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33-year old male found dead a few days ago someone amongst them is our killer Iran 1979 the worst hostage crisis in American history begins unknown to the world of the time US Embassy staff escape and find their way to the house of Canadian diplomats where they spend 85 days in hiding the longer that we were in hiding the more the potential was that we would be found when the Central Intelligence Agency learn of The Americans on the Run they assign one of their tough Escape agents Tony Mendes to get them out he comes up with an extraordinary plan to walk the diplomats out of Iran in broad daylight posing as a Hollywood film crew it was a perfect example of Truth being Strang and the fiction the CIA now pushes its tradecraft to the Limit as they set out to disguise and train six ordinary Americans in the art of escape this is the real life story of what would later become an oscar-winning Hollywood sensation but what isn’t in the Hollywood version are the extraordinary details of an operation the CIA kept hidden away in classified files until now it’s the secret story of how the CIA fooled [Music] everyone in late 1979 thousands of anti-American protesters in Iran are gathering outside the US [Applause] Embassy demonstrations against America are common Iran is still in the throws of an Islamic revolution and America is being accused of aiding and abetting the hated exiled dictator the Sha Raza palavi this is one of hundreds of protests organized by militant revolutionary students but this time it’s different few of them had makeshift weapons you know bike chains or a baseball bat though some of them did have [Applause] pistols massive crowd of thousand people roaring down with America death to Carter inside the embassy staff can see the disturbance from the office Windows shortly after after 9:00 a.m. the chains of the gate are cut a small Breakaway group of student militants heads for the main Embassy building the Chancery they broke the window and they were able to enter into the basement the Iranians made their way up to the second floor I captured some Americans and said let us in otherwise you know we’ll we’ll har these people adjacent to the Chancery is another building the consulate inside there are more Americans one of them is Mark liic we started hearing U kind of a hubub coming from the waiting area people talking about demonstrators roaming inside the compound Li’s wife Kora is also in the consulate we did hear footsteps on the roof and we thought that maybe somebody was going to try to get in and find access into the building so that was a bit scary All the Lights Went Out apparently the demonstrators had gotten into our into the power station and and cut off the power someone threw a brick or a rock through the window and the Marine went running in and saw a guy climbing up the ladder the diplomats now realize that the embassy compound is completely overrun by demonstrators at first one of the US Marines guarding the consulate advises them to stay inside the building they hear on the radio that armed militants are trying to kidnap the rest of the Americans they now know that they’re in grave danger they must escape fast they realized that the Chancery had been broken into and that they really couldn’t hold out any longer they’re advised to head to the nearby British Embassy with the help of a local Iranian [Music] guide so they make their way to a side door of the consulate that leads directly onto the streets of Teran only steps away are thousands and thousands of angry Iranian [Applause] protesters among the first out are Mark and cor liek when I first left the embassy I I was certainly nervous I felt very conspicuous we were trying not to stand out we were trying to blend in with the people that were walking away step by step you know trying to get away they are followed by Joe Stafford his wife Kathy and Bob Anders the five avoid the angry crowds now behind [Applause] them and head Southwest towards the British Embassy led by their Iranian guide she pulled me to the side and the rest of our group also went to the side and she says you know there’s a demonstration we can’t go there we saw a demonstration there so we decided that was not a good idea in the end they head to Bob ander’s apartment and remain there terrified of stepping back onto the streets of Tran [Music] in Washington while the embassy crisis is unfolding it’s still the early hours of Sunday morning calls from Iran begin to trickle in to the state department the president is alerted as Dawn Rises and so is the Central Intelligence Agency upon receiving the information that the embassy had been overrun the CIA would have immediately been concerned for the safety of its people by the time America wakes up the Revolutionary students have declared a victory day one of the world’s biggest ever International hostage crisis has begun they were paraded in front of the cameras and this was a big victory for the students I mean they were very surprised that they’d actually been able to pull it off 66 Americans are now being held hostage at gunpoint at this stage the CIA have no idea that there’s a group of diplomats On The Run we felt very dangerous a very dangerous situation what happens next is not portrayed in the Hollywood [Music] movie after their first night in hiding the escapes make a nail-biting series of overnight stays at five different locations in Teran this includes the British ambassador’s residence this takes place over six grueling days they’re literally going from house to house to house the most terrifying time was was either Wednesday or Thursday night all night long the local Watchmen kept blowing a whistle about every 10 or 15 minutes our nerves were were raw the six days that we spent on our own was the scariest time the Iranians were rounding people up because the other Americans that we’d been in touch with in the first days who were uh still out were gradually being um arrested seized desperate and with no idea what to do Bob Anders remembers a friend in the Canadian embassy and gives him a call his name is John shear down Bob said well I I’m not alone there there’s five of us and John said bring them all [Music] 6 days after they first step out of the US Embassy onto the streets of tan the escapes finally reach the Canadian house with their fellow Americans held hostage at gunpoint they themselves are now effectively fugitives at large in Iran terrified of being caught confused about what to do next and exhausted they now have just one hope Rescue by the CIA I had to sense anyway that Washington had sort of forgotten about us one month after the embassy takeover and the state department is still consumed by the ever worsening hostage crisis the American hostages no act has so galvanized the American public toward unity in the last decade as has a holding of our people as hostages in tyan while State Department’s staff grapple with how to deal with the embassy they also become aware of the six escapees through information sent from Canadian officials in tran the state department turns to the CIA in early December a series of top secret flash cables arrive on the desk of an intelligence officer called Tony Mendes say flash cables are the highest priority Communications usually restricted to Wars or the most urgent of information Tony saw these cables on his desk and at the top of them were these marked flash which you almost never see in fact some communicators he told me can go their whole careers without ever seeing one The Flash cables are about the escaped diplomats on December 10th when Tony heard that there were six Americans stranded out inside the embassy immediately his mind would have kicked into [Music] gear Tony Mendes is a rising star within the CIA he’s carried out numerous undercover rescue operations which the agency call exfiltration or extracting assets out of dangerous places his job was getting people out of tough spots rescuing people from dangerous areas he’s known as The Master of Disguise and works in a highly secretive specialist Department known as OTS OTS is the office of technical service and they are the cia’s gadget makers these are the people in the film James Bond which would be the Q you know these are the they give the equipment with the arrival of The Flash cable Mendes and the OTS are about to receive their biggest challenge [Music] yet Mendes is called to a meeting at the state department they discuss what they thought they should do to help rescue these people Tony immediately sort of let them know that they should should let him and the experts of the CIA worry about this and they did the rescue is now in Mendes’s hands along with his team of specialists at OTS he sets to work on a plan that will get them out in broad daylight the first problem the escapes are American and the Iranian authorities will be on the lookout for any Americans trying to leave the country the US is the hated enemy the second problem is that the diplomats are untrained in spy tradecraft they simply won’t have the ability of accomplished agents to suddenly adopt an alien identity they were completely unwitting of this black World in which people can be exfiltrated so Mendes wants to find them a plausible reason to be in Iran which will fool the Iranians and one which any ordinary English-speaking American can fake the key is if they spoke English what other possible Country Wasn’t Iran mad [Music] at the answer of course is Canada Mendes has a hunch that Canada offers the diplomats their best chance but he’s is worried that the Canadian government won’t break its own protocol and issue citizens from another country fake passports unfortunately the Canadians had a law that said you know you can’t just give out passports to anybody the foreign minister along with the Prime Minister got together and they were able to sort of circumvent the um the parliament so that they could pass this exception to their laws with the Canadian passport secured next Mendes now needs a cover story he wanted to create a story that was so unbelievable so crazy and over the top that no one would believe that it was fake after endless days and nights searching for the perfect cover story Mendes hits on an idea suppose the diplomats are Canadians who are part of a Hollywood film crew and their cover story is that they’re on a special trip to look at filming locations despite the revolution the cultural sector of the new Iranian government still wants to attract foreign currency and that includes film investment the plan is implausible it’s improbable that it would work it is fraught with problems and a thousand things could go wrong not the least of the problems is that that Mendes knows little about Hollywood film crws so he calls up an old friend in California John Chambers an Oscar winning makeup artist famous for his effects on Planet of the Apes so he called his friend John Chambers to find out if it would be feasible and what kind of people would go on a location scouting party and after Chambers ticked off the various jobs that a person would have Tony realized it it was a perfect solution [Music] back in Iran the escapes are following developments in the ongoing hostage crisis at the US Embassy we had an old television so we did see some footage of the hostages blindfolded and being let around you know they’re completely helpless at the mercy of this crowd of people around them pushing them out and that was pretty scary the diplomats have been joined by one more Lee shatz another American working at the embassy whose Escape had been engineered by the swedes the six are now known as the house guests after living with the Canadians For What by Christmas is now well over 40 days the longer that we were in hiding the more the potential was that we would be found day by day the danger for the house guests is incre increasing odds are that sooner or later the diplomats will be discovered and turned over to the [Music] authorities it’s now a Race Against [Music] Time in early January Mendes goes to Los Angeles on a 4-day trip to execute the first stage of his elaborate Hollywood ruse by visiting his old friend John Chambers with him $10,000 of CIA cash hidden in a secret compartment of his briefcase Tony had to come out to Los Angeles to try to put this plan into motion goes to John Chambers house and they sit down Mendes turns to Chambers and a colleague of his Bob Sidell to help him build up what will look like a genuine Hollywood production from scratch Bob was really surprised when he shows up at John Chambers house and there’s sitting in the breakfast nook and then here’s a CIA officer saying we have to rescue some Americans who are stuck in on the lamb in Teran you know like that was not what he expected that morning the three work fast and quickly find the script of an unmade film called Lord of Light Tony says this is exactly what we need it kind of has a middle eastern feel to it so he says let’s call it Argo and they realize that it also has a kind of mythical connotation Jason and the Argonauts it’s the ship that The Argonaut sailed on and Tiny says this is perfect with the script problem solved next they need a Hollywood office we’re just coming up here on Sunset Gower Studios this is the lot that used to be the Columbia lot actually and this is where Tony and John Chambers and Bob cidel took over an office that had just been occupied by Michael doas for The China Syndrome and it was empty so that’s where they set up their fake Film Production Mendes names the production company Studio 6 after the six diplomats he must rescue Chambers and sidel agree to run it on behalf of the [Music] CIA while in California Mendes also turns his attention to the minui of the operation collecting what the CIA call pocket litter pocket litter refers to all the time details which the authorities might check during the Escape Tony would have had to consider every possibility everything from the labels on their clothing down to matchbooks that came from Ottawa are bits that would be Associated either with the movie industry or with Canada everything had to support the central cover preparations for the exfiltration do not stop here here when Mendes gets back to OTS offices he draws on his huge team of CIA technical Specialists to work on the details he was supported by literally hundreds of people he had disguise Specialists he had graphics people he had document validators how to talk about forgery he had individuals that could talk about clothing what would a Canadian film crew look like back in Iran the house guests have now been in hiding not for days but months the endless waiting has begun to unnerve them and by this stage any small incident is enough to cause huge alarm we had one incident where a helicopter flew low very low over the house it uh scared us we were tense even though we were in a safe place it didn’t take much uh to to trigger uh this sort of uh uh you know flight response or Panic whatever you want to call it fear paranoia and frustration that combined effect begins to wear down the mental state of the trapped diplomats their worries are well founded inside the US Embassy the hostages are being mistreated even being subjected to terrifying mock executions despite the pressure the house guests do whatever they can just to get through the endless weeks in hiding this is helped by their Canadian hosts the shadam the um atmosphere that was created by the shear Downs through the family kind of setup that we had the social events that they did for us I think they helped us as much as possible have a normal life I think John realized that in order to keep us um mentally