From an early age, it sort of defies common sense. Cspan i found it interesting you actually named the publications and went specifically to the point they were making. Janes intelligence review, which reported that bin laden may have obtained an engineering degree in the United States and was financed by the cia you even call it respectable. Why would they publish Something Like that . Guest i think that, you know, its because bin laden is libelproof, incommunicado. His family isnt speaking, largely incommunicado and you know, hes public enemy number one, you can write anything that kind of occurs to you. And, i mean, i think the bar about you know, if lets say, janes intelligence review is writing about, lets say, jim woolsey or some wellknown intel you know, they would be able to check these things. I mean, they would find out where did mr. Woolsey go to school. And, you know, janes just repeated something that was sort of hearsay and, you know, its a very good publication, but i think i wasnt trying to single them out. Im just saying that theres been a lot of stuff written about bin laden, not all of it very accurate. Cspan you mention yossef bodansky. Guest yeah. Cspan . Who had a bestseller for a while. It was on the it may still be on there as far as i know. Guest yeah. Cspan you say, one of the examples of misinformation about bin laden can be found in the tome by yossef bodansky, who enjoys the title of director of Congressional Task force on terrorism. do you know what that is . Guest its a Republican Task force on terrorism. Cspan it says, in bin laden the man who declared war on america, bodansky described the teenaged bin laden visiting beirut to drink, womanize and get involved in brawls. never did that . Guest not according to people who know him. Cspan those who know bin laden, however, describe a deeply religious teenager who married at the age of 17. Bodansky makes another fantastic assertion that the 1996 crash of twa 800, which killed 230, was a joint operation between iran and bin laden. guest yeah. Cspan no proof at all that that ever happened . Guest i mean, you know, twa 800 went down for reasons that the ntsb or the National Transportation safety board and the fbi concluded was an accident. Its not really exactly clear why the accident, but, i mean, trying to pin bin laden, you know, for the twa 800 or iran is just its i dont think its very responsible for somebody who works, you know, for congress. Cspan how did you then go about making sure that and youve got so many connecting points in this book that it was accurate . Guest i tried to you know, like any book, i mean, there are probably you know, there are probably errors of you know, in there, but, you know, i try to be somewhat responsible about what i put in or you know, basically, the threshold had to be, lets say, sufficiently high. You know, having worked at cnn, you know, for, say, working at cnn i mean, thats the sort of tradition i come out of. So i try to sort out some of the myths and some of the rumors and try to really actually report and actually go and meet the people who met and knew bin laden or, you know, were involved in his group in some way or the people who were tracking him and rather than relying on secondary sources. Obviously, i do rely on secondary sources, but i try and rely on secondary sources that are either, you know, reputable publications or books or, you know, trial transcripts. I mean, i think Court Testimony is a very useful in the un the Embassy Bombing attacks, the subsequent manhattan trial, there was about, i dont know, must be every page generated 150every day generated 150 pages of testimony. And there were about 70 days. So there was a wealth of information in those in those court transcripts. I used those and trying to talk to as many people on the different sides of the story as possible, whether they were American Government officials, people who were reportedly sympathetic with bin laden, arab journalists who met with him or know about him, pakistanis. You know, i mean, the way to get a complete picture is to talk to as many people as possible, obviously. Cspan you went to his fathers village. Guest yeah. Cspan when did that happen . Where is it . What did you find . Guest its a beautiful place in hadhramaut, which is a very remote area of yemen, in eastern yemen. And it looks perhaps a little bit like arizona. Its sort of mesas almost as cliffs and theres honeycolored cliffs, and in one of the end of one of these valleys, you can find the town of alribat, which is bin ladens ancestral village. And its, you know, about 5,000 people. It doesnt you know, if you go there as a westerner, its you know, youre kind of a big deal. I mean, the all the kids in the village just, you know, start running after you. And, you know, its not something its not a place thats regularly visited. Bin laden left, bin ladens father left the village when he was a young man to go and seek his fortune in saudi arabia, but the family retains some links to the village. They gave some money for irrigation projects, and there is a house there which is the bin laden street, which is this rambling old, decrepit place which now houses kind of an extended family, some of the more distant relatives of Osama Bin Laden, and its so big that part of it is the village school. But i went there with john burns of the New York Times, who is a wonderful reporter, and we went to go and talk to some of the remaining cousins who were who were there. Cspan what does it mean if youre from yemen . Whats that in that part of the world over there, where is it located . What borders yemen . Guest ok. Well, to the south, its the arabian sea, and then to the north, its saudi arabia. So a lot of yemenis went to saudi arabia because basically, to get i mean, yemen is a very, very poor country. I think its the poorest country in the middle east, probably. And so you get a lot of