[David] Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"
we reveal the wild cover stories that fooled the world,
from the FBI sting which traps a crooked U.S. senator...
- The FBI signs off on private jets and swanky parties
to fool investors.
- To the CIA's secret airline,
where there's no list of restricted items.
- They deliver guns, spies, and soldiers anywhere in the world.
- And a clever magician hides a vital factory from enemy eyes
during World War II.
- The army wants to make the entire Boeing
production plant disappear.
- These are the astonishing and sometimes terrible things
done by governments and the people who work for them.
It's time to bring them to light.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
When the Nazis discover the body
of a drowned British officer carrying classified documents,
they believe they've stumbled onto top secret
Allied invasion plans.
In fact, it's the most audacious deception
of World War II.
♪ ♪
- In 1943, the German military is bogged down
on the Eastern front, fighting the Red Army.
And now the Allies want to open a second front
in Western Europe to split the German Army in two.
Their plan is to use Sicily as a stepping stone
to mainland Italy.
- The location of Sicily is a strong choice,
but it's also very obvious.
Winston Churchill himself puts it like this.
Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily.
[David] To succeed, the Allies must divert
German attention from Sicily.
[Mark] What they'd really like to do
is deceive the Germans into thinking
that the Allies are gonna land somewhere other than Sicily.
[David] Luckily, British Intelligence
already has a plan.
[Hakeem] Charles Cholmondeley
is an MI5 Intelligence officer.
He realizes that he can feed
fake invasion plans to the Germans...
♪ ♪
By placing documents on the body
of what appears to be a serviceman who died
in an air crash off the coast of Spain.
♪ ♪
- MI5 assign Naval Intelligence Officer Ewen Montagu
to aid Cholmondeley in getting the plan together.
[David] The mission is called Operation Mincemeat.
The first challenge, Cholmondeley and Montagu
need a fresh cadaver to play the role
of their downed officer.
- Montagu goes to the London coroner.
And he asks him, do you have an appropriate corpse for us?
[David] Six weeks later,
the body of a Welsh homeless man, Glyndwr Michael,
turns up at the coroner's office.
- He had ingested rat poison,
which meant that his insides, if an autopsy were done,
would look similar to what would happen to someone
if they had died of drowning at sea.
[David] But there's a problem.
The body is already starting to decompose.
[Vince] You couldn't freeze it
because even in the 1940s, a good coroner could figure out
that a body had been frozen.
So you could keep it refrigerated,
but you had to use it relatively quickly.
[David] With the clock ticking,
Cholmondeley and Montagu create the papers
their fake officer will carry.
- British Intelligence decides to try and convince
the Germans that the Allies will be landing
in Greece and in Sardinia.
[David] Deciding exactly what clues
to give the enemy isn't easy.
- If the fake intelligence is too blatant,
the Germans will see through the ruse, game over.
- The British have to give them just enough
to draw conclusions.
♪ ♪
- The clues to the fake invasion are planted,
and the corpse is given a history
and the name Captain William Martin.
- British Intelligence realizes that just a uniform
is not enough to make the Nazis believe this story.
♪ ♪
Martin needed more than that.
He needed his own backstory.
So they created one for him.
[David] They give him a silver cross,
a half-used book of stamps, a pencil stub, keys,
a bus ticket, and cigarettes.
[Vince] They even create letters
from Martin's father and his bank manager to try to breathe
even more life into him.
They also give him a girlfriend, a fiancée.
She's actually a desk officer for MI5,
who they took a picture of to create this illusion.
[David] On April 19th, a Royal Navy submarine
sets off with its top secret cargo.
The lives of thousands of Allied soldiers
could now rest on the shoulders of a man who died 11 weeks ago.
♪ ♪
- 11 days later, at 4:30 a.m. on April 30th,
the body of Glyndwr Michael is given final rites
and lowered into the ocean.
The body is floating off the coast of Spain
and is found by a fishing crew.
They bring it on board, discover the documents,
and very quickly get them into the hands
of German Intelligence.
