America's Book of Secrets (2012) s01e10 Episode Script
Black Ops
NARRATOR: They are top-secret missions manned by specially trained intelligence and military elite Covert operations using unconventional tactics outside the standard protocol But behind the clandestine activities and state-of-the-art training are secrets Secrets so deceptive BOB BAER: Don't even go to the Bin Laden raid if you think what you saw on the news has any correlation with what happened.
NARRATOR: So elusive RONALD KESSLER: The CIA is violating the laws of foreign countries.
That has to be kept secret.
NARRATOR: So life-threatening OLIVER NORTH: Lord knows keeping secrets matters when your life is at stake.
NARRATOR: that they've been kept hidden from the public until now.
CHRISTOPHER HEBEN: I'm not gonna be anyone's prisoner of war.
You're gonna have to kill me because I'll chew your face off if I don't have any ammunition left.
NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a book a book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America, a book whose very existence is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists, what would it contain? Secret origins? Secret missions? Secret lies? Does there really exist NARRATOR: January 24, 2012: Moments before President Barack Obama was to begin his State of the Union address, he commended the U.
S.
Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
OBAMA: Good job tonight.
Good job.
NARRATOR: But why? Kept secret from those outside the Defense Department was the knowledge that, only minutes earlier, an elite group of American special forces known as SEAL Team Six had stormed a Somali compound in a daring rescue mission.
In a matter of minutes, two hostages were extracted, unharmed, and President Obama confirmed the rescue with their families.
It is the same elite unit, which only eight months earlier, carried out an ultra-secret, highly classified mission: Operation Neptune Spear.
38 minutes after U.
S.
helicopters set down at a secret Abbottabad, Pakistan compound, the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, was dead.
OBAMA: The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: Within hours, news of the clandestine "Black Operation" or "Black Op," spread across the globe, proclaiming the men of SEAL Team Six as American heroes.
But just who are the elite soldiers behind these top-secret operations, and what exactly makes a mission a "Black Op"? OLIVER NORTH: "Black Ops" is a euphemism for unconventional operations.
And Black Operations include everything from unconventional attacks against the enemy.
Today it's even cyberattacks all the way through hostage rescue operations, surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence-collecting.
Those are the kinds of activities that we refer to today as Black Ops.
HOWARD WASDIN: The primary function of Black Ops is to do something expeditiously that's gotta be done right away without anybody else knowing that it's going on.
Nowadays during warfare, we need a scalpel rather than a hammer.
MIKE HAYDEN: That's covert action.
That's action taken on behalf of the United States government, in which the hand of the United States government is intended to remain hidden and activities which the United States government does not intend to acknowledge.
It's that world between war and peace.
NARRATOR: While the U.
S.
government refuses to acknowledge their existence, top-secret Tier 1 missions can only be designated at the highest levels of government and planned by the Central Intelligence Agency.
NORTH: What makes a mission a Tier 1 Mission? It's a determination made at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and inside the Pentagon.
BAER: These operations normally start with the CIA.
We collect all the intelligence for these guys to go into a place.
We're there first on the ground, like Afghanistan when the CIA went in first, Special Forces came in later.
The CIA works with Delta Force and the SEALs every single day.
A lot of the people inside the CIA had at one time been in Delta Force or the SEALs.
NARRATOR: While Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force are the most recognized, the Army Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have elite Tier 1 units under the control of a unified combatant command.
HEBEN: Special Operations Command, which is the big umbrella that SEALs and Delta and Rangers and Air Force Special Operations fall under-- they comprise about 60,000 individuals, and of those 60,000 individuals, there's 20,000 operators or shooters or door-kickers.
WASDIN: What makes SEAL Team Six different and what makes Delta Force different is they're Tier 1 counterterrorist units, which means they can go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.
HEBEN: When there's a situation in the world that threatens Americans' lives, the President wants to know a few things right away: Where's the nearest aircraft carrier? Where's the nearest SEAL team? Where's the nearest Delta squadron, and how can we point the needle in the right direction? NARRATOR: Special Operations units are trained in areas of direct action, psychological operations, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Many consider the Navy SEALs to be the best fighting force on Earth, and they are often tasked with conducting the most harrowing and dangerous missions.
WASDIN: SEAL actually stands for "Sea, Air, and Land.
" It's the elements from which we operate.
The sea, the air We sky-dive in, fast-rope in from a helicopter.
And of course land-- we could patrol in.
So "Sea, Air, and Land" is what forms the acronym SEAL.
HEBEN: SEALs are described as the brain surgeons of shooting.
You also have a guy that can use his hands for any number of edged weapons.
So a guy can stab you, slash you, jab you, poke you, shoot you, render you unconscious, or straight out kill you with his hands.
That's a deadly combination.
NARRATOR: It was the failed American invasion of Cuba in April 1961, known as the Bay of Pigs, that compelled President John F.
Kennedy to create a special force outside the CIA, one that would be capable of conducting unconventional operations.
RUSS BAKER: He began to see the duplicity involved with what he was being told about the Bay of Pigs invasion.
It became more and more clear to him that the CIA was not properly accountable.
He became so angry at this that he actually declared that what he wanted to do was to destroy the CIA, break it into a thousand pieces, and cast it to the wind.
NARRATOR: May 25, 1961: During his famous "Man on the Moon" speech to Congress, President Kennedy made public his desire for a special fighting force.
JOHN F.
KENNEDY, JR.
: I am asking the Congress for an additional $100 million to expand existing forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, paramilitary operations, and sub-limited or unconventional wars.
WASDIN: The Navy SEALs was originally formed by John F.
Kennedy in 1962.
President Kennedy had the foresight to realize that wars of the future would be low-intensity conflicts that would spring up real quick, and we needed the guys to send in to do that job.
NARRATOR: April 24th, 1980.
President Jimmy Carter orders an ultra-clandestine mission: Operation Eagle Claw, in an effort to rescue 52 U.
S.
embassy employees held captive in Iran for nearly six months.
RICHARD MARCINKO: Eagle Claw.
Well-documented, in terms of what went wrong.
We went over and over what could go wrong, and damn it, something went wrong.
So, a sandstorm kicks up.
It got to the filters of the helicopter that couldn't lift off enough.
Hit the wing tank of the C-130.
End of mission.
NORTH: That operation was the reason why the entire special operations community was reorganized in the aftermath.
It was the direct consequence of the failure of that mission.
NARRATOR: Following the Eagle Claw debacle, where eight U.
S.
service men died, the Department of Defense commissioned Vietnam veteran Richard Marcinko to build a top secret counterterrorism unit-- Navy SEAL Team Six.
MARCINKO: The consequence of Eagle Claw was, of course, got me to build SEAL Team Six, which I consider my thesis of my military career.
One of the secrets about Six is that when I built it, I called it Six, but there was only two.
We still had the Cold War going on, so I said, "Let them figure out where three, four and five were.
I'll go to six.
" I think that Eagle Claw, for being a failure, certainly has a plus, in that Congress mandated the establishment of Joint Special Operations Command.
And now you have a bona fide staff that does nothing but keep track of terrorism and special operations around the world.
We now have this tier-one capability that won't let a failure like that happen again.
