[William Shatner] Covert operations
hidden in plain sight...
...classified experiments on unwitting test subjects...
and elaborate conspiracies
to conceal the truth.
It's common knowledge that nations around the world
pursue top secret projects
in an attempt to protect their citizens,
outmaneuver rival powers,
or develop new technology.
And throughout history, we've learned
about some of these black budget programs
through declassified documents and whistleblowers
who have bravely come forward from the shadows.
But how much do we really know?
What secret operations are still hidden from us?
And what can we learn from missions of the past
that were once deemed too dangerous for the world to see?
Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
Since World War II,
the United States has carried out
countless classified programs,
ranging from intelligence gathering
to clandestine operations
to advanced weapons development.
Each designed
to create some type of strategic edge over our foes--
and our friends-- on the world stage.
What is required to deem a project
top secret?
[Russ Baker] The government classification process
is very simple. There are three levels.
There's confidential,
secret, and top secret.
Basically, "confidential" are things
that could cause problems if they were made public.
"Secret" could cause big problems.
And "top secret" usually refers to something
that, if publicly exposed,
could cause grave harm
to the American national security.
[Paul Springer] If something's top secret, typically,
not only can you not share the information in those systems,
you can't even confirm or deny that there is such a system
or a project or information.
Because by merely confirming that it exists,
you're providing a useful clue to any adversary
that might want to take advantage of that fact.
So, for example,
if you were to create a weapons system
that would create an enormous advantage
versus any peer competitor on Earth,
you would want to keep that weapon system secret
until the time came to actually utilize it.
Partially, this is so you can achieve surprise
with the weapon system.
And, partially, it's so that your adversaries don't build
their own versions of that same idea.
[Richard Dolan] Ultimately, "top secret" means
the public don't know what is the truth.
That is how government wants it,
and that's why it was designed that way.
If you're operating in secrecy,
in theory, that means you may not be held responsible
for any of the actions,
so you've got room to maneuver there.
[Shatner] In the United States,
it's estimated that more than one million individuals
have the security clearance to view top secret information.
Most of those people work for one of the 18 different agencies
that comprise the U.S. intelligence community.
And of those,
perhaps the most infamous
is the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA is unique as an intelligence agency
in that it is not part of any other department.
The National Security Agency
is actually part of the Defense Department.
The Defense Intelligence Agency
is part of the Defense Department.
Department of Treasury has its own small intelligence agency.
CIA is independent on its own
and has the authority to conduct covert operations.
And these are operations
that offer the U.S. government plausible deniability.
But there's a downside,
which is that there's a relationship between
too much secrecy
and too little trust from the American people.
[Dolan] When we think of government secrecy,
sometimes we'll knee-jerk
and say, "Well, it's sinister. It's evil.
They're trying to keep important things from us."
Yes, I think sometimes that is definitely true.
But any government that has the responsibility
of protecting its nation,
it's not impossible to see that there would be secrecy on things
that, at least in their mind,
would be for the protection of the public.
[Shatner] Since its inception,
the CIA has been accused of everything
from orchestrating coups in foreign countries
to assassinating world leaders.
No one truly knows the full extent
of the agency's activities.
But most experts believe the CIA's biggest secret
is located somewhere inside the mysterious facility
known as Area 51.
[Dolan] Area 51 is in Southern Nevada.
It's the most famous secret base in the world.
For many, many years, it was completely secret
and no one knew about it.
It was created in the very early 1950s under CIA control.
And it was designed--
and still, I think, functions today--
as a secret base for the Air Force.
What is known is that a lot of secret testing
of advanced aircraft went on there.
You've got this massive, dry, desert lake bed
that's ideal, uh, for aircraft
that need long runways, for example.
And, more importantly,
it's just very remote.
It's not an easy place for any person to get to.
So if you're gonna have a secret base,
that is a good location to have it.
Area 51 was established as a direct consequence
of World War II and the Cold War,
because we are continuing in the development of a technology
that will become the U-2 spy plane.