[David] Back in Britain,
Cholmondeley and Montagu wait with bated breath.
Will the Nazis buy their ruse?
[Mark] Finally, on May 12,
British codebreakers at Bletchley Park
decrypt a message where Hitler issues an order saying
we need to be particularly careful about defending
Sardinia and Greece.
[Paul] Now they actually can see,
almost in real time,
the effects of this disinformation campaign.
- Soon thereafter, British Intelligence learns
that German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has been ordered
with the entire 1st Panzer Division to Greece,
along with seven different infantry divisions.
- A telegram is sent to Winston Churchill saying,
"Mincemeat swallowed hook, line, and sinker."
[David] On July 10th, Allied troops land
on the shores of Sicily,
when they are met by just two German divisions.
[Paul] The entire campaign only takes 38 days
before Sicily falls, and the Germans
are forced to retreat with their remaining
forces to the mainland.
[David] This incredible subterfuge
remains a closely guarded secret until the '50s.
The UK is rocked by a series of humiliating
Soviet spy scandals.
British Intelligence desperately needs
some good PR,
and so in 1953, Montagu publishes
"The Man Who Never Was,"
and the world finally learns how Operation Mincemeat
changed the course of the war.
- Imagine how many more British, American,
and Canadian soldiers would have died
if Mincemeat hadn't been run and hadn't been so successful.
♪ ♪
- In 1895, the illusionist Harry Keller
made a woman vanish into thin air.
In 1918, Harry Houdini made a five-ton elephant disappear.
So when the U.S. military wants to make a 26-acre
aircraft plant become invisible,
who better to turn to than a magician?
[airplane engines roaring]
[whistling]
[Sami] When the Japanese bomb the U.S. fleet
at Pearl Harbor, the United States
immediately declares war against Japan.
[crowd chanting]
[Paul] But the United States is not particularly
well prepared for a war with Japan.
And in February of 1942, about two months
after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese submarine
surfaces off the coast of California
and shells an oil field.
And this really ramps up American fears
of the possibility of a Japanese attack
on the West Coast.
♪ ♪
- What the U.S. is really concerned with
is the vulnerability of our aircraft
and shipbuilding plants on the West Coast.
If the Japanese bombers were to strike there,
they could destroy this nascent industry
and just flatten it before it ever gets off the ground.
- An attack on these factories could totally
cripple America's war effort.
[David] One location in particular keeps
U.S. generals awake at night--
Boeing's vast Plant 2 aircraft factory.
- Boeing's Plant 2 is a state of the art,
million square foot aircraft facility
in Seattle, Washington.
It employs over 30,000 workers who churn out
over 300 B-17 bombers a month.
[David] To protect Plant 2,
the U.S. military turns to
engineer Colonel John Ohmer Jr.
- He's the perfect guy for this job.
Number one, he's an expert in camouflage.
And number two, as a hobby, he is a magician.
So who better to make an entire factory disappear?
[David] If Ohmer can make Plant 2 vanish,
it will be the greatest magic trick of his life.
But hiding a sprawling mega factory
will take far more than a few rolls of camo netting.
Ohmer must think bigger.
- Ohmer decides to build an entire fake town on the roof
of the factory, a whole 3D model neighborhood
perched right on top of Plant 2.
- Ohmer wants to make the entire Boeing
production plant disappear when viewed from above.
- To any Japanese pilot, this giant aircraft facility
will look like just another residential suburb.
- Ohmer's plan gets approved,
but given the possibility of a Japanese attack,
there's no time to lose.
- In 1942, Army engineer John Ohmer
is planning to build a fake town
on the roof of the Seattle Boeing factory
to hide it from enemy bombers.
For help, he turns to Hollywood.
[upbeat music]
- The film business is filled with set designers, stagehands,
carpenters, and decorators who have made their entire careers
building fake worlds on tight schedules.
Ohmer realizes that they're the perfect collaborators.
