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[guitar music playing]

[woman] Sérgio was a man that had lived all over the world.

Well, he was a Brazilian.

It's a place where he was a son, he was...

the man from Rio de Janeiro.

He was anonymous.

He could become himself.

Sérgio had a well-worked tradition.

Every time he would land in Rio de Janeiro,

we would rush to Gilda's house, to his mother's house,

drop the luggage, dash to the beach, to his favorite corner,

run straight into the water

and the moment that he would go and put his head under the water

and emerge up, he would say, "Ah, yes.

I have arrived."

[man] So, what were you wishing to say?

Well, you're going to speak to the people.

-Really? -Going to have 35 new staff members...

-I see. -...where Gary is now, so...

I see. Some spontaneous wisdom.

Huh?

[reporter] Just how you came to be the High Commissioner?

Oh, my God, but you realize I can't summarize 34 years

in three minutes.

That's a huge theme.

'Cause you're asking me to recount my life. [laughs]

But I suppose it's, uh...

it's intended to be inspirational, right?

[reporter] Absolutely.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Sérgio Vieira de Mello.

I'm Brazilian and I'm presently

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I joined the organization at the age of 21, believe it or not.

Just out of university.

[Sérgio] I was lucky to have served in East Pakistan,

Cyprus, South America, Bosnia, Lebanon,

Cambodia, Kosovo, and from there, East Timor.

This organization is the best opportunity you have in your life

of achieving your dreams.

Never forget the real challenges,

and the real rewards of serving the United Nations

are out there in the field where people are suffering, where people need you.

[George Bush] Remember Rwanda or Kosovo, the UN didn't do its job.

Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding...

or will it be irrelevant?

[reporter 1] The President said last night

that he is prepared to invade with or without the backing of the United Nations.

[reporter 2] So, President Bush made it clear, no time left for stately diplomatic

waltzes at the United Nations.

It's now the Texas two-step from here on out.

So we just met with the President and he explained

the position of the United States,

which I think you're all aware.

I reminded him of the position of the Secretary General on this issue.

But I don't think anyone can predict

what the human cost of such a war would be,

but it will be high by definition.

[distant explosion]

[Tony Blair] The conflict in Iraq

and the removal of Saddam had been immensely controversial.

It had been deeply opposed by many within the international community.

It split the UN Security Council.

So I thought it was particularly important that the UN were in a prime role.

[Samantha Power] The countries that had fought

so fiercely over whether to go for war,

decided that they had to somehow kiss and make up.

"Let's agree that we all have an interest in seeing Iraq stabilized.

Let's send a United Nations mission,

and much more importantly, in a way, let's send the most charismatic,

most experienced person in the entire system of conflict management,

conflict prevention, nation building, refugee care, you name it.

Let's send this guy who's known as a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy.

Let's send Sérgio."

[Condoleezza Rice] I asked him personally to take the job in Iraq.

I said, "You're the right person for this job and I hope you'll do it."

President Bush, I know, had met him and, I think, rated him very highly.

Um, and, yeah, there was therefore a general consensus

that if he could be persuaded to do it, he would be the right person.

[Carolina Larriera] He never wanted the job in Iraq.

But that week he called me to say

that he had just received a phone call from New York,

where the Secretary General was asking him to go and see him.

And I ask him, "Is that to talk about what? About Iraq?

But you were already clear about your position vis-à-vis Iraq."

Sérgio, with his friends, was absolutely adamantly saying, "No way, forget it.

Are you crazy?

I've just got a new job, and here with Carolina, etc., etc..."

Gradually the interest mounted and the pressures mounted

and, uh, he clearly became more interested and, uh...

was finally influenced I think, by the profile of the issue.

It was the center stage of international UN action in 2003.

I have asked Mr. Sérgio de Mello to serve as my special representative.

He will lead the UN effort in Iraq...

for the next four months.

[Power] He went to Iraq with a cadre of experts

on constitutions, elections, policing, refugees...

The best and brightest of international community.

He felt like he had all that he needed for success,

and the way he defines success was a speedy end to the occupation,

and a smooth and peaceful transition

to a brighter post-Saddam independent future.

We see our role as one that supports the Iraqis to replace

as soon as possible the coalition

and recover fully their sovereignty.

No one likes to be under occupation.

And I often ask myself how would I feel

if I saw foreign tanks in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, my home town.

I wouldn't like it

and I would want that to come to an end very, very quickly.

And I would have wanted it not to happen in the first place.

[guitar music playing]

[engine starts]

[Larriera] Sérgio was exhausted. It was the month of August.

It was extremely hot in Baghdad.

We got up early. We met our other colleagues downstairs,

and then, uh, headed all together to the Canal Hotel.

[speaking French]

He ate breakfast quickly.

He stood up.

The convoy was ready to leave

and he looked very distant.

I could see him,

his forehead was against the window

looking outside

and I knew he wasn't well. I don't know why.

[Power in English] On August 19th, he was preparing to issue two statements.

Two open criticisms of the coalition for their excessive use of force.

He knew the Americans would go nuts,

and yet Sérgio understood if he didn't take this step,

the United Nations would continue more and more to just be seen as an accomplice

of the United States.

[Pichon speaking French]

He had a meeting with Paul Bremer.

The convoy was ready to go, we were all about to leave

and we got a call from the US Command Center.

They said the meeting with Bremer was canceled.

[in English] Unexpectedly, the meeting had been cancelled,

so he ended up remaining in the office

and called me in at lunchtime to have lunch with him.

I told him that I was going to stay in and skip lunch and just work through.

Then I knew that in the afternoon he was having another series of meetings

and we were going to meet each other again.

[Gil Loescher] We arrived in Baghdad that morning.

It was a short initial trip to get a feel for the lay of the land.

We went directly to the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority

and saw Paul Bremer.

My abiding memory of the interview was that, at the very end he said,

"You know, the security situation is improving,

in fact it's, you know, it's, it's in very good shape."

From there we went to the United Nations.

We wanted to hear from Sérgio what he thought the UN had been able to achieve.

We were early for the meeting.

Someone came and let us up, I think it was the third floor,

to Sérgio's office.

[speaking French]

I signaled to Sérgio that it was okay.

So he stood up

and went to sit with his guests.

[in English] Sérgio was at his desk and was putting papers together,

and then he came over to us and sat us down.

I was sitting directly opposite him, just a couple of feet away.

[indistinct conversation]

I think we will be surprised at the highlight of causalities that we have.

Specifically with the unexploded ordinance.

And in our landmine impact survey in the north we found that...

-eighty-- -[explosion]

[indistinct shouting]

-[man] Stay where you are! -[people screaming]

Stay where you are!

[indistinct shouting]

Stay where you are!

Stay where you are!

Stay where you are!

