All language subtitles for Race.Against.Time.The.CIA.and.9.11.2021.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- My name is Michael Morell,
and on September 11th, 2001,

I was President Bush's
daily intelligence briefer.

♪

I briefed him six days a week

no matter
where he was in the world.

♪

From April

to mid-July of 2001,

there was a significant
increase in intelligence

reporting about al-Qaeda
planning attacks.

♪

[rockets roaring]

Catastrophic attacks.

Multiple simultaneous attacks.

History-changing attacks.

[dramatic music]

♪

- We'd seen chatter
before other operations.

♪

You know, they saw it
around the millennium.

We saw it before
the bombings in '98.

We knew
they were planning something.

But they started using language
we had never heard before.

They were calling it
Olympic-sized.

Armageddon.

- There were real plots
being manifested.

♪

The world felt like
it was on the edge of eruption.

[soft dramatic music]

- It's early
this Tuesday morning,

the 11th of September, 2001.

[upbeat music]

- From the heart
of New York City...

- The first job
of any government

is to protect the country
and protect its people...

[soft dramatic music]

But you don't get credit
for what you stopped

if you don't stop them all.

♪

And we were unable
to stop the big one.

♪

- For us, there was
a personal dimension in this.

♪

3,000 Americans
had been killed.

The city I grew up in
had been blown up.

There was
an emotional piece of this

because we had woken up
every day of our lives...

♪

Trying to stop
what just had happened.

[dramatic music]

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- 20 years have passed
since the United States

suffered
the worst terrorist attack

in its history.

Four planes...

19 hijackers...

Nearly 3,000 killed.

An act that shook America
to its core,

led to a 20-year war,

and left our legacy
bruised and battered.

For the nation's
premier spy agency,

9/11 was
the nightmare scenario,

but it was no surprise.

♪

- We knew we were running out
of time every single day.

Nobody knew when
an attack might happen.

Could be
at any moment, any day,

any moment.
That was the feeling.

It felt like
al-Qaeda was ready.

It just kind of felt like that.

♪

- The international
terrorist network

was targeting Americans.

For the officers,
analysts,

and covert operatives

of the Central
Intelligence Agency,

the hunt for al-Qaeda
and its leader,

Osama bin Laden,

started years before 9/11
and ended long after.

This is their story.

- People come to work at CIA
because of the mission.

The mission is
to collect information

that we can't get any other way
to keep the country safe.

♪

- Pretty much every country
I've visited

in one way or the other,

I used to smile
and tell people,

"I was either causing trouble,

stopping trouble,
or planning trouble."

♪

- A CIA case officer
for 18 years,

Marty Martin recruited spies
in the Middle East,

often undercover.

He grew up
in Shreveport, Louisiana,

and became fluent in Arabic

while serving
in special forces.

♪

- You would think,
"What the heck?

"How can a guy from Louisiana
operate in the Middle East

and kind of understand
where they're coming from?"

Well, as a young boy
in Louisiana,

one, we are a diversed culture
in a lot of ways.

At the same time,
we care about honor and family.

In the Middle East,

honor is
a very important thing.

Family and tribe
is very important.

♪

- In July, 1998,

Martin arrives
at the CIA station

in Nairobi, Kenya.

His colleagues worry
they and other Americans

are in the crosshairs.

- The operations officers
there were strident in that

they felt like there was
a threat from al-Qaeda there.

They even showed me how
they would drive that truck

if they went
to hit the embassy.

As I look back,
I'll never forget

the looks on their faces
when they told me,

"Marty,
we are vulnerable here.

They are coming at us."

♪

- Massive explosions
at two U.S. embassies

in East African countries
this morning.

The United States embassy
in Nairobi, Kenya,

has been heavily damaged.

♪

- The bombings
were allegedly carried out

by members of al-Qaeda,

an international
terrorist group

founded by Osama bin Laden.

- He's believed to run
a vast terrorist network

from his headquarters
in Afghanistan.

But who is this man?

Who is he,
and what kind of man is he?

♪

- It's hard for me to remember
when I first heard

the name Osama bin Laden.

I probably heard it
when I was first working

on Afghanistan.

My name is Cindy Storer.

I was a CIA senior analyst
on September 11, 2001.

♪

I was the only one
looking at bin Laden

when I first came.

And I came across his name
as early as 1982,

certainly, as someone
who was part of the people

who were coming
from overseas to work

and fight
against the Soviets.

- [shouting indistinctly].
Allahu Akbar!

[rockets whoosh]

- He was a guy who had shunned
the riches of Saudi Arabia

and the bin Laden family

and gone to the mountains
of Afghanistan to fight,

and so, you know,
that would engender

some sort of respect.

♪

- He was very devout.
He lived very simply.

He kept the Koran
by his bedside,

and as his myth grew,

people would talk
about him, you know,

glowing when he prayed
and things like that.

- Bin Laden
joins Afghan forces

in a decade-long fight
against a Soviet invasion.

He then returns
to Saudi Arabia,

but after denouncing
the royal family's

alliance with the U.S.,

he's stripped
of his citizenship

and leaves for Sudan.

- Bin Laden was only
just starting

to expand his reach
when we saw him

as an emerging threat
during his time in Sudan.

We characterized him as one
of the most active

financial sponsors of
Islamic fundamental terrorism.

- The U.S. pressures
the Sudanese government

to kick him out,
and bin Laden

is again a man
without a country.

- No one knew exactly
where he was gonna go,

so it was kind of a
"Where's Waldo" going mystery,

if you will.

[dramatic music]

He ended up in Afghanistan,

which didn't
surprise us at all.

He had a lot of friends
who would provide

security and support.

♪

- Within months,

bin Laden issues
a declaration of war

on the United States.

- Bin Laden
had two objectives.

One was to drive
the United States

out of the Middle East,

and the other was to depose

the leaders
of Sunni Muslim countries,

who he saw as American puppets.

♪

- When they say
they're gonna come kill you,

they're gonna come kill you.

♪

- To better understand

bin Laden's operations
and associates,

Storer starts
piecing together intelligence

and arrives
at a startling conclusion.

- I was looking
at these associations

that I'd drawn out

and how people
related to each other,

and I was looking at accounting
and how they would move money.

They even talked
about moving money

from one line item
on their budget

to another line item
on the budget

to pay
for somebody's medical care.

Then they were
issuing paychecks.

And then I started going back
and looking at all

of the information
we had on them

over the years and realized

that this was
a terrorist organization,

and it really was
one of those eureka moments

where you've been working
on something for a long time,

and all of a sudden
you just go...

Like, everything
snapped together.

♪

- Osama bin Laden

is more than
just a financier of jihad.

He's the head of al-Qaeda,
a terrorist network.

- Nobody wanted to believe it.
[laughs]

That can't happen.
Arabs don't work together.

People from all these cultures
don't work together.

Their school systems stink.

They're not capable
of critical thinking.

I mean, just a lot of crazy--

not really crazy for the time,

but a lot of assumptions
that people were making.

[soft dramatic music]

- People were focused
on nation-states.

There was not an appreciation
across the organization

for al-Qaeda and bin Laden

and non-state actors
in general.

- So trying to tell folks,
you know,

"Not only do you have
this group of people

"from all over the world
who are working together,

"but that
they're well-educated,

and they know
what they're doing,"

yeah,
that did not go over well.

