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[soft dramatic music]

♪

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

I was President Bush's daily intelligence briefer.

♪

I briefed him six days a week

no matter where he was in the world.

♪

From April

to mid-July of 2001,

there was a significant increase in intelligence

reporting about al-Qaeda planning attacks.

♪

[rockets roaring]

Catastrophic attacks.

Multiple simultaneous attacks.

History-changing attacks.

[dramatic music]

♪

- We'd seen chatter before other operations.

♪

You know, they saw it around the millennium.

We saw it before the bombings in '98.

We knew they were planning something.

But they started using language we had never heard before.

They were calling it Olympic-sized.

Armageddon.

- There were real plots being manifested.

♪

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

[soft dramatic music]

- It's early this Tuesday morning,

the 11th of September, 2001.

[upbeat music]

- From the heart of New York City...

- The first job of any government

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

[soft dramatic music]

But you don't get credit for what you stopped

if you don't stop them all.

♪

And we were unable to stop the big one.

♪

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

♪

3,000 Americans had been killed.

The city I grew up in had been blown up.

There was an emotional piece of this

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

♪

Trying to stop what just had happened.

[dramatic music]

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- 20 years have passed since the United States

suffered the worst terrorist attack

in its history.

Four planes...

19 hijackers...

Nearly 3,000 killed.

An act that shook America to its core,

led to a 20-year war,

and left our legacy bruised and battered.

For the nation's premier spy agency,

9/11 was the nightmare scenario,

but it was no surprise.

♪

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

Nobody knew when an attack might happen.

Could be at any moment, any day,

any moment. That was the feeling.

It felt like al-Qaeda was ready.

It just kind of felt like that.

♪

- The international terrorist network

was targeting Americans.

For the officers, analysts,

and covert operatives

of the Central Intelligence Agency,

the hunt for al-Qaeda and its leader,

Osama bin Laden,

started years before 9/11 and ended long after.

This is their story.

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

The mission is to collect information

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

♪

- Pretty much every country I've visited

in one way or the other,

I used to smile and tell people,

"I was either causing trouble,

stopping trouble, or planning trouble."

♪

- A CIA case officer for 18 years,

Marty Martin recruited spies in the Middle East,

often undercover.

He grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana,

and became fluent in Arabic

while serving in special forces.

♪

- You would think, "What the heck?

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

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

Well, as a young boy in Louisiana,

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

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

In the Middle East,

honor is a very important thing.

Family and tribe is very important.

♪

- In July, 1998,

Martin arrives at the CIA station

in Nairobi, Kenya.

His colleagues worry they and other Americans

are in the crosshairs.

- The operations officers there were strident in that

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

They even showed me how they would drive that truck

if they went to hit the embassy.

As I look back, I'll never forget

the looks on their faces when they told me,

"Marty, we are vulnerable here.

They are coming at us."

♪

- Massive explosions at two U.S. embassies

in East African countries this morning.

The United States embassy in Nairobi, Kenya,

has been heavily damaged.

♪

- The bombings were allegedly carried out

by members of al-Qaeda,

an international terrorist group

founded by Osama bin Laden.

- He's believed to run a vast terrorist network

from his headquarters in Afghanistan.

But who is this man?

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

♪

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

the name Osama bin Laden.

I probably heard it when I was first working

on Afghanistan.

My name is Cindy Storer.

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

♪

I was the only one looking at bin Laden

when I first came.

And I came across his name as early as 1982,

certainly, as someone who was part of the people

who were coming from overseas to work

and fight against the Soviets.

- [shouting indistinctly]. Allahu Akbar!

[rockets whoosh]

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

and the bin Laden family

and gone to the mountains of Afghanistan to fight,

and so, you know, that would engender

some sort of respect.

♪

- He was very devout. He lived very simply.

He kept the Koran by his bedside,

and as his myth grew,

people would talk about him, you know,

glowing when he prayed and things like that.

- Bin Laden joins Afghan forces

in a decade-long fight against a Soviet invasion.

He then returns to Saudi Arabia,

but after denouncing the royal family's

alliance with the U.S.,

he's stripped of his citizenship

and leaves for Sudan.

- Bin Laden was only just starting

to expand his reach when we saw him

as an emerging threat during his time in Sudan.

We characterized him as one of the most active

financial sponsors of Islamic fundamental terrorism.

- The U.S. pressures the Sudanese government

to kick him out, and bin Laden

is again a man without a country.

- No one knew exactly where he was gonna go,

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

if you will.

[dramatic music]

He ended up in Afghanistan,

which didn't surprise us at all.

He had a lot of friends who would provide

security and support.

♪

- Within months,

bin Laden issues a declaration of war

on the United States.

- Bin Laden had two objectives.

One was to drive the United States

out of the Middle East,

and the other was to depose

the leaders of Sunni Muslim countries,

who he saw as American puppets.

♪

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

they're gonna come kill you.

♪

- To better understand

bin Laden's operations and associates,

Storer starts piecing together intelligence

and arrives at a startling conclusion.

- I was looking at these associations

that I'd drawn out

and how people related to each other,

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

They even talked about moving money

from one line item on their budget

to another line item on the budget

to pay for somebody's medical care.

Then they were issuing paychecks.

And then I started going back and looking at all

of the information we had on them

over the years and realized

that this was a terrorist organization,

and it really was one of those eureka moments

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

and all of a sudden you just go...

Like, everything snapped together.

♪

- Osama bin Laden

is more than just a financier of jihad.

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

- Nobody wanted to believe it. [laughs]

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

People from all these cultures don't work together.

Their school systems stink.

They're not capable of critical thinking.

I mean, just a lot of crazy--

not really crazy for the time,

but a lot of assumptions that people were making.

[soft dramatic music]

- People were focused on nation-states.

There was not an appreciation across the organization

for al-Qaeda and bin Laden

and non-state actors in general.

