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Secrets of 24
The Unauthorized Guide to the Political & Moral
Issues Behind TV's Most Riveting Drama
by
Dan Burstein and Arne de Keijzer
CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Berger, Contributing Editor, is a British freelance writer living in New York. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, US News and World Report, Online Journalism Review, and Denmark's Weekendavisen. He is the contributing editor of four books, including the New York Times and worldwide best-seller Secrets of the Code, and, most recently, All the Money in The World: How the Forbes 400 Make - and Spend - Their Fortunes. He writes the blog Englishman in New York at www.pdberger.com.
David Freeman, Contributing Editor, is a journalist and editor whose work has been published in Men's Health, Popular Mechanics, Consumer Reports, Reader's Digest, Businessweek, and many other magazines, websites, and newsletters. He is the former editorial director of two publishing companies, Boardroom Inc. and New Hope Media, and is now is president of smartmandaily.com, an Internet startup.
Katherine Goldstein, Contributing Editor, is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist who writes reviews, op-eds, and features. Her work has appeared in AM New York, New York Press, and BUST magazine, among others.
Shohreh Aghdashloo was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, but fled with her family in 1978 to escape the Islamic revolution. Along with starring as Dina Araz in Season 4 of 24, she has had roles on TV's Smith, Grey's Anatomy, ER, and Will & Grace. Film credits include The Nativity Story and House of Sand and Fog, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004. She is also a cofounder, with her husband, Houshang Touzie, of a Farsi-language theater company, which tours all over the world. Upcoming projects include playing Saddam Hussein's wife in Between Two Rivers, an HBO/BBC miniseries about the dictator and his relationship with his family and advisers. She holds a BA in International Relations.
Stephen Applebaum is a UK-based freelance writer specializing in film, entertainment, social issues, and politics. His work appears regularly in newspapers and magazines worldwide, including The Independent, The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Australian, Rolling Stone, BBC Online and Filmfour.com.
Ginia Bellafante is a television, theater, and cultural critic for the New York Times, as well as a style reporter. She is also a former contributor to Time magazine.
Mark Bowden, an Atlantic Monthly national correspondent, is an author, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher. His international best-seller, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bowden is also the author of the best-seller Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw, which tells the story of the hunt for Colombian cocaine billionaire Pablo Escobar. Killing Pablo won the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award as the best book of 2001. He has worked as a consultant and screenwriter on the film version of Black Hawk Down, and is currently adapting Killing Pablo for Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Bowden teaches journalism and creative writing at his alma mater, Loyola College, and is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Rosa Brooks is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. An expert on human rights and international law, she has been an adviser to the U.S. Department of State, served as a consultant for Human Rights Watch, and served on the board of Amnesty International USA. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the coauthor of Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law After Military Interventions.
James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in defense affairs, military operations and strategy, and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation. His academic posts have included the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the U.S. Naval War College, and the National Defense University. Carafano served twenty-five years in the army, and is author of several military history books and studies, the latest being GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War II. As an expert on defense, intelligence, and homeland security issues, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and provided commentary for most major media around the world. His editorials have appeared in the Boston Globe, USA Today, and the Washington Times, among others.
Brian Carney is an op-ed writer and member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Previously, for the Wall Street Journal Europe, he served as the editor of the editorial page and of the Business Europe column. In 2003, he received the Frederic Bastiat Prize for Journalism for writing that promotes free markets and free societes. Before joining the Journal in 2000, he was associated with the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard University. He has also worked as a sternman on a lobster boat in Maine.
Michael Chertoff has been the secretary of Homeland Security since 2005. Prior to taking on this position, he was assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, where he helped trace the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the al Qaeda network, and also worked to increase information sharing within the FBI and with state and local officials. Before joining the Bush administration, Chertoff was a partner in the law firm of Latham & Watkins. He spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey as well as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. As U.S. Attorney, Chertoff investigated and prosecuted several significant cases of political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud. Chertoff graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1975 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1978. From 1979 to 1980 he served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr.
