Original subtitles

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

we reveal the global manhunts that cornered

the world's most wanted.

From the 17-year chase for the Unabomber...

It's one of the biggest manhunts

in the history of the FBI.

To the Eastern European warlord

hiding in plain sight.

He ends up becoming the face of a U.S.-based vitamin company

and even writes for a well-being magazine.

And the covert hunt for the world's greatest revolutionary.

One moment, Che Guevara was smoking cigars in Cuba.

The next, he vanished.

These are some of the secret pursuits carried out

in the shadows by governments

and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

The best way to catch your prey is to set a trap.

That's what the U.S. DEA does

to catch one of the underworld's

biggest arms traffickers.

To lay the bait, they don't turn to a spy

but a retired bush pilot.

In the early 2000s, U.S. intelligence analysts

start to notice a very worrying trend--

insurgent groups and militias around the world

suddenly have way more advanced weapons.

For the U.S., this is a massive problem

because a lot of these groups are openly hostile

to Western interests.

U.S. intelligence services

wanna find out where the weapons are coming from

and cut the flow off at the source.

It's revealed that many of these weapons

are Soviet issue.

Illegal traffickers are funneling

stockpiles of ex-Soviet arms into rebel hands,

making big money.

By tracking shipments and speaking to informants,

it becomes clear that the king of these traffickers

is one man, Viktor Bout,

better known by his nickname,

the Merchant of Death.

Bout is a former Soviet military officer.

He's running a fleet of about 60 aircraft,

and he's selling everything from assault rifles

to helicopter gunships.

In 2002, Interpol releases

a red notice for Bout, and he becomes a wanted man.

The problem is, he's got friends in very high places.

Bout rarely leaves Russia, where he's widely believed

to be protected by Moscow.

When he does travel, he only goes to other rogue regimes

that won't extradite him.

In 2007, the DEA decides enough is enough.

To up the ante, they'll lure Bout into a trap.

The DEA comes up with a plan.

They're gonna pose as buyers offering him

a multi-million dollar weapons deal.

But to seal it, they're going to insist

that he has to leave Russia.

That way, they can grab him.

They name their plan Operation Relentless.

For it to work at all, they need just the right frontman

to place the bait.

This person needs to be of Bout's world

but also someone the DEA trusts.

There's only one guy who ticks both boxes:

Mike Snow, a British pilot working out of South Africa.

Mike Snow is a former commando

who has spent over a decade flying

bush planes across Africa.

He's no gunrunner, but Snow has spent years

touching down on the same runways that Bout flies into.

He has met many of Bout's cohorts, so they know him,

they know of him, and they trust him.

The DEA reaches out to Snow and asks him to help.

Snow is initially reluctant,

but he's seen what Bout's weapons can do,

the way that they destroy communities

and the way that they shatter lives.

And he wants to do something to prevent that

from happening in the future.

Eventually, he agrees,

and the U.S. pays him $25,000 for his help.

In November 2007, Snow reaches out to Bout

to dangle the bait.

Snow tells Bout's people this concocted backstory

that he recently flew a representative

of a Colombian guerrilla group, and they're looking

for a serious arms supplier.

Given Snow's strait-laced reputation,

this feels a little out of the blue.

Bout actually makes jokes that Snow's U.S. phone number

must be a direct line to the CIA.

But Bout looks into the guy, doesn't see anything

that gives him suspicion.

And listen, the size of this deal

is just a little too tempting for Bout to give up.

Snow's got Bout on the hook.

Now the DEA needs to reel him in.

Snow puts Bout into contact with two

supposed Colombian rebel commanders,

but they're really just undercover DEA agents.

The agents and Snow tell Bout

they need to meet him face to face at a location

that they all feel is secure.

They suggest Romania, Ghana, Morocco, Montenegro,

but they can't seem to find anywhere that Bout feels safe.

Then, as a last ditch, the agent suggests Thailand.

It doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.,

but the DEA believes that Thai authorities

will agree to the deal.

Bout recognizes that Thailand is convenient.

It's easy for him to get there.

And he is operating under the misapprehension

that the United States can't get to him in Thailand.

Bout gets on a plane.

The trap is ready to be sprung, but the DEA doesn't just

need their target in Thailand.

To extradite him, they also need Bout to acknowledge

he knows the weapons he's selling

will be used on U.S. citizens.

In a private conference room at the Sofitel Hotel,

Bout meets the two undercover agents.