- Bin Laden
establishes his base

in Afghanistan
after maneuvering his way

into the good graces
of the Taliban.

- The Taliban has set up

a religious
extremist government

that not only tramples
on women's rights

and bans most
modern pleasures,

it offers one of the world's
last havens for terrorists.

- The most important factor

in a terrorist groups' ability

to conduct attacks
is safe haven.

And that's what
the Taliban provided.

So complete freedom
of movement,

complete ability to train,
complete ability to plan.

[rockets whoosh]

♪

- At the bomb site in Nairobi
where the search for evidence

and the cleanup
seems never ending,

there is no sense this morning
that revenge is right,

only that it may be necessary.

- In the aftermath
of those bombings

of embassies in Africa,
what do we do?

We fiddle-faddle around.
We sent firecrackers.

We sent, you know,
a few missiles.

- Two weeks
after the embassy bombings,

the United States struck back
at bin Laden long distance,

dropping cruise missiles

on his alleged
terrorist training camp

in eastern Afghanistan.

- The United States
had tried to retaliate

and did no real damage,

and so, to his followers,

he looked like
he had taken on

the United States and won.

- My fellow Americans,
our battle against terrorism

did not begin with a bombing
of our embassies in Africa,

nor will it end
with today's strike.

- You gotta hit 'em
in the effing nose, okay?

You hit them
in the effing nose,

and if they don't go down,
you hit them again.

President Clinton
should have been asking us

every day,
"Where is Osama bin Laden,

and what are you
doing about it?"

No lawyers,
no Janet Reno saying,

"You can't shoot the helicopter
because that's assassination."

None of that.

You say, "This guy
has bombed our embassies.

I want him dead."

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- The big high of this job
that I will never forget

is the quality
of the men and women

and what they meant to me.

♪

Someone once asked me,

"How'd you get
through tough days?"

♪

'Cause I was surrounded
by men and women

who were ready for it.

- George Tenet
became director

of Central Intelligence
in 1997.

A brash New Yorker
and son of Greek immigrants,

he would become one of
the longest tenured directors

at the CIA.

He spoke about the agency's
successes and failures

in a rare interview in 2015.

- We knew
that al-Qaeda was dedicated.

We understood
that this was an organization

that was operating
with a hub in Afghanistan

that operated
in 60 countries.

We understood
that they had an interest

in attacking
the United States overseas

or inside this country.

[indistinct chatter]

- The CIA deserves
both credit and blame.

They deserve credit
for knowing

that a major attack was coming.

People say,
"Oh, well, they didn't know

where the attack was going
to be or when or how."

That's true, but you can't
expect them to know that.

- Richard Clark

was the top
counterterrorism official

at the White House,
coordinating efforts

across all
U.S. intelligence agencies,

including the CIA.

- It was not
an intelligence failure.

9/11 was something that they
had predicted in broad strokes.

What they failed to do was
to actually act on their words

and do anything about it.

- I don't believe
that Mr. Clark

has an accurate sense

of the sense of urgency
that existed

at the Central
Intelligence Agency

between the East Africa bombing
and 9/11.

- By 1999,

as a new millennium
approaches,

the CIA believes
more terror attacks

against the U.S. are imminent.

♪

- There is not
the slightest doubt

that Osama bin Laden,

his worldwide allies,
and his sympathizers

are planning
further attacks against us.

♪

We are concerned that one
or more of bin Laden's attacks

could occur at any time.

- During
the millennium threat period,

I told the President
of the United States

to expect
between 5 and 15 attacks

against American interests.

- Holiday travelers
warned to be calm

but vigilant
for millennium terror threats.

- Preparing for the worst.

The CIA believes
that a bin Laden terror attack

for New Years
is now likely. The U.S...

- The fury
of technical operations

for a period of months
was enormous.

- Arrests in Jordan last week
have linked the threats

to exiled Saudi militant
Osama bin Laden.

- 300 extra customs agents
are on high alert this morning

at entry points
across the United States.

- The arrest of 32-year-old
Ahmed Ressam

has sent a chill through
American law enforcement.

Now they fear terrorists
have begun

selecting targets
within the United States.

- Bill Clinton said,
"Go on alert."

- Guys, let's go.
Out, out.

- Pull out all the stops,
do whatever you can

to stop
this possible al-Qaeda attack

around the millennium.

- Just a few minutes ago,
the ball dropped here

in Times Square,
and revelers cheered

as the year 2000...

- Were there
successful attacks

around the millennium?
No, there were not.

♪

- What was really happening
at the CIA

was that everybody
had been stunned,

shocked by the extent
of al-Qaeda planning

to carry out strikes
at the turn of the millennium.

And so they had said,
"What else are we missing?

What else is out there?"

And they redoubled
their targeting

for collection of phones,

surveillance
of individuals' homes.

- Major terror plots
have been thwarted,

but the CIA is about to make
one of its biggest mistakes.

♪

- On December, 1999, CIA, FBI,

and the Department of State
received intelligence

on the travels of suspected
al-Qaeda operatives

to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

♪

The CIA saw the
Kuala Lumpur gathering

as a potential source
of intelligence

about a possible
al-Qaeda attack

in Southeast Asia.

♪

- These men,
Khalid al-Mihdhar

and Nawaf al-Hazmi,
are part of the group

traveling to Kuala Lumpur.

Al-Mihdhar is believed

to have ties
to Osama bin Laden.

- The 4th of January, 2000,

CIA obtained a photocopy
of al-Mihdhar's passport

as he traveled to Kuala Lumpur.

CIA suspected that al-Mihdhar
was a terrorist

and knew he had a visa
to enter the United States.

♪

- A suspected
al-Qaeda terrorist

intent on traveling
to the U.S.

♪

The CIA sets up surveillance,
but the two men get away.

♪

The agency fails
to put their names

on a travel watchlist.

♪

- It defies all understanding

that the CIA could know
that these two people

were in the United States

and not immediately
pick up the phone

and tell the FBI
at a high level,

not immediately
pick up the phone

and tell the National
Coordinator for Terrorism.

- It was our responsibility
at CIA

to tell the FBI
that information

in a formal memo

so that they
could be watch-listed.

They could be put
on the no-fly list.

And we didn't do that.
We failed.

- The CIA says
it simply dropped the ball.

- Should they
have been watch-listed?

- Yes, sir.
We've acknowledged that fact.

- Two weeks after
the meeting in Kuala Lumpur,

al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi

touch down at Los Angeles
International Airport,

one step closer
to the worst attack

on U.S. soil
since Pearl Harbor.

♪

- They have been recruited
into the plan

that Osama bin Laden
had authorized

to hijack airplanes,
turn them into cruise missiles,

and fly them into targets
in the United States.

♪

- We can never say,
in retrospect,

if we had done X or Y,
it would have stopped 9/11.

There's no way of knowing that.

We do know that there were
many opportunities

that CIA either missed

or refused to participate in,

and maybe, maybe,

that could've stopped 9/11.

[dramatic music]

- If we'd been asleep
at the switch, not warning,

not acting, not preventing
people from being killed,

we live terrorism
like we live no other issue,

no other issue.

No matter what anybody says,

they'll never understand
how we live this issue.