healthy you might say that there were certain things that they they could do um one of them was uh the routine that we had with um the formal dinner and and um the conversation following another was uh they would have parties for us a couple times a month they would invite people from other embassies such as the new zealanders and and the Danish Ambassador people who knew about us so that we could have normal social interaction with people outside of our very limited [Music] Circle some of their most memorable occasions include both a Thanksgiving and a Christmas Feast enjoyed in the Sumptuous setting of John she Down’s diplomatic house due to a strange fluke the showns had stocked their basement with alcohol because they were next in line to host one of these Embassy functions that the foreign uh diplomats would have obviously they didn’t happen because of the embassy takeover that sort of shut all that stuff down but the house guest had this abundant supply of wine and liquor and these kinds of things so they often uh threw themselves little parties and they drank but there was also a lot of tension um and it was there were some tense moments when they were worried about being discovered I felt like we were on the Titanic and that we didn’t know when we were going to hit the iceberg but unlike the people in the real Titanic we knew that there were icebergs out there and that it was potentially possible that any day we could run into one unable to leave the house and living behind closed doors the diplomats pass endless hours in whatever way they can it’s just a waiting game John shear down had a big Library we uh we did a lot of reading I read 27 books in that time I think Mark Mark liek more than doubled that we played Monopoly Scrabble Bridge you know there’s always a worry in the back of your mind you know that we might be caught they became a bit are crazy they had to stay inside they there were times when they visitors would come over to the house they would lock themselves in their room they would hide under the bed they were very nervous about making an an un sound anything that could attract [Music] attention in Washington the CIA also feel the pressure Mendes sets a date for the exfiltration January 25th 1980 the risks are so great that rather than send another agent he’ll go there himself he selects a colleague codenamed Julio who speaks fi the language of Iran to travel with him the CIA are also in contact with the Canadian Ambassador Kenneth Taylor who has been protecting the house guests since the start soon Mendes will meet them all face to face and their freedom will pass from the hands of the Canadians to those of the CI a a agents if it all goes wrong and fails then ultimately their own lives could also be on the line almost 3 months since the first day of the diplomats Escape top intelligence agent Tony Mendes and a colleague Coden named Julio arrive in Iran most of this time the Canadian Ambassador has been in secret communication with the CIA and know knows they’re [Music] coming when they arrive at the Canadian diplomat’s house the house guests have no idea what to expect Two Gentlemen in trench coats showed up which was appropriate of course Tony introduced himself as Kevin Harkins there was a another gentleman with him but he stayed in the background pretty much [Music] the man who calls himself Kevin Hawkins in fact Tony Mendes immediately begins to assess the diplomat’s mental state after 80 Days in hiding when Tony joined the group he selectively and very carefully begin to analyze each one of them saying who is the individual that I least need to worry about and who do I need to focus on Mendes is looking out for the weakest link the person most likely to panic during the escape the house guests are also making an assessment of their own can this man really get them out of here and how when Tony offered the Hollywood scenario I liked it immediately they set up an office in Hollywood and everyone had their business card and here’s mine right here the Argo plan impresses most of the house guests but not all of them are immediately convinced I got to admit I was taken aback by it because it it’s not something I’d been thinking about for the last three months the challenge for Mendes is to Open the diplomat’s Eyes to an entirely new illusionary world of f it and pretense they must somehow come to terms with playing Hollywood characters that don’t exist except in the eyes of the Iranians so Mendes plays a small conr trick on them to get them thinking about the deception they’ll have to perform themselves to escape so he comes in and he performs this little parlor trick that he does with two corks he holds them in his hand kind of forming two D’s and he magically separates them making it look as if one cork has passed through the other and I know it was just a trick it was just a slight of hand but somehow I was kind of amazed by the little hand trick I well he can do this like you know and he’s saying he’s got all this experience so um I think that we can trust him I think he said this the point of it it’s the whole thing is illusion you know trying to put something over on somebody you’re playing a role you’re a different person so you’re trying to fool somebody so it’s it’s not it’s not it’s not real it’s an illusion these are the very first moments that the Master of Disguise has with the house guests just the beginning of the preparations he knows the Hollywood plan is a big ask for civilians not used to undercover [Music] operations even so Mendes issues them with their aliases the people they’re going to have to pretend to be on the day of the Escape cor liek is told that she is no longer Mark Li’s wife but the Hollywood script writer Teresa Harris someone had obviously read our files because my birthday was my mother’s month and day and it was my year so it was things that I already knew and I actually went to school with a woman named Teresa Harris who shares my actual real birthday I don’t know if that’s a [Music] fluke the next day CIA agents Tony Mendes and Julio drive through Tran to the Canadian embassy here they have to perform a critical piece of CIA tradecraft forging the travel documents of the six escapes watched by the Canadian Ambassador Kenneth Taylor Mendes forges the travel doc docents he needs to create a record of these false identities having entered Iran and he’d have had a number of tools he would have had of course a magnifying class he would have had a forgers kit and he would have used What’s called the forgers bridge which is a way to rest his hands on the document that don’t smear the ink but allow ow him to put in the final details if they look too perfect there’s something wrong with them but if they’re too halfhazard they may not be believable to match the ink used by the Iranian authorities Mendes uses an ink pad supplied by the CIA but it has dried up and doesn’t work now here is where the the artistic side of Tony comes in he walks over to Kent Taylor’s Liquor Cabinet he selects a Scot with a high octane quality he pours some Scotch onto the pad and sure enough they come out perfectly It’s the final day of the Escape preparations tomorrow they will head to Tran’s airport and try to flee the country but Mendes and Julio are not sure that the house guests are adequately prepared so on Sunday night Tony goes back to the showdowns to meet up with the house guest and he’s very surprised by what he sees what he sees is that the house guests are scrambling through all their clothes completely absorbed in the characters they will play they have to transform themselves from bureaucrats into fashionable Hollywood filmmakers Bob Andrew I think won the prize though I mean he decided to to become very flamboyant I think he unbuttoned his shirt down to about the middle of his chest Bob has quite a bit of chest a so he displayed that prominently I’m looking on my shirt you know and I thought well maybe I had some kind of a chain you know with a medallion or something and that would that would fit you know that’d be sort of hollywoodish and so then I said yeah that’s that’s the me that’s a new me you know that’s that’s Robert Baker works for Studio [Music] [Applause] 6 the house guests begin to enjoy playing their flamboyant Hollywood characters but Mendes is still concerned that they haven’t yet taken on board the full gravity of the Escape so with the help of Roger Lucy a colleague of the Ambassador he decides to put them through a mock interrogation and he took it very seriously he actually wore these leather boots he had a camouflage jacket a little swagger stick and he got right in their faces Roger he he was playing his role as the interrogator he was playing it to the hilt so he he uh gave him some kind of a very serious threat I forget exactly what it was but something like he was going to be taken away and probably executed and so and this uh gave us all a little start you said well we have this have to take this thing seriously and uh it’s not not just a game that that we’re playing I think the the point was to make sure that we had those answers down so fast that we could spit them out and uh not give us time to to think to remember they had to be uh right there and just we had to be able to recall them immediately and and uh it was effective I [Music] think after only 2 days of preparation Mendes decides the time has come for the diplomats to make a break for it if he’s right it could be their ticket out but if he’s wrong their freedom even their lives could be on the line the Day of Reckoning has arrived once the group enters the airport there will be no turning back this was the Moment of Truth he knew that this was life or death [Music] as day breaks Mendes enters the airport soon to be followed by the six [Music] diplomats the initial shock of entering a brightly lit crowded place after being in hiding for 3 months uh definitely was something to deal with after checking in their bags they fa their first big test getting through passport control but right from the start it looks like it could go wrong Lee shatz breaks away from the house guests and their agreed plan and Lee was sort of standing there a little nervous I was beginning to look around you know a little worried the Customs official looks at Lee shatz his passport photo notices his mustache and thinks maybe it’s a different person immigration’s officer looked at him looked at his photo did a double take and then took his passport and left and went into a back room Mendes can only watch from a distance hoping shatz won’t Panic Tony’s greatest fear was that they would Panic they would break cover they would confess refus to go through the screening process and literally be frozen by fear and at this point even a tiny bead of sweat running off their forehead could betray the fact that these passports weren’t legitimate when the official comes back shatz tries to explain that he’s trimmed his mustache and it really is him in the photograph and he basically told the guy well I trim my mustache and he stamped the passport and and he let him go after leeat the rest of the house guests file through passport control but the team are not yet through ahead they still face the riskiest part of the Escape presenting their departure forms at final immigration all of this work came up to the point is could the departure forms that they were carrying would they be matched to The Originals white forms in theory filled in on Entry to Iran but which the escapes don’t have must match the yellow exit forms Mendes has forged if the officials try to cross check the forms against each other it will all go wrong it’s a chance Mendes has to take if any one of the six had failed they would not only have been arrested but tonally likely would have been shot you feel very powerless when we got to the immigration desk there was no one there Cora went kind of in the back there and started yelling and nobody came so she yelled again and this sleepy looking guy came out carrying a teapot and he put the teapot down and he grabbed our passports pulled the cards out handed them back to us didn’t even look at us at all at any point in this process and we thanked him and uh then we headed off to the departure Lounge all six escapes make it through the critical stage the official hardly looks at the yellow forms that Mendes has forged the house guests now assemble in the departure Lounge waiting for their flight call then bad news we are sorry to inform you that Swiss Air flight 363 will be delayed due to mechanical problems something always happens unexpected and in this instance it does the flight is delayed the delay means that their chances of being found out are now increasing minute after minute the elite revolutionary guards who Mendes hoped to avoid and now coming on duty they’re trained to be on the lookout for spies the delay means that the diplomats must maintain their disguises potentially for hours you feel very powerless and that makes the time drag even longer they don’t know are the Revolutionary guard onto them are they scrutinizing the papers are they going to be matching the white and yellow copies the worry for Mendes is how long can they maintain their disguises before they give everything away and can they hold their nerve in front of the feared revolutionary guards the longer we were there the greater the chance of somebody recognizing anyone of us the delayed flight has left the escapes exposed Kathy Joe and cor liek have more reason to be worried than the others because they work in the Visa section of the consulate dealing with Iranians every day their faces are familiar they could be spotted at any time Kathy Joe and I had all worked on the Visa line I was worried that just by coincidence somebody in the airport would recognize Kathy Joe or myself I don’t think we were talking very much we’ kind of gone quiet we’ done everything we could we just wanted to get out of that room and onto the airplane the presence of the Revolutionary guards who are now coming on duty ramps up the pressure to another level the departure Lounge itself is filling out as the day is progressing more and more revolutionary guards are coming in they’re beginning to harass the people as they wait Mendes sees that the Revolutionary guards are stopping other passengers and questioning them they’re looking for Iranians who are trying to steal wealth and leave the country but they’re starting to turn and look at foreigners as well [Music] after years of carrying out undercover exfiltration Mendes knows that it’s in these unexpected moments that the escapes are most likely to panic they have already begun to make their first mistakes for Mendes this is nerve-wracking one of the people in the group really didn’t want to leave he felt we were abandoning the hostages he never really got into the story and the role in fact when we went to the waiting room he called me by my real name Kora Mark and I moved away from that person and decided to kind of keep a distance from them another mistake is when a nervous house guest picks up an Iranian newspaper written in the local language of FY it would be highly unlikely for a Hollywood filmmaker to be doing this this exactly the kind of giveaway a trained revolutionary guard would be looking for Tony went over to him and said you know put the paper down you should probably not be a farsy speaker or be able to read it and he did he he put it down Mendes cannot afford a third mistake just one glance by a revolutionary guard at the wrong moment and they all go down during the delay Tony could do essentially one thing to assuage the fears of the six and that’s be calm those last 30 minutes in the