Original subtitles

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

the shadowy alliances and deadly partnerships

that were never meant to come to light.

First, the CIA hires a young hitman named Saddam Hussein.

Before he ruled Iraq, he was quietly recruited

into a CIA-backed assassination plot.

Then, the U.S. partners with a fruit company

to topple a foreign government.

They took a boat that usually carried bananas

and filled it with guns.

And Allied victory in World War II

hangs on a deal between the U.S. Navy

and one of the nation's most notorious gangsters.

That man is Lucky Luciano.

These are some of the dark deals struck

throughout history by governments

and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

In 2003, after invading Iraq,

U.S. forces hunt the countryside

for its leader, Saddam Hussein.

Then an explosive news article drops,

alleging Saddam and the United States weren't always enemies

but once allies, bound together in a top secret

CIA plot 40 years earlier.

In 1958, Iraq's fragile monarchy

collapses in a violent coup.

Bloodshed erupts.

The king is shot, while the crown prince is executed

and hung from the Ministry of Defense.

Iraq comes under the control of the military,

and the military is controlled by a general

named Abdul-Karim Qasim.

For Washington, this guy is a big worry.

The monarchy was firmly pro-Western.

Now they wanna know, will Qasim stick with them

or drift to the Soviets?

They don't need to wait long

to get their answer.

Qasim brings in Soviet advisors.

He starts buying Soviet weapons.

And he fills key ministries with Iraqi communists.

Soon, a decision is made by the CIA.

Qasim has to be removed.

The question is, how?

Washington doesn't want to invade

a sovereign Arab country to topple a leader,

at least not in 1959.

Because all this would do is blow up

America's Arab alliances and stir up even more

anti-Western anger across the region.

So instead, the CIA turns to Qasim's enemies inside Iraq,

looking for an ally who might do the job for them.

One group stands out, the Ba'ath party.

They're a nationalist political group

who hate the idea of Qasim cozying up to Moscow.

The CIA approaches the Ba'athists

to quietly pitch removing Qasim.

And both sides reach the same brutal verdict.

The surest path to regime change is assassination.

The CIA starts putting together

a Ba'athist hit team, six men willing to carry out

this assassination of the general.

One of them is a 22-year-old recently released from prison

associated with another political murder.

The name of this would be assassin

is none other than Saddam Hussein.

At this time, Saddam is a wayward student.

But he's already displaying the traits that would define him.

He's volatile, thuggish, and burning with ambition.

For several months, Saddam and his accomplices plan the hit.

They spend hours mapping Qasim's daily commute

from his home to the Ministry of Defense.

And ultimately, they settle on an ambush plan.

One vehicle will block the motorcade.

One vehicle will then block them in and trap them.

They'll open fire, kill him,

and then escape the scene of the crime.

By early October, a young Saddam

is ready to make his first mark on history.

The plan completely unravels right from the beginning.

The car gets boxed in,

so the team is forced to carry out the attack on foot.

When they reach Qasim's convoy, stalled in traffic,

accounts claim Saddam suddenly panics.

He fires too early, sending bullets

spraying across the road.

Suddenly, the street erupts into chaos.

Qasim's guards react and return fire.

One assassin is killed.

Qasim's driver is shot and killed.

Qasim himself is hit.

Saddam takes a bullet to the leg

but still manages to escape with the survivors.

At this moment, Saddam and his conspirators

think it's mission accomplished.

They got Qasim.

But later, in a Baghdad safehouse,

they get disastrous news.

Qasim is alive, recovering, and he's furious.

It turns out volatile 22-year-old students

don't make the best assassins.

Now Saddam is a big problem for the CIA.

If Saddam is captured,

he'll be subjected to torture,

and he'll reveal the CIA's involvement.

And this, of course, was supposed to be something

that was happening without foreign involvement.

The CIA needs him out of Iraq and fast.

Saddam is later smuggled

out of the country and takes refuge in Egypt.

In Cairo, Saddam is put under close watch,

and every so often, he'll slip into the U.S. embassy

for debriefings.

And even to this day, whatever they discussed

is still classified.

But Saddam soon gets another shot

at making history.

In February 1963, the Ba'athists

roll out another coup attempt.

And some believe the CIA played a large role in this coup too.

General Qasim's luck finally runs out.

In the chaos, he is captured and executed.

With Qasim gone, Saddam can return to Iraq.

