Stories of operations by special forces with reenactments, archival footage, narration, and interviews with those who took part. Some operations are famous while others are lesser known.
00:00 Assault on Al Qaeda
Al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, proves to be a formidable enemy. Responsible for bombings, beheadings, and relentless attacks, he is more persistent than Saddam and more active than Osama. The coalition’s only hope lies with a top-secret task force.
48:18 City Under Siege – The 2008 Mumbai Attacks
On November 26, 2008, Mumbai, India’s largest city, is shaken by a series of brutal terrorist attacks. Multiple landmarks are targeted, bombs explode across the city, and the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel is set ablaze. Only India’s National Security Guard, the Black Cats, can stop the chaos. Trained by Germany’s GSG9, these elite commandos fly into Mumbai to bring the carnage to an end—despite having little intelligence on the attackers.
1:36:38 Night of Terror – The Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis
October 2002. Russia’s elite Spetsnaz Group Alfa faces an impossible mission—rescuing 800 hostages from a Moscow theater, held by Chechen militants armed with explosives. Negotiations fail, and innocent lives hang in the balance as the situation escalates into a desperate battle.
2:25:27 Operation Certain Death – The Sierra Leone Hostage Crisis
August 25, 2000. A British Army patrol from the Royal Irish Regiment takes a wrong turn deep in the jungles of Sierra Leone, entering the territory of the notorious West Side Boys, a rebel gang infamous for their brutality. The soldiers are taken hostage, and when communication is lost, the British government realizes the gravity of the situation. After over two weeks of captivity, British Special Forces launch a daring rescue operation—one chance to bring the soldiers home safely.
3:13:35 Operation Thunderbolt – The Raid on Entebbe
June 27, 1976. Terrorists hijack Air France Flight 139 en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, taking 246 passengers hostage in Entebbe, Uganda. With most of the captives being Jewish, Israel’s Defense Minister Shimon Peres orders a high-risk rescue mission. Thousands of miles away, across hostile territory, the elite Sayeret Matkal unit prepares for one of the most daring counter-terrorism operations in history.
4:02:40 Taking Down Bin Laden – Operation Neptune Spear
May 1, 2011. A team of US Navy SEALs boards stealth Black Hawk helicopters bound for Abbottabad, Pakistan. Their target: Osama Bin Laden. In just over an hour, they will breach a heavily fortified compound to capture or kill the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. This is the story of meticulous intelligence gathering, strategic decision-making, and one of the most daring black ops missions in modern history.
A vicious militant is systematically targeting
innocent civilians. – The guy was so brutal. If you kill everybody else, eventually people stand back and say, “Whoa, we’ve got a big guy.” An elite group of Special Forces are
hand-picked from across the world to take the terrorists out. – You do a series of
raids that is devastating. They’re led
by a maverick general with radical new methods. – If you hit an organization
repeatedly enough, you could actually cause them to collapse. It’s a race against time. They must stop him before
more blood is shed. – Nothing’s routine if
there’s lives at risk. Iraq, April 2006. In the dead of night, a helicopter lifts off
from a desert air base. On board is a group of elite soldiers from a secretive unit
codenamed Task Force Black. – On the way to a mission, I’m often asked, “Were you nervous?” You know, I don’t have time to be nervous because there’s so many things happening. I mean, everyone is busy. They are bound
for a house in an area known as the Triangle of Death. Their mission is to arrest a senior member of the deadly terror
group Al-Qaeda in Iraq. – You should always be
expecting the worst. What if we get fired upon? What if the fast rope
is in the wrong spot? What if we get around and the helicopter is
downed outside the compound? Their targets
are ready to resist with extreme violence. – Almost as soon as they
were through the door, they were hit by a hail of bullets. The people inside clearly
knew somebody was coming. They were armed and they were waiting. The team quickly
killed the first militant and move in to clear the
rest of the building. Go, go, go! – There were half a dozen assault rifles. There were dozens of hand grenades. There were at least two, possibly three, wearing suicide vests. And at the
top of the staircase. One of the
suicide bombers steps out of the shadows and detonates his vest. By now, the militants are fighting with everything they have. Two more appear on the roof and spray the assault force with bullets. The soldiers of Task
Force Black are accustomed to this kind of brutal violence. They face it on a daily basis. – At the end of the day, we’re gonna win. And we’ll do whatever it takes to win. Though the Special
Forces don’t realize it, this house holds the key to
finding the most wanted man in the Middle East. One of their captives
tonight will lead them to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He has murdered thousands
of innocent civilians and spread terror throughout the region. His campaign of violence is so effective, the US has created a black ops task force with just one mission: taking al-Zarqawi down. – This was a guy who had
murdered thousands of people. In fact, he murdered many more people than Osama bin Laden ever did. To understand
how al-Zarqawi rose to become one of the most
feared terrorists on the planet, we must look to the town of Zarqa, Jordan, 500 miles to the west of Baghdad. Al-Zarqawi was born here in 1966. – Zarqawi’s background
is he was a criminal. You know, he spent time
in a Jordanian prison for sexual assault. He was a drug dealer. He was
a petty criminal in Jordan. – Accounts differ as to
whether he was actually a sort of hard-boozing
villain in his hometown. But it’s certainly true
that he was involved in some forms of crime, and that he probably had
some kind of epiphany, some kind of moment when he realized that his life was going the wrong way and that Islam was the answer for him. In 1989, al-Zarqawi
travels to Afghanistan to become a freedom fighter
against the Soviet occupation. It is here that he meets
his mentor and inspiration, Osama bin Laden. – He had come up during
the course of the war in Afghanistan. People understood his importance
as an operational leader. And he was clearly trusted by bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda senior leadership. He was well liked by the
soldiers in Al-Qaeda. He was well respected by the leadership. He was incredibly capable.
He was experienced. Over the next 15 years, partly with bin Laden’s support, al-Zarqawi grows to become
an accomplished terrorist. By 2003, he’s in Iraq, fighting against the
American-led invasion. The early months of the
war appear to be a swift and stunning victory, as
the old regime melts away. But al-Zarqawi is waiting in the shadows to start a new campaign of violence. – When he was deployed into Iraq, we understood as the American
counter-terrorism community that this was a significant event. He had that unique combination of skills that would allow him to be a real force for Al-Qaeda against us inside Iraq. In the months
that follow Saddam’s overthrow, chaos envelops the country. Al-Zarqawi takes full advantage of this, actively working to stir up the hatred between Iraq’s two main religious groups: the majority Shia Muslims
and the minority Sunnis. He creates a militant group with the aim of killing
as many Shias as possible, thus sparking retaliations and creating a brutal cycle of violence. It is called Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI. – We mistakenly look
at these organizations as terrorist groups. This is too narrow. These are revolutionary organizations that want to spread an idea. They don’t wanna just spread
weapons or explode/suicide. The idea is they can return
to what they call a caliphate, a 14-centuries-old concept, that there’s a pure way to live according to the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. So the idea is where can you
find a springboard to do this? Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and then you get Iraq. – The militant Islamists were prepared to do pretty much anything. And of course, quite soon they discovered that bombing things like
the UN offices in Baghdad, the International Committee
of the Red Cross offices, and then moving on to
targets like markets, queues outside police stations where the police were recruiting, all those sort of things, were actually far easier
targets than American convoys or American bases where
the T walls had gone up. The base represented a hard
concrete face to the world. And, you know, yes, if
you drove a truck up, you might kill the guy on the
gate who was checking passes, but you were unlikely to
achieve a major result. Al-Zarqawi orchestrates numerous suicide bombings. A devastating series of attacks
in March 2004 kills close to 200 people at Shia holy sites. – So they shifted their targeting towards the sort of softer targets that could yield more spectacular results. And of course, soon they
were killing dozens, scores, maybe even sometimes over 100 people in a single complex attack. On the 11th of May, 2004, al-Zarqawi is linked to a new outrage. A video of an American hostage appears on a jihadist website. The American, deliberately dressed in a Guantanamo-Bay-style
orange jumpsuit, is Nick Berg, a 26-year-old communications
engineer from Pennsylvania. Berg was kidnapped in
Iraq a month previously. And the video shows his
unimaginably horrific death. – The video is one of
those horror show type of jihadist videos in which a long knife is used to cut his throat. And you can even hear the
sound of knife on bone and the screams. It’s a truly horrific video. But the point is, at the
beginning of the video, in the original form it
was released, it says, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
slaughters an American.” The CIA determines
that al-Zarqawi himself is the hooded man wielding the knife. – The guy was so brutal, so tough, it’s sort of like a mafia family
operating in New York City. If you kill everybody else, eventually people stand back and say, “Whoa, we got a big guy, a
big dog on the corner in town, and we better be careful.” – Zarqawi could see that
if he publicized himself and what he was doing
as a really militant, irreconcilable enemy of the Americans that this would bring him
money from the collections in mosques for the jihad. It would bring him volunteers
from across the Arab world. And in that calculation, he was right. – He really put the
crosshairs on his own head by all these spectacular acts and all the press that he was receiving. – So just the brutality and the effectiveness of his efforts against first the Americans
and then the locals, I think people stood back and
say, “This guy’s a blowtorch. We better let him roll.” – What the Iraqi Sunnis started to believe and those people who
had joined Al-Qaeda was that if the Americans can’t
kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, can’t stop him, then
maybe he was predestined to win the war. Berg’s death
is a signal to the world that al-Zarqawi’s reign of terror is escalating out of control. But secretly, the US is planning a series of black ops designed to
bring him crashing down. In Washington, ending al-Zarqawi’s reign
of terror has become a top priority for President Bush and his inner circle of advisors. – You come in, and in the days where you feel like the
momentum hasn’t been with you, you start with, your
thought is really so simple. It’s let nothing blow up today. Let me get today with nothing blowing up. – It wasn’t that we were losing. It was just like, when will
this end? And how will it end? Al-Zarqawi
seems to have the power to strike at will, and yet somehow he
remains completely hidden. – We really didn’t know
what he was doing in Iraq. And we didn’t know, like,
did he have wives there? Did he have kids there?
Where was he moving? What was his support network? – What most counter-terrorism
officials will tell you is you go through periods where
you feel beleaguered, right? You go through periods where you are making
very limited progress, and you’re trying to
understand why that is. Why does he seem to have
momentum behind him? And you’re trying to figure out, what can I do to change that dynamic? But anybody who’s been in
this fight will tell you that’s what happens. You go through these periods, and you’ve gotta push through. And you’ve gotta understand what is it that’s giving him the momentum, and how do you take that away from him? No one even has
a recent photo of al-Zarqawi, let alone any idea where he is. He doesn’t use a mobile phone for fear it’ll be tracked. He only
meets with a select group of trusted advisors whose
own whereabouts are unknown. – He really was kind of
a ghost for a long time. And you would get bits and pieces here, but usually by the time you
got them, they were outdated. In September 2003, a new general arrives in Iraq. His name is Stanley McChrystal. He has radical new ideas
for hunting down al-Zarqawi and destroying AQI. – General McChrystal is one of the most dedicated
individuals I’ve ever met. He is a driven, driven warrior. He artfully looked at where
he could make the most impact. – Stan McChrystal, unique guy. Years of experience with our
special operations forces at all levels. Former ranger commander. You get personalities
that are that strong, that experienced, that well respected, the force falls in and their operational
experience starts to show. And it’s just the type of guy
you want in that position. McChrystal is
the newly appointed commander of the Joint Special
Operations Command, or JSOC. – Certainly in every conflict,
the JSOC has been there. They were in Granada, they were in Panama, Gulf one, Gulf two, Kosovo. Pretty much where there’s a conflict, you can depend that JSOC
has been there first, and they’re always the last to leave. Formed in the late 1980s to coordinate the work of
America’s elite troops, JSOC controls the best of the best from across the US Military. These are the so-called
special mission units: Navy SEAL Team Six, Army Delta Force, and the Air Force 24th
Special Tactics Squadron. Active in every corner of the world, often on highly classified missions, the men of JSOC are experts in precise, targeted strikes against
hard-to-reach enemies. – It was a very secret organization, and it was tasked with fighting
the most sensitive types of mission against US enemies. Obviously, in the context, post 9/11, terrorist enemies, counter-terrorism. At the start of the war, JSOC’s mission had been to find and arrest the leaders
of the old Iraqi regime, the men famously depicted
on a deck of cards, with Saddam Hussein as the ace of spades. – Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Within a year, even Saddam himself is in custody. But this creates a power vacuum, and al-Zarqawi is ready and
waiting to step into the breach. – In decapitating what some called the Baathist or nationalist leadership, they probably assisted the
growth of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Because by taking away the
leadership figures, the sheikhs, the former generals, the key
people, the key Baathists, they left quite a lot of
angry, young, militant Sunnis with nowhere to go. McChrystal
takes a strategic decision to abandon the hunt for ex-members
of the old Saddam regime. Instead, he will focus
almost all of his resources on just one man: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. – Our commander gave us a big speech. The point of the speech was the
only way to win the Iraq war and to stop the violence
between Sunni and Shia is to find and kill or
capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. To get to al-Zarqawi himself, McChrystal knows he needs
to build a complete picture of his terror network, AQI. He sets up a large command center at an old Iraqi air base in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad. Then he invites all of America’s
many competing spy agencies to set up camp there. From now on, interagency
turf wars are banned and everything will be shared. – When we started working
with Special Forces, and I remember General McChrystal, who’s a real hero in this war, I remember him coming into
CIA headquarters and saying, “You know, we need some of your people.” And as any bureaucrat will,
you sit back there and say, “All right, is this dog gonna hunt? What are we trying to do here?” The idea is that
every piece of information, however insignificant,
will be brought here and fed into a massive database. If McChrystal and his men learn everything they can about AQI, they may be able to quickly
find its weakest points and strike. – Senior leadership understood that in order to win a counterinsurgency, you could not win it by
being on the defensive. You had to go on the offensive. – You would be shocked at one, the focus on the targets. These are the top 10. Here are the intel collection tasks. This is how we’re moving against them. And as information breaks on each one, you see the various forces in the interagency and the allies, and, in some cases, the Iraqis, move against that. And it’s an unfolding story every day. It’s constantly updated. It never blinks, it never sleeps. A key part of the plan is to pump each captured militant for as much intelligence as possible. So McChrystal sets up a
special detention facility right next door to his command center. – The interrogation unit
essentially composed of where we kept the prisoners and also our interrogation rooms and then our analysis room and our desk, which we called the gator pit. Part of our facility was, you know, an old Saddam-era aircraft hangar, and then the rest of it was just kind of like makeshift built additions to a warehouse, essentially. Using his huge store of the most up-to-date intelligence, McChrystal unleashes the
most dangerous weapon in JSOC’s arsenal, the special mission units
of elite frontline soldiers. These men will also work
in an entirely new way. Historically, they ran only one or two major operations per year. Now they will conduct multiple
raids on a daily basis. – I can remember visiting
Iraq and watching them. They didn’t go out once on a night. They went out multiple times. Oftentimes the intelligence
operators would go with the Special Forces. – It all starts by piling in
the back of a striker vehicle and sitting in a very cramped space that’s very hot and very dark. And then you’re going through
the streets, you know, and there’s all types of hazards. Roadside bombs and snipers. And by the time, you know,
you get to the target, you’re usually already,
like, drenched in sweat and your adrenaline’s going. – You’re fired up. You have your game face on. You need to be intense because intensity and
momentum are critical, you know, as far as winning the day. Nervous? Not really nervous. You’re jumping
out of the vehicle. You’re running down the street. When it gets really exciting is when you have more than one house. Oftentimes these terrorists, they would run out of one house and jump a wall and into another house, and then you’d have to
raid a second house. And then sometimes that would end up with a third or fourth house. Don’t move. The critical factor is speed. Every time a militant is captured, the members of AQI around him
will try to cover their tracks by reorganizing the entire network. – You had information that would perish. It was time sensitive. That sometimes needed to
be run down to the ground. And maybe that would be the only chance of preventing a catastrophe
or an act that would kill, you know, a US soldier or our ally. It’s a cat and mouse game. The terrorists constantly
change their routines, abandon safe houses, and recruit new men to replace
those that have been lost. But if McChrystal’s people can
work faster than their enemy, they will destroy AQI
before it can regenerate. – You take technical information, things like stuff you get
off a captured cell phone or a captured hard drive, you take detainee operation, what detainees are saying about the network they just came from, and you put them in a big hopper and say, “Our software, our analysis, our people have to be good enough so they can put together a picture of what that network looks like. And not only put that picture together. Do it well enough so that an operator can conduct
a raid within 24 hours.” You’re doing it for years on end with people from every agency in town. Incredible. – In a way, the most important idea that General McChrystal and JSOC brought to this whole thing was that if you hit an organization fast enough, accurately enough, and repeatedly enough, you could actually cause them to collapse. JSOC soon develops
into a well-oiled machine. Every night, four black
ops task forces spread out through Iraq, performing up
to a dozen raids at one time. On your feet! – Go, go, go, go! Each group is
assigned to take down targets in a different part of
US-occupied territory. To the north is Task Force Red, formed from the Army’s
75th Rangers Brigade. To the west, Task Force Blue, made up of US Navy SEALs. The center of Iraq will
be the responsibility of Task Force Green, staffed by the US Army’s
most elite unit, Delta Force. These soldiers are joined
by a team of elite troops from Britain’s Special
Air Service, the SAS, operating under the
codename Task Force Black. The SAS are the pioneers
in the art of black ops, such as this daring hostage rescue from the Iranian embassy in
the heart of London in 1980. In particular, they are
masters of surveillance and intelligence gathering. – There was undoubtedly a feeling among many of the American
intelligence operators that the SAS and the other
British Special Forces had skills that were quite unusual
and quite different to the type of skills that
Delta Force or the SEALs had. The American training and operational activity
had all been based around, if you like, action man
leaping out of helicopters, boarding ships, all this
kind of stuff, assault rolls. Whereas the British Special Forces, because of their long involvement, not just in Northern Ireland, but in places like the Balkans, where they’d been involved in
the hunt for war criminals, they had skills to do with the
patient nurturing of targets and groups of targets. Now, that involved surveillance. It involved creativity,
stealth about how, for example, could you get a remote
surveillance camera onto a balcony overlooking a target you
might be interested in. They came up with all sorts of things. They drove around in Baghdad taxis. They disguised themselves. And the American
intelligence people saw some of this during the early years in Baghdad, and they liked it. McChrystal
and his team worked through their targets, night after night. The supply lines of foreign
fighters are intercepted. Bomb makers are taken out of action. Mountains of intelligence
are captured and analyzed. – They would do a raid, they would get what’s called
pocket litter or hard drives. You know, pieces of paper
out of people’s pockets. They’d come back, they’d bring it to analysts
back on the base from the CIA, who would go through that information. That would lead to
another targeting package, and the Special Forces would go out again. That sort of continuous
feed, continuous loop, is what made them incredibly effective. Despite two years of taking al-Zarqawi’s network apart, the ultimate objective, the
man himself, still eludes them. But the task force is about to
find a crucial breakthrough, one that could finally
stop al-Zarqawi for good. Strike teams from JSOC, the US Joint Special Operations Command, are staging multiple raids
across Iraq every night. This secretive organization joins together elite special forces from
across the US Military and its allies. They’re under the command
of a single leader, General Stanley McChrystal. By the start of 2006, their
system of rapid-fire raids and sophisticated intelligence gathering is beginning to pull apart the
terror network known as AQI. They’re also getting ever
closer to its feared leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. – I’m gonna target each
discreet, tiny, little element, and if I can begin to
pull little elements away, suddenly the whole thing
falls on its own weight. Whenever they
get close to al-Zarqawi, he seems once again to
slip through their grasp. Yet, he still retains the ability to perpetrate devastating attacks, especially against
so-called “soft targets,” like Shia mosques,
killing hundreds at once. In April 2006, al-Zarqawi releases a video which, for the first time
in years, shows his face. – The fact that he was
a charismatic military and tactical leader led to
this larger-than-life sort of myth about him. I think it fed his ego as well. He kind of began believing
his own press, if you will. – He had little kids in
the street, you know, pretending to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi because he was essentially invincible. The video urges
al-Zarqawi’s supporters to show no mercy against
their so-called “enemies”: Iraq’s Shia community and the US forces. Just as that video hits the airwaves, one element of the JSOC task
force is preparing the latest in their long series of nightly raids. It’s a team from the British SAS, operating under the
codename Task Force Black. They’re now concentrating on an area to the south of the capital. It is a militant heartland, and the soldiers call it
the Triangle of Death. – The British special
operations task force conducted a series of operations
in the Triangle of Death in early 2006. And they planned an
operation in April 2006, which they called Larchwood 4. Operation
Larchwood 4 is a dangerous and daring raid to arrest a
mid-ranking al-Zarqawi henchman, codenamed Abu Haydr. McChrystal’s intelligence
machine has pinpointed him to a safe house in the town of Yusufiyah. – We put surveillance on that safe house, and we watched it continuously
for I think almost a month. And then one day, you know, we see this meeting happening there. These cars converge. And so we quickly sent
a raid team to go out and capture the members
in that safe house. The team
know that houses like this are often well defended
with heavily armed men, some wearing suicide vests. But the house could also contain a number of innocent civilians. – If they’re a threat, then you engage. If they’re not a threat, then you don’t. You have to be able to make
that decision in a snap. That’s what special operations trains for. That’s what they’re
really, really good at. At just after 2:00 AM, Task Force Black sets
off in their helicopters for the target house. Following them is a support group from the British parachute
regiment, the Paras. They will form a cordon around the house to prevent reinforcements arriving and arrest so-called “squirters,” targets trying to make a run for it. A short flight of just
20 minutes puts them within range of the house. – The SAS men realized it was not going to be a typical sort of mission. They thought they could hear
sounds inside the building. They approached very gingerly and, to their surprise and satisfaction, found that there was
a door just wide open. Almost as soon as they
were through the door, they were hit by a hail of bullets. These people were heavily armed, and they were prepared
to fight to the death in order to prevent the SAS from getting in and taking their man. The team quickly
withdraws to a safe distance. They must decide whether or
not to resume their attack. – Some of these incidents where heavy resistance was encountered, they simply pulled back and
dropped a bomb on the building and killed everybody inside. For many different reasons, the SAS commander on the
ground decided not to do that. They wanted this person alive
for intelligence purposes. They felt it was worth
trying to fight their way in, and that’s what they did. – In raid compounds, the objective is to keep
the opposition on the run and keep them on the defensive. The team encounter
their worst nightmare, a suicide bomber. – As one of the SAS
men went up the stairs, he detonated. The SAS man was blown down the stairs. Fortunately for him, he
wasn’t seriously wounded. He had cuts and bruises. But of course, the suicide