waiting area seemed to drag on forever every minute passing very very slowly when they glanced over at him they couldn’t see Panic they could see fear only the normal countenance the rock the steadiness if you could take your blood pressure at each different point along the line it probably pretty high this was kind of a draining experience going through the airport and I just wanted to be on the aircraft at that stage that that was it finally at around 8:30 a.m. there’s a second announcement passengers for Swiss Air flight 363 for Z please approach the boarding gate finally they hear the announcement Swissair flight is boarding we really felt good actually getting on the bus to the plane that was beginning to feel that maybe was really going to work you know it’s really going to [Music] happen as they leave there is no dramatic police chase along the runway flight 363 takes off without further [Music] incident a few hours later it lands in Zurich Switzerland I wanted to say thank you and goodbye to Tony but when I turned around he was gone I I’m not even sure we had a chance to shake hands with with Tony and Julio they went off and you know for them it was just another day at the office I guess but obviously for us it was a life-changing experience Tony knows they’re going on with their lives but he knows that this is just one of many operations and his primary objective at that point is drift off into the Shadows the Aro Escape Plan is kept secret for 17 years the files are eventually Declassified and the world would learn of one of the cia’s most extraordinary operations it’s the secret story of how the CIA fooled everyone nargo is a perfect example of Truth being Strang in Than Fiction I mean it’s hard to imagine that this is real and I think that’s was the genius of Argo Beirut 1985 a car apparently packed with explosive blew up at the entrance to the Embassy terrorists are targeting Americans in a series of deadly attacks hundreds are dead and now the cia’s top man in the Middle East has been taken hostage William casc the head of the CIA decides to throw out the rule book and strike back he wanted to take revenge it was totally an off the books oparation in a top secret Mission still denied by the American government Casey allegedly sanctions the assassination of the man he believes is responsible for the attacks on Americans Bill Casey was convinced that fod laala was the force behind his Bala he determined this was a leading terrorist and they were going to get him and on March the 8th 1985 the Assassin strike it was a car bomb they took it into fala’s neighbor neighborhood hoping to kill him based on briefings with the former head of the CIA this is the top secret story of the Beirut carum [Music] 1983 bayout Lebanon the capital of this tiny Middle Eastern country is being devastated by years of conflict Now American troops are arriving in the city their mission not to invade but to bring peace [Music] also in the city is a substantial CIA presence operating out of the US Embassy the agents are there to counter a growing problem in Beirut terrorism a top secret meeting has been called to discuss the threat chairing the meeting will be the cia’s top middle east analyst Robert ases he is a man who was considered to be the key analyst of terrorist organizations and Middle East politics Bob am was probably the most knowledgeable person in the Middle East ases had previously infiltrated the PLO and has been brought into Beirut secretly to advise on the terrorist threat also in the building that day is Aid worker and D when you work in an embassy everyone knows that CIA agents are the what you may not know is who they [Music] are as the classified CIA meeting is gathering a white van is winding through the Beirut streets to the Embassy very few people saw what was coming it was the Calm before the [Music] storm the funny thing about living in B when I was there I never dreamt that I would be targeted it didn’t look like a threat and kind of took everybody off guard the driver manages to enter the embassy compound’s basement garage the entire Central section of the embassy building collapses in the explosion bringing down seven stories of Masonry and rubble and Amaral is one of those trapped beneath the wreckage I couldn’t move anything I heard yabina yabina let’s go let’s go and I was aware that there were four young Lebanese near me they made like a board and they moved me out and they started to run with me across the garden an’s rescue is captured on video she is one of the lucky ones 200 people are wounded in the attack 63 are killed 17 of them American news of the embassy bombing rocks America CBS Evening News Dan Rather reporting the US Embassy in Beirut tonight is a floodlit scene of death and Devastation much of the seven story building is rubble and and in that Rubble possibly more victims of a massive terrorist Car Bomb the Pentagon says one US Marine and two US Army soldiers I’m a young Marine then and I watched this on the news and my thoughts were wow I’m on my way over there the embassy being bombed was definitely a shock I don’t think anybody had any idea the kind of Defense an embassy really needed against the kind of bombs that could be put together uh particularly when you have people willing to die deliver them this cowardly act has claimed a number of killed and wounded it appears that there are some American casualties but we don’t know yet the exact number or the extent of injury for the CIA it is a particularly devastating blow half the American Dead worked for the agency if you look at it from the bomber’s point of view it was an enormous success it wiped out the CIA station killed Bob Ames his loss was devastating and the director of the CIA said that Bob Ames was as close to an Irreplaceable man as he had ever known in US intelligence that director of the CIA is William Casey and Casey is taking it [Music] personally well Casey obviously was a very intelligent guy he was a risk taker and that’s different from being a gamble he was a very intimidating person if you were afraid of him he was uh had a very short temper he didn’t suffer fools lightly in many respects he was a wild man he had really no time for the moderates you know the make nice [Music] people Casey directs every CIA resource available to hunt down those responsible for the attack on the US Embassy under CIA director Casey the CIA was probably more sophisticated than it it ever had been in in its history analysts are charged with reviewing thousands of intercepts agents are ordered to go to their informants and dozens of emergency meetings are called for senior Cia officials but before Casey can get the enemy in his sights they strike again [Music] their target over 1,800 American Marines stationed in Lebanon as peacekeepers the United States had made a decision to put its troops in Lebanon to help stabilize that country we were there acting as a liazon between the Lebanese government and the Waring milias until the Lebanese government could could uh get on their feet they weren’t sent there to fight a war they were to keep the peace it was a peacekeeping mission the majority of the forces are based in Barracks situated next to Beirut Airport from the rooftop of the building we could see the main terminal and the mountains and the the Mediterranean Sea to the right their position is also dangerously close to an area of Beirut controlled by Muslim militias where it was located was not a choice position for its security in the early hours a truck heads out of Muslim controlled Bay route on the airport road towards the barracks at the same time Marine Lance corporal Kevin jigitz is signing off from guard Duty I went down to my room in the building and I remember just taking off my boots and laying [Applause] down as jiggets lies down to sleep the van approaches the perimeter of the barracks this truck came down Airport Road he turned into the the parking lot of the main terminal and he crashed through a bob wire barrier as a peacekeeping force the Marine’s weapons are not loaded the face of the driver is visible to the guards as he aims the truck at the barracks he is smiling it drove into this big building that was a barracks the initial contact with the truck and the guard shack is what woke me out the truck Rams into the base of the barracks and is primed to explode and I reach for my weapon when I say the showtime ladies and that’s the last thing I remember it is the largest non-nuclear explosion since the second world war upon detonation the building was lifted from its foundation and kind of Pang cake down floor after floor the entire building is leveled we had never seen anything like this it was an iconic bombing the truck was Laden with approximately 12,000 lb of explosives it was a pretty simple thing a very large vehicle packed with explosives got up to the front of the barracks and was fled and it wasn’t very complicated it was a beautifully done operation the next thing I remember was two white Marines were removing rubble from me I didn’t feel any pain until they picked me up both of jig’s legs are broken and he suffers Burns and cuts over his entire body All That Remains of the nine-story building is rough prior to 911 it was the largest terrorist attack against us Personnel uh in the history of the United States 241 American soldiers were killed 240 of them were Marines it is the biggest single loss of American serviceman’s life since iima I know there are no words that can express our sorrow and grief over the loss of those Splendid young men likewise there are no words to properly express our outrage and I think the outrage of all Americans at the Despicable act in Washington William Casey and the CIA are now under real pressure to find the terrorists the problem is is that no one has yet claimed responsibility but within hours of the attack a statement is released to a French news agency by a group calling themselves Islamic Jihad Arabic for Holy War the group say they are responsible for both the attack on the Marines and for another simultaneous attack in the city which has claimed the lives of 58 French soldiers but no one in Washington has ever heard of Islamic Jihad when the Islamic Jihad claimed the bombing we knew absolutely nothing about it it was not an organization that we even knew existed the CIA was caught completely off guard we did not have the structure internally to handle that kind of threat we didn’t know where it was what it was we didn’t know who was behind it William Casey is determined that the CIA will find out and bring the perpetrators of this terrible crime to Justice and according to some he will go beyond the law to do so the man Casey selects to uncover those responsible is seasoned Middle East agent Robert Bayer anxious not to lose more operatives Bayer’s brief is simple when I left Washington the orders were stay alive whatever you do stay alive we don’t care if you ever send a report in we don’t care what you do just don’t get killed or kidnapped there was very simple orders Bayer sets off and finds Beirut a city in turmoil there was no other way in except a Blackhawk [Music] helicopter we came in over the sea about 10 ft the helicopter drops down so there’s spray going everywhere and you’re coming in about 200 miles an hour there’s shelling parts of bayro are burning it was the ninth circle of [Applause] [Music] hell Bayer and the other agents immediately begin to set up a lowprofile operation this was Lebanon you know it was a civil war you just absolutely absolutely wanted to be the the least important person on the street we didn’t wear suits always Levis scuff shoes you never carried a radio in the open you never carried a gun in the open you look like you were a bum that just sort of wandered off from [Music] wherever we drove beat up old cars with bullet holes in them with bald tires you know if you change your car every day that was the best way to do do it at one point I actually drove a taxi there it was an old Mercedes was been painted a bunch of time all dinged up and it looked like what’s called a service there were just no limits no laws it was amazing we had all the money we wanted we would at the drop of a hat buy an apartment I had probably 12 apartments and houses and moved between them night after night so you were never in the same place as a fluent Arabic speaker baaya is a find the role of gathering Intelligence on the streets was mainly picking up sources and cars and we would put surveillance on places watch people coming and going gradually Bayer’s intelligence work starts to pay off he begins to gather information on Islamic Jihad and that intelligence leads him to the religious leaders of one of lebanon’s main Islamic sects the Shia we knew that there was a grouping of Shia clerics that had started in 1982 and we watch this formation occur you know people would join and leave um names we didn’t know much about but basically the religious establishment was coming to join in this Islamic resistance movement the Shia sect are in the minority in the Muslim world but in Lebanon they make up around half the Muslim population and critically they are the same branch of Islam as America’s key enemy in the Middle East Iran despite Limitless CIA resources Bayer’s efforts to penetrate Islamic Jihad now hit a brick wall these people are very very good they never showed themselves they worked out of tenements in Beirut they didn’t have a name they didn’t have an office they didn’t keep phone numbers what we began to find out was that they were very sophisticated in the structure of their organization and in my opinion they are almost as good as we are they were strictly family based impossible to penetrate so William Casey decides to turn to America’s only friend in the region Israel Israel is a very very close Ally both politically and in intelligence areas and so we work with them uh really as as our intelligence and political brothers and sisters really the Israeli intelligence service Mossad is conducting its own operations in [Music] Lebanon mosad pass on to Casey what they know the Israel report says that an organization inside Lebanon is [Music] involved the Israelis identify a house in Damascus the capital of neighboring Syria where they say a Syrian intelligence officer discussed the attacks on the Marines 3 days before the [Music] bombing present at the meeting was a grandfatherly man with a black turban and brown [Music] robes the Israelis say he is the key figure in the militant Shiite movement in Lebanon shik Muhammad Hussein fadlala the intelligence the CIA and the Israelis developed showed that shik fala a Shiite militant was at the center and involved allegedly in at least the main bombings in Beirut including the attack on the Marine Barracks fala was born and raised in Iraq but has spent his adult life in Lebanon he is an open critic of America’s presence in the region Muhammed Hussein fadlala naturally became a part of the anti-western um Coalition if you like you know he’s an Ayatollah he would give blanket fatwas saying yeah it’s fine TR to to use Force to drive out an occupying power casei becomes convinced that fadala has to be connected to the bombings and is a leading figure in Islamic Jihad at last Casey has a Target According to some Casey now sets in motion an operation to assassinate the man who he believes ordered the slaughter of hundreds of Americans in the months after the barracks bombing President Reagan reassures the world that America will stay the course the people of Lebanon must be given the chance to resume their efforts to lead a normal life free from violence without the presence of unauthorized foreign forces