A representative from the U.S. State Department congratulates and offers a partial payment to an informant, whose information lead to the neutralization of a terrorist in the Philippines.

An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants (CI), and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information without the consent of the other parties with the intent of malicious, personal or financial gain.^[1] However, the term is used in politics, industry and academia.^[2][3]

Criminal informants[link]

Informants are commonly found in the world of organized crime. By its very nature, organized crime involves many people who are aware of each other's guilt, in a variety of illegal activities. Quite frequently, confidential informants (or criminal informants) will provide information in order to obtain lenient treatment for themselves and provide information, over an extended period of time, in return for money or for police to overlook their own criminal activities. Quite often, someone will become an informant following their arrest.^{[citation needed]}

Informants are also extremely common in every-day police work, including homicide and narcotics investigations. Any citizen who aids an investigation by offering helpful information to the police is by definition an informant.^{[citation needed]}

The CIA has been criticized for leniency towards drug lords^[4] and murderers^[5] acting as paid informants, informants being allowed to engage in some crimes so that the potential informant can blend into the criminal environment without suspicion,^[5] and wasting billions of dollars on dishonest sources of information.^[1]

Informants are often regarded as traitors by their former criminal associates. Whatever the nature of a group, it is likely to feel strong hostility toward any known informers, regard them as threats and inflict punishments ranging from social ostracism through physical abuse and/or death. Informers are therefore generally protected, either by being segregated while in prison or, if they are not incarcerated, relocated under a new identity.

Labor and social movements[link]

Corporations and the detective agencies that sometimes represent them have historically hired labor spies to monitor or control labor organizations and their activities.^[6] Such individuals may be professionals or recruits from the workforce. They may be willing accomplices, or may be tricked into informing on their co-workers' unionization efforts.^[7]

Paid informants have often been used by authorities within politically and socially oriented movements to weaken, destabilize and ultimately break them.^[8]

Politics[link]

Informers alert authorities regarding government officials that are corrupt. Officials may be taking bribes, or participants in a money loop also called a kickback. Informers in some countries receive a percentage of all monies recovered by their government.^{[citation needed]}

Lactantius described an example from ancient Rome involved the prosecution of a woman suspected to have advised a woman not to marry Maximinus II: "Neither indeed was there any accuser, until a certain Jew, one charged with other offences, was induced, through hope of pardon, to give false evidence against the innocent. The equitable and vigilant magistrate conducted him out of the city under a guard, lest the populace should have stoned him... The Jew was ordered to the torture till he should speak as he had been instructed... The innocent were condemned to die.... Nor was the promise of pardon made good to the feigned adulterer, for he was fixed to a gibbet, and then he disclosed the whole secret contrivance; and with his last breath he protested to all the beholders that the women died innocent."^[9]

Criminal informant schemes have often been used as cover for politically motivated intelligence offensives.^[10]

Jailhouse informants[link]

Jailhouse informants, who report hearsay (admissions against penal interest) which they claim to have heard while the accused is in pretrial detention, usually in exchange for sentence reductions or other inducements, have been the focus of particular controversy.^[11] Some examples of their use are in connection with Stanley Williams, Cameron Todd Willingham, Gerald Stano, Thomas Silverstein, Marshall "Eddie" Conway, and a suspect in the disappearance of Etan Patz.^{[citation needed]}

Terminology and slang[link]

Slang terms for informants include:

• cheese eater^[12]
• dog — Australian. May also refer to police who specialize in surveillance, or police generally.
• fink — this may refer to the Pinkertons who were used as plain-clothes detectives and strike-breakers.^[13]
• grass^[14] or supergrass,^[15] — rhyming slang for grasshopper, meaning copper or shopper^[16] and having additional associations with the popular song, "Whispering Grass", and the phrase snake in the grass.^[17]
• narc — a member of a specialist narcotics police force.^[18]
• nark — this may have come from the Romany term nak for nose or the French term narquois meaning cunning, deceitful and/or criminal.^[19][20]
• nose^[21]
• pursuivant (archaic),^[22]
• rat,^[12][23] informing is commonly referred to as "ratting."
• snitch^[24]
• snout^[25]
• spotter^[26]
• squealer^[24]
• stool pigeon^[27]
• tell tale or tell-tale^[28][29]
• tittle-tattle^[27]
• trick^[30]

The phrase "drop a dime" refers to an informant using a payphone to call the authorities to report information.^{[citation needed]}

List of famous informants[link]

• W. Mark Felt, a.k.a. "Deep Throat," former Deputy Director of the FBI
• Sammy Gravano, former underboss of the Gambino crime family
• Henry Hill, Lucchese crime family associate
• Frank Lucas, New York drug dealer turned informant
• Joseph Valachi, soldier in the Genovese crime family
• Salvatore Vitale, former underboss of the Bonanno crime family
• James Carey, Irish terrorist

See also[link]

• Agent provocateur
• Aguilar–Spinelli test
• Counter-terrorism
• Espionage
• Hollywood blacklist
• Pentiti
• Plea bargain
• Turn state's evidence
• United States Marshals Service
• Whistleblower
• Witness Protection Program

References[link]

Jack Black
Jack Black, Los Angeles, California on October 4, 2011
Background information
Also known as	Jables, JB
Born	(1969-08-28) August 28, 1969 (age 42)[1] Santa Monica, California, United States
Genres	Rock, comedy rock, heavy metal, hard rock, acoustic rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, actor, comedian
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, percussion, keyboard
Years active	1982–present
Labels	Epic, Sony BMG
Associated acts	Tenacious D, Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Probot, Foo Fighters, Meat Loaf, Ronnie James Dio
Website	www.tenaciousd.com

Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969)^[1] is an American comedian, actor and musician. He makes up one half of the comedy and satirical rock duo Tenacious D. The group has three albums as well as a television series and a film. His acting career is extensive, starring primarily as bumbling, cocky, but internally self-conscious outsiders in comedy films. He was a member of the Frat Pack, a group of comedians who have appeared together in several Hollywood films, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe award. He has also won an MTV Movie Award, and a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award as well as hosting the 2006, 2008, and 2011 Kids Choice Awards.

