2 Hours Of The CIA Taking Down America's Enemies | CIA Declassified

33-year old male found dead a few days ago someone amongst them is our killer it is al-qaeda's first strike at America hundreds are killed by Suicide bombs at two US embassies in Africa the scale of the bombing was enormous it is the beginning of a new era of terrorism you can't really over State the impact this was the declaration of war on the United States for the CIA there's only one man who can hunt down the killers the legendary operative John Bennett he is entrepreneurial aggressive he is exactly the sort of person in a war

zone that you would want in charge the terrorists are operating from a country that's a noo zone for the US it was very dangerous the Somali Clans will turn you over for a few dollars the top secret mission infiltrate the most dangerous country in the world deliver operation Celestial balance and work with SEAL Team Six to ensure that Justice is done [Music] it's a bustling August morning in Nairobi the capital of the East African state of Kenya if it's famous for anything it's for its world-class Safari parks and pristine beaches it's a part of Africa

that doesn't often make the news headlines just after 10:30 a.m. a truck drives up to the US Embassy and instead of slowing with the barrier it accelerates [Music] [Music] the scale of the bombing was was enormous it was not only the explosive capacity which destroyed the embassy and nearby buildings but the shock wave uh shattered glass for many many many blocks around most of the Kenyans who were injured badly um were hit by flying glass the final death toll is 12 Americans and 200 Kenyans with over 4,000 [Music] injured almost simultaneously another suicide bomb explodes

outside the US Embassy in Salam the capital of the neighboring country of Tanzania nothing has ever happened like this before to Americans in the region it's an incomprehensible act that stuns the world our teams are on the ground in Africa they tending to the wounded they are providing security they are searching and finding evidence we will do whatever we can to bring the murderers to [Applause] Justice to a handful of experts inside America's intelligence and security agencies it's immediately obvious that the sophistication of an operation like this can't have come from locals working alone the

suspicion is that a Saudi Prince few have heard of called assama Bin Laden is behind the attacks earlier in the year he declared a holy war on the US and now it's clear he wants the world to know that America has an implacable enemy that will strike without warning the 1998 Embassy bombings were a turning point until then Al-Qaeda had been a shadowy behind the scenes presence it wasn't really known uh to the public uh wasn't widely known outside intelligence you can't really overstate the impact and this was the the declaration of war on the

United States the only explanation for the location of the attacks is the ease with which they can be carried [Music] out poor security corruption and easy targets like Western Mass tourism make the country irresistible to a burgeoning terror organization a the embassy bombing revealed the fact that the East Africa Al-Qaeda cell found Kenya to be actually quite a permissive environment to work in they had both aggrieved uh Muslim Coastal populations that they could find some support from they had uh opportunities thanks to Kenya's uh corrupt political system and police to operate with near impunity and

they had thousands of soft targets almost immediately the US hits back at known Al-Qaeda targets today I ordered our Armed Forces to strike at terrorist related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan but they failed to achieve their objectives the strikes on a basin Sudan destroy a harmless pharmaceutical Factory 75 m Iles hit four Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden but he's not in any of them as well as tracking down Osama Bin Laden the CIA wants the local cell responsible for the planning and the execution of the attacks within

hours of the bombing Kenyan police have an amazing ing Stroke of Luck they arrest a man who turns out to be one of the suicide bombers who panicked and flared at the last [Music] minute on his cell phone are numbers that confirm his links to Al-Qaeda but he gives an even more valuable piece of information the name of his Al-Qaeda Handler in Nairobi that name is harun ful the CIA Nairobi station immediately get to work they check NSA wiretaps of AMA Bin Laden's calls to Nairobi and see regular connections to the offices of an aid

charity and conversations with an employee there called fizo when investigators raid the Charity's offices they discover fake passports that show that harun ful is an alias used by someone called ful Abdullah Muhammad it turns out he's a hardened terrorist with over a decade's experience fil had a very long and whining background but he moved to several different places you know In and Out of Africa uh even going as far is going to Pakistan he was the personal secretary to osam Bin Laden and then moved with Bin Laden back to Sudan ful really became one of

the guys that was a foreign operations director took on this role of doing the ex big external foreign attacks for Al-Qaeda and specifically the Horn of Africa he would make trips into Kenya and so leading up to the Embassy bombings he would go there you know set up Logistics look at financing and money investigators also discover that ful is assisted by a young prote called s Ali nabhan further interrogations reveal that the two terrorists fled Kenya on the eve of the bombing CIA analysts conclude they must have gone to one particular country Kenya's violent Lawless

and chaotic neighbor Somalia is the perfect safe haven for terrorists on the run for years it's been a noggo area for Americans thanks to the notorious battle of Mogadishu 5 years earlier the shooting down of a Blackhawk helicopter and the drawn out rescue attempt that followed led to massive American casualties it later became known as Blackhawk Down 18 US Army Rangers were killed hundreds of Somali died in that the US pulled out and Somalia was left to its own devices for a number of years [Music] the CIA now realizes that going after ful and nabhan

means chasing them down to the one place where no Commander wants to send his men Somalia is a dead zone where the US has no base no friends and no contacts the assets that the US intelligence Community had in Somalia were practically non-existent when the US troops pulled out of Mogadishu in 1993 the CIA station went with them that was the last CIA presence in the country the CIA is virtually in the dark and will need to build an intelligence gathering operation from the ground up very difficult to go in there and really get any

sort of intelligence going there's not a lot of signals intelligence so you really have to rely on human intelligence and then the CIA makes another disturbing dis Discovery because Kenya's Muslims distrust the us-backed Christian government Al-Qaeda sympathizes straddle the border of Kenya and Somalia it's a situation which suits the terrorists perfectly the internal dynamics of Kenya really play to the strengths of guys like fizul and nban so we partner with the Kenyan government which is predominantly Christian and from the tribes of central Kenya but the Kenya Muslim Coast has always been minority and a somewhat

oppressed minority and because there is that division in that country Navan and ful can move up and down uh the coast of Kenya and in these Muslim populations intelligence comes in that ful and nabhan are most likely being protected by a Muslim fishing community on one of the many islands that dot the coast of Kenya ful built networks um both in Nairobi especially in neighborhood known as eastley which is a a slum area of Nairobi and he also did that up and down uh the coast of Kenya he would move up and down through those

locations and then move back into Somalia and even there he would pick up Kenyans who he would train in Somalia and they would move back into Kenya that knew how to sort of naturally navigate these networks I think uh and it gave them a certain ability to move up and down the coast where once it came time to execute an attack they knew exactly how to do it and they had a best network to do [Music] that posing as fishermen and married into local families the cell now starts making inroads into the ports of Somalia

building Logistics and networks to enable their next attack it turned out that the East Africa Al-Qaeda cell was using Somalia the same way a lot of business people were using Somalia basically as the world's largest dutyfree shop the the ports there the SE ports where you could move moneyman material from Beach to truck and into East Africa no questions asked the cell now have a presence in both countries and are able to switch at a moment's notice when it suits them maximizing the proximity of a failed state to a land effectively defenseless from terrorism what's

different about Kenya as well as opposed to Somalia especially for Al-Qaeda is access to Western Target to attack a Westerner from Somalia they have to project a long way they have to really build out an operation you can't do that unless you have a support network in another country with access to targets they could access Western targets there they had a network that could support them and they had a safe haven in Somalia that they could flee to so Kenya became a right place for ful and Nan to essentially conduct attacks on the [Music] west

the CIA know that with all it resources and power the us could send in troops and bring the terrorists to justice but since the disaster of Blackhawk Down nobody in Washington has much interest in tackling Somalia then one day in September 2001 all that changes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and to conduct a fullscale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act 9/11 sudden put Somalia on the front burner of us counterterrorism concerns

the US government had very good reason to believe that as it hit al-Qaeda in Afghanistan Al-Qaeda would disperse to ungoverned space uh places where it would be beyond the reach of rule of law and Somali of course is a country with a completely collapsed State an Islamic country and so Somalia immediately garnered a lot of attention with an overnight change in policy towards the terror threat in Africa the hunt for the masterminds behind the embassy Bings now becomes a top priority the US is now determined to prevent Somalia becoming a Haven for Al-Qaeda and President

Bush allocates a $100 million of military spending to the region at the center of the package is an expanded military base on somalia's North northern border and a massive investment in the CIA operation in Kenya with a substantial influx of intelligence operatives and Special Forces so the CIA station in Nairobi was dramatically reinforced we brought in a bunch of military guys you know the cover was they were part of a training mission for the Kenyan military and in fact they were all Special Forces operators with uh some par military experience uh with the CIA and

these guys became the nucleus for trying to figure out what was going on inside [Music] Somalia but all the spending in the world won't give the CIA the one thing they need most Intelligence on the location of fil and naban they need contacts in Somalia and despite the increased in investment a year on from 9/11 the trail is still ice cold Kenyan intelligence and CIA analysts realize that they have no means of guessing where or when the terrorists might strike next all they can be certain of is it's only a matter of time before they