- So trying to tell folks, you know,

"Not only do you have this group of people

"from all over the world who are working together,

"but that they're well-educated,

and they know what they're doing,"

yeah, that did not go over well.

- Bin Laden establishes his base

in Afghanistan after maneuvering his way

into the good graces of the Taliban.

- The Taliban has set up

a religious extremist government

that not only tramples on women's rights

and bans most modern pleasures,

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

- The most important factor

in a terrorist groups' ability

to conduct attacks is safe haven.

And that's what the Taliban provided.

So complete freedom of movement,

complete ability to train, complete ability to plan.

[rockets whoosh]

♪

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

and the cleanup seems never ending,

there is no sense this morning that revenge is right,

only that it may be necessary.

- In the aftermath of those bombings

of embassies in Africa, what do we do?

We fiddle-faddle around. We sent firecrackers.

We sent, you know, a few missiles.

- Two weeks after the embassy bombings,

the United States struck back at bin Laden long distance,

dropping cruise missiles

on his alleged terrorist training camp

in eastern Afghanistan.

- The United States had tried to retaliate

and did no real damage,

and so, to his followers,

he looked like he had taken on

the United States and won.

- My fellow Americans, our battle against terrorism

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

nor will it end with today's strike.

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

You hit them in the effing nose,

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

President Clinton should have been asking us

every day, "Where is Osama bin Laden,

and what are you doing about it?"

No lawyers, no Janet Reno saying,

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

None of that.

You say, "This guy has bombed our embassies.

I want him dead."

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

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

is the quality of the men and women

and what they meant to me.

♪

Someone once asked me,

"How'd you get through tough days?"

♪

'Cause I was surrounded by men and women

who were ready for it.

- George Tenet became director

of Central Intelligence in 1997.

A brash New Yorker and son of Greek immigrants,

he would become one of the longest tenured directors

at the CIA.

He spoke about the agency's successes and failures

in a rare interview in 2015.

- We knew that al-Qaeda was dedicated.

We understood that this was an organization

that was operating with a hub in Afghanistan

that operated in 60 countries.

We understood that they had an interest

in attacking the United States overseas

or inside this country.

[indistinct chatter]

- The CIA deserves both credit and blame.

They deserve credit for knowing

that a major attack was coming.

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

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

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

- Richard Clark

was the top counterterrorism official

at the White House, coordinating efforts

across all U.S. intelligence agencies,

including the CIA.

- It was not an intelligence failure.

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

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

and do anything about it.

- I don't believe that Mr. Clark

has an accurate sense

of the sense of urgency that existed

at the Central Intelligence Agency

between the East Africa bombing and 9/11.

- By 1999,

as a new millennium approaches,

the CIA believes more terror attacks

against the U.S. are imminent.

♪

- There is not the slightest doubt

that Osama bin Laden,

his worldwide allies, and his sympathizers

are planning further attacks against us.

♪

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

could occur at any time.

- During the millennium threat period,

I told the President of the United States

to expect between 5 and 15 attacks

against American interests.

- Holiday travelers warned to be calm

but vigilant for millennium terror threats.

- Preparing for the worst.

The CIA believes that a bin Laden terror attack

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

- The fury of technical operations

for a period of months was enormous.

- Arrests in Jordan last week have linked the threats

to exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.

- 300 extra customs agents are on high alert this morning

at entry points across the United States.

- The arrest of 32-year-old Ahmed Ressam

has sent a chill through American law enforcement.

Now they fear terrorists have begun

selecting targets within the United States.

- Bill Clinton said, "Go on alert."

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

- Pull out all the stops, do whatever you can

to stop this possible al-Qaeda attack

around the millennium.

- Just a few minutes ago, the ball dropped here

in Times Square, and revelers cheered

as the year 2000...

- Were there successful attacks

around the millennium? No, there were not.

♪

- What was really happening at the CIA

was that everybody had been stunned,

shocked by the extent of al-Qaeda planning

to carry out strikes at the turn of the millennium.

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

What else is out there?"

And they redoubled their targeting

for collection of phones,

surveillance of individuals' homes.

- Major terror plots have been thwarted,

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

♪

- On December, 1999, CIA, FBI,

and the Department of State received intelligence

on the travels of suspected al-Qaeda operatives

to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

♪

The CIA saw the Kuala Lumpur gathering

as a potential source of intelligence

about a possible al-Qaeda attack

in Southeast Asia.

♪

- These men, Khalid al-Mihdhar

and Nawaf al-Hazmi, are part of the group

traveling to Kuala Lumpur.

Al-Mihdhar is believed

to have ties to Osama bin Laden.

- The 4th of January, 2000,

CIA obtained a photocopy of al-Mihdhar's passport

as he traveled to Kuala Lumpur.

CIA suspected that al-Mihdhar was a terrorist

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

♪

- A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist

intent on traveling to the U.S.

♪

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

♪

The agency fails to put their names

on a travel watchlist.

♪

- It defies all understanding

that the CIA could know that these two people

were in the United States

and not immediately pick up the phone

and tell the FBI at a high level,

not immediately pick up the phone

and tell the National Coordinator for Terrorism.

- It was our responsibility at CIA

to tell the FBI that information

in a formal memo

so that they could be watch-listed.

They could be put on the no-fly list.

And we didn't do that. We failed.

- The CIA says it simply dropped the ball.

- Should they have been watch-listed?

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

- Two weeks after the meeting in Kuala Lumpur,

al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi

touch down at Los Angeles International Airport,

one step closer to the worst attack

on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

♪

- They have been recruited into the plan

that Osama bin Laden had authorized

to hijack airplanes, turn them into cruise missiles,

and fly them into targets in the United States.

♪

- We can never say, in retrospect,

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

There's no way of knowing that.

We do know that there were many opportunities

that CIA either missed

or refused to participate in,

and maybe, maybe,

that could've stopped 9/11.

