Ex-CIA Strategist, Author Riedel to Speak Oct. 17

Retired Central Intelligence Agency specialist Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, will discuss Osama bin Laden and the future of al Qaeda in a lecture at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17 at the Buchanan Alumni House at the University of Maine.

Sponsored by the UMaine School of Policy and International Affairs (SPIA), the presentation, titled “The Search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda: Inside the War on Terror,” is free and open to the public. Riedel will revisit the trail that led American SEALs to find the mastermind of 9/11 in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and assess the Obama administration’s strategy for fighting al Qaeda. The presentation also will look ahead to the status of al Qaeda today and the threat it poses in the future.

Riedel retired from the CIA in 2006 after 30 years of service, including postings overseas. He was a senior adviser on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four presidents as a staff member of the National Security Council at the White House. He also was deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Near East and South Asia at the Pentagon and a senior adviser at NATO in Brussels.

In January 2009, President Barack Obama asked Riedel to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the results of which the president announced in 2009. Riedel served in 2011 as an expert adviser in the prosecution of al Qaeda terrorist Omar Farooq Abdulmutallab in Detroit.

Riedel is the author of “The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future” and “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad.” He also was a contributor to “Which Path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran,” “The Arab Awakening” and “Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979–1988.”

Riedel currently teaches at the Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies and is an advisory board member for SPIA.

Contact: George Manlove, (207) 581-3756