Original subtitles

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

the ingenious disguises and elaborate ruses

used by governments everywhere to deceive the enemy,

from the decoy army created by some unlikely tricksters...

Army chiefs turned to an industry

where the nation leads the world--

show business.

To the luxury dive resort

that's really a secret spy base.

The scuba diving tourists

wake one morning to find that the entire senior staff

have deserted them.

And the Allied agent who takes on the Nazis

by baking the perfect camouflage.

He's carrying a bomb disguised as lunch.

These are some of the strange and terrible schemes

created throughout history by governments

and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

The bigger the mission, the bigger the disguise.

In the 1950s, when the CIA needs to hide

its covert operations across all Southeast Asia,

it secretly purchases one of the world's

biggest airline companies.

In the early 1950s, the French military

is fighting Communist rebels for control

of their greatest Southeast Asian colony, Indochina.

But it's a battle that they're losing.

By 1954, much of the French army,

just over 10,000 troops, are holed up

in this mountainous valley named Dien Bien Phu,

surrounded by enemy troops.

The French don't have the air power

to actually resupply their troops.

Outnumbered, outgunned and out of options,

the French make a desperate appeal for aid

to the Americans.

President Eisenhower sees the French

as a major ally in fighting Communist expansion

across the globe.

The president realizes, though,

that the American public has no appetite

for another ground war.

We recently had World War II and the Korean War,

and he doesn't wanna write the French a blank check.

So Eisenhower is more interested

in covert assistance to the French

than in sending the Marines.

To keep the U.S. support under wraps,

he's gonna need a major smoke screen.

The answer could be an extraordinary air service

with a very inconspicuous name--

Civil Air Transport, or CAT for short.

CAT was formed in 1946 by combat veteran pilots

flying supplies to anti-Communist forces

fighting in the Chinese Civil War.

Weapons, people, livestock,

no cargo was too wild

and no route is too hazardous for CAT's pilots.

Their gung ho reputation

catches the attention of the CIA,

who start using CAT to help supply

their overseas operations.

Soon, CAT is flying

hundreds of covert missions for the U.S.,

and by 1950, the CIA have bought

the entire airline using a shell company

called the Airdale Corporation.

And CAT has the perfect disguise.

They become an actual legitimate business,

flying regular passengers all around Asia.

In fact, their work ends up making them

the second largest air transport company in the world.

CAT is a ready made solution to secretly funnel supplies

to French troops.

But there is a problem.

This mission is so politically sensitive

that the CIA worries CAT's cover might not be enough.

So they add a whole new level of subterfuge.

The U.S. government wants to be 100% sure

that these airdrops are never traced back to them.

So they begin working with the CAT pilots

to make sure that this entire operation

looks like a French enterprise.

Overnight, a fleet of CAT's finest planes

and pilots get a French makeover.

All the planes are repainted in French colors

to make them appear to be

regular French military flights.

Some of their aircrews

even use French language commands over the radio.

In March 1954, the supply drops begin.

Disguised as French airmen, CAT pilots risk it all,

flying ammo and equipment through hostile skies.

These are incredibly dangerous missions.

Two pilots die.

Among those who survive,

they say that the anti- aircraft fire they receive

is as intense as the worst they faced during World War II.

For two months, CAT pilots run a deadly gauntlet,

flying almost 700 missions to supply besieged French troops.

Despite Eisenhower's top secret aid mission,

the French forces are defeated in May 1954.

Even so, CAT's adventures in the region are far from over.

In the late 1950s, CAT is rebranded as Air America.

And as the Vietnam War heats up,

it flies thousands of covert missions in Southeast Asia,

until 1975, when the conflict ends

and its doors are closed for good.

In 1979, journalist Christopher Robbins

publishes a best-selling book called "Air America."

And the truth about this amazing airline...

Is finally revealed.

The CIA goes to extreme lengths to protect CAT's cover story.

This next spy does, too, but his disguise

doesn't hinge on what's in his papers

but what's in his pants.

In the late 1950s, Egypt's President Nasser

is determined to turn his nation

into an unshakeable power in the Middle East.

