>> tonight, in this special edition of frontline, three stories. >> there was a "before 9/11" and there was an "after 9/11". >> first, "inside top secret america." >> the money just came out of congress. it was flying out. >> pulitzer prize-winning reporter dana priest investigates the massive intelligence buildup since 9/11. >> it's shrouded in secrecy. >> buildings four stories high, but they go down ten stories. >> 16 or 17 different intelligence agencies. >> are we safer? >> are we safe enough? >> in our second story tonight... >> so these are parts that are

illegal? >> that would be the easy way to say it-- an illegal part. >> miles o'brien investigates a disturbing new trend in the airline industry. >> and the downside is there's going to be people that are going to die. it's going to be at the expense of a smoking hole at the end of the runway. >> and from afghanistan, martin smith finds the man who knows the secrets. >> did you encourage the americans to increase their use of drones? >> i encouraged america to "bomb pakistan." >> these three stories tonight on frontline. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank yo and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation.

committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation. dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by the frontline journalism fund. major funding for frontline's expanded broadst sean is provided by the bill and melinda gates foundation. >> narrator: it was just after midnight, september 9, 2001. >> a trooper was doing what a trooper would do.

saw a speeder. pulled over the speeder. ( siren wailing ) >> narrator: the maryland state trooper ran the driver's name through the local police database... >> and he gave him a ticket. the driver, from all accounts, was polite. had proper registration, license. there was nothing that the trouper could have done, other than to write the ticket, tell him "have a nice day"... or ave a nice night." that was it. >> narrator: the driver headed to newark. he was meeting friends at the airport. his name was ziad jarrah. >> united flight 93 crashed near johnstown, pennsylvania.

>> narrator: his burned passrt was found in the wreckage. ziad jarrah, his fellow hijackers, 40 passengers and crew were dead. the near miss of jarrah by that state trooper, and near misses of other hijackers, caused the government to assemble a massive nationwide surveillance apparatus. >> president bush said to us in the basement of the white house on the night of 9/11, "you have everything you need." and that was true. because as soon as we went to the congress, they said, "just tell us what you need." blank check. >> what congress did, and the american people supported, was turning on the spigot of funding for all the agencies that were involved in counter-terrorism. >> right after 9/11... i mean, every agency can give you their own gradation, but a nice popular rule of thumb is everybody doubled down.

>> narrator: nine days after the attacks, congress committed tens of billions of extra dollars to launch a global offensive against al qaeda. >> yet in this first war of the 21st century... >> narrator: since then, washington post investigative reporter dana priest has been tracking the growth of that terrorism-industrial complex-- not just internationally, but also here at home... >> ...oregon, virginia, california, texas and ohio... >> narrator: ...where the vast effort to fortify domestic defenses began with creation of the department of homeland security. >> homeland security is, by far, the largest merger in government history. there were 17 agencies from multiple departments-- coast guard, the secret service, fema, all being fused together into one organization. and all at once. >> narrator: they broke ground on what will become the home of a mammoth bureaucracy.

its $3.4 billion headquarters will rival the pentagon as the largest government complex ever built in washington. >> you had something that you should never offer a bureaucracy, which is a candy store without a price tag. >> narrator: when dhs was first created, official washington believed 9/11 was a failure of federal intelligence agencies to communicate. >> there was something like 40 different agencies that had databases that had information that was not being shared and correlated. it was not connecting the dots. >> narrator: the buzzwords became "connecting the dots" between federal government agencies and the states. that's why d deced to fund fusion centers in the states, a place where intelligence from thousands of local police forces and federal government databases could be brought together and analyzed.

>> you need to get information. you need to get it fast. and you need to have it analyzed properly and disseminated properly. >> narrator: dhs has funded 72 fusion centers across the nation. maryland, the state where ziad jarrah slipped through the net, built one of the first. >> these fusion centers are very, very important entities for that information sharing between federal government, state government, local government. >> the more we collaborate and cooperate, i think, the better chance we have of preventing another september 11, 2001, from occurring. >> so the homeland security department funded intelligence fusion centers in every state. >> we have roughly 80 personnel representing 30 different law enforcement agencies, and public health agencies, including the fbi. >> contractors went in, put in the large flat-screen tvs, put in the mission-control-to-the- moon kind of facilities.

