PBS's FRONTLINE has assembled a free 9/11 documentary collection built around 24 documentaries and one podcast episode as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reach their 25-year mark. The package pulls from more than two decades of reporting on the attacks, the U.S. response, and the long tail of the war on terror.
That collection does more than reopen the archive. It gives viewers and listeners a single streamable entry point into stories about intelligence failures, Afghanistan and Iraq, the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, the rise of the U.S.' covert drone program, a secret mass surveillance apparatus within the U.S., the emergence of ISIS, and eroding trust in U.S. government and institutions.
Bill Moyers and Hunting bin Laden
Bill Moyers provided opening and closing commentary for Hunting bin Laden, which aired on Sept. 13, 2001, two days after the attacks. The film was built on an investigation into bin Laden's terror network that had aired two years earlier, putting FRONTLINE's work on the attacks' aftermath on the record almost immediately.
John O’Neill, the former FBI counterterrorism agent who died in the attack on the twin towers, had led a six-year fight to track down and prosecute Al Qaeda operatives around the world. His name is one of the clearest reminders that this archive is not just history; it is a record of people who were already trying to connect the dots before Sept. 11, 2001.
Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero
Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero takes the collection in a different direction, examining the spiritual questions raised by the attacks. It used interviews with victims' families, World Trade Center survivors, priests, rabbis, Islamic scholars, atheists and agnostics, writers and thinkers, which gives the anniversary package a rare range of voices instead of a single institutional view.
That mix matters because the collection is not only about what happened in Washington or Afghanistan and Iraq. It also tracks how the attacks altered public trust inside the U.S., where the reporting moves from battlefield and intelligence questions to the harder problem of what institutions can be believed after a national shock.
FRONTLINE's 25-year archive
The 24 documentaries and one podcast episode turn more than two decades of FRONTLINE reporting into a free archive timed to the 25-year milestone. For viewers and listeners who want the widest possible view of the attacks and their aftermath, the practical step is simple: the stories are already available to stream for free.
What the collection still leaves open is the full line-up beyond the pieces named in the anniversary overview. FRONTLINE has given the outline of a 25-item archive; the remaining titles are what readers will have to work through inside the collection itself.