NARRATOR: Coming up: HEBEN: We train aggressively as SEALs.
One of our mottos is, "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
" WASDIN: If you're going through BUDS, and you don't at least think about quitting, something's wrong with you.
NARRATOR: Tier One special operators like the Navy SEALs must conduct high-risk counterterrorism missions with surgical precision in a matter of minutes.
Let's go! Let's go! Let's move, move! NARRATOR: But what training process can prepare a solider for these life-and-death covert missions? And what skills really separate a Navy SEAL from other Tier One Operators? NORTH: What does it take to become a black operator? First of all, you got to be a volunteer to one of the branches of the armed forces.
Second, you have to qualify.
And that means a very rigorous selection process.
ALL: Hey, up! HEBEN: When you look at the numbers, active duty military personnel is about 1.
4 million, which represents .
001 percent of our population.
So when you look at SEAL teams, there's only about 1,200 SEALs that are actually what we call "door kickers, shooters" or "operators.
" So not only are you .
001 percent of the military, but you're like .
00005 percent of the entire nation.
WASDIN: Nobody's recruited in the SEAL teams.
To be a Navy SEAL, you have to volunteer.
You gotta go through screening, physical, mental, psychological.
And there are three key characteristics in the SEAL teams: aptitude one, very, very intelligent people.
Physical fitness.
And the biggest key of all is mental toughness.
And that is the key thing that separates a Navy SEAL from anybody else on the planet.
INSTRUCTOR: Fired up! TRAINEES: Fired up! HEBEN: The attrition rate with respect to SEAL training is pretty high.
It's never been lower than 85%, which means 85% of the people that try out, don't make it.
Matter of fact, the first day, they say, "Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you.
Ten months from now, only one of you is gonna be here.
" NARRATOR: For Navy SEALs, secret training exercises can be more rigorous and intensive than battlefield operations.
HEBEN: We train aggressively as SEALs.
One of our mottos is "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
" BUDS training is an acronym that stands for "Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL" training.
That's the initial forging process that every SEAL has to go through WASDIN: If you're going through BUDS and you don't at least think about quitting, something's wrong with you.
People die in BUDS of hypothermia, people die at all SEAL training.
INSTRUCTOR: Get down in the mud and start crawling! WASDIN: Parachuting accidents, diving accidents, fast-roping accidents.
When you get to that level of training, everything you do is inherently dangerous.
That's the price you pay for sharpening that spear.
NARRATOR: Before Navy SEAL candidates can graduate to the next level of training, they must survive the most anticipated and feared part of BUDS training: Hell Week.
For a grueling six days, these men must push themselves beyond their limitations or they will go home.
HEBEN: Hell Week starts on a Sunday afternoon and it culminates the following Friday.
It's a nonstop evolution from swims to obstacle courses to running all over the place with boats on your heads.
There is a rotating shift of instructors who are all SEALs themselves.
INSTRUCTOR: Into the water.
HEBEN: So every eight hours you get a fresh crew of these guys that are ready to stick their foot up your backside.
The number-one quality of every SEAL is just a general overall state of perseverance.
We are not quitters.
We would rather die than quit.
I'm not gonna be anyone's prisoner of war.
You're gonna have to kill me because I'll chew your face off if I don't have any ammunition left.
WASDIN: BUDS is just the screening-out process.
Now you have to prove you have the aptitude to do the demolition, the skydiving, the diving, the IED work, hostage rescue, whatever it is that may be required.
So that's another six-to-ten months of intensive training that's worse than BUDS.
NARRATOR: For the elite 15% who actually survive Hell Week, an even more harrowing experience awaits: closed quarters battle.
WASDIN: CQB is an acronym for "Closed Quarters Battle.
" It's the toughest type of battle.
Closed quarters could be on a ship, could be on an airliner.
It's basically non-conventional warfare, not open terrain.
MARCINKO: You're in confined spaces, close order, and not is it that, but you're firing amongst each other.
So you're now going through a room where you have ricochets, you have the hostages, you've got friendly assets in there, and you have bad guys in there, and you're all firing.
HEBEN: Close quarters combat is a myriad of combat techniques that are slammed together in this homogenous mixture of [bleep.]
kicking.
If you don't have the physical skills or the mental skills to shift gears and quickly figure out a solution to that problem that's right in front of you, you're gonna die.
NARRATOR: For Tier One operators, special closed quarters resources are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
These facilities are aptly named "Kill Houses.
" MARCINKO: A kill house is a training house for CQB.
You can arrange good guy, bad guy targets.
You have the capacity of changing the furniture around, of changing the entry points, modifying it and electronically scoring it so there's no, "Oh, I would have had it.
" WASDIN: Being able to shoot a 3 X 5 index card about this big, and being able to put two bullets into that every single time.
If I come wake you up at 2:00 in the morning, tell you to gear up, and we go do a kill house run, you've got to be able to make those killing shots every single time.
Once I got to SEAL Team Six, I realized that I didn't know what I didn't know.
These guys have CQB down to a science.
You only think you know CQB unless you are SEAL Team Six.
(whistle blows) NORTH: In the training process, you're basically given the qualities of a world-class athlete.
Right from the very beginning, you're taught the importance of teamwork.
They train together.
They work together.
They get committed together.
And they become part of a remarkably effective special operations unit in the process.
NARRATOR: Once SEAL tactical training is completed, the few Navy SEALs that make it receive the SEAL Trident.
But to the men of the Navy SEALs, it's more than just a badge of honor.
HEBEN: The SEAL Trident is the insignia that SEALs wear on their uniforms.
The head of our eagle is bowed in deference to the nation because we are at service to our nation.
The second symbol is an old flintlock pistol.
The hammer is cocked, which is indicative of a constant state of readiness.
Also, there's King Neptune's trident on there, which represents our mastery and command of the sea.
WASDIN: This is, like, the biggest, baddest and gaudiest piece of chest equipment that anybody wears.
And every SEAL that gets one of these has that buried into his chest, literally.
They're punched in by your commanding officer, your team leader and everybody in your platoon.
You have to literally pull it out of your chest after you earn that.
I made up my mind.
I'm either going back to Wayne County, Georgia with a Trident on my chest, or they're going to have to mail me back in a box.
NARRATOR: Coming up: RUSS BAKER: The very fact that the federal government denies their preservation of a so-called black budget, this is a kind of a game being played with the American people.
NARRATOR: For the United States, top-secret Black Ops missions are a necessary, yet extremely costly endeavor.
Billions of dollars are invested in training, equipment, weapons, transportation and operational support.
But just how do covert operations get funded by a government that denies their very existence? MIKE BAKER: A black budget is essentially, uh, monies allocated for the maintenance, resourcing, logistics of our covert operations team.
Now, its not open book.
That's the reason why it's clandestine and covert.
If it's not, then you might as well get out of the game.
KESSLER: The money for black budgets, it's all done secretly.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have closed-door sessions where they approve these black budgets.
BAER: The CIA has a separate funding from Congress.
The military has Black Ops that are under special access programs.
You have to keep it secret.
MARCINKO: It takes a lot of money to train the operators.
It takes a lot of money to equip the operators.
When I started with 100 shooters in 1980, my training allowance for bullets was larger than the training allowance for the whole Marine Corps.