Early life[link]

Black was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of two satellite engineers, Judith (née Cohen), who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, and Thomas William Black.^[2][3] His mother is Jewish and his father converted to Judaism (Black attended Hebrew school).^[4][5] On The Tonight Show, he said his surname may have come from the occupational name Blacksmith.^[6] Black's parents divorced when he was 10; Black moved to Culver City with his father and frequently visited his mother’s home. As a child, Black appeared in a commercial for the Activision game Pitfall! in 1982,^[7] which was later shown during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live and again on The Tonight Show with Conan O' Brien. When Black entered high school, his parents enrolled him at the Poseidon School, a private secondary school engineered specifically for students struggling in the traditional school system.^[8] Black also attended the Crossroads School, where he excelled in drama. He later attended UCLA but dropped out during his sophomore year to pursue a career in entertainment, at which point his father discontinued his financial support.^{[citation needed]} Fellow UCLA alumnus Tim Robbins later cast Black in Bob Roberts. He also had recurring roles on the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show.

Career[link]

Acting career[link]

Black's acting career began with prime time television. He played roles on shows including Life Goes On, Northern Exposure, Mr. Show, Picket Fences, and The X-Files. Black appeared in the unaired TV pilot Heat Vision and Jack, directed by Ben Stiller, in which he played an ex-astronaut pursued by actor Ron Silver. He was accompanied by his friend who had merged with a motorcycle, voiced by Owen Wilson.

Black later took on small roles in Airborne, Demolition Man, Waterworld, The Fan, Mars Attacks!, Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, and others. He had a small role in True Romance as a security guard, but the scene was deleted. In 2000, he appeared in High Fidelity as a wild employee in John Cusack's record store, a role Black considers his breakout.^{[citation needed]}

His career soon led to leading roles in films such as Shallow Hal, Nacho Libre, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Year One and Gulliver's Travels. He received particular praise for his starring role in the well-received School of Rock, earning critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Musical Or Comedy.^[9] In a rare move, he starred in a dramatic role as the obsessed filmmaker Carl Denham in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong, a performance he based on Orson Welles. He voiced the title role in Kung Fu Panda, which grossed $20.3 million on its opening day, June 6, 2008, and Kung Fu Panda 2; it is a role he considers his favorite, with a performance enhanced with the tutoring of co-star and two time Academy Award winner, Dustin Hoffman. On September 13, 2009 before nominees for best rock video at MTV Video Music Awards Black led the audience in a Satanic prayer in which he told the audience to throw up their horns.^[10] His next film, The Big Year, a competitive birdwatching comedy co-starring Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and JoBeth Williams, was released in October 2011. He is referred to in the media as a member of the Frat Pack,^{[citation needed]} a group of comedy actors who frequently work together, which also includes Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Steve Carell.

He guest-starred on The Office along with Cloris Leachman, Jessica Alba, and Steve Carell in a movie within the show. He also guest-starred in iCarly, in the episode iStart a Fan War.

Black has appeared numerous times on the "untelevised TV network" short film festival Channel101, created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, starring in the shows Computerman, Timebelt, and Laserfart. He also provided an introduction for the unaired sketch comedy Awesometown, donning a Colonial-era military uniform. In the introduction, he claims to be George Washington (and takes credit for the accomplishments of other American Presidents such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln). Black also guest starred in the Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" show Tom Goes to the Mayor, as a bear-trap store owner. Black also guest-starred on Dan Harmon's show Community.

Black hosted the 2006 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards on April 1, 2006 and hosted it again March 29, 2008, and April 2, 2011. He also appeared on the MTV video music awards on August 31, 2006. Black has made five appearances on Saturday Night Live: three times as a host, once as a musical guest (with Kyle Gass as Tenacious D), and another appearance with Tenacious D, not as a host or musical guest. He produced and appeared on VH1's Internet video show Acceptable.TV.^[11]

Black voice acted for The Simpsons episode "Husbands and Knives", which aired November 18, 2007, voicing the friendly owner of the rival comic book store, Milo. Black took part in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? celebrity edition along with Denis Leary, Jimmy Kimmel and others and was handed the prize of US$125,000 in October 2001.^[12] On December 14, Jack Black hosted the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards. He provided the voice of the main character, roadie Eddie Riggs, in the heavy metal-themed action-adventure video game, Brütal Legend. In 2009, at the Spike Video Game Awards, he earned the Best Voice award for the voice of Eddie Riggs in Brütal Legend. In April 2009, Black also starred in an episode of the children's show "Yo Gabba Gabba!" on Nick Jr. vocalized funny kid songs such as "It's Not Fun to Get Lost", "Friends" and "The Goodbye Song". He was also voiced as Po on Kung Fu Panda.

Music career[link]

Jack Black with Kyle Gass of Tenacious D.

Black, also known as JB or Jables, is the lead singer for the rock comedy band Tenacious D. Along with Kyle Gass, they have released three albums, a self-titled debut, the follow-up, The Pick of Destiny, and Rize of the Fenix. One of their songs "The Metal", from their album "The Pick of Destiny" was used in the music video games "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" and "Brütal Legend". "Rock Your Socks" from the album "Tenacious D" was played in the music videogame "Rock Band Unplugged", and "Master Exploder" from "The Pick Of Destiny" went on to be used in music video games "Guitar Hero Van Halen" and "Rock Band 2", along with their song "Tribute" from "Tenacious D". "Master Exploder" and "The Metal" featured in the film Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. The film, directed by Tenacious D veteran Liam Lynch, features recurring characters such as Lee the superfan and Sasquatch. Tim Robbins cameos as does Dave Grohl and Satan. Ben Stiller also makes an appearance as a worker at Guitar Center, and also another appearance in the music video for "Tribute".

