Marian Marzynski

US federal investigators are called in to determine the cause of a mysterious jetliner crash in Panama. Nothing about the accident makes sense, until a key clue emerges.

Frontline correspondent Hedrick Smith, the award-winning host of “Inside Gorbachev’s USSR,” revisits the former Soviet Union to investigate how the institutions and people he filmed for his 1990 series are dealing with the challenge of change. Smith finds a nation enjoying new freedoms of speech and conscience but on the brink of economic and political disaster.