Original subtitles

In Panama, a military base on the front lines

against a drug-running tyrant...

A ruthless dictator, CIA meddling, narco kingpins, you name it.

This story's got it all.

...in Italy, a life cut short turns a utopian dream

into a nightmare...

Was the death the result of nefarious activities

from a foreign power?

...in Tunisia, an ancient place of spectacle

born out of a bloody power struggle...

Emperors were overthrown,

new emperors were appointed.

There was conflict in the Roman Empire.

...and in Poland, a grim facility

caught between the treachery of two regimes.

The people held here fought against the very worst inhumanity

and were jailed for it.

Decaying relics...

...ruins of lost worlds...

...sights haunted by the past...

...their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In Panama, on the outskirts of the capital,

a random collection of buildings tells a complex story of conquest.

In the shadow of the Bridge of Americas

is what appears to be a public park.

But have a closer look

and you'll see some strange remains.

There's a lot of long, rectangular buildings.

They were clearly built with some purpose in mind.

But there's very little left to suggest

what exactly that might be.

More structures nearby point to an official function.

You see the word "policia",

and we understand that this must have been

a Panamanian police building of some sort.

When you look at the pitting here,

people have been shooting this place up,

and you don't shoot up your own base.

For many years, this country had very close ties with the US,

but in the 1980s, those ties were stretched to breaking point.

It is as though Manuel Noriega wants to force George Bush senior

into having a war in Panama.

This place has changed immensely.

It's not what it used to be.

The houses were nicely painted.

Everything was new.

Grass was green.

Ricardo Eva was a soldier and interpreter in the US Army.

When he was first stationed here in 1984,

the country was a very different place.

Everything was American, right here, in the heart of Panama.

There were a lot of families living here, a lot of young kids,

young children playing around,

grabbing mangoes from the trees.

Life was idyllic.

The only reason these buildings exist at all is because of one thing.

The Panama Canal.

The canal was built by the Americans in the early 1900s,

and under the terms of the agreement with Panama,

they were granted ownership in perpetuity

of a 553-square-mile area of land called the Canal Zone.

This was America's first step onto the world stage

as an imperial great power.

Unsurprisingly, an investment of this size needed protecting.

In 1913, at the end of this man-made causeway,

huge gun batteries were installed

to guard the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal.

And here, administrative and housing facilities were built.

It was called Fort Amador.

The Canal Commission believed that the US citizens

within the Canal Zone

should live in beautiful communities

with a high quality of life.

Whenever you cross from Panama to the Canal Zone area,

it's a totally different world.

We had our own commissaries, little stores, theatres,

bowling alleys, swimming pools, you name it.

We had everything here.

A country inside another country, if you will.

Amongst Panamanians,

especially as we moved into the 1960s,

there was resentment that started to grow at this American presence.

So the United States used to guard this area very jealously,

to a point where it became a problem for Panamanian citizens

to cross the Panama Canal

to go to the other side of their own country,

because we had Canal Zone police officers

that could stop you at will.

On the 9th of January 1964, tensions boiled over

when a group of angry Panamanian students

marched into the Canal Zone

and tried to raise their national flag

next to the Stars and Stripes.

They're met by a crowd of American students who surround them

and grab the Panamanian flag, tear it down.

And that is a gross insult

to the Panamanian people.

And it leads to this riot between the two groups.

Over 20 people killed

and several hundred injured in this fighting.

That was the spark that ignited the nationalism in Panama.

PROTESTERS CLAMOUR

The rising wave of anti-American sentiment

eventually forced the US back to the negotiating table.

In 1977, a historic new canal treaty was agreed upon.

There is going to be a phased withdrawal

of American armed forces from the Panama Canal Zone.

And on the last day of 1999,

the Panama Canal itself

will become sovereign Panamanian territory.

Fort Amador became a jointly operated base,

with the north side remaining as US housing,

and much of the south side

was turned over to the Panamanian forces.

But the US maintained the right to defend the canal,

which basically meant that they could come in

any time they wanted if they felt it was under threat.

Relations were strained

but hadn't yet reached a breaking point.