Tenacious D helped the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation^[13] to raise awareness and funds in San Diego on June 16, 2007. Tenacious D can be seen performing in the Pauly Shore film Bio-Dome where the duo is performing its song "The Five Needs" at a "Save the Environment" party. Black was also a guest star on an episode of The Ellen Degeneres Show entitled "Ellen the Musical", alongside Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth and teenage singer-actress Olivia Olson. On the show, besides singing, he discussed his then-upcoming film Nacho Libre with the host.

Black has also appeared on Dave Grohl's Probot album, providing vocals for the hidden song "I Am The Warlock", and Lynch's Fake Songs album, providing vocals for the song "Rock and Roll Whore". Black performed a cover of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" in the last sequence of High Fidelity. He lent his musical abilities to the Queens of the Stone Age song "Burn the Witch" with rhythmic stomps and claps, some performed with his eyes closed. He also provided vocals for The Lonely Island's track "Sax Man" from the album Incredibad.

Black has also recorded a duet on Meat Loaf's new CD Hang Cool Teddy Bear. The song is called Like a Rose. Meat Loaf has also played Black's father in the Pick of Destiny movie. Hang Cool Teddy Bear also features Hugh Laurie, Kara Dioguardi, Brian May, Steve Vai & Patti Russo, produced by Rob Cavallo.

Black performing in 2006

Black has appeared in music videos of Beck "Sexx Laws"; Foo Fighters "Learn To Fly", "Low", and "The One"; The Eagles of Death Metal's "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)"; Sum 41's "Things I Want"; Dio's "Push"; and Weezer's "Photograph." In October 2010, Tenacious D appeared at BlizzCon 2010, a convention hosted by the game designers, Blizzard Entertainment.

Personal life[link]

In January 2006, Black became engaged to Tanya Haden. She is the daughter of the jazz double bassist Charlie Haden, and sister of violinist and singer Petra Haden. Haden herself is an accomplished cellist. Both attended Crossroads school and met again 15 years after graduating, at a friend's birthday party. Black proposed marriage around Christmas 2005. They married on March 14, 2006, in Big Sur, California.^[14] Their son, Samuel Jason "Sammy" Black, was born on June 10, 2006, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.^[15] On May 23, 2008, Black and his wife had their second son, Thomas David Black.^[16] Black is an atheist, but is still considering sending his children to a Jewish school.^[17][18]

Filmography[link]

Television work[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jack Black

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jack Black

• Jack Black at the Internet Movie Database
• Jack Black at AllRovi
• Jack Black collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Margot at the Wedding
• Suicide Girls interview
• Jack Black in King Kong
• The Tao of Jack Black, Steve Ramos, Cincinnati CityBeat, October 8, 2003

Andy Long (born 2 September 1977) is an English rugby union footballer who plays at Hooker for Northampton Saints. He has 2 caps for England.

Originally a product of the Bath academy, where he came to the attention of Bath coach Clive Woodward, having captained England U19 and U21. Woodward was appointed England coach in 1997 and picked the 20-year old on potential for his first match in charge against Australia. However, Long played poorly^[2] and was replaced at half-time by Richard Cockerill, who then started the subsequent matches against New Zealand with Long on the bench. Long however did not again enter the field of play. He was thus seemed destined to become a "one cap wonder" until gaining a second cap against the United States in 2001 when most of the regular England players were away with the 2001 British Lions tour to Australia. He also played for England in a non cap international against The Barbarians in 2003.

Meanwhile, Long spent 7 years at Bath, before joining Irish province Munster during the 2003 World Cup, after which he returned to England with Rotherham, who were relegated in 2004 and he travelled further north to join Newcastle Falcons.

On 20 November 2009, He was signed up by Northampton Saints on a short term deal and made his debut on the 29th January 2010 for the Saints' first team against Sale Sharks in the LV cup which they won 20–14. On 31 March 2010, Long signed a contract extension for the club.

He has been called into the England Saxons squad to face Italy A in Ragusa, Sicily on 9 February 2008.^[3][4]

For the 2011/12 season he is joining Cambridge RUFC as forwards coach ^{[5] [6]}

References[link]

External links[link]

• Newcastle profile
• England profile
• [1]
• [2]
• CURFC
• Cambridge News

Steven Soderbergh
Soderbergh at the 2009 Venice Film Festival
Born	Steven Andrew Soderbergh (1963-01-14) January 14, 1963 (age 49) Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Occupation	Director, cinematographer, screenwriter, producer, editor
Years active	1984–present
Spouse	Betsy Brantley (div. 1994) Jules Asner (2003–present)

Steven Andrew Soderbergh (/ˈsoʊdərbɜrɡ/; born January 14, 1963) is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing critically acclaimed commercial Hollywood films like Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven. He has also directed smaller, less conventional works, such as Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Schizopolis, Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience and Che. His most recent works are Contagion and Haywire.