And he begins his rapid and brutal rise to power

from party enforcer to head of military intelligence.

And in 1979, he's president.

Saddam's rule influences

the Middle East for decades.

But his covert alliance with the CIA

remains unknown until the Second Gulf War.

When the U.S. invades Iraq,

a reporter named Richard Sale begins to look into the rumors

of a secret Saddam-CIA alliance.

He speaks to almost a dozen high ranking officials

who all tell the same incredible story.

In 2003, Sale publishes

a bombshell exposé in UPI.

Eight months later, it's all over

for the CIA's former hit man.

U.S. forces dig Saddam Hussein

out of his spider hole in the Iraqi desert.

It's a humiliating end for a brutal dictator.

He was a monster,

but we now know he was a monster

the CIA played a part in unleashing.

Saddam Hussein isn't the only villain

the U.S. has found useful.

In World War II, when Allied forces

need to take the island of Sicily from the Nazis,

they reach out to a ruthless mob boss

who's already behind bars to forge a deal

no one was ever meant to see.

After four years of fighting,

the Allies are desperate to open a second front

into occupied Europe.

So the top choice for the second front is Sicily.

It's close to Allied bases in North Africa,

lightly defended, and is seen as a stepping stone

to an attack on the Italian mainland

and the rest of Europe.

As Allied troops train for their impending assault,

the U.S. Navy spots an opportunity

to grease the wheels of this invasion.

Navy intelligence is aware that Mussolini, Il Duce,

is not well liked on Sicily.

Many Sicilians already resent fascist rule.

The U.S. Navy figures,

if someone can reach out ahead of time,

basically saying we hate fascism, too,

we're on the same side,

it could make the U.S. look good--

like liberators, not just another occupying force.

So the U.S. wants someone

who has the right connections, the ability to reach out

and talk to the people.

The messenger has to be someone

local Sicilian leaders will trust,

and crucially, someone who has the ear of the island's

all-powerful Mafia.

The U.S. knows just the man for the job.

The problem is, he's one of America's

most notorious crime lords,

Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

Luciano runs pretty much all prostitution in New York,

runs racketeering, and he does it all from prison.

He is a violent and dangerous mobster,

but Luciano could be just what the U.S. needs

to tip the balance of the invasion.

He's Sicilian.

He knows people who still live on that island.

He could function as the diplomat

who introduces you to the prominent members

of the Sicilian mob underworld.

The U.S. military needs Luciano's help,

but they have very little to offer in return.

They can't spring him from prison.

It's not gonna go over well to have the president

give a pardon to one of the most notorious gangsters

in the entire country.

And Luciano also has one good reason to refuse.

If word gets out that Luciano is working with the government,

it'll mark him as a snitch,

a death sentence for any mobster.

But there's one small concession

they can make.

The navy suggests that Luciano could have

more extensive visiting hours.

This means that his lieutenants

have more face time with the boss.

He can more effectively run his criminal empire from prison.

Luciano agrees to help.

But will he stick to his word?

Luciano puts his network to work.

He talks to his people in New York.

That opens conversations with the right people in Sicily.

A handful of them are quietly flown

to naval intelligence, bringing with them

all sorts of information to aid the invasion.

Now they have people sitting in front of them

who can answer a specific question of like,

well, what does the beach look like at Gela?

What road network should we follow?

Where are Italian military bases across the island?

They got all the intelligence needed

for the most ideal landing on Sicily.

The invasion plans are set.

Now they need to make sure the locals stay friendly.

Luciano sends a message through his intermediaries

to the one man who can keep Sicilians

from turning their guns on U.S. troops, Don Calo Vizzini.

He's the island's top Mafia boss

who's word matters in rural Sicily.

After weeks of secret negotiations,

the moment of truth finally arrives.

Allied landings begin.

Allied forces quickly press into the interior.

And within the span of a little over a month,

the campaign on Sicily has been brought to a conclusion.

It's all aided by the Mafia influence,

keeping the towns quiet and the roads open.

Sicily's capture gives the Allies

a critical foothold for an invasion of mainland Italy

that will hasten the end of the war.

After the war, Luciano is rewarded with early release

but only if he agrees to permanent deportation to Italy.

Luciano, who was previously

looking at dying alone in a prison cell,

he gets to go back to his ancestral homeland.

He takes this story to the grave.

But in 1977, one journalist gains access

to an explosive report.