The introduction of this technology
is a massive escalation of the tensions of the Cold War.
And during the Cold War,
there are Soviet spies throughout the United States.
And we continue to test other aircraft at Area 51.
Because of this, the secrecy must exist.
[Nick Pope] There are signs at the border that say "Warning.
Use of lethal force authorized."
If you cross the line, you will be arrested.
You might be shot.
The CIA kept the existence of Area 51 secret for decades.
I mean, this was not publicly acknowledged
until quite recently.
And, certainly, it's true
that some of America's most iconic aircraft
were developed and test-flown there.
So there are many, many people who believe
that within this kind of top secret program
of cutting-edge aerospace,
that there's an even bigger secret at Area 51.
[Dolan] The crazy thing about Area 51
is that we learned about it in the world
through the subject of UFOs.
And that's through the testimony of Bob Lazar,
who, back in 1989, claimed to work at S4,
which is part of the Area 51 complex,
on a series of flying saucers.
That was the context in which we learned about it.
Now, um, Area 51 would make a very, very excellent location
to do some studies of flying saucer-type technologies,
because it's remote.
But I think it's a reasonable supposition
that UFOs have been studied there
or technology related to UFOs have been studied at Area 51,
and probably a few other places as well.
The U.S. government would want to reverse engineer
any kind of alien technology that it got its hands on.
Of course it would. And so...
it's possible.
But it's-it's absolutely not...
known or confirmed by anyone.
[Shatner] Could the United States military
actually be studying alien technology at Area 51?
While only a handful of individuals
with the highest top secret clearance know the truth,
some experts speculate the rumors about aliens and UFOs
are precisely what the government wants us to believe.
[Morgan] We do know that there's
a cover story wrapped in a cover story
and that the U.S. government absolutely adores the fact
that we are so distracted with the-the narrative
of alien technology and reverse engineering
at Area 51, because it means we're not paying attention
to the things that are actually happening there.
And so maybe the best way to handle super secrecy
is to hide it in plain sight.
[Rick Beyer] If you have a place like Area 51,
you can say they're doing anything,
and the government's not gonna say, "We're not doing that."
The government's gonna refuse to comment on it.
So it becomes this kind of suckhole
for conspiracy theories,
and maybe we'll never know.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
[Shatner] Office of Naval Intelligence analysts
monitoring the Pacific Ocean
for signs of Soviet submarine activity
notice something quite alarming.
They identify a massive surge of Soviet ships and aircraft
about 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii...
a clear indicator of a search and rescue emergency.
[Bennett] The U.S. observed dozens of ships
and aircraft that were kind of looking for something,
but couldn't find it.
And so, at that point, U.S. officials went back
and reviewed data that had been collected.
The U.S. Navy and the Air Force maintained
an array of underwater microphones
and acoustic sensors around the rim of the Pacific Ocean,
designed to track Soviet missile launches
and also Soviet submarines,
and went back and reviewed that data
and discovered acoustic signatures that indicated
a sub that imploded and crushed
as it sank to the bottom of the ocean.
[Springer] The Soviets were absolutely determined
to either recover the sub or make sure
that no one else could get access to it.
Eventually, the Soviets actually gave up
on locating the submarine.
It had sunk to a depth of three miles below the ocean's surface,
and they thought it was technologically impossible
for any of the contents to be recovered.
I mean, obviously there's no hope by that point
that anyone is still alive.
But the chance to acquire
a Soviet nuclear submarine--
and the weapons-- was priceless.
And so the intelligence agencies went into absolute overdrive.
The United States figured out
exactly where the submarine had gone down
and thought to themselves,
"Well, wouldn't it be great if we could grab it?
How-how can we possibly do this?"
[Shatner] Sharing the data with the United States'
Central Intelligence Agency,
analysts determined the missing vessel was designated K-129,
a state-of-the-art Soviet submarine carrying
multiple nuclear warheads
and some of the most advanced, valuable technology
of the Cold War.
However,
any attempt to recover it from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
would not only require a massive feat of engineering
but also the utmost secrecy.
