Original subtitles

Throughout time, governments and the people

who work for them have done strange and even

terrible things in the name of national interest.

And sometimes, they recruit undercover agents to help.

Tonight, the head of a rogue U.S. agency

hires a dangerous French doctor to gain Nazi secrets.

He's also a literal serial killer.

An ingenious cover story is deployed to extract

six Iranian hostages.

Pretending to be a film unit in a country being

torn apart by revolution?

And a deep cover agent confronts an impossible goal

take down the hell's angels.

The leader of the hell's angels

tells Jay to expect blood and to expect violence.

Now it's time to bring these secret missions to light.

It's 1979, and the U.S. embassy in Iran

is overrun by militants who seized dozens of hostages.

Somehow, six managed to hide.

To get them out, the CIA create a web of lies so convincing,

it will go down as one of the most daring

undercover escapes in history.

In 1979, the world is rocked by events in Iran.

The country erupts in chaos as the pro-U.S. government

is toppled in the islamic revolution.

And in the capital, Tehran, the U.S. embassy

is stormed by a group of armed Iranians,

who capture 66 American hostages.

Miraculously though, six of them

managed to escape undetected, to the nearby Canadian

diplomatic residence, where they seek refuge,

fearing for their lives.

The U.S. has no room to maneuver.

We can't just go in, guns blazing.

Failure of that mission would not only

mean certain death for the rescue team,

but compromise the safety of the hostages, as well.

The CIA call on a master of deception.

His name is Tony Mendez.

I worked with Tony almost my whole career.

And he just brought a new way of thinking

to a lot of those operational problems.

He was the right guy to send in.

Tony's facing a real challenge.

It's not going to work to take people in

and then try to rescue them.

Instead, it might be easier to change

their identity from within Iran, and then just leave.

And so he's got to figure out some believable

cover story that will make it possible for him to take

those six people to the Tehran airport

and put them on a civilian commercial flight out of town.

The six need new identities, neutral,

free from suspicion, Canadian.

Canada, at this point, is not really

on the radar of the Iranian revolutionaries.

So the question is, who are they?

Could they be school teachers?

Well, the schools are all closed.

Could they be technicians from the oil field?

And he had this thing, this flash, like.

He comes up with this idea that they are going

to be a Canadian film crew.

The cover story,

the production needs exotic locations.

So the Canadians are scouting for a desert picture in Iran.

It is kind of wild.

I mean, pretending to be a film unit in a country being

torn apart by revolution?

The stakes are high.

This is a true nightmare scenario for CIA,

because the one option that they have, if it fails,

results in the hostages potentially being killed,

as well as the international smear campaign of CIA

not being able to keep its own people safe.

The longer that that clock ticks,

the more and more likelihood that the Iranians

could realize that six people are unaccounted for.

No one's getting out unless they were really scrutinized.

And these Americans had no training, whatsoever,

in assuming new identities.

President Jimmy Carter approves the mission.

Tony Mendez is director and scriptwriter.

The movie's name is argo.

Tony's wife, jonna,

remembers the team's attention to detail.

They went to great lengths

to legitimatize it in Hollywood.

They got signs made for the doors... studio 6.

Tony did the artwork for a piece

that appeared "in variety."

Tony Mendez jets into Iran as this movie producer,

producing the movie argo.

At the same time, Canada diplomatically ships

six Canadian passports to the six hostages

as golden tickets to get them across the border.

Tony got into Tehran, was down at the U.S. embassy site.

Death to america, that was the chant of the day.

So it was scary.

It's one thing to get actors to play hostages.

It's another to turn hostages into actors.

They all have characters that they are playing in this game

the director, the director of photography,

the production designer.

He told them that if I don't believe you're a film crew,

the guards at the airport are not going to believe

that you're a film crew.

And they had to study scripts.

They had to study backgrounds.

They had to sound like they could

convincingly carry out the role

they were supposed to carry out.

Tony called in the security guard

from the Canadian embassy.