Now, they have bugged this entire room

with hidden microphones.

When the meeting begins, one of the undercover agents

asks for dozens of Igla launchers.

Then the agent drops the line that could

blow the whole thing apart--

these missiles are to shoot down American pilots.

Everyone's hanging on his next words.

Finally, he nods and says, we have the same enemy.

Just like that, boom!

It's the clincher-- proof Bout is conspiring

to kill U.S. citizens.

Doors burst open, agents rush in.

After a global hunt spanning nearly a decade,

the Merchant of Death is caught.

In 2011, Bout is convicted

of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals

and provide material support to a terrorist organization.

He's sentenced to 25 years.

Meanwhile, Mike Snow vanishes,

taking his heroic story with him.

Mike and his family flee Africa

for a witness protection program,

and for years, his story remains hidden.

Then in 2014, journalist Nicholas Schmidle

sits down repeatedly with Viktor Bout

and publishes a detailed exposé.

In it, he lays bare the incredible tale

of Operation Relentless and how one bush pilot

helped bring down the world's biggest arms dealer.

Viktor Bout sheltered out of reach.

Other fugitives hide in plain sight.

For three years, locals in one Eastern European dive bar

drink alongside a mystic healer called Dr. Dragan Dabic.

What they don't know is, he's really

the most wanted warlord on the planet.

In the mid '90s, the newly formed nation

of Bosnia and Herzegovina is being torn apart by civil war.

The two biggest ethnic groups, mostly Muslim Bosniaks

and mostly Christian Bosnian Serbs,

are in a bitter fight for power.

Leading the Bosnian Serb forces

is one of modern history's most brutal leaders,

Radovan Karadzic.

Radovan Karadzic is a former psychiatrist

who is now the political and military leader

of the Bosnian Serbs,

and he is truly an extreme nationalist.

During the war,

he carries out a horrific genocide.

He has Bosniak cities surrounded and starved

and carries out dozens of brutal mass killings.

When the war ends in 1995,

the world cries out for justice.

Karadzic is indicted for genocide by the UN.

But at first, nothing happens at all.

For the first few months after the end of the conflict,

Karadzic is living openly.

But as time passes, he can sense a change.

Karadzic feels that local support is waning

and his arrest may be imminent.

Sometime in 1997, Radovan Karadzic disappears.

To find him, NATO peacekeeping troops

begin a huge manhunt, working closely

with U.S. intelligence forces.

American analysts comb tiny settlements along the border

between Bosnia and Serbia.

They're looking for things like late-night internet logins

in villages that don't normally have power,

or even subscriptions to newspapers.

As pressure to enforce the UN indictment grows,

so does the size of the manhunt.

Soon it's deploying teams of CIA officers,

Delta Force, and even SEAL Team Six.

For eight years, every lead comes up empty.

But as investigators comb Eastern Europe,

they miss one crucial development,

the sudden appearance of a mystical healer

in the neighboring country of Serbia.

In 2005, Dr. Dragan Dabic

appears in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade,

and he practices acupuncture and old traditional remedies.

He's gentle.

Kids on the street call him Santa Claus.

But this mystical healer is no saint.

In fact, he's the world's most wanted warlord,

Radovan Karadzic.

Weirdly, the disguise kind of adds up.

Karadzic studied medicine when he was young,

so he knows exactly how to be convincing as a healer.

You'd think he'd keep his head down,

but that's not his style.

Pretty soon, he's built up enough of a profile

that he ends up becoming the face of a U.S.-based

vitamin company, and even writes a weekly column

for a well-being magazine.

Then he gets even bolder.

He starts going to a local bar that's a haunt

of Serbian nationalists, and at one point,

the disguised Karadzic grabs a fiddle

and plays a heroic Serbian ballad

beneath a picture of himself.

By now, Karadzic believes

he's truly untouchable.

Then someone in his inner circle makes a mistake.

11 years after he first disappears,

Karadzic gets a phone call from his brother.

But his brother uses an old SIM card

that investigators are still tracking.

Officers start looking into the man

who picked up the phone.

Soon they figure out he's not who he says he is at all.

This time, Karadzic has got nowhere to run.

In July 2008, in a crowded city bus,

one of history's worst war criminals is finally cornered.

He takes his seat on the bus, and two plainclothes agents

take seats behind him.

At that point, he knows that he's been caught.

In 2016, Karadzic is found guilty

of genocide and war crimes and sentenced

to 40 years in prison.