- Ohmer recruits John Stewart Detlie,
an Oscar-nominated art director in Hollywood,
who's also married to the star Veronica Lake,
and puts him in charge of the project up in Seattle.
- Together, they assemble a Hollywood dream team
of 13 architects, 8 commercial artists,
7 landscape architects, 5 engineers,
and 1 soil-management expert.
Nothing is overlooked.
[David] They get to work on construction.
First, they stretch 26 acres of netting across the roof
of the plant, 50 feet off the ground,
creating an elevated blank canvas.
On top of this, they begin to construct their fake town.
[Amy] Next, the team has a brainwave.
From the air, it's impossible to tell how tall a building is.
And since they're running a race against time,
they decide to cut some corners.
They can build them a third of the height
using plywood and canvas.
[David] Soon, a strange miniature town appears--
53 houses, a dozen garages, greenhouses,
a service station, even a corner store.
Then it's brought to life.
- Detlie and his people put in fake trees
made out of fiberglass,
and for the foliage on the trees,
they use chicken feathers painted in appropriate greens.
[David] Now all this Hollywood production needs
to make it sing is a cast.
- Boeing employees are encouraged
to spend their breaks on the rooftop,
moving cars, straightening laundry,
or just lounging on fake porches.
The total cost of the subterfuge is $3 million.
Now, at the time, that's 10 times the price
of making a major Hollywood movie.
[David] By spring 1943, it's finished.
Now Ohmer's grand illusion needs to be put to the test
by top brass back in Washington.
- They send cameras up in open-cockpit planes.
They look down, capture images,
and what they find is startling.
The town works.
This giant factory with thousands of workers
has completely disappeared.
[David] Japan's bombers never make it
to the U.S. mainland,
and Ohmer's illusion is never truly tested.
But the entire operation is kept secret from the public
until the end of the war.
- It's only as the Americans are closing in
on the Japanese homeland in late July of 1945
that they feel confident enough to tell the public.
[David] On July 23rd, three weeks before V-J Day,
"The Seattle Daily Times" unveils the fake town
to their astonished readers,
dubbing it the Boeing Wonderland.
Hiding an aircraft factory, that's ingenious.
But up next, the CIA has to disguise an entire fleet
of U.S. airplanes, taking the art of subterfuge
to whole new heights.
♪ ♪
[Riskin] In the early 1950s, the French military
is fighting Communist rebels for control of their greatest
Southeast Asian colony, Indochina.
But it's a battle that they're losing.
♪ ♪
[Sami] By 1954, much of the French army,
just over 10,000 troops,
are holed up in this mountainous valley
named Dien Bien Phu, surrounded by enemy troops.
- The French don't have the air power to actually
resupply their troops.
[David] Outnumbered, outgunned, and out of options,
the French make a desperate appeal for aid
to the Americans.
[Sami] President Eisenhower sees the French
as a major ally in fighting Communist expansion
across the globe.
- The president realizes, though,
that the American public has no appetite
for another ground war.
[Mark] We recently had World War II
and the Korean War, and he doesn't want
to write the French a blank check.
So Eisenhower is more interested
in covert assistance to the French
than in sending the Marines.
[Hakeem] To keep the U.S. support under wraps,
he's gonna need a major smokescreen.
[David] The answer could be an extraordinary air service
with a very ordinary name,
Civil Air Transport or CAT for short.
[Sami] CAT was formed in 1946
by combat veteran pilots flying supplies
to anti-Communist forces
fighting in the Chinese Civil War--
weapons, people, livestock.
No cargo is too wild and no route is too hazardous
for CAT's pilots.
[David] Their gung-ho reputation
catches the attention of the CIA,
who start using CAT to help supply
their overseas operations.
- Soon, CAT is flying
hundreds of covert missions for the U.S.
And by 1950, the CIA had bought the entire airline
using a shell company called the Airdale Corporation.
[David] And CAT has the perfect disguise.
They become an actual legitimate business,
flying regular passengers all around Asia.
- In fact, their work ends up making them
the second largest air transport company in the world.