Early life and career[link]

Soderbergh was born in Atlanta, the son of Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator.^[1] His paternal grandfather was a Swedish immigrant, from Stockholm.^[2] When he was a child, his family moved from Atlanta to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lived during his adolescence, then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). There he discovered filmmaking as a teenager, directing short Super 8 mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU students.^[3]

While the family resided in Baton Rouge, Soderbergh's mother appeared regularly on a local ABC-affiliate's (WBRZ-TV/broadcast channel 2) early-morning show ("2une In") as a "call-in" psychic, and taught adult-education and "alternative education" classes in "parapsychology" at LSU.^{[citation needed]}

His primary high school education was at Louisiana State University Laboratory School, a K-12 school that is directed by the University. While still taking classes there around the age of fifteen, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with secondhand equipment.^[4]

Rather than attending LSU, Soderbergh tried his luck in Hollywood after graduating from high school; he worked as a game show scorer and cue card holder to make ends meet, and eventually found work as a freelance film editor.^[5] His big break came when he directed the Grammy-nominated concert video 9012Live for the rock band Yes in 1985.^[6]

Career[link]

[edit] 1989: rise to prominence: Sex, Lies, and Videotape

It wasn't until Soderbergh came back to Baton Rouge that he conceived the idea for Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which he wrote in eight days.^[7] The independent film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, became a worldwide commercial success and greatly contributed to the 1990s independent film revolution. At age 26, Soderbergh became the youngest director to win the festival's top award.^[8] Movie critic Roger Ebert dubbed Soderbergh the "poster boy of the Sundance generation".^[9]

1993 to 1998[link]

Sex, Lies, and Videotape was followed by a series of low-budget box-office disappointments: Kafka, a biopic mixing fact and Kafka's own fiction (notably The Castle and The Trial), written by Lem Dobbs and starring Jeremy Irons as Franz Kafka; King of the Hill (1993), a critically acclaimed Depression-era drama; The Underneath (1995), a remake of Robert Siodmak's 1949 film noir Criss Cross; and Schizopolis (1996), a comedy which he starred in, wrote, composed, and shot as well as directed. He also directed the Spalding Gray monologue film Gray's Anatomy in 1996.

Making good on his Schizopolis-inspired "artistic wake-up call", his commercial slump ended in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.^[10] The film was widely praised, though only a moderate box-office success. It reaffirmed Soderbergh's potential, sparking the beginnings of a lucrative artistic partnership between Clooney and Soderbergh.

1999 and 2000[link]

Soderbergh followed up on the success of Out of Sight by making another crime caper, The Limey (1999), from an original screenplay by Lem Dobbs and starring veteran actors Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda. The film was well-received, but not as much as Erin Brockovich (2000), written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action.^[11] Later that year, Soderbergh released Traffic, a social drama written by Stephen Gaghan and featuring an ensemble cast.

Traffic became his most acclaimed movie since Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. He was also nominated that same year for Erin Brockovich. He is the only director to have been nominated in the same year for Best Director for two different films by the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America. The double nomination was the first in 60 years. (In 1938, Michael Curtiz was nominated twice, for Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters, but did not win for either film.)

2001 to 2007[link]

Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy García, Julia Roberts, and Soderbergh in December 2001

Ocean's Eleven (2001), a Ted Griffin-scripted remake from a Rat Pack-movie from 1960, featuring an all-star cast and flashy aesthetics, is Soderbergh's highest grossing movie to date, grossing more than $183 million domestically and more than $450 million worldwide.^[12][13] The film's star, George Clooney, subsequently appeared in Solaris (2002), marking the third time the two have headlined a film. In the same year, Soderbergh made Full Frontal which was shot mostly on digital video in an improvisational style that deliberately blurred the line between which actors were playing characters and which were playing fictionized versions of themselves. A film within a film, the title is a film industry reference to an actor or actress appearing fully nude (a.k.a., "full frontal nudity"). Also in 2002, Soderbergh was elected First Vice President of the Directors Guild of America.^[14]

Following up Full Frontal stylistically was Soderbergh next project, K Street (2003), a ten-part political HBO series he co-produced with Clooney. The series was noteworthy for being both partially improvised and each episode being produced in the 5 days prior to airing to take advantage of topical events that could be worked into the fictional narrative. Actual political players appeared as themselves, either in cameos or fictionalized versions of themselves (as were the leads, real life husband and wife James Carville and Mary Matalin). The show caused a stir during the 2004 Democratic Primary when Carville gave candidate Howard Dean a soundbite during a location shoot that Dean then used in a debate.

Ocean's Twelve (2004), a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, has followed. The Good German, a romantic drama set in post-war Berlin starring Cate Blanchett and Clooney, was released in late 2006. The sixth pairing of Clooney and Soderbergh, Ocean's Thirteen, was released in June 2007.

Latest work[link]

In 2006, Soderbergh raised eyebrows with Bubble, a $1.6 million film featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors. It opened in selected theaters and HDNet simultaneously, and four days later on DVD. Industry heads were reportedly watching how the film performed, as its unusual release schedule could have implications for future feature films.^[15][16] Theater-owners, who at the time had been suffering from dropping attendance rates, did not welcome so-called "day-and-date" movies.^[17] National Association of Theatre Owners president and CEO John Fithian indirectly called the film's release model "the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today."^[18] Soderbergh's response to such criticism: "I don't think it's going to destroy the movie-going experience any more than the ability to get takeout has destroyed the restaurant business." The film did poor business both at the box office and on the home video market.^[19] Nevertheless, Soderbergh is on contract to deliver five more day-and-date movies. In fall of 2006 he contributed a mini-essay on hotel pornography, along with an accompanying series of long-exposure photographs, to Anthem magazine's November/December issue.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}

In 2007, Soderbergh and Tony Gilroy contributed an audio commentary to the DVD re-release of The Third Man by the Criterion Collection.

