Season 1 |
| 1 :01x01 - An Unauthorized History of the NFL (Jan/17/1983) | In its premiere broadcast, Frontline investigates the underbelly of the NFL--the secret connections between professional football and the world of sports gambling and organized crime.
Source: PBS | |
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| 2 :01x02 - 88 Seconds in Greensboro (Jan/24/1983) | On the morning of November 3,1979, five civil rights demonstrators were killed by a group of Klan and Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina. Correspondent James Reston, Jr.,investigates the role of a police informant who was with the group when the attack was planned and when it was carried out.
Source: PBS | |
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| 3 :01x03 - In the Shadow of the Capitol (Jan/31/1983) | Frontline correspondent Charles Cobb journeys to a Washington, DC that tourists rarely see. The nation's capital, seventy-five percent black, faces widespread poverty, yet it is run by some of the civil-rights movement's most effective and militant organizers, including Mayor Marion Barry.
Source: PBS | |
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| 4 :01x04 - A Chinese Affair (Feb/07/1983) | For thirty-four years, those who fled to Taiwan in the wake of the Communist victory have had only their memories and fantasies of mainland China. Now they want to know much more, and a political struggle is underway to determine how Taiwan will relate to the mainland.
Source: PBS | |
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| 5 :01x05 - God's Banker (Feb/14/1983) | In 1982,a man was discovered hanging from a bridge over the Thames River in London. He was Roberto Calvi, head of Italy's largest bank and chief advisor to the Vatican's bank. Reporter Jeremy Paxman investigates Calvi's links with the Vatican and with P-2, a secret Italian society, and questions whether his death was really a suicide.
Source: PBS | |
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| 6 :01x06 - Pentagon, Inc. (Feb/21/1983) | Frontline investigates the power of the Pentagon as a business and economic force in the domestic economy. Politicians find themselves chasing Pentagon dollars for the jobs those dollars create in their districts; scientists and universities find themselves dependent on the military if they want to do research in many high-tech areas.
Source: PBS | |
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| 7 :01x07 - Gunfight USA (Feb/28/1983) | Frontline looks beyond the cliches and stereotypes in the debate over gun control. Visiting prison inmates, victims of gun crime, and the sharpest minds on both sides, Frontline explores the underlying fears that make gun control such an emotional issue.
Source: PBS | |
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| 8 :01x08 - Children of Pride (Mar/07/1983) | Kojo Odo, a 42 year-old single black man, took in his first child a decade ago-a 7 year old boy with his arm missing. No one wanted the youngster. Each of Odo's 21 children came to him with a physical or mental handicap. Frontline looks at the daily life of this remarkable family and Odo's battle to keep the family together.
Source: PBS | |
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| 9 :01x09 - A Journey to Russia (Mar/21/1983) | Before Gorbachev and glasnost, three young Americans journey to the Soviet Union on a whirlwind two-week, six-city debating tour. They encounter young, articulate Russians whose world view is completely contradictory to their own.
Source: PBS | |
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| 10 :01x10 - Daisy: Story of a Facelift (Mar/28/1983) | Daisy is 55 and terrified of growing old. She feels she needs a facelift. From the moment of her decision, Frontline follows her through all the procedures, but the heart of the story is an exploration of values, character, cosmetics, and the business of plastic surgery.
Source: PBS | |
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| 11 :01x11 - Space: the Race for High Ground (Apr/11/1983) | Before President Reagan introduced Star Wars, Frontline examined how in the previous 25 years the US and the Soviet Union had gone from designing satellites to designing weapons to blast them out of the sky. The superpowers were converting space from an arena for communications, to a concept of space as 'high ground,' the battle area to control.
Source: PBS | |
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| 12 :01x12 - Abortion Clinic (Apr/18/1983) | For the first time on American television, Frontline's cameras record the most intimate details and one of the most personal decisions a woman can make. By focusing not only on the clinic, but also on a right-to-life doctor who pickets the clinic every Saturday, the film becomes a revealing study of people confronting their most deeply held values.
Source: PBS | |
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| 13 :01x13 - Crisis in Zimbabwe (Apr/25/1983) | Rhodesia, a symbol of white racism, has become Zimbabwe and white minority rule has given way to black majority rule. However, the end of the guerilla war may not mean an end to fighting. Correspondent Charlie Cobb finds a rift between the nation's two black leaders that threatens to split the country along tribal lines.
Source: PBS | |
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| 14 :01x14 - Air Crash (May/02/1983) | Frontline investigates the frightening aftermath of one of the worst air disasters in U.S. history-the June 9, 1982 crash of Pan Am flight 759 at the New Orleans airport. The report discovers how human greed and legal machinations over hundreds of millions of dollars bring new horror to survivors and victims' relatives alike.
Source: PBS | |
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| 15 :01x15 - Looking for Mao (May/09/1983) | Only seven years after Mao's death, it is clear that China is undergoing another revolution. This is a revolution of political and social relaxation. Frontline explores what has been retained and what has been rejected from the days of the Cultural Revolution.
Source: PBS | |
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| 16 :01x16 - Israel: Between the River and the Sea (May/16/1983) | For eight years, Rafik Halabi covered the West Bank and Gaza strip-the only Arab reporter working in the Hebrew section of Israeli Television. This is Rafik's story-a story in which his identity and loyalty became a national controversy.
Source: PBS | |
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| 17 :01x17 - In Our Water (May/23/1983) | Frank Kaler's story begins simply enough when he requests a water test. Why? Because his children develop skin lesions after bathing in it. Frontline chronicles Kaler's six-year battle with local and federal officials over the chemical pollution of his drinking water.
Source: PBS | |
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| 18 :01x18 - Vietnam Memorial (May/30/1983) | Frontline tells the story of five days in the fall of 1982 when more than 150,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. for the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial. Parents, friends, and survivors came to the emotion-filled event reflecting the pain and conflict many still feel about that war.
Source: PBS | |
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| 19 :01x19 - The Russians are Here (May/13/1983) | During the previous decade, 100,000 Russians came to America to live. Here they found a more difficult freedom than Americans might imagine. Frontline's portrait of this emigrate community reveals the conflicting values which underpin American and Soviet societies.
Source: PBS | |
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| 20 :01x20 - For the Good of All (Jun/06/1983) | When a national recreation site between Cleveland and Akron was first mandated by Congress in 1974, everyone applauded the project. But Frontline found that park policies of condemning hundreds of businesses and homes soon generated intense local opposition as well as charges that the homes of politically influential citizens were being spared.
Source: PBS | |
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| 21 :01x21 - Who Decides Disability? (Jun/20/1983) | Frontline investigates the Reagan administration's effort to remove tens of thousands of people from the Social Security disability rolls. Disabled people face personal hardship and bureaucratic indifference as they take their cases to the courts and to Congress.
Source: PBS | |
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| 22 :01x22 - Crossfire in El Salvador (Jun/27/1983) | In 1983, El Salvador was a nation where murder and torture were an everyday occurrence, a place where loved ones disappear and truth remains elusive. Frontline interviews government soldiers, rebels, and noncombatants to find out why the killing continues.
Source: PBS | |
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| 23 :01x23 - Sanctuary (Jul/04/1983) | Frontline follows the journey of a Guatemalan family through the 'new underground railroad' and considers the plight of the people who seek refuge from governments allied to the United States.
Source: PBS | |
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| 24 :01x24 - Moneylenders (Jul/11/1983) | Developing countries have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from Western banks. Some of the biggest borrowers, Brazil and Mexico,are struggling even to repay the interest. Correspondent Anthony Sampson finds that threats to repudiate the loans are causing American bankers to fear financial catastrophe.
Source: PBS | |
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| 25 :01x25 - Klaus Barbie: the American Connection (Jul/18/1983) | Klaus Barbie, a hated Nazi war criminal, was returned to France in 1983 to face justice. But some Frenchmen were worried that he would reveal embarrassing evidence about French collaboration, and some Americans feared that he would talk about his postwar work for U.S. intelligence agencies.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 2 |
| 26 :02x01 - Crisis at General Hospital (Jan/16/1984) | Most Americans regard health care as a social responsibility undertaken for the common good. We assume government and charity programs will allow for everyone with serious health problems-no matter how poor-to be provided treatment. Frontline examines how many investor-owned, for-profit hospital chains are aggressively marketing themselves to treat only the insured, or wealthy patient.
Source: PBS | |
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| 27 :02x02 - We are Driven (Jan/23/1984) | The industrial might of Japan has taken the U.S. by storm as American corporations begin to adopt the Japanese style of management, stressing worker involvement in a family-like corporate environment. Frontline looks at the darker side of Japanese labor relations through the tough management style of the Nissan Motor Company in Japan and Smyrna, Tennesee.
Source: PBS | |
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| 28 :02x03 - The Old Man and the Gun (Feb/06/1984) | Frontline looks at the conflict in Northern Ireland through the eyes of Irish Americans who support the IRA and its strategy of violence. Frontline cameras follow Michael Flannery through his day as Grand Marshal of New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade and then back to Ireland to the spot where Flannery participated in an ambush on British troops some 50 years ago.
Source: PBS | |
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| 29 :02x04 - Give Me that Big Time Religion (Feb/13/1984) | Television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's weekly ministry was seen by over two million people in big cities and small towns across the U.S. and Canada.But of the tens of millions of dollars he raised through his appeals, only a tiny portion actually went into charity work. Several years before his fall, Frontline investigated whether the money these modern revivalists raise goes to do God's work or to keep the preachers on TV. Should the government regulate religious fund raising?
Source: PBS | |
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| 30 :02x05 - The Campaign for Page One (Feb/27/1984) | On the eve of the 1984 New Hampshire primary, Frontline presents the first of four national election reports. Correspondent Richard Reeves takes a behind-the-scenes look at the presidential candidates and the political reporters who cover them, examining the story behing the story and who writes it.
Source: PBS | |
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| 31 :02x06 - The Mind of a Murderer: Part 1 (Mar/19/1984) | A terrifying look into the mind of mass murderer Kenneth Bianchi, who killed two women in Bellingham, Washington, and was one of the Hillside Strangler murderers in Los Angeles. Yet, he almost escaped punishment for these crimes because he convinced a group of experts that he had multiple personalities and was not mentally competent to stand trial.
Source: PBS | |
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| 32 :02x07 - The Mind of a Murderer: Part 2 (Mar/26/1984) | Part 2 raises serious questions about the use of psychiatric evidence in criminal proceedings. Kenneth Bianchi convinced experts that he had multiple personalities and was mentally unfit to stand trial for his cirmes. Before Frontline cameras, Bianchi is unmasked and is proved to be an accomplished faker.
Source: PBS | |
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| 33 :02x08 - The Struggle for Birmingham (Apr/02/1984) | This special election report focuses on Birmingham, Alabama, which was a key battlefield in the black struggle for civil rights in the 1960's. Now, 20 years later, Birmingham is one of the new battlefields for a mature black political movement. Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves examines black political power today and the struggle for the heart and soul of the black voter.
Source: PBS | |
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| 34 :02x09 - Captive in El Salvador (Apr/16/1984) | Much of the debate over the role of the U.S. in Central America focuses on this tiny nation about which filmaker Ofra Bikel says 'we know so much, but we know so little.' In this report, Bikel takes us into the heart of El Slavador to examine the politics and the people the U.S. government supports there.
Source: PBS | |
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| 35 :02x10 - Chasing the Basketball Dream (Apr/23/1984) | Many young men, especially many poor blacks in the nation's cities, dream of making it big by playing basketball. Charlie Cobb looks at some who make it-and many who will not-and at many of the issues in high school and college sports today. College recruiters seek the best of them, promising an educations in exchange for play. But 75% never get a college degree because, as this film suggests, colleges are too busy with their big-time sports programs to be concerned with educating their players.
Source: PBS | |
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| 36 :02x11 - The Other Side of the Track (May/07/1984) | Horseracing is American's number one spectator sport. In 1982, more that 77 million people wagered almost $12 billion at the nation's racetracks. Frontline gives an insider's look at the 'sport of kings,' focusing on tracks at Belmont, NY, where the rich indulge their interest in racing, and at Great Barrington in Massachussetts where infirm horses run for purses that can barely pay the feed bill.
Source: PBS | |
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| 37 :02x12 - Return of the Great White Fleet (May/14/1984) | Frontline profiles Navy Secretary John Lehman and the growing debate inside the Navy establishment to build a multibillion dollar fleet which critics say may not be able to fight the kind of wars the nation would be most likely to fight.
Source: PBS | |
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| 38 :02x13 - Warning from Gangland (May/21/1984) | In 1984, Los Angeles had the worst gang problem in the nation, and more than 1,000 people were killed in gang violence during the previous three years. More than half of those killed were not gang members but residents who were murdered or were caught in the cross fire of gang warfare. Frontline explores what LA is trying to do about its gang problem.
Source: PBS | |
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| 39 :02x14 - Bread, Butter and Politics (Jun/04/1984) | National attention has focused on hunger in America after a presidential commission and several private advocacy groups reported new findings. Frontline looks at what those commissions saw-and did not see-in this examiniation of both the human story and the political environment surrounding the issue of hunger.
Source: PBS | |
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| 40 :02x15 - Man's Best Friends (Jun/18/1984) | Frontline examines the ethical arguments over the use of animal testing in American laboratories, hospitals, and medical schools. Some animal rights groups have even broken into labs to steal research animals. But many scientists say that eliminating or severely restricting animal testing means an end to medical progress.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 3 |
| 41 :03x01 - So You Want to Be President (Oct/09/1984) | From the lonely, early days of presidential ambition, through the months of promise, to the day of denial, Frontline follows the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart, revealing presidential politics as it has never before been seen on television.
Source: PBS | |
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| 42 :03x02 - Welcome to America (Oct/16/1984) | The bittersweet story of four unforgettable people who flee repression in Poland to find a better life in Chicago. They succeed, fail, fight, love, laugh, and confront an America unlike anything they had ever imagined.
Source: PBS | |
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| 43 :03x03 - Not One of the Boys (Oct/23/1984) | As more women are voting and running for elected office, have the changed the face of American politics? Through the eyes of women as different as UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, correspondent Judy Woodruff looks at women and politics in 1984.
Source: PBS | |
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| 44 :03x04 - Living Below the Line (Oct/30/1984) | It could never happen to you. One day it happened to Farrell Stallings. After 28 years at the same job, he was laid off-a victim of the recession. Now he's broke, afraid, and at the mercy of the welfare system. Frontline follows him into the maze of the bureaucracy.
Source: PBS | |
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| 45 :03x05 - The Arab and the Israeli (Nov/13/1984) | Two men, a Palestinian and an Israeli, born thirty miles apart, journey to America. In synagogues and universities, on television talk shows and interviews, they try to project a message: that a solution for the West Bank is possible.
Source: PBS | |
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| 46 :03x06 - Better Off Dead? (Nov/20/1984) | Frontline goes inside the hospitals where every day doctors, lawyers, and parents face the agonizing choice: how far do we go with medical treatment for infants born so physically and mentally damaged that they have no hope of leading normal lives? Several intimate case histories are examined, as are the politics of recent legal decisions and government rules relating to the medical care for critically ill babies.
Source: PBS | |
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| 47 :03x07 - Cry, Ethiopia, Cry (Nov/27/1984) | In one of the first comprehensive reports broadcast in the U.S., Frontline presents the searing reality of the famine in Ethiopia. In desert camps described as 'the closest thing to hell on earth,' nearly 100 children, old people, and the infirm were dying every day. They were dying while the US and the Soviet Union argued over how to feed them and what to do about Ethiopia.
Source: PBS | |
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| 48 :03x08 - Red Star Over Khyber (Dec/11/1984) | In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan, examining the stalemate in the Persian Gulf and the pressure placed on Pakistan to accept over one million Afghan refugees.
Source: PBS | |
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| 49 :03x09 - Marshall High Fights Back (Dec/18/1984) | Marshall High School is one of the poorest in Chicago-both academically and economically. But it is fighting back, trying desperately to upgrade academic standards and to make a difference in the lives of it students. Frontline looks at the struggle to salvage Marshall High and the lessons this school has for a nation trying to improve its public schools.
Source: PBS | |
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| 50 :03x10 - Vietnam Under Communism (Jan/15/1985) | Frontline takes a rare look inside the new Vietnam, 10 years after the fall of Saigon and the US pullout. While the Vietnamese celebrate their victory, the countryside remains scarred and war-torn. Frontline examines the legacies of the longest and most unpopular war in American history on the country where it was fought.
Source: PBS | |
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| 51 :03x11 - Shootout on Imperial Highway: Part 1 (Jan/22/1985) | Seventy-two year-old James Hawkins,Sr. has turned his home and business into an armed camp. Living in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Hawkins is fighting gang members who live across Imperial Highway. It's a war being fought on the streets and in the courtroom between gang members and the Hawkins family.
Source: PBS | |
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| 52 :03x12 - Shootout on Imperial Highway: Part 2 (Jan/29/1985) | The trial of gang members accused of conspiracy concludes this special two-part report. Through interviews in prison and inside the housing project where they live in the Watts section of Los Angeles, gang members talk about gangs and why they form, and the threat they pose to ordinary citizens.
Source: PBS | |
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| 53 :03x13 - The Lifer and the Lady (Feb/05/1985) | He was a convicted murderer. She was a prison volunteer. They fell in love. Frontline follows the story of Ron Cooney, who tries to work his way through the prison system to parole from a life sentence, and Lesley Earl, the woman who wants to help him go straight.
Source: PBS | |
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| 54 :03x14 - The Child Savers (Feb/12/1985) | Over a million cases of child abuse were reported in 1984-and the figure is growing. Frontline follows a dedicated group of case workers from the Emergency Children's Service of New York into homes where they confront violent parents and battered children.
Source: PBS | |
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| 55 :03x15 - Down for the Count (Feb/19/1985) | Professional boxing is one of the most popular and profitable sports in America. It can also be fatal. Frontline goes inside the world of fighters, promoters, and fans who love the sport-and critics who say it should be banned.
Source: PBS | |
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| 56 :03x16 - Retreat from Beirut (Feb/26/1985) | They went to keep the peace. But 241 died-caught in a military and political cross fire. One year after the pullout of American Marines from Lebanon, Frontline correspondent William Greider examines the decision and asks: Where should Americans die, and what should they die for?
Source: PBS | |
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| 57 :03x17 - Buying the Bomb (Mar/05/1985) | Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh presents his first television investigation for Frontline. After six months of work, Hersh uncovers the story of a Pakistani businessman who tried to ship electrical devices which can be used as nuclear bomb triggers out of the US to Pakistan.
Source: PBS | |
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| 58 :03x18 - A Class Divided (Mar/26/1985) | Almost 20 years ago, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, a teacher in a small town in Iowa tried a daring classroom experiment. She decided to treat children with blue eyes as superior to children with brown eyes. Frontline explores what those children learned about discrimination and how it still affects them today.
Source: PBS | |
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| 59 :03x19 - Potomac Fever (Apr/02/1985) | Every two years, a desire to represent their home districts in Washington brings a group of first-time freshmen congressmen to the nation's capital on the shores of the Potomac river. Frontline follows two newly elected representatives from their homes to Washington where they experience the rewards-and the frustrations-of making the transition from citizen to congressman.
Source: PBS | |
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| 60 :03x20 - Crisis in Central American 1: Yankee Years (Apr/09/1985) | From the Spanish-American War in 1898 until the 1950's, US preeminence in Central America and the Caribbean was never successfully challenged. Part 1 looks at these turbulent years that set the stage for today's crises-from the glory days of building the Panama Canal, through the early US Marine occupation of Nicaragua, to the Cold War crisis in Guatemala in 1954, which resulted in the CIA's first 'covert' war in the region.
Source: PBS | |
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| 61 :03x21 - Crisis in Central America 2: Castro's Challenge (Apr/10/1985) | The Cuban revolution of the 1950's was the first successful challenge to US preeminence in the Western hemisphere. Part 2 looks at the roots of the revolution, Fidel Castro's rise to power, the establishment of the first Communist state in the Americas, the support for his revolution abroad, and Cuba's troubled history with the United States.
Source: PBS | |
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| 62 :03x22 - Crisis in Central America 3: Revolution in Nicaragua (Apr/11/1985) | In 1979, the Sandinistas led a revolution that overthrew the Somoza dynasty which had ruled Nicaragua for almost 50 years. It was a revolution the US first tried to prevent, then tried to court, and later tried to undermine. Part 3 traces the evolution of US involvement in Nicaragua and the struggle for control of the revolution.
Source: PBS | |
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| 64 :03x24 - Men Who Molest (Apr/16/1985) | Experts estimate there are at least four million child sexual abusers in the US, and they do not fit our stereotypes. Almost half of those guilty of incest also molest children outside the family. Many also commit adult rape-and they come from every social background. Should they be treated, punished, or both? Frontline examines a controversial Seattle, Washington, program aimed at treating child sexual abusers.
Source: PBS | |
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| 65 :03x25 - Catholics in America: Is Nothing Sacred? (Apr/23/1985) | One in four American citizens is Catholic, yet few seem to agree with-or follow-every doctrine and practice of their church. Frontline examines the conflicts within the American Catholic Church and its ongoing struggle with the Vatican.
Source: PBS | |
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| 66 :03x26 - The American Way of War (Apr/30/1985) | Frontline examines the complex relationship between the US Army, its fighting doctrine, the American people, and the government in an effort to understand the army's role in fighting modern wars.
Source: PBS | |
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| 67 :03x27 - Memory of the Camps (May/07/1985) | Forty years ago, Allied troops invaded Germany and liberated Nazi death camps. They found unspeakable horrors which still haunt the world's conscience. Frontline presents the world broadcast of a 1945 film made by British and American film crews who were with the troops liberating the camps. The film was directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock and is broadcast for the first time in its entirety on Frontline.
Source: PBS | |
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| 68 :03x28 - You Are in the Computer (May/14/1985) | You go to rent an apartment and are turned down without any obvious reason. Then you find out your name is in a computer file of undesirable tenants and every other landlord in the city has access to the information. Correspondent Robert Krulwich investigates computerized information systems and the issues of privacy they raise.
Source: PBS | |
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| 69 :03x29 - What About Mom and Dad? (May/21/1983) | Americans over the age of 75 are the fastest growing segment of the nation's population. Many have spent all their lives planning carefully for retirement. But they find their savings destroyed by nursing home care and federal programs for medical costs covering much less than they ever thought. When they turn to their families for help, difficult emotional and financial choices must be made.
Source: PBS | |
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| 70 :03x30 - Breaking the Bank (May/28/1985) | In 1984, there were more bank failures in the US than at any time since the Great Depression. Correspondent Judy Woodruff investigates one of the largest banks that failed, Penn Square in Oklahoma City, and another which nearly failed, Continental Illinois in Chicago, to examine the implications on the nation's banking system.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 4 |
| 71 :04x01 - Hostage in Iran (Jan/21/1986) | While the whole world watched, 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran by Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days. On the fifth anniversary of their release, using never-before-seen footage from inside the American embassy compound in Tehran, the hostages tell the story of their long ordeal.
Source: PBS | |
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| 72 :04x02 - Sue the Doctor? (Jan/28/1986) | For many doctors, practicing medicine has become a nightmare. Today, one out of every six American doctors faces a malpractice suit. Frontline takes an inside look at the fierce battle developing between doctors and lawyers over medical malpractice suits.
Source: PBS | |
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| 73 :04x03 - Growing Up Poor (Feb/04/1986) | The children of Chester, Pennsylvania are plagued by poor health, malnutrition, drugs, and family problems. Half of them live below the poverty line. Frontline follows them through the maze of social service programs available to them and discovers what it is like growing up poor.
Source: PBS | |
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| 74 :04x04 - Russia-Love It or Leave It (Feb/11/1986) | | A unique look at the Soviet Union through the eyes of Americans as they attempt to escape the confines of a carefully managed Russian tour. They elude their government guides and search for their fellow man on the streets of the Soviet Union. | |
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| 75 :04x05 - Tobacco on Trial (Feb/18/1986) | | Life-long smokers who say their health has been destroyed by cigarettes are suing tobacco companies. Frontline correspondent Judy Woodruff takes an inside look at the preparation of these massive lawsuits, concentrating on a suit that would later reach the Supreme Court as well as presenting the emphatic denials of the tobacco industry, which says smoking is a simple question of personal choice and responsibility. | |
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| 76 :04x06 - Divorce Wars (Feb/25/1986) | Half of all American marriages end in divorce. Using unique access to mediation and court proceedings, Frontline profiles the couples, the lawyers, the judges, and most poignantly, the children caught between parents.