[David] That makes using CAT
a perfect way to secretly get supplies to French troops.
But pulling that off requires
a whole new level of deception.
- The U.S. government wants to be 100% sure
that these airdrops are never traced back to them.
So they begin working with the CAT pilots
to make sure that this entire operation
looks like a French enterprise.
[David] Overnight, a fleet of CAT's finest planes
and pilots get a French makeover.
- All the planes are repainted in French colors
to make them appear to be
regular French military flights.
[David] Some of their aircrews
even use French language commands over the radio.
[radio chatter]
In March 1954, the supply drops begin.
♪ ♪
Disguised as French airmen, CAT pilots risk it all,
flying ammo and equipment through hostile skies.
[Hakeem] These are incredibly dangerous missions.
Two pilots died.
Among those who survived, they say that
the anti-aircraft fire they receive
is as intense as the worst they faced during World War II.
♪ ♪
- For two months, CAT pilots run a deadly gauntlet,
flying almost 700 missions to supply besieged French troops.
[David] Despite Eisenhower's top secret aid mission,
the French forces are defeated in May 1954.
Even so, CAT's adventures in the region are far from over.
♪ ♪
[Sami] In the late 1950s,
CAT is rebranded as Air America.
And as the Vietnam War heats up,
it flies thousands of covert missions in Southeast Asia
until 1975, when the conflict ends
and its doors are closed for good.
[David] In 1979, journalist Christopher Robbins
publishes a best-selling book called "Air America."
♪ ♪
And the truth about this amazing airline...
♪ ♪
Is finally revealed.
- The ultimate con requires the ultimate con artist.
So when one FBI agent sets out to catch grifters and scammers,
he wants the best on his team, even if the best
is a notorious swindler himself.
[dramatic music]
[Sasha] It's the 1970s in New York.
John F. Good is an FBI agent working fraud and corruption,
and he's hungry for bigger cases.
[Sami] Agent Good is an "out of the box" thinker,
and he believes the best way to ensnare
high-level criminals is to go undercover in sting operations.
[David] The problem is, John Good doesn't know
the first thing about running a con.
He needs to find someone who does.
- In the spring of 1977, Agent Good hears
about the arrest of a small-time
con artist named Mel Weinberg.
He's this cigar-chewing, snappy dressing grifter.
He's got the gift of gab and a sharp mind,
but not sharp enough to avoid being picked up by the Feds
for a phony investment scam.
[David] Mel is looking at some serious prison time,
so Agent Good thinks he'll be willing to play ball.
- John Good offers Mel Weinberg a deal.
He agrees to work with Good and the FBI,
running stings in the art world.
[David] Mel joins the team
and immediately hatches the perfect sting.
- Mel tells Good that before he was arrested,
he ran this con.
He would pose as a representative
of these supremely wealthy
and totally invented Arab investors,
and the crooks lined up to sell him stolen goods.
- Mel suggests that they revive his very effective con,
and they start to represent "Arab wealthy sheikhs"
looking for stolen artwork.
[David] Agent Good agrees to use Mel's con as bait,
and it doesn't take long to hook their first big catch.
- Mel knows a New York hustler with some shady underworld
connections named Ron Sablosky.
He wants to meet Mel's fake "Arab investors"
to discuss a deal.
[Andrew] Agent Good creates a fake company
called Abdul Enterprises.
This is what gives the sting operation
its name, Abscam, a combination of Abdul and scam.
[Sami] Mel then rents a suite in the super fancy
Plaza Hotel to meet Sablosky.
And the FBI wire it up to record the evidence.
[David] Now all they need
is to find a perfect person to play the sheikh.
- Mel agrees to let the Feds allow one of their agents
to pose as the sheikh,
but that turns out to be a big mistake.
- On the day of the meeting with Sablosky,
an FBI agent arrives dressed as a sheikh.
[Hakeem] But there's a few problems here.
First off, the agent is a white dude.