bomber had blown himself up. Meanwhile, outside the house, more militants join the fight. They rain fire down on the Special Forces. Another man wearing
a suicide vest, a squirter, fled out the back of the
building and hid under a car. The outer cordon of paratroopers enters the fight. Taking out the two militants
firing from the roof, they turn their attention to the suicide bomber
hiding under the car, shooting him dead before
he can detonate his vest. – So at the end of a sort
of terrifying 20 minutes, there were a whole lot of dead people. – Inside the house, we captured five senior-ranking
members of Al-Qaeda. The operation is considered another successful day at the
office for Task Force Black. The main target of the raid, Abu Haydr, is in custody, along with
four other detainees. In addition, a treasure
trove of intelligence is recovered from the house. – They sweep everything up they
think might be of relevance. Mobile phones, computers, everything else, and they take it away. As a result of Larchwood 4 and subsequent operations
that it generated, a huge amount of actionable
intelligence came into JSOC’s hands. When a JSOC
analyst starts to probe one of the captured computers, he discovers something extraordinary: raw footage of al-Zarqawi himself from his recent propaganda video. Through traces of
DNA that were found on it when it was sent back
to the US for analysis, they would conclude it was his laptop. The analysts realize that al-Zarqawi must have
left the house just hours before the SAS arrived. – We actually started to get
excited that we were close because Zarqawi was in that house the day before we raided it. And that’s when we
finally had the confidence to think that we were hot on this trail. They had
narrowly missed their target, but the net is closing in fast. By the spring of 2006, the
hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,
has reached a turning point. An elite assault team from the Joint Special
Operations Command, JSOC, has secured a major breakthrough
following a daring raid on a terrorist safe house. – The momentum had shifted. The raids of his network
were getting faster and closer to him. And so you had the sense
we’re gonna get there. As well as
capturing several senior members of Al-Qaeda in the raid, JSOC soldiers discover a
video of enemy number one: al-Zarqawi. Hoping to tarnish his fearsome reputation, the coalition releases the full
unedited video to the media. It contains the familiar footage of the terrorist leader
parading through the desert, confidently firing a machine gun. But it also shows another
side to al-Zarqawi, a slightly overweight,
unimpressive figure of a man. – Here’s Zarqawi, the ultimate warrior, trying to shoot his machine gun. It’s supposed to be automatic fire. He’s shooting the single shots. No sooner does he figure out how to switch his weapon to
fully automatic when it jams, and the self-styled holy warrior
can’t get it going again. He looks down,
can’t figure it out. Calls his friend to unblock the stoppage and get the weapon firing again. He also appears to be going into battle wearing a nice
pair of white trainers, hardly the image of a man
threatening the might of America. – It makes you wonder. Meanwhile, deep inside JSOC’s
secret detention center, the task force’s interrogators get to work on their captives. – The men that we brought in
we called the group of five. And we knew that they were
five important members of Al-Qaeda, but we didn’t
know what their roles were. And they had this very unbelievable story that they were there to attend a wedding, even though there was no bride or groom and there were suicide
bombers in the house. And little by little, we would get information from one of them, and then we would take
that and turn around and use it against the other four. One member of the group, the senior AQI operative
known as Abu Haydr, refuses to say anything. – He was interrogated for about 20 days. And during that time, he
just maintained this story that he was just there
to videotape a wedding, even though it was
completely unbelievable. For weeks, rotating teams of interrogators
try psychological pressure, pleas for cooperation, subtle threats, and subtle promises. Eventually they decide he
will not talk and arrange to have him sent to Iraq’s
main detention facility, Abu Ghraib prison. – I decided that I would go and interrogate him one
last time before he left. And I didn’t really have
permission to do that, but I felt that he could provide
very important information towards finding Zarqawi. And that conversation started
with nothing about Al-Qaeda, nothing about terrorism. It just started with a
friendly conversation about who he was. What was his life story, how did he come to be sitting
in a chair opposite me, and getting to know each other. Over the course
of five and a half hours, Matthew Alexander discovers
Abu Haydr has a fatal weakness: his arrogance. He believes he has beaten
the mighty American machine and should be recognized for it. Alexander obliges him. – I would constantly stroke his ego. Constantly make him
believe in this fallacy in his head that he was
a very important man, that he could affect the future of Iraq. And then in the last 15 minutes, what I did was essentially
offer him a deal. I offered him the chance to work with us instead of Al-Qaeda in a secret
program that didn’t exist, in which he could be a person who could influence the future of Iraq. And he decided to work with me. Over the next few weeks, Alexander visits Abu
Haydr in his cell at night and coaxes more and more
information out of him about al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts, all on the pretext of proving his worth for the non-existent secret program. – I said, “You’re so close
to getting this program. All we need is that one
last piece of information that’ll convince my bosses.” And he said every month Zarqawi would meet with his spiritual advisor who was our detainee’s best friend. It’s the
piece of intelligence that everyone has been waiting for. For years, al-Zarqawi has been a ghost, striking with impunity. Now, at last, JSOC has
what it needs to find him and take him out. – The intelligence and military effort that had been put together was beginning to close the noose around his neck. We knew that Zarqawi
had a spiritual advisor. We knew that he was going to visit him. It was just a matter of being patient. Using this information, JSOC quickly traces the spiritual advisor and begins following him day and night, using high-tech systems
like Predator drones, as well as old-fashioned
undercover operatives. They create what McChrystal
calls the unblinking eye. Their target is never out of sight. Abu Haydr tells Alexander that if they want to find al-Zarqawi, they need to look for one particular sign. – We would know when he
was gonna meet with Zarqawi because he would change cars
from a white car to a blue car. And whenever he got in this blue car, that meant he was going to meet Zarqawi. – Once again, it was a
joint US-UK surveillance on a building in Baghdad. Lo and behold, they realized
by following his movements that every few days this
man got into his car. They used Predator and other
methods to follow his car as it went up the road to this place in the
palm groves, near Tikrit, where indeed Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi himself was hiding. By now, pictures from the drone are being fed live to JSOC’s command center. Everyone, including
General McChrystal himself, is watching in silence as al-Zarqawi’s spiritual
advisor gets out of the car. Then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself appears. – Once the blue car arrived at the house, helicopters took off
immediately to go to that house and capture Zarqawi. And it was about 20 minutes away. A discussion is
held in the command center. Is it worth trying to
capture al-Zarqawi alive in broad daylight? Is it better to wait until nightfall and take him when he is asleep? If they strike now, they
risk a heavy firefight and numerous casualties. Worse, al-Zarqawi is a master
of the last-minute escape. If they wait, he could easily
slip through the net again. This could be their one and
only chance to finish the job. – And there was a period of time in which we were just waiting. I was watching it live on video. And we were just waiting. – I made a decision. McChrystal believes
there is no time to lose. He can’t even wait 20
minutes for the assault force to arrive by helicopter. He opts for another plan, designed to take al-Zarqawi
completely by surprise. He calls up two F-16
fighters patrolling nearby. – We are expecting to
watch the helicopters land in the raid, which we
typically would watch. And instead, after about
maybe a five-minute wait, the house just exploded. – They knew he was in the building, and they made the decision,
without losing any time, to prosecute the target. So they didn’t even feel there was time to get one of their
special ops task forces in the air to go and raid the building. They simply decided to hit
it with bombs from an F-16, which is what they did. Just minutes
after the bombing, Special Forces arrive at the house. Incredibly, they find
al-Zarqawi still alive in the wreckage. – A soldier grabbed him,
and then Zarqawi died. And it was sort of a sweet
justice, if you will, that Zarqawi’s last image was
a US soldier grabbing him. The day following the raid, the US announces to the world that they have their man at last. – Good morning. Now Zarqawi has met his end, and this violent man
will never murder again. Pictures are
released of his dead body as grim confirmation. – Zarqawi could be responsible for upwards of almost 100,000 deaths by starting the civil war in Iraq. And so I don’t think the
world’s gonna miss him. It’s a devastating
blow to Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The man who was thought
to be invincible is dead. But the work is not over. With the intelligence that was collected from the smoldering remains
of al-Zarqawi’s compact, another series of raids is launched. And AQI starts to fall
like a stack of dominoes. – There was, you know, a good deal of chaos
inside the organization. And what you do is, you know,
when you’re targeting Zarqawi, you’re also collecting
intelligence on the network. And so what that allows you
to do is the minute he’s dead, they’re far more vulnerable, the people around him, than they realize. – Killing him undoubtedly had an impact. There was a lot of
exploitation from the raid. A lot of material was recovered. And we can see that, little by little, through 2006 through to
the early part of 2007, they did successfully take them down. So Zarqawi, if you like, was evidence of a bigger strategy that was really getting seriously
effective by that point. And certainly by the summer of 2007, Al-Qaeda in Iraq had largely been smashed. – And so you do a series of
raids that is devastating. And they never really
came back from his death. Today, the Joint
Special Operations Command is the group of Special Forces operators that is tasked with planning
and executing dangerous and secretive missions
for the United States. The black ops it conducts have continued to strike at the heart of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups around the world. In 2011, it was JSOC that planned and executed the mission to take down the world’s most
wanted man, Osama bin Laden. – You have to win. And at the end of the
day, when the heat is on, you’re gonna do whatever it takes to win. Islamist terrorists are hunting down Westerners in India’s
most luxurious hotels. – It was covered in thick, thick blood. A coordinated attack by bloodthirsty killers has
brought a buzzing metropolis to a grinding halt. – This was India’s 9/11. Mumbai is in flames. There is panic on the streets, and as the death toll
rises, confusion reigns. – They didn’t know at any time
if there’s gonna be someone to save them or it was gonna
be someone to take them out. Hopelessly
outgunned, the local police are no match tor the
heavily-armed terrorists. – The baddies had the guns,
the goodies had nothing. There is
only one unit capable of rising to the challenge. – You can’t use maximum force. It has to be precise force. But it will
take all their training, raw courage, and superhuman
endurance to win the day. – These were some extremely
motivated and brave men. This is the dramatic story of Operation Black Tornado, the mission that puts
India’s elite Black Cats on the special forces map. In a hijacked fishing boat, a gang of Islamist militants are heading for the city of Mumbai,
formerly known as Bombay. Their intent: to target
Westerners throughout the city in a coordinated terror
strike that will result in an orgy of death and destruction. Mumbai is the richest, most
populated city in India. It prides itself on its Western influence. – Mumbai is a busy,
crazy, hectic, wild place. Absolute assault on the senses. – Mumbai, to Americans, is
considered a wealthy city home to Bollywood, home to
luxury hotels, luxury boutiques. It’s considered an investment city. Between 8:30 and 8:30 PM, a gang of 10 men, all heavily armed and with provisions to last days, slip ashore at this point, just minutes away from
their intended targets in the heart of the city. The evening is like any other, bustling and busy, as
people hit the streets and relax after work. British tourist Harnish Patel
was enjoying a few drinks with a friend at the
world-famous Leopold Cafe. – The Leopold Cafe is
a very popular bar cafe where a lot of Westerners, locals, and tourists meet for food and drink. I recall from walking into the bar, it was completely packed. Local
journalist, Sourav Mishra, was also enjoying a drink
when he saw two visitors that weren’t there for the beer. – Well, I saw people
moving around, you know, quite a few people moving around. They seemed out of place to me. – Must have been 15, 20 minutes in, suddenly heard a gunshot. And what sounded like a lot
of glass dropping at once. – I just hear ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, and then something hits me. Two gunmen are
firing AK-47s from the doorways, spraying the cafe with bullets. – And a lot of shouting and screaming, people rushing around. – When I came out of the door, I realized there’s something
which is holding me back. Then I see that blood is
flowing out of my body. – There were a lot of bodies. The floor was just covered
in thick, thick blood. And then suddenly everything went silent. Clearly the guy was reloading and it was during that
round that I was hit. After a sustained attack, the gunmen flee into the night, leaving the dying and the
wounded to their fate. – It really was a case of being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Across town, a
taxi carrying two more gunmen heads for the crowded
central railway station. – The Victoria Terminus would be akin to an
attack on Grand Central. – I think the targets are
fantastically well chosen. I think, if you look at the station, that’s the busiest station in Mumbai. Mingling with the
people they intend to kill, they walk through the
crowded passenger hall. A 21:53, the gunmen pulled
AK-47 assault rifles from their bags and unleashed a devastating
hail of bullets into the crowd. 104 people were injured
and 58 were killed. – My first reaction when I saw
the shots and I told my wife, I said, “This is not gang warfare. This is a terrorist attack.” – What took people by surprise was the fact that the
way Mumbai was chosen, very clearly designed to show that nowhere is safe in India anymore. It is now clear that Mumbai is under a sustained terrorist attack, but no one knows who is behind it or where they will strike next. – We begin with a mass terror attack in India’s largest city, Mumbai. Millions
watch as the events unfold live across India’s news networks. Well, this is
clearly an unprecedented scale of a terror attack on
Mumbai and the center. One viewer
is Jyoti Krishan Dutt, the director general of India’s elite National Security Guard. And after watching the events unfold, he orders his Black Cat
commandos to stand by. Nicknamed the Black Cats because of their distinctive uniforms, the National Security Guard
commandos are the ideal unit for the situation. – The National Security Guard was set up around the mid 1980s when India actually first faced
the threat of urban terror. The Black Cats
have two principle areas of expertise, counter-terrorism
and counter hijacking, and they are also experts
in hostage rescue. – The NSG is a highly-specialized force designed and structured on the lines of some of the world’s key
anti-terrorism special units, like the SAS, GSG 9, the U.S. Navy Seals. – The men are all drawn
from the Indian Army. – Everybody in the NSG who comes to join the organization
is a volunteer, right? And he’s put through a
probation at Manesar, which is 30 kilometers south of Delhi. All recruits are put through a rigorous screening process, assessing physical fitness,
shooting standards, and psychological profiling. – They look at people who
have commando mindsets and therefore are willing to do the unusual in
unusual circumstances. So they look for people
who are out of the box. – Those who are left, then they are put through a brutal regime of physical training,
special operations training, like, for example, room
shooting practices, building interventions, bus intervention, metro intervention, and
bomb disposal training. – And it takes anything up to one year for a soldier to be fit to
be employed operationally. Their extensive
skills and specialized training make the Black Cats India’s
elite special forces unit and the ideal troops to take
on the terrorists in Mumbai. – They are daredevils. They’re first-rate troops, and I can vouch for that. But the question is, how will they deal with a gang of well-armed committed terrorists spread out across India’s busiest city? Mumbai, 26th of November, 2008. Reports are coming in a series
of gunfights and explosions. At 9:15, armed with AK-47s, gunmen launched their first attack. The city is under a prolonged and remorseless attack
from an unknown number of highly-armed and
rapidly-mobile terrorists. – One did not exactly know
where and what was happening, and whatever information we
were getting was from the media. The Leopold
Cafe has been hit, so has the main train station. Now there are reports of
gunfire at a local hospital and a police station. Time bombs left in taxis
by the terrorists detonate in different parts of the city. Reports are already coming in that 74 people have been
killed and 147 wounded. – I think within one
hour, one hour 15 minutes, I was absolutely sure that
this was a huge story, possibly the biggest
terror attack in India. At this stage, the authorities have no
idea what is going on. Instead, the best intelligence
is from social media. – It was really the first time that Twitter played a very
big role in our news coverage. People posting links to cell phone images, people who were giving firsthand accounts. From the
sheer number of messages, the scale of the attacks
and sense of panic on the ground is obvious. But with so much conflicting information, it is impossible for the authorities to build up an accurate
intelligence picture. BBC correspondent, Mark Dummett, was scrambled to the scene of the attacks. – It was stunning. It was shocking that this
was going on in India. It was so confusing because it was taking place in
lots of different locations. I mean, at that stage, I mean, the government had
no idea what was going on. The sudden assembly
of the world’s media means that there is now mounting pressure on the Indian authorities. It later became clear that
grabbing worldwide attention was a key part of the terrorists’ plan. – It was meant to last a long time. It was meant to attract
the attention of the world. – Gunfire, explosions,
and terror in Mumbai. – The timing played perfectly into a Western news schedule. 119 people have
been killed and 315 wounded, including three Americans. – Remember, it happens at night in Mumbai, it’s daytime in New York. The global media
coverage adds to the sense that the Indian government
has lost control of the situation. Over 1,000 kilometers away in Delhi, India’s elite Black Cat
commandos are on standby and waiting to deploy. But until the director general, J.K. Dutt, is tasked by the government to launch a counter-terror operation, they are powerless to intervene. In Mumbai, the situation is escalating. Two hours into the attacks, the terrorists target two of
Mumbai’s most famous hotels, the Oberoi Trident and the Taj Palace, home to around 830 guests. Completed in 1903 at a cost
of over 127 million pounds in today’s money, the Taj Palace Hotel is Mumbai’s greatest landmark. Built by J.N. Tata, the
father of Indian industry, the hotel has 560 rooms in 44 suites. It was also the first hotel in India with a steam-powered elevator. From royalty to rock stars,
princes to presidents, the Taj has always been
homed to the world’s elite. An attack on such a landmark building will have far-reaching implications. – You get a lot of bang for your buck. More specifically, you get
Americans, you get Brits. And we know that that
was really the goal here, was not just to send a
message to the Indians, but also to send a wider message to the international community. Reports come in of shootings and explosions at the city’s
iconic Taj Palace Hotel. – I think the image that’s
burned into everyone’s mind of this incident, of this event, is that of the Taj Palace Hotel and the flames coming through the roof. – Whenever anybody talks of Mumbai terror, this is the shot, Taj on fire. With Mumbai’s
greatest landmark up in flames, the terrorists are
delivering a clear message. Nowhere is safe. – The fear factor was very high, which is always one of
the very first goals of these kinds of attacks. Mumbai’s
first line of defense is the local police force, but this coordinated
attack totally exceeds their training and they are overwhelmed. – Some of the senior
policemen had been caught up in the violence and the head
of the anti-terrorism squad from Mumbai had been shot dead. – When you are dealing with, you know, hardcore, highly-motivated
terrorists who are willing to die and who have been
well-trained, well-equipped, it is difficult to, you know, handle those guys if
you’re a normal policeman. Until the
Black Cats are called in, the only other special forces on hand are a few units from the
locally-based marine commandos, the MARCOS, but they can do no more than try to contain the situation. – The naval commandos are not meant to operate in these situations. They are for a different
purpose altogether. So therefore, the
militants had the freedom to move anywhere inside the hotel. With the city’s
police in complete meltdown and no one to stop them, the terrorists continue on their rampage at the Oberoi and the Taj Palace hotels. After setting rooms on fire and indiscriminate shootings, the gunmen hunt down
more valuable targets. – They were targeting British,
American, European travelers. The hotels are
full of Westerners and VIPs. This presents them with the possibility of extremely high-profile hostages. British businessman, Tim Reid, was trapped inside the Oberoi Hotel. – When I heard the terrorists
getting closer to me, my legs were shaking uncontrollably and all I could think about was how painful might it be to be shot? How quickly would it end? And thinking about my family and my eight-month pregnant wife. Over 1,000
kilometers away in Delhi, the director general of India’s elite counter-terrorism
unit, the Black Cats, is aware of the developments. He has been impatiently watching
the unfolding scenes on TV, desperately awaiting government
authorization to deploy. – There was a reluctance on the part of the government in
Mumbai to come to terms with the level of attack
that was taking place. As the death toll rises, 83 people have been killed. 90 minutes after the attacks
begin, the phone finally rings. A formal request comes in from
the Ministry of Home Affairs just before midnight. The Black Cats are at last operational. 200 NSG troops suit up
and do weapons checks. – From the time the word go is given to the time you reach an aircraft, should be there within half an hour. So within 70 minutes,
you should get airborne. Then they
race to the airport. But they’re based outside Delhi, over 1,000 kilometers from Mumbai. It’s going to take three
hours to get there. En route, they must start
planning the operation. But they still don’t know
who they’re up against, how they’re armed, or what their aims are. At this point, their only source of information is the press. – Gunfire can be heard from
inside the Taj Mahal Hotel. Another sign that the
attackers were well armed and well prepared to launch what some here are calling India’s 9/11. By dawn on
Thursday the 27th of November, hundreds of journalists had arrived at the besieged Taj
Palace and Oberoi hotels where up to 830 guests are staying. – I remember the rope
line coming up outside the Taj for the journalists. In hindsight, it wasn’t very safe, the distance was not very far. – You know, some of the bullets, you know, sort of flew overhead, you know, so maybe we shouldn’t have been there. – And we knew it was serious. The Taj was under siege. The other hotel, Oberoi, was under siege. People were trapped inside. – I think everyone was in shock. People didn’t know what
was gonna happen next. In the absence of any official government announcement, people begin speculating as
to who is behind the attacks. – Originally, when we
first reported the story on the very first day, the fact that there were multiple targets and multiple sites involved, these were all Al-Qaeda hallmarks. – All of a sudden, you
had an attack by gunmen. We didn’t know how many,
how well armed they were. There was a strong suspicion, as there always are when
there’s an attack in India, that it was by Pakistanis, but we didn’t have confirmation of that. But whilst the
Black Cats are in transit, there’s a breakthrough. Indian intelligence intercept
cellphone conversations between the gunmen and their controllers. From this, they learn the
controllers are based in Pakistan. Now they know who is behind the attacks and what their aims are. – This was an attack by LeT,
a Pakistani terrorist group, also known by the name Lashkar-e-Taiba. And their whole mission is to campaign for the
mujahideen in Afghanistan and also for the release of
Muslims and to free Kashmir. The region of Kashmir in the northwest of India
also borders Pakistan, and its ownership has
been heavily disputed by the two countries for over 60 years. – The general impression in the West was that the Lashkar-e-Taiba is a Kashmiri liberation organization. It is not. It’s a Pakistani jihadi organization. This militant organization had been involved in previous
attacks on Indian soil, including train bombings and an attack on the
parliament building in Delhi. An Islamist
attack on India’s parliament in 2001 left a dozen people dead and prompted India to
send a million troops to the Pakistani border. – The Lashkar has three enemies, the Christians, the Jews, and the Hindus. It’s also a philosophy
that Al-Qaeda believes. Now they know
who’s backing the attacks, the security forces know
the terrorists’ mission won’t end in surrender. – They came to die, perhaps. And when you are in that state of mind, then it becomes a little
tough to deal with a guy. Just how
fanatical the terrorists are is made clear by intercepted
cell phone conversations between the terrorists and
their Pakistani-based handlers, transcripts of which
were later declassified. Everything is
being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage, keep fighting, don’t be taken alive. Kill all the hostages
except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so we can hear the gunfire. Kill them! – The gunmen at first were firing an incredible number of rounds and they seemed to be very heavily armed. I heard the gunfire
getting closer and closer and fully expected them to find me. In the lobby
of the Oberoi Hotel, guest, Tim Reid, watched as nine staff and three
guests are gunned down. – That was when I realized that something fairly bad was happening. And it was one of those occasions where everything moves in slow motion. I backed against the corridor, looking for somewhere to hide. There really wasn’t anywhere. There was a slight recess
that I was able to hide in, but literally if I’d been