[indistinct shouting]

[people clamoring]

[man] Tell your people to stay near a wall, please.

[Pichon speaking French]

The first thing I did was make sure I was not hurt,

and that I had all my arms and legs.

I couldn't hear.

Then I think, "Oh, my God, my boss."

[Ghassan Salamé] When the explosion took place, I thought it was a mortar.

Which tells you that even after many years in Beirut,

you still can be wrong on things.

When Ghassan stood up,

he-- he had some kind of very strange kind of smile that...

he's okay,

and then immediately he said, "Let us go and see what's happened to the people."

I took my telephone, took my neck tie, my jacket, my laptop, my passport,

and I went out and I discovered that...

a lot of people were shouting, crying, bleeding.

[people clamoring]

[Taher] We could see blood everywhere.

On the walls of the corridor, body is there...

You don't know if they're alive or not.

And things burning...

The smell of burn, the smell of blood.

[indistinct shouting]

I stood up and I see Mona Rishmawi across from me

and I see her looking at me

and there's a drip of blood that is coming down her forehead.

[Mona Rishmawi] And then I came to the first floor,

my husband was in the first floor.

So I called him, I said, "Andrew? Andrew?" And miraculously he came out,

I'll never forget this.

And the moment he took my hand, Carolina said, "Sérgio. Sérgio. Sérgio,"

and she said, "I have to find Sérgio."

[Larriera] I started screaming.

I cannot see anything because it's all dust.

I couldn't see. I saw this light, this blinding light all around me,

and, uh...

and suddenly the dust starts to settle,

and I realize that this light is the sun.

The sunlight of 4:00 p.m. Baghdad.

[William von Zehle] We were about 100 meters from the point of the blast.

Bent over to pick up the paper work and the next thing I knew,

I saw this intensely bright flash

and I had about an eighth of a second to think what the--

And then when I woke up I was lying across the room.

Minutes ago, an explosion ripped through a hotel in central Baghdad,

the headquarters for the UN. An update live...

[reporter 1] ...by far the most serious attack that's been,

since US troops took Baghdad.

[reporter 2] First this hour, terrorism in Baghdad.

Right now at least 14 people are dead, dozens wounded...

[reporter 3] A bomb exploded directly below

the office of its special representative here, Sérgio de Mello.

The UN has been there in what used to be the Canal Hotel since the early 1990s.

Three hundred UN staff work inside.

It's home to several UN humanitarian agencies,

all working on the rebuilding of Iraq.

[Pichon speaking French]

I entered and saw Buenaventura,

the assistant,

he was dead.

I entered Jonathan's office,

Rick was there,

also dead.

And after Jonathan's office,

emptiness.

No office.

I called, "Sérgio! Sérgio!"

No response.

I went outside the building

and I climbed around it.

I climbed on top of the rubble

to try to find Sérgio.

And with me, there was an Australian,

Jeff, the military attaché for Sérgio.

[inaudible]

[in English] I was calling out, stopping, listening.

Move a meter, call out, stop, listen.

There was this other fellow who was running towards the rubble,

who was in US military uniform.

I said, "Who are you?" And he said, "My name's Bill."

The gentleman in a blue UN baseball cap came up and he said,

something to the effect of like, "Where are the rest of your guys?"

And I said, "There are no rest of our guys,

it's me and a captain right now."

I want to go in the building and do an internal reconnaissance and see.

I must be nuts to even think about going in the building.

But firefighters have this thing, we run into burning buildings

when everybody else is running out of burning buildings.

We made our way upstairs and it was almost unrecognizable.

I'd been up there on many occasions, for meetings...

As we walked along, I was looking

and at one point I found a little spot of light down below.

If you looked in there, I could see two people.

[Loescher] The flash is what I remember.

The ceiling collapsed, the floor collapsed.

We were thrust down.

I heard someone say, "Oh, shit!"

As if someone had expected it.

I'm pretty sure it was Sérgio.

The next thing I remember is regaining consciousness

and not being able to move.

I remember looking up, um...

at, at someone...

who was wearing a...

like a fireman's hat or, or helmet,

and, and I sort of waved at him.

It may sound melodramatic, but honestly from looking at it

I was pretty convinced that this was gonna be a one-way trip. Um...

You know, I'd seen Oklahoma City done enough collapse-rescue stuff,

and the building, it was still moving.

Uh, you know, bricks were still falling,

it was, you know, within a few minutes of the blast.

I was kind of convinced this was a one-way trip,

and I said, you know, "Tell my wife and, uh, my daughter I love them."

I took my body armor off and started to climb down the hole.

I got down to about... [sighs] where the first floor would be.

At that point I had to turn around in a space

and basically slide down head first, so I could get next to him.

And fortunately there was a piece of reinforcing rod, a rebar,

that was sticking out of a concrete and I put my shoulder up against that.

It was perfect, where I could basically lean down

and, you know, touch them.

Um, and that's when I first introduced myself when I said,

you know, "My name is Bill. I'm a civilian EMT. I'm from the army unit.

I promise I'm gonna get you guys out of here alive."

I remember saying my name to that person.

Telling him that my name was Gil.

I remember very little else.

One gentleman said "My name is Gil," and he was directly in front of me.

There was another gentleman, and he said his name was Sérgio.

As we're talking, you know, he starts to say, I thought he initially said,

"Don't pull me out." And I said, "Don't worry. We're gonna get you both out.

I promise we'll get you both out."

And he goes, "No, no. Don't let them pull the mission out."

And at this point, I'm still not sure who he is.

Then he's asking about, you know, the other people.

"How many people are killed? How many people are wounded?

Do we know what happened?"

And suddenly I'm dawning, this guy's somebody who's, you know, in charge.

It's not just a worker, he's asking questions as the guy in charge.

And it dawned on me, "Jesus, this is Sérgio de Mello."

[Gilda speaking Portuguese]

He had such perfect teeth.

He was a happy boy, always laughing,

always in a good mood.

[speaks Portuguese]

People would ask him to sing everywhere.

When he was about three years old

he could sing in four languages.

We moved to Italy.

There he attended a Catholic school.

[Power in English] Sérgio was the son of a Brazilian diplomat,

so he spent most of his childhood years abroad, in Europe, mainly.

In Genoa, in Milan, in Rome,

uh, Naples, and even in Beirut.

Through that vagabond life, this was just second nature to him.

His capacity to just descend into a new place and look around and say,

"Okay, I'm home."

[Gilda speaking Portuguese]

And then finally he went to a French school

at the Sorbonne

where he studied philosophy.

[Power in English] He became activated politically,

partly by the philosophy, and mainly by what was going on

on the campus of the Sorbonne at that time.

It was 1968, war in Vietnam was raging,

um, students and workers throughout France were striking.

