The Witsec: HBO’s next big drama dives into the birth of the witness protection program

HBO is moving forward with The Witsec, a drama that will explore the birth of the federal witness protection program.

The project is based on Pete Earley and Gerald Shur’s nonfiction book WitSec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program. The book examines how the system was created and how it evolved to protect key witnesses from retaliation. Peter Chernin’s Chernin Entertainment is producing, with Justin Piasecki (Relay) and David Kob (Foundation) attached as writers.

The series will focus on a Department of Justice lawyer and a mob hitman who form an uneasy partnership. Both are disillusioned with the institutions around them but recognize that by working together, they can bring down powerful crime figures. Their alliance sets the stage for the early framework of the witness protection program, showing how it took shape in an era when mob violence and government corruption were widespread.

Executive producers include Alex Jackson of Chernin Entertainment, along with Earley and Miriam Shur. Piasecki and Kob bring strong résumés, with Piasecki recently releasing Relay through Bleecker Street and Kob now co-showrunning Foundation. With its mix of historical detail, crime drama, and institutional conflict, The Witsec signals HBO’s next prestige series in development.

The Witsec: Inside HBO’s plan to chronicle the birth of witness protection

The main hook of The Witsec lies in how HBO is shaping a character-driven story around the complicated birth of the federal witness protection program. Instead of treating it like a background detail, The Witsec focuses on the drama at the heart of the story. It explores the legal and criminal forces that pushed the government to design a system protecting informants who risked everything to testify.

The choice to pair a Department of Justice lawyer with a mob hitman highlights the strange alliances that defined this era. Both characters are written as people who no longer trust the institutions they serve but who see no alternative if they want to dismantle the hold of organized crime. Their pact becomes the dramatic engine for showing how Witsec started as a desperate experiment before it became a permanent government program.

What makes this approach specific to HBO is the focus on institutional decay and the human cost of cooperation. The DOJ lawyer is not a polished government success story but someone who recognizes how corruption and inertia block justice.

The mob hitman is not a caricature but a figure who knows the brutality of his world firsthand and understands that betrayal is often the only path to survival. By pairing them, the show avoids glamorizing either side and shows how early witness protection efforts depended on fragile deals between people who had no reason to trust each other.

The production team adds further credibility. Justin Piasecki has proven his ability to write complex, morally ambiguous thrillers, with Relay showing his knack for tense partnerships under extreme pressure.

David Kob’s experience on Foundation means he understands how to structure a sprawling narrative with political stakes layered across characters. Their combined skill set suggests The Witsec will balance character depth with a broader look at how criminal empires and the government clashed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Backing from Chernin Entertainment ensures the series has the resources and reach HBO requires for a large-scale drama. The company’s recent output, ranging from Back in Action to Chief of War, shows its ability to build projects that mix strong character arcs with wide audience appeal.

With Alex Jackson overseeing from Chernin, with Pete Earley and Miriam Shur ensuring the story stays rooted in factual history. HBO is positioning The Witsec as a drama about the origins of one of America’s most secretive programs.The series shows how it was born from uneasy deals, institutional compromise, and the urgent need to save lives in the face of violent odds.

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