Spy Ops (2023) s01e01 Episode Script

1
[grim instrumental music playing]
[man 1]
9/11 was a beautiful, clear fall morning.
I was leaving for work
later than I normally would
because I had actually
entered into the CIA retirement program.
I went to headquarters, where I had been
deputy chief for two years.
So it was going to be a kind of sad day
because I was going to miss working there.
At some point, there was some commotion.
[reporter 1] This just in.
You are looking at
a very disturbing live shot there.
That is the World Trade Center.
We have unconfirmed reports
this morning
[reporter 2] There's the second plane.
Another passenger plane
hitting the World Trade Center.
[reporter 3] Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
We're looking at a live picture
from Washington,
and there is smoke pouring
out of the Pentagon.
[somber music playing]
[man 1]
Everyone assumed it was al-Qaeda.
As I say, FBI, the U.S. military,
because there really weren't
any groups that would have
that kind of organization
and that ability
to plan something and carry something
of that scale out against America.
The president said, "I want Americans,
either military or CIA,
on the ground in Afghanistan
hunting Bin Laden."
On the 14th, the chief
of Counterterrorism Center
called and said,
"Gary, do you want to take a team,
the first team, into Afghanistan?"
He said, "I can't think of anyone
in the agency
who is better prepared.
You've worked it for years."
I said, "Of course I'll go."
I mean, everybody in America
wants to strike back
at these terrorists,
and you're telling me
I get to lead the attack? Yes.
My wife, she was unhappy.
She said, "You're retiring."
"You're 59 years old.
Why are you doing this?"
There was a picture
in the Washington Post
of a fireman in New York.
Just his face in his dress uniform
and tears running down his face
because he was at a funeral.
And I held it up to her
and I said, "That's why I'm going."
And I said, "I can't not."
[tense music playing]
[music fades]
[Tom Brokaw] A day of remembrance.
In Washington and around the world,
the nation pauses to honor those lost,
missing, changed forever.
[man 1] I think we were all in shock.
The whole U.S. government was in shock.
They were meeting at the White House
in the Situation Room,
the Counterterrorist Center,
Chief Chief of Central Intelligence
George Tenet, were there.
And they met and talked about
what the responses could be.
We knew it was Bin Laden that
I mean, and that he was in Afghanistan
and that he had built
the al-Qaeda network.
I had gone into Afghanistan
during that period, from 1996 to 1999,
on three different occasions.
We had contact with virtually
every commander of note in the country.
And so it made sense
that I would go back in
during this first visit
to try to convince them
to work with us.
So right then, we started planning,
Counterterrorist Center and myself,
starting pulling the team together.
Phil Reilly, probably one of the youngest
senior intelligence service officers
in the agency,
had been suggested as my deputy
for the team.
We talked for ten minutes,
and I said, "This is the guy."
First time I met Gary Schroen,
I knew of his name.
He was a very storied figure
within the CIA.
I'd almost say legendary
with the Near East division.
He held the agency's highest award
for events before 9/11.
My emotions, uh, they probably
weren't noble ones.
I mean, I was very angry, very upset.
I wanted,
like a lot of people did,
go get those responsible
for the attack on our country.
So revenge was a big
motivation for me.
But I also intend to be honest.
I was very humbled and honored
that I knew I had drawn the, you know,
the lottery ticket,
the right one to be on this team.
Our mission was given to us verbally
by Cofer Black,
the head of the Counterterrorism Center.
It was to go into Afghanistan,
contact the Northern Alliance,
bring them over to our side,
make them understand
that we would be bringing in
large elements of the U.S. military,
that we would be working together.
And he said, "You have to prepare them
to receive American Special Forces
who will be arriving at some point
so they can do target designation out
in the battle lines in front of Kabul."
"Then, once you get past the Taliban
and you break them,
and you get into Kabul,
you are to hunt down Bin Laden
and his lieutenants."
"And then, when you kill Bin Laden,
you cut his head off
and you put it on dry ice
and you ship it back
so I can show the president."
And then I walked out. I said to Phil,
"Was he joking?"
Phil said, "No, man, he was serious."
But, anyway, that was our orders.
So right then, we started planning.