And of course in May of '68,

the students ended up affectively taking over the campus.

Sérgio manned the barricades, threw stones at the police.

What's amazing about his politics in those days is,

how dogmatic he is,

how virulent his anti-Americanism, his anti-imperialism,

even his Marxism or Neo-Marxism is.

I mean, he is a revolutionary to the core.

He graduated from the Sorbonne in 1969.

One of his best friends lived in Geneva,

and Sérgio, looking for work, went and crashed at his place.

Got some interviews with international organizations,

and ended up at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

[McNamara] Those of us who joined in the '70s really worked on Third World issues.

It was well regarded,

it was expanding rapidly,

it had an interesting mandate of not just aid, but also protection,

it was politically very active in the sense,

that it was on hot borders and conflict areas.

The turning point of Sérgio's relationship to his new place of employment

was his first field mission,

uh, which was in Bangladesh.

Here Sérgio is tasked as a very young man to help provide shelter,

to help provide food, um, to try to come up with some kind of political strategy

by which these people could eventually return to their homes.

He discovered himself.

He suddenly saw extreme poverty, enormous refugee flows,

and the ideals that had motivated him took life, they took flesh.

He realized that he was not merely a man of thought,

but that if he wanted to make those ideals real,

he had to be a man of action.

[McNamara] I met Sérgio first time actually in Swaziland in 1976,

to move the Soweto kids who'd been attacked by the South African police,

out of Swaziland to Tanzania.

This was a very hot operation, as you can imagine

the South African security were all over the place,

but we evacuated them through Mozambique.

Sérgio was the acting UNHCR person in Maputo.

[Richard Holbrooke] I met Sérgio Vieira de Mello in Cambodia and Thailand

when the Khmer Rouge were driven out of power

and a massive refugee crisis ensued.

This is what brought a whole generation of people

into the international humanitarian effort.

You're a better agronomist than I am.

[grunts] Voilà.

[Holbrooke] Sérgio was the most dazzling, charismatic person in that area.

[Sérgio] I better not shower him.

[Holbrooke] How could a guy this charismatic, this good looking,

be doing this kind of work?

Well, he was one of the bright stars, no question.

Probably, maybe, the brightest.

He was the master magician,

mediator, manager, massager of egos.

[reporter] Would you mind spelling your last name?

[chuckles] V-I-E-I-R-A D-E M-E-L-L-O.

The mission was to return between 350 and 400,000 refugees

who were primarily living on the borders with Thailand in refugee camps

for a prolonged period of time already

to return them ahead of the elections that were scheduled to take place.

Sérgio was convinced that the only way to make the repatriation a success

was to work with the Khmer Rouge.

But this was controversial because...

they were what they were. They, they...

Their senior leadership had been part of a genocidal regime.

[McNamara] He had a long fascination with evil genius.

The mind of evil men and how they functioned and why.

Especially intellectual evil, as the Khmer Rouge were.

There was no question it was high risk and it shouldn't have happened.

It was all done, um, in a bit of a...

an unorthodox way.

There was a meeting place which was in the middle of nowhere.

We had no idea where we were going.

I remember Sérgio's driver declared him, basically, insane.

We had to walk through minefields.

There was no radio contact.

And it was an hour and a half by tractor trailer

to a miniscule kind of settlement headquarters.

We spent the rest of the day there and evening and had discussions with them

about the land and where people could return.

It was just an extraordinary experience.

Sérgio never underestimated, of course, who he was dealing with

and what their, their historical baggage was,

but that did not cause him to think that he shouldn't talk to them.

He wasn't a black or white kind of guy.

[McNamara] War Criminals, My Friends

is what his autobiography could have been called.

He was rather inclined to see a broader view, perhaps, than many of us would.

Uh, I would be the dogmatic, uh...

human rights approach that these guys were war criminals

and should be put on trial immediately.

He told me to stop, get off my high horse.

I think, and it was a breakthrough.

It was the first time that the UN,

and probably foreigners for that matter,

were in touch with the official Khmer governing structure.

Sérgio managed to convince at least some leading members of the Khmer Rouge

that cooperation with the international community

was a more constructive approach,

and more in their self-interest than sabotage.

More tangibly, he managed to produce one of the few concrete successes

of a long international

and a very expensive international engagement in Cambodia...

the return of 400,000 Cambodians to their homes.

[Bos] I think there was a huge sense of being vindicated.

I think you can almost see a sense of satisfaction on his face

that they're able to take their destiny in their own hands.

May they be blessed with happiness, lasting peace, and prosperity.

We are all here betting on peace.

We will, as from this morning,

and with deep emotion, escort you home.

Thank you.

From that point forward, he wasn't just a UN success story,

or a humanitarian success story,

he was an individual that governments thought about as a problem solver,

as a troubleshooter, as a go-to guy.

As someone that you could put into harm's way,

have talk to the world's most dangerous people,

and he could somehow pull rabbits out of the hat.

[Simões speaking Portuguese]

I already looked at him like 007.

He never dies.

I asked him one time, "Sérgio,

why do you go to all these countries,

that have such conflicts, that are so dangerous?"

He just laughed

and didn't reply.

-[siren blaring] -[car horn honking]

[Vance Kuhner] It sounded to me like a 500-pound bomb

had gone off, and very close.

I went down on one knee

and when I stood back up again, I looked at my first sergeant and I said,

"Let's go. Let's get in the truck."

My driver said, "Where to go?" I said, "You see the smoke?

Follow the smoke."

My philosophy of the UN was not 100%.

The UN believes a lot of talking will solve all the problems,

and they don't.

Sometimes you need to have brute force.

On that day it didn't make any difference.

There were people there that needed our help,

and my job was to accomplish that.

[Kuhner] I wasn't prepared for what I'd saw.

Mass chaos.

Wounded people everywhere.

I saw one man, he had a piece of rebar that was stuck through his cheeks

and he was sitting there smoking a cigarette.

Absolute insanity.

[people clamoring]

Time was our enemy.

We needed to start moving people.

[Valentine] It looked like a car bomb came in

and it was setting off all the other vehicles that were next to it.

We had people that were crawling out of the building.

So I said, "Okay, I'll take control of this."

This little section, this little island,

dirt island is gonna be our triage and staging area right now.

We had to make decisions on who was gonna live and who was gonna die.

[William] One of the things we have in civilian medical world

is called the "Golden Hour."

Basically if you can get somebody to the trauma center

within 60 minutes from injury,

if you can get him there alive, they have a pretty good chance of surviving.

At least in the Western world.

At this point, I don't hear anybody calling,

it's just a quiet little womb in there,

it's hotter than you know what.

Both men were covered in brick and debris from the waist down.

Sérgio was actually more almost chest high.

