Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): A region littered with ruins.

Home to an extraordinary deception.

Spies behind enemy lines, danger, espionage, warfare,

could almost be the pitch for a Hollywood blockbuster.

The grand remnants

of a mystical city of stone in Tanzania.

It's kind of like an Amazon warehouse

where it's collecting, distributing,

producing and then exporting all over the globe.

A derelict facility in buffalo that would produce an American icon.

It's hard to describe,

it's like you're touching kind of cotton

like, very, very soft cotton

and it's whiter than white colour

like the colour of virtue, the colour of purity.

And a secret complex in Taiwan built to serve a brutal regime.

A guest house was actually a smoke screen

for its real purpose.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

The golan heights, a politically explosive region,

strewn with the remains of warfare.

There's military vehicles littering the area,

there's mine field warning signs everywhere.

This is a military zone.

This is the flash point,

the centre of conflict which over and over again

has resulted in tremendous violence on a vast scale.

At its heart a battle scarred ruin.

It looks a little bit perhaps like a parking garage

or some kind of office building but all windows are blown out.

And it was clearly hit by something pretty powerful,

there's a hole that goes from the roof

all the way to the basement.

But before destruction rained down on these defaced walls,

it was the site of an astonishing deception.

Through these halls walked a man whose ability

to pretend to be what he wasn't,

his ability to be trusted and get sensitive secret information

was unparalleled and he just might have changed

the course of history.

Damascus Syria, the 18th of may 1965.

10,000 onlookers packed the martyr square

where a lone man hung from a noose.

The trusted him,

they promoted him in the government,

they almost made him defence minister of Syria

and in order to expunge that shame,

they don't just decide to kill him,

they sentence him to death and they hang him publicly.

This man's journey to the gallows is inextricably linked

to this collection of ruins less than 40 miles from Damascus.

Today, the golan heights are occupied by Israel

but this structure's distinctive style suggests

an outside influence.

You can tell by the brutalist architecture

that there was a heavy Soviet influence

on its design.

This site was built in the 1950s with the help of Russian engineers

and Russian materials.

The Soviet union however was no ally of Israel.

In the 1950s this terrain

was controlled by Syria and it was heavily fortified.

Access in and out of the golan heights

was strictly controlled by the Syrian military and police.

It was a front line province in a front line state.

And Syria confronted Israel actively.

This is the former Syrian military headquarters.

Ilan shulman is a retired Israeli paratrooper

and an expert on the history of this troubled region.

So, first of all we're standing

and it's you know, quite unbelievable

but this was the main office of the commander

that was in charge on the Syrian forces

on the golan front, the southern front.

The headquarters was the centre of military operations

in the golan heights and the centre of intelligence.

But this structure was soon drawn in to war.

So, in the entrance of the headquarters

and we see here an entrance

of a bomb that managed to penetrate the roof,

the floor and got all the way down here

to the lobby of the headquarters.

The root cause of this damage can be found just 10 miles away

in the shattered remains of a Syrian border fortification.

So, we're here in tel faher

in the biggest Syrian bunker in the golan heights.

It's a net of bunkers and trenches and,

and firing positions and barbed wires and mine fields.

The irony is that, er, every soldier that was station here

er, for him this was the Syrian defence line.

But from the Israeli perspective things looked

very different.

Attacks on the Israeli settlements below tel faher were common

and although the Israeli defence forces responded

in kind the Syrians had one key advantage.

It's an elevated position.

It looks out over the sea of galilee and importantly Israel.

The tactical advantages of this location are very obvious.

So, this was the firing positions, one of many

that were around the main bunker

and the machine gun was right over here

and you can see that those guys, doesn't matter what you do

you're eventually being a sitting duck.

With tensions at an all time high in October 1962

a visitor arrived at the military headquarters.

In the early 60s a man shows up in Damascus

by the name of Kamil amin thaabet,

he was a Syrian who'd been living in Argentina.

Now, he had moved to Damascus to try to set up businesses

in his home country.

With an extraordinary rise through the Syrian political establishment,

he was soon in a position of great power.

He becomes the transport minister of Syria,

he becomes deputy defence minister of Syria

and he is implicitly trusted

by the Syrian regime.