>> narrator: so far, dhs has spent more than $420 million on the nation's fusion centers. the idea is built around cops on the beat. they are supposed to feed the system intelligence about possible terrorists. >> you want to get as much information from that trooper into the system-- into the state system, and into the federal system, so that those euphemistic dots can be connected. >> narrator: but almost right away, the imperative to gather as much information as possible got the state police in maryland in trouble. looking for suspicious characters, undercover officers infiltrated anti-war and anti-death penalty groups that sometimes met here. >> we're trying to bring together the anti-war movement and the climate chaos people, because the pentagon is number one at destroying this mother

earth. >> nartor:ax obuszewskwa one of the targets of the operation. >> max was well known to law enforcement. max enjoyed being well known to law enforcement, in my opinion, because he... he was confrontational. >> narrator: before long, the police had gathered data on 53 protestors. it made its way to a database in washington. >> we were described as "possible terrorists" that they were very, very concerned about, which is absurd on many levels, to say the least. >> the ter"terristis jt one of the most detrimental words that could ever be applied to anyone. you know that. >> and you don't know where your name might appear... >> narrator: some of the so-called "terrorists" were actually catholic nuns. >> and i think there's a big difference, at least in my mind, between being considered a person who is non-violent and a

terrorist. >> narrator: their files were now accessible to state and federal officials, and that's when the american civil liberties union entered the fray. >> there is insufficient oversight of the fusion centers to ensure that they are only collecting the appropriate information. >> narrator: mike german's cautions come from his own experience as an undercover agent for the fbi. >> they were contacting other local police agencies and even the joint terrorism task force, the national security agency, unnamed military intelligence people. so, the information was being disseminated very broadly. >> police spied on local peace organizations... >> 53 people were wrongly labeled as terrorists. >> maryland state police spying program... >> narrator: it was an embarrassment to the state of maryland. >> i think this is an example of the sort of cowboy excesses that you can get into if you do not have a properly functioning and professionally run fusion

operation within your state. >> narrator: the files of tens of thousands of americans have been put in national databases. >> this is one case with the maryland state police, but this is the type of activity we have seen all across the country, and at all levels of gernment-- state, local police, as well as fbi, department of homeland security, even the department of defense. >> narrator: but the fusion centers in maryland and washington still need information, lots of it, and dhs continues to depend on cops on the beat. >> cops are information gatherers. that's our front line of defense for crime. terrorism's a crime. they need to do that and they are doing that. >> narrator: this is one of the war on terror's primary weapons, known as a sar-- suspicious activity report. >> if one of the 800,000 police officers in this country comes across something suspicious related to homeland security, to

terrorism, they'll fill this information out. >> narrator: local police are being told to look out for suspicious behavior around public facilities-- picture taking, map drawing, evasive driving.u< >> i think any time we have activity and photographs of those sorts of facilities, and it comes to our attention, we need to ask the questions why, or look at who's taking the pictures to find out something about them. >> narrator: but even that simple instruction can get local police in trouble. >> a gentleman who was photographing an amtrak train was arrested by amtrak police, and handcuffed and detained because they thought this behavior was suspicious. >> narrator: it was an amtrak-sponsored photography contest. >> so this information-- again, completely innocuous, deserved no policatteion-is now being put on a report, deemed

suspicious activity, and forwarded on to the intelligence community. >> narrator: inevitably, there have been cases of abuse, but experienced anti-terror practitioners say it's too late to stop the information- gathering juggernaut. >> limiting information access is a task that's not going to happen. in the age of information explosion, forget about it. people say, "you're keeping records on x, y and z," i'll say, "hey, get on google, get on google maps, get on google earth. get into commercial software that looks at how to investigate somebody's telephone number." you've got to be kidding me. >> that's the great american conundrum, isn't it? i mean, our very... our freedom as individuals, our freedom of movement, are the very things that are most vulnerable to terror attacks. and also, sadly, are most vulnerable to our own systems of government turning on those things and doing more harm than the terrorists do in their attacks.

>> narrator: meanwhile, the federal government continues to spend billions of dollars for states to gather more information. in maryland, they've even started taking pictures of license plates. >> priest: what are we doing here? >> the system we're using has two cameras. they're... it's constantly taking pictures, observing the tags, allowing the system to record them, and check them against the database. >> suspended or revoked registration. >> narrator: this technology, used by u.s. military forces on the streets of baghdad, has migrated to the streets of baltimore. >> with the license plate reader system, if we were to get that information, we can then go into the system and see where else this car has been. >> the software with the system, when it sees what it thinks is a license plate, it will read it using ocr-- optical character recognition-- and make a crosscheck against a database.