On May 22, 2008, Che, which was released in theatres in two parts titled The Argentine^[20] and Guerrilla,^[21] was presented in the main competition of the 2008 Cannes film festival. Benicio del Toro plays Argentine guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara in an epic four-hour double bill which looks first at his role in the Cuban revolution before moving to his campaign and eventual death in Bolivia.^[22][23]

Soderbergh shot his feature film The Girlfriend Experience in New York in 2008. The film's lead actress is adult film star Sasha Grey.^[24][25][26]

His next film was 2009's The Informant! a black comedy starring Matt Damon as corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre. Whitacre wore a wire for two and a half years for the FBI as a high-level executive at a Fortune 500 company, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), in one of the largest price-fixing cases in history.^[27] The film was released on September 18, 2009. The script for the movie was written by Scott Z. Burns based on Kurt Eichenwald's book, The Informant.

In 2009, Soderbergh directed a play titled Tot-Mom for the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia.^[28] The play is based on the real-life case of Caylee Anthony. Rehearsals commenced in early November 2009, and the production opened December 2009. Soderbergh also shot a small improvised film with the cast of the play, The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg, a comedy about a theatre company staging Chekhov's Three Sisters.

He followed that with the action-thriller Haywire, starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, and Channing Tatum which, though shot in early 2010, was not released until January 2012.

In the fall of 2010, he shot the epic virus thriller Contagion, written by Scott Z. Burns.^[29] With a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law, the film follows the outbreak of a lethal pandemic across the globe and the efforts of doctors and scientists to discover the cause and develop a cure. It was released on September 9, 2011.

In September and October 2011, he shot Magic Mike, a film starring Channing Tatum, about the actor's experiences working as a male stripper in his youth. Tatum plays the title mentor character, while Alex Pettyfer plays a character based on Tatum. The film is expected to be released in the summer of 2012 in the US.

Soderbergh had planned to follow this in early 2012 with a feature version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., also written by Scott Z. Burns. The film was set to reunite him with George Clooney, but Clooney had to drop out of the film due to a recurring back injury suffered while filming Syriana.^[30] As of November 2011, Soderbergh had dropped out of the film due to budget and casting conflicts.^[31]

His next project is the psychological thriller The Bitter Pill. It was reported the cast will include Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Filming will take place in April 2012 for a release in the first half of 2013.^[32]

Behind the Candelabra, his final film, is set to shoot in the Summer of 2012. It will star Michael Douglas as legendarily flamboyant pianist Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover Scott Thorson. The film is written by Richard LaGravenese, based on Thorson's book Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace. It will be produced by HBO Films.^[33]

Soderbergh has announced in numerous interviews his intention to retire from filmmaking after finishing these three films to focus on his painting full-time. He stated that "when you reach the point where you're saying, 'If I have to get into a van to do another scout, I'm just going to shoot myself,' it's time to let somebody who's still excited about getting in the van, get the van."^[34] Soderbergh later confirmed that he would retire from filmmaking and begin to explore painting.^[35] A few weeks later, Soderbergh played down his earlier comments, saying a film-making "sabbatical" was more accurate.^[36]

Unrealized Projects[link]

Soderbergh nearly filmed a feature adaptation of the controversial state-of-baseball tome Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Demetri Martin. The book, by Michael Lewis, tells of how Billy Beane, general manager of Oakland Athletics, used statistical analysis to make up for what he lacked in funds to beat the odds and lead his team to a series of notable wins in 2002. Disagreements between Sony and Soderbergh about revisions to Steven Zaillian's version of the screenplay led to Soderbergh's dismissal from the project only days prior to filming in June 2009. The move by Sony's Amy Pascal, unprecedented in recent history, sent shockwaves through the industry. The film was eventually made by director Bennett Miller, with a script rewritten by Aaron Sorkin^[37]. It was critically acclaimed and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Around the same time, he planned a 3D live-action rock musical film based on Cleopatra's life entitled "Cleo", with Catherine Zeta-Jones in talks to play Cleopatra, and with music by the band Guided by Voices.^[38] Soderbergh and scriptwriter James Greer were said to be rewriting the lyrics of the songs to fit the story.^[39] Hugh Jackman was approached to play Mark Antony but withdrew.^[39][40]

He also worked for a time with writer Scott Z. Burns on a biopic of controversial Nazi-era film director Leni Riefenstahl, but he and Burns ended up abandoning that script as too uncommercial, making Contagion instead.^[41]

Directorial style and collaborations[link]

Soderbergh frequently works with actors on more than one occasion. The following is a list of notable collaborators (in order of first film appearance):

• Peter Gallagher (sex, lies, and videotape and The Underneath)
• Ron Vawter (sex, lies, and videotape and King of The Hill)
• Jeroen Krabbe (Kafka, King of the Hill and Ocean's Twelve)
• Joe Chrest (King of the Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Full Frontal, Ocean's Thirteen and The Informant!)
• Spalding Gray (King of the Hill, Gray's Anatomy and And Everything is Going Fine)
• Eddie Jemison (Schizopolis, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, and The Informant!)
• Don Cheadle (Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen)
• George Clooney (Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven, Solaris, Ocean's Twelve, The Good German and Ocean's Thirteen)
• Viola Davis (Out of Sight, Traffic and Solaris)
• Luis Guzmán (Out of Sight, The Limey, and Traffic)
• Catherine Keener (Out of Sight and Full Frontal)
• Terrence Stamp (The Limey and Full Frontal)
• Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean's Twelve)
• Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven, Full Frontal and Ocean's Twelve)
• Michael Douglas (Traffic, Haywire and Behind the Candelabra)
• Topher Grace (Traffic, Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve)
• Benicio del Toro (Traffic and Che)
• Catherine Zeta-Jones (Traffic, Ocean's Twelve and The Bitter Pill)
• Matt Damon (Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Che Part 2: Guerrilla, The Informant!, Contagion and Behind the Candelabra)
• Elliott Gould (Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen and Contagion)
• Brad Pitt (Ocean's Eleven, Full Frontal, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen)
• Enrico Colantoni (Full Frontal and Contagion)
• Jude Law (Contagion and The Bitter Pill)
• Channing Tatum (Haywire, Magic Mike and The Bitter Pill)

