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FRONTLINE: Film Audio Track | PBS

Special Edition Podcast: A Brother’s Quest

FRONTLINE: Film Audio Track | PBS

FRONTLINE

Documentaries, Frontline, Wgbh, Tv & Film, Pbs

4.62.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2015

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special edition podcast, FRONTLINE filmmaker Ken Dornstein remembers his older brother, David, who died in the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103. Music featured in this podcast by Jeremy Messersmith. http://jeremymessersmith.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0

If you've been watching my brother's bomber, frontlines, three-part series on the bombing

0:23.1

of Pan Am Flight 103, then you know that filmmaker Ken Doranstein has a very personal connection

0:28.9

to the story. His older brother, David, was on the plane when it exploded over Locker

0:34.4

B. Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

0:46.4

What you might not know is that two weeks after his brother died, Ken got a letter in the

0:50.8

mail. It was from David. I was home because I was on Christmas break and news had come from

0:59.8

Pan Am and the mourners had come to the house and we'd had a service forum. You know, he was

1:06.9

very much dead. But then I'd go to get the mail and then they opened it up and there's one of his

1:13.0

letters. I understood exactly why they arrived late but there's a part of it that feeds that

1:22.3

fiction that, okay, what are we going to get letters every week now and you know clues about where

1:28.5

he's hiding out. It was very easy to think he was still out there somewhere. It's been 27 years

1:37.6

since David's death. In that time, Ken has been on an extraordinary journey, which is culminated

1:43.4

in a quest to find and confront the men who carried out the bombing. I'm Michelle Meisner and in

1:49.7

this special edition of the Frontline podcast, we hear from Ken about his relationship with David

1:54.4

and what has motivated him to keep searching, even when it felt like the rest of the world had given up.

2:00.2

I'm sending a letter home to my brother so I told him my tell him what brunch was all about.

2:06.4

So I'm taping brunch. Don't let it inhibit you. Apart from the timing of that last letter, Ken got

2:15.4

from David. It actually wasn't surprising to see an envelope from him in the mail. They were the

2:20.4

kind of brothers who wrote to each other. There's a lot of interesting people. Who there? Someone with purple hair. Sometimes they even made

2:27.5

tapes. This is a recording David sent to Ken of a Sunday brunch on his college campus.

2:32.5

Hi Sarah. Hi James. I'm fine. And one year when David couldn't come home for Passover, Ken made a

2:39.6

recording of their family's satire dinner and sent it to him. At this point in the satire, I have come

...

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