One of the ways he wants to do this

is to launch an Egyptian ballistic missile program.

The problem is that he doesn't have

the expertise inside the country

to be able to launch this program.

So he turns to German rocket engineers

who were actually part of the missile program

during World War II.

For Egypt's neighbor, the state of Israel,

the rocket program is a major red flag.

Israel is alarmed by the idea of the dictator

of an unfriendly country having long-range missiles.

If Egypt perfects these missiles,

it could strike Israel with no warning.

Israeli intelligence decides to send in a spy.

That means finding a Jewish agent

who can operate amongst Nazi engineers undetected.

One man fits the bill.

Wolfgang Lotz is an Israeli spy who was born

in Germany to a Jewish mother.

He's blond haired, blue eyed, and speaks fluent German,

which makes him the perfect fit to go into Cairo

to cozy up to some German rocket engineers.

In December 1960, Mossad deploys Lotz to Egypt,

armed with an extravagant cover.

Lotz's cover story is that he's a fabulously wealthy

ex-Nazi officer who has an unquenchable thirst

for champagne.

To find his marks, Lotz begins wining and dining

Egypt's high society.

Lotz is a fun guy.

He's really good at parties.

He's great at cocktail conversations.

He quickly becomes the drinking buddy

of a lot of high-ranking Egyptian officers,

including in particular General Osman.

This is the very general who oversees security

for the rocket bases that he's here to spy on.

But Lotz's party is cut short

when Mossad sends an urgent report.

Israeli reconnaissance identifies what it believes

to be a rocket base in the desert east of Cairo

in a place called Shallufa.

They want to send Wolfgang Lotz in

to basically see whether or not this is an active base.

If it turns out to be the real deal,

Mossad will probably recommend that

the Israeli Air Force bomb the site.

Lotz heads into the desert to investigate.

He brings his wife along so they can pose as tourists

visiting a nearby lake.

At a crossroads, they identify

a lone track and a sentry box.

No barriers and a single guard, and that one guard

steps away for a bathroom break.

So the two of them jump on the accelerator and charge down

the track past the barrier.

This is a terrible idea.

They haven't thought through the ramifications

of what they're doing.

Lotz and his wife are intercepted by a Jeep load

of heavily armed Egyptian military troops.

Inside the base, the commanding officer

interrogates them.

Lotz makes up a tale about how they were

trying to find a place to picnic, and they just got lost.

So he tells the base commander to call his friend,

General Osman, to prove his identity.

A few minutes later, Lotz is chatting with Osman,

who even unknowingly teases him about his spy mission.

Osman has no idea how close to the truth he really is,

and the pair is set free.

But just as Lotz's operation is gaining momentum,

his plan falls apart.

Lotz has been secretly communicating

with the Israelis using a covert radio transmitter,

and the Egyptians pick up on his transmissions.

In February of 1965, Lotz and his wife

return home, and it's filled with Egyptian agents.

They find the radio transmitter.

Lotz knows at this point the game is up.

Lotz and his wife are accused of being Israeli spies.

The punishment for that is execution.

To save them both, this smooth-talking spy

must spin his greatest lie of all.

Lotz insists that he's a German patriot,

and he only agreed to spy for Israel

because he needed the money.

And they threatened to expose his SS background

if he refused.

The problem is, Lotz's interrogators

aren't convinced.

They press him with the same question over and over.

Is he Jewish?

Luckily for Lotz, he has one ace left to play--

a bold move that could put their doubts to rest.

Lotz's father wasn't Jewish, and his Jewish mother

wasn't particularly religious, so he'd never been circumcised.

Lotz decides that his best form of evidence

is to pull down his pants.

Faced with this incontrovertible

physical evidence, his interrogators

finally buy his story.

Lotz is imprisoned for spying,

but he escapes execution.

Three years later, he's returned to Israel

in a prisoner exchange, yet the details

of his mission remain secret.

Then, in 1972, Lotz breaks his silence

by publishing an explosive memoir, "The Champagne Spy."

The book finally reveals how this silver-tongued spy

fooled Egypt's military by baring it all.