[Springer] Because the Soviets were
heavily invested in submarine technology during the Cold War,
the United States does not want to be seen
as overtly seeking to capture a Soviet sunken submarine.
So the United States turns towards the idea
of sending out, essentially, a surface ship
that supposedly is looking for ways to drill for oil
or other resources below the seabed
to carry out some form of salvage program
to possibly gather all of the material of the submarine.
And that would create an enormous advantage
for the United States government.
[Shatner] The CIA's top secret plan
to recover the Soviet K-129
was code-named Project Azorian.
It involved the construction of a fake deep-sea mining vessel
known as the Glomar Explorer
at a staggering cost of around $2.8 billion in today's dollars.
And to complete the project,
the CIA recruited one of the most famous men in the world,
billionaire Howard Hughes.
[Bennett] Howard Hughes was reputed to be
one of the richest Americans alive in the late 1960s.
He had a reputation as someone who funded
and supported projects that seemed improbable,
that seemed beyond the realm of possibility.
At the center of his empire was the Hughes Tool Corporation,
an oil services firm that had some interest
in offshore drilling. So it offered
a perfect black box
to hide the financial transactions
that you had to have to make this operation go forth.
[Shatner] According to files later declassified
by the U.S. government,
the Glomar Explorer left Long Beach, California,
in June 1974.
A few weeks later, it arrived at its destination
1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii
to begin the recovery operation.
[Dolan] It was an incredible operation.
This was one of the real technological coups
of the 20th century.
They had a cable that went three miles down
to the floor of the Pacific Ocean,
and they were able to pull the submarine up,
although they were not able to retrieve it all.
But they got some of it,
and they brought it up through the center
of the bottom of the ship.
And they were able to get it to a secure facility
where they were able to study this.
I mean, an incredible score.
[Shatner] The skillful creation of Project Azorian
was a success,
and the mission appeared to be a well-kept secret
until...
a robbery at Howard Hughes' Los Angeles office in 1974,
in which a classified memo about the project was stolen
and leaked to the press.
Despite the public scrutiny,
the full extent of what the CIA recovered
from the K-129 submarine
remains unknown.
[Bennett] What did Azorian actually recover?
There's a lot
that we don't officially know.
But we do know some things.
And one of those is that the U.S. did recover
six sets of human remains, according to published reports.
And we know that because those sailors were buried at sea,
and a video of that ceremony was released
in the early 1990s.
Otherwise, what do we know?
Well, this is where we get into, uh, some uncertainty.
We don't have a definitive answer on that.
[Dolan] All these years later,
there's a lot about Project Azorian
that still remains classified to this day.
There's a book in the late 1990s called Blind Man's Bluff
that argued that encrypted communications,
Soviet code books, missile guidance system information,
and other sensitive encrypted communications
were also recovered. Now,
that's not impossible.
If the U.S. did recover the-- that type of information,
that would be one of the major scores of the entire Cold War.
So you could see why they would not want to advertise that fact.
You know, in the aftermath of the retrieval of this submarine,
questions were asked of the U.S. government,
like what were the results of this.
And, uh,
for the first time, the U.S. government
issued the response of "We can neither confirm nor deny."
And so anytime you hear that today,
that is a legacy of the Glomar Explorer operation
in which the U.S. acquired a Soviet submarine.
The Project Azorian mission was certainly a clever way
to collect top secret information in plain sight.
But what happens
when an agency crosses the line
and turns a company party with U.S. military personnel...
...into a dangerous and radical experiment?
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
[Shatner] At approximately 2:00 a.m.,
the night manager of this hotel in Midtown Manhattan
hears a dull thud out on the street.
He heads outside to investigate,
where he discovers a grisly scene.
There on the sidewalk lay Frank Olson,
a respected CIA biochemist,
barely alive after falling from a hotel window.
[Dolan] Frank Olson
was a civilian employee
working with the U.S. Army
and really very closely with the CIA
in the late '40s, early 1950s
on biological weapons.
