it makes a kind of perverse sense that he would be the subject of the most expensive manhunt ever conducted. It’s this decade-long fight to get just one man that Peter Bergen expertly recounts in his authoritative Manhunt. Notably, Bergen doesn’t skimp on the early phases of this long story, going as far back as the 1990s to show us the foundations of this massive struggle. Bergen’s familiarity with bin Laden’s deep history shines – he’s been on this beat for nearly 20 years and even managed to snag a rare interview with bin Laden in 1997. From there he makes accessible the interesting facts surrounding how the CIA managed to sift countless pages of information in its hunt for bin Laden, building a “horizontal” (instead of hierarchal) blueprint of the terrorist’s associates. It was this innovative strategy that allowed forces to zero in on the terrorist’s hideout, as it was not a lieutenant or family member but bin Laden’s lowly personal courier who eventually led the U.S. to the man himself.
Bergen’s eyewitness accounts of the safe house where bin Laden lived from 2005 till his death are fascinating as only the ugly details of an infamous celebrity can be: Who knew al-Qaida’s mastermind used Just for Men to keep his beard dark or had a hole in the ground for a toilet? Also intriguing are Bergen’s descriptions of bin Laden’s domestic arrangements with his three wives, and the very prosaic struggles he engaged in with them. The final account of the raid that brought the mastermind to his end gives the full story of a climactic, anxiety-ridden day that most only know from sound bites and news reports. That, plus Bergen’s deep look into how the intelligence community functions in this era of globalized warfare, makes this a valuable book to have in mind when assessing the president’s record going into election 2012, as well as for considering future battles in the fight against terrorism.