In the lead up to D-Day, the Allies are scrambling

to knock out a key Nazi armament factory in France.

To blow it sky high, one young agent cooks up

an ingenious deception.

3 cups flour, 2 cups water,

and 40 pounds of plastic explosive.

It's April of 1944, and D-Day is just weeks away.

The Allied commanders are working overtime

to weaken the German defenses that they're gonna face

when they invade Normandy.

An important target

is the national munitions factory

that's located in Saint Medard-en-Jalle

just outside of Bordeaux.

The Allies drop 268 tons of bombs

in an attempt to raze it to the ground,

but it's back up within days.

Knocking out a factory is not as simple

as it seems from the air.

So Britain's wartime sabotage unit, the SOE,

devise a black op--

send someone behind enemy lines to blow it sky high.

It's a black op at its boldest.

High reward and high risk,

which is why Britain calls on an unlikely recruit--

a 20-year-old French aristocrat.

Robert de La Rochefoucauld

is a young count from one of France's oldest noble families.

He flees to Britain once his father

is imprisoned by the Germans.

While in Britain, he learns of a new covert unit

known as the SOE, or the Special Operations Executive.

They were formed by Churchill for the purpose

of carrying out sabotage missions in occupied Europe.

Robert arrives in Britain at the perfect time

for the SOE.

Their operatives on the continent

keep getting caught because they're given away

by their school boy French.

So they're looking to recruit eager French exiles

to carry out sabotage missions.

Rochefoucauld is the perfect fit--

gung ho, willing, French,

and desperate to avenge his family.

He's given the mission to take out the munitions factory

at Saint Medard-en-Jalle.

On May 7, 1944, Rochefoucauld and another SOE agent

head to Southwestern France in two Halifax bombers

loaded with weapons, ammunition, and explosives.

The two men parachute into the countryside,

where they link up with the local resistance

and begin plotting how to take down the Saint-Medard plant.

Early surveillance reveals

the scale of the challenge.

The place is crawling with guards

who run regular patrols,

and they stop the workers at random

to make sure that none of them are smuggling in explosives.

Then the team spots a way

for a native Frenchman like Robert to just walk right in.

Rochefoucauld observes that the workforce

in the factory, they're French civilians.

And what that means is that he has an opportunity now

to blend in.

He can pass for French because he is French.

To convince the guards at the gate,

Robert has to look like a real employee.

So the team scour the workers and eventually find

a close match who, desperate to stop the Nazis,

hands over his ID.

It's a major risk for both men, to be sure,

because being caught would almost certainly mean death.

Getting Robert inside is one thing.

Disguising 40 pounds of explosives

is a much bigger problem.

So the team looks for a cover no guard would question.

They notice that most workers come into the plant

each morning carrying a baguette.

It might be possible to smuggle

small amounts of plastic explosive inside baguettes.

In France, nothing raises less suspicion

than the humble baguette.

But how can you engineer it into the perfect secret bomb?

Robert needs a baguette with the right structure

for concealing explosives.

So it's not as simple as just

popping over to the local bakery.

Any ordinary baguette might be too dense to hollow out,

too brittle to hold a charge,

or too dry to seal up convincingly.

The team starts baking.

They shape dough around a cavity,

bake it firm but make it pliable,

then load it with plastic explosives

and seal it with a flour and water paste.

It's black ops by baking.

Now it just needs to fool the guards.

Robert starts out with a small amount

of plastic explosives, which he smuggles past the guards,

knowing that if anything looks out of place,

the entire operation is over.

He slips away just long enough

to plant the explosives at critical points

around the factory, including fuel tanks

and munitions stores.

Once one artillery shell gets detonated,

it has enough explosive power to detonate

all of the shells around it.

To trigger this chain reaction,

Robert needs to plant a network of hidden explosives.

This means returning to the factory every day

for an entire week.

Each baguette can only hold a limited amount

of explosive, so Robert repeats the mission

over and over again.

And each visit carries the very real risk of being caught.

By the end of the week, he's planted

eight baguette bombs in total,

enough to blow the factory to pieces.