His initial story was he wanted to visit

the fresh mountain Springs in the golan

but because he was friends

with so many high level military officials,

the officials on the ground thought they could maybe earn

a few brownie points by showing him around

and treating him like a big shot.

But this man was not who he appeared to be.

Well, Kamil amin was really Eli Cohen,

a Mossad intelligence agent.

Sent by Mossad,

Israel's foreign intelligence service

he was a spy deep behind enemy lines.

Before being given the grand tour of the military installations,

Cohen had to sign in at the headquarters.

The amazing part was that Eli Cohen was here.

He managed to get to the headquarters

of the Syrian army, it was in this structure,

in each of those rooms there was a commander,

there was an officer,

there was an intelligence officer gathering information about Israel.

Cohen had almost unimaginable access to the golan heights

and it's military secrets.

Cohen was able to observe various installations,

different listening posts where the trenches were,

where the artillery guns were located.

Eli Cohen is going out to places like tel faher

on the golan heights

and he's saying hey all the soldiers come here,

pose with the deputy defence minister.

And he comes away with pictures of all the fortifications

on the golan heights.

And of course he sends them all back to Israel.

But as more and more intelligence leaked out of Syria

the net was closing around Mossad's inside man.

Cohen is an immensely valuable asset to Israel intelligence

right up until the moment that he's caught.

Syrian agents burst in to his apartment

and found him literally at his radio set.

They captured him, tortured him, interrogated him

and finally sentenced him to death.

But Eli Cohen's incredible work would soon prove invaluable.

In 1967, tensions between Israel and Syria

had reached a fever pitch.

War was coming to the golan heights.

In 1967, the arab countries around Israel

were preparing for a massive attack,

Israel knew this was coming and decided to counter attack first

and this was the beginning of the famous six-day war.

They'd already done the surveillance,

they'd already done the intelligence analysis,

they'd already done the contingency planning,

all they had to do is take a plan off the shelf

and put it into motion.

With war already under-way with their neighbours to the south,

the Israeli defence force,

the idf decided to take the high ground.

After neutralising the bunker at tel faher

in just a few hours the idf advanced towards the military headquarters

where the Syrians had fallen in to disarray.

They had not had time to destroy the papers,

the secret papers that were there

so, the full contents of the secret vaults

of this facility fell in to the hands of the idf.

So, for the Israeli's this place was a little bit of a gold mine.

When a seize fire was called on the 10th of June 1967

Israeli military leaders met in the headquarters

to discuss Israel's control of the captured golan heights.

But only a few years later

war would erupt around this structure again.

On the Jewish holiday of yom kippur 1973

the Syrian army thundered past the headquarters

briefing taking the strategic high ground.

This is the site of the largest tank battle

since the second world war.

This is the epicentre of a war between

the United States ally Israel and the Soviet ally Syria.

This could easily have been

the beginning of world war 3.

Seemingly against the odds, the idf retook the golan heights.

After a seize fire line was drawn

less than 300 feet from the headquarters,

it served briefly as a base

for the United Nations peace keepers.

But this imposing structure was soon abandoned to the elements.

The military hq was serious damaged in the 73 war,

left it more or less in the state you see it today,

the impact of bombs and shells.

Today, control of the golan heights is still being fought over.

Most countries in the world consider

the golan heights to be occupied by Israel,

most countries in the world consider that occupation to be

at best dubious under international law.

Israeli leaders have made clear how reluctant they would be

to give up this strategic terrain

it was used to threaten them for decades.

Now, they're in a position to be able to use this high ground

as a first line of defence for their country.

And the extraordinary legacy of Eli Cohen,

israels spy inside the golan heights

continues to be felt to this day on both sides of the conflict.

When Eli Cohen is unmasked as an Israeli spy

the resulting national shame and the embarrassment

for the Syrian government directly results

in the Syrian air force commander

hafez al-Assad taking power.

And that ushers in decades of Assad family rule

which is ruthless, brutal and continues to this day.

In the city of buffalo usa,

an industrial relic stands apart from those surrounding it.

Here there's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of empty store fronts,

there's a lot of run down areas.