on their soil and to this Noble end I rededicate the efforts of the United States but the truth is that neither the American military or the American people have any desire to be embroiled in another Vietnam the military decided that no longer were they going to let the politicians dribble them into a war and a war that the public doesn’t [Music] support I think the American public were sick of the killings but Cia director William Casey is considering an operation against the Lebanese cleric shik Muhammad fadala who he suspects is the leader of the terrorist organization behind the attacks on [Music] Americans but before he can strike back there is a further humiliation for [Music] America Just 4 months after the bombing of the US Marines America begins a full withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon many in the CIA believe it is sending the wrong message to the terrorists pulling Marines out of bay rout was viewed as a victory by the the bad guys we at large it was sending a signal to terrorists in the region that uh the rean administration was a paper tiger Casey decides that it is up to the CIA to exact revenge for this loss of face Casey felt defeated because he was part of part of the administration that convinced Reagan to go in to send the Marines in but to strike back he must first rebuild the agency’s damaged capabilities in Lebanon Casey’s first action is to send in a new station Chief William Buckley Buckley was a great man very solid fella his expertise was in paramilitary operations Buckley a former Commando who had fought in Vietnam will be the cia’s most important man on the ground in Beirut Casey promises to provide Buckley with everything he needs to combat the terrorist threat posed by Islamic [Music] Jihad Buckley steps up CIA paramilitary training hostage rescue and VIP protection he trains Lebanese intelligence agents to work alongside his teams back at CIA headquarters in Langley Casey has 50 highly trained analysts working exclusively on Islamic terrorism in the Middle East out of this massively expanded operation Buckley and Casey learn a vital piece of intelligence it takes a lot of time to figure out what’s going on we figur that the Islamic Jihad was an organization that they just they just borrowed a name it emerges that Islamic Jihad is not a single body it is the name for a loose network of Shiite militant groups the CIA learns that just one of these groups is responsible for the attacks on American targets that group will become one of the most dangerous and radical organizations to ever emerge emerge from the Middle East but in 1984 they are only just starting to refer to themselves by name they call themselves The Party of God in Arabic Hezbollah everybody talks about his ballet today at the time I never heard of his Bala in April 1983 we had no idea that there would be a his Baller in fact there was no name for it it is only now after the bombings that the group starts to use their notorious name Hezbollah has been created by America’s greatest enemy in the region Iran in 1982 its spiritual leader Ayatollah hom had sent a thousand Iranian revolutionary guards s to train Shiite fighters in Lebanon his Bala was created by the Islamic revolutionary guard Corp there there’s just no doubt about this they they funded it they organized it and now Hezbollah is fighting Iran’s war in Lebanon it was an extension of the Iranian Revolution if you like it was Iran’s effort to open out the revolution to the Arab world and they did it very successfully and Lebanon was the first place the CIA discovers that Iran is training Hezbollah fighters on the Lebanese Syrian border soon they receive other vital intelligence both the Lebanese security forces and Israel’s Mossad informed the CIA that a senior figure in the Hezbollah power structure is none other than shik Muhammad fadala the same man who Casey believes is behind the attacks on the US Embassy and Marine [Music] Barracks Casey becomes convinced that the best way to strike at Hezbollah and send a clear signal to America’s enemies is to kill fadala but Casey faces a complication targeted assassinations are against the law during Watergate Gerald Ford the President issued an executive order Banning assassinations by any agency including the CIA so in the 80s Casey’s hands were tied and so he stretched the [Music] law in Washington Casey turns to the cia’s formidable legal team to try to convince President Reagan to change the [Music] law his argument is that a preemptive strike against fadala should be seen as an act of self-defense in other words if you’d gotten rid of Hitler in the 30s you know maybe 20 million people wouldn’t have died in World War II and that’s a pretty good [Music] argument back in Beirut William Buckley has a much more immediate problem to deal with the terrorists have started taking hostages Hezbollah had started kidnapping individual Americans with a view to getting the United States out of the Middle East groups of armed men are seizing westerners especially Americans from the streets of Beirut Casey realizes that the CIA needs to act so Buckley starts formulating a daring rescue plan he wanted to set up paramilitary operations he said let’s get people on the ground let’s get Delta Force there we’re going to rescue these people Buckley’s plan is that the Green Beret and Israeli Special Forces will enter the City by boat under the cover of Darkness simultaneously in the city Mossad agents will cause a diversion by placing bombs outside the homes of suspected Islamic terrorists then the Green Beret will make their way to a series of susp Ed locations and conduct stealth raids to rescue the hostages and take out the terrorists dangerous and daring though the plan is Buckley believes that the very nature of such a surprise assault will be what ensures its success on March the 15th 1984 Casey gives Buckley the green light but before he can put his plan into action Hezbollah will strike again and this time the terrorists are coming after the CIA [Music] themselves since arriving in Beirut Buckley has been having an affair with a beautiful young Lebanese woman called Zeno [Music] unbeknown to Buckley Zeno works for Hezbollah monitoring every detail of Buckley’s personal routine she passes on the intelligence to the Hezbollah leadership Buckley was very predictable in his routine going to and from the embassy and he was warned by a ranking military official that look stop doing that because you’re putting yourself at risk Buckley ignores the warning believing he is safe from attack and oblivious to Zeno’s true identity on a Friday morning William Buckley leaves his bayout apartment carrying top secret documents taking the elevator to the basement garage he is joined by A well-dressed [Music] man in the basement the man suddenly strikes they hit him over the head with a briefcase with something hard in it they grabbed him threw him in the back of a trunk of a car and drove off into the southern suburbs for Casey the kidnapping of the Beirut station Chief is an unprecedented disaster this was a real earthquake for Casey in the CIA William Buckley was a chief of station and had volumes of CIA information in his head in his memory and the accounts were that Hezbollah was tort torturing Buckley [Music] daily in September proof that Buckley is still alive is released to the CIA by his kidnappers there appeared eventually a video that Casey saw of Buckley being tortured he was almost dead he was he was slobbering you could barely understand what he was saying the concern was the amount of classified information that was being tortured out of station Chief Buckley was causing serious damage to National Security Buckley’s Lebanese agents began to vanish or turn up dead with the loss of their station Chief and their intelligence Network in Lebanon clearly compromised Casey fears the agency’s entire operation in the Middle East is in ruins it showed the limits of American power the United States was not able to protect its intelligence Representatives abroad and Hezbollah was able to hold this man and the United States apparently couldn’t do anything about it for one of their own to be tortured and killed that way and then for the video to get to Casey in the CIA it galvanized this idea of we have to fight back and if our hands are going to be tied if the rules if their laws if they executive orders to hell with them we’re going to get the job [Music] done and any doubt the Casey may have about hitting back of the terrorists is removed when they strike yet again a Hezbollah carbomb targets the US Embassy Annex Building 24 are killed and 90 are [Music] wounded but this time the CIA linked the attack to [Music] Hezbollah Casey turns to remarkable top secret CIA aerial photographs which show a van identic to the one used in the attack at a Hezbollah training camp in the Lebanese desert the photographs reveal an exact mockup of the protective concrete barriers of the embassy Annex and between the obstacles tire tracks if they looked carefully enough the outline of the drive that had to be made was exactly what you saw right in front of the United States Embassy Annex in Beirut it is beyond doubt the Iranians are running a Car Bomb school for Hezbollah terrorists in Washington Casey makes his position clear they must cut off the head of the Hezbollah snake and kill the man they believe to be its leader shik [Applause] fadala in November of 1984 President Reagan signed something called a finding finding is a document that means the president has found that a certain top secret activity is in the interests of National Security the finding does not mean that the CIA can carry out assassinations but it does mean that they can train local units who potentially can this gives Casey some room for maneuver Casey can now sanction The Killing but the CIA must still not be directly involved veteran journalist Bob Woodward claims that this is precisely what Casey does next it was totally an off thee books operation the CIA was not directly involved though Casey himself personally was covert action has always been available to presidents when they do not wish to use the United States military according to Woodward Casey hunts for for a third party to execute the assassination Willam Casey looked elsewhere to find a partner to launch a strike against the leadership of Hezbollah and Lebanon and that partner was Saudi Arabia although denied by Saudi Arabia and the American government according to Woodward in early 1985 the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US Prince bandar is ordered by his King to cooperate with Casey in every respect Casey and bandar met in one of these classic CIA secret meetings at bandar’s house and walked out into the garden according to Woodward the Saudis like Casey believe that shik fadala is the leader of Hezbollah and so agree to fund the operation Casey gave bandar a card with the bank account number and said transferred the $3 million for this operation into this account Casey agrees to the Saudis taking operational control and they agree to using a former British SAS officer to head the mission it was Saudi intelligence a former SAS officer and Casey and they planned this [Music] operation the SAS officer arrives in Beirut to keep the CIA out of the picture he recruits Lebanese agent to carry out the mission the goal here was to get the Lebanese to do the work your boots on the ground if you will to try to find hezbollah’s leaders and and deal with them the plan is simple to strike at fadala using the weapon of the terrorists you know irony of ironies made a Car Bomb One agent is ordered to procure a large quantity of explosives another is to choose the vehicle money is paid to informants to make sure that they know where fadala will be at a certain time the man chosen to drive the vehicle is Ellie hoba the leader of a Christian militia group the bomb will be set off by a timed remote which Haba will activate before leaving the scene everything is set the team has given the green light and the operation to kill fadala is set in [Music] motion a pickup truck is driven into the crowded beer alabed neighborhood in South beut concealed beneath crates of vegetables 750 lbs of explosives the truck is parked across the road from shik fala’s [Music] house intelligence says that fadala will soon be returning there from the mosque look outs her position to alert the driver of the truck Ellie Haba of fala’s departure at approximately 2:00 p.m. fadala leaves the mosque after Friday prayers one of the Lookouts identifies fala and the signal is relayed to Haba to prepare the bomb for [Music] detonation but then a woman stops fala she asks a religious question they need to delay the detonation fala is too far from the bomb [Applause] [Music] but it’s too [Music] late the blast kills 83 people 283 lie wounded the victims are mainly school girls women and children buildings up to 600 ft away are destroyed despite the size of the explosion the bombers have missed their target fala is just outside the blast radius surrounded by his supporters the cleric simply walks away they did not kill him they killed 80 innocent people and F escaped those at the scene are under No Illusion as to who is behind the [Music] attack at CIA headquarters Casey receives word that the operation has gone horrifically wrong this bombing of fod laala was a turning point I mean anybody had any doubts about the West were immediately convinced that these guys are crazy they’re going to slaughter us and kill us all for no purpose at all and worse is to come it later transpires that the cia’s Intelligence on fala from Israeli and Lebanese sources is deeply flawed the man the CIA had targeted for death is not the head of Hezbollah over the next few years the agency learns that fadala has never been involved in any terrorist attacks against America there was no evidence none zero at all that he was directly involved in tax on the west or Israel he was not an active operational member of his Bala never at any time to this day Prince band and both the Saudi Arabian and American governments deny any involvement in the attempt on fala’s life they say that Rogue Lebanese militias undertook the operation [Music] alone and those who worked alongside Casey at the highest levels of the CIA also claim he was not involved I think a lot of people have ascribed it to something that Casey put together with whatever and uh that’s not true Casey had nothing to do with it despite these public denials it appears that William Casey himself is prepared for the story of his personal involvement to go public in the years before his death in 1987 Casey agrees to a series of interviews with award-winning reporter Bob Woodward I met with Casey and talked to him 48 times I talked to him on the phone traveled with him on his CIA plane when I was the only one with him had dinner with him in his house had breakfast with him in his house Woodward eventually reveals Casey’s involvement in the botched assassination attempt in his book Veil The Secret Wars of the CIA now why Casey would tell Bob wward this story I don’t know I think Casey talked to Woodward quite openly to leave a legacy behind and let people know what he wanted them to know over the years there has been speculation as to why Casey would talk to Woodward many people believe it was because Casey wanted to ensure that the CIA would learn from its mistakes in Beirut we underestimated our enemy in that case and it came back to bite us prior to 911 the terrorist attack on the Marine compound in 1983 was the largest terrorist attack against Americans in the history of of the United States because of intelligence