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1 9/11 was a beautiful, clear fall morning.

I was leaving for work later than I normally would

because I had actually entered into the CIA retirement program.

I went to headquarters, where I had been deputy chief for two years.

So it was going to be a kind of sad day

because I was going to miss working there.

At some point, there was some commotion.

This just in. You are looking at

a very disturbing live shot there.

That is the World Trade Center.

We have unconfirmed reports this morning...

There's the second plane.

Another passenger plane hitting the World Trade Center.

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

We're looking at a live picture from Washington,

and there is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.

Everyone assumed it was al-Qaeda.

As I say, FBI, the U.S. military,

because there really weren't any groups that would have

that kind of organization and that ability

to plan something and carry something of that scale out against America.

The president said, "I want Americans, either military or CIA,

on the ground in Afghanistan hunting Bin Laden."

On the 14th, the chief of Counterterrorism Center

called and said,

"Gary, do you want to take a team, the first team, into Afghanistan?"

He said, "I can't think of anyone in the agency

who is better prepared. You've worked it for years."

I said, "Of course I'll go." I mean, everybody in America

wants to strike back at these terrorists,

and you're telling me I get to lead the attack? Yes.

My wife, she was unhappy. She said, "You're retiring."

"You're 59 years old. Why are you doing this?"

There was a picture in the Washington Post

of a fireman in New York.

Just his face in his dress uniform and tears running down his face

because he was at a funeral.

And I held it up to her and I said, "That's why I'm going."

And I said, "I can't not."

A day of remembrance.

In Washington and around the world, the nation pauses to honor those lost,

missing, changed forever.

I think we were all in shock.

The whole U.S. government was in shock.

They were meeting at the White House

{n8}in the Situation Room, the Counterterrorist Center,

{n8}Chief... Chief of Central Intelligence George Tenet, were there.

And they met and talked about what the responses could be.

We knew it was Bin Laden that...

I mean, and that he was in Afghanistan

and that he had built the al-Qaeda network.

I had gone into Afghanistan during that period, from 1996 to 1999,

on three different occasions.

We had contact with virtually every commander of note in the country.

And so it made sense that I would go back in

during this first visit

to try to convince them to work with us.

So right then, we started planning, Counterterrorist Center and myself,

starting pulling the team together.

Phil Reilly, probably one of the youngest senior intelligence service officers

in the agency,

had been suggested as my deputy for the team.

We talked for ten minutes, and I said, "This is the guy."

{n8}First time I met Gary Schroen, I knew of his name.

{n8}He was a very storied figure within the CIA.

I'd almost say legendary with the Near East division.

He held the agency's highest award for events before 9/11.

My emotions, uh, they probably weren't noble ones.

I mean, I was very angry, very upset. I wanted,

like a lot of people did, go get those responsible

for the attack on our country.

So revenge was a big motivation for me.

But I also intend to be honest. I was very humbled and honored

that I knew I had drawn the, you know, the lottery ticket,

the right one to be on this team.

Our mission was given to us verbally

by Cofer Black, the head of the Counterterrorism Center.

It was to go into Afghanistan, contact the Northern Alliance,

bring them over to our side,

make them understand that we would be bringing in

large elements of the U.S. military, that we would be working together.

And he said, "You have to prepare them to receive American Special Forces

who will be arriving at some point

so they can do target designation out in the battle lines in front of Kabul."

"Then, once you get past the Taliban and you break them,

and you get into Kabul, you are to hunt down Bin Laden

and his lieutenants."

"And then, when you kill Bin Laden,

you cut his head off and you put it on dry ice

and you ship it back so I can show the president."

And then I walked out. I said to Phil,

"Was he joking?"

Phil said, "No, man, he was serious."

But, anyway, that was our orders. So right then, we started planning.

I got the best field communicator, John.

And I picked another paramilitary officer, coincidentally named Phil.

Gary picked the finest case officer in the Near East division, Chris.

One other guy was a former SEAL.

He knew demolitions.

And he was a huge, strong man.

We came up with Doc, Doc Phillips, who was the medic.

He was a combat medic in Vietnam back in Special Forces days.

This guy knew exactly what to take into a place like that.

{n8}I had been working a program that was doing aerial surveillance

{n8}of the areas where Bin Laden frequented.

