FRONTLINE traces how the National Security Agency built a surveillance apparatus after September 11, drawing on interviews with the officials and whistleblowers who watched it happen from inside. NSA veterans William Binney and Thomas Drake describe a warrantless wiretapping program authorized by the Bush administration that swept up Americans' phone and email data without court oversight, and Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's refusal to hand over customer records to the agency becomes a turning point when his company pays a price for saying no. The film reconstructs the secret room at an AT&T facility where fiber-optic cables were tapped directly, and follows the legal and bureaucratic fights inside the Justice Department as officials debated the program's legality. Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks arrive at the end as confirmation of what earlier whistleblowers had already tried, unsuccessfully, to expose. Told through the people who tried to stop the program from within, the episode lays out how a small circle of officials built a surveillance system that outlasted the men who first questioned it.