That's a lot of bullets.
But when you're saying, "I'm coming to save you," you don't care about the cost of those bullets.
HEBEN: You have the ability to buy cutting-edge equipment, cutting-edge gear from clothes that you're wearing to weaponry to optics to even experimental types of food that we're looking at to give guys more sustainable energy in the field.
RUSS BAKER: The very fact that the federal government denies their preservation of a so-called black budget, this is a kind of a game being played with the American people.
NARRATOR: With billions in funding secretly appropriated to Black Ops every year, just who is signing the checks? Could there be a secret chain of command, as some believe, that stretches all the way to the White House? NORTH: I know there's a lot of inquiry about-- how does that chain of command work? And, quite frankly, I am not at liberty to take the risk that I'm going to divulge something I shouldn't.
MARCINKO: The chain of command of that Tier 1 is working for the National Command Authority.
National Command Authority, by definition, is the president of the United States and the secretary of defense-- that's it-- managed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But, in essence, you're talking about the president saying, "I want," secretary of defense says, "Go do it," and the chief says, "Troops, be there.
" That is not a normal military function, so that allows you direct line for funding, direct line for intelligence, direct line for action, and everybody's on a short tether.
ALEX JONES: They sell you secrecy in the name of, "The enemy will know.
We've got to have some secrecy.
" And then it grows and grows and grows and grows, and expands and expands and expands.
It never ends.
And we're just gobbled up by the National Security State.
NARRATOR: But how is the president shielded from domestic and international accountability when a covert operation is exposed? Just how much-- or little-- is the president aware of? RUSS BAKER: Plausible deniability has been written into the substructure of covert operations under the National Security Act of 1947.
Anything that is being done that is illegal, immoral, unethical or potentially embarrassing must be plausibly deniable by people at the highest levels.
JONES: Many times, the people involved don't even know exactly what they're doing.
That way, if things go wrong, they can be cut loose.
Plausible deniability.
BAER: Secrecy is always a good thing.
The problem with secrecy is when it covers up incompetence.
We're talking about the United States government.
There's a lot of incompetence.
And when that's the purpose of secrecy, it doesn't serve this country.
NARRATOR: Spring, 1984.
Prior to the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations James A.
Lyons, Jr.
voiced concerns about vulnerabilities on America's military bases both at home and abroad.
Determined to expose potential weaknesses in America's defense systems, Vice Admiral Lyons enlisted the mastermind behind SEAL Team Six, Commander Richard Marcinko, to create and conduct an ultra secret Black Op known as Red Cell.
MARCINKO: So I pulled some SEAL Team Six members.
And I hired a group of cameramen, and we went around saying, "Which one of your bases would you like us to attack?" He would pick it.
And I would go out there, and we would attack the base.
I'd attack it for nine to ten days, and every day, I would brief the senior officer on what I had done the night before and what I got away with and presented him with a film that said, "Gotcha.
" NARRATOR: Commander Marcinko's Red Cell did, in fact, expose security weaknesses on American military compounds.
But just how vulnerable were they? MARCINKO: In New London, Connecticut, I was able to get on board nuclear submarines.
When Reagan was president, I got a truckload of 500-pound bombs alongside Air Force One.
That proved the vulnerability, and and policy lines had to be resolved.
NARRATOR: But did the findings of the Red Cell mission also expose other secrets? Ones that would threaten Commander Marcinko's very future? MARCINKO: How'd I get in trouble? I conspired with myself.
I didn't know you could do that, but apparently I did.
I was already retired.
And Naval Investigate Service spent a lot of money to find out how I did all the things I did.
I was guilty of a grenade contract that I said I needed.
The Army was the contracting service.
I had nothing to do with it but I was the one that went to jail, because I didn't say it cost too much.
I spent time in a federal camp for a little over a year.
Landed in a manure pile and came out smelling like a rose.
NARRATOR: Did Marcinko violate the chain of command or was the former SEAL Team Six Commander a victim of his own covert mission? Did the government create Red Cell as a means to orchestrate an even larger, secret agenda? HEBEN: Red Cell had a duality to it.
It was testing out American installations, but it was also simultaneously building a database that is gonna allow us to move in a Black Ops fashion all over the world, and assemble an assault team somewhere without anybody knowing.
NARRATOR: Coming up.
BAER: The CIA training never stops.
Right now, I can go to CVS and I can make a bomb between now and midnight that will take this hotel down.
Now how are you gonna stop that? NARRATOR: Undoubtedly, the most secretive and highly classified of all Black Ops missions originate within the cloak and dagger world of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Many CIA Operatives spend their entire careers shrouded in a clandestine existence-- operating behind enemy lines, spying against foreign countries, stealing secrets, and conducting counterintelligence.
HAYDEN: When you look at CIA we are the nation's first line of defense.
We go where others cannot go, and we accomplish what others cannot accomplish.
We spy, we conduct espionage, we steal secrets, and we do it through human sources.
We conduct analysis.
The actual number of analysts we have is a classified number, but it's the largest collection of intelligence analysts in the American government by far.
NORTH: You also have several affiliated organizations within the CIA that aren't necessarily based at Langley.
It's very highly classified how they do it, where they do it, when they do it.
Very few of those are actually publically acknowledged.
KESSLER: Everything that the CIA does, does have to be done secretly, because when CIA officers go into foreign countries to collect intelligence, they are violating the laws of those countries.
NARRATOR: About 150 miles away from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, tucked into the countryside, is an ultra clandestine training facility-- Camp Peary-- where new CIA operatives prove themselves.
While the U.
S.
government refuses to acknowledge its existence, insiders simply refer to it as "The Farm.
" BAER: The Farm is a training base.
It's an old naval base, which we're not allowed to name, but you can say "The Farm.
" They train you on all sorts of stuff.
They train you on weapons high-speed driving-- how to run somebody off the road at 70 miles an hour parachute training secret writing short-range agent communication, communicating with satellites, rendezvousing with a submarine in the Atlantic in the middle of the night.
You know, useful skills like that.
NORTH: The skill set that a Special Operator employs is astounding.
It's communications.
It's explosives, it's demolitions, it's explosive ordnance disposal.
It's every kind of weapon that you can imagine.
BAER: We can go to CVS and I can make a bomb between now and midnight that will take this hotel down.
Now how are you gonna stop that? NARRATOR: From The Farm, an operative will be dropped in a major U.
S.
city and must maintain his or her cover in a real-life game of spy hunter.
BAER: The CIA training never stops.
They put you on the streets of Washington, and have constant surveillance even use FBI agents.
You're supposed to detect them.
You're supposed to be able to put down dead drops, even under observation.
You're going 18 hours a day.
And what they're trying to do is break you down, to see at what point you make mistakes.
What they want to do is find people that can live overseas, live under the pressure of a foreign government watching them.
You learn it as part of your life.
Every single room, you assume is wired; you assume you're under surveillance all the time.
NARRATOR: Former CIA Operative Bob Baer-- whose covert exploits inspired the 2005 thriller Syriana-- was in charge of the CIA in Iraq during the years following the Persian Gulf War.
His Black Op mission-- to organize opposition against one of the most brutal dictators in modern history, Saddam Hussein.