[soft dramatic music]

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- My first exposure
to al-Qaeda was in 1997,

when I watched
the first interview

with bin Laden to the West

where he issued
his declaration of war

against the United States.

- [speaking Arabic]

- We declared a jihad,

a holy war against
the United States government

because it is unjust,
criminal, and tyrannical.

- Being young, obviously
it felt like I was a target.

My name is Tracy Walder,

and I was
a staff operations officer

at the CIA
on September 11, 2001.

♪

- Tracy Walder joined the CIA
straight out of college

in the summer of 2000.

She was thrown into the hunt
for Osama bin Laden,

investigating terrorist
training camps in Afghanistan.

- I don't think
that maybe we fully realized

or understood up
until that point

how structured
their training was

and how organized,
quite frankly,

their training was.

♪

And I believe
that in the upper echelons

of administration,

that al-Qaeda
was very underestimated.

♪

I think that it was,
"Uh, well, those people

"in that dirt farm,

"they won't be able
to do anything huge anyway,

"so it won't be that difficult
to get bin Laden,

"and they won't be capable

of this sort
of large scale attacks."

♪

- Our top story this morning
is the attack

on a U.S. ship in Yemen.

♪

- An explosion ripped through
the USS "Cole,"

killing 17 sailors
and injuring 39 others.

- The working theory
among intelligence

and law enforcement officials

is that this was
the work of Osama bin Laden.

- 17 Americans dead.

Investigators confirm
it was al-Qaeda.

♪

- If their intention
was to deter from our mission

of promoting peace and security
in the Middle East,

they will fail utterly.

- Soon the burden will shift

from one U.S. president
to another,

but there's confusion
and delay.

♪

- Today in Florida,
the race for the White house

became a race
to the courthouse.

- I felt that every day
that we didn't kill bin Laden,

that we didn't destroy
the leadership,

the sands of time
were running out on us.

- The divisive election
that wrecked this country

for 36 days
after November the 7th.

- The votes of a single county

that could determine
the next president

of the United States.

- The Bush campaign
is sending a clear message

that they are preparing
for the presidency.

- Our hair is on fire.

- It's a Bush win

in the United States
Supreme Court.

- The lights are blinking red
as far as we're concerned.

- I, George Walker Bush,
do solemnly swear...

- The Bush administration
took this seriously...

- That I will
faithfully execute

the office of President
of the United States.

♪

- But like
the Clinton administration,

they, too, ran out of time.

♪

- The new administration
is settling in,

just coming to grips
with the grave threat

posed by al-Qaeda.

A plot against
the United States

is developing
at the worst possible time.

- I think there were
two people in the White House

who were responsible
for making sure

that there was
a sense of urgency,

and that's Richard Clarke,

who was
the counterterrorism advisor,

and Condi Rice, who was
the national security advisor.

They should have created
a greater sense of urgency

on the policy side.

- There was nothing more
that I could have done

to convey a sense of urgency

other than jumping
out the window.

- We were looking for
a more comprehensive plan

to eliminate al-Qaeda,
but we weren't sitting still.

While that plan was developing,

we were continuing
to pursue the policies

that the Clinton
administration had pursued.

♪

- National security advisor
Condoleezza Rice

is on the job just five days

when she receives a request
from Richard Clarke.

♪

- I sent a memo saying,

"We need
a urgent, high-level meeting

"to approve
more aggressive action

"against bin Laden,

"because the intelligence
is indicating

that they're planning
major attacks against us."

♪

And I underlined "urgent."

I wanted
that principal's meeting

the next week.

I got that principal's meeting,
not in January,

but on September 4th,

a week before the attack.

- Rice insists
the Bush administration

was working furiously
in response

to the looming threat,
but that the intelligence,

while dire, was far too vague.

♪

- Let me read you
some of the actual chatter

that was picked up
in that spring and summer.

"Unbelievable news
coming in weeks.

"Big event.

"There will be a very, very,
very, very big uproar.

There will be attacks
in the near future."

Troubling, yes.

But they don't tell us when,
they don't tell us where,

they don't tell us who,
and they don't tell us how.

- What happens
in the spring and summer

is the threat is
starting to rise all over.

♪

[sirens blare]

♪

- If you were to chart
our reporting on a graph...

♪

It would go like this,

and then, in July,
it would spike like this.

- We needed to take advantage
of the Afghan sanctuary,

take advantage of the discord
that the Taliban had sowed

between them
and the tribes of Afghanistan.

We needed to get
inside the sanctuary.

♪

- We knew that's where
the planning was occurring.

We knew that camps were there.
We knew bin Laden was there.

We knew terrorists were there.

- I said, "Condi,
I have to come see you."

It was one of the rare times
in my seven years

as director where I said,
"I have to come see you."

♪

- Tenet and
his top counterterrorism aide

Cofer Black
rush to the White House.

Their message is unmistakable.

♪

- There will be
significant terrorist attacks

against the United States
in the coming weeks or months.

The attacks
will be spectacular.

They may be multiple.

Al-Qaeda's intention
is the destruction

of the United States.

"What do you think
we need to do?"

was the question.

Cofer responded by saying,

"We need to go
on a wartime footing now."

♪

- That's what all of us
had been saying for months,

that we needed decisions
to put us on a war footing.

We couldn't make
those decisions ourselves.

Those decisions had
to be made by the president.

♪

- I think
we've all asked ourselves,

"What more could
have been done?"

♪

If we had known
that an attack

was coming
against the United States,

an attack was coming against
New York and Washington,

we would have moved
heaven and Earth to stop it.

♪

- There was never intelligence
that indicated the attack

would be in the United States.

In fact, the intelligence

was frustratingly lacking
in detail

on location, date, and method.

♪

- A few weeks
before September 11th,

we started noticing
that the training camps

were basically dead.

- The intelligence
just dried up.

♪

What was
a regular flow of intelligence

about a significant
al-Qaeda attack

just was gone.

♪

- The CIA knows
an attack is coming somewhere.

One of George Tenet's
senior aides

goes to him with a warning.

- I'll never forget this
till the day I die.

"They're coming here."

And the silence
that followed was deafening.

You could hear a pin drop.

- What Tenet and the CIA
don't know

is that, by early August,

19 men intent on hijacking
commercial airliners

are already
in the United States.

- I sent an email
to Condi Rice, and I said,

"I want you to imagine
that you were in the future"...

♪

"On the day
when al-Qaeda has attacked,

"and there are hundreds
of dead Americans

"in the streets
of an American city.

"What would you wish

that you had done before?"

♪

"Well, that future day
is coming,

and this is the period before."

♪

"This is the time
when you can do something."

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- President Bush
travels to Florida today

to talk education,

but he's getting
a harsh lesson

about
the deteriorating economy.

♪

- I was on Air Force One
when it went wheels up

for what was to be
a domestic trip to Florida.

♪

The PDB that morning

had the typical 10 to 12 items.

There was nothing in the book
about terrorism.

I left his suite,
and I was told

to join the motorcade,
and we'd be soon heading

toward where the president
was gonna do

one of his education events.

- I was having breakfast
in downtown Washington.

- We understand that a plane

has crashed
into the World Trade Center.

We don't know anything
more than that.

We don't know if it
was a commercial aircraft.

- The head
of my security detail

came over to me to say

a plane had hit
one of the towers

of the World Trade Center.