A journalist named Rodney Campbell comes across

a 101-page summary of a secret investigation

commissioned into the navy's pact with the Mafia.

When the findings break, the press goes wild,

When the findings break, the press goes wild,

stunned that the navy secretly partnered

with the mob during the war.

U.S. intelligence has cut secret deals

with some of America's biggest corporations.

In the 1950s, a global banana giant teams up with the CIA

to overthrow a democratically elected leader in Guatemala

in a story that truly is...

bananas.

In the 1950s, one U.S. company

wields huge power in Guatemala.

The United Fruit Company owns 42% of the country's land.

It also has control over the infrastructure.

So we're talking about railways, ports,

and even telephone lines.

Its primary business is growing bananas

and shipping them to the U.S.

And that trade alone makes up more than half

of the country's exports, which gives

the United Fruit Company a stranglehold

on Guatemala's economy.

United Fruit has so much power

that a new phrase emerges to describe this nation,

a banana republic.

But in 1951, a serious threat to its monopoly emerges.

Guatemala elects a new president, Jacobo Arbenz.

He's very idealistic and feels that the United Fruit Company

is essentially siphoning money straight out of Guatemala

right into the pockets of rich Americans.

Arbenz basically goes in and seizes close to

a quarter million acres of land

that the company has been sitting on.

He offers them a very small compensation for that land,

and United Fruit is not happy about this.

For United Fruit, the president's move

is a direct attack on their power.

So they turn to some friends in very high places.

The United Fruit Company is known for having

powerful connections.

Eisenhower's private secretary is married

to the United Fruit PR chief.

The U.S. Secretary of State has represented

the company as a lawyer.

And the head of the CIA has been on the company board

and owns shares.

United Fruit heads to Washington D.C.

and starts a massive lobbying campaign

to remove Arbenz from power.

This has to be framed correctly.

United Fruit knows that Washington

is not so worried about bananas,

but what it is worried about--

communism.

United Fruit publishes what it calls a research report.

It's packed with wild exaggerations,

warning that Guatemala is becoming a Kremlin outpost

in Central America.

They know that it will send a chill up the spine

of the American government.

The idea is to alarm Congress, and it works.

In 1952, the CIA and United Fruit

launch a joint covert operation known as PBFortune

to take down Arbenz.

The U.S. starts sending arms shipments

to an exiled rebel force in Nicaragua.

And the plan is for them to move into Guatemala,

assassinate more than 50 political targets,

including Arbenz, and to replace him with a leader

who's more aligned with the interests

of the United Fruit Company.

The United Fruit Company offers up one of its

cargo freighters for the operation.

In New Orleans, they load the ship--

which, by the way, is literally a banana boat--

with crates of what they're calling agricultural machinery.

But it's not machinery.

It's machine guns.

It's weapons.

And they send that to Nicaragua.

But while the vessel is en route,

the truth about its secret cargo spills out.

The Nicaraguan president basically boasts about

his nation's part in the coup,

and very soon, rumors of a U.S.-backed takeover

spread across Central America.

Before this banana boat

reaches Guatemala, Washington panics

and quietly diverts it to Panama,

where the weapons are locked away.

But not for long.

One year later, the CIA attempts

a new coup with a new plan.

The CIA floods Guatemala with propaganda.

They hire dissident groups to stage mock uprisings.

Basically, they do anything and everything

they can to make it look like Arbenz has

lost control of the country.

On June 27, 1954, under immense pressure

and abandoned by the military,

President Arbenz finally flees the country.

The CIA-backed rebels

march into the country, take control with just 480 men

who are armed with weapons that were originally shipped

by United Fruit Company.

In the aftermath of the coup,

Guatemala is run by a series of brutal dictators,

all loyal to the CIA and United Fruit.

But the United Fruit Company's role in Arbenz's downfall

remains a secret.

Then, in May 1977, the CIA releases

1,400 pages of documents

detailing its role in the coup.

These pages reveal, for the first time,

the CIA's clandestine alliance with a fruit company.

Many legends tell of secret cities hidden in the jungle.

But in the Vietnam War, the CIA actually builds one.

It's part of a secret deal to turn

Laotian farmers into fearsome warriors

to take on the North Vietnamese.

During the early days of the Vietnam War,

the North Vietnamese are using a vast jungle network

known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move supplies and ammunition

to their forces in the south.

