The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al-Qaeda's Leader by Peter Bergen Free Press, $203 Lucky Peter Bergen. Last month's audiotape from Osama bin Laden, in which he threatened more attacks on the US, and a recent air strike targeting his deputy have swung the spotlight back on to the world's most wanted man. His reappearance after more than a year's silence will undoubtedly boost sales of Bergen's new book, drawing in readers hoping to find out what makes the al-Qaeda leader tick. They risk being disappointed. The book covers the basic plot line of the pious, unassuming son of a wealthy Saudi entrepreneur becoming a brand name for global Islamic jihad bent on bringing death and destruction to the decadent west. It follows bin Laden as he goes to the best schools in his oil-rich homeland, becomes radicalised by fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and forms the al-Qaeda terror network that later carries out the September 11 attacks. Bergen has travelled to Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Indonesia in his pursuit of the truth about al-Qaeda. He has gathered an impressive array of material, including interviews with bin Laden family members, friends, al-Qaeda members, bin Laden's bodyguard, and reporters who met the man who now has a US$25 million bounty on his head. We learn that the young bin Laden liked westerns and kung fu films and that he was a middling student whose English was not very good. He was 'extraordinarily courteous ... probably partly because he was a bit shyer than most of the other students', says his British high school teacher. When he went on a business trip to Sweden with an elder brother, the pair travelled in a Rolls-Royce and threw away their Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior shirts after each day's wear, according to the owner of the hotel they stayed in. We read how going to fight the Soviet army occupying Afghanistan transformed him, and how this and the influence of Egyptian militants fuelled his ambition and led him to begin thinking in global terms. But the problem with this book is that it offers little that hasn't already been said or written countless times before, not least by Bergen himself. Bergen, a 'terrorism analyst' for the CNN news network that has shamelessly plugged his new book, wrote a work on bin Laden a few years ago. Entitled Holy War Inc, it is far superior to his latest offering. The Osama bin Laden I Know presents a mass of interviews, documents, court statements and various other accounts that leave the reader confused and weary. You can't help suspecting that Bergen took all the material he'd gathered for his first book and bunged it into a new one simply to cash in. Bergen met bin Laden just once, and for a short time. Swathes of the book are taken up with people talking about al-Qaeda or other related matters and not about the man himself. And judging from what those who do talk about him have to say, America's bogeyman is a bore - merely a template for a set of dour opinions that have gripped a generation of radical Muslims.