any more than my 11 stone, my stomach would probably have
been poking out from that. Miraculously,
the gunmen passed right in front of Tim. – At that point, they
must have been, you know, 5, 6, 7 feet from where I was. But they weren’t looking for me. They were looking at the restaurant. As 13
diners are being murdered in the restaurant, Tim makes a desperate break for it. – I think of all the times
in the whole incident, this was the only bit where
I actively contributed. I was a participant who was in
charge of what was happening. And there was a lift between myself and where the gunmen were. I was able to reach out and
touch the call lift button. All those years on the Nintendo, practicing with my rapid finger movements, were put into action as I hit the close door
button about 2,000 times in quick succession. We pressed the lower
lobby on the lift button, and then when the doors
opened, we just ran. And I think that is really
probably the abiding memory, the one that haunts me
probably more than any other, because you know you’re running and you just don’t know what’s behind you. When I ran out of the Oberoi
Hotel onto the street, there were thousands of people panicking, running one way and then running again when the next grenade went off. 3 1/2 hours into the attacks and chaos and confusion continue to grip the population of Mumbai. And the terrorists have one other target. This is the Chabad House, a Jewish community center and synagogue, located in a five-story building down a density-populated narrow street. It’s home to American-born
Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who
is six months pregnant. This Chabad house is
one of 4,000 such houses in 73 countries, typically run
by husband-and-wife couples. Opened in 2003, it largely catered for Israelis on their way to party hotspots
such as Goa and Rajasthan, but is open to anyone who
wanted a place to pray, eat kosher food, or
celebrate Jewish holidays. Information from the intercepted
cell phone conversations prove it is seen as a key
target by the controllers. Every individual you kill, there is like in 50 elsewhere. Get rid of those people. Kill them. You never know, firing may start and they may be left behind. By God’s
wish, it is all quiet. No movement here. No, no, don’t wait. The controllers
urge the terrorists on to kill Jews. Have you done the job or not? I will do
it now in front of you. I was waiting for you call. Do it in the name of God. Do it in the name of God. You killed one? Both together. Rabbi Holtzberg
and his wife, Rivka, are murdered along with an unborn child. Four others are taken hostage. – They got Americans who also were Jews. So in one fell swoop, they
sent a whammy of a message. They had even said later
that an American Jew or a Jew alone was worth
50 of anybody else. Meanwhile, across Mumbai in the luxurious Taj Hotel, the terrorists can be
heard enjoying themselves in the intercepted cell
phone conversations. Did you see
the paintings on the wall? The bathrooms have gold tops. There are TVs with 13 screens. – Obviously they were kind
of overwhelmed by the luxury. And the Taj, of course, is
really the epitome of luxury in terms of hotels in India. – It’s ironic that human life
was not considered valuable. But that wretched TV was. The level of
coordination is revealed as the controllers issue orders. I can’t see any flames on the television pictures. I said set fire to them. Arriving
in Mumbai at 5:00 AM, eight hours after the
attacks began, J.K. Dutt and his senior Black Cat
officers set up a command post and start planning their operation. – The government comes in to
tell you what the task is. Thereafter, the place
and time of the operation is decided by the force commander. Dutt and his team
quickly assess the situation. They know they are dealing
with three locations, the two hotels and the
Jewish outreach center. – The targets were split. And the main target, the Taj Hotel, was a huge big area. But they’re hampered
by a lack of information. There are no detailed floor
plans of the hotels available and no one even knows how
many terrorists or hostages are still holed up in each location. – Mumbai was administratively
in a state of paralysis for some time and no
information was provided to them, actually, of the target area. So they had to do a lot of
guesswork and improvise, which took a huge amount of time. What makes it worse is that their enemies clearly
know the locations better than they do. – To my mind, somebody
had recced the place. Taj Palace was a specific target. The Trident was a specific target. Chabad House was a specific target. The problems become clear when the Black Cats try
to establish a perimeter around the target buildings. The locations have been well chosen. All are in heavily built-up areas. – Right in the center of Bombay with roads, population, buildings, all sorts of things all over the place. The Chabad
House is in a narrow street. With one entrance, it is easy to defend and difficult for the Black Cats to storm without endangering the
lies of the hostages. – You cannot go with all guns blazing in a scenario like this. No, certainly not. You can’t use maximum force. It has to be precise force. The hotels,
on the other hand, have multiple entrances and exits. – Hotels are even more
difficult to clear out because there are hundreds of rooms, and you have to go from
room to room to room. Even worse, the eyes of the world are upon them. Orders are given to
minimize collateral damage. And yet somehow, the Black Cats have to hunt down the terrorists. It’s the second day of
the Mumbai terror attacks. Pressure is now mounting on India’s elite counter-terrorism unit, the Black Cats, to pounce. – The terrorists can definitely not win. Let’s get that absolutely clear. – You got to hit them hard and immediately so that he knows that either
he is gonna be captured or he is gonna die. With the
lives of hundreds of guests and hostages at stake, meticulous planning and preparation is vital. – I think it’s very
hard to imagine the kind of logistical challenges that were involved in locking
down all of these sites. In his final
briefing to his officers, J.K. Dutt, the head of India’s
National Security Guard, has four key points, no loss of innocent life, try and take the terrorists alive, minimize collateral damage, and screen hostages to prevent terrorists
slipping through the net. With the plans finalized, Black Cat commando squads are deployed to the Jewish Chabad House
and the two five-star hotels. When completed in 1973, the Oberoi Trident Towers building was the tallest skyscraper in South Asia. At 116 meters with 35 floors above ground and 547 guest rooms, it is hugely popular with
the world’s business elite. Leaving the police and marine commandos guarding the perimeter, the Black Cats swing into action. And at 6:20 AM, they
enter the Oberoi Hotel. Operation Black Tornado is underway – So the NSG had to make its
way through multiple rooms, multiple floors, like
all five-star hotels. With no
detailed plans of the hotel, they’re forced to improvise. – These are massive buildings, right? And whatever information
they got of the hotel and its layout will be
from the hotel staff. The NSG
use the service stairs and climb to the 21st floor. – We generally prefer to tackle a target from a
higher to a lower ground. Now they start a
top-down sweep of the hotel. They move down through the building, clearing each floor as they go, gradually herding the
terrorists into a corner. But it isn’t easy. – You have to identify these people, otherwise you will end up killing some guests inside the hotel. Armed with
German Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, the men begin the meticulous
room-by-room search of the hotel. As guests are rescued, they’re
shepherded to safety outside. Transcripts from the intercepted
cell phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers
reveal what happened. Eight hours after entering the hotel, at 2:00 PM on the 18th floor, the terrorists are finally
cornered by the Black Cats. The room is on fire. I’m in the bathroom. Try breaking
out using a grenade. I’ve used up both grenades. Be brave. Don’t be afraid. God and heaven are waiting for you. God willing. – We try and capture the
terrorists alive if it is possible, so that you could get maximum information. But if it is not possible, so be it. Part one of
Operation Black Tornado to free the Oberoi Hotel is a success. Although 24 guests were murdered, both terrorists have been killed and 143 guests rescued. A mile away across the city, the Black Cats are in a standoff with the terrorists at the Jewish center. Having locked down the perimeters, they’re unwilling to storm the building and endanger the lives of the hostages. They are further hampered by the media who are inadvertently
providing free intelligence to the gunmen. – What was very interesting about the way these attackers operated was the fact that they were monitoring the press. – It was all live. There was no time delay
between what was being shown and what was being reported. This meant
the controllers were able to alert the terrorists to the helicopters buzzing the building. After carefully analyzing
the intercepted traffic, intelligence agents
believe all the hostages may have been executed. In the full glare of the cameras, they launch an aerial assault. – The people who organized this operation were watching those tape
and telling people inside on mobile phones that, look, guys, there is a commando operation, aerial commando operation coming in. At 7:30,
NSG commandos fast rope from an Indian Air Force helicopter onto the roof of the Chabad House. The assault is captured on
the cell phone intercepts. Firing has started. I think there is a helicopter on the roof. Take cover, move now. Do it. Do it. With suppressing
fire from the terrace and covering fire from snipers, they begin hunting down the terrorists. They’re
firing into our roof. Peace be upon you. I have been
hit, I have been hit. Pray for me. Where have you been hit? Where have you been hit? In my side and in my neck. After a fierce gun battle, both terrorists lie dead. The Black Cats have
scored another success. The terrorists in the Oberoi
Hotel have been neutralized, so have the terrorists in
the Jewish Chabad House. The Black Cats now face
their greatest challenge, the imposing and iconic Taj Palace Hotel. – I think for Americans, the Taj Palace Hotel could be equivalent to the Park Plaza, the Waldorf Astoria. – Because there are hundreds of rooms and you have to go from room
to room, floor to floor, it’s an enormous task. Guests inside the hotel include VIPs and politicians, their caliber and status
compounding the difficulty of the operation. Not only are they potentially
valuable hostages, they’re amongst the world’s elite. Any mistakes here will
be hugely embarrassing. – What is important for the
troops there is to make sure that whenever they use their weapon, they use it properly and
that no collateral damage or no innocent civilian killed. – In this kind of a scenario, killing a terrorist does
not become a priority. Priority is to take the hostages out. The NSG assess their options. They can’t simply storm the hotel. They need a methodical approach. But for this, they need
detailed floor plans. Yet, once again, they don’t have them. – The problem was that the NSG was not provided with
any maps of the location, because apparently those
maps are not available either with the hotel or the
civil administration. The only
information the NSG could pick up were basic hotel room guides. They didn’t show service
lanes, passages, or corridors. However, the terrorists clearly knew the Taj Palace layout inside out. – I give full marks to the planners that are sitting across the border. – They had this operation
meticulously planned, months in advance. – They say all warfare
is based on deception and they were completely
utter surprise to everybody. The Black
Cats realize the terrorists can use their superior knowledge of the Taj’s layout to their advantage. By only operating from
areas with multiple exits, they will be difficult to contain. So with the odds stacked against them and not even knowing how
many gunmen they are facing, the Black Cats prepare to move in. – Once they’re given the word
go, they don’t look back. They don’t say that I
don’t have intelligence. Whatever they have, you make do with that and you just get on with it. Trying to
locate the terrorists and free the hostages means breaking into and clearing all the rooms. – Every step was an obstacle for them. I know for a fact a lot
of doors were jammed. – Therefore, you will have to
prepare an explosive device to break open the entrance. This is
a painstaking process. It will take time to
thoroughly check each area. And in a hotel with over 500 rooms, this could take days. – That had to be done very
methodically and carefully, and that is why they took a lot of time. To make matters worse, hotel guests have been told to lock themselves in their rooms. Most people are too scared
to open their doors, terrified of who may be on the other side. As the Mumbai terror attacks
move into their third day, the battle for the iconic
Taj Palace Hotel is raging. – They came to cause maximum damage. And because it was a televised operation, whole world is watching for 60 hours, they wanted to prolong
it as long as possible. India’s
elite Black Cat commandos are battling an unknown
number of terrorists who are well armed and highly mobile. – Here was India sending
in its top troops, and I suppose we thought
it’d be over pretty quickly. But with
over 500 rooms to clear and hundreds of terrified guests hiding throughout the building, this
cannot be a quick operation. – What we didn’t know
is when it would end. And by the time the siege
went on and on and on, we realized this was getting very sticky. Moving through
the hotel, the Black Cats need to keep their tactics fluid and respond to situations as they arise. – When you’re a soldier,
you go into an operation, you will give your best
for first 12 hours. After that, you start tiring out. But despite that, they went on and on and I take my hat off to them. What they did there, I think they were against all odds. By midnight
on the 28th of November, the Black Cats have been
fighting for 30 hours. They have rescued over 200 guests and led them through the
corridors to safe areas. Now they can focus on
the remaining terrorists. – We are going through the entire hotel, through the corridors, through the rooms. Until we are able to
check each and every room, I will not say that my operation is over. With 90% of
the hotel now cleared, the Black Cats believe they’ve cornered the remaining terrorists
in one wing of the hotel. Heading up a staircase, contact is made. It’s an ambush. They’re caught in the crossfire. The Black Cats have a senior man killed, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan. Spurred on by his death,
the Black Cats press on, forcing the terrorists to fall back. In the early hours of
Saturday the 29th of November, 56 hours after the
terrorists enter the hotel, there are a series of loud explosions. But for the world’s
media assembled outside, it is unclear what is happening. – We were given briefings by
the chief of the commandos. – When we first exchanged fire, we could have got those terrorists but for trying to avoid the
casualty of those civilians, we had to be that much
more careful in our firing – Information was very scanty. It was very sketchy because
it was a siege situation. The commandos had gone in inside, and there was a lot of fighting going on. – It was slightly strange. We were reporting on a
battle which was going on in a building just a few
hundred yards in front of us, but we couldn’t see the battle
because it was all inside. But one thing is clear, for the terrorists, every
second on TV is a victory as the intercepts show. The atmosphere is good. After watching the TV reports, the whole city is feeling the destruction. More than 250 are injured across the city. You have worked well for God. – They came to cause maximum damage, and because it was a televised operation, whole world is watching for 60 hours, they wanted to prolong
it as long as possible, so they had come for that. Finally, after
two straight days of fighting inside the hotel, the Black
Cats have cleared entire floors and are pressing the terrorists hard. – Our commandos are so very well trained. There is no question of
the terrorists escaping. So the problem is, find out where he is, spot him, and fix him. – By now, the Black Cats have also learned one critical piece of
information from the intercepts. There are four terrorists in the hotel and they’re steadily eliminating them. – So people began to count. One more knocked out. One more knocked out. So the body count was being kept track of. That was a sign things
were coming to an end. By dawn on
the 29th of November, the siege is in its end game. There are just two terrorists left and they are cornered on the first floor. In an intense exchange, the Black Cats fire a hail of bullets into the terrorists’ position. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, the terrorists’ deadly
onslaught of murder and mayhem is finally over. After three days and the
death of 170 innocent people as well as the serious injury of 304 more, the city is left with terrible scars. – How dare somebody from
across the border come right into the heart of the country and kill innocent people for what? – The killers who struck this
week are brutal and violent, but terror will not have the final word. People of India are resilient. People of India are strong. – The comparisons to 9/11 are fair. I think they’re valid. I think this is India’s 9/11. I think if any good came of this, it’s that India was forced
to have a day of reckoning. There are
clearly lessons to be learned. The government took too long to react and called in the elite
commandos far too late. – The NSG apart, India as a
whole learned a few lessons. One is that we must have a more decentralized system of dealing with terror attacks. Since then,
changes have been made to India’s counter-terrorism plans. – Well, we are better prepared. Yes, we are better
prepared than we were then, but I hope to God it’s never tested. Operation
Black Tornado was a success for the Black Cats. – The NSG were really up against it. They were confronted with
an enemy that had a number of hiding places, a lot of armory, and they did a great job to take them. Even though
they had minimal intelligence and faced a well-prepared enemy, they defeated the terrorists. – I remember seeing the NSG commandos in their sort of black, their black overalls looking
absolutely exhausted. You know, and I was in no doubt that these were some
extremely, extremely motivated and brave men. – For about 100-odd men deployed, they knocked off 10
heavily armed terrorists. So the NSG’s ratio of killing terrorists in such an operation, to my mind, would be perhaps one of
the highest in the world. – It’s a great organization. It has always come out, you know, with flying colors in any
operation they’ve been deployed. – And it is to their credit
that they did this job with minimum number of casualties. Operation Black
Tornado shows terrorists and the world just what the
Black Cats are capable of and the lengths they’ll
go to to get the job done. 40 heavily armed Islamist terrorists seize a theater and over
800 innocent civilians. Demands are made. Hostages are lined up for execution. The clock starts ticking. – It was an absolute nightmare situation from the point of view
of the security forces. Only the
elite special ops force, Spetsnaz Group Alfa has
a chance to defeat them. It’s a race against time
as deadlines approach. – You got to have people
willing to go there. And that’s the difference between a soldier and a specialist. there’s no obvious way of preventing the murder of hundreds. Only one very long shot a
secret Russian technology that’s never been tried before stands a chance of saving them. Now on “Black Ops” we go behind the scenes on one of the most unbelievably
risky hostage rescues in modern times. – It’s not a movie,
it’s not a reality show. It’s reality. And reality’s very unpredictable. The crisis
starts on an ordinary evening in an ordinary suburb of
Russia’s capital city, Moscow. It’s a wet autumn night,
and for 800 Russians, a time with friends and
family at a popular musical is a welcome prospect to cheer
up a dreary weekday evening. Almost by accident we got to see the musical,
we didn’t plan to. The weather on this day was terrible. It was a very gray day. My granddaughter was
very young at the time. She felt really nervous, as if something bad was going to happen. She was really crying, and
she wouldn’t let us go. Tickets are sold
out at the popular venue, a huge Soviet-era building that had been converted
into an arts center, a place of peaceful, civilized recreation. – In some ways, what was
particularly striking about it was that it was not striking. It was not a particular
high-prestige target. This is the
theater’s actual recording of that fateful night’s performance of a romantic comedy set in the 1950s, with the plot featuring
cheerful Russian soldiers. Just a block away, four vans with a force of 40 heavily
armed Chechen terrorists are closing in on the theater fast. We were enjoying it. After the interval, we went
back to the second half, and there was dancing, and that’s when the siege started. Now the extremists
burst into the theater, rake the foyer with gunfire, and spread through the building fast. They’re suicide bombers who, for years, have been at war with Russia. Islamist Jihadis from a breakaway republic who will stop at nothing to get their way. Now they’ve brought
their campaign of terror into the midst of Russia’s civilians. The theater’s recording
reveals the moments the terrorists take over the building as they seal it off
from the outside world. People in military uniform walked around the auditorium
and down the aisles, and at first I thought
it was part of the play. One of the
actors was made to sit next to me after the Chechens had stormed the stage, and I whispered, “That’s an
amazing piece of theater.” Slowly, the audience realizes that the game has changed,
the terror has started, and they’re now hostages. Then I
saw some of the soldiers hit people with rifle butts, and I realized that it was serious. And he replied,
“That’s not part of the play. “This is for real.” It was then that I realized
what danger we were in. Now the
terrorists are in control, and the siege has begun. The theater couldn’t be better designed as a place to hold hostages. The auditorium is a perfect prison with few exits that are easy to guard. Every one of the terrorists
are radical extremists committed to die for their
cause, pitiless and determined. The unique
feature of a terrorist threat is that you can never predict
how serious their plans are, if they’re just bluffing or if they are really ready
to sacrifice themselves. We were inclined to think
that they were not joking. With alarm bells ringing in every security department in Moscow, the worst possible
scenario is now a reality. – It was an absolute nightmare situation from the point of view
of the security forces. It really is, it’s the
last thing they wanted. They knew from past experience
that the Chechen terrorists would be, if necessary,
willing to blow themselves up. Amongst the terrorists, there
would be people who had, had experience fighting
during the Guerilla War, and therefore they knew
how to use their weapons. They were unlikely to listen
to humanitarian appeals. It looks
like a no-win situation for Russia’s authorities. Their only hope, Spetsnaz Group Alfa, an anti-terror unit the envy of the world, soldiers built to take on terrorists, hardened by years of
confronting Chechen attackers. But even for them, a
mass suicide-bomb attack and 850 hostages is an
almost impossible challenge. Within minutes, the elite of Russia’s anti-terror
strategists are scrambled. It’s clear that conventional
tactics won’t work. Their solution, a secret gas technology
unknown outside Russia. But there’s a problem. It’s completely untried. If it succeeds, it’ll beat the terrorists. If it fails, the
consequences are unthinkable. Orders from the Kremlin summon every fighting man in the city, and Moscow’s barracks are emptied as hundreds descend on the theater. The Chechen terrorists have
some new techniques of their own to add to their advantage. Never seen before, female suicide bombers the so-called black widows women who’ve lost their loved ones and are willing to die for their cause. At a single command, they’ll
detonate their bomb belts and trigger a series of massive explosions that will demolish the
theater, killing everyone. This is payback for years of suffering in a conflict with Russia that seems impossible
to resolve peacefully. A lot of people passionately hate the Russian government and project their hate on all Russians. When your family’s been destroyed, you’d never go for peace talks, at least until you get some revenge. The government spawned a
huge number of sworn enemies, and the black widows
who appeared on the TV for the first time were a
variation of such sworn enemies. The Chechens
make sure the black widows are constantly on display. They appeared
in absolutely all footage, in journalistic as well as that made by terrorists themselves. All of them were dressed in black and were wearing suicide bomber’s belts. Their main task was to show that they were ready for everything. The black widows are not just a propaganda tool. They’re also deadly serious. They’ve come to Moscow
for one purpose only. Everyone understood that this was not an act, everyone knew that these women, if they called themselves black widows, were ready to blow themselves up. Finally,
there are two massive bombs each too heavy for a single person to lift placed among the hostages at
the center of the auditorium, their hair-trigger detonator at the fingertip of a black widow. The Chechen’s terror
tactics are well known to Russia’s authorities. They’re experts at capturing
big public buildings and holding large groups hostage. Hospitals and schools have
been targets in the past. Now a theater gives them
the perfect platform to get the world’s attention. The
main danger was obvious, a very powerful bomb in the
auditorium with suicide bombers. I knew Alfa had very
little time for an assault, and only a very slim chance
to destroy the terrorists before they detonated
their infernal machine. I’d never known a situation where people were grouped
around a giant bomb that could be detonated in one second. Group Alfa have to weigh up the risks very carefully. Their expertise is all about
speed in an assault situation. For years their adversaries, the Chechens have had to devise a
solution to the Spetsnaz incredible discipline and aggression. Now they think they’ve cracked it and have Alfa in the
ultimate stranglehold. – It’s not as easy as kicking in the door and shooting someone between the eyes. Not when you have 40 people
willing and able to shoot back. And some of them willing and
able to blow themselves up along with thousand hostages. So the equation is very
different from a video game or TV show or a movie. The cost is very different, the consequences, the possibilities are very different. And any hope
of a peaceful resolution is very small. The Chechens can only be
pacified by the impossible, the withdrawal of Russian
troops from their homeland. – The terrorist’s agenda
was straightforward if ridiculously unrealistic. They wanted, basically, the Russians to pull out of Chechnya. They wanted an end to the
war, and they wanted victory. They were not necessarily stupid. They had, I think, no real expectation that this was going to happen. This was, frankly, a terror raid rather than a carefully
planned political act. Only one group
has a chance if taking them out without setting off the bombs, the elite Spetsnaz Group Alfa, among the most experienced and successful anti-terrorist special
forces in the world, Group Alfa are Russia’s Navy Seals. Their headquarters Moscow. The Chechens have brought their war to the home city of Russia’s hardest men. A massive
group of people take over in the heart of Moscow,
in the heart of Russia, I couldn’t believe it how 30 people got in and managed to take so
many people hostage. When I got the call, it was very brief “It’s an emergency.” Alfa was formed in the 1970s and has evolved constantly since. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union needed ruthless killers more