BAER: An Iraqi general came to me and said he can get rid of Saddam.
He had a tank company near Tikrit, and our plan was to cause a diversion in Baghdad.
Start shooting so that Saddam would move to Tikrit and then once he was there, our colonel was gonna move these 12 tanks on his compound near Tikrit, and ask him to resign or we'd kill him.
NARRATOR: In 1995, Baer informed the Clinton Administration that the opportunity existed to neutralize the man known as "The Butcher of Baghdad," but inexplicably, they refused.
BAER: I was called back by the FBI and investigated for murder and attempted murder.
And I figured once your employer's starting to think about putting you in jail, it's time to move on.
NARRATOR: But why would the government stop Baer's Black Op and investigate its highest- ranking CIA operative working in Iraq? BAER: When I went into the CIA, it was a very black and white world.
We were worried about the Soviet Union.
Was Moscow going to launch an attack on the United States? The people that were doing counterterrorism leading up to 9/11 had moved off accounts on the Soviet Union.
So you had a guy that was very good at counting tanks, and then all of a sudden, you're doing Bin Laden.
Some of these people had never set foot outside the Beltway and didn't speak Arabic, didn't quite know who Bin Laden was.
What was Al Qaeda? NARRATOR: And what would be the ultimate consequence as the antiquated CIA struggled to modernize? September 11, 2001.
America fell victim to a covert attack at home.
BAER: When 9/11 happened, I was in Washington D.
C.
Someone called me on the phone and said, "Turn the TV on.
" The second plane hits and the Pentagon hits.
And I can see the Pentagon burning from my house.
My first reaction is, "All right, we're gonna finally get serious about this.
" NARRATOR: The events of 9/11 galvanized the intelligence community and Tier One Special Forces with one unified Black Op mission: to hunt down and kill the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack-- Osama Bin Laden.
HEBEN: The events of 9/11 almost served as an opening of a floodgate for special operations.
It's almost like having this Rottweiler that's been in a cage with a choke chain on it, and all of a sudden, they open up the cage, they take the choke chain off, they open up the gate and say, "Go bite some people.
" NARRATOR: Coming up.
MIKE BAKER: You're trying to decide, with some credibility, is Bin Laden behind those walls enough to be able to convince the president to send the SEAL teams.
You'd better be on your game.
NARRATOR: August, 2010.
White House intelligence officers call a top-secret meeting with President Obama.
Nearly ten years after 9/11, President Barack Obama gave the orders to launch the Black Op to capture or kill Osama bin Laden: Operation Neptune Spear.
May 2, 2011, at 1:15 a.
m.
An American military transport departed Bagram, Afghanistan, where two dozen elite warriors from SEAL Team Six arrived at an airbase in northwest Pakistan and boarded two Chinook helicopters.
Their destination: a multi-level Abbottabad compound, fortified by 12-foot walls and armed guards.
HEBEN: We had been watching that place for years, and in the months leading up to the actual operation, we had constructed a mock compound.
The SEAL Team Six guys, they knew every square inch of that compound, much like you or I would know the details in our kitchen.
MIKE BAKER: There were eight or nine years of work, credibly labor-intensive, painstaking work carried out by the CIA and others that led eventually to the SEALs landing on that site and taking out bin Laden.
NARRATOR: Escorted by a pair of stealth Black Hawk helicopters, the SEALs, equipped with night vision goggles and M4 carbine rifles, rappelled into the compound.
HEBEN: They had a lot of details of the compound, but the door they thought was a door was a false door, it was a façade.
They ended up having to explode their way through one of the walls.
NARRATOR: While the SEALs entered the house, a previously unreported stealth helicopter was forced to land.
NORTH: We were told publically that it was a Special Operations Helicopter that was damaged and then partially destroyed.
MARCINKO: We wouldn't have known about that special helicopter if it hadn't crashed.
NARRATOR: As the SEALs stormed inside, they rely on their close-quarters combat training, clearing room after room.
HEBEN: They climbed up that three-story inner compound, and that's where they found Osama Bin Laden.
And they took him out as he was reaching for a weapon.
NARRATOR: In a matter of seconds, the world's most notorious terrorist was dead.
HEBEN: The entire operation happened in under an hour-- about 38 minutes.
But the actual defining moments wherein they were able to locate Osama and put rounds into his body happened in under a minute.
WASDIN: 38 minutes is a very long time.
It becomes even longer if people are shooting back at you.
It becomes even longer if you crash a helicopter and you have to breach through a wall and you don't know if somebody else is coming for reinforcements.
NARRATOR: Sunday May 1, 11:35 p.
m.
President Obama addresses the nation.
OBAMA: Good evening.
The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: But within hours, conflicting details of the raid spread worldwide.
And over the next several days, the official statement from the United States government would change multiple times.
RUSS BAKER: In the first week after that raid, we were told so many conflicting stories that have never been resolved Why, really, they disposed of the body so quickly whose orders it was to assassinate him, rather than to take such a high-value intelligence target in for questioning.
WASDIN: Nobody outside the team that hit the compound in Abbottabad knows what went on in that compound.
I find it laughable for people to think that anybody's got any insider information about what really went on inside the op to kill Bin Laden and stuff like that.
BAER: You're gonna hear a lot of propaganda: You're gonna hear a lot of propaganda out of the White House, and then you got the SEALs that don't want to talk about it at all.
NORTH: Quite frankly, I was stunned at how much was revealed about the operation to get Bin Laden.
What we know is that the administration announced that a SEAL Team carried out a raid in which Bin Laden was killed.
And Bin Laden was then taken out to a ship and his body was given a Muslim burial at sea.
NARRATOR: The death of Bin Laden marked the War on Terror's greatest victory.
So why would the United States government be so eager to revise its accounts of the Bin Laden raid and refuse to release any photos? NORTH: Every warrior in those kinds of units understands that divulging information, even about an operation that may have taken place years ago, can jeopardize those who are on the next mission.
That old axiom "Loose lips sink ships," they get that.
NARRATOR: For highly- classified, covert missions secrecy is paramount, but could the clandestine nature of Black Ops, like Operation Neptune Spear, spawn conspiracy theories and fuel mistrust in the government? RUSS BAKER: With that kind of misinformation, you don't really know whether in fact, the operation went as characterized.
In fact, you don't even really know-- there's no proof-- that Osama Bin Laden was ever even there.
JONES: Upwards of 90% of warfare today is psychological in nature or a Psy Op, and I cannot stress enough how integral and how key this is to the overall system.
RUSS BAKER: Psy ops, or psychological operations, are basically an attempt to influence hearts and minds.
It's an attempt to convince people of certain things, some of them true, some of them not true.
NARRATOR: Beyond propaganda, rumors and conflicting accounts, one thing remains clear.
The escalation of black budgets may point to one of America's greatest military secrets.
that the future of American warfare and the global War on Terrorism lies largely in Black Ops and the elite warriors who are prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the safety of their nation.
WASDIN: I've had people ask me, "Is it true that most Black Ops don't live to see their 30th birthday?" When I got into SEAL Team Six, if you'd have told me that I would live to be 40, I would have thought you were crazy.
HEBEN: The secrets that we keep are very, very necessary.