You couldn't see that anything was broken or out of place,

but he was covered completely.

They both had severe lower extremity injuries.

Gil, you could see, his left leg was folded up.

Uh, Sérgio, we presumed he's got that much weight on him, he's got crush injuries.

I was able to start an IV on Gil Loescher.

I could not get to Sérgio de Mello well enough to get an IV going.

I just physically couldn't get in there without lying on top of Gil.

I knew we had no heavy equipment,

so I knew the only way we're gonna get these guys out is the old-fashioned way

so I started taking bricks, you know, a couple of bricks at a time,

throwing them up in the opening,

go back down, get a couple more bricks

and just, to try to get these guys uncovered.

[Valentine] We saw about 185 people,

and we moved 130 of them in 55 minutes in whatever vehicle we could find,

uh, Deuce and a Half, 5 tons, pick-up trucks.

[Kuhner] MPU's were arriving at this point

and they've set up a 360 degree security perimeter on the outside.

Sorry, I need you to back up.

We then set to work searching the building and looking for survivors.

[Valentine] Probably about an hour or so down the line,

I heard a cry that there's more people up here.

So I said, "Okay, I'm going upstairs to check."

I went floor to floor, room to room

till I got to the top floor and I heard another cry there,

and that's where I met Bill.

About 40 minutes after I arrived, I hear somebody yelling from up above,

and the guy goes, "Do you need any help?"

And the last thing I wanted was somebody wo had no training down there,

gonna make more problem, knock more bricks down,

and I said, "You have any experience?"

and he said "I'm a New York City firefighter paramedic,"

and I said, "Come on down."

[Valentine] I looked at the hole

and I just said "Holy crap!"

Here would be the third floor...

looking at it from the side.

When it collapsed, the roof basically went...

And Sérgio's office would've been somewhere... in here.

The second floor had collapsed partially down.

They were basically here. Their heads were down.

Now, they would be next to each other. So this would, let's say, be Gil Loescher

here in his feet...

To his right behind him, on that diagram,

Sérgio would be basically in the same position.

Several bodies were actually located in this area, over here.

That were, the other people that were in the meeting.

We treat everybody in the EMS the same.

If I could have gotten Sérgio out first, would I?

All things being equal, maybe.

But if it could have been the President of United States

and I would've had to get Gil Loescher out first

physically to get room to pull Sérgio out.

I said "Let me go down, you've already gone your turn."

My little one-man hole in the ground became a two-man hole in the ground,

and we spent the next, uh, two, three hours working together like a team,

uh, trying to get these guys out of there.

[Valentine] I had to climb over two victims. First victim was a female.

She had, uh, this side of the face covered with a concrete slab.

Uh, she had what we call agonal breaths, but still had a pulse.

She had a real severe head injury, I knew she wasn't gonna be survivable.

I told her to hang on and I said "Keep your faith,

and I said that God is with you," and she squeezed my hand.

So I'm assuming, because in the medical community

the last thing that goes is your hearing,

so I really believe the lady heard me.

I quietly pray, and I tell him "Jesus loves you."

I do that automatically.

Some of my co-workers think I'm crazy, but, you know, that's who I am.

I continue to go down.

I finally got down to the bottom of the first floor,

and I heard two people, they were talking, and one was Sérgio,

he was to the left of me and Gil was more or less straight right in front of me.

He was conscious, he knew what was going on,

he knew what happened, he knew where he was.

Uh, he knew his name, he knew how old he was and where he was from.

Uh, and he told me he was from Oxford, England.

He was an American working there.

I'm told that I was conscious for most of that time,

but I don't remember.

[Valentine] I told him, "I'm gonna continue to work while you talk."

He was telling me about his family, his wife and his two lovely daughters.

I said, "This is my promise to you...

I will get you out of here alive if you stay with me."

[Pichon speaking French]

The earth was smoldering.

We were digging with our bare hands.

We had no shovels or equipment.

We kept calling Sérgio's name over and over.

[Davie in English] My memory was of dirt.

I was surprised about how much dirt there was.

I remember thinking I'm going to move a piece of rubble and he will be there.

I then saw a slit.

I put my head in and called out again, and it was Sérgio.

I just felt wonderful, you know.

He was alive, and, uh, and we'd found him.

[Salamé] We found a hole through which we were communicating.

"Sérgio! Sérgio!"

In French... [speaks French]

"We will come and help you. Don't worry."

His first questions of me after I'd asked of him,

were concern for others in the team,

not of himself or of his circumstances.

"Where is Carolina? Where are the others? Please look for them."

Um, "Don't stop."

[William] I was not aware that there were people still working outside of the base

of the opening. I didn't hear anybody.

At this point I was able to yell out one of my sergeants.

I said, "Robbie, I need a rope.

I need something to haul this stuff out, I need lights."

I never saw any equipment, because he was a buck sergeant and as he came through,

now as more and more people were showing up from the army,

higher ranking, it was like, "Hey, we need that rope."

You know, Captain would say "Give me the rope," and he'd say,

"Well, I need it for my first sergeant.

I'm a captain, give me the rope."

You know, "I need it and I'm a colonel, give me..."

Never got any of that stuff.

At that point both of them were lucid, conscious.

I'm just trying to keep them talking.

What I was taught was to get their minds off their injuries.

The survival rate is greater

when we get their mind off of what's going on at that time.

Kind of put them in another area in their life.

Get their mind away from Baghdad.

[Holbrooke] A seminal moment in Sérgio's life came

when East Timor was cut loose from Indonesia

after tremendous fighting and genocide.

[people clamoring]

We needed a senior UN official to be in effect the president,

the power in an area which was no longer part of Indonesia

and not yet an independent country.

Sérgio Vieira de Mello had the drive, the leadership and the skills to do it,

and it was the biggest test the UN had ever faced in the nation-building phase.

[Larriera] I never heard of Timor in my life.

When I was proposed to go there, I, I could...

I couldn't in a million years have placed it on the map.

I was an economics officer

working in establishing the traditional structure of the new government.

I did know Sérgio Vieira de Mello from Brazil.

My part of the government knew him as the SRSG.

The Special Representative of the Secretary General.

Um, one morning I was running along the beach road,

and I saw this man running with someone else who looks like a bodyguard.

He passed by and I looked at...

You know, I looked at the two and I realized this was the SRSG.

And I'm looking at him thinking,

"Well, I am a woman, here I am running on my own,

why does he need a bodyguard next to him? What a chicken."

[reporter] The two man who hold East Timor's immediate future in their hands

enjoy another rapturous welcome in an East Timorese town.

On this day, Xanana Gusmão has been crowned king of the Ermera regency.

By his side is the man with the real power in East Timor today.

Sérgio de Mello is East Timor's legal leader for the next two years

as it makes its transition to full independence.

