A commando during the operation at the Jewish center.

Program note: See Peter Bergen’s full report during special CNN coverage of the Mumbai attacks, tonight, 7-9p ET.
Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

It was an al Qaeda-influenced attack with western targets, British targets, American targets, Jewish targets, multiple coordinated attacks. In terms of who could have done this, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials that I’ve been speaking with recently, they don’t think that this could be just simply a local indigenous group.

We have seen numerous terrorist attacks in India, of course, and in Bombay. But some of the attacks in Bombay — one of the counterterrorism officials I talked to pointed to the ‘93 attack in Bombay which killed 250 people, multiple attacks, was coordinated according to the U.S. government by a guy called Daoud Ebraham (ph). Now Daoud Ebraham (ph) is an Indian gangster with strong links to Pakistan.

He’s believed to be living in Karachi right now, Karachi, Pakistan, the large port city where it is possible that the ship came from that delivered the terrorists, so that’s one angle I’m sure investigators are going to be looking at. A significant Kashmir militant group conducted a similar operation to what we’ve seen in Bombay against the Indian Parliament back in December of 2001 where numerous gunmen was sent into the Parliament on a de facto suicide mission, shot up the Parliament. It nearly brought India and Pakistan to war in 2002, perhaps the intent again with these recent attacks to kind of inflame tensions between these two long-time rivals.

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Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst. His most recent book is “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.” This commentary is based, in part, on an paper Bergen wrote for the New America Foundation, where he is a senior fellow, and an article he wrote for The New Republic in September, “A Man, A Plan, Afghanistan.”

Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

Sir, during the election campaign, you often said that getting Afghanistan and Pakistan right and ending the threat from al Qaeda were vital for American national interests.

In an effort to have an effective policy to do that, it is important to define the greatest challenges facing the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in order of importance. They are:

• Eliminating the safe haven al Qaeda enjoys on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
• Providing security to the Afghan population.
• Eliminating the growing tactical threat posed by the Taliban on both sides of the border.
• Providing tangible reconstruction and development efforts in Afghanistan and in the tribal border regions of Pakistan.
• Ending, or at least curtailing, the opium/heroin trade in Afghanistan.
• Expanding the legitimate, largely agricultural economy in Afghanistan.
• Holding fair and secure presidential elections in 2009 in Afghanistan.

To achieve these goals, the following eight steps must be taken within Afghanistan…

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Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

One person who was supposed to weigh in on the American presidential election is someone we have yet to hear from: Osama bin Laden.

Four years ago the al Qaeda leader appeared in a well-lit videotape addressing himself directly to the American people five days before they voted in the contest between Sen. John Kerry and George Bush. Bin Laden said then that whoever won the election was immaterial as far as al Qaeda was concerned and that instead Americans needed to change their country’s foreign policies in the Muslim world, or face the consequences.

US intelligence officials tracking al Qaeda have been expecting a similar message from the al Qaeda leader in the run-up to this presidential election. Yet, so far, bin Laden has not appeared.
There could be several reasons for this. First, the bin Laden tape might still be in the pipeline and will surface in coming weeks having wended its long way via a chain of couriers from his hideout on the Afghan-Pakistan border to be uploaded to a jihadist website or delivered to an Arab TV station.

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A U.S. soldier watches a broadcast of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama during a post-election event at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

Even before the election results are known, the Bush administration is making plans for the transition of management of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the next president.

A review of Afghan policy has been under way for many weeks, led by Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the senior National Security Council official responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq. The classified strategic review is expected to be completed this week, according to a staffer involved in preparing it.

Military and administration sources say the review was commissioned after growing alarm in the Bush White House about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has recently seen more U.S. military deaths than in Iraq. The country has experienced a sharp spike in violence along its eastern border with Pakistan since the summer. Those officials say the Bush administration felt that the review of Afghan policy could not wait months for a new administration to get up to speed.

Since mid-October, senior Bush administration officials have taken pains to brief advisors of both campaigns on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, according to participants in the meetings. One meeting, with advisors to both John McCain and Barack Obama, was held at the private Army and Navy Club and was organized, in part, by Barnett Rubin, a professor at New York University and one of the country’s leading experts on Afghanistan. The tone of the meeting was described by one participant as “realistic” and “certainly NOT upbeat.”

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst and a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington and at New York University’s Center on Law on Security. His most recent book is “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.”

Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

Toward the end of Friday’s presidential debate, the conversation turned to Iran and there was a long back-and-forth between the two candidates about what kind of conditions should be set for any discussions with the Iranian government.

But neither addressed what could be the most important foreign policy issue either might face as president: a unilateral strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israeli officials are clearly seriously contemplating such a strike, as Iran is believed to be drawing near to having a nuclear capability that those officials believe poses an existential threat to Israel.

Such a strike would probably immensely complicate U.S. efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan as the Iranians would probably retaliate against American targets in both countries after such an attack.

During the next debate, each candidate should be asked, “If you receive intelligence or warning that Israel is about to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, what would you do?” Sorting out the correct American policy in such an eventuality is exactly the tough kind of call that will help define the next president.