He was apparently very, very good at his job.
But he started talking about getting out of his career
and-and leaving government service.
And the next thing you hear about Frank Olson is that he...
ran through the window
of Room 1018A
and, um, fell to his death to the sidewalk.
-[siren wailing] -[Shatner] According to the police report,
when the night manager rushed outside,
Olson was still alive
and trying to mumble something,
but passed away before medical help arrived.
His case was ruled a suicide.
But many who knew Frank Olson questioned
whether he had, in fact, taken his own life.
The night of his "suicide" is very suspicious.
He's staying in this hotel room with another man
who, it turns out, is another CIA officer.
He supposedly
runs across this room, by two beds,
throws himself into the glass...
[glass shattering]
...and out onto the street.
They do an autopsy.
There's an unexplained wound on his head.
-[grunting] -It looks like he was bashed in the head
-and thrown out this window. -[yells]
[Baker] The way that Frank Olson died
was that his body hurtled out of a window.
I believe the window in the hotel was closed.
Now, how could that happen unless the body
went out like a projectile?
According to... I believe it was a manager of the hotel,
the switchboard operator had heard Olson's roommate
on the phone, saying something to the effect of,
"It's done. He's gone."
And so, if we are to believe this story
that the hotel switchboard operator heard this conversation
between his suitemate and somebody else,
that was an assassination.
[Shatner] What really happened
inside that tenth-floor hotel room
on that cold November night?
While no one can say for sure,
some believe Olson's work for the CIA
likely played a role in his untimely death.
[Beyer] Frank Olson,
first for the U.S. Army,
then for the CIA,
had been deeply involved in top secret stuff,
much of it involving biological warfare.
He had seen people who had been injured or sometimes killed
in experiments with sarin gas and other stuff.
And he was starting to really doubt
his involvement, uh, at the CIA,
thinking that he should leave.
So I think there's probably a good chance
that the CIA wanted him out of the way
so that he wouldn't reveal anything.
[Shatner] For decades, the idea that the CIA was involved
in Frank Olson's death was dismissed as conspiracy theory.
But then, in 1975,
a presidential commission tasked with investigating
illegal CIA activities inside the United States
revealed something quite shocking.
Led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller,
the commission's final report
contained a brief yet alarming account
of a unidentified government scientist
who had been secretly drugged with the hallucinogen LSD
days before he died
after falling from a New York hotel room window.
[Jonathan Moreno] The official story that was told later
was that
there was a...
group, uh, at what was then called Camp Detrick,
in Frederick, Maryland,
who were part of a...
highly compartmentalized set of activities
around biological and chemical weapons.
Somehow, nine of these men were taken on a retreat
in Deep Creek, Maryland.
And in the course of having their meetings,
they decided to have a cocktail party.
[Dolan] Without his knowledge--
certainly without his consent--
someone spiked his drink with a massive hit of LSD.
And Frank Olson had a very bad trip with this.
Uh, bad enough that it really damaged him psychologically.
He went home.
His family noticed, like,
there's something wrong with him.
He was not responsive.
He became very dark and moody.
[Shatner] After the Rockefeller commission released
its final report in 1975,
the government conceded that the man dosed with LSD
was indeed Frank Olson.
The U.S. government paid a $750,000 settlement
to the Olson family.
They also received a personal apology
from President Gerald Ford.
But the question remained:
did the CIA deliberately give Frank Olson LSD?
Or was he dosed by accident?
What was later revealed was the shocking news
Olson had been an unwitting participant
in a top secret CIA program known as MKUltra.
[Pope] MKUltra was a program
to try to influence human behavior.
And they had a number of techniques
that-that they used for this,
and-and a lot of them revolved around chemistry, drugs,
truth serums.
They even used LSD to influence people,
change their behaviors,
change their decisions.
And even to this day,
the whole thing is shrouded in secrecy.
[Morgan] The era of LSD
and its merger with the politics of the Cold War
and the politics, particularly, of Project MKUltra,
will lead us to a large number of people
receiving exposures to LSD.