than battlefield heroes, people who could start revolutions
and kill heads of state without anyone knowing who was behind it. That meant lightning speed, total stealth, and clinical precision. – These are not negotiators. These are not people who are there to rescue hostages first and foremost. These are people who go in because they have people to kill. – Wah. Alfa training
is the toughest in the world with levels of brutality and
extreme personal endurance that in many armed
forces would be illegal. – They go through a phenomenally
brutal training regime which culminates in sort
of a 12-minute period where they have to take on
12 experienced special forces in hand-to-hand combat, and all they have to do
is basically stay standing at the end of that 12 minutes. Even so, a lot of them
never get through that. – Wah. – You cannot just wish for it. You have to learn it, you
have to ingrain it in people, and there is a method to that madness. but Alfa
operatives are trained not to just be physically tough, but to be extremely
mentally capable as well. – Training is the most important part, not the hardware, the toys, the technical implements. You become a thinking
fighter, thinking operator versus someone who follows the script. – Aah. The glory days
of Russia’s special forces were Afghanistan in the 1970s and ’80s. They were sent to Kabul to
kill the Afghan president, and in the raid lost only two men. But after the Cold War, Russia’s biggest problem was terrorism, and it was Alfa that answered the call. They are among the world’s great experts in dealing with hostage taking, and specialize in extracting
people from a massive range of different environments. If you are an Alfa officer specializing in storming airplanes, you will train all day long to
storm the plane blindfolded. You know where every rivet is. You know how to open the aisle cover, how to penetrate the plane
through the service doors, and so on. But there’s another reason why the Moscow theater
siege mission is special. Alfa’s reputation has been tarnished after being drawn into Russia’s
unstable internal politics. The unit’s reputation reached
the ultimate low in 1991, when it was ordered to
crush popular support for the government and back a
coup by hard-line communists. There have
always been hard times, especially in those
moments when we realized that our division was being misused. Our primary objective
is fighting terrorists, the homeland enemies, and we have always
perceived and still perceive internal conflicts with suspicion. The attempted coup turned Alfa from the heroes of Afghanistan into the attack dogs of
Russia’s secret police. It all
came as a real shock. All the officers had a very hard time. We were not prepared to
fight our own people. We all saw ourselves as an elite unit whose mission was to save people, and we were seeing
through our helmet visor people just like our mothers,
sisters and brothers. We had no desire to use special techniques on our own people. Naturally, this affected
the combat ability. It is one thing to fight your enemy, and another thing your own people. Now, 11 years later, Spetsnaz Group Alfa have a
chance to assert their integrity as defenders of their nation by taking on its most deadly enemy in the heart of the country. But it’s a chance that comes at a price. It will be the toughest test ever of their formidable skills. Alfa’s elite planners
know they have a challenge from the Chechen terrorists that is uniquely tailored to
stop even the fastest assault. The weapons that usually
guarantee success, speed and aggression can’t
work in this situation. So careful planning,
calculation and timing are crucial to give Alfa
every chance of success. – They had to work fast but on the other hand they had to prepare as much as possible. They had to try and scope out the area, they had everything from listening devices to using fiberoptic vision
devices to try and see what was going on. They had to run a few mock-up operations just so their special forces had a sense of where they were going
and where the targets were. So it’s this balance. On the one hand, you don’t
wanna leave it too long, so that something bad happens. On the other hand, you
don’t want to rush it. But even with
the best planning and timing Alfa is outmaneuvered by the simple fact that suicide bombers only
need to press a trigger to inflict mass casualties. Stopping that is beyond
conventional tactics. Moscow has been on high alert
for a major terrorist incident for over a year, since 9/11. Already this year, there
have been attacks on subways and residential properties. Now the city is facing a crisis
on an unprecedented scale. This wasn’t
a standard situation. In the history of the special forces, this was a first in Moscow. Alfa are
specialist siege commandos. This is what they train for night and day. The challenge of the suicide
bombers belts is big enough. Each might kill 30 or 40 people. But the giant bombs are powerful enough to kill everyone in the
auditorium, all 850. It’s clear that Alfa’s planners had to come up with a
radically new solution that will give their men the edge. For the hostages surrounded
by suicide bombers vowing to die, an
assault by special forces is a terrifying thought. Calling their families and the media, they do everything they can
to stop Alfa from attacking. They were
making phone calls saying, “Please don’t let them storm the theater. “Please negotiate
peacefully and carefully, “and maybe you’ll be able to
find a peaceful solution.” To increase the pressure on Russia’s authorities, the terrorists have been releasing
footage of the hostages. And they’re careful to
avoid revealing anything that might be useful to attackers. Then, they make their first mistake. As an act of mercy, they release
some vulnerable hostages, children and sick people. With careful questioning,
Alfa’s intelligence officers are able to get the
first bits of information about the situation inside the theater, that the Chechens don’t want known. The total number of terrorists,
the positions of snipers, and ammunition stores. Then, six hours into the siege, a completely unpredictable
element enters the equation. a truly bizarre event takes place. As unseen by the security
guards around the theater, a young woman walks right off the street and into the theater. No one knows who she
is or why she’s there. She goes into the auditorium
and shouts at the audience, telling them to rise up
against the Chechens. And then she starts at the gunman. She bust
through the aisle screaming, “What have you done? “You should release all
the people” she was saying, “I’m going to call the police.” Maybe she was drunk. The Chechens said she was a KGB agent pretending to be a drunk woman. The Chechens
show just what they do with anyone who won’t take them seriously. The woman was a 26-year-old local shop assistant, Olga Romanova, with no connection to the
hostages or the theater. After
that incident with Olga, just after it happened, the whole mood among the
audience and terrorists changed. From then on, there was
a different atmosphere. Everyone understood
that this was something that might happen again. It was much more serious. All the time, as
the world looks on in horror, Alfa intelligence is building
up a detailed picture of the situation inside the theater and the weaknesses of the terrorists. Mobile phone conversations between the hostages and their families now reveal a much more serious situation. The terrorists have not
only wired the auditorium to kill all the hostages, but wired the whole building
and packed it with bombs. The security
people were 100% convinced the bombs were real
and would be detonated. This put the special forces in a position where they knew they would
almost certainly be killed along with 90% of the hostages. So, they were looking for
whatever advantage they could get. That meant they were ruling out nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing. 48 hours into the siege, and the terrorists decide
to turn up the heat. The Chechen commander, Movsar Barayev, announces he’s going to
start executions at midnight, one killing every hour
until his demands are met. The victims are selected
by Barayev himself. There was a
decision to shoot 10 people on either the fourth or fifth row. And just after this information started to spread around the hostages, one of the Chechens came and sat down at the end of the fifth
row wearing a mask, and everyone now expected
that at any minute, something would happen to
the people in the fifth row. Now the Russian
authorities face a dilemma. Either Alfa goes in and
triggers an explosion with mass casualties, or the world watches
helpless as the Chechens start killing innocent
men, women and children, one by one, hour by hour. Alfa strategists now have to go for their most radical
solution a long shot, so risky it would normally
be dismissed as impossible. but this is an impossible situation. For years, Russian military scientists have been working on a secret
formula for a knockout gas that will stop any
aggressor in his tracks. Even today, its exact
composition is a state secret, and scientists outside Russia can only guess what it really was. – As far as we can ascertain, the agent that was used
in the theater siege was a derivative of an
opiate called fentanyl. Opiates are very potent, and
they depress your breathing. They’re normally used
in operating theaters. But what they wanted was something that would act very
quickly, knock people out, that could be delivered in the air. So this is why they
probably chose fentanyl. In complete secrecy, Russia’s military scientists
have figured a way to multiply the strength of
a powerful medical anesthetic by a factor of several thousand. If this top-secret, untried chemical can somehow be piped into the theater without anyone noticing, it might just sedate the terrorists enough to stop them from detonating their bombs and give Alfa a chance of
taking them out in an assault. It sounds like something
out of science fiction, but it’s about to get the green light from President Putin himself. – This is absolutely a one-off. Sometimes gasses from knockout
to tear gas have been used, but never has it been used on this scale in these kind of concentrations to flood an entire area with knockout gas. Their logic
was that if 90% of the hostages would die anyway, and if this gas could
help save at least a few, then it should be applied. But even if they use the gas, there’s a problem. The Chechen leader, Movsar Barayev, is going to start executions at midnight. That’s just two hours away. To get the gas equipment
inside the building and then fill it up so
it knocks people out is going to take far longer. Even with the secret weapon, it looks like there’s no way
of stopping the executions of innocent civilians. Outside the theater special forces units from all over Moscow gather, knowing they face a formidable enemy who make up in determination
what the lack in skill. – The Chechens were an interesting mix. They ranged a whole gamut from people who are really experienced fighters, who had done the national
service in Soviet times, then they had actually gone on
to become anti-Soviet rebels and had fought through
the last decade or so of civil war and insurgency within Russia. They therefore knew the
trade craft of how to fight and they also had a degree of
discipline in esprit de corps. And the terrible destruction brought by war in their homeland means that they will stop at nothing to get even with the Russian authorities. – They were, on the whole,
motivated by loss, by anger. There were a certain number
who were, of example, members of their own
family had been killed. In some cases they had been
arrested by the authorities and then were never seen again
or turned up in some ditch. So they didn’t necessarily
have the same skill but by God they certainly
commitment and determination to eventually pay the Russians
back for what had happened. It isn’t
long before the gunmen get a chance to demonstrate once again how ready they are to
kill innocent civilians, as a anxious relative decides to take matters into his own hands. A middle aged man, Gennady
Vlakh, strides into the theater and demands that the
Chechens release his son. And the Chechens waste no time in deciding how to respond. Any doubts that the
terrorists mean business and have no difficulties killing Russians whenever it suits them have now been completely discarded. Alfa’s strategists have
hours to get the gas working, if they’re to prevent
the start of executions. The trouble is, that
simply isn’t possible. And there’s another factor
ramping up the time pressure, days without sleep and massive stress means both hostages and
captors are getting jumpy. – The sense is that just one individual can do something silly, or else, just bad luck. You know, for example, let’s
say some of the hostages try to take matters into their own hands and it could lead to a massive explosion. The most important thing they’re all afraid of was the psychological
fatigue of the terrorists, so everyone was aware that
there was a time limit. Alfa badly need two things, more time and anything that
will calm the situation down. And an hour before the deadline, the unexpected once
again changes the game. Movsar Barayev, the Chechen leader, gets a phone call from Moscow’s
special envoy to Chechnya, General Viktor Kazantsev. He offers to fly to Moscow and negotiate face-to-face
with the terrorists with the full authority of the president, Vladimir Putin, behind him. There’s one condition, no executions. The Chechens buy it. Barayev
came in looking happy, saying “Tomorrow, Kazantsev
is flying back to Moscow.” And at that point, the mood lifted. The black widows came
across as much more upbeat and started telling us, “You see, “our Barayev gets things
done better than your Putin.” For the Chechens, this seems a major strategic breakthrough, and they’re overjoyed. This is the actual
wire-tapped conversation between Kazantsev and Barayev cutting a deal to delay the executions. The terrorists’ plan seems to be working. Until now, they’ve been ignored, outlaws from a forgotten conflict. Now the president’s man is
coming to plead with them in the heart of the Russian capitol. – It was undoubtedly a delay tactic. One thing that the authorities
knew is they need time. They needed time to dig out
the blueprints of the theater and train their operations
forces to make an assault. They needed time to decide
what they were gonna do. Meanwhile,
Alfa uses the precious time bought by the negotiators
to maximum effect. Through the night, deep
beneath the theater, working in total silence
and with utmost care, engineers secure canisters
of the knockout gas in strategic parts of the
theater’s air-conditioning. The time for it to be
released has arrived. Gradually, it starts to
filter into the auditorium to do its work. Aware that something is happening, the Chechen gunmen run from the auditorium and leave the black widows at their posts. But rather than set off the bombs, the gunmen seem to want
to prolong the siege and run to the defense of the building, determined to take on
their old adversaries, the Spetsnaz, in combat. But there isn’t anyone to fight. Alfa group still has to hold back. If just one black widow is conscious, the whole theater could still blow. And every minute that the auditorium fills with the powerful agent, the danger to the hostages increases. – One of the problems is
where you release the agent. So you have to use air vents. And you’ve got to ensure
that the agent you release will knock everybody out quickly, so this means that you have
to pump in huge quantities to reach the people at the
far end of the theater. And, in pumping in large amounts, what you’re going to end up doing is giving some people at
the far end of the theater enough to knock them out, but the people close to the vent are going to get many times
the lethal dose of an agent. Soon after
the release of the gas, the first signs of its effects emerge. Semi-drugged hostages manage
to escape the auditorium. It’s clear the terrorists
are no longer in control. Now is the time to strike. The waiting’s over. The word comes from
strategic command to go. When the
officers received the order to enter the building and
destroy the terrorists, all of them were 100% certain that in the event of an explosion, no one would come back alive. It’s our job. If you’re going to think
about the mission too much and what could go wrong,
it’s not going to help. You go into zombie mode,
autopilot, to fulfill the mission. It may seem cold, but it is necessary. Taking out as
many Chechens as possible before the order to detonate
is now the top priority. Alfa’s legendary speed cuts
down the gunmen in seconds. It would have been good to take some terrorists
alive to question them, but when you’re there in that situation, you have weapons, they have weapons, and you need to fire before they do. It’s a quick decision. And in the auditorium, Alfa killed every black widow
without a second’s pause. Some die before they can
detonate their bomb belts. Others press the triggers
only for the belts to fail. But the theater could
still blow at any moment because there’s still one person who can inflict mass casualties. Now, seconds count in the hunt to stop the Chechen
leader, Movsar Barayev. We were expecting Barayev to be in the auditorium with
the bombs, and he wasn’t. Movsar Barayev
is loose in the building. Now Spetsnaz have to find him and stop him before he puts into action the terrorists’ ultimate sanction, detonation of the bombs. Eventually, he’s traced to a storeroom behind the theater’s cafeteria. Once the
officers of Alfa came in, after just a minute and a half, all the terrorists were shot down, and none of them managed
to trigger a single bomb. The whole operation was not more than ten minutes in duration. the shooting itself can be
counted in just a few minutes. Alfa’s lightning speed prevents the explosions and
stops the crisis in its tracks. It is, without doubt, one of the most successful Alfa operations
ever undertaken. Not a single operative
or hostage is harmed, and all the enemy are taken out. I remember that I thought, thank god the bombs did not go off. I can imagine if the bombs had exploded, no one would have survived. The first
hostages are pulled to safety as the whole world watches the extraordinary success
of the elite force after three days of agony. It looks like Alfa’s reputation
has risen from the ashes. But any hope that the mission’s
over is quickly dashed. For even from beyond the grave, the Chechens have another surprise for the Russians they hate so much. Intelligence reports suggest
there are hidden bombs around the theater on timers that are impossible to
find and defuse in time. If this intelligence is true, the theater could still
blow at any moment. They have to get the hostages out fast. With extraordinary haste verging on panic, rescue teams sweep into the building. Their task to haul out
the unconscious hostages in a race against time
with an unknown number of ticking time bombs beneath them. But in a siege beset by
surprises and unexpected twists, the greatest of all is about to unfold in front of the world’s TV cameras. The Dubrovka operation should be divided into two major phases. One which involved Alfa
units who did their job, and another one that happened afterwards. As phase one of the military operation is completed, the job is now to get the
hostages out of the theater. – Alfa were not essentially tasked with getting the hostages out. There were too few of them, and that’s not really what they’re about. That would have been the
role of other elements within the fire service, within the ambulance corps or whatever. And this is really where
the operation fell apart. Alfa’s done a brilliant job a textbook operation that
couldn’t have been bettered by any special forces team anywhere. But the hostages aren’t out of danger, and the mission is about to
enter its darkest phase yet. When
the first media reports about the completion of the operation and the freeing of the
hostages started coming in, of course we were all
euphoric, including myself. We saw dead black widows, and there was no
information on their losses. And then the
stark reality starts to emerge. And then after we saw and got the reports that
the operation went well. There was no explosion,
people were reported alive. And then the tragedy came. Every hour updates began to come of 10, 20, 30, 40 people dead. Everyone was stunned. Hostages that look as if they’re unconscious from the gas are in fact dying, and it’s due to the same
technology used to rescue them. – Some of the police officers
that carried the people out, they had no idea about
the recovery position for people that have a severe
respiratory depression, so they just laid them on their backs, and people suffocated. Instead of putting them in
their recovery positions on the side, where the tongue would relax and they would be able to breathe until the antidote was administered. The brilliance
of Alfa’s military operation is now being catastrophically let down by civilian evacuation,
wreaking more havoc in minutes than the Chechens have done
in the previous three days. – If you were going to do
something like this thoroughly, you would want everybody primed, and for some reason, that didn’t happen. The people who needed
to help with the cleanup and the protection of
individuals who were affected just didn’t know what to do. without realizing the terrible damage they’re doing, paramedics and police are
carrying out drugged hostages with their heads at dangerous angles, lying unconscious faces exposed
upwards to the elements. Completely helpless,
hostages are suffocating, choking on their own vomit or gagging to death on their tongues. – It was quite clear that the
way people were brought out and just dumped when they
came out of the theater, that no thought had been given to the fact that people’s breathing
might have been compromised. So, there was very little coordination. – A lot of people who were involved, from the medical perspective, hadn’t been told it was
fentanyl that was used, they didn’t even know how to treat the individuals concerned. And therefore there was this awful vacuum. And that’s frankly where so
many of the hostages died, or why so many of the hostages died, is because at that moment, where you needed to
have a seamless handover from, as it where, the
killers to the savers. There was in fact a moment of uncertainty, a moment of insecurity. And also again a very classic moment of, well in Russian terms,
security took precedence that until people were absolutely certain that there, for example, no
terrorists amongst the hostages, none of the hostages could be removed. Because you had to make sure
you got all the terrorists. And it’s not only that the evacuation teams aren’t organized to deal with drugged hostages. They haven’t even prepared enough supplies for the hundreds who need treatment. An antidote to the gas exists, but it’s only available in tiny quantities with a handful of people
qualified to administer it. In the hours and days
that follow the siege, the city’s hospitals struggle to cope, and the death toll steadily climbs. – People simply didn’t know what to do. They didn’t imagine the scale
of what needed to be done. And as a result of that,
some of the hostages that could’ve been saved were not saved. You know, it’s very
unfortunate, it’s very sad but sometimes it’s the
fact of war, you know, things do not go perfect,
things don’t go perfect. We wish they did, you know, yeah. Every operator and every military, especially a tier one operator, what is his wish in situation like that? Of course, to save every hostage, okay. Does it work that way every single time? Again, it’s not a movie,
it’s not a reality show. It’s reality. And reality is very unpredictable. In all, 133 people die in the 2002 Dubrovka Theater siege. Only three at the hands of the terrorists. Nearly all the fatalities are caused by the gas used to rescue them, either overdoses or because
the unconscious are mishandled. I think
everybody understands that although 133 people died, in the circumstances, it
could have been a thousand. The full scale of the tragedy could have been very different. I was miserable. It was a real tragedy. Because of the tragedy, the Alfa teams involved don’t
call the operation a success. The only success was the killing of the terrorists and that the majority of
people were still alive, but, generally, it was not a success because more than 100 people died. It’s not that we didn’t work hard enough. It wasn’t because of bad planning. It wasn’t Alfa’s fault. We don’t feel proud of what
we did because it’s our job. The deaths
become all the more poignant when it’s revealed that the
giant bombs in the theater were fakes all along. And some of the black
widows’ belts were duds. Even though Alfa themselves were unaware of this at the time, it leaves the impression
that the use of the gas and the deaths that it caused
had all been for nothing. Media observers start
talking about the operation as a tragedy. – So a 130 some hostages
die and it’s a tragedy? Absolutely, huge tragedy to every single
family that lost loved one. It would have been a
little bit bigger tragedy, thousand of them dying
in a few huge explosions. And in the long run, it would have been an even bigger tragedy
if a state, a country, succumbs to the demands. And people like that, capable
to do something like that, achieve what they want to achieve. The irony is plain to all that the expertise of the military is only mirrored by the failures of the civilian rescue effort. In the years that follow
the Dubrovka Theater siege, the families of the hostages who died, and many hostages themselves
campaign for compensation and continue trying to get justice. The precise details of the gas
used have never been revealed despite repeated requests from
doctors treating survivors. But Alfa’s achievement remains
unblemished by the siege. – It didn’t really tarnish the reputations of the special forces themselves. It instead was regarded, as it were, that the fighting men did their job, it was the Kremlin, it
was the administration, it was everyone else who
in fact let them down. Today in the
eyes of most Russians, Spetsnaz Group Alfa are the heroes of the Dubrovka Theater siege. – For the kind of liberal
antigovernment protestors who are marching in the streets of Moscow, it shows how the Kremlin
is brutal, heavy-handed, doesn’t mind letting people die as long as it kills its enemies. To be honest, though, for
the majority of Russians, actually what Dubrovka says is that Russia is still
strong and determined, and if you mess with Russia, then you can expect a
devastating response. the extraordinary achievement of Spetsnaz Group Alfa at Dubrovka stands unchallenged as
one of the most daring and technically brilliant
operations ever undertaken to break a siege and counter terrorism. Among the world’s special forces, Spetsnaz Group Alfa enjoy
an outstanding reputation. But the Soviet legacy and
Russia’s unique approach to counterterrorism have
created a specialist force unlike any other. An asset appreciated both domestically and internationally. – Alfa remains today, the pre-eminent Russian
special forces unit, beyond any shadow of a doubt. They really are pretty much
at the absolute top tier of, obviously, the world’s
special forces rankings, particularly when it comes to individual, personal combat skills, shooting, killing people
with their bare hands, that kinda thing, they
really are at the top. And just in terms of pure individual physical
toughness as well. Alfa’s fight
to assert its integrity after years of political
interference has triumphed. Once again, it’s proved itself the defender of the Russian people. A drug-crazed,
murderous warlord has captured 11 peacekeeping soldiers. – He was a paranoid,
schizophrenic, mad, basically. An elite special
forces unit is mobilized. – These guys are united in
the ability to just keep going when the going is hellish, A daring and
dangerous plan is drawn up. – The odds were against us, totally. As executions are threatened, the special forces explode into action. They are outnumbered five to one, they are outgunned with heavy artillery, and their enemy believes in black magic. Now on “Black Ops,” go behind the scenes on