That year, British war reporter Julian Borger

uncovers the full story of how this historic moment happened.

Borger publishes an extraordinary tell-all account

built from dozens of interviews with spies and officials.

These interviews reveal the details

of how intense this chase had been

and just how close Karadzic came to disappearing forever.

Some manhunts cross continents.

This one never leaves the building.

When the CIA suspects a mole at Langley,

they send in an operative to root him out,

triggering one of the most unique spy-versus-spy hunts

in the agency's history.

In 1995, a Russian source drops a bombshell

that blindsides the CIA--

they have a mole.

This source claims the Russians know details

of secret U.S. operations that could only have

been leaked by an insider.

This warning sends shock waves through Washington.

The FBI handles counterintelligence

inside the U.S., so it falls to them to work with the CIA

to figure out who this mole might be.

They begin an urgent hunt inside the agency.

The FBI narrows the search to just a handful of officers

who have access to the information

that the Russians claim to have.

And as that list narrows further and further,

one name stands out:

James Nicholson.

The FBI decides to check him out.

Nicholson is polygraphed several times

as part of these routine security checks.

The polygraph examiner actually sees

that Nicholson is not only showing signs of deceptions,

he's actually showing signs of trying to cheat the test.

They let him think that he's passed,

and he leaves none the wiser.

But he's just become their prime target.

Catching an agent this experienced

comes with high stakes.

Nicholson is a 45-year-old

intelligence officer.

He's trained in catching spies,

which makes him a formidable opponent in and of itself.

But the bigger worry is his current job.

His current posting is as an instructor

in the CIA's training academy.

This is a big problem because every future

and upcoming covert officer is going through

the same training regiment that Nicholson is leading.

He could potentially compromise

an entire generation of intelligence officers

before they've even left the training facility.

After the FBI starts surveillance on Nicholson,

they spot a chance to slip an undercover agent

right under his nose.

A short while into the investigation,

Nicholson needs a deputy.

He's given a stack of personnel files to choose from,

and one stands out-- John Maguire.

To Nicholson, he looks like the perfect sidekick.

He's a field officer who's recently

been sidelined and stuck in an administrative post.

What Nicholson doesn't know is,

John Maguire's placement is no accident.

The FBI has put Maguire directly in his path

with orders to spy on him.

What happens next is the only spy-versus-spy mission

to ever play out inside the CIA.

Maguire becomes Nicholson's

indispensable right-hand man,

and gradually he wins his trust.

Piece by piece, he starts feeding

evidence back to the FBI.

First forensics.

After a meeting, Maguire slips Nicholson's

coffee cup into his bag because the DNA on it

gives investigators a way to tie him

to any stolen documents.

Then a house sweep.

With Maguire's help, using a duplicate key,

a covert team breaks into Nicholson's house

while Nicholson is away.

And inside, they hit the jackpot.

They find a scanner and a laptop computer

chock full of clandestine CIA documents

supplied by Nicholson.

Finally, the surveillance.

The investigative team is able to put hidden cameras

inside of Nicholson's office.

They record him taking pictures

of classified CIA files.

It's a damning stack of evidence.

But to make their case bulletproof,

the FBI wants to catch Nicholson red-handed

heading to his handler with classified documents

in his possession.

After several months of investigation,

Maguire alerts the FBI to the fact

that Nicholson is arranging a secret meeting in Switzerland.

This is the perfect moment.

Once Nicholson goes through airport security,

he'll be unarmed, but he'll also likely be carrying

the sensitive material.

On the day of the flight, agents follow

Nicholson through the airport.

A team posing as passengers surround him,

then out on the tarmac they take him down.

The bag he is carrying is full of stolen intelligence

bound for Moscow.

Nicholson is sentenced to 23 years,

the highest-ranking CIA officer ever

to be convicted of espionage.

James Nicholson is a true American traitor.

He sold out his own colleagues

and U.S. secret operations to the Russians

for a sum total of $300,000.

Maguire's undercover role in Nicholson's capture

stays hidden for years, but in 2011,

one reporter uncovers the full story.

A journalist named Bryan Denson manages to befriend

Nicholson's family and gains access to reams

of private correspondence along with Nicholson's

own prison journal.

These documents reveal in detail the incredible story

of how the CIA quietly planted one of its own

to track a traitor inside Langley.

How do you track down a terrorist

no one has seen in 17 years?

