1x1 - Baby It's Cold Outside

October 20, 2004

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. The first part of the series explains the origins of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism.

1x2 - The Phantom Victory

October 27, 2004

Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. They are successful in repulsing the Soviet armies and, when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they were the primary architect of the "Evil Empire's" defeat and thus have the power to carry out their revolutions in their homelands. Curtis instead argues that the Soviets were on their last legs and were doomed to collapse without intervention.

1x3 - The Shadows in the Cave

November 3, 2004

Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. The film instead shows the United States government wanting to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, and needing to prove him to be the head of a criminal organisation to do so. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called "al-Qaeda". With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.

Gilles Kepel

Himself

Melvin Goodman

Himself

Stephen Holmes

Himself

William Kristol

Himself

Michael Ledeen

Himself

Richard Perle

Himself

Azzam Tamimi

Himself

Fouad Allam

Himself

Abdullah Anas

Himself

Milton Bearden

Himself

Vincent Cannistraro

Himself

Anne Cahn

Herself

Ali Haroun

Himself

Richard Pipes

Himself

Stanley Rosen

Himself

Jack Wheeler

Himself

Leo Strauss

Himself

John Kerry

Himself (archive footage)

John Ashcroft

Himself

Paula Jones

Herself

Vladimir Pozner jr.

Himself

Adam Curtis

Narrator