And in many cases, overexposure on a deliberate basis
as a means of an evaluation of the drug
for the overall objectives in Project MKUltra
of evaluating the drug's use as mind control.
[Moreno] It's really hard to know if people
died because of these experiments.
And what's ironic about the Deep Creek LSD dosing
in their cocktails is that
these were people who themselves
had pretty high security clearances,
and yet they themselves were not told
about what was about to happen to them.
So when Frank Olson had this LSD experience
without his knowledge or consent,
we have an onion skin
of layers within layers within layers of secrecy.
It's disturbing to know that there have been
classified scientific programs
that have dangerously manipulated
unsuspecting citizens.
But in a much more elaborate top secret case,
an entire army was created to help defeat the Nazis.
The fact is, it was simply an illusion.
[Shatner] When most of us think of war,
we think of troops on the battlefield
and dangerous, powerful weapons of destruction.
But in the world of military might,
often the most effective tools
aren't guns, tanks or bombs...
...but instead, the top secret techniques and operations
involving the element of deception.
[Dolan] During warfare,
one thing, whether this is a thousand years ago or today,
you are going to want to deceive your enemy
with all kinds of things.
You're gonna want your enemy
not to know where your most powerful forces are
or when you're going to attack.
If you throw people off even for, like, a week,
even for a few days, maybe that's all you need
to get your advantage.
[Beyer] Deception creates surprise,
and surprise is huge on the battlefield.
General Wesley Clark said once to me
that every commander knows he has to use deception,
and if he doesn't use deception, he's going to lose.
And I think that that's really a way of summing up
how important deception is to the military art.
[Shatner] The very nature of deception
means we may never truly know what top secret operations
have been conducted on the battlefield.
But there is one that we do know about, and, incredibly,
it involved the use of a "Ghost Army."
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
As World War II rages across Europe,
Allied forces prepare to launch the surprise assault
code-named Operation Neptune,
or more commonly known as D-Day,
the largest seaborne invasion in military history.
And the attack's success hinges on a secret plan
known as Operation Fortitude.
[Beyer] Operation Fortitude
is a deception to fool the Germans
about where the D-Day landings will take place.
So, we're gonna be landing in Normandy,
but we want to make it seem like the Allies
are gonna be landing at the Pas-de-Calais,
which is the narrowest part of the English Channel.
We recognize that we could draw away some enemy strength
simply by deceiving the enemy.
And we would do this by forming an entire Ghost Army,
by creating camps that are empty,
but yet, you can see a vehicle park
where there's a line of trucks
or maybe even Sherman medium tanks,
except that they're not real trucks or real tanks,
they're inflatable facsimiles
that are meant to function as decoys.
[Springer] German aircraft reported back
that an army was mustering to cross the Channel
at a different point.
These individuals also engaged in phony radio transmissions
so that the Germans would pick them up
and believe that it was the communications
of an entire army that was being designated
for a different attack.
Essentially, they keep trying to draw
German attention in the wrong direction.
And quite frankly, the Germans fall for it many, many times.
After the D-Day landings, the Germans actually pull
most of their forces back into reserve
to counter the expected thrust at Pas-de-Calais,
and that allows the Normandy invaders to establish a foothold
and start moving forward on the Continent.
It's remarkable to think that an inflatable ghost army
was key to the success of D-Day
and the Allies' eventual victory in World War II.
But how is wartime deception being used today?
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
Roughly three weeks after the Russian invasion
of this neighboring country,
which escalates into the largest European conflict
since World War II,
a video is uploaded to the Internet
of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
delivering an unexpected message.
What actually ended up on screens was
what looked like President Zelenskyy
basically instructing his troops to surrender.
[speaking Ukrainian]
[Pope] This actually turned out to be
what we would now call one of these "deepfakes."
So, this was clearly Russian intelligence.
They'd taken Zelenskyy's appearance, his voice,
and they manipulated, perhaps,
a mix of some genuine archival footage
with something else,
and they flipped the narrative.