That time came in the 1980s,

when a power-hungry military leader seized control of Panama.

Manuel Noriega was absolutely ruthless

and someone who was determined to retain power at all costs.

So he creates the PDF, the Panamanian Defense Force.

And this is going to be, you know, under his personal control.

During this time,

areas of Fort Amador became a dangerous place for Americans.

The PDF were pretty much under orders

to harass us Americans that were here in Panama.

He put his strategic buildings and headquarters

all throughout this area,

and that's what converted it pretty much into a no-go zone.

It was one of Noriega's ways of thumbing his nose at the US.

"Look, you used to be here.

"Now I'm here, and you're not allowed here any longer."

But Noriega's relationship with the United States was complicated.

Their connection dated back to around 1958.

Allegedly, he was recruited by the CIA initially

whilst studying at a military academy in Peru,

and from there, he went on to forge close ties with Washington.

Noriega was a very useful client,

because Panama was a place

where the United States could, you know,

base a lot of its anti-communist activity in Central America.

Noriega also provided the CIA valuable information

on drug cartel activity.

But the Americans became aware

that Noriega wasn't working against the cartels.

In fact, he was working with the cartels

and making big profits

by shipping drugs into the United States.

He was playing everyone.

It is said that Pablo Escobar paid Noriega many millions of dollars

to allow him to process cocaine in Darien,

in the Panamanian side of the jungle.

By this point,

Washington's relationship with Noriega was over,

and they wanted him out.

In 1988, Noriega was indicted by courts in Florida

on drug trafficking charges.

The United States demanded that he step down from office,

but the dictator remained defiant and refused to leave Panama.

On December 15th, 1989,

Noriega even went as far as declaring

that a state of war existed

between America and Panama.

The day after,

a marine is killed by Noriega's people.

That incident was one of the breaking points.

The United States said, "You know what? This is it.

"We can no longer deal with this."

At 1am on the 20th of December, Operation Just Cause begins.

The objectives of the US invasion are clear.

Protect American lives,

preserve the integrity of the Panama Canal,

and apprehend Manuel Noriega.

Fort Amador is a key battleground.

This was one of Noriega's main headquarters.

Operationally, we had to take this building.

We had a couple of Apache helicopters flying around,

and they shot off the roofs,

while ground troops, 82nd Airborne, surrounded this whole area.

And then they're pinned down for a while by snipers,

but then they start moving into Fort Amador.

You're scared. They're scared. What's going to happen?

There's bullets flying all over the place.

After issuing warnings to surrender,

the US military bring out the big guns,

and start shelling the PDF barracks with 105mm howitzers.

The Panamanian National Guard hasn't got a chance.

It is a decisive victory for the United States

in record time.

In about three hours we had everything under control.

People who were in this building,

we detained them, and we had them sitting here,

of course, with their hands tied and all that.

But Noriega was nowhere to be found.

A few days later, he turned up,

hiding out at the Vatican embassy in Panama City.

And what happened next

was one of the most bizarre scenes of the invasion.

The Americans pull up some loudspeakers

mounted on the back of vehicles,

and they blast the loudest rock music they can find.

Noriega, believe it or not, actually likes classical music.

And then after some time, Noriega says, "I'm done."

And he comes out with his hands up and surrenders to American forces.

In 1992, the fallen dictator was found guilty of drug trafficking

and sentenced to 40 years in a federal prison.

Seven years later, in December 1999,

the now democratic country took full control of the Panama Canal.

When the Americans left,

Fort Amador, no longer needed, fell into complete disrepair.

But the ghosts of American imperialism live on.

Noriega served 17 years in a US prison

and was eventually extradited back to Panama

to face charges there.

He died in 2017.

But ultimately, it was not without cost,

this American intervention against him.

Official estimates suggest around 500 civilians were killed

during Operation Just Cause.

Unofficial estimates say the death toll was much higher.

Part of my job was to gather evidence

and interview the claimants of the damages

after the Panamanian invasion.

I had to go out with the other assessors,

and I saw that first-hand.

The damage was... was huge.