Source: PBS | |
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| 77 :04x07 - Who's Running this War? (Mar/18/1986) | | Eight months before the Iran-contra scandal broke, Frontline investigated the contras, probed the legality of private aid, and asked questions about the role of the White House and a mysterious Marine colonel named Oliver North. | |
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| 78 :04x08 - AIDS: a National Inquiry (Mar/25/1986) | Fabian Bridges, a homosexual prostitute, bragged he had sex with six partners a night and refused to stop even though he knew he had AIDS. In a special broadcast, Frontline first follows Bridges' tragic journey across the US and later, a panel of national experts, led by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, discuss how Americans should respond to this urgent public health issue.
Source: PBS | |
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| 79 :04x09 - Standoff in Mexico (Apr/01/1986) | Political violence is breaking out in northern Mexico. Frontline documents the growing unrest in Mexico caused by fixed elections, corruption, violence, and the widening gap between Mexico City and the more conservative border states.
Source: PBS | |
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| 80 :04x10 - Inside the Jury Room (Apr/08/1986) | For the first time on American television, Frontline cameras move inside a jury room to record the deliberations in a Wisconsin criminal trial. The results yield a view of 12 Americans grappling with guilt, innocence, and the nature of justice as never before seen.
Source: PBS | |
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| 81 :04x11 - Taxes Behind Closed Doors (Apr/15/1986) | For more than a year, Frontline has been behind the scenes with congressmen and lobbyists covering the deals, dollars, and politics of tax reform. Correspondent William Greider investigates how Washington really works as seen through this exclusive access to the inner circles of Congress.
Source: PBS | |
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| 82 :04x12 - The Disillusionment of David Stockman (Apr/20/1986) | Former budget director David Stockman gives an exclusive interview to correspondent William Greider on what has been called 'the greatest free lunch fiscal policy' in modern times.
Source: PBS | |
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| 83 :04x13 - Visions of Star Wars (Apr/22/1986) | Former budget director David Stockman gives an exclusive interview to correspondent William Greider on what has been called 'the greatest free lunch fiscal policy' in modern times.
Source: PBS | |
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| 84 :04x14 - Hollywood Dreams (May/13/1986) | | Hollywood is called an industry, a place, a state of mind. But making it in Hollywood, and making movies, persists as part of the American dream. In the real world of agents, casting directors, aspiring actors, and studio executives, how are movies made? Frontline examines the fantasy and reality of Hollywood's five billion dollar a year industry. | |
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| 85 :04x15 - The Bloods of 'Nam (May/20/1986) | | A high percentage of men on the frontlines in Vietnam were young, poor, undereducated, and black. By most accounts, they had the highest casualties. But these young men say they were fighting two wars-against the enemy and against discrimination. Correspondent Wallace Terry, the author of 'Bloods,' the national bestseller on which this film is based, talks with black veterans who fought discrimination in Vietnam and who later confronted disillusionment when they came home. | |
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| 86 :04x16 - A Matter of the Mind (May/27/1986) | | Millions of Americans are mentally ill. They live in a world that is fragile and often frightening. Inside a halfway house in St. Paul, Minesota, Frontline examines mental illness from the point of view of those who struggle with it as they fight their psychological demons and confront the social stigma of their disease. | |
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| 87 :04x17 - Holy War, Holy Terror (Jun/03/1986) | Frontline correspondent John Laurence examines the background of the Islamic Revolution, the roots of radical Shiism and reveals why Iran's war with Iraq is an important step in spreading their brand of Islam throughout the world.
Source: PBS | |
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| 88 :04x18 - Will There Always Be an England? (Jun/10/1986) | England is a country divided. One in five workers in northern England is unemployed, while in the south of the country, power, privilege prevail. Ofra Bikel explores Britain's social structure, cultural values, and attitudes toward enterprise and work.
Source: PBS | |
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| 89 :04x19 - Assault on Affirmative Action (Jun/17/1986) | The Supreme Court ruled against a Memphis firefighter who successfully fought for an affirmative action plan for the hiring of fellow firefighters in 1984. As a result, the Justice Department asked 50 cities to tighten their affirmative action policies. Correspondent George Curry examines the 20 year conflict over these policies and reveals the point of view of those whom it affects.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 5 |
| 102 :05x01 - The Real Stuff (Jan/27/1987) | | One year after the Challenger disaster, Frontline examined the all-too-human side of the space program as seen through the eyes of the astronauts and engineers responsible for making it work. Correspondent James Reston tells the inside story of a program plagued by problems and politics. | |
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| 103 :05x02 - The Earthquake is Coming (Feb/03/1987) | | Frontline examines the startling implications of what will happen when the big earthquake hits California, detailing the awesome effects as systems rupture and the entire nation's economy, industries, and national security are jeopardized. | |
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| 104 :05x03 - Stopping Drugs (Feb/10/1987) | | Part 1 examines the personal struggles of addicts trying to kick the habit and the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. Part 2 journeys into America's schools to find out if drugs are really a major problem and if anti-drug efforts are working. | |
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| 105 :05x04 - Stopping Drugs (Part 2) (Feb/17/1987) | | A two-part special examining efforts to stamp out drugs. Part 1 examines the personal struggles of four addicts trying to kick the habit and the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. Part 2 journeys into America's schools to find out if drugs are really a major problem and if anti-drug efforts are working. | |
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| 106 :05x05 - The Nazi Connection (Feb/24/1987) | | German scientists were responsible for putting the first American on the moon. Now, 15 years later, government investigators are asking whether some of them were also responsible for Nazi war crimes. Frontline examines their war records and the role of American officials who decided to bring them to the United States. | |
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| 107 :05x06 - Desperately Seeking Baby (Mar/03/1987) | | Two million American couples desperately want babies and can't have them. They are turning to private adoption deals brokered by lawyers and counselors. Sometimes they get a new baby and a happy home; sometimes their hearts are broken. Frontline looks at a system filled with ambiguity and heartbreak. | |
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| 108 :05x07 - Street Cop (Mar/31/1987) | | Frontline takes a gritty look at street cops. In Boston's busiest, most violent police district, they confront the never-ending calls for help and the never-ending chase after drugs. | |
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| 109 :05x08 - The Secret File (Apr/14/1987) | | How could an ordinary citizen be considered a national security risk? Penn Kimball, a university professor, former New York Times editor, Rhodes scholar, and Eagle Scout, was stunned to discover that for 30 years, government files existed declaring him as a disloyal American. As he tries to clear his name, Frontline examines the government decision to gather information on American citizens. | |
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| 110 :05x09 - War on Nicaragua (Apr/21/1987) | As the Iran-contra scandal was still unfolding, Frontline correspondent William Greider revealed how the US began supporting the contras in Nicaragua and why our involvement there continues. The program is a meticulous reconstruction of US policy toward Nicaragua, and an investigation into how US foreign policy is made.
Source: PBS | |
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| 111 :05x10 - The Bombing of West Philly (May/05/1987) | 'I could hear the bullets all around me, hitting all around the house. I was forced back by gunfire,' says Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of MOVE, a small, violent, urban cult. Years of tension ended May 13, 1985, when police bombed Africa's house. The surrounding neighborhood burned out of control, leaving 250 homeless. Frontline correspondent Leon Dash examines why the bombing really happened.
Source: PBS | |
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| 112 :05x11 - In Search of the Marcos Millions (May/26/1987) | The day Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos fled the Philippines in 1986, they left with $8.9 million in jewelry, cash, and bonds. But the Philippine government claims they took much more, plundering the wealth of the nation, stashing it in fake companies and secret bank accounts. Frontline tracked hundreds of millions of dollars of the Marcos money and asked whether the Philippine government will ever get it back.
Source: PBS | |
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| 113 :05x12 - Israel: the Price of Victory (Jun/02/1987) | The Six Day War was a decisive victory for Israel. But many Israelis feel that something has gone wrong. On the war's twentieth anniversary, Frontline finds a nation struggling with its image and its role as a democracy and reveals what has happened to the dream.
Source: PBS | |
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| 114 :05x13 - Death of a Porn Queen (Jun/09/1987) | She was from Minnesota. Young, pretty, and fresh. She went to Hollywood in search of a dream and found herself in X-rated movies, on drugs, and estranged from her family and friends. Correspondent Al Austin retraces her story, discovering why after two years as a porn queen, she took her own life.
Source: PBS | | Guest Stars: Danielle Martin as Herself | |
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| 116 :05x15 - The Politics of Greed (Jun/23/1987) | As corruption scandals rock New York City, the careers of dozens of high officials are being destroyed. Frontline takes an inside look at the seamy side of urban politics and asks whether this is any way to run a government.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 6 |
| 117 :06x01 - Apartheid Part 1: 1652-1948 (Dec/14/1987) | Many white South Africans claim that the entire country is theirs by right. No black man, they say, occupied South Africa before the first tiny Dutch settlement in 1652. Part 1 refutes this claim and traces the country's colonial history, the emergence early in the 20th century of the African National Congress, the rise to power of Afrikaner nationalists, and the formal policy of apartheid.
Source: PBS | |
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| 118 :06x02 - Apartheid Part 2: 1948-1963 (Dec/14/1987) | Part 2 details the new policy which included classifying all South Africans by race, removing blacks from cities where many had lived for generations, and establishing separate and unequal schooling for blacks. Frontline focuses on the increasing black resistance in the 1950s and the rise of resistance leader Nelson Mandela.
Source: PBS | |
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| 119 :06x03 - Apartheid Part 3: 1963-1977 (Dec/15/1987) | 'Independent homelands' for blacks was the centerpiece of Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd's vision of apartheid. Part 3 focuses on how the white government found African leaders to collaborate with them in a plan to make foreigners of black South African citizens by deporting them to independent homelands in rural areas of the country. The program looks at the increased resistance to the homeland policy as seen through the first nationwide attack by young black South Africans in the Soweto ghetto in 1976.
Source: PBS | |
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| 120 :06x04 - Apartheid Part 4: 1978-1986 (Dec/15/1987) | When PW Botha became prime minister of South Africa two years after the Soweto uprising in 1976, he realized that apartheid must 'adapt or die.' Part 4 explores the reforms undertaken by Botha to maintain white supremacy, changes that have deeply divided Afrikaners and have provoked explosive reactions from many blacks.
Source: PBS | |
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| 121 :06x05 - Apartheid Part 5: 1987 (Dec/16/1987) | Part 5 looks at an unprecedented meeting in the struggle for South Africa's future. Two years before the release of Nelson Mandela, dissident white Afrikaners met with black leaders from the outlawed African National Congress in Dakar, Senagal, to discuss strategies for change in South Africa, presaging the reforms that would come later.
Source: PBS | |
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| 122 :06x06 - Praise the Lord (Jan/26/1988) | Frontline traces the rise and fall of television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and investigates why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.
Source: PBS | |
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| 123 :06x07 - Operation Urgent Fury (Feb/02/1988) | Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh investigates one of Ronald Reagan's greatest truimphs-the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh's reporting reveals an inept US military operation and questions whether the students needed rescuing at all.
Source: PBS | |
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| 124 :06x08 - The Man Who Shot John Lennon (Feb/09/1988) | Frontline goes inside the mind of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder, believing it would make him famous.
Source: PBS | |
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| 126 :06x10 - Shakedown in Santa Fe (Feb/23/1988) | Eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in US history, Frontline returns to the penitentiary in New Mexico to probe the contininuing struggle between the inmates and the guards, the wardens and the reformers, for control of one of our most dangerous prisons.
Source: PBS | |
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| 127 :06x11 - Let My Daughter Die (Mar/01/1988) | Joe and Joyce Cruzan want doctors to remove their severely brain damaged daughter from the life-support system that keeps her alive. Nearly two years before it became the US Supreme Court's first right-to-die case, Frontline explored the complex legal and moral issues of this Missouri couple's battle to allow their daughter to die.
Source: PBS | |
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| 128 :06x12 - Back in the USSR (Mar/29/1988) | In 1968, American journalist Jerry Schecter, accompanied by his wife and five young children, moved to Moscow on assignment for Time magazine. In 1987, Frontline returned with the Schecter family to the Soviet Union as they renewed old friendships and explored Russia under glasnost.
Source: PBS | |
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| 129 :06x13 - Poison and the Pentagon (Apr/05/1988) | The military is America's largest producer of toxic waste. Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates the Pentagon's poor record of cleaning up its pollution that contaminates the ground water in communities across the country.
Source: PBS | |
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| 130 :06x14 - To a Safer Place (Apr/12/1988) | When Shirley Turcotte was a child, she was sexually abused by her father. After years of therapy she takes a remarkable journey back into her past-confronting her mother and other adults who failed to protect her, reuniting with her brothers and sister who were also brutally abused, and trying to make peace with the horror story that was her childhood.
Source: PBS | |
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| 131 :06x15 - Murder on the Rio San Juan (Apr/19/1988) | Frontline investigates the unsolved 1984 terrorist bombing at a press conference held by contra leader Eden Pastora. Eight people, including an American reporter, died that night on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This report dissects the motives of possible conspirators and follows the trail of the man suspected of planting the bomb.
Source: PBS | |
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| 132 :06x16 - American Game, Japanese Rules (Apr/26/1988) | Can America succeed in Japan? Frontline paints an intimate portrait of Americans living and working in Japan-baseball players, businessmen, and an American bride-all confronting a society that looks Western, but operates by a very different set of rules.
Source: PBS | |
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| 133 :06x17 - Racism 101 (May/10/1988) | Frontline explores the disturbing increase in racial incidents and violence on America's college compuses. The attitudes of black and white students reveal increasing tensions at some of the country's best universities where years after the civil rights struggle, full integration is still only a dream.
Source: PBS | |
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| 134 :06x18 - Guns, Drugs, and the CIA (May/17/1988) | A Frontline investigation examines the CIA's long history of involvement with drug smugglers in trouble spots around the world and how the agency has defended its alliances with drug dealers under the cloak of 'national security.'
Source: PBS | |
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| 135 :06x19 - The Defense of Europe (May/24/1988) | Frontline and Time magazine join forces to examine the new realitites for the NATO alliance following the American-Soviet nuclear arms treaty. How good are the Warsaw Pact forces? Can Europe defend itself without nuclear missiles? Will America begin to pull out its troops?
Source: PBS | |
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| 136 :06x20 - Trouble in Paradise (May/31/1988) | Frontline examines the US government's attempts to forge a military pact with the Pacific Island nation of Palau (population 15,000)-a campaign that has led to economic dependence, political strife, corruption, and violence in that tiny country.
Source: PBS | |
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| 137 :06x21 - Who Pays for AIDS? (Jun/07/1988) | By 1991, health care for AIDS patients in the United States could cost an estimated $16 to $22 billion. Caring for AIDS victims is overwhelming some communities. Frontline examines the impact on patients caught in the middle of a battle between local governments and Washington over who will pay for AIDS.
Source: PBS | |
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| 138 :06x22 - Our Forgotten War (Jun/14/1988) | In Central America, while US attention has been dominated by the contra war in Nicaragua, the battle for El Salvador continues. The US government has dumped nearly $3 billion in aid into El Salvador (more than ten times the amount spent on the contras), but there are new signs that the American policy is in trouble. With exclusive footage shot behind guerilla lines, Frontline takes a fresh look at the war in El Salvador.
Source: PBS | |
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| 139 :06x23 - Indian Country (Jun/21/1988) | The Quinault Indians of Washington State seem to have everything-strong leadership, a landmark court victory guaranteeing fishing rights, business deals with the Japanese, and a lush, beautiful reservation. But the Quinaults still face crushing problems-unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, and suicide. Frontline reporter Mark Trahant searches for answers to the Quinault's dilemma in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress, the White House and in the heart of the Quinault people.
Source: PBS | |
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| 140 :06x24 - My Husband is Going to Kill Me (Jun/28/1988) | In February 1987, 30 year-old Pamela Guenther turned to the police and the courts in a Denver suburb for protection from her violent husband. Three weeks later, as her children watched, she was murdered. Frontline asks why the system could not protect Pamela Guenther.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 7 |
| 141 :07x01 - The Politics of Prosperity (Oct/10/1988) | In the last weeks of the 1988 presidential campaign, correspondent William Greider explores the private but increasingly intense debate about what the next president should do to avoid economic disaster, how and when should he do it, and who will be asked to bear the burden. Frontline focuses on four communities that have not shared in the prosperity of the Reagan years.
Source: PBS | |
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| 142 :07x02 - The Choice (Oct/24/1988) | Frontline and Time magazine step back from the heat of the 1988 presidential campaign to examine, in-depth, the background, character, qualifications, and beliefs of the Republican and Democratic candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Correspondent Garry Wills assesses their lives and career through the people who know them best.
Source: PBS | |
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| 143 :07x03 - The Real Life of Ronald Reagan (Jan/18/1989) | Frontline correspondent Garry Wills profiles the career of Ronald Reagan, his legacy, and public life through the eyes of friends, top aides, biographers, and critics. The role of myth, media, and politics in Reagan's popularity and policy decisions is portrayed in the light of our national romance with the 'Great Communicator.'
Source: PBS | |
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| 144 :07x04 - The Spy Who Broke the Code (Jan/24/1989) | Was John Walker the spy of the century? Frontline investigates the Walker spy ring and how it sold secrets about American military codes to the Soviets. The program assesses the damage to US national security and includes exclusive interviews with Walker, the convicted ring leader, and his principal partner, Jerry Whitworth.
Source: PBS | |
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| 145 :07x05 - The Battle for Eastern Airlines (Jan/31/1989) | Donald Trump's recent purchase of Eastern Airlines' shuttle focused national attention once again on the fight for this troubled airline. Frontline correspondent Robert Kuttner chronicles the saga of Eastern's ongoing labor-management disputes and the behind-the-scenes struggles between Charlie Bryan, head of the machinists' union, and Texas Air's Frank Lorenzo, as well as the fate of the experiment in joint union and management ownership of Eastern under former astronaut Frank Borman.
Source: PBS | |
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| 146 :07x06 - Running with Jesse (Feb/07/1989) | An inside look at the historic 1988 presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Frontline profiles the Jackson strategy, his relationship with the press and his difficulties with the Jewish community and New York's Mayor Koch. The program chronicles the hopes and the hype of a campaign that became a crusade.
Source: PBS | |
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| 147 :07x07 - Children of the Night (Feb/14/1989) | The story of Iain Brown, who at thirteen left the comfortable world of a middle-class family in Walnut Creek, CA, for the life of a male hustler in San Francisco. Iain committed suicide in December 1987 at the age of nineteen. His story highlights the disturbing and growing national problem of teenage runaways and suicides.
Source: PBS | |
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| 148 :07x08 - Who Profits from Drugs (Feb/21/1989) | Frontline investigates how the American economy uses the profits from the illegal drug trade. The program documents a network of lawyers, real estate developers, stock brokers, and bankers who launder drug proceeds through 'legitimate' businesses in Miami, Boston, and Dallas.
Source: PBS | |
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| 149 :07x09 - Prescriptions for Profit (Mar/28/1989) | Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates abuses in the fiercely competitive marketing and promotion of prescription drugs by the pharmaceutical manufacturers. The program explores the dangers of hype and hard sell applied to widely prescribed arthritis medications and how the industry tries to influence the prescribing habits of doctors.
Source: PBS | |
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| 150 :07x10 - The Dallas Drug War (Apr/04/1989) | Frontline correspondent Bob Ray Sanders profiles the struggle of one neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, to combat the drugs and violence that threaten the lives of its citizens and the future of the community.
Source: PBS | |
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| 151 :07x11 - Murder in the Amazon (Apr/11/1989) | Chico Mendes was an environmentalist and a leader of seringueiros, Brazilian rubber tappers, who struggle to defend their forests from destruction by cattle ranchers and developers. Mendes's murder in December 1988 focused international attention on the ecological pillage of millions of acres of Amazonian rain forest.
Source: PBS | |
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| 152 :07x12 - The Shakespeare Mystery (Apr/18/1989) | Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, and Charlie Chaplin all doubted that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was the true author of the dramatic masterpieces that bear his name. Correspondent Al Austin investigates the latest controversial theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, a poet and intimate of Queen Elizabeth 1, was the real Shakespeare.
Source: PBS | |
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| 153 :07x13 - Extraordinary People (May/02/1989) | Over 25 years ago, scores of Canadian women gave birth to badly malformed children because of a prescription drug called thalidomide. This program, anchored and narrated by Judy Woodruff, profiles the heroic struggle of 3 thalidomide children who overcame their handicaps despite government neglect and inadequate rehabilitative solutions.
Source: PBS | |
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| 154 :07x14 - Yellowstone Under Fire (May/09/1989) | President Reagan's Interior secretaries, James Watt and Donald Hodel, may have altered the landscape of the Yellowstone Park area more dramatically than the fires that ravaged it in the summer of 1988. This program examines the impact of eight years of accelerated development of minerals, timber, and tourism on America's most famous wilderness.
Source: PBS | |
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| 155 :07x15 - Remember My Lai (May/23/1989) | In 1968, American soldiers massacred over 500 adults and children in a Vietnamese hamlet called My Lai. Frontline explores the legacy of that savage day on the men who were there and the Vietnamese who survived.
Source: PBS | |
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| 156 :07x16 - Israel: the Covert Connection (May/16/1989) | The Iran-contra scandal revealed a glimpse of the US government's secret relationship with Israel. This program investigates America's strategic alliance with Israel since the 1950's and our covert and overt ties to Isaraeli arms deals and intelligence operations.
Source: PBS | |
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| 157 :07x17 - Babies at Risk (May/30/1989) | The infant mortality rate in some Chicago neighborhoods is higher than that of many third-world countries. Frontline investigates the political and bureaucratic neglect which fuels this crisis and examines how health and social workers combat the conditions that imperil the lives of poor infants.
Source: PBS | |
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| 158 :07x18 - Death of a Terrorist (Jun/13/1989) | Mairead Farrell was one of three Irish Republican Army terrorists gunned down by British security forces on Gibraltar in March 1988. Frontline examines her 17 year career as an IRA militant and the questions her life and death raise about the British government's ability to apply the rule of law to political terrorism.
Source: PBS | |
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| 159 :07x19 - Who's Killing Calvert City? (Jun/20/1989) | Calvert City, Kentucky, is at war with itself over the legacy of pollution and toxic waste from the chemical plants that are the heart of its economy. Frontline examines the struggle between citizens and industry giants, like GAF and BF Goodrich, to find the truth about what's happening to Calvert City.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 8 |
| 160 :08x01 - Tracking the Pan Am Bombers (Nov/28/1989) | A Frontline special report investigates the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. The broadcast pieces together the latest information about the bomb, how the terrorists built it and placed it on board, and whether warnings about the attack were ignored by government officials. Frontline profiles the terrorist network believed responsible for the bombing and details blunders made by the German police that may have contributed to the tragedy.
Source: PBS | |
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| 162 :08x03 - The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (Jan/23/1990) | Frontline profiles the efforts of the surviving families of the 270 people killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, to seek justice for their loved ones. The families' crusade focuses attention on issues of airline and airport security, on the lack of coordination between international police and intelligence services, and on whether the US government has the will and means to respond effectively against terrorists and the countries that support them.
Source: PBS | |
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| 163 :08x04 - The Noriega Connection (Jan/30/1990) | In the wake of the US invasion of Panama, Frontline tracks the rise and fall of General Manuel Noriega and investigates the confusion and duplicity in the US government's long relationship with the fallen dictator.
Source: PBS | |
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| 164 :08x05 - Miss USSR (Feb/06/1990) | Frontline goes behind the scenes at the Soviet Union's first national beauty pageant with an intimate, bitterweet examination of the status and struggles of women in the USSR.
Source: PBS | |
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| 165 :08x06 - Throwaway People (Feb/13/1990) | Correspondent Roger Wilkins investigates the economic and social roots of the black underclass, focusing on the struggle of young black men in one neighborhood in Washington, DC.
