In 2003, William Blum, former State Department worker turned historian and author, became famous when Osama bin Ladin, the supposed mastermind behind the attacks on 9-11, recommended Blum's book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, because Osama felt that it aptly described a horrible American foreign policy which engenders so much hate and fear of America. As William says during this interview, it gained him a great deal of attention and many interviews with mainstream US television and print media.