Here's this very impressive building

but you can tell it's not a high school

or an office building, it's got a large smoke stack

and there's a rail line running right next to it.

The inside is littered with abandoned machinery,

dark basements and open elevator shafts.

It's derelict, it's run-down.

There's still rubbish strewn around the floor there's paper,

there's bits of detritus but there's also elements

of grandeur left in here.

This building once proudly displayed it's name

but now that display is in pieces.

On the roof of this very impressive building

is a sign that once proudly displayed

its purpose but doesn't make a lot of sense now.

Clearly we're missing some letters here.

Chris hawley first came to this site 10 years ago.

I felt a sense of wonder

when I first walked in to this space.

It clearly symbolised to me er, what er,

buffalo was at its apex of industrial greatness.

Inside this building

has been mostly stripped of whatever equipment was here

but you can see the graffiti artists have gotten in and left their Mark.

Evidence of the last people who were here can still be found.

You can imagine the day this place closed down,

that everyone had to just pack up

and leave and the remnants were just left.

2004, (indistinct) Brands, companies.

On someone's desk er, before the factory closed.

It's a nice desk.

Few clues remain of what happened in this place.

But the largest piece of the puzzle can be found on the roof.

You see the back of the broken sign

looming from the edge

of the building precariously down over the street.

And on the floor is one of the missing letters.

Anyone who grew up in the United States

in the latter part of the 20th century

you put that in place and you immediately recognise

the logo for wonder bread.

Wonder bread and hostess cakes were iconic American products,

we all remember it even growing up in the 1980s like me

er, going to a gas station or coin, or convenience store

and grabbing off the shelf some twinkies, some hohos

or snowballs and those were some of the products

that were made here at this site.

But the most important American product made

in this factory was their classic loaf of bread.

Soft as sponge and pure white.

Wonder bread was a staple

of the modern American kitchen

especially in the second half of the 20th century.

The texture of it just feels, it's hard to describe,

it's like you're touching kind of cotton

like very very soft cotton and it's whiter than white colour,

like the colour of virtue, the colour of purity.

Long before wonder bread became an American icon

the company faced a major challenge.

In the 1920s the problem with a bread factory

is exactly the word factory

because in most people's mind at that time a factory

was a big dirty grimy place but if you're producing bread

you want people to feel that

it's clean, it's hygienic, it's wholesome.

So, how do you convince people that something that comes out

of this dirtiest of locales is the cleanest thing possible?

They are going to launch this massive advertising campaign

er, to try to reassure people that the world might be

a dangerous place and full of germs but this bread, this bread is safe.

When this factory opened

they invited every housewife in buffalo

to come tour the plant with the so called

scientific and sanitary practices in place.

As you can see also on the walls er, much like the rest

of the other factory, the walls are aligned with tile,

concrete and tile were used throughout the building

as a sanitary measure.

If you look at the way the building's built

with that white exterior

it's designed to look like sort of a temple to cleanliness,

not a dirty grimy factory.

Now, these days we would be suspicious about that,

a company that keeps kind of pound

that message home like it's clean it's clean

we start to think well what are they,

what are they hiding.

The company hoped to entice customers

by removing as many contamination risks

as possible but they went one step further.

Removing people from the process.

They advertise an industrial process free from human touch

so, not a single human hand was to touch

any part of the food product itself so, any person employed

in this plant was only handling machinery.

The advertising campaign helped establish wonder bread

as one of American's favourite brands.

Wonder bread was a pioneer in the movement

towards national brands

for products that used to be locally produced.

And to do that it had to be completely uniform,

the loaf you buy in bangor Maine

has to be identical to the loaf you would buy

in San Diego California.

So, we're here on the 5th floor and the 5th floor played

a critical role in the plants in the early 20th century

because of air conditioning was revolutionary.

It meant for the plant that every single loaf of bread,

every single pie,

every single cake that came out of this plant

was more or less the same to the customer.

By the 1960s Americans were consuming

over half a kilogram of white bread every week.

But the public was about to realise

that the manufacturers baking process

had a flaw.

They milled the flour in a more aggressive way

than previous bakers had.