"I've always gotten along with them," says Soderbergh of actors, "I try and make sure they're OK, and when they're in the zone, I leave them alone. I don't get in their way." His non-intrusive directorial style has attracted repeat performances by many high-profile movie stars.^[42] Julia Roberts had supporting roles in Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Full Frontal, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead in Erin Brockovich. Benicio del Toro, who also won an Academy Award for his work in a Soderbergh film (Traffic), later starred in Guerrilla and The Argentine. Catherine Zeta-Jones won a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Helena in Traffic (2000) and reteamed with him for box-office hit Ocean's Twelve (2004). But the actor he has collaborated most frequently with is George Clooney, who played the leading role six of his films, and with whom he co-owned the film production company, Section Eight Productions. Section Eight produced the critical hits Far From Heaven, Insomnia, and Syriana as well as the Clooney-directed films Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Soderbergh often acts as his own director of photography under the alias of Peter Andrews and occasionally as his own editor under the alias of Mary Ann Bernard. While shooting Traffic, Soderbergh wanted a credit of "Photographed and Directed by". The Writer's Guild (WGA) wouldn't allow another credit ahead of the writer. Because Soderbergh didn't want his name used more than once, he adopted a pseudonym, Peter Andrews, his father's first and middle names.

Soderbergh often utilizes Cliff Martinez to construct/compose the soundtracks to his movies, and when not cutting his own films, he relies on editor Stephen Mirrione.

Aesthetics[link]

Soderbergh has made big-budget Hollywood films as well as art-house independent films; works with above-the-title movie stars and unknowns; directs adaptations and original material, both of which written by himself as well as other screenwriters.^[43] His versatility is also apparent with the genres which he chooses to film and his trades as a filmmaker behind the scenes. Traffic screenwriter and Syriana director Stephen Gaghan named Soderbergh "the Michael Jordan of filmmaking" for his ability to assume so many distinct roles in film production.^[44]

While Soderbergh is enamoured of dialogue, Soderbergh's incorporation of score and montage are equally prevalent in his story-telling.^[45] Even Soderbergh's light-hearted affairs, such as Out of Sight and Ocean's 11, contain scenes where images and score are the dominant story-telling mechanisms. Films such as Solaris and Traffic are heavily layered in scenes absent of dialogue altogether. Cliff Martinez, a frequent collaborator with Soderbergh, composes many of the scores that provide Soderbergh with the thematic and sonic landscapes into which he inserts his characters.^[43]

But while Soderbergh's subject matter is highly varied, many of his films feature as a central theme the exploration of the act or moral consequences of lying. For example, the protagonists in two early films, King of the Hill and Sex, Lies, and Videotape, are both pathological liars (one in training, one in recovery), while most of the characters in all three Oceans films are con artists. It is interesting to note that he directed Spalding Gray in Gray's Anatomy after King of the Hill, an actor who often commented that he was unable to "make anything up". Full Frontal is another film in this thread, where seemingly the fundamental dishonesty of the entire filmmaking process is exposed. More distantly, Soderbergh's interest in rhyming slang, as seen in The Limey and the Oceans films, may be seen as part of this theme, based on the conjectured origin of rhyming slang as a language game.

In his review of Full Frontal film critic Roger Ebert commented that, "Every once in a while, perhaps as an exercise in humility, Steven Soderbergh makes a truly inexplicable film... A film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable... It's the kind of film where you need the director telling you what he meant to do and what went wrong and how the actors screwed up and how there was no money for retakes, etc."^[46] About Soderbergh's film, The Good German and his emphasis on style over substance, film critic Richard Roeper commented that the film had to offer, "a lot of style. Not so much with the plot."^[47]

Soderbergh has, nonetheless, been dubbed a stylistic chameleon by Anne Thompson of Premiere Magazine. Drew Morton has extensively researched Soderbergh and has tied him to a modern movement much like the French New Wave.^[48][49]

Soderbergh also has a track record of honorable contributions in the cinematic arts; when the papers of Terry Southern were potentially in limbo following his untimely death in 1995, Soderbergh purchased and then donated the papers to the New York Public Library. Naqoyqatsi, the final chapter of Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy, was completed after a delay of more than 10 years, only after Soderbergh stepped in to provide the necessary funding.

Views[link]

Soderbergh claims to not be a fan of possessory credits, and prefers not to have his name front and center at the start of a film. "The fact that I'm not an identifiable brand is very freeing," says Soderbergh, "because people get tired of brands and they switch brands. I've never had a desire to be out in front of anything, which is why I don't take a possessory credit."^[50]

On Monday, April 5, 2009, Soderbergh appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, and "cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates," indicating he supports anti-piracy laws and Internet regulation.^[51]

Personal life[link]

Soderbergh is married to writer/journalist Jules Asner, whom he often credits for influencing his female characters. Soderbergh claims he no longer reads reviews of his movies. "After Traffic I just stopped completely",^[50] says the director. "After winning the LA and New York film critics awards, I really felt like, this can only get worse".^[50] Steven has a daughter with his first wife, Betsy Brantley. He also has a daughter, from an out of wedlock relationship.^[52]

Soderbergh lives in New York City. He is an atheist.^[53]

Filmography[link]

Director[link]

Screenwriter[link]

• 1989: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
• 1993: King of the Hill
• 1995: The Underneath as Sam Lowry
• 1996: Schizopolis
• 1997: Nightwatch
• 2002: Solaris
• 2004: Eros – the segment "Equilibrium"

Cinematographer[link]

