Al Qaeda Now: Networks, Strategies, Goals

Featuring Peter Bergen, Terrorism Analyst for CNN and fellow, Center on Law and Security; Roger Cressey, Partner, Good Harbor Consulting, and fellow, Center on Law and Security; Thomas Hegghammer, Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University; Evan Kohlmann, Terrorism Analyst, NBC News

Event Details

*This event is free and open to the public*

Date: February 23, 2010
Time: 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Location: Lipton Hall, 108 W. 3rd Street

SPEAKER BIOS

Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C; an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University; a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law andSecurity; CNN's terrorism analyst and author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden. (Free Press, 2001). Holy War, Inc. was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into eighteen languages. A documentary based on Holy War, Inc., which aired on National Geographic Television, was nominated for an Emmy in the research category. His most recent book is "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader"(Free Press, 2006).It was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2006 by The Washington Post. Bergen has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, TIME, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, Washington Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Prospect. He has also worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and DiscoveryTelevision. He is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict& Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field. In January 2008 Bergen will start teaching at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Roger W. Cressey served in senior cyber security and counterterrorism positions in the Clinton and Bush Administrations. He has been a crisis manager in Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. He currently advises clients on homeland security, cyber security and counterterrorism issues and is an on-air counterterrorism analyst for NBC News. Previously, Mr. Cressey served as Chief of Staff to the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board at the White House from November 2001 to September 2002. From November 1999 to November 2001, Mr. Cressey served as Director for Transnational Threats on the National Security Council staff, where he was responsible for coordination and implementation of U.S. counterterrorism policy. During this period, he managed the U.S. Government's response to the Millennium terror alert, the USS COLE attack, and the September 11th attacks.

Prior to his White House service, Mr. Cressey served in the Department of Defense, including as Deputy Director for War Plans. From 1991–1995, he served in the Department of State working on Middle East Security issues. He has also served overseas with the U.S. Embassy in Israel and with United Nations peacekeeping missions in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. While in the former Yugoslavia, he was part of a United Nations team that planned the successful capture of the first individual indicted for war crimes in Croatia. Mr. Cressey received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and an M.A. in Security Policy Studies from The George Washington University. He has taught a graduate course on U.S. counterterrorism policy at Georgetown University.  Mr. Cressey is the recipient of the State Department's Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards and the Defense Department's Exceptional Civilian Service Award.

Thomas Hegghammer is an academic specializing in the study of violent Islamism. He is currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, an associate at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. He holds a PhD in political science from Sciences-Po in Paris and an MA and MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford University. A fluent Arabic speaker, Dr. Hegghammer has conducted extensive field research in the Middle East. His research focuses on jihadi ideology, jihadism on the Arabian Peninsula and the history of the foreign fighter phenomenon. He is the author of the forthcoming book Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge University Press) and the co-author of al-Qaida in its own words (Harvard University Press, 2008). He is currently working on a book about the jihadi ideologue Abdallah Azzam and Arab involvement in the 1980s war in Afghanistan.

Thomas also edits Jihadica, a blog devoted to the analysis of jihadi websites (a Technorati top 100 blog in world politics).

Evan Kohlmann is a private sector International Terrorism Consultant who has spent over a decade tracking Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations.  During the course of his research, Mr. Kohlmann has amassed one of the largest and most extensive open source databases in the world of original documents, communiqués, and multimedia.  He currently works as a senior investigator for the Nine Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) Foundation--and has also served at various times as a contract consultant in terrorism matters on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY) at the Hague, the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Scotland Yard's SO-15 Counter Terrorism Command, the Central Scotland Police, West Yorkshire Police, and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET).