War

Professor, uh, at Arizona State University, a man with contacts everywhere, uh, covering the war on terror for several decades, has had the inside track on so many stories.

What better person to speak to, uh, on the exact 25th anniversary of 9/11? Especially since he has a new book out.

He's written about terror, the war on terror before, but this one is "All the President's Wars", and it has a look at 25 years of the war on, war on terror, where it started, what's happened, and where are we now.

Peter Bergen, welcome to "The Andrew Neil Report".

Thank you, Andrew.

Bin Laden himself, as, as we look back on 25 years, obviously the seminal figure for the event on 9/11, but you're quite right, since, not so much of a player.

Let me come to the other side and George Bush, because the global war on terror was generally seen as George Bush's war, uh, and his successors in the White House reluctantly inherited it.

But your book is titled "All the President's Wars." Why?

Thanks for having me on the program.

Mark came on my old show, The War Zone, and we spoke about, uh, China and Taiwan and kind of the threats there.

So it's good to have you back on to discuss a separate conflict.

But I wanna start off with, of course, today marks the 25th anniversary since 9/11.

And the Trump administration has accelerated that.

The problem in, in the past is several-fold, and one is strategic.

That is, after the Cold War, the United States expected to fight short regional conflicts against adversaries like North Korea or Iraq, and that didn't require large, uh, munitions inventories.

Uh, and the, uh, defense industrial base was, uh, reduced quite substantially.

Oh, yay, yay.

And it's, he's holding up a sign and said, "War is over if you want it to be." And I know that's overly simplified, but if ever there was a day we could all get on the same page, including people in the military and just being like, "Yeah, you know, we're, we're not gonna kill each other anymore.

We're not, we're not doing that," that would be so fucking fascinating.

Like, how would they try to infiltrate? 'Cause there would be a leader.

Do you guys know the first...

You know the Gettysburg Address? Yeah, I had no fucking idea where that was.

In the first fucking battle of the Civil War.

I thought it was, like, you know, somewhere in the A-- SEC.

Box 500 London, has been quietly reading other people's letters, following other people's footsteps, and keeping the realm's most closely guarded secrets.

MI5, the British Security Service, was founded in 1909 in the nervous run-up to the First World War and its motto, Regnum Defende, defend the realm.

James Bond and George Smiley are the fictions, but this is the real thing.

Thanks to the extraordinary declassified files held at the National Archives, we can now at last read over its shoulder.

so steven let's go back to the beginning of the of these spy stories the first world war gives us one of the great details the fatal lemon so tell us about carl mueller and how a piece of fruit hanged a spy

Yes, it's a bit of a stab and sort of a pitiful tale in many ways.

I think we need to place this in context to begin with in that At the beginning of the First World War, the German spy network was rounded up pretty much like stock and barrel.

So the Germans didn't really have any intelligence assets within the country.

drinking?

I want to approach this podcast with the amount of joy that Warren Light approaches making the show.

Or at least the amount of joy that he

has in having people come from non-New York states.

I think it's mostly just punching down at hapless rubes from the provinces, you know.

Yeah.

It's elitist in a classic Warren Light way, which is somehow makes me hate.

Oh, God.

Published September 11, 2026 on Just Security, an essential resource for those shaping a just and secure world, here's today's news.

IRAN WAR President Trump yesterday said he did not regret going to war against Iran.

Trump said that if he had to do it again, I would do exactly as I did, and rejected claims some of his supporters were demoralized about the war.

The US Treasury Department yesterday announced new sanctions against firms and individuals that it says are aiding Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East.

I'd

like to take just a moment now to talk to you about particularly about what's going to be happening at the Greensboro War Memorial Coliseum on Thursday night, February 17th at 8.15. As all of you perhaps know, and if you don't know, of course, Mr. Jim Crockett and Eddie Graham, a producer of Championship Wrestling, have been longtime friends.

And Mr. Crockett has many times come to Florida to aid and assist Ed in things in regards to wrestling.

And, of course, Ed has certainly returned that favor.

The TBS slot, et cetera, we talked about.

Listen to these names, because we thought that list of names before was good.

Baby Faces, Dusty Rhodes, Magnum TA, The Rock and Roll Express, Barry Windham, Ronnie Garvin, Jimmy Valiant, The Road Warriors.

Heels, Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Ole Anderson, Arn Anderson, The Midnight Express, Ivan and Nikita Koloff, Lex Luger, Big Bubba Rogers.

And look, there are a lot of analogies between 06 and 26.

Obviously, Iraq War, War in Iran, Operation whatever you want to call it.

And George

Bush was

But then look back

at Gulf War II with Bush and Cheney thinking that Iraqis were just going to overwhelmingly embrace American democracy.

It doesn't.

The government's not set up that way.