failures in 1983 hundreds of Americans including 241 Marines lost their lives it is a loss that many refuse to forget Beirut lives in the hearts of Beirut veterans because there’s not been a day that’s gone by that I don’t think about it and I don’t remember [Music] it Casey 2 was adamant that the deaths of the Marines the CIA agents and Embassy staff who died in the previous bombing would not be in vain the CIA desperately needed to employ more effective tactics against the extremists Casey figured out that we had to do something better about combating terrorism the critical lesson that Casey Learned was that the CIA needed to find ways of getting better Intelligence on its enemies and finding more accurate ways of killing [Music] them so a year after the fadala attack Casey sets up a new CIA Department the counterterrorism center it brought together the Espionage people and the people from the directorate of intelligence to work together for virtually the first time in history and this was a revolution this revolution at the agency ensures that unlike in Beirut the CIA will now always try to have its own agents on the ground providing highly accurate intelligence direct to the cia’s best analysts they will no longer need to repeat the mistake Stakes of Beirut where they were forced to rely on foreign intelligence and local Lebanese to carry out their [Music] missions in 1986 the counterterrorism center starts developing a new way to accurately Target its enemies an unmanned aerial vehicle that was the beginning of where we are today with the lethal drones that was the Genesis right [Music] there this idea born out of a failure of such tactics as the carbomb would result in the development of Highly sophisticated lethal drones it would take a generation to be perfected but drones are now an integral and highly effective weapon in the CIA campaign against terrorism it is a new era and if you think about what Casey was dabbling in with shik fedala its Small Change compared to what goes on now the CIA continues to evolve in the face of new terrorist threats and has achieved some startling successes in many cases the extent of those successes are only now becoming Declassified May 1st 2011 30 minutes after midnight in military terms Zero Dark 30 Navy Seals are on a top secret mission their target America’s Most Wanted assama Bin Laden this night brings to a close the biggest Manhunt ever known I don’t think the CIA or the military had any idea that how difficult it would be to apprehend this guy yet what the movies tell us about the cia’s Manhunt is not the full story between May of 98 and may of 99 we had two opportunities to capture him and eight different opportunities to kill him we hear from the couvert team who tracked Bin Laden down you know you’re fighting against time and you know that people are going to die to reveal the Declassified truth behind the 15-year Pursuit that brought America’s Most Wanted to Justice [Music] [Music] a Friday morning in New York thousands of people are downtown but this is a day unlike any other because the hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man begins now terrorists attack the World Trade Center we heard a tremendous explosion the entire building shook but this is not 9/11 it’s 8 years earlier a 1500lb truck bomb rips a 100t hole through four levels of World Trade Center Tower 1 the blast is designed to topple one 110 Story Tower into the other potentially killing tens of thousands of people it has failed but six are dead and the injured number more than a thousand at first no one has any idea who could have executed such an attack years of Investigation reveal those responsible are from a terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda little is known about them this is their very first strike outside a Muslim Nation it helped to put Al-Qaeda on the map uh what it helped to do most of all was was to convince at least the intelligence community that a threat within the United States could involve more than just um a shooting or a kidnapping at the CIA an order comes in from President Clinton find out everything there is to know about this new terror group senior analyst Mike Sher is instructed to head up a small team dedicated to the task I was fortunate enough to be appointed the chief in late 1995 and we set up and began operations uh in December of of 1995 shya assigns his new unit a code name Alex station named after his then 2-year-old son Alex station is a first unlike any other unit in the CIA because it’s dedicated to just one single Mission tracking down a man they suspect is al-qaeda’s leader Osama Bin Laden it was a very different organization it was the first time we were set up with um a significant amount of Manpower and funding to look at one person the team sets up at the CIA headquarters sher’s recruitment ad has unexpected results was women who came forward to be interviewed who applied for the jobs even when we were very small when we had 10 or 12 people probably uh seven or eight of them were women Cindy stora an expert on Afghanistan works with Alex station from the very beginning I was the communication with the policy makers including the president about what’s going on in in the world that relates to terrorism the idea of the counterterrorist Center was that your analysts and your operations officers being in the same place having access to the same information literally being able to talk over the cubicles to each other so there was a lot of synergy very quickly shoya’s close-knit female team builds a special Rapport we got very close I mean these are my sisters in arms on the inside they earned the nickname The Sisterhood and a reputation for excellence women were extraordinary it’s only half jokingly usually I say you know if I could have I would have put a sign up that said no men need apply from the very beginning the cia’s mission was clear understand Bin Laden and decide if he’s a real threat to the United States they start by methodically trolling the cia’s existing database very quickly a picture unfolds we found out we had a great deal of information particularly about Bin Laden’s family and its influence within Saudi Arabia and its economic power and Geographic reach the database reveals Ben Laden is the son of a Saudi billionaire but then at the age of 22 something happens that shapes his future the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan like thousands of young Muslim men Asama Bin Laden travels across the globe to support the Afghan mujahadin Freedom Fighters please showed up as sort of the representative of his very very wealthy family visiting clinics visiting wounded mujahadin uh writing checks for their families it’s the height of the Cold War and America and the mujahadin share a common enemy we didn’t pay an extraordinary amount of attention to him because he was on the side of the Angels at that time he was killing Soviets but then Alex station’s Sisterhood uncover something alarming Bin Laden is not like most Afghan Freedom Fighters he’s gaining his own followers and taking things a step further there’s this group of Arabs out there and they’re not like the rest of the Afghan resistance you know if you go down this road and you’re not welcome there they shoot before they ask questions they attack Aid workers and then you start to hear these stories about who’s involved well Bin Laden’s there Declassified documents reveal that from around 1985 Bin Laden goes from Freedom Fighter to terrorist he begins to fund Terror cells in Egypt Saudi Arabia and Pakistan by 1993 he Funds New York’s World Trade Center bomb and is thrown out of both Saudi Arabia and the Sudan in 1996 The Sisterhood trace him to Afghanistan here he pairs up with an extremist regime the Taliban they support his radical views and provide a safe haven for his terrorist funding operations but the question was was he just the finance year or was he involved operationally in less than a year the Alex station team would find out they have some extraordinarily good luck what they call a Walkin an Insider from a training camp in Sudan simply walks into the American Embassy ready to talk he turned out to be an extraordinarily important individual in telling us about how Al-Qaeda was organized how it was uh uh financed how it acquired Weaponry that it was looking for um uh biological and nuclear types of weapons what the walk-in tells them moves Osama Bin Laden Beyond financia he’s instigating missions of his own organizing training regimes and writing handbooks for bombings and assassinations he’s selecting teams to plant bombs on planes even to crash small aircraft into the cia’s own headquarters and it’s Bin Laden himself who comes up with the name Al-Qaeda Arabic for the base calling it al-Qaeda in a I mean he a indicative of his sort of ambition he calls it this is the base this is this is an organization it has a system where in Fighters can arrive in Pakistan or through Afghanistan and find their way to the fight there’s a pipeline and he he is largely responsible for putting that sort of structure in place sher’s team have uncovered something truly alarming Osama Bin Laden has a master plan from his refuge in Afghanistan he’s setting up terrorism Incorporated to turn violent Jihad into a global phenomenon we were very sure that Al-Qaeda was an organization like of which we had never seen before in terms of Manpower Focus discipline and Geographic [Music] reach then as if to leave no doubt in August 1996 5 years before 9/11 Bin Laden officially declares war on America it was not rocket science to figure out that this man was deadly serious he was telling us we’re coming after you we knew they were planning a big attack but we didn’t know where what or where Alex station decides they have to make the first move and in May 1998 an opportunity arrives The Sisterhood team gains reliable Intelligence on AMA Bin Laden’s whereabouts they prepare a plan to capture him the plan requires President Clinton’s [Music] approval despite the CIA warning of a growing threat from Al-Qaeda the president gets cold feet we had had an an opportunity to kidnap Osama Bin Laden in May of 1998 and the policy makers turned it down because they were afraid he would die and we would be blamed for assassination at least that was their their reason at the time the CIA see this as a missed opportunity but the White House is simply not prepared to risk an international incident his Sisterhood are reduced to warning President Clinton it’s just a matter of time before Bin Laden strikes and Strikes big suicide bombers drive a 2,000 truck bomb into the American Embassy 212 people are dead around 4,000 wounded are trapped within the rubble less than 10 minutes later over 400 m away another explosion at an American Embassy is time to maximize the chaos here 11 people die a further 85 are injured Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for both attacks but the worst is yet to come Bin Laden himself has declared this is just the beginning at the CIA there’s frustration I remember the week before the bombings in ’98 I had written something just internal talking about what I thought was al-qaeda’s ability to do multiple simultaneous attacks um just just as a way of giving some sense of what kind of threat we might be facing and I got this you know response back you can’t say that there’s no way can say that you don’t have any evidence for that of course I had tons of evidence for it it’s just that the people who were the The Establishment so to speak they didn’t look at that evidence we knew we were 10 years behind on following this issue I we could feel it and we were playing catchup all the time The Sisterhood tried to pick up the trail but Bin Laden knows he is a hunted man after the Africa bombings everything goes quiet Bin Laden simply disappears after the bombings of the embassies they became much more security conscious uh not staying too long in any one place sending out two or three convoys going in different directions so it became increasingly hired over the years to really pin down um his location Osama Bin Laden from the beginning was going to be a difficult Target to go after he was a practiced clandestine operator he was quite good at hiding he stops communicating by cell phone or by phone call he relies on this network of couriers he’s basically communicating in a in a medieval way almost uh to protect himself well in Kenya The Sisterhood turned to their informants just two weeks after the Africa bombings their efforts pay off the informants reveal that Bin Laden is heading towards the Maze of al-Qaeda training camps at a town called [Music] host we developed intelligence from several sources that Bin Laden was going to travel from kahar City to host and he was going to meet with pakistanis and various other kind of islamist Fighters there this time President Clinton agrees to go after Bin Laden he gives the go ahead for a massive missile strike code name operation infinite reach today I ordered our Armed Forces to strike at terrorist related facilities in Afghanistan and [Music] Sudan our Target was Terror our mission was clear to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Usama Bin Laden perhaps the preeminent or organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today dozens of al-Qaeda terrorists are killed but what about Bin Laden as it turned out the information we had was good but Bin Laden at the last moment uh decided to uh go to Cabell and we of course missed him to the CIA it’s a huge blow and it takes another 9 months before shoya’s Sisterhood team can pick up Bin Laden’s Trail again this time the Intelligence on his location is much more precise The Sisterhood learn the exact dates Bin Laden is staying at her home in kaha in southern Afghanistan they’re confident this time he won’t escape a hit a mission request is put to the president third week of May in 1999 for example for five consecutive nights we knew what building he was staying in in kahar and yet they chose not to shoot President Clinton pulls the operation the kaha home is next to a mosque innocent worshippers may be injured Clinton is not prepared to risk International condemnation an internal CIA email sent by Mike Sher states he is sure they’ll regret not acting the Common Sense part was a little bit offended I think in that we had a man who declared war on us in 1996 wasn’t sure that we heard him did it again in February of 1998 and we still had a government that was really paying no attention the CIA continues to place Mission plans in front of the president between May of 98 and may of 99 we had 10 opportunities two opportunities to capture him and eight different opportunities to use the US military uh either through missiles or fixed wi aircraft to kill him but but we had 10 opportunities each time White House advisers assess them as simply too risky to act upon but the Alex station team aren’t about to give up using surveillance drones and voice recognition software The Sisterhood track Bin Laden down w more he’s at a notorious training camp near kaha in Afghanistan the camp offers training in constructing bombs and in assassination techniques jihadis are being prepared to serve as suicide bombers some sent around the world to enroll in commercial flight training something big is being planned this time The Sisterhood are determined to get the president to act they assure him there will be no risk of collateral damage because now the CIA has a new weapon in their Armory a high-tech remotely operated drone that’s armed they plant a guide of Precision bomb into the heart of Bin Laden’s Lair the president gives the go-ahead but it’s winter