>> narrator: surveillance cameras at vital institutions are also photographing license plates and adding them to the database. >> maybe nobody called it in when they were at ft. detrick or aberdeen proving ground, or at bolling air force base. but the license plate readers will tell us they were there, and when they were there, and when they passed through. that's a pattern. that's something we'd want to know about. >> narrator: and they've gone one step further. smile-- cameras are everywhere. >> we are very big on cctv. we believe that it is a force multiplier, that it is an effective way, not only to provide greater security in open spaces-- evidence times square. but also, it's a much more effective way to guard approaches to tunnels, bridges and other sorts of static targets. >> narrator: maryland, like most states, has gotten very good at following the money from dhs-- money to equip local police with

the latest technology, much of it imported from the battlefields of iraq and afghanistan. here, at a sales fair in phoenix, american companies have rushed into the information- gathering bonanza. >> it's called micro-facial expressions. we use it to help the soldiers, the troops on the ground in afghanistan and iraq, to tell if the individual's trying to hide something... >> narrator: the new gold rush has attracted some familiar names-- general dynamics, northrup grumman-- and some newcomers. >> we can take massive stores of pre-recorded video, whether it be facial video, aerial-- in this context, anything related to vehicles-- and extract those objects, and understand the nature and behavior of those objects, and update a sybase iq system with the high-level results. >> narrator: this is all part of that massive new organization,

top secret america, that the government has been constructing since 9/11. >> doesn't that make sense? >> priest: yeah. >> narrator: two years ago, with her fellow reporter bill arkin, priest began to focus on top secret america as it grew and spread. >> priest: what's this one? >> here's all of general dynamics in the country. >> priest: oh, my goodness! >> narrator: and hundreds of those buildings were hiding in plain sight in office parks like this. >> priest: and this is a gate to... to the nsa? >> there's a government facility back in there. you'll see it better after we turn down this road. obviously, i can't go that way. >> narrator: inside these buildings, nearly one million americans are fighting what has been called "the global war on terror." >> okay, you've got titan in here, csc is in one of these buildings, general dynamics. security station here in front where they check out the cars and look underneath. >> priest: so maybe you should put the camera down now.

>> you just never know who's watching over here. >> narrator: slowly, they discovered a hidden world of military, government and private corporations. >> priest: all right, so can we just go over what you have? >> sure. this is the picture that i went up to that credit union place. >> priest: uh-huh. >> narrator: they documented the incredible building boom all around washington. >> had it not been for the leaves off the trees and at night, you just... you would never see this thing. >> priest: and yet it's gigantic. >> for the rest of my life, i will never see the world the same way again, especially around washington. these buildings that-- they might only be four stories high, but they go down ten stories. and there's a whole world down there, like shops and places to eat that you don't know about that's just for them. >> narrator: this is a world so secretive, so large and unwieldy, that no one knows how much it costs, or everything it does. >> i could not possibly claim that i knew everything that was going on. i think someone said that "only

god knows all the special access programs." i think that's true. is that a good thing? probably not. can we avoid it? probably not. >> narrator: four-star general michael hayden ran the national security agency, and then the cia. but even he didn't know the scope and size of secret programs inside top secret america. >> i was in government service for 40 years; most of that was in intelligence. i would never claim to you that i knew all the compartments. >> narrator: and no one seems to know what it all really costs. >> you have a congress that's not doing its job on oversight, and recognizes it's not doing it, calls it dysfunctional. so, who's making the decisions? and where are they being made? well, they're being made in the 17 different intelligence agencies. and nobody's in overall charge. so, naturally, you're going to get bloated budgets, naturally you're going to get duplication. >> narrator: it's a story only

just beginning to be understood, a story about the price of security, and whether all those tens of billions of dollars are actually making us safer. >> you can look, if you're objective, at all of this money and all of this effort and say, "what would have happened if we hadn't done that?" and in almost every case, nothing would have happened. it's true that there hasn't been another attack. it's not true that all of this expenditure and all these people have stopped it. >> the terror threat in this country is coming from within... >> ...tried to set off a bomb at a christmas tree lighting ceremony... >> ...arrested by federal agents this morning after attempting to detonate... >> narrator: but what about all those publicized cases that sounded like successes. >> ...the guy whtried to blow up more than 250 fellow passengers... >> what exactly went wrong? >> narrator: just a year ago, at christmas, the underwear bomber, who somehow evaded the security net, despite numerous intelligence red flags and a father who warned the cia his son might be a threat.

