The Dark Side

Story

Synopsis

On Sept. 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.

Director

Michael Kirk

Writers

Michael Kirk

Language

English

Country

United States of America

Release date

20 June 2006

Ensemble

Cast

• 

  Dick Cheney

  Self (archive footage)

• 

  George W. Bush

  Self (archive footage)

• 

  Richard Clarke

  Self - Dir. NSC Counterterrorism 1998-'01

• Gary Schroen

  Self - CIA 1970-2002

• John McLaughlin

  Self - Dpty. Director, CIA 2000-'04

• Bob Graham

  Self - Senator (D-FL), Select Cmte. on Intel. 2001-'03

• James Bamford

  Self - Author, 'The Puzzle Palace'

• 

  Michael Scheuer

  Self - CIA 1982-2004

• 

  Bob Woodward

  Self - 'The Washington Post'

• 

  Ron Suskind

  Self - Author, 'The One Percent Doctrine'

• Charles Battaglia

  Self - Bush-Cheney 2000 Transition

• 

  Steve Coll

  Self - 'The New Yorker'