Much of the Ho Chi Minh Trail

doesn't actually run through Vietnam at all,

but through the neighboring country of Laos.

And this creates real concern

from the international community

that this will pull Laos into the war.

To prevent the bloodshed spreading,

on July 23, 1962,

14 nations, including the U.S. and North Vietnam,

sign a treaty declaring Laos strictly neutral.

It demands all foreign forces withdraw.

The problem is, almost before the ink is dry,

North Vietnam starts violating the deal.

In fact, they actually expand the trail farther into Laos.

This creates a real diplomatic nightmare for the U.S.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail is giving the Viet Cong

a clear advantage, but Laos is neutral territory,

so the U.S. government can't send troops there

to choke off the supply line.

The U.S. is in a fight with its hands tied.

Their solution is to make friends

with a remote mountain tribe

who can swing a punch on their behalf.

The Hmong people are an Indigenous farming people

who live in the remote highlands of Northeastern Laos.

And the war is affecting their lives daily.

North Vietnamese forces are moving through their territory,

turning their villages and farmlands

into supply routes for the war.

Hmong communities are trying to defend their land,

but the resistance is happening on a small scale.

I mean, we're talking about groups of untrained,

badly armed men protecting their villages

and protecting local routes.

The CIA spots an opportunity

to team up with the Hmong to covertly fight

the North Vietnamese in Laos.

This will not be an easy deal to make.

The Hmong are a remote community.

The only way to get to them

is to fly a helicopter in,

and they're very suspicious of outsiders.

They speak a regional dialect

that some Laotian people can't even speak.

To make the deal with the Hmong,

Washington turns to Bill Lair.

He's a veteran CIA officer based in Thailand,

and by that point, Bill Lair has been stationed

in Southeast Asia for years.

He knows everything about the region's terrain

and its people better than almost anyone in the agency.

Lair has already traveled deep into the jungle

to broker a deal with the Hmong's resistance leader,

General Vang Pao.

Lair tells Vang Pao that the CIA can supply

food, medical kits, and radios,

and most importantly, the training and guns

Pao's fighters need.

In exchange, his Hmong fighters

will take on the job no official U.S. force can touch:

blocking the North Vietnamese from pushing through Laos.

The general agrees,

and an alliance is forged.

So the agency sends in covert operatives

to transform these farmers into foot soldiers.

In just 18 months, the Hmong force grows

from 9,000 to 30,000 men.

That is about 60% of the entire Hmong male population.

They become extremely effective at fighting

the North Vietnamese because they know the trail

better than the Vietnamese do.

This is their land.

This is where they live.

This is where they farm.

This is where they hunt.

They use the mountain terrain to their advantage,

launching hit-and-run ambushes, blowing apart supply columns

all along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

North Vietnam knows the U.S. is behind it.

And the U.S. knows they know.

But neither can say a word because neither of them

is supposed to be fighting in Laos.

The beating heart of the CIA

and the Hmong alliance is a top secret base,

a remote settlement few outsiders

have ever heard of-- Long Chieng.

The CIA uses this base to supply the entire mission.

Long Chieng is 3,000 feet up, and during the war, it grows

into this vast, bustling army town

of tens of thousands of people.

This town isn't marked on any map,

and it never officially exists.

When North Vietnamese forces discover

the secret jungle base, they want it wiped off the map.

So in late 1971, they begin a huge offensive on Long Chieng.

Outnumbered almost 2 to 1, the CIA's secret army

now faces its biggest test.

This battle drags on for weeks.

At times, it's unbelievably vicious hand-to-hand combat

on rugged peaks right around the base.

The cost to the Hmong is huge.

Then, in mid-January, CIA-led units

arrive from Thailand as reinforcements,

and this is the boost the Hmong need to survive.

They finally manage to hold the base,

and the North Vietnamese withdraw.

Long Chieng is never attacked like that again.

This is a David versus Goliath story

insofar as the Hmong people

fought this dramatic battle against an enemy

with great numerical superiority,

and they prevailed.

For years, what happened at Long Chieng

exists only as rumor.

Then, in 1987, journalist Christopher Robbins

publishes a book about the conflict in Laos,

based on interviews with CIA operatives and airmen

who flew into this city.

And the full story of this secret army

is finally uncovered.

That book reveals that this wasn't a sideshow

of the ongoing war in Southeast Asia,

but this was the main effort to prevent the North Vietnamese

from using the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

It's 1953, and the CIA wants Iran's prime minister gone.

