Canceled/Renewed Watch Episodes Recently Aired Episodes Latest Blogs API Center TVRage Survey
 
[–] Show Menu
 
[+] Empty Sections
 
[+] Show Contribs
 
[+] Episode Contribs
 
[–] Login
Username:

Password:




• Forgot Password
• Free Sign Up
 
(Change Layout)Frontline (US)  
Main:
Show Info:
« Season 20   Settings    Season 21 (Printable Guide) Season 22 »
S-1 | S-2 | S-3 | S-4 | S-5 | S-6 | S-7 | S-8 | S-9 | S-10 | S-11 | S-12 | S-13 | S-14 | S-15 | S-16 | S-17 | S-18 | S-19 | S-20 | S-21 | S-22 | S-23 | S-24 | S-25 | S-26 | S-27 | S-28 | All
Season 21
415 :21x01 - Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (Sep/03/2002)
“Where was God on Sept. 11?” This two-hour report explores that question, as well as the nature of evil and of religion in comments by some 30 observers. Speakers range from clergy and academics to survivors of the World Trade Center attacks and relatives of victims. Many found their faith to be a comfort following the attacks, but others feel otherwise. There are few pat answers. After all, as Rabbi Brad Hirschfield puts it, “religion drove those planes into those buildings.”
 
416 :21x02 - Campaign Against Terror (Sep/08/2002)
“The Campaign Against Terror” chronicles the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Included: comments by Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, as well as foreign leaders Tony Blair (Britain), Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Gerhard Schroder (Germany) and Hamid Karzai, the Afghani leader installed after theTaliban fell. And there are U.S. special-forces personnel, who recall some “wild, wild West events” (as one puts it) on the ground.
 
417 :21x03 - The Man Who Knew (Oct/03/2002)
“The Man Who Knew” profiles John O'Neill, the FBI's former New York counterterrorism chief, who was perhaps the country's foremost Al Qaeda expert. However, his intensity and flamboyance bothered many FBI bureaucrats---and ex-director Louis Freeh---and he was finally forced out in August 2001. That's the story filmmaker Michael Kirk pieces together from interviews with O'Neill allies (critics declined interview requests). “We're due for something big,” one recalls him saying on Sept. 10, 2001. The next day, O'Neill died on the job as security chief at the World Trade Center.
 
418 :21x04 - Missile Wars (Oct/10/2002)
A report that traces the recent history of antimissile defense, assesses its technological prospects and explores what producer Sherry Jones calls the “politics of the threat” of an ICBM attack against the U.S. An Alaska-based system is currently under construction, but the U.S. Missile Defense Agency concedes it's not yet foolproof, says Jones. The hour also features interviews with missile-defense supporters (former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz among them), and looks at the role of missile defense in the Bush Administration's security strategy. “It's as much an offense as a defense,” says Jones.
 
419 :21x05 - A Crime of Insanity (Oct/17/2002)
The case of a disturbed gunman who held a class hostage at SUNY-Albany in 1994 is examined. The report explores “questions that arise when the legal and psychiatric worlds collide,” says Will Lyman. The defendant: Ralph Tortorici, a 26-year-old psychology student, who pleaded insanity. The hour includes testimony from Tortorici's trial, and features interviews with his lawyer, prosecutors, the judge, psychiatrists and Tortorici's father and brother. Sums up lead prosecutor Cheryl Coleman: “What's right as opposed to what's legal plays so little a role in the system.”
 
420 :21x06 - Let's Get Married (Nov/14/2002)
Author Alex Kotlowitz looks at how the decline of marriage and the rise of divorce is affecting American families socially and economically. Kotlowitz visits Oklahoma (which has one of the highest divorce rates), where he says too many people marry capriciously; and inner-city Chicago, where he says too many people are too cautious about marriage. He also interviews social scientists, “marriage movement” activists, Oklahoma governor Frank Keating and Bush-administration official Wade Horn. “Marriage,” Kotlowitz concludes, “is both society's bedrock and its faultline.”
 