a mission so dangerous they call it Operation Sudden Death. August 2000, Sierra Leone, a small war-torn nation
on the West African coast. For almost a decade, a loose alliance of murderous rebel gangs has been fighting for
control of the country. Their leaders are driven by the
prospect of fabulous wealth. This is the world center of the trade in illegal blood diamonds, – Blood diamonds become an
extraordinary important factor in the violence which was going on. There are daily raids§ on undefended rural villages. The rebels often take
all the children away, turning them into child soldiers. Those left behind were often
punished by amputation. – They would chop arms off, short sleeve or long sleeve style. So short sleeve was above the elbow. Long sleeve was below the elbow. The aim of doing so was to
spread terror across the country, in some strange way, to prove their power. One of the
most brutal of these gangs is a group of about 1,000 fighters known as the West Side Boys. – The West Side Boys, drugs and alcohol, that’s how they fueled their war. – They were rounding up local women. And there’s little
doubt that sex and drugs featured quite prominently in
their behavior and activities. So, they were a dangerous group of people, simply because they were
totally unpredictable. – If that wasn’t bad enough, they had this belief that
voodoo would protect them to such an extent it would
make them bulletproof. – One man, who served nearly two years with the West Side boys, is 26-year-old Black Zorro. He was recruited by the
rebels, aged just 14, and rose to become a
trusted junior officer. Well, we used
to smoke plenty of marijuana. And as for drink, we had lots
of homemade strong alcohol called hard wine. Cocaine was sometimes available, but heroin was all over the place. If you went to the jungle at that time, you would find everybody high on heroin. I was often high all day. The drugs made me feel
strong and ready for battle. As soon as I took them, I
was ready for any any fight. To save Sierra Leone from total collapse, the Global Coalition
intervenes with military force. British troops in particular play a leading role in keeping the peace and in training the local
army to stand on its own. – We were demonstrating a wider commitment of the Western world to,
what at the time was, a struggling democracy in
a very poor part of Africa. So I think there was an
important symbolic value in our intervention. On a quiet Friday afternoon, 11 military training advisors from Britain’s Royal Irish Regiment set out on a routine patrol. At this junction, their
commander, Major Alan Marshall decides to turn down a dirt
road, leading into the jungle. He’s heading straight into the heart of West Side Boy’s territory. I don’t know
why they left the main road and came into our territory. It was a no-go zone for anybody except us. – The unofficial reason may be that he was actually there with a
mission to try and scope out what their forces were like,
how powerful they were, what weapons they were armed with, and what they would be like as a fighting force to come up against. The British don’t realize they’ve already been spotted
by West Side Boy scouts hiding in the forest. We saw
them as a major threat. They came to our camp
without authorization. We didn’t know their intentions, and we thought they
were here to spy on us, so we couldn’t just let them leave. – They reached the riverside, where one side of the
rebel base is situated, and immediately that they get there. They’re surrounded by
what can only be described as a seething, screaming
mob of West Side Boys. Heavily outnumbered, and with no means of escape, the soldiers are forced to surrender. – It’s very clear, very quickly that this is not a friendly situation. The well-trained,
well-armed soldiers are taken prisoner by this crazed mob of drugged-out jungle gangsters. We arrested the soldiers to get attention from the
international community. We wanted to stop hiding in the jungle, and we thought we could use
them to get what we wanted. The 11 British
soldiers are beaten, stripped of their valuables, and taken off to a stinking jungle hut. At the Ministry of Defense
Headquarters in London, news of the missing soldiers reaches Britain’s Chief General. – We weren’t quite sure just how serious it was to start with. I knew about the West Side Boys. I’d been to Sierra Leone. I’d been briefed about them. But I wasn’t quite sure
what they would do. General Guthrie and Defense Secretary Hoon convened a crisis meeting
in their situation room, deep in the basement. – The problem was how were
we going to get these people who’d been kidnapped, who
were in tremendous danger of either being tortured, killed, or split up around Sierra Leone? So there was a real urgency about this. – They knew nothing. They had no intelligence. They had no eyes on the rebel base. They didn’t know the rebel numbers. They didn’t know what weaponry they had. And most worryingly of all, they didn’t know whether
the British soldiers would get killed in the rescue operation. The British
are haunted by the memory of a disastrous rescue mission in Africa seven years earlier. This was the infamous
Black Hawk Down incident. 18 American servicemen were killed when their helicopters
were shot down by a rocket, and their bodies paraded through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. – Obviously, reports are
going to the Prime Minister. He would be briefed. – And I remember him saying,
“Well, is this very dangerous?” I said, “Yes, very dangerous.” “Are people likely to be killed?” I said, “Almost certainly.” Terrified of the fallout from a failed rescue, the British government
decides to try to negotiate for the hostages’ release. – I was perfectly content
for negotiations to be begun, but I have to say, in
the background as well, we were always preparing to take military action to release them. If negotiations fail, there will be no choice but
to take the hostages back by force. Three days into the crisis, a team of specialist negotiators from Scotland Yard arrive in Africa. They will try to peacefully
secure the hostages’ release. Leading the talks on the
rebels side is their commander, a 24-year-old warlord calling himself Brigadier General Foday Kallay. – Kallay was paranoid schizophrenic. He was certainly very
paranoid and very deluded. Foday Kallay
was the best commander we had. He was a skilled soldier,
and he led from the front. – He was so deluded to the extent that he believed his rebel
group had the power to, for example, force the
British out of Sierra Leone. Everybody
knew that when he gave orders, you had to follow them, because he took responsibility
for all his soldiers. At his first
meeting with the negotiators, Kallay makes a rambling series of demands. These range from simply wanting an amnesty for the West Side Boys, to outrageously insisting all
British leave the country. Most insanely of all, Kallay himself wants to be named
president of Sierra Leone. – In some cases, it’ll be quite apparent from an early situation that the prospect of a
successful negotiated solution with the victims coming
out unharmed is low. That may be a factor of
history of the group, the demands and the nature of
the demands are being made, the political ideology. It may be from a range of factors that you can make that judgment. The negotiators are walking a dangerous tight rope. Kallay’s demands can never be met, but the team must make
him believe they might. The hope is that as long
as he keeps talking, the hostages will be kept alive. – Clearly, they didn’t wish
to kill them at the outset, and they saw some value in them, and that’s why they kept them alive. So that was the good news. The bad news in this situation is the unpredictability
and the volatility. So, in the blink of an eye,
you can move from a situation where you have stable,
well-treated hostages to them being killed. To confirm that the hostages are being well treated, the negotiators insist on
meeting with Major Marshall, the patrol leader, in person. Kallay agrees. It’s a decision he will come to regret. – Major Marshall, the
man who was in charge of the British patrol, had been captured. He recognized in these meetings an opportunity to pass over
some vital intelligence in a clandestine fashion
to the British side. – The people who’ve been abducted here were professional military people. They foresaw where this was going. – What he had done is during the various walkabouts that the rebels had proudly
given them of the base saying, “There is our anti-aircraft weapons, “and there are our mortars,”
and these kinda things, during those walkabouts, Major Marshall had noted
down every single defense that he could see. Back in their room, where they
were locked in in captivity, he had drawn up a detailed
map of the rebel base, mapping out all the positions
and all their strengths, and he’d taken that piece of paper, rolled it up very tightly,
and poked it inside a pen lid. When Major Marshall meets one of the men from Scotland
Yard, they shake hands, to make a secret exchange. If Kallay spots what they are
doing, it will be a disaster. But incredibly, the negotiator manages to put the object in his
pocket without being noticed. – I wouldn’t characterize these as a highly professional
group of hostage takers. The fact that they allowed that handshake allowed an exchange of intelligence. That was not a shrewd move on their part. It’s an unexpected but crucial breakthrough. At last, the British
have some intelligence to begin planning a rescue mission, and there is only one group
that has skills to carry it out. Britain’s legendary special forces unit. The SAS. They are the pioneers
in the art of black ops, with a history stretching back as far as the Second World War. – The SAS, the British
Special Air Services, they’re the special operations
force that we modeled all of our special operations after. They set the model for
the rest of us to follow. Through the years, they have constantly adapted and improved, playing a crucial role in
every major British conflict, from the streets of Northern Ireland to the polar wastes of
the Falkland Islands, to the deserts of Iraq, the SAS are famous for
being ready to fight in any environment. – Behind your back, behind your back. And to carry out the missions with absolute secrecy. – Go, go, go, go. – Small unit, just a few hundred people, the elite of the elite. They have to go through
a brutal entry course to prove that they measure up. It washes the majority
of the applicants out. Those that make it through the infamous selection procedure are honored by having
the SAS wings and dagger pinned or badged to their army berets. – I joined the army to be a soldier, and take up the duties that that includes, and as a badge member of the SAS, that is about as pure as the driven snow as you can get in terms of soldiering. The SAS have two particular specialties. One is storming difficult targets. In London, in 1980, they
famously rescued 19 hostages. Breaking a terrorist siege
of the Iranian embassy. – The SAS pioneered the art of bursting onto a scene
and rescuing hostages. That means things like fast
roping from helicopters, breaching doors, throwing
in a stun grenade to stun everyone inside,
and then quickly firing and taking all of the hostile parties out, leaving the civilians. That is what they perfected. – Go go go. – The training for releasing
hostages is quite intense, as you can imagine, because there’s not a
lot of room for error. You know, you don’t get second chances when you’re dealing with people’s lives. – They don’t have all the special gear that the Americans have. What the SAS guys will tell you is, yes, what we lack in gear, we have
to make up for in skills. That other great skill is jungle warfare. – Jungle warfare is,
in many people’s eyes, one of the purest forms of fighting. You’ve gotta really get atoned
in with your surrounding. There’s no open spaces. It’s closed in. It’s a tight environment. So it’s on top of you. Now the
unit was preparing to put both of these specialties into practice and start planning an audacious rescue using the smuggled map. The crisis has been dragging
on for almost seven days, but the negotiators continue to try and seek a peaceful settlement. Kallay is now asking for
something more reasonable, some medicine for his camp and a satellite telephone
so he can call the BBC and announce his grievances to the world. The British quickly agreed, if they can have some of
the hostages in return. – There was a major,
major negotiating success. Five hostages were released in exchange for a satellite
phone and the medicines. Now, that was a win-win situation, because one is worthwhile having effective and good communications, you know, with the hostile elements. Two, medicines are a good idea, particularly if they’re gonna be used to treat any of your individuals. And three, it provides
intelligence opportunity. It’s a master stroke, which will change the
course of the operation. Almost half of the men are now free. What’s more, the British can use the signal
from the satellite phone to pinpoint Kallay’s secret hideout. Unknown to him or anyone
outside a select inner circle, a task force has arrived in Sierra Leone to begin secret preparations for a rescue. It consists of about 300 men. Most are from Britain’s
frontline airborne force, the parachute regiment, known to all in the British
Army are simply the paras. But they are merely
there as support troops. The rescue itself will be
handled by a 50-strong team from the elite Special
Air Service, the SAS, and about 20 colleagues from the British Royal Navy’s
own special forces unit, the SBS, or Special Boat Service. To avoid arousing any suspicion, their mission is given
an innocuous code name, Operation Barras. – I’m often asked, “How on
earth does Britain choose “these rather curious
names for its operation?” In contrast to the United States that talks about Operation Freedom, and has rather dramatic names for their military activities. And the answer is, I’m
afraid, rather prosaic, and probably very British, which is that we allow a computer
to generate randomly names that are then, providing
they’re appropriate, allocated accordingly. With the tacit support of the Sierra Leone government, the men of Operation Barras
established a covert base just outside the capital. – It wasn’t until that we moved forward into Sierra Leone itself that
the focus starts coming down. Then you start thinking,
right, this is gonna happen. Your kit’s being packed as to what you wanna take in with you. You’re beginning to get
a bit more intelligence. Briefing boards are going up. We need to be ready for it. The SAS start gathering as much intelligence as they can about the rebels and their jungle hideout. Their preferred plan is to send a small team up river
at night in SBS boats. Moving in total darkness
and total silence, the rescue team can secretly
enter the rebel camp, sneak into the hostage hut, and quickly escape with the prisoners. – Move, move, move, move. – Hopefully without a shot being fired. As the troops wait for the green light, they begin rehearsing for the mission. – There was a floor plan
built of the village so that you knew roughly
how far you had to go, what your limits of your
particular arcs were and that sort of stuff. An arc being where you can
fire and where you can’t fire. At the height of battle, it could be quite
confusing as to who’s where and who’s doing what. – This-
– But there is still no permission to mount the rescue. The final go can only come from Defense Secretary Jeff Hoon in London. The fate of the six
remaining British hostages hangs in the balance. If a bargain cannot be
struck for their lives, there will be an epic battle to freedom. The Brits were cocky. We would give them orders,
and they would say, “No, we won’t accept your command.” They were extremely stubborn, actually. Sometimes we would talk to them, tell them what to do,
and they would ignore us. They really did not make
life easy for themselves. Sometimes Kallay would have
to slap them around a bit to make them understand. He would shake them up and hit them hard. He had to treat them roughly
so they knew he was in charge. – The key thing would be
reading the mood music. You know, whether it was
positive or it’s negative, you know, in terms of their attitude, because the volatility is
the key element in this, or whether they’re gonna
behave in a rational and thoughtful sort of way, or whether they’re escalating to a point where it’s clearly never
going to be resolved, you know, amicably. Defense Secretary Jeff Hoon has still not authorized a
full-scale rescue mission, but he has given the go
ahead for a secretive and highly dangerous operation. A four-man SAS surveillance team stealthily enters the jungle. Their job is to provide
more detailed intelligence about conditions in the rebel base – In the first place, they had to be inserted
around the village. Actually, it meant that some
of them spent several days in swamp, crawling
through some of the most unpleasant conditions I
think anyone could face. Moving and
operating in total silence, and advancing just a few feet each hour, the men slowly approach rebel territory, looking for a concealed
position where they can see but not be seen. – That team was tasked with setting up an observation post, an OP. An OP, it’s like a grave
dug in the jungle floor. – They know how to quietly get
into a scene, if necessary, whether it’s marching
into a jungle invisibly and sitting in an
observation post under a tarp for three weeks, staring at a target, so nobody knows they’re there, that’s what they do. – You dig a pit, you jump in the pit, you cover it with vegetation, and you lie there for as long as it takes to keep eyes on the base until either the mission is
called in, and it happens, or the mission’s called
off and you withdraw. This kind of surveillance is another SAS specialty, and it takes incredible
reserves of patience and skill. The men must eat, sleep,
and maintain their watch for days on end, making only
the smallest of movements. – Throughout the special operations world they have this expression,
the quiet professionals. And these guys, when
they’re out on the mission, that’s really what they are. – Straight away they discover
three pieces of bad news. Firstly, the captives are
no longer in the rebel base where they were first taken hostage. They have been moved across a
wide river to a smaller camp, even deeper into the jungle. Second, the original plan for the assault along the river will not work. It’s full of concealed sandbanks, and the special forces
boats cannot use it. On top of that, the jungle is so thick that an approach by
land is also impossible. The only option is a full
frontal assault by helicopter. – If we’d have sneaked
up and not fired a shot, taken everybody down
without killing anybody, then that would’ve been
the preferred option. As it was, it couldn’t pan out that way. We couldn’t get to them,
we couldn’t do it that way. So, you know, we had to go in
and give them a bloody nose. The only
helicopter up to the job is one of the biggest in the world. The twin rotor HC2 Chinook. But an air assault using
one of these beasts has its own specific problems. – Well, the obvious
thing about a helicopter is that they are very noisy and the element of surprise is lost if the enemy can hear a
helicopter coming at distance. Chinooks
can carry a huge payload, but they’re also slow, hard
to maneuver, and easy to spot. Hence, their unofficial
nickname, The Flying School Bus. – If a Chinook gets hit
and knocked out of the sky with a large number of SAS people in it, it would be very serious. To make matters worse, most of the West Side Boys group remained in their main base on
the south side of the river. They have a battery of heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, and mortars, any of which could easily
shoot a Chinook out of the sky, or rain artillery fire down on the hostage camp across the river. Any rescue mission would quickly turn into a suicide mission. The SAS commanders must
rethink the entire operation. Time is running out. Rebel Leader Fodaly Kallay is getting more and more impatient with the endless rounds of negotiations. – It could change in the blink of an eye. It was highly unpredictable,
highly volatile, and groups like this had already
killed many times before. Even if they were compliant today, you could not, in any way, be assured of the safety of the hostages tomorrow or the day after. The negotiators
from Scotland Yard called Kallay daily on
his satellite phone, but with each conversation he
becomes more unpredictable. He’s spending his days taking
drugs and drinking heavily. By the start of every afternoon,
he is thoroughly drunk. Eventually, due to the lack
of electricity in his camp, Kallay’s phone runs out
of battery and goes dead. – We have a message saying
negotiations had failed. The safety of the hostages is now at serious risk. One evening
he called us all out and said, “We are going to shoot one of them.” – He took Major Marshall,
the British commander, to the edge of the jungle, made him kneel. They put an assault rifle to his head, and basically pulled the trigger. Kallay’s rifle is empty, but next time, in all
likelihood, it will be loaded. When news of this outrage
arrives in London, Jeff Hoon decides that the time
for talking is finally over. – We were certainly receiving
very detailed information about what was going on inside the huts where our men were being held prisoner. And I think one of the key
piece of information I received is that they were being
subject to mock executions, that weapons were being pointed at them, apparently being fired. And that kind of behavior
was totally unacceptable, as far as I was concerned. Operation Barras is a go. – Well, the SAS, I think
everybody in the army would admit, are probably the most
suitable people to do this. They are trained in special operations. They’re trained in rescuing
people who have been kidnapped. They’ve done it in other places. Everyone
involved in the mission knows the odds are stacked heavily against them. In fact, the mission is so dangerous the men on the ground have
given it their own name. – When they realized they
could only go in via air, that was when the men of the SAS, the men who were tasked to go
in and do this hostage rescue, coined the phrase, the
nickname for the mission, Operation Certain Death. Assuming they even make it to their target without
being shot out of the sky, the rescue force will be
outnumbered more than five to one, and their enemy, who believe black magic makes
them invincible to bullets, will fight fearlessly and recklessly. In a battle
you don’t check to see who you killed. When I fire my weapon,
there will be many victims. I don’t know who is dead or alive. All I know is when I pull the trigger, the bullets will be
flying around each other, and no one will be left in front of me. The men of Operation Barras are assembling before the
dawn to launch their attack, a dangerous air assault on a
well-defended jungle hideout. The mission will be personally overseen by General Charles Guthrie, one-time commander of the SAS, now head of all Britain’s Armed Forces. – We had a very good plan,
but it was a risky plan. Because in these things
you never quite know what the enemy are going to do. Guthrie makes things plain to his political masters, the mission to rescue six British hostages is likely to incur heavy casualties. – General Guthrie made clear that this operation was not without risk, that he could not guarantee that we would not lose
soldiers in the process. – In an attempt to overcome
the staggering odds facing the rescue team, General Guthrie signs
off on a new strategy, two simultaneous attacks. First, a team of about 50 elite SAS troops will approach the small
jungle camp on the north bank, Gberi Bana. This is where the captives are located, along with Rebel Commander Foday Kally. To surprise the rebels, they will fast rope down
from the hovering choppers, landing just feet from the hostage hut. – We didn’t know what to expect, so all the time that we
know where the hostages are is the time that we have to act in, because if they take them somewhere else, it’s jungle for jungle for jungle. At the same time, the force of 150 paratroopers, who have been waiting in reserve, will launch the second attack. Landing by helicopter on
the south side of the river, they will strike the main
West Side Boys base, Magbeni, to distract the large
force of rebels there and disable their heavy weaponry. The mission is planned for
dawn on the 8th of September, the 15th day of the crisis. But at the very last
moment, there’s a hitch. The SAS observation team
hiding in the jungle sends an urgent message. – The mission was originally planned for first light on a Saturday morning, but in fact, those who had been literally crawling through swamp in order to get near to the
huts and near to the village, took longer than they had planned. The plan
requires the observation team to move within a few feet
of the hostage house, to provide covering fire, but they must move at night,
at an agonizingly slow pace to avoid being spotted. They ask for a 24-hour delay. – Because of the time it
took to get into position, it actually was delayed
until Sunday morning. The
night before the attack, everybody was out of it. We had all been partying. I was in my hut taking lots of drugs. Because it was raining outside, we had no idea what was about to happen. One day later,
Operation Certain Death finally lifts off. They fly out to sea with
muster off the coast. – I don’t think there was a guy there that didn’t leave a letter
with one of his best mates to give to his loved ones,
should something happen. At the Ministry
of Defense headquarters in London, all that Jeff Hoon
can do now is wait and hope. – I think it’s important to bear in mind that we were not sitting, watching live TV footage
of what was taking place. Essentially, I knew that
the operation was underway. I knew that the operation would proceed along the lines that
had been briefed to me. Two Chinook helicopters are carrying the 50 strong SAS contingent, followed by a third with the first wave of support troops from the paras. Each SAS man is carrying
more than 80 pounds of kit, including his body armor,
his M14 assault rifle, and enough ammunition and
grenades for hours of fighting. – You know your job inside out by then, so you know what your
mate’s gonna be doing. You know where he’s goin’
when he gets off the chopper, you know what you’re gonna do if he doesn’t manage to go that way. The plan’s in your face now. It’s stored up here. You know, you’re just waitin’ for that ramp to come
down now and you’re off. – On operations you get psyched up. There’s no question about that. And everybody wants it. I mean, you get a sort of working together, cooperation, which is quite difficult to explain, because it’s extraordinarily
dangerous, what you’re doing, but, you know, well trained
soldiers get on and do it. After a 10-minute flight, the six helicopters are on the final approach
to their targets. – The four-man observation team were in contact with the
pilots and telling them, “You can come in, you can come in. “There’s no one moving,
there’s no one moving. “It’s light enough to see. “It’s light enough to see.” And so the airborne assault force flew up to the rebel base using the river upon which
the rebel base was situated to hide their progress as they came in. So the helicopters were
invisible to the naked eye, but far more importantly,
you couldn’t hear them because the jungle to
either side of the river masks the approach of the assault. At 6:30 in the morning, the thunderous noise
overhead rouses the rebels. – Early in the morning,
I stepped outside my hut, and as I was looking around,
I heard a strange sound. I turned to see a huge
helicopter coming in. Then men started to drop down
from ropes onto the ground. By now, the helicopter was
overhead, making a huge wind. I was scared. The most urgent objective is the hostage hut. The entire operation hinges on getting to the captive soldiers before rebels get there
first and execute them. It’s now that the reconnaissance team, who have been lying almost motionless for a week in the jungle,
finally break cover. Just in time to kill the rebels
guarding the hostage hut. – They fight their way in there, and they scream out, “British soldiers, “British soldiers.”
– British soldiers. British soldiers. Move, move, move, move, move.
