The Dark Side

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

The Dark Side — Plot

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.

• Release date
• June 20, 2006
• Runtime
• 84 min
• Genres
• Documentary
• Director
• Michael Kirk

The Dark Side — Cast

Dick Cheney Self (archive footage) George W. Bush Self (archive footage) Richard Clarke Self - Dir. NSC Counterterrorism 1998-'01

G

Gary Schroen Self - CIA 1970-2002

J

John McLaughlin Self - Dpty. Director, CIA 2000-'04

B

Bob Graham Self - Senator (D-FL), Select Cmte. on Intel. 2001-'03

J

James Bamford Self - Author, 'The Puzzle Palace' Michael Scheuer Self - CIA 1982-2004