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Video from Yemen TV shows burnt cars and blood on the ground following an attack on the U.S. Embassy.

Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

After al Qaeda blew up the USS Cole in October 2000 killing seventeen American sailors, I visited Yemen to check out Osama bin ­Ladens’s ancestral village in the Hadramaut region, in the south of the country. His father, Mohammed, left there as a teenager in 1931 to seek his fortune in what is now Saudi Arabia.

I traveled through Wadi Doan, a 100 ­mile-­long valley in which the road is not much more than a rocky path. Black-­robed women flitted like wraiths down the alleys of the wadi towns, avoiding eye contact with foreigners. Out in the fields, women harvested crops while completely swathed in black, wearing distinctive conical hats made of straw. Attempts to photograph the Hadrami women produced such a volcanic explosion of rage by my local driver that I abandoned the enterprise.

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Editor’s Note: We are devoting many posts today to the anniversary of 9/11, with first-hand accounts, insight, and commentary dedicated to that day seven years ago that changed our world. Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst. He produced bin Laden’s first television interview which aired on CNN in 1997. He shares his thoughts below:
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Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

Seven years after 9/11 the author of the largest mass murder in American history is free, almost certainly living in Pakistan, which is, at least nominally, a close ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’. As he no doubt savors the anniversary of his greatest “triumph” Osama bin Laden seems untroubled by serious kidney illness as was once rumored, nor does he appear to be troubled by American efforts to find him.

Since his disappearance at the battle of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in mid- December 2001 US intelligence agencies have not had any definitive information about the al Qaeda’s leader’s whereabouts. While there are informed hypotheses that he is in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, on the Afghan border, perhaps in one of the more northerly areas such as Bajaur, these are simply hypotheses not actionable intelligence. In other words, American intelligence agencies have nothing of any substance on bin Laden. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars that the ‘war on terror’ has consumed the failure to capture or kill al Qaeda’s leader has been one of its signal failures.

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Editor’s Note: The following article by Peter Bergen originally appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post. We share it with you here:

Peter Bergen | Bio
AC360° Contributor
CNN National Security Analyst

Two decades after al-Qaeda was founded in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar by Osama bin Laden and a handful of veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project — to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate — has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.

In large part, that’s because bin Laden’s strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda’s leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills and charisma, he has fastened on an overall strategy that is self-defeating.

Bin Laden’s main goal is to bring about regime change in the Middle East and to replace the governments in Cairo and Riyadh with Taliban-style theocracies. He believes that the way to accomplish this is to attack the “far enemy” (the United States), then watch as the supposedly impious, U.S.-backed Muslim regimes he calls the “near enemy” crumble…

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360° sorts through one of the largest collections of al Qaeda documents to fall into civilian hands. They reveal the inner workings of al Qaeda in Iraq - providing insight few have ever seen.

Editor’s note: CNN has obtained what is believed to be one of the largest collections of internal al Qaeda documents to fall into civilian hands. The videos and documents give fascinating insight into the inner workings of the organization. Watch full report tonight, 10p ET

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

In a great journalistic coup, Michael Ware and the CNN team in Iraq have unearthed the largest collection of al Qaeda in Iraq material outside the hands of the US military. What they found in this collection of videos and memos underlines a key aspect of the al Qaeda organization in Iraq; it is highly organized, and not simply a loosely-knit collection of jihadists.

A debate has recently erupted in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the leading American journal of international relations, between two scholars of terrorism. On one side is former CIA case officer, Marc Sageman, the author of Leaderless Jihad, who contends that the threat from al Qaeda as an organization is largely over and the new threat comes from “a multitude of informal groups trying to emulate their predecessors by conceiving and executing plans from the bottom up. These ‘homegrown’ wannabes form a scattered global network, a leaderless jihad.” Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman, by contrast, argues that the al Qaeda organization, headquartered on the Afghan-Pakistan border, remains the most important threat to American national security.

The thousands of pages of documents and scores of videos obtained by CNN will help to move the Sageman-Hoffman debate forward. They show that al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has, in fact, for years been a highly bureaucratized top-down organization with an attention to detail suggestive of the IRS… Keep reading

A frame grab from new video featuring an audio statement from Osama bin Laden to the people of the West about Israel's 60th anniversary.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

Less than a day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain promised that if he won the presidency Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed by 2013, a message from al Qaeda’s leader appeared on jihadist websites reminding the world that he is alive and well.

Bin Laden’s audiotape message commented on the recent 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel; promised that he would fight for the liberation of Palestine, and told his Muslim listeners that they have a duty to help in that effort.

Was the audiotape an attempt by bin Laden to remain relevant by pushing on the issue that remains a hot button for most Muslims? After 9/11 some commentators said that the Palestinian issue was something that bin Laden had recently adopted in order to appeal to a wide range of Muslims. This is false.

When al Qaeda’s leader declared war on the United States publicly for the first time in August 1996
part of his rationale concerned the Palestinian issue:
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