[instruments playing]

Here, Sérgio, a guy who in his early 20s,

you know, had preached against imperialism,

had thrown stones at Parisian police,

and suddenly he was in charge, he was the viceroy.

[Peter Galbraith] United Nations gave Sérgio all the powers of a dictator,

but he never dictated anything.

He set up a consultative council that included the top East Timorese leaders,

and later a cabinet

which included the East Timorese leaders.

And he never took a decision that the East Timorese disagreed with.

East Timor will have an elected representative body

working for the people to frame a constitution

that is of the people.

This is a momentous achievement.

Democracy looks to be in a very healthy state indeed.

[Larriera] The real first time when I talked to Sérgio

was at a formal dinner.

I arrived very early, and, um...

it turned out that the only person who was there,

the first person who was there was Sérgio.

No one else was there, so we... started chatting away.

He told me that he knew I was from Argentina, and that, uh,

he had spent the first days of his life in Argentina, in Buenos Aires,

and I was surprised to hear that.

As he was telling me this, he was drifting away in memories,

until everyone suddenly arrived and our conversation was cut short.

It was that time, it was that day that we had really, you know...

established a connection and liked each other.

He had told me he was separated, you know,

and I assumed that that was a legal separation.

It was later on that he told me that he was not legally separated.

But I must say that in the beginning he was not, you know...

You know,

hundred percent clear from that.

[Power] Sérgio had gotten married very young to Annie

and I don't think when he had his two sons that he would've forecast

that so much of his life would be spent away from his home in France.

He was never a terribly faithful husband.

He had relationships outside his marriage,

um, you know, couple of which were very, very public.

Uh, in Cambodia, he had lived with his girlfriend

and worked with her in the mission.

It was clear to everybody with whom we worked that,

um, we had a relationship.

It was, for me, very difficult because he was married

and we were clearly serious.

I never met his wife but I'm sure she knew.

Sérgio had an eye for women and, uh, enjoyed their company.

A lot.

[Bos] It didn't last.

But we stayed in touch, sort of, and through friends, uh, mutual friends.

Then I remember receiving an email from him that he sent

to his closest friends just before he left for Iraq.

He said, you know, "I'm so happy that I'm...

moving into a phase in my life where I'm...

I'm starting to have a personal life, and I'm looking forward.

This is going to be my last assignment and then...

I want to have a more normal lifestyle and start with Carolina."

What I remember from that email was that he was ready to,

to settle down and start enjoying life.

[Power] With Carolina, he was saying, "This is the woman I'm gonna marry."

He was wearing a ring with her name on it.

She was wearing a ring with his name on it.

He started legal proceedings to end his marriage,

and, uh, with a thought of beginning a new life with Carolina.

He really wanted to have a second chance at having a family.

[Galbraith] I think he did regret not having spent more time with his sons.

On the other hand, it didn't change his behavior,

and he felt drawn intellectually,

uh, and emotionally to the work he was doing. He was ambitious.

He was-- His career was very important to him.

And I think he also felt that he was doing good.

In that scheme of things, spending time with his sons

ended up being less, less important.

But the truth is, had he been a family man,

he would not have done,

he could not have accomplished what he accomplished.

[singing East Timor national anthem]

[Larriera] All of a sudden, things just started falling into place.

Yes, independence will take place and yes, we are in love, and...

You know, life cannot be better

than life at that moment in time.

[Holbrooke] It was his success in East Timor

that proved that he was at a unique level.

He inherited this war-torn, genocide-torn half an island,

had presided over it, built it up, and handed it off

as an independent country.

[folk music playing]

[Larriera] After the ceremony was finished,

several parties were taking place.

The President of the World Bank was toasting with President Clinton,

and many heads of state were in town.

He told me, "Carolina, I don't want to go to any party.

I just want for the two of us to be together,

and let's do our own thing.

Why don't we go for a run?"

As we were running along, the Timorese were recognizing him.

They were saying, "Whoa, look. Here he comes."

I could see Sérgio smiling from ear to ear,

waving his hand to the people, you know,

as if he was waving bye-bye to East Timor.

And many times afterwards, he will bring me back to that moment.

He would take me back to that moment.

[sniffles]

"Tell me you remember that night when we went running, the taste of independence,

didn't it feel good? Didn't we do the right thing?"

[speaking Arabic]

Let us examine the stand of the West and the United Nations in Indonesia

when they moved to divide the largest country in the Islamic world...

[in English] Osama bin Laden had issued a statement saying that, uh,

jihadis all over the world should take up arms not only against United States,

but against the United Nations.

[in Arabic] Under no circumstances should any Muslim or sane person

resort to the United Nations.

[in English] And the grounds for that appeal

was that the United Nations had helped dismember Indonesia,

the largest Muslim country in the world,

and that it had pried away, uh, East Timor from this Muslim motherland, Indonesia,

and bin Laden was sending the signal the UN is a target.

[helicopter hovering]

[inaudible]

[siren wailing]

It's not an unusual thing for the United Nations to be, uh, targeted

when our objective in that country, I think,

which should be recognized by all,

is to just help Iraqis get back on their feet.

[reporter] A Special Representative of the UN, Sérgio de Mello,

was there in the compound when this truck bomb detonated

right below his window.

We still don't have any conformation about the extent of the injuries.

We're still searching out more information about that. We are...

[Valentine] I told ranking officers,

I'd said, "Get me the heavy equipment, bull dozers, cranes...

Just find me anything."

[William] Finally, somebody threw down a woman's purse,

and it was tied with a string

which looked like the kind of cord that you use on a set of drapes,

that they had tied together and that became what we used to haul the bricks up.

So I'd fill it with a half a dozen bricks

and these guys would haul it up to the third floor,

throw it somewhere and they'd drop it back down

and we'd throw a few more bricks in.

And this just kept going on and on.

That went on for hours until there was enough room

for me to move Gil or Sérgio a little bit out of the way.

Sérgio did move a little bit,

but every time I moved him, he was in agony,

and every time I moved him, the dirt and the walls were shifting.

So I really had no means of supporting the walls up,

because I didn't have two by fours, or four by fours or anything like that.

But this stuff didn't come fast enough.

[William] There was no unity in command, no unity of effort.

Basically, you know, fire service in America, Canada, Western Europe

they're going to have shoring equipment, they're gonna have things that we can use

to stabilize the building to get them out. We had nothing but our hands,

a ladies purse and a string.

At the base of the rubble pile, there were a couple of people milling around.

One was a female.

She was missing a shoe. She had torn dress.

I don't know what language she was speaking, to be quite honest with you,

but it wasn't English.

She was told a number of occasions to go to the casualty collection point,

but she kept milling around.

[Larriera] I tell the soldiers, "Come on, you know, help me. Let's get him out.