>> there are more questions than answers to that... >> there were no red flags raised. >> he actually got to the point of triggering the device, which means, at that point, the only thing that's going to stop that is what happened-- is a technical failure, or maybe a human failure. >> what we found out from the christmas day bombing attempt was that, because the nigerian guy's name was misspelled by one letter, he did not pop up, the little bits of data about him did not... were not correlated, those dots were not connected. >> google does it. if you mistype something on google, it says, "did you mean this?" despite spending all the billions of dollars on databases, that simple spell check "did you mean this?" kind of software wasn't operating. >> narrator: and then, five months later, there was the times square bomber. >> ...can be assured that the fbi and their partners in this process have all the tools and experience they need. >> the times square bomber was a horrendously run operation.

a bunch of vendors in times square said to the cops, "there's a problem with this car." >> both those cases-- it was not the intelligence agencies, it was private citizens. on the plane, it was a private citizen who jumped the guy. times square, it was a vendor saying, "something's wrong there," letting the law enforcement authorities know it. so, we were lucky, and because we have an alert citizenry. >> the fbi says it's taken down a home-grown radical. >> ...here in baltimore, a man apparently tried to blow up a military recruitment center in... >> narrator: and then there's this case that happened just recently in maryland. >> ...tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb... >> he proceeded to drive the suv as planned to the recruiting center, where he parked it in front of the building. >> narrator: an undercover fbi agent had given the suspect an inert bomb. >> he haa detonation device, which he was to key. however, when he keyed it, it

didn't work. >> he was immediately placed under arrest at that time. >> narrator: and once again, the suspect, 21-year-old antonio martinez, had been discovered by an alert citizen reading facebook. the source called the fbi in baltimore. >> priest: i'm trying to think of any other technology that would have helped in this case. >> this was good, old-fashioned police work by a lot of different police agencies coming together. >> priest: okay, so not so heavy on the technology? >> that's correct. >> narrator: the fusion center's new technology was not involved. nor were the cctv or license plate cameras. there was no sar report. >> ...free to go.

>> narrator: later on this special edition of frontline... amrullah saleh was never afraid to tell president karzai what he thought. now, he tells us >> i am urging u.s., whatever can hurt taliban and their supporters in pakistan, use it. >> narrator: but first, frontline uncovers the new realities of airline safety. "flying cheaper" begins right now. >> o'brien: a year ago, we investigated a commuter crash that shed light on a sea-change

in the airline industry. >> narrator: ...the buffalo crash of continental 3407, the deadliest u.s. air accident in eight years. >> o'brien: major carriers were outsourcing more and more flights to independent regionals... >> narrator: ...a major transformation in the airline industry... >> o'brien: ...raising serious questions about safety. after the broadcast, we heard from hundreds of pilots, and airline mechanics, too. >> "as an aircraft maintenance technician with united airlines, i would like you to follow up on this story with an investigation on aircraft maintenance." >> "the flying public has no idea what shenanigans go on behind the curtain." >> "much of this heavy maintenance work is being done by the lowest bidder. as a former airline pilot with 25 years in the industry, this scares me the most." >> flight 2-8-0, you can land runway one at teterboro. >> we're unable. we may end up in the hudson. >> o'brien: we also talked to the co-pilot who helped safely land flight 1549 into the hudson river. he's worried about airline maintenance, too. >> ten years ago, maintenance was virtually all done in-house

by the airline that's flying the airplane. now, heavy maintenance is mostly done by people who are unrelated to the airline that's flying... that's flying you as a passenger, and sometimes not even in this country. >> o'brien: so we decided to examine the airline maintenance industry, and started at its annual convention here in phoenix. they call themselves mros, for maintenance, repair and overhaul. it's a highly competitive business. mros from all corners of the globe were here, trying to drum up business with u.s. airlines. so what's the advantage? why would... why would a u.s. airline fly an airplane all the way to turkey to get maintenance done? what's the advantage to going to turkey and your company? >> firstly, the quality is very high, and secondly is that the pricing... the pricing is very reasonable for the... >> o'brien: labor... labor is cheaper in turkey? >> yes, the labor is cheaper, yeah.