[Music] do one of the jewels of Kenya tourist industry is its tropical Coastline and a much sought after Beach Resort is the Paradise hotel near the busy Port of Mombasa it's popular with Israelis flying in from Tel for a week in the sun it's the Jewish holiday of Hanukah everyone is in festive mood suddenly a car explodes outside the hotel 16 people are killed including 10 kenyons and three Israelis many more are injured a mile away at the same time a charted passenger flight from Mombasa to Israel takes off carrying 200 holiday makers heading home

as it leaves the tarmac two surface to- a missiles streak towards the planee the missiles only just miss their target simultaneous coordinated attacks the al-Qaeda signature just like the twin bombings of the US embassies 4 years earlier they do a two-prong attack the first group is two suicide bombers that go to the paradise hotel but naon uh takes on the role of leading this sort of effort um at the Mombasa airport navon actually is the one who fires one of the missiles at the jet luckily neither of the missiles actually hit the jet but naban

sort of LED that cell and with that he rejoins with the others they move back to Somalia and that was really the last time they were in at least working in terms of operations there for the CIA an awful reality is Dawning despite the massive investment in counterterrorism since 9/11 the bombers have struck again just a few hundred miles from their last attack in an operation that could have been even more [Music] deadly American and Kenyan agents now realize Al-Qaeda is accelerating its attacks on Western targets and the CIA will now more than ever need

to hunt them down it's a wakeup call for anyone who thought that the war on terror was going America's way in East Africa [Music] fizul and nabhan now base themselves permanently in Somalia but have a network of operatives who they can use to plan an ambitious series of attacks on Western hotels in Kenya one of the um lowlevel operatives that was arrested uh in Mombasa said that after the Paradise Hotel attacks he was told to start casing hotels around Mombasa and ful specifically told him to go around those hotels in Mombasa and that the plan

was essentially later on to come back and do another hotel style attack but he was seeing again you know a couple different times on the Kenyan Coast coming back down what you have to wonder is was he doing reconnaissance essentially to conduct another attack in Kenya and then there's a breakthrough satellite phone intercepts reveal a dramatic increase in al-Qaeda related activity in somalia's capital not issue it suggests that this must be the terrorist cell's base of operations the East Africa Al-Qaeda cell started coming and going from Mogadishu back to Kenya we're talking about a small

number of what the US government called high value targets maybe five people and that meant that the US now had specific targets of interest in Mogadishu that it was going to to try to pursue the problem the CIA faces is that they need a presence on the ground in morod issue but that simply isn't possible Somalia is completely Lawless the US military were driven out 5 years earlier it's Anarchy In which Outsiders don't stand a [Music] chance then critically important information comes to light boyed by their successful attacks in Kenya the terrorists ful and nabhan

have become confident and are starting to raise their profile it allows the CIA to start picking up their Trail they are forging links with local Somali extremists who are now offering them protection for the CIA it's a Game Changer it became increasingly clear that the al-Qaeda East Africa Network had local allies in Somalia that it was protected by some militias at that time they had no name their leadership was still unknown but that there was a Nexus in Somalia between Al-Qaeda East Africa and local extremists and from that point onwards American counterterrorism efforts really started

to focus on the al-Qaeda leadership in Somalia and their local Associates the CIA realized that with Al-Qaeda building its presence in somalia's capital they have to think the unthinkable they will have to send agents in a covert operation to the most dangerous place in all Africa for Americans they turn to the only man who could make that happen a legendary operative steeped in years of top secret missions in Africa famous for taking extreme risks and getting results in his pursuit of targets his name is John Bennett John Bennett was pretty good at his job he

is entrepreneurial he is aggressive he is exactly the sort of person in a war zone that you would want uh in charge of your operation uh he's not afraid to take risks in a intelligence community that was criticized after 9/11 for being risk adverse he was the exact opposite Bennett is under no Illusions about what he faces he knows that the kind of intelligence Network the CIA must build will only be done by experts with years of experience in Africa and even then it's a massive task building an intelligence Network under those sorts of conditions

is extremely extremely difficult the other thing that's unique about Somalia there are lots of foreign cultures that you know don't like Outsiders this is very common in places where Al-Qaeda hides but in Somalia maybe more than anywhere else they don't trust foreigners it's a very Clan based society and because of that Clan basis how do you essentially build intelligence inside a clan that you have no access to and almost no contct with operating out of the CIA station in Nairobi Bennett now uses his years of experience working with African Guerilla armies and rebel militias to

make a plan to infiltrate Mogadishu he knows that not everyone in the capital is friendly to Al-Qaeda and the Somali extremists protecting them if he can make an alliance with their enemies he might be able to persuade them to help the US but that means dealing with some of the most dangerous men in Africa the notorious Somali Warlords Bennett now sends in his best operatives carrying huge quantities of cash the US strategy to apprehend these high value targets who were coming and going from Mogadishu was to Outsource it the US government turned to the dance

partner who were available at the time a group of Clan militia leaders and in some cases some Business Leaders with large private militia to guard their properties um and uh paid them to try to apprehend these East Africa Al-Qaeda cell individuals Bennett knows that the one thing that will win over the Warlords is old-fashioned bribery in Morad disu more than anywhere else money TS his strategy is simple C hard cash for the people and the intelligence he needs the better the people and the more useful the intelligence the bigger the payoff in a world where

anyone will turn over anyone else for the right price Whoever has the most dollars calls the shots it was very dangerous work the Somali Clans will turn you over for a few dollars just as easily as they will to cooperate with you so Americans operating in that part of the country with these Clan leaders basically you really took your life in your hands whatever access we thought we could get away with we did but we had no Embassy no diplomatic cover uh no protection under international law if our Personnel got caught it was very dangerous

work Ben it's gamble with the warlord seems to work gradually they start seizing suspects and turn them over to the CIA some of these figures were engaged then in trying to identify to track down uh Al-Qaeda leadership uh and there began a process of apprehension of some of the suspect and rendition of some of the suspects the only trouble is none of them are the al-Qaeda bombers ful or Nan but if Bennett can't get the people he wants at least the new alliances with the Warlords means he can put in a second line of attack

he turns to a top secret unit in the CIA purpose built for penetrating the toughest environments in covert operations and delivering targets and intelligence the special activities division they work with signals Specialists called the intelligence support activity under the protection of the Warlords they can operate right on al-qaeda's doorstep in the Somali Capital they have years of experience tracking insurgents in Afghanistan and are experts in building networks of local agents and informants they start tapping the cell phone traffic of mogadishu's Terror groups hunting for Clues on the whereabouts of ful and [Music] nabhan and then

Bennett deploys a third strategy somalia's roads are full of trucks carrying Freight across the borders into Kenya and Ethiopia drivers and Traders travel widely in the country and for the right price will act as spies almost immediately bennet's various intelligence strategies deliver a result multiple sources confirm the existence of a new Al-Qaeda cell run by nabhan and a well Advanced plot with the potential for massive casualties nabhan is planning to Charter a plane and crash it into the US Embassy in [Music] Nairobi two truck bombs will explode simultaneously at the gates of the newly rebuilt

compound all flights between Somalia and Kenya are immediately suspended and the embassy is evacuated [Music] the plot is foiled but it shows the CIA that Al-Qaeda is maturing into a determined and well resourced operation and its protection in Mogadishu is making it stronger every day the strategy of CIA boss John Bennett should be yielding suspects and getting investigators closer to the terrorists but it hits a problem [Music] as the months pass it's clear that the Warlords are taking the cia's money but mostly delivering excuses the individuals and the Clans that they uh contracted with were

not the same sub Clans that were hosting the the the high value targets and so they had great difficulty even moving into much less reaching into and getting information on those neighborhoods uh secondly these militia leaders weren't necessarily very interested in the risk involved in going into a safe house and grabbing some very valuable Al-Qaeda suspects uh at the expense of a rival Clan because it could trigger an entire clan war it now looks like John Bennett is not getting value for money and the Warlords are treating the Americans with contempt they know they hold

all the cards and the CIA have no one else to turn to in order to get the people and information they need over time uh they were very happy to take the money from the US government but weren't particularly engaged in apprehending these individuals and that led to some growing frustration within the US government and then there's a new problem Bennett finds out that the Warlords are now faking information and arresting innocent people just to keep the money rolling in it's looking more and more like the cash payments are turning counterterrorism intelligence into a business

on the streets of madesu there were so many people involved trading on information selling intelligence fabricating intelligence arresting people on speculation that maybe this would be someone the US government would either pay money for or would have an interest in the apprehension of al-Qaeda suspects was deeply unpopular because Warlords were not necessarily discriminating in who they arrested Bennett deals with the Warlords are supposed to be a covert operation but the word is spreading that their clumsy counterterrorism operations are backed by the CIA it's making the Americans even more unpopular on the streets of madish which

plays right into the hands of the extremists the involvement of the CIA um and possibly other parts of the US government with Somali militia leaders was an Open Secret there are very few secrets in Somalia and some of the the Warlords who were involved in these operations wanted it to be known that they were friends of the United States and would boast about it so the nature of us support very quickly became clear that faction leaders were receiving cash payments uh that they were being given specialized equipment to help them gather intelligence and conduct surveillance

on sites they believed were linked with with Al-Qaeda to complicate matters Al-Qaeda and their protectors start a push back against the cia's bounty hunters the Warlords gang Warfare erupts on the streets you had Warlords and militia leaders hunting Al-Qaeda figures and their local Somali Affiliates on the other hand uh the Somali militias associated with Al-Qaeda were starting to identify who was involved in counterterrorism operations and to Target their pursuers so there were reciprocal assassinations and attacks between members of these groups that started to escalate through 2004 2005 with what effectively became a kind of dirty

