‘Frontline’ Ponders U.S.-Bin Laden Showdown

“Frontline” tonight questions whether Osama bin Laden is quite the omnipotent boogeyman the U.S. claims he is. The PBS program suggests, instead, that a series of spectacular anti-American bombings were less likely the masterwork of the exiled Saudi Arabian millionaire than a reflection of wider Muslim disgust with the U.S.

No one here argues that Bin Laden doesn’t regard himself at war with the U.S. “But from the evidence made available,” says narrator Will Lyman, “it is unclear whether . . . Bin Laden has committed acts of terror or simply inspired them.”

“The Terrorist and the Superpower” is another strong hour from this durable documentary series, the difference this time being its collaboration here with the New York Times on a story that raises doubts about the way the U.S. has chosen to counterpunch Bin Laden. That includes cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan, where the U.S. targeted a pharmaceutical factory that it claimed was making lethal nerve gas with Bin Laden’s assistance. “Frontline” finds “problems” with that hypothesis.

“Frontline” reporter Lowell Bergman conducted a wide range of interviews for this documentary. Bergman is the very able former “60 Minutes” field producer whose seminal role in that program’s controversial Brown & Williamson tobacco wars is depicted in a coming theatrical feature in which he is played by Al Pacino.

Who is Bin Laden, whom “Frontline” titles “the most wanted man on Earth?” The documentary provides no definitive answer but does pierce a bit of the mystique. And in exploring his activities and U.S. fixation on him, it provides a rare Islamic view of some of this nation’s policies in the Middle East.

For instance, Khalid Hamideh, a Saudi doctor said to be familiar with Bin Laden’s views, tells Bergman that U.S. troops presently stationed in Saudi Arabia are a “huge religious insult” driving Muslims’ “anti-American fervor.” And Palestinian-born author Said Aburish maintains that Bin Laden’s “first demand” is for U.S. troops to leave this “holy soil of Islam.”

Others tell Bergman that by focusing so intensely on Bin Laden, who is said to be hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, the U.S. is en route to making a folk hero of the man it hopes to destroy. “And then,” says a Muslim living in the U.S., “the radicals will further rally behind an individual like him.”

* “The Terrorist and the Superpower” airs tonight at 9 on KCET-TV.