and the weather is now so hostile in Afghanistan that the operation must be put on hold until spring but before then matters are taken out of the cia’s hands [Music] a new president is sworn in and George W bush has a different Focus Mr Bush um and to some extent all of the presidents since uh Mr Reagan were brought up in the Cold War era they always come into office with a worldview and they’re going to accomplish certain things and then you hit them was something that they had no idea about and really nobody not many people had an idea about it and they’ve somehow got to integrate that into their presidency um that is not easy not easy at all it takes at least 10 years to get people to come around to understanding that you have a new problem they had a very hard time thinking that a 6’4 skinny Saudi who wore a turban uh and and ate goat in the desert could be a threat to the United States when they were lining up threats to consider they thought about China and Russia and Iran and narcotics uh not this goofy Saudi and we were crippled to some extent by our uh view of terrorism at that time despite multiple warnings from multiple security agencies requesting action none are able to pinpoint an immediate or specific threat without this information the Bush Administration feels it can’t justify taking Bin Laden out it refuses to reauthorize the cia’s proposed drone strike in the spring of 2001 Bin Laden now in his sixth year of hiding once again slips through Alex station’s grasp as the the tone of the intelligence chatter the team is monitoring takes a dramatic turn and then we started to see something that was clearly something else and the chatter we were hearing things like Armageddon and you know you’re fighting against time and you know that people are going to die every morning 6 days a week the CIA briefs the president on matters of National Security if you see this disaster coming you want to try to to stop it by the summer of 2001 shoya’s team are briefing that a significant attack is being planned on home soil but they can’t be more specific than that so at the time they really just wanted to know who’s going to blow me up when and can we stop it in time right and unfortunately that’s the thing that you almost can never do you had the Alex station this bin Laden unit working away you know at uh at trying to find Bin Laden um but it was also regarded by many inside the agency as this odd collection of Fanatics who were so preoccupied with an individual who didn’t deserve that much attention I think there was a lot of skepticism at the time over whether that whether that effort was was really worth it um and whether their view of his significance was was out of whack was was imbalance it was the best of times it was the worst of times you know it was the best in that you’re working with an equally dedicated group of people who are doggedly determined and you really have to have that Bulldog mentality you’re going to shake it until you get the answers right um but it was also the worst in that you know you’re trying to explain to people a new emerging issue that completely violates all of their mindsets somehow they have to convince the president to act the CIA director requests a non-scheduled meeting with the president instead he gets National Security adviser condalisa rice he advises her to go on a war footing immediately a month later security analysts meet with the president at his vacation home in Texas the now Declassified president’s Daily Brief reveals the CIA think Bin Laden’s supporters may already be in the US plotting an attack without a precise who where or when President Bush feels there’s no target he can strike senior National Security advisers meet for a briefing they too see no precise information they can act upon it’s a Tuesday Morning in New York thousands are working visiting shopping at the Jewel and the crown of the business district the World Trade [Music] Center hijacked American Airlines flight 11 strikes between the 93rd and 99th floors of World Trade Center Tower 1 the damage destroys all means of Escape above the Impact Zone 1,344 people are trapped all will die it’s 17 minutes after the first impact the second plane strikes the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors [Music] two more planes are hijacked one hits the Pentagon the other crashes before it reaches its Washington Target in under an hour nearly 3,000 people are [Music] dead it’s the worst terrorist atrocity in US history and the kind of tragedy the CIA have been warning of since the Manhunt [Music] began now the search for bin Laden will be kicked into a high gear but you know at that time most of us really didn’t know what Al-Qaeda was if you had asked us you know who runs Al-Qaeda what is Al-Qaeda where is Al-Qaeda we would have been hard pressed to answer all of those questions on that day it changed dramatically you know so quickly for us at Alex station they feel the frustration of having seen it all coming when those planes hit on 9911 we had no when they were going to do that not that specific day or that specific Target but that Medium of operation the plan they had for sending Arabs uh to the United States to be trained for uh driving 747s into US facilities they intended to do that since at least 1995 The Sisterhood feel a terrible sense of responsibility for not being able to prevent the tragedy I think looking back it’s easy to forget that in the fall of 2001 America had suffered the equivalent of a national nervous breakdown that the eyes and ears of the American Eagle the first line of defense against terrorism the first line of the war against al-a F had failed to protect [Music] America within days President Bush makes his feelings known I want Justice and uh uh there’s an old poster out west as I recall that said Wanted Dead or Alive it marks a crucial turning point in the relationship between the Bush Administration and the cia’s bin Laden team after 2001 Osama Bin Laden became the Most Wanted Man in human history no one has been pursued by so many people as us Bin Laden was the world turned upside down on 911 I mean the next day it was anything you want from Congress from everywhere anything you want request whatever you want we took whole branches from other parts of the agency and expanded rapidly by a factor of like seven and very quickly the CIA develops a plan the war on terror Roars into life operation enduring freedom is the invasion of Afghanistan the aim to overthrow the Taliban regime and flush out AMA bin lad it’s the first time in American history a war has been launched explicitly to take down a terrorist organization at the Vanguard of the fight with the special forces are highly trained covert CIA operatives as Bin Laden supporters the Taliban fall undercover CIA agents intercept Communications Baden is traced to the remote caves of Torah Bor along Afghanistan’s mountainous Eastern [Music] Border US Special Forces and a crack team of CIA Special Operations paramilitaries have Bin Laden cornered we were so close to Bin Laden in the last days in 2001 we could hear him on his radio we knew that he was is a mile 2 miles away but the US military takes a strategic decision an act of diplomacy they allow their Afghan allies to take the lead in capturing Bin Laden and hand over responsibility to two local commanders it’s a move the cia’s out station warns against we did the traces on the names of the Afghan commanders for for our people who were in the field and we found out that both of them had fought alongside of Usama Bin Laden uh against the Soviets so what we did was say simply to the military here’s the guys you picked here’s their records here’s their associations they’re not going to do what you want the CIA is proved right the Afghan commanders allow Osama Bin Laden to disappear across the Lawless border with Pakistan we didn’t know whether this man was in Pakistan or Pennsylvania he was gone missing an action I don’t think the CIA or the military had any idea that how difficult it would be to apprehend this guy [Music] with Bin Laden on the run the White House begins to shift priorities resources are diverted to the war looming in Iraq and away from the hunt for bin Laden President Bush would start to talk about well wherever he is he’s on the Run he’s hiding in a cave he doesn’t matter which wasn’t true of course he mattered after 2001 was we took our Eye Off the Ball we began chasing other bad guys in another desert in Iraq and didn’t give the priority we needed to to the hunt for us Bin Laden for The cia’s Sisterhood the next few years are the Lost Years Bin Laden is now so skilled in tradecraft that there are few good leads he even taunts the CIA releasing video recordings from Myster locations with little new progress in late 2005 the CIA closes down Alex station altogether there were a lot of knives out for it organizationally that it was a source of heartburn for a lot of traditional people and frankly it offended a lot of the old boys that so many women were involved um one of the the chiefs of the counterterrorism center called um the the Manson family because they he thought they were too obsessed and too uh dedicated there was a a large degree of uh animosity um directed at some of those women simply because they were women there is now only minor support for the pursuit of America’s Most Wanted but a change of administration will bring greater resources and A Renewed focus in the hunt for assama bin Laden the cia’s director receives a memo from the new president Barack Obama bring Osama Bin Laden to Justice from the day he came into office in January 2009 he told his National Security team and especially his director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta your most important responsibility is to find Usama Bin Laden and either capture or kill him the CIA assembles a team of experts many other women of the original Sisterhood they dust off the files and get to work they start by reanalyzing why they’d been unsuccessful in tracking him down before they realized they can’t trace Bin Laden’s phone conversations or emails because he had abandoned all electronic communication but then the team have a breakthrough what if they can turn Bin Laden’s strength into his weakness we knew he didn’t communicate electronically therefore he had to have a courier and if you started to figure out who that Courier might be and look around the people who’d been with Bin Laden all his life and were still alive then you narrowed it down to a relatively small number of potential figures the team has a mission to find Bin Laden they have to first identify his Courier then track him down in Afghanistan CIA operatives interview every potential source of information in their custody at top secret black sites the world over they interrogate every high value prisoner and in cam Delta at the guantan bay Naval Base in Cuba every inmate with a link to Bin Laden is questioned nobody can or will reveal the Courier’s [Music] name but then the analysts begin to notice a pattern many high level prisoners are at pains to downplay the significance of one name in particular a man they refer to as Abu Ahmed Al kuti the CIA begins to think the prisoners are downplaying this man for a reason perhaps Alti is highly significant after [Music] all a CIA team on the ground in Pakistan intercepts alu’s calls they track him to a small town of aabad home to an elite Pakistani Military Academy and just 30 m north of the capital Islamabad it was a relatively simple matter of following him until sooner or later he began to detect a pattern of behavior [Music] alu’s Behavior patterns are strange he’s behaving like a man who doesn’t want to be followed retracing his steps using his phone only in certain areas to the CIA surveillance team their classic signs of tradecraft and exactly how they’d expect Bin Laden’s career to act but they can’t tell for sure the surveillance team have to dig into alu’s [Music] past local sources confirm that in 2004 Alti buys land on the outskirts of abbotabad he commissions an architect to build a million dooll two-story compound for a family of [Music] 12 it’s the sprawling 1 acre complex they see him visit very high walls very difficult to see in but Al Q8 is not wealthy and does not have a large family and there’s more it had no electrical signature there was no internet there was no telephone system a third story of the building isn’t even on the original plans its design makes the CIA analysts suspicious it was self-sufficient it grew much of its own food uh it destroyed its own garbage it was a safe haven a sanctuary to the CIA the compound’s residents were going to extraordinary lengths to hide something they begin to wonder if the something the residents are hiding is the man the CIA have been tracking for over a decade and a half Osama Bin Laden the team on the ground also o knows the White House won’t act without a positive identification of Bin Laden they try every surveillance trick they know to catch a glimpse of the man in the compound but get nowhere even after the CIA followed the couriers to that compound his security was still so sound that they never got a glimpse of him and it was mainly uh because of his willingness the discipline that he showed in not ever ever being on the internet and sending messages out not ever having us making cell phone calls not venturing outside this compound after weeks of round thee clock surveillance the cia’s dedication pays off a tall man is spotted walking in the walled kitchen Garden Ben Laden is 6’4 the man doesn’t stay outside for long and is careful to shelter under a Tarpin it’s as if he knows not to expose himself to spy satellites or drones they called him the Pacer at the CIA because they only saw this sort of tall shadowy figure pacing behind this this wall despite the mounting circumstance stantial evidence the CIA cannot positively identify the mystery man number even so they decide to take their findings to President Obama there was significant uncertainty in the CIA and in the White House over whether they were going to find him there um and the the degree of uncertainty depending on who you asked you know you they sort of went around the table in in these National Security meetings and Senior officials would would put different numbers on it would range anywhere from 50% to 90% nobody thought that the odds were 100% the best the CIA could say to the president was it’s 5545 that Usama Bin Laden is in this compound this was the only real lead we’d had on Osama bin lad he could have been hiding on the moon as far as the American intelligence Community knew President Obama weighs the off and gives the CIA permission to plan a [Music] raid now more than ever the CIA needs a Surefire plan crucially they need a plan that takes into account the Paca may not be Bin Laden after all a bombing mission is ruled out forensic evidence to prove the mystery man’s identity would be vaporized they need eyes on to confirm the Pacers identity face to face there is only one real [Music] option they propose a helicopter raid involving the best of the best of the Special Forces SEAL Team Six it’s a daring proposal the CIA takes their plan to President Obama what he was presented with was an opportunity to do what Mr Clinton should have done uh 10 times what Mr Bush had a chance to do once you know these CIA officials could argue well this may be the best chance we have do you remember these other chances that we had that we passed on before the September 11 attacks do you want to be the president who passes on this chance and that’s a pretty compelling argument President Obama gives the go head 15 years after the