This panel discussion about the war on terror was recorded live at the 2006 New Yorker Festival in New York City.
Bradford A. Berenson served as associate counsel to President George W. Bush from January 2001 to January 2003. He worked on a wide range of issues associated with the war on terror, including the Patriot Act, detainee litigation, the use of military commissions, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. He is now an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C.
Deborah Pearlstein is the director of the Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, which focuses on U.S. detention and intelligence operations, executive power, and the role of the courts. She is a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years. He was the first head of Alec Station, a unit within the CIA Counterterrorist Center that was formed in 1996 to track Osama bin Laden. He is the author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, both originally published anonymously.
Ali Soufan grew up in Lebanon during the civil war, before his family emigrated to the United States. In 1997, he joined the FBI. He was the chief investigator of the USS Cole bombing. In 2005, he left the FBI and became director of international operations for Giuliani Security and Safety. He was the subject of Lawrence Wright's piece The Agent, which ran in the July 10th and 17th, 2006, issues of The New Yorker.
Jane Mayer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her subjects have included the Pentagon's secret policy on torture, the Guantánamo Bay prison, and the legality of CIA interrogations.
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