>> o'brien: most major airlines now outsource the majority of their heavy maintenance, some as much as 70% or more. it's all to keep the airlines competitive and efficient, says mro spokesperson sarah macleod. >> what i would look at is what business am i in. am i in the business of flying passengers or cargo, or am i in the business of maintaing my fleet? >> o'brien: their core business is to ensure a safe trip, isn't it? >> absolutely. i mean, but that's a given. i mean, i'm not going to stay in business very long if i'm going to be crashing aircraft. so part of your business is obviously to keep airworthy aircraft. but if i can have you do it more efficiently, it's kind of foolish for me not to. >> o'brien: one carrier that led the way into this new era is united airlines. it used to do virtually all its major maintenance in-house. but facing bankruptcy and competitive pressure from industry upstarts like southwest, united began

outsourcing more of its repair work. now, about 60% of its maintenance is contracted out to independent mros. >> maintenance traditionally has been sacrosanct. it was one area where the industry collectively said, "no, that's not something we can cut." in... in recent years, we've seen a change, and i don't think that we've yet seen all the manifestations of that change. at unitedfirsand foremost, we had to get our own house in order... >> o'brien: at the mro conference, united's then-president, john tague, spoke about the economic chlenges facing the airline industry, and i asked him about this outsourcing trend. what can you say to the public about that trend, and whether that ultimately could erode the possibility of continued safety in the airline business? >> you know, i think its wholly unrelated. i would ask them to take a journey with me to ameco in beijing.

we have get pasthisiew that any work that's done in the u.s. is de facto done better. it's just not true. >> o'brien: i'd like to take you up on that offer-- would you take us to ameco? >> sure, absolutely. >> o'brien: we thought that was a great idea. ameco is one of asia's largest mros, doing maintenance on united wide-body jets since 2005. we arranged a visit with ameco in china. we got visas and tickets. then, just days before our trip, ameco suddenly cancelled. but we knew about another place, here in the u.s., where united has moved its maintenance, and i flew to mobile, alabama, to take a look. this is one of the larger independent repair facilities in the u.s. it's owned by a company called st aerospace. >> according to statistics i've seen, st is the largest of all of the mros, the outsourced facilities, worldwide.

this is a singapore-based company that has opened maintenance facilities in the united states. >> o'brien: since 2002, st has been doing a lot of maintenance here in mobile for major airlines like united, delta and u.s. airways, carriers that used to do almost all of their maintenance in-house. st would not allow us to visit or grant an interview, but we talked to many st workers, from line mechanics to supervisors. here at papa buddha's, a bar in mobile, we heard a lot about long hours, hard working conditions, and the pressure mechanics were under to "move the planes." a few agreed to talk, but only if we would protect their identities. >> to beonest, if you have one inspector... >> o'brien: one-- we'll call him "john"-- worked at a major airline for many years before joining st. what were your marching orders when you were inside st? >> it was typically "push." i mean, you know, you were given x amount of time to accomplish a

task. and they wanted to keep moving forward faster and faster, you know. "whatever it takes to get it done, get it done." >> o'brien: though st wouldn't let us in, secretly, we did get footage from inside the facility. it's a place where another veteran mechanic told us about a shortcut he'd seen used called "pencil-whipping". >> if i was pencil whipping a job, that means i'm just going to sign it off without doing the maintenance and lie about what i did, so that we don't lose time, you know, fixing it. >> o'brien: you whipped the problem with a pencil, not a wrench. >> that's right, you beat it right on down. that's pencil whipping. >> o'brien: we showed what the mechanics at st had told us to veteran faa inspector linda goodch. >> it's just devastating to hear things like that, because it's just... you know it happens, it's... you know, and just for the exact reasons that he said. but you can't take shortcuts.

this is an industry you can't take shortcuts. it will come back to bite you >> o'brien: this kind of shortcut was discovered at st last spring. according to an internal company document obtained by frontline, u.s. airways found fuel leaks in three of its planes that had been serviced at st mobile. an investigation found that mechanics had signed off the work as completed, when in fact the work was not, failures that could have resulted in "serious aircraft mishaps." >> this is very serious. because if they're willing to do it for something as important as this, then they're willing to do it on just about any level. i mean, this is the tip-of-an- iceberg type of a situation, and not a good one, for sure. >> o'brien: other company documents show multiple maintenance failures at st last year: a misrouted flight control cable;

the failure to install a navigation box; landing gear with a broken hydraulic line. one of the biggest issues with the quality of the work at independent mros is the quality of the workforce. at the largest major airlines, the vast majority of mechanics are licensed by the faa. but not at independent mros, like here at st, where about two-thirds of the nearly 1,200 mechanics are unlicensed. that's because the faa regulations don't require that all airline mechanics hold a license or certificate. why isn't everybody who is working on an airplane licensed to work on airplanes? >> because the system has demonstrated that, in fact, people can perform the functions that are a part of repairing an airplane that don't rise to the level of needing that certificate. >> o'brien: but wouldn't it be better if they were all licensed? >> they are certainly able to be licensed.