Manhunt began a date for The Raid to capture or kill assama Bin Laden is set May the 1st 2011 code name Operation Neptune [Music] Spear two dozen members of Navy SEAL Team Six are temporarily transferred to the cia’s command no one officially designated as milit Tre will cross into Pakistani airspace the White House does not want to trigger a war with Pakistan at 2300 hours the Seal’s stealth Blackhawk helicopters take off destination the abbotabad compound in Pakistan the target Asama Bin Laden America’s Most Wanted a man who was a Ed the CIA for over a decade and a half there is no turning back Navy Seal Team 6 are about to touch down in the compound it’s Zero Dark 30 a milit turn for 30 minutes past [Music] midnight just as they’re preparing to fast rope down to the compound one of the pilots hits serious trouble and loses lift to save his crew and the mission the pilot pulls off a daring emergency landing instantly the seals adapt their mission plan they storm the compound from the ground the first sealed team encounter Bin Laden’s Courier a second sealed team find the Courier’s brother and his wife [Music] inside a man identified as AMA Bin Laden’s son is also killed on the third floor of the main building the seals encounter the man the CIA call the [Music] Pacer 5 seconds later the team leader radio’s a message gono the code word for bin Laden EK I a enemy killed in action Osama Bin Laden is dead good evening tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden the leader of al-Qaeda and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men women and children from touchdown to Mission completion the 38 minutes in the abbotabad compound draws to a close the most extensive and expensive Manhunt in history for the cia’s Mike Sher it’s been a long journey but one ending in Victory I was of course delighted that he was dead um he was a very serious enemy of the United States and it’s a viory 2 for The Sisterhood team shya first set up in 1995 6 years before 9/11 we achieved all of the all of the things that we were assigned to do not to my credit but to the credit of the officers who worked for me because they were truly extraordinary of what they do the determination of the CIA analysts painstaking scrutiny of 15 years of intelligence gathering finally pays off to bring AMA Bin Laden to Justice a fortress in Afghanistan 1 month after 9/11 two operatives from the cia’s elite special activities division are hot on the trail of assama Bin Laden those first teams were going into the wildest wild west this is the Declassified story of how the CIA with elite special forces put down a Taliban Uprising outnumbered 100 to1 it’s like a scene from Armageddon we hear from the people on the ground as it happened and reveal their footage from the heat of the battle What’s happen there’s a prison uising caught in the crossfire the CIA makes a discovery for which one operative pays the ultimate price [Music] [Music] America is under attack acting on orders from Osama Bin Laden teams of hijackers fly aircraft into New York’s World Trade Center two more planes are hijacked one hit the Pentagon the other crashes before it reaches its Washington Target in under an hour nearly 3,000 people are dead it’s the worst terrorist atrocity in US [Music] history the nation is in shock the United States had been caught so off guard by the September 11 attacks it just seemed inconceivable that two gigantic towers and in the nation’s capital could come under attack by this rag tag group of of terrorists from across the world it was not hard to conceive that there were other attacks underway President Bush speaks to the nation and to the world today our fellow citizens our way of life our very Freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist Acts the search is underway for those who are Behind These evil acts I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to [Music] justice the full operational force of the CIA now focuses on one man and his network of terrorists finding Bin Laden was a was a priority from the outset the head of the counterterrorism center for the CIA talked about bringing home Bin Laden’s head on a pike the world turned upside down on you know on 9911 I mean the next day it was anything you want from Congress from everywhere anything you want request whatever you want we took whole branches from other parts of the agency and expanded rapidly by a factor of like seven well us Bin Laden from the beginning was going to be a difficult Target to go after he was a practiced clandestine operator the CIA knows Bin Laden is hiding in Afghanistan he’s found Refuge with a Taliban the ruling extremist Islamic regime but they don’t know his precise location even so very quickly they develop a plan intelligence driven Warfare for the very first time in American history President Bush approves a plan using the CIA as a lead element in a war operation enduring freedom is the invasion of [Music] Afghanistan the aim to overthrow the Taliban regime and flush out Assan Bin Laden in a matter of just weeks the Taliban are in a fullscale retreat thousands are captured by America’s allies the Afghan Northern [Music] Alliance on the ground from the very beginning a highly trained covert CIA operatives they’ve been sent in to interrogate captives and gain information on exactly where Bin Laden is hiding just 10 weeks into the war CIA analysts learn of an opportunity a chance for their men to interrogate individuals who could potentially lead them to their number one target 85 Mi outside the northern Afghan town of kundus Taliban fighters have assembled on the road to Maza Sharif their leaders want to negotiate a truce now these guys were fully armed they had with them AK-47s PKM light machine guns rocket propelled grenades they had all the normal armaments that Taliban and Al-Qaeda had these men are not just Afghans there are also hundred s of foreign Fighters now what kind of Fighters are drawn to a an international Jihad from from from overseas they are by the very nature the most the most extreme because to do that you have to have some kind of extreme commitment to come and fight in a foreign [Music] land at the CIA headquarters analysts re receive intelligence that many of these Hardline foreigners are in fact members of al-Qaeda some may be high ranking commanders some may even know where Bin Laden is hiding the CIA decides to send in specialist interrogators so they turn to an exceptional unit the cia’s experts in operating in hostile zones the special activities division outside the city of Maza Sharif a two-man special activities division team prepares for their [Music] mission Dave Tyson is a Central Asian specialist he is a fluent speaker of Dari the language of America’s Ally the Northern Alliance with him Johnny Michael span Mike a 32-year-old former Marine from Alabama he’s been with the CIA for 3 years this is his first field assignment so those first teams that were going in were going into the wildest wild west that you can imagine if they got into a firefight with the Taliban there was no Cavalry going to come in they were on their own at the Tippi tip of the Spear of American power the team’s mission to persuade the surrendering fighters to reveal precisely where Bin Laden is [Music] hiding at the same time just a few miles away the foreign Fighters are taken to kalaj jangi a sprawling mudw walled 19th century fort in the desert a few hours West of the city of maah Sharif the fort is 600 M across with massive walls 20 M thick and 30 m High inside are two enclosed compounds separated by a dividing wall to the north is the northern land’s headquarters building to the South the so-called pink house and nearby lies the [Music] Armory despite its size there is still nowhere truly suitable to house such a huge influx of men you need a large building large enough to hold and process and house and feed 600 men and you need somewhere which you can secure them in they didn’t have any prisons obviously uh what alternatives were there Northern Alliance guards have little choice but to herd the Taliban into the basement of The Pink House the building in the middle of the compound this will be their makeshift prison but the foreign Taliban become Restless after the truce they had expected to be able to walk free to these Hardline jihadis imprisonment comes as a shock their frustrations wouldn’t matter but for one thing their Northern Alliance guards have failed to confiscate all the prisoners weapons and grenades in Afghan tradition and in in Muslim culture as well if somebody says they are surrendering you are supposed to take that at face value this is supposed to be an honorable thing so in the on tradition they weren’t searched they were processed into the fort very quickly and a lot of these guys had weapons hidden under their clothing they’re still armed and dangerous as one Taliban fighter quickly [Music] shows I don’t know the mentality of those Taliban fights is but I guess it’s an attitude of okay I Surrender I make myself defenseless but maybe not utterly defenseless shall I keep something just in case and that’s probably when one of them or some of them decided to use the grenades that they had hidden the explosion I usion is the last action of one Taliban Fighter’s life a warning of what the Taliban are [Music] capable as a result inside their underground prison the fighters develop a plan they outnumber their Northern Alliance guards by 5 to one they know that just across the compound there is an Armory it is packed with rockets RPGs machine guns and mortars they decide if they are not released the following morning they will take matters into their own hands they’ll execute a fullscale breakout if they do the cia’s two covert agents will be caught in the middle the two undercover agents Mike span and Dave Tyson arrive at the kalaj jangi Fort to begin the interrogations for them the fighters were a source of intelligence let’s get as much as possible intelligence from them and information this was about 2 and A2 months after 911 and I think this put of course put the military and especially the CIA under an enormous stress and pressure to deliver the information the intelligence span and Tyson need information to lead them to Bin Laden or Intelligence on the next planned alider attack it was you know the jobs of these interrogators to a large extent to figure out well what were these plans what was coming next and there was intense pressure on them to get answers to these questions because there was not going to be another way to get those answers but the fort is far from an ideal setup for questioning the CIA interrogation manual sets clear guidelines on how to cross-examine a detainee interrogators should have time to memorize the detainees history to present files dossier and photographs they should have time to repeat their questioning or to lure the prisoner into making the first move most of all they should be able to keep the prisoners separate from other captives in the open air compound of the Afghan Fort playing it by the the book just isn’t possible the fort is filled with hundreds of Taliban guarded only by a handful of America’s Northern Alliance allies if anything goes wrong they are on their own the question is do they go ahead with the interrogations or do they abandon their mission and pull out it’s a huge risk but one they feel they must take they adapt to the situation and improvise a plan first thing you need to do when trying to gather intelligence and you’ve got 600 prisoners is work out which ones know nothing which ones might know something and which guys are the real gems in terms of intelligence so that first morning they were processing the prisoners through this filter if you [Music] like Mike spam was leading in the questioning so he was the guy doing the face to face with the prisoners Dave Tyson was stood back with an AK-47 kind of watching over things and then you had a few Northern Alliance soldiers on the battlements or or at the entrance to the prison bringing the prisoners out but there was very few Northern Alliance guys around so the security was very [Music] light after 2 hours they noticed one particular captive he is unusually pale skinned and is wearing items of western clothing they suspect he speaks English they realize this could be the one man they can communicate with directly the one man they can break but the prisoner refed refuses to talk span and Tyson have to move on but not before the prisoner’s image is sent back to the cia’s Langley headquarters and cross referenced with known Al-Qaeda operatives on the CIA database but identifying him will take time he may be what they term a Clean Skin an extremist not yet known to the CIA so for now span and Tyson are in the dark in the basement prison the Hardline Taliban fighters realize what’s going on they will not succumb to interrogation I’m convinced the Taliban they were not prepared to be questioned by Americans and not by the CIA bear in mind you’ve now got 600 of the hardest most extreme prisoners in Afghanistan at that time face to face with as they see it the enemy and not just any old American enemy these guys who are questioning them they know they are special forces or CIA these are the cream of America’s Warriors these are the people of anyone that they most want to kill and so you can imagine how explosive this this confrontation is the Taliban decide the next group to be brought out to the compound will trigger a [Music] breakout on the other side of the fort a German journalist and his cameraman are in the northern compound headquarters building waiting for permission to interview the prisoners smoking a cigarette waiting birds singing wonderful Blue Sky cool fresh air a very peaceful setting and then all of a sudden there were one or two explosions grenades a Taliban prisoner detonates his grenade in a suicide attack almost immediately after that heavy Small Arms fire started it was obvious this is not just um a couple of shots being exchanged this is a real heavy gunfight and then I grabbed my set phone and ran um for cover in the main building which was like 20 yards away from where I had been at the time CIA operatives span and Tyson now realize they are facing a full scale breakout span then had a decision to make Marines do not take a back step they go forward they go forward in the face of the enemy within seconds Mike span is faced with a wave of attacking [Music] Taliban ambushed and outnumbered he could have run he could have run and saved himself but he didn’t he stepped forward and he decided to make a stand just yards away span’s colleague Dave Tyson is powerless to help his his friend he has no choice but to make a break for it towards the headquarters building Tyson’s arrival is captured on camera by the German TV crew and relayed around the world this is actual footage of the event his undercover status is immediately blown instinctively Stout suspects Tyson is Cia I mean to have an armed civilian American dressed like an Afghan on the ground meant something in the field of Secret Service where you from Amer he is very controlled but you see he’s very upset and nervous at the same time and from you know his appearance I had the very clear impression that something that he had witnessed something horrible I asked him what is going on this was my very simple question and he said there’s an uprising of the prisoners What’s happen there’s a prison Uprising uising yeah they stolen from Tyson’s mission is clearly compromised he has to think of a way of keeping the operation alive but he is on his own and his weapons are empty by now the Taliban prisoners in the basement of The Pink