Tony tried to make him look like an Iranian officer.

Take them in another room and interrogate

the hell out of them.

And then come back and report to Tony, did they pass?

No? They didn't pass?

They have to go study some more.

They found different clothes.

They darkened their beards with mascara.

They turned curly hair straight and straight hair curly,

long hair short.

They had to own a completely new identity.

After a hectic 48 hours, Tony cables the final exfiltration

plan to Washington and Ottawa.

His bosses are satisfied.

And they respond with a sign off.

See you later, exfiltrator.

It's sunup on the morning of the rescue.

And Tony and his six "colleagues"

leave the residence.

And finally, after this white-knuckle ride,

they can see the airport in sight.

Now they have to live the story.

They have to live their disguise.

And they have to walk in the door like they own the place.

And they have to present all of the attitude of a film crew.

Mendez chooses an early morning departure

because he assumes the Iranian border guards

will be less alert right at dawn.

They all know that at passport control,

the whole thing can go wrong.

So this hodgepodge group approach the border patrol,

waiting on bated breath for somebody to make a mistake,

for one person to screw up, for one thing to go wrong,

and the whole house of cards to come crumbling down.

But then eventually, they're waved through.

It was ok until they announced

they were having a mechanical delay.

The flight would not be boarding.

This is not how it's supposed to go.

Put yourself in the shoes of these hostages,

the amount of stress that they must have been under.

Finally, the plane is fixed,

and the undercover producers can leave.

Even though they're on the airplane,

they're still the concern that somebody might come on

at the last moment, right before they

close the cabin door, and put us in front of a firing squad.

And eventually, the pilot comes on

and makes the announcement that we have left Iranian airspace.

And it's only then that they know that they are safe.

And so they all order drinks.

And that must have been the best tasting beer

that any of them ever had.

The escape of the hostages is greeted in the United States

with euphoria.

No one outside the CIA knows the truth.

The official story is that the Canadian government

got these six escapees out of Iran

and then turned them back over to the United States.

And the U.S. government and the CIA

were happy to let that story stand because they didn't want

to jeopardize the lives of the people

who were still being held in captivity.

Tony and jonna are married shortly after

he retires from the CIA in 1991.

Then, in 1997, the incredible story comes out,

leaked by the CIA themselves.

When the CIA turned 50, Tony was directed

to tell the story to "the New York times."

He became the argo guy.

It changed our lives.

In 2012, Hollywood makes a real movie

based on the fake movie.

Inevitably, it's called "argo."

Tony Mendez is played by Ben Affleck.

And when the film wins an Oscar, he's there.

Tony Mendez made a decision to go deep cover.

Not everyone gets to choose.

In 1939, just before the U.S. joins the second world war,

one man is told, spy for us or your family dies.

A German American named William sebold

lands in Cologne to visit his mom.

He's grown up in Germany, but emigrated to the United States

in 1922 and became an aviation engineer.

On his trip back to Germany, he's stopped by the gestapo

and offered a deal that he can't refuse

become a spy for the Nazis or his family will be in danger.

They tell him that unless he agrees to work with them,

they can't guarantee the safety of his poor mother,

still living in Germany.

Mr. Sebold doesn't really have a choice.

He accepts this position that's been forced upon him.

In Germany, sebold undergoes espionage training.

The Nazis are satisfied and assign him a job

work to advance Germany's war effort by joining a spy ring

operating in New York City.

While sebold was born in Germany,

he is now a naturalized U.S. citizen,

which makes him the perfect recruit for the Nazis.

His mission is to gather intel on U.S. military preparations

and feed it back to Germany via shortwave radio.

But before he leaves, sebold goes to the U.S. consulate.

He manages to inform officials of the predicament

that he finds himself in.

The American government can work with that.

They inform Mr. Sebold, who has no interest

in being a spy to begin with,

that he will now be a double agent.

This was supposed to be a simple trip home to see

his mother, and instead,

he ends up being swept into the complicated world

of international espionage.

Just before the U.S. joins world war ii,

William sebold is coerced to join a Nazi spy ring

in New York City, run by a German named Fritz Duquesne.

What the Nazis don't know is that sebold

is really a U.S. double agent.

Sebold's now going to work with the FBI, who set him up

with an office in midtown, New York,

that has all the works to make sure he can record and capture

his meetings with the Duquesne spy ring.

We're talking secret microphones,

two-way mirrors, the works.

All of this is getting captured by this amateur,

unintentional double agent.

They have motion-picture film footage of these subjects

shot through a two-way mirror.

And it's all names, dates,

even the material that they collected.

This is one of the best sting operations in history.

The footage reveals the spy ring's secret.

The goal of these several dozen men

is to commit acts of sabotage, to disrupt

the U.S. war machine before it can even get off the ground.

The FBI runs sebold for as long as they dare.

But he's close to cracking under pressure.

So they swoop in.

In June of 1941, the FBI arrests,

essentially, the entire ring,

over 30 of these Nazi sleeper agents.

The trial begins in September of 1941

and makes headlines everywhere.

The photos and conversations captured in sebold's office

become the overwhelming evidence

to bust up one of the most important German spy rings

on the Eve of the U.S. entry to world war ii.

33 Nazi agents are convicted and sentenced

to a total of 300 years in prison.

But the news coverage doesn't just

expose the Duquesne spy ring.

It also reveals William sebold's role.

As soon as the trial is over, sebold disappears.

He's whisked away into witness protection.

But the Nazis in Germany want their revenge for the betrayal.

So sebold ends up living in hiding and in fear

for the rest of his life.

Sebold risked his life to protect American interests.

But thanks to technology invented by a Swedish refugee

in 1940, U.S. spymasters find a safer way

to learn the enemy's secrets.

It's 1940.

World war ii is just seizing Europe.

And Boris hagelin, a Swedish-descent Russian,

is looking to get out of dodge.

He wants to make his way to the United States as a refugee.

But with him, he's bringing a new invention of his.

It's an encryption device,

a tool that can be used to code a message

and deliver it secretly.

And given the war that's just breaking out,

it could have huge ramifications for the years ahead.

It's called the m-209.

It uses coding wheels to scramble the content

of a message, which is then transmitted by morse code

to a recipient with their own m-209,

who can then rearrange the text on their end.

It's light, it's easy to carry,

and better yet, it doesn't require any electricity.

The highest ranks of the American military recognized

that there's a new potential

for the m-209 encryption device.

And so they pump out hundreds of thousands

of new examples of them.

Hagelin's encryption device is, of course,

crucial during world war ii.

But he continues to see success, even after the war.

His company, crypto ag, creates encryption devices

that are sold to nations all around the globe.

Hagelin is selling to nations friendly to the United States

and nations that aren't so friendly to the U.S.

At first, the CIA is unsure about hagelin's

commercial arrangements.

But soon they see opportunity.

In 1951, Boris hagelin strikes a deal

with U.S. intelligence, where he will

only sell his most advanced machines to friendly nations.

And america's adversaries will get older, weaker machines

that the U.S. can easily break.

It's a system that works brilliantly

until hagelin decides to sell the company.

The CIA cannot let its asset fall into the wrong hands.

The CIA then recognizes an opportunity

to purchase crypto ag and operate it

under covert circumstances.

The CIA ultimately realized, like, hey,

if we buy the company and then

we own the means of production of this device,

we can spy on everybody.

It's one of the most closely-guarded

secrets of the cold war.

And it pays huge dividends.

The crypto machine allows the U.S. to decode crucial intel.

In 1979, during the Iranian hostage crisis,

president Jimmy Carter monitors all of

the coded conversation between the mullahs

as they discuss negotiations.

Even the Vatican gets involved and buys crypto devices.

And in 1988, their communications

prove crucial in the American manhunt for Panamanian leader

Manuel Antonio noriega.

But one incident threatens to expose the CIA's secret.

In 1986, there is a bombing in Berlin.

It's a terrible event.

And it kills an American serviceman.

President Ronald Reagan, in announcing retaliatory strikes,

says that he has evidence that is direct

it is precise.

It is irrefutable.

Libya and their ally, Iran, can't figure out

how Reagan knows the plans.

Their communications must have been hacked.

Suspicion falls onto crypto ag.

The Iranians arrest one of crypto ag's salesmen

because they believe that crypto ag is leaking the codes.

He's only freed after nine months,

when crypto ag pays a million dollars in ransom.

U.S. officials continue to deny

any involvement with crypto ag.

Rumors persist, but no concrete evidence

emerges that there's anything suspicious about crypto ag's

relationship with the west.

Then, in 2020, a "Washington post" reporter

obtains a leaked CIA document and discovers

the CIA's 70-year-long hack.

What this report exposes is that the CIA, essentially,

has had a back door to all the crypto machines for decades,

and they've been reading the messages

from both their enemies and their friends.

The CIA itself calls this "the coup of the century."

This is winning the world series of spying.

They got foreign governments to pay good money

for the privilege of having their most

secret communications read.

And crypto ag continues operating until 2018,

when the CIA sells off the company, and it's liquidated.

In 1985, U.S. spy agencies face a problem.

One by one, their deep-cover assets in the Soviet union

are being unmasked.

Is there a mole in the ranks?

In 1985, FBI receives a disturbing report

that two of their informants in the Soviet embassy

in Washington were actually recalled

back to Moscow, where they were arrested and suddenly executed.

It turns out that the problem is not just isolated to FBI.

CIA is also reporting the loss of highly-placed Soviet assets

from within Moscow.

And they don't know why.

Creating informants like these takes years.

You gain their trust, and you promise them protection.

So then to lose them is a really crushing

and unsettling blow.

With FBI losing Soviet informants and CIA losing

Soviet assets, the two organizations

realized that they may have a shared problem.

In December 1990, america loses

yet another asset inside the kgb.

A mole is clearly at work.

The CIA and FBI joined forces to root out the traitor.

The two organizations have to compare

Soviet operations at FBI against Soviet operations

at CIA.

And they have to compare those operations against assets

and those assets against handlers

and those handlers against leaders.

And this is a huge process.

Every minute that they take is one more minute

that they risk losing another asset from either FBI or CIA.

The whole process takes four months

and the review of thousands of documents.

And there was this one name that

appeared on multiple lists.

And that was aldrich ames.

It's astounding that ames could be the mole.

He's been in the CIA for decades.

He's had a prestigious career, steeped in positions of trust.

He's ascended all the way to the rank of chief

of Soviet counterintelligence.

As CIA and FBI look closer at aldrich ames,

they start to see some irregularities

that are very suspicious.

He makes $70,000 a year,

and yet he was able to buy a half-million dollar house

in cash.

He's also driving a brand new Jaguar

and coming to work in finely-tailored

Italian clothing.

But suspicion isn't evidence.

They need proof.

Time to ramp things up.

They actually wiretap his phone at home.

And they find out that he's actually

planning a trip to Caracas, Venezuela,

to meet with a Russian handler.

FBI actually got his trash can.

And they found a note.

He was going to meet with his handlers in Bogota.

They have the evidence they need.

And the FBI moves in.

Back here.

Ok, right here, right down here, please.

Sir?

- Mr. Ames? - Back up.

Back up.

Ames is arrested on February 21 of 1994.

And he's charged with espionage for having

spied on behalf of the ussr.

The FBI released details of the case against aldrich ames,

revealing his treachery and its fatal consequences.

Pleads guilty to all charges, is sentenced to life,

and has zero possibility of parole.

The public is gripped as the devastating story unfolds.

Why did ames risk so much?

Was it political conviction or misplaced ideals?

The answer is none of the above.

The man is reported to have made between

$2.7 and $4.2 million working with the Soviets.

I have spent my career chasing down

villains like aldrich ames.

