Captain Kidd

For centuries, popular culture has depicted Captain Kidd as an illiterate, devious, merciless pirate. But we turn the tables on accepted fact to uncover a different story. Kidd was an intelligent, well-read businessmen living in New York, when English King William III commissioned him for "special operations"--as a pirate hunter. Why did he switch from hunter to hunted? Was he a "double agent" of piracy? Was he hung as a paradigm for those who dared blur the distinction between privateer and pirate?

• documentary