So they hand a top spy $1 million

and send him to Tehran to cut a secret deal

with the one man who can make that happen:

Iran's shah, the king of kings.

When Mohammad Mosaddegh becomes Iran's prime minister,

it's bad news for Britain and the United States.

Britain controls Iran's most valuable resource, its oil.

Mosaddegh has promised to nationalize the industry

and reclaim that wealth for Iran.

Meanwhile, the United States is suspicious of Mosaddegh,

seeing him as a potential Soviet sympathizer.

Washington ultimately concludes

that Mosaddegh has gotta go.

He is a threat.

To bring him down,

the CIA turn to one man, Kermit Roosevelt Jr.

He's the grandson of former president Teddy Roosevelt

and a U.S. intelligence officer

with years of experience in the Middle East.

It's mid-July.

Roosevelt enters Iran under the cover story

of being a Canadian oil tycoon.

He's equipped with a million-dollar budget,

brought to you by the Central Intelligence Agency,

so that he can undermine Mosaddegh's power.

He gets to work straight away.

Kermit begins bribing newspaper editors

and religious figures, encouraging them

to turn on Mosaddegh in public.

Kermit comes into contact with a military leader named

Fazlollah Zahedi, and he recognizes in him

a potential replacement leader.

Roosevelt forms a plan for a coup to install

Zahedi in Mosaddegh's place.

To pull it off, he will need one crucial ally--

Iran's monarch, the shah.

The shah is Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,

33 years old, inexperienced,

and largely a ceremonial figurehead.

But he does have one critical power:

the legal authority to remove a prime minister.

If this is going to take place without devolving

into a general violent overthrow of power,

the United States needs the shah's cooperation

because what the United States wants it to look like

is that this is something that happened voluntarily.

But gaining the shah's support

will be no easy task.

The shah is incredibly nervous,

especially about moving against Mosaddegh,

who still has enormous popular support.

So Roosevelt looks for a wedge

he can drive between the two men.

And he soon finds several.

Mosaddegh has humiliated the monarchy,

cutting its power, its budget,

and even exiling the shah's sister to Europe.

This is the leverage Roosevelt needs to build an alliance.

Roosevelt sends messages through royalists

to set up a meeting with the shah.

The shah agrees to meet,

but only if Roosevelt takes great precautions.

The shah is paranoid about being watched.

He's convinced his rooms are bugged.

And what's more, Mosaddegh has banned him

from meeting foreign diplomats.

On the night of August 1st, just before midnight,

a government sedan picks him up.

Roosevelt has to hide under blankets in the car.

When it stops in the palace driveway, the shah gets in,

and the two men begin plotting.

While the shah is receptive

to Roosevelt's plan, he's also terrified

what Mosaddegh could do to the monarchy

if the coup goes wrong.

Before he'll commit, he makes one impossible demand

of Roosevelt, a public show of support

from President Eisenhower.

If the shah is gonna risk his dynasty,

he wants the American president to acknowledge the coup.

But this is impossible.

The coup is supposed to be deniable,

and Eisenhower is deliberately being kept at arm's length.

Then, without even realizing,

the president gives Roosevelt the break he needs.

Eisenhower delivers a speech,

and in that speech, he goes off script briefly

and describes how he will not allow Iran

to fall behind the Iron Curtain.

Roosevelt jumps on it, convincing the shah

that the line was placed in the speech

as a deliberate signal of American backing for the coup.

And it works.

After weeks of hesitation,

the shah finally comes on board.

The shah signs a decree

removing Mosaddegh from power.

But loyalists get word to Mosaddegh

before the police can show up and bring him under arrest.

Now Mosaddegh turns the tables.

Mosaddegh goes on the radio.

He puts out the call to his followers

and effectively says there is a coup underway.

This has to be stopped.

To the shah, it looks like the entire coup d'etat

is about to fall apart, and it's about to turn violent.

And so he flees Iran.

The CIA tells Roosevelt to disappear

while he still can.

But instead of pulling out of Iran,

he pulls out the CIA's checkbook once again.

Roosevelt bankrolls counter protests,

buys loyalty inside the army and police,

and gets the chosen successor, General Zahedi,

on the radio, declaring victory.

The CIA ends up spending $5 million,

a huge overspend on Roosevelt's

original $1 million budget,

but it gets the job done.