Our team was the one that actually filmed Osama bin Laden

walking across Tarnak Farms.

Unmanned, unarmed spy planes, called Predators,

fly over known al-Qaeda training camps,

the pictures transmitted live to CIA headquarters half a world away.

A Predator captured even more extraordinary pictures:

this tall figure in flowing white robes

many intelligence analysts believe is Osama bin Laden.

So the idea would be, if we have to, we could go back and capture him.

And that's what I was doing before 9/11.

On September 10th, we had everything set up.

We were flying home then

on a Lufthansa flight.

On 9/11, he was scheduled to come home that morning.

{n8}And my daughter calls and says, "Where's Dad?"

{n8}And I said, "He's on his way home."

On the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is where the pilot announced

they're closing the airspace.

Doc Phillips was stuck in Gander, Newfoundland.

All the planes were grounded, and we had...

And he was grounded with them, so getting him back to us was important.

Dave called.

I said, "Any idea when you'll be coming home?"

"Because they'll probably lift these flights soon."

He said, "I'm not."

"They're flying in to pick me up

and I'll see you probably in a month or two."

Sue's been around the agency a bit,

and she knew instantaneously where I was going.

You know, she knew I'd been working Afghanistan since 1980.

So she knew.

It turned out that there was a helicopter that we were going to use.

It was a CIA-owned helicopter

waiting for us.

It had a crew of three, so there would be a total of ten of us,

CIA people, flying into Afghanistan when we tried to make the entry.

It looked like the Over-the-Hill Gang going to war.

The same group of people who had been doing this stuff

all over the world.

And we have a place, surprisingly, the CIA does,

that has every weapon known to man.

And you can get them in quantities.

And so we had ten of each of the weapons,

plus all the sundry ammunition people thought we might need.

I thought we would have a warehouse that would have military uniforms.

The CIA doesn't, so we took money to the local REI store

and loaded up.

There were three of us.

We had this big shopping cart full of stuff.

One of the ladies came over and said, "Where are you going?"

I said, "Hiking in the mountains." She said, "Where?"

I said, "Oh, overseas."

She didn't say anything, just looked at us.

And the last thing we took was $3 million in cash.

Cash was critical,

and $3 million was just the initial tranche of money we needed

to induce warlords to do the right thing.

Cash was needed to buy things they needed to prosecute the operations.

We then moved forward

and ultimately linked up with our Mi-17,

a single Russian helicopter.

And we had our permission, uh, 26 September

to enter Afghanistan.

We flew through what's called the Anjuman Pass.

And the helicopter, coincidentally, had just been refitted

and rehabbed to a certain degree.

This helicopter was not in the greatest shape.

As we were climbing, you could hear the sound of the engine changing.

It was beginning to labor because the air was getting thinner.

And there's not a...

The lift is diminishing.

Basically, they were radioing on their internal communication

back to our commo guy.

They don't know if we're gonna make it.

That we may have to turn around.

The helicopter's service ceiling is not anywhere near 17,000 feet.

This thing is really straining to go over these mountains in the Hindu Kush.

You could feel the straining to stay in the air.

As we started down, you could hear the pitch of the engine change.

And everybody was thumbs up.

Once we cleared the Anjuman Pass, we were good.

We ascended into the Panjshir Valley.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon on the 26th.

And when I stepped off, there were probably ten,

eleven Afghans standing there.

Guys from the Northern Alliance.

I recognized five of them, and they recognized me.

We had met before on some of the visits I had made.

Everyone was happy, including myself,

that the Americans were getting involved in this war.

We were glad that this war would become an international war,

and the world would be intervening here.

{n8}They said, "We are ready to attack Afghanistan,

{n8}but not without understanding your point of view."

"Where would you stand regarding this matter?"

"Do you accept it or not?"

The Northern Alliance was united

vis-à-vis attacking the Taliban and going after al-Qaeda.

But underneath the surface, there was a fragility to it

because it was pulling together all the disparate ethnic groups

within Afghanistan.

{n8}Taliban controlled three-fourths of the country at that time

{n8}in 2000, 2001.

{n8}But they couldn't take the Panjshir Valley.

And so they were at a stalemate.

Ahmad Shah Massoud had an army of about 8,000 fighters.

