Arts & Culture

FRONTLINE: Top Secret America

Published August 18, 2011 at 8:53 AM PDT

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Airs Friday, Sept. 9 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. on KPBS TV

In the years after September 11, FRONTLINE produced more than 45 hours of award-winning films documenting the 9/11 attacks and America’s response to them. Now, on the tenth anniversary of September 11, the FRONTLINE team that produced “Bush’s War,” “The Torture Question” and “Cheney’s Law” teams up with Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest to investigate the dramatic changes that have reshaped America in the last decade.

Over one hour, "Top Secret America" examines the history of the dark side of America’s “war on terror.” From the creation of black site prisons abroad and super-secret facilities here in America, to targeted killings and covert wars waged by special forces, to a multibillion-dollar terrorism industrial complex, FRONTLINE and Dana Priest ask how a decade of fighting terrorism has reshaped the country and whether it has made us any safer.

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Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

FRONTLINE and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest ask how a decade of fighting terrorism has reshaped the country and whether it has made us safer.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Dana Priest is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Washington Post. She spent three years as the Post's intelligence reporter and was Pentagon correspondent for seven years before that. She covered the invasion of Panama (1989), reported from Iraq (1990), covered the Kosovo war (1999), and has traveled widely with Army Special Forces in Asia, Africa and South America and with Army infantry units on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged “a top to bottom review of the threats we face and our abilities to confront them.” He promised a sweeping overhaul of the Bush administration’s war on terror, which he criticized for compromising American values. But FRONTLINE has learned from a former high-ranking CIA official that even before he took office, Obama’s team “signaled” they had no intention of rolling back secret programs begun under the Bush administration.

FRONTLINE: Top Secret America

Airs Friday, Sept. 9 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. on KPBS TV

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