History's Greatest Lies Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
Episode 1 - 1915: The Sinking of the LusitaniaOn May 7th 1915, the British trans-Atlantic liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine. The Germans justified the action by claiming that the ship was transporting concealed weapons. The Americans denied this, and used the disaster to help shift public opinion against Germany, and therefore justify their eventual declaration of war.
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Episode 2 - 1944: Operation Fortitude6th June 1944. The beaches of Normandy are the scene of the most spectacular military operation of all time: the Normandy Landings, a key moment that will alter the course of the Second World War. They owe their success, though, to a gigantic lie: a phantom army, armed with inflatable tanks and wooden rifles; but also to a whole network of double agents, most of them entirely fictitious.
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Episode 3 - 1983: The Sniffer PlanesIn 1979, in the midst of the second oil crisis, two eccentric inventors proposed to the French industrial oil giant, Elf, a concept for an aircraft able to detect oil deposits underground. Encouraged by promising demonstrations, the French state administration eagerly backed the avion renifleur, which turned out to be a complete hoax.
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Episode 4 - 1972: Watergate1972. This is the greatest American lie of the twentieth century. Richard Nixon spared no effort to ensure his re-election on the 7th November: spying on his opponents from the Democratic party, wiretapping, stealing documents, using slush funds. A team of 50 people were recruited from within the White House to bring down the opposite camp and rig the election.
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Episode 5 - 2003: The War in Iraq12th September 2002, George W. Bush assured the United Nations Security Council that Iraq was in possession of “weapons of mass destruction” and posed a threat to the United States, particularly through its links with Al Qaeda. “We have a first-hand description” of these installations of death, explained Colin Powell, the Secretary of State a the UN. However, it was all untrue.
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Episode 6 - 1985: The Rainbow WarriorMarch 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, was docked in Auckland, New Zealand. The environmentalists were organizing a large-scale act of protest in order to put a stop to French nuclear testing in Polynesia. On 10th July 1985, a dozen French External Security agents were stationed in New Zealand to launch an operation to sink the Rainbow Warrior.
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Episode 7 - 2008: The Madoff Affair12th December 2008, in the very midst of the financial crisis, Bernard L. Madoff was arrested and handcuffed in front of the media. This former stockbroker was behind the largest financial fraud in US history. 65 billion US dollars! This lie lasted for over 20 years...
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Episode 8 - 1990: The First Gulf WarOn the 14th October 1990, before a US Congress commission, a 15 year old adolescent girl, Nayirah al-Sabah, gives a chilling testimony of the atrocities committed in a Kuwait hospital by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops. Televisions around the world broadcast the speech. On the 17th January 1991, international forces launch the operation Desert Storm.
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Episode 9 - 2013: Lance Armstrong the LegendOn the 17th January 2013, in a cleverly orchestrated cathodic ceremony, the seven times winner of the Tour de France confesses to the queen of the talk-show, Oprah Winfrey, that he has been doped, using EPO, growth hormone and blood transfusions. But how did this American “hero” - stricken by cancer at the age of 25, returned to the height of competition through unfailing courage?
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Episode 10 - 1998: The Monica Lewinsky AffairSex, lies and politics. How a sex scandal changed the face of the United States. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. These allegations are false." Those were Bill Clinton’s words. It was January 26th, 1998. Looking straight in the eyes of his interviewers, the President of the United States lied live from the White House during a filmed press conference.
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Episode 11 - 1953: Tobacco, The Industry of Lies"Nicotine isn’t addictive". These words are the ones that the tobacco industry’s seven most important leaders pronounced in front of the United States Congress. It was April 4th, 1994. Four years later, they had to pay a $200 billion fine and to make their archives public.
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Episode 12 - 1983: The Elysee Wire Tapping Scandal"Gentlemen, our conversation is over. I didn’t think we would stoop to such a degree of despicability." The offended man speaking these words was François Mitterrand, the French President at the time. In March 1993, two journalists questioned him on the Elysée Palace wiretapping scandal which had just come to light. The President of the Republic denied everything and was disparaging.
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Episode 13 - 1991: The Contaminated Hemophilia Blood CaseHow could France, one of the wealthiest country in the Western world let medical staff passed out HIV contaminated blood bags to thousand of patients. That is the question raised by hemophiliac, transfused people and their close relatives. They were indeed infected with HIV in the 1980’s through these contaminated blood bags. That is also the question raised by those who survived...
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Episode 14 - 1997: The Asbestos ScandalThis is the greatest industrial killer of the XXth century. The story is not over yet. Around 300 new cases of «Absestos cancer» are reported each year in France. It would represent 100000 deaths until 2025. At the European scale this number grows up to 500000. This is also one of the most efficient industrial lobbying case in France’s History.
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Episode 15 - 1996: The Mad Cow CrisisDisinformation and lies through omission: During 10 years, british politicians and lobbyists have worked to reduce the importance of the greatest food-industrial crisis since World War II. On March 20th of 1996, it eventually became public that the prion could communicate the mad cow disease to humans. At this time ten British citizens got a deadly disease, the Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
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