My instinctual reaction was,

"This is al-Qaeda.
I've got to go."

- They were the only enemy
we had who had said

that they were gonna do some
sort of catastrophic attack.

- All of us were just quiet.

I think we all were
just sitting at our desks,

absorbing sort of
what happened.

- We all looked at each other
and said, "This is it."

This is before
the second plane even hit,

and, of course,
we watched in horror

as the second plane flew in.

♪

- Another one,
another plane just hit.

- [gasps]
- Oh, my God.

Another plane
has just hit that--yes,

that was definitely
was like it was on purpose.

♪

- 60 on page 153.

Get ready for the beginning
of that sentence.

Get ready.

students: She played
with her boat in her house.

- Go on.

students:
She played with her...

- Two things
were racing through my mind

when the second plane hit.

One was, "This is al-Qaeda.
This is bin Laden."

The second was,

"Is somebody gonna
fly a plane into this school?"

♪

This is what we
have been worrying about.

♪

This is the nightmare scenario.

♪

- Today, we've had
a national tragedy.

♪

Two airplanes have crashed

into the World Trade Center

in an apparent terrorist attack
on our country.

- At the White House,

Richard Clarke
is in the situation room

coordinating the nation's
emergency response

as the attacks unfold.

- What I had up on
the TV screens

were the command centers,

and at one point,
it became very clear

that the Pentagon had been hit.

The people I was talking to,

they had felt it,
and then they smelled smoke.

- Oh, my goodness.

There is smoke
pouring out of the Pentagon.

- One eyewitness
is quoted saying

he thinks a plane crashed
into the Pentagon.

♪

- Gentlemen, let's keep moving
away from the building.

Let's get away
from the building,

ladies and gentlemen.

- I was in
the Canon Office Building

up on Capitol Hill.

The members scattered,

and I came out,
jumped in the car.

I actually could see the smoke

from the plane having crashed
into the Pentagon.

♪

- We knew there was
an ongoing attack

that was
targeting Washington...

♪

And we knew there was

another plane up
that was headed this way.

♪

- There is a report
of a large plane crash

in Western Pennsylvania,

80 miles
southeast of Pittsburgh.

The plane is believed
to be a Boeing 767.

♪

- Decisions were made
to ground all the aircraft,

to get fighter jets up

to defend New York
and Washington,

to institute the continuity
of government system,

which we had prepared
in case of a nuclear war.

♪

- At CIA headquarters,

there's concern
they are the next target.

- We know they do multiple.

They've already flown
a plane into the Pentagon.

We need to get
the hell out of here

because we are
the institutional knowledge.

- We decide to tell
most of the workforce

to go home because we assumed

our building was a target.

♪

We assumed
the Capitol was a target.

We assumed
the White House was a target.

Cofer Black said,
"The Counterterrorist Center

wants to stay."
So we kept them there.

We said to Cofer,
"They may die."

And he said,
"Then they'll have to die."

- The president asked
to see me alone.

The president looked me
in the eye, and he said,

"Michael, who did this?"

I said, "Mr. President,
I think when we

"get to the end of the line,
we're gonna find

bin Laden, and we're
gonna find al-Qaeda."

And I told him
that I was so confident

in that judgment
that I would bet

my children's future on it.

♪

- After an hour or so,

a young analyst
came running in,

and this analyst had obtained
copies of the manifests

of the plane
that hit the Pentagon,

and the names
of these two people

were on that manifest,
al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar.

The two people
we'd been looking for.

- Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar

were the two who had been
in the Kuala Lumpur meeting,

the two who had shown up
in Los Angeles,

the two who had been
in the United States

for over a year,

and two of the people

who would die on 9/11
as hijackers.

- Since entering
the U.S. in 2000,

the two men have been living
under their own names.

Al-Mihdhar is even able
to leave the U.S.

and enter again.

- During August 2001,

CIA had become
increasingly concerned

about a major terrorist attack
on U.S. interests,

and I directed
a review of our files

to identify potential threats.

In the course of that review,
the Counterterrorism Center

found that
these two individuals

had entered the United States.

- 19 days before
the attacks

and 19 months
after first entering

the United States,

the CIA finally adds
al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar

to the watchlist,
but it's too late.

- The CIA knew

that two senior
al-Qaeda terrorists

who had planned
terrorist attacks

were in the United States.

So when the CIA says,

"Well, we didn't know
where or when."

Yeah, that's right,
but they knew who.

- It was a failure
to not detect the presence

of these people
in the United States

before August, yes.

It was a missed opportunity.

- On the night
of September 11th,

Michael Morell
flies back to Washington

with the president
on Air Force One.

On final descent,

a military aid
motions to a stunning sight:

an F-16 fighter jet

alongside
the plane's left wing.

- The F-16 was so close,

you could see the pilot
looking at us.

And in the distance,

you could see
the still-burning Pentagon.

Then he said something
to me that, to this day,

sends shivers up my back.

He said, "Their mission
is, if somebody fires

"a surface-to-air missile
at us on final approach,

"their mission
is to put themselves

"between that missile

and the President
of the United States."

That was surreal.

- Today our fellow citizens,
our way of life,

our very freedom
came under attack

in a series of deliberate
and deadly terrorist acts.

- Around 10:00,

I remember
turning to my computer

and just typing one sentence.

"Nothing will
ever be the same."

- Federal investigators
are following

hundreds of leads tonight

to try to find out
who was behind the attacks

and bring them to justice.

- If there is a gnawing concern

among federal investigators
tonight,

it is this,
"Have we accounted

for all the terrorist pilots?"

- The investigation
into who caused all this

continues to point
toward Osama bin Laden,

and there's no doubt
the U.S. will retaliate

against whoever
is responsible.

- There was a lot
of pressure on CIA

in the aftermath of 9/11

because, frankly,
no one else knew what to do.

- We had to unpack
the threat matrix

that we were gonna report
to the president the next day.

We had to make
immediate decisions

on what actions
had to be taken overnight

to stop the next range
of terrorist attacks.

- I was sending teams
of analysts around Washington

with maps to show people,

"This is what
Afghanistan looks like.

Here are the countries
that border it."

- On September the 12th,
we saw the president

and told him that what we
were gonna propose to do

was put CIA teams
on the ground,

marrying up with the tribes,

create the ground
for special forces to arrive.

We were gonna basically
go after

al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

- CIA said, "We have a plan."

And that's when
President Bush said,

"It's your war.
Go get 'em."

[dramatic music]

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- On September 11, 2001,

I was assigned overseas.

I was on the other side
of the world.

♪

Director Tenet wanted me
to come back and to organize

and lead the CIA effort

against al-Qaeda
in Afghanistan.

I, of course, said yes,

went home, told my wife,
and started packing my bag.

♪

- A legendary spy
and counterterrorism expert,

Hank Crumpton
is a 24-year veteran

of the CIA's
clandestine service.

He was just 10 years old
when he wrote to the agency

explaining his desire
to serve.

- Some kind soul wrote back
on CIA letterhead and said,

"Thanks for your interest.

Please reapply
when you're older."

And that's what I did.

- Now Crumpton would lead
an historic campaign,

commanding special operations
paramilitary forces

to crush the enemy.

♪

- The orders
were pretty clear.

Our mission
was to destroy al-Qaeda.