Source: PBS | |
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| 166 :08x07 - The Faces of Arafat (Feb/27/1990) | In the wake of PLO chairman Yasir Arafat's historic declaration that he has rejected terrorism and now recognizes Israel's right to exist, correspondent Marie Colvin profiles the Palestinian leader, follows his peace initiatives, and examines his commitment to fulfill his new promises.
Source: PBS | |
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| 167 :08x08 - Anatomy of an Oil Spill (Mar/20/1990) | In the black, early morning hours of Good Friday, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez went aground on Bligh Reef, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. Frontline correspondent Jon Tuttle investigates the long history of complacency, negligence, and broken promises by government agencies and oil companies that led to this disaster.
Source: PBS | |
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| 168 :08x09 - Poland - the Morning After (Mar/27/1990) | In the summer of 1989, Poland astonished the world by starting the revolution which has swept Eastern Europe. Solidarity, the once-banned independent trade union, took power in a coalition government ending 45 years of Communist repression. In this report, Frontline examines a society attempting something which has never been done-changing overnight from Communism to capitalism.
Source: PBS | |
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| 169 :08x10 - Born in Africa (Apr/03/1990) | Philly Bongoley Lutaaya was a celebrated singer.musician from Uganda who died of AIDS in December 1989. But he died a national hero because he gave his nation new hope in battling the devastation of the disease. This Frontline.AIDS Quarterly special, narrated by Peter Jennings, chronicles Philly Lutaaya's remarkable last year of life as he travelled across Uganda in a crusade to help stop the spread of AIDS, even as the disease ravaged his body.
Source: PBS | |
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| 170 :08x11 - New Harvest, Old Shame (Apr/17/1990) | Thirty years after Edward R. Murrow's 'Harvest of Shame,' Frontline correspondent David Marash looks at the continuing plight of migrant farm workers and explores the forces that keep their lives so desperate.
Source: PBS | |
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| 171 :08x12 - Hilary in Hiding (Apr/24/1990) | In 1989, Dr. Elizabeth Morgan was freed from prison after serving the longest detention for civil contempt in American history-25 months. Dr. Morgan had refused a court order to reveal the whereabouts of her daughter, Hilary, who Morgan believed had been sexually assaulted by Hilary's father, Dr. Eric Foretich. In February 1990, Hilary was discovered living in New Zealand with her grandparents. Frontline explores both sides of the troubling case.
Source: PBS | |
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| 172 :08x13 - Other People's Money (May/01/1990) | The savings and loan scandal is the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression and will cost US taxpayers an estimated $315 billion. Frontline investigates Charles Keating, Jr., and the role politics played in the $2.5 billion failure of his Lincoln Savings and Loan.
Source: PBS | |
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| 173 :08x14 - Plunder! (May/08/1990) | Frontline correspondent Carl Nagin investigates the looting of pre-Columbian tombs in Latin America and the trafficking of stolen artifacts, exposing a trail that leads to auction houses, galleries, museums, and private collections in the United States.
Source: PBS | |
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| 174 :08x15 - Seven Days in Bensonhurst (May/08/1990) | The 1989 murder of Yusef Hawkins by white youths in the Bensonhurst section of New York City set off a racial and political fire storm. On the eve of the first verdicts in the murder case, writer Shelby Steele returns to talk to the participants and tries to unravel the forces that propelled this racial crisis.
Source: PBS | |
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| 175 :08x16 - Inside the Cartel (May/22/1990) | How serious is Colombia's war on drugs? Frontline investigates the drug cartels in Medellin and Cali and demonstrates how they've become part of the country's political and economic life.
Source: PBS | |
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| 176 :08x17 - Teacher, Teacher (Jun/12/1990) | Frontline explores the hopes and frustrations of public school teachers in one midwestern town as they face the threat of funding cutbacks, the criticism of parents, and a growing number of troubled children from troubled homes.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 9 |
| 177 :09x01 - The Arming of Iraq: Frontline Special (Sep/11/1990) | Frontline examines how Saddam Hussein built Iraq's massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980's. Correspondent Hodding Carter invetigates the complicity of the US, European governments, and Western corporations in creating the Iraqi military machine the world is now trying to stop.
Source: PBS | |
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| 178 :09x02 - Decade of Destruction Part 1: Ashes of Forest (Sep/18/1990) | Adrian Cowell's epic, ten-year-long series begins with a tale reminiscent of the American Wild West. A Brazilian settler brings his family to live deep in the Amazon, in Indian territory. Two of his sons are murdered and another is kidnapped by a renegade Indian tribe. For four years, a government expedition searches for the Indians and the child. Meanwhile, the colonists' expansion continues to encroach on the Indians' land. The series follows landless peasants as they are lured to the forest with promises of free land and big harvests. As the forest is slashed and burned, the crisis is taken to the US Congress, where under pressure, the World Bank finally changes its policies toward Brazilian development.
Source: PBS | |
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| 179 :09x03 - Decade of Destruction Part 2: Killing for Land (Sep/19/1990) | Part II follows the land wars which broke out as millions of poor farmers migrated to massive ranches in the Brazilian rain forest. As squatters, they begin to work the land until absentee landlords hire gunmen to kill these peasants. The peasants take up arms themselves, and the result is a lawless gun battle.
Source: PBS | |
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| 180 :09x04 - Decade of Destruction Part 3: Mountains of Gold (Sep/20/1990) | Part III follows the gold rush of 200,000 illegal propectors who swarm over private gold reserves in the rain forest. As securtiy forces track the prospectors, the government fights to protect the world's largest untapped gold reserves.
Source: PBS | |
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| 181 :09x05 - Decade of Destruction Part 4: Chico Mendes (Sep/21/1990) | The series concludes with the story of Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper whose murder in 1988 brought worldwide attention to the problem of Amazonian deforestation. Mendes had become a symbol of the struggle between the rubber tappers and landowners. After surviving attempts on his life, Mendes was finally murdered by gunmen allegedly from a neighboring cattle ranch.
Source: PBS | |
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| 182 :09x06 - Global Dumping Ground (Oct/02/1990) | Correspondent Bill Moyers investigates America's shadowy new industry-the international export of toxic waste-revealing how shipping deadly wastes to third-world countries has become an enormous business in the US.
Source: PBS | |
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| 183 :09x07 - When Cops Go Bad (Oct/16/1990) | The corrupting influence of drug money is now listed as the number one threat to the integrity of police forces. Frontline investigates this crisis in three communities in Florida, California, and New Jersey.
Source: PBS | |
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| 184 :09x08 - The Hunt for Howard Marks (Oct/23/1990) | For 20 years, one man - Oxford-educated Dennis Howard Marks - was responsible for running an international drug market that shipped marijuana into the US by the ton. Frontline tells the story of the man who believed that he was too smart to be caught-and the DEA agent who was determined to prove him wrong.
Source: PBS | |
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| 185 :09x09 - Broken Minds (Oct/30/1990) | Three million Americans are thought to be schizophrenic. As medical science searches to find its cause, society struggles to understand a crippling disease that has shattered families and left tens of thousands on the nation's streets.
Source: PBS | |
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| 186 :09x10 - Betting on the Lottery (Nov/06/1990) | Lottery fever is spreading. Twenty-nine states now raise $20 billion a year in revenues. Frontline correspondent James Reston, Jr., goes behind the scenes of state lotteries to look at the promoters selling them, the people buying the tickets, and to ask the question, 'Who really wins and who loses?'
Source: PBS | |
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| 187 :09x11 - Springfield Goes to War (Nov/20/1990) | As the threat of war in the Gulf grows, a middle-sized American city grapples with the reason hundreds of thousands of US troops are being sent to Saudi Arabia. As one of the country's embarkation points for US troops and equipment, Springfield, Massachusetts has a special connection to the deployment. A student, a protester, a soldier, and a family join correspondent Bill Moyers and others in a special town meeting to discuss their hopes and fears.
Source: PBS | |
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| 188 :09x12 - High Crimes and Misdemeanors (Nov/27/1990) | Four years after the Iran-contra scandal broke, correspondent Bill Moyers examines-for the first time on television-the full record of this story, documenting the scale of White House deceit and analyzing the failures of our other democratic institutions: the Congress, the press, and the law.
Source: PBS | |
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| 189 :09x13 - The Struggle for South Africa (Dec/11/1990) | | As fear and violence mount, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk struggle to control the tumultuous course of change in South Africa. Correspondent David Dimbleby examines the lineup of forces on each side-Afrikaners and blacks-and the divisions within each group that could disrupt negotiations for a new South Africa. | |
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| 190 :09x14 - The Spirit of Crazy Horse (Dec/18/1990) | | One hundred years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Milo Yellow Hair recounts the story of his people-from the lost battles for their land against the invading whites-to the bitter internal divisions and radicalization of the 1970's-to the present-day revival of Sioux cultural pride, which has become a unifying force as the Sioux try to define themselves and their future. | |
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| 191 :09x15 - To the Brink of War (Jan/15/1991) | | On January 15, 1991, the United Nations resolution that allowed the use of force against Saddam Hussein took effect. Frontline correspondent Hodding Carter examined the critical decisions inside the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon that had brought the nation to the brink of war. | |
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| 192 :09x16 - Cuba and Cocaine (Feb/05/1991) | Frontline investigates the long history of Castro's connection to the drug trade. Despite Cuban government denials, this report uncovers evidence that drug smuggling was an official state policy under Castro during the past decade.
Source: PBS | |
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| 193 :09x17 - The Man Who Made the Supergun (Feb/12/1991) | Frontline examines the career of one of the world's most brilliant designers of weaponry, Gerald Bull, who designed long-range artillery used by Iraq during the Gulf War. Bull was murdered at his home in Brussels, Belgium, in March 1990-a murder believed to have been orchestrated by the Israeli secret intelligence agency, Mossad.
Source: PBS | |
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| 194 :09x18 - Guns, Tanks, and Gorbachev (Feb/19/1991) | Correspondent Hedrick Smith, best-selling author of The New Russians, looks at the causes of recent violence in the USSR and explores the ramifications for future US-Soviet relations.
Source: PBS | |
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| 195 :09x19 - The Mind of Hussein (Feb/26/1991) | Frontline investigates the personal and political history of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Through interviews with Hussein's former neighbors, members of his government, military leaders, journalists, and Middle East experts, correspondent Hodding Carter reveals the fears, the passions, and the intellect of the man behind the demonic image.
Source: PBS | |
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| 196 :09x20 - Black America's War (Apr/02/1991) | | Nearly thirty percent of all US soldiers in the Gulf War were black Americans. But blacks were much more skeptical than whites about the decision to go to war. Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree leads a Frontline town meeting that explores the source of black attitudes and the impact of the war on the lives of black Americans. | |
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| 197 :09x21 - War and Peace in Panama (Apr/09/1991) | Before Operation Desert Storm, there was Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama. Frontline examines the planning and execution of the Bush administration's first war and its impact on the problems still facing Panama's fragile democracy.
Source: PBS | |
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| 198 :09x22 - The Election Held Hostage (Apr/16/1991) | On January 20, 1981, just as Ronald Reagan became the 40th president of the United States, Iran finally released the 52 American hostages it had held for 444 days. Frontline reporter Robert Parry investigates startling new evidence about how both the Carter and Reagan camps may have tried to forge secret deals for those hostages during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Source: PBS | |
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| 199 :09x23 - Who Pays for Mom and Dad? (Apr/30/1991) | | Frontline examines the crisis facing middle-class Americans seeking long-term nursing home care for elderly parents. The report focuses on the tremendous financial difficulties faced by families who must decide what's best for their loved ones. | |
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| 200 :09x24 - Innocence Lost (May/07/1991) | What has happened to the small town of Edenton, North Carolina, now that its most prestigious day-care has been closed down because of charges of sexual abuse? Frontline examines the painful personal story of a divided community, the tangled roots of the charges, and the history of the investigation in this highly controversial case.
Source: PBS | |
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| 201 :09x25 - The Spy Hunter (May/14/1991) | Correspondent Tom Mangold profiles the mysterious, tortured life of James Angleton, ex-chief of counter-intelligence for the CIA who was obsessed by the belief that the agency was harboring a mole. His pursuit ruined lives and careers and seriously skewed US intelligence.
Source: PBS | |
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| 202 :09x26 - To the Last Fish (May/21/1991) | Correspondent Al Austin looks at the mass environmental destruction of the world's fisheries caused by new technologies in the fishing industry. Interviews with fishermen, businessmen, scientists, and government leaders reveal how the vital marine resource is in a dangerous state of decline.
Source: PBS | |
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| 203 :09x27 - The Color of Your Skin (Jun/11/1991) | An intimate journey into America's great racial divide, reported by David Maraniss. For 16 weeks, behind a two-way mirror in a small room at the US militaries intensive race relations course, a dozen Americans-black, white, and Hispanic-confront each other with their racial anger, pain, and bewilderment. This group's dramatic struggle poses the vital question: can America overcome its racial conflicts and make equality work?
Source: PBS | |
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| 204 :09x28 - The Gates Nomination (Jul/15/1991) | At the start of US Senate confirmation hearings, Frontline probes the background of Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to head the CIA. The program, anchored by Hodding Carter III, focuses on Gates's role in the Iran-contra affair and in a secret US policy to help Saddam Hussein build and maintain his war machine.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 10 |
| 205 :10x01 - In the Shadow of Sakharov (Oct/15/1991) | Frontline recounts the saga of Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist turned human-rights advocate who became the father of the Soviet democracy movement. With unique access to Sakharov's family and friends, the film documents Sakharov's life across seven decades of Communist rule in the USSR and traces his struggle to teach his country and the world important lessons about the moral power of the human spirit.
Source: PBS | |
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| 206 :10x02 - The Great American Bailout (Oct/22/1991) | The biggest financial disaster in US history continues. Four years into the process of selling off failed savings and loan assets, the Resolution Trust Corporation, the federal agency charged with managing the bailout, hasn't stopped the rising cost - estimated at $600-700 billion in taxpayers' dollars and climbing. In a co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, Frontline correspondent Robert Krulwich uncovers the inside story of mismanagement and politics and tells how the bailout itself is now in need of rescue.
Source: PBS | |
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| 207 :10x03 - The War We Left Behind (Oct/29/1991) | Frontline investigates the hidden strategies of the air war against Iraq and its devastating impact on Iraqi civilians. The program reveals how the war destroyed Iraq's power stations-leaving many Iraqis without electricity, sewage lines, or purified water, vulnerable to hunger and disease, and part of the 'slow motion disaster' in post-war Iraq.
Source: PBS | |
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| 208 :10x04 - Don King, Unauthorized (Nov/05/1991) | Frontline investigates the life and career of boxing promoter Don King, from his early street hustling days in Cleveland-where he once killed a man who owed him money-to his current position as the top boxing promoter in America. Correspondent Jack Newfield travels to training camps, title matches, and interviews fighters, managers, and trainers to tell the troubling story of a man who is bigger than the sport he promotes.
Source: PBS | |
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| 209 :10x05 - My Doctor, My Lover (Nov/12/1991) | Dr. Jason Richter, a psychiatrist, had a sexual affair with his patient Melissa Roberts-Henry. She later sued him for sexual abuse. Frontline examines the history of this patient-therapist relationship, the legal battle that followed, and how the psychiatric establishment dealt with the case. The program details the case history, drawing from videotaped portions of the trial, interviews with Roberts-Henry, Richter, attorneys, and experts.
Source: PBS | |
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| 210 :10x06 - Losing the War with Japan (Nov/19/1991) | Frontline looks at the challenge Japanese-style capitalism poses to the US market. The program examines three industries-automobile, video games, and flat panel displays used in computers. Robert Krulwich introduces the hour-long documentary and anchors a closing half-hour roundtable discussion.
Source: PBS | |
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| 211 :10x07 - The Secret Story of Terry Waite (Nov/26/1991) | Frontline, in co-production with the BBC, examines the secret connections between Oliver North and British hostage Terry Waite, the Anglican church envoy released from captivity in Lebanon after nearly five years. Correspondent Gavin Hewitt investigates the charge North used Waite in an effort to locate the other hostages and to cover up American's covert arms-for-hostages deal with Iran.
Source: PBS | |
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| 212 :10x08 - Who Killed Adam Mann? (Dec/03/1991) | On March 5, 1990, in New York City, five year-old Adam Mann was beaten to death for eating a piece of cake. The autopsy indicated Adam had been battered by his parents for years. Frontline investigates Adam's death and reveals a documented record, stretching back seven years, of how New York City's child-welfare system failed to protect Adam and his three brothers from their violent parents.
Source: PBS | |
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| 213 :10x09 - The Resurrection of Reverend Moon (Jan/21/1992) | Frontline investigates the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who after serving 13 months in prison in the early 1980s for conspiracy and false tax returns, has reemerged as a major media, financial, and political power in the new conservative establishment. The program explores Moon's long involvement with US political causes and politicians and the foreign sources of funding for Moon's Unification Church.
Source: PBS | |
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| 214 :10x10 - The Last Communist (Feb/11/1992) | The Cuban Revolution has turned into a struggle to feed its people. To understand what has happened to Cuba, Frontline tells the story of Cuba's controversial and charismatic leader, Fidel Castro-from the early days when his small guerilla band launched a revolution from the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the present day as Cuba's isolated, but defiant, leader.
Source: PBS | |
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| 215 :10x11 - Coming from Japan (Feb/18/1992) | The Matsushita Electric Company is one of the largest corporations in the world, with a controversial history in the US stretching back more than 30 years. Shuichi Kato, a leading social critic in Japan, joins Frontline in an investigation of the conflicts that have surrounded Matsushita in the US and explores some of the larger moral and cultural issues that confront Japan as it expands rapidly abroad.
Source: PBS | |
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| 216 :10x12 - After Gorbachev's USSR (Feb/25/1992) | Frontline correspondent Hedrick Smith, the award-winning host of "Inside Gorbachev's USSR," revisits the former Soviet Union to investigate how the institutions and people he filmed for his 1990 series are dealing with the challenge of change. Smith finds a nation enjoying new freedoms of speech and conscience but on the brink of economic and political disaster.
Source: PBS | |
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| 217 :10x13 - Who is David Duke? (Mar/03/1992) | Correspondent Hodding Carter investigates the life and political career of presidential candidate David Duke-exploring Duke's troubled childhood, his intellectual journey into the extremist ideology of the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, and the effort to reshape his image so he could run as a national figure in the Republican party.
Source: PBS | |
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| 218 :10x14 - The Death of Nancy Cruzan (Mar/24/1992) | | In 1984, a near-fatal automobile accident left Nancy Cruzan in a 'persistent vegetative state.' To permit the removal of Nancy's life support, the Cruzan family waged a three-and-a-half year legal battle which became the first right-to-die case heard by the US Supreme Court. Frontline follows the family's agonizing journey and chronicles their final days with Nancy. | |
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| 219 :10x15 - Saddam's Killing Fields (Mar/31/1992) | One year after the fateful Kurdish uprising, Frontkine charts dissident Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya's secret return to Iraq to investigate rumors of an official extermination program aimed at the Kurds. Makiya travels from town to town, sifting through documents, audiotapes, and video footage kept for years by the Iraqi secret police and captured by the Kurds in the uprising. The records detail the horrifying scale of the Iraqi state's routine surveillance, torture, and murder.
Source: PBS | |
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| 220 :10x16 - Investigating the October Surprise (Apr/07/1992) | At the start of an official Congressional inquiry into allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush presidential campaign delayed the release of 52 Americans held hostage by Iran, Frontline expands on its 1991 investigation into the so-called October Surprise. Reporter Robert Parry investigates whether or not William Casey, Reagan's campaign director, could have met with Iranians in Paris and Madrid in the summer of 1980.
Source: PBS | |
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| 221 :10x17 - The Betrayal of Democracy (Apr/15/1992) | Journalist William Greider examines what he calls 'the deepening divide between the governed and the governing' in this PBS Election '92 Report. Drawing upon Greider's award-winning reporting and observations of Washington's politics and government for over 20 years, Frontline examines the institutions of democracy - among them the two major political parties and the press - and how they are failing the public.
Source: PBS | |
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| 222 :10x18 - The Bank of Crooks and Criminals (Apr/21/1992) | Frontline examines the global banking scandal surrounding the Bank of Credit & Commerce International by tracking the aggressive investigation of the case by New York District attorney Robert Morgenthau. This report investigates the origins of BCCI, how it became a conduit for terrorism, arms deals, and drug money laundering, how its influence spread to political power brokers in the US, and why agencies of the US government were so slow to respond to the growing scandal.
Source: PBS | |
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| 223 :10x19 - Who Cares About Children? (Apr/28/1992) | With 410,000 children in foster-care and over half a million expected by 1995, child advocates across the country say nearly every state is in, or approaching, a crisis. Frontline examines the child-welfare crisis in Arkansas and the struggle to reform the system-a political battle that focused squarely on Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton as he launched his presidential campaign.
Source: PBS | |
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| 224 :10x20 - China After Tiananmen (Jun/02/1992) | In June 1989, Chinese students defied their government and held pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Their voices of protest were silenced with tanks and guns. Three years later, Frontline examines a country torn by the conflicting realities of liberal economic reform and continuing political repression. While China's ruling gerontocracy maintains a firm hold on political dissent, the people are embracing economic reforms and a more open society.
Source: PBS | |
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| 226 :10x22 - A Kid Kills (Jun/16/1992) | When 15 year old Damien Bynoe and two friends took a gun and went to settle a dispute, 15 year old Korey Grant and 11 year old Charles Copney, Jr. wound up dead. Public outcry over the case led Massachusetts politicians to pass one of the country's toughest juvenile crime laws. Frontline probes what turned Damien into a kid with a gun and examines the debate over how to deal fairly with him and other young people drawn into the violence on our streets.
Source: PBS | |
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| 227 :10x23 - Your Loan is Denied (Jun/23/1992) | Peter and Dolores Green, African-American professionals, are suing a Chicago-area bank for refusing to finance their purchase of the home they have lived in for 30 years. Correspondent Bill Schechner finds mortgage-lending discrimination a systemic problem in America's financial institutions. In a co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, Frontline examines the devastating effects of discriminatory lending practices on neighborhoods fighting for economic survival.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 11 |
| 227 :11x01 - Thomas and Hill: Public Hearing, Private Pain (Oct/13/1992) | Frontline expolores how Clarence Thomas's bitter Supreme Court nomination hearing, replete with charges of sexual harassment, reached deep into the psyche of black America. Through interviews with prominent Aftican-Americans, the program finds that the dynamics of race-being black in America-were inescapably at the heart of the story and that little common understanding existed in the way blacks and whites viewed the nomination battle.
Source: PBS | |
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| 228 :11x02 - The Politics of Power (Oct/20/1992) | Frontline, in a co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, examines the story of our nation's failed energy policy. Journalist Nick Kotz investigates the role the Bush administration and key congressional committees played in creating a national energy policy that remains guided by special interests, calls for the controversial revival of nuclear power, and leaves America increasingly dependent on foreign oil supplies.
Source: PBS | |
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| 229 :11x03 - The Choice '92 (Oct/21/1992) | In this Election '92 Special Report, Frontline presents political biographies of the two leading candidates for the presidency-Republican George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton. Correspondent Richard Ben Cramer examines the public careers and private lives of these men, searching for clues to their character and the patterns of behavior that could predict how they might handle the problems confronting the US in the post-Cold War era.
Source: PBS | |
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| 230 :11x04 - The Best Campaign Money Can Buy (Oct/27/1992) | In 1992, a year when the presidential campaigns cost $400 million, Frontline, in a co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, investigates the behind-the-scenes money givers who finance the presidential campaigns and the access and influence they gain with the candidates. Correspondent Robert Krulwich follows the largest contributors to the Bush and Clinton campaigns and traces the impact money has on American politics.
Source: PBS | |
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| 231 :11x05 - Monsters Among Us (Nov/10/1992) | Wesley Allan Dodd's 1989 arrest in Washington State for the murder of 3 young boys ended his 15 year career of violent sex crimes. Through interviews with Dodd, other sexual offenders and their families, therapists, and treatment specialists, correspondent Al Austin investigates the epidemic of sexual assault and examines Washington's desperate solution to the problem-to keep the offenders locked up until they are judged to be no longer a danger.