I got the best field communicator, John.
And I picked another paramilitary officer,
coincidentally named Phil.
Gary picked the finest case officer
in the Near East division, Chris.
[Schroen] One other guy was a former SEAL.
He knew demolitions.
And he was a huge, strong man.
We came up with Doc, Doc Phillips,
who was the medic.
He was a combat medic in Vietnam
back in Special Forces days.
This guy knew exactly what to take
into a place like that.
[suspenseful music playing]
I had been working a program
that was doing aerial surveillance
of the areas where Bin Laden frequented.
Our team was the one that actually filmed
Osama bin Laden
walking across Tarnak Farms.
[reporter] Unmanned,
unarmed spy planes, called Predators,
fly over known al-Qaeda training camps,
the pictures transmitted live
to CIA headquarters half a world away.
A Predator captured
even more extraordinary pictures:
this tall figure in flowing white robes
many intelligence analysts
believe is Osama bin Laden.
So the idea would be, if we have to,
we could go back and capture him.
And that's what I was doing
before 9/11.
On September 10th,
we had everything set up.
We were flying home then
on a Lufthansa flight.
[woman] On 9/11, he was scheduled
to come home that morning.
And my daughter calls and says,
"Where's Dad?"
And I said, "He's on his way home."
[ominous music playing]
[Phillips] On the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
is where the pilot announced
they're closing the airspace.
Doc Phillips was stuck
in Gander, Newfoundland.
All the planes were grounded,
and we had
And he was grounded with them,
so getting him back to us was important.
[Sue] Dave called.
I said, "Any idea
when you'll be coming home?"
"Because they'll probably
lift these flights soon."
He said, "I'm not."
"They're flying in to pick me up
and I'll see you probably
in a month or two."
Sue's been around the agency a bit,
and she knew instantaneously
where I was going.
You know, she knew I'd been working
Afghanistan since 1980.
So she knew.
It turned out that there was a helicopter
that we were going to use.
It was a CIA-owned helicopter
waiting for us.
It had a crew of three,
so there would be a total of ten of us,
CIA people, flying into Afghanistan
when we tried to make the entry.
[Phillips] It looked like
the Over-the-Hill Gang going to war.
The same group of people
who had been doing this stuff
all over the world.
[suspenseful music playing]
And we have a place, surprisingly,
the CIA does,
that has every weapon known to man.
And you can get them in quantities.
And so we had ten of each
of the weapons,
plus all the sundry ammunition
people thought we might need.
[suspenseful music continues]
I thought we would have a warehouse
that would have military uniforms.
The CIA doesn't, so we took money
to the local REI store
and loaded up.
There were three of us.
We had this big shopping cart
full of stuff.
One of the ladies came over and said,
"Where are you going?"
I said, "Hiking in the mountains."
She said, "Where?"
I said, "Oh, overseas."
She didn't say anything,
just looked at us.
[suspenseful music continues]
And the last thing we took
was $3 million in cash.
[Reilly] Cash was critical,
and $3 million was just the initial
tranche of money we needed
to induce warlords to do the right thing.
Cash was needed to buy things
they needed to prosecute the operations.
We then moved forward
and ultimately linked up
with our Mi-17,
a single Russian helicopter.
And we had our permission,
uh, 26 September
to enter Afghanistan.
We flew through what's called
the Anjuman Pass.
And the helicopter, coincidentally,
had just been refitted
and rehabbed to a certain degree.
This helicopter
was not in the greatest shape.
As we were climbing, you could hear
the sound of the engine changing.
It was beginning to labor
because the air was getting thinner.
And there's not a
The lift is diminishing.
Basically, they were radioing
on their internal communication
back to our commo guy.
They don't know if we're gonna make it.
[dramatic music playing]
That we may have to turn around.
The helicopter's service ceiling
is not anywhere near 17,000 feet.
This thing is really straining to go
over these mountains in the Hindu Kush.
You could feel the straining
to stay in the air.
[Schroen] As we started down, you could
hear the pitch of the engine change.
And everybody was thumbs up.
[Reilly] Once we cleared the Anjuman Pass,
we were good.
We ascended into the Panjshir Valley.