war in the streets of Mishu then the signals Specialists the intelligence support activity discover from wiretaps a worrying development ful and Nan's extremist Somali protectors are rapidly gaming numbers and strength in the [Music] capital and it was around 2002 2004 that we began to see the rise of a small militia uh a Sharia Court militia that was answering to one of about 14 Sharia courts in uh Mogadishu uh almost none of which were Radical they were traditional they were they were governed by traditional Sufi clerics and Clan elders but this one Sharia Court um had

radical elements in it and that militia came to be known eventually as shabab and it included some mujahadin who had been in Afghanistan and that was the link that the East Africa Al-Qaeda cell was exploiting there the terrorists are now protected by thousands of extreme islamists who are every bit as dangerous as Al-Qaeda and their main enemy is the Warlords working with the CIA it couldn't be worse news the CIA is losing its protection in Morad disu the balance of power in the city is switching from the Warlords to the extremists and the Americans are

on the wrong side to the operatives on the ground despite all their efforts it looks like the CIA will be driven out of Somalia again and then something remarkable happened the Ethiopian Armed Forces invaded Somalia Ethiopia somalia's Christian neighbor is an ally of the US and more alarmed than anyone at the rise of the extremists in madesu Ethiopia was not going to tolerate the rise of an extremist islamist group in Mogadishu they had to rid themselves of this emerging threat Ethiopia sent over 10,000 troops and captured Mogadishu amazingly the CIA a is back in with

a chance it's about the best Christmas present Bennett could have hoped for when Ethiopia's Army sweeps through Somalia the CIA gets an open invitation to move as close to the action as they want the CIA and its Special Forces now use the Ethiopian Army to capture militants and start interrogating them but before long Vital Information comes to Light fresh intelligence indicates that Al-Qaeda has relocated South to the one place they know they can [Music] defend an island called Ras camboni Ras camboni is a name given to both an island and a coastal area right on

the Kenya Somali border it's very remote it was a training base certainly a spot for provisioning we know that they were coming and going from that area there's a functioning fishing business there and they actually mentioned this in their documents and they say we have access to the port it's good for trafficking and moving people weapons money whatever it might be and it's close to Kenya it's only a few kilometers away strategically Ras camboni couldn't be a better base it's protected by swamps Inland and is very hard to attack in a ground or sea assault

analysts believe ful and nabhan are hiding out here this is the opportunity the CIA has been waiting [Music] for when the Ethiopian Army besieges the town AC 130 gunships are sent in to hit the training camps with lethal [Music] Force the camps are flattened but there's no sign of fulo naan [Music] once again the al-Qaeda leaders have slipped through the cia's net it's getting harder to avoid the conclusion that the only way to take out the terrorists is by putting boots on the ground and sending in Special Forces it will mean risking another Blackhawk Down

back in madesu an increasingly unstable political situation means the US is running out of time if it wants to find the bombers despite the Ethiopian Invasion al-shabab the extremist Protectors of the al-Qaeda terrorists ful and nabhan is rapidly gaining mass [Music] popularity at this point in early 2007 uh shabab morphs from a small committed islamist militia of about 400 mujah to a much larger movement uh involving thousands of somalis who are supporting them tactically they're supporting them to get the Ethiopian Invasion uh out of Somalia so shabab is in a position now where it captures

the flag of anti- Ethiopian sentiment which is fierce in Somalia the CIA knows that shabab's power means that it will be increasingly hard to seize their allies for zul and abhan then the cia's special activities division uncovers intelligence that the terrorists have hit a problem a political crisis in shabab means they've started to fight amongst themselves for Zulan Nan's protectors are losing their effectiveness it might just expose the terrorists and give the CIA the chance it so badly needs they have internal clam fighting going on within shabab who's going to be the leader you know

who's in charge is it more about Somali issues or is it about these foreign Fighters that have come in from all over the world the quarreling is forcing one of the bombers the al-Qaeda leader s Ali nabhan to move more frequently to settle disputes and broker deals this movement makes him an easy target for surveillance the CIA quick Trace his Safe House in the capital and start a round thee clock watch they learn that from time to time napan travels south of the capital usually in a single vehicle and he's lightly [Music] armed the CIA

puts forward a plan to senior commanders in Washington to take nabhan in a snatch operation dead or alive it's called operation Celestial balance the US fifth Fleet is directed to wait off the Somali Coast silent miniaturized surveillance drones a launch to watch the roads running South out of madish navy ships carry their own unmanned drones called scan Eagles very small drones which you can launch off the helicopter deck on the back of a frig or a destroyer and it's wonderful for doing covert surveillance work it's quiet we can stay in the air for upwards of

seven or 8 hours CIA surveillance teams on the ground in Mishu report that nabhan is on the move and the alarm goes up in Washington he'll be on the road for about 4 hours at the Pentagon and the White House officials assemble to discuss the options the target area is out of range from the nearest drone base which means a hunter kill a drone strike is not an option a cruise missile attack runs a high risk of missing a vehicle on the move and an AC-130 Gunship can be evaded by such a small group with

the options narrowing fast senior commanders in the Pentagon have to consider an operation in the most dangerous country in the world for American soldiers commanders insist that if men do go in they must have the advantage of surprise but nabhan is traveling through Open Country it's the worst environment for an ambush so Precision in locating him is critical The Raid would never have been launched unless we had really firm evidence of where naan was physically located there had to be realtime intelligence from drone reconnaissance SEAL Team Six stationed on a nearby Navy destroyer now receive

their orders the plan is simple make an Airborne assault scan Eagle surveillance now proves crucial in tracking naban and his men as they travel out of the capital a squad of four little bird helicopters backed up by four black hawks launches from Naval vessels just off the Somali Coast with a fix on nabhan secured SEAL Team Six moves in and engages the AL a [Music] bomb killing him and everyone with [Music] him it was you unmanned drone video coverage that gave the Commandos the location of their target allowed them uh to do the job NAB

Han's body is removed for formal identification and Burial at Sea but the cia's work is not quite finished and the Hunt is on for his fellow Al-Qaeda conspirator fuzul Muhammad it's not long before he's located and tracks killed in a firefight with the Somali National [Music] army with the two most Wanted terrorists in Africa out of action Justice is done for the victims in the US Embassy bombings it marks a successful conclusion to operation Celestial balance and the removal of a major Terror threat in East Africa Somalia is closed down as AMA Bin Laden's next

Refuge [Music] the bombing of the USS coal it is one of the first of a series of deadly strikes by Al-Qaeda on us targets we had to avenge the 17 Souls that perished in the USS coal the organization responsible is quickly identified the only people out there who had anywhere close to this capability was Al but it'll take the best to find and stop The Killers themselves we want to know their tactics or techniques the procedures Who's involved this is the top secret story of how the CIA used Cutting Edge technology in one of the

most inhospitable regions in the world to hunt down the terrorist Mastermind behind the attack on the USS coal and deliver lethal Justice Abu Ali was The Godfather the head of the snake that needed to be decapitated in a country where it's easy to hide and impossible to search finding a bunch of guys in the most rugged forbidding teritory I've ever seen highly tribal areas the tribes were armed to the teeth yeah it's going to be hard [Music] it's a sultry morning in the poor town of Aiden in Yemen the Arab world's poorest country Aiden's location

on the southern tip of the region makes it useful as a refueling point for us vessels starting a tour of Duty from year to year little happens here to grab the world's attention today the USS Cole an American warship with 220 Sailors on board has come into Aiden to refuel before heading off on a training exercise it's nearly 11:00 a.m. the harbor is busy with small boats and Skiffs selling everyday Wares to the passing fleets then one of them approaches the coal its smiling occupants wave of the sailors very early morning on the 12th of

October 2000 I received a telephone call and it was U my good friend and colleague special agent Randy Hughes and he had told me in a very excited voice dude turn on the TV morning a US Destroyer sits crippled in a Yemen Harbor and there on the screen was breaking news of a terrorist attack a US warship in the port of Aiden had experienced an explosion it's more than an explosion a suicide bomb has ripped a 40ft hole in the hull of the coal nearly sinking the ship the latest figures are seven dead 10 missing

and 38 uh wounded eventually the death toll Rises to 17 with 39 injured back in the US the families of the dead and injured struggled to make sense of the first attack of its kind in US military history if it turns out that this is a terrorist act as it appears to be but certainly the investigation will prove that and any leads on who might have done it will be followed wherever they go to most people this is an incomprehensible crime but to a small number of experts in the FBI and the CIA a it's

got all the Hallmarks of a terrorist attack Prime Suspect Al-Qaeda and the largely Lawless mountains and deserts of Yemen is one of its favorite hiding [Music] places with alarm bells ringing across the Pentagon the CIA the FBI the naval criminal investigation service and the military sending plain loads of their best teams special agent Bob mcfaden is a seasoned operator in the Middle East with long stance of service in Bahrain and a command of fluent Arabic he summoned to Yemen to join a task force of investigators the word was to uh pack my bags for about