Let's get some shovels and start digging the debris out."

And he tells me, "There are no shovels."

"Well, okay, let's do it, you know, with this piece of steel."

He said, "No, no, no. We need to wait for equipment to come."

"But where is equipment?

Who the hell is in charge?"

[Rice] I got a phone call saying that, uh,

Sérgio de Mello had perhaps been very seriously wounded.

That he was trapped and that they didn't know how serious the situation was.

But then a few minutes later,

someone said, "Well, no, he'd been speaking,

and had been talking to people outside the building."

And I remember just a sense of relief that, uh, perhaps this was all right.

[Bremer] The President called and he said, "Well, please find out what happened."

And my Chief of Staff pulled me aside and he said,

"We don't know what's happened with Sérgio."

Um, "The last we heard he was alive,

but, you know, we just don't know what's going on.

Um, he's trapped somewhere in the rubble."

Short time ago I spoke with Ambassador Bremer,

directed him to provide all possible assistance

to the rescue and recovery effort

at the United Nations headquarters.

[indistinct chatter]

[man] Heads up.

You ask questions or you want to hear from me?

-[reporter] Both. -Yeah?

[Rice] The President immediately took to him.

He was eloquent.

He was committed.

He drew you in in the conversation with him.

You just knew that this was somebody who could command a room.

[Sérgio speaking Portuguese]

Secretary General,

distinguished members of the Council,

friends,

I believe we have reason to be optimistic

about the future of Iraq.

But we have little margin for error.

[in English] The United Nations' presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to

any who would seek to target our organization.

Our security continues to rely significantly

on the reputation of the United Nations,

our ability to demonstrate meaningfully that we are in Iraq to assist its people

in our independence.

[Power] Sérgio hadn't wanted to go to Iraq in any deep way.

I mean, he liked being at the center of, uh, the action, always.

He liked being the center of attention, always.

But he was beginning to build a new life with Carolina

and exhausted from East Timor,

coupled with the fact that he opposed the war in Iraq, to begin with,

but as soon as the question was posed, Sérgio did not feel like he could say no,

and of course tried to make the best of, uh, not an ideal situation.

[McNamara] I never forget him writing his speech for his landing in Baghdad.

I think he didn't have the press that he expected

because Bremer had called a press conference for his own at the same time,

so that sort of sabotaged a little bit,

but he was pretty aware of a historic event,

and I think also pretty aware

that he had an awful mandate from the Security Council.

It wasn't a political management mission.

It wasn't a humanitarian mission.

It was a compromised mission under the US occupation.

But if anyone could have achieved something

in that political hotchpotch mess of a situation,

it would've been Sérgio.

Hi.

[Rishmawi] The first thing he wanted to do is to listen.

He went to Basra, Mosul, Erbil, all over. All over.

He was very attentive to how normal Iraqis were living day by day.

Water, electricity.

He saw it very much as a question of human dignity.

What I do if I don't have money? What I do?

I stole. Became a thief.

-No, don't do that. I understand-- -No, I am...

I am a graduate from a university.

[Salamé] Well, he didn't know much, but he did not pretend to know much.

That was something that you'd immediately like about him that...

he was willing to listen, to learn.

We had an advantage.

Everybody is in principle willing to talk to us,

which was not the case with the Americans.

[Sérgio] I am here to listen to you.

I am here to learn.

[interpreter speaking in Arabic]

[Sérgio] Tell me frankly, how you believe the United Nations, myself,

and my colleagues can be helpful to you.

[speaks Arabic]

[applause]

[Larriera] Sérgio worked non-stop.

He was eternally optimistic that, uh,

he and his team, single-handedly, and perhaps naively, um,

could turn the tables around.

[Bremer] We've had a very good first meeting with Mr. de Mello here,

going over a very wide range of issues on which we can work together

to help in our common objective which is producing an independent, democratic

peaceful Iraq, and I think we have a very good sense...

Sérgio saw nothing incompatible with trying to help the UN

by helping the Iraqis, which in turn would help the United States.

There wasn't any press briefing foreseen in our program.

[Holbrooke] He was not an accomplice

to the terrible mistakes of the Bush administration.

He was doing what he could for the Iraqi people

in a typical Sérgio fashion.

He was paying too little attention to the fact

that he was at great personal risk

precisely because the more effective he was

the more he would be perceived by the enemies of the US

as serving American interests.

[reporter] Mr. de Mello,

is there a real role to the United Nations

in the political process in Iraq

or it's just a cover to the American...

American occupation?

Thank you. First of all, my friend, and answering your second question,

the UN, its Secretary General,

and Sérgio Vieira de Mello, Representative of the Secretary General,

are no tool and no cover for anyone, all right?

We are an independent organization.

Secretary General Kofi Annan and myself are independent from anyone.

So don't suggest for a second that we are there supporting the United States

or the coalition, all right?

Once in the street, there were small pieces of paper in blue.

Like, square ones in blue,

uh, that says "Al-Qaeda is now here," or something like that.

Someone had been reportedly seen taking down the numbers of the license plates

of cars coming in and out of the compound.

[William] As an anti-terrorism specialist,

I try to look at it from the terrorist point of view and I was thinking that,

you know, "If I was a terrorist,

it would be so easy to drive a truck loaded with explosives down the driveway

and detonate it right next to the UN and blow it up."

I recommended strongly that they put in a large reinforced gate

at the entrance to the Canal road driveway,

but it was a very busy road and they were concerned the traffic

trying to get into the parking lot would queue up,

and they'd have accidents and it would just be a mess and...

I reported back that I thought, you know,

it'd be better to have a few fender-bender accidents

than have somebody drive a truck up the driveway and blow up the building.

In lieu of the gate that I'd recommended,

the 2nd Cavalry had supplied them

with a Bradley armored fighting vehicle and a crew,

and they were basically the valet parking.

Later on, I noticed the vehicle was gone

and there was nothing there except a roll of concertina wire across the driveway,

and I was, like, "Uh-oh."

When I spoke to somebody at the UN, I said "What happened to it?"

And they said, "Oh, Sérgio ordered it moved." I'm, like, "Oh, Jesus."

He was trying to tone down the American presence at the UN compound,

so it didn't look like the UN was, you know, part of the coalition forces.

[Nesri Tehayneh speaking Arabic]

The UN is ruled by the Jews and the Americans

and its crimes are flagrant in the Arab and Islamic world.

Zarqawi told me he needed to hit a big target - to recruit followers.

Zarqawi said that the UN

was a nest for secret services and American spies.

He said he needed to attack the UN

and kill that criminal Sérgio.

On that Monday, he told me that he...

he really needed something to look on to the future.

We needed to get going and start planning immediately

on our next steps, on our next move.