House have killed their Northern Alliance guards they ransack the armory [Music] [Music] at that stage you had 600 guys armed with AK-47s mortars RPGs PKM light machine guns Northern Alliance allies take up defensive positions and mount a Counterattack trying to keep the Taliban at Bay it’s a vicious firefight from the shelter of the headquarters building CIA agent Dave Tyson can hear the battle escalate unless he can control the situation the mission to extract Vital Information from the prisoners will fail and an opportunity to track down AMA Bin Laden will be lost agent Tyson uses journalist Stout’s phone to call for backup but he has a problem he has no contact number for the US Special Forces quick reaction force stationed locally he has to improvise at the time I didn’t know but later I checked the the numbers from our set phone it was the number of the American embassy at Tashkent usbekistan that’s where he called from the fort just outside maah Sharif Tyson calls a number he believes is his only option the embassy in Tash Kent patches Tyson through to the US Army Central Command at mcdill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida mcdill roote him to the Special Forces local command base at Maza Sharif by the time his emergency call reaches a fellow CIA paramilitary officer at base it has traveled 20,000 miles Tyson gives a full situation report this is the actual recording of what he said we control the North End of the fort the south end the fort is in their hands there’s hundreds of dead here at least and I’m not I don’t know how many Americans we just need help to free this place up Tyson warns that any intervention must be precise there is hand to hand fighting enemy and allies in close proximity and he made it very clear he repeated it like three times saying you can’t come and bomb the Place can’t hit it from the air because friends and foes were so close to each other that they might killed might have killed us by bombing on the other side of the fort the heavily armed Taliban have identified the building in which Tyson and stout are Sheltering they pound it with mortar shells it must have been I think a mortar grenade exploding just above the ceiling which made an enormous impact in terms of Acoustics it was so loud and my ear went in response America’s allies the Northern Alliance drive an old Russian tank onto the northern ramparts and bombard the enemy caught in the middle of the battle all Tyson and stout can do is hunker down and wait for [Music] help just 2 hours after the first shot is fired that help arrives the quick reaction force of us and British Special Forces that Tyson had requested I think it’s the Brits who up first in a Land Rover wearing Barber jackets and jeans and they’re all called things like Scruff and Ginge it’s hilarious and they’re moaning the driver is moaning he’s saying um oh there’s nowhere to park you know meanwhile there’s you know and I’m was taking all this out it’s just fantastic sort of you know the elite of of of Britain’s Army you know moaning while they sort of casually go about sort of organizing this battle and then the Americans turn up as well and there’s more of them there’s about eight of them and they’re much more aggressive let’s do this let’s do that the first thing they do when they arrive is they send someone up to put eyes on as in have a peak over and work out what the hell’s going on what are we facing here how many people how are they armed the team’s Commander assesses the situation he has just 15 men his Northern Alliance allies number around 50 the enemy has [Music] 600 despite this the quick reaction force goes in and takes on their enemy it’s like a scene from armagedon you’ve got Tracer rounds going to the sky you’ve got RPGs firing off this has kicked off into a major major firefight and at the moment you’ve just got a few Northern Alliance soldiers there trying to put down the uprising it is a hopeless situation very quickly the Special Forces realize they’re not going to be able to crush the uprising on their own they will need to adapt the special skill that special forces have is that they are able to handle it and that they are able to go in with the plan and when that becomes impossible they’re able to make another one quite quickly and that’s the edge that they have okay let’s go let’s [Music] go despite the fact that friend and foe are fighting in extremely close quarters the Special Forces team makes the decision to bomb the Taliban from the air the one advantage apart from their training and their superlative abilities the one advantage they can very often rely on is air power because air power evens up the odds somewhat you can have a few guys Behind Enemy Lines but if they can call in air strikes they can have the effect of hundreds get the air strikes in get the enemy’s head down it’s the shock Factor as much as anything else that puts the enemy’s heads Heads down for a few seconds there’s always a danger when you calling air strikes that you know the pilot will get it wrong and drop the ordinance on you uh and in any case in this situation they were dropping danger close they were dropping within a fraction of what the safe distances are but there was nothing I mean what else could you do so the risk of getting hit by their own Munitions the risk of Friendly Fire was significant yeah but I mean they had no option they had no choice a special forces spotter team provides precise GPS coordinates for a bomber pilot circling overhead 46 this is 1 we’re in position over they Shine A Rang finding laser or soflam on the pink house where the Taliban are taking shelter above them an F-18 Hornet is armed with guided 500lb jdams weapons designed to be accurate to within just 12 yards right fr the copy that here they come one bomb after another rips through the southern end of the [Music] fort you hear this sound like a car that’s in high gear sort of decelerated going like that and you can see this thing it just pops out of the clouds like a javelin coming looks like it’s coming straight at you and then sort of it’s obviously off to the side boom and everything jumps the building that we’re on jump and you black out for sort of I don’t know half a second or so and you sort of come to you know it’s like you’re rebooting or something the Taliban Retreat past the bodies of at least a 100 of their fellow [Music] Fighters the rest fite is only temporary but it gives the special forces the opportunity they need to send in a search team to find missing in action CIA agent Mike span it’s a US nav seal Maxim you never leave a man behind and it’s a British military Maxim that you never leave your buddies behind there is no other decision to be made we will go in after hours of looking and under heavy fire the Twan Rescue Team reaches the southern compound there the spotter’s search comes to an end we scans the southern end of the for I guess he wants to see him but he doesn’t want to see him it’s a horrendous situation to be in and eventually he sees a guy lying on the ground and he can see he’s wearing blue jeans and a and a kind of shirt which is exactly what you know CIA sad operatives would wear the search team confirms they found the body of agent Mike [Music] span he is the first American Casualty in the war on terror [Music] Under Fire it’s simply too dangerous to retrieve his body they can go no further and so in what must have been the worst moment of the man’s life I would imagine well for both of them they have to make the decision to turn around and and leave a fellow soldier in the hands of the enemy they vow to return for him [Music] on the other side of the fort CIA agent Tyson doesn’t yet know the fate of his colleague he and reporter anim Stout are trapped on the roof of the headquarters building Tyson knows before nightfall he must find a safer place from which to plan a strategy for somehow resuming interrogations crossing the roof risks them being picked off by a Taliban sniper even then there seems to be no way down but a Northern Alliance fighter reveals a possible route to safety there was one wounded Afghan he had two or three gun wound not very serious ones but on his crutches you know he he crossed the roof um someone helped him and he slid down the wall and he disappeared using his CIA training Tyson calculates the risks they must time their run between incoming bullets hey guys time to go huh it’s time to go I remember at one point Tyson just saying it’s time to go in a very decisive way and that was the signal for everybody and then one after the other we we crossed that that roof we slid down the wall we ran towards that Clay Road and there was a van there you know like out of nothing there was a van as if we had all that the cap you know Stout is driven through the desert to safety Tyson can regroup at the cia’s local base the fate of his mission to locate AMA Bin Laden Now lies in the hands of the special forces and the success of their air [Music] strikes in the basement of The Pink House the Taliban face their second night in the fort some 300 of their original 600 Fighters lie dead everyone is convinced that with America’s overwhelming Firepower the battle will be over by morning but no one has foreseen the determination of the Taliban prisoners to fight to the death [Music] are setting UPS right now over on the third day further teams of US Special Forces arrive to assist the cia’s operation together with reinforcements from the Afghan Northern Alliance inside the pink house there is no sign of surrender so the air bombardments continue despite the cia’s concerns that friend and foe are simply too close but this time the bombs used won’t be a standard 500b jdam this time they’re four times as big get you guys on the target over coat the coordinates are dictated and [Music] confirmed and a countdown is given elevation 1 2 ner hey u m they’re about ready to drop pull back pull back at this [Music] time journalist Alex Perry joins the Special Forces teams calling in the strikes you know you hear it that I mean it shoots you know 300 yards into the sky sh down biggest thing we’ve ever seen this is suddenly a 2,000 it puts a swimming pool size hole in the wall the dust Tower is 1,000 ft high but the bomb hasn’t hit the intended [Music] target and we’re thinking that’s where we were that’s where all those guys are that’s where the Americans are they’ve just hit their own people a 2,000 American bomb has wiped out a Northern Alliance tank position up to 30 Alliance men have been killed five us and two UK Special Forces men are badly injured it’s just as the CIA had warned friend and foe are too close together for air strikes and you just see all these guys coming out just you know they’re they’re gray with dust pink eyes and half of them are completely deaf um and uh and and and we’re just thinking how many how many people died day after day the battle rages on several days went by when you had like massive bombardments or big gun battles or you know you know maybe 200 guys on a parit firing down this thing nothing could possibly survive and you go back the next day and it’s the same situation and you’re back to square one and it starts again Taliban deaths are in the hundreds still many fight on others regroup in the basement of the pink house will any be left for the CIA to interrogate and if you look down on this quadrant there were hundreds of bodies and you’re like well how you know it looks to me like everybody’s dead and and you could tell that there was almost no one firing back maybe one maybe two so our assumption was everybody’s dead but we were we were wrong in their Pink House Refuge the remaining Taliban are armed defiant and still refusing to surrender I think at some point it was obvious to them they would all die there the Afghan Northern Alliance are now in charge of the fort but how can they flush out the remaining Taliban they try firing into the building with guns and RPGs they pour oil through the tiny windows and set it on fire this may sound brutal Okay this may sound medieval and horrific but bear in mind they weren’t trying to force them out to kill them they were trying to force them out to accept their surrender but the Taliban don’t want to surrender eventually the Northern Alliance has just one remaining option to flood the Taliban from their Refuge they divert a nearby stream directly into the pink house basement [Music] after 20 hours in freezing water yet more of the hardliners perish somehow 86 Taliban fighters survive in the bitter cold of morning they surrender they were starving they had been firebombed they had been shot at they had been frozen with water they were half drowning but they came out of that base largely to a man full of hatred and full of defiance to the men of the Special Forces it is mission accomplished but to the CIA it’s only the beginning at last they can return to interrogate the Taliban prisoners for Vital Information on Usama Bin Laden’s Hideout the CIA have to find out if the pale skinned Taliban span and Tyson had picked out 6 days earlier survives of the original 600 Taliban only 86 remain and among the survivors is the man the CIA agents have identified as of particular interest they confirm what they had originally suspected he speaks English at first he claims his name is suan alares but then he reveals he is John Walker Lind a 20-year-old student from California it was a sort of miracle that this guy was alive but he garnered attention you know not least because he was an American and the Taliban and that was just such a shock after 9/11 they couldn’t believe it they couldn’t believe it overnight the world learns that jihadis can be of any race any color any nationality Terror can be homegrown under interrogation Walker Lind confirms he met assama Bin Laden once at a training camp may but can reveal no Intelligence on Bin Laden’s current Hideout Walker Lind is charged with consorting with the Enemy and is serving a 20-year sentence with no Prospect of parole the cia’s hunt for AMA Bin Laden must continue in the fort the US Special Forces retrieved the body of CIA agent Mike span it had been booby trapped by the Taliban a CIA officer for 3 years and father of three he is the first American Casualty in the war on terror buried with full as an American hero as for his colleague agent Tyson despite his cover being blown by the TV crew he remains working at the CIA in operations reports he has been referred to variously as Dave dorson and Olsen his current identity and whereabouts is known only to a few yeah we went to the compound the next day just to say hello did you get home safely um are you okay um I gave him my business card I mean obviously he didn’t give give me any only now has the depth of the cia’s involvement in operation enduring Freedom the invasion of Afghanistan been revealed a tiny handful of Special Forces soldiers from the CIA mainly basically managed to roll back the Taliban with a power across the whole of the north of the country within a matter of weeks the work of the cia’s interrogators like Mike span and Dave Tyson in those early days provides crucial information in the pursuit of al-Qaeda and the hunt for AMA Bin Laden this was the main source of Intelligence on this organization for a period of years was being able to sit across the table in an interrogation Booth from somebody who’ been recently captured and then Ade that person to give up as much information as possible information that after over a decade of dedication in May 2011 leads the CIA to a private compound in abadabad in Pakistan and to the death of America’s Most Wanted AMA bin Laden [Music]
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