Second, he's wearing a cheap Arabic costume
from a thrift store.
And third, he doesn't speak a word of Arabic.
- Sablosky should have seen through this façade,
but maybe it was the prospect of money that blinded him.
♪ ♪
- As the meeting progresses, things go from bad to worse
as a tape recorder that's fixed
under the table where the meeting is taking place
breaks free and drops to the ground
at Sablosky's feet.
- Somehow, Mel manages to smooth talk his way
through these blunders, and eventually
Sablosky offers to sell them a number of stolen artworks.
- The first sting is a success, but if Good wants
the next phase to work, he needs to scale things up
with some serious money.
♪ ♪
[Sami] Good persuades his bosses to deposit
a million dollars into a bank account.
Then Mel can provide their marks
with a direct telephone number for the Chase Manhattan Bank,
who can truthfully confirm Abdul Enterprises are indeed
a multi-million dollar client.
- With bigger financial bait in the water,
you catch bigger fish.
And that's exactly what happens.
In 1978, Mel is approached by an associate
of Angelo Errichetti, who's the mayor of Camden, New Jersey.
[Sami] The mayor is open to doing business.
Mel and Good are able to win Errichetti's trust
with a shady casino-licensing deal.
Errichetti then starts to introduce him
to more powerful people from his corrupt political circles.
[David] Next, Mel and Good supersize their scam
to keep up the charade.
Meeting places get more extravagant.
And now when the sheikh appears,
he's played by an FBI agent who can actually speak Arabic
and who's wearing more convincing clothes.
- The FBI even signs off on private jets and swanky parties
to continue to fool investors of the sheikhs' wealth.
[David] Good hears that New Jersey Senator
Harrison Williams Jr. wants to meet.
This could be the biggest catch of them all.
- The senator secretly asks for a $100-million loan.
But if the sheikh sorts out the loan,
Williams promises to use his position
to secure lucrative government contracts
for Abdul Enterprises.
[Sasha] It's a bombshell.
Now the FBI has a senator on camera clearly demanding
a bribe for political favors.
[David] Senator Williams would be arrested
and sentenced to three years,
the first U.S. senator to be sent to prison in 80 years.
- Now, up to this point, Good hadn't made
a single arrest because he didn't wanna blow
the fake sheikh's cover.
But now Abscam makes its move
and makes an additional 19 arrests,
including several congressmen.
And it goes all the way down the food chain
back to Mayor Errichetti.
[David] The case is a media sensation,
and the story is discovered all over again in 2013,
when it becomes the basis for the Hollywood movie
"American Hustle."
- In World War II, Britain, the most dangerous person
in the country isn't wearing a uniform or carrying a weapon.
She's wearing an apron, baking scones for her neighbors
and radioing the secrets of the atomic bomb directly to Stalin.
[cows mooing]
[Vince] The Beurton family live
in a picture-perfect village in Oxfordshire,
about 80 miles from London.
They go to church.
They have young kids.
They are exactly who you would want to live next to
as your neighbor.
[Sami] Mrs. Beurton is a striking woman
with a foreign accent.
Neighbors know her as someone who bakes
the most excellent scones.
[David] What the neighbors don't know
is Mrs. Beurton is actually Colonel Ursula Kuczynski
of the Soviet Union's Red Army.
She's on a mission to steal the secrets
of the Anglo-American atomic bomb project
and send them back to Stalin.
And she's one of his best spies.
- Ursula is a German Jew by birth
and a longtime Communist sympathizer.
In the 1930s, she's living in Shanghai
with her first husband and her son.
- Ursula starts a lurid love affair
with a man named Richard Sorge, who is not everything he seems.
He's actually a headhunter for Soviet Intelligence.
[Andrew] Sorge recruits her into the Soviet
intelligence service, recognizing that her lifestyle
as a domestic housewife is the perfect cover
and that nobody would suspect a domestic housewife
is actually a Soviet agent.
- Throughout the next decade,
Ursula spies across the world for Russia,
using the routine of family life
to disguise her activities.