421 :21x07 - In Search of Al Qaeda (Nov/21/2002)
Correspondent Martin Smith visits Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia to assess U.S. efforts to track down terrorists, and to evaluate Al Qaeda's appeal among the general populations in those countries. In Pakistan, a Pashtun journalist working with Smith tours tribal areas inaccessible to Western reporters, while Smith interviews President Pervez Musharraf. And in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, Smith meets with government officials (including Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah) and ordinary citizens. Among the latter he finds “a sea of resentment.” And, he adds, “the harder we push, the more resentment we create.”
 
422 :21x08 - Much Ado About Something (Jan/02/2003)
Australian filmmaker Michael Rubbo explores the enduring question of whether Shakespeare actually wrote the plays attributed to him. Rubbo is a partisan of Christopher Marlowe, and he rounds up a number of Marlowe-friendly experts to make the case for him---and foes to debunk it. His own hunch, however, is that Shakespeare and Marlowe were a team. The better-educated Marlowe provided “the learning and great themes,” he says, “and Shakespeare the heart and soul of Merrie England.”
 
423 :21x09 - A Dangerous Business (Jan/09/2003)
The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for articles written in conjunction with this 2003 workplace-safety report, which focuses on foundries operated by the McWane Corp. of Birmingham, Ala. “Many McWane workers say safety has been sacrificed to increased productivity,” says narrator Will Lyman. The hour examines the operations in plants in Texas, Alabama, New York and New Jersey, and includes interviews with former employees, relatives of those who died on the job and OSHA officials. Produced in cooperation with the Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Lowell Bergman and David Barstow report.
 
424 :21x10 - Failure to Protect: The Taking of Logan Marr (Jan/30/2003)
Part 1 of a two-part probe of Maine's child-protective services explores reasons why a 5-year-old died in foster care in January 2001. Logan Marr and her younger sister Bailey were taken from their mother, Christy, by the state Department of Human Services, despite a lack of evidence of abuse, and placed in the home of DHS caseworker Sally Schofield, where Logan died. Marr and Schofield are interviewed throughout the hour, which looks at why Marr lost custody of her daughters, and follows her efforts to get them back. It also traces what happened to Schofield, who was convicted of manslaughter in the case.
 
425 :21x11 - Failure to Protect: The Caseworker Files (Feb/06/2003)
Following staffers in the Bangor office of Maine's Department of Human Services as they decide to move children from their homes into foster care. They must find “the proper balance between saving a child and destroying a family,” says narrator Will Lyman. More often in recent years (and in this hour), the emphasis has been on child safety, which means uncomfortable sessions with parents---and a shortage of foster parents.
 
426 :21x12 - China in the Red (Feb/13/2003)
An exploration of what narrator Will Lyman calls “the human cost” of the China's economic reforms, following 10 Chinese citizens between 1998 and 2001. Overall, the “cost” is 35-million lost jobs since the 1998 announcement that state-owned industries must become profitable by 2001. None of the workers at state-owned factories (one in Beijing, the other in Shenyang) profiled by producer Sue Williams were laid off, but none are doing as well as the entrepreneurs Williams filmed. Says one, a woman who makes and sells noodles in her rural village (and is its richest resident): “Now you can do anything, as long as you make money.”
 
427 :21x13 - The War Behind Closed Doors (Feb/20/2003)
A 1985 report that follows up on a 1970 experiment in which Iowa third-graders were encouraged to actively discriminate against one another for two days. Teacher Jane Elliott says that she was able to turn polite, thoughtful kids into nasty, vicious ones in just 15 minutes. Students who participated in the exercise discuss the lessons they learned during a 1984 reunion. Also: Elliott conducts a similar workshop for the Iowa Department of Correction; and New York prison inmates react to a 1970 documentary about Elliott's work. Charlie Cobb is the correspondent.
 
428 :21x14 - The Long Road to War: A FRONTLINE Special Report (Feb/17/2003)
Examining the history of U.S.-Iraqi relations in the Saddam Hussein era, as well as the actions and motivations of the Iraqi leader and his skill at survival. Also: the origins of the 1991Gulf War. The program includes “Frontline” archival material.
 