We don't like people to know where we've been, where we're going, where we've come back from.
WASDIN: I was an elite warrior in the modern world, and that's all I cared about.
We had a saying at SEAL Team Six called "Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.
" Captioned sponsored by A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
NARRATOR: So elusive RONALD KESSLER: The CIA is violating the laws of foreign countries.
That has to be kept secret.
NARRATOR: So life-threatening OLIVER NORTH: Lord knows keeping secrets matters when your life is at stake.
NARRATOR: that they've been kept hidden from the public until now.
CHRISTOPHER HEBEN: I'm not gonna be anyone's prisoner of war.
You're gonna have to kill me because I'll chew your face off if I don't have any ammunition left.
NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a book a book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America, a book whose very existence is known to only a select few.
But if such a book exists, what would it contain? Secret origins? Secret missions? Secret lies? Does there really exist NARRATOR: January 24, 2012: Moments before President Barack Obama was to begin his State of the Union address, he commended the U.
S.
Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
OBAMA: Good job tonight.
Good job.
NARRATOR: But why? Kept secret from those outside the Defense Department was the knowledge that, only minutes earlier, an elite group of American special forces known as SEAL Team Six had stormed a Somali compound in a daring rescue mission.
In a matter of minutes, two hostages were extracted, unharmed, and President Obama confirmed the rescue with their families.
It is the same elite unit, which only eight months earlier, carried out an ultra-secret, highly classified mission: Operation Neptune Spear.
38 minutes after U.
S.
helicopters set down at a secret Abbottabad, Pakistan compound, the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, was dead.
OBAMA: The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: Within hours, news of the clandestine "Black Operation" or "Black Op," spread across the globe, proclaiming the men of SEAL Team Six as American heroes.
But just who are the elite soldiers behind these top-secret operations, and what exactly makes a mission a "Black Op"? OLIVER NORTH: "Black Ops" is a euphemism for unconventional operations.
And Black Operations include everything from unconventional attacks against the enemy.
Today it's even cyberattacks all the way through hostage rescue operations, surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence-collecting.
Those are the kinds of activities that we refer to today as Black Ops.
HOWARD WASDIN: The primary function of Black Ops is to do something expeditiously that's gotta be done right away without anybody else knowing that it's going on.
Nowadays during warfare, we need a scalpel rather than a hammer.
MIKE HAYDEN: That's covert action.
That's action taken on behalf of the United States government, in which the hand of the United States government is intended to remain hidden and activities which the United States government does not intend to acknowledge.
It's that world between war and peace.
NARRATOR: While the U.
S.
government refuses to acknowledge their existence, top-secret Tier 1 missions can only be designated at the highest levels of government and planned by the Central Intelligence Agency.
NORTH: What makes a mission a Tier 1 Mission? It's a determination made at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and inside the Pentagon.
BAER: These operations normally start with the CIA.
We collect all the intelligence for these guys to go into a place.
We're there first on the ground, like Afghanistan when the CIA went in first, Special Forces came in later.
The CIA works with Delta Force and the SEALs every single day.
A lot of the people inside the CIA had at one time been in Delta Force or the SEALs.
NARRATOR: While Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force are the most recognized, the Army Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have elite Tier 1 units under the control of a unified combatant command.
HEBEN: Special Operations Command, which is the big umbrella that SEALs and Delta and Rangers and Air Force Special Operations fall under-- they comprise about 60,000 individuals, and of those 60,000 individuals, there's 20,000 operators or shooters or door-kickers.
WASDIN: What makes SEAL Team Six different and what makes Delta Force different is they're Tier 1 counterterrorist units, which means they can go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.
HEBEN: When there's a situation in the world that threatens Americans' lives, the President wants to know a few things right away: Where's the nearest aircraft carrier? Where's the nearest SEAL team? Where's the nearest Delta squadron, and how can we point the needle in the right direction? NARRATOR: Special Operations units are trained in areas of direct action, psychological operations, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Many consider the Navy SEALs to be the best fighting force on Earth, and they are often tasked with conducting the most harrowing and dangerous missions.
WASDIN: SEAL actually stands for "Sea, Air, and Land.
" It's the elements from which we operate.
The sea, the air We sky-dive in, fast-rope in from a helicopter.
And of course land-- we could patrol in.
So "Sea, Air, and Land" is what forms the acronym SEAL.
HEBEN: SEALs are described as the brain surgeons of shooting.
You also have a guy that can use his hands for any number of edged weapons.
So a guy can stab you, slash you, jab you, poke you, shoot you, render you unconscious, or straight out kill you with his hands.
That's a deadly combination.
NARRATOR: It was the failed American invasion of Cuba in April 1961, known as the Bay of Pigs, that compelled President John F.
Kennedy to create a special force outside the CIA, one that would be capable of conducting unconventional operations.
RUSS BAKER: He began to see the duplicity involved with what he was being told about the Bay of Pigs invasion.
It became more and more clear to him that the CIA was not properly accountable.
He became so angry at this that he actually declared that what he wanted to do was to destroy the CIA, break it into a thousand pieces, and cast it to the wind.
NARRATOR: May 25, 1961: During his famous "Man on the Moon" speech to Congress, President Kennedy made public his desire for a special fighting force.
JOHN F.
KENNEDY, JR.
: I am asking the Congress for an additional $100 million to expand existing forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, paramilitary operations, and sub-limited or unconventional wars.
WASDIN: The Navy SEALs was originally formed by John F.
Kennedy in 1962.
President Kennedy had the foresight to realize that wars of the future would be low-intensity conflicts that would spring up real quick, and we needed the guys to send in to do that job.
NARRATOR: April 24th, 1980.
President Jimmy Carter orders an ultra-clandestine mission: Operation Eagle Claw, in an effort to rescue 52 U.
S.
embassy employees held captive in Iran for nearly six months.
RICHARD MARCINKO: Eagle Claw.
Well-documented, in terms of what went wrong.
We went over and over what could go wrong, and damn it, something went wrong.
So, a sandstorm kicks up.
It got to the filters of the helicopter that couldn't lift off enough.
Hit the wing tank of the C-130.
End of mission.
NORTH: That operation was the reason why the entire special operations community was reorganized in the aftermath.
It was the direct consequence of the failure of that mission.
NARRATOR: Following the Eagle Claw debacle, where eight U.
S.
service men died, the Department of Defense commissioned Vietnam veteran Richard Marcinko to build a top secret counterterrorism unit-- Navy SEAL Team Six.
MARCINKO: The consequence of Eagle Claw was, of course, got me to build SEAL Team Six, which I consider my thesis of my military career.
One of the secrets about Six is that when I built it, I called it Six, but there was only two.
We still had the Cold War going on, so I said, "Let them figure out where three, four and five were.
I'll go to six.
" I think that Eagle Claw, for being a failure, certainly has a plus, in that Congress mandated the establishment of Joint Special Operations Command.
And now you have a bona fide staff that does nothing but keep track of terrorism and special operations around the world.
We now have this tier-one capability that won't let a failure like that happen again.
NARRATOR: Coming up: HEBEN: We train aggressively as SEALs.
One of our mottos is, "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
" WASDIN: If you're going through BUDS, and you don't at least think about quitting, something's wrong with you.