we don't require that. >> o'brien: whnot? >> bause, again, the system has demonstrated that we can meet the safety standards, because our inspectors go in and establish that the individuals are competent to do the work they're doing. >> o'brien: this faa licensing policy has implications for the workforce at st, where the company has brought in less experienced and less expensive workers. mechanics start at about $14 an hour. they've also gone global, bringing in foreign labor to work on airplanes in mobile. >> they're issued work visas, and they're brought inrom the philippines, south america, the ukraine, africa. they're brought in from everywhere and anywhere. >> o'brien: "tom" has worked at st for more than ten years. >> a lot of these guys can't speak, read or write english, you know. i'll see these guys practicing their abcs. >> o'brien: so they're practicing their abcs, and they're supposed to be able to read a boeing 757 manual.

>> exactly, yeah. >> mechanics use a lot of the same things that we use in the cockpit. they use... they have to follow chklisprocures. they have to follow maintenance manuals. if you've got somebody that doesn't speak english, they can't be following the checklist to make the repair. they've got to essentially be winging it. >> o'brien: in a written response to frontline, st said that foreign nationals make up less than 10% of their workforce and all are assessed for language skills. and before hiring all mechanics, they conduct a thorough review of their work history and a verification of their background. but "john" says that's not what happened when he was hired. i applied online with a contracting company. i sent them my résumé, and within a couple of days, they called me up and asked me when i could be there. >> o'brien: so, what did that tell you? >> well, i thought... i was pretty apprehensive of that. i... i expected an interview, at least, when i got there.

but i was just told, "show up. you've got the job." i didn't even have to present any of the documents of any of my training. i mean, it was... they took me on my word. >> o'brien: multiple faa reports cite repeated concerns about the quality of the wkforce at st: "a shortage of qualified maintenance personnel"; concerns about english fluency; a lack of proper training; and repeated questions about management's commitment to safety according to faa records, the agency has levied 15 enforcement actions against st mobile since 2003. only one resulted in a fine, of $11,000. if you've got 15 enforcement actions, one $11,000 fine, and the same write-ups over and over again, happens again and again-- that's a problem, isn't it? >> it's the responsibility of the inspectors. as they do their write-ups, they are getting corrective action. they are recommending

enforcement actions. those enforcement actions are pursued if we have the evidence. based on their expertise, i am satisfied that they are satisfied that this is a company that is meeting our standards. >> it's not working. and you do this enough, and we're a joke. inspectors become a joke. we come in there and they're going, "yeah, yeah, sure, sure, whatever." "we'll just continue what we've be doing, because there sn't en a consequence big enough to change our attitude on this." >> o'brien: one of the most troubling things i heard at st involved a major faa inspection here last april. so tell me about this particular inspection. how much warning did everybody have? >> probably a little more than two weeks that we knew this was going to happen. >> o'brien: two weeks of warning, and did the faa indicate what it was looking for? >> we had meetings, and we were informed on the things that we needed to go ahead and prepare for. >> o'brien: several workers told us that, in preparation for the faa inspection, there was a massive clean-up.

>> it was amazing all the stuff that was thrown out. we had dumpsters full of stuff carried out of there constantly. >> o'brien: what kind of stuff were you throwing away? >> aircraft parts that were unmarked. the trackability on there... if the trackability of an aircraft part is invalid, then that part is no good, and it's supposed to be destroyed and got rid of. >> o'brien: so wait a minute. so these are parts that are illegal. >> that uld theasy way to say it--n illegal part. >> o'brien: according to faa reports, one of the most pervasive problems at st has been its handling of airplane parts. since 2004, st has been cited repeatedly for failing to properly tag, document and track parts through its maintenance system. several workers told us that, prior to the faa inspection, untagged, illegal parts were moved to this rented warehouse not far from st. so this is the place which,

supposedly, is just loaded up with parts that are undocumented and illegal, right? >> yep. >> o'brien: and in the trash here are some papers that are linked to united airlines for a controlled part of some kind. so, clearly, this is a spot that st is using for something. several workers told us that, after the inspection, some of the illegal parts were taken back to st. so, eventually, what is happening is parts that don't have the paperwork, parts that are illegal, end up on airplanes that fly passengers around this country. >> correct. >> o'brien: i think that would shock a lot of people. >> that would... yeah, that would shock me. and it did shock me. >> o'brien: in response, st wrote frontline that it does not have untagged or undocumented parts, that all parts used on aircraft are properly

