Paul Fitzgerald

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began
working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's
television show, Watchworks. Called, The Arms Race and the Economy, A
Delicate Balance, they found themselves in the midst of a swirling
controversy that was to boil over a few months later with the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Their acquisition of the first visas to
enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew in the spring of
1981, brought them into the middle of the most heated Cold War
controversy since Vietnam.

Following their exclusive news story for the CBS Evening News, they
produced a documentary (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) for PBS and
in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline with Harvard
Negotiation project director Roger Fisher. It was at the time of the
first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 when Paul and Liz were
working on the film version of their experience under contract to
Oliver Stone, that they began to piece together the mythic
implications of the story. During the research for the screenplay many
of the documents preceding the Afghan crisis were declassified. Over
the next decade they trailed a labyrinth of clues only to find a
profound likeness in Washington's official policy towards Afghanistan
- in the ancient Zoroastrian war of the light against the dark - whose
origins began in the region now known as Afghanistan. It was a
likeness that grows more visible as America's involvement deepens. As
the horrors of the Taliban regime began to grab headlines in 1998 Paul
and Liz began collaborating with Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali.
They contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and
Claiming the Future book project. In 2002 they filmed Wali's first
return to Kabul since her exile in 1978. The film they produced about
Wali's journey home, The Woman in Exile Returns, gave audiences the
chance to discover the message of one of Afghanistan's most articulate
voices and her hopes for her people. They are featured alongside
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stansfield Turner, John K. Cooley, Benazir
Bhutto, Noam Chomsky and Jack Blum in an award winning documentary by
Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden that traces the
creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that
mythology has been used to maintain the "war on terror" approach of
the Bush administration. Ultimately their book Invisible History:
Afghanistan's Untold Story, City Lights, January 2009) lays bare why
it was inevitable that the Soviet Union and the U.S. should end up in
Afghanistan and what that means to the future of the American empire.

Gould and Fitzgerald have appeared on Democracy Now!, GRITtv, and
C-SPAN Book TV. For more information visit www.invisiblehistory.com
or City Lights Books at www.citylights.com/publishing/

Show full bio

Hide full bio