NARRATOR: Tier One special operators like the Navy SEALs must conduct high-risk counterterrorism missions with surgical precision in a matter of minutes.
Let's go! Let's go! Let's move, move! NARRATOR: But what training process can prepare a solider for these life-and-death covert missions? And what skills really separate a Navy SEAL from other Tier One Operators? NORTH: What does it take to become a black operator? First of all, you got to be a volunteer to one of the branches of the armed forces.
Second, you have to qualify.
And that means a very rigorous selection process.
ALL: Hey, up! HEBEN: When you look at the numbers, active duty military personnel is about 1.
4 million, which represents .
001 percent of our population.
So when you look at SEAL teams, there's only about 1,200 SEALs that are actually what we call "door kickers, shooters" or "operators.
" So not only are you .
001 percent of the military, but you're like .
00005 percent of the entire nation.
WASDIN: Nobody's recruited in the SEAL teams.
To be a Navy SEAL, you have to volunteer.
You gotta go through screening, physical, mental, psychological.
And there are three key characteristics in the SEAL teams: aptitude one, very, very intelligent people.
Physical fitness.
And the biggest key of all is mental toughness.
And that is the key thing that separates a Navy SEAL from anybody else on the planet.
INSTRUCTOR: Fired up! TRAINEES: Fired up! HEBEN: The attrition rate with respect to SEAL training is pretty high.
It's never been lower than 85%, which means 85% of the people that try out, don't make it.
Matter of fact, the first day, they say, "Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you.
Ten months from now, only one of you is gonna be here.
" NARRATOR: For Navy SEALs, secret training exercises can be more rigorous and intensive than battlefield operations.
HEBEN: We train aggressively as SEALs.
One of our mottos is "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
" BUDS training is an acronym that stands for "Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL" training.
That's the initial forging process that every SEAL has to go through WASDIN: If you're going through BUDS and you don't at least think about quitting, something's wrong with you.
People die in BUDS of hypothermia, people die at all SEAL training.
INSTRUCTOR: Get down in the mud and start crawling! WASDIN: Parachuting accidents, diving accidents, fast-roping accidents.
When you get to that level of training, everything you do is inherently dangerous.
That's the price you pay for sharpening that spear.
NARRATOR: Before Navy SEAL candidates can graduate to the next level of training, they must survive the most anticipated and feared part of BUDS training: Hell Week.
For a grueling six days, these men must push themselves beyond their limitations or they will go home.
HEBEN: Hell Week starts on a Sunday afternoon and it culminates the following Friday.
It's a nonstop evolution from swims to obstacle courses to running all over the place with boats on your heads.
There is a rotating shift of instructors who are all SEALs themselves.
INSTRUCTOR: Into the water.
HEBEN: So every eight hours you get a fresh crew of these guys that are ready to stick their foot up your backside.
The number-one quality of every SEAL is just a general overall state of perseverance.
We are not quitters.
We would rather die than quit.
I'm not gonna be anyone's prisoner of war.
You're gonna have to kill me because I'll chew your face off if I don't have any ammunition left.
WASDIN: BUDS is just the screening-out process.
Now you have to prove you have the aptitude to do the demolition, the skydiving, the diving, the IED work, hostage rescue, whatever it is that may be required.
So that's another six-to-ten months of intensive training that's worse than BUDS.
NARRATOR: For the elite 15% who actually survive Hell Week, an even more harrowing experience awaits: closed quarters battle.
WASDIN: CQB is an acronym for "Closed Quarters Battle.
" It's the toughest type of battle.
Closed quarters could be on a ship, could be on an airliner.
It's basically non-conventional warfare, not open terrain.
MARCINKO: You're in confined spaces, close order, and not is it that, but you're firing amongst each other.
So you're now going through a room where you have ricochets, you have the hostages, you've got friendly assets in there, and you have bad guys in there, and you're all firing.
HEBEN: Close quarters combat is a myriad of combat techniques that are slammed together in this homogenous mixture of [bleep.]
kicking.
If you don't have the physical skills or the mental skills to shift gears and quickly figure out a solution to that problem that's right in front of you, you're gonna die.
NARRATOR: For Tier One operators, special closed quarters resources are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
These facilities are aptly named "Kill Houses.
" MARCINKO: A kill house is a training house for CQB.
You can arrange good guy, bad guy targets.
You have the capacity of changing the furniture around, of changing the entry points, modifying it and electronically scoring it so there's no, "Oh, I would have had it.
" WASDIN: Being able to shoot a 3 X 5 index card about this big, and being able to put two bullets into that every single time.
If I come wake you up at 2:00 in the morning, tell you to gear up, and we go do a kill house run, you've got to be able to make those killing shots every single time.
Once I got to SEAL Team Six, I realized that I didn't know what I didn't know.
These guys have CQB down to a science.
You only think you know CQB unless you are SEAL Team Six.
(whistle blows) NORTH: In the training process, you're basically given the qualities of a world-class athlete.
Right from the very beginning, you're taught the importance of teamwork.
They train together.
They work together.
They get committed together.
And they become part of a remarkably effective special operations unit in the process.
NARRATOR: Once SEAL tactical training is completed, the few Navy SEALs that make it receive the SEAL Trident.
But to the men of the Navy SEALs, it's more than just a badge of honor.
HEBEN: The SEAL Trident is the insignia that SEALs wear on their uniforms.
The head of our eagle is bowed in deference to the nation because we are at service to our nation.
The second symbol is an old flintlock pistol.
The hammer is cocked, which is indicative of a constant state of readiness.
Also, there's King Neptune's trident on there, which represents our mastery and command of the sea.
WASDIN: This is, like, the biggest, baddest and gaudiest piece of chest equipment that anybody wears.
And every SEAL that gets one of these has that buried into his chest, literally.
They're punched in by your commanding officer, your team leader and everybody in your platoon.
You have to literally pull it out of your chest after you earn that.
I made up my mind.
I'm either going back to Wayne County, Georgia with a Trident on my chest, or they're going to have to mail me back in a box.
NARRATOR: Coming up: RUSS BAKER: The very fact that the federal government denies their preservation of a so-called black budget, this is a kind of a game being played with the American people.
NARRATOR: For the United States, top-secret Black Ops missions are a necessary, yet extremely costly endeavor.
Billions of dollars are invested in training, equipment, weapons, transportation and operational support.
But just how do covert operations get funded by a government that denies their very existence? MIKE BAKER: A black budget is essentially, uh, monies allocated for the maintenance, resourcing, logistics of our covert operations team.
Now, its not open book.
That's the reason why it's clandestine and covert.
If it's not, then you might as well get out of the game.
KESSLER: The money for black budgets, it's all done secretly.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have closed-door sessions where they approve these black budgets.
BAER: The CIA has a separate funding from Congress.
The military has Black Ops that are under special access programs.
You have to keep it secret.
MARCINKO: It takes a lot of money to train the operators.
It takes a lot of money to equip the operators.
When I started with 100 shooters in 1980, my training allowance for bullets was larger than the training allowance for the whole Marine Corps.
That's a lot of bullets.
But when you're saying, "I'm coming to save you," you don't care about the cost of those bullets.