These Northern Alliance fighters are excellent at what they do.

This is their valley.

They're not gonna let the Taliban in without a fight.

Masood Khalili was Ahmad Shah Massoud's best friend.

They were like brothers.

Al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden.

Zawahiri.

{n8}All of them were in Afghanistan.

Taliban started indeed savagery.

Indeed killing.

Every girl in their house was just thinking that,

"Are they coming now to take me?"

"To kill me?"

"To push me

and my brother?"

Commander Massoud said, "We have to warn the world."

We went to France.

His first trip to France.

And there, in France, he was invited by European Union,

and there he announced something which is very important.

The Taliban that are currently active in Afghanistan

have a very specific vision and interpretation of Islam.

The groups that support them, like Osama Bin Laden's,

along with the Pakistani regime, have similar objectives.

I want to insist on the fact that the goals of these groups

are not restricted to Afghanistan alone.

Believe me, their goal is to continue beyond Afghanistan

to the rest of the world.

Massoud exposed the true face of the Taliban,

al-Qaeda network, and Bin Laden to the international community.

Two Arab guys

who were affiliated with Bin Laden's al-Qaeda from Europe

got fake credentials as journalists

and came to Afghanistan with a camera,

and they had packed it with explosives.

And on 9th September, they were finally able to sit down

with Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance,

the Taliban's biggest enemy.

Commander sat beside me, shoulder to shoulder.

Commander said, "Tell me the questions first."

It was 15 questions exactly,

and eight were about Osama bin Laden.

And then they started the camera.

They blew the bomb up.

I was injured totally.

I opened my eyes there after...

four or five days.

The first question was, "How? What happened to my friend?"

"Died."

It was 9 September,

around 11 o'clock in the morning.

And he died in my lap.

He died.

Afghanistan lost a son.

The world lost an honest man.

By then, Bin Laden had made a deal

with leader of the Taliban Mullah Omar.

"I will give you money if you give me sanctuary

{n8}here in Kandahar, and a country."

{n8}And Mullah Omar said yes.

{n8}Bin Laden knew that if he could kill Ahmad Shah Massoud,

{n8}that that would remove the Taliban's biggest enemy in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden told Mullah Omar that he and his guys had done the attack.

"Now the Americans are going to come for me,

and you have agreed I can stay here in Afghanistan."

And so when Bin Laden brought down the wrath of the U.S. on Afghanistan,

just by the code that Mullah Omar lived by

he could not throw him out.

Ahmad Shah Massoud's death really united the Northern Alliance.

If there was any doubt what side they would be on,

{n8}there was no reason to feel any question.

{n8}They were totally onboard.

And the seven of us literally went to work immediately

doing what we needed to do.

First, we set up camp at a house that was provided to us, a safe house.

Basically, we said we're the tip of the spear.

We're out here. There's nobody else.

And the reason that the U.S. military had declared

that they weren't going to come with us

was that they said there is no search and rescue capability,

and it's too dangerous to send our soldiers

into a place where they can't be rescued.

We were all macho guys, supposedly.

But everybody knew it was dangerous.

There was no way out except the helicopter.

And if the helicopter broke or it couldn't get over the mountain,

we might have to walk out, because...

And it was a long way out up over the mountains toward Pakistan.

We sat down and tried to figure out,

under the new structure without Ahmad Shah Massoud,

who was in charge.

General Fahim, then the leader of the Northern Alliance,

he was drastically different than Ahmad Shah Massoud.

But he was a fighter, and he committed to working with us.

So we go to a meeting

and there's, like... a crew of these senior guys are there.

Uh, and so we sat down.

And I have a... $250,000 with me.

I told the Northern Alliance commanders in the valley

that I don't want to hear about political differences.

I don't want to hear about ethnic differences.

Under Ahmad Shah Massoud, you guys had been united.

Because I control the money.

And I've got a lot of money to give out for specific purposes.

But if you aren't working together, you're not getting anything.

Money went to commanders that needed it.

Various military commanders.

And all of it was provided by the team.

We organized what we called a fusion center.

It was a couple of CIA people,

plus the Northern Alliance intelligence analyst.

So these guys would take intelligence that they gathered,

or listening to the radios of the Taliban,

and then say, "This is what's happening."

So these were tactical stuff. "Where are the Taliban?"