Source: PBS | |
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| 232 :11x06 - JFK, Hoffa, and the Mob (Nov/17/1992) | Frank Ragano was an intimate friend and lawyer to Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa and attorney to Santo Trafficante, one of the most feared Mafia bosses. Now, he's the first mob lawyer ever to go public with what he knows. Journalist Jack Newfield examines Ragano's accounts of mob involvement in CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro and probes Ragano's allegations that the mob orchestrated the assassination of John Kennedy and the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.
Source: PBS | |
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| 233 :11x07 - In Search of Our Fathers (Nov/24/1992) | Marco Williams was 24 years old when he learned his father's name. It was the first of many things he would discover about himself and his family in a journey into his family's past. Frontline airs the first-person story of Williams's seven-year search to learn about his father, to uncover the circumstances surrounding his birth, and to come to terms with what it means to grow up fatherless.
Source: PBS | |
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| 234 :11x08 - Clinton Takes Over (Jan/19/1993) | After the campaign rhetoric subsides, a new president has only eleven weeks to establish the form and substance of his administration. On the eve of Clinton's inauguration, correspondent Hodding Carter offers the first inside view of the new administration as it tackles the critical choices of the people and policies that will form the new American government.
Source: PBS | |
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| 235 :11x09 - Journey to the Occupied Lands (Jan/26/1993) | As the Arab-Israeli peace talks enter their 17th round of negotiations, Frontline examines the issue which holds the key to peace: the land of the West Bank and Gaza. In a personal journey to the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, correspondent Michael Ambrosino explores the bitter and complex issues of land ownership, the scope and future of the Israeli settlements, the realities of Israeli military justice, and daily life under Israeli occupation.
Source: PBS | |
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| 236 :11x10 - What Happened to the Drug War? (Feb/02/1993) | The federal government's multi-billion dollar war on drugs is an issue Bill Clinton largely ignored during his presidential campaign but will now have to confront. An eight-month investigation by Frontline shows how smugglers in Texas are defeating the nation's drug-war defenses and reveals flaws in the systems set up by the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and the military to detect smugglers.
Source: PBS | |
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| 237 :11x11 - The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover (Feb/09/1993) | For nearly 50 years, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover amassed secret files on America's most prominent figures, files he used to smear and control presidents and politicians. Frontline reveals how Hoover's own secret life left him open to blackmail by the Mafia and offers a startling new explanation why the FBI allowed the mob to operate unchallenged for over two decades.
Source: PBS | |
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| 238 :11x12 - The Arming of Saudi Arabia (Feb/16/1993) | Since 1979, the US has been helping Saudi Arabia construct a sophisticated multi-billion dollar network of military bases. Frontline uncovers the hidden history of US-Saudi relations, examining the extent of the secret Saudi defense buildup, the question of high-level US collusion in fixing the price of oil, and the extent of US involvement in covert Saudi aid to Iraq in its eight-year war against Iran.
Source: PBS | |
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| 239 :11x13 - Apartheid's Last Stand (Mar/02/1993) | Three years after Nelson Mandela's release from prison, talks between Mandela's African National Congress and the government of President FW de Klerk show signs of reaching an agreement that will end apartheid. Frontline correspondent John Matisonn investigates the forces and politics behind the ongoing violence and examines how de Klerk and Mandela have pushed through the peace process, detailing what has led both leaders to major compromises in their negotiations.
Source: PBS | |
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| 240 :11x14 - Choosing Death: Health Quarterly Special (Mar/23/1993) | In the Netherlands, euthanasia has been openly practiced for twenty years. Through the personal accounts of doctors, patients, and families in Holland, this program explores the complexities and dilemmas of euthanasia. Anchored by veteran newsman Roger Mudd and co-produced by The Health Quarterly and Frontline, the documentary is interspersed with a studio discussion relating the Dutch experience to the euthanasia debate in the United States.
Source: PBS | |
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| 241 :11x15 - In Our Children's Food (Mar/30/1993) | Frontline traces the 30 year history of US pesticide use, regulation and scientific study and explores what is and is not known about the risks of agricultural chemicals in our food. The program, reported by Bill Moyers, examines how the government has failed to certify pesticide safety and why the only source of data on the safety of pesticides is the industry that profits from them.
Source: PBS | |
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| 242 :11x16 - The Trouble with Baseball (Apr/06/1993) | As the 1993 baseball season begins, Frontline looks at the power struggle between the owners and players for economic control of Major League baseball and how that battle has led the national pastime to the brink of disaster.
Source: PBS | |
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| 243 :11x17 - Iran and the Bomb (Apr/13/1993) | With headlines focused on the United Nation's search and destroy missions inside Iraq, Frontline investigates how Iran is quietly rebuilding its national arsenal of weapons. The program uncovers a far-flung secret procurement network, including Iranian efforts to acquire biological, chemical, and, most worrisome of all, nuclear weapons.
Source: PBS | |
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| 244 :11x18 - LA Is Burning: 5 Reports from a Divided City (Apr/27/1993) | One year after Los Angeles' three days and nights of beatings, looting, and burning, how well do we understand what happened there-and why? Frontline revisits Los Angeles to explore those questions through the eyes of five people who have thought and written about the city from the perspectives of its different communities, races, and classes.
Source: PBS | |
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| 245 :11x19 - Ashes of the Cold War (May/04/1993) | Three hundred thousand defense jobs have been lost since cutbacks began in 1989 and 1.2 million are expected by the end of the decade. Frontline sifts through the debris of the military-industrial complex and explores the challenges facing industries, states, and people who based their livelihood on the cold War. The program chronicles the recent history of two of the nation's largest military contractors, General Dynamics and Hughes Aircraft Company, as each tries to carve out a future in a radically changed defense environment.
Source: PBS | |
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| 246 :11x20 - The Health Care Gamble (May/25/1993) | Frontline, in association with The Health Quarterly, presents a behind-the-scenes report on Bill Clinton's savvy campaigning and hard bargaining for health care reform during his bid for the presidency. The program details Clinton's difficulties in transforming health care reform from a campaign issue to a social reality.
Source: PBS | |
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| 247 :11x21 - Innocence Lost: The Verdict Parts I and II (Jul/20/1993) | In 1992, one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in the country concluded its first trial, sentencing Robert Fulton Kelly, owner of the Little Rascals day-care center in Edenton, North Carolina, to 12 consecutive life terms. This program, a follow-up to the 1991 Frontline broadcast 'Innocence Lost,' is the first to document on this scale the history and outcome of a child molestation case. Using footage from the original broadcast with added material never used, the program outlines the earliest history of the case in light of the trial testimony.
Source: PBS | |
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| 248 :11x22 - Innocence Lost: The Verdict Parts III and IV (Jul/21/1993) | The Innocent Lost series continues, focusing on the testimony of the twelve children who took the stand, the questioning by prosecutors and defense attorneys, and the jurors' decisions on what they heard. With unusual access to parents, residents, the defendants, and five members of the jury, as well as actual courtroom testimony of the experts, the children, and their parents, the program reveals the deeply troubling ambiguities that remain unresolved after the guilty verdict is found and raises questions about the ability of our society and our legal system to face the challenges child sexual abuse cases present.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 12 |
| 249 :12x01 - The Heartbeat of America (Oct/12/1993) | FRONTLINE opens its twelfth season with the story of General Motors--the world's largest industrial company and the symbol of corporate America's once golden age of optimism. A co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, the program examines how GM went from being the undisputed number-one car company to suffering a $23.5 billion loss last year--the biggest U.S. corporate loss on record. Can GM halt its decline? What went wrong? FRONTLINE looks for answers to those questions in this saga of a once mighty company that is struggling to regain its past glory. At stake are the livelihoods of GM's 736,000 workers worldwide and millions more who produce the steel, glass, rubber, and plastic that go into GM cars and trucks.
Source: PBS | |
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| 250 :12x02 - Prisoners of Silence (Oct/19/1993) | Facilitated communication (FC) has been heralded as a breakthrough technique for nonverbal people with autism. The method uses a helper to control the involuntary movements of an autistic person's hand, allowing that person to type his or her thoughts on a keyboard. Thousands of people have begun using FC, often to communicate major life decisions like the desire to go to college or to move to a new home. But many scientists reject FC as simply not real and believe that it is the facilitator who is unknowingly controlling the hand of the autistic individual. FRONTLINE presents a comprehensive investigation of this controversial technique, interviewing the leaders of the FC movement, scientists, facilitators, and parents of autistic children and raises tough questions about the implications of its use for people with autism and their families.
Source: PBS | |
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| 251 :12x03 - Secrets of a Bomb Factory (Oct/26/1993) | Wes McKinley didn't know what he was getting into when, in 1990, he was chosen as foreman of a special grand jury investigating potential crimes at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. But what McKinley and the other grand jurors learned in their two-and-one-half years of listening to testimony and examining other evidence disturbed them enough to risk prosecution themselves by going public. FRONTLINE, in co-production with Oregon Public Broadcasting, examines what the grand jury learned and what led to their rebellion.
Source: PBS | |
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| 252 :12x04 - Showdown in Haiti (Nov/09/1993) | FRONTLINE examines the escalating confrontation between the Haitian military government and the Clinton administration. Interviewing military ruler Lt. General Raoul Cedras, exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, U.S. officials, Haitian businessmen, and Aristide supporters, the program covers developments in Haiti up to the time of broadcast, setting events in historical context and examining what is at stake for President Clinton's foreign policy. 'Showdown in Haiti' includes interviews with two Aristide supporters, Antoine Izmery, a major financial backer of Aristide's political coalition, and Justice Minister Guy Malary. Both men were assassinated only days after they spoke to FRONTLINE.
Source: PBS | |
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| 253 :12x05 - Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? (Nov/16/1993) | At the heart of the mystery of who killed John F. Kennedy lies the puzzle of Lee Harvey Oswald. Marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, FRONTLINE presents an investigative biography of the man at the center of the political crime of the century. The program follows Oswald's life story from his boyhood to Dallas, 1963. Was Oswald the emotionally disturbed lone gunman of the 1964 Warren Commission Report? Was he, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, only one of two gunmen that day in Dallas? Or was he an unwitting 'patsy' for the real assassins, as Oswald himself claimed when he was arrested on November 22, 1963?
Source: PBS | |
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| 254 :12x06 - AIDS, Blood and Politics (Nov/30/1993) | Since the outbreak of AIDS more than a decade ago, an estimated 30,000 Americans have become infected after receiving HIV-contaminated blood or blood products. FRONTLINE,in association with The Health Quarterly, investigates the ten-year history of AIDS and the blood supply. Airing on the eve of World AIDS Day, the program asks why the nation's guarantors of safe blood, including the American Red Cross and the Food and Drug Administration, failed to safeguard the blood supply from the deadly virus in the early 1980s, and why, still today, some of the nation's largest blood banks are not yet in full compliance with federal regulations on blood safety.
Source: PBS | |
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| 255 :12x07 - Behind the Badge (Dec/14/1993) | In a year in which national attention has focused on police brutality trials in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Miami, FRONTLINE crosses 'the blue line' to examine police culture and to ask what do cops think of us? Longtime police beat reporter Jack Newfield offers a close up look into the world of cops - their frustrations and their fears - through the different experiences of cops in the New York City Police Department. Key figures in New York's recent police corruption hearings are interviewed as well as Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and members of the rank and file.
Source: PBS | |
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| 256 :12x08 - A Place for Madness (Jan/18/1994) | In the last quarter century, many of the mentally ill in this country were discharged from hopitals with no coherent provision for follow-up care. The hundreds of thousands wandering the streets evoke our compassion, stir our conscience, and, for those mentally ill who are violent, test our definition of individual rights and liberties. FRONTLINE examines the troubling conflict between protecting the rights of the mentally ill to live outside of the mental hospitals and safeguarding society from those who are dangerous to themselves and to others. To explore this dilemma, the program focuses on the community of Northampton, Massachusetts, and the personal stories of one family, several mentally ill residents, and the lawyers, psychiatrists, and care givers who deal with the mentally ill on a daily basis.
Source: PBS | |
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| 257 :12x09 - The Diamond Empire (Feb/01/1994) | Second only to Christmas, Valentine's Day is the holiday when diamonds are most often given as the ultimate token of love. Central to the diamond's role as a romantic symbol is the belief that diamonds are one of the rarest, most precious gifts for a loved one. But it's only a myth--diamonds are found in plentiful supply. FRONTLINE examines how the great myth about the scarcity of diamonds and their inflated value was created and maintained over the decades by the diamond cartel. This report chronicles how one family, the Oppenheimers of South Africa, gained control of the supply, marketing, and pricing of the world's diamonds.
Source: PBS | |
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| 258 :12x10 - Tabloid Truth: the Michael Jackson Story (Feb/15/1994) | On a quiet Sunday morning at home in the San Fernando Valley, a freelance reporter got a call from an expert in child sex crimes: Michael Jackson was under investigation. By the time the reporter's story aired twenty-four hours later, the media feeding frenzy was underway. Within a matter of days of the first report, the Jackson story had jumped from hard, verifiable news to spectacle and entertainment. FRONTLINE correspondent Richard Ben Cramer goes behind the scenes of the television coverage of the Michael Jackson story to look at the people, organizations, and economic pressures that have led to the tabloidization of American television. The program follows a few of the most exuberant and successful of the tabloid press as they pursue the Jackson story.
Source: PBS | |
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| 259 :12x11 - Red Flag Over Tibet (Feb/22/1994) | What is the fate of Tibet? To explore that question, FRONTLINE asked Orville Schell, an author and longtime observer of China, to make the journey to the Roof of the World. Forty years of Chinese occupation have left tens of thousands of Tibetans dead and six thousand Tibetan monasteries and temples destroyed. Today, the Dalai Lama is in exile, Lhasa, the capital, is predominantly Chinese, and one of Tibet's most sacred lakes is being developed for Chinese hydroelectric power. Schell vividly chronicles the history and culture of Tibet, explores the Chinese view of Tibet, and looks at why the survival of Tibet's people and culture has become an international issue.
Source: PBS | |
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| 260 :12x12 - Sarajevo: the Living and the Dead (Mar/01/1994) | As the world's eyes focus on whether the United States and NATO will finally break the two-year-long siege of Sarajevo, FRONTLINE goes behind the daily news images of this war to tell the story of the day-to-day lives of Sarajevo's beleaguered people. Yugoslavian-born filmmaker Radovan Tadic presents an intimate portrait of Sarajevans trying to live while deprived of almost everything--water, electricity, medicine, food, hope. Tadic's chronicle, filmed over a period of six months, ultimately becomes a meditation on the war, as well as a larger journey through the psychological and moral landscape of the besieged city.
Source: PBS | |
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| 261 :12x13 - In the Game (Mar/29/1994) | 'We just know this is our season--we want it all! So there's nothing that's going to get in our way,' says Trisha Stevens, one of the stars of the 1990 Stanford University women's basketball team. In this FRONTLINE report, producer Becky Smith takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Stanford team, its coach, and the season they set out to win the biggest dream in college sports--a national championship. Smith's six-month record of the team's 'miracle season' captures their spirit and determination, details coach Tara VanDerveer's strategy and tenaciousness, and chronicles the grueling twists and turns on the road to the title. The program poses important questions about the obstacles facing women's athletics which continue to fight for equal opportunities, funding, and media coverage.
Source: PBS | |
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| 262 :12x14 - The Kevorkian File (Apr/05/1994) | Just a few years ago, nobody had ever heard of Jack Kevorkian. Today, he is the most famous doctor in America--and the most controversial. Kevorkian is celebrated by his supporters as a merciful angel of death, the only man courageous enough to publicly step forward to help those suffering needlessly at the end of life--the champion of a new civil-rights issue. To his opponents, Kevorkian is Dr. Death, a discredited pathologist whose obsession with death has led him to kill patients who are not yet at the end of their lives; a man who is trying to push America into a nightmarish future of death on demand. Who is the real Jack Kevorkian? FRONTLINE presents an in-depth examination Jack Kevorkian's record--exploring the man, his cases, and the issue he has come to personify.
Source: PBS | |
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| 263 :12x15 - Mandela (Apr/26/1994) | On the eve of the first non-racial elections in South Africa, FRONTLINE presents an analysis of Nelson Mandela's ascent to power as the first democratically-elected leader of South Africa and the remarkable political comeback of his ex-wife, Winnie Mandela.
Source: PBS | |
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| 264 :12x16 - The Struggle for Russia (May/03/1994) | On May Day 1993, thousands of hard-core Russian Communists, their supporters, and militant nationalists rioted in Moscow's streets. Hundreds were injured. Protesters denouncing their government's massive economic reforms vowed to continue to forcefully resist these measures. Will 1994 be another bloody May Day for Russia's troubled people? FRONTLINE presents the story of the rise and fall of Boris Yeltsin, exploring the past two years of Russia's economic chaos and social turmoil and examining why Yeltsin's 'shock therapy' dramatically foundered. The program examines how social and political forces crippled Yeltsin and how the resulting power vacuum was skillfully seized by populist, fascist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Source: PBS | |
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| 265 :12x17 - Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo (May/10/1994) | The international press named the couple 'Romeo and Juliet.' He was Bosko Brckic, a twenty-four-year-old Serb. She was twenty-five-year-old Admira Ismic, a Muslim. Together, they tried to escape the war in Sarajevo and marry. But late in the afternoon of May 19, 1993, on a bridge leading out of Sarajevo, they died in each other's arms, shot down by snipers in the hills overlooking the besieged city. On the one-year anniversary of their deaths, as the tragic struggle over former Yugoslavia continues, FRONTLINE pieces together the story of this couple's life and their struggle to build a future together in the midst of war and in defiance of the centuries-old Balkan conflict.
Source: PBS | |
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| 266 :12x18 - Public Lands, Private Profits (May/24/1994) | Senator Dale Bumpers calls it 'probably the most outrageous practice still going on in this country.' He is referring to a federal law passed in 1872 that allows mining companies to extract billions of dollars in public minerals virtually for free. FRONTLINE, in co-production with the Center for Investigative Reporting, examines the gold mining industry--which is in the midst of a boom bigger than the 1849 California gold rush--and the call for congressional reforms to halt environmental disasters and taxpayer giveaways. Correspondent Robert Krulwich surveys the impact of mining activities and focuses on the pitched political fight over control of mineral resources, like gold and silver, on public lands.
Source: PBS | |
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| 267 :12x19 - Go Back to Mexico! (Jun/07/1994) | America continues to wage a battle against the stream of undocumented immigrants entering the country. An estimated three million undocumented immigrants currently reside in the US. Each year, another three hundred thousand illegal immigrants arrive in the US in addition to the nearly nine hundred thousand who are legally accepted. How long can America sustain this influx of immigrants? And how real are the growing fears about economic costs and long-term social and political disruption? Frontline correspondent William Langewiesche explores these questions, focusing on California.
Source: PBS | |
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| 268 :12x20 - The Trouble with Evan (Jun/21/1994) | What makes 11 year-old Evan lie, fight and steal? And what leads his parents to heap verbal abuse on their son, to tell him, 'I would like to lock you up in a cage and let everybody look at you like you're an animal'? Using surveillance cameras placed inside Evan's home, Frontline dramatically records one family's turmoil as they try to cope with and change their son's behavior and examines the vital connection between parenting and juvenile crime.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 13 |
| 269 :13x01 - School Colors (Oct/18/1994) | Integration. It was called the greatest social experiment of our generation. But 40 years after Brown v. Bd of Ed, many of our schools are still sharply segregated along color lines. America's changing demographics have tested the limits of our racial and ethnic tolerance, leaving many of us to ask whetther the nation's diversity will enrich us or tear us apart. Follows one year in the lives of Berkeley CA students and principal.
Source: PBS | |
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| 270 :13x02 - Is This Any Way to Run a Government? (Oct/25/1994) | As the Clinton administration claims significant progress in its commitment to streamline the federal government, Frontline investigates the one agency that is arguably the most resistant to reform--the Department of Agriculture. Focusing on the excesses, abuse, and mismanagement in the USDA's massive crop subsidy programs, Frontline examines how Congressional power has stymied a generation of agriculture secretaries, Republicans and Democrats alike, who have tired to reform the agency's bloated and outdated bureaucracy.
Source: PBS | |
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| 271 :13x03 - Hot Money (Nov/01/1994) | Frontline investigates a financial revolution--the movement of most of the world's money to huge off-shore banking centers, many located on the tiny islands of the Caribbean. The program examines how the secrecy and lax regulation of these off-shore centers play a critical role in facilitating international crime--money laundering, insurance fraud, and tax evasion.
Source: PBS | |
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| 272 :13x04 - How to Steal $500 Million (Nov/08/1994) | Michael 'Mickey' Monus, the flamboyant co-founder and president of Phar-Mor, awaits criminal trial to decide if he was responsible for one of the largest corporate frauds in U.S. history. FRONTLINE tells the story of Phar-Mor's rapid rise and stunning fall and reveals how, for five years, the company's top executives were able to hide a $500 million shortfall from the company's auditors.
Source: PBS | |
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| 273 :13x05 - Hillary's Class (Nov/15/1994) | In 1969, Hillary Rodham Clinton and four hundred other smart, privileged, young women graduated from Wellesley College into a world that for the first time was opening its doors to women. But what about her classmates who left college believing they could do anything? In 1969, Hillary Rodham Clinton and four hundred other smart, privileged, young women graduated from Wellesley College into a world that for the first time was opening its doors to women.
Source: PBS | |
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| 274 :13x06 - The Nicotine War (Jan/03/1995) | FRONTLINE tells the story of Food and Drug Administration chief David Kessler's bold attempt to regulate tobacco--an industry which has defied regulation for more than thirty years. The program details Kessler's efforts to prove that manufacturers have been manipulating nicotine in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked and examines how this mission may be in jeopardy because of the Republican landslide in Congress.
Source: PBS | |
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| 275 :13x07 - Does TV Kill? (Jan/10/1995) | Before the average American child leaves elementary school, researchers estimate that he or she will have witnessed more than eight thousand murders on television. Has this steady diet of imaginary violence made America the world leader in real crime and violence? FRONTLINE correspondent Al Austin journeys through what is known about television violence and how it affects our lives. The program reveals some unexpected conclusions about the impact TV has on the way we view the world.
Source: PBS | |
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| 276 :13x08 - What Happened to Bill Clinton? (Jan/31/1995) | FRONTLINE presents a thoughtful and challenging examination of the Clinton presidency at midterm. Moving beyond the conventional analysis of Clinton's troubles and the Republican electoral victory, the program lays out a mosaic of perspectives and insights on the man and his performance from some of the nation's savviest political thinkers.
Source: PBS | |
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| 277 :13x09 - The Godfather of Cocaine (Feb/14/1995) | FRONTLINE travels to Colombia for an investigative biography of the rise and fall of the richest and most violent cocaine drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Before Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency hunted him down and killed him, Escobar built an estimated $4 billion fortune through international cocaine smuggling alliances and the violent repression of his enemies.
Source: PBS | |
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| 278 :13x10 - The Begging Game (Feb/21/1995) | Each day, thousands of panhandlers work the streets and subways of cities all across America. Are the hard luck stories they tell believable? What are their lives really like off the street? Correspondent Deborah Amos explores the hidden world of panhandlers in New York City, gaining access to the intimate details of the their lives, investigating the real story of why they beg, and examining the impact of New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani's crackdown on panhandlers.
Source: PBS | |
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| 279 :13x11 - Rush Limbaugh's America (Feb/28/1995) | FRONTLINE explores the phenomenon of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Three hours each day, five days a week, Limbaugh is heard on more than 600 radio stations, in addition to hosting a daily half-hour television program. How much political clout does Limbaugh have? Tracing his rise to fame and fortune, the program also takes an in-depth look at Limbaugh's audience and asks what impact he had on the Republican congressional landslide.
Source: PBS | |
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| 280 :13x12 - Divided Memories Part 1 (Apr/04/1995) | Today, a raging debate over the validity of repressed memory about sexual abuse divides the therapeutic community, the women's movement, and thousands of accusers and accused. In 'Divided Memories,' producer Ofra Bikel examines the complicated issue of repressed memory, looking at what we know about memory and the way it works. Tracing the repression debate back to Sigmund Freud, Part 1 examines the different kinds of therapies used to help patients remember, including age-regression therapy, past-life therapy, and hypnosis.