10 days and 10 days wind up being better part of 2 years and they have just one Mission objective find The Killers of America's 17 Sailors and bring them to justice words fail us but our feelings are pure and only now can all the details of that extraordinary Mission be told for it would be a mission that would test the CIA to its limits and involve every counterterrorism agency in the US [Music] I get word that some of the US government support elements are starting to come into Aiden so I go down to Aiden airport

to meet what I think is a relatively small group of people and there's about seven US Government planes of different varieties that had landed at the airport and I didn't know they were coming in the yemenis didn't know they were coming in no one had told the yemenis that what looked like a small Invasion force was going to be coming in at its height we were somewhere around 350 [Applause] people when investigators arrive the USS coal is listing heavily and they have to move fast to gather what evidence they can from the stricken vessel before

it sinks seeing the uh the the news clips of the ship is one thing but then actually seeing it and and being aboard the ship is is another altogether very emotional visceral the sights The Sounds the smells of Destruction and Decay is just remarkable it looked like a like a wounded animal there was something horrific about a ship that mortally wounded and and yet still somehow struggling to stay afloat it should have sunk it didn't Aiden's local police start Mass arrests seizing anyone they suspect move and from eyewitness evidence very quickly figure out the basics

of how the operation was carried out they were able to identify the launching spot of the skiff that attacked the ship they were able to identify very early on the compound where the bomb in the skiff had been assembled so they were able to to do a lot of those Basics pretty [Music] quickly now hundreds of us detectives from the CIA the FBI and the naval criminal investigation service get to work with ferocious energy they truly was a 24-hour operation and it was an exceptional uh working element among all those different agencies there's so much

to do so many tasks take care of setting up uh the communications and technicians setting up comms secure comms with Washington getting fact similes up getting uh internet connectivity for unclass and in various levels of classified systems the army of investigators is led by an extraordinary boss who commands Fierce loyalty among his team John O'Neal one of America's top experts on a terrorist who few of this point have heard of called assama Bin Laden and the shadowy group He commands called Al-Qaeda o' Neal leads his massive team from the front working tirelessly to deliver results

bigger than life personality uh very confident articulate uh very personable uh very very quick on his feet and uh truly someone who has a natural multitasking capability gathered around O'Neal as a team of the best Intelligence Officers in the US and leading them is a Lebanese PhD called Ali sufan one of the few investigators who speaks fluent Arabic D sufan is someone with Arabic skills you know not just with language but a lot of the unspoken things a lot of the cultural things that might not go into a bureaucratic report but that make a lot

of difference in building personal [Music] relationships the CIA believed that the men they want are Al-Qaeda but finding the individuals in Yemen who carried out the crime seems an enormous challenge at this stage all they have is scraps of evidence and eyewitness testimony then sufan and mcfaden make a connection with another terrorist crime 2 years earlier in the east African country of Kenya there two simultaneous attacks on US embassies in 1998 killed over 200 people and wounded 4,000 as President Clinton has indicated we're going to conduct an intensive unending and unyielding investigation to bring the

perpetrator to Justice now FBI and CIA operatives from the East Africa investigation are sent in to help O'Neal and the US team in Yemen they bring expertise that confirms Beyond doubt the coal was bombed by Al-Qaeda very experienced investigators special agents detectives came to Yemen with with a deep experience and knowledge of al-Qaeda and its motus operandi how it put together the cell for East Africa what kind of taxic they use what kind of safe houses they rented how they went about getting the explosives the East Africa team points out similarities in bomb making techniques

planning methods concealment strategies and team structure between the Embassy bombings they've been investigating and the attack on the USS coal in Yemen you have a core element that that we're saying over and over again remarkable similarities remarkable similarities to how the East Africa dual attacks occurred and sure enough when names surfacing in connection with the USS coal attack are shown to investigators with knowledge of the East African Embassy bombings matches are made some of the same names that were involved in East Africa facilitators and others that were at large their names were coming up very

early on in the coal investigation there's now no doubt left in the minds of the investigators it has to be Al-Qaeda what they need is the local cell the yemenese who set up and carried out the attack on the ship and then there's a breakthrough Yemen police recover a hat from the sight of the explosion the yemenis were able to find a cap from one of the bombers that had some hair that had some DNA pretty soon we had a pretty good idea of who was responsible for setting up this attack with a DNA evidence

the name of one of the suicide bombers is confirmed and from that a network of local associations emerges suspected members of the al-Qaeda cell in Yemen are brought in and interrogated sufan and mcfaden interview two men who turn out to be junior operators in the attack it looks like the investigation is on a roll and from these two men the US teams extract the name of the organizer the leader of the cell he's not a Yemen he's a wealthy young Saudi who is constantly on the move around Africa in the Middle East his name is

Abdul [Music] nashri with this vital piece of new information the investigators are ready to close in and shut down the cell that killed the 17 US Sailors Justice seems Within Reach but then there's a problem to get Abdul nashri investigators know they are entirely dependent on the cooperation of the yemeni authorities but soon yemeni officials begin to put up obstacles there was a decision somewhere within the chain of command of Yemen authorities that that put a Hal the interview of the witnesses it it was probably not for at least 2 weeks until uh myself and

investigator counterparts were able to reinter witnesses that the Yemen investigators had already interviewed The Cooperative attitude of the Yemen government is rapidly evaporating and then the US team loses its charismatic leader the frustrated John O'Neal is called back to the US and then leaves the FBI to take up a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center it's been 33 days since the attack on the coal and the US team is confronted with some devastating intelligence cell phone intercepts by CIA analysts indicate that nashri has set into motion another attack this time

his Target is the investigators themselves I received a call from the NCIS multiple threat alert Center and said you need to stand by there's some very significant threat reporting coming in this was actually a cell coming of gunning for the investigative element LED and directed by Abdul Raheem nashri a decision was made very very quickly to pair down the investigative element to a core of 50 orders come from Washington for the whole investigative Force to pull out of Yemen and a small core team is evacuated to a warship mored far out at [Music] Sea from

there the team learns further details of the planned assault there was consistent reporting that there was a cell or cells that would try to conduct some kind of breaching operation uh where the US element was sure enough the method of the terrorists mirrors exactly that of the bombers of the East Africa embassies 2 years earlier there is a main vehicle with high explosives that is essentially the ramming vehicle improvi improvised explosive device that breaches the perimeter and then there are other vehicles with attackers with weapons RPGs explosives just trying to uh shoot and kill anybody

in sight but to stand any chance of catching the bombers the investigation has to be brought back from the warship to Yemen and with massively increased security the team returns to Aiden the investigation had to go on very smart people made the decision that our our security and and other safeguards and measures were in place and so um quite fortunately we were able to continue and and restart the investigation sufan and mcfaden know that to get the quality of intelligence they need only meticulous preparation and careful psychology will work the way we approach um interview

and interrogation is a a rapport a relationship based approach uh a cerebral approach and that starts with getting any and all information available from any Source about the subject uh of the interview and and going in with a with a plan but also being able to turn on the dime if our plan's not going as anticipated does it mean he's going to say you have me here's everything but no think of it in terms of say a helicopter making concentric circles around a Target and you tend to revisit these topics when when he's comfortable and

then us establishing up front that we know an awful lot of information about him in a classic maneuver of interrogation psychology the investigators developed sincere relationships with their interviewees who soon have to reciprocate to preserve their self-respect and with that come the first pieces of reliable intelligence he doesn't want to lose face by continually lying or deceiving so he's going to have to give up bits of information so he can at least stay somewhere within his circle of comfort and so working on that in a consistent professional and cerebral basis with him day in and

day out within uh the first week we had already opened up a Channel of Highly reportable and actionable information about the al-Qaeda structure its command structure its communication methodology its capability and and different um weapon systems and then there's a breakthrough and the Americans make a discovery that has massive implications for the investigation they find out that the attack on the coal was not the first Al-Qaeda attempt to blow up a US Naval warship in [Music] 2000 9 months earlier just days after the Millennium New Year's Eve an identical plot almost succeeded against another US

Naval vessel the USS the Sullivans but the operation was abandoned when the attack boat flooded by [Music] accident until now investigators believe that the Mastermind of the coal bombing was a Saudi called Abdul nashri operating with just a tiny group of extremists the additional intelligence connecting a second plot to attack a US ship points to the presence of a larger cell in Yemen one that would require a Yemen leader further interrogations yield a new name well Abu alii was The Godfather for Al-Qaeda and Yemen or the Amir of the yemeni branch of al-Qaeda so he

was the head uh of the snake that needed to be decapitated Abu Ali al-h harati is even more dangerous and determined than Abdul nashri and has a long history of Terror operations all over the world he's one of what we would call sort of the first generation of jihadis he fought in Afghanistan in the late 1980s he was close to Osama Bin Laden building up camps within Yemen as well as the fact that he had military training so this is an individual who is able to combine a lot of different skills as they find out

more about him the US investigators realized that if nailing nashri was going to be hard tackling harati will be far more difficult a hardened Survivor with deep roots in Yemen Society he has the protection of a Fierce and heavily armed tribe in a remote part of the [Music] country mcfaden and suan realized that to get alh harati they are going to have to penetrate Yemen's bad lands wild places where even Yemen's Army didn't go Yemen is a very mountainous country with expansive areas where the government uh is not present that rugged terrain uh makes it

very difficult to establish control it's very similar to the situation in Afghanistan the tribe are extremely strong CIA investigators know that with the help of Special Forces and air strikes hunting harati down might be possible but Yemen's president has forbidden the US military in the CIA from going outside the country's major cities and he's unwilling to risk a confrontation with the tribes by sending in his own troops alh harati is not only beyond the reach of the US investigators but the Yemen government forces as well as a compromise president s suggests a diplomatic solution to