HEBEN: You have the ability to buy cutting-edge equipment, cutting-edge gear from clothes that you're wearing to weaponry to optics to even experimental types of food that we're looking at to give guys more sustainable energy in the field.
RUSS BAKER: The very fact that the federal government denies their preservation of a so-called black budget, this is a kind of a game being played with the American people.
NARRATOR: With billions in funding secretly appropriated to Black Ops every year, just who is signing the checks? Could there be a secret chain of command, as some believe, that stretches all the way to the White House? NORTH: I know there's a lot of inquiry about-- how does that chain of command work? And, quite frankly, I am not at liberty to take the risk that I'm going to divulge something I shouldn't.
MARCINKO: The chain of command of that Tier 1 is working for the National Command Authority.
National Command Authority, by definition, is the president of the United States and the secretary of defense-- that's it-- managed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But, in essence, you're talking about the president saying, "I want," secretary of defense says, "Go do it," and the chief says, "Troops, be there.
" That is not a normal military function, so that allows you direct line for funding, direct line for intelligence, direct line for action, and everybody's on a short tether.
ALEX JONES: They sell you secrecy in the name of, "The enemy will know.
We've got to have some secrecy.
" And then it grows and grows and grows and grows, and expands and expands and expands.
It never ends.
And we're just gobbled up by the National Security State.
NARRATOR: But how is the president shielded from domestic and international accountability when a covert operation is exposed? Just how much-- or little-- is the president aware of? RUSS BAKER: Plausible deniability has been written into the substructure of covert operations under the National Security Act of 1947.
Anything that is being done that is illegal, immoral, unethical or potentially embarrassing must be plausibly deniable by people at the highest levels.
JONES: Many times, the people involved don't even know exactly what they're doing.
That way, if things go wrong, they can be cut loose.
Plausible deniability.
BAER: Secrecy is always a good thing.
The problem with secrecy is when it covers up incompetence.
We're talking about the United States government.
There's a lot of incompetence.
And when that's the purpose of secrecy, it doesn't serve this country.
NARRATOR: Spring, 1984.
Prior to the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations James A.
Lyons, Jr.
voiced concerns about vulnerabilities on America's military bases both at home and abroad.
Determined to expose potential weaknesses in America's defense systems, Vice Admiral Lyons enlisted the mastermind behind SEAL Team Six, Commander Richard Marcinko, to create and conduct an ultra secret Black Op known as Red Cell.
MARCINKO: So I pulled some SEAL Team Six members.
And I hired a group of cameramen, and we went around saying, "Which one of your bases would you like us to attack?" He would pick it.
And I would go out there, and we would attack the base.
I'd attack it for nine to ten days, and every day, I would brief the senior officer on what I had done the night before and what I got away with and presented him with a film that said, "Gotcha.
" NARRATOR: Commander Marcinko's Red Cell did, in fact, expose security weaknesses on American military compounds.
But just how vulnerable were they? MARCINKO: In New London, Connecticut, I was able to get on board nuclear submarines.
When Reagan was president, I got a truckload of 500-pound bombs alongside Air Force One.
That proved the vulnerability, and and policy lines had to be resolved.
NARRATOR: But did the findings of the Red Cell mission also expose other secrets? Ones that would threaten Commander Marcinko's very future? MARCINKO: How'd I get in trouble? I conspired with myself.
I didn't know you could do that, but apparently I did.
I was already retired.
And Naval Investigate Service spent a lot of money to find out how I did all the things I did.
I was guilty of a grenade contract that I said I needed.
The Army was the contracting service.
I had nothing to do with it but I was the one that went to jail, because I didn't say it cost too much.
I spent time in a federal camp for a little over a year.
Landed in a manure pile and came out smelling like a rose.
NARRATOR: Did Marcinko violate the chain of command or was the former SEAL Team Six Commander a victim of his own covert mission? Did the government create Red Cell as a means to orchestrate an even larger, secret agenda? HEBEN: Red Cell had a duality to it.
It was testing out American installations, but it was also simultaneously building a database that is gonna allow us to move in a Black Ops fashion all over the world, and assemble an assault team somewhere without anybody knowing.
NARRATOR: Coming up.
BAER: The CIA training never stops.
Right now, I can go to CVS and I can make a bomb between now and midnight that will take this hotel down.
Now how are you gonna stop that? NARRATOR: Undoubtedly, the most secretive and highly classified of all Black Ops missions originate within the cloak and dagger world of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Many CIA Operatives spend their entire careers shrouded in a clandestine existence-- operating behind enemy lines, spying against foreign countries, stealing secrets, and conducting counterintelligence.
HAYDEN: When you look at CIA we are the nation's first line of defense.
We go where others cannot go, and we accomplish what others cannot accomplish.
We spy, we conduct espionage, we steal secrets, and we do it through human sources.
We conduct analysis.
The actual number of analysts we have is a classified number, but it's the largest collection of intelligence analysts in the American government by far.
NORTH: You also have several affiliated organizations within the CIA that aren't necessarily based at Langley.
It's very highly classified how they do it, where they do it, when they do it.
Very few of those are actually publically acknowledged.
KESSLER: Everything that the CIA does, does have to be done secretly, because when CIA officers go into foreign countries to collect intelligence, they are violating the laws of those countries.
NARRATOR: About 150 miles away from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, tucked into the countryside, is an ultra clandestine training facility-- Camp Peary-- where new CIA operatives prove themselves.
While the U.
S.
government refuses to acknowledge its existence, insiders simply refer to it as "The Farm.
" BAER: The Farm is a training base.
It's an old naval base, which we're not allowed to name, but you can say "The Farm.
" They train you on all sorts of stuff.
They train you on weapons high-speed driving-- how to run somebody off the road at 70 miles an hour parachute training secret writing short-range agent communication, communicating with satellites, rendezvousing with a submarine in the Atlantic in the middle of the night.
You know, useful skills like that.
NORTH: The skill set that a Special Operator employs is astounding.
It's communications.
It's explosives, it's demolitions, it's explosive ordnance disposal.
It's every kind of weapon that you can imagine.
BAER: We can go to CVS and I can make a bomb between now and midnight that will take this hotel down.
Now how are you gonna stop that? NARRATOR: From The Farm, an operative will be dropped in a major U.
S.
city and must maintain his or her cover in a real-life game of spy hunter.
BAER: The CIA training never stops.
They put you on the streets of Washington, and have constant surveillance even use FBI agents.
You're supposed to detect them.
You're supposed to be able to put down dead drops, even under observation.
You're going 18 hours a day.
And what they're trying to do is break you down, to see at what point you make mistakes.
What they want to do is find people that can live overseas, live under the pressure of a foreign government watching them.
You learn it as part of your life.
Every single room, you assume is wired; you assume you're under surveillance all the time.
NARRATOR: Former CIA Operative Bob Baer-- whose covert exploits inspired the 2005 thriller Syriana-- was in charge of the CIA in Iraq during the years following the Persian Gulf War.
His Black Op mission-- to organize opposition against one of the most brutal dictators in modern history, Saddam Hussein.
BAER: An Iraqi general came to me and said he can get rid of Saddam.
He had a tank company near Tikrit, and our plan was to cause a diversion in Baghdad.