Source: PBS | |
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| 281 :13x13 - Divided Memories Part 2 (Apr/11/1995) | Part 2 looks at the effects that remembered abuse has had on the families involved and explores how we distinguish real memories from those which are not true. 'We know that sexual abuse is a real problem,' says Bikel. 'But when the memories are not real, what makes the 'victim' so ready to believe they are? What cultural forces have made the explanation of sexual abuse so easy to accept?'
Source: PBS | |
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| 282 :13x14 - The Homecoming (Apr/25/1995) | In February 1974, Nobel prize-winning author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his Soviet citizenship, and expelled from his country. Nearly twenty years after exiling himself in Vermont, FRONTLINE accompanies Solzhenitsyn on his emotional return to his homeland, journeying by train across Russia into his past even as his thoughts turn toward the current troubles plaguing Russia. Followed--and often frustrated by--leagues of journalists, photographers, and camera crews, Solzhenitsyn urges the factory workers, businessmen, and ordinary villagers he meets along the way to have courage.
Source: PBS | |
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| 283 :13x15 - When the Bough Breaks (May/02/1995) | FRONTLINE explores the bond between parents and children and the profound implications for children's behavior later in life if that attachment is hampered. These characteristics may include overly aggressive behavior, serious learning problems, and delinquency. The program uses surveillance cameras in the homes of three middle-class families who are struggling with troubled children between the ages of sixteen months and three years and observes the behavior and interactions of the children and their parents. 'Even before they can speak, children give out signals,' says producer Neil Docherty. 'What are those signals? And what happens when they are misread or missed entirely?'
Source: PBS | |
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| 284 :13x16 - The Vanishing Father (May/16/1995) | In less than two generations, a seismic shift has occurred in the makeup of the American family. Today,fatherlessness has become the norm for about forty percent of American children and, some experts believe, contributes to some of our most urgent social problems. FRONTLINE explores this dramatic change in the American family and the startling findings of sociologists that, despite economic status, children from single parent homes are twice as likely to drop out of high school, to become teen-age mothers, and to spend time in jail.
Source: PBS | |
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| 285 :13x17 - The Confessions of Rosa Lee (May/23/1995) | The Washington Post ran a week-long series of front-page articles about one Washington, D.C., resident and her family. Reporting on the interrelationships of poverty, racism, crime, illiteracy, and drug use and their persistence over generations, reporter Leon Dash spent four years getting to know RosaLee Cunningham, a thief, former prostitute and drug addict, and the mother of eight children. Dash observed first-hand the poverty, drug use, and crime now cycling through a third generation of RosaLee's family. FRONTLINE examines the reaction and controversy Dash's powerful report had among policymakers and amidst the African-American community and reveals what happens when the reporter-as-objective-observer erases the boundary between himself and his subject.
Source: PBS | |
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| 286 :13x18 - Welcome to Happy Valley (Jun/06/1995) | Prozac is the most prescribed antidepressant drug in America. FRONTLINE travels to the prozac capital of the world, Wenatchee, Washington, and talks to the 'Pied Piper of Prozac,' Dr. Jim Goodwin, a clinical psychologist who says Prozac is 'probably less toxic than salt' and has had it prescribed for all his seven hundred patients. Psychiatrist Peter Breggin and members of the Prozac Survivors Support Group, however, question the use of the drug.
Source: PBS | |
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| 287 :13x19 - Currents of Fear (Jun/13/1995) | Adrian Dedinger, who grew up across the street from an electric tower, became convinced of the dangers of electromagnetic fields after she and her family were diagnosed with multiple cancers and health disorders. She and other residents in Omaha, Nebraska, joined together when they discovered a high incidence of cancer in their neighborhood--all clustered close to power lines and an electric substation. Do the magnetic fields associated with electric power lines cause cancer? Are the cancers in Omaha due to the substation or simply to chance? FRONTLINE talks to people on both sides of the power line debate--concerned citizens and parents, journalists, physicists, biologists, and epidemiologists--examines the scientific data and explores the role politics plays in what information gains public attention and in funding studies on this issue.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 14 |
| 288 :14x01 - Waco: the Inside Story (Oct/17/1995) | FRONTLINE investigates the April 1993 FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas. With access to secret government documents, audio and videotapes, correspondent Peter Boyer of The New Yorker magazine probes the untold story of the fierce political infighting inside the FBI's Waco command center and in the corridors of power at the Justice Department in Washington.
Source: PBS | |
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| 289 :14x02 - The Search for Satan (Oct/24/1995) | FRONTLINE untangles the mysterious web of satanic ritual abuse, psychiatric treatment, and insurance claims that escalated into millions of dollars. Were these professed victims of secret satanic cults really helped by the psychiatric care they received?
Source: PBS | |
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| 290 :14x03 - High Stakes in Cyberspace (Oct/31/1995) | FRONTLINE boldly goes where no one has gone before--tracking the new land rush to stake claims in cyberspace and asking hard questions about the optimistic predictions for a cyber-revolution. Correspondent Robert Krulwich reports on the effects these changes will have on the individual and how they will alter society.
Source: PBS | |
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| 291 :14x04 - Who's Afraid of Rupert Murdoch? (Nov/07/1995) | In the last forty years, Rupert Murdoch has gone from publisher of a marginal newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, to chairman of one of the world's largest and wealthiest media empires. His business acumen combined with a gambling spirit has made him an enormously successful player in the communications industry. FRONTLINE correspondent Ken Auletta probes Murdoch's drive to establish the first global telecommunications network and examines how Murdoch's success has been dogged by controversy over journalistic standards and the use of political influence.
Source: PBS | | Guest Stars: Reuven Frank as Himself | |
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| 292 :14x05 - Natasha and the Wolf (Nov/14/1994) | FRONTLINE takes a riveting and intimate look at a notorious murder case--the story of Maduev, a cunning Russian gangster and killer known as 'The Wolf.' Maduev charmed and seduced all who crossed his path, including his state prosecutor, Natasha Voronstova, who smuggled him a gun to make his escape from prison. With exclusive access to the central characters, the trial, and to secret KGB tapes, this film reveals the heart of a killer's chilling story that has mesmerized Russia.
Source: PBS | |
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| 293 :14x06 - Living on the Edge (Dec/12/1995) | | Bill Moyers tells the story of several hardworking Milwaukee families struggling with low-paying jobs after previous employers downsized their operations. Filmed over a period of five years, these families were first featured in Moyers's 1992 documentary 'Minimum Wages: The New Economy.' FRONTLINE chronicles the families' emotional and financial strains, their search for better jobs and job retraining, and looks at Milwaukee's efforts to adapt to an ever-shrinking industrial sector. | |
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| 294 :14x07 - The Gulf War (Jan/09/1996) | Marking the fifth anniversary of the war with Iraq, FRONTLINE investigates what really happened during the invasion of Kuwait, the months of diplomatic maneuvering, the air war and ground assault, and the post-war rebellion inside Iraq. The two-hour episodes are built around dozens of interviews with key political and military leaders in the U.S., its allies, and Iraq, as well as soldiers on both sides of the front line. Interviews include General Norman Schwarzkopf, General Colin Powell, former Secretary of State James Baker, former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Jordan's King Hussein, and Israeli Premier Yitzahk Shamir.
Source: PBS | |
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| 295 :14x08 - The Long March of Newt Gingrich (Jan/16/1996) | One year into the Republican revolution, FRONTLINE presents an investigative biography of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. FRONTLINE correspondent Peter J. Boyer, the New Yorker writer, examines the childhood roots of Gingrich's vaulting ambition, the evolution of his philosophy and political methods, his assault on the leadership of both parties in Congress, and how he developed and implemented his battle plans for a GOP takeover of Congress.
Source: PBS | |
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| 296 :14x09 - So You Want to Buy a President? (Jan/30/1996) | FRONTLINE investigates the expected $500 million flowing into the 1996 presidential campaign. Correspondent Robert Krulwich scrutinizes the generosity of prominent campaign donors whose interests range from bananas to computer chips and reveals what they get for their money.
Source: PBS | |
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| 297 :14x10 - Murder on 'Abortion Row' (Feb/06/1996) | Airing as his trial begins, FRONTLINE follows the intersecting lives of twenty-two-year-old antiabortionist, John Salvi III, charged with murder in the armed attacks on two Massachusetts health clinics, and his victims, Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols. Through in-depth, personal interviews with family members and friends, clinic employees, police, Pro-Life and Pro-Choice protesters, witnesses, and religious leader Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, the film draws a portrait of what led to Salvi's brutal acts of violence. From the producers of 'Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo,' this two-hour program crosses the emotionally charged terrain of the abortion battle.
Source: PBS | |
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| 298 :14x11 - Breast Implants on Trial (Feb/27/1996) | More than 400,000 women are part of a proposed global settlement against U.S. breast-implant manufacturers in the largest lawsuit in history. Many claim they have contracted a wide range of silicone-related diseases, but recent medical studies conducted by the nation's premier researchers have failed to find any evidence that silicone breast implants are dangerous. As Congress actively examines the powers of the FDA and the possibilities of tort reform, FRONTLINE looks at the enormous stakes involved in the clash between biomedical science and the nation's most powerful litigators.
Source: PBS | |
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| 299 :14x12 - Smoke in the Eye (Apr/02/1996) | FRONTLINE investigates the war between network news and the tobacco industry in the wake of the $10 billion libel suit against ABC and the controversial decision by CBS not to allow 60 MINUTES to air an explosive interview with a tobacco company whistle-blower. As media companies increasingly come under the control of large corporations, will their newsrooms continue to aggressively report on corporate America?
Source: PBS | |
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| 300 :14x13 - Angel on Death Row (Apr/09/1996) | FRONTLINE takes on the death penalty debate with a personal profile of the woman behind the highly acclaimed motion picture Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. With her 1993 book adapted for Hollywood starring Susan Sarandon, the nun from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, became the nation's leading voice against the death penalty. FRONTLINE follows Prejean's crusade against the death penalty while serving as spiritual advisor to five death row inmates. The program centers on the grisly 1980 Louisiana murder of Faith Hathaway, a crime for which Robert Lee Willie was executed four years later. The film features the first, exclusive interview with Debbie Morris, a young woman who was kidnapped and brutally raped by Willie just three days before he raped and killed Hathaway. But Prejean's opposition to the death penalty has prompted criticism from death penalty advocates, including Hathaway's mother and step-father who believe the nun's compassion for condemned criminals, rather than their victims, is misguided.
Source: PBS | |
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| 301 :14x14 - Shtetl (Apr/17/1996) | To commemorate National Holocaust Remembrance Week, FRONTLINE travels back in time to a family shtetl, a small village in Bransk, Poland, with producer Marian Marzynski. As a child, Marzynski escaped the Warsaw ghetto and was raised by Christians. The remarkable three-hour film tells the homecoming story of two elderly Polish-American Jews who return to their families' shtetl ,Bransk, where 2,500 Jews lived before most were sent to Treblinka's gas chambers. These two Americans are aided in their journey by a Polish Gentile who has restored Bransk's Jewish cemetery and researched the lives of the Jews who once lived there. The film captures these pilgrims as they face old neighbors, some who were betrayers, others who were saviors to the Jews of Bransk.
Source: PBS | |
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| 302 :14x15 - The Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (Apr/30/1996) | Through five decades, Jesse Jackson has been trying to realize the promise of his own potential he first embraced as a boy in segregated Greenville, South Carolina. His life has been a headlong rush toward that end, fueled by a mix of personal aggrievement, ambition, his own vision of what America should be, and his quixotic but enduring belief that he might be able to change the country and the world. Drawn from journalist Marshall Frady's biography, Pilgrimage, the program is not only a rare in-depth look at the man, but also offers a portrait of race and politics in post-war America.
Source: PBS | |
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| 303 :14x16 - The Kevorkian Verdict (May/14/1996) | As Dr. Jack Kevorkian faces his third criminal trial for assisting in the suicide of his desperate patients, FRONTLINE examines the improbable saga of 'Dr. Death' and assesses how quickly the Michigan pathologist seized center stage in the intricate and emotional debate over physician-assisted suicide and what role he played in changing how America thinks about the end of life.
Source: PBS | |
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| 304 :14x17 - Does America Still Work? (May/21/1996) | At the height of the Rust Belt primaries, FRONTLINE goes to Wisconsin where presidential candidates tap the deep-seated anxiety and insecurity that fuels tensions between American businesses and their employees. Correspondent Jeff Madrick looks behind the heated political rhetoric to see how companies, workers, and civic leaders are wrestling with global competition and the end of an era of industrial affluence. In a volatile economic climate, what do corporations owe their employees and their communities?
Source: PBS | |
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| 305 :14x18 - The Gate of Heavenly Peace (Jun/04/1996) | In the spring of 1989, students and workers occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square and the world watched as China struggled with this wrenching upheaval in the name of democracy. 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace' documents the history of China's Protest Movement, providing context to the history and political attitudes which shaped the development of the movement, and reveals how moderates among student protesters and within the government were silenced by extremist factions. In its first television broadcast, the film reflects five years of meticulous research and interviews to construct the most complete and accurate account to date of the complex political process that eventually led to the Beijing Massacre on June 4.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 15 |
| 306 :15x01 - The Choice '96 (Oct/08/1996) | FRONTLINE opens its fifteenth season on PBS with a dual biography of the 1996 presidential candidates, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Interweaving their public careers and private lives, the two-hour report offers an illuminating portrait of each candidate's record and, most importantly, his character, to help voters understand what kind of president each might be.
Source: PBS | |
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| 307 :15x02 - The Navy Blues (Oct/15/1996) | FRONTLINE examines the Navy after Tailhook, an investigation of seismic shock caused by the sex scandal involving naval aviators five years ago and its continuing impact on the Navy. The film explores the controversy over the post-Tailhook mandate to introduce women into combat roles and positions of greater authority. The report also looks at how these pressures weighed on Admiral Mike Boorda, the Navy's chief of naval operations, who committed suicide the following spring.
Source: PBS | |
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| 308 :15x03 - Why America Hates the Press (Oct/22/1996) | FRONTLINE offers a tough, insider's examination of the culture and tactics of the national press corps. With public respect for the press at an all-time low-----on par with public regard for politicians----journalists have begun to break ranks to probe what has gone wrong. FRONTLINE follows the nation's top political journalists along the 1996 presidential campaign trail and behind the scenes of the weekly talk shows where reporters are transformed into celebrity pundits. Through the eyes of a few key journalists, this report explores the dynamics of the news business and its troubling impact on American politics.
Source: PBS | |
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| 309 :15x04 - Loose Nukes (Nov/19/1996) | FRONTLINE investigates the new nuclear nightmare of the post-Cold War era. While the fear of nuclear annihilation has faded, the security of 1,400 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium----enough nuclear material to make roughly 100,000 weapons----is vulnerable to theft in the former Soviet Union. Top American officials call its potential diversion to rogue states or terrorist groups a major threat to U.S. national security. FRONTLINE examines the most serious case of nuclear smuggling in Russia to date and explores the perilous state of nuclear security in a country already rife with chaos and corruption.
Source: PBS | |
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| 310 :15x05 - Secret Daughter (Nov/26/1996) | FRONTLINE producer June Cross tells the intricate story of her own family through the prism of the changing face of race relations in America. Cross, born to a white mother and an African-American father in the early 1950s, was given away by her mother to live with a black family in Atlantic City when she was four.She only saw her mother and stepfather, TV star Larry Storch, on visits to Hollywood during school vacations. But Cross's mother was afraid her husband's career would be destroyed if the truth about Cross was discovered, so she kept her a secret. FRONTLINE takes viewers on an epic journey across the racial divide, into the hidden world of Hollywood and deep into the complicated relationship between a daughter and the mother who gave her away.
Source: PBS | | Guest Stars: Larry Storch as Himself | |
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| 311 :15x06 - Betting on the Market (Jan/14/1997) | For fourteen years, Wall Street has produced record gains and has been embraced by America as the place where hopes and dreams can be realized -- but does America understand the nature of the risk? Since the beginning of the 1980s, close to half the nation has invested in the stock market directly or through mutual funds, which now hold three trillion dollars of the American publics money. Frontline traces the seduction of an entire generation of Americans into the stock market and looks at its implications for the nation. The program follows Garrett Van Wagoner, one of the nation's hottest mutual fund managers, and tells the story of Peter Lynch, celebrated manager of Fidelity's Magellan Fund.
Source: PBS | |
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| 312 :15x07 - Six O'Clock News (Jan/21/1997) | FRONTLINE showcases the latest work of filmmaker Ross McElwee, producer of the widely acclaimed 'Sherman's March' and 'Time Indefinite.' In Six O'clock News,' McElwee and his camera investigate the aftermath of the life-shattering events reported every day on the evening news. Moving beyond the graphic television images of violence and natural disasters, McElwee seeks out the individuals whose lives have been inexplicably altered by hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, forest fires, and murder. The result is a thought-provoking journey across the tenuous line between order and chaos and an inquiry into how these events impact the victims' faith in God. In an introspective and sometimes humorous broadcast, McElwee explores the 'nagging metaphysical questions' behind the 'Six O'clock News.'
Source: PBS | |
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| 313 :15x08 - What Jennifer Saw (Feb/25/1997) | Identified by the victim, Ronald Cotton spent eleven years in prison for rape. But in 1995, DNA evidence proved Cotton could not have been the attacker. With unprecedented access to the central figures in the investigation, confidential police reports and legal files, FRONTLINE delves into the Cotton case, examining the reliability of eyewitness identification and the implications of DNA evidence for the American justice system. In an exclusive interview, Jennifer Thompson tells the story of her brutal rape and how, twelve years later, she must confront the consequences of her mistaken identification.
Source: PBS | |
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| 314 :15x09 - Valentina's Nightmare (Apr/01/1997) | Four days after the slaughter of her village, Valentina, a thirteen-year-old Tutsi girl, lay hidden among the corpses of her family and neighbors, her machete wounds festering with infection. Miraculously, she would survive to tell her story. FRONTLINE looks back at the origins and the horrors of the 1994 massacre of 800,000 Tutsis by the Hutu majority in Rwanda and examines the country's struggle for justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of the bloody genocide.
Source: PBS | |
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| 315 :15x10 - Murder, Money, and Mexico (Apr/08/1997) | For six years, Carlos and Raul Salinas ruled Mexico -- Carlos as president, his brother Raul as his political fixer. The brothers convinced Washington, Wall Street, and the Mexican people a new age of political freedom and the prosperity had dawned for Mexico. But in 1994, within days of Salinas leaving office, the Mexican economy collapsed, throwing the world financial system into crisis and revealing a story of scandal, corruption, and murder which left Carlos in exile and Raul in prison. FRONTLINE follows this modern fable of two brothers, exploring the charges of corruption in the Salinas government and examining the fallout of Mexico's economic demise for America and the world.
Source: PBS | |
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| 316 :15x11 - The Fixers (Apr/15/1997) | As campaign finance scandals dominate the headlines, FRONTLINE correspondent Peter Boyer follows the story of how easily small-time political operators Nora and Gene Lum have used a little money and a lot of moxie to get close to the president. Boyer journeys to Hawaii in search of this husband and wife team of local political fixers, who in two years parlayed a handful of political contributions into millions of dollars of personal wealth and fourteen visits to the White House.
Source: PBS | |
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| 317 :15x12 - Nuclear Reaction (Apr/22/1997) | Since 1978, no new nuclear power stations have been commissioned in the United States. Americans, once enthusiastic about nuclear power, now consider it one of the most serious risks to human life and health. But the American people's aversion to nuclear power has perplexed many nuclear scientists who believe it poses only trivial risks to the public. FRONTLINE correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes looks at what has derailed nuclear power in the United States and at the differing national attitudes toward nuclear power.
Source: PBS | |
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| 318 :15x13 - Little Criminals (May/13/1997) | It was an unthinkable crime. In California, a six-year-old boy entered the home of a neighbor to steal a tricycle and savagely beat Ignacio Bermudez, Jr., a thirty-day-old infant. The boy was arrested and became the youngest person in U.S. history ever charged with attempted murder. Today, doctors fear Ignacio may never walk, see, or care for himself. In a film of surprising candor and emotional depth, FRONTLINE explores the conscience of a community and the haunting problem of violent crimes committed by ever-younger children.
Source: PBS | |
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| 319 :15x14 - The Opium Kings (May/20/1997) | In a journalistic odyssey of more than three decades, filmmaker Adrian Cowell ventures into a remote corner of Burma known as Shan State, where much of the world's heroin originates. FRONTLINE chronicles the rise and fall of Khun Sa, a Shan nationalist leader and warlord who has long been a chief target of U.S. drug enforcement. In interviews with drug-war figures ranging from opium farmers to U.S. officials, Cowell unravels the complex political, economic, and diplomatic web that surrounds the heroin business.
Source: PBS | |
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| 320 :15x15 - Innocence Lost: the Plea (May/27/1997) | FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel revisits the defendants in the Little Rascals Day Care sexual abuse case and reports on how each of them, while accused of the same crimes, have met with dramatically different fates. In 1991, FRONTLINE broadcast Bikel's Emmy Award-winning profile of Edenton, North Carolina, a town torn by reports of sexual abuse emerging from its best day-care center. More than thirty people were accused, and seven were eventually indicted on hundreds of abuse charges. In 1993, 'Innocence Lost: The Verdict,' winner of a DuPont Columbia Silver Baton and the Grand Prize at the Banff Television Festival, detailed stunning courtroom events and raised serious questions about the fairness of the trials which resulted in twelve life sentences for Little Rascals owner Bob Kelly and one life sentence for day-care worker Dawn Wilson. 'Innocence Lost: The Plea' reveals what has become of those caught up in this controversial case.
Source: PBS | |
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| 321 :15x16 - Hot Guns (Jun/03/1997) | Two years ago, Evelyn Garcia was shot to death. Police arrested her husband -- a twice convicted felon -- but when they tried to trace the murder weapon, the manufacturer said the gun had never been made. How could a gun that kills not exist? FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting take viewers inside the illegal handgun market and follow federal agents as they investigate one of their biggest cases ever into stolen guns and the illicit gun market.
Source: PBS | |
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| 322 :15x17 - Easy Money (Jun/10/1997) | Casino gambling -- once the domain of mobsters and hustlers -- has emerged as one of the most popular forms of adult entertainment. Since 1992, gaming revenues have doubled along with the number of states that have made it legal. Today, the gaming industry is no longer an outlaw business, but it is a national economic force with substantial political muscle. FRONTLINE chronicles how America's gaming industry has gone legit and examines the evolution of its political influence. The film also explores the astonishing growth of Indian gaming and the surprising role governments have played in promoting and legitimizing gambling.
Source: PBS | |
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| 323 :15x18 - Nazi Gold (Jun/17/1997) | It may be the final tragedy of the Holocaust. For years, many survivors and their families have tried in vain to collect assets deposited in Swiss banks before the war. Most were turned away empty-handed. Today, new information about Switzerland's financial relationship to the Nazi war effort has blemished its long-held reputation of neutrality. FRONTLINE examines the Swiss role in supporting Nazi Germany and explores the internal political events in Switzerland that allowed their border police to turn fleeing Jews away, into the hands of the Gestapo. The film also examines the Swiss response as they have been forced to address Holocaust survivors seeking reparations.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 16 |
| 324 :16x01 - Once Upon a Time in Arkansas (Oct/07/1997) | As charges and countercharges surrounding Arkansas business deals plague the White House, and are the focus of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, FRONTLINE takes a close look at the personal finances of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Correspondent Peter Boyer investigates the Clintons' past in Arkansas and reveals fresh evidence that casts new light on the troubles reaching into the private quarters of the White House.
Source: PBS | |
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| 325 :16x02 - The Lost American (Oct/14/1997) | FRONTLINE explores the extraordinary life and mysterious disappearance of Fred Cuny, a passionate humanitarian and global trouble-shooter who traveled from Biafra to Bosnia, bringing hope to countless lives in need. A hero to some, a renegade to others, Cuny's strength lay in his ability to look beyond the immediate crisis -- drought, civil discord, earthquakes -- in order to restore a way of life. Like a character lifted from a John le Carre novel, Cuny was a larger-than-life, take-charge Texan with a hunger for lost causes. But after twenty-five years in the field, Cuny was tired of dealing with disasters after they happened instead of the underlying causes. He wanted to be a deal broker, to take a seat at the table where major policy is made. Did that ambition kill him? The investigation traces Cuny's last days in Chechnya, unravels the story of his disappearance, and explores the lessons of his life in an examination of America's responsibilities for the humanitarian disasters that plague our world.