documented, and that its records are regularly audited by the faa and airlines. based on what we've showed you with documentation and interviews, how would you characterize st mobile as an operation? >> ah, i think i... i would be deeply concerned over their viability to be any kind of consistent organization, with the stuff i've seen here, to the point where, pending investigations, they should be suspended. something's seriously wrong here, and this is... we need to investigate this. >> o'brien: our investigation of st focused on just one facility in the vast $29 billion global mro industry. but many insiders say the trend lines with maintenance are clear. what we hear time and again from people who are in the field-- in the trenches, as it were-- is that in... over the years, with this wonderful system we've created, we create this huge margin for safety. and that what is happening, because of all the pressures here in the airline industry in

general and, specifically, in maintenance, is we're kind of eating away at that margin. we're borrowing from the margin. what do you say to that? >> well, i would say, over the last ten or 12 years, we have actually reduced the risk in aviation by over 80% for fatal accidents. so, if anything, we have expanded the safety margins, we haven't eaten away. but the idea that... that we might affect the safety margins is a very high concern for the faa. it is what we focus on. >> o'brien: is the industry borrowing from its safety margin? >> i think there's no question. it's... it's simply not good enough to say, "well, you know, let's look at the safety record and let's look at the statistics," as a way of not addressing what could be problems that are fomenting now. the faa says that everything is fine. i think there are an awful lot of experts in the industry that i have spoken to that question that. >> o'brien: how much evidence is there, if at all, that safety is

being compromised by this system of repair and maintenance? >> it's going to be at the expense of a smoking hole at the end of the runway. i mean, i hate to see it come to that point, you know? it's going to be more reactive than proactive, and the downside is there's going to be people that are going to die. and i hate to see that happen. >> o'brien: of course, no one can predict a crash, but industry insiders are increasingly sounding the alarm about the high cost of flying cheaper. >> narrator: finally tonight, in afghanistan... >> what did we fight for, all these years? there must not be a deal with the taliban? >> narrator: "the spy who quit" begins right now.

>> smith: there are a lot of closely guarded secrets in afghanistan. amrullah saleh kws most of them. until six months ago, he was afghanistan's chief of intelligence. then, suddenly, he was out. saleh had sparred publicly with president hamid karzai over karzai's efforts to make peace with the taliban. i've invited myself to saleh's home in the panjshir valley, 60 miles north of kabul, to hear about his defection. >> i was not in power politics to go and flatter and be rosy.

i was a straight forward. there were a lot of moments i thought my job was over. >> smith: to help me understand where he was coming from, saleh insisted on taking me and his bodyguards on a hike. he said he needed to show me something. he led the way. that's me on all fours. >> i am sorry. but it's good for you. >> smith: saleh was taking me to a ridge top upon which sits a shrine to afghanistan's national hero, ahmed shah massoud. it was from here that massoud's northern alliance forces successfully held back the russians in the '80s and the taliban in the '90s. but a decade ago, two days before 9/11, massoud was assassinated by two al qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists. saleh says massoud would roll over in his grave if he knew

karzai was preparing to offer a peace deal with the enemy. >> what did we fight for all these years? my view is there musnot be a deal with the taliban. >> smith: ever? >> ever. if there is a deal, we will resist against the deal, "we" meaning all the forces who fought the taliban. there must be a process. and based on that process, taliban should become part of the society and play according to the script of democracy. they should be demobilized, sarmed, retegred. and that process will bring a lasting stability. deals never bring stability. >> smith: the problem with any reconciliation plan is that the taliban don't seem very interested. in june 2010, karzai gathered

afghan tribal elders for a peace jirga, or conference, and proposed amnesty for what he called "his dear talibs." as the jirga opened and karzai began speaking, rockets landed nearby and a gun battle followed. saleh says he had clear evidence that the taliban was behind the attack, but karzai refused to accept it. afterwards, he called his interior minister and saleh to his office. he accused them of wanting to derail the jirga. >> president karzai said, "i don't buy into this evidence that taliban did it. taliban cannot be that smart." that was a tipping point.g >> smith: he was ridiculing your evidence. and he w ang? >> yes. yes, he was gry. he had every right to be angry. >> smith: can you remember anything he specifically said? >> i remember every word he has said.