429 :21x15 - Blair's War (Apr/03/2003)
A look at what producer Eamonn Matthews calls the “tricky game” that the British Prime Minister has been trying to play during the Iraq crisis as he offers himself as “an Atlantic bridge” between the U.S. and its erstwhile European allies. The hour traces the split to the months following Sept. 11 as perceptions of terrorism crystallized. To U.S. policymakers “it's war,” Matthews says, while in France and Germany the attacks were seen as simply a terrorist incident. “Sure it was a bad one,” Matthews says, “but [Europeans] have seen them before.” The result: “a huge collision of world views.” Interviewed: British foreign secretary Jack Straw and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
 
430 :21x16 - Kim's Nuclear Gamble (Apr/10/2003)
“Kim's Nuclear Gamble” traces “how we got into the mess we're in with North Korea,” says producer Martin Smith, who traces the crisis over Pyongyang's plutonium back to 1994, when Kim Il Sung (the father of present North Korean leader Kim Jong Il) made similar threats, and former President Jimmy Carter (who's interviewed) brokered a deal. The hour explores policy differences toward North Korea between the Clinton and Bush administrations (and differences of opinion within the Bush administration); looks at life in North Korea; and assesses how destructive a war in Korea might be. Also interviewed: former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and Defense Department consultant Richard Perle.
 
431 :21x17 - Cyber War! (Apr/24/2003)
“Cyber War!” examines warfare by computer and assesses the probability of attacks on U.S. infrastructure on what producer Michael Kirk calls a “new kind of battlefield.” The hour traces “cyber war” to the 1991 Gulf War; explores potential enemies (Al Qaeda among them); and looks at its use in the Iraq war. Also: a profile of Richard Clarke, former adviser to the president for cyber security; and John Arquilla, who trains U.S. “cyber warriors” at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Cal. They're good, but as Kirk puts it: “If you can do it to them, then they can do it to us some day.”
 
432 :21x18 - Burden of Innocence (May/01/2003)
“Burden of Innocence.” Filmmaker Ofra Bikel follows the cases of five men who did time for crimes they didn't commit. Bikel explores psychological and practical reasons why, after prison, reentry into society is often so hard, but she also finds one man, law student Anthony Robinson, who seems to have made the adjustment successfully. Still, Robinson's wary. “I'm apparently okay,” he says. “But there's always that stigma.”
 
433 :21x19 - The Wall Street Fix (May/08/2003)
“The Wall Street Fix” traces the rise and fall of WorldCom stock and looks at what N.Y. Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer calls a “corrupt business model.” Correspondent: Hedrick Smith.
 
434 :21x20 - The Other Drug War (Jun/19/2003)
A report on prescription-drug pricing focuses on complaints from consumers about high prices and state-government efforts in Maine and Oregon to control drug costs. The hour also includes comments from Eli Lilly and Merck executives, who describe what they say is the necessity to recoup the costs involved in drug research, and from drug-industry critics, who decry what one calls the industry's “staggering” profits. Summing up the dilemma: indpendent analyst Richard Evans. “As a soceity we've got two important questions here,” Evans says. “One is how do we make sure that everyone has access to existing technology, and how do we make sure that we do that in such a way that we don't wreck our access to better technology tomorrow.”
 
435 :21x21 - Public Schools, Inc. (Jul/03/2003)
“Public Schools, Inc.” explores the career of Chris Whittle, founder of Edison Schools, the for-profit company that manages public schools around the country. The trouble is, Edison hasn't been making a profit, and “there's a real question as to whether the model itself is flawed,” says reporter John Merrow. In this hour, Merrow and New York Times business writer Diana B. Henriques profile Whittle (who's interviewed) and chart Edison's problems in Philadelphia, Chester, Pa. and Wichita (and its successes in Baltimore). They also examine the pressures that Edison faces from Wall Street---and the often-conflicting pressures it faces from public officials. “Democracy,” Merrow says, “is messy.”
 
Contact | Terms Of Service | Privacy Policy | Copyright | RSS Feeds
Digg Furl Del.icio.us Google