Source: PBS | |
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| 326 :16x03 - Behind the Mask: the IRA and Sinn Fein (Oct/21/1997) | FRONTLINE examines the secret history of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its equally formidable political arm, Sinn Fein, which have waged a bloody campaign in Northern Ireland for over a quarter of a century. The film traces the history of the IRA and Sinn Fein, the most sophisticated guerrilla movement in the world, examining their tactics, weapons, and operational structures and assesses the chances of a final resolution to one of the century's oldest and bloodiest conflicts.
Source: PBS | |
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| 327 :16x04 - Dreams of Tibet (Oct/28/1997) | | Journalist and China-watcher Orville Schell, who traveled secretly to Tibet for FRONTLINE in 1994, returns to a story that won't go away. Broadcast on the eve of Chinese premier Jiang Zemin's 1997 trip to Washington and at the same time that two new Hollywood films focus on Tibet, DREAMS OF TIBET looks at the new attention that is being paid to a country that has long been a political 'cause celebre.' Schell explores the clash of values between American opinion of China's human rights record -- shaped by powerful forces in Hollywood -- and an uncomprehending and intransigent Chinese leadership. | |
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| 328 :16x05 - A Whale of a Business (Nov/11/1997) | | America's marine theme parks are big business, attracting twenty million visitors each year. FRONTLINE examines the money, power, and politics of the captive marine mammal industry through the story of Keiko, the killer whale star of Hollywood's, FREE WILLY. The film traces Keiko's fourteen years in captivity, examines the capture, transport, and treatment of marine mammals, and explores human understanding of, and relationship with, these large creatures. | |
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| 329 :16x06 - The Princess and the Press (Nov/18/1997) | The day Princess Diana died in Paris, her brother, Earl Spencer, blamed the media for her death. FRONTLINE examines how the Royal Family's relationship with the British press, once governed by unwritten rules of privacy, evolved into the media circus that surrounded Princess Diana in her final years.
Source: PBS | |
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| 330 :16x07 - Last Battle of the Gulf War (Jan/20/1998) | | In the years following the return home of the last U.S. troops who participated in ground war in the Persian Gulf, attention has turned from the historic victory to a strange new sickness the press has dubbed Gulf War Syndrome. But while many veterans believe something in the Gulf made them ill, scientists argue Gulf War veterans are not dying or being hospitalized at a higher-than-average rate. FRONTLINE tells the story of how Gulf War Syndrome came into existence, examining the psychology of war, the politics of veterans affairs, and the roles of the media and the biomedical research community. | |
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| 331 :16x08 - My Retirement Dreams (Feb/03/1998) | 'I began my journey as a voyeur in the landscape of old age, but when it was over I was an insider,' says FRONTLINE producer Marian Marzynski. Marzynski, who calls himself somewhere between a boomer and a geezer,' takes viewers on a personal and poignant journey into America's way of growing old. As the baby boom generation begins to anticipate age, Marzynski settles into the life of Miami Beach's condo complexes, investigating the retirees' struggle to leave behind their old lives and to find new meaning and new joy in life's final chapter.
Source: PBS | |
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| 332 :16x09 - The Two Nations of Black America (Feb/10/1998) | Today, America has the largest black middle class in its history, yet half of all black children are born into poverty. Have the walls of segregation tumbled down, only to be replaced by walls of class? FRONTLINE correspondent and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., grapples with the issues facing the 'two nations of black America' as he takes a personal journey that measures the distance between the beneficiaries of affirmative action and those they left behind.
Source: PBS | |
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| 333 :16x10 - From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (Apr/06/1998) | FRONTLINE presents the epic story of the rise of Christianity. Drawing upon new and sometimes controversial historical evidence, the series transports the viewer back two thousand years to the time and place where Jesus of Nazareth once lived and preached and challenges familiar assumptions and conventional notions about the origins of Christianity. Program 1 traces the life of Jesus of Nazareth, exploring the message that helped his ministry grow and the events that led to his crucifixion around 30 c.e. The film then turns to the period that followed Jesus' death, examining the rise of Christianity and concluding with the First Revolt -- the bloody and violent siege of Jerusalem and the beginning of a rift between Christianity and Judaism. The broadcast explores new evidence suggesting that Jesus' followers because of their diversity and the differences in their cultures and languages, looked at and interpreted Jesus and his teachings in many different ways.
In program 2, FRONTLINE examines the period after the First Revolt, tracing the development and impact of the Gospels and looking at the increasingly hostile relationship between the Christians and the Jews. The film looks at another bloody Jewish war against Rome, the second Revolt, assessing its impact on the Christianity movement. The broadcast documents the extraordinary events of the second and third centuries in which Christianity grew from a small Jewish sect to an official religion of the Roman Empire.
Source: PBS | |
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| 334 :16x11 - The High Price of Health (Apr/14/1998) | Today, providing health care is a profit-driven enterprise which is subject to the forces of the marketplace and operated by administrators with their eyes on the bottom line. But has too much of the decision-making power been taken away from the doctors, nurses, and patients? FRONTLINE looks at how in the wake of a failed attempt by the Clinton administration to provide universal health care for every American, the industry has undergone a dramatic transformation. The film examines the changing health-care industry through an in-depth look at how California and Massachusetts hospitals are coping with this health-care revolution.
Source: PBS | |
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| 335 :16x12 - Busted: America's War on Marijuana (Apr/28/1998) | The United States government spends nearly $2.5 billion each year to process arrests related to marijuana production and sales, which often carry severe penalties. While the war on marijuana may be going strong do the results prove it a boom or a bust? FRONTLINE expolores the impact of current policy on stemming the tide of marijuana use and looks at how marijuana law enforcement is affecting American life.
Source: PBS | |
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| 336 :16x13 - Inside the Tobacco Deal (May/12/1998) | FRONTLINE goes inside the tobacco deal,telling the intriguing tale of how a group of small-town lawyers from the nation's poorest state brought Big Tobacco to the bargaining table. FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman follows the trail of confidential Brown & Williamson documents that were leaked, examines the role of former presidential advisor Dick Morris in shaping Clinton's stance on tobacco,and reveals new information about the government's criminal case against the tobacco industry.
Source: PBS | |
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| 337 :16x14 - Secrets of an Independent Counsel (May/19/1998) | In a rare in-depth television interview given by a sitting independent counsel, Donald Smaltz takes FRONTLINE inside his investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. FRONTLINE correspondent Peter Boyer steps behind the current controversy about Kenneth Starr to find out what these independent counsels really want, how far they'll go to get it, and why they cost so much money.
Source: PBS | |
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| 338 :16x15 - The World's Most Wanted Man (May/26/1998) | FRONTLINE examines the dramatic hunt for Radovan Karadzic, the notorious Bosnian Serb leader indicted for atrocities by the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, but still at large in the former Yugoslavia. The film investigates Karadzic's rise to power, the war crimes committed during his rule, and why NATO and U.S. forces have failed to arrest him.
Source: PBS | |
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| 339 :16x16 - Fooling With Nature (Jun/02/1998) | FRONTLINE examines new evidence in the controversy over the danger of man-made chemicals to human health and the environment, thirty-five years after Rachel Carson first raised concerns of an impending ecological crisis. Currently, millions in research and public relations dollars are being spent in the battle, and President Clinton is calling this one of his top environmental priorities. The film takes viewers inside the world of scientists, politicians, activists, and business officials embroiled in this high-stakes debate that threatens the multi-billion dollar chemical industry.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 17 |
| 340 :17x01 - The Farmer's Wife, Part 1 (Sep/21/1998) | Filmmaker David Sutherland takes us deep inside the passionate, yet troubled, marriage of Juanita and Darrel Buschkoetter, a young farm couple in rural Nebraska facing the loss of everything they hold dear. Part 1 of "The Farmer's Wife" recounts the moving story of Juanita and Darrel's romantic love affair and their emotional struggles, which have pushed their marriage to the brink. Darrel and Juanita tell their own story, in their own words, without the intrusion of a narrator.
Source: PBS | |
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| 341 :17x02 - The Farmer's Wife, Part 2 (Sep/22/1998) | In Part 2 of "The Farmer's Wife," the camera focuses on the rhythms of everyday life on the Buschkoetters' farm. We follow Juanita, Darrel, and their three girls through days reminiscent of a forgotten, simpler time in America. In September, an early frost destroys thirty percent of their crop. Darrel must go to work at a nearby farm for seven dollars an hour and does his own farming at night. Juanita cleans houses while trying to get a college degree so Darrel can stay home and farm, but Darrel worries that if she goes off the farm she'll find something she likes better. By Christmas, they are broke and unsure of their future.
Source: PBS | |
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| 342 :17x03 - The Farmer's Wife, Part 3 (Sep/23/1998) | In the concluding episode, Darrel finally harvests the bumper crop he had dreamt about his whole life. But Darrel has to go to work for another farmer to make enough money to feed his family, and the stress and exhaustion cause him to explode. In December, Juanita takes the girls and leaves for a week--it has a deep and profound effect on Darrel. Two months later, the marriage that had seemed almost doomed is miraculously transformed. Through counseling, Darrel learns to deal with his anger and undergoes extraordinary personal growth. Now he is the at-home parent, farming and caring for his three daughters. Juanita, who has earned a college degree, works at a respected crop insurance company in town, helping other farmers. The film ends with hope--through faith and hard work, the Buschkoetters save their farm and rediscover the love that binds them.
Source: PBS | |
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| 343 :17x04 - Ambush in Mogadishu (Sep/29/1998) | With U.S. special forces now participating in a ground war in Afghanistan, FRONTLINE updates this 1998 investigation of a United Nations peacekeeping mission gone awry. On October 3, 1993, elite units of U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force were pinned down on the streets of Mogadishu by forces of the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. Seventeen hours later, eighteen American soldiers were dead and seventy-five lay wounded. The Rangers and Delta Force are now fighting in Afghanistan. FRONTLINE investigates new charges that Osama bin Laden trained and supported the Somali fighters responsible for the attack and explores the lessons learned by the U.S. military.
Source: PBS | |
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| 344 :17x05 - Washington's Other Scandal (Oct/06/1998) | The 1996 presidential campaign was the most expensive in history and the most corrupt since Richard Nixon's 1974 re-election. Janet Reno has now renewed deliberations over the appointment of an independent prosecutor to examine the campaigns financial abuses, and the McCain/Feingold reform legislation is being debated in the Senate. In a special report with Bill Moyers, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to explore how both Democrats and Republicans conspired to evade the laws which limit the amount of money allowed to flow into election campaigns.
Source: PBS | |
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| 345 :17x06 - Plague War (Oct/13/1998) | Today, there are at least ten nations in the world with the ability to produce biological weapons. Cheap and now technologically possible to produce and refine into weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare has the potential to do as much damage to civilian populations as nuclear weapons. FRONTLINE presents new evidence culled from scientists, intelligence agencies, and policymakers to examine the threat biological warfare poses to world security and the responses the U.S. is frantically developing.
Source: PBS | |
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| 346 :17x07 - The Child Terror (Oct/27/1998) | In the midst of a sudden willingness to believe that children were being ritually abused in day-care centers during the 1980s, parents, police, prosecutors, and the press turned Miami, Florida, into ground zero for a new way of convicting alleged child molesters.
Led by Florida's then-prosecuting attorney, Janet Reno, alleged abusers were relentlessly pursued and convicted with a zeal unmatched in the nation. Today, as some of Renois celebrated cases seem to be unraveling, FRONTLINE correspondent Peter J. Boyer examines the convictions that were a stunning triumph for the crusading prosecuting attorney and created an emerging political model that would be emulated by prosecutors across the country.
Source: PBS | |
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| 347 :17x08 - Fat (Nov/03/1998) | Despite the appeals of the multi-billion dollar diet and exercise industries, the United States is getting fatter. The media bombards us with images of thin models exuding the message that to be thin is to be beautiful. But for many of us, being thin is a difficult, if not impossible, achievement. FRONTLINE examines how the diet industry is contributing to our frustration over unwanted pounds and asks if one can be healthy, fit, beautiful and fat.
Source: PBS | |
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| 348 :17x09 - Snitch (Jan/12/1999) | In the last five years, nearly a third of defendants in federal drug trafficking cases have had their sentences reduced because they informed on other people they snitched. With the prospect of mandatory life sentences facing many charged with drug crimes, the only option to escape their fate is to inform on someone else, resulting in unsettling cases in which minor offenders are serving harsh prison sentences. FRONTLINE takes a critical look at the federal governments disturbing use of informants in drug prosecutions and the effect it has had on individuals rights and the U.S. judicial system.
Source: PBS | |
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| 349 :17x10 - The Triumph of Evil (Jan/26/1999) | It is one of the most shameful stories of the post-Cold War world. One million Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu majority in Rwanda while the West turned a blind eye. As the U.N is Genocide Convention reated to make sure genocide would never happen again marks its fiftieth anniversary, FRONTLINE examines the role of the U.S. and the U.N. as they ignored the warnings and evidence of impending massacre in Rwanda.
Source: PBS | |
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| 350 :17x11 - The Execution (Feb/09/1999) | FRONTLINE looks into the mind and soul of a death row killer and the effect of his execution on all who had a stake in it. Clifford Boggess was a pianist and artist. He was also a cold-blooded murderer. Boggess spent almost ten years on Texas' death row praying and awaiting the execution chamber. And while he prayed, the tormented families of his two victims brutally slain in convenience store robberies impatiently awaited the lethal injection that took his life in June 1998.
Source: PBS | |
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| 351 :17x12 - Russian Roulette (Feb/23/1999) | The Cold War is ended, but the threat of a nuclear nightmare is far from over. In 1995 Russian President Yeltsin came within two minutes of launching a nuclear attack because of faulty signals from Russia's crumbling early warning system. FRONTLINE's investigation into the safety and security of the Russian nuclear arsenal presents interviews with U.S. and Russian military commanders about the menacing potential for catastrophe. It also includes top Russian military discussing missing Russian nuclear suitcase bombs and U.S Customs agents describing the first credible case of a scenario to smuggle tactical nuclear weapons in the U.S.
Source: PBS | |
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| 352 :17x13 - Hunting Bin Laden (Apr/13/1999) | Osama bin Laden is charged with masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, believed to have had a role in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, and now is a prime suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center and the bombing of the Pentagon. This report features reporting by a Pulitzer-Prize nominated team of New York Times reporters and FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman.
Tracing the trail of evidence linking bin Laden to terrorist attacks, this updated report includes interviews with Times reporters Judith Miller and James Risen and former CIA official Larry Johnson. They discuss the terrorist attacks which are linked, or are likely linked, to bin Laden's complex network of terrorists, outline the elements of his international organization and details of its alliances and tactics, and address the challenges confronting U.S. intelligence in trying to crack it.
Source: PBS | |
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| 353 :17x14 - Spying on Saddam (Apr/27/1999) | In the wake of Desert Fox, the U.S. assault on Iraq last December,UNSCOM--the special UN commission created to find and destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction--has disintegrated amid charges it was really a spy agency. Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine and UNSCOM inspector, claims U.S. Intelligence destroyed UNSCOM's credibility when American spies penetrated and compromised the UN arms inspection teams. FRONTLINE investigates Ritter's charges and asks, who really killed UNSCOM?
Source: PBS | |
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| 354 :17x15 - Give War a Chance (May/11/1999) | FRONTLINE explores the bitter divide between military and civilian attitudes about where, when,and why America employs military force. In examining the gulf between what American diplomats want and what the military is prepared to deliver, correspondent Peter J. Boyer follows the inevitable collision from Vietnam to the Balkans between diplomat Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Leighton Smith. Their careers, and ultimate clash, represent the most vivid example of this critical foreign policy dilemma
Special reports on FRONTLINE's web site include one examining the evolution of the doctrine on the use of military force and, a chronology of significant U.S. military interventions over the past 30 years. Also published on the site is an analysis of the new kind of diplomacy--'nation-building' backed by military might. Several top experts debate the pros and cons. The site also offers brief biographies of Holbrooke and Smith, parallel chronologies of their lives and careers, and, a selection of key readings on the issues examined in the FRONTLINE broadcast.
Source: PBS | |
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| 355 :17x16 - The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela (May/25/1999) | FRONTLINE profiles the most widely known and revered political leader in the world--Nelson Mandela. Credited with the reversal of apartheid in a South Africa controlled by two generations of stern Afrikaner leaders who enforced the ideology of racial separation, Mandela stands as an all-embracing giant who brought about his nation's extraordinary peaceful transformation to democracy.
In the most in-depth film biography of Mandela ever undertaken, the broadcast tells the story of his life through interviews with intimates--from his most trusted associates to his jailers on Robben Island, the prison where he was held for twenty-seven years. The two-hour film offers an insider's account of his extraordinary will to lead and of the great risk and personal sacrifice he endured to achieve democracy and equality for the people of his nation.
Source: PBS | |
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| 356 :17x17 - Making Babies (Jun/01/1999) | FRONTLINE examines the revolution in reproduction and the entrepreneurial atmosphere that imbues the practice of infertility medicine today. On the cusp of a new millennium, we can now visit the Internet and shop for sperm and egg donors. Before long, cloning could do away with the need for sperm altogether. The film looks at how these new technologies hold great promise, but usher in pressing questions regarding the very meaning of family.
Source: PBS | |
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| 357 :17x18 - Pop (Jun/22/1999) | In his first film, acclaimed photographer Joel Meyerowitz creates a poignant and indelible portrait of his father, an unpredictable, courageous, and remarkably funny man who somehow manages to make Alzheimer's disease look like another of his many adventures. As the curtain of this disease falls over Hy Meyerowitz, Joel and his son take him on a two-week car trip from Florida back to the New York neighborhood where he raised his family. Relaxed and free enough to say anything that comes to mind, Hy imparts his wisdom to all he meets along the way, wisdom gained from a long life observing human foibles. In the week of Father's Day, the film is a moving tribute to a father from his son and reminds us that the present moment is one of life's real treasures.
Source: PBS | |
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| 358 :17x19 - The Crash (Jun/29/1999) | FRONTLINE explores the global crisis that began as a real estate bust in Thailand and roared through the world's economy from Bangkok to Jakarta to Moscow to Wall Street. On August 31, 1998, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 512 points, wiping out stock market gains for the entire year. In the United States, small investors watched more than half a trillion dollars of their savings disappear. Fear spread that the global economy was falling apart. The program gathers some of the world's leading financial analysts to unravel the reasons for the crash of 1998 and to predict whether and when it will happen again.
Source: PBS | |
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Season 18 |
| 359 :18x01 - John Paul II: the Millennial Pope (Sep/28/1999) | FRONTLINE presents a comprehensive biography on the world leader who has emerged as a man at war with the twentieth century itself. In the two decades John Paul II has commanded the world stage, re-invigorating the Catholic Church in much of the world, he has defined himself by his opposition to many of the dominant secular ideologies and passions of our time: communism, feminism, capitalism and consumerism.
The program draws on hundreds of interviews--from intimates of the Pope, to those whose lives have intersected with his. Their stories are evocative of major themes in the Pope's life: the shaping influence of his youth in Poland, his remarkable relationship with Jews, his part in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, his battle with liberation theology, his repudiation of the ordination of women, and his relentless exhortation to faith.
The film is a journey through the 20th century to the sources of Pope John Paul II's character and beliefs, and a journey into the passionate reaction to him. It's a journey that says as much about us as it does about him.
Source: PBS | |
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| 360 :18x02 - Secrets of the SAT (Oct/05/1999) | How fair are standardized tests? What do they measure? And what's their impact on racial diversity on America's college campuses? FRONTLINE examines the debate over fairness in college admissions, looking at the national obsession with test scores, the multi-million dollar test prep industry, and the legal challenges to race-sensitive admissions policies. A diverse set of students are followed through the stressful college admissions cycle as they dream of attending some of the country's most prestigious universities.
Source: PBS | |
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| 361 :18x03 - Mafia Power Play (Oct/12/1999) | FRONTLINE investigates how the tentacles of Russian organized crime have penetrated the National Hockey League. The report exposes how major Russian crime figures are extorting Russian-born players and using their hockey connections to establish a beachhead in the U.S. and Canada. Over the course of a ten-month investigation, FRONTLINE conducted dozens of interviews with sources in the Russian underworld, professional hockey representatives and law enforcement agencies in Russia, the U.S., and Canada.
Source: PBS | |
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| 362 :18x04 - The Lost Children of Rockdale County (Oct/19/1999) | Conyers, Georgia is a prosperous bedroom community just outside Atlanta. FRONTLINE examines the link between an outbreak of syphilis among a group of its teenagers and the well-off community in which they live. The film reveals a parent's worst nightmare--children as young as fourteen naming scores of sexual partners; others telling of binge drinking, drugs and sex parties. In a series of intertwining profiles, FRONTLINE uncovers the roots of the Conyers syphilis epidemic and reveals the turbulent psychology of America's suburban teenagers.
Source: PBS | |
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| 363 :18x05 - Apocalypse! (Nov/22/1999) | From Waco and Littleton to Y2K and global warming, as the millennium approaches, we are bombarded by visions of the apocalypse. From the team that created "From Jesus to Christ," this two-hour FRONTLINE special journeys back more than 2500 years to unravel the origins of the Book of Revelation and how its apocalyptic expectations have shaped our history and our world.
Source: PBS | |
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| 364 :18x06 - Justice for Sale (Nov/23/1999) | FRONTLINE and Bill Moyers investigate how campaign cash is corrupting America's courts. In the thirty-nine states where judges are elected, special interest money is pouring into judicial politics, threatening to compromise judicial independence. The film focuses on three states--Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania--and documents efforts by special interest groups to influence judges and their decisions.
Source: PBS | |
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| 365 :18x07 - The Case for Innocence (Jan/11/2000) | Fifteen years ago, DNA analysis was nonexistent. Today, more than seventy inmates accused of rape and murder have been freed because DNA tests proved their innocence in a way that evidence, courtroom testimony, and eyewitness accounts never could. Why then are prosecutors, courts, and even governors reluctant to use this scientific test? And when evidence has been tested and DNA does not match that of the accused, how can the law overlook the results? FRONTLINE investigates the reasons why inmates remain in prison despite DNA evidence that excludes them as the perpetrators.
Source: PBS | |
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| 366 :18x08 - The Killer at Thurston High (Jan/18/2000) | In May 1998, a year before the massacre at Columbine High, fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and father, and then opened fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two fellow students and wounding twenty-five others. In this first in-depth television examination of a school shooter, FRONTLINE reveals the intimate inside story of how the "shy and likable" Kip Kinkel from a solid middle-class family became the boy police call "a cold-hearted killer."
Source: p | |
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| 367 :18x09 - The Survival of Saddam (Jan/25/2000) | When the Gulf War ended, the United States government believed the Iraqis would quickly overthrow Saddam Hussein. But nine years later, he still rules Iraq. FRONTLINE investigates Saddam's ruthless rise to power and how he has maintained his grip despite pressure from economic sanctions, no-fly zones, UN weapons inspectors, and military attacks from the Iraqi opposition.
Source: PBS | |
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| 368 :18x10 - Assault on Gay America (Feb/15/2000) | On February 19, 1999, in Sylacauga, Alabama, 39-year-old computer programmer Billy Jack Gaither was murdered - the victim of a violent hate crime. One of the convicted killers testified he killed Gaither because he was "queer." Why have gays like Gaither and Matthew Shepard become the targets of such brutality? On February 15, nearly one year after the Gaither murder, FRONTLINE correspondent Forrest Sawyer explores the roots of homophobia in America-as a catalyst for hate crimes and as a phenomenon that permeates our society-and asks how these attitudes, beliefs, and fears contribute to the recent rise in violence against gays.
