The Fifth Estate (1976)

Season 38: Episode 23

Cynthia Vanier had seemingly hit the big time in business, politics and international intrigue, working with Canada's largest engineering firm, SNC Lavalin, to protect billions of dollars worth of projects in Libya. That work led her to cross paths with one of the world's most notorious family names -- Gadhafi. But as events unfolded, she became a part of a fiasco so complex that she'll likely never fully understand it, nor recover from its impact on her life. On this week's the fifth estate, Linden MacIntyre tells the story of Cynthia Vanier and how she claims she was duped into a risky mission in Libya, and is now spending her days in a shabby prison in southern Mexico fighting allegations of terrorism, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.