tackle alh harati and reluctantly the Americans agree he went into endless negotiations with uh Abu Ali directly trying to get Abu Ali to surrender himself and with some guarantees that he wouldn't be handed over to the Americans but uh it seemed to us pretty clear that these negotiations were sham that Abu Ali never really intended to do so as the investigation drags on into 2001 it's obvious the bombers of the USS coal have disappeared into the Sands of Yemen's deserts and mountains and the investigation is going nowhere then one day in September changes everything we

are Contin continually TR I've ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and and to conduct a fullscale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act in Yemen mcfaden and sufan are working the phones trying to get any information they can on the whereabouts of friends and relatives and become increasingly concerned about the one man who knew all about Al-Qaeda from the start their former boss and Mentor John O'Neil now head of security at the World Trade Center and only 11 days

into his new job when they have a routine meeting with a senior yemeni official they break the news that they believe their former boss has been murdered by the very people he was sent to Yemen to track down we told him that um his good friend and brother as he called him brother John O'Neal was missing and presumed dead at that point when Ali was conveying in Arabic to the general as to what happened we had a really quite emotional uh meeting about the realization of this profound event the attack of 9/11 and that someone

like John O'Neal missing and presumed dead in the attack I mean one of the great ironies you you could ever describe with Al-Qaeda now the single greatest threat to US National Security Yemen becomes a front line in the war on terror Yemen's president s knows that his country is a hot bed of terrorist extremism and closely associated with Al-Qaeda and assama Bin Laden he's in the spotlight and America is piling on the pressure either you are with us or you are with the terrorists president Sal is incredibly worried about what's about to happen he knows

that Afghanistan is sort of the US's number one target but after that there's a lot of loose speculation that Yemen might be next very quickly s clears his schedule for a visit to the US and a meeting with President Bush he's been clamoring for a trip to to the United States this is what he really wants to go to have a one-on-one meeting with President Bush and explain look whatever you need to do I'm here to help you just don't bomb Yemen Salah came to Washington met with uh all of the significant leaders director of

the FBI Secretary of Defense colen Powell and finally President Bush himself in the Oval Office it was cards on the table it was you know you're either with us or against us Sal didn't really have much of a choice I mean he could have told the US he wasn't interested in their friendship but then there' probably been an invasion we spent a lot of time talking about our mutual desire to uh bring radicals and murderers to Justice the two men both very Originals had a candid discussion uh about Al-Qaeda and the threat and uh they

reached a man-to-man agreement and I thank the president for his strong support in this war against extremists and terrorists and it was on that basis really that we built uh the next 3 years of uh active cooperation Shan behind the smiles for the cameras the tough realities of the US requirement from Sally are [Music] unmistakable at a meeting with CIA Chiefs president s has handed a list of the terror suspects Most Wanted in his [Music] country at the top of the list is Abu Ali alh harati within hours an order comes from president s to

give the USS coal investigation back in Yemen whatever they want if you talk about a watershed event there was a sea change in Attitude any individual we need access to unfettered interviews of card carrying Al-Qaeda members but as well as orders Yemen's president gets back up days after his trip to Washington Congress authorizes a massive package of counterterrorism aid for Yemen and taking the lead is the [Music] CIA at the center of the package is the establishment of a training camp led by 100 special forces from the Marines the Navy Seals and units from The

Joint Special Operations Command paramilitary operatives contract officers uh working for for the CIA former uh Green Berets or US Navy SEAL Commandos go places and do things that uh your standard CI field operative is just not trained to do they set up a base to train a yeni counterterrorism battalion the cia's classified mission is to help Yemen's Special Forces find and take out as many Al-Qaeda operatives as possible and alh harati is the top priority supporting the Special Forces is a top secret group of communications and CIA intelligence Specialists known as the activity they come

ready to spy on cell phone satellite phone and landline networks and quickly start harvesting a wealth of data for analysis in the US on top of that the investigation starts making the best possible use of president Sal's increased openness and cooperation the yemenis handed over to us a vast amount of information and evidence uh which we were then able to send to the United States for processing so that whole investigation got a real jolt now with unfettered access to interrogate anyone they want the CIA Le team develops a vastly richer array of new information about

al-Qaeda in Yemen having access was tremendous night in and night out it was a veritable assembly line of reporting of useful intelligence [Music] information even with this increased level of intelligence alh harati remains Out Of Reach in the tribal Backcountry of Yemen's empty quarter an area as impenetrable as torab Bora in Afghanistan the key to locating Abu Ali al-h harati is the yemeni president Ali Abdullah Sal and all eyes are on him to deliver president s takes one of the biggest gambles of his career he decides to take on the tribes in a military confrontation

to get alh harati and to do it with his own troops it's something he has never dared do before but he's determined to show he's in control and to assert his authority over the [Music] tribes shortly after president Salah arrived back in Yemen he sent out a group of yemeni forces about 100 miles east of the capital in an attempt to to capture what at the time was believed to be um Abu Ali alari [Music] s's troops are far from familiar territory and face a heavily armed opposition of experienced Fighters there was a confrontation between

the government forces and the tribal forces and indeed 18 yemeni soldiers were killed uh in that operation there was Yemen Blood on the ground in the attempt by Salah to redeem his pledge uh from the the Oval Office s not only fails to capture alh harati but shows the world he's not in control of his own country with the president floundering intelligence comes in that al-Qaeda in Yemen is about to make the most of his weak grip on security and the shock created by 9/11 alari and the rest of them were as surprised by September

11th as the rest of us so for them they had no idea that Al-Qaeda was planning this and so when it happened then they they had to reorganized everything that they' known the world had changed and to anticipate any counterterrorism initiatives alh harati now starts a campaign of violence far in excess of anything ever seen before in the country in late 2001 and early 2002 was this organization al-qaed in Yemen trying to reorganize make sense of a world that had changed dramatically around them where all of a sudden instead of laying low carrying out one

big attack now they're just fighting for their lives and in doing that they lashed out and they carried out a lot of different attacks which at the time I think led a lot of different analysts both in the United States as well as in Yemen to think that the group was much much bigger than it actually [Music] was impotent and confined largely to the cities all Sally's Security forces can do is arrest anyone they suspect and detain them for long periods a strategy which yields few results the Yemen government has just arrested a vast number

of people and thrown them all in prison in the hope that the guilty would rise to the surface and they'd be able to give the Americans some of what it is that the US appeared to want it was very very uh intense uh during that period it was really a crescendo of us uh raising our game to try to disestablish Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda with the flush of success from 911 raising their game drive us out of Yemen and to intimidate the yemeni government through that first year it was very touch and go about which side

was going to prevail ever since the attack on the coal Yemen's two main ports have been closely watched by the security services but they've ignored a third smaller Port that is occasionally used by oil tankers and then sufan and mcfaden get intelligence that alh harati is about to exploit a security weakness in Yemen's counterterrorism strategy Ali had just compos osed an information report an intelligence report and in that he talked about information we had put together that strongly indicated that a an Maritime attack was imminent 2 days after sufan warning and before Yemen's security forces

can act a small boat Laden with explosives approaches a French oil tanker the attack kills one sailor and Spills thousands of barrels of oil into the sea when we first heard about it we knew without any doubt whatsoever that this was the next planned attack on a ship in this case a large uh French flag tanker it's a reminder of just how free Al-Qaeda is to operate in Yemen nearly 2 years since the attack on the coal and what once again all fingers point to alh harati and his Network the FBI was gradually methodically accumulating

evidence uh the Yemen government itself issued a white paper to the parliament during this period which laid out a lot of the details uh of the terrorist activity including uh the attack on the merchant vessel limberg the French oil tanker uh and uh Abu Ali's fingerprints were uh on those operations he had acquired uh and transferred the explosives for example uh for the attack uh on the uh limberg as he was involved uh in the coal attack as well so uh his fingerprints were all over uh this plotting and he remained uh at the top

of our list of people that we had to deal with to protect ourselves but with each successive attack the CIA are learning more and more about how its Godfather the lead terrorist Abu Ali al-h harati operates we were conferring every day with the special element that was in in Yemen and they were working very hard 24 hours a day to um establish Communications procedures using the the best technology and information available to track Abu Ali alari and those he was with the information war on al-Qaeda in Yemen is quickly accelerating but no one is ready

for alh hara's most dangerous plot yet it's a hot afternoon in a suburb of Yemen's Capital sonar and alh harati is busy with preparations in a safe house for an operation on a Target he's been meaning to hit for years but then one of his Fighters accidentally triggers a rocket propelled grenade setting off an explosion that kills one and wounds another the explosion alerts the Yemen police who call on the Americans for [Music] assistance and then with a CIA signals Specialists known as the activity they move in in inside the safe house the activity finds

a treasure Trove of information left by the bombers laptops cell phones and lists of names crucially they obtain a wealth of detail about the satellite phones used by the cell and its conspirators it's as good as having the contacts book of The Godfather himself and then they find out what harati had been planning when we put the intell Ence pieces together we ultimately concluded that the target of the attack was a missile attack against the US uh Embassy CIA investigators now realize that Al-Qaeda is facing a problem in its Yemen operations that plays directly into