It's May 20, 1944.

As thousands of workers begin to exit the factory,

Rochefoucauld hides under a piece of machinery.

Robert moves quickly,

and he begins attaching timers to the bombs.

But he knows that this is incredibly dangerous

because these devices don't always work as predicted,

and they sometimes set off the bombs early.

By 7:30, the last charge is armed,

leaving Robert less than 10 minutes to escape.

Robert finds himself trapped inside the factory grounds

by an 18-foot wall.

But the resistance throws him a ladder,

he climbs up over the wall, and disappears into the night.

At 8:00, the explosions begin.

They are incredibly effective,

leveling the factory and stripping the Germans

of crucial munitions in the run-up to D-Day.

This secret mission remains secret for decades

after the war.

It's not until 2017, when a journalist

named Paul Kix publishes a book that describes

the baguette bomb incident.

The full story is finally revealed--

how a young Frenchman pulled off one of World War II's

boldest black ops with nothing more than nerve,

ingenuity, and a handful of baguettes.

In World War II, the U.S. Army creates

a top secret unit whose sole job is fooling the enemy.

It calls itself the Ghost Army, and for a very good reason.

Nothing about this army is real.

It's 1944, and the United States

is preparing to take the fight to Hitler

by invading Nazi occupied Europe.

America needs to leverage any advantage they can find.

So army chiefs turn to an industry

where the nation leads the world--

show business.

The Pentagon creates the Ghost Army.

They're not using rifles and machine guns.

This unit will ultimately use Hollywood stagecraft

to fight the enemy.

The purpose of the Ghost Army is to create diversions

and feints and deception.

Officially known as

the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops,

the Ghost Army is made up of just 1,100 men.

The concept is that you're engaging

in force multiplication by having

a small group of soldiers

pretend and give the enemy the impression

that they're actually a very large group of soldiers,

up to two divisions.

So you have a unit with about 1,000 people in it

that is able to make the enemy think it's 30,000 strong.

In June 1944, the Ghost Army Vanguard

Task Force Mason gets an airlift

onto the battleground in France.

Here, their mission is to support

the U.S. 928th Artillery Division

by providing an attractive target for German gunners.

The Ghost Army inflate a series of rubber howitzers,

matching the real guns.

The idea is to draw in the Nazi fire

to get them to focus on that area

where these inflatable weapons are,

as opposed to where American soldiers actually are.

The Ghost Army has to keep their inflatable guns

ahead of the real artillery for almost a month,

taking as many hits as possible themselves.

So these guys are either just

really, really brave or really crazy.

Possibly both.

Over the next 12 months, the Ghost Army supports the Allies

in some 20 operations before this wartime Hollywood team

gives their finest performance on the banks of the Rhine

in March 1945.

The biggest obstacle that we had to confront

after the Normandy landings

was crossing the Rhine.

General Patton and his Ninth Army

are trapped behind the river, which blocks them off

from the path to Berlin.

Rivers are a natural obstacle,

especially to heavy treaded vehicles like tanks.

You have to bring in army engineers,

start erecting bridges.

It turns into a big mess.

Meanwhile, German forces

are waiting on the other side,

and they're just poised to rain hell

on any Allied troops that try to make

that difficult river crossing.

The Ghost Army is ordered

to divert German defenders' attention

from Patton's crossing point

to draw the fiercest German fire.

The first phase is to generate

sneaky signals traffic.

Ghost Army communications teams fill the airwaves

with bogus radio chatter, creating the illusion

of a huge army on the move.

But that's just the beginning for the Ghost Army.

During the day, sonic teams

play the sound of heavy construction

through 500-pound speaker systems.

To the Germans on the other side,

it sounds as if pontoon bridges are being constructed.

The enemy would then be led to believe that

I'm about to be attacked by this very powerful force,

when in actuality, all that was over there

were a couple of Jeeps with loudspeakers on them.

The supporting cast plays its part

behind the lines, but the key part

of the operation is yet to come.

