For Release: April 30 , 2007
The events of 9/11 indelibly altered America , from perpetual orange alerts to much stricter regulations at the airport . Now Frontline investigates another major consequence of the domestic war on terrorism -- greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. Reporter Hedrick Smith discloses that even former government intelligence officials worry that the combination of new security threats, advances in communications technologies and radical interpretations of presidential authority may be threatening the privacy of Americans.
Frontline explores these issues with " Spying on the Home Front , " airing Tuesday, May 15 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET2 and Monday, May 21 at 10/9 p.m. CT on KET1.
Although P resident Bush told the nation that his National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping program was limited to known Al - Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., the Frontline investigation reveals comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans which indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein , for example, inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA .
" Spying on the Home Front " also looks at a massive FBI data sweep in December 2003. On a tip that Al - Qaeda "might have an interest in Las Vegas" around New Year's 2004, the FBI demanded records from all hotels, airlines, rental car agencies, casinos and other businesses on every person who visited Las Vegas in the run-up to the holiday. A check of all 250,000 Las Vegas visitors against terrorist watch lists turned up no known terrorist suspects or associates of suspects.
Frontline "Spying on the Home Front" is a co-production of Hedrick Smith Productions, Inc. and WGBH / Boston . More information about KET programming and education services, as well as how to support KET, can be found at www.ket.org.