Source: PBS | |
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| 369 :18x11 - War in Europe (Feb/22/2000) | A two-part review of the 1999 campaign against Serbia explores why “we nearly stumbled badly,” says senior producer Michael Kirk. Part 1 covers the events leading to the bombing (particularly Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's “drive to make that happen,” says Kirk) and the first three days of the air war. Albright is interviewed, as is National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former senator Robert Dole and Hashim Thaci of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
A two-part review of the 1999 campaign against Serbia concludes by examining shortcomings of the air war and the political infighting that surrounded the initial combat (or, as senior producer Michael Kirk puts it: “The air war hasn't worked. Now what?”). Included: Gen. Michael Short (USAF), the commander of NATO air operations, describes disputes within NATO leadership. Also interviewed: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Gen. Wesley Clark (USA), the Supreme Allied Commander; and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Source: PBS | |
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| 370 :18x12 - Dr Solomon's Dilemma (Apr/04/2000) | Internist Martin Solomon and other physicians at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital are followed as they weigh cost vs. care, patient by patient. The reason: their physician-run health-care network lost $100-million in 1999, and the pressures for “operational discipline” (as the network's CEO puts it) are relentless. Many patients know what's going on, and that development, says correspondent Hedrick Smith, “is eroding the precious bond of trust between doctors and patients.”
Source: PBS | |
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| 371 :18x13 - What's Up With the Weather? (Apr/18/2000) | Since the late 1980s, rising temperatures and dramatic weather-from heat waves and hurricanes to melting glaciers-have fueled a global political and scientific debate about whether life on earth is imperiled by human-caused global warming. NOVA and FRONTLINE join forces to examine what climatologists really know about the greenhouse effect. What is the connection between rising levels of carbon dioxide and rising temperatures? And what will the real impact of global warming be? The program examines the enormous difficulty in reducing the levels of greenhouse gases in a highly technological world economy and explores the political struggle between environmentalists and industrialists, between rich and poor countries, to grapple with what promises to be the most perplexing issue of the twenty-first century.
Source: PBS | |
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| 372 :18x14 - Jefferson's Blood (May/02/2000) | | Correspondent Shelby Steele explores how Thomas Jefferson might have tried to reconcile his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. Also: how Hemings' descendants live with their legacy. Uneasily---with each other and society at large---a number of them say. As for Jefferson: “He was circled by the terms of America's racial primitivism,” Steele says. “And this man of the Enlightenment must have known himself as primitive.” | |
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| 373 :18x15 - Return of the Czar (May/09/2000) | | An examination of the precarious state Russia finds itself in as Vladimir Putin steps into its presidency. It is “a country in collapse,” says producer Sherry Jones, pointing to endemic corruption, increasing autocracy, widespread poverty and a host of social problems. Jones interviews Russians and looks at how the U.S. government reacted to Russia's fall. She also assesses Putin. “After Communism,” she says, “Russia has returned to czarism.” | |
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| 374 :18x16 - The Battle Over School Choice (May/23/2000) | | The state of education in the U.S.---and its role as an issue in the 2000 Presidential race---is explored in “The Battle Over School Choice.” Al Gore and George W. Bush are interviewed during the hour, which also visits the schools their children attend (a public high school for Bush's twin daughters; a private school for Gore's son), as well as a Washington, D.C., public high school located near Gore's home. Also: a visit with a “voucher family” in Cleveland; and interviews with former New York City school chancellor Rudy Crew and former Assistant Secretary of Education Chester Finn. | |
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Season 19 |
| 375 :19x01 - The Choice 2000 (Oct/02/2000) | | Parallel portraits of Presidential rivals George W. Bush and Al Gore are presented. Producer Michael Kirk and correspondent Peter Boyer probe their backgrounds and explore their personalities in interviews with some 70 people (including the candidates' wives), all of whom have known the two men and none of whom are pundits. Accordingly, Kirk says, “we're not wrestling with a lot of policy; we're wrestling with who they are.” | | Starring Roles: George W. Bush as Himself, Al Gore as Himself | Director: Michael Kirk (2)
Writer: Michael Kirk (2) | |
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| 376 :19x02 - Drug Wars, Part 1 (Oct/09/2000) | | Veteran reporter-producer Lowell Bergman charts the U.S. Government's largely futile efforts to stem drug trafficking in this panoramic two-part report. Bergman enlists both drug “warriors” (retired U.S. agents) and former traffickers to tell this sad 30-year saga. As Part 1 begins, the Nixon Administration is focusing its antidrug efforts on treatment. The strategy didn't last, and Bergman believes that it's too bad it didn't. As he puts it: “People involved in the drug business say, 'hey, this is a business. If there is no great demand, we wouldn't be supplying it'.” | |
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| 377 :19x03 - Drug Wars, Part 2 (Oct/10/2000) | | The conclusion of “Drug Wars” focuses on the increase in smuggling through Mexico and the introduction of crack cocaine into U.S. cities, both in the 1980s. The smuggling led to an increase in corruption in Mexico, while the crack epidemic led to the passage of laws mandating draconian sentences for drug violators, filling U.S. prisons. Also examined: allegations that Nicaragua's Sandinista government and Contra rebels were involved in trafficking. Interviewed: former National Security adviser Oliver North; U.S. drug “czar” Barry McCaffrey; former DEA chief Jack Lawn. Lowell Bergman reports. | |
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| 378 :19x04 - The Future of War (Oct/24/2000) | | “The Future of War” examines efforts by Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, to streamline his service to enable it to strike faster. As Shinseki, who's interviewed throughout the report, put it at his induction ceremony: “Our heavy forces are too heavy and our light forces lack the staying power that we need.” The hour explores problems (potential and actual) with “lethality and survivability” in the Persian Gulf, Somalia and the Balkans, and weighs differences of opinion over armored vehicles and military-readiness policy. Interviewees include vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney (R) and Joseph Lieberman (D). | |
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| 379 :19x05 - Real Justice, Part 1 (Oct/31/2000) | | The wheels of justice turn---creakily, but they do turn---as shown in this two-part chronicle of daily operations in Boston's court system. Part 1 focuses on District Court, where minor criminal cases are heard. That's where prosecutor Viktor Theiss and public defender Lisa Medeiros are seen juggling up to 15 cases a day. For Medeiros, success isn't necessarily an acquittal, it's a “sweet deal” with prosecutors---a teenager not losing his chance for a driver's license; a welfare-fraud convict's restitution cut in half. And the thanks she gets? A “thank you,” occasionally. | |
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| 380 :19x06 - Real Justice, Part 2 (Nov/21/2000) | | Conclusion. Three criminal cases in Boston's Superior Court are followed. Two of the cases involve deaths, and all three involve plea bargaining. In one case, a mother is accused of hitting her children. A child died in another. The defendant: his teenage baby-sitter. And in the third case, two brothers are on trial for killing a man in a South Boston bar. If they plea-bargain, one would get seven years, the other 18. If they don't, both could get life. | |
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| 381 :19x07 - The Clinton Years (Jan/16/2001) | | ABC's Chris Bury reviews “The Clinton Years” in this film crafted from reports produced by ABC's “Nightline.” The documentary combines “Nightline” segments from that era with post-Clinton interviews with administration figures. Among them: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; former labor secretary Robert Reich; former sreasury secretary Robert Rubin; former press secretaries Dee Dee Myers, Mike McCurry and Joe Lockhart; and ex-advisors Dick Morris, James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and Paul Begala, who calls Clinton “the smartest guy I ever met.” | |
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| 382 :19x08 - Juvenile Justice (Jan/30/2001) | | Should youngsters charged with serious crimes be tried as adults? Four cases in Santa Clara County, Cal., are examined. In March 2000, California voters approved a referendum mandating adult trials for some offenses, and the four defendants profiled here are charged with crimes committed in late 1999. “Each case has a set of facts that makes it a difficult call,” according to correspondent Michel Martin, who interviews prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges, as well as people involved in the cases. | |
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| 383 :19x09 - Saving Elian (Feb/06/2001) | | “Saving Elian” reviews the passions and conflicts that surrounded the 6-year-old boy who became a symbol of South Florida's struggle with Cuban Communism. The hour traces the seven-month tug-of-war over Elian Gonzalez, which began on Thanksgiving Day 1999. But mostly it explores the character of Miami's Cuban community to see why the tugging was so tenacious. As for Elian himself, the report isn't really about him. Nor was the tug of war, the hour claims. “He became a pawn in a political game,” says businessman Carlos Saladrigas. “And in the end everything mattered but Elian.” | |
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| 384 :19x10 - Hackers (Feb/13/2001) | | A primer on Internet vulnerability explores how hackers can break into personal, corporate and government computers, and charts some of the damage they've caused. Producer Neil Docherty reviews notorious cases (including that of a Florida 16-year-old who broke into NASA's computer system); visits a hackers convention; and interviews Government Accounting Office technologist Keith Rhodes, who tested the computer systems of 26 government agencies. How successful was his team at breaking into them? “We were always successful,” Rhodes says. | |
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| 385 :19x11 - The Merchants of Cool (Feb/27/2001) | | In “The Merchants of Cool,” media commentator Douglas Rushkoff explores why teenagers buy what they tell themselves to buy (with a nudge from media conglomerates). The problem: “cool” is hard to find, and once marketers do find and market something that's “cool,” it ceases to be so. Rushkoff follows “cool hunters” as they track teen tastes, and marketers as they try to camouflage their intentions. His case studies: MTV and “Dawson's Creek.” His conclusion: “It's a giant feedback loop. The media watches kids and then sells them an image of themselves.” | |
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| 386 :19x12 - Organ Farm (Mar/27/2001) | A two-part survey of the prospects for animal-to-human organ and cell transplantation begins with an assessment of its pros and cons (and graphic footage of a human-to-human heart transplant). The upside of xenotransplantation (as it's called): “If it works,” says narrator Will Lyman, “it will take transplant surgery from a life-saving therapy for a lucky few and make it available to everyone.” Of course, it doesn't work yet. There are also the concerns of animal-rights activists, not to mention, says neurosurgeon Galen Henderson, the existence of “so many unknowns.”
A two-part report on prospects for animal-to-human transplantation concludes by focusing on the possibility of transmissible genetic viruses in organs taken from pigs. It's the fear, says Hugh Auchincloss of the FDA: “that you create AIDS 2.” Another downside---the rejection of animal organs by recipients---is seen being addressed with the cloning of “transgenic” pigs at a Wisconsin facility. The upside is seen in three case studies of patients whose lives were saved by experimental procedures. | |
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| 387 :19x13 - Medicating Kids (Apr/10/2001) | | The effectiveness and necessity of stimulant drugs that are prescribed for children with attention-deficit disorder are weighed. On one side: Patti Johnson of the Colorado Board of Education. “Too many children are being diagnosed and labeled, and too many children are on these drugs,” she says. But parents of three of the four Denver-area youngsters profiled would disagree. Says one father: “The bottom line is that after [the] medication, we saw the results.” | |
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| 389 :19x15 - LAPD Blues (May/15/2001) | | Reporter Peter J. Boyer explores allegations of corruption in the Los Angeles police department. His story begins with a 1997 road-rage incident involving two officers (one white and one black), and involves gangsta rappers, an antigang unit in the city's tough Rampart section and a rogue unit member who accused some 70 officers of misdeeds. Many of the charges haven't held up, but the bottom line, Boyer says, is that the LAPD “is considered so corrupt and brutal that it requires supervision by the Federal Government.” | |
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| 390 :19x16 - Blackout (Jun/05/2001) | | Correspondent Lowell Bergman explores the utility-deregulation disaster that has hit California and examines whether or not the rest of the U.S. will be next. Bergman also visits Pennsylvania, where a different form of deregulation hasn't led to consumer pain---yet; Washington, D.C. (interviewees include Vice President Dick Cheney); and Houston, where new energy “trading” companies are thriving. The report is a collaboration with the New York Times. | |
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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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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.” | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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.” | |
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| 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.” | |
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Season 22 |
| 436 :22x01 - Truth, War, and Consequences (Oct/09/2003) | | Correspondent Martin Smith explores how the “mess” in Iraq six months after Saddam's fall came to be. Smith interviews State and Defense Department officials---who aren't on the same page. One example of this “interagency warfare”: Gen. Jay Garner, the first Pentagon administrator in Iraq, tells Smith that he had been told to “ignore” a postwar plan developed by State. And when Garner arrived in Iraq---days after the troops---the country's infrastructure was already in tatters. | |
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| 437 :22x02 - Chasing the Sleeper Cell (Oct/16/2003) | | Correspondent Lowell Bergman (working with The New York Times) examines the case of six Buffalo Yemeni-Americans who pleaded guilty to aiding Al Qaeda. It was the first major terrorism case completed after the passage of the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Homeland Security Department, and Bergman explores how---and how effectively---these “new tools” were used. Bergman also reviews the case itself. “What did they do,” he asks, “that was really illegal?” | |
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| 438 :22x03 - The Alternative Fix (Nov/06/2003) | | “The advancing edge of health care” or “pseudo science”? Alternative medicine can be either, depending on the therapy and who's talking about it, and both sides make compelling cases in this overview of the subject. But no one disagrees with former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell when she calls it “big business.” And this report doesn't pretend to be the final word. “We don't know everything about illness and health,” Harvard medical historian Ted Kaptchuk says simply. | |
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| 439 :22x04 - Dangerous Prescription (Nov/13/2003) | | “Dangerous Prescription” explores side effects from what producer Andy Liebman calls “major inadequacies” in the FDA's oversight of drugs before and after they appear on the market. The hour uses diet drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs and a medication for rheumatoid arthritis as case studies. It follows the FDA's approval process and finds, says Liebman, that “many fewer people than most of would imagine” are tested before approval is granted. And drugs that are approved are monitored in “a voluntary system that's very haphazard.” Overall, Liebman concludes: “Our watchdog agency isn't doing much watching,” and what watching it does “is going to waste.” | |
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| 441 :22x06 - From China With Love (Jan/15/2004) | | An atmospheric report on the 20-year love affair between an FBI agent and one of his “assets,” a Chinese-born woman who's accused of being a Chinese double agent. The principals: Katrina Leung (code name: Parlor Maid) and agent J.J. Smith, who were arrested in April 2003. Leung was charged with copying classified documents; Smith with “gross negligence” (letting her do it). Producer-director Michael Kirk tells this “story of secrets, risk, patriotism and, perhaps, love” largely through interviews with former FBI agents, one of whom (also named Smith) fears that “very grave damage could have been done.” | |
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| 442 :22x07 - Chasing Saddam's Weapons (Jan/22/2004) | | BBC reporter Jane Corbin follows U.S. inspectors as they search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction following the fall of Saddam Hussein. “It has been very frustrating for them,” says Corbin, who interviews chief inspector David Kay throughout the hour. Corbin also interviews intelligence analysts, the wife of an Iraqi nuclear physicist and former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as she investigates whether Saddam had plans to produce such weapons (there are “tantalizing clues” that he did, she says). And Corbin speculates on Saddam's strategy. “Why did he want us to think they [weapons] were there?” she asks. “Because in so doing, he effectively brought down his own regime.” | |
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| 443 :22x08 - Beyond Baghdad (Feb/12/2004) | | An overview of the situation in Iraq by correspondent Martin Smith, who travels “Beyond Baghdad” and focuses on Kurdistan, the Sunni heartlands, and the Shia strongholds Karbala and Najaf. Smith interviews Iraqi clerics, tribal leaders and politicians, as well as Americans, and finds “a number of fault lines, either ethnic or sectarian,” that pose a longer-term threat than does resistance to U.S. forces. He concludes that “things are going to get better---but it's going to be a long, hard slog.” Smith also surveyed the situation in Iraq in an October 2003 “Frontline” report titled “Truth, War and Consequences.” | |
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| 444 :22x09 - Tax Me if You Can (Feb/19/2004) | | Correspondent Hedrick Smith explores what banks and accounting firms are doing with tax shelters, focusing on what he calls “sham shelters” with “a veneer of legality.” They “twist the law,” Smith says, “and play on it in ways that were never intended.” One example he follows: a U.S. bank's leasing (then leasing right back) of a German city's sewer system. “Money never moves,” Smith says. “It's all on paper.” The bank saved millions in taxes and the IRS, Smith says, “is behind the eight ball.” | |
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| 445 :22x10 - The Invasion of Iraq (Feb/26/2004) | | Recounting the invasion of Iraq---and how, says “Frontline” executive producer Michael Sullivan, it “laid the seeds” for “the very messy peace” that followed. The report examines the battle over troop levels in the Pentagon prior to the war, and how the decision to go with fewer troops---combined with shortcomings in U.S. intelligence---affected the outcome. The U.S. “had enough troops to win the war,” says Sullivan, “but not enough to win the peace.” | |
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| 446 :22x11 - Ghosts of Rwanda (Apr/01/2004) | | “Ghosts of Rwanda” recalls the April 1994 genocide in the African nation, in which Hutus killed some 800,000 Tutsis. It was, says producer Greg Barker, the Hutu government's “own version of the final solution.” In interviews with eyewitnesses and officials, Barker examines the complex causes of the tragedy. And he looks at it as a “moral test” for those who wanted to stop it. “What do you do in a crisis?” he asks. “You hope you'd do the right thing, but there's no guarantee.” | |
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| 447 :22x12 - Diet Wars (Apr/08/2004) | | In “Diet Wars,” “Frontline” producer Steve Talbot goes “shopping” for a diet, visiting Weight Watchers and checking out various low-fat and low-carb regimens. Talbot, a baby boomer who was an actor as a child (he played Gilbert on “Leave It to Beaver”), also explores the business of dieting and comes to a “common sense” conclusion that isn't easy to market. “There are good carbs to eat and good fats to eat,” he says. “You should eat moderate portions, and you should exercise.” | |
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| 448 :22x13 - Son of Al Qaeda (Apr/22/2004) | | “Son of Al Qaeda” profiles Abdurahman Khadr, the rebellious 21-year-old son of a Qaeda leader who grew up with Osama bin Laden's children---then spied for the CIA after having been arrested in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. Now in Canada---and estranged from both sides---Khadr tells his story to CBC journalist Terence McKenna. It took him from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, then to Bosnia, where the CIA wanted him to infiltrate terrorist cells, McKenna says. Khadr turned on the CIA, just as he had his father---and Qaeda. Sums up McKenna, “Being a wild teenager is what saved him.” | |
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| 449 :22x14 - The Jesus Factor (Apr/29/2004) | | “The Jesus Factor” examines the connection between President Bush's evangelical Christianity and his policies and political strategies. They blend seamlessly. Says Doug Wead, an evangelical who advised George H.W. Bush: “There's no question that the president's faith is calculated. And there's no question that the president's faith is real.” Among the other interviewees are Richard Land of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention and Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal evangelical magazine Sojourners. Wallis is uneasy with Bush's “language of righteous empire,” while Land isn't. “The problem with the left is that some of them don't think God has a side,” he says. “George Bush and most of [his] supporters believe God has a side. And we believe that side is freedom.” | |
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| 450 :22x15 - The Way the Music Died (May/27/2004) | | “The Way the Music Died” follows Velvet Revolver, a new “super group” composed of former members of Guns & Roses and the Stone Temple Pilots, and singer-songwriter Sarah Hudson (the daughter of Mark Hudson, one of the “zany” Hudson Brothers, who had short-lived success in the 1970s). The decline in the recording industry in recent years is also explored. Among the reasons for the decline are the impact of MTV and illegal downloading of songs, but the primary culprit cited is music-industry and radio-station consolidation, which has led to an overriding emphasis on short-term profits. “It's a classic example of art and commerce colliding and nobody wins,” says Los Angeles disc jockey Nic Harcourt. | |
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| 451 :22x16 - The Plea (Jun/17/2004) | | In “The Plea,” filmmaker Ofra Bikel (“Burden of Innocence”) explores cases in which it is her contention that the plea-bargaining system infringed on the constitutional rights of defendants. The cases include a Texas single mother caught in a drug bust; a man accused of killing someone outside a Brooklyn bowling alley; a North Carolina woman accused of taking part in a Utica, N.Y., gas-station robbery-murder in 1973; and a Texas man convicted of a 1977 rape and murder. | |
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Season 23 |
| 452 :23x01 - Sacred Ground (Sep/17/2004) | | “Sacred Ground” chronicles the tortuous design process for the World Trade Center site, a contentious collaboration between architect Daniel Libeskind, the winner of a competition to design the site's master plan, and site developer Larry Silverstein and his favored architect, David Childs, all of whom are interviewed. New York governor George Pataki favored Libeskind's “iconic” 1776-ft. tall “Freedom Tower” plan, but Silverstein stood on his “absolute right” to choose an architect, and the battle---as much about money and power as aesthetics---was joined. Sums up architecture critic Paul Goldberger: “Do you ask Matisse and Dali to collaborate on painting a picture together?” | |
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| 453 :23x02 - The Choice 2004 (Oct/12/2004) | | “The Choice 2004” profiles George W. Bush and John Kerry, side by side. Producer Martin Smith and correspondent Nicholas Lemann trace the lives of these two very different Yale graduates through some 40 interviews (subjects include the candidates' wives). “It's a tale of two wars, of two Americas, over a 35-year period,” says Smith. “And it's a contrast of someone who relishes nuance and another person who drives toward clarity.” | |
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| 454 :23x03 - Rumsfeld's War (Oct/26/2004) | | Is the Army broken? That question, posed by “Frontline” producer Michael Kirk, is at the heart of “Rumsfeld's War,” an exploration of the status of the U.S. Army as it fights in Iraq. The program also profiles the secretary of defense, recalling his first stint at the Pentagon in the 1970s, and tracing his efforts to make the Army “quicker and more nimble” since he returned to the office in 2001. But in doing so, Kirk wonders, “Has he plunged it back to the state it was at the end of Vietnam?” | |
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| 455 :23x04 - The Persuaders (Nov/09/2004) | | “The Persuaders” explores how marketers try to sell products---and political candidates---in an increasingly cluttered advertising landscape, using increasingly “spiritual” and “big concept” approaches. Assessing what it all means is CBS and NPR media watcher Douglas Rushkoff, who wades through a thicket of psychobabble and manages to make sense of most of it. As for conclusions, however, all he can do is quote an industry aphorism: “I know I'm wasting half my ad dollars. I just don't know which half.” | |
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| 456 :23x05 - Is Wal-Mart Good for America? (Nov/16/2004) | | “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” Correspondent Hedrick Smith assesses the impact of the retail giant's “everyday low prices” on the U.S. economy as he visits Circleville, Ohio, where a factory that made components for TV sets sold at Wal-Mart recently closed, and Shenzhen, China, where those components are now made. “It cuts both ways,” Smith says, pointing to both lower U.S. inflation and a “tectonic shift in production” away from the U.S. Smith also visits Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, and traces the company's 30-year relationship with Chinese manufacturers. And he goes full circle (sort of), visiting the site of a planned Wal-Mart right next to the closed Circleville factory, where the jobs will pay barely half of the lost manufacturing jobs. “It's the two models, side by side,” he says. | |
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| 457 :23x06 - Secret History of the Credit Card (Nov/23/2004) | | In “The Secret History of the Credit Card,” correspondent Lowell Bergman surveys the credit-card industry to explore reasons why cards are so easy to get and hard to pay off. The hour examines issues like interest rates, data-sharing and the industry's clout in Washington, but the short answer, as Bergman puts it, is that “the most profitable part of the industry is when they get people into debt.” A coproduction with the New York Times. | |
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| 458 :23x07 - Al Qaeda's New Front (Jan/25/2005) | | “Al Qaeda's New Front” surveys Islamic militancy in Europe, visiting Britain, France and Germany, as well as Spain, where last March's train bombings affected the country's election. “Al Qaeda has mutated and metastasized into a social movement,” says producer Neil Docherty, who adds that merely capturing leaders won't stop it. While many cells have been broken up, “the war in Iraq is serving as a recruitment tool,” says Docherty, “and that just means that there are going to be more of them.” | |
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| 459 :23x08 - House of Saud (Feb/08/2005) | | Producer Martin Smith looks back over the seven decades that “The House of Saud” has ruled Saudi Arabia and explores the oil-rich kingdom's relations with the U.S. What makes the country tick? Smith points to tension stemming from the “unholy alliance” between the ruling family and the conservative clerics who help keep them in power. It's “barely controlled inside the kingdom,” Smith says. “Once it gets outside the kingdom it could be deadly.” | |
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| 460 :23x09 - A Company of Soldiers (Feb/22/2005) | | The Iraq War---as seen by “A Company of Soldiers” with whom a “Frontline”-BBC crew was embedded during November and December 2004. The unit: a 10-person component of the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry Regiment. One soldier is killed in an ambush, and the crew's car is damaged by a roadside bomb, but, says producer Ed Jarvis, the film is more about the confusion and frustration that beset the group---and Iraqis they encounter---in the face of unremitting danger and uncertainty. | |