And so, this is going to be a whole new branch of warfare.
I mean, deception has always been part of military doctrine,
but it's going to be on a completely different level.
[Dolan] This deepfake video
of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,
I don't think it fooled too many people,
and today, even a few years later,
that would have been seen as extremely crude.
So, the deepfake technology is just getting better
and better and better all the time.
And you really can see that this could be a useful form
of deception and public manipulation at certain times.
[Springer] One of the probable futures
of disinformation warfare
is the use of artificial intelligence
to generate phony pieces of information.
Not only might that information
directly confuse and cause chaos,
it will also cause the recipients
of that information to question everything that they see,
making it far harder to maintain command and control.
[Beyer] When you're talking about the Ghost Army,
people say, "Well, you couldn't do that today
because of technology." Well, you can,
because every day, AI can do more and more.
The Allied Forces' Ghost Army
proved that clever deception can shift the tide of war.
But another top secret project
attempted to transform the battlefield
by turning weather into a weapon.
[Shatner] The Vietnam War.
In the dense jungles of Southeast Asia,
North Vietnamese forces move men and supplies
along a vast network of hidden routes
known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
For the United States military,
stopping that flow becomes a critical objective.
But in a war defined by dense jungle terrain,
conventional tactics aren't enough.
[Morgan] A factor that emerges during the war in Vietnam
is that North Vietnamese communist forces
are constantly infiltrating into South Vietnam to challenge
not just the army of the Republic of Vietnam
but then, also, the American forces
that are fighting with them.
They use infiltration routes
that go through the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
But during the wet season,
all of the trails get washed out.
They become almost completely impassable.
And what the American military eventually recognizes is,
"What if we make it-- the rainy season--
two months longer?"
Then we're denying the enemy
the easy and unfettered use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
for a greater period of time during the calendar year,
and that will result in the enemy's strength
being significantly weakened.
[Shatner] What would make the U.S. military think
they could mess with Mother Nature
and extend the monsoon season?
Well, in 1947, the United States government
began experimenting with weather modification
using a technique known as cloud seeding,
or dispersing substances like silver iodide
into clouds to trigger rainfall.
During the Vietnam War,
this controversial science was deployed
in a highly classified program
code-named Project Popeye.
[James Fleming] Project Popeye
was really top secret.
It was, uh, restricted to the president--
at the time, Johnson--
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
and General Westmoreland, who was head of the military.
There was nobody in the Vietnam theater that knew about it.
They'd say, "Oh, it was just a big monsoon this year."
And so, uh, they thought the stakes were so high
that they might tr-- want to try to make it work
and not tell anybody.
[Morgan] They are able to mark success in this program,
Operation Popeye,
uh, through the use of aircraft
like the C-123 Provider or the C-130 Hercules.
They are able to seed the clouds and get them to rain
even when they're not raining.
And in this way, we manipulate the weather as a weapon of war.
Much of this is still under a top secret classification
that will eventually expire.
We'll learn more about whether or not
we attempted to modify it in other ways
to gain an advantage on the battlefield.
[Shatner] While the true scope of Project Popeye
remains unknown,
cloud seeding is no longer a secret.
China used the technology
at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
to prevent rain from interrupting outdoor events.
So, if countries are now openly utilizing weather modification,
what new, top secret programs are being developed
to change the atmosphere on our planet?
Weather has always been a critical factor
in warfare and-and battles.
Imagine, for example,
being able to create a Category 5 hurricane
and have it hit a major city.
And then, you just put it down to an act of God.
Tornadoes,
earthquakes.
I mean, the potential here is frightening.
[Springer] In the modern era, recently, the Russian Federation
has threatened to develop and deploy
an atomic torpedo--
essentially, a torpedo with a nuclear warhead.
And if it's detonated a couple of miles
off of the coastline near a city,
it might create a wave 40 to 60 feet high
that would slam into and devastate that coastal city.
[Shatner] It's easy to understand
how harnessing the power of Mother Nature
could unleash unspeakable destruction on your enemies.