"What are they doing? What's going on?"

One of the dangers we would run into...

if you drive into a Taliban or an al-Qaeda ambush,

probably never gonna be seen again.

It's obvious that you're an American. It's something that we really had to face.

One thing that we needed to do was to go down to the front lines

and actually GPS where the front lines were.

Team one was sent up to Kunduz.

Kunduz was where rockets were flying,

and a great deal of fighting.

And the other team that broke off, we went down to the hills above Bagram.

And the idea then was, we'll capture Bagram...

then start working our way to actually capture Kabul.

{n8}That's pretty well what our mission was.

What we did the first three to four weeks

was plot enemy positions, working with the locals,

taking maps out and, with laser range finders and other techniques,

we would identify all of the enemy positions.

And then send that all back in intelligence reports to the CIA,

which were then immediately disseminated to the U.S. military.

We'd been begging for air strikes down on the Shomali Plain.

We had a TV in the courtyard. And they turned it on. It was CNN.

And CNN announced the U.S. military started its bombing campaign.

{n8}On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes

{n8}against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps

{n8}and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

And that first night, Phil and I stood on the roof

looking at the mountains between us and Kabul.

We were about 30 miles away, but there were low clouds in the sky.

We said, "When the bombs hit, we'll see the flash reflected

on the bottom of the clouds."

And finally, there's... You see a flash.

"Okay, it's starting."

Nothing. That was it.

Well, the first air strikes, I'll tell you, they were not...

It was not shock and awe. I think they were getting...

They didn't want to do collateral damage with civilians.

Initially, we were concerned, and so was the Northern Alliance,

where's this U.S. air power we've been told?

{n8}All the people were satisfied and happy

{n8}that there was at least a war against the Taliban,

but our troops were not satisfied with the American attacks.

Instead of concentrating on the front lines at Kabul

or the front lines at Mazar-i-Sharif, or in Takhar,

they started bombing all over the country.

That looked like tank depots with truck repair places.

Troop training areas.

Barracks, warehouses.

So all of this bombing of these places was just wasted.

Team Alpha went to the Mazar-i-Sharif,

which was an agency team very similar in composition

to the team that I was part of.

These became known as the horse soldiers.

{n8}There were resistance groups inside the north,

{n8}uh, that were inside the, you know, the Taliban lines,

fighting in the mountains.

Uh, and that's where we were going to go.

Abdul Rashid Dostum is often referred to as a warlord.

The truth is, is that he was certainly an ethnic tribal leader.

He was a leader of the ethnic group known as the Uzbeks in Afghanistan.

Once the Taliban were in charge, the militia became a resistance group.

Dostum had resistance fighters all over the place,

but he had a... what would probably be called a Praetorian Guard.

His own bodyguard that traveled with him wherever.

Horsemen would all arrive out of a dust cloud.

Dostum had said up front, "Things are a little different here."

"What we call an armored personnel carrier, you call a horse."

I'd learned to ride when I was a kid.

I grew up on a farm, and so it was not a big deal.

The rest of the team, not so much.

Our job was basically

to serve as the pathfinders

for the U.S. Special Forces.

Pathfinders are the people who go in ahead of time

to ensure that the guys can get into Afghanistan safely.

{n8}I'm Lieutenant General retired John Mulholland.

{n8}I'm a career Army Special Forces officer.

I have had the great privilege and honor

of commanding the 5th Special Forces Group in 2001.

The first effort was aimed at getting a integrated team

of CIA and Special Forces soldiers working together.

We talked to Colonel Mulholland directly.

He tried on several occasions to send two Black Hawk helicopters

over the Anjuman Pass

and come into the valley.

First two times, the weather was so bad.

Icy conditions, snow. He had to turn around both times.

ODA 555 was an aid detachment of 12 men and two helicopters.

Um, and for whatever reason,

they actually didn't land right on our landing zone.

One landed on one side of the Panjshir River,

and one helicopter landed on the other side.

There's no reception committee, that would be us,

saying, "Get off the helicopter. We're friends. Everything's okay."

We were basically just wandering

toward where we thought they would be.

Hal, the Navy SEAL, couldn't resist water in front of him.

He dove in the stupid river and swam across,

and actually found the one team.