the hands of the us all the planning needed for his multiple plots means far greater communication is needed and that is giving much greater scope for surveillance the problem with Mr hadti is that he loved to chat on the telephone he was hiding out in what they call the empty quarter now the problem with sap phones are that they're incredibly easy to intercept every time you press the talk button it's like a giant invitation to the world's electronic eavesdroppers to listen in on what it is that you're saying sat phones don't just give away what

you say but also show where you are because they link to satellites they act like a GPS and anyone with the right equipment can pick up your position as soon as the phone is turned on NSA through a series of classified technical means can locate the person holding that phone is called in the business geolocation the National Security Agency in Fort me Maryland is now getting routine fixes on hara's position in Yemen and feeds it to the CIA NSA identified hara's telephone number and put him under 247 watch it's what in the business they call

cast iron coverage meaning there's some guy listening to that telephone number 24 hours a day 7 days a week if the CIA can work with the Yemen's Army and send in a ground force or air strike alh harati can be easily taken out and then just as investigators are closing in alh harati discovers his sa phone is revealing his location and he stops using it no one has any idea where he is or where he'll strike next but everyone knows it won't be long before he does but the CIA have one certainty they can rely

on harat's radio silence puts a huge strain on his ability to organize multiple plots and so he has to travel a great deal more to talk to his conspirators the CIA know that to reveal his whereabouts the terrorist only has to weaken once and resort to using his phone and so it waits and watches hoping alh harati will take a risk in November 2002 alhar is out in the desert with several members of Alla they had to come and meet face to face to have these different meetings they were carrying out one of these and

one of aly's phones rings and he's been very disciplined for a very long time um about not answering his phone and for whatever reason he answered the phone and he immediately knew it was a mistake he didn't stay on the phone particularly long but he stayed on long enough for um the intelligence analysts at the NSA in Fort me in Maryland to get a to get a lock on him and That Was Then relayed to different teams on the ground harati Reveals His location in a moment of carelessness just one call and the NSA is

locked on analysts in Washington quickly gather to review their options taking out harati with a team of Navy SEALS or other special forces would be the preferred option bouncing around in a Land Rover in the Backwoods of Eastern Yemen of a minimal escort if the yemeni government was willing to give us permission to send in a a team of Special Forces operators it would have been easy to eliminate his bodyguard and capture him but there's one big obstacle to a ground attack the president of Yemen Abdullah s has ruled out US forces putting boots on

the ground the only option left to us was an air strike now uh president Sal didn't want American fighter bombers uh flying over yeni airspace uh which left basically an unmanned drone as the only option left to us until now an armed drone has only been used once to take out a terrorist the decision now is to assassinate alh harati with the new technology something that has never been done before in the Arab world there had been an executive order which allowed the use of drones um to kill uh terrorists effectively and and the implication

was Al-Qaeda terrorists and that had happened relatively recently with Al harati pinpointed and a presidential order in place authorizing his killing the decision to use a drone armed with a missile is given the green light and the cia's well-rehearsed plan is put into action as soon as the order came in a classified message went to the commander two predator drones both armed with Hellfire missiles were sortied uh from the base took off flew uh into yeni airspace and just sat there and waited for NSA to tell the controllers where their target was located the Drone

can fly uh up to 9 10,000 ft in the air and just sit there flying lazy circles in the air waiting for your Target to appear they can stay in the air up to 25 hours at a time the cia's Drone operators now track the vehicle containing alh harati they're assisted by Yemen Special Forces observing and following from a distance with the predator drone directly above the target the operator releases a Hellfire missile [Music] the time had come to show that that the US would not allow Al-Qaeda to crop up on different front that if

you're going to attack the United States there are going to be consequences of that and I think I think actually the attack on Abu Ali was was probably a conglomeration of all of those things in November 200 to the strike on Abu Ali alari is the first time at least the first recorded time that we have of the US using a drone outside of a a declared Battlefield so it's a very big is a very big moment not only for the US war against Al-Qaeda because killing Abu alari sort of you know cut off the

head of al-Qaeda and Yemen but also for us technology with alh harati out of action al-Qaeda in Yemen is left fragmented and weak it was a country that had had violent islamism um including Al-Qaeda since at least the early '90s goes all the way up to 2002 and then with the death of Abu Ali it suddenly stops this one of very few cases in which the Drone strike did exactly what it's meant to which is decapitate an organization if you take out top of an organization you leave the rest of it without an authority to

control it to tell it what to do it just kind of crumbles in on itself and and Fades in this case it did work very well the CIA strike on alh harati is a textbook operation it goes down in history as one of the most successful drone operations of its [Music] kind for the next 3 years top secret signals technology combined with advanced intelligence gathering across the Arab world leads to operations that seize Abdul Rahim nashri and 13 others all are jailed Al-Qaeda is put out of business and Yemen is closed down as AMA Bin

Laden's next place of Refuge [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1959 the CIA is confronting a new enemy Fidel Castro the man who threatens to spread communism across America's backyard the fear for the United States was that a Cuban style Revolution would explode throughout Latin America the US president Dwight Eisenhower wants him assassinated and the CIA is given a job but they need someone who can break through his tight security their unlikely weapon a 19-year-old woman named Marita Loren she was the Natural Choice because she could get through all of the protective layers that Fidel had

around him and she could get into his bed this is the story of one of the most extraordinary CIA operations of them all it will involve the mafia a Watergate burglar and Castro's Lover he looked at me did you come to kill [Music] [Music] me this the most bizarre CIA assassination attempt of them all begins with a Chance encounter that took place in the port of Cuba's capital city Havana a 19-year-old German American woman named Marita Loren is on the deck of her father's Cruise liner the MS Berlin I was on board the ship my

father was sleeping I saw the launch coming and it was coming closer and closer and then finally they stood up and waved and I saw that they all had guns and all wore green uniforms and had beards the launch came up very close and he just held on to the railing he looked up and I looked down he said I'm coming up I said no and he said yes and I said well who are you and he just looked at me and he said this is commandante Fidel [Music] Castro Fidel Castro is the most notorious

revolutionary in the world just one month earlier at the age of 32 he sees his power in Cuba in January 1959 he overthrows an American back dictator and turns his people against the United States Castro becomes prime minister of Cuba and forms a close economic and Military alliance with the Soviet Union now his friendship with the Soviets and his desire to spread his Communist Revolution throughout Latin America is sending shock waves back to the United States we didn't realize it was a threat right in the United States backyard until it was too late and Castro

it se's power we had to focus our attention because this had the potential to become a communist base in our hemisphere [Music] Cuba is only 90 Mi away from the American Coast Cuba was so close to the United States and was potentially a place where missiles could be launched directly against the United States I mean what a strategic Advantage Fidel had Eisenhower recognizes that Castro is a serious emerging threat to the US that needs to be dealt with but the Young Marita knows nothing about this man who's about to come on board her father's [Music]

ship very flirtatious looking at my eyes trying to size me up as they come together 19-year-old Marita Loren is Swept Away by Castro's Charisma and I saw his eyes and that was it lost in love I fell in love and that's the first time I kissed him and then uh my father stormed in and that's that picture of me sitting at the table with the first officer and Fidel and and immediately I pulled my hand away so Papa wouldn't see Marita's father invites Castro to stay for dinner that evening before he takes his ship and

his daughter back to New York I remember standing on the top deck when we pulled out of the harbor and missing him and feeling terrible i've got to see him again as soon as Marita returns to the city Fidel Castro calls and invites her back to Cuba this is the beginning of a passionate lover fair I hadn't even unpacked he said how are you I miss you and with his bad English asked me to come back I send you airplane and I ended up back in Havana with the same suitcase I hadn't [Music] unpacked a

week later Marita leaves her family's ship and moves into Castro's Penthouse Apartments on the 24th floor of the Havana Hilton I felt absolutely terrified happy frustrated crazy and defying my parents without telling them I was felt very guilty I was taken to a suite 2408 which linked to 246 with doors the first thing I remember the smell of cigars this is his place I look around and there's all his uniforms and this beautiful music it was a record that never stopped it played over and over and over again and Boots turned upside down and ashtrays

with cigars in it and then I see toys little [Music] tanks and then a bazooka sticking out from under the bed this was where Fidel was living and that kind of scared me a little bit you know but I don't have anywhere to go even if I tried the whole Hall was filled with bodyguards and it was Fidel's Suite and they just said wait and don't go out just wait and I did just that I waited and waited and waited all of a sudden I hear the door swing open and he came in and picked

me up and swung me around and I miss you so much you know and love talk and that's a moment I'll never [Music] forget the CIA has been looking for ways of getting to Castro and they've just stumbled on their first Big Break would have very close access to Fidel Fidel I'm sure had very very tight security uh he would have bodyguards with him protective detail wherever he went oh he has Fidel Castro from the very beginning enjoyed very very good personal security very good it's comparable to the best anywhere in the world he created

one of the world's best intelligence and Counter Intelligence organizations back in Washington CIA agents realize that 19-year-old Marita Loren may be exactly what they are looking for here you have one of the Prime uh targets by the US government and the CIA Fidel Castro himself so any body that's accompanying him around him or anywhere connected with him is going to be known in detail uh By Us intelligence the CIA realizes marito could be a valuable asset and they are studying her every move Marita had a romantic relationship with him a romantic relationship would actually get