[dramatic music]

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

not acting, not preventing people from being killed,

we live terrorism like we live no other issue,

no other issue.

No matter what anybody says,

they'll never understand how we live this issue.

[soft dramatic music]

[soft dramatic music]

♪

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

when I watched the first interview

with bin Laden to the West

where he issued his declaration of war

against the United States.

- [speaking Arabic]

- We declared a jihad,

a holy war against the United States government

because it is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical.

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

My name is Tracy Walder,

and I was a staff operations officer

at the CIA on September 11, 2001.

♪

- Tracy Walder joined the CIA straight out of college

in the summer of 2000.

She was thrown into the hunt for Osama bin Laden,

investigating terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

- I don't think that maybe we fully realized

or understood up until that point

how structured their training was

and how organized, quite frankly,

their training was.

♪

And I believe that in the upper echelons

of administration,

that al-Qaeda was very underestimated.

♪

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

"in that dirt farm,

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

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

"and they won't be capable

of this sort of large scale attacks."

♪

- Our top story this morning is the attack

on a U.S. ship in Yemen.

♪

- An explosion ripped through the USS "Cole,"

killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others.

- The working theory among intelligence

and law enforcement officials

is that this was the work of Osama bin Laden.

- 17 Americans dead.

Investigators confirm it was al-Qaeda.

♪

- If their intention was to deter from our mission

of promoting peace and security in the Middle East,

they will fail utterly.

- Soon the burden will shift

from one U.S. president to another,

but there's confusion and delay.

♪

- Today in Florida, the race for the White house

became a race to the courthouse.

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

that we didn't destroy the leadership,

the sands of time were running out on us.

- The divisive election that wrecked this country

for 36 days after November the 7th.

- The votes of a single county

that could determine the next president

of the United States.

- The Bush campaign is sending a clear message

that they are preparing for the presidency.

- Our hair is on fire.

- It's a Bush win

in the United States Supreme Court.

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

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

- The Bush administration took this seriously...

- That I will faithfully execute

the office of President of the United States.

♪

- But like the Clinton administration,

they, too, ran out of time.

♪

- The new administration is settling in,

just coming to grips with the grave threat

posed by al-Qaeda.

A plot against the United States

is developing at the worst possible time.

- I think there were two people in the White House

who were responsible for making sure

that there was a sense of urgency,

and that's Richard Clarke,

who was the counterterrorism advisor,

and Condi Rice, who was the national security advisor.

They should have created a greater sense of urgency

on the policy side.

- There was nothing more that I could have done

to convey a sense of urgency

other than jumping out the window.

- We were looking for a more comprehensive plan

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

While that plan was developing,

we were continuing to pursue the policies

that the Clinton administration had pursued.

♪

- National security advisor Condoleezza Rice

is on the job just five days

when she receives a request from Richard Clarke.

♪

- I sent a memo saying,

"We need a urgent, high-level meeting

"to approve more aggressive action

"against bin Laden,

"because the intelligence is indicating

that they're planning major attacks against us."

♪

And I underlined "urgent."

I wanted that principal's meeting

the next week.

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

but on September 4th,

a week before the attack.

- Rice insists the Bush administration

was working furiously in response

to the looming threat, but that the intelligence,

while dire, was far too vague.

♪

- Let me read you some of the actual chatter

that was picked up in that spring and summer.

"Unbelievable news coming in weeks.

"Big event.

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

There will be attacks in the near future."

Troubling, yes.

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

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

- What happens in the spring and summer

is the threat is starting to rise all over.

♪

[sirens blare]

♪

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

♪

It would go like this,

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

- We needed to take advantage of the Afghan sanctuary,

take advantage of the discord that the Taliban had sowed

between them and the tribes of Afghanistan.

We needed to get inside the sanctuary.

♪

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

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

We knew terrorists were there.

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

It was one of the rare times in my seven years

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

♪

- Tenet and his top counterterrorism aide

Cofer Black rush to the White House.

Their message is unmistakable.

♪

- There will be significant terrorist attacks

against the United States in the coming weeks or months.

The attacks will be spectacular.

They may be multiple.

Al-Qaeda's intention is the destruction

of the United States.

"What do you think we need to do?"

was the question.

Cofer responded by saying,

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

♪

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

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

We couldn't make those decisions ourselves.

Those decisions had to be made by the president.

♪

- I think we've all asked ourselves,

"What more could have been done?"

♪

If we had known that an attack

was coming against the United States,

an attack was coming against New York and Washington,

we would have moved heaven and Earth to stop it.

♪

- There was never intelligence that indicated the attack

would be in the United States.

In fact, the intelligence

was frustratingly lacking in detail

on location, date, and method.

♪

- A few weeks before September 11th,

we started noticing that the training camps

were basically dead.

- The intelligence just dried up.

♪

What was a regular flow of intelligence

about a significant al-Qaeda attack

just was gone.

♪

- The CIA knows an attack is coming somewhere.

One of George Tenet's senior aides

goes to him with a warning.

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

"They're coming here."

And the silence that followed was deafening.

You could hear a pin drop.

- What Tenet and the CIA don't know

is that, by early August,

19 men intent on hijacking commercial airliners

are already in the United States.

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

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

♪

"On the day when al-Qaeda has attacked,

"and there are hundreds of dead Americans

"in the streets of an American city.

"What would you wish

that you had done before?"

♪

"Well, that future day is coming,

and this is the period before."

♪

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

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- President Bush travels to Florida today

to talk education,

but he's getting a harsh lesson

about the deteriorating economy.

♪

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

for what was to be a domestic trip to Florida.

♪

The PDB that morning

had the typical 10 to 12 items.

There was nothing in the book about terrorism.

I left his suite, and I was told

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

toward where the president was gonna do

one of his education events.

- I was having breakfast in downtown Washington.

- We understand that a plane

has crashed into the World Trade Center.

We don't know anything more than that.