I got a white jacket on, a zipper jacket, and a ball cap,

and I'm waving and I'm hollering,

"We're CIA! We're CIA! Don't shoot!"

And they come walking up to us.

I said, "Hi, I'm Gary Schroen. I'm from the CIA."

"We're here to welcome you."

That night, would've been about 24 Green Berets on the ground.

And that team linked up with our Team Alpha,

uh, JR Seeger and others

working with Dostum and other elements in that area,

and mobilizing them.

What the Special Forces unit was supposed to do

was laser-designate targets down on the battlefield,

that U.S. aircraft flying in would see the laser beam

and could see the starting point, and that was carefully given to them.

And they were to bomb the end point,

because that was a high-value target, a SOFLAM.

What Dostum would do is he would call down

to the enemy that was in front of us.

And he would say to them,

"You're on the losing side."

I will be polite. He wasn't as polite.

More often than not, he would get an exceptionally rude response

on the radio.

So then he would turn to our Special Forces colleagues

and he'd say, "I really need an air strike there."

And then the United States Air Force or the Navy

would then drop laser-guided munitions right on top of that location.

Didn't take much convincing at that point,

after one guy had seen his partner completely destroyed,

to realize that he was on the wrong side, and side with us.

We used to refer to Afghanistan in its early days as Mad Max meets Star Wars.

We were literally bringing together ancient methods of warfare

on horseback, et cetera,

and combining it with, you know, now 21st century technology.

Laser-guided munitions.

Precision Strike munitions.

But come early November, it was clear the trajectory that we were on.

Gary was needed back in Washington for meetings

because he had the most current understanding of the situation,

and there was an appetite by President Bush and others for that.

I left the valley, I think it was on 4th November.

I retired on 31st November,

and on 4th December I signed a contract to work for CTC.

I was asked to help out in the Counterterrorism Center,

the Counterterrorism Center's Special Operations Department.

I went back to be its chief of operations. We were there to get al-Qaeda.

A lot was gonna be run from headquarters.

So we were handing off Jawbreaker to the second Jawbreaker team.

Uh, Gary Berntsen was its head.

Some of my team was staying there to provide overlap.

We were doing significant air strikes

on Taliban defensive positions.

They broke through the final Taliban defenses on the foothills,

the northern foothills of the Hindu Kush.

And now the plains up to Mazar-i-Sharif were now open.

The Taliban basically just abandoned Mazar-i-Sharif.

We did not have to fight for that city, thankfully.

We had this crowd of people from Mazar-i-Sharif

who were thrilled to see the Taliban gone.

It was absolutely a wonderful feeling.

We knew our job wasn't done. It was a nice moment, that's for sure.

I communicated with Gary and his team.

He was going from the northeast to the southwest.

That's the direction heading to Kabul.

The liberation of Kabul was going to be the gain.

Kabul was the capital. And it was the capital before the Taliban took over,

and it remains the capital, so whoever owns it owns the country.

So taking it back was critical in putting the new government into place.

The Taliban literally pulled out of Kabul the first night that we attacked.

From where I was, it was definitely in convoys.

The morning of the 14th, General Baryalai Khan

was leading his troops in,

and he had told the CIA team that had been shadowing him

as the battle went on down on the Shomali Plains,

"I'm gonna go in, and you guys wait."

They basically said, "We're going to come with you."

Our team plus the Special Forces guys started following the general down.

And he just drove right in.

He was like the first senior person from the Northern Alliance side

to get into the city.

The same day that the attack on Taliban forces began,

I was on the front line of the old North Road,

and we were moving towards Kabul.

The tanks came forward, the infantry behind them,

and I took my camera and I got on one of the tanks and we moved forward.

It did not take long.

There was virtually no resistance.

As the forces of the Northern Alliance rolled into Kabul,

the people took to the streets.

John Mulholland grabbed me, held me up in the air and gave me a hug,

and cracked two ribs.

He was really ecstatic

over Kabul finally falling.

Let's think about Jawbreaker for a moment.

So they had fought and successfully defeated the Taliban

in basically less than two months.

Really, it is amazing.

Our biggest disappointment

was the fact that Bin Laden was on the run.

Gary Berntsen's team... During that period,

Osama bin Laden tracked to the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan.

It's a certainty he was there and did escape across the border.

