Melvin Goodman

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.

The Secret presents the story of how leaked government documents prove that the United States has been recovering crashed unidentified flying objects, often known as flying saucers, since 1941, and has been successful in keeping this information from the public. These documents have been examined using forensic techniques and are declared genuine by those who examine the subtleties of paper, ink age, watermark, type fonts, classification stamps and markings. The central basis of the documentary is the content of the documents and the amazing story they tell – a different approach. This program is not a rehash of the old Roswell crash scenarios, providing evidence that the first U.S. crash was in Missouri in 1941.

Journalist Dana Priest traces the battle against terrorism in the United States, from Sept. 11 to the April 15, 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Examines how politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society.