[tense music playing]
It was about 2:30 in the afternoon
on the 26th.
And when I stepped off,
there were probably ten,
eleven Afghans standing there.
Guys from the Northern Alliance.
I recognized five of them,
and they recognized me.
We had met before
on some of the visits I had made.
[tense music continues]
[in Persian] Everyone was happy,
including myself,
that the Americans
were getting involved in this war.
We were glad that this war would
become an international war,
and the world would
be intervening here.
[in Persian] They said,
"We are ready to attack Afghanistan,
but not without understanding
your point of view."
"Where would you stand
regarding this matter?"
"Do you accept it or not?"
[indistinct chatter]
The Northern Alliance was united
vis-à-vis attacking the Taliban
and going after al-Qaeda.
But underneath the surface,
there was a fragility to it
because it was pulling together
all the disparate ethnic groups
within Afghanistan.
[Schroen] Taliban controlled three-fourths
of the country at that time
in 2000, 2001.
But they couldn't take
the Panjshir Valley.
And so they were at a stalemate.
[tense instrumentals playing]
Ahmad Shah Massoud
had an army of about 8,000 fighters.
These Northern Alliance fighters
are excellent at what they do.
This is their valley.
They're not gonna let the Taliban in
without a fight.
Masood Khalili was Ahmad Shah Massoud's
best friend.
They were like brothers.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] Al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden.
Zawahiri.
All of them were in Afghanistan.
Taliban started indeed savagery.
Indeed killing.
Every girl in their house
was just thinking that,
"Are they coming now to take me?"
"To kill me?"
"To push me
and my brother?"
Commander Massoud said,
"We have to warn the world."
[suspenseful music playing]
We went to France.
[inaudible chatter]
His first trip to France.
And there, in France,
he was invited by European Union,
and there he announced something
which is very important.
[camera shutters snapping]
[in Persian] The Taliban that are
currently active in Afghanistan
have a very specific vision
and interpretation of Islam.
The groups that support them,
like Osama Bin Laden's,
along with the Pakistani regime,
have similar objectives.
I want to insist on the fact
that the goals of these groups
are not restricted to Afghanistan alone.
Believe me, their goal is to continue
beyond Afghanistan
to the rest of the world.
[in Persian] Massoud exposed
the true face of the Taliban,
al-Qaeda network, and Bin Laden
to the international community.
[helicopter flying overhead]
[Schroen] Two Arab guys
who were affiliated
with Bin Laden's al-Qaeda from Europe
got fake credentials as journalists
and came to Afghanistan
with a camera,
and they had packed it
with explosives.
And on 9th September,
they were finally able to sit down
with Ahmad Shah Massoud,
leader of the Northern Alliance,
the Taliban's biggest enemy.
Commander sat beside me,
shoulder to shoulder.
Commander said,
"Tell me the questions first."
It was 15 questions exactly,
and eight were about Osama bin Laden.
[suspenseful music continues]
And then they started the camera.
[somber music playing]
They blew the bomb up.
[overlapping shouts]
I was injured totally.
I opened my eyes there after
four or five days.
The first question was,
"How? What happened to my friend?"
"Died."
It was 9 September,
around 11 o'clock in the morning.
And he died in my lap.
He died.
Afghanistan lost a son.
The world lost an honest man.
[mournful music playing]
[dramatic music plays]
[Schroen] By then,
Bin Laden had made a deal
with leader of the Taliban
Mullah Omar.
"I will give you money
if you give me sanctuary
here in Kandahar, and a country."
And Mullah Omar said yes.
Bin Laden knew that if he could kill
Ahmad Shah Massoud,
that that would remove the Taliban's
biggest enemy in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden told Mullah Omar
that he and his guys had done the attack.
"Now the Americans
are going to come for me,
and you have agreed
I can stay here in Afghanistan."
And so when Bin Laden brought down
the wrath of the U.S. on Afghanistan,
just by the code
that Mullah Omar lived by
he could not throw him out.
[Reilly] Ahmad Shah Massoud's death
really united the Northern Alliance.
If there was any doubt
what side they would be on,
there was no reason to feel any question.
They were totally onboard.
And the seven of us
literally went to work immediately
doing what we needed to do.