♪

- So on September the 15th,
we show up at the Camp David,

essentially outline
our plan to basically seal

the borders of Afghanistan,
go after their leadership,

shut off their money,
destroy al-Qaeda.

It was our plan.
It was our direction.

The president was playing
off our sheet music.

- Truly unprecedented
for the president

to sign a covert action
giving this kind of authority

and almost unlimited resources

to the CIA to execute a war.

Never in American history
had that happened.

♪

We walked outside,

President Bush put
his hand on my shoulder,

and he said, "Go get 'em."
And I said, "Yes, sir, I will."

♪

- 16 days
after we brief the president,

we put our first team
on the ground

with a big metal briefcase
full of cash, a lot of cash.

Our officers often slept

on millions of dollars
of cash at night.

If you didn't want
to cooperate with us,

you were more than likely
to get a 2,000-pound bomb

down your throat.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Jawbreaker
was the first CIA team

into Afghanistan after 9/11.

♪

That morphed
into Team Alpha, Team Bravo,

followed by Charlie,
Delta, Foxtrot, Echo.

They were all deployed

into various parts
of Afghanistan,

teaming up with local allies
on the ground.

♪

- People remember scenes
of special forces operators

and CIA officers
riding on horseback.

We're back
in a different century

fighting this war.

So we had 100 CIA officers,

about 400
special forces operators.

There was never
a general on the ground.

There was never
a command structure

on the ground.

This was
real counterinsurgency.

Within 90 days,
this was all done.

♪

- The Taliban
is overthrown,

and bin Laden is on the run,

cornered in some of
the most forbidding terrain

on Earth.

- Somewhere between 300
and 1,000 al-Qaeda fighters,

probably including
Osama bin Laden,

are trapped
in the Tora Bora Mountains,

cut off from resupplies

of food, water,
and ammunition.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- Tracy Walder
is on night duty

at CIA headquarters,

monitoring drone footage
in a top secret room

called The Vault.

Bin Laden
may be within their grasp.

♪

- We had
some interesting situations,

but that was,
hands down, the most tense.

George Tenet
was there to support us.

Tonight's the night
that this is gonna happen.

We're gonna get him.

[gun booms]

- It's not just us.

So we've got tribals
on the ground,

and we're calling in
bomb attacks.

- People were
leaving the caves.

We were thinking
that bin Laden

was probably
one of those people.

- Guys on the ground
come to the realization,

the Afghan tribals
aren't gonna get this done.

We need help.

Our guys consult
with General Franks.

Tommy says it's gonna take
weeks to get people up there.

♪

- We knew
we could not successfully

capture or kill him

if there were no ground troops
to sort of stop him.

That's when
the situation devolved

into shouting,
cursing, screaming.

♪

- Bin Laden
escapes into Pakistan

and finds sanctuary
in the tribal territories

on the border.

♪

The fighting
in Afghanistan drags on,

and the president soon turns
his focus to a pursuit

that would confuse
the War on Terror

and cost thousands of lives.

- President grabbed me
in the situation room and said,

"I want you to look into
Iraq's role in the attack."

And I said, "I don't think
Iraq had a role in the attack."

And he didn't wanna hear that.

He said,
"Iraq, Iraq, look into it.

Find out
if Iraq was involved."

♪

- The preoccupation
with Iraq

would become
a decade-long distraction

from the mission
of eliminating al-Qaeda.

With the Bush administration
shifting priorities,

a new team is created
at the CIA.

- My name is Nada Bakos.

I was a CIA analyst
after September 11, 2001.

♪

The whole reason
for the formation of the team

that I was on
is because the White House

had the question
of whether or not

Iraq had anything to do
with 9/11 and al-Qaeda.

This was backwards completely.

It's the complete opposite
of how the CIA does analysis.

We were constantly
running around

with hair on fire
answering questions,

and you could tell that people

weren't getting the answers
they really wanted.

- And as part of
the president's daily brief,

we'd actually been asked
to see if we could assemble

what might be said
in a public case

about Saddam's weapons
of mass destruction.

- Every chemical
and biological weapon

that Iraq has or makes

is a direct violation
of the truce

that ended
the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

- Apparently I said,

"We can make this better.
It's a slam dunk."

- Tenet says
that phrase, "slam dunk,"

was later blown
far out of proportion.

- Now, the way
it was portrayed

was this was
the seminal moment

in the president's life
in terms of deciding

whether to go to war or not,

and it's not
what happened at all,

since the decision to go to war
had already been made.

What I wanted to convey is,
it was probably a better way

for us
to make a better public case,

and all I meant
to say was that.

[dramatic music]

- President Bush turns
to his secretary of state.

Colin Powell prepares
to present evidence

about Iraq's failure to disarm

in a speech
to the United Nations.

- Our team had a draft
of Colin Powell's UN speech.

We reviewed it.
We made changes.

We sent it back
to the White House.

From that point,
it was edited again,

and we didn't hear it

until Powell
gave the speech at the UN.

- What I wanna bring
to your attention today

is the potentially
much more sinister nexus

between Iraq

and the al-Qaeda
terrorist network.

- It's drawing conclusions
that weren't there.

It was drawing relationships
that weren't there.

They plaster up
a organizational chart

to make it look like
all these entities

are connected
when they're not.

- To draw a connection
between Iraq and al-Qaeda,

Powell points
to a suspected terrorist

named al-Zarqawi,

showing a chart
created by the CIA,

but the words "Iraq-linked"
have been added

to the original title.

- To our horror,
General Colin Powell

used that chart
on the floor of the UN

to garner international

and, I think, domestic support
for the war.

- Iraq today harbors
a deadly terrorist network

headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

an associate and collaborator
of Osama bin Laden

and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.

- It was masterful
how they used the information

and the language around
trying to create this idea

in the public's mind that Iraq

had any connection
to al-Qaeda.

Zarqawi was not connected
to al-Qaeda,

didn't have anything
to do with that.

He also wasn't working
with Saddam.

- We felt that our trust
was violated,

that something we had made
was misused in this way.

How can an administration
do that?

- You know,
everybody was frustrated.

Why does our team exist?

- I started to wonder,
you know,

"What's the point
of my intelligence

if people are just gonna use it
sort of however they want to?"

I don't think
that that's right.

- So who added
the words "Iraq-linked"?

- So I don't know.

Whomever changed the title,
I truly don't know

the answer to that question.

- When our coalition ousted
the Taliban,

the Zarqawi network...

- It's not clear
who was behind it.

Powell says his speech
was approved by George Tenet,

who sat behind him
in a show of support.

And just six weeks later...

- U.S. forces in Kuwait

are positioning themselves
for attack.

Now officially dubbed
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

♪

- The U.S. invades Iraq

based on
the flawed convictions

that it has weapons
of mass destruction

and significant ties
to al-Qaeda.

- I think the Iraq War
had a detrimental impact

on the U.S. mission
in Afghanistan.

We took our eye off the ball.

We did not finish the job
in Afghanistan.

- The invasion of Iraq

not only thwarted our ability

to capture or kill bin Laden,
but in my opinion,

exacerbated and led
to the spread

and growth of al-Qaeda.

- As soon as we invaded Iraq,
bin Laden won.

It's like we were playing
by his playbook

and doing the things
that helped him

fan the flames
against the United States.

