 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
Contributors
The Actors and Creative Team of 24 | Government Officials and Terrorism Experts |
Journalists & Commentators
Scholars and Other Experts | Editors
The Actors and Creative Team of 24
 |
| Joel Surnow Photo: Julie O'Connor |
Joel Surnow is co-creator, 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. In 2006, he and his fellow producers of 24 won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama.
 |
| Robert Cochran Photo: Julie O'Connor |
Robert Cochran, co-creator of 24 with Joel Surnow, won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 2002 for the show’s pilot episode. He has written many episodes since and has been an executive producer for all 148 hours of the show to date. 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.
Howard Gordon, screenwriter and producer, has been called 24’s “mastermind.” 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 showrunner. Previous projects include Spencer: For Hire, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Joss Whedon’s Angel.
Manny Coto joined 24’s creative team in 2005 as a co–executive producer and major writer for the show. A passionate “Trekkie” all his life, he became co-executive producer and showrunner of Star Trek: Enterprise. He was a writer, cast member, and co-creator of The Half Hour News Hour, a short-lived, right-wing news satire show on the Fox News Channel in 2007.
Evan Katz shared the 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for his work as part of the creative team of 24. He’s been a TV producer and writer for other series as well, including Special Unit 2, Seven Days, and JAG.
Kiefer Sutherland (“Jack Bauer”) has engaged life as a musician, pool player, rodeo performer, rancher, father, GQ “man of the year,” scotch drinker, cigar aficionado, tattoo-wearer, hockey player, and, oh, yes, film and television actor who is the central character and heart of 24. Sutherland has appeared in over fifty films, including The Vanishing, At Close Range, Stand by Me, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Young Guns, Lost Boys, Flatliners, and The Three Musketeers. In 1992 he had a leading role, along with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, in A Few Good Men, a movie with a plotline that would later be expanded and adrenalized on 24. In 2007, Forbes magazine listed him as the highest-paid dramatic actor on television (he reportedly earns $10 million a season).
Mary Lynn Rajskub (“Chloe”) is an actor/comedienne and former performance artist who has appeared in the films Punch-Drunk Love, Sweet Home Alabama, Legally Blonde 2, Little Miss Sunshine, and Firewall. On television, she was in the cast of The Larry Sanders Show, and appeared in the HBO special, Helter Skelter. She has twice been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Dennis Haysbert (“David Palmer”) 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.
James Morrison (“Bill Buchanan”) 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, acted in more than a half-dozen films, and had done numerous TV shows, including Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Frasier, and The X-Files, and Cold Case.
Shohreh Aghdashloo (“Dina Araz”) was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, but fled with her family in 1978 to escape the Islamic revolution. 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.
Carlos Bernard (“Tony Almeida”) joined the cast of 24 in 2001. The recipient of an MFA degree from American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, he has acted in variety of stage productions, has made guest appearances on TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger and F/X: The Series, and is a regular on the daytime drama The Young and the Restless.
Kal Penn (“Ahmed Amar”) attended the UCLA School of Theater, Television and Film. 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.
Government Officials and Terrorism Experts
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.
Wiliam 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.
R. James Woolsey 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).
James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in defense affairs, military operations and strategy, and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation. He has taught at 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 GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War II, among other titles.
Amy Zegart is an associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and one of the nation’s leading experts on intelligence reform. 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: Flawed by Design and Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.
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.
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.
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 directed the Cooperative Threat Reduction program of U.S. assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states in eliminating the weapons-of-mass-destruction legacy of the cold war.
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).
Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, 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 is the author of two books, Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk and Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide.
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.
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.
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 was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993 and is the author of See, I Told You So and The Way Things Ought to Be.
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. Bowden teaches journalism and creative writing at his alma mater, Loyola College, and is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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. His latest book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.
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. 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.
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.
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 has won two Pulitzer Prize awards. Page 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.
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.
