producers Hedrick Smith

Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor and Emmy award-winning producer/correspondent, is one of America's most distinguished journalists. He has covered Washington and world capitals for The New York Times, has authored several best-selling books and has created 20 award-winning PBS primetime specials and mini-series on Washington's power game, Soviet perestroika, the global economy, education reform, health care, teen violence, terrorism and Wall Street.

His recent documentaries for FRONTLINE include: Spying on the Home Front (2007), an examination of the clash between civil liberties and the Bush administration's war on terror; and Can You Afford to Retire? (2006), an investigation of the looming financial crisis for the middle class, which won an Emmy and was nominated for a Writers Guild script award. After Sept. 11, Smith went Inside the Terror Network (2002) for FRONTLINE to show how Al Qaeda's conspirators organized their attack and how the U.S. missed chances to catch them.

Additional FRONTLINE investigative reports -- Bigger Than Enron (2002), The Wall Street Fix (2003), Tax Me If You Can (2004) and Is Wal-Mart Good for America? (2004) -- probed accounting scandals, conflicts on Wall Street, global trade, corporate fraud, and their implications for U.S. markets and investors. The Wall Street Fix won an Emmy for investigative documentaries on business and finance.

For 26 years, Smith served as a correspondent for The New York Times in Washington, Moscow, Cairo, Saigon, Paris and the American South. In 1971, as chief diplomatic correspondent, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers series. In 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. From 1976-88, he was The New York Times Washington bureau chief and chief correspondent.

Smith has published several national best-selling books, including The Russians (1976), The Power Game: How Washington Works (1988), The New Russians (1990) and Rethinking America (1995). He has co-authored several other books. His newspaper career began with The Greenville (S.C.) News. After completing his B.A. at Williams College and doing graduate work at Oxford University, he worked for Universal Press International in Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta, 1959-62. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1969-70.

Smith began creating documentaries for PBS in 1989 with an adaptation from his best-selling book, The Power Game. His second documentary series, Inside Gorbachev's USSR, broadcast on PBS in 1990, built on his experience as Moscow bureau chief for the Times in the 1970s, on his best-selling book, The Russians, and on his subsequent coverage of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. Inside Gorbachev's USSR won the duPont-Columbia grand prize in 1991 for the most outstanding public affairs production on U.S. television.

recent films

Poisoned Waters watch »

Spying on the Home Front watch »

Can You Afford to Retire? watch »