And really our next move had been to go back to Brazil.

Monday night he said, "Carolina, let's book the flights

and make sure that we have a clear exit strategy.

Because I need to be thinking that I'm going back to Brazil,

I'm going back to Rio."

We were six weeks away from leaving Baghdad.

[William] They say time flies when you're having fun.

Well, I certainly wasn't having fun but time was flying.

And the golden hour, it came and went, we didn't even realize it.

I'm tired, my legs and arms were cramping.

We were driven, basically.

We were determined that these guys were not gonna die in this hole.

I tried to get them into their, what I felt was their religious belief.

[William] At one point Andre wanted to pray with Sérgio

and he was still lucid enough to say if prayers...

You know, this is not the time,

uh, which I think kind of [chuckles] upset Andre a little bit.

I asked him, you know, you got to have faith, you have to believe,

and he said, "Believe? Damn, God. God did this to me," you know.

"Curse God." He was using some other words that I will not say,

um, and I was trying to tell him, "God didn't do this to you, man.

You have to have faith this strong

to believe that God could get you out of here.

I'm you savior, in a sense.

You have to believe in me."

I've never had that experience.

In 35 years, nobody's ever said, "Hey, let's stop and pray."

What's so wrong with praying with somebody, you know?

It, it, uh... It wouldn't have hurt.

And Sérgio wanted no part of that, so, you know...

And he was... [chuckles]

expletive deleted "no," you know. He didn't want any part of that.

I'm not a big prayer guy either. I was, like, I don't know if I...

tactfully or untactfully said, "We haven't got time for this shit.

Prayer's great, we'll pray when we get him out. But let's get him out."

[Larriera] There are some soldiers that told me to clear the area.

I said, "No, no, no, I'm going there because I hear that Sérgio's there."

And the soldier comes to me and says,

"No, you know, you have to clear the area. You have to step back."

And I said, "No, no."

After a period of time I started to figure out that

maybe there was something going on between her and somebody in there.

She was close with him or something, I don't know.

I could see she wanted to get up,

and I though about it for a second and I said, "You know what?

Let them talk to each other."

I gave her my hand, I let her come up,

she put her head on the hole and started talking.

I put my ear and my mouth very close to the hole

and I, I say...

[speaking Spanish]

Sérgio, are you there?

And a very weak voice says, "Carolina, my love, I'm in pain, I'm here.

I love you."

And I tell him I love him too...

to be strong...

and I'm going to get him out.

At this point, Gil is reacting to some verbal stimuli, but not much.

You can't get really more than a word or two in reply.

We got to get him out, we know we got to get him out,

we got to get him out now.

But the problem is he's still pinned from his lower legs.

Where Sérgio was, Gil had to be removed first.

I said, "Buddy, you know, I've done the best I can,

and if I don't get you out now, we're never gonna get out."

So he said, "Do what you have to do,

and I just wanna live and I wanna go home."

My memory of it is that, you know, I'm just not going to give in.

I'm not going to die. I have...

a lot to live for, you know. I...

You know, I thought...

[voice breaking] immediately of my family.

[sniffles]

A decision was made and, uh, we all agreed on it,

and the most important thing was Gil was ready for it.

The only thing they found me was an old rusty wood saw

and my trusty paramedic scissors.

I said, "I'm gonna start sawing away.

If you have to scream out, scream out.

If the pain is unbearable, let me know and I will stop

and give you some more pain medicine."

I don't remember any of that. I've... blacked that out.

[Valentine] I started to cut through his first leg.

I had to kind of separate his screaming from what I had to do,

'cause I knew it had to be done.

Even with morphine, even being deeply in shock

and basically reacting only to pain,

it was pretty gruesome work. Um...

He screamed. I mean, you probably could've heard the screams in, you know,

the green zone.

We felt terrible, but we knew if we didn't do this,

he would die where he was, because we physically couldn't get him out.

I pulled tighter on the tourniquet,

and I told him I'm gonna go to the second leg.

He didn't answer for a while, for a few minutes, I thought I'd lost him.

What I believe what happened was,

the pain was so bad that it literally just knocked him out.

So, in a way, that was probably a blessing.

I started to cut into the second leg and he woke up again,

and he started to moan and he just said, "Andre, I feel that,

but go ahead and do it and finish."

Um, and I did. I finished cutting the second leg,

pulled tighter on the tourniquet, and I bandaged it.

[William] We finally got a Sked.

It's an acronym for something and I have no idea what it is,

but it's this plastic roll-up thing

that when you unroll it and lace the sides

it forms a semi-rigid stretcher.

[Valentine] I got him in the best I can,

and the team up on top was just waiting on me to say go ahead and go.

They pulled, and they pulled, and they pulled.

The reinforcing rod was blocking one part of the small opening

and the body was blocking the other.

We tried to pull the SKD past it, it wouldn't fit.

Since we never got the hacksaw, we couldn't move the reinforcing rod.

So the only other way to get Gil up was to

remove the body that was pinned in the rubble

part way up.

So I had the unenviable task of, uh, using my combat knife again to, uh,

cut the body in half so they could haul it.

[exhales] And if you think cutting a leg off was fun...

Uh, now even though the victim was dead and obviously deceased...

it was still hard work.

[Valentine] And they finally got Gil up.

I looked at him and I said, "Gil, you're free, you're home now.

I'm gonna give you to my other guys and they will take you to the doctors."

[Loescher] My family was my anchor.

I probably knew instinctively that if I got out of there...

[inhales and exhales]

that they would, uh...

[sighs] see me through my recovery.

He was close to death when they got him out there.

His vital signs were, like, 60 over 40 for blood pressure,

uh, and they did a hot load

into one of the medivac helicopters and flew him away.

I spotted this man. I rushed to him and I asked him,

"Please, I need your help. I need your help.

My Sérgio is in the rubble, and he is going to die if...

if we don't help him out."

He told me, "I have news for you.

Do you see that helicopter, the black copter that just left off?"

And I said, "Yes, yes."

"That is passing by now? That's probably...

the helicopter with him. But I have bad news for you,

and you have to be strong.

To free him out we had to cut his legs

and he is in a very bad shape.

One of his arms is also in very bad shape."

I said, "Okay, it doesn't matter. Is he alive?

I don't care about his legs, is he alive?"

"Yes."

[Valentine] His mind was starting to go. He wasn't talking much anymore.

He was... You could hear his breathing was a lot more erratic

and, and, uh, irregular and stuff,

and I just went over there and I continued to encourage him,

I tried to, uh, hold his hand,

and you know, lay next to him and put my head on him,

uh, so he'll know that somebody was there.

I went back over to talk to Sérgio, tell him we'll get you out next,

he didn't reply to me. Shook him, he didn't reply to me.

