Frontline

The Torture Question (2005x12)

Air date: Oct 18, 2005

In the uncertain weeks following September 11, an internal power struggle was underway deep inside the Bush administration. Waged between partisans at the highest levels of the government, that battle -- captured in a series of blunt memos -- exemplifies the struggle to create a legal framework to give the president authority to aggressively interrogate enemy fighters in the war on terror. On October 18, FRONTLINE goes behind closed doors to investigate the struggle over how and when to use what was called "coercive interrogation." The film begins with a policy born out of fear and anger and tracks how increasingly tough measures were taken to gather information about Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and finally the rising insurgency in Iraq. In an examination that begins at the White House and ends in the public debate about alleged abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, policy makers, government interrogators, and their subjects talk to FRONTLINE about their experiences as part of this internal battle.