First, we set up camp at a house
that was provided to us, a safe house.
Basically, we said
we're the tip of the spear.
We're out here. There's nobody else.
And the reason that the U.S. military
had declared
that they weren't going to come with us
was that they said
there is no search and rescue capability,
and it's too dangerous
to send our soldiers
into a place where they can't be rescued.
We were all macho guys, supposedly.
But everybody knew it was dangerous.
There was no way out
except the helicopter.
And if the helicopter broke
or it couldn't get over the mountain,
we might have to walk out,
because
And it was a long way out
up over the mountains toward Pakistan.
[horse chuffs]
We sat down and tried to figure out,
under the new structure
without Ahmad Shah Massoud,
who was in charge.
- [tense music playing]
- [no audible dialogue]
[Reilly] General Fahim,
then the leader of the Northern Alliance,
he was drastically different
than Ahmad Shah Massoud.
But he was a fighter,
and he committed to working with us.
[Schroen] So we go to a meeting
and there's, like a crew
of these senior guys are there.
Uh, and so we sat down.
And I have a $250,000 with me.
I told the Northern Alliance
commanders in the valley
that I don't want to hear
about political differences.
I don't want to hear
about ethnic differences.
Under Ahmad Shah Massoud,
you guys had been united.
Because I control the money.
And I've got a lot of money
to give out for specific purposes.
But if you aren't working together,
you're not getting anything.
Money went to commanders
that needed it.
Various military commanders.
And all of it was provided by the team.
[Schroen] We organized
what we called a fusion center.
It was a couple of CIA people,
plus the Northern Alliance
intelligence analyst.
So these guys would take
intelligence that they gathered,
or listening to the radios
of the Taliban,
and then say, "This is what's happening."
So these were tactical stuff.
"Where are the Taliban?"
"What are they doing? What's going on?"
[suspenseful music playing]
[Phillips] One of the dangers
we would run into
if you drive into a Taliban
or an al-Qaeda ambush,
probably never
gonna be seen again.
It's obvious that you're an American.
It's something that we really had to face.
[suspenseful music continues]
One thing that we needed to do
was to go down to the front lines
and actually GPS
where the front lines were.
[Phillips] Team one
was sent up to Kunduz.
Kunduz was where
rockets were flying,
and a great deal of fighting.
And the other team that broke off,
we went down to the hills above Bagram.
And the idea then was,
we'll capture Bagram
then start working our way
to actually capture Kabul.
That's pretty well what our mission was.
[Reilly] What we did
the first three to four weeks
was plot enemy positions,
working with the locals,
taking maps out and, with laser range
finders and other techniques,
we would identify
all of the enemy positions.
And then send that all back
in intelligence reports to the CIA,
which were then immediately disseminated
to the U.S. military.
[tense music playing]
We'd been begging for air strikes
down on the Shomali Plain.
[Schroen] We had a TV in the courtyard.
And they turned it on. It was CNN.
And CNN announced the U.S. military
started its bombing campaign.
On my orders, the United States military
has begun strikes
against al-Qaeda terrorist
training camps
and military installations
of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
And that first night,
Phil and I stood on the roof
looking at the mountains
between us and Kabul.
We were about 30 miles away,
but there were low clouds in the sky.
We said, "When the bombs hit,
we'll see the flash reflected
on the bottom of the clouds."
And finally, there's
You see a flash.
"Okay, it's starting."
Nothing. That was it.
[Reilly] Well, the first air strikes,
I'll tell you, they were not
It was not shock and awe.
I think they were getting
They didn't want to do
collateral damage with civilians.
Initially, we were concerned,
and so was the Northern Alliance,
where's this U.S. air power
we've been told?
[in Persian] All the people
were satisfied and happy
that there was at least a war
against the Taliban,
but our troops were not satisfied
with the American attacks.
Instead of concentrating
on the front lines at Kabul
or the front lines at Mazar-i-Sharif,
or in Takhar,
they started bombing all over the country.
That looked like tank depots
with truck repair places.
Troop training areas.
Barracks, warehouses.
So all of this bombing of these places
was just wasted.
