CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen will discuss "Beyond The Kite Runner: Exploring Afghanistan Today" as part of the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series.

The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Owens Auditorium on the Sandhills Community College campus in Pinehurst. Admission is free to the public with no tickets required.

The is The Pilot's Sam Ragan Memorial Lecture.

Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, a former adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security, CNN's terrorism analyst, and author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of bin Laden," based on the 1997 television interview of this leader.

His book was a New York Times best-seller and has been translated into 18 languages. A documentary based on the book, which aired on National Geographic Television, was nominated for an Emmy in the research category.

Bergen has traveled repeatedly to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to report on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. His most recent book is "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader." It was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2006 by The Washington Post. The book was translated into French, Spanish and Polish.

CNN produced a two-hour documentary "In the Footsteps of bin Laden," based on the book, that aired around the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Bergen was a producer of the CNN documentary. In July 2007, the documentary was nominated for an Emmy in the news-long documentary form category.

Bergen has written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Time, Vanity Fair and The Times. He has also worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and Discovery Television. He is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field.

In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden's first television interview. He was the recipient of the Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship in 2000 and a Pew Fellowship in 2001 for "Holy War, Inc." In 1994, he won the Overseas Press Club Edward R. Murrow Award for best foreign affairs documentary for the CNN program "Kingdom of Cocaine."

The Ruth Pauley Lecture Series is sponsored by Sandhills Community College, the Moore County public schools, the Moore County League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women. The series objective is to bring speakers to the Sandhills to give insights on important issues.

Previous speakers have included Frank Deford, Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen Ambrose, George McGovern, Ossie Davis and Newt Gingrich.

Additional information can be obtained by calling 245-3131.