– And so the hostages know it’s the friendly force
come in to rescue them that they’ve been dreaming
of happening for some time. Across the river in the main rebel stronghold of Magbeni, the support force from
the parachute regiment is slowly approaching their target. Their mission is to prevent the
core group of West Side Boys interfering with the rescue. – Operations nearly always
have unforeseen consequences, and you’ve gotta be aware of
that and be prepared to react. – Chinook comes in, hovers
over this flat area of ground, first guy jumps out, first
para jumps out with his weapons and his Bergen on his back, and lo and behold, he lands
up to his neck in a swamp. – That initially caused some
problems for the operation because men were literally
sinking into the ground. – There’s nothing worse than
if a plan does get wrong, and you just are left high and dry. – But as soon as they
reach the edge of the base disaster strikes. – Very quickly things go
really quite badly wrong. The mortar round goes up and lands in the tree under which the command element of the parachute regiment
guys is situated. It explodes in the tree, so it’s like an air burst. And very, very quickly you’ve
got the whole command element of that parachute regiment force injured and taken out and needing evacuating. – The only member of the
eight man command unit to escape serious injury is a young officer,
Captain Danny Matthews. He now finds himself
directing a major battle for the first time. Quickly regrouping his troops, he orders them to eliminate the greatest source of danger. The mortar. By this time, in the smaller jungle camp on the north side of the river, the rebel army is now fighting back. The SAS realized that
the battle on the ground is not going according to their
carefully orchestrated plan. – When I left the chopper,
we took fire from a direction that we hadn’t planned to take fire from. We all end up stacked up in
a completely different way, facing a completely
different part of the village that we were going to because we took so much fire from behind. I tried to
gather my group together on the edge of the forest and take cover behind
one of the buildings. I could see things were getting
very hot, so we moved up. – We knew how heavily armed
the West Side Boys were. There is little doubt,
either, that they fought, and they fought hard once they
realized what was happening. The
disciplined special forces managed to hold the
rebels at bay long enough for the hostages to be escorted to the helicopter landing zone. – You can’t afford to switch off. It’ll be a terrible shame
to go through the village, rescue all the hostages,
have a marvelous day out, and then get shot getting
on chopper on the way out. The mission appears to be on the verge of success
when one SAS soldier is hit by a wild spray of gunfire. – A soldier called Brad Tinnion, who was a legend within the SAS, was hit and seriously wounded. There are
several serious casualties on one side of the river, a dying SAS trooper on the other side, and although the hostages
have now been freed, they’re still not out of danger. The success of Operation Certain
Death hangs in the balance. – These guys are united in the ability to just keep going when the going is hellish. – Although the rebels could not shoot the British helicopters down, they have inflicted serious
damage on the two units fighting their way through the jungle. – The odds were against us, totally. We flew into their village,
into their backyard, with two of the biggest
helicopters in the world. By rights, I mean, if they’d
have been switched on, they should have smashed those choppers straight outta the sky. We woulda been lucky to
get anybody in there. One of the
men, Trooper Brad Tinnion, is seriously wounded. – Tremendous efforts were
made, I know to, save his life. A helicopter pilot picked him up and took him out to a ship that we had stationed off Sierra Leone. Sadly, he had died before further medical attention
could be given to him. By now, all six hostages have also been flown
out to the waiting ship. In London, General Guthrie, himself a former special forces soldier, receives a coded message from the field just before appearing live
on breakfast television. – We decided to attack the place where the hostages were being kept at half past six this morning. So the situation is still very confused. There is fighting going on, but the first indications are
that the hostages are safe. I don’t what condition
they’re in, but they are safe. The hostages may be safe, but the battle is not yet over. The men who went to join the battle were all killed. Many of them were sharing a hut with me. I lost most of my friends. Objective
number two for the SAS is the rebel leader, Foday Kallay. One of the four-man fire teams is assigned to take down his house. – They basically kick open the doors and clear each of the rooms, and in one of those rooms there’s a bed, like you know, a wooden bed
with a mattress on top of it, and they’re about to leave the room, ’cause there’s no one else in there, when someone, some smart guy, thinks to look under the bed, and cowering underneath
the bed, not able to move, not able to say a word, is the West Side Boys
leader, Foday Kallay, the guy who was demanding that he be made the President of Sierra Leone. With their
leader now a prisoner himself, the rest of the West Side Boys
melt away into the forest. We had no support left, so there was no way we
could offer resistance in our part of the village. All I heard was the sound
of British heavy weapons. So I decided the best thing to
do was escape while I could. Black
Zorro and several others fled into the jungle and ran as far as they
could from the battlefield. The British were now left standing alone. Today, Black Zorro is returning to the village of Gberi Bana, where the hostages were kept, and where he lived for almost 18 months as a West Side Boy fighter. It is the first time he’s
been back to this place since the battle with
the British 12 years ago. This is the
place where Kallay was living, the commander in charge of this place. Well, it was destroyed. A lot of bullet shots, a lot of damage because the helicopter came right here, to bombard this area, to kill Kallay. This
is where I was living. Here was my room where I slept. They wiped it, but I wrote my
name here before, Black Zorro. – Early in the morning I woke up from my room. Straight away I went over here. I was standing here, relieving myself, I heard the sound from that side. Straight away I saw the helicopters, people dropping from there. I rushed into the house. I tried to wake up my friends. I took my AK47, and I stood there. There were gunshots all over, so we tried to resist, to return
fire, but it was too late. The incoming fire was too heavy, and the British were all over the place. So I decided to escape to the bush. I ran and cleared a path by
shooting heavy into the trees. I shot about 30 bullets into this area to try and clear the way. They went right over there. This way. I went through the bush. I left behind heavy firing. The British were everywhere. It was risky, because we were
being ambushed from all sides. So I managed to escape by
the will of the power of God. All of the hostages from the Royal Irish Regiment
made a full recovery. Many still serve in the
British military to this day. Foday Kallay, the rebel leader,
was put on trial in Freetown and sentenced to 50 years in prison. The other West Side Boys
that survived the battle joined a reconciliation process and returned to civilian life. Today, Black Zorro is homeless, living on the streets of
Freetown, the capital city. – Well the West Side Boys broke up and everybody went their own ways, those that survived had to keep surviving. Those that were captured
had to face up to prison. And that was the end of us. We finished up. Operation Barras had a massive impact on Sierra Leone. In the months that followed, rebels all over the country
laid down their arms. – It sent a message to the rebels, which was clear and could
not be misinterpreted. If you continue to do what you
do, we will come after you, and we will hunt you
down in your rebel bases, wherever you are, in the
jungle, with ultimate force, and your days are numbered. Today’s
Sierra Leone is still poor, but it is peaceful. This one mission brought a decisive end to years of conflict, and it’s all due to the
skill and bravery of the SAS. An international flight hijacked by armed terrorists is flown to hostile territory. – Every few hours they say that they are going to execute us. Demands are made. Deadlines are set. An elite Special Forces team known as the Unit moves into action. – To kill someone is relatively simple. To rescue someone is
much more complicated. As time is running out, a daring plan is launched
from thousands of miles away. – It will stand as one of the most bold Special Force operations
in modern history. Now on “Black Ops,” behind the scenes of one of the most daring rescue missions ever made: “Operation Thunderbolt”. Air France Flight 139
from Tel Aviv to Paris makes a stopover in Athens. On board the airplane are 248
passengers and crew members. – I was putting nail polish on my nails, and we were talking to the
girl sitting in front of us. I didn’t suspect anything. Shortly after takeoff, terrorists storm the cockpit. One of them takes over the radio, and announces the flight is hijacked. No one knows where it’s headed. In Jerusalem, a routine cabinet meeting is interrupted, and the message is
delivered to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Defense Minister Shimon Peres is also getting the news. – A man came in and handed me a very small piece of information that said that an Air
France plane was hijacked. – Good evening, an Air
France jet was hijacked by Palestinian guerillas today. The hijacking of
Flight 139 is just the latest in a string of terrorist attacks targeting Israeli citizens. Four years earlier in 1972, 11 Israeli athletes were killed in an attack on their compound at the Munich Olympics. In the same year, terrorists shot and killed 26 passengers waiting for their luggage
in Tel Aviv Airport. And in 1974, terrorists sieged a high school in Northern Israel, killing 22, most of them young students. Immediately after the hijacking, Israeli Special Forces
are put on high alert. The authorities are expecting the plane to arrive in Tel Aviv, but the hijackers have a different plan. One of them is a trained pilot. He instructs the captain to
divert the flight to Libya. – He knew exactly how to fly an airplane, and he had the maps that he needed, and he followed our pilot to see that he’s taking him wherever he wants to go. On the ground in
Libya one desperate passenger pretends to be having a miscarriage in an attempt to escape. She is released, and immediately met by Israeli intelligence officers. They learn from her that
there are four terrorists: two German and two Palestinian. They’re armed with guns and grenades. – The plane continued to fly, and we didn’t know to which destination. It is headed to Africa. In the early hours of June 28th, Air France Flight 139 lands
in Entebbe Airport in Uganda, more than 2,000 miles from Tel Aviv. At first the passengers think the crisis is coming to an end. – They told us we are going
to be released in Uganda. But as soon
as they get off the plane, their hopes are dashed. – There were two rows of Ugandan soldiers standing with guns, and
we were in the middle, and they led us into
the terminal of Entebbe. That was the second very big shock. – We were sure that we are free. Free to go. And then we saw that lots of Ugandan soldiers are waiting for us there, and six more terrorists
were waiting for us there. Instead of being released, they are led to an unused
terminal in Entebbe Airport. – They told us that we
are going to stay there, and later they brought us mattresses and blankets. Soon they receive a visit from Uganda’s unpredictable
and ruthless ruler, Idi Amin. He offers his services as
a mediator in the crisis. – Negotiations between the
hijackers and Ugandan officials, led by President Idi
Amin, were at a stalemate, but the hijackers did allow the plane’s 256 passengers to wait
in the airport lounge. In Jerusalem, the cabinet ministers are
wondering if Amin can be trusted. – We didn’t know yet. Is it in coordination with Uganda people? Was it prearranged? We didn’t have the slightest idea. The hijackers still
haven’t issued any demands. The passengers, unsure of their fate, spend a nervous night in Entebbe Airport. In the morning, the terrorists make an announcement. – They are going to separate part of us to the other room, and it will be more comfort for all of us. It sounds reasonable. – They started to call us by names. After the first few names, we understood that they are calling the Israeli people and the Jewish people. It was a very frightening moment. For many passengers, the process of a selection between Jews and non-Jews bears echoes of the Holocaust. – It’s such a despair. It’s such a feeling of, “That’s it. The end,” because you can’t do anything. And we knew that they are going
to release all the others. – They separated between
Jews and non-Jews. The fact that they are Germans and they made a separation, really made me outraged. In Jerusalem, the leaders anxiously follow the news reports from Entebbe as the terrorists announce their demands. – But the hijackers threatened to kill the more than 200 remaining hostages, including seven Americans, unless Israel and four other countries release 53 pro-Palestinian prisoners. The hijackers set
a deadline for their demands. – The terrorists sent us a message. That if they are not
going to get the answer in the next 12 hours or 10 hours, they’ll start to execute passengers one by one on an hourly basis. Israel has
a long-standing policy not to give in to terrorists’ demands. Defense Minister Shimon Peres knows he needs to start
setting in motion a response. – If we can find a political way, why not? But parallel, I started to look for a military solution. Peres will turn
to the Israeli Defense Forces. They have a reputation as one of the best-trained armies in the world. Its elite Special Forces units have carried out many daring operations. – They had a force that was capable. The consequence of them
failing, I think, was great. The consequence of the
success was even greater. But Uganda
is 2,000 miles away. Staging a rescue mission so far from home and under such a tight
deadline seems impossible. The Israeli leaders are
trying to devise a response, but they desperately need more time. – I thought we have a chance, with a little bit of
daring or much daring, and decisiveness and surprise
and ingenuity to do the job. Any operation
would be extremely risky. – This was a push for an emerging country. It happened at a period of time where you had an emerging nation whose destiny was uncertain. The intelligence
available is minimal. They don’t know how many
terrorists are involved or if they have the backing
of the Ugandan Army. They could be facing thousands in hostile and unfamiliar territory, but Defense Minister Peres
is pushing for a plan. – The first I called in was the Commander of the Air Force, whom I liked very much. I called in the other young commanders. They said, “Look, we
have to look at a map. “We have to check where
are the radar stations. “How can we land?” Joshua Shani, one of Israel’s top pilots, gets an urgent phone call. It’s very unusual to get a direct call from the Commander of the Air Force. And what he wanted to know is very basic information about the range, about the payload that we can take, about the fuel needed, about the route that is
possible or not to do. I gave him, one by one,
everything he needed to know, and then he say, “Come
back to the headquarters. “We’ll start planning.” The planners need to know how big a threat the Ugandan Army is. They turn to Muki Bezer, a Commander with Israel’s Special Forces who knows the African forces well. I was sent to train the paratroopers unit for two years. They asked me, “Muki, what do you know “about the Ugandan Army?” I said, “Listen, the Ugandan Army “is not exactly a well-trained army, “not like the IDF, in any case.” The planning group
considers several options. One involves dropping
boats and a parachute force into Lake Victoria by Entebbe. We’ve tested
parachuting into Lake Victoria, but we didn’t have any
experience with such things. And Navy Seals tried it,
and the boats exploded. – Technically, we did not
do well in the exercise. That one boat was blown
up, and it was kind of… And the second round was better, but, say, 50% is not good enough for an operation like this. The Prime Minister
sends them back to work. – And he did not approve that operation. He thought it will be very risky, and it was not a wise plan. And some of the military people were very disappointed that
that plan was not approved. and he stated, “I want another
plan as soon as possible.” And he set specific
guidelines to the plan. Risks of a failed
operation start to sink in. – I thought, “If it will fail, “it will be a boost for terrorists. “It will be a shame for Israel. “It will make our Army look
as a second-rate army.” Meanwhile,
the government is under enormous pressure from the
families of the hostages to give in to the terrorists’ demands. The Prime Minister
saw a representative group and revealed that the government
has decided to negotiate with the hijackers to
secure the release of all of the hostages and was
ready to release some terrorists held in
Israeli jails in return. – Their message was, “Do whatever we can to
meet the terrorists’ demand “and free our fathers and
mothers and relatives.” Secretly,
the military planners work according to new guidelines
set by the Prime Minister. – One, it should be a complete surprise. B, the time that planes
went up, will land, and the military operation we start should be limited to a
specific number of minutes. But they still
don’t have a plane of action. It’s decided to try to pressure Idi Amin to solve the crisis one more time. An old Israeli friend of the
Ugandan President calls him. – So he called him early morning. He said, “You remember you
told me once that your mother “told you to help the people of Jerusalem? “And that’s your chance. “Those people that are being kept “in your terminal are your guests, “but if you will not
take good care of them, “you might pay a price for it.” The calls
convince Israeli leaders that their only remaining option is a daring military raid. But negotiating may allow them to buy more time to solve their big problem. The planners are hampered
by a lack of intelligence. We got Super
8 films and photographs. They gave us information
about the distances. We were watching tv. Amin was coming in every
evening to see them. So, intelligence was coming in slowly, but this wasn’t operational intelligence. On Wednesday,
less than 24 hours before the deadline they’ve set
for executions expires, the hijackers release
the non-Israeli hostages and allow them to fly back to Paris. It’s their first mistake. – We sent a team to
Paris to interview them. Find out as much as we can, details, of what is taking place at the terminal. This is a
critical breakthrough. The released passengers provide them with information about the
number of terrorists, the Ugandan troops helping them, and the exact location of the hostages. With the new intelligence, the odds that the raid may work improve. We were sure that coming to Entebbe from out of the blue, and Entebbe is so far away from Israel, and with our force we can finish it in less than two minutes. – They’re trying to gain that upper hand, again attack the enemy on your terms, and trying to achieve
that element of surprise, and that was probably the greatest thing they had going for them. Then another piece
of encouraging news arrives. Only hours before the executions are due to begin in Entebbe, the hijackers agree to
extend the deadline. – We needed time to keep quiet and to keep their attention
around the negotiations. If the slightest rumor
or indication will leak that we have a military
intention, we lost it. They are
still missing a critical piece of intelligence: a detailed image of the terminal. – We asked somebody from, that was at that time in
Kenya, not an Israeli, to try to fly above the
airport by small plane, and try to take pictures. Where exactly the Air
France plane is parked, and as much information
he could get from that. And he was able to do that, and transfer those photos to us. So all together we had quite a clear idea where the hostages are being kept, what is the logistics of the airport, where can the plane land, what is exactly the commercial
runway of the airport. It was also a military
section of the airport. The top-secret
Israeli Counter-Terrorism Team, simply known as the Unit,
have been put on high alert since the crisis began. It’s time to mobilize the troops. It’s a very special unit. It’s the cream of the crop. It was developed over
the years to carry out intelligence and
counterterrorism operations, and others we call the
long arm of the IDF. The Unit
has built its mystique by carrying out the most daring missions, operating behind enemy lines and rescuing hostages. – It has a significant reputation, because it took part in
many special operations. Like other
black-ops units around the world, the Unit’s operators have to go through a grueling selection camp to join. The few who pass it are
invited to the team. – The first and foremost attribute or feature is determination. The operators
need a combination of skills: physical ability, intelligence,
good technical skills, and social skills because it’s teamwork. Only a few
of the Unit’s operations have ever been made public. Among them: rescuing
hostages from terrorists who hijacked a Sabena
airline flight in 1972. When the plane arrived in Tel Aviv, the troops pretended to be technicians coming to fix the plane. They then stormed it and
rescued all the passengers. In Operation Spring of
Youth in Lebanon 1973, the Unit’s troops avenged the
killing of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. We came from the sea. Came in with the Navy Seals. We were dressed as tourists. Ehud Barak was my partner. He was dressed as a woman. We got to the heart of Beirut and took out three terrorist
leaders in retaliation. – I thought, “Those boys,
if there is somebody “in the world that can
do it, they will do it. “And they are ready to pay with their life “without the slightest hesitation.” The Unit is
the best chance Israel has, but they only have hours
to come up with a plan. If they fail, the terrorists
will deliver on their threat and start executing passengers. In the Army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, one plan that initially
seemed like an outlandish idea is starting to take shape. Sending a strike force 2,000 miles away. Then storming the terminal
under the cover of darkness. The plan
was to send four planes. The first lands seven
minutes ahead of the others. Joshua Shani
will be the lead pilot. He will fly the assault team, 29 Matkal soldiers led by Yoni Netanyahu. with him is Muki Bezer, who is part of the group
that planned the operation. To add to the element of surprise, the Special Forces team assembles a convoy of official-looking vehicles. – CBS showed, a couple of times, Idi Amin coming with a Mercedes, with two Land Rover Jeeps, to visit the terminal,
to visit the hostages. We sort of said, “Why
wouldn’t we do the same?” One Mercedes
and two Land Rovers, we will all be dressed up as Ugandans. Basically, staging the arrival of Idi Amin or another dignitary as
they did every night. The plan is to get there and
completely surprise them, storm the terminal,
take out the terrorists, and release the hostages. The rest of the Force, another 200 top infantrymen and paratroopers
handpicked for the mission will arrive in the other
three Hercules planes. – The other three will wait seven minutes in holding pattern just south of them around the border of Kenya and Uganda. Just to make sure that we will keep the maximum surprise, minimum noise. They will land
in seven-minute intervals. Their job: to secure the airport, fight back any retaliation, and provide backup for the rescue team. The Unit’s senior operators are assembled. Amir Ofer is at home, just days before finishing his mandatory service with the Unit. – It was a very frightening
phone call, I must admit. I was told, “Come
immediately to your base.” All of us were very worried. It was a very dangerous operation. Practice begins. They need to be ready for
every potential scenario. Our
planning seemed perfect. With a high probability
that throughout the journey, the landing, and the raid on the terminal, we will be able to maintain
the surprise element. Israel’s leaders
and top military commanders are invited to observe a dress rehearsal on an improvised model of the terminal. – When you decide an operation, you have to take a risk. The question is, “Is
it a reasonable risk?” I wouldn’t do it to commit suicide. And when I saw the boys, I saw their preparation, my self-assurance go up. At the end of the rehearsal, the Chief of Staff wants to know what are their chances of succeeding? He collected all the commanders together after the rehearsal. He asked each of us to say if we believe in the plan or not. All of us said that, 70% to 80%, it would fail, but we decided to go. – When you have the type
of well-trained personnel and some of their ground
forces are exceptionally well-trained, you do what
you have to do in order to accomplish the mission. The hijackers’ new deadline is approaching fast. Peres, the Minister of Defense, needs to convince Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin to green light the risky operation. – He struggled with that decision for a day and a night. He told me that he hardly slept. – I wanted to carry out the mission. I wanted to do it. I saw that it is possible. I wanted to be a part of it. And I was very anxious to get airborne, and get out and do it. And we were sitting there
waiting for an approval. Five days
into the crisis, on Friday, encouraged by the latest developments, Rabin, who is a former
General, is persuaded. – He accompanied me to the
elevators, and said to me, “Amos, if the military operation will fail “and the chances are 50/50, “I will resign the following day.” Prime Minister Rabin wants the entire government to sign off on what has been, until
now, a secret plan. As time is running out, 200 of Israel’s top fighters
are taking off to Africa ready to carry out the daring
rescue raid now codenamed “Operation Thunderbolt”. The final go or no-go will be given while they are in the air. – We took off to the mission without the final approval of the government. The assault
teams had less than 24 hours to prepare before changing
to Ugandan uniforms, their operational disguise, as they attempt to pass themselves off as an official escort
to Idi Amin’s motorcade. – I was totally sure that no one will approve the operation. It will be canceled within a few hours. It was too risky, too far. It was a crazy operation. The troops are getting a quick last-minute briefing. – Yoni Netanyahu, which was our commander, explained that we have a very short time to prepare the operation. Therefore, we will not discuss any activities with other Forces. He just told each one of us what’s the specific role of each squad. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, an emergency cabinet meeting is called. Unless all ministers approve the plan, the troops will be called back. The Hercules planes have been in the air for nearly two hours
when a message arrives. Operation Thunderbolt is a go. – Given that the consequence of both failure and success for
the State of Israel, I think, it was a very, very tough call, but it was one they had to make. In Entebbe, for the hostages the
situation seems hopeless. – We couldn’t even for