• 1996: Schizopolis
• 2000: Traffic – as Peter Andrews
• 2001: Ocean's Eleven – as Peter Andrews
• 2002: Full Frontal – as Peter Andrews
• 2002: Solaris – as Peter Andrews
• 2004: Ocean's Twelve – as Peter Andrews
• 2004: Eros – the segment "Equilibrium"
• 2006: Bubble – as Peter Andrews
• 2006: The Good German – as Peter Andrews
• 2007: Ocean's Thirteen – as Peter Andrews
• 2008: Che – as Peter Andrews
• 2009: The Girlfriend Experience – as Peter Andrews
• 2009: The Informant! – as Peter Andrews
• 2011: Contagion – as Peter Andrews
• 2011: Haywire – as Peter Andrews

Editor[link]

• 1989: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
• 1991: Kafka
• 1993: King of the Hill
• 2002: Solaris – as Mary Ann Bernard
• 2004: Eros – the segment "Equilibrium"
• 2006: Bubble – as Mary Ann Bernard
• 2006: The Good German – as Mary Ann Bernard
• 2009: The Girlfriend Experience – as Mary Ann Bernard
• 2012: Haywire – as Mary Ann Bernard

Producer[link]

• 1994: Suture
• 1996: The Daytrippers
• 1998: Pleasantville
• 2002: Far from Heaven
• 2002: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
• 2002: Insomnia
• 2002: Welcome to Collinwood
• 2002: Naqoyqatsi
• 2004: Keane
• 2004: Criminal
• 2005: Syriana
• 2005: Good Night, and Good Luck
• 2005: The Jacket
• 2005: Rumor Has It...
• 2006: Pu-239
• 2006: A Scanner Darkly
• 2007: I'm Not There
• 2007: Michael Clayton
• 2007: Wind Chill
• 2008: Tishomingo Blues [in limbo]
• 2009: Solitary Man
• 2011: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Audio commentaries[link]

On his own films[link]

• Sex, Lies, and Videotape, with filmmaker Neil LaBute
• Schizopolis
• Out of Sight, with screenwriter Scott Frank
• The Limey, with screenwriter Lem Dobbs
• Traffic, with screenwriter Stephen Gaghan
• Ocean's Eleven, with screenwriter Ted Griffin
• Full Frontal, with screenwriter Coleman Hough
• Solaris, with producer James Cameron
• Ocean's Twelve, with screenwriter George Nolfi (Blu-ray only)
• Bubble, with filmmaker Mark Romanek
• Ocean's Thirteen, with screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien (Blu-ray only)
• The Girlfriend Experience, with actress Sasha Grey
• The Informant!, with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (Blu-ray only)

On other films[link]

• Apartment Zero, with screenwriter/producer David Koepp
• Billy Budd, with actor Terence Stamp
• Catch-22, with director Mike Nichols
• Clean, Shaven, with director Lodge Kerrigan
• The Graduate, with director Mike Nichols
• Point Blank, with director John Boorman
• Seabiscuit, with director Gary Ross
• The Third Man, with screenwriter Tony Gilroy
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with director Mike Nichols
• The Yards, with director James Gray

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Waxman, Sharon, ed. (2005), Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, HarperEntertainment .

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steven Soderbergh

• Steven Soderbergh at the Internet Movie Database
• Steven Soderbergh Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Steven Soderbergh: Interviews
• Everhip interview with Steven Soderbergh about making The Girlfriend Experience
• NPR: Bubble (01/2006)
• Wired interview (12/2005)
• Guardian interview (02/2003)
• French New Wave Influences in Steven Soderbergh (05/2003)
• Steven Soderbergh on The Girlfriend Experience (April 30, 2009)
• 'Che': Soderbergh's Own Revolution? by Lisa Collins, New York Post, October 31, 2008
• "Soderbergh Takes A Revolutionary Approach to 'Che'" by Mark Olsen, LA Times, October 31, 2008
• Steven Soderbergh interview by Scott Tobias, The Onion A.V. Club, January 5, 2009
• Steven Soderbergh Wants a Revolution interview by Foster Kamer, Black Books, December 29, 2008
• The Rumpus Long Interview with Steven Soderbergh by Scott Hitchins, The Rumpus, January 19, 2009
• Steven Soderbergh: "I can see the end of my career" by Henry Barnes, Guardian, July 14, 2009
• Literature on Steven Soderbergh

Bill Ayers
Ayers speaks to audience members following a forum on education reform at Florida State University.
Born	William Charles Ayers (1944-12-26) December 26, 1944 (age 67) Glen Ellyn, Illinois, U.S.
Residence	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Fields	Education
Institutions	University of Illinois at Chicago
Alma mater	University of Michigan (B.A.), Bank Street College of Education (M.Ed.), Teachers College, Columbia University (Ed.M., Ed.D.)
Known for	Founder / former member of the Weather Underground Urban educational reform
Spouse	Bernardine Dohrn

William Charles "Bill" Ayers (born December 26, 1944)^[1] is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group^[2] that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s, in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

He is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.^[3] During the 2008 US presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama. He is married to Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather organization.

Early life[link]

Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He attended public schools there until his second year in high school, when he transferred to Lake Forest Academy, a small prep school.^[4] Ayers earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in American Studies in 1968 (his father, mother and older brother had preceded him there).^[4] His parents are Mary (née Andrew) and Thomas G. Ayers, who was later Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison (1973 to 1980),^[5] and for whom Northwestern's Thomas G. Ayers College of Commerce and Industry was named.^[6][7]

Ayers was affected when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Paul Potter, at a 1965 Ann Arbor Teach-In against the Vietnam war, asked his audience, "How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?" Ayers later wrote in his memoir, Fugitive Days, that his reaction was: "You could not be a moral person with the means to act, and stand still. [...] To stand still was to choose indifference. Indifference was the opposite of moral".^[8]

In 1965, Ayers joined a picket line protesting an Ann Arbor, Michigan pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans. His first arrest came for a sit-in at a local draft board, resulting in 10 days in jail. His first teaching job came shortly afterward at the Children's Community School, a preschool with a very small enrollment operating in a church basement, founded by a group of students in emulation of the Summerhill method of education.^[9]

The school was a part of the nationwide "free school movement". Schools in the movement had no grades or report cards; they aimed to encourage cooperation rather than competition, and the teachers had pupils address them by their first names. Within a few months, at age 21, Ayers became director of the school. There also he met Diana Oughton, who would become his girlfriend until her death in 1970 after a bomb exploded while preparing the bombs for Weather Underground activities.^[4]

Early activism[link]

Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).^[10] He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the "Jesse James Gang," Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.

