» The Choice

10.24.1988 (100 min)

Frontline and Time magazine step back from the heat of the 1988 presidential campaign to examine, in-depth, the background, character, qualifications, and beliefs of the Republican and Democratic candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Correspondent Garry Wills assesses their lives and career through the people who know them best.

Producer: Sherry Jones

» The Politics of Prosperity

10.10.1988 (60 min)

In the last weeks of the 1988 presidential campaign, correspondent William Greider explores the private but increasingly intense debate about what the next president should do to avoid economic disaster, how and when should he do it, and who will be asked to bear the burden. Frontline focuses on four communities that have not shared in the prosperity of the Reagan years.

Producer: Morrow Cater

» My Husband is Going to Kill Me

06.28.1988 (60 min)

In February 1987, 30 year-old Pamela Guenther turned to the police and the courts in a Denver suburb for protection from her violent husband. Three weeks later, as her children watched, she was murdered. Frontline asks why the system could not protect Pamela Guenther.

Producers: Virginia Storring, John Zaritsky

» Indian Country

06.21.1988 (60 min)

The Quinault Indians of Washington State seem to have everything-strong leadership, a landmark court victory guaranteeing fishing rights, business deals with the Japanese, and a lush, beautiful reservation. But the Quinaults still face crushing problems-unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, and suicide. Frontline reporter Mark Trahant searches for answers to the Quinault's dilemma in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress, the White House and in the heart of the Quinault people.

Producer: Michael Kirk

» Our Forgotten War

06.14.1988 (60 min)

In Central America, while US attention has been dominated by the contra war in Nicaragua, the battle for El Salvador continues. The US government has dumped nearly $3 billion in aid into El Salvador (more than ten times the amount spent on the contras), but there are new signs that the American policy is in trouble. With exclusive footage shot behind guerilla lines, Frontline takes a fresh look at the war in El Salvador.

Producers: Marc Cooper, George Moll

» Who Pays for AIDS?

06.07.1988 (60 min)

By 1991, health care for AIDS patients in the United States could cost an estimated $16 to $22 billion. Caring for AIDS victims is overwhelming some communities. Frontline examines the impact on patients caught in the middle of a battle between local governments and Washington over who will pay for AIDS.

Producer: Martin Smith

» Trouble in Paradise

05.31.1988 (60 min)

Frontline examines the US government's attempts to forge a military pact with the Pacific Island nation of Palau (population 15,000)-a campaign that has led to economic dependence, political strife, corruption, and violence in that tiny country.

Producers: Elizabeth Arledge, Sylvia Collier, Alan Hayling

» The Defense of Europe

05.24.1988 (60 min)

Frontline and Time magazine join forces to examine the new realitites for the NATO alliance following the American-Soviet nuclear arms treaty. How good are the Warsaw Pact forces? Can Europe defend itself without nuclear missiles? Will America begin to pull out its troops?

Producers: Stephanie Tepper, William Cran

» Guns, Drugs, and the CIA

05.17.1988 (60 min)

A Frontline investigation examines the CIA's long history of involvement with drug smugglers in trouble spots around the world and how the agency has defended its alliances with drug dealers under the cloak of 'national security.'

Producers: Leslie Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn

» Racism 101

05.10.1988 (60 min)

Frontline explores the disturbing increase in racial incidents and violence on America's college compuses. The attitudes of black and white students reveal increasing tensions at some of the country's best universities where years after the civil rights struggle, full integration is still only a dream.

Producers: Tom Lennon, Orlando Bagwell

» American Game, Japanese Rules

04.26.1988 (60 min)

Can America succeed in Japan? Frontline paints an intimate portrait of Americans living and working in Japan-baseball players, businessmen, and an American bride-all confronting a society that looks Western, but operates by a very different set of rules.

Producer: Ofra Bikel

» Murder on the Rio San Juan

04.19.1988 (60 min)

Frontline investigates the unsolved 1984 terrorist bombing at a press conference held by contra leader Eden Pastora. Eight people, including an American reporter, died that night on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This report dissects the motives of possible conspirators and follows the trail of the man suspected of planting the bomb.

Producers: Charles Stuart, Marcia Vivancos

» To a Safer Place

04.12.1988 (60 min)

When Shirley Turcotte was a child, she was sexually abused by her father. After years of therapy she takes a remarkable journey back into her past-confronting her mother and other adults who failed to protect her, reuniting with her brothers and sister who were also brutally abused, and trying to make peace with the horror story that was her childhood.

Producers: Gerry Rogers, Beverly Shaffer

» Poison and the Pentagon

04.05.1988 (60 min)

The military is America's largest producer of toxic waste. Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates the Pentagon's poor record of cleaning up its pollution that contaminates the ground water in communities across the country.

Producer: Michael Kirk

» Back in the USSR

03.29.1988 (60 min)

In 1968, American journalist Jerry Schecter, accompanied by his wife and five young children, moved to Moscow on assignment for Time magazine. In 1987, Frontline returned with the Schecter family to the Soviet Union as they renewed old friendships and explored Russia under glasnost.

Producer: Sherry Jones

» Let My Daughter Die

03.01.1988 (60 min)

Joe and Joyce Cruzan want doctors to remove their severely brain damaged daughter from the life-support system that keeps her alive. Nearly two years before it became the US Supreme Court's first right-to-die case, Frontline explored the complex legal and moral issues of this Missouri couple's battle to allow their daughter to die.

Producer: Elizabeth Arledge

» Shakedown in Santa Fe

02.23.1988 (60 min)

Eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in US history, Frontline returns to the penitentiary in New Mexico to probe the contininuing struggle between the inmates and the guards, the wardens and the reformers, for control of one of our most dangerous prisons.

Producer: Hector Galan

» Your Flight Is Cancelled

02.16.1988 (60 min)

Since deregulation, American's airline industry has become a nightmare of delays, cancellations, and near misses. Frontline probes the air traffic dilemma inside America's busiest airport-in the control tower and behind the ticket counter.

Producers: Robert Drew, Anne Drew

» The Man Who Shot John Lennon

02.09.1988 (60 min)

Frontline goes inside the mind of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder, believing it would make him famous.

Producer: Kevin Sim

» Operation Urgent Fury

02.02.1988 (60 min)

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh investigates one of Ronald Reagan's greatest truimphs-the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh's reporting reveals an inept US military operation and questions whether the students needed rescuing at all.

Producer: Mark Obenhaus

» Praise the Lord

01.26.1988 (60 min)

Frontline traces the rise and fall of television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and investigates why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.

Producers: Stephanie Tepper, William Cran