her into his bedroom so she would be able to bypass all of his security layers she would be the ultimate recruitment Target for the CI and for the US government no one could track him down except for this one person who was his [Music] lover in April 1959 Fidel Castro was invited to the US by the Society of newspaper editors Castro accepts the invitation hoping to win over American public opinion as tensions between the two countries steadily rise Marita accompanies him on their 11-day visit the CIA is of course there too what the CIA would

use is What's called the foreign agent recruitment cycle and that cycle consists of first spotting a target a person that has direct access to the person that you're after the spotting could have very possibly occurred when Marita was either in Havana or be a strong possibility it could occur when she traveled to the United States with Fidel and he met with Nixon he came to New York in anticipation of seeing President Eisenhower and instead Eisenhower rejected him and pushed him off to Nixon which absolutely infuriated Fido he felt very angry that he wasn't accepted with

open arms as the new leader of Cuba that would have been a prime opportunity for her to be spotted without without question he was meeting with Nixon that was a high Lev meeting uh and you can you can be sure uh that us intelligence was all over that uh visit then they would assess the person their vulnerabilities uh whether they were available for recruitment then they would develop that person befriend them find certain switches maybe that they could use and then finally they'd make the pitch uh would you come over and work with us and

can we use you in our [Music] operation after two blessful months Marita learns that she is pregnant with cast child I was happy to be pregnant very happy I wanted it I wondered what it was going to be he said oh wonderful half German half Cuban I said and American and he was very happy he said now I have to build another hospital but Marita realizes there are limitations to being Fidel Castro lover I understood that he belonged to Cuba he made that very clear he belonged to everybody and to Cuba first and to nobody

but to Cuba by now the US is becoming increasingly concerned by Castro's popularity Fidel Castro was a Titanic figure when he won power on New Year's Day in 1959 he had come down from the mountains of Cuba after after a 2-year Insurgency he was the hero of the Cuban population he was a young man he was 32 years old and there was an appeal the beard and the costume that he cultivated very very carefully almost never being seen out of that gorilla costume he was admired in much of Latin America especially among the youth the

University students the nationalists and of course the radical left [Music] it was just weeks after he won power and Fidel began very strident attacking the United States in speeches he did this in speech after speech he denounced the United States if the Americans don't like what is happening in Cuba they can land the Marines and then there will be 200,000 Gringo dead even if the Yankee imperialists prepare a bloody drama for America they will not succeed in crushing the people's struggles they will only arouse Universal hatred against themselves and such a drama will also Mark

the death of their greedy and carnivorous system it is the end of 1959 and US Cuban relations are deteriorating rapidly it looked pretty clear now that Fidel was abandoning any pretense of democracy of fair government of Human Rights he began to support violent incursions interventions against other Latin American leaders he was aggressively exporting the Cuban Revolution to other countries and thinking in Washington was becoming much more focused on we've got to do something about this it is now that the US government realizes that Castro must be removed the CIA were highly regarded in Washington in

those days and uh the belief was that covert action against Castro was the best instrument to use what happens next is a bizarre and strange mystery but one that eventually leads to Marita being put in contact with the CIA Marita is alone in Castro's Penthouse Apartments in The Havana Hilton the birth of their child is predicted for the beginning of December and Marita has just ordered her room service breakfast everything was fine getting big getting ready for the baby I had ordered breakfast and I drank the milk I felt dizzy I said well maybe this

is just because of the pregnancy but [Music] no all I remember was falling backwards on the bed and I was out and then I woke up in a car and I was being driven somewhere I was like half asleep and U then I was out Marita's memory of what happens next is very hazy she has glimpses of events that she can only partially recall the next thing I remember is lights A Light Above me and arguing arguing back and forth cursing in Spanish they were arguing about Fidel I don't know if they're arguing at him

or with him or against him or for him or what I couldn't make it out and I don't know if my clothes were on or off off or somebody's moving my body back and forth Marita is 7 and 1/2 months pregnant and senses that something shocking is happening to her baby terrible pain terrible pain but I was like half gone I thought the baby was born for a moment I heard a baby cry I had a needle in my arm and the pain was unbearable and I felt wet made me frighten and I started to

cry and that's all I remember and then I woke [Music] up back in my sweet Marita is so ill one of Castro's AIDS arranges for her to fly back to New York for urgent medical treatment FBI agents are there as her plane touches down the FBI met me at the airport and I went straight to Roosevelt Hospital under FBI protection surrounded by them unbeknown to Marita this is the beginning of her involvement with the CIA plot to kill Castro after a forced abortion performed when she was drugged and kidnapped from Castro's residence Marita is now

suffering from blood poisoning and requires immediate surgery and she's about to find out what has really happened to her it is apparent that she underwent a forced abortion uh in Havana uh and then the question would be was that done by the Cuban government was that done by the US government of the CIA and based on my knowledge of the kind of operations that happened back then personally I don't think the CIA would have done that it would be my opinion perhaps that Castro himself may have been behind that he had several lovers and it's

very possible that Marita was not the only one and if a child was born it could have caused him possibly some political ramifications the CIA agents begin to use the abortion as a way to turn her against Castro if Castro was behind this forced abortion then that would be the ultimate development tool to use with Marita CU that would be a classic betrayal not just by her romantic lover but also the loss of her child caused by Fidel Castro [Music] the CIA now initiates its plan to turn Marita into their assassin the next step in

the recruitment cycle it's called development and at that point uh they would approach Marita and begin developing her first the CIA agents play the good cup and try to win her confidence after the hospital stay I was allowed to go home under 24-hour guard and recover physically and mentally and emotionally had the agents around me every day giving me so-called vitamins and they took turns watching me day and night and day and night the agency would now know the vulnerabilities that Marita had after the assessment and to develop her they would begin appealing to those

vulnerabilities I was heartbroken I was sad I was [Music] lonely she was betrayed uh she had an abortion a child that obviously she loved and wanted to keep um she was emotionally traumatized she wound up in a US Hospital alone so they'd begin appealing to that they started this program of let's get even with him he did this to you let's get even with him he didn't do anything about it left her in the cold so he wasn't the person that she thought he was I was 19 I was very naive when it came to

matters of politics or International foreign policy Affairs or love affairs they're going to try to convince her that the United States is the good guy and Fidel Castro is the bad guy they repeated things over and over and over again about Fidel do this Fidel that Fidel this I would have these crying Jags where I would curl up into a ball and cry my eyes out and wanting the baby and throwing things you know and they would give me pills to calm me down they would say that's the anger coming out you have to do

something to get rid of that anger you know before the SE agents can go any further with Marita they need to know that she has been telling them the truth about her past the next very important step is uh you have to vet the person the target it's critically important because we've had many times many cases where a person has come over and they've become a double agent or were a double agent so to vet in this case Marita the agency would have to corroborate all the information she provided her trips back to Avan all

her records would be checked her travel records uh the people that knew her over there if we had access to them and the procedure would not proceed forward until the agency was absolutely convinced uh that the information she was providing was credible having worked on her personal relationship with Castro planting the seed that he is the bad guy they now need to get her on their side [Music] politically the CIA agents begin to dig deeper into Marita's [Music] past Marita tells them she was born in Germany on the 18th of August 1939 and 2 weeks

later her country invaded Poland I'm a child of the war all I remember was hard times the agents learned that her father enri was a German submarine Captain Marita informs them that her mother Alice was a spy for both the French Resistance and the British intelligence during World War II my first memories of her were in the basement where she would do morco da d da da da she tells them that in 1944 her mother's cover was blown and that she was thrown into the Nazi German Bergen bellson concentration camp Marita then only 5 years

old accompanied her there I was incarcerated in a SS home and then transferred to Bellen at the end of the war in 1945 the bellson Concentration Camp was liberated and Marita say she was finally rescued it was this British ambulance driver that found me half dead under a under a bunk and bells and and pulled me out [Music] in 1950 the family moves to the United States settling eventually in New York and life begins to improve for Marita the story of Marita's brutal childhood in Germany allows the CIA agents to play on her loyalty to

her new country the country that's made her happy and the country that Castro is now threatening to destroy planting the seed that Castro is the bad guy in their relationship they now broaden their approach to include his hatred of America they'd bring out the information such as Castro was determined on invading the United States overturning the US government he was a bad guy he was affiliated with the Russians he hadn't told her any of that information she didn't know any of that you didn't know that no you you too dumb too blind mind you know

they would curse at me they would they would keep me in the room they wouldn't open the window I wouldn't go out they would just bring food and and I I felt confined and all they ever talked about look here's more proof see he's a commi he's nothing but a damn commi and you have to do [Music] something having now softened Marita up the Agents come clean and ask her to join them the final step in the recruitment process would be the pitch and that's when you actually ask the person to come over and work

for the CIA us intelligence and ultimately the US government the CIA said to me that now you can work for us after weeks of developing Marita she agrees to join them only now to the CIA agents finally disclose the real purpose of their mission we want you to take them out and I said you what you trying to tell me to kill him and they said well we don't use those words it's uh just kind of neutralizing him look can you just put something in his food and put them to sleep you would never know

and you would leave I said I can't kill him the CIA now ramp up the horror of a world under Castro's control and try to explain to Marita that the future of the United States is at stake they would have to have her so convinced that Castro had absolutely betrayed her that his sole aim was to invade the United States and overturn the US government that the lives of millions of American people were at stake that the US Constitution was at stake and possibly a nuclear war was at stake and she was one of the

