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" Investigations by special prosecutors can take on a life of their own. "

Peter L. Bergen

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" The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway. "

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" There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The dangers of TATP bombs can be seen in the case of Matthew Rugo and Curtis Jetton, 21-year-old roommates in Texas City, Texas. They didn't have any bomb-making training and were manufacturing explosives in 2006 from concentrated bleach when their concoction blew up, killing Rugo and injuring Jetton. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The United States didn't ban Italian immigration in the 1920s because a small minority of Italians became members of the Mafia, and the country is a richer place for it. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Some might say that that while al Qaeda the organization may be basically dead, its ideology continues to thrive and to inspire 'lone wolves' to attack the United States. "

Peter L. Bergen

" President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Americans generally regard themselves as belonging to an exceptional nation. And in terms of living in a religiously tolerant and enormously diverse country, Americans can certainly take some justified pride. "

Peter L. Bergen

" What is tricky for those hoping to utilize such weapons is that TATP bombs are quite difficult to make because their ingredients, when combined, are highly unstable and can explode easily if mishandled. "

Peter L. Bergen

" If the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were private companies and were chronically unable to accomplish one of their key missions, their shareholders would have long ago revolted, fired their management, and their stock would be trading at values near zero. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The E.U. is the latest of a series of multinational organizations set up after World War II to ensure that there would never again be a pan-European war and to create the conditions for a new European prosperity after the destruction wrought by the war against the Nazis. The E.U. has admirably succeeded at both. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Trump has long been a fan of Vladimir Putin but seems to be unaware that Russia's goal in Syria is simply the maintenance of its longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad in power. Indeed, Moscow has hitherto shown little appetite to focus on ISIS. "

Peter L. Bergen

" ISIS is even at war with its most natural ally, al Qaeda in Syria. "

Peter L. Bergen

" 'Zero Dark Thirty' is a great piece of filmmaking and does a valuable public service by raising difficult questions most Hollywood movies shy away from, but as of this writing, it seems that one of its central themes - that torture was instrumental to tracking down bin Laden - is not supported by the facts. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Since Trump is not quick to forgive the merest of slights, it's hard to imagine him calling on any of the officials who have publicly taken a stand against him to serve in key national security slots. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The civil war across the Middle East between the Shia and the Sunni empowers groups like ISIS and al Qaeda who claim to be the defenders of Sunni rights against Shia attack. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Bush administration officials, of course, deny that they didn't take the threat urgently enough, but there is no debating that in their public utterances, private meetings, and actions, the al Qaeda threat barely registered. "

Peter L. Bergen

" In 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 L. Bergen

" The Second Amendment is, of course, very much part of the American fabric. But the intent of the founders was that the amendment protected the rights of citizens to bear arms in a militia for their collective self-defense. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The inattention of the Bush administration to the threat from al Qaeda had results. Shortly before 9/11, Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, turned down FBI requests for some 400 additional counterterrorism personnel. "

Peter L. Bergen

" The war on terror, sometimes known as the 'Global War on Terror' or by the clunky acronym GWOT, became the lens through which the Bush administration judged almost all of its foreign policy decisions. That proved to be dangerously counterproductive on several levels. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Trump has long said he favors a 'safe zone' in Syria to prevent Basher al Assad's regime from carrying out indiscriminate airstrikes against Syrian civilians and to halt the refugee flow out of Syria. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Keeping a relatively small, predominantly U.S. Special Forces presence in Afghanistan to continue to train the Afghan army past December 2016 is a wise policy that would benefit both Afghans and Americans. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Six years after al-Awlaki was born, his family moved back to Yemen, but he returned to the States for college and remained there for much of his adult life. "

Peter L. Bergen

" Trump himself has not laid out a clear agenda on the national security issues that are the most pressing for the United States, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the deepening Syrian civil war to the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin. "

Peter L. Bergen

National Security

" ISIS' key social media-encrypted platform is Telegram, which is engineered by a Berlin-based tech company that can simply ignore the rulings of American federal judges as well as legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. "

Peter L. Bergen

" In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his 'Gen. George Patton.' Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice. "

Peter L. Bergen