Greg Barker, producer of the Frontline documentary Showdown With Iran, explains how the Bush/Cheney administration refused to hear Ayatollah Kahmenei’s attempts to make peace, the role of Flynt Leverette and Hillary Mann, the hanging out to dry of the Iranian peace-makers, the current march to war and the neocons’ claim that the Iranians would rise up and help the U.S. attack their government.
MP3 here. (15:26)
Greg Barker produced, wrote, and directed FRONTLINE’s epic two-hour 2004 special Ghosts of Rwanda — the culmination of six years of interviews and research into the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged in the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandans. The Boston Globe called the film “riveting, appalling television … one of [FRONTLINE’s] most powerful programs in years” and the film won honors including the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Sidney Hillman Award, a Banff Television Festival Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Barker’s other projects for FRONTLINE include Campaign Against Terror (2002), which recounts the behind-the-scenes story of the U.S. and world response to 9/11, and The Survival of Saddam (2000), an examination of Saddam Hussein. For the fourth hour of FRONTLINE’s News War series (2007), Barker traveled to the Middle East to examine the rise of Arab satellite TV channels and the growing influence of Al Jazeera. He also produced Part II of FRONTLINE’s four-hour series The Age of AIDS (2006), which won the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton.