Original subtitles

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

the rogue missions that broke all the rules,

like the black op to kidnap a Nazi war criminal

in broad daylight.

He's one of the most wanted men in the world,

and they have just one chance to bring him in.

Winston Churchill recruits a boatload of modern-day pirates.

There's fighting dirty, and then there's

fighting like Churchill.

And the wartime spy who goes undercover

in one of the deadliest places in history.

Who's mad enough to actually break into Auschwitz?

These are the most extreme and illicit missions

ever carried out by governments and the people

who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

In 1960, a group of men arrive at Buenos Aires airport.

They look like ordinary businessmen on a sales trip.

In fact, they're intelligence operatives

on a high-stakes operation:

to kidnap a factory worker called Ricardo Klement.

Real name? Adolf Eichmann.

It's been 15 years since the end of World War II,

and Adolf Eichmann is one of the most

notorious Nazi war criminals still evading justice.

Eichmann, more so than almost anyone else,

is the logistical architect of the Holocaust,

turning genocide into an industrial operation.

He escaped justice after the war.

He's still on the loose somewhere, probably alive,

but nobody could find out where.

Then, in 1959, Israeli intelligence gets

a credible tip that Eichmann is living a quiet life

in a suburb of Buenos Aires.

The lead comes from a German refugee

living in Argentina.

Now, this guy's daughter has been dating a guy

who keeps bragging that his dad used to have

a really powerful position in Nazi Germany.

And the dad's name is Ricardo Klement.

But the son goes by the name Eichmann.

The Israeli government gets word of the fact

that this person is possibly Adolf Eichmann.

If there's anyone left who can be

brought to justice for the crimes of the Holocaust,

this is the man.

There's one big obstacle

to bringing him in: Argentina.

Israel and Argentina don't have

a working extradition agreement,

and Argentina has a fascist-friendly government.

So if Klement is Eichmann,

there's no way the Argentinian government

is just gonna hand him over.

To get their man, Mossad decides to go rogue.

A top secret group of Mossad agents

is sent to Argentina.

Their mission is to seek out Klement and confirm that

he is the same person as Eichmann.

And if he is, to kidnap him and bring him to Israel.

You're not allowed to do that kind of thing.

That is a blatant disregard for the sovereignty

of another country.

First, the Mossad team stalks their prey.

They position agents all along Klement's daily route

to his job at a Mercedes-Benz plant,

and they snap photographs using cameras

cleverly hidden inside briefcases.

Their plan is to compare the pictures

they take in Argentina against wartime photos of Eichmann.

Getting an image of Klement is easy.

The hard part is finding a picture of Eichmann.

Toward the close of the war, Eichmann deliberately destroyed

every photograph he had of himself.

Mossad have some grainy photographs

from the pre-war period, but what they are lacking

is a photograph that will provide a good view

of his facial features.

This is a problem Mossad manages to solve.

After the war, one agent

seduced Eichmann's previous girlfriend.

And in her personal albums, they were able to find

a picture of Eichmann from the war.

To tell if these snaps

taken over 20 years apart are the same man,

the Mossad team hones in on the one feature

that barely changes with age: the ear.

The curves and ridges of the human ear

are as distinct as a fingerprint, so Mossad overlays

the two photos and runs a painstaking

ten-point comparison.

And they discover that the two men have an exact match.

Ricardo Klement is Adolf Eichmann.

Now, Mossad needs to capture him.

On the evening of May 11th,

as Eichmann steps off his usual bus home,

a man approaches him casually and says, "Momentito, señor."

Eichmann turns, and in that instant,

he's tackled and dragged into a waiting car.

He is taken to a safe house

on the outskirts of town.

There, he is interrogated, and he ultimately

admits that he is Eichmann.

Capturing Adolf Eichmann is one thing.

Sneaking him out of the country

without the Argentinian authorities realizing,

that's quite another.

To do that, the Mossad team crafts a daring escape plan.

In ten days, a large official Israeli delegation is scheduled

to be in Buenos Aires.

The agents' plan is to dress Eichmann

in an airline crew uniform, blend him into that crowd,

slip him past security, and fly home to Israel.

Before arriving at the airport, a doctor on the team

heavily sedates Eichmann.

They take him through the airport

as part of their delegation, claiming that

he's sick to everyone who's around.

When the Israeli team gets to customs,

they have a fake passport.

That document was made just a couple days ago,

and they've done their best to dirty it and crease it

so it looks like a well-worn passport,

but they don't know if it's going to work.

It's almost as if the Border Patrol officer

can sense that something isn't right.

But ultimately, he clears the group to get on the plane.

At 12:05 on May 21st,

the plane takes off carrying Eichmann.

Two days later, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion

makes a stunning announcement.

Adolf Eichmann is in Israel.

Argentina is beyond upset.

They lodge a protest at the United Nations,

accusing Israel of violating its national sovereignty

and demand Eichmann's return.

Israel refuses, claiming private Nazi hunters

carried out the operation.

A year later, Eichmann finally faces justice.

Eichmann is put on trial.

Survivors of the Holocaust describe in detail

the machines of murder that Eichmann helped construct.

He's found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Then, on May 31, 1962,

Eichmann is executed by hanging.

Only after 50 years does Israel finally

drop the pretense that Mossad had nothing

to do with his capture.

In 2012, the full truth is revealed

when Mossad opens its archives in an exhibition on Eichmann.

They display the briefcase camera,

the forged Israeli passport, and even the ear comparison

that confirmed his identity.

Two decades after Mossad sneak Eichmann out

of Argentina, the CIA begins its own smuggling operation

to secretly funnel an eye-watering $2 billion

into the hands of anti-Soviet fighters.

What follows is the most expensive

and most consequential illicit operation in U.S. history.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union launches a massive attack

on Afghanistan to prop up the Communist government

by sending close to 100,000 troops.

The Soviets seize the cities quickly,

but out in the remote rural expanses,

it's a whole different story.

There, a coalition of Islamist fighters

called the Mujahideen hold their ground guerilla style.

The CIA spots an opportunity.

If they can drag out this fight,

they could drain the power and resources of the Soviet Army.

So they kickstart Operation Cyclone

to support the Mujahideen.

The problem is, finding any guerrilla force

fighting the Soviet Army risks igniting World War III,

and these are some highly controversial new allies.

The Mujahideen is funded by the narcotics trade

and are religious fundamentalists

who hold very anti-Western views.

Funding fundamentalist narco barons?

Kind of a tough sell on Capitol Hill.

To help win Congress's approval

for this rogue operation, the CIA teams up

with an unlikely ally.

The CIA turns to Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson.

He's this heavy drinking womanizer,

but he's also politically savvy.

Wilson's influence manages to massively inflate

the CIA's budget for Operation Cyclone.

With Wilson's help, the budget for Operation Cyclone

balloons from $5 million to more than $30 million by 1983.

But to defeat a superpower, the Mujahideen

needs more than just money.

They need something the CIA can't send them: firepower.

If the CIA flooded

American weapons into Afghanistan,

that would be an open provocation

against the Soviets.

Also, the Mujahideen

don't know how to use American weaponry.

They are trained on Soviet weapons.

Somehow the Americans have to get

their hands on a cache of Soviet weapons

that can't be traced back to them.

In 1983, this challenge is handed

to a renegade CIA agent, a man named Gust Avrakotos,

also known as "Dr. Dirty."

Avrakotos is a blunt, foul-mouthed agency fixer,

known for bending the rules.

He knows that Egypt has recently switched

its alignment from the USSR to the U.S.

Avrakotos feels there could be a massive supply

of Soviet weapons in Egypt.

So he flies to Cairo,

where he gets the red carpet treatment

thanks to Congressman Charlie Wilson.

The Egyptians have already been softened up

by a visit from Wilson, who allegedly brought

his own personal belly dancer to perform

for the defense minister.

Whatever it is she did during that dance,

it seems to have worked.

The defense minister gives Avrakotos a personal VIP tour

of all the Egyptian defense installations

that house the Soviet matériel.

Amongst this hoard of weaponry,

Gust spots a weapon that could truly tip the scales--

54 Katyusha rocket launchers.

The Katyusha is a 122-millimeter rocket

that would give the Mujahideen long-range firepower

for the very first time.

Now, it's not accurate enough to take out helicopters,

but it can hit the Soviet bases that they fly from.

Avrakotos buys everything the Egyptians have.

His next challenge is to get these weapons over 2,000 miles

from Egypt to Afghanistan.

Believe it or not, the best way to get

a rocket launcher to Afghanistan undetected

is to strap it to a camel.

Gust engineers a massive covert supply chain.

First, ships carry the arms from Egypt

through the Suez Canal into Pakistan.

And then the weapons complete the journey over the border

into Afghanistan on traditional camel caravans.

At its height, some 300,000 guerrillas

wield CIA-sourced weapons.

By the late 1980s, the CIA

is channeling over $600 million

annually into Afghanistan.

This flood of cash and arms turns the tide.

The Soviet Union officially withdraws

on February 15, 1989.

The drain on the Soviets was immense.

Billions were spent, 15,000 Soviet soldiers died,

and scholars say this was one of the pressure points

that eventually led to the collapse

of the Soviet Union.

The full story of Operation Cyclone

remains a secret until 2003, when one journalist

named George Crile pieces together the whole mission.

George Crile is a Middle East reporter

who spends 15 years

investigating Operation Cyclone.

He interviews everyone involved,

including Avrakotos and Charlie Wilson.

And in 2003, he publishes the book

"Charlie Wilson's War," revealing the whole

tangled truth for the first time.

These revelations expose that many

of the Mujahideen the U.S. fight in 2001

are the same as those they armed 22 years earlier.

When 11 of its athletes are murdered

at the Munich Olympics, Israel hunts the perpetrators down,

not through the courts but in the shadows,

with an extreme vengeance mission

that breaks all international laws.

The 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany,

becomes a horror show.

A Palestinian group called Black September

storms the Olympic Village and takes 11 Israeli

athletes and coaches hostage.

It ends in a bloody shootout on an airfield,

and all the hostages are killed.

For Israel's security services, Mossad,

it's a massive intelligence failure

because it was their job to prevent something

like this from ever happening.

Israel's prime minister, Golda Meir,

publicly vows revenge, and she wants it by any means.

Israel doesn't have extradition relationships

with the countries that are definitely

going to be harboring the perpetrators of this crime.

The traditional path of justice will

get her absolutely nowhere.

So she orders the chief of Mossad to plan a series

of extrajudicial revenge hits.

For Israel, this isn't just about justice.

It's sending a message: "If you kill Israelis,

you won't walk away."

The rogue mission's codename?

Operation Wrath of God.

Mossad draw up a kill list of the key terrorists.

But these men are scattered all across the globe,

often living under aliases.

To hunt them, Mossad needs the most

up-to-date and reliable intel on their movements.

To help, Israel has a backdoor channel

to a vast European intelligence network.

At the time, there's this semi-secret coalition

of Western European spy agencies

called the Club de Berne.

Its purpose is to share information

on terrorist threats across the continent.

Israel has access to its telegram system,

which supplies live data on passports,

hotel registries, and surveillance.

Using the intelligence flowing

from the Club de Berne, Mossad tracks down

every target on their list.

They build a series of compact mobile kill teams

from their most elite commando unit.

Now these teams head out across Europe

to eliminate those behind the Munich attack

and strike the fear of God into any other terrorist

who might threaten Israel.

The first target is Wael Zwaiter,

the PLO's representative in Rome,

believed to be a key facilitator

for the Munich massacre.

As he returns to his apartment building,

two figures step out of the shadows.

They gun him down.

They shoot him 11 times, one bullet for each victim

of the Munich massacre.

The message is sent.

Next, Mahmoud al-Hamshari.

Killed when his phone explodes in his hand.

Then Mohamed Boudia, killed by a car bomb.

By the summer of 1973, 11 are dead.

After each hit, the Mossad uses the Club de Berne intel

to monitor the aftermath.

They read the reports from European agencies,

and this allows them to stay one step ahead.

Then, in July 1973, the agents believe

they've located their biggest target of all.

Ali Hassan Salameh is the alleged mastermind

of the Munich massacre.

They get a tip that he is in the town

of Lillehammer, Norway,

and start preparing an operation.

The Lillehammer hit is a particular challenge.

Mossad has no established network

in Norway, no safe houses.

Add to that, the intel is thin.

It's all based on a single grainy photograph of a man

that they think is Salameh.

Mossad has a team on location,

and one night, they spot a man at a bus stop

who looks like the target.

They follow him and then gun him down.

It turns out this man is not Salameh.

It's a Moroccan waiter by the name of Ahmed Bouchiki.

It's a catastrophic error.

And it's about to get worse for the Mossad.

Their escape plan falls apart.

The team have used credit cards in their own names,

so police trace them easily.

Norwegian authorities quickly round up the Mossad agents

and convict five of them in court.

The fallout is a public relations disaster.

Israel's kill list is exposed to the world,

forcing them to halt their entire operation.

But behind the scenes, Mossad's secret access

to the Club de Berne remains,

leaving the door open for Israel to finish the job.

Six years later, Israel reactivates

Operation Wrath of God for one last hit.

Fresh intelligence locates Ali Hassan Salameh.

He's in Beirut.

And this time, they're certain it's him.

On January 22nd, Salameh drives down a bustling street.

A car bomb in a parked Volkswagen

kills Salameh and eight other people.

Salameh's death

brings Wrath of God to a close.

For decades, Europe's intelligence services

are not suspected to have any connection

to this illicit killing spree.

That changes in 2018.

Swiss historian Aviva Guttmann

is looking into the matter of this Club de Berne

anti-terrorist network, and she wants

to see the telegram system.

Archivists give her access to a host

of sensitive intelligence files.

They probably didn't realize what they were sharing,

because in these files is definitive proof

that Europe was sharing intelligence with Israel

and supporting one of the most terrifying

state-sponsored assassination operations.

In 2025, Guttmann reveals the truth to the world

in a bombshell book.

They say cheaters never prosper.

But in World War II, Winston Churchill

greenlights a mission that breaks all the rules of war.

To shatter the Nazis' power at sea,

he sends a secret unit of saboteurs

to raid a neutral island.

In 1941, Britain feels like it's losing

the Battle of the Atlantic.

Nazi U-boats are decimating the convoys

that are carrying food, fuel, and troops

vital for the Allied war effort.

By the end of 1941, almost 400 Allied and neutral

merchant vessels have been sent to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Then, British receive intelligence reports

from Fernando Po, a tiny island

off the Coast of Africa that reveal a critical

chance to fight back.

British intelligence discovers that the Germans

are gonna use Fernando Po as a sort of off-the-books

refueling site where they can refuel and restock

their U-boats and get them back into the fight quickly.

They believe three vessels

in Fernando Po's harbor are crucial

to the German resupply operation.

The ships consist of an Italian merchant ship

and two German tugboats.

Taking out these three boats

could cripple the Nazi supply chain in the Atlantic.

But there's a problem.

Fernando Po belongs to Spain.

Spain is officially neutral,

but its fascist leader, General Franco,

is very friendly with Hitler.

So the British know that if they launch a military strike

in Spanish territory, that would be

a breach of international law

and would almost certainly draw Spain into the war

on the side of the Nazis.

And that would be a disaster for Britain.

So to take out these ships,

Winston Churchill greenlights a more underhanded strike.

Churchill decides that, to beat the Nazis,

Britain has to fight dirty.

So he forms a new top secret team,

essentially one of the world's first special forces,

the Small Scale Raiding Force, the SSRF.

At the time, Churchill calls them

something else: his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Their first mission?

A secret raid to steal the three Axis ships

lying in Fernando Po's harbor,

codenamed Operation Postmaster.

The SSRF devises a plan that, when you look at it,

it's just piracy, plain and simple.

A raiding team of around 30 mercenaries that are mostly

recruited from nearby Nigeria will sneak into the harbor,

hijack the ships, and tow them out to international waters

where the Royal Navy can "stumble" across them

and legally seize them.

To prepare for the raid,

a handful of SSRF agents quietly slip onto the island.

But they realize that they're going to need

some aerial photography of the harbor

where the boats are anchored.

Well, it turns out that the territorial governor

has an airplane.

So they set up the circumstances

whereby they are able to photograph

the governor in a bathtub with his mistress.

Using those photographs, they then bribe him

into taking them up for a flight

around the harbor, during which

they take the needed photographs.

Next, the agents discover that,

during the attack, the SSRF's raiders

will be vastly outnumbered.

So to even the odds, they throw a party.

The German and Italian officers love shore leave.

So using local connections, the team organize this lavish bash

on the night of the raid.

Music, drinks, just the works.

It's the perfect misdirection, except the only restaurant

they can book has a perfect view of the harbor

and all the target ships.

But they solved the problem with the clever seating plan.

The agents ensure every Axis officer

is sat with his back to the sea,

and with a beautiful woman opposite of him

to hold his attention.

Never before in the history of the Second World War

has a seating chart been

a strategic piece of masterwork, but here it has.

Decoy in place,

on January 14th, the mission begins.

Any mistakes could bring Spain crashing

into the war on Hitler's side.

So the team is on their own.

London has made it crystal clear,

if any of the raiding party are caught,

they'll be disavowed and left to face the consequences alone.

As the distraction party gets into full swing,

an operative on the island kills the lights.

Two blacked out tugboats enter Fernando Po's harbor,

carrying the 34 raiders.

In darkness, the raiders maneuver

alongside their three targets.

Now they announce their presence to the whole island.

The team blow the anchor chains

off the three enemy ships.

In the chaos, the commandos board the enemy ships,

taking the crews captive at gunpoint.

Axis officers race from the party

and arrive just in time to see their ships disappear

into international waters.

And a few days later, they're picked up

or, rather, intercepted by a British warship.

Churchill's high stakes gamble has paid off.

London rolls out pre-written headlines,

"Navy patrols on routine duty seized

the three ships legally."

The Spanish are furious over the incursion,

but there's no proof that Britain

has broken international law.

With this mission,

Churchill is sending a powerful message.

He is acknowledging that the Germans are bending the rules,

and he's also telling them, I'm gonna bend the rules too.

Two can play at that game.

For over 40 years,

the British maintain the cover story.

Only when Spain's fascist government

is removed from power does British intelligence

begin to declassify the truth.

The astonishing story of Operation Postmaster

is finally revealed.

All rogue missions ignore the rules.

Our next story also ignores the risk.

To uncover the horrors of a new Nazi prison camp,

one spy walks inside willingly,

then escapes it to tell the world what he saw.

That camp is Auschwitz.

It's 1940.

Poland has been occupied by Nazi

and Soviet forces for about a year

when whispers begin circulating

about a new prison camp being built

in the south near the town of Oswiecim.

Oswiecim will ultimately become known

as the concentration camp

and then eventually the extermination center

of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Auschwitz is synonymous with evil.

It's the epicenter of the Holocaust,

where over a million people were systematically murdered.

But back in mid-1940,

the name of this camp and its true purpose is a mystery.

All the Polish people know

is that the Germans have taken over some old army barracks

and converted them into a detention facility.

But when the first prisoners arrive there,

alarming reports start to leak out.

There are tales of murder, torture,

and horrific experiments.

The Polish resistance decides

it needs urgent answers about what's going on

behind the barbed wire.

So one 39-year-old officer named Witold Pilecki

volunteers for an incredible mission.

Witold Pilecki is a former army lieutenant

who hates the Nazis and will stop

at nothing to sabotage them.

He literally volunteers to go undercover as a prisoner

to the Nazi prisoner camp.

Once there, he means to collect intelligence,

build a resistance network to smuggle in food

and medicine for the inmates.

His plan is so extreme

not everyone is on board.

Some of Pilecki's leaders don't know how bad things are

inside this concentration camp, but they're worried that

it's basically a suicide run.

The plan is so far outside normal procedures

that it's incredible the Polish resistance

doesn't simply shut it down.

In late summer, Pilecki is finally

granted permission to head into Auschwitz.

But he can't just walk up and knock on the door.

He needs to be transported there as a genuine prisoner.

To make sure his military record doesn't draw

the attention of the Gestapo, he takes on a false identity,

Tomasz Serafinski.

Then, he deliberately gets himself

rounded up by the German military police

in the streets of Warsaw.

Those arrested could be taken anywhere in the Reich.

And his plan is to essentially just hope that

he gets sent to Auschwitz.

Three days later, Pilecki's gamble pays off.

He enters the camp underneath the now infamous sign

that reads "arbeit macht frei,"

"work will set you free."

Witold Pilecki is the only

known person to have ever entered Auschwitz by choice.

Now he's prisoner 4859.

In the camp, Pilecki endures backbreaking labor,

conditions so harsh that a prisoner's life expectancy

is measured in weeks, not months.

He keeps his head down, but he begins to build a network.

Pilecki recruits other prisoners inside the camp,

and they start organizing a group

to distribute food and clothing.

And they even undertake small acts of sabotage.

Against all odds, Pilecki's daring mission is paying off.

But in March 1942, everything changes

when Auschwitz transforms from a brutal work camp

into an extermination machine.

In the spring of 1942, Nazi leaders begin

to enact their Final Solution.

This is a genocidal blueprint for wiping out

all of Europe's Jews.

Pilecki is witness to the opening stages

of the Holocaust.

He sees trains arriving, coming and going.

He sees Jewish men, women, and children being dropped off.

And then he sees billowing clouds of smoke,

indicating that they have been incinerated.

Faced with this horror, Pilecki knows

the world must hear the truth.

It's a message so crucial he must deliver it in person.

So two years and seven months after breaking into Auschwitz,

Pilecki plots his escape.

Through his network, Pilecki and two co-conspirators

slowly gather false papers, civilian clothes, money,

and even cyanide, which they will use on themselves

if they do get captured.

Pilecki bribes a guard to transfer him

to the camp bakery located just outside

the main perimeter, one of the least secure areas of the camp.

The night of April 26, 1943,

they make their move.

At 2:00 a.m., the three men force open the bakery door

and sprint into the darkness.

The alarm sounds, gunfire goes off behind them,

but somehow they vanish into the woods.

Then they make a grueling 60-mile journey on foot

until they reach a resistance safe house.

Shortly after, Pilecki handwrites

his 104-page mission report.

It's a landmark document.

Pilecki writes the first eyewitness

account of the Holocaust.

It's the first time the Allies

really understand what's going on,

but they're helpless to do anything.

It's not until January of 1945 that the Soviet troops arrive

and finally liberate Auschwitz.

Pilecki survives the war, but in the aftermath,

he faces a new, deadly challenge.

Two years after Germany's defeat,

Poland falls under Soviet control.

Now Pilecki has to fight for his country all over again.

But this time, it doesn't go as well.

He's arrested by the Communists for organizing

acts of resistance.

He's tried, convicted,

and then in 1948, he is executed.

After his death, the Soviets expunged

Pilecki's bravery from Polish history.

His incredible mission to reveal the horrors

of Auschwitz is buried--

until 2000, a decade after the Soviet Union collapses,

when his eyewitness report is finally published.

In 2006, Poland posthumously honors Pilecki

with the Order of the White Eagle, their highest award.

Recognition of a spy who broke all the rules

to walk into a hell on Earth

and tell the world what he saw.

In the last 150 years, more than 60 national leaders

have been assassinated.

Those responsible are usually radicals,

rebels, or lone gunmen.

But behind this plot to kill a democratically elected

prime minister is the CIA.

On June 30, 1960,

the African nation of the Congo,

now known as the DRC, declares independence

after decades of colonial rule by Belgium.

The country's first ever prime minister, Patrice Lumumba,

promises that from now on, the Congolese people

will control their own land, including its mineral wealth.

The Congolese are euphoric.

In Belgium, they're seething.

The Congo is massive.

It's about the size of Western Europe,

and it is absolutely packed with minerals.

There's copper, there's cobalt, there's uranium--

all resources that Belgian corporations have been mining

to fuel their industries for generations.

Belgium immediately moves to reclaim

control of this wealth.

It incites a mineral-rich southern region

known as Katanga to break away from the Congo.

They select a local politician

to be a puppet leader and send in Belgian troops

to support him.

To hold his country together,

Lumumba asks the U.S. for military aid.

When they refuse, he turns to the East.

Lumumba reaches out to the Soviet Union,

and they give him weapons and advisors.

Now, for America, that crosses a line.

Washington now sees Lumumba as a threat,

potentially spreading Communism throughout

the African continent.

The CIA director, Allen Dulles,

demands his urgent removal.

They wanna take out the democratically elected leader

of a sovereign nation, a flagrant violation

of international law.

The man who gets the task is Larry Devlin,

CIA Station Chief at Congo's capital, Léopoldville.

Devlin decides he's gonna remove Lumumba from power

by orchestrating chaos.

He funds the opposition.

He bankrolls demonstrators.

And he spreads anti-Lumumba propaganda.

Then he sets his sights on the military.

The CIA starts paying off colonels

in the army for their loyalty.

Soon, the country is in chaos.

And now they encourage a new leader to take advantage.

Colonel Mobutu places Lumumba under house arrest,

and the military seizes control of all of the elements

of government power.

But for the CIA, that's not enough.

They need a more permanent solution.

As long as Lumumba is alive, he remains a powerful symbol

with huge support among the people.

The CIA needs him gone.

But if Devlin is going to solve

the problem of Lumumba, he needs to do it fast.

There has been an election in the United States

and a concern that JFK could soon

call for Lumumba's release.

Devlin's bosses suggest poison.

But he thinks that might get traced back to the agency.

Then he figures Lumumba has many enemies besides the CIA,

so why not get one of them to do the job for him?

Larry Devlin settles in on a plan,

and that is to deliver Lumumba to his political enemies

in the province of Katanga,

and there, his execution is pretty much guaranteed.

But Persuading the Congo's many factions

to sign up to this plan isn't easy

without attracting attention.

Devlin needs to coordinate

with a lot of different groups in the Republic of Congo,

but he's prominent enough that he needs an excuse

for why he can move around the country.

Luckily for him, the perfect smokescreen is

on its way, a living legend.

In October 1960, a plane touches down

at the Léopoldville airport.

And out steps none other than Louis Armstrong.

Satchmo, arguably America's first truly global superstar,

has come to play in the Congo where his concerts draw

crowds of over 100,000 people.

For the CIA, the timing is perfect.

Devlin hosts Armstrong at the U.S. embassy facilities

and can use the concert schedule

to jet around the country.

It's argued that, under the guise

of those tours logistics,

Devlin meets Lumumba's enemies in Katanga

to plot his execution.

All the while, Armstrong has no idea

his tour is being hijacked for a covert CIA operation.

By the time Armstrong flies out,

Patrice Lumumba senses the noose is tightening.

He makes a desperate attempt to escape but is caught.

On January 17, 1961, Lumumba is recaptured

and flown into Katanga under Colonel Mobutu's orders.

That night, Katangese officials and Belgian operatives

drive him out into the bush

where he's executed on the spot.

Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically

elected prime minister of an independent Congo,

is dead at 35.

In his place, the CIA's strongman, Colonel Mobutu,

rules the Congo for over three decades.

But piece by piece, the CIA's role

in this rogue assassination is uncovered.

The story first comes to light in 1975,

when Congress investigates the CIA's illicit activities.

Then, in 2021, a British author

named Susan Williams stitches details

from newly declassified documents,

and she uncovers what she believes are indications

of just how far the CIA's manipulations went,

right to the CIA's use of Louis Armstrong's Congo tour

as a smoke screen.

From the 1950s to the 1970s,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation

under the iron reign of J. Edgar Hoover

runs a top secret illegal operation

targeting thousands of U.S. citizens.

The only reason we know about it

is because eight ordinary Americans

pulled off one extraordinary heist.

By 1956, J. Edgar Hoover has been running the FBI

for over three decades.

For him, the real threat to America's security

isn't organized crime or bank robbers,

it's ideas, political movements that threaten the system,

particularly Communism.

He wants to root out these groups and neutralize them.

No holds barred.

Hoover's problem is,

the courts keep getting in his way.

Hoover is willing to use illegal wiretaps,

bugging, intercepting mail.

He believes that these tools and tactics are fair game.

But the courts insist on warrants.

They want constitutional protections.

Hoover sees these as operational inconveniences.

So in 1956, he decides to circumvent the law

with a new classified operation he calls COINTELPRO,

short for Counterintelligence Program.

Hoover creates a program to try to monitor the behavior

of potential dissident groups.

He also starts having agents infiltrate them and push

more radical activity than they had previously espoused,

which will then justify the FBI in suppressing those groups.

This is an illegal operation

targeting U.S. citizens on American soil,

and it grows fast.

By the 1960s, Hoover expands the program's scope

to civil rights leaders and opponents

of the war in Vietnam.

Any voice speaking out against the status quo,

Hoover calls it subversive and unleashes his agents.

One activist is dead center

in Hoover's sights: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At this time, Martin Luther King

is the most prominent voice in the Civil Rights movement.

His profile and influence make him a key target for Hoover.

In 1962, Hoover instructs COINTELPRO

to investigate King for alleged Communist influences.

He doesn't really believe that King is a Communist.

He just wants to disrupt the Civil Rights movement.

As Hoover digs into Martin Luther King Jr.,

he bugs his hotel room, taps his phones,

puts him under 24-hour surveillance,

all without warrants from the courts.

Eventually, they record evidence.

Not that King is a Communist,

but that he's been having an affair.

It's the ammunition Hoover needs

to bring King down.

Now COINTELPRO crosses the biggest line yet.

In November of 1964, King receives a package.

Inside are audio recordings documenting

his extramarital relationship.

There's also an anonymous threatening letter.

He calls King a fraud and tells him,

"There is but one way out for you."

The FBI seems to be telling a Nobel Peace Prize winner

to kill himself.

It's not subtle.

King refuses.

Hoover's unchecked operation targets citizens across America

for over a decade.

But its secrecy is about to be shattered,

because in a quiet corner of Pennsylvania,

eight ordinary Americans are plotting to expose

the FBI's dirtiest tricks.

In 1971, a group emerges that calls itself

the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI,

and they are convinced that the FBI

is engaging in behavior that is illegal,

immoral, and unethical.

Their plan?

Break into an FBI office to steal documents that prove it.

Their target is a lightly guarded

field office in Pennsylvania.

And they'll do it on the perfect night for a heist.

On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

are gearing up for the fight of the century.

Millions of Americans, including local police,

are gonna be glued to their televisions.

Dressed in suits and evening wear,

the team approaches the office as if

they're heading to a party. They break in.

And once inside, they ignore files on mobsters

and bank robberies and instead search for evidence

of political surveillance.

The group find hundreds of classified pages.

They take all this information and walk out into the night.

Back at a safe house,

they sift through over 1,000 pages,

and they come across the critical name, "COINTELPRO."

The activists have uncovered extensive details

of Hoover's illegal war.

The question now, is any journalist

brave enough to take on Hoover

and publish what they've found?

The burglars mail copies of some of the most

incriminating documents to members

of the press and politicians.

Most of the recipients of this classified material

are terrified at the prospect of publishing it

because publishing classified documents is a crime.

Only Betty Medsger, a journalist

for "The Washington Post," has the courage

to publish the story.

And when it hits the press, the country absolutely erupts.

Hoover defends his actions as needed

to keep Americans safe.

Privately, the exposé forces him

to pull the plug on his operation.

Determined to find the burglars,

he unleashes 200 agents, one of the largest

manhunts in FBI history.

For 40 years, the identities of the burglars

remain a total secret until Betty Medsger

publishes a book about their exploits.

It's only then that the world finally learns who they were,

eight ordinary Americans who risked everything

to expose the illegal plans of their own government.

When the stakes are high enough, no set of rules

will ever stop a government from getting what it wants.

But the rogue missions they carry out in the dark

eventually get exposed for all to see.