- The American public
would have been angry

if there was another attack

and we didn't do
everything in our power

to get information
on future attacks.

- But at the same time,
what you do matters.

Your actions matter.

Is it really these
interrogation techniques?

Is that really
the most effective thing?

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- Penetrating the inner core
of a terrorist organization

like al-Qaeda
is not an easy thing to do.

♪

In 2002, after the first phase
of the Afghan War,

we started to collect
intelligence that al-Qaeda

was coming back at us
in a second wave of attacks...

[rockets whoosh]

But we didn't have
the specifics.

- The hunt goes on
for Osama bin Laden,

but a key lieutenant
is in U.S. custody tonight.

The biggest catch yet.

- Abu Zubaydah,
the highest ranking

al-Qaeda leader captured
so far,

can expect tough questioning
from U.S. officials.

- We believe that Zubaydah
was a senior terrorist leader

and a trusted associate
of Osama bin Laden.

♪

- It's March 2002,
six months after 9/11.

♪

Abu Zubaydah
has been captured,

an apparent triumph
that would lead to one

of the most controversial
programs in CIA history.

- My name is Jose Rodriguez,
and I was in charge

of the Enhanced
Interrogation Program.

♪

Every day
I was in the newspaper.

They described me
almost as a torturer,

violator of laws.

- Jose Rodriguez.
- Jose Rodriguez.

- Jose Rodriguez
was the one who said,

"We need harsh techniques"

and went out
and developed the program.

- More than a decade
after leaving the CIA,

Jose Rodriguez
remains the defiant face

of the Enhanced
Interrogation Program.

- I am totally convinced,

you know,
that the program worked well

and that we
were the only answer

that the country had
at the time.

We had captured Abu Zubaydah,

and we knew
he was a senior person

in al-Qaeda.

He had come
across our screen in relation

to the millennial plots
of 2000.

- He was captured
by Pakistani police,

CIA, and FBI agents
at a house...

- Abu Zubaydah
was severely wounded

when he was captured,

and we made a decision
that we needed

to take him away from Pakistan
and take him to our own site.

It became known
as a black site.

♪

- FBI interrogators
are also brought in.

One of the first to question
Abu Zubaydah

is Special Agent Ali Soufan,

a Lebanese-American
fluent in Arabic.

- There is something
that they don't expect

when they are being
interrogated by Americans.

They don't expect a person
comes with them.

They have, like, tea.
They have coffee.

They have cookies.

Sit down, talk,
trying to know each other,

trying to build a rapport.

That scares them.
That shakes them.

He was cooperating
every time we talk to him.

- Once the FBI started
to get involved

with questioning Abu Zubaydah,

the CIA's reaction was,

"Oh, my goodness,
this is gonna take forever,

and it may
never be successful."

The CIA's attitude
in the spring of 2002

was still hair on fire.

- Abu Zubaydah
gives the FBI

a critical piece
of information

about another
alleged terrorist.

He says this man,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

is not only a member
of al-Qaeda,

but the architect of 9/11.

♪

- Zubaydah disclosed
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM,

was the mastermind
behind the 9/11 attacks.

This was a vital piece
of the puzzle

that helped
our intelligence community

pursue KSM.

♪

- The news about KSM
is a breakthrough,

but CIA officials
still believe

Abu Zubaydah is holding back.

Rather than continue
to build a rapport,

the CIA steps in
with a new plan,

to try to break him.

- We knew we had
to do something different.

♪

- You have nudity,
and then you have noise,

and you have sleep deprivation,

and it goes
from one stage to another

until he decides to cooperate.

That was shocking to us
at the time

because this is just--I mean,

I know, as a government,
we do not torture.

- You've just killed
3,000 of our people.

Tough [bleep] if you have
a problem with nudity.

Nudity works and works well
because these cultures,

nudity is something
that is not common,

and they feel
very uncomfortable with it.

- We knew that Zubaydah
had more information

that could save innocent lives,

and so the CIA used
an alternative set

of procedures.

- CIA likes to call it
enhanced interrogation.

It was torture.

♪

- The CIA
isn't acting on its own.

It has full approval
from the Bush White House.

This Justice Department memo

approves
ten interrogation techniques,

including a facial slap,
sleep deprivation,

insects in a confinement box,
and the waterboard.

- Waterboarding
is putting someone

in an incline
with the face and body down,

and from a distance
soaking up a towel with water.

So there is a feeling
that you are suffocating.

- Suffocating, so somebody
thinks they're about to die.

- Yeah.
Yeah.

- That's a difficult thing
to think about.

If somebody
who's in U.S. custody--

the belief that their life
is about to end.

- Hey, you know what?
It's either us or them, okay?

So we needed to do
whatever we needed to do

to get information out of them
to protect the country.

- More than four months
after his capture,

Abu Zubaydah is subjected
to the techniques

on a near 24-hour basis
for 19 straight days.

He later releases
these drawings

depicting his experience.

He spends 11 days
inside a confinement box.

During one
waterboarding session,

he becomes
completely unresponsive,

with bubbles rising
through his open full mouth.

- An evaluation
by the CIA's office

of medical services
said AZ probably reached

the point of cooperation
even prior

to the institution
of enhanced measures.

- Another official says
Zubaydah is blowing smoke

and deliberately exaggerating
al-Qaeda's capabilities.

- As it turned out,
Abu Zubaydah didn't know

anywhere near as much
as the CIA thought he did.

- Abu Zubaydah
had been tied

to terrorist training camps
in Afghanistan,

but the CIA later determines

he was not
a member of al-Qaeda.

- Abu Zubaydah has been held
without charges

since he was captured
in Pakistan.

Pentagon officials
claim he's a threat

but admit he was
never an al-Qaeda leader.

- The belief was that he was
the number three

or number four
in al-Qaeda, but he wasn't.

- Correct.
Just as important, however.

- But the CIA was wrong about
his role and his position.

- We didn't know exactly who
was the chief of operations.

We thought it was either him
or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

- There was no reflection

about whether this
should continue.

Instead,
the opposite happened.

This unsuccessful interrogation
of Abu Zubaydah

using these techniques
became a kind of springboard

to expand the program

and to apply it
to other suspects

of different levels
of knowledge.

- Over six years,
from 2002 to 2008,

the CIA holds
at least 119 detainees.

39 are subjected
to enhanced interrogation.

- People will give you
whatever you wanna hear

in order
to have the pain stop.

So the most important thing
in intelligence collection

is the reliability
of the information,

and that didn't exist.

♪

- In 2009, two days
after his inauguration,

President Obama
signs an executive order

eliminating enhanced
interrogation techniques.

- I can say without
exception or equivocation

that the United States
will not torture.

[applause]

- With that
comes a new chapter

led by President Obama's

first CIA director,
Leon Panetta.

- My view...

was that the United States

should stand
by our values as a country.

Torture should not be part

of what we need to use
to gather intelligence.

- He's entitled to his opinion.

We had a binding legal opinion

in writing that said
that it was not torture.

- I hope no other director,

no other president,
is ever faced

with the situation
we were faced with

in those immediate years.

At a period of maximum danger
to the country,

we did it by the numbers.

We gained information
that I believe

saved thousands of lives.

I'm not gonna ever accept
the use of the word torture

in front of what happened here.