1% think that Israeli are coming to save us there. No way. We didn’t know what’s going on in Israel. Nobody was talking to us. The deadline for executions to begin approaches. – Every few hours they say that they are going to execute us, each and every one of us. I remember that my thought was, “I would like to be one of the first,” because I couldn’t think of
seeing the others being killed. – It was despairing, not giving any hope. The four
Hercules planes head north, then turn south, flying over the Red Sea, and over to Africa. In the cockpit, lead pilot Joshua Shani, feels the burden of responsibility. – The fear was for failure,
real fear, big fear. 29-years-old it’s all on my shoulder, and if I screw it up, this
is a national disaster. The journey
is some 2,200 miles long, and it involves crossing hostile airspace. If detected, they could be shot down. – We kept radio silence, because we didn’t want anybody from the enemy countries next to us to listen. To avoid getting detected, they fly as low as only
100 feet above sea. Making the journey a rough one. Even so, some of the troops
use the time to prepare. – I loaded my AK-47, and I opened the safety pin. And my friend who was sitting beside me, shouted at me, “You are not supposed to “open your safety pin to load
the weapon within a plane!” I told him, “Shut up. This is a real war.” – Others, like Matan Vilnai, the operation’s Deputy Commander, and Yoni Netanyahu, the Unit’s Commander, managed to catch a few minutes of sleep. Both of
us occupied this bay with full gear and weapons. We tried to sleep. It’s a long flight. – We found very difficult to understand how a guy that’s going to storm, and his chances to get killed are 50%, can sleep like a baby, and he did sleep like a baby. Just as they
get to the border of Kenya and Uganda the pilots break
formation and separate. Shani, carrying the attack force, continues directly towards Entebbe, while the others reach the
airport from another direction. The aim is to time their arrival to maximize the potential surprise. – Very dangerous, you know,
flying into an airfield that enemy forces are
controlling with aircraft that are essentially unarmed. You know, they didn’t have cover. Didn’t have gunships covering them to be able to come in, land. – When we had to pick
out the time of landing, we knew it should be the
middle of the night sometime. As the plane
approaches Entebbe Airport, the control tower, anticipating another arriving flight, asks the plane to identify itself. Shani’s answer could seal
the fate of the mission. In broken English, they start asking questions, and our captain he gave the right answer. Shani manages to pass as another incoming flight
without raising suspicion, and his plane lands at
11:01 p.m. Uganda time, right on schedule. The rest of the Force, 200 troops, should arrive within the next 15 minutes. – When I was at approximately 1500, 1,000 feet over the lake, I saw the lights of the runway very clear. And all of a sudden, I was relieved. The flight was behind me. I was in a formation. I was exactly on time. The runway’s in front of me. Piece of cake. And then, when I was at 300 feet, approximately 300 feet, all of a sudden the lights went off. Complete darkness. My first officer unbuckled
his harness, stood up, peered through he windows looking for any clue where is the runway. But until then, the Matkal operators are on their own. – The intelligence that we got were that there are between 200 and 1,000 soldiers in
this specific air base. And we were supposed to be
alone for about 7 to 10 minutes. When you think that you’re
29 against, let’s say, 1,000 and about 8-15 terrorists,
its a crazy operation. Everything
goes according to the plan. – I taxi all the way
almost to the old terminal we determined where
the hostages were held. While the
plane is still taxiing, the assault force gets into
the official-looking vehicles to pose as Amin’s motorcade. The next moments are critical. They have to get right up to the terminal without being detected. We jumped
out with the Mercedes. The air was fresh right after the rain. We’re driving slowly, adjusting our speed to our surroundings. In the Mercedes
are Bezer and Netanyahu, the commanders of the assault. Behind, the rest of the
Force in Land Rovers, pretending to be an official escort. – I remember these two feelings. One is a feeling of terrible loneliness, and the second is that I saw 29 shadows, shadows of people, of soldiers, holding their weapons in the darkness, and I thought to myself, “How many of these will
stay alive in five minutes?” The success
of the entire operation depends on maintaining the surprise and on no one daring to
stop the President’s convoy. We look straight ahead, and we see two Ugandan
soldiers standing there, a little bored. The troops
have only seconds to react. The guy yells, “Advance.” I tell Yoni, “Forget it. It’s routine.” But he hesitates for a second, and then says, “Take them out.” – There was a burst of non-silenced fire. And at this moment it was obvious that the element of surprise, gone. I thought this
is when the slaughter begins. Their cover is blown, and they’re exposed and outnumbered. And still more than 200
meters away from their target. The hijackers could start
executing hostages immediately. Hundreds of lives are on the line. We jumped
off and started running. And as we are running, a Ugandan soldier opens
fire right above us, and I shoot a round at him, hitting him in the chest, and he drops. Any Ugandan soldier we see is shot. There was massive shooting. The Ugandan
soldiers are confused. – The Ugandans, in
general, always view Israel and Israelis as a special people on Earth, and any confrontation with them, is as if you’re confronting
special children of God. So in that view, our soldiers were saying, “The children of God has come.” So anything to do with God, to Ugandans that was beyond human control. Inside the terminal, the hostages are terrified. They don’t know who is shooting or why. – I thought, “The terrorists will shoot. “The Ugandan soldiers will shoot, “and we will be dead in a few minutes.” – There was shooting, terrible shooting all around, Noises, shouting, lights everything, we were sure that that’s the end. It comes now. Everything now depends on how quickly the assault force
can get to the hostages. – It was critical to
enter as fast as possible. Amir Ofer is the
first inside the terminal. – I couldn’t see my Commander, and I was sure that he already ran, and he disappeared in the darkness. And I must run as fast as I can in order to catch up with
him and to cover his back. He is on
his own with no cover. – Someone was shooting in the terminal about five meters inside it, and he was holding an AK-47. And he was shooting at me directly. You know, I could see his hands like this, because he was shooting
a huge burst of fire. His Special Forces
training kicks into action. – And the bullets were
one here and one there, and I simply didn’t care. I just shot him accurately,
three or four bullets, and, you know, tat,
tat, tat, and that’s it. The rest
of the team catch up. As they move through the terminal, they see two men dressed as civilians. They don’t realize they are terrorists until one soldier notices a spark. – He shouted, “They have a grenade,” and they shoot them, and… The assault
team is now together. They continue to sweep the terminal. – There were two other terrorists. They turned their rifle
to shoot me in the back. – Move! Within five seconds, I was supposed to die twice. Next the troops advance into the passengers’ hall. – We were scanning the whole room with our eyes looking
for more terrorists. The hostages have no idea who these soldiers are. – It was very frightening moments. It looks like hours. And we didn’t understand what is going on. – In my left hand, I put the loudspeaker. My right hand was still on the trigger. And I said, “Everybody lie down.” They were totally sure that they are now going to be executed. In the confusion, one hostage, Jean-Jacques Maimoni, excited to be rescued, leaps to his feet. – He jumped against my explicit
instruction to lie down, and he was mistakenly
considered to be a terrorist who is jumping in order
to run and activate a bomb or whatever, and he was shot. – I shouted to him not to move, but he didn’t hear me. There was already too much
noise from the shooting. Then I wanted to pull him with his foot, but there was too many bullets around. He jumped to say,
“Wonderful for saving me.” Maimoni is
one of three hostages killed in the crossfire. The hostages start to
realize what is happening. – They started to raise
a little bit their heads, and just, you know, to
look from the bottom from the floor, to look up. And, suddenly, they
identified or they understood that they’re not going to be killed. That someone came to rescue them, and it’s an amazing moment. – It’s like if there was an
angel coming out of the sky. It was such a surprise. By now, the
rest of the Israeli force has landed and is battling
the Ugandan Army outside. The Hercules pilots are
waiting in the dark. – There was shooting all
over the place, tracers, and I couldn’t tell if they
are aiming to us or not. One bullet in the right place
the airplane’s grounded. You can’t take off. Inside the terminal, the assault force needs to
report to the Unit’s Commander, that the team has eliminated
the hijackers’ threat. I call Yoni on the radio, and I say, “Mission completed. “Yoni,” I say, “Completed, “just like in the rehearsal!” Nothing. The Unit’s Communication’s
Officer picks up. He’s yelling, “Yoni is
hurt! Yoni is hurt!” Yoni Netanyahu,
Matkal’s commander, has been critically injured. There’s no time to digest the news. They’re still not out of danger. – The soldiers told us to go out to follow the lights
outside to the Hercules, and we started to run. They only have minutes before the Ugandan Army regroups. – Amin’s reaction was furious. He regretted that he had
been duped by a common belief that they were negotiating with the view to peaceful exchanges. Yet, the Israelis had been
having double planning. That kind of thing, to my view, annoyed him even more. The hostages and the troops are still at least eight hours away from home in a hostile country. – My issue was, at that time, to make sure that we can
get the hell out of there. The evacuation must begin. – We had to count the
soldiers a million times, just to make sure we are
not leaving anyone behind. It was so critical. And when we filled too, everybody that was ready took off. But not
everyone is on the plane. Ilan Hartuv’s elderly mother was taken to a Ugandan hospital the night before. – I said I had a mother was in hospital 30 miles away, of course,
30 kilometers away. Of course, I knew they couldn’t get there. There was no time for
them to go and save her. But I told them to try to to speak with whoever they can, and the people in the plane told me that, “Africans usually are very
respectful to old women.” The Israeli
force needs to make sure they can’t be pursued by the Ugandan Army. A demolition team moves in to destroy the entire fleet
of MiG fighter planes. On the way home, the troops learn that
the Unit’s Commander, Yoni Netanyahu, has died. I went out to the back of one of the aircraft, and I saw Yoni lying there. He was covered with an aluminum blanket. And I looked at it, and I think about Yoni. In military operations, the price is always human life. 2,000 miles away, the government in Jerusalem is waiting for an update. – I was at my office. It was, I think, 12:00 o’clock at night. That was the first time
that the silence was broken. And we got the code. It says that one of our commanders fall. Somehow my heart told me it’s Yoni, whom I loved very much. While the Hercules
planes are still in the air, news of the secret has leaked out. – We turn on the long-range radio, and I put it on the loudspeaker, so the Special Forces will hear. It started with the
French television station. That said, “Israeli commando
just did this operation.” After another
seven hours journey and a week after the hijacking, the four planes carrying
the troops, the hostages, and the dead are finally
back home in Israel. – Everybody, all of our friends, all of them were there. – It was unbelievable. I thought that the whole country is waiting for us in the airport. Lots and lots and lots of people. The pilots can finally relax. – When you have this kind of
responsibility, you function. Adrenaline is so high you just function, and you don’t know how. I totally collapsed when I got home. But Matkal, the secret black-ops unit, cannot take part in the celebrations. For many years to come, its missions and the operators who carried them out will remain in the shadows. – We were isolated and taken aside because it was top secret at the time. I think that there was one moment later on that I understood that we did something, I would say, extraordinary. Amin took
his revenge on Dora Bloch, the elderly hostage who was
taken earlier to the hospital. – After the operation ended,
kind of a retaliation, Idi Amin gave an order to the doctors at the hospital to kill her. And that’s what took place. – We waited three years until we had the remains. A body was found there, and she was brought to Israel, to be buried in Israel. – They know this is a secret mission. They felt that only they can do it, only they have to do it, only they have to take the risk. – It was not God that worked overtime. It was just we did a good job
like we were expected to do. The daring raid and the courage of the
troops who carried it out would be studied by forces
all around the world and serve as a model for what special-ops teams could achieve. The Israeli’s overwhelming
retaliation to the hijackers is an early international
victory in the war on terrorism. He’s the most wanted terrorist
in the world. After almost a decade, U.S. intelligence
has finally tracked Osama bin Laden down to a compound in Pakistan. SEAL Team Six,
a US elite special forces unit, is tasked with a now historic capture
or kill mission. They had been waiting
for this call for years. This is the inside account of one of the most famous
black ops missions of all times. It gets more excitement in the air, and everybody starts
getting a lot more serious. For the heros, we’re going now. We’re going in and going in at night. How SEAL Team Six
planned this high-risk raid, and how it almost failed. Now on Black Ops, taking down bin Laden. Operation Neptune Spear. Two Black Hawk helicopters
carrying a team of US Navy SEALs are approaching
a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They believe Osama bin Laden
is hiding there, but then, disaster. It’s rare,
and off it goes like it’s planned. There’s always something
that comes up without expecting it. One of the helicopters
hits a sudden draught, causing it to hit the compound wall
and crash land. The town’s awake, and so they’re thinking, any minute now, we can be run down
with many enemy forces coming at us. The SEALs have lost
the element of surprise. Every second is now critical. The Special Forces team must quickly adapt
and respond to the changed situation. What you’re expected to do
is make a determination whether the occupants are a threat
or not a threat. They blow their way into the compound. You have to react in an instant. If they’re a threat, then you engage. This elite unit
has trained for every scenario. This is the last chapter in the hunt
to bring bin Laden to justice, a hunt that began
more than a decade earlier. On 9/11, 2001, the US endures the worst attacks
on its soil in modern history. Almost 3,000 people are dead. President Bush
vows to hunt down Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader
and the mastermind of the attacks, and bring him to justice. There’s an old poster out west,
as I recall, that said wanted dead or Alive. In December 2001, US forces chased bin Laden
to the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, but he managed to slip away. We were always on the hunt. We were using every form
of intelligence gathering, whether it was human intelligence,
or signals intelligence. For the next ten years,
bin Laden managed to elude US forces. We still haven’t killed
or captured Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cadre. Do you happen to know where he is? He may be dead. He may be seriously wounded. He may be in Afghanistan. He may be somewhere else. Bin Laden learns very early on that he can’t trust
anything electronic. He almost dies in Tora Bora, in the mountains of Afghanistan
from using cell phones. Therefore, one of the first things he does is get rid of anything electronic
that could be traced back to him. Minimizing the use of communication
technology allows Al Qaeda’s leader and his close deputies
to operate under the radar. We saw his name crop up so little
because of very little communication, I think very few people
in the organization knew where he was. Bin Laden seems to have disappeared
off the face of the earth. The only clues come from videotapes
he releases taunting the US. You were looking at things
as simple as the foliage and the light and the terrain to try and figure out
where it may have been taped. We looked at his health. Did he use particular words? Was it possible that what looked
like a message to followers might have had some embedded message? Bin Laden has found a way
to still control the organization. He becomes reliant on a series
of individuals, couriers in particular, who bring him information,
be it the latest battle reports. They then, in turn, take his directives
back out to his lieutenants in this way. Over the decade,
the US does make some progress. Senior Al-Qaeda figures
are captured and interrogated. The importance of getting
the big players in the organization, the archetypal plotters
in the al Qaeda organization, was partly trying to learn
locational information. Where is the man? The first question you might ask him
might be things like, where’s bin Laden? Despite these successes,
public enemy number one remains at large. By the time President Obama
took office in 2009, most people believed
he’d never been caught. There are fewer, of course,
fewer and fewer sightings of him. Bin Laden is making fewer videos,
although still some. When he does make a video,
there’s a spike in interest, of course, within the government. At the CIA, some analysts
are still looking for new clues. The bits and pieces
are things like talking to detainees. How does the network operate? Watching them move. Case officers suggest studying
the structure of al-Qaeda’s network. Who does bin Laden used to pass messages
allowing him to remain undetected? The analysts believe
the answer to this question will lead them back to bin Laden. Somebody says something here,
somebody says something there. Over the course of years,
you accumulate those grains, and slowly, a picture comes into focus. After years of frustration, the analysts believe
they’ve got something. When we started looking
at terrorist organizations, and if you look at them historically,
they’re not Western hierarchies. When you sit at the threat table, you’re talking about a facilitator here,
a fundraiser there. The organization itself,
as you go up to the top, don’t talk to each other,
it’s very diffuse. It’s more like fabric than a hierarchy. They knew there was probably
a courier out there, and it was from some
of these initial interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons that they learned
of one courier in particular. Al-Qaeda’s detainees reveal the courier bin Laden trusts
is someone who’s known as al-Kuwaiti, the man from Kuwait. Digging deeper,
they find his real name, Saeed Ahmed. If they find him,
they may be able to find his boss. Through intercepts of his cell phones, as he traveled throughout the Gulf
and Pakistan, they figured out that he seemed to still be in touch
with the highest ranks of Al-Qaeda, and they started
tracking him on the ground in Pakistan. As they track him, CIA operatives notice
a highly suspicious pattern of al-Kuwaiti’s behavior. They found this very strange thing
he would do was to turn off his cell phone and then drop off the map for a while. Things that made the Americans think,
this is the kind of extraordinary measure that the most hunted terrorist
in the world might take. Let’s follow this guy. The breakthrough comes when the agents
managed to follow the courier’s car. To their amazement, it is headed towards
a residential compound in the outskirts of Abbottabad. A Pakistani army town
about an hour and a half drive from the capital, Islamabad. It’s the home of Pakistanis West point,
one of its top military academies. It’s a garrison town. The CIA starts watching the compound. Surveillance reveals that al-Kuwaiti,
the courier, lives there with his brother
and their families, but they are not alone. Hidden behind unusually high walls, there are other residents,
perhaps even another family, living on the top floor
of one of the buildings. Once they had a place to focus on,
you can bring the full technological weight
to this compound. Therefore, there was no expense spared. Satellites were shifted. You’re basically using
every technological mean, every covert mean on the ground. Initial analysis
of the surveillance reports is encouraging. They still don’t know
who’s in the compound in Abbottabad, but they suspected somebody quite senior, either in Al-Qaeda or one of the other
terrorist organizations. Finding out who that mysterious
senior person is will not be easy. Abbottabad was teeming
with military officials, likely intelligence officials, and security officials
to protect the Pakistani military. Therefore, it was a very difficult
operating environment. It’s so difficult that at first, the CIA is focusing
the effort on surveillance from space. You had satellites
peering down night and day, trying to get an image
of whoever was working in there. You had electronic eavesdropping equipment
that was trying to pick up any signals, be they emails, text messages,
or cell phone conversations. You had this new stealthy aircraft that was flying high over Pakistan
trying to get a glimpse of, again, his hidden side. After weeks of satellite imagery,
the efforts pay off. US intelligence teams managed to identify
a figure who occasionally takes walks around the courtyard, but appears to never leave the compound. The analysts are convinced
they have found an HVT, a high-value target. They call him the pacer. The pacer is very tall. Bin Laden is about six foot four. It’s a tantalizing clue, but any attempt to get closer
and confirm it is indeed bin Laden
is fraught with risk. The challenge became we think
we have someone important here, but is it someone high enough on the ranks to risk a manned mission into the country
that could completely upset the relationship
with Pakistan for years to come? To try and confirm
they have the right man, the CIA activates agents on the ground. They had a safe house overlooking the compound
where they had Pakistani agents, people spying for the CIA, trying to establish
what they call a pattern of life. Who goes in, who goes out,
and how many people live there? Who’s interacting with the compound? There were women and children
that would leave, come and go from the compound. They would go shopping. The children, however,
seemed to be mostly, stayed inside, but they never saw the individual. The tall individual,
the pacer, as they called him, they never saw
him leave the compound itself. That raised even more suspicions. The agents soon report on the unusual behavior patterns
of the residents. The house itself had no real connections
to the outside world. There was a satellite dish,
but there were no phone lines. There were no hard wires beyond
some electricity wires going in and out. It’s as if these people
wanted to live off the grid. My first reaction when they described
the compound in Abbottabad was that we had something
that was very unusual. Neighbors say the compound’s residents
keep to themselves. Occasionally, they have visitors. Strangely, they burn their trash. In Washington,
the analysts are still trying to determine who is the high value target
in the compound, but it’s decided
there is enough to brief the president. President Obama’s top counterterrorism
and intelligence officials go to him and say, look,
we think we may have the location where bin Laden is right now. We can’t be certain, but given all the other clues
that we have, Obama is cautiously optimistic. This is by far the most solid lead they’ve had on the location
of bin Laden in years. Once the intelligence reached a point where there was at least
a higher confidence level about the possibility,
the next question we asked was, what should we do operationally? A group
of the president’s closest advisers is called in to discuss the new lead. There are many questions on his mind. Are there military options? What are the diplomatic options? What are the political options
here that I’m dealing with? Therefore, he and his advisers
begin talking about those options, tasking the military
and the CIA to come up with options for how to deal with this,
assuming bin Laden is there. Officially, the Situation Room meetings
don’t exist. The top secret is shared only
with a handful of people in the White House. Whenever they had these meetings
at the White House, they weren’t even put
on the daily schedules that the top
national security officials get, just a blank space in their calendars. There’s a danger that if bin Laden
is among the compound’s residents, he may slip away before a plan is hatched. There may be escape routes or tunnels
leading out of the compound. They have to act fast. CIA Director Leon Panetta
wants to move things to the next stage. He calls him the commander
of U.S. Special Forces, Vice Admiral William McRaven. Bill McRaven is a bit of a legend
in the community for his booming voice
and a lot of charisma, and his guys love him. He has always been a hard-charging, good, clear thinker
who has always understood that modern warfare changes
and special operations must be flexible. McRaven oversees JSOC,
the Joint Special Operations Command. He wrote the book on black ops. He needs to come up with a plan. The machinery of intelligence and special operations
has grown in the past decade plus. The world of counterterrorism operations, in fact, the world of joint operations
generally, whether it’s pirates or counterterrorism or cartels,
is incredibly evolved. I think it’s night and day
from what we would have had back on 9/11. In the next weeks,
his team will have to figure out if there is enough intelligence
to go after the target. If so, what kind of an operation
is feasible and which is the best unit
to carry it out? McRaven is looking at what operatives
on the ground found through surveillance, satellite imagery, and the analysis
of communication intercepts. After reviewing the intelligence, McRaven is ready to present three options
to the president and his team. The first option involves
a massive bombing campaign by a B-2 bomber. The advantage of this kind of campaign,
it would kill anybody in the compound. The downside was you’d never be sure
bin Laden was ever there. Another option
is a more surgical drone strike. They have proved effective
against Al-Qaeda before. A couple of the senior advisers
to the president were all for dropping a small munition,
a missile onto the compound. However, others argued that there were a lot of civilians
in the compound, women, and children,
that would produce many casualties. A drone strike would still not guarantee knowing if they had actually
killed bin Laden or not. Leaving just one other option. To ensure that you get the man
that you’re going after, you send in a commando team. This has the advantage, of course,
that you can have eyes on your target. You can be guaranteed
that he’s killed or captured. This is a job made for an elite unit
like the Navy SEALs. The public probably isn’t aware of how much the CIA and the Navy SEALs
have worked together on missions across the world, stopping Al-Qaida,
capturing Al-Qaida suspects, and sometimes killing them. They perfected this method
of hunting a target, grabbing them,
and then exploiting the scene, gathering up the evidence,