That's the challenge the CIA faces in 1994

as it hunts a man who spread a wave of violence

across Europe in the 1970s and '80s.

In Vienna in 1975, the biggest names

in the global oil industry are gathered in a single room

for their annual OPEC summit.

Around midday, six armed militants burst inside.

They kill 3 and capture over 60 hostages.

They force Austrian TV to broadcast their demands

every two hours, and their message

is on behalf of liberation for Palestine.

Incredibly, they escape by demanding

a jet bound for Algeria.

The world's press go wild over the audacity

of the attack.

Who could pull off a strike like this

and get away with it?

The militants claim they belong to a group

called Arm the Arab Revolution.

Investigators recognize one of the men

from the photos and footage as a known militant,

the wanted terrorist already nicknamed Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos is the pseudonym

for Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,

the son of a wealthy Venezuelan

who has drifted into radical politics

during his world travels.

He's previously been linked to bombings

and killings across Europe in the early '70s,

but until now he's flown largely under the radar.

Not anymore.

The OPEC attack catapults Carlos

straight to the front pages.

Western intelligence services launch a renewed manhunt

to bring him to justice.

Problem is, Carlos's fame has won him

powerful new protection.

Soviet bloc states see Carlos as someone

with a common enemy, the West.

They also see him as someone who can inflict chaos

on this enemy with terrorist attacks.

So they begin to shelter him.

He bounces from East Berlin to Czechoslovakia,

even down to Syria.

While in East Berlin, Carlos is given

a support staff of 75 people.

It's almost like he has gone from below the radar

to a state-supported terrorist.

For over 15 years, no Western authorities

get so much as a shot at him.

In that time, Carlos unleashes wave after wave

of terror on the West.

Bombing attacks and hit jobs that claim almost 80 lives.

Then a revolution changes everything.

When the Soviet Union collapses,

many of the Soviet-friendly regimes that once

sheltered Carlos begin to ally with the United States.

So overnight, his safe havens start to disappear.

It's not a good look to be protecting Carlos,

especially if you wanna get into the Americans'

good graces.

Eventually, the CIA are approached

by an unlikely ally.

Bruno Bréguet is a trusted lieutenant

Carlos has relied on for years.

He reaches out to the Americans.

He feels Carlos's terror is no longer guided

by his ideology but by his ego.

The growing brutality inside Carlos's group

has left him disillusioned.

Now he offers to help the CIA

hunt his former comrade.

The CIA gets Bréguet to meet one of Carlos's couriers

for lunch in Zurich.

Now, the courier is completely unaware

that Bréguet is working with the CIA.

Intelligence teams track the courier

all the way to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

The problem is, Khartoum has about 2 1/2 million residents,

and they need to find one man.

Added to that, the few images they have of Carlos

are 17 years out of date.

So to find Carlos, the CIA brings in Billy Waugh.

He's 64 and a veteran tracker.

Billy Waugh launches a huge surveillance

sweep across the city.

Then one day, while he's eating pizza,

he sees someone that he had seen beside Carlos before--

his former bodyguard.

Later, he trails the bodyguard's car

to a walled property.

He sits, and he waits.

And then suddenly, a man he believes to be Carlos

steps into view.

Waugh gets the first confirmed pictures

that the CIA has of Carlos in more than a decade.

Now the CIA has his exact location,

but they don't bring him in themselves.

Carlos's biggest crimes have occurred in Europe,

and the French authorities have the biggest

stack of evidence against him.

So the CIA lets them step in.

In August 1994, Carlos goes into the hospital

for minor surgery.

But the moment he begins to wake,

a security guard steps in and sedates him again.

He wakes up to a good news, bad news situation.

The good news is that the surgery went swimmingly.

The bad news, he's actually on a French military aircraft

on his way to Paris, where he's going

to be charged for his crimes.

On August 14, 1994, after two decades on the run,

the world's most wanted terrorist is in custody.

He's found guilty of a string of murders and bombings.

He's sentenced to life in prison three times over.

The story doesn't end there.

In the 1990s, former Soviet states declassify records

from their secret police.

They shed new light on why so many nations

were willing to shelter Carlos.

Page after page of files reveal Eastern Bloc states

were terrified of the reprisals

Carlos might launch against their nations

if they refused to shelter him.

It wasn't a shared ideology that led them

to cooperate with Carlos; it was fear.

Very few people terrified Communist intelligence

services like the Stasi, but in his prime,

Carlos was one of those people.