[Reilly] Team Alpha
went to the Mazar-i-Sharif,
which was an agency team
very similar in composition
to the team that I was part of.
These became known as the horse soldiers.
There were resistance groups
inside the north,
uh, that were inside the, you know,
the Taliban lines,
fighting in the mountains.
Uh, and that's where we were
going to go.
Abdul Rashid Dostum
is often referred to as a warlord.
[dramatic music playing]
The truth is, is that he was certainly
an ethnic tribal leader.
He was a leader of the ethnic group
known as the Uzbeks in Afghanistan.
Once the Taliban were in charge,
the militia became a resistance group.
[horses whinnying]
Dostum had resistance fighters
all over the place,
but he had a what would probably
be called a Praetorian Guard.
[horses whinnying]
His own bodyguard
that traveled with him wherever.
Horsemen would all arrive
out of a dust cloud.
Dostum had said up front,
"Things are a little different here."
"What we call an armored
personnel carrier, you call a horse."
I'd learned to ride when I was a kid.
I grew up on a farm,
and so it was not a big deal.
The rest of the team, not so much.
Our job was basically
to serve as the pathfinders
for the U.S. Special Forces.
Pathfinders are the people
who go in ahead of time
to ensure that the guys
can get into Afghanistan safely.
I'm Lieutenant General retired
John Mulholland.
I'm a career
Army Special Forces officer.
I have had the great privilege and honor
of commanding
the 5th Special Forces Group in 2001.
The first effort was aimed
at getting a integrated team
of CIA and Special Forces soldiers
working together.
[dramatic music playing]
[Schroen]
We talked to Colonel Mulholland directly.
He tried on several occasions
to send two Black Hawk helicopters
over the Anjuman Pass
and come into the valley.
First two times,
the weather was so bad.
Icy conditions, snow.
He had to turn around both times.
[dramatic music continues]
[Reilly] ODA 555 was an aid detachment
of 12 men and two helicopters.
Um, and for whatever reason,
they actually didn't land
right on our landing zone.
One landed on one side
of the Panjshir River,
and one helicopter landed
on the other side.
[Phillips] There's no reception committee,
that would be us,
saying, "Get off the helicopter.
We're friends. Everything's okay."
[Schroen] We were basically
just wandering
toward where we thought they would be.
[Phillips] Hal, the Navy SEAL,
couldn't resist water in front of him.
He dove in the stupid river
and swam across,
and actually found the one team.
[Schroen] I got a white jacket on,
a zipper jacket, and a ball cap,
and I'm waving and I'm hollering,
"We're CIA! We're CIA! Don't shoot!"
And they come walking up to us.
I said, "Hi, I'm Gary Schroen.
I'm from the CIA."
"We're here to welcome you."
That night, would've been about
24 Green Berets on the ground.
And that team linked up
with our Team Alpha,
uh, JR Seeger and others
working with Dostum
and other elements in that area,
and mobilizing them.
[dramatic music continues]
[indistinct chatter]
[Schroen] What the Special Forces unit
was supposed to do
was laser-designate targets
down on the battlefield,
that U.S. aircraft flying in
would see the laser beam
and could see the starting point,
and that was carefully given to them.
And they were to bomb the end point,
because that was a high-value target,
a SOFLAM.
What Dostum would do
is he would call down
to the enemy that was in front of us.
And he would say to them,
"You're on the losing side."
I will be polite. He wasn't as polite.
More often than not, he would get
an exceptionally rude response
on the radio.
So then he would turn
to our Special Forces colleagues
and he'd say, "I really need
an air strike there."
And then the United States Air Force
or the Navy
would then drop laser-guided munitions
right on top of that location.
[somber music playing]
Didn't take much convincing
at that point,
after one guy had seen his partner
completely destroyed,
to realize that he was on the wrong side,
and side with us.
We used to refer to Afghanistan in
its early days as Mad Max meets Star Wars.
We were literally bringing together
ancient methods of warfare
on horseback, et cetera,
and combining it with, you know,
now 21st century technology.
Laser-guided munitions.
Precision Strike munitions.
[indistinct chatter]
But come early November, it was clear
the trajectory that we were on.