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

- The head of my security detail

came over to me to say

a plane had hit one of the towers

of the World Trade Center.

My instinctual reaction was,

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

- They were the only enemy we had who had said

that they were gonna do some sort of catastrophic attack.

- All of us were just quiet.

I think we all were just sitting at our desks,

absorbing sort of what happened.

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

This is before the second plane even hit,

and, of course, we watched in horror

as the second plane flew in.

♪

- Another one, another plane just hit.

- [gasps] - Oh, my God.

Another plane has just hit that--yes,

that was definitely was like it was on purpose.

♪

- 60 on page 153.

Get ready for the beginning of that sentence.

Get ready.

students: She played with her boat in her house.

- Go on.

students: She played with her...

- Two things were racing through my mind

when the second plane hit.

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

The second was,

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

♪

This is what we have been worrying about.

♪

This is the nightmare scenario.

♪

- Today, we've had a national tragedy.

♪

Two airplanes have crashed

into the World Trade Center

in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

- At the White House,

Richard Clarke is in the situation room

coordinating the nation's emergency response

as the attacks unfold.

- What I had up on the TV screens

were the command centers,

and at one point, it became very clear

that the Pentagon had been hit.

The people I was talking to,

they had felt it, and then they smelled smoke.

- Oh, my goodness.

There is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.

- One eyewitness is quoted saying

he thinks a plane crashed into the Pentagon.

♪

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

Let's get away from the building,

ladies and gentlemen.

- I was in the Canon Office Building

up on Capitol Hill.

The members scattered,

and I came out, jumped in the car.

I actually could see the smoke

from the plane having crashed into the Pentagon.

♪

- We knew there was an ongoing attack

that was targeting Washington...

♪

And we knew there was

another plane up that was headed this way.

♪

- There is a report of a large plane crash

in Western Pennsylvania,

80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The plane is believed to be a Boeing 767.

♪

- Decisions were made to ground all the aircraft,

to get fighter jets up

to defend New York and Washington,

to institute the continuity of government system,

which we had prepared in case of a nuclear war.

♪

- At CIA headquarters,

there's concern they are the next target.

- We know they do multiple.

They've already flown a plane into the Pentagon.

We need to get the hell out of here

because we are the institutional knowledge.

- We decide to tell most of the workforce

to go home because we assumed

our building was a target.

♪

We assumed the Capitol was a target.

We assumed the White House was a target.

Cofer Black said, "The Counterterrorist Center

wants to stay." So we kept them there.

We said to Cofer, "They may die."

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

- The president asked to see me alone.

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

"Michael, who did this?"

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

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

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

And I told him that I was so confident

in that judgment that I would bet

my children's future on it.

♪

- After an hour or so,

a young analyst came running in,

and this analyst had obtained copies of the manifests

of the plane that hit the Pentagon,

and the names of these two people

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

The two people we'd been looking for.

- Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar

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

the two who had shown up in Los Angeles,

the two who had been in the United States

for over a year,

and two of the people

who would die on 9/11 as hijackers.

- Since entering the U.S. in 2000,

the two men have been living under their own names.

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

and enter again.

- During August 2001,

CIA had become increasingly concerned

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

and I directed a review of our files

to identify potential threats.

In the course of that review, the Counterterrorism Center

found that these two individuals

had entered the United States.

- 19 days before the attacks

and 19 months after first entering

the United States,

the CIA finally adds al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar

to the watchlist, but it's too late.

- The CIA knew

that two senior al-Qaeda terrorists

who had planned terrorist attacks

were in the United States.

So when the CIA says,

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

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

- It was a failure to not detect the presence

of these people in the United States

before August, yes.

It was a missed opportunity.

- On the night of September 11th,

Michael Morell flies back to Washington

with the president on Air Force One.

On final descent,

a military aid motions to a stunning sight:

an F-16 fighter jet

alongside the plane's left wing.

- The F-16 was so close,

you could see the pilot looking at us.

And in the distance,

you could see the still-burning Pentagon.

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

sends shivers up my back.

He said, "Their mission is, if somebody fires

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

"their mission is to put themselves

"between that missile

and the President of the United States."

That was surreal.

- Today our fellow citizens, our way of life,

our very freedom came under attack

in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

- Around 10:00,

I remember turning to my computer

and just typing one sentence.

"Nothing will ever be the same."

- Federal investigators are following

hundreds of leads tonight

to try to find out who was behind the attacks

and bring them to justice.

- If there is a gnawing concern

among federal investigators tonight,

it is this, "Have we accounted

for all the terrorist pilots?"

- The investigation into who caused all this

continues to point toward Osama bin Laden,

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

against whoever is responsible.

- There was a lot of pressure on CIA

in the aftermath of 9/11

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

- We had to unpack the threat matrix

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

We had to make immediate decisions

on what actions had to be taken overnight

to stop the next range of terrorist attacks.

- I was sending teams of analysts around Washington

with maps to show people,

"This is what Afghanistan looks like.

Here are the countries that border it."

- On September the 12th, we saw the president

and told him that what we were gonna propose to do

was put CIA teams on the ground,

marrying up with the tribes,

create the ground for special forces to arrive.

We were gonna basically go after

al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

- CIA said, "We have a plan."

And that's when President Bush said,

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

[dramatic music]

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- On September 11, 2001,

I was assigned overseas.

I was on the other side of the world.

♪

Director Tenet wanted me to come back and to organize

and lead the CIA effort

against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

I, of course, said yes,

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

♪

- A legendary spy and counterterrorism expert,

Hank Crumpton is a 24-year veteran

of the CIA's clandestine service.

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

explaining his desire to serve.

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

"Thanks for your interest.

Please reapply when you're older."

And that's what I did.

- Now Crumpton would lead an historic campaign,

commanding special operations paramilitary forces

to crush the enemy.

♪

- The orders were pretty clear.

Our mission was to destroy al-Qaeda.