immigration, and one of the people who immigrated was mohammed bin laden, the father of osama. But he was part of a pretty big movement. And one thing thats interesting about bin ladens organizations, youll find that some of the key people are saudis, but they actually have yemeni backgrounds like bin laden himself. For instance, the person whos regarded as being the mastermind of the bombing of the uss cole in yemen last year is somebody whose family originates in yemen, but grew up in saudi arabia, fought in afghanistan, like bin laden, against the soviets. Cspan how close is yemen to afghanistan . Guest yemen is, i mean, quite some distance. I mean, youd have to go youd, i mean, it would be youd have to fly, you know i dont know, its about 1,500 i mean, im guessing 1,500 miles, about 1,000 miles, perhaps. Quite some way. Cspan whats the population of yemen . Guest the population of yemen is 17 million, 18 million. One interesting thing is that they and i might be getting confused. I think the i think the number of guns in yemen may be that number, and then the population may be there im a little con. Cspan i think you remember the statistic 65 million guns and 18 million people. Guest right. Thats exactly right. Thats right, 65 million guns, 18 million people. So like afghan i mean, yemen is a lot very similar to afghanistan in its i mean, physically, its very beautiful. Theres mountains, theres deserts. You know, its tribal. There is quite a theres been quite a tourist industry in yemen, except that has been impacted, obviously, by terrorist events and kidnapping of tourists. But, you know, its one of the seven wonders of the world is this bazaar in sanaa, yemen, literally one of the seven wonders of the world. I think unesco called it so. And its really like stepping back into the middle ages. You see camels wearing blinkers, and theyre trying to theyre making sesame oil in these giant mortars and pestles. And you see its like a scene out of some medieval painting. But its real. I mean, its its happening now. And its its a wonderful its a wonderful place. Unfortunately, you know, bin ladens group managed to function just, you know, pretty well there. I mean, they were able to bomb the uss cole. There were plans earlier this year in june for some of bin ladens followers to bomb the us embassy there. So it remains a place where pockets of alqaeda exist, although the Yemeni Government has been apparently quite cooperative with the United States government in terms of trying to close alqaeda down there. Cspan you point out in the book that there was an attempt at bombing the sullivans. Guest yeah. Cspan . Ship. The sullivans. When did that happen, and how much of that do we know now . How much of its public . Guest well, i think, quite a lot. The uss the sullivans, which was a dress rehearsal for the cole, and that occurred on january 3rd, 2000, which was towards the end of ramadan in that particular year. And basically, what happened is that the bombers overloaded their boats with explosives and it sunk. But they learned from their mistakes and they came back and they did the uss cole. But the interesting thing about the sullivans attack was that the planned attack on the sullivans was that it was going to be part of a terrorist spectacular involving the bombing of Los Angeles International airport, lax, and also bombing tourist sites in jordan. And all of these things were going to be related for the millennium, for the new millennium, and none of them actually worked out, either because of the incompetence of the plotters or good police work. But it shows, a, that, you know, alqaeda has had its share of failures, as it were, luckily. But, b, it shows you know, these rather grandscale plans. I mean, this was this was a plan to kind of not simultaneously but within the same time period, you know, blow up an airport in america, blow up a us warship in yemen and also blow up places associated with american tourists in jordan. And it would have been pretty devastating. Cspan where do you think the Us Intelligence has been in all this . Guest well, i mean, you know, itsits very easy to monday morning quarterback because, obviously, september 11th was the biggest failure of intelligence gathering in american history. And you know, no one can argue with that fact. On the other hand, it has to be said that us Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community knew that bin laden was a pretty serious character quite early on. As early as 1995, the prosecutors in the Southern District of new york, which has basically handled a lot of the terrorism cases, worked for the initial trade Center Bombing in 93, for instance, they were asking people in some you know, in terrorism trials, do you know Osama Bin Laden . that was in 95. And, you know, lawyers who were in the case at that time said they were kind of mystified who was this Osama Bin Laden . Even though they knew a lot about the case, why was it the prosecutors were asking about him . So his name was beginning to surface in 95 for american Law Enforcement and prosecutors because his name was came kept cropping up too often, i think, is what happened, you know. And by 96, the Us State Department was calling him the most significant financier of islamic extremism in the world and actually had a very detailed white paper about who this guy is; he has Training Camps in afghanistan, sudan. And also, i think, around about the same time, the cia founded its own separate unit devoted to bin laden, which is sort of an interesting you know, there was a Counterterrorist Center within the cia. And, you know, to have set up this specialized unit, which is allowed to function, apparently, given quite a lot of latitude to function without having to deal with the washington bureaucracy so much. You know, so, i mean, the United States government was well aware that bin laden was a very dangerous man. On