[suspenseful music]
In 1940, Ursula marries a British-born Communist spy
and becomes Mrs. Beurton.
Now, Mr. Beurton knows all about her espionage,
and they settle down to a quiet life
in a rural British village.
[David] For Ursula's Soviet spy masters,
the timing couldn't be better.
- In the 1940s, the Soviets have a number
of assets inside the American and British-led A-bomb project.
- Chief among them is a man named Klaus Fuchs,
who works at a university not far
from where Ursula lives.
[David] Ursula is tasked with being Fuchs' handler.
But receiving nuclear secrets from a scientist working
for the most classified military venture
on the planet, that's no easy task.
[Riskin] The atomic bomb project
is under huge scrutiny,
as are the movements of the scientists who work on it.
Ursula needs to get close to Fuchs
to establish a relationship, but without alerting suspicion
of either British or U.S. Intelligence forces.
[David] Luckily, Ursula is a master of becoming invisible.
[Riskin] She arranges to meet Fuchs for walks
in the Oxfordshire countryside.
Her plan is that anyone watching will make
the obvious assumption that they're just lovers
having an illicit affair.
It's the perfect cover because it totally explains
why they would make all these attempts
to be as discreet as possible.
- Ursula then relays information back to Moscow
from a radio transmitter she's built herself.
- When Ursula has more information to pass
than can be done by radio, she travels to London
and leaves a chalk mark at a preordained location
to signal to her Soviet handler
that she has documents to pass along.
Ursula then has a rendezvous with her Soviet handler
just outside of London on the roadside,
and there she passes along whatever pictures and documents
she needs to deliver.
[David] For 15 months, Ursula tends her vegetable patch
and hosts the local church bell ringers
for tea and cakes,
all the while slipping the USSR
top secret plans for the A-bomb.
- What she manages to deliver Stalin from Fuchs
is essentially a guide to building an atomic bomb.
And her mission is such a success that by the time
Truman meets Stalin at the Potsdam Conference
and informs him that they are working on
an atomic bomb project,
the Soviet leader doesn't flinch
because he already knows everything.
- After the war, Ursula's cover
gets its ultimate life or death test.
In 1947, one of her previous assets
defects and points the finger right at her.
A few weeks later, she gets a knock on the door.
- Ursula is now in MI5's crosshairs,
and they send Jim Skardon, one of their most
feared spy catchers, to pay her a little visit.
[David] Ursula welcomes Skardon in
and puts the kettle on.
And she serves tea while politely
answering his questions and says that
she's a loyal British subject.
[Hakeem] Ursula does not deny that she does have
a socialist background, but she claims that
she turned away from the Soviets.
[Sami] Once again, the innocent housewife routine
works its magic.
Afterwards, in his files, Skardon writes that, quote,
"Mrs. Beurton is a somewhat unimpressive type,
"with frowsy unkempt hair and a rather untidy appearance.
The British agents have been totally outmaneuvered."
♪ ♪
[David] Two years later,
Klaus Fuchs is arrested for espionage.
Fuchs confirms Ursula as his handler,
and the game is finally up.
But this time, when MI5 comes for her, Ursula is gone.
- Ursula moves to East Germany, where she lives out her life
not as a spy but as a author of children's books
under a new name, Ruth Werner.
[David] In 1977, the story of her life of espionage
is revealed when she publishes a tell-all autobiography.
♪ ♪
- Cover stories can fool the enemy.
They can also ensnare the innocent.
In the hunt for Osama bin Laden,
the CIA tricks thousands of ordinary people
to catch one man.
[dramatic music]
[Sami] The United States has been hunting
for Osama bin Laden for well over a decade,
but he's been like a ghost.
But then in August of 2010,
an operation tracking an Al-Qaeda courier
leads the CIA to a compound
in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
- Satellite imagery shows a man taking
regular walks through the courtyard of this compound.
And visually, it looks like a match to Osama bin Laden.
But it's not a certain match.