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| 461 :23x10 - The Soldier's Heart (Mar/01/2005) | | “The Soldier's Heart” profiles Iraq War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and examines the military's approach to it. The Defense Department takes PTSD seriously, but one of the hour's main points is that this sensitivity hasn't seeped easily into the military's macho culture, and this can make things all the worse for vets. “We're trained not to hurt,” says Jacob Martin, a marine who's in therapy between tours in Iraq. “That's the big deal: Just suck it up.” | |
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| 462 :23x11 - Israel's Next War? (Apr/05/2005) | | “Israel's Next War?” explores problems posed by Zionist hard-liners who want all Arabs out of Israel. The fear is that their provocations could lead to wider conflict. The hour includes interviews with hard-liners and Israeli officials, and profiles of Shlomo Dvir and Yarden Morag, who were convicted of attempting to blow up an Arab school in Jerusalem. This “enemy within,” as producer Dan Setton calls the militants, “is in many ways a mirror image” of Islamic terrorists. | |
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| 463 :23x12 - Karl Rove -- the Architect (Apr/12/2005) | | “Karl Rove---The Architect” profiles the Bush strategist and policy adviser. He's “an amazing political geek [who] knows every detail about everything,” says producer Michael Kirk, who prepared this profile with reporters from the Washington Post. And his method---“attack, attack, attack”---serves his “master plan” for conservative domination for the foreseeable future. Success in that remains to be seen, but for now, Kirk says, he's “the second most powerful man in America, maybe.” | |
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| 464 :23x13 - Death of a Princess (Updated) (Apr/19/2005) | | “Death of a Princess,” a “Rashomon”-like 1980 docudrama about the 1977 public execution of a Saudi princess and her lover for adultery, explores what “Frontline” executive producer David Fanning (a writer on “Princess”) calls “the private center of the Arab world.” The film incorporates interview transcripts (actors play the interviewees) with re-creations of the executions and events leading up to them. Also: a review of the controversy generated by the original film. | |
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| 465 :23x14 - The New Asylums (May/10/2005) | | A case-study report examining how the state of Ohio has dealt with an influx of mentally disturbed inmates in recent years. Many of them would have been sent to state mental hospitals in the past. But many of those institutions have closed and, says Ohio Corrections chief Reginald Wilkinson: “I became a de-facto director of a major mental-health system.” | |
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| 466 :23x15 - A Jew Among the Germans (May/31/2005) | | Filmmaker Marian Marzynski, a Holocaust survivor, is a wary “Jew Among the Germans” as he visits Berlin, where a Holocaust memorial was dedicated in May 2005. Marzynski opposed it and he sorts out his reasons why during this philosophical hour. He also samples young Germans' feelings about the Holocaust and finds a desire to rid themselves of their grandparents' guilt. He demurs, contending that sense of guilt is a necessity. But “an honorable one. And within it a proud guardianship of memory.” | |
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| 467 :23x16 - Private Warriors (Jun/21/2005) | | “Private Warriors” assesses the implications of the presence of thousands of private security guards in Iraq, where they protect U.S. generals and diplomats, not to mention military bases. Reporter Martin Smith toured Iraq in April 2005 for the report, accompanied by private guards (one of whom was killed). Many of these “guys with guns” do fine work---for their bosses, but not U.S. policy makers, Smith says. “They're not accountable in any chain of command.” | |
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Season 24 |
| 469 :24x01 - The O.J. Verdict (Oct/04/2005) | | “The O.J. Verdict” explores reasons why Simpson was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and gauges the case's impact 10 years later. Producer Ofra Bikel interviews prosecutors and defense lawyers, including Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey, and analyzes the media's role. The verdict, Bikel concludes, “cast doubt on the concept of our justice system, and became the event that measured the difference between being black and white in America.” | |
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| 470 :24x02 - The Torture Question (Oct/18/2005) | | “The Torture Question” explores how the post-Sept. 11 fear of terrorism led to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. “We moved and blurred some important lines,” says producer Michael Kirk, “and we may have crossed them.” Kirk, who filmed at both prisons and follows cases, also interviews military and White House officials, and examines how government lawyers “rewrote” the definition of torture. They “miniaturized it,” he says. | |
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| 471 :24x03 - The Last Abortion Clinic (Nov/08/2005) | | “The Last Abortion Clinic,” a review of the pro-life movement's strategy, focuses on Mississippi, where just one one clinic provides abortions. The strategy: “Chip away at Roe v. Wade” with state laws limiting abortions, says Betty Thompson, the Mississippi clinic's former director. The hour also looks at how the Supreme Court has ruled on such laws (and might rule in the future), and it visits another Southern abortion clinic, whose director admits: “We feel very, very isolated.” | |
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| 472 :24x04 - The Storm (Nov/22/2005) | | This report on the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina illustrates the chaos and the tension in the affected areas and examines the subsequent political fallout. Included: New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum (National Guard) and former FEMA director Michael Brown. | |
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| 473 :24x05 - Country Boys, Part 1 (Jan/09/2006) | | Part 1of three. David Sutherland (creator of the acclaimed documentary “The Farmer's Wife”) wrote, produced and directed this compelling chronicle of Chris Johnson and Cody Perkins, Kentucky teens coming of age in the Appalachian hills. In Part 1, Chris, who lives in a trailer with his working mom and terminally ill dad, tries to begin a school paper, while Cody, an orphan living with a step-grandmother, wants to start a Christian music group. A “Frontline” special episode. Will Lyman narrates. | |
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| 474 :24x06 - Country Boys, Part 2 (Jan/10/2006) | | Part 2. A friendship slowly develops after Chris returns to school and starts a choir, which Cody joins. Also, Chris's parents separate; Cody wonders about his his inheritance money; Chris gets a job at a fast-food restaurant and his schoolwork suffers; Cody's girlfriend's parents argue, as he and Jessica consider marriage in the future. A “Frontline” special episode. Written, produced and directed by David Sutherland (The “Farmer's Wife”). | |
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| 475 :24x07 - Country Boys, Part 3 (Jan/11/2006) | | Conclusion. Chris tries to get a GED and visits a college, while Cody learns more about becoming a preacher and achieves a perfect attendance record at school; Chris moves into an apartment by himself; and Cody's band plays its first gig outside Kentucky. Written, produced and directed by David Sutherland (“The Farmer's Wife”). A “Frontline” special episode, narrated by Will Lyman. | |
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| 476 :24x08 - Sex Slaves (Feb/07/2006) | | “Sex Slaves” is a disturbing episode focusing (with a hidden camera) on the trafficking of women for prostitution in Moldova, Ukraine and Turkey; and one man's search for his wife, who was sold by an acquaintance. Included: the missing woman's husband poses as a trafficker in an effort to secure her freedom. Also: comments from victims and a look at the details of the criminal trade. | |
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| 477 :24x09 - The Meth Epidemic (Feb/14/2006) | | “The Meth Epidemic” is a revealing look at methamphetamine abuse that focuses on Portland, Ore., where use has hit crisis proportions. Included: ways in which drug makers obtain pseudoephedrine (a necessary ingredient); how meth works on the brain and why its effect is immediate and powerful. Also: comments from the police, a reporter, a former DEA deputy director, a pediatrician and politicians. | |
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| 478 :24x10 - The Insurgency (Feb/21/2006) | | “The Insurgency” looks at the Iraq War. Included are comments from insurgent leaders, U.S. and Iraqi military officers, and journalists. The updated report also examines how the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq will impact the insurgency. | |
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| 479 :24x11 - The Tank Man (Apr/11/2006) | | On June 5, 1989, one day after Chinese troops expelled thousands of demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a solitary, unarmed protester stood his ground before a column of tanks advancing down the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Filmmaker Antony Thomas searches for the elusive man investigates his fate. | |
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| 480 :24x12 - Can You Afford to Retire? (May/16/2006) | | “Can You Afford to Retire?” A look at the baby-boomer generation as it hits retirement. Included: how boomers may be long on life expectancy but short on income; uncertainties about Social Security; corporate pensions; and employee-contribution plans, such as 401(k) programs. | |
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| 481 :24x13 - The Age of AIDS (May/30/2006) | | Part 1 of two. “The Age of AIDS” traces the pandemic over the past 25 years, beginning with the virus's eary cases. Included: political denial; social stigma; the contamination of blood supplies; and the virus's personal toll. Dr. Jim Curran, who headed the CDC's AIDS initiative in the1980s, recounts the story of a Florida family whose house was burned down because their children were hemophiliacs with AIDS. Also: the impact of the deaths of Rock Hudson and Ryan White. | |
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| 482 :24x14 - The Age of AIDS (May/31/2006) | | Conclusion of “The Age of AIDS.” Included: Dr. David Ho's development of an AIDS drug “cocktail,” and his belief (with five million new cases each year) that neither he nor his children will live to see the end of AIDS. Also: the efforts of Rev. Franklin Graham; Bono's activism and how the rock star got Sen. Jesse Helms to change his views on AIDS; the disease's impact in South Africa, Uganda, Brazil, China and Russia. | |
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| 483 :24x15 - The Dark Side (Jun/20/2006) | | “The Dark Side” reports on Vice President Cheney's involvement with the war on terror and the Iraq War. Included: his working relationships with former CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; steps leading to the Iraq War. Also: comments from former White House adviser Richard Clarke, former national intelligence officer Paul Pillar and former CIA official John O. Brennan. | |
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Season 25 |
| 480 :25x01 - Return of the Taliban (Oct/03/2006) | | A 25th season starts with a report from tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border on how the area has fallen under the control of the resurgent Taliban, which uses it as a launching pad for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is interviewed. | |
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| 481 :25x02 - The Enemy Within (Oct/10/2006) | | “The Enemy Within” looks at a reported Al Qaeda cell in Lodi, Cal. New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman interviews former FBI agent James Wedick. | |
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| 482 :25x03 - The Lost Year in Iraq (Oct/17/2006) | | “The Lost Year in Iraq” reports on the 2003-04 U.S. efforts, led by presidential envoy L. Paul Bremer III, to establish democracy in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Included: comments from Bremer, military personnel and reporters. | |
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| 483 :25x04 - A Hidden Life (Nov/14/2006) | | “A Hidden Life” is an engrossing examination of an Internet sex scandal (and a newspaper's online sting operation) that led to the 2005 recall of Spokane mayor Jim West (1951-2006) after West visited a gay chat room on a city computer. Included: clips of West; comments by Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith and reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorne Steele; and West's ex-wife Ginger Marshall. A federal probe failed to yield criminal charges against West. | |
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| 484 :25x05 - Living Old (Nov/21/2006) | | “Living Old” is an earnest---and often sobering---look at the lives of people 85 and older, “the fastest-growing segment of the [U.S.] population,” notes narrator Will Lyman. The episode addresses the expectation that, over the next 30 years, the total of those over 65 is expected to double and fears that, as geriatrician Jeffrey Farber says, “there's not really anyone trained to care for them.” Also included: comments from seniors; case histories. | |
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| 485 :25x06 - Hand of God (Jan/16/2007) | | “Hand of God,” a documentary by Joe Cultrera about his brother Paul's sexual abuse as a teen by a Catholic priest (who died in 1989) in Salem, Mass. Included: comments from Paul, his parents and sister, and others. Also: Paul's discovery of other victims; the long-term effects of his molestation. | |
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| 486 :25x07 - News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin (Feb/13/2007) | | Part 1 of 3. Lowell Bergman examines challenges facing the news media, including its relationship with the Bush administration; the use of anonymous sources; and the CIA leak case and its consequences. Included: comments from Patrick Buchanan; Mark McKinnon, a former media adviser to President George W. Bush; William Safire; and New York Times reporter James Risen, who helped break the NSA wiretapping story. | |
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| 487 :25x08 - News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin (Feb/20/2007) | | Part 2 of 3. Lowell Bergman examines the news media, including what some see as a disturbing trend: the jailing of journalists who refuse to reveal their sources. Included: comments from the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who were subpoenaed after reporting on the BALCO investigation, targeting steroids and athletes; ex-Whitewater prosecutor Stephen Bates; the Washington Post's Bob Woodward; blogger Josh Wolf; and former New York Times columnist William Safire. | |
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| 488 :25x09 - News War: What's Happening to the News? (Feb/27/2007) | | Conclusion. Lowell Bergman examines the economic pressures the news industry faces because of aging audiences and the Internet. Included: comments from “Daily Show” head writer David Javerbaum; Ted Koppel; former L.A. Times managing editor Dean Baquet, who was fired after a dispute about staffing cuts; “60 Minutes” executive producer Jeff Fager; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas; and former L.A. Times editor John Carroll. | |
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| 489 :25x10 - So Much, So Fast (Apr/03/2007) | | The story of Stephen Heywood (who at the age of 29 in 1998 learned that he had Lou Gehrig's disease) and the ALS Therapy Development Foundation, which his brother, Jamie, created in hopes of finding a cure. Included: comments from Heywood (who died in 2006); his wife, Wendy; and his brother, Jamie. | |
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| 490 :25x11 - Hot Politics (Apr/24/2007) | | An examination of the politics behind the federal government's actions on global warming; and the stances of state and local governments on the issue. | |
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| 491 :25x12 - When Kids Get Life (May/08/2007) | | A look at the criminal-justice system's treatment of juveniles convicted of murder, as seen through the eyes of five Colorado inmates serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for their involvement in murders committed before their 18th birthdays. Included: comments from the inmates; Denver defense attorney Norm Mueller; Columbia University law professor Jeffrey A. Fagan; and juvenile-justice advocate Curt Jensen, whose son Erik is among the profiled inmates. | |
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| 492 :25x13 - Spying on the Home Front (May/15/2007) | | Hedrick Smith reports on the government's post-9/11 domestic-surveillance efforts, including the controversial NSA eavesdropping program; and a December 2003 FBI data sweep of Las Vegas vacationers. Included: insights from former AT&T technician Mark Klein; former FBI assistant director Larry A. Mefford; former CIA senior counsel Suzanne Spaulding; and Peter Swire, a Clinton-administration privacy adviser. | |
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| 493 :25x14 - The Tank Man (Jun/05/2007) | | “The Tank Man” searches for the student who stood his ground before a column of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing; and details how China has revamped its society since, creating a more capitalistic system while continuing to suppress dissent. Included: the brutal conditions faced by many factory workers; how information Yahoo! gave the government in 2004 led to a journalist being imprisoned for 10 years; and the experiences of Hong Kong-based radio talker Han Dongfang. | |
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| 494 :25x15 - Endgame (Jun/19/2007) | | An examination of the reasons for the current situation in Iraq, including failure to plan for an insurgency; the “light footprint” strategy pushed by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the 2005 Iraqi election, which the Sunnis boycotted. Included: comments from Gen. Jack Keane (USA Ret.); State Department Counselor Phillip D. Zelikow; and reporters. | |
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Season 26 |
| 495 :26x01 - Cheney's Law (Oct/16/2007) | | The 26th-season opener examines how, in the aftermath of 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration have pushed to expand the power of the presidency. Included: comments from former assistant attorney general Jack L. Goldsmith and former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman. | |
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| 496 :26x02 - Showdown With Iran (Oct/23/2007) | | The post-9/11 history of U.S.-Iran relations is chronicled. Included: Iran's initial help in Afghanistan; Iran's nuclear ambitions; Iran's threats to force the U.S. out of the Middle East. | |
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| 497 :26x03 - The Undertaking (Oct/30/2007) | | A look at funeral homes, featuring poet Thomas Lynch (“The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade”), proprietor of Lynch & Sons, a Central Michigan funeral home. Included: comments from customers. | |
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| 498 :26x04 - On Our Watch (Nov/20/2007) | | An examination of the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, which has resulted in the deaths of some 200,000 people and forced some 2.5 million from their homes. Included: UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow visits refugee camps in Chad in hopes of drawing attention to the genocide. Also: comments from activist Eric Reeves; Dr. Mukesh Kapila, a former UN coordinator for Sudan; Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudan's UN ambassador; and James Traub (“The Best Intentions”). | |
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| 499 :26x05 - The Medicated Child (Jan/08/2008) | | The medication of children to treat behaviorial problems, and possible long-term consequences, are examined. Included: the increasing rate of bipolar diagnosis in children and use of anti-psychotics to treat it; insights from psychiatrists, researchers and pharmaceutical representatives. | |
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| 500 :26x06 - Growing Up Online (Jan/22/2008) | | A look at the ways that todays youth uses the internet, from MySpace profiles of themselves to YouTube uploads, are discussed by parents and their teenagers. Also includes the divide created between parents and their kids, cyber bullying, Internet fame, and online sexual predators. | |
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| 501 :26x07 - Rules of Engagement (Feb/19/2008) | | A look at what is known as "Iraq's My Lai," an incident on Nov. 19, 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, where 24 civilians were killed. Includes footage using an unmanned aerial drone to record the events, Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant's remarks, and remarks from Iraqi deputy prime minister Barham Salih as well as an Iraqi girl injured during the incident. | |
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| 502 :26x08 - Bush's War, Part 1 (Mar/24/2008) | | New and archival footage is used as we look into the history of the war in Iraq. Starting in the year following 9/11, when the Bush administration first started talking about ending Saddam Hussein's stay in power. Includes differences in strategies within the administration on this matter; the role in which the U.N. should play; whether intelligence linking Hussein to Al Qaeda could be trusted. | |
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| 503 :26x09 - Bush's War, Part 2 (Mar/25/2008) | | In the conclusion to this 2 part episode, we look closely at the history of the war in Iraq, including an unexpected quick defeat of Saddam Hussein's troops and the chaos and looting which took place shortly after. Also, the disbanding of the Iraqi military and banishment of Baathists from the government. Plus, the battle of the Iraq strategy between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the surge of US troops in 2007. | |
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| 504 :26x10 - Bad Voodoo's War (Apr/01/2008) | | A look at the war in Iraq through the eyes of a unit of the California national Guardsmen known as the "Bad Voodoo Platoon," who have recorded their experiences via video cameras. | |
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| 505 :26x11 - Sick Around the World (Apr/15/2008) | | An inside look at the health care systems from countries all over the world, including England, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland to get ideas of how the US system could be overhauled. | |
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| 506 :26x12 - Storm Over Everest (May/13/2008) | | The recollection of the May of 1996 storm on Mount Everest which trapped three expedition teams which included film maker David Breashears, and claimed the lives of five others. | |
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| 507 :26x13 - Young and Restless in China (Jun/17/2008) | | The chronicles of nine young people in China throughout a four year period. Among the stories is their attempt to keep up with a changing China's fast pace. | |
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Season 27 |
| 508 :27x01 - The Choice 2008 (Oct/14/2008) | | Profiles on Republican candidate John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama along with interviews with their advisers, family, friends and reporters. | |
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| 509 :27x02 - Heat (Oct/21/2008) | | What changes have big business made due to the increasing climate? This report includes China where the coal conglomerate Shenhua Energy CEO Ling Wen answers to his shareholders instead of the public, and in India, where car sale are on the rise. Also, an exploration of GM's creation of a hybrid car, clean coal science and energy plans for the presidential candidates. | |
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| 510 :27x03 - The War Briefing (Oct/28/2008) | | An examination of what the foreign policy challenges will be like for the 44th United States president, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Experts and diplomats offer their advice on how these matters should be handled. | |
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| 511 :27x04 - Boogie Man: the Lee Atwater Story (Nov/11/2008) | | A profile of Lee Atwater (1951-91), an influential political strategist who helped George W. Bush win his election against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. Includes insights from GOP strategists Tucker Eskew, Mary Matalin and Ed Rollins, journalists Joe Conason, Sam Donaldson, Howard Fineman and Robert Novak, and Michael and Kitty Dukakis. | |
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| 512 :27x05 - The Hugo Chavez Show (Nov/25/2008) | | A profile of Hugo Chavez, the controversial Venezuelan president, which includes footage from his weekly Aló Presidente, TV show which he uses to speak directly to the people. Plus insights from author Alberto Barrera and journalist Jon Lee Anderson. Includes Chavez's role in the 1992 ill-fated coup d'etat and rise to power; the failures in his polices meant to improve the lives of many Venezuelans; and the defeat in 2007 of the referendum he championed which was meant to end term limits. | |
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| 513 :27x06 - The Old Man and the Storm (Jan/06/2009) | | The devastation of Hurricane Katrina damage the home of octogenarian Herbert Gettridge and his wife, and the master plasterer and veteran builder has begun rebuilding. | |
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| 514 :27x07 - Dreams of Obama (Jan/20/2009) | | The story of Barack Obama's rise to the 44th president of the United States, featuring interviews with insiders and observers who followed him from his Harvard Law School days though his entry into politics in Chicago and his 2004 Democratic National Convention's memorable keynote address. | |
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| 515 :27x08 - My Father, My Brother and Me (Feb/03/2009) | | In 2004, Frontline correspondent Dave Iverson was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, just like his father and brother, and tries to investigate the degenerative disease. includes interviews with Michael J. Fox and writer Michael Kinsley, both who suffer from this affliction. Also included is a debate over stem cell research and interviews with some famous doctors about the disease. | | Guest Stars: Michael J. Fox as Himself, Michael Kinsley as Himself | |
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| 516 :27x09 - Inside the Meltdown (Feb/17/2009) | | A look at the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, including the selling of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the financial bailouts of insurance giant AIG and TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) which was a $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout. | |
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| 517 :27x10 - Ten Trillion and Counting (Mar/24/2009) | | A look at how the Obama administration may be hindered by the deficit, which has now ballooned to over $10 trillion, and why both right and left wingers believe it must be reduced in order to ensure the nations future. Includes factors which may have caused the debt to rise; the possible outcome if the problem is not addressed; and potential solutions. | |
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| 518 :27x11 - Sick Around America (Mar/31/2009) | | A look at the health care crisis in America, where 46 million people are uninsured and even more are underinsured. Highlights include the challenges faced by small businesses and their employees, who often pay for more than they receive, as well as people seeking insurance on their own. Also featured are nightmare stories, including the tale of one woman who's insurance was rescinded just after completing cancer treatments; interviews with insurance company executives; and an examination of Massachusetts health care reform. | |
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| 519 :27x12 - Black Money (Apr/07/2009) | | An exploration by Lowell Bergman over the bribery used by multinational companies in order to procure billion dollar contracts. Includes a crackdown by the Justice Department over this practice; and bribery allegations leveled against BAE Systems, a British company. | |
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| 520 :27x13 - Poisoned Waters (Apr/21/2009) | | The Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound are used as examples as a checkup of America's waterways. Both estuaries, chemicals contained in products we use everyday can be found, and are likely affecting marine life and humans. A USGS study of the Potomac river revealed mutations in frogs which can be linked chemicals to household items. And in Puget Sound, orca carcasses have been tested and contain high levels of PCB's. | |
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| 521 :27x14 - The Released (Apr/28/2009) | | The stories of two paranoid schizophrenics are explored as the pair of mentally ill inmates from Ohio are released and rearrested for allegedly committing crimes after going off their meds. | |
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| 522 :27x15 - The Madoff Affair (May/12/2009) | | The story of Bernard Madoff, the financier who pleaded guilty for running the Ponzi scheme which bilked $65 million from investors. | |
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| 523 :27x16 - Breaking the Bank (Jun/16/2009) | | An exploration of the role played by the super-sized banks on the economic collapse of 2008-09 through the prism of Bank of America. Includes the following questions: What went wrong? Why the financial free-fall was so sudden? And what efforts are being made to stabilize the banking industry. | |
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Season 28 |
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| 525 :28x02 - The Warning (Oct/20/2009) | | The economic meltdown had early warnings which could be traced back to the 1990s, when regulation of the emerging derivatives markets failed to occur. | |
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| 526 :28x03 - Close to Home (Oct/27/2009) | | As middle-class America struggle to cope with the economic uncertainty, a small business owner and a woman share the real fear of losing their homes to foreclosure. | |
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| 528 :28x05 - A Death in Tehran (Nov/17/2009) | | This episode details the murder of Neda Agha Soltan by the Basij, and the significance of her death with the controversial election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | |
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