september the 10th, you know, he was already on the ten most wanted list and he had a 5 million reward on his head, so unprecedented. So its easy to sort of say, well, that was a huge failure and aon the other hand, i mean, both statements are true. It was it was an intelligence failure, but also the Us Government had you know, had put a lot of effort into going after him. I mean, the fact is that his group were sort of sui generis, i mean, very unusual, in the sense that it was very disciplined and very organized. And, you know, if you think about the terrorism that happened against american targets in the 80s, it was the Marine Barracks bombing that killed more than 200 americans in 1983. Well, that was but it was nothing never on the scale, you know the you know, i mean, the thing about this group is they kept making their plans more and more complex and more and more deadly as time went on. One can only hope that you know, that the trade center represents the apex. Cspan before i go on, let me ask you some questions about you. Guest yeah. Cspan where were you born . Guest i was born in minneapolis. Cspan what year . Guest 1962. Cspan how long did you live there . Guest my parents my parents and the family moved to paris when i was three. And then we moved to london when i was five or six, think. Cspan how long did you stay there . Guest lived in london my basically my entire life, went to high school in yorkshire, in the north of england, and went to university at oxford, and then returned to the United States after i left university. Cspan and why did you go to oxford . And what did you study . Guest i studied history. Cspan what kind of history . Guest modern history, which at oxford begins with the anglosaxons. So and why i mean, why did i go there . I mean, its an incredibly beautiful place. It was a wonderful time to go. And. Cspan college . Guest new college. Cspan new college . Guest yeah. And which is across the street. And new college is, i think, founded in 1369 or whatever, so but you know, i had a great time there. I didnt really you know, there werent that many requirements to work really, so and everybody you know, it was funny because at that time, you know, the english government actually paid for you to go to university. They gave you you know, i mean, now you have to pay or something yourself, but at that time, not only was the education free, but they actually gave you money to like kind of a spending money. So its a kind of a very different philosophy than the kind of but, of course, now the British Government is asking people to pay, but its still, relatively speaking, very inexpensive. Cspan british citizen or american citizen . Guest im american. Cspan did your parents move back here with you . Guest my mother stayed in england for another, i guess, 10 years, and then shes moved to washington relatively recently. And my father now lives in the United States as well. Cspan so when you came here from oxford, whered you go . Guest yeah. I moved to new york. Cspan what did you do . Guest i became a messenger, or i had a job called desk assistant, which basically meant at abc news. And that was my first job. But it was a it was a, a, very good way to sort of get to know manhattan because you sort of, you know, take your packages here and also kind of a good way to get to know the business because you kind of, just by process of osmosis, you kind of began to learn a little bit about business. Theres no reason to employ somebody it doesnt matter where theyve been to school, if they dont know you know, so it was kind of like thats the opening job you get. And then, you know, you kind of get promoted as you go along. Cspan whatd you do how longd you stay at abc . Guest five years. Cspan and what did you end up being at abc . Guest i worked my last job was at 20 20, where i was, you know, like a production assistant, associate producer, whatever, on different projects. You know, 20 20 was a very nice place to work. They were very nice people. And i was able to get Ronald Reagan and nancy reagan after they after Ronnie Reagan had retired, which is pretty amazing, you know, as a kid to spend a day with him. He was exactly how i you know, he was exactly how everybody said he would be. He was very charming and very pleasant. And nancy seemed to completely run the show. Cspan and and when did you decide to leave abc, and whered you go . Guest i got aa job offer at cnn, which was early in 1990. And from a wonderful my boss, pam hill, at the time. And she was setting up a unit pam hill, at the time. And she was setting up a unit at cnn to do, like, you know, documentaries, you know, investigative pieces, etc. And i decided to go there. And it turned out to be quite good timing because the gulf war then happened, and it was a great time to be at cnn. And, you know, i feel very lucky that i was at cnn, in a way, because, you know, i mean, if youre interested in news, where else better to be . I mean, thats what they do. Cspan so in 1990, you would have been how old . Guest i think i was 27 27 . Yeah. Cspan so youve been there ever since . Guest yeah. Well, except i resigned to write the book two years ago. Cspan go back to the first time you ever thought about Osama Bin Laden. Guest i think the first time i really thought about it seriously was an article by Judith Miller and jeff gerth is in the New York Times, round about the time the state Department Released this kind of rather detailed fact sheet about him. And i thought, well, thats kind of interesting, because it always seemed to me that the bombing of the World Trade Center was the you know, when youre a prosecutor, theres a rather narrow set of things youre looking for. I mean, who bombed the trade center . And that question was solved by the trials. But who was behind the bombing wasnt ever really asked very seriously, it didnt seem to me, perhaps because it just didnt seem that