After three days of chaos on the streets,

Mosaddegh finally surrenders.

Once it's clear the tide has turned,

the shah returns to Tehran and formally backs Zahedi

as the new prime minister.

Mosaddegh is imprisoned

while many of his supporters

are rounded up, tried, and executed.

As for the shah, his gamble

to go all in with the CIA pays off.

Ultimately, the shah comes out of the coup

far more powerful than he started.

He ends up sidelining the new prime minister

and governs increasingly on his own terms,

all the while staying closely aligned with Washington.

Meanwhile, Kermit Roosevelt's

secret deal with the shah stays classified for decades.

On the 60th anniversary of the coup,

the National Security Archive publishes a document

titled "The Battle for Iran."

It reveals the role of Kermit Roosevelt.

It also clearly states that the coup was carried out

under CIA direction, approved at the highest

levels of the U.S. government.

Some secret deals come with unusual sweeteners.

But this has to be the most unorthodox.

When the CIA needs to ally with China against the Soviets,

they agree to give the Chinese premier

a red carpet tour of one of the most restricted buildings

of the United States.

In 1979, the pro-U.S. Iranian monarchy

is overthrown in a violent coup.

And overnight, the U.S. loses one of its most vital

intelligence assets in the region.

The Iranian monarchy has been hosting

U.S. spy bases in Iran, right along the border

with the USSR.

And that has allowed the U.S.

to monitor Soviet missile tests.

To stay up to speed

on Soviet weapons capability, the CIA must find

a new spot for its spy bases.

One possible location is the mountains of Western China.

It's one of the few places close enough to Soviet

test sites, where the U.S. can pick up the electronic signals

from Soviet missile tests.

The problem is, Washington and Beijing

have barely spoken in the past 30 years.

In the late '70s, the U.S.

still doesn't formally recognize

the People's Republic of China.

However, China is increasingly wary of the Soviet Union.

So Washington sees a chance to leverage

this concern to cut a deal.

Washington rolls the dice

and secretly contacts Beijing to float a bold idea:

shared spy stations inside China.

The Chinese play hardball.

Now, China doesn't reject the idea outright,

but in return, they want a major condition--

formal recognition of the People's Republic of China

by the United States.

They really have no choice.

And the U.S. have to do what would have been unthinkable

just a few months prior.

On January 1, 1979,

the U.S. government formally recognizes

China's government for the first time.

Deng Xiaoping, China's political leader,

travels to the U.S. to formalize the new relationship.

From Washington's point of view,

the spy deal is basically settled.

Behind the pageantry, it's just a matter

ironing out a couple of final details.

But Beijing has other ideas.

During his visit, China's leader

makes another startling demand

that jeopardizes the whole deal.

He wants to visit the CIA's top secret headquarters at Langley.

This is extraordinary.

China's senior leader is asking for a private tour

of a U.S. facility

that's closed to even most U.S. officials.

For China, they wanna see firsthand

whether U.S. intelligence is really

as good as they're saying it is.

But for Washington, this is a huge risk.

If the news leaks out in the U.S.,

the backlash would be explosive.

The CIA agonizes

before eventually agreeing to the visit--

but with one condition.

Nobody must ever know it occurred.

The CIA needs to find a small window in Deng's schedule

when U.S. officials who could potentially leak this visit

won't be monitoring his movements.

And the only opportunity they see is in the dead of night,

just hours before he's scheduled to leave.

On the night of January 31, 1979,

Deng's motorcade quietly pulls into Langley

under cover of darkness.

First, he's taken into the CIA's global command center.

It's a sealed, windowless space where analysts

track the world in real time.

Most people who work their entire lives

in the service of the U.S. government

never get anywhere close to it.

But they walk Deng through satellite images

and classified maps, and they lay out exactly where

joint U.S.-Chinese monitoring stations could be set up.

Then he goes to the seventh floor

and meets with the CIA director, Stansfield Turner.

Deng sits down for a private 45-minute meeting,

and in that meeting, the deal gets finalized--

joint spy stations in exchange

for unprecedented Chinese access

to advanced U.S. technology.

Just like that, one midnight visit

helps two global adversaries become unlikely allies.

And they get to work immediately.

After the deal is made, U.S. aircraft land in Beijing

carrying crates of classified equipment.

And by the 1980s, ten intelligence bases

rise up in remote parts of Western China.