Tom Clancy is the author of a series of bestselling political thrillers, best known for their technically detailed espionage and military science storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. The most famous of these - The Hunt for Red October (his breakout best-seller), Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears - have been turned into commercially successful films. His 1989 novel Clear and Present Danger sold more than 1.5 million hardcover copies, making it the number-one best-selling novel of the 1980s. Tom Clancy has also become a "brand." His name is on a series of similar action/adventure books written by ghostwriters, as well as a series of nonfiction books on military subjects and biographies of key leaders. In 1996, Clancy cofounded the computer game developer Red Storm Entertainment and has had his name on several of its most successful games. Clancy is also part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles, a major league baseball team.
Robert Cochran, cocreator of 24 with Joel Surnow, won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 2002 for the show's pilot episode. Originally, he was doubtful that the concept of the show could be sustained for more than one season, but he has written many episodes since and has been an executive producer for all 148 hours of the show to date. Cochran's other television credits include serving as executive consultant for La Femme Nikita, co-executive producer of The Commish, supervising producer of JAG, and writer/producer on Falcon Crest and Sons and Daughters. A lawyer by training, he began his career by writing episodes for legal shows such as L.A. Law and The Antagonists. He has also written two historical miniseries - Atilla and Nothing Like It In the World - and a feature film titled 1066.
Jerome E. Copulsky is assistant professor of philosophy and religion at Goucher College. He was previously assistant professor and director of Judaic studies at Virginia Tech, and holds degrees from Wesleyan, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. His essays, stories and reviews have appeared in such places as the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Religion, and Azure.
David Danzig is the campaign manager, Public Programs Department, and Primetime Torture Project director for the New York City office of Human Rights First. The project addresses the negative fallout from the way that torture is presented on American TV programs like 24, Lost, The Wire, Sleeper Cell, and others. He has worked at Human Rights First since 2002. Prior to joining the organization, he worked as an award-winning journalist for the Jersey Journal in Jersey City, New Jersey, and the Hoboken (N.J.) Reporter. He also spent three years working on Capitol Hill as a press secretary and legislative director.
Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary for her coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, became a columnist on the New York Times op-ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for the New York Times Magazine. She is the author of two books, Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk and Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide.
Colin Freeze is a reporter for Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail of Toronto, specializing in national security issues.
Deirdre Good is a professor in the Department of New Testament, General Theological Seminary, New York City. A widely published author and prominent lecturer, she is also a program consultant to television on religious history. She is the author, most recently, of Jesus' Family Values and editor of Mariam, the Magdalen, and the Mother, a collection of essays exploring the religious and prophetic identity of Mary Magdalen(e) and Mary, Jesus' Mother, as Miriam figures. She is also the editor of Reconstructing the Tradition of Sophia in Gnostic Literature and Jesus the Meek King, and contributed to Secrets of the Code. She was also a contributing editor to Secrets of Mary Magdalene.
Howard Gordon, screenwriter and producer, has been called 24's "mastermind." Gordon came to Hollywood fresh out of Princeton in 1984 and, with his fellow filmmaker and screenwriter Alex Gansa, broke into the industry with a few episodes of Spencer: For Hire. This project was followed by the Emmy-nominated series Beauty and the Beast, for which the pair were later named producers. From 1993 though 1997, Gordon and Gansa were writers and supervising producers for ninety-six episodes of The X-Files. After this series Gordon began to pursue projects independently. He cowrote one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then went on to work on Joss Whedon's Angel. Gordon joined 24 in 2001, where he wrote several episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 and crafted the entire story arcs for Seasons 3 and 4. Since 2006 Gordon has been 24's executive producer and show-runner.
Jing Guan, who is originally from Shanghai, received her MIA degree (Master of International Affairs) from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs in New York. She previously worked for CNN in New York and London as a production and editorial assistant, and for China's state media as a reporter and editor. She is also former senior editor for Newsweek China. Jing currently freelances on a wide range of media projects from her base in Shanghai.
Shane Harris writes feature and investigative stories about intelligence, homeland security, and counterterrorism. He is a staff correspondent for National Journal, and has written for publications such as Slate, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Adbusters, Government Executive, Movieline, and the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings. In 2007, he was named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, which honor the best journalists in America under the age of thirty-five. He is also a fiction writer and a Sundance Film Festival screenwriting finalist.
Seymour Hersh is an investigative reporter for the New Yorker, specializing in national security and international affairs. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. During his long career he has won five George Polk awards in addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1970 for his coverage in the New York Times of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.