The best spies don't just disappear.

They start over-- like this next pair,

two KGB agents who give the FBI the slip in New York,

only to resurface 3,000 miles away as an entirely new couple.

Exactly how they were caught

was kept secret for more than 50 years.

At a political rally, Lona Petka,

an American-born Communist activist,

meets Morris Cohen from Harlem.

They hit it off, and by July 1941, they're married.

It's only after they're married that Morris reveals

to Lona that he is not just a fellow believer,

he has actually been working as a spy

for the Soviet Union since 1937.

For most people, finding out your partner

is part of a spy network

would be a marriage ender-- but not Lona.

She agrees to give Morris her silence,

and soon he asks for even more.

When America enters the war, Morris is called up

to serve in the U.S. Army.

But before he leaves, he asks Lona to take over,

stealing intelligence from military factories

all along the East Coast.

Lona readily agrees.

After all, she believes in the cause.

And it turns out she's pretty good.

During this time, she meets a scientist

who is working in the Manhattan Project,

and he provides her with blueprints

for the U.S. atomic program, which were immediately shared

with the Russian government.

After the war, Lona and Morris return to New York

and live under the radar until a sensational arrest in 1950

sets the authorities onto their trail.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two American-born Soviet spies,

are convicted of passing atomic secrets

about the Manhattan Project.

They're electrocuted at New York's Sing Sing Prison.

This unnerves the Cohens.

They knew the Rosenbergs.

And there's proof now that if your name comes up

in association with sharing nuclear secrets

with the Soviet Union,

you could face the electric chair.

With help from the KGB, the Cohens slip out of the U.S.

and into Poland.

As the FBI digs into the Rosenbergs' network,

they discover links to the Cohens.

The FBI goes to the Cohens' house

and interrogates neighbors, only to learn

that the couple is long gone.

There's nothing.

It's as if this couple simply disappeared.

The only thing that the FBI can cough up

is the enlistment record from Morris entering the army

during the Second World War.

It gives them some fingerprints,

and it gives them a photograph.

The FBI sends word to all NATO embassies

that Morris is a wanted man, but nothing comes back.

The case goes cold until a year later,

when these two spies resurface 3,000 miles away,

but not as Morris and Lona.

In 1954, the Cohens arrive in a village

just outside of London.

Now they are Peter and Helen Kroger.

And Peter and Helen have established

a bookshop where they're interested in antique books.

This bookshop is the key

to a new top secret mission.

The KGB is running a spy ring

targeting the HM Naval Base Portland,

which is building the UK's very first nuclear armed submarine.

The Cohens are passing information

about the construction of that submarine

on to Moscow, and the method that they're using to do that

is ingenious.

They shrink secret documents into microdots,

tiny photos the size of a period.

Then they replace real periods in the books

with these microdots.

So just imagine you're reading "A Tale of Two Cities,"

and this period on page 57 is in fact a secret document.

That copy of the book then finds its way to the Soviets.

The Cohens send off their antique books

for six years, feeding Mother Russia with secrets.

Then the British get a new lead that puts

the Cohens back on the radar.

In 1960, MI5 gets a tip that a naval attaché

working in London is spying on behalf of the Soviet Union.

MI5 puts him under tight surveillance

and realize that he's handing over documents

to the home of Peter and Helen Kroger, the Cohens.

Over nine months, MI5 pieces together

the entire Soviet spy ring, including the Cohens.

Then, on January 7, 1961, they raid the Cohens' home.

The second they walk in, it hits them.

This isn't a normal home.

It's a spy nest.

They find passports, covert communication tools,

and the equipment to make and read microdots.

It's about as incriminating as it gets.

MI5 arrest Peter and Helen Kroger,

but their true identities are only uncovered

after they take their prints.

MI5 can't match the fingerprints to anything

in their databases; however, they then get a tip

that perhaps the Krogers are, in fact, Americans.

They share the fingerprints

with the United States government,

and they get a match.

The man that they're dealing with is actually Morris Cohen,

and he is wanted for spying.

After two decades in the field with two spy rings,

the Cohens are finally caught.

They're sentenced to 20 years for espionage

but freed after 8 in a prisoner swap.

Meanwhile, MI5's operation stays locked away until 2017.

Only then are files declassified,

including the details of the microdots

found in Lona Cohen's handbag upon her arrest.