These new stations

track Soviet missile tests over a decade

and yield even better data

than their Iranian predecessors.

Although their existence soon hits the headlines,

details of the deal that made them

stay hidden until a podcast interview in 2022.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

reveals what had never been public before,

that during the Cold War, the CIA had given

a secret midnight tour of their headquarters

to a rival Communist leader

to push this deal over the line.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launches

a massive invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin is expecting a quick and easy victory.

But Ukraine has a surprise waiting for him,

an elite unit of fighters born out

of a secret deal with the CIA.

After years of living under Russia's yoke, in 2014,

huge pro-democracy and pro-European protests

erupt across Ukraine.

President Viktor Yanukovych flees to Russia,

and a new government takes power.

Celebrations in Ukraine are brief.

And just days later, Russian troops move into Crimea

and annex the region.

Shortly after, Russian military units

disguised as pro-independence rebels

move in and occupy eastern sections of Ukraine.

In 2015, a fragile ceasefire is brokered.

But for many, this invasion is the first sign

that Vladimir Putin has set his sights

on reclaiming all Ukraine.

One man is given the task of ensuring the nation's fate.

General Valeriy Kondratyuk is Ukraine's

new intelligence chief, and he knows

that the nation is toast if the Russians

really go for a full-on invasion.

Many of Ukraine's top military

and intelligence officials fled with its president,

destroying key military databases.

Without those, Ukraine doesn't know where its units are

or even what equipment it has.

To survive a Russian invasion,

Kondratyuk sees only one option:

find an ally with the resources to stand up to Putin.

And that means the United States.

The problem is,

any alliance is based on trust.

And when it comes to Washington,

that's in short supply.

Washington has long seen Ukraine's

military intelligence as corrupt

and compromised by Russian influence.

Kondratyuk needs to convince them that he can be trusted,

so he proposes a secret meeting.

Unexpectedly, they say yes,

and Kondratyuk hops a plane to Washington.

As a show of good faith,

Kondratyuk carries with him an extraordinary gift.

He brings a cache of highly sensitive documents

that reveal all sorts of things about Russia.

It includes details on Russia's latest weapon designs,

nuclear subs, and military capabilities.

When the Americans see these files, they sit up.

They thought the Ukrainians were coming to plead for help.

This is proof they have something to offer in return.

Behind closed doors, a secret deal is struck.

In return for a continued supply

of high level intelligence on Russia, the U.S. agree

to covertly help equip and support Ukraine's defense.

This new partnership includes setting up

a network of 12 secret joint bases

along the border to monitor Russian intelligence.

As signs grow that Putin is preparing

for an all-out invasion, in 2016,

this partnership intensifies.

The CIA begins training

a Ukrainian commando force, Unit 2245.

They're taught covert warfare techniques.

The unit is deployed on clandestine missions

deep inside Russian territory.

And to guard against treachery, it's made up of recruits,

all under 30 with no Soviet ties.

In early 2022, the fate of Ukraine

rests in the hands of this secret unit.

At 5:00 a.m., Russia begins a full-scale military invasion.

200,000 troops begin pouring over the border,

and among them are 18 helicopters

carrying around 300 paratroopers.

Their target is Hostomel Airport,

just outside Kyiv.

The Russians need to secure this runway

to fly reinforcements straight into the heart of the country,

conquering Kyiv, and in one fell swoop,

decapitating the Ukrainian state.

But CIA intel has warned Kyiv of this plan,

and at the airport, Unit 2245 is ready.

As the Russian choppers approach,

2245 ambushes them...

Engaging those that land in close combat for hours

until Ukrainian reinforcements arrive.

Over two days of brutal fighting,

the Ukrainian forces kill around 300 Russian troops.

Most crucially, they destroy the airport's runway

beyond use.

Unable to funnel its forces into the heart of Ukraine,

Russia's plan to rapidly seize Kyiv collapses.

The unit almost singlehandedly prevents

Ukraine from collapsing in the opening days of the invasion.

For two years, the details

of this pivotal engagement remain hidden.

In 2024, the secret finally breaks.

"The New York Times" publishes a major investigation

based off of 200 interviews

with both Ukrainian and American sources,

including Kondratyuk himself.

History is shaped by terrible conflicts

but also through unlikely alliances, shadowy pacts,

and strange partnerships so subversive

that governments will do anything

to keep their secrets hidden away.

But even the darkest deals come to light in the end.