Dennis Haysbert was born in San Mateo, California. He appeared in five seasons of 24 as Senator and then President David Palmer, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He currently stars as Jonas "Snake Doctor" Blane in CBS's military drama, The Unit. His film credits include Breach, Far from Heaven, Absolute Power, Random Hearts, Major League, and playing Nelson Mandela in Goodbye Bafana, among many others.
David Heyman is director and senior fellow of the Homeland Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is a leading expert on the global war on terrorism, bioterrorism, critical infrastructure protection, and risk-based security. Prior to joining CSIS, he served in senior positions at the Department of Energy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Heyman's commentary and analysis has been seen on all major television networks and quoted in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today.
Laura Holgate is vice president for Russia/New Independent States Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an organization whose mission is to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Prior to joining NTI, Holgate led the Department of Energy's Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, and from 1995 through 1998, she directed the Cooperative Threat Reduction "Nunn-Lugar" program of U.S. assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states in eliminating the weapons-of-mass-destruction legacy of the cold war. Holgate has received numerous public service awards and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Executive Board of Women in International Security. She recently joined advisory panels for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Laura Jackson is a best-selling rock and film biographer who has interviewed many of the world's leading celebrities and gained privileged access to their inner circles. Some of her subjects have included Neil Diamond, Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Simon, Bono, Brian Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Mick Jagger. Kiefer Sutherland: The Biography is her latest book.
Tony Lagouranis is a former U.S. Army specialist and interrogator who served in Iraq and worked at Abu Ghraib prison. He is the author of Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. In addition to writing a much-discussed New York Times op-ed piece, titled "Tortured Logic," in 2006, he has appeared on Democracy Now!, The Leonard Lopate Show, Frontline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Human Rights First's Primetime Torture DVD.
John Leonard is a literary, television, film, and cultural critic who has written a weekly column on TV for New York magazine since 1984 and was the film and television critic for "CBS Sunday Morning" for sixteen years. He is currently a columnist for Harper's, and a frequent contributor to the Nation, the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Review of Books. He is the author of several novels as well as essay collections, among them Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures.
Ben Liaw. Originally from Taiwan and educated in the United States, Ben received an engineering degree from Lehigh University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He worked at Deloitte Consulting in Washington, D.C. as a management consultant, and Millennium Technology Ventures as a summer associate, before moving to Shanghai to pursue his own technology startup.
Rush Limbaugh has been a nationally syndicated radio political commentator since 1988. His strong conservative views are broadcast on 600 stations nationwide, and his fervent and loyal audience of some 15 million "dittoheads" have made him the number-one nationally syndicated radio talk show host in America - and the highest-paid radio personality in history. Limbaugh refers to himself as the "professor" of the fictional Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where he holds the (fictional) "Attila the Hun Chair." His only reported brush with direct politics was when turned down an offer from Pat Buchanan to be his running mate during the 1992 presidential campaign. Limbaugh has raised a record $1.7 million - plus for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America in his annual Cure-a-Thon, in addition to his personal donation of a quarter of a million dollars. Limbaugh was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993. He is the author of See, I Told You So and The Way Things Ought to Be.
Jane Mayer is an investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1995. She has also written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Star, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Review of Books. She is the coauthor of two books, Strange Justice: the Selling of Clarence Thomas (with Jill Abramson) and Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984 - 1988 (with Doyle McManus).
Charles McGrath is the former editor of the New York Times Book Review, a fiction editor at the New Yorker, and he is currently a writer-at-large for the New York Times. He is a coauthor of The Ultimate Golf Book: A History and a Celebration of the World's Greatest Game, and the editor of Books of the Century: A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas and Literature.
Rick Moran is a writer living in the exurbs of Chicago "on the banks of the beautiful Fox River." He is the associate editor of the online magazine American Thinker (americanthinker.com), as well as a sports and political columnist for Pajamas Media (pajamasmedia.com). In addition, he is a contributing editor at Family Security Matters (familysecuritymatters.org), and the comment moderator for Michelle Malkin (michellemalkin.com). He is also proprietor of his own website, RickMoran.Net. Moran has appeared on several nationally syndicated radio shows as well as on C-SPAN and "the O'Reilly Factor." His own radio program, the Rick Moran Show, can be heard on Blog Talk Radio (blogtalkradio.com) every Tuesday afternoon. Moran graduated from Drake University in 1976 with a degree in fine arts.