And it's such a high-stakes environment,

because every day you don't find them,

they do that much more damage.

It's estimated that ames burned over

a hundred covert operations.

He blew the cover on over 30 operatives,

some of whom were executed as a result.

He's a traitor who allowed people to die

so that he could get wealthy.

Aldrich ames always will be the most hated villain

in CIA history, and he's still in jail

for the rest of his life.

In world war ii, america's struggle

to uncover Nazi secrets leads to the creation

of two new spy agencies.

The boss of one of them will do anything to win,

including making deals with gangsters, or worse.

Pearl harbor shocks the United States

and makes people realize that we have a really

profound capabilities gap.

We should have been able to anticipate

this surprise attack, but we didn't.

So the U.S. is now at war.

But privately, the government realizes

that to even stand a chance of victory,

they need to seriously up their spy game.

So the government sets up

the office of strategic services,

a.k.a. The oss, under the leadership

of someone named wild bill Donovan.

Now, a lot of people in the military

view bill Donovan with suspicion at best

and contempt at worst.

He's a former corporate lawyer and a failed politician.

And he left the army after world war I

and is widely seen as unqualified.

To make matters worse, he's viewed as a publicity seeker,

which is everything that a secret intelligence leader

should not be.

The military want their own agency,

headed up by their own man.

In 1942, they create the pond.

The idea behind the pond is that it's

more competent, more secure,

and more secret than the wartime oss.

It will report directly to its supporters,

high up in the military.

And it'll operate without restraint.

It's so secret, in fact, that the oss,

the very organization that will evolve into the CIA,

doesn't know that it exists.

But this new agency needs a leader,

and not just any leader, but someone prepared to do

anything to get the job done.

Military leaders turned to John grombach

to lead the pond.

Grombach is a olympian.

He's a boxer. He's an army captain.

But above all, grombach is a fierce patriot.

He's ready to do whatever it takes

to give america the upper hand.

Grombach hates the oss.

In fact, he was a previous employee of Donovan.

And their relationship did not end well.

So now, grombach will stop at nothing

to outdo his oss rival.

And in 1942, the top-secret pond becomes active.

The pond is intended to collect secret intelligence

via a global network of deep undercover informants

who might not be willing to deal with the oss.

These could be international companies, societies,

religious organizations, and well-placed,

high-profile individuals.

A true underground organization like the pond

doesn't care who it deals with.

It just gets the job done.

One of John grombach's early plots in the war

was working with the Italian mafia.

Grombach approached lucky Luciano in prison

and pitched him on the idea that perhaps,

he could have some of his mafia associates

assassinate Mussolini,

and in exchange, Luciano would be pardoned

and released from prison.

The idea dies, rather than Mussolini.

The pond's focus shifts to two new priorities,

gathering vital data on Nazi armaments

and German spy networks in allied countries.

So first, they need to recruit someone

that's already on the inside.

In the early 1940s, grombach finds a French doctor

working in Nazi-occupied France.

His name is Marcel petiot,

and among his patients are Nazi officials.

He's able to glean all sorts of vital information,

the location of missile bases,

Nazi spies operating in the U.S..

Where are they? What are they up to?

The sort of information that can really help swing the war.

Ultimately, it all goes back to grombach.

Doctor petiot is a mine of Nazi information.

But he has his own dark secrets.

He's happy to be an informant for the pond.

And yet, he's also a literal serial killer.

A very compromising figure to work with,

and yet, the pond feels that the ends justify the means.

But once the war is over, the doctor is arrested.

He's convicted of 26 murders.

And he pays for his crime in the most French of ways.

He's whisked off to the guillotine.

After the war is won, the pond loses

its clear purpose and is shut down in 1955.

Its existence is never officially acknowledged.

Then, in 1982, a remarkable series of events

exposes its dubious history.

Toward the end of his life, John grombach gives

his dossiers from the pond to a private library.

So they hand those over to the CIA.

These papers, they then stay with the CIA

for about another decade, at which point,

the CIA begins to declassify them.