Actually, I felt sad seeing all of that.

Uh, because being a US soldier,

we were of the idea that such force wasn't necessary.

I don't believe the ends justify the means.

I don't. I don't believe it.

In Warsaw, Poland, is a secretive facility

that struck fear into the hearts of the city's residents.

We see this complex of buildings behind a tall wall.

There's not that much to distinguish them

from the rest of the city,

but the other buildings

don't have barbed wire around them

or bars on the windows.

There are multiple housing blocks,

some of them connected by sky bridges.

Inside, the function of this compound quickly becomes clear.

But all is not as it seems.

The prison was built to house common criminals,

but almost from the start, it took on a political dimension.

The cells look really sparse and dank, like literal hellholes.

And there's a spooky corridor that leads into a boiler room.

But you have this very eerie sense when you walk in

that something, you know, far worse was going on here.

These rooms hide the stories of innocent victims

considered inconvenient by the government.

In a different set of circumstances,

many of the Polish inmates would be revered national heroes.

I can only imagine

what it must have felt like, being taken prisoner,

not knowing what was going to happen.

Were they going to be killed?

Were they going to be tortured? Would they ever return?

Historian Dr Alexandra Richie is an expert

on this prison's dark history.

Her interest goes much deeper than just scholarly curiosity.

This cell was inhabited by my father-in-law,

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.

He spent almost six years of his life in this prison.

His only crime was fighting to save his country.

He was only 23 years old,

and the things that happened here were absolutely terrible.

This is Mokotow Prison.

The events that tied Wladyslaw's fate to this cruel facility

began with the outbreak of World War II.

At the start of the conflict,

the Soviet Union, not yet fighting with the Allies,

made a side deal with Nazi Germany.

Poland was kind of in the crosshairs of this pact,

not only not to go to war with each other,

but to essentially kind of split up the spoils of Europe.

So the Nazis invaded Poland from the West,

the Soviets invaded from the east.

Hitler's forces, vastly outnumbering Poland's,

quickly took the capital, Warsaw.

But the Polish people didn't give up the fight.

They create an underground army and military.

The Home Army eventually it's called

was a very sophisticated group of around about 300,000 men and women.

They did not want to be dominated by these totalitarian systems.

They were fighting for a free Poland.

These people are priests. They're army officers.

They're schoolteachers. They're college professors.

And, you know, they're seated throughout Polish society.

Alex's father-in-law, Wladyslaw, joined the Polish Home Army in 1942.

For the next two years, he risked his life

fighting in a guerilla war against the Nazi occupiers.

By 1944, the tide seemed to be turning.

It was becoming obvious that Germany was losing control

over the territories it had occupied.

The Warsaw Uprising broke out on the 1st of August 1944,

and the main aim for the Poles was to try and take over

as many important buildings, bridges, airports

as they possibly could.

It was a gamble,

and they threw everything that they had into taking the city back.

But the Polish resistance was no match for the Germans.

One hope was that the Soviet army, now siding with the Allies,

was nearing Warsaw, and would come to Poland's aid.

The Poles had allied themselves

to the British and to the Western Allies,

but of course, by definition, to the Soviets as well.

And so they went and fought thinking that they were allies.

But Poland hadn't banked on the treachery

of one of history's most notorious dictators, Joseph Stalin.

The Soviet leader had his own plan for Poland.

The Soviets made no effort to intervene

and help the Poles and get the Germans out of there

and save the city of Warsaw.

85% of Warsaw is destroyed during the rising,

while the Soviets are sitting on the hulls of their tanks

on the outskirts of the city, just, like, watching.

Stalin always had an ulterior motive,

and that was political control.

He wanted to create a buffer zone

between Russia and the rest of Europe,

and he also wanted to control large swathes of territory.

The Soviets were happy to see

the Germans do their dirty work for them,

kill all these Polish nationalists.

Then the Soviets roll in

so they can take over this passive, defeated population

and easily bring them into the Soviet empire.

When the Red Army entered the ruined city,

Mokotow Prison was one of the few buildings left standing.

