peter Bergen: Remembering the Journalist Who First Interviewed Osama bin Laden
By Peter Bergen, CNN
Former CNN reporter Peter Arnett poses with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in march, 1997 after a television interview for CNN at Tora Bora, afghanistan.
Photo: HO / AFP
It was a frigid night in March 1997. We were huddled in a mud hut high in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, surrounded by heavily armed al-Qaeda fighters.
Peter Arnett asked their leader a straightforward question: “What are your future plans?”
Osama bin LadenS reply was chilling: “You’ll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing.”
That interview marked bin Laden’s first appearance on television. He and his team specifically chose Arnett and CNN to conduct it – an interview I produced.
The following year, bin Laden followed through on his ominous promise. Al-Qaeda launched near-simultaneous attacks on two US embassies in Africa, killing over 200 people. In 2000, they bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, claiming the lives of 17 American sailors. Than came the devastating 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people and launched the “Global War on Terror.”
I first met Arnett in 1993. He was already a global icon, arguably the world’s most recognizable foreign correspondent. It was just two years after the Gulf War, and his courageous decision to remain in Baghdad while other Western reporters fled during the American bombing of Saddam Hussein’s regime had dramatically elevated CNN’s reputation. It also made Arnett a celebrity.
You could often hear Arnett before you saw him – a robust man with a booming, New Zealand-accented voice that could cut through anything. And then you’d see him: “Larger than life” doesn’t quite capture it. Arnett was a newsman’s newsman, brimming with stories of daring and adventure.
Keep reading