Reminder-"Frontline" tonight, PBS - (Al Qaeda in California?) -

[nickyt]

"The Enemy Within" looks at a reported Al Qaeda cell in Lodi, Cal. New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman interviews former FBI agent James Wedick.
9pmEST

[Up2Late]

1. Wow, everyone remembered at the same time! Here's more...

(There is a short video preview too, at the link below.)


<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/enemywithin/>

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/>

The Enemy Within

coming Oct. 10, 2006 at 9pm (check local listings at link above)


A U.S. Capitol Police SWAT team storms into
the House Canon Office building in Washington, DC.
Credit: © TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

(60 minutes) Five years after the attacks on 9/11 and the massive, multibillion-dollar reorganization of government agencies which followed, FRONTLINE and New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman investigates the domestic counterterrorism effort and asks whether we are any better prepared to prevent another catastrophic attack. Relying on interviews with high-level sources in the U. S. government, Bergman looks into the major cases brought inside the United States and reveals troubling flaws in what has been the largest reorganization of the government in half a century. The documentary focuses on who is the real enemy within the United States and whether we are prepared to defeat him. (read the press release)

PRESS RELEASE

FRONTLINE EXAMINES LODI TERROR CASE TO GAUGE
U.S. RESPONSE TO HOMEGROWN THREAT

FRONTLINE presents
THE ENEMY WITHIN
Tuesday, October 10, 2006, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/enemywithin/

Soon after 9/11, an FBI informant made an alarming claim: Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had visited the town of Lodi, Calif., in the late 1990s and attended a mosque there. Moreover, two Pakistani imams preaching at the mosque came from a conservative Islamic school, or madrassa, linked to the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan. According to McGregor Scott, the U.S. attorney who led the federal anti-terror investigation, this was "an attempt by a group of radical Islamic religious figures to come to this country and ... establish a madrassa to serve as a recruiting ground."

However, a deeper look at the evidence creates uncertainty about what kind of threat actually did exist in Lodi and provides a case study of America's response to the threat of domestic terrorism. FRONTLINE and New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman examines the Lodi case and interviews FBI and Homeland Security officials to assess U.S. anti-terror efforts in The Enemy Within, airing Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings).

The Lodi case drew the attention of senior U.S. officials. "A network of Islamic extremists in Lodi," Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte told Congress in February 2006, "maintained connections with Pakistani militant groups, recruited U.S. citizens, ... allegedly raised funds for international jihadist groups."

But when Bergman interviews one of the defendants, Umer Hayat, an ice cream truck driver in Lodi, about the terror investigation, the story seems less clear. "I just make a story, that's all," says Hayat, "because they would not believe me when I was telling the truth." At the trials of Hayat and his son, Hamid, the FBI showed a videotape in which the Hayats confessed to attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, but questions remain. After arriving at the bureau's Sacramento office voluntarily, the Hayats were interrogated nonstop for 15 hours without a lawyer present. Separated, they gave different accounts of the camp they had visited, and the FBI did not conduct a follow-up investigation in Pakistan. "You can hear the agents literally dictate to what it is that they thought he was involved in," says James Wedick, a retired 35-year veteran of the FBI, who reviewed the videos for the defense. "And then he mimics back to them what he thinks that they want to hear."

According to Wedick, from the beginning, the case was based on bad intelligence. He tells FRONTLINE that the idea that Zawahiri had visited Lodi was "totally ludicrous," and prosecutors now admit that the informant was mistaken. The trial ended April 25 with the conviction of Hamid Hayat for attending a training camp and lying to the FBI; the defense has filed an appeal. After the jury deadlocked over charges against Umer Hayat, he pled guilty to an unrelated charge of making a false claim on a customs form and was released.

Critics of the U.S. war on terror, both in and out of government, fear that cases like Lodi demonstrate that the Bush administration, the Justice Department and the FBI have exaggerated the terrorist threat inside America. "Terrorism itself can be a rallying cry for political purposes," says John Brennan, founder of the National Counterterrorism Center and 23-year veteran of the CIA. "There is a legitimate concern about terrorism. However, you don't want to overhype it, and I think there has been some of that over the past couple of years."

The Enemy Within is a FRONTLINE co-production with Cam Bay Productions in association with The New York Times. The film is written and produced by Lowell Bergman & Oriana Zill de Granados. The correspondent is Lowell Bergman. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by The Park Foundation. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The FRONTLINE executive producer for special projects is Michael Sullivan. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

pbs.org/pressroom
Promotional photography can be downloaded from the PBS pressroom.
Press contacts
Diane Buxton [phone]
Andrew Ott [phone]

FRONTLINE home | about <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/enemywithin/>

[LSparkle]

2. "Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again ... "

Great, now I've got an earworm ...

[ovidsen]

3. Good NY Times review link here

On television fear sells, especially when accompanied by what the comedian Jon Stewart called “the fear music,” “the fear voice” and “the fear font.” Fearmongering also generates political support, a fact that the Bush administration has used — or, to judge from “The Enemy Within,” on the PBS program “Frontline” tonight — abused in a variety of ways to press the hunt for terrorists on American soil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/arts/television/10fron.html?_r=1&ref=television&oref=slogin

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. What's the deal with Frontline?

When did it jump the shark?