And if you're going to undertake a mission like this
in a foreign country, then you need to be
100% certain or at least as close as possible to that.
[Jack] Pakistan is a nuclear power,
and a raid like this risks destabilizing the government.
We have to be absolutely sure that bin Laden is there
before we decide to launch.
We can't just rely on some grainy satellite photos.
♪ ♪
[David] The race is on to verify
bin Laden is inside the compound,
then the surveillance team spots something,
which leads to a brilliantly devious bit of deception.
- Teams watching the compound have observed
that very few people are allowed in,
but one group that is allowed in
is health workers administering polio vaccines.
So the thinking is, one way the CIA can get inside
is to set up a fake inoculation program.
- If they can get medical professionals into the compound
and collect blood samples, they're probably not going
to get his blood, but they might be able to get
blood of his relatives.
[David] The plan is hatched,
but then they discover a critical flaw.
- There is no historical sample of bin Laden's blood,
so we don't actually know what his DNA
specifically looks like.
- The CIA does some digging and learns that bin Laden
has a sister who died in Boston of brain cancer,
and there is some of her genetic material
still in the United States.
Because she's a close blood relative,
they can use this sample to make a DNA match.
[David] With the DNA secured,
now they need to find a local accomplice
to run the scheme.
[Riskin] The CIA identifies Dr. Shakil Afridi
as a man who might be able to help them set up
this healthcare scheme without arousing suspicion.
He's a leading physician in the Khyber tribal district
who's already overseen a number
of U.S.-funded vaccination programs in Pakistan.
[David] Even better for the CIA, Afridi needs cash.
[Sasha] Afridi was recently kidnapped
by a local Islamic warlord.
His family paid $10,000 for his release,
and that was money that they didn't have.
So the agency offers him about $60,000
to set up this covert vaccination scheme.
[Amy] Afridi accepts the CIA's offer,
and to maintain total secrecy over the operation,
he's not even told who the prime target is.
[David] With their doctor signed up,
the CIA starts devising a program
to get health workers into the compound.
- They pick a hepatitis B vaccination program
for their cover because it requires a drop of blood
be taken from the subject and blotted on rapid test strips.
And then the blood can be later tested for DNA.
- But ethically, it's quite dubious because the vaccine
needs three rounds to work.
And here they're only planning to do one.
- They're leaving an entire community
thinking they're immune to hepatitis B
when really they're not protected.
[David] Ultimately, bin Laden is considered
such a high-value target
that the CIA decides mass subterfuge
is a price worth paying.
[indistinct chatter]
In March 2011, the CIA rolls out the scheme.
After administering 1,000 jabs, the time comes
to enter bin Laden's suspected compound.
♪ ♪
[Riskin] In late April, one of Afridi's nurses
is sent to the compound.
If she's denied entry at the door, the entire scheme,
months of work could come crashing down.
[Jack] The stakes are incredibly high.
This might be their one shot to confirm that bin Laden
is actually on the compound.
And then the door opens, and she's allowed in.
- Exactly what happens next within the compound
is fiercely debated.
A nurse tells a local journalist
that she was able to enter and take a sample
from a young woman whose description matched
bin Laden's daughter, Mariam,
but she later retracted that statement.
But according to Pakistani Intelligence,
the nurse hands over the hep B blood test to Afridi.
- As far as the results from those blood samples,
it's still a bit of a mystery today
as all the bin Laden files haven't been declassified.
- Tonight, I can report to the American people
and to the world.
- What we do know is that just a few days after those
blood samples were reportedly taken, President Obama
gave the okay to a mission to go into the compound
and either capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
[David] That's not quite the end of the story.
- Three weeks after bin Laden's death,
Afridi is arrested by Pakistani authorities
for colluding with U.S. Intelligence.
[David] A British newspaper investigates the arrest,
revealing the CIA's clandestine operation
to the world.
- Tales of grand military deception
go all the way back to the Siege of Troy.