And that is when we start to become aware

that the pond ever even existed.

And to this day, much of what the pond did

is shrouded in secrecy,

especially since the CIA are still withholding

thousands of grombach's papers.

In 2001, notorious biker gang, the hell's angels,

are deeply involved in criminal activity,

and willing to do anything to protect

their profits, even murder.

There's only one way to stop the group.

Go deep undercover.

In October 2001, hell's angels bikers

were responsible for the death of a mother of six

in mesa, Arizona.

In the following year, they were involved in a shootout

at a casino in Nevada that produced three killed.

So these are dangerous criminals.

In order to really take down

a group like the hell's angels,

you have to have evidence, right?

You have to have a lot of it.

And the best way to do that is from the inside.

But that is pretty close to impossible.

And if they find out that you are not who you say you are,

you will be tortured and you will be killed.

In 2002, a nomad biker gang in Tijuana,

called the solo Angeles,

applies to join the Arizona hell's angels.

A nomad biker gang is unique because these

are gangs that are not tied to any specific territory.

They're kind of on their own

and can apply to join larger chapters.

The solo Angeles are headed up by a gun runner

and debt collector named jaybird Davis.

About a year after being introduced

to the hell's angels, jaybird is invited to roll

with the gang to Las Vegas, where they have to Rumble

with another biker gang called the bandidos.

The leader of the hell's angels tells Jay

to expect blood and to expect violence.

So this is the first opportunity

that jaybird has to prove himself to the hell's angels.

This is far from easy for jaybird.

He's no criminal and no killer.

In fact, he's a government agent.

He's been undercover with the federal bureau

of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms for 15 years.

And he's never been involved in anything like this.

Jay is at the crossroads during this journey to Vegas.

He runs the risk of having to kill someone,

or this entire gang finding out who he is.

He could blow his cover and cost himself his life,

all in one trip to Las Vegas.

He actually finds a point in time where

he can pull over and use his phone

and let the atf know what the plan is

so that the atf can round up the bandidos.

As a result of all of this, the hell's angels

arrive in Vegas fully expecting this Rumble with the bandidos.

And there's no bandidos there.

This has been a success for him.

He's been able to maintain his cover

without having to kill anyone.

In Vegas, Jay's quick thinking saves him,

but it's not over yet.

There's a lot of rumors going around.

And the hell's angels is starting

to really question who Jay is.

Jay has made incredible progress

to gain the trust of the hell's angels,

but he's still not being accepted as an insider.

So he has to do something significant.

- Hey, how are you? - Good, good.

To earn the respect of the hell's angels,

Jay presents a photo.

It's a photo of a dead biker with his brains blown out.

And that biker is wearing the colors

of the mongols, the arch rival to the hell's angels.

And Jay claims to have been the one who

murdered this biker in order to earn his right

into the hell's angels.

But Jay does not really have blood on his hands,

at least not human blood.

This picture is a staged picture.

We're creating the illusion that the victim of our hit

was hit over the head with a baseball bat with his hands

behind his back, shots to the head.

This is actually a local police officer dressed up

in the clothing, with pig organs and fake blood,

to make it seem that he had been killed.

The photograph of the fake dead biker

gives him street credibility.

That brings him into their inner circle.

And that gives him access to what he needs,

so that the government can build

an airtight case against them.

The atf bureau calls a halt to the operation in 2003.

But the final reckoning does not go to plan.

Jay's work against the hell's angels

led to one of the largest take downs ever

by the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.

They collected a hundred thousand phone calls,

800 hours of bugged conversation,

8,500 incriminating documents.

But the prosecution's case suffers over worries

that presenting all the evidence

could jeopardize other atf investigations.

Some of those members plead to lesser charges,

which resulted in jail time.

But other charges were dismissed altogether,

which put those members back on the street with the

hell's angels, with an opportunity to look

for the very same person who had put them

in court in the first place.

Jay survived his time in the gang.

But now, both he and his family are in danger.

