Loading descriptions...
The third documentary about the war on terror from the team that
produced "Rumsfeld's War" and "The Torture Question."
On September 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice
President Dick Cheney was ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot
down any commercial airliner still in the air above America. At
that moment, CIA Director George Tenet was meeting with his
counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted
fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war. But soon a
debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror and the
decision to go to war in Iraq. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and others saw Iraq as an important part of a broader plan
to remake the Middle East and project American power worldwide.
Meanwhile Tenet, facing division in his own organization, saw
non-state actors such as Al Qaeda as the highest priority.
FRONTLINE's investigation of the ensuing conflict includes more
than 40 interviews, thousands of pages of documentary evidence and
a substantial photographic archive. It is the third documentary
about the war on terror from the team that produced "Rumsfeld's
War" and "The Torture Question."