i don't want to repeat it. >> smith: saleh resigned, accusing the president of appeasement. >> he is no longer bad-mouthing the taliban. he calls them brothers. >> smith: to defeat the taliban, saleh supports escalating the war. >> i am in favor of more robust activities against the taliban. >> smith: he advocates more raids, more targeted killing. how effective are targeted operations? >> very effective. you cannot roll your tanks. there is no enemy territory, per se. >> these guys have already been hiding. >> the enemy is hiding amongst greater civilian population. >> smith: there are great risks in getting it wrong and killing civilians? >> yes. >> smith: in fact, civilian casualties soared 31% last year. so how dyou bance ose risks against the gains that you might or might not make in

killing leaders? >> well, of the 700-whatever number of operations that were done, very few had wrong... gone wrong. i don't say all of these operations go perfect. there are disasters. but what is the alternative? >> smith: karzai says this strategy is backfiring, turning more afghans against the government. i also asked saleh about the two-fold increase in drone strikes against taliban sanctuaries in neighboring pakistan. >> drone operation is very, very sensitive, secret u.s. operation. i don't know much about it. >> smith: i don't believe that you don't know much about it. i think what you're saying is you choose not to talk about it. >> i only talk about things in which i was involved and i had a degree of control or influence. >> smith: but your counterparts in the cia are running these drones? >> right. and they're very proud of it.

>> smith: did you encourage the americans to ireastheir us of drones? >> i encouraged america to use air force-- "bomb pakistan. force it to stop supporting taliban and al qaeda," period, let alone drones. i said, "drones are not sufficient. this is global war against terror." i am very, very direct on that. so, i was urging u.s., and i am urging them now-- whatever can hurt al qaeda and taliban and their supporters in pakistan, use it. you will regret not using it today. >> smith: saleh's special obsession is pakistan's spy agency, the isi. >> isi has created a space for al qaeda and taliban to launch operations. without their protection, they

won't be able to do these operations. so isi knows they are doing it. and isi is happy they are doing itecause, through em, pakistan promotes her policy in afghanistan. and the policy is "taliban are ours. and they are to dominate afghanistan." >> smith: the pakistani officials have long wanted to see you go. >> yes. >> smith: now, you are out. they won. >> they won, in a way, because i am not in a position of power. but they lost, still. i am in my country. and i talk to you and i lecture the afghans and i go abroad, talk about afghanistan, talk about pakistan. people say i was sacrificed. i say, "no, i am... i am here." >> smith: a week after i saw saleh, he took his message to america.

he'd been invited to give the keynote address at a major washington conference on terrorism. that's him talking with michael hayden, former director of the cia. >> we hear the speeches of major western politicians sang, "failure is not an option." now it seems as if failure is an option. >> smith: in his speech, he blasted the karzai administration. >> because everybody is desperate for a deal. >> smith: do you have intentions to run for president? >> i... that's a... it will be wrong to say "yes" or "no." i want to contribute. presidential position is not the only meaningful one. a deal will be a dasteboth for afghanistan and for the united states. >> smith: are you worried about what happens when the americans withdraw? >> yes. >> smith: what will happen?

>> if they happen and the situation is the way it is, it will be disaster-- massacre of people, bloodbath, disintegration of power, fragmentation of authority. >> smith: why should america stay here and sacrifice the lives of its young indefinitely? >> why did they come here? they came here for three distinct objectives: defeat al qaeda; make the taliban irrelevant; create a viable afghan state. if those objectives are achieved, good. >> smith: how long is that going to take? >> how long did it take to defeat communism? >> smith: 50 years. >> so, they n rencilwith al qaeda. it's up to them. >> smith: america is losing interest.

>> if they lose interest and they withdraw, i have no influence to stop it. none of us have any influence to stop it. >> smith: but? >> there will be disaster. and history has seen many disasters. >> next time on frontline... >> they still had iraq inside of them. >> i didn't even want to come home. >> you took a broken soldier and you sent him back. >> i didn't want to live anymore. >> you just feel like everybody's against you. if you don't know them, they're your enemy. >> frontline investigates the invisible scars of war. >> we give up part of our morality to go to war. >> it allows us to survive. it allows us to kill. >> "the wounded platoon." frontline's web site has more on tonight's stories, plus a web-exclusive video report on the embattled afghan town of musa qala, where u.s. war policy is being put to the test.

>> if they cant make a success of musa qala, it's really hard to see how they can make a success of anywhere. >> and there's much more on frontline's web site. watch nearly 100 programs from our archive; explore interactive timelines; and follow ongoing frontline investigations. then, join the discussion at pbs.org >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation. dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by the frontline journalism

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