♪

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

essentially outline our plan to basically seal

the borders of Afghanistan, go after their leadership,

shut off their money, destroy al-Qaeda.

It was our plan. It was our direction.

The president was playing off our sheet music.

- Truly unprecedented for the president

to sign a covert action giving this kind of authority

and almost unlimited resources

to the CIA to execute a war.

Never in American history had that happened.

♪

We walked outside,

President Bush put his hand on my shoulder,

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

♪

- 16 days after we brief the president,

we put our first team on the ground

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

Our officers often slept

on millions of dollars of cash at night.

If you didn't want to cooperate with us,

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

down your throat.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Jawbreaker was the first CIA team

into Afghanistan after 9/11.

♪

That morphed into Team Alpha, Team Bravo,

followed by Charlie, Delta, Foxtrot, Echo.

They were all deployed

into various parts of Afghanistan,

teaming up with local allies on the ground.

♪

- People remember scenes of special forces operators

and CIA officers riding on horseback.

We're back in a different century

fighting this war.

So we had 100 CIA officers,

about 400 special forces operators.

There was never a general on the ground.

There was never a command structure

on the ground.

This was real counterinsurgency.

Within 90 days, this was all done.

♪

- The Taliban is overthrown,

and bin Laden is on the run,

cornered in some of the most forbidding terrain

on Earth.

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

probably including Osama bin Laden,

are trapped in the Tora Bora Mountains,

cut off from resupplies

of food, water, and ammunition.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- Tracy Walder is on night duty

at CIA headquarters,

monitoring drone footage in a top secret room

called The Vault.

Bin Laden may be within their grasp.

♪

- We had some interesting situations,

but that was, hands down, the most tense.

George Tenet was there to support us.

Tonight's the night that this is gonna happen.

We're gonna get him.

[gun booms]

- It's not just us.

So we've got tribals on the ground,

and we're calling in bomb attacks.

- People were leaving the caves.

We were thinking that bin Laden

was probably one of those people.

- Guys on the ground come to the realization,

the Afghan tribals aren't gonna get this done.

We need help.

Our guys consult with General Franks.

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

♪

- We knew we could not successfully

capture or kill him

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

That's when the situation devolved

into shouting, cursing, screaming.

♪

- Bin Laden escapes into Pakistan

and finds sanctuary in the tribal territories

on the border.

♪

The fighting in Afghanistan drags on,

and the president soon turns his focus to a pursuit

that would confuse the War on Terror

and cost thousands of lives.

- President grabbed me in the situation room and said,

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

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

And he didn't wanna hear that.

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

Find out if Iraq was involved."

♪

- The preoccupation with Iraq

would become a decade-long distraction

from the mission of eliminating al-Qaeda.

With the Bush administration shifting priorities,

a new team is created at the CIA.

- My name is Nada Bakos.

I was a CIA analyst after September 11, 2001.

♪

The whole reason for the formation of the team

that I was on is because the White House

had the question of whether or not

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

This was backwards completely.

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

We were constantly running around

with hair on fire answering questions,

and you could tell that people

weren't getting the answers they really wanted.

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

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

what might be said in a public case

about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

- Every chemical and biological weapon

that Iraq has or makes

is a direct violation of the truce

that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

- Apparently I said,

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

- Tenet says that phrase, "slam dunk,"

was later blown far out of proportion.

- Now, the way it was portrayed

was this was the seminal moment

in the president's life in terms of deciding

whether to go to war or not,

and it's not what happened at all,

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

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

for us to make a better public case,

and all I meant to say was that.

[dramatic music]

- President Bush turns to his secretary of state.

Colin Powell prepares to present evidence

about Iraq's failure to disarm

in a speech to the United Nations.

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

We reviewed it. We made changes.

We sent it back to the White House.

From that point, it was edited again,

and we didn't hear it

until Powell gave the speech at the UN.

- What I wanna bring to your attention today

is the potentially much more sinister nexus

between Iraq

and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

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

It was drawing relationships that weren't there.

They plaster up a organizational chart

to make it look like all these entities

are connected when they're not.

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

Powell points to a suspected terrorist

named al-Zarqawi,

showing a chart created by the CIA,

but the words "Iraq-linked" have been added

to the original title.

- To our horror, General Colin Powell

used that chart on the floor of the UN

to garner international

and, I think, domestic support for the war.

- Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network

headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden

and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.

- It was masterful how they used the information

and the language around trying to create this idea

in the public's mind that Iraq

had any connection to al-Qaeda.

Zarqawi was not connected to al-Qaeda,

didn't have anything to do with that.

He also wasn't working with Saddam.

- We felt that our trust was violated,

that something we had made was misused in this way.

How can an administration do that?

- You know, everybody was frustrated.

Why does our team exist?

- I started to wonder, you know,

"What's the point of my intelligence

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

I don't think that that's right.

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

- So I don't know.

Whomever changed the title, I truly don't know

the answer to that question.

- When our coalition ousted the Taliban,

the Zarqawi network...

- It's not clear who was behind it.

Powell says his speech was approved by George Tenet,

who sat behind him in a show of support.

And just six weeks later...

- U.S. forces in Kuwait

are positioning themselves for attack.

Now officially dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom.

♪

- The U.S. invades Iraq

based on the flawed convictions

that it has weapons of mass destruction

and significant ties to al-Qaeda.

- I think the Iraq War had a detrimental impact

on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

We took our eye off the ball.

We did not finish the job in Afghanistan.

- The invasion of Iraq

not only thwarted our ability

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

exacerbated and led to the spread

and growth of al-Qaeda.

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

It's like we were playing by his playbook

and doing the things that helped him

fan the flames against the United States.

- The American public would have been angry

if there was another attack

and we didn't do everything in our power

to get information on future attacks.

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

Your actions matter.

Is it really these interrogation techniques?

Is that really the most effective thing?