Despite efforts in blocking forces...

Pakistanis claimed to have 4,000 troops on the border.

Maybe, but he did escape and get through.

{n8}Once we knew that Kabul had fallen,

{n8}then the only thing that needed to be accomplished was Kandahar,

{n8}the home of the Taliban.

And that took place early December.

Almost all of our teams

were reporting mass surrenders on the part of the Taliban.

So much had been forbidden by the Taliban,

like music and playing,

and anything that a normal human civilization

would consider fundamental to your life

now was once again available to them.

Barbershops had lines of men

so they could get their beards shaved off.

Men and families who had hidden their radios,

you know, buried them, were digging them up and playing them again.

Little kids could play soccer again.

{n8}They were successful

{n8}because in a month or so, you saw the Taliban out.

I couldn't believe that. Taliban left Afghanistan.

Yes. Oh my goodness.

It was a united front

against the common global enemy.

Hamid Karzai was appointed as interim president initially.

The beginning of a new Afghanistan

was happening right then.

Chairman Karzai is a determined leader.

And his government reflects the hopes of all Afghans

for a new and better future.

The United States strongly supports Chairman Karzai's interim government.

- Welcome to Washington. Thank you. - Thank you very much.

What we were able to prove

was that we could, in fact,

let the Afghans do the work themselves.

Many things we gained. Say, education.

An army of 300,000 were built.

Schools, roads, hospitals.

Another thing which was also important:

freedom.

It was not because America told us to be free.

It was because we got that opportunity

to indeed show our right of freedom.

These are gains that we've got.

This war will not be quick.

We know this from the history of military conflict in Afghanistan.

It's been one of initial success,

followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure.

We're not gonna repeat that.

After more than 13 years,

America's combat mission in Afghanistan came to a responsible end.

It's time to bring our people back home.

The United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan,

the longest war in American history.

Thousands of Afghans have fled to the Kabul airport

in an attempt to leave Afghanistan

a day after the Taliban seized control of the country.

The horror that is the Taliban now enveloping that country again,

actually, more completely than it was in 2001.

I pray for the people of Afghanistan every night.

I'm 61, and for the rest of my life this sort of black mark

is gonna be there, and I'm not gonna recover from it

in the sense that, you know, maybe some Vietnam vets

felt the same way.

I was a young guy in '75.

I don't know what the fall of Saigon felt like to those great Americans.

But I don't know how we recover as a country,

uh, from what we've done.

We will definitely have to go back.

We have brand-new enemies coming on the horizon.

Twenty years for what, chump?

Twenty years for what?

All this you did, what good did it do you?

When I look back at what's happened now,

I have to think of my good friend Masood Khalili.

And to have to watch him now look at his country

after all of the sacrifice that he put in,

to say, "It's over."

I mean, there's nothing that I can do anymore.

It's heartbreaking.

In 43 years, look at this unlucky nation.

Always phases, not of peace.

Phases not of celebration.

Phases not of happiness.

Phases of war.

{n8}We are expecting Europe, NATO, and U.S.

{n8}to actually provide monetary, financial, and military assistance

to the newly-formed resistance forces.

So today's youth, such as Ahmad Massoud, who is following his father's footsteps,

and other young adults will be able to rebuild the country of Afghanistan

and create a modern Afghanistan for the people of Afghanistan

and the future children of Afghanistan.

It is written in our culture

that you have hope,

you have love,

and never give up.

Noriega was able to use Panama as a transit point for drugs.

We knew we could not turn a blind eye anymore.

So the hunt starts.

Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet KGB officer,

perhaps one of the greatest spies that ever worked for British intelligence.

It never came to my head that my comrade can be recruited by the British.

If I had doubts, I would shoot him.

And there's a link between Turkish Gray Wolves

and the man who tried to kill the Pope.

My intention was to kill the Pope and commit suicide.

There were 11 hostages. They're all gone.

Golda Meir called for revenge.

The basic principle was shoot and don't talk.

The CIA hadn't really done anything like this,

where we're trying to cooperate with people

on the enemy side.

There are three nuclear missile warheads

on the bottom of the North Pacific.

The K-129 was a warship.

And it sank.

...couple beat reporters for the Los Angeles Times...

This was more complex,

in some respects, than going to the Moon.