A grain of wheat has 3 parts,

you have an outer layer of kind of fibrous bran,

then you have the wheat germ and inside the wheat germ

you have the interior endosperm which is the white heart

of the wheat.

And when you only produce bread with that endosperm

you get this incredibly white spongy bread

that's completely uniform in consistency.

The problem with super processed white bread

is that you're also throwing away all the nutritional content,

all the fibre, all the good stuff in it.

In the 1980s the public came to realise that white bread

might not be as healthy as they once thought.

People were starting to learn more about nutrition,

learn more about the importance of fibre in the diet.

And realising that this browner wheat bread

that they had been staying away from was actually healthier for you.

Sales of white bread tumbled

and baking companies moved to other recipes.

But wonder bread was slow to change.

And wonder bread's dominance of the market gets smaller

and smaller and smaller and finally in 2010 america

you have brown bread outselling white bread.

In 2004, with demand decreasing

the buffalo factory closed its doors.

150 people were laid off, the building was cleared,

for the past 16 years, er, the building

has very slowly deteriorated.

When I was first in this building

one decade ago it was perfectly fine.

White bread never recovered it's market dominance in the us

but now wonder bread is back with a whole wheat alternative.

For nearly two decades buffalo's wonder bread factory

has remained derelict,

a monument to an old way of doing things.

So, there's a lesson there for how economics works,

advertising and the message that you send

has an incredibly powerful effect on the people hearing it.

And producers whether of slogans or bread should think

about not just will we sell it but should we be selling it.

On the outskirts of a city in Taiwan lies a curiously shaped complex.

You've got this bustling city of two million

and then you come to this kind of this opening

this clear space on the edge of the city

where none of this urban sprawl infringes.

It's almost like the surrounding buildings

don't dare encroach in to this zone.

When you look at a satellite picture

or a drone shot of this piece of ground

it looks like somebody has dropped a bagel.

There is no apparent evidence of the requirement

for these giant circles.

It's a maze like complex, every corner you turn

there's another strange shaped building.

In the centre there's this green building broken up

in to rooms with padded walls.

The variety of infrastructure suggests the site

has been subject to multiple uses.

"There are two major phases,

"the bright side and the dark side.

"They are two very contrasting sides."

What darkness descended on this place

and how is it connected to Taiwan's fight for independence?

Some of these structures were undoubtedly built

with defence and fortification in mind.

One of the doors has a circular plate,

almost like a water tight hatch

that you'd find on a submarine or a battleship.

Bomb proof case-mates

with thick earth roofs over top,

to absorb bombs and artillery shells if they come under attack.

What was inside these buildings that warranted such protection?

One large structure in the centre of the complex contains

a vital clue.

There are quite a few circular holes in the brickwork

suggesting that at one time something was attached to it

or protruding from it.

These holes are the key to understanding

the original purpose of this place.

Professor kuang a local university lecturer

has spent years piecing together the scant evidence

that remains here.

"There were cables here

"for wireless radio communications.

"They went from the roof connecting to a main tower

"which was 200 metres tall,

"the signals were then transmitted to 18 additional towers.

"Each of them 60 metres tall."

So, what we're looking at here is an array of antennas

and because you've got this full array, you're able to be,

er, directional and that enables you to transmit with great efficiency

and also it enables you to receive optimally signals

that are coming from all over the pacific.

All these cables coming from different areas joined up

in the middle, it must have looked seriously impressive.

Like some kind of work of art.

Built in 1917

this is the fongshan wireless communications centre,

a state of the art facility central to Japan's plan

to take over the western pacific.

Once Japan and next Taiwan from China in 1895

they saw the value of Taiwan

as kind of an outpost off the coast of China

and, er, great sort of accelerant for their naval expansion.

Radio communications centre like fongshan is absolutely vital

to the spread of Japanese power.

Yes, this buildings role

as a Japanese communications facility

would only be revealed with a recent discovery,

when a hidden naval emblem emerged from beneath cleared rubble.

"A lot of evidence of the Japanese being here

"during world war two has vanished

"that's because after the Japanese were defeated

"in world war two they destroyed most of it

"when they were being interrogated for war crimes."