Felt for a pulse, and there wasn't one.

We weren't gonna get him out, and that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

[Larriera] I, I felt there is something wrong. I know there was something wrong.

I hear on the back...

someone saying Sérgio's dead.

Sérgio's dead. [sobs]

[Larriera sniffles]

No.

No.

[softly] I wanted to die.

[Larriera sighs]

He failed me. He really failed me.

I really believe God sent two miracles.

Bill and myself, we were his angels,

and he failed both of us.

And it hurt real bad.

I'm mad at him, but I'm also hurt for him,

because he didn't believe in me. He didn't believe in a miracle.

We only asked him to stay alive, have the will to survive,

have the faith to survive and he didn't want to.

Maybe he's misconstruing where he's saying...

you know, basically don't worry about me, get everybody else out first.

Maybe he's construing that as not a will to live.

I look at that as being pretty selfless.

I don't think that's a lack of will to live, I think that's, you know,

I think that's a pretty damn good thing.

I told him, "I promise I'm gonna get you out." And I didn't.

I felt almost, like, he knew I lied to him.

To this day, it's probably the thing that bothers me the most is that

I truly felt that I'd get both of these guys out alive.

[Bremer] A soldier covered with sweat and dirt came over and he said,

Mr. Ambassador, I'm very sorry, we tried to save Sérgio,

but he's dead.

Now the press were clamoring for an interview.

I could not say that I knew Sérgio was dead because

I couldn't have his family find out by my making a statement on television,

so I basically lied.

[reporter] Excuse me, sir.

Sérgio Vieira de Mello apparently also has been injured in this attack...

Yes, that's right. As of this time,

my dear friend Sérgio is somewhere back there.

Uh, it may well be that he was the target of this attack.

The truck was parked in such a place, here in front of the building

that it had to affect his office which was in the second floor above us.

What strikes me about the rescue is just the utter indignity

of Sérgio being left under the rubble for three and a half hours,

for them to be relying upon a lady's handbag and a curtain rope?

Are we kidding?

This is the United States.

And the degree to which the political planners of this war failed

not only Sérgio and the UN officials and others who were killed that day,

but also their own soldiers who put their lives on the line in that way.

Terrible. Terrible.

[Davie] He was lying on his flag, in the rubble.

The United Nations flag.

The, uh, the team...

above then, uh, pulled...

and, uh, slowly we were able to take him up, uh,

up the shaft.

Gaby was up there and some of his other, uh, bodyguards, and, uh, and they...

took one of the stretchers and, uh,

and laid him on... Sorry.

[speaking French]

We put him on a stretcher.

We looked at him and we thought, "Everything he did in the world...

for this."

Impossible to understand.

[in English] We were standing up there in the second floor and the body came,

and, uh, it was put on a...

[inhales deeply]

[exhales deeply] on a...

Uh, and I recognized him. His face was...

entirely intact.

And he looked handsome as usual, I remember.

[somber instrumental music playing]

[Simões speaking Portuguese]

I received a call

that he had died.

I felt like crying, screaming

but my Grandmother was here

and she didn't know.

She didn't know anything.

So I controlled myself as much as possible,

went to the bedroom and cried for a bit

then pulled my head together and took care of it.

[speaking Portuguese]

That was when my world collapsed inside my head.

[voice breaking] To have a son like that

with such good qualities

and it ends like that.

I miss him immensely.

[Pichon speaking French]

Now, I can't say I've come out of the tunnel,

but I'm walking.

And often I go to the Cemetery of Kings

where Sérgio's body is buried

and I talk to him.

Now he's up in there in the sky

and certainly still trying to save some people up there.

I know one day I'll meet him again.

But I really can't forgive the people who did this to him.

[speaks French]

[in English] I was really impressed with his stoicism.

Never asked about himself, he asked about others, you know.

Never asked for anything for himself in the way of pain medicine.

He was always asking, "Take care of the others,"

and I thought somebody should know that.

I didn't know who to contact, I didn't know where he was from.

I just knew his boss was Kofi Annan.

So that night on my broken and battered laptop computer,

I wrote a letter to Kofi Annan.

19th August, 2003.

[sniffles] You know, I'm not gonna get through this.

"Subject: Sérgio Vieira de Mello.

As you are painfully aware, at approximately 1630 today local time,

a horrible disaster occurred

[voice breaks] at the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

I was the first US soldier to arrive on the scene, and the sight was catastrophic.

Unfortunately, Mr. de Mello passed away.

While there is no good way to die, it says a lot about a man's character

when his last thoughts are for his family, his co-workers,

and his country, or in this case, the UN.

I'm truly sorry we could not

have kept our promise to get him out alive.

The UN is fortunate to have people of this caliber working for them.

I salute all of them

and hope that your mission in Iraq will conclude successfully.

Mr. de Mello was a humanitarian of the first order.

He will be hard to be replaced."

[Kofi Annan] Today we share our shock and sorrow

at the loss of people we loved.

All of them leave a huge void.

Raid, Leen, Ihsan, Emaad, and Basim,

Rahim, Ranillo, Rick, Reza,

Jean-Sélim, Christopher, Martha,

Fiona, Nadia,

finally, Sérgio, my dear friend.

Why did you never seem tired

while even working 18-hour days?

Why did you never look crumpled

even after an 18-hour flight?

Why were you never sick?

Why were you never grumpy?

And you were the only top official in the UN known to everyone

by his first name.

Even to those who didn't know you personally

you were always just Sérgio.

[Power] It is heartening that around the world,

whether in the United Nations missions

or in humanitarian organizations or in governments,

you do have individuals who ask themselves

what would Sérgio do.

The one answer that they know he would give is,

"Get out of the capital and go out into the world

and figure out what's happening.

Figure out what's making people tick.

Respect the dignity of the human beings whose lives are at stake here.

Don't treat them as a model if there is a mass.

Engage the bad guys.

Be a man of action,

but also never stop being a man of reflection."

[Larriera] I wish I could have an elastic time.

To be able to go back to the past and stretch out some special moments

to a maximum.

Now we know where that, uh, those times are finished and, uh...

and... they won't happen again.

When I finally made it back to Brazil, I went to this spot.

The spot where we will always arrive

every time we would hit the ground in Brazil,

and go straight into the water at the sea.

I really felt the strength of his spirit and the kindness of his spirit

were right there.

That's where I feel that... that Sérgio is now.

And where I feel that, uh, he really, really rests forever.

[Sérgio] My message is very simple.

Never forget that the real challenges

and the real rewards of serving the United Nations

are out there in the field,

where people are suffering, where people need you.

So, good luck. Welcome to the organization,

and here we are to help you in any way we can.

All the best.

[indistinct talking]

Okay.

[applause]

[inaudible]

[indistinct talking]