It was quickly transformed into a sinister tool

of communist repression.

The first thing that, you know, the Soviets do

is they create a ministry of public security.

You know, very Orwellian name.

It has nothing to do with public security.

It has to do with public persecution.

They want to find every remnant of the Polish nationalist movement.

They either want to, like, kill them or they want to convert them

to, you know, passive pawns of the Soviet state.

The Home Army represented a huge threat for Stalin

because they represented Western democratic values

in the sense of freedom,

freedom of speech, freedom of religion.

Tens of thousands of Poles

were incarcerated, were tortured, and many of them were executed.

Alex's father-in-law, Wladyslaw, was one of those rounded up

and imprisoned without trial during Stalin's violent purge.

The sort of box-like area at the end here

was a punishment cell.

At the time, there was a wall here and a tiny kind of trap door,

and prisoners were pushed in as a sort of solitary confinement.

From this cell, my father-in-law

remembers hearing people being executed.

So they didn't know what was going on, had no idea,

and then all of a sudden would hear this loud shot ringing out.

You didn't know if you were going to be next.

And this was all part of the fear that was generated in this prison.

The torture didn't end there.

One of the most disgusting ironies of this Soviet conquest

is that they then take Polish nationalists

who'd been fighting so bravely against the Nazis

to free their country,

and they put these Polish nationalists

in cells with German Nazis

in Mokotow Prison, as if they're just as bad.

My father-in-law was in Auschwitz,

and for him, the experience of Auschwitz

was by far the worst that he ever experienced in his life.

Just two doors down was the prison cell of Hoess,

who was the commandant of Auschwitz.

And this was to humiliate and demean the Polish prisoners.

In other words, they were made to think

that they were even below Nazi criminals.

It isn't known exactly how many political prisoners

were killed by the Soviets,

but their intention was clear.

They wanted to completely rewrite the story

of the Second World War in Poland.

Their bodies were just taken and disappeared somewhere.

And this was a deliberate attempt

to erase, to eradicate these people from history.

Mention of the heroic stance of the Polish Home Army

against the Nazis was completely forbidden.

There was, under Stalinism, no Holocaust.

Everybody who was killed in the Second World War

was simply a victim of fascism.

When Wladyslaw was released in 1954,

he defied the communist authorities

by dedicating himself to keeping the story of the Home Army alive.

He wrote books about what had happened during the war.

Many of the things he wrote were either censored heavily

or not published at all.

This facility continued to house perceived enemies of the regime

until communism collapsed in 1989.

Finally, people were free to actually talk about these things

and go into archives

and interview survivors, for example,

and actually put together a story that, in a way, had been frozen

by the Soviet system since 1945.

After the Democratic Republic of Poland was established in 1990,

Mokotow Prison still continued to operate.

In 2016, it closed for good.

Meanwhile, Wladyslaw spent his final years

building a brighter future for Poland

as part of the newly democratic government.

So he had an incredible career.

I mean, going from a young man in a Soviet prison

and then ending up in a free Poland as foreign minister

and a minister of high office

until the day he died, so it was an extraordinary life.

In Italy, the town of Ivrea hides pockets of revolutionary zeal.

It looks like any other normal Italian town.

That is, until you notice

the modern architecture that's in the middle of it.

Miles of glass dot the landscape.

And there's this mishmash of buildings

spread throughout the town.

One of the structures looks like a typewriter.

Who would build a building

to look like a typewriter?

You can tell that a lot of work went on right here,

but you can't really tell what it was.

Below the surface,

rumours still swirl of ruthless espionage...

...and a death under mysterious circumstances.

What's strange is that an autopsy was never requested or carried out.

Some people think that the CIA was involved.

What was it about this sleepy country town

that might have been worth killing for?

Matteo Olivetti is part of the centuries-old family

that transformed the town of Ivrea.

I came here in 1972,

and all these buildings,

when I was small, they were full of people.

It's all part of a utopian community

created by Matteo's ancestors.

The Olivetti family is a corporate dynasty

that is associated with the development

of cutting-edge technologies,

reaching all the way back

to the era of innovation in the mid-19th century.

