Season 20 |
| 391 :20x01 - Hunting Bin Laden (Sep/13/2001) | | From 2001: “Hunting Bin Laden” updates an April 1999 “Frontline” investigation of the August 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and examines, says reporter Lowell Bergman, “the reasons why [Osama] Bin Laden and company do what they do.” The hour also assesses the U.S. retaliation to the bombings. Produced in conjunction with The New York Times, this update also includes information on Bin Laden's alleged role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, interviews with Times reporters Judith Miller and James Risen, and an interview with former CIA official Larry Johnson. Introduction by Bill Moyers. | |
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| 392 :20x02 - Target America (Oct/04/2001) | | Terrorism by Islamic militants over the last 20 years---and how the U.S. government has dealt with it---is explored. Included: “Frontline” archival material and new interviews. | |
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| 393 :20x03 - Looking for Answers (Oct/09/2001) | | A report on terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, explores the failures of U.S. intelligence, Americans' conceptions and misconceptions about the Islamic world and reasons for anti-U.S. feelings among some Muslims. Bill Moyers hosts; Lowell Bergman is the correspondent. | |
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| 395 :20x05 - Trail of a Terrorist (Oct/25/2001) | | In “Trail of a Terrorist,” CBC journalist Terence McKenna profiles Algerian Ahmed Rossam, who was arrested in December 1999 with explosives in his car trunk as he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada. His plan: a New Year's Day attack on Los Angeles Airport. The hour traces Ressam's activities in Montreal and Afghanistan in the five years prior to his arrest and includes dramatizations of Ressam's testimony in the 2001 trial of an accomplice. Ressam didn't testify at his own trial, which resulted in a conviction in April 2001. | |
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| 396 :20x06 - Gunning for Saddam (Nov/08/2001) | | An October 2001 report explores the pros and cons of a military campaign in Iraq in the light of the anthrax scares and the Sept. 11 attacks. | |
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| 397 :20x07 - Saudi Time Bomb? (Nov/15/2001) | | Examining what producer Martin Smith terms the U.S.'s “fragile alliance” with the Saudi government, which bankrolls “an intolerant, anti-Western brand of Islam.” The reason for the U.S. government's “blind eye,” Smith adds, is simple: “We depend on them for oil and arms purchases.” Included: visits to religious schools in Pakistan funded by Saudis. Interviewed: former secretary of state James Baker; former U.S. ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke; and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's long-time ambassador to the U.S. | |
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| 398 :20x08 - The Monster That Ate Hollywood (Nov/22/2001) | | Exploring the economics of the megacorporation-dominated movie industry. The hour contends it has led to mediocre movies. Interviewees include Michael Douglas, movie executive Peter Gruber and Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart. | |
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| 399 :20x09 - An Ordinary Crime (Jan/10/2002) | | Filmmaker Ofra Bikel examines how a 1997 North Carolina robbery and shooting turned into an extraordinary case because one of the perpetrators knew only the first name of another. The result, Bikel contends, is that Terence Garner is serving 32 to 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, while Terrance Deloach wasn't prosecuted---even though he confessed at one point. The shooting victim swears that Garner did it, but most of the evidence Bikel points to contradicts her. Says Garner's lawyer: “If his mother had named him John he wouldn't be in prison.” | |
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| 400 :20x10 - Inside the Terror Network (Jan/17/2002) | | Hedrick Smith explores the “motivation, psychology and evolution” of three men who engineered the Sept. 11 attacks. Smith follows Mohamed Atta, Marwin al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah from their middle-class childhoods in the Middle East to the cockpits of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center and the one that crashed in Pennsylvania. Smith also examines how they managed to remain undetected. “There were a half-dozen times agencies could have spotted them,” he says. “Al Qaeda was thinking bigger than American intelligence.” | |
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| 401 :20x11 - Dot Con (Jan/24/2002) | | A look at the tech-stock boom and bust, and the role that the initial-public-offering process (“the big bang,” says producer Martin Smith) might have played in both. The hour follows three dot-coms through the financial “food chain” that culminated with their IPOs and examines why things went wrong (two are no longer in business). Says Smith: “They got out into the public marketplace well before they were ready.” | |
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| 402 :20x12 - Inside the Teenage Brain (Jan/31/2002) | | A look at neurological reasons teenagers act the way they do, including examples of the moody and risky behavior caused by the neurological changes of adolescence. “In many ways,” says Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health, “it's the most tumultuous time of brain development since coming out of the womb.” Augmenting interviews with neuroscientists, educators, parents and teens is a running commentary by cartoonist Jim Borgman, who charts teen life in his comic strip “Zits.” | |
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| 403 :20x13 - American Porn (Feb/07/2002) | | An examination of the adult-film industry. The hour visits porn sets and contains nudity and frank language, but it's basically a business story. Thanks to the Internet, porn is a burgeoning enterprise. “It's the high-tech boom that didn't go bust,” correspondent Peter Boyer says. “New technology allowed pornography to break through into the mainstream.” That's seen here in a look at how porn is distributed. Also: interviews with pornographers; and with prosecutors who insist, says Boyer, that if pornography “is actually put before the community, the old standards will apply.” | |