Alvin Toffler, along with his wife, Heidi Toffler, are known around the world for their groundbreaking work on futurism. Each of their books—which include such classics as Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift, and War and Anti-War—have been international best sellers. Their newest book, Revolutionary Wealth, attacks key features of conventional economics as it paints the emerging global “wealth system” of the decades ahead.
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.
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. In 1990 he was a candidate for president of the Republic of Slovenia, running under the banner of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia party.
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 the coauthor of Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law After Military Interventions.
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. 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.
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 contributed to Secrets of the Code. She was also a contributing editor to Secrets of Mary Magdalene.
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 has contributed to about a dozen books (including three in the "Secrets" series), and is the author of Secrets of the Widow’s Son.
David Danzig is the campaign manager, Public Programs Department, and Primetime Torture Project director for the New York City office of Human Rights First. He spent three years working on Capitol Hill as a press secretary and legislative director.
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 and wrote the much-discussed New York Times op-ed piece, “Tortured Logic,” in 2006.
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 the award-winning book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
 |
| Dan Burstein Photo: Julie O'Connor |
Dan Burstein, Editor, launched Squibnocket Partners LLC as an innovative content development company in 2003 with his business partner, Arne J. de Keijzer. The next year, they published Secrets of the Code, which went on to spend more than six months on the New York Times best-seller list and to become a global blockbuster, appearing in more than thirty languages and in multiple editions all over the world. Secrets of 24 is the fifth title in the Secrets series. Altogether, there are over 4 million books in print in the Secrets series worldwide. Three Squibnocket titles—Secrets of the Code, Secrets of Angels & Demons, and Secrets of Mary Magdalene—have been turned into documentary films.
Maintaining an active full-time career as a venture capitalist (his “day job”), in addition to his involvement with the Secrets series, Burstein is founder and managing partner of Millennium Technology Ventures, a New York–based venture capital firm that invests in innovative companies. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen early-stage technology companies and is currently a director of Applied Minds, a leading-edge research lab, and Global Options, a publicly traded international risk management company. From 1988 to 2000, he was senior advisor at The Blackstone Group, one of Wall Street’s leading private merchant banks. He is also a prominent corporate strategy consultant and has served as an advisor to CEOs, senior management teams, and global corporations, including Sony, Toyota, Microsoft, Boardroom Inc., and Sun Microsystems.
Burstein is also an award-winning journalist and author of numerous books on global economics and technology. His most recent technology-related book is BLOG! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture, cowritten with David Kline, and widely considered the most definitive book about the rise of the blogosphere. Burstein’s 1988 book Yen!, about the rise of Japanese financial power, was an international best-seller in more than twenty countries. In 1995, his book Road Warriors was one of the first to analyze the impact of the Internet and digital technology on business and society. His 1998 book Big Dragon (written with Arne J. de Keijzer), outlined a long-term view of China’s role in the twenty-first century that has, so far, turned out to be prescient.
Working as a freelance journalist in the 1980s, Burstein published more than a thousand articles in over two hundred publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Rolling Stone, Paris Match, le Nouvel Observateur, L’Expansion, and many others in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Burstein has appeared on numerous TV documentaries and news specials, ranging from the programs broadcast on the History Channel, MSNBC, and CNN, and to Charlie Rose and Oprah!
Arne J. de Keijzer, Editor, is a writer, former China business consultant, and Dan Burstein’s partner in Squibnocket Partners LLC. He is the author of an internationally best-selling travel guide to China, two books on doing business with China, and, with Dan Burstein, Big Dragon: China’s Future—What It Means for Business, the Economy, and the Global Order. Also together with Dan Burstein, he created the “Secrets” series of books and was managing editor of Secrets of the Code and coeditor of Secrets of Angels & Demons and the Secrets of Mary Magdalene. He was also a contributing editor to BLOG! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture. de Keijzer’s other work has appeared in publications ranging from Powerboat Reports to the New York Times.
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.