First Aired: January 17th, 1983
Status: Continuing
Network: PBS
Summary: Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast by serving as a catalyst for change.
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Season 1993
Episode 1: Clinton Takes Over
Air Date: January 19th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 2: Journey to the Occupied Lands
Air Date: January 26th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 3: What Happened to the Drug War?
Air Date: February 2nd, 1993
Summary: The federal government's multibillion 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.
Episode 4: The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover
Air Date: February 9th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 5: The Arming of Saudi Arabia
Air Date: February 16th, 1993
Summary: Since 1979, the US has been helping Saudi Arabia contruct a sophisticated multibillion 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.
Episode 6: Apartheid's Last Stand
Air Date: March 2nd, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 7: Choosing Death - Health Quarterly Special
Air Date: March 23rd, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 8: In Our Children's Food
Air Date: March 30th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 10: Iran and the Bomb
Air Date: April 13rd, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 11: LA is Burning - 5 Reports from a Divided City
Air Date: April 27th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 12: Ashes of the Cold War
Air Date: May 4th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 13: The Health Care Gamble
Air Date: May 25th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 14: Innocence Lost - The Verdict Parts I and II
Air Date: July 20th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 15: Innocence Lost - The Verdict Parts III and IV
Air Date: July 21st, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 16: The Heartbeat of America
Air Date: October 12nd, 1993
Summary: 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. [90 minutes]
Episode 17: Prisoners of Silence
Air Date: October 19th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 18: Secrets of a Bomb Factory
Air Date: October 26th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 19: Showdown in Haiti
Air Date: November 9th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 20: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
Air Date: November 16th, 1993
Summary: 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?
Episode 21: AIDS, Blood and Politics
Air Date: November 30th, 1993
Summary: 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.
Episode 22: Behind the Badge
Air Date: December 14th, 1993
Summary: 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.
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