♪

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- Penetrating the inner core of a terrorist organization

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

♪

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

we started to collect intelligence that al-Qaeda

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

[rockets whoosh]

But we didn't have the specifics.

- The hunt goes on for Osama bin Laden,

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

The biggest catch yet.

- Abu Zubaydah, the highest ranking

al-Qaeda leader captured so far,

can expect tough questioning from U.S. officials.

- We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader

and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden.

♪

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

♪

Abu Zubaydah has been captured,

an apparent triumph that would lead to one

of the most controversial programs in CIA history.

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

of the Enhanced Interrogation Program.

♪

Every day I was in the newspaper.

They described me almost as a torturer,

violator of laws.

- Jose Rodriguez. - Jose Rodriguez.

- Jose Rodriguez was the one who said,

"We need harsh techniques"

and went out and developed the program.

- More than a decade after leaving the CIA,

Jose Rodriguez remains the defiant face

of the Enhanced Interrogation Program.

- I am totally convinced,

you know, that the program worked well

and that we were the only answer

that the country had at the time.

We had captured Abu Zubaydah,

and we knew he was a senior person

in al-Qaeda.

He had come across our screen in relation

to the millennial plots of 2000.

- He was captured by Pakistani police,

CIA, and FBI agents at a house...

- Abu Zubaydah was severely wounded

when he was captured,

and we made a decision that we needed

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

It became known as a black site.

♪

- FBI interrogators are also brought in.

One of the first to question Abu Zubaydah

is Special Agent Ali Soufan,

a Lebanese-American fluent in Arabic.

- There is something that they don't expect

when they are being interrogated by Americans.

They don't expect a person comes with them.

They have, like, tea. They have coffee.

They have cookies.

Sit down, talk, trying to know each other,

trying to build a rapport.

That scares them. That shakes them.

He was cooperating every time we talk to him.

- Once the FBI started to get involved

with questioning Abu Zubaydah,

the CIA's reaction was,

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

and it may never be successful."

The CIA's attitude in the spring of 2002

was still hair on fire.

- Abu Zubaydah gives the FBI

a critical piece of information

about another alleged terrorist.

He says this man, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

is not only a member of al-Qaeda,

but the architect of 9/11.

♪

- Zubaydah disclosed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM,

was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

This was a vital piece of the puzzle

that helped our intelligence community

pursue KSM.

♪

- The news about KSM is a breakthrough,

but CIA officials still believe

Abu Zubaydah is holding back.

Rather than continue to build a rapport,

the CIA steps in with a new plan,

to try to break him.

- We knew we had to do something different.

♪

- You have nudity, and then you have noise,

and you have sleep deprivation,

and it goes from one stage to another

until he decides to cooperate.

That was shocking to us at the time

because this is just--I mean,

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

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

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

Nudity works and works well because these cultures,

nudity is something that is not common,

and they feel very uncomfortable with it.

- We knew that Zubaydah had more information

that could save innocent lives,

and so the CIA used an alternative set

of procedures.

- CIA likes to call it enhanced interrogation.

It was torture.

♪

- The CIA isn't acting on its own.

It has full approval from the Bush White House.

This Justice Department memo

approves ten interrogation techniques,

including a facial slap, sleep deprivation,

insects in a confinement box, and the waterboard.

- Waterboarding is putting someone

in an incline with the face and body down,

and from a distance soaking up a towel with water.

So there is a feeling that you are suffocating.

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

- Yeah. Yeah.

- That's a difficult thing to think about.

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

the belief that their life is about to end.

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

So we needed to do whatever we needed to do

to get information out of them to protect the country.

- More than four months after his capture,

Abu Zubaydah is subjected to the techniques

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

He later releases these drawings

depicting his experience.

He spends 11 days inside a confinement box.

During one waterboarding session,

he becomes completely unresponsive,

with bubbles rising through his open full mouth.

- An evaluation by the CIA's office

of medical services said AZ probably reached

the point of cooperation even prior

to the institution of enhanced measures.

- Another official says Zubaydah is blowing smoke

and deliberately exaggerating al-Qaeda's capabilities.

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

anywhere near as much as the CIA thought he did.

- Abu Zubaydah had been tied

to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan,

but the CIA later determines

he was not a member of al-Qaeda.

- Abu Zubaydah has been held without charges

since he was captured in Pakistan.

Pentagon officials claim he's a threat

but admit he was never an al-Qaeda leader.

- The belief was that he was the number three

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

- Correct. Just as important, however.

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

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

We thought it was either him or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

- There was no reflection

about whether this should continue.

Instead, the opposite happened.

This unsuccessful interrogation of Abu Zubaydah

using these techniques became a kind of springboard

to expand the program

and to apply it to other suspects

of different levels of knowledge.

- Over six years, from 2002 to 2008,

the CIA holds at least 119 detainees.

39 are subjected to enhanced interrogation.

- People will give you whatever you wanna hear

in order to have the pain stop.

So the most important thing in intelligence collection

is the reliability of the information,

and that didn't exist.

♪

- In 2009, two days after his inauguration,

President Obama signs an executive order

eliminating enhanced interrogation techniques.

- I can say without exception or equivocation

that the United States will not torture.

[applause]

- With that comes a new chapter

led by President Obama's

first CIA director, Leon Panetta.

- My view...

was that the United States

should stand by our values as a country.

Torture should not be part

of what we need to use to gather intelligence.

- He's entitled to his opinion.

We had a binding legal opinion

in writing that said that it was not torture.

- I hope no other director,

no other president, is ever faced

with the situation we were faced with

in those immediate years.

At a period of maximum danger to the country,

we did it by the numbers.

We gained information that I believe

saved thousands of lives.

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

in front of what happened here.

- This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee

is expected to issue a long-expected report

on the CIA's interrogation practices

that were adopted in the aftermath of 9/11.

- Tactics used were more brutal

than previously thought.