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| 404 :20x14 - Roll Over: the Hidden History of the SUV (Feb/21/2002) | | Tracing the 20-year-history of SUVs to explore why they roll over and what Detroit and Washington have done about it. The answer: not much, according to the journalists, lawyers and technical experts advocating SUV-design modifications who are interviewed. The hour also chronicles the 2000 Ford-Firestone rollover battle; and focuses on former Ford CEO Jacques Nasser, who notes that Ford did make some of the called-for changes for its 2002 model---but not for safety reasons. Will Lyman narrates. | |
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| 405 :20x15 - Testing Our Schools (Mar/28/2002) | | Correspondent John Merrow explores mandatory standardized multiple-choice tests, a major part of President Bush's education initiative. “On the surface it's apple pie and motherhood,” according to Merrow. “Doing it turns out to be messy and fascinating.” Merrow assesses the pros and cons of “standards and accountability” in visits to schools in Massachusetts, Virginia and California; and in interviews with state education officials and Secretary of Education Rod Paige. | |
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| 406 :20x16 - Battle for the Holy Land (Apr/04/2002) | | Fighters on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict describe what they're doing and why they're doing it in this examination of the military side of the hostilities. The “through-the-gunsights view” (as “Frontline” producer Michael Kirk puts it) includes footage of operations (taped in December 2001) and comments from a Palestinian man identified as a “living martyr” (a suicide-bomber-in-training). “You get an idea,” says Kirk, “that they're on some collision course that's bigger and more profound than it has been in some time.” | |
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| 407 :20x17 - Requiem for Frank Lee Smith (Apr/11/2002) | | “Requiem for Frank Lee Smith” traces the case of a Florida man who was exonerated of a crime he didn't commit---10 months after he died in prison. Smith was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl largely on the testimony of one witness, who later changed her story and became an ardent Smith defender. As filmmaker Ofra Bikel shows, this didn't sway prosecutors, who also fought DNA testing. When they relented, in 2000, Smith was cleared. But it was too late. | |
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| 408 :20x18 - Modern Meat (Apr/18/2002) | | Safety issues in the beef industry are explored. “Producing meat today is more like manufacturing a car than farming,” says narrator Will Lyman. But cars don't attract bacteria, and this report surveys how modern meat-preparation methods have “opened up new ecological homes” for microbes, as Dr. Donald Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control puts it. The hour also assesses USDA oversight of the industry and looks at how the industry has responded to that oversight. | |
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| 409 :20x19 - Did Daddy Do It? (Apr/25/2002) | | The case of Frank Fuster, who was convicted in 1985 of sexually abusing some 50 children at the baby-sitting service his teenage wife operated out of their Miami home. The sensational case was one of a number at the time that hinged in part on testimony “teased” from alleged victims, and the State's Attorney at the time, Janet Reno, took an active role in its prosecution. Reno stands by it here, but two of her most important witnesses---Fuster's ex-wife and son---now say that he didn't do it. Correspondent: Peter Boyer. | |
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| 410 :20x20 - Terror and Tehran (May/02/2002) | | Exploring the complexities of the American-Iranian relationship in the wake of Sept. 11 and President Bush's inclusion of Iran in what he called an “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address. Iran, governed jointly by conservative mullahs and reformist politicians, is a “schizophrenic state,” says producer Neil Docherty, who interviews representatives from both camps. “It's way too big to ignore and way too difficult to really deal with.” Also interviewed: Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; former CIA chief James Woolsey; and journalist Elaine Sciolino. | |
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| 411 :20x21 - Muslims (May/09/2002) | | A survey of Islam around the world, exploring the depth of its gulf with the West. Included: visits with religious scholars in Cairo and the Iranian holy city Qom; a Shariah (Islamic law) judge in Nigeria; and a Malaysian woman who has been seeking a civil divorce for six years. Also: the repercussions of Islam's growth in the U.S. are explored in profiles of Muslims in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where DePaul University religion professor Aminah McCloud assesses “the Islamization of America and the Americanization of Islam.” | |
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| 412 :20x22 - The Siege of Bethlehem (Jun/13/2002) | | “The Siege of Bethlehem” chronicles the April-May 2002 standoff between Palestinians holed up in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and Israeli forces outside. Filmed by the British producers of the April 2002 “Frontline” report “The Battle for the Holy Land,” the hour charts firsthand the “dynamic between using force and negotiation” on the Israeli side, as series executive editor Louis Wiley puts it. And it observes Palestinians as they negotiate. Also: an interview with the father of a Palestinian killed during the standoff. | |
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| 413 :20x23 - Bigger Than Enron (Jun/20/2002) | | A look at lapses in the U.S. financial-oversight system, which were highlighted by the role of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in the collapse of Enron. “Why didn't the watchdogs bark?” asks reporter Hedrick Smith, who traces a decade of increasingly “fuzzy” regulation practices in a white-hot economy and political climate increasingly friendly to deregulation. Smith examines Andersen's role with Enron and two other companies it audited; and looks at political “battles” over executive stock options, tort-law reform and consulting by auditors. Interviewees include Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino. | |
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| 414 :20x24 - Shattered Dreams (Jun/27/2002) | | Reviewing the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” from the 1993 Oslo accords to 2002. Interviewed: Yasir Arafat and former Israeli prime ministers Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. There are also comments by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross. Then there are the Israeli and Palestinian officials who did the bulk of the negotiating. To one, Palestinian Saeb Erekat, the conflict is “a Greek tragedy.” | |
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