Start shooting so that Saddam would move to Tikrit and then once he was there, our colonel was gonna move these 12 tanks on his compound near Tikrit, and ask him to resign or we'd kill him.
NARRATOR: In 1995, Baer informed the Clinton Administration that the opportunity existed to neutralize the man known as "The Butcher of Baghdad," but inexplicably, they refused.
BAER: I was called back by the FBI and investigated for murder and attempted murder.
And I figured once your employer's starting to think about putting you in jail, it's time to move on.
NARRATOR: But why would the government stop Baer's Black Op and investigate its highest- ranking CIA operative working in Iraq? BAER: When I went into the CIA, it was a very black and white world.
We were worried about the Soviet Union.
Was Moscow going to launch an attack on the United States? The people that were doing counterterrorism leading up to 9/11 had moved off accounts on the Soviet Union.
So you had a guy that was very good at counting tanks, and then all of a sudden, you're doing Bin Laden.
Some of these people had never set foot outside the Beltway and didn't speak Arabic, didn't quite know who Bin Laden was.
What was Al Qaeda? NARRATOR: And what would be the ultimate consequence as the antiquated CIA struggled to modernize? September 11, 2001.
America fell victim to a covert attack at home.
BAER: When 9/11 happened, I was in Washington D.
C.
Someone called me on the phone and said, "Turn the TV on.
" The second plane hits and the Pentagon hits.
And I can see the Pentagon burning from my house.
My first reaction is, "All right, we're gonna finally get serious about this.
" NARRATOR: The events of 9/11 galvanized the intelligence community and Tier One Special Forces with one unified Black Op mission: to hunt down and kill the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack-- Osama Bin Laden.
HEBEN: The events of 9/11 almost served as an opening of a floodgate for special operations.
It's almost like having this Rottweiler that's been in a cage with a choke chain on it, and all of a sudden, they open up the cage, they take the choke chain off, they open up the gate and say, "Go bite some people.
" NARRATOR: Coming up.
MIKE BAKER: You're trying to decide, with some credibility, is Bin Laden behind those walls enough to be able to convince the president to send the SEAL teams.
You'd better be on your game.
NARRATOR: August, 2010.
White House intelligence officers call a top-secret meeting with President Obama.
Nearly ten years after 9/11, President Barack Obama gave the orders to launch the Black Op to capture or kill Osama bin Laden: Operation Neptune Spear.
May 2, 2011, at 1:15 a.
m.
An American military transport departed Bagram, Afghanistan, where two dozen elite warriors from SEAL Team Six arrived at an airbase in northwest Pakistan and boarded two Chinook helicopters.
Their destination: a multi-level Abbottabad compound, fortified by 12-foot walls and armed guards.
HEBEN: We had been watching that place for years, and in the months leading up to the actual operation, we had constructed a mock compound.
The SEAL Team Six guys, they knew every square inch of that compound, much like you or I would know the details in our kitchen.
MIKE BAKER: There were eight or nine years of work, credibly labor-intensive, painstaking work carried out by the CIA and others that led eventually to the SEALs landing on that site and taking out bin Laden.
NARRATOR: Escorted by a pair of stealth Black Hawk helicopters, the SEALs, equipped with night vision goggles and M4 carbine rifles, rappelled into the compound.
HEBEN: They had a lot of details of the compound, but the door they thought was a door was a false door, it was a façade.
They ended up having to explode their way through one of the walls.
NARRATOR: While the SEALs entered the house, a previously unreported stealth helicopter was forced to land.
NORTH: We were told publically that it was a Special Operations Helicopter that was damaged and then partially destroyed.
MARCINKO: We wouldn't have known about that special helicopter if it hadn't crashed.
NARRATOR: As the SEALs stormed inside, they rely on their close-quarters combat training, clearing room after room.
HEBEN: They climbed up that three-story inner compound, and that's where they found Osama Bin Laden.
And they took him out as he was reaching for a weapon.
NARRATOR: In a matter of seconds, the world's most notorious terrorist was dead.
HEBEN: The entire operation happened in under an hour-- about 38 minutes.
But the actual defining moments wherein they were able to locate Osama and put rounds into his body happened in under a minute.
WASDIN: 38 minutes is a very long time.
It becomes even longer if people are shooting back at you.
It becomes even longer if you crash a helicopter and you have to breach through a wall and you don't know if somebody else is coming for reinforcements.
NARRATOR: Sunday May 1, 11:35 p.
m.
President Obama addresses the nation.
OBAMA: Good evening.
The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: But within hours, conflicting details of the raid spread worldwide.
And over the next several days, the official statement from the United States government would change multiple times.
RUSS BAKER: In the first week after that raid, we were told so many conflicting stories that have never been resolved Why, really, they disposed of the body so quickly whose orders it was to assassinate him, rather than to take such a high-value intelligence target in for questioning.
WASDIN: Nobody outside the team that hit the compound in Abbottabad knows what went on in that compound.
I find it laughable for people to think that anybody's got any insider information about what really went on inside the op to kill Bin Laden and stuff like that.
BAER: You're gonna hear a lot of propaganda: You're gonna hear a lot of propaganda out of the White House, and then you got the SEALs that don't want to talk about it at all.
NORTH: Quite frankly, I was stunned at how much was revealed about the operation to get Bin Laden.
What we know is that the administration announced that a SEAL Team carried out a raid in which Bin Laden was killed.
And Bin Laden was then taken out to a ship and his body was given a Muslim burial at sea.
NARRATOR: The death of Bin Laden marked the War on Terror's greatest victory.
So why would the United States government be so eager to revise its accounts of the Bin Laden raid and refuse to release any photos? NORTH: Every warrior in those kinds of units understands that divulging information, even about an operation that may have taken place years ago, can jeopardize those who are on the next mission.
That old axiom "Loose lips sink ships," they get that.
NARRATOR: For highly- classified, covert missions secrecy is paramount, but could the clandestine nature of Black Ops, like Operation Neptune Spear, spawn conspiracy theories and fuel mistrust in the government? RUSS BAKER: With that kind of misinformation, you don't really know whether in fact, the operation went as characterized.
In fact, you don't even really know-- there's no proof-- that Osama Bin Laden was ever even there.
JONES: Upwards of 90% of warfare today is psychological in nature or a Psy Op, and I cannot stress enough how integral and how key this is to the overall system.
RUSS BAKER: Psy ops, or psychological operations, are basically an attempt to influence hearts and minds.
It's an attempt to convince people of certain things, some of them true, some of them not true.
NARRATOR: Beyond propaganda, rumors and conflicting accounts, one thing remains clear.
The escalation of black budgets may point to one of America's greatest military secrets.
that the future of American warfare and the global War on Terrorism lies largely in Black Ops and the elite warriors who are prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the safety of their nation.
WASDIN: I've had people ask me, "Is it true that most Black Ops don't live to see their 30th birthday?" When I got into SEAL Team Six, if you'd have told me that I would live to be 40, I would have thought you were crazy.
HEBEN: The secrets that we keep are very, very necessary.
We don't like people to know where we've been, where we're going, where we've come back from.
WASDIN: I was an elite warrior in the modern world, and that's all I cared about.
We had a saying at SEAL Team Six called "Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.
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