After the trial, dobyns and his family

were given new identities.

But then the atf revoked that, five years later.

So he lives in the open.

There have been two attempts against his life.

And to this day, he lives in fear.

One of the most feared and respected spy

agencies operating today is Israel's Mossad.

It's known for taking on daring missions,

including one that took place in Sudan in the 1980s.

As a result of the Ethiopian civil war

and the famine that was produced as a consequence

of it, Ethiopian Jews by the thousands

fled Ethiopia into Sudan.

Some 600,000 Ethiopian refugees flee to Sudan,

including at least 16,000 Jews.

Sudan is still a third-world country.

So the refugee camps, they've got disease.

They're overcrowded.

The Israelis believe that the Ethiopian Jews were

actually one of the lost tribes of Israel

that were exiled from the holy land thousands of years before,

and were now ripe to return back to Israel

and reconnect with their people.

But Sudan is an islamist country

and hostile to judaism.

So the problem for the Ethiopian Jewish refugees

is that in Sudan, they're not safe.

They are actively being hunted

and they are a target for killing.

So Israel has to find a way to exfiltrate

their Jews out of the refugee camps in Sudan

and smuggle them to Israel.

The Sudanese government won't help.

Time for Mossad to come up with a plan.

Mossad identifies an officer, Dani limor,

to go to Sudan, to try to find a way

to bring these Ethiopian Jews back to Israel.

Well, he knew from the start that he needed something

on the sea because these evacuations would have

to start on the coastline.

The ratline would lead them over water, directly to Israel.

So he starts shopping for a location,

when he finds the perfect cover story

in the form of this abandoned Italian dive resort,

right on the water's edge.

It was almost a turnkey project for him

because he could move in and occupy the existing structures,

and people would be attracted to that resort,

and he could use it as a cover story

to evacuate Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

So he does a deal where he's able to lease

the resort for a quarter million dollars,

using Mossad's funds.

Mossad rebuilt the resort at arous

to turn it into a functioning vacation destination

that Europeans would want to go to

and that the Sudanese government

would not want to interfere with.

Mossad would use the resort as a cover story

to slowly and secretly exfiltrate Ethiopian Jews.

During the day, the plan is for Mossad to host guests.

Then at night, they will drive

over 500 miles to collect the refugees.

A two-night truck convoy will then take them

to the coast, where Israeli special forces will ferry them

via zodiac dinghies to a naval ship offshore,

bound for Israel.

The mission is highly classified.

All involved are well aware of the mortal danger

that they face, not only to themselves,

but all the fleeing refugees.

Mossad agents are convinced that anyone

who's uncovered participating in the operation

could be hanged in Khartoum.

By day, arous is a luxury resort.

By night, it's a Mossad escape route.

The refugee camps that were holding the Ethiopian Jews

were about 500 miles from the coastline.

But under cover of darkness, the actual agents on the resort

would go to the refugee camps,

and literally wake up the Ethiopian Jews

to smuggle them by truck.

And then by night, they take the refugees out,

and deliver them to the Israeli Navy,

who then takes them back to Israel.

The rescue resort operates for more than two years.

A thousand refugees escape to a new future in Israel

until political chaos in Sudan

makes it impossible to continue the mission.

The scuba diving tourists wake one morning

to find that the entire senior staff have deserted them.

The mission stays secret for more than 20 years,

until a British journalist hears rumors

that lead to Dani limor.

And limor, feeling comfortable that enough time had passed,

reveals details about the way that the Mossad

operated a fake dive resort.

This is why Mossad has the reputation that it has,

because it is willing to rebuild a resort,

to smuggle Jews across 500 miles of desert,

to take them back to Israel.

The scale of this operation is absolutely mind boggling.

Going deep undercover brings with it terrible risks.

No surprise that the people in the shadows

often choose to stay there.

But when secret files are opened,

they can reveal stories of incredible ingenuity

and courage.

I'm David duchovny.

Thanks for watching "secrets declassified."