- The report's most damning conclusion

is that the tactics were ineffective.

- In 2014,

the Democrat-led Senate Intelligence Committee

releases a report that concludes CIA's use

of its enhanced interrogation techniques

was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence

or gaining cooperation from detainees.

- I have long believed

some of these practices amounted to torture.

♪

- Republican Senator John McCain,

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

was one of the program's fiercest critics.

- As the committee's report makes clear,

it produced little useful intelligence

to help us track down the perpetrators of 9/11

or prevent new attacks and atrocities.

♪

- Today, Abu Zubaydah remains in American custody

at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He has never been charged with a crime.

- The bottom line

is that we saved American lives

and we protected the homeland

at a time of crisis

and despair.

♪

- Jose Rodriguez faced a criminal investigation

by the Department of Justice after ordering the destruction

of 92 videotapes

of enhanced interrogation sessions.

The CIA deemed his actions inappropriate.

He was given a letter of reprimand,

but was not charged with any crime.

- I think that historians

as well as the press will continue

to label it as torture.

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

I would do it all over again.

♪

[soft dramatic music]

- Our overarching goal remains the same,

to disrupt, dismantle and defeat

al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan,

and to prevent its capacity to threaten America

and our allies in the future.

- The president made clear that we continue

to go after bin Laden and bring him to justice.

- It's late 2009, more than eight years

since al-Qaeda attacked the U.S.

and changed the course of history.

The CIA doubles down on its hunt for bin Laden,

who is still at large.

[dramatic music]

Sarah Carlson would help close that chapter.

Her journey starts on 9/11,

when she's just a college senior.

- That is when my career in counterterrorism began.

This drive to protect runs very strong in my family.

All three of my brothers actually joined the military

after September 11th.

We wanted to hold those responsible accountable.

♪

- For the CIA,

the pursuit of bin Laden would come at a grave cost

suddenly and without warning.

- We set up a meeting

at a place called Khost, Afghanistan,

which was a base located near the border of Pakistan.

It was part of this effort by the CIA

to try to go after any possible lead

that might bring us

either to Bin Laden or to Zawahiri,

who is his second in command.

- The meeting is with Humam al-Balawi,

a Jordanian doctor

who claims to have information on al-Zawahiri,

but the asset turns out

to be a double agent seeking revenge.

♪

- He was not searched as he came through the gate

as he should have been.

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

he detonated a suicide vest.

- It was al-Qaeda taking the fight

to CIA...directly.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- We were called together into the hallway,

and the head of CTC announced to all of us

that the source conducted a suicide bombing

and that--excuse me.

And that seven CIA officers were killed.

Sorry, it's still hard.

And more were wounded.

♪

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

and I remember going to each of the families,

and every family I talked to said,

"I hope you will not stop

"going after the goal

that our sons and daughters died for."

And I said, "You have my assurance."

♪

- You know, it's very difficult.

I had been involved in stopping so many attacks

and disrupting all these threats,

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

♪

- Getting bin Laden would make clear

that their death was not in vain,

so I established a task force at the CIA,

and I made clear to them that their responsibility

was nothing else,

nothing else but focusing on the hunt for bin Laden.

♪

- In late August, 2010,

the task force finally gives Panetta

the lead he's been waiting for.

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

his only links to the outside world.

♪

- They followed the couriers to a town called Abbottabad,

which is near the capital of Pakistan.

♪

The couriers pulled into a compound,

and as soon as the individuals involved with the task force

saw the compound,

the house where they were going into,

the bells went off.

- Much larger than any other compound

in the neighborhood.

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

A third-floor balcony that had a privacy wall.

You have a balcony to look out.

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

♪

The hair on the back of my neck stood up,

and nobody said bin Laden might be there...

But everybody, including me, was thinking it.

♪

- It was soon after that that I immediately sat down

with the president.

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

First, find out what the hell is going on

inside that compound.

Number two, don't tell anyone.

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

- Even within CIA,

even within the Counterterrorism Center,

there was a very few number of people

who actually knew about the operation

before it happened.

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

and writing about and briefing about,

well, what if he's there?

♪

What's going to happen?

What will that retaliation look like if we capture him?

What will al-Qaeda do if we kill him?

♪

- And we continued to do surveillance,

and there were some interesting developments.

- There was an individual who, nearly every day,

would come out and pace

around the garden.

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

We couldn't get a good enough look.

♪

- We followed the couriers when they made phone calls,

were able to intercept their phone calls.

We got a conversation with the courier

from a friend who had called him,

and he was asking the courier,

"What are you doing?

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

And the courier said,

"We're doing what we did before."

Well, what they had done before

was to be couriers to bin Laden.

♪

- President Obama decides it's time

to bring in the military.

Together with the CIA, Admiral Bill McRaven

devises a plan,

a helicopter assault using Navy SEALs

to infiltrate the compound.

- Our hope was that we might get

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

that bin Laden was there.

♪

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

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

♪

- On April 29, 2011,

President Obama greenlights the operation.

- I got word from the president

that it was a go,

and I remember calling Admiral McRaven

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

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

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

get the hell out."

♪

- We had set up an operation center in CIA.

The director's conference room had been turned

into our situation room.

♪

A lot of people monitoring all sorts

of intelligence feeds.

♪

- We sort of got real-time updates

on what was occurring.

The anticipation in the office and CTC

was, like, the highest you can possibly imagine.

It was like a palpable feeling of just waiting

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

- I issued the order, and Admiral McRaven

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

It's after midnight in Pakistan.

And as the helicopters approached the compound,

one of the helicopters just kind of started to shake.

♪

Thank God there was an experienced pilot

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

and the tail of the helicopter

was up on one of the walls around the compound.

- When the helicopter crashed...

I was so worried for them.

They intentionally did this overnight

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

- And I remember

immediately calling Bill McRaven and saying,

"What the hell is going on, Bill?"