James Morrison, the actor who played Bill Buchanan on the fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons of 24, started his acting career as a clown and wire walker in the mid-1970s and then served his theatrical apprenticeship with the Alaska Repertory Theatre. Since then, he's performed in over a hundred plays at theaters ranging from the McCarter Theatre to the La Jolla Playhouse, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Old Globe. He's been in the films Catch Me If You Can, American Gun, The One, Falling Down, Wilderness Survival for Girls, and Jarhead. He was McQueen on the Fox network's Space: Above and Beyond, and he's handled dozens of episodic assignments for TV shows, including Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Frasier, Millennium, The X-Files, and Cold Case. Morrison is also a playwright, musician, and poet, and he has directed, written, and produced several award-winning short films. He is certified to teach hatha yoga by the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, where he still studies and teaches. He also conducts regular weekly classes at LA's oldest studio, The Center for Yoga.
Clarence Page is a syndicated op-ed columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He is a Vietnam veteran who has worked as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent. He was awarded the Edward Scott Beck Award for overseas reporting on the changing politics of southern Africa in 1976. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his participation in a Chicago Tribune task force series on voter fraud, and then went on to win another Pulitzer for commentary in 1989. Additionally, he is a contributor to the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, hosts documentaries on PBS, and is a regular panelist on BET's Lead Story. He is also the best-selling author of Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity.
Kal Penn was born and raised in Montclair, New Jersey, and attended the UCLA School of Theater, Television and Film. In addition to his role as Ahmed Amar in Season 6 of 24, his film acting credits include Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle; Van Wilder 2: Rise of Taj; Superman Returns; A Lot Like Love; and The Namesake. Penn also teaches courses in media images and teen movies in the Asian American Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. Upcoming projects include Harold & Kumar 2 and Two Sisters, a film directed by Margaret Cho.
Dorothy Rabinowitz has been a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal since 1996. She writes the Critic at Large column for the Journal's editorial page, which also appears on OpinionJournal.com as Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log. She won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary for her articles on American culture and society.
Frank Rich has been an op-ed columnist for the New York Times since 1994. He also serves as senior adviser to the Times's culture editor on the paper's overall cultural news reporting. Before writing his column, he served as the paper's chief drama critic beginning in 1980, the year he joined the newspaper. Among other honors, Rich received the George Polk Award for commentary in 2005. In addition to his work at the New York Times, he has written about culture and politics for many other publications. His latest book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. Before joining the New York Times, Rich was a film and television critic at Time magazine. Earlier, he had been film critic for the New York Post and film critic and senior editor of New Times magazine.
John Robb, a former U.S. counterterrorism operation planner and commander, now advises corporations on the future of terrorism, infrastructure, and markets. While serving in the Department of Defense Counterterrorism Unit, Robb participated in global operations as a mission commander, pilot, and mission planner. His training included advanced interrogation resistance training, terrorism survival, and clandestine mission operations. As a technology analyst, he led the move to cover Internet technologies at Forrester Research. Robb also ran a company that pioneered in weblogs and RSS technologies. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Air Force Academy, and his writings on war, terrorism, and technology have appeared the New York Times and Fast Company.
Tricia Rose is professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, whose teaching, research, and public lectures are focused on African-American culture, history, gender, and popular music. Her latest book is The Hip Hop Wars: The Top Ten Debates in Hip Hop, Why They Hurt Us and How to Fix Them. She is also the author of Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy and the award-winning book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Essence, Vibe Magazine, Artforum, Bookforum, The Village Voice, Women's Review of Books, and Boston Book Review.
William S. Sessions is best known to the public as the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1987 - 1993), but he has also had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer specializing in alternative dispute resolution. Before his appointment to the FBI, he served as the section chief of the Government Operations Section of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., the U.S. District judge for the Western District of Texas, and chief judge of that court. Judge Sessions currently serves as a member of the American Bar Association's Advisory Commission to the Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress; the Innocence Project of the National Capital Region; and the International Center for Dispute Resolution, among other posts. Judge Sessions was been named by his peers to the 2007 edition of The Best Lawyers in America for both alternative dispute resolution and corporate governance and compliance law. William Sessions joined the law firm of Holland & Knight LLP in 2000, where he remains a partner engaged primarily in alternative dispute resolution procedures.