- This week, the Senate
Intelligence Committee

is expected to issue
a long-expected report

on the CIA's
interrogation practices

that were adopted
in the aftermath of 9/11.

- Tactics used
were more brutal

than previously thought.

- The report's
most damning conclusion

is that the tactics
were ineffective.

- In 2014,

the Democrat-led
Senate Intelligence Committee

releases a report
that concludes CIA's use

of its enhanced
interrogation techniques

was not an effective means
of acquiring intelligence

or gaining cooperation
from detainees.

- I have long believed

some of these practices
amounted to torture.

♪

- Republican Senator
John McCain,

himself the victim of torture
as a Vietnam prisoner of war,

was one of the program's
fiercest critics.

- As the committee's report
makes clear,

it produced
little useful intelligence

to help us track down
the perpetrators of 9/11

or prevent new attacks
and atrocities.

♪

- Today, Abu Zubaydah
remains in American custody

at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He has never been charged
with a crime.

- The bottom line

is that we saved American lives

and we protected the homeland

at a time of crisis

and despair.

♪

- Jose Rodriguez faced
a criminal investigation

by the Department of Justice
after ordering the destruction

of 92 videotapes

of enhanced
interrogation sessions.

The CIA deemed
his actions inappropriate.

He was given
a letter of reprimand,

but was not charged
with any crime.

- I think that historians

as well as the press
will continue

to label it as torture.

As far as I'm concerned,
I have no regrets at all.

I would do it all over again.

♪

[soft dramatic music]

- Our overarching goal
remains the same,

to disrupt, dismantle
and defeat

al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
and Pakistan,

and to prevent its capacity
to threaten America

and our allies in the future.

- The president made clear
that we continue

to go after bin Laden
and bring him to justice.

- It's late 2009,
more than eight years

since al-Qaeda
attacked the U.S.

and changed
the course of history.

The CIA doubles down
on its hunt for bin Laden,

who is still at large.

[dramatic music]

Sarah Carlson
would help close that chapter.

Her journey starts on 9/11,

when she's
just a college senior.

- That is when my career
in counterterrorism began.

This drive to protect
runs very strong in my family.

All three of my brothers
actually joined the military

after September 11th.

We wanted to hold
those responsible accountable.

♪

- For the CIA,

the pursuit of bin Laden
would come at a grave cost

suddenly and without warning.

- We set up a meeting

at a place
called Khost, Afghanistan,

which was a base located
near the border of Pakistan.

It was part
of this effort by the CIA

to try to go after
any possible lead

that might bring us

either to Bin Laden
or to Zawahiri,

who is his second in command.

- The meeting
is with Humam al-Balawi,

a Jordanian doctor

who claims to have information
on al-Zawahiri,

but the asset turns out

to be a double agent
seeking revenge.

♪

- He was not searched
as he came through the gate

as he should have been.

- And when he pulled up
and stepped out of the car,

he detonated a suicide vest.

- It was al-Qaeda
taking the fight

to CIA...directly.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- We were called together
into the hallway,

and the head of CTC
announced to all of us

that the source
conducted a suicide bombing

and that--excuse me.

And that seven CIA officers
were killed.

Sorry, it's still hard.

And more were wounded.

♪

- I greeted their bodies
when they came back to Dover,

and I remember going
to each of the families,

and every family
I talked to said,

"I hope you will not stop

"going after the goal

that our sons
and daughters died for."

And I said,
"You have my assurance."

♪

- You know,
it's very difficult.

I had been involved
in stopping so many attacks

and disrupting
all these threats,

and, this one, you know,
it made it very, very personal.

♪

- Getting bin Laden
would make clear

that their death
was not in vain,

so I established
a task force at the CIA,

and I made clear to them
that their responsibility

was nothing else,

nothing else but focusing
on the hunt for bin Laden.

♪

- In late August, 2010,

the task force
finally gives Panetta

the lead
he's been waiting for.

In Pakistan, they've located
bin Laden's couriers,

his only links
to the outside world.

♪

- They followed the couriers
to a town called Abbottabad,

which is near
the capital of Pakistan.

♪

The couriers
pulled into a compound,

and as soon as the individuals
involved with the task force

saw the compound,

the house
where they were going into,

the bells went off.

- Much larger
than any other compound

in the neighborhood.

12- to 18-foot walls
topped with barbed wire.

A third-floor balcony
that had a privacy wall.

You have a balcony
to look out.

Why did somebody build a wall
so you couldn't look out?

♪

The hair on the back
of my neck stood up,

and nobody said
bin Laden might be there...

But everybody,
including me, was thinking it.

♪

- It was soon after that
that I immediately sat down

with the president.

- The president had two orders
for Director Panetta and me.

First, find out
what the hell is going on

inside that compound.

Number two, don't tell anyone.

It was the best-kept secret
of my entire career at CIA.

- Even within CIA,

even within
the Counterterrorism Center,

there was
a very few number of people

who actually knew
about the operation

before it happened.

My job and why I was brought in
was to start assessing

and writing about
and briefing about,

well, what if he's there?

♪

What's going to happen?

What will that retaliation
look like if we capture him?

What will al-Qaeda do
if we kill him?

♪

- And we continued
to do surveillance,

and there were
some interesting developments.

- There was an individual
who, nearly every day,

would come out and pace

around the garden.

We called him the pacer.
We did not know who he was.

We couldn't get
a good enough look.

♪

- We followed the couriers
when they made phone calls,

were able to intercept
their phone calls.

We got a conversation
with the courier

from a friend
who had called him,

and he was asking the courier,

"What are you doing?

I haven't seen you
for a long time."

And the courier said,

"We're doing
what we did before."

Well, what they had done before

was to be couriers
to bin Laden.

♪

- President Obama
decides it's time

to bring in the military.

Together with the CIA,
Admiral Bill McRaven

devises a plan,

a helicopter assault
using Navy SEALs

to infiltrate the compound.

- Our hope was
that we might get

that one piece of evidence
that would make it 100% certain

that bin Laden was there.

♪

- At the end of the day,
the president will tell you

that he was 50/50 about
whether he was there or not.

♪

- On April 29, 2011,

President Obama
greenlights the operation.

- I got word from the president

that it was a go,

and I remember calling
Admiral McRaven

and saying, "I'm ordering you
to proceed with this mission,

"to go in, get bin Laden,
get the hell out.

"And if you go in
and bin Laden's not there,

get the hell out."

♪

- We had set up
an operation center in CIA.

The director's conference room
had been turned

into our situation room.

♪

A lot of people monitoring
all sorts

of intelligence feeds.

♪

- We sort of got
real-time updates

on what was occurring.

The anticipation
in the office and CTC

was, like, the highest
you can possibly imagine.

It was like a palpable feeling
of just waiting

to hear if he was there
and then what would happen.

- I issued the order,
and Admiral McRaven

gave the order to the SEALs.
They got on the helicopters.

It's after midnight
in Pakistan.

And as the helicopters
approached the compound,

one of the helicopters
just kind of started to shake.

♪

Thank God there was
an experienced pilot

on that helicopter,
and he was able to set it down,

and the tail of the helicopter

was up on one of the walls
around the compound.

- When the helicopter
crashed...

I was so worried for them.

They intentionally
did this overnight

when people would be sleeping,
you know, woke people up.

- And I remember

immediately calling
Bill McRaven and saying,

"What the hell
is going on, Bill?"