How exactly Japan employed this high tech station

during world war two may never truly be known...

Yet what transpired here later

is remembered all too painfully by many Taiwanese.

At the end of the second world war

and as the allies are occupying

the Japanese empire,

one of those allies is nationalist China.

And this station on Taiwan

becomes part of the new China.

The new nationalist China also known as the republic of China

was fighting a bitter civil war against communist forces

and they had a very different plan for this place.

It is newly dedicated to the requirements

of nationalist China.

The Chinese Navy moved in and added the fongshan guest house.

Sounds nice doesn't it? Think again.

The guest house was actually a smoke screen

for its real purpose.

Imprisonment and interrogation.

Taiwan it becomes the last bastion

of the republic of China

and the republic of China government

is really worried about communist subversion

and as a result

they are prepared to act ruthlessly

against anyone they consider a communist,

anyone they consider a traitor.

As well as communists many of those suspected

of supporting Taiwan's independence

from a united China also ended up here.

"They confiscated your belongings,

"if you were lucky you will get them back

"but stuff like belts were taken away

"because they were scared you'd kill yourself."

The torture and interrogations here sent screams echoing for miles.

"There would be whaling's

"at around midnight,

"some villagers from the neighbourhood

"couldn't stand it and moved to the city."

There are some cells where the walls are padded

and electrified to stop the prisoners using them

for suicide.

To think people may have been locked up

and treated this badly here as recently as 2001

it's shocking.

What we've got to remember that democratisation

in Taiwan is a recent phenomenon.

Taiwan was a scary dictatorship

until recently.

A cultural shift towards protecting basic human rights

finally forced this place to be shut down for good in 2002.

These horrors were just no longer acceptable

in the 21st century.

It's doors were closed and the site abandoned.

These structures are now preserved as monuments to the past

and centres of learning

and while the impressive technological achievements

of the Japanese Navy should not be forgotten,

it is the human hardship endured here later

that deserves greater reflection.

There were martyrs and innocents,

"there were some who were released after a while

"but some died tragically.

"That's the relatively dark side

"but it is a lesson to be learned from history."

And with Taiwan's long time adversary

the people's republic of China increasingly flexing its muscles,

the lesson is more important than ever.

Just off the coast of Tanzania in east Africa

is the island of kilwa kisiwani.

Once home to a thriving community.

The island is littered with ruins

and they have an ancient feel to them.

It looks almost like it could be some kind of mythical city made

out of coral stone.

The two best preserved structures

offer up contrasting styles of architecture.

One is a powerful fortified building on the waters edge

but the other is something entirely different.

The masonry really is beautiful,

it's precise and delicate.

So, this is ancient engineering with a lot of class and thought

and effort put in to it.

These pointed arches and domed roofs are so evocative,

you can almost imagine walking around

a buzzing thriving community that clearly once lived here.

When a real life Indiana Jones encountered

this settlement in the 1300s he was astonished with what he saw.

Ibn battuta, he's a kind of arab Marco Polo

and he called kilwa

one of the most beautiful cities he had ever seen.

What was this place that amazed all who encountered it?

And what did these mysterious ruins tell us about a clash of empires

that would bring about kilwa's downfall?

Abdallah Ahmad is a kilwa native.

Born and raised here

he is caretaker of this remarkable site.

"Here we are at gereza fort,

"it's a fortress in kilwa and the former prison

"of kilwa kisiwani."

The fort sits on the same site as an earlier fortification

built by the Portuguese in 1505.

These Portuguese explorers had launched a devastating attack

before seizing the island.

This was a place with something worth fighting for

and then striving to protect.

"Even if I stretch my arms

"I can't span the breadth of this wall

"which surrounds the whole building."

The Portuguese and subsequent conquerors

were desperate to secure this island

because they had stumbled upon a gold mine.

A kingdom famed across the region that by the 11th century

had developed in to a booming seaport.

"And why specifically

"did people like this area, to live here

"and build architecture like this, they liked this area

"because it was easy for trade

"with sea faring vessels like barges."

Trade was the key and the island had geography on its side.

It's perfect for trade because it's connected

to the African continent and the Indian ocean.