Those microdots reveal the extent to which this couple,

this duo, functioned as one of the most prolific spy teams

during the Cold War.

Che Guevara is the Marxist revolutionary

who helps reshape Cuba.

Then, in 1965, he suddenly vanishes.

The CIA races to find him

before he can ignite his next revolution.

Che Guevara is an Argentinian revolutionary

who was one of the masterminds behind Castro's

Communist takeover of Cuba.

After their victory, Guevara travels through Latin America

and Africa, pushing Communism.

But in 1965, he stops speaking at public events.

This man, who at one point had been

the darling of the Marxist world,

now can't be found anywhere.

That's a problem because the CIA

see Che Guevara as someone with a truly unique power

to single-handedly ignite revolutions.

Che becomes a ghostly figure haunting the CIA.

They chase his shadow in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Then a breakthrough in Bolivia refocuses their manhunt.

In March of 1967, the Bolivian military

realizes that there is some sort

of new resistance group in the interior of their country.

They send some of their soldiers to check it out,

and seven of them are killed in an ambush.

Later, two of the insurgents

come forward and surrender themselves

to the Bolivian Army.

The Bolivian Army is very surprised

when they learn that that insurgent group

is being led by Che Guevara.

The Bolivians alert the CIA

that Che might be fomenting a new revolution

in the Bolivian jungle.

After so many false leads, the CIA isn't convinced,

so they decide to send a U.S. field operative to find out.

But that creates a different problem.

The Bolivian government doesn't want

a U.S. operative running this hunt.

It would make them look weak.

And the United States doesn't want it either.

If Che can point to CIA involvement,

it becomes proof that he is fighting American imperialism.

So the U.S. and Bolivian authorities

decide to put a CIA operative on the ground but undercover.

The CIA already has the perfect man in mind,

26-year-old Félix Rodríguez.

He's a Cuban exile who knows Guevara's

playbook back to front.

Rodríguez is given a position in the Bolivian Army,

and he goes by the name Captain Ramos.

His first task is to identify if the rebel leader

really is Che.

Rodríguez gets a break in August.

Troops catch the guerrillas off guard at a river crossing

and capture a prisoner, and he gives the same answer:

Che is in charge.

That same month, another break.

When Bolivian troops raid a camp,

they discover cigar butts, fake passports, photos,

and even fingerprints belonging to Che Guevara.

Rodríguez has confirmation

the world's most iconic revolutionary is back,

leading rebels in Bolivia.

Now his mission intensifies

from intelligence gathering to a hunt.

Rodríguez leaves his office in La Paz

and goes out in the field with the troops.

They're hunting down the insurgent group

in a remote jungle area that's characterized by deep valleys.

On October 8th, Bolivian forces run

into 17 rebels at a nearby stream,

and a four-hour gunfight erupts.

During that gun battle, one of them

tries scrambling up a hillside,

only to be shot through the calf.

Bolivian soldiers rush to that individual,

and only after flipping him over

do they realize that the man that's been shot

is Che Guevara.

Che is moved to a nearby schoolhouse,

and Félix Rodríguez, still undercover,

rushes to the site.

Six months after the search in Bolivia began,

he's standing next to Che.

Rodríguez wants to take Che alive.

They want to interrogate him.

This is the CIA's objective.

He also knows the Bolivians

are ready to kill him.

They don't want a public trial or the protests it might spark.

Rodríguez urgently sends word to the CIA station chief,

asking the U.S. embassy to pressure the Bolivians

to keep Che alive.

It's too late.

On the morning of October 9, 1967,

Rodríguez himself takes a call.

The orders come direct from the Bolivian president.

Che is to be shot, staged to look like he died in combat.

Rodríguez knows the best he can do now

is get whatever intel that he can.

So Rodríguez sits with Che for an hour,

talking through his life and everything he's

been doing since leaving Cuba.

And then Rodríguez informs Che of his fate.

Che Guevara turns white.

Then he says, it's better this way.

I should have died in combat.

Two days later, images of Che's body

appear on front pages worldwide.

His death cements his iconic status.

For more than 20 years, many challenge the official story

that Che died in battle.

Then in 1989, Rodríguez decides to share

his truth with the world.

At the age of 48, Rodríguez publishes

this memoir that narrates the final chapter

of the life of Che Guevara,

but also the extent to which the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency was involved

in his pursuit and his death.

One of the longest manhunts in FBI history

stretched for 17 years, 16 bombs,

three deaths, and dozens of injuries.

