Cyrus Nowrasteh

Cyrus Nowrasteh (Persian: سیروس نورسته), born September 19, 1956, is a conservative American screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known for his involvement in the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11.

Biography

Of Persian descent , he was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 and was a city boys high school tennis champion. Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University and later transferred to the University of Southern California to attend the School of Cinema, graduating in 1977. Currently, he is married to wife Elizabeth G. Nowrasteh (born March 9, 1953) commonly referred to as "Betsy."

History

Nowrasteh began his career in 1986 writing on the CBS television series, The Equalizer. He went on to work on other series (Falconcrest, D.E.A.), and wrote the pilot for the hit USA network show La Femme Nikita (1996). He also worked on independent films such as the American/Brazilian production The Interview (1997, writer/co-producer), which played at Sundance and on the Showtime network; and Norma Jean, Jack and Me (1998), a film that was not theatrically released but played the festival circuit and aired on HDNet. In 2001 he wrote and directed the Showtime presentation The Day Reagan Was Shot, which starred Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Haig and was executive produced by Oliver Stone. The following year he wrote 10,000 Black Men Named George, the story of the Pullman strike of the 1930s, for Showtime.

For both of the above films Nowrasteh received the Pen USA West Literary Award for Best Teleplay -- the only writer in the history of the Pen awards to win two years in a row in the same category. The Day Reagan Was Shot also received the Eddie Award and the Golden Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture for Television, 2001, as well as a SAG nomination for Best Actor (Richard Dreyfuss). Most recently Nowrasteh wrote the Manifest Destiny episode of the Steven Spielberg and TNT miniseries presentation, Into the West, which was nominated for 16 Emmy awards - though none in the writing category.

The Path to 9/11

Main article: The Path to 9/11

Although Nowrasteh's screenplay for The Path to 9/11 was billed by the ABC network as having been "based on the 9/11 Commission Report", there were multiple accusations that the screenplay evidenced political bias because of its portrayal of the Clinton Administration. In an interview Nowrasteh gave to the online magazine FrontPageMag.com on August 16th 2006, he said that the movie "dramatizes the frequent opportunities the Administration had in the 90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so". Critics, including 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste pointed out that this was not the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission and that certain scenes in the film were fabrications. Richard Miniter - a conservative author who wrote a book entitled Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror - conceded on CNN on September 7, 2006 that several of the complaints about the mini-series being made by Clinton administration officials were entirely justified, and that several scenes in the film were based on "Internet myth" . The film was a controversial docudrama aired by ABC/Walt Disney. The project has been criticized as having a political agenda and for fictionalizing the lead-up to 9/11 in order to redirect blame to the Clinton administration. Some opinion columns reported their belief that David Cunningham's Film Institute initiated the film project, however a spokesperson from ABC clarified that the network provided the entire funding of $40 million for the miniseries and that UHP Productions was created for bookkeeping purposes.

Nowrasteh wrote about his work on Path To 9/11 in a first-person article in the Wall Street Journal on September 18, 2006. Among other things he stated:

"'The Path to 9/11' was set in the time before the event, and in a world in which no party had the political will to act. The principals did not know then what we know now. It is also indisputable that Bill Clinton entered office a month before the first attack on the World Trade Center. Eight years then went by, replete with terrorist assaults on Americans and American interests overseas. George W. Bush was in office eight months before 9/11. Those who actually watched the entire miniseries know that he was given no special treatment."

Critics - including President Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, former Clinton aides, an FBI agent who quit as a consultant to the film, 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, and some conservatives including Bill Bennett and John Fund asserted that the film contained multiple inaccuracies and depicted Clinton as so distracted by the Lewinsky scandal that he neglected the terrorism issue (even though the 9/11 Commission had investigated and disproved this allegation). Critics have also noted that Nowrasteh fabricated an assertion by Condaleeza Rice that President Bush had called for strong action after reading the August 6, 2001 “PDB” warning Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.

Further, regarding Nowrasteh's comment that "Eight years then went by...", while other Islamic groups had conducted some attacks on American interests in the period of Clinton's term from 1993 to 2001, al-Qaeda had not started directly attacking U.S. interests until 1998 with the African embassy bombings, directly following their initial anti-U.S. fatwa (See Osama bin Laden#Attacks on United States targets). They only had a minor advisory/financial connection to the first attack on the World Trade Center (See Khaled Shaikh Mohammed#World Trade Center bombing, 1993).

Upcoming projects

Nowrasteh's next project will reportedly be a film adaptation of Thomas Tessier's book The Nightwalker.

Filmography

• The Path to 9/11, writer (2006)
• 10,000 Black Men Named George, writer (2002)
• The Day Reagan Was Shot, writer/director (2001)
• Norma Jean, Jack and Me, writer/director (1998)
• Veiled Threat, writer (1989)

Quotes

• On Michael Moore and producing movies: "To quote Team America, he’s an out of control socialist weasel (laughs). Listen. I’m probably more of a libertarian than a strict conservative. In my writing and directing, I don’t want to just be a conservative version of Michael Moore. I’m here to tell a good story first and foremost - and that’s why I can navigate the networks and get my work produced."

Trivia

• Martin Lewis published a claim on Huffington Post Blog, in September 2006, alleging Nowrasteh to have created a sockpuppet account on IMDB in order to praise of one of his own films - a film that had not been commercially released.

External links

• Cyrus Nowrasteh at IMDb
• The Path to Hysteria - Nowrasteh's response to critics
• Dissection of Nowrasteh's "response" to critics
• Nico Pitney, "Writer of ABC’s 9/11 'Docudrama' Is Avowed Conservative Activist," Think Progress, September 1, 2006.
• Doug Moe, "West grad's 9/11 film stirs storm," The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), September 2, 2006.