And the Indian ocean is like commercial super highway.

The currents literally propel ships across the Indian ocean

from all over the world,

we're talking about the arabian coast,

the persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent

and all the way up from China.

And then 2 months later the currents reverse

and push the ships back across in the other direction.

Directly north is the middle east

er, a trading centre and a hub of cultural exchange.

You're also right at the mouth of a bunch of river estuaries,

now that might not mean a lot to us now

but back in the day rivers were really the highways

of the ancient world.

It's what people and people bought trade.

It was importing goods from all over the world,

arabian ceramics and Chinese porcelain

but there was a lot more going on in kilwa

than simply importing and exporting goods.

The ornate dome structure stands out

in stark contrast to the utilitarian fortress.

It suggests outsiders took charge and put their stamp on the island.

"Even as we examine

"it's architecture and construction

"it is different from most other buildings in kilwa."

It's domes clearly speak to a strong islamic influence.

"Where I am here

"is the area of the great mosque which was added in the 13th century.

"And there's the stairs that the museum went up

"to call for prayer.

"So, people would come to worship."

The best relic of islamic on kilwa kisiwani

has to be the great mosque.

The shiraz people from a region in modern day Iran

established firm roots here

and by the 1300s were displaying their cultural influence

with glorious coral stone buildings.

In charge was an arab sultan who further enlarged

the iconic great mosque

just in time for the arrival in around 1331

of the most famous travel writer of the day.

The Moroccan explorer ibn battuta.

He's a kind of arab Marco Polo who travelled all across this part

of the world and left this incredibly rich record

of the cities that he visited and the people he met.

Travelling as far as Spain, Iraq, India and China

he was still struck by the buildings on display here

and welcomed by the shiraz sultan

he was bought in to an elaborate and exotic world.

At its heart the great mosque

built in at least 2 distinct stages,

first the small northern prayer hall

built in the 11th and 12th centuries

with 16 domed and vaulted bays

divided by 9 pillars holding a flat coral plaster roof.

And then the 14th century enlargement

with a further 30 bays adorned with dressed coral panels,

taking centre stage though was the biggest dome

in east Africa at the time.

It was up until the 16th century the largest mosque

in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"This mosque spread islam far and wide

because in the southern saharan desert,

this was the best known mosque.

The nearby ruins of a palace completed around the same time

as the great mosque

reveal a fusion of islamic and local customs

that over time became known as Swahili.

The ruins included some traditional Swahili elements

like a stepped greeting court bordered

by guest rooms for visiting merchants

but it also borrowed elements from traditional islamic palaces

such as an octagonal swimming pool

er, rooms for hundreds of guests.

After leaving kilwa,

battuta continued to explore the medieval world,

he's believed to have travelled more than any other explorer,

covering 10 times the distance of Marco Polo.

Robberies, kidnappings and ship wrecks

couldn't prevent him reaching China.

So, even battuta who saw just so many remarkable things

he still described kilwa as one of the most beautiful cities

he had ever seen.

Described by some as a real life Indiana Jones

he eventually died back in his home land of Morocco

in around 1369.

And kilwa's days were also numbered.

The 16th century marks the beginning of Europe's great merchant empires.

Portuguese explorer vasco da gama,

launched an attack as he ruthlessly attempted

to arrest control of trade.

The Portuguese had this grand strategy

for how they were going to take control

of the Indian ocean which was essentially

to seize all the major ports.

So, it's no surprise that they took kilwa in 1505.

They built the gereza fort to cement their dominance here

in kilwa kisiwani.

Spain and Portugal had reclaimed land and independence

from islamic control during the crusades

and now they were going to move

from reclaiming land to expanding overseas.

Therefore it was a symbol

of the Christian advance against islam.

Rather than a centre of trade,

the island itself became a prized possession

fought over and traded between numerous competing empires.

Never again achieving the same success

the city was abandoned in the 1840s.

The site is now protected by unesco

who face a constant battle

to prevent the ruins from further collapse.

Now, there's been extensive digs and excavations here

so, we've learned a lot about this site

but there's a lot that we still could discover here,

the place is thick with mystery.

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