Back then, Matteo's great-grandfather was a visionary electrical engineer.

Camillo Olivetti saw great potential in typewriters

and decided to capitalise on it.

Everything starts here in Ivrea,

and in 1908,

Camillo puts up the Olivetti factory of typewriters.

Camillo Olivetti designed the first Olivetti typewriter.

It was known for the fact

that it was composed of over 3,000 parts,

and yet it weighed only 40lb.

In 1933, Camillo brought in his son Adriano to manage the firm.

Under his leadership, when he took over the company,

the company's productivity soared.

And by 1933, Olivetti was producing half of Italy's typewriters.

But the rise of a brutal dictator threatened to destroy

everything he had built.

As the Second World War loomed,

Benito Mussolini ruled Italy with an iron fist.

The Olivetti family was in a precarious position

under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini,

and that's because they were Jewish

and the dictatorship was anti-Semitic.

But typewriters were as important then as computers are today,

and Olivetti offered Mussolini's government

an Italian-made typewriter,

and they needed them in large quantities.

The Olivetti factory produced typewriters throughout the war,

but secretly, Adriano was participating

in the underground anti-fascist movement.

He was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1944.

Adriano had to do a daring escape from jail to Switzerland.

He stayed in neutral Switzerland until the end of the war,

returning to Italy in 1945.

When he came back, he decided to transform his company,

and he really put in place democratic ideals

and used that

as a way to change how his workers

lived and operated and worked.

He commissioned

some of the brightest architectural minds in Europe

to design a city for his company.

He wanted to make it a wonderful place to be,

a wonderful place to work,

a wonderful place to be a member of a community.

Employees were promised flexible working hours,

free childcare,

cultural activities, perks and bonuses.

Who wouldn't want to work here?

This complex is Adriano Olivetti's vision for a new way of life.

Matteo remembers Ivrea's social services building,

the beating heart of his uncle's utopia.

We needed a real space for all the welfare

of all the people that worked for us and for the factory.

This building was the epitome of Adriano's philosophy.

It housed a library, a nursery, healthcare centres

and an auditorium.

There was the "infermeria",

and I remember when we knew all the doctors.

This was the library,

and I remember when I was a little kid

that we'd come here and get books.

There was an idea to elevate the cultural part

of the people that worked for Olivetti.

To fund his idealistic vision,

Adriano continued to push the boundaries

of technological innovation.

He decides that computers are the future.

He ventured into electronics,

collaborating with Chinese-Italian chief engineer Mario Tchou.

Olivetti was soon outstripping the competition.

In 1959, Adriano unveiled

one of the world's first mainframe computers.

With all revolutionary, brilliant ideas,

there's always someone out there who wants to steal them.

There was a lot of communists in Italy.

And so this was a big problem.

With Cold War tensions growing,

there were some global powers that felt threatened by Olivetti.

The United States is already concerned

that Italy might ultimately go communist,

and that concern reaches a higher level of escalation

when they realise that the Olivettis have

this high-end computer technology.

In February 1960, Adriano boarded a train to Switzerland,

but he would never make it to his destination,

for he died suddenly en route.

What's strange is that an autopsy was never requested or carried out.

His official cause of death is a stroke.

Yet many believed there was more to Adriano Olivetti's death

than meets the eye.

It doesn't seem to me to be an absurd stretch of possibility

that the CIA may have carried out

a pointed assassination against Adriano Olivetti

over this issue of this critical technology

becoming something that provides an advantage for the communists.

But the sinister occurrences were far from over.

A year later, Mario Tchou, his chief engineer,

dies in a tragic car accident.

It came out that somebody said

that there was the smell of alcohol in the car, but he didn't drink.

And it's a lot of little things that make you think,

"Hm, maybe something happened more than just a car accident."

There's no proof,

but when you look closely at the circumstances of that accident,

it certainly does look suspicious.

The double tragedy marked

a turning point for the Olivetti family.

In 1963, a financial crisis hit Italy,

and a year later, the Olivettis sold off their computer division

to General Electric.