Gary was needed back in Washington
for meetings
because he had the most current
understanding of the situation,
and there was an appetite
by President Bush and others for that.
[Schroen] I left the valley,
I think it was on 4th November.
I retired on 31st November,
and on 4th December
I signed a contract to work for CTC.
[Reilly] I was asked to help out
in the Counterterrorism Center,
the Counterterrorism Center's
Special Operations Department.
I went back to be its chief of operations.
We were there to get al-Qaeda.
A lot was gonna be run
from headquarters.
So we were handing off Jawbreaker
to the second Jawbreaker team.
Uh, Gary Berntsen was its head.
Some of my team was staying there
to provide overlap.
[inspirational music playing]
[insects chirping]
[Mulholland] We were doing
significant air strikes
on Taliban defensive positions.
They broke through the final
Taliban defenses on the foothills,
the northern foothills
of the Hindu Kush.
And now the plains
up to Mazar-i-Sharif were now open.
The Taliban basically just abandoned
Mazar-i-Sharif.
We did not have to fight for that city,
thankfully.
[excited chatter]
[Seeger] We had this crowd of people
from Mazar-i-Sharif
who were thrilled to see the Taliban gone.
- [cheering]
- [car horns blaring]
It was absolutely a wonderful feeling.
We knew our job wasn't done.
It was a nice moment, that's for sure.
[tense music playing]
I communicated with Gary and his team.
He was going from the northeast
to the southwest.
That's the direction heading to Kabul.
The liberation of Kabul
was going to be the gain.
Kabul was the capital. And it was
the capital before the Taliban took over,
and it remains the capital,
so whoever owns it owns the country.
So taking it back was critical
in putting the new government into place.
The Taliban literally pulled out of Kabul
the first night that we attacked.
From where I was,
it was definitely in convoys.
[suspenseful music playing]
The morning of the 14th,
General Baryalai Khan
was leading his troops in,
and he had told the CIA team
that had been shadowing him
as the battle went on
down on the Shomali Plains,
"I'm gonna go in,
and you guys wait."
They basically said,
"We're going to come with you."
Our team plus the Special Forces guys
started following the general down.
And he just drove right in.
He was like the first senior person
from the Northern Alliance side
to get into the city.
[in Persian] The same day that the attack
on Taliban forces began,
I was on the front line
of the old North Road,
and we were moving towards Kabul.
The tanks came forward,
the infantry behind them,
and I took my camera and I got on one
of the tanks and we moved forward.
[reporter] It did not take long.
There was virtually no resistance.
As the forces of the Northern Alliance
rolled into Kabul,
the people took to the streets.
[crowd cheering]
[dramatic music playing]
[crowd cheering and whistling]
John Mulholland grabbed me,
held me up in the air and gave me a hug,
and cracked two ribs.
He was really ecstatic
over Kabul finally falling.
["The Star-Spangled Banner" playing]
Let's think about Jawbreaker
for a moment.
So they had fought
and successfully defeated the Taliban
in basically less than two months.
Really, it is amazing.
[Schroen] Our biggest disappointment
was the fact that Bin Laden
was on the run.
Gary Berntsen's team
During that period,
Osama bin Laden tracked to
the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan.
It's a certainty he was there
and did escape across the border.
Despite efforts in blocking forces
Pakistanis claimed to have 4,000 troops
on the border.
Maybe, but he did escape
and get through.
[Seeger]
Once we knew that Kabul had fallen,
then the only thing that needed
to be accomplished was Kandahar,
the home of the Taliban.
And that took place early December.
Almost all of our teams
were reporting mass surrenders
on the part of the Taliban.
[Mulholland]
So much had been forbidden by the Taliban,
like music and playing,
and anything that a normal
human civilization
would consider fundamental to your life
now was once again available to them.
Barbershops had lines of men
so they could get their beards shaved off.
Men and families who had hidden
their radios,
you know, buried them, were digging
them up and playing them again.
Little kids could play soccer again.
They were successful
because in a month or so,
you saw the Taliban out.
I couldn't believe that.
Taliban left Afghanistan.
Yes. Oh my goodness.
It was a united front
against the common global enemy.
[Reilly] Hamid Karzai was appointed
as interim president initially.