only ones that could stop that and I started to believe them you're going to be a good citizen and I wanted to be good I didn't want to be bad you have to do this you have to do this not just for you and your freedom but for the United States and the people in the United States 90 miles away you know that's how close he is you could almost walk there you could jump a puddle you know that's how close he is just think of it raita you will save this country from an evils

of Communism and how proud my mother would be and how proud We would be then I would have a star in the CIA building in Langley eventually it seems the CIA tactics have worked worked they slowly convinced me and I said well maybe they weren't all that wrong if it was unpredictable you could push that button if I went ahead and just slipped him something to go to sleep I would prevent an invasion and then I thought I have to go back and kill him towards the end of December 1959 the CIA needs to be

sure that she's a willing agent so they send her back to Cuba Marita enters the country as an American Tourist but her real task is to gauge how Castro will react to seeing his lover after 6 weeks recuperating in New York they wanted me to not be absent too long from Fidel they didn't want him to think that I had become a turncoat and working for them now if Marita was sent by the agency back to hanana uh that would be a vetting process obviously if she was a double agent or if she had provided

false information and went back to Havana she would stay there I had the keys to the suite room 248 and I could just walk in and walk out and the toys are still there the music is still there there the boots are still there his his clothes are still in the closet so if she went there and she behaved the way that her handlers in the US had told her to do did the things that they told her to do and and then if she came back then that would be a very very good indication

that she was indeed now uh properly assessed and and recruited Marita passes the test the CIA now prepares the assassination plan at the beginning of January 1960 the CIA instructs Marita to travel to Miami to meet a man called Frank Sturgis a former US Marine Sturgis fights alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s and becomes his chief of Air Force intelligence but when stur just realizes the direction Castro's Revolution is heading he changes sides and now he's working for the CIA some people in the Press call him a real life James Bond and he certainly was

uh he used over 30 different aliases in his career as a spy and and as as an assassin uh I lived with Frank for a year in in Miami when I was in college uh he had a whole drawer full of uh phony IDs I mean some of them were from uh South American countries I mean he uh the man uh was was clearly he was a man of action uh he didn't just sit around and talk about his beliefs he firmly and deeply believed in the freedoms that we have here in the United States

and didn't like communism he didn't like the total control of the individual's life and took a stand against those things and basically waged a war against Fidel Castro when Marita Loren met with Frank Sturgis in January of 1960 to proceed with this plot to assassinate Fidel Castro Frank at that point was working uh hand inand with the CIA in an attempt to overthrow the Fidel Castro government he told me that uh Marita was a very intelligent beautiful secure 192 year old woman uh he was very impressed with her and in terms of her maturity for

her Young young age she basically was thrust onto a uh kind of a world stage in terms of the relationship she had with Fidel sturgis's job is to come up with a suitable murder weapon for Marita to use against Castro should it be a gun a knife eventually he decides on poison pills to get hold of the poison Sturgis turns to an unlikely SCE to obtain it when Frank stures told me the story I uh said poison you know how do you get where do you come up with poison Frank and he looked at me

and said well uh I got him from some friends and I said friends he said let's just say close family of friends and of course I knew he was talking about the Mafia the thought that the CIA working with the mafia is not such a far-fetched idea the mob had controlled much of Cuba's gambling interests for 50 years but when Castro came to power he kicked them out the mob knows that if Castro was taken out they could move back [Music] in the mafia and the CIA had a community of interest in terms of getting

rid of Fidel and so I think all those things kind of gelled together in this particular plot it is clear and there is documented evidence that between 1960 and 1965 the CIA did approach the mafia to obtain the poison pills to use against specifically [Music] Castro the reason that they would do that obviously is the mafia could get these poisons uh illegally which the United States could not do even the CI officers would prefer not to do Sturgis gives Marita the pills containing botulism toxin the weapon is very carefully chosen they are not traceable they

would dissolve completely and invisibly in liquid there will be no odor or taste critically they will be easy to use for someone emotionally involved because the death will not be [Music] unpleasant they would portray to her that look this is uh a very easy way to go it's you're you're not going to be pulling the trigger on a Gun there's no violence uh in this and it's a merciful way to do it uh to use poison really this is the most painless soft way to do it cter won't suffer at [Music] all the CIA has

got their agent and their murder weapon all that is left now is to set their assassin in motion the problem now facing the CIA is that Castro has no routine no set pattern which drives the agents wild with frustration he is in Havana one minute then across the other side of the island the next even his closest Associates have little idea where he will be spending the night he had no hours he had no timing nobody could make an appointment with him it was always a six or eight hours late his watches meant nothing he

would come and go as he pleased and he wished nobody ever knew what he was going to do he was a pretty hard target so they would have to find out a routine a habit something that would occur pretty regularly so they could have things set up to occur at that time or that place eventually CIA agents spot a [Music] pattern Castro gives regular public television broadcasts to tell his people how they are all benefiting from the revolution the CIA agents discover that whenever he is going to make a live television speech he stays at

his Penthouse in The Havana Hilton just after New Year the CIA sends Marita back to Havana to assassinate Castro she is told they have intelligence that he will be at the penthouse that night this was one of the most tense times in US history in terms of intelligence and Military involvement in the Cold War uh our relationship with Russia and their connection to Cuba so this operation would have been of utmost importance to the CIA and to the US government I was in the plane I was going to go to Kil Fidel you know the

pills made me nervous Marita terrified she will be stopped going through customs decides on an extra precaution to try and conceal the poison pills I went into the bathroom and I put them in a cold cream jar and I felt better I felt I'd be okay going through customs the 90m trip from Miami to Havana takes about 30 minutes Marita makes it through Customs unchecked it seems her trick with the cold cream has worked Marita now heads to The Havana Hilton and Fidel Castro's penthouse suite I felt important I almost felt like I was a

a grasp that I couldn't get out of and that I was going to be saving American lives if I took this one life I walked right in and snuck in the bathroom close Clos the door hoping don't didn't walk in right now I was nervous because I have this man's life in my hands all because of these little tiny pills my heart was crying oh God I was absolutely scared Marita's mission is to place the poison pills in Castro's drink to assassinate him but they are covered in coal cream which is sticking to the pills

Like Glue I tried to wipe the coal cream off the pills oh I was panicking my god there was no way I could grasp the pills Marita now desperately tries to abort the mission and I just took them like that and [Music] and they wouldn't go down and they kept floating I was panicking I thought I heard the door and Fidel was coming in I kep pushing the lever down and one went down and the other one didn't and I smell like cold cream and fidal walks in I think I love you I love you

I'm back I'm going to stay this and that you [Music] know he lay down on the bed like nothing he said you're back what you been up to hanging around those Miami people and when he said that oh my God he knows he knows and he just looked at me and shook his [Music] head and then he just took off the gun belt and threw it over the lamp and he took the gun out of the holster I thought that he's going to shoot me but then he flipped it around and he gave it to

me he looked at me I said did you come to kill me he left himself wide open vulnerable he turned turned to his side you know like she's got the gun in her hand what is she going to do who is she really he was for a split second a little nervous and then he just took a puff of smoke on a cigar and closed his eyes he nobody can kill me NOA nobody ever can kill me I ejected the magazine out of the gun and then I put the gun back in the holster and

then he he said come here and that was the end of that I could have killed him but I didn't kill him I went to bed with him he took the phone off the hook I was so relieved about the pills I was even afraid that my makeup case would come walking out of the bathroom but I made love to him and it was as beautiful as ever but something was missing and that was the baby on the same evening Marita flies back to Miami and tells the CIA she has failed to kill Castro Frank

felt that Marita lost her nerve on this particular assignment mainly because of her feelings about Fidel the old emotions if you will took over and she just wasn't willing to take the step to actually to end his life you know the CIA is not always successful in what it does and and uh it has failed a number of times we never know about that because it's it's an enclosed secret world so uh failure is something that that the CIA is used to so if Marita was not successful in her operation the agency would just move

on to the next plan that's exactly what they did Marita's failure causes the CIA to realize they will need to continue exploring ways to get to Castro maras was the first assassination attempt on Castro's life and is the closest anyone has managed to get to him since then there's been an estimated 638 plots to kill Castro ranging from an allout invasion to exploding cigars poison pens and sniper attacks all have failed and Castro who steps down in 2008 as one of the longest serving heads of state in the world is still alive today he's survived

quite a few assassination attempts only a few of them were sponsored by the American government many others were sponsored by Exiles who were violently opposed to the Castro government Fidel survived because he created a very powerful and thoroughly ruthless machine for internal security he was absolutely ruthless whenever he even had a scent of opposition whether it was a group of Cubans somewhere on the island or some prominent individual in the Cuban leadership even a hint of opposition was enough to result in that person's political extermination and possibly even their execution the year after Frank Sturgis

gave Marita the poison pills he helped plan the CIA funded Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to overthrow the Castro government he was later arrested as one of the Watergate burglars sent by President Richard Nixon to break into the Democratic National headquarters in Washington Sturgis was imprisoned for 30 months as for Marita she continued to work against the Castro government and during a fundraising Mission met another dictator former president of Venezuela Marcos Perez gimenez Marita fell in love with Perez they had a daughter and a brief affair and then he was imprisoned on charges of

embezzling $200 million in 2000 Marita returned to Havana in the hope of meeting with Fidel Castro again but he refused to see her today she is still living in New York [Music] [Music] [Music]