I said,
"What the hell is going on?"

♪

[soft dramatic music]

It's one of those moments

where, you know,
your stomach's in your mouth

and you're not quite sure
what the hell is happening.

♪

- On a moonless night,
two Black Hawk helicopters

carrying a team
of Navy SEALs descend

upon Osama bin Laden's
suspected hideout.

♪

One of the engine stalls,

and a chopper is forced
to crash land.

♪

- Bill McRaven, to his credit,
didn't miss a beat.

He said, "Mr. Director,

"we're going on
with the mission.

"I've called in
a backup helicopter,

and they're going
to continue the mission."

Just like that.

And I said,
"God bless you, Bill."

We heard gunfire

soon after
they breached the walls.

- They were clearing
the building

and looking for bin Laden,

and we were all just waiting
with bated breath

to hear what had happened.

- There was
about 20 minutes of silence.

The longest 20 minutes
in my life.

And at the end
of that 20 minutes,

Bill McRaven came on and said,

"I believe
we have a Geronimo,"

which was the code word
for locating bin Laden.

- They brought the body bag out
with bin Laden in it.

You could see it.

And they put it
on a helicopter,

and they were out of there.

- Finally, both helicopters
arrived back at Jalalabad.

And it was at that point

that I think
we all sighed in relief

that the mission
had been accomplished.

- Tonight, I can report
to the American people

and to the world

that the United States
has conducted an operation

that killed Osama bin Laden,
the leader of al-Qaeda,

and a terrorist
who's responsible

for the murder of thousands
of innocent men,

women, and children.

[cheers and applause]

[people chanting]
U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.!

- We were walking
back towards the West Wing,

and you could see that crowds
were beginning to gather.

You could hear them yelling,
"U.S.A., U.S.A.

CIA, CIA."

Something I never thought
I would hear.

- It was a big moment
for the country.

It was closure.

There was a wound
opened on 9/11.

And that wound
was closed on May 1st.

- You just think
about how much

throughout the world
people have suffered

at this man's hand.

It felt like justice
was finally served.

- I felt obviously
a lot of emotions thinking,

"Finally, finally,
you got what was coming."

It was a good moment.
Good moment.

But it also brought
flashbacks of people

who sacrificed their lives
along the way.

- I thought of all the people
I knew who had worked on this.

There are 137 stars

carved in the marble
of the CIA lobby,

one for each person at CIA

who has died
in the line of duty.

Well over one third
of those stars

have been carved since 9/11.

- I also welcome the hearings
because it is finally a forum

where I can apologize
to the loved ones

of the victims of 9/11.

To them who are here
in the room.

I thought it was appropriate
for someone

who is involved in 9/11

to turn around to the families
who were sitting behind me

and to the families
who were watching on TV

and say what someone
should have said before.

We tried hard,

but that doesn't matter,
because we failed.

And for that failure,

I would ask,
once all the facts are out...

for your understanding
and for your forgiveness.

♪

- You cannot go
to the 9/11 Memorial

or the 9/11 Museum
in New York without tears.

What comes to mind
for me is sorrow...

♪

That we were unable
to prevent the attack.

♪

- There were lots of things
that I saw,

lots of things that I did,
quite frankly,

that made me
lose sleep at night.

I would have night terrors
and things like that.

I feel a huge sense
of responsibility

to the victims
and to their families

that I
should have stopped this.

I could have stopped this,
and I know I'm just one person,

but I think a lot of us
probably feel that way.

- In the beginning,
I kept questioning,

why would I have PTSD?
I wasn't in the military.

I think it's
just collective trauma.

It's just the bombardment

of that kind of,
you know, experience.

- We're humans,

and I do think,
in the aftermath,

obviously we all
lost loved ones along the way,

little brothers or sisters.

That makes that guilt, that
PTSD, probably more severe.

♪

- I just found ways that I
could sort of disconnect

and try to just calm my mind.

♪

For me, the best thing
was just to separate myself

and to go into nature.

♪

- I struggle with PTSD
every day and depression,

and every day
since I left the agency.

20 years later.
It's ridiculous.

- 20 years after 9/11,
what I think about the most

is that if bin Laden
were still alive,

he would probably think
that he won,

that he created
a global movement.

- Bin Laden was always
playing the long game.

I don't believe
that he ever intended

for the movement
to die with him,

that he felt like
he was beginning it.

- On September 10, 2001,

his movement
was in one place

on the planet, Afghanistan.

Now it stretches
from West Africa,

all across Africa
to East Africa,

into the Middle East,
into South Asia,

and into Southeast Asia

in the form
of both al-Qaeda and ISIS.

♪

- We've got breaking news
for you right now

from Afghanistan.

The Pentagon says
there's been a suicide bombing

outside the Kabul Airport.

It is the deadliest day
for U.S. forces

in Afghanistan in a decade.

The bombers
struck late in the afternoon

at an airport entrance
packed with people.

More than 100 were wounded.

An affiliate of ISIS

has claimed responsibility
for the attacks.

♪

- 13 Americans
killed in action.

♪

It is a bitter
and bloody ending

as the last U.S. soldier
leaves Afghanistan.

The longest war
in U.S. history

has cost
more than $2 trillion.

The human toll is staggering.

The lives of nearly 2,500
American service members

and tens of thousands
of Afghans lost.

- I'm now
the fourth American president

to preside
over war in Afghanistan.

I will not pass
this responsibility

on to a fifth president.

- I think we made a mistake

in invading Afghanistan

in the way that we did.

We were going after al-Qaeda,

not to take over a country.

- The war is over,
but the War on Terror is not.

- Today, Taliban fighters

took control
of the capital, Kabul.

Taliban fighters were seen
rolling up the Afghan flag

inside
the presidential palace.

- We lost
the war in Afghanistan.

♪

The Taliban has won.

- The Taliban's
swift return to power

means al-Qaeda
could now reconstitute itself

in Afghanistan faster
than U.S. government estimates

of two years.

- We forget the lessons

that come from attacks
like 9/11,

and the tendency
for us as a country

is to then focus
on something else and move on.

We need to continue
to pay attention

and be vigilant
about attacks on our homeland.

♪

- If you allow the enemy
to maintain a safe haven,

that gives them
a platform to recruit,

to train, to plot, to plan.

We learned that lesson
the hard way a long time ago,

and I hope
we haven't forgotten it.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- One of the things
that I sometimes worry about

in this country is that
we have a short memory.

There are
a lot of young people now

that were not alive
when 9/11 happened,

don't really remember,
you know,

all of the sacrifices
that were made.

♪

Don't really understand

the impact of a country

that is suddenly thrown
into war.

♪

It was a terrible day.
We've just been attacked.

I thought
I really have to get back

to my family in California.

You know, threw my luggage
in the back of the car

and just started driving west.

It was a very strange
and yet encouraging trip

across the country
of patriotism,

and you could see
people throughout the country

felt that they had
personally been attacked.

♪

As we come together

on this 20th anniversary
of 9/11,

it's an important moment

for a country that today
is deeply polarized,

deeply divided
over a lot of things...

♪

That we remember

that when
this country was attacked...

♪

We pulled together.

♪

I hope we remember
that deep down,

there is
a fundamental spirit here

that can never, never be ended

by terrorists or by any enemy.

♪