The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman. Before the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS.^[8] "During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more pronounced over the year [1969]", disaffected former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Ayers had previously been a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant who was killed in 1970 along with Ayers' girlfriend Oughton and one other member in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, while constructing anti-personnel bombs intended for a non-commissioned officer dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.^[11] Ayers was living in Michigan at that time.

In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary.^[8] Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket affair confrontation between labor supporters and the Chicago police.^[12] The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway.^[13] (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970.^[13][14] Rebuilding it yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast, and in January 1972 it was moved to Chicago police headquarters).^[15]

Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the "War Council" meeting in Flint, Michigan. Two major decisions came out of the "War Council." The first was to immediately begin a violent, armed struggle (e.g., bombings and armed robberies) against the state without attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The second was to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country.^[16] Larry Grathwohl, a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant in the Weatherman group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, stated that "Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman".^[17]

Years underground[link]

After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers' close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers' girlfriend, Diana Oughton were killed when a nail bomb being assembled in the house exploded, Ayers and several associates evaded pursuit by US law enforcement officials. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.^[4] Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Ayers writes:

Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy - weighing close to two pounds - it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.^[18]

Some media reports and political critics have suggested that Ayers, Dohrn or the Weathermen were connected to the fatal 1970 San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing but neither Ayers nor anyone else has been charged or convicted of this crime.^[19]

While underground, Ayers and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations.

In 1973, new information came to light about FBI operations targeted against Weather Underground and the New Left, all part of a series of covert and often illegal FBI projects called COINTEL.^[20] Due to the illegal tactics^{[clarification needed]} of FBI agents involved with the program, government attorneys requested all weapons- and bomb-related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground, including charges against Ayers.^[21]

However, state charges against Dohrn remained. Dohrn was still reluctant to turn herself in to authorities. "He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own", she later said of Ayers.^[4] She turned herself in to authorities in 1980. She was fined $1,500 and given three years probation.^[22]

In 1973 Ayers co-authored the book Prairie Fire with other members of the Weather Underground which they dedicated to close to 200 people including Harriet Tubman, John Brown, 'All Who Continue to Fight', and 'All Political Prisoners in the U.S.'. The list includes Sirhan Sirhan, convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.^[23][24] Ayers himself has denied personally dedicating the book to Sirhan.^[25]

Later reflections on underground period[link]

[edit] Fugitive Days: A Memoir

In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir, which he explained in part as an attempt to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin's son, and his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb makers.^[26] Some have questioned the truth, accuracy, and tone of the book. Brent Staples wrote for The New York Times Book Review that "Ayers reminds us often that he can't tell everything without endangering people involved in the story.^[27] Historian Jesse Lemisch (himself a former member of SDS) contrasted Ayers' recollections with those of other former members of Weatherman and has alleged serious factual errors.^[28] Ayers, in the foreword to his book, states that it was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project.^[29]

Statements made in 2001[link]

Chicago Magazine reported that "just before the September 11th attacks," Richard Elrod, a city lawyer injured in the Weathermen's Chicago "Days of Rage," received an apology from Ayers and Dohrn for their part in the violence. "[T]hey were remorseful," Elrod says. "They said, 'We're sorry that things turned out this way.'"^[30] In the months before Ayers' memoir was published on September 10, 2001, the author gave numerous interviews with newspaper and magazine writers in which he defended his overall history of radical words and actions. Some of the resulting articles were written before the September 11 attacks and appeared immediately after, including one often-noted article in The New York Times, and another in the Chicago Tribune. Numerous observations were made in the media comparing the statements Ayers was making about his own past just as a dramatic terrorist incident shocked the public.

Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since 2000 stems from an interview he gave to The New York Times on the occasion of the memoir's publication.^[31] The reporter quoted him as saying "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again," as saying "I don't want to discount the possibility."^[29] Ayers protested the interviewer's characterizations in a Letter to the Editor published September 15, 2001: "This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion."^[32] In the ensuing years, Ayers has repeatedly avowed that when he said he had "no regrets" and that "we didn't do enough" he was speaking only in reference to his efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War, efforts which he has described as ". . . inadequate [as] the war dragged on for a decade."^[33] Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs.^[33][34]

In a November 2008 interview with The New Yorker, Ayers said that he had not meant to imply that he wished he and the Weathermen had committed further acts of violence. Instead, he said, “I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which “thousands of people were being killed every week.” He also stated, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,” and “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.”^[35]

The interviewer also quoted some of Ayers' own criticism of Weatherman in the foreword to the memoir, whereby Ayers reacts to having watched Emile de Antonio's 1976 documentary film about Weatherman, Underground: "[Ayers] was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism.' "^[29] "We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."^[4]

In a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."^[36]

Views on his past expressed since 2001[link]

Ayers was asked in a January 2004 interview, "How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?" He replied:^[37] "I've thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it's impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful? ... I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable." On September 9, 2008, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Ayers' blog explaining the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"^[38][39]

In an op-ed piece in 2008, Ayers gave this assessment of his actions:

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated.^[40]