and taking it away. When it came time to get into the OP
for bin Laden, they were more than ready. They have more combat experience
now than any unit in the world, and they’ve been fighting
more than we’ve ever fought as a country. They’ve been doing a dozen raids a night
next door in Afghanistan, and they’ve been doing it for years. Therefore, they had the skills, they were close by, and they’d been hunting bin Laden
for a decade. Planning an operation
based on limited intelligence is risky. Even after months of concentrated efforts, there’s no certainty
that bin Laden is indeed in the compound. Rushing to action could needlessly cost
the lives of dozens of US troops. How likely
were they to fight their way out? What was the likelihood
of technical failure? All of those things you’ve got to plan
for assess the risk against the potential gain. President Obama is facing
the most momentous decision of his career. He needs to choose
the best course of action. Bomb the compound from the air. Send in a black ops unit, or maybe wait
until he is sure bin Laden is there. The priority was to ensure
that you either kill or capture Osama bin Laden,
and the only way you could do that was to send in
a commando team to do that job. As the president considers his options, one US special ops team
is ordered to start preparing. Hand-picked for the job,
they are the best of the best. The Navy’s top secret counter-terrorism
force, SEAL Team 6. Historically, people didn’t talk
about SEAL Team 6. The missions, the tactics, what they do, and how they do it,
it’s all close-held secret. Inside the Navy,
the unit is only known as DEVGRU, short for Naval
Special Warfare Development Group. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. There are 300 operators at SEAL Team Six. There’s a team of a couple thousand people
supporting them. Everyone from intelligence to dog handlers
to the boat and helicopter folks who get them into the mission. You can’t train all the other teams
to quickly deploy to the jungle, quickly deploy to the desert
or the Arctic or an urban. You have one team made up of the elite
who can play anywhere in the world. That team
is our nation’s 911 worldwide call. Only SEAL operators
with years of experience are considered for a job with the team. You have to be screened
to become a part of SEAL Team Six, which has additional years of training
in the screening requirements that are involved. McRaven knows he can rely on Team Six. He was once a commander of the unit
and helped shape it as one of the best counterterrorism
forces in the world. I think the thing
that separates SEAL Team Six from all others is SEALs just don’t quit. They’re trained never, ever quit. Over the last decade, the US Special Forces have had
a great deal of operational experience. Thousands of operations
have been conducted. Many of them are not on the front page, but almost all have had
a significant influence on the direction of the war on terrorism. One of the few publicly known missions
was the rescue of the captain of the Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates, who hijacked his boat
near the Horn of Africa in 2009. The hostages were rescued. The snipers,
did they hit on the Somali pirates? For everyone that you hear about, there are 100 successes
you don’t hear about. In Iraq and Afghanistan, nightly raids
have been part of the SEAL’s mission. They are ready for action. The SEALs got the go-ahead
to start planning for this raid, and a small team
worked on a model of the compound, figured out how they would go in, what was the best way
to get everyone subdued, killed, and captured. They were going to train and train and train and be ready
if the president said, get on that plane and get to Pakistan. Not one of them breathed
a word to their families or to their other SEAL teammates,
SEAL Team Six. There’s one real concern
about keeping the mission secret. Should the US involve
the Pakistani government? There are worries about trust. Over time, we saw problems
working with Pakistani intelligence, information going out the back door,
for example, when we were cooperating with them. Too often, when they got a tip, it turned out that an hour before a raid,
for instance, mysteriously,
the target of that raid would disappear. He would have been tipped off. The president determines that bringing
the Pakistanis in on the plan could mean losing the one chance
in almost a decade to get Osama bin Laden. However,
keeping the Pakistanis in the dark makes this raid even more risky. This is crossing a border, crossing a large territory of Pakistan,
a sovereign country, without the knowledge
of local security services, with the prospect
that local police might get onto you and start shooting you in a boat aboard. The risk factors here were incredible. The consequences of a potential disaster
weigh heavy on the president and his aides. In the back of everyone’s mind is the failed Desert One operation
to rescue hostages from Iran in 1980. Eight American servicemen were killed when their helicopters
collided on the way to the mission. It was a crushing blow
for the Carter presidency. Some of those in the room
with Obama are still haunted by what came
to be known as Black Hawk Down, a special forces operation
codenamed Gothic Serpent into Somalia in 1993. Militants shot down two US helicopters. At the end of the battle, 18 American soldiers were dead,
their bodies mutilated and dragged
through the streets of Mogadishu. These are his top advisers. People like Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Defense Secretary Bob Gates, and CIA Director Leon Panetta are all giving
their assessments to the president. Some are more skeptical
about this than others. Joe Biden, for instance,
is a little more skeptical. Gates is skeptical
about sending in ground troops. He’s the one individual from this group
who lived through the Desert One. Other intelligence officials, however,
including Panetta, were much more bullish. Secretary of State Clinton was convinced
that this was the right call to make, even though she lined up all of her doubts
before saying we could be very wrong and we could end up
with a bad relationship with Pakistan for decades to come,
but this is the right call to go in. It’s a tough call. Whenever you’re advising the president
about a particular operation, it’s how certain
do you feel that your target is there and that you will have a good opportunity
to successfully execute that mission, versus what are the likely consequences
or potential points of failure? To stack the odds in his favor,
Obama orders additional backup. The president said I want to be able
to protect these guys and get them out. Within the White House itself,
the top national security aides, the president, and others were devising
something they call the playbook. It was a three-ring binder
about two inches thick, and it had all the various contingencies
of what could go right, what could go wrong,
and things in the middle. What would happen, for instance,
if this Navy SEAL team, when it got in on the ground, was engaged
by Pakistani soldiers or police? What would you do then? The president wants another SEAL team
ready nearby as a quick reaction force. One thing that he wanted to see was the option
to fight their way out if they had to. They didn’t want to be pinned down,
so the military devised some backup plans that had additional transport helicopters
ready in case there might be a problem. Even now, the president
still hasn’t decided whether to greenlight the operation. However, members of SEAL Team Six
are sent to prepare in North Carolina and the Nevada desert. An exact replica of the compound is built especially for them to train
for every potential scenario. You could have land mines,
or the whole building could be a trap, and the moment you get a compound,
4,000 pounds of explosives get detonated. That’s enough to kill the entire force. They know that they have a bunch
of contingencies that they have to prepare for, and the plans
don’t always go according to plan. We have a saying,
plan you dive and dive your plan. From the intelligence gathered,
the SEALs learn that behind the high walls securing the compound
are at least two buildings. The mysterious residence
and the courier’s brother seem to be in the main one. The smaller building
has al-Kuwaiti and his family. To get to them, the SEALs
would have to split into two groups. One will land in the courtyard
and secure the perimeter, and the other will fast rope to the roof,
taking the residents by surprise. Intelligence was critical. Our satellite imagery
and our ground intelligence to the degree we could, we had an understanding of at least
the battlefield exterior of the compound. As the SEALs prepare,
the president calls in more experts. He wants fresh eyes on the intelligence,
what the pros call a red team exercise. Senior analysts are given everything
that’s been gathered on the case. Their job is to provide
an objective assessment of the intelligence. After reviewing the material, the red team concludes
the chances bin Laden is in the compound are only 50-50. To get the 50-50 in itself,
I thought was significant. That might seem like low odds for Vegas. For me, as an intelligence professional,
that’s pretty good odds. In the last secret White House meeting, the room is still divided
on the best plan of action. As they went around the table, each one of the participants prefaced
his or her remarks by saying, Mr. President, we know this is probably the most
difficult decision you’re going to make. It got to be a joke as they went around because they each echoed each other
as if to shield them from the ultimate responsibility
of having to make this decision, knowing, of course, the commander-in-chief
would be the one who decides whether to go or not. I think most of us
would have said the risk here is huge, and the best we could do is to say, boss, I’m going
to have to ask you to take a huge risk. That said, I think I would have said
I’m not sure it’s going to get any better and now it’s on your back. It’s the ultimate decision
for the commander-in-chief. Is he willing to risk
the lives of American troops based on so much uncertainty? President Obama
says he needs more time to think, but delay carries its own risk. What happens if you wait
so long to have it be perfect that you lose the opportunity? The next morning,
the president calls in his top advisers. He has made up his mind. Operation Neptune Spear is a go. It was the best information
they were going to have. This was bin Laden,
and this was the opportunity to strike, the opportunity
they’d been looking for for years, and the risks were worth it. The raid is planned for the next day, Saturday, April 30th,
with Sunday, May 1st, as an alternative if the weather is bad. As the SEALs prepare for the operation, the president continues
with his planned commitments. The White House Correspondents Dinner
is scheduled for Saturday night. The president always attends it. This is an annual event here in Washington where the president
shows up in a black tie. He’s expected to give a funny speech. All right, everybody, please have a seat. To make sure the operation
remains a secret, everyone has to act
as if it’s business as usual. The White House advisers really debated. Do we pretend that the president is sick? Do we want him making jokes
from the podium, which is the point
of that particular dinner? Just as the Raiders
are hitting the compound, what if the helicopters go down? What if you have another
Black Hawk Down situation where you lose a whole team? At the last minute, forecast for cloudy weather delays
the mission by 24 hours. Eleven p.m. in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. It’s a moonless night. Two Black Hawk helicopters
take off from a US air base. Each is carrying 12 members
of SEAL Team Six. The operation to get Osama bin Laden,
codenamed Neptune Spear, is finally underway. Boy, this is a little hairy here. Okay, we are flying into Pakistan. This is definitely a goal, and then there is some
more excitement in the air, and everybody starts
getting a lot more serious. We’re going now. We’re going in. It’s going in at night. On the 10th flight to Abbottabad, the troops go through
last-minute preparations. There will be a very detailed
petroleum disorder. It’s time you go in.
It’s time to come out. What care are you gonna take? Who’s going to be sitting where
in the helos? These SEALs were hand-picked
for the mission because of their specialties
and experience. It’s the operation
they’ve long been waiting for. You’re going through the what-ifs. What if we get fire upon infiltration? What if the fast rope
is in the wrong spot? What if we get around and the helicopter
is downed outside the compound where now you need to protect
not only the pilots, where are you going to move them into? You’re going through your your playbook. The troops also find time
for a personal moment. There is so thick. People are saying last-minute prayers, thinking about the families
and make sure the weapons loaded. Doing press checks, and making sure
there’s a round in the chamber. Making sure all the gear are secured, going over last minute notes
with the buddies, and thinking of all the details. Also on board the aircraft,
a translator and a dog named Cairo, a member of the K-9 unit. If an anti-personnel
is sniffing things out, it goes search something for smell,
looking for somebody. Cairo was a veteran,
a veteran of many raids. He’d actually been wounded
in a previous raid and had taken
six months out to recuperate. The SEALs are flying
in new stealth helicopters specifically designed for this mission. The SEALs
have state-of-the-art equipment, and every year and every generation,
the helicopters get a little faster, a little lighter,
and a little harder to detect. The operation pilots
and the Night Stalkers, members of the Army’s elite
160th Special Aviation Regiment. They were called Night Stalkers
for a reason we to like to fly at night to give us a cover of darkness. Flying in the dark is a lot different
than flying in the day, and sound acts differently. Light acts differently. The whole mission is planned
to hit the target from an unexpected direction
and an unexpected time. The journey to the target in Abbottabad
takes about 90 minutes. The two stealth helicopters managed to cross
the border to Pakistan undetected. You’re going to have weather radar
so you can detect electrical storms
that could be on the horizon. You’re going to have weapons,
and these weapons are generally not found in
the conventional army inventory. These are specifically designed
to get on to an objective. A lot of the aircraft today
have long range fuel probes so they can do aerial refueling. In the original plan, they were going to fast rope down
into the outer courtyard. It would have taken two minutes
to land these guys and maybe ten minutes in all
to storm both buildings. Just as he’s hovering above the compound,
preparing to land, one of the pilots hit serious trouble. The air was hotter
than anyone had expected, and the helicopter lost control because the air was thinner
and the helicopter therefore was heavier, and started falling a little bit
through space, sliding breezily back and forth. Drones flying over the compound stream
the unfolding disaster back to Vice Admiral McRaven in Jalalabad,
the CIA headquarters in Langley, and the Situation Room in the White House. They’re all jammed in a very small room, listening and watching the feed. All they could see was the helicopter
going down and then crashing, and wondering,
have we just lost the mission? With one helicopter down
and the loss of the surprise element, the SEALs will have to quickly adapt
to the situation or the whole operation
could be compromised. It landed upright.
Just landed a little hard. We call that an uncontrolled landing
or a hard-impact landing. In that case,
it became mechanically impossible for that aircraft to take off. In the Situation Room,
the tensions are running high. Your heart’s in your throat. You don’t know at any moment if the Pakistanis
are going to come rushing in. You don’t know if you’re going to hear
that the whole mission has been lost. The white House advisers are desperate
to hear if the SEALs survived the crash. An extremely tense moment
until they heard from McRaven. Now the guys are out. The guys are good,
and we’re prepared for this. We’re modifying the plan. When Admiral McRaven indicated a kind of,
this is not a problem, these guys are going to do the job, it gave me a sense of confidence. In Abbottabad, the pilot buries the news
of the helicopter in the ground. If failure is not an option, you have to have a way
to accomplish the mission. One thing that’s critical to the success
is imaginative operators on the ground
and people who can shift gears. The SEALs immediately activate plan B. When things go wrong,
you’re not going to overreact. You have a checklist and you can get through
just about anything. They quickly organize themselves
to storm the compound from the ground. The first thing the guys have to do
is get a full headcount and make sure everybody’s there. However, the crash has caused noise. The town’s awake, and so they’re thinking,
any minute now, we can be run down
with a lot of enemy forces coming at us. Fearing they’ve lost
the element of surprise, they know every second is now critical. Once you’re at the door,
the door has got to be breached. As soon as the door’s breached, people in,
left, right, left right, left, right, and then you make movement. The SEALs make it to the courtyard. Now, they must get to the main building,
where they think Bin Laden may be. There were these knots of children
who were trying to avoid getting caught, trying to avoid getting hit, and not knowing what to do
or where to run. They still don’t know
who else is in the compound and how many people are armed. They’re just moving,
going through danger areas, moving, moving,
moving, checking stairways, and giving clearance
for people to go up stairways. When someone opens fire, they engage. With still no sign of bin Laden,
the SEALs move to clear the next building. They find that most entrances
and pathways are barricaded or blocked. The key is to have
the standard operational procedures that allow a unit to flow
through a structure like that, keeping a target in mind,
and keeping security in mind. Take out a closed door.
They know how to get security on it. People blast through the door. From his headquarters in Langley,
CIA Director Leon Panetta is narrating the action for the president. We had heard that shots had been fired. We weren’t quite sure what was happening. It was a good 15 or 20 minutes of silence in the sense
of what exactly was going on. They are inside the main building. The young man they’ve just shot matches
the description of bin Laden’s son. They advance up the stairs
leading to the top floor. Osama bin Laden
pokes his head around the doorway. One of the first SEALs in the line
knows that’s bin Laden. The operational signal
for sighting their target is sent to the command, Geronimo. The signals were set out by alphabet
A, B, C, D. G was securing Osama bin Laden,
and G for Geronimo. They gunned down bin Laden
with a signature double tap. One shot to the chest and one to the head. In the Situation Room, it was, we got him,
we think, wait, maybe, we hope. Those were very long and torturous moments
waiting for the one. They move in to confirm
they got the right man. A message is sent back,
EKIA, Enemy Killed In Action. One of them pushes bin Laden’s widows
out of the way. He has to assume
they may be wearing suicide vests. One of the women is bleeding
from gunfire ricochets. They collect DNA samples. The SEALs started evidence collection,
taking photographs of bin Laden’s face and sending those back
so that two waiting teams in the CIA, who were facial recognition experts,
measuring the length of the nose, and the length of the jaw. The operation is not complete. Bin Laden was running Al-Qaeda
from the compound. The evidence he left behind
could be used to prevent future attacks. It took them 19 minutes
to get to bin Laden, and then in the rest of the time, they were going from room to room
looking for computers, cell phones, documents,
anything that might tell them what bin Laden had been doing there
for the past six years, and anything that might lead them
to other parts of the network. Every minute they spent gathering
material puts the teams at greater risk. One of the helicopters positioned nearby
makes its way to the compound to assist in evacuating them. We have everybody. We have the aircraft
already exiting on the right route. Before taking off,
one team blows up the crashed helicopter, making sure its classified design, features, and technology
will not fall into the wrong hands. In the early morning hours, the SEAL teams
finally make it back to Jalalabad. Before being taken away, Al-Qaeda’s leader is identified
with almost 100 percent certainty. Hours later, his body will arrive
at the USS Carl Vinson, and bin Laden
will be given a burial at sea. The White House team is getting ready
to announce the news to the world. America’s number one
most wanted terrorist is dead. When the helicopters got back
over the border into Afghanistan, and it dawned on the people
inside the Situation Room and the top CIA officials
that they’ve done it. It looks like we’ve got bin Laden
and all the SEALs and all the teams
supporting them as safely out. That’s when people quietly
started popping the champagne bottles. 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. When President Obama goes to congratulate
the SEALs who took part in the mission a few days later,
the question of the identity of the SEAL who shot bin Laden comes out. They collectively answer, we all did, sir. The team then hands the president an American flag
with an inscription saying Operation Neptune Spear. May 1st, 2011. For God and country. Geronimo.
44 Comments
First😇
ಠ_ಥ
Ayoo 😂
How old is this??
🇺🇸USA adalah Negara TERORIS Terbesar di Dunia, di ikuti England, Israel, France adalah Negara Teroris. 3:14 3:15
🇺🇸USA adalah Negara TERORIS Terbesar di Dunia, di ikuti England, Israel, France adalah Negara Teroris.
🇺🇸USA adalah Negara TERORIS Terbesar di Dunia, di ikuti England, Israel, France adalah Negara Teroris. 3:14 3:15
🇺🇸USA adalah Negara TERORIS Terbesar di Dunia, di ikuti England, Israel, France adalah Negara Teroris.
🇺🇸USA adalah Negara TERORIS Terbesar di Dunia, di ikuti England, Israel, France adalah Negara Teroris. 3:14 3:15
why?? for who? what's the returns?
multiple years of high intensity, high risk, high cost combat does not sound like very effective? Also, after Al-Zarqawi ISIS came, so what was actually achieved other than escalating violence?
Que pelicula americana😂😂😂😂😂
First Pin me
This guy was in the mirror or the sun in 2008.
He was putting up Sharia Law stickers up everywhere and they did a big report on him.
That must of been a legit cover story to get him recruited.
Mental.
SAS 🇬🇧🫡
Propaganda is Propaganda is Propaganda. Get it?
Es versión del video y la otra versión cuan sería?
Amerika dan NATO lah teroris nya
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If we were to go in and completely eradicate this evil that brings hate and harm to the rest of the world, including their own countrymen and neighbors, we would be labeled by many of our own as "racists" or fascists. Radical Islam is a scar upon the planet, and has been for thousands of years. They terrorized the entire world then, just as they do now. God forbid they ever get their hands on nuclear weaponry, they WILL use it immediately.
اتمنى من القناة الدبلجة الى اللغة العربية معظم وثائقياتكم جميلة ولكن لم نشاهدها لهذا السبب
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai highlighted the inefficiency of the local police and the special naval forces. Let's be realistic. Those terrorists were not aliens, so you can say that the local troops were not prepared for such an attack. Any person who is part of a law enforcement or armed forces department, is trained with firearms and minimal combat techniques must necessarily be able to manage, control and eliminate such a criminal attack!… or maybe they were from the mounted police and those from the city's parking management??? 😂😂
I wish the black ops cut off his head the same way he cut off the American’s head.
You need to be saved by the Russian Spetsnaz ???… quickly give the order to the coffin because you will also be among the killed
Those idiots killed more innocent civilians than the terrorists killed
the only terrorists on earth have always been USA uk and ISRAEL!!
5 hr doc??? you SOB, you got me
این است اسلامِ ننگینِ تروریستی👍
ما در ایران بالغ بر ۵۰ سال است ، گروگانِ رژیمِ تروریستیِ علی خامنه ای و جمهوری اسلامی هستیم 🤦♂️🤦♂️😞
این رژیم به واسطهء اسلام گرایی مارا به گروگانگرفته ،کشورمان را با خاک یکسان کرده🤦♂️😞
هرجا که اسلامِ ننگین و خونخار پا میگذارد ،آن منطقه به گَند کشیده میشود🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
اسلام فقط خون میخاهد ، اسلام اصلا و ابدا صُلح آمیز نیست، اسلام بشدت خشن و تروریستی است
آن کسی ک طرفدار اسلام است ، بخود حق میدهد مخالفان اسلام را سَر بِبُرد،
اصلا اسلامگراها را میدان ندهید
آنها اگر میدان را خالی ببیند ، به سرعت تکثیر میابند و آن منطقه رو غصب میکنند
اسلام گراها بشدت خطرناک هستند
لطفا اسلامیست ها را از منطقه خود دور کنید
از ترامپ و نتانیاهو تشکر کنید که یکتنه در برابر اسلامِ تروریسم ،ایستاده اند و این تروریستان را از بین میبرند
جمهوری اسلامی ،ایران و ۹۰میلیون مردم ایران را گروگان گرفته اند ،آنها به اسم خدا و اسلام به ما شلیک میکنند، بچهایمان را میکشند
دخترانمان را تجاوز میکنند
کشورمان را غارت کردند
هروقت هم به خیابان میرویم برای اعتراض
بما گلولهء جنگیمیزند 😞🤦♂️
من تازه یک سال است که از زندان ازاد شدم
۱۱ عدد ساچمهء تفنگ شادگان، درون بدنم بود و زیرپوستم بود
با اینحال من را به زندان بردند و در بهداری آنجا با ساده ترین وسائل و کثیف ترین ابزار مرا درمان کردند🤦♂️😞 بدنم عفونت کرد و با اینهال منرا به انفرادی انداختند ۹ روز
اسلام گراها خطرناک ترین موجودات کیهان هستند 👍
از انها دوری کنید 👍
پاینده انسانیت 🌹🫂🤝
Интересный подход у империалистов: преступления свои показать как доблесть и борьбу за что-то хорошее.
С таким же успехом можно оправдать Третий Рейх и его преступления, скорее всего, Америка туда же и стремится.
Совсем уже озверели, чертовы капиталисты, всё с ног на голову перевернули.
America black ops.? Misleading and misinforming., can yoi explain to me why there is british SAS operation, Black cats of India, and spetnaz of russia in the video?
Creados por la CIA para luego expolear países y crear genocidios
I find it so amazing that these guys think they are fighting for something they believe in but hide their faces at the same time. ALL I see is a bunch of cowards and murderers that keep screaming what sounds like Allah ahkbars or Allah chocolatebars. Sorry but your wrong if you think the way to fix things is through killing. It's not. Negativity breeds more Negativity. Positivity breeds more Positivity! Love conquers all!
😡😡😡BS
Prettt
I so happy he’s dead
All these talking heads have the NASTIEST, WET SMACKING NOISE when they talk and it makes me want to SCREAM. Its called a POP FILTER!!..GOOGLE IT
Al- Zarqawi was a complete lunatic & psychopath 😬😮💨
In jail he carved off his own tattoos because knew they would hold him back From joining & was so violent Al-Qaeda told him he was too violent 😬😮💨
They want / believe that only this caliphate /strict islam (Sharia) should be world wide and anyone else should be "erased" for not following Quran and the Sunnah & Prophet Muhammad😳
And that is why I can't understand for the life of me why people in America or anywhere else for that matter who aren't would even think about standing up for / behind them ..😮💨
they would literally wipe out your entire bloodline without thinking twice just based off that religious belief… Islam & and other religions can't cohabitate! Period
Кстати насчёт Бен Ладена вы Американцы конечно раздули нормально, чтоб нефть себе прикарманить, все знают что вы любите войны устраивать это же бизнес, сейчас начнёте меня гнабить скажите вы Русские что делаете на Украине полюбому😂
Shut up Obama