David A. Shugarts is a journalist with more than thirty-five years' experience, having served on newspapers and magazines as a reporter, photographer, desk editor, and editor-in-chief. He received a BA degree in English from Lehigh University, followed by service in Africa in the Peace Corps, then an MS degree in journalism from Boston University. His fields of expertise include aviation and marine writing. He was the founding editor of Aviation Safety magazine in 1981 - for which he won five regional and national awards from the Aviation/Space Writers Association - and of Powerboat Reports magazine in 1988. As a writer, he has contributed to about a dozen books, including the best-seller, Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Burstein and Arne J. de Keijzer. He is the author of Secrets of the Widow's Son .
Joel Surnow is cocreator, with Robert Cochran, of 24, which, in addition to its highly adrenalized plots, is the first television series to adopt a "real time" format. Surnow began writing for film soon after graduating from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1975 and his breakthrough came when he began writing for Miami Vice in 1984. Surnow was also the creator and executive consultant of the television series La Femme Nikita, and supervising producer and writer for The Equalizer. Other credits include Nowhere Man and Wiseguy. In 2002 he shared the Emmy's Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series award with Robert Cochran, and, in 2006, he and his fellow producers of 24 won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama.
Alvin Toffler, along with his wife, Heidi Toffler, are known around the world for their groundbreaking work on futurism, which has influenced presidents and prime ministers, top leaders in fields ranging from business to nonprofit organizations, as well as educators, psychologists, and social scientists. Each of their books - which include such classics as Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift, and War and Anti-War - has been hailed for originality, clarity, and unusual insight into the challenges and opportunities racing toward us. Their newest book, Revolutionary Wealth, attacks key features of conventional economics as it paints the emerging global "wealth system" of the decades ahead.
Sarah Vowell is an astute social observer and best-selling author of four books, Assassination Vacation, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli, and Radio On. Her fifth book, The Wordy Shipmates, a history of American Puritans, will be published in 2008. She has been a contributing editor for public radio's This American Life since 1996, has twice been a guest op-ed columnist for the opinion page of the New York Times, and makes frequent television appearances. She is a former music columnist for Salon.com and San Francisco Weekly. Her criticism, interviews, and essays have also appeared in Time, Esquire, GQ, Spin, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.
Judith Warner is the author of the Domestic Disturbances column for the New York Times's electronic edition, TimesSelect. She is also a guest op-ed columnist for the paper. Her book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety was a New York Times best-seller. She is currently the host of the Judith Warner Show on XM Satellite Radio.
R. James Woolsey is currently a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. Before he joined Booz Allen as a partner in July 2002, Woolsey was an attorney with Shea & Gardner in Washington D.C., specializing in commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution (arbitration and mediation). He served five times in the federal government for a total of twelve years, holding presidential appointments in two Democratic and two Republican administrations. He served as director of Central Intelligence (1993 - 1995), ambassador and chief negotiator for the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in Vienna (1989 - 1991) and delegate-at-large to the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (START). Woolsey has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. From time to time he speaks publicly and contributes articles to newspapers and other periodicals on such issues as national security, energy, foreign affairs, and intelligence.
Amy Zegart, PhD, is an associate professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and one of the nation's leading experts on intelligence reform. She earned her doctorate from Stanford University, where she studied under Condoleezza Rice. Zegart worked on the Clinton administration's National Security Council staff and served as a foreign policy advisor to the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign. She is the author of two books on national security issues. The first, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC has become a standard intelligence text. The second, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, examines why the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism after the Cold War.
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic who has a double doctorate in philosophy and psychoanalysis. He is considered one of the world's leading contemporary cultural commentators. Žižek is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. His most recent books are The Parallax View and How to Read Lacan. He is the presenter in the film The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, where he delves into the hidden language of film and explores what movies tell us about ourselves. The film had its debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in April 2007. In 1990 he was a candidate for president of the Republic of Slovenia, running under the banner of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia party.