The Dark Side

Story Line

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.

“"We also have to work the dark side...we've got to spend time in the shadows..."”

Top Cast

Will Lyman

Self - Narrator

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