It's disturbing to think that world governments
are developing top secret weather warfare technology
that could create mass destruction.
Could signs of these experiments
already be written in the sky?
[Fleming] If you've ever looked up in the sky
and saw giant streaks of white,
really artificial clouds that c-come from one side
of the horizon to the other, these are contrails.
They're condensation of water vapor
that comes out of the jet engines.
There are some people that believe
that those clouds contain some chemicals
that are trying to control our minds
or our health or control the climate.
So, are there top secret projects going on right now?
I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
It's possible that there are
speculative weather-control ideas
trying to be put into operation
at very high levels today, and we'd never know about them.
[Shatner reads on-screen text]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Shatner] After a 76-hour journey,
Apollo 11's landing module, the Eagle,
touches down on the Moon.
Shortly thereafter, astronaut Neil Armstrong
exits the spacecraft, becoming the first human
to set foot on another celestial body.
[Springer] The early Space Race
is a contest between the United States
and the Soviet Union as for not only who can get into space
but who can demonstrate technological prowess.
In the early stages, the Soviets are ahead.
They're the first ones to launch an artificial satellite.
They're the first ones to put an animal
and a human into orbit.
But the United States is the only country
to ever put astronauts onto the surface of the Moon.
This was a technological feat
that the Soviets knew they could not accomplish.
[Shatner] Yet, despite this monumental achievement
witnessed by millions around the world,
a different narrative began to take hold
that claimed the Moon mission
was all an elaborate hoax.
[Baker] In the annals of secrecy, there's probably
little like the Moon landing,
and, of course, the, um, widespread theories
that the U.S. never landed on the Moon.
In fact, there were a number of anomalies
that gave the impression that, in fact,
this had been conjured up.
[Pope] Researchers point to the flag
appearing to flutter in very low gravity,
or the way in which the astronauts move.
Some people take that a step further and say, "Well,
maybe the U.S. pulled it off by faking it in a film studio."
And then, there is the fact
that some of the original footage,
which you think would be in the National Archives
as some of the most treasured footage anywhere,
has apparently gone missing.
And, of course, secrecy breeds conspiracy.
Because when people don't
have information,
they struggle to fill in the gaps.
[Shatner] The idea that the Apollo 11 Moon landing
may have been staged is hard to believe.
But in an era defined by secrecy and propaganda,
if one superpower had reason to claim victory,
the other had reason to cast doubt.
[Springer] There are individuals that argue
that the United States
wanted to intimidate the Soviet Union
by pretending to have the technological capacity
to reach the Moon,
even though it did not actually possess that ability.
There is a die-hard segment of the American public
that still believes the Moon landings were faked.
[Baker] The Space Race was fundamentally a propaganda war.
The U.S. Moon landing might be seen
as the apex of the Cold War propaganda battle.
And, of course,
it was a tremendous victory for the U.S.,
tremendous defeat for the Soviets.
One could understand
how the Soviets weren't exactly unhappy
when all these rumors began circulating
that the Moon landing had been faked.
[Shatner] When it comes to top secret warfare,
the battle is often fought not with weapons
but with information.
And in that battle,
truth itself can become the casualty.
[Beyer] When it's deception,
you never know exactly where the truth lies.
The whole philosophy of deception, it's like
a game of chess between two sides,
and the winner is the person who can
be the most convincing when you get to the bottom of it.
[Pope] Secrecy sends the message to people
that they're hiding something, and, of course, they are.
With all of that, you wonder what
we haven't got to hear about.
And they could be anything.
I mean, the sky's the limit.
Was the Moon landing all just a masterful deception?
Whether one accepts the conspiracy theory or not,
it shows how secrecy can distort and cloud
even our greatest achievements.
But perhaps that was the goal all along.
From covert missions and mysterious technologies
to dangerous experiments and even phantom forces,
there's no question that top secret projects
have shaped world history
in ways that continue to surprise us.
And for every operation that's been revealed,
there are countless clandestine plans
and mysterious missions that may forever remain...
unexplained.
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