The next year,

the company reveals a world-changing invention

that it had heretofore kept secret.

In 1965, at the New York World's Fair,

the Programma 101 made its debut.

Programma 101 is considered by many to be the first desktop computer.

40,000 of these P101s were sold,

and it was even used in the Apollo 11 mission of NASA.

But by the 1980s,

as computer technology ultimately takes over,

people need typewriters less.

The company eventually stops manufacturing them altogether.

In 1978, we were more or less 90,000 people in the world,

and now it's 500.

Ivrea is abandoned by 2003,

but its name has been immortalised by its pioneering design

and its visionary family.

Today, Matteo is determined to keep his family's unique experiment alive.

I try to keep up this history of the family.

That's the important thing.

It was one of the most successful

commercial industrial towns in the world,

and it becomes eventually a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Northeast Africa, in the Tunisian town of El Jem,

a colossal building bears witness to ancient rivalries.

Right in the middle of town, we have a massive Roman structure.

You pass through these outer walls

and enter this vast oval floor surrounded by stadium seating.

This was a place to put on a show.

And what entertainment did the Romans enjoy more

than gladiatorial games?

But this was much more than just an arena for savage Roman spectacle.

Its remarkable size hints at its intended purpose.

This is one of the biggest, grandest amphitheatres

in the entire Roman world.

Why do we have this here in Africa?

The answer may lie in one of the most violent periods

of Roman history.

It became known as the year of the Six Emperors.

There was murder, there was ruin,

and it was all happening right here in El Jem.

Archaeologist Rached Hamdi decodes this site

to piece together what was happening almost 2,000 years ago.

It had three levels of galleries which could fit

35,000 people.

It's thought that the mighty structure

was adorned with statues of Roman gods,

had 64 arches, 120ft-high red limestone walls,

and might even have had a fabric awning as a roof.

The town it towers over offers a clue

as to why this iconic structure is here.

Today it's known as El Jem,

but under the Romans

it was known as Thysdrus.

This was one of the wealthiest

and most thriving parts of the empire.

El Jem sat in the province the Romans called Africa.

It allowed vital access

to the strategically important

Mediterranean coast.

At the time of El Jem's construction,

treacherous rivalries were sending shock waves

across the Roman Empire.

This amphitheatre was built in the year 238 CE.

This was a very important and dangerous year

for the Roman Empire.

When the Emperor in Rome decided to fund his warring campaigns

by taxing the people of El Jem,

they rebelled and demanded their governor, Gordian I,

be put on the imperial throne.

At 80 years old, he reluctantly agreed,

but only on the condition that his son would rule alongside him.

But when his son was killed in battle,

Gordian took his own life.

Gordian hanged himself with a belt just 22 days into his reign,

the shortest reign in Roman history.

This was one of six changes in rule that year.

From the ashes of this chaos,

Gordian's grandson rose to take the throne.

It's thought by some that Gordian III

may have constructed the mammoth amphitheatre

to immortalise his family.

It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century

that archaeologists discovered

the true extent of the dynastic monument.

What they found was an intact basement level

that covered the entire footprint of the arena.

Nearby, ancient mosaics suggest why this basement was so big.

In Gordian's time, El Jem was at the centre

of a highly lucrative and well organised trade

in wild animals

caught by professional hunters in the interior of Africa.

Many thousands of leopards, elephants and other African animals

would have passed through

the subterranean corridors of El Jem.

You came here to watch gladiators and wild animals killing each other.

The basement was designed to ensure the games ran

with chilling efficiency.

We have all of the hidden chambers necessary

to create the very best in Roman spectacle.

Below the arena floor, Rached Hamdi finds evidence of how it worked.

The El Jem amphitheatre stood as a symbol of Roman dominance

over this region

until they lost power two centuries later.

By the Middle Ages, Rome's influence in North Africa had ceased

and the empire had fallen.

Once this was no longer a provincial capital,

it was abandoned.

Over the coming centuries, the people of El Jem

plundered the stones of the mighty Colosseum,

leaving it to crumble.

Today, the residents of El Jem make full use of the ancient monument.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media