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

♪

[soft dramatic music]

It's one of those moments

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

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

♪

- On a moonless night, two Black Hawk helicopters

carrying a team of Navy SEALs descend

upon Osama bin Laden's suspected hideout.

♪

One of the engine stalls,

and a chopper is forced to crash land.

♪

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

He said, "Mr. Director,

"we're going on with the mission.

"I've called in a backup helicopter,

and they're going to continue the mission."

Just like that.

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

We heard gunfire

soon after they breached the walls.

- They were clearing the building

and looking for bin Laden,

and we were all just waiting with bated breath

to hear what had happened.

- There was about 20 minutes of silence.

The longest 20 minutes in my life.

And at the end of that 20 minutes,

Bill McRaven came on and said,

"I believe we have a Geronimo,"

which was the code word for locating bin Laden.

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

You could see it.

And they put it on a helicopter,

and they were out of there.

- Finally, both helicopters arrived back at Jalalabad.

And it was at that point

that I think we all sighed in relief

that the mission had been accomplished.

- Tonight, I can report to the American people

and to the world

that the United States has conducted an operation

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

and a terrorist who's responsible

for the murder of thousands of innocent men,

women, and children.

[cheers and applause]

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

- We were walking back towards the West Wing,

and you could see that crowds were beginning to gather.

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

CIA, CIA."

Something I never thought I would hear.

- It was a big moment for the country.

It was closure.

There was a wound opened on 9/11.

And that wound was closed on May 1st.

- You just think about how much

throughout the world people have suffered

at this man's hand.

It felt like justice was finally served.

- I felt obviously a lot of emotions thinking,

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

It was a good moment. Good moment.

But it also brought flashbacks of people

who sacrificed their lives along the way.

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

There are 137 stars

carved in the marble of the CIA lobby,

one for each person at CIA

who has died in the line of duty.

Well over one third of those stars

have been carved since 9/11.

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

where I can apologize to the loved ones

of the victims of 9/11.

To them who are here in the room.

I thought it was appropriate for someone

who is involved in 9/11

to turn around to the families who were sitting behind me

and to the families who were watching on TV

and say what someone should have said before.

We tried hard,

but that doesn't matter, because we failed.

And for that failure,

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

for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

♪

- You cannot go to the 9/11 Memorial

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

What comes to mind for me is sorrow...

♪

That we were unable to prevent the attack.

♪

- There were lots of things that I saw,

lots of things that I did, quite frankly,

that made me lose sleep at night.

I would have night terrors and things like that.

I feel a huge sense of responsibility

to the victims and to their families

that I should have stopped this.

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

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

- In the beginning, I kept questioning,

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

I think it's just collective trauma.

It's just the bombardment

of that kind of, you know, experience.

- We're humans,

and I do think, in the aftermath,

obviously we all lost loved ones along the way,

little brothers or sisters.

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

♪

- I just found ways that I could sort of disconnect

and try to just calm my mind.

♪

For me, the best thing was just to separate myself

and to go into nature.

♪

- I struggle with PTSD every day and depression,

and every day since I left the agency.

20 years later. It's ridiculous.

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

is that if bin Laden were still alive,

he would probably think that he won,

that he created a global movement.

- Bin Laden was always playing the long game.

I don't believe that he ever intended

for the movement to die with him,

that he felt like he was beginning it.

- On September 10, 2001,

his movement was in one place

on the planet, Afghanistan.

Now it stretches from West Africa,

all across Africa to East Africa,

into the Middle East, into South Asia,

and into Southeast Asia

in the form of both al-Qaeda and ISIS.

♪

- We've got breaking news for you right now

from Afghanistan.

The Pentagon says there's been a suicide bombing

outside the Kabul Airport.

It is the deadliest day for U.S. forces

in Afghanistan in a decade.

The bombers struck late in the afternoon

at an airport entrance packed with people.

More than 100 were wounded.

An affiliate of ISIS

has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

♪

- 13 Americans killed in action.

♪

It is a bitter and bloody ending

as the last U.S. soldier leaves Afghanistan.

The longest war in U.S. history

has cost more than $2 trillion.

The human toll is staggering.

The lives of nearly 2,500 American service members

and tens of thousands of Afghans lost.

- I'm now the fourth American president

to preside over war in Afghanistan.

I will not pass this responsibility

on to a fifth president.

- I think we made a mistake

in invading Afghanistan

in the way that we did.

We were going after al-Qaeda,

not to take over a country.

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

- Today, Taliban fighters

took control of the capital, Kabul.

Taliban fighters were seen rolling up the Afghan flag

inside the presidential palace.

- We lost the war in Afghanistan.

♪

The Taliban has won.

- The Taliban's swift return to power

means al-Qaeda could now reconstitute itself

in Afghanistan faster than U.S. government estimates

of two years.

- We forget the lessons

that come from attacks like 9/11,

and the tendency for us as a country

is to then focus on something else and move on.

We need to continue to pay attention

and be vigilant about attacks on our homeland.

♪

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

that gives them a platform to recruit,

to train, to plot, to plan.

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

and I hope we haven't forgotten it.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- One of the things that I sometimes worry about

in this country is that we have a short memory.

There are a lot of young people now

that were not alive when 9/11 happened,

don't really remember, you know,

all of the sacrifices that were made.

♪

Don't really understand

the impact of a country

that is suddenly thrown into war.

♪

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

I thought I really have to get back

to my family in California.

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

and just started driving west.

It was a very strange and yet encouraging trip

across the country of patriotism,

and you could see people throughout the country

felt that they had personally been attacked.

♪

As we come together

on this 20th anniversary of 9/11,

it's an important moment

for a country that today is deeply polarized,

deeply divided over a lot of things...

♪

That we remember

that when this country was attacked...

♪

We pulled together.

♪

I hope we remember that deep down,

there is a fundamental spirit here

that can never, never be ended

by terrorists or by any enemy.

♪