So in 2014, when Vladimir Putin sends 280 trucks to Ukraine
that he claims are carrying aid supplies,
the world is sure it's a modern-day Trojan horse.
The truth turns out to be even more shocking.
[dramatic music]
[Sasha] It's 2014, and Vladimir Putin has a problem.
A revolution has swept through the streets of Kyiv,
toppling the pro-Russian government,
and the country is turning decisively toward the West.
[crowd shouting]
- For Putin, who sees Ukraine as part
of a great Russian Empire,
this is an intolerable betrayal.
[David] Putin wants to bring Ukraine
back under Moscow's thumb.
But with the world watching, he doesn't wanna risk
a full military confrontation.
So he turns to what many believe the Russians do best--
deception.
- The idea of smoke and mirrors is deeply embedded
into the Russian military.
The term the Russians use is maskirovka.
It means masking or masquerading.
[David] Putin is about to give the world a masterclass.
His first move comes in February
on the Crimean Peninsula in Southern Ukraine.
[Sasha] On February 27th, hundreds
of highly trained soldiers in unmarked green uniforms
appear out of nowhere.
They go on to take Crimea's parliament,
the airports, and strategic choke points
with chilling efficiency.
- With their lack of official insignia,
they're dubbed the little green men by the world's media.
[Sasha] The West immediately suspects
that the little green men are elite Russian forces.
But they have no evidence.
[Jack] Vladimir Putin denies it,
says that these are just local defense forces
or local guerrillas that are rising up.
[Hakeem] Before the West can prove
that these are Russian commandos,
it's already too late, and the Russian flag
is already flying over Crimea.
Putin has essentially created his own ghost army.
They give him plausible deniability
but still performing his dirty work.
[David] The first act of Maskirovka
is a stunning success.
- Next, Putin sets his sights on Eastern Ukraine's
industrial heartland, the Donbas.
- Putin needs to send in more men and heavy weapons.
But now the Russian-Ukraine border
is more closely watched than ever.
[Sami] On August 12th, Russian state television
broadcasts images of a vast fleet
of 280 white trucks rolling towards the Ukrainian border.
Moscow announces that this is a humanitarian convoy
filled with water, food, and medicine
for the suffering people of Donbas.
- The arrival of these trucks raises alarm bells
in Western capitals because
they have already been deceived once.
- The convoy looks like its made up
of military vehicles that have just been
very hastily painted white.
It looks suspect as hell.
[David] It seems like a classic Trojan horse maneuver
where instead of aid, the trucks
contain weapons and fighters.
- When the trucks reach the border,
their passage is barred.
And the unfolding standoff becomes a global media event.
[Sami] The Ukrainians won't let the trucks through
without opening them up for inspection.
The Russians steadfastly refuse,
which only fuels suspicion that they contain weapons
and military equipment.
♪ ♪
[David] The tension grows.
Finally, after several days,
the Russians open the trucks up.
[Sasha] Inside, they're half empty.
What cargo they do contain, they really are aid items--
crates of water, pillows.
No weapons for rebels.
It's all a bit anticlimactic.
And eventually, the trucks are allowed entry into Ukraine.
[David] What the West don't realize
is that the convoy is only half of Russia's plan.
- While the world is fixated on this standoff,
a darker plan is unfolding elsewhere.
Many miles away on a quiet part of the border,
the Russians are secretly sneaking in
troops, tanks, and artillery over the border into Ukraine.
[David] The whole convoy
is a devious traveling road show
designed to mask the real movement of Putin's forces.
[Sami] By 2015, the Russians have taken over
a vast swath of Eastern Ukraine,
all while denying that they have any military forces
there at all.
[David] Later, at a press conference,
Vladimir Putin finally comes clean and admits his military
was in Ukraine after all.
♪ ♪
From hiding an aircraft factory
to faking entire invasions, smoke and mirrors
is far more than just stage trickery.
Often the most powerful weapon isn't a bomb or a bullet;
it's a perfectly crafted lie.
But sooner or later, the secret behind
every illusion is revealed.