And it was all sparked by a homemade explosive so simple,

it gave investigators nothing to trace at all.

It's the spring of 1978, and a nondescript package

has been delivered to Northwestern University.

As a member of campus security investigates it,

the package explodes.

It turns out to be a crude bomb

made from scrap metal and bits of wood.

Thankfully, it only causes minor injuries.

A year later, another blast rips through the cargo hold

of an American Airlines flight.

Now, again, no one's killed, but investigators

notice it's the same style

as the Northwestern University package.

And maybe from the same maker.

The FBI opens a manhunt to find the sender

and gives it the code name Unabomber,

short for University and Airline Bomber.

But they have very little to go on.

There are no traceable parts in these bombs.

Everything has been taken from junkyards, scrap yards,

and they're put together in a way that the FBI cannot trace.

Over the next five years, more bombs follow

at university halls, computer shops, and airline factories.

These bombs get more sophisticated

until after ten attacks, the spree turns deadly.

In 1985, a computer store owner in California

is killed when a device rigged with shrapnel detonates.

The press goes wild.

Soon, the Unabomber task force has over 150 people

working the case, becoming one of the biggest manhunts

in the history of the FBI.

They go through every fragment of every device

and conduct thousands of interviews,

but still they come up empty.

Despite little evidence,

the FBI builds a profile of the bomber.

They think he's probably white, male, solitary,

maybe some academic background,

maybe an engineering background.

The FBI investigates more than 2,000 people,

but still they've got nothing.

Nine years after the first bomb, they get a break.

A man is spotted leaving a box

in a Salt Lake City parking lot,

and when a nearby computer store owner

goes to check it out, it detonates,

severing all the nerves in his arm.

The description of the man, though,

helps a sketch artist produce the first widely circulated

drawing of the suspect.

It appears the bomber is spooked by this close call.

For six years, nothing.

Then, suddenly, new and deadlier devices appear.

This time, though, the bomber isn't just

sending bombs but a message.

In 1995, the bomber sends a 35,000-word manifesto

to "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post."

The manifesto itself is a diatribe against industry,

against modern life, and especially against technology.

But he also makes this demand.

He says if you don't publish this manifesto

in your newspapers, I'll kill again.

The journalists agonize over the decision.

Should they refuse to cave to blackmail

or protect the public?

But the FBI sees an opportunity.

The unique writing style, like the British spelling

of "analyse," give investigators

something to work with.

It's filled with clues to who the Unabomber

might actually be.

The FBI winds up pressuring news outlets

to publish the manifesto because they're hoping

that someone will recognize the terminology, the ideas,

the concepts that are contained within it.

It works better than they ever believed.

Thousands of people come forward with clues.

One of them is a teacher named David Kaczynski.

David's scared because the writing feels eerily

like that of his brother Ted.

Ted Kaczynski had a Midwestern upbringing,

but he was always known to be a genius.

He was a Berkeley professor.

But one brother's hunch isn't enough.

The FBI needs something solid.

David hands over an old essay

that Ted wrote back in 1971.

And it is a heartstopper because you've got 23 pages

that are just brimming with exactly the same ideas

and obsessions as they see in the manifesto.

For the first time in U.S. criminal history,

linguistics are brought to bear in getting

a major search warrant.

After thousands of dead ends,

the investigation finally has its first promising suspect,

Ted Kaczynski.

But the FBI doesn't rush in.

The FBI go to Ted's remote cabin in Montana,

but they have to act carefully.

If the Unabomber really is Ted,

then he's highly intelligent, likely armed,

and may have the whole place rigged with explosives.

As the FBI is moving in on the cabin,

the cabin door opens,

and Kaczynski just walks out onto the porch

and surrenders himself into their custody.

Inside the cabin is a cache

of undeniable evidence.

They find 40,000 pages of notes,

they find bomb-making experiments,

and even one finished bomb ready to be mailed.

The longest and most expensive manhunt

for a serial killer in U.S. history is over.

Ultimately, Kaczynski pleads guilty to carrying out

the attacks in 1998, and he receives

four life sentences without the possibility of parole.

For decades, the full details about the case

remain classified, until 2012, when the FBI releases

a wave of new documents,

including the very writings and words Ted wrote

that were used to convict him.

From double agents hiding inside the CIA

to warlords lurking in plain sight,

the world's most dangerous players go to extreme lengths

to stay one step ahead.

But no one hides forever.