Martin Smith

Jan. 3 2012 magazine: The Secret War and Opium Brides. Also available on Amazon Instant Video

Unexpected victims have been caught in the crossfire of attempts to eradicate Afghanistan's flourishing drug trade: young farm girls. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's illicit opium. Opium farmers have long borrowed money from drug gangs, some with links to the Taliban, to subsidize their crops. Now, as the Afghan government destroys their livelihood in an eradication program, the farmers find themselves in a horrifying situation: repay their debts or give their daughters to drug-traffickers, often to be used for sex. Award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi reports on the harrowing story of families torn apart and the collateral damage of the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan. Also this hour, a timely encore broadcast: FRONTLINE crosses the border into Pakistan, where correspondents Stephen Grey and Martin Smith go inside "The Secret War" against the militants. They uncover evidence of covert support for elements of the Taliban by the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI. At a safe house not far from where Osama bin Laden was killed, they make contact with one mid-level Taliban commander who tells FRONTLINE, "If they really wanted to, [the Pakistanis] could arrest us all in an hour."

June 28, 2011 magazine: 'The Child Cases' and 'Educating Sergeant Pantzke' Also available on Hulu Plus

When a child dies under suspicious circumstances, abuse is often suspected. That's what happened in the case of six-month-old Isis Vas, whose death was deemed "a clear-cut and classic" case of child abuse, sending a man named Ernie Lopez to prison for 60 years. But now a Texas judge has moved to overturn Lopez's conviction, and new questions are being asked about the quality of expert testimony in this and many other similar cases. In this joint investigation with ProPublica and NPR, FRONTLINE correspondent A.C. Thompson unearths more than 20 child death cases in which people were jailed on medical evidence-involving abuse, assault, and "shaken baby syndrome"-that was later found unreliable or flat-out wrong. Are death investigators being properly trained for child cases? Also in this magazine hour: Correspondent Martin Smith (College Inc.) continues to investigate for-profit colleges, this time focusing on their aggressive recruitment of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Are the for-profits making promises that they can't keep?