The beginning of a new Afghanistan
was happening right then.
[pensive music playing]
[Bush]
Chairman Karzai is a determined leader.
And his government reflects the hopes
of all Afghans
for a new and better future.
The United States strongly supports
Chairman Karzai's interim government.
- Welcome to Washington. Thank you.
- Thank you very much.
What we were able to prove
was that we could, in fact,
let the Afghans do the work themselves.
[hopeful music plays]
[Khalili]
Many things we gained. Say, education.
An army of 300,000 were built.
Schools, roads, hospitals.
Another thing which was also important:
freedom.
It was not because America
told us to be free.
It was because we got that opportunity
to indeed show our right of freedom.
These are gains that we've got.
[music ends]
- [tense music]
- This war will not be quick.
We know this from the history
of military conflict in Afghanistan.
It's been one of initial success,
followed by long years
of floundering and ultimate failure.
We're not gonna repeat that.
[Obama] After more than 13 years,
America's combat mission in Afghanistan
came to a responsible end.
It's time to bring our people back home.
The United States ended
20 years of war in Afghanistan,
the longest war in American history.
Thousands of Afghans
have fled to the Kabul airport
in an attempt to leave Afghanistan
a day after the Taliban
seized control of the country.
[indistinct shouting]
[grim music playing]
[car horn honks]
[Mulholland] The horror that is the
Taliban now enveloping that country again,
actually, more completely
than it was in 2001.
I pray for the people
of Afghanistan every night.
[grim music continues]
I'm 61, and for the rest of my life
this sort of black mark
is gonna be there,
and I'm not gonna recover from it
in the sense that, you know,
maybe some Vietnam vets
felt the same way.
I was a young guy in '75.
I don't know what the fall of Saigon
felt like to those great Americans.
But I don't know how we recover
as a country,
uh, from what we've done.
[explosion booming]
[Schroen]
We will definitely have to go back.
We have brand-new enemies
coming on the horizon.
Twenty years for what, chump?
Twenty years for what?
All this you did,
what good did it do you?
[Schroen]
When I look back at what's happened now,
I have to think of my good friend
Masood Khalili.
And to have to watch him now
look at his country
after all of the sacrifice that he put in,
to say, "It's over."
I mean, there's nothing
that I can do anymore.
It's heartbreaking.
[overlapping shouts]
[Khalili]
In 43 years, look at this unlucky nation.
Always phases, not of peace.
Phases not of celebration.
Phases not of happiness.
Phases of war.
[in Persian]
We are expecting Europe, NATO, and U.S.
to actually provide monetary, financial,
and military assistance
to the newly-formed resistance forces.
So today's youth, such as Ahmad Massoud,
who is following his father's footsteps,
and other young adults will be able
to rebuild the country of Afghanistan
and create a modern Afghanistan
for the people of Afghanistan
and the future children of Afghanistan.
It is written in our culture
that you have hope,
you have love,
and never give up.
[solemn music plays, fading]
[tense music playing]
[woman 1] Noriega was able to use Panama
as a transit point for drugs.
[woman 2] We knew we could not
turn a blind eye anymore.
- [man 1] So the hunt starts.
- [gunshot]
[man 2]
Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet KGB officer,
perhaps one of the greatest spies that
ever worked for British intelligence.
[man 3] It never came to my head that my
comrade can be recruited by the British.
If I had doubts, I would shoot him.
[man 4] And there's a link between
Turkish Gray Wolves
and the man who tried to kill the Pope.
[in Italian] My intention was to kill
the Pope and commit suicide.
- [gunshot]
- [people screaming]
There were 11 hostages.
They're all gone.
[man 5] Golda Meir called for revenge.
[man 6] The basic principle
was shoot and don't talk.
[man 7] The CIA hadn't really
done anything like this,
where we're trying to cooperate
with people
on the enemy side.
[man 8]
There are three nuclear missile warheads
on the bottom of the North Pacific.
[man 9] The K-129 was a warship.
And it sank.
couple beat reporters
for the Los Angeles Times
[man 10] This was more complex,
in some respects, than going to the Moon.
[dramatic music playing]
[music fades]
[theme music plays]