The Germans are conducting daily photo reconnaissance

sorties over Allied lines, measuring what our strength

looks like across the river, so that if there's any

noticeable build up, those photo reconnaissance aircraft,

they will detect it.

To fool these pilots,

the Ghost Army creates an entirely fake front line.

600 inflatable Sherman tanks

and field artillery pieces are moved into position

purposely so that an aircraft can photograph them,

and the enemy can then be left to wonder, all right,

it looks like there's a build-up here.

The Nazis react as intended,

pounding the Ghost Army's position with artillery fire.

Three of the unit lose their lives, but the ruse works.

Patton's army crosses the Rhine miles up the river,

facing only scattered Nazi resistance.

They take only minimal casualties.

This is a critical victory for the Allies.

In 2024, the Ghost Army is presented

with the Congressional Gold Medal for heroism.

It can be quite difficult to quantify

psychological operations, but it has been estimated

that the Ghost Army saved tens of thousands of American lives

during the war.

Desperate times demand daring deceptions.

In 1941, when one American singer

wants to save her husband from the horrors

of a Japanese internment camp,

she deceives hundreds of enemy troops

and puts on the performance of a lifetime.

On December 8, 1941,

the Japanese begin an amphibious landing operation

on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

These islands host key U.S. military bases,

and Tokyo is determined to stop them

from becoming a launch pad for future American counterattacks

in the Pacific.

U.S. forces beat a hasty retreat

out of the capital, Manila.

Fleeing with them is a young American couple in love,

Claire and John Phillips.

Claire is a singer from Michigan

who's been performing in the Philippines

for the last two years.

John is a young and handsome sergeant

that she met while working there.

Despite the war, Claire and John marry,

tying the knot in a makeshift chapel.

But these newlyweds are torn apart

when John is sent to the front line.

Five months later, Claire gets the news she's been dreading.

Claire learns that John has been captured

by Japanese forces and sent to a prison camp

called Cabanatuan,

roughly 60 miles north of Manila.

This is one of the most infamous prisoner of war camps

in the Philippine Islands.

Meals are mainly basic rations of rice.

Sanitation is all but non-existent,

and dysentery and malaria are everywhere.

The thought of her husband suffering

is unbearable, so Claire dreams up an audacious scheme

to help him survive, one that will call on all her skills

as a performer.

Claire's idea is to open a high-end nightclub

in the heart of Manila that she'll run and star in.

She'll pack it with paying Japanese officers

and use the profits to help her husband and other POWs

by smuggling money and medical supplies into the camps.

Claire's grand plan has just one problem.

She's an All-American girl.

To run the hottest nightspot in Manila,

she needs an entirely new identity.

So Claire Phillips disappears,

and Dorothy Fuentes, a Filipino-Italian showstopper,

steps into the spotlight.

Dorothy's persona is perfect for Claire.

Claire is already an accomplished performer,

and although she doesn't speak Italian,

she knows most Japanese troops won't either.

She persuades someone who

used to work in the Italian embassy

to cook up some fake documents to support

the Dorothy Fuentes cover story.

Now Claire gets to work opening

the best cabaret in town.

She pawns her jewelry, including her wedding ring,

and pours every dollar she has

into leasing a modest dance studio.

Then she painstakingly transforms it

into one of the city's most glamorous nightspots.

To appeal to Japanese clientele,

she names it Club Tsubaki,

named after a delicate Japanese flower.

On October 15, 1942,

Club Tsubaki finally opens its doors.

Japanese officers are treated to dazzling dance routines

and very overpriced drinks.

The liquor is flowing. The music is hot.

And at 10:00 p.m. on opening night,

they're already turning away customers.

Her grand opening is the talk of the town.

But before Claire can funnel any profits to help John,

her world is turned upside down.

Claire receives word that John caught malaria

and has died at Cabanatuan.

Claire is devastated by the news,

but she realizes that

while she couldn't save John,

she can press on to help other prisoners.

Driven by Claire's grief,

Club Tsubaki is soon raking in thousands of dollars a week.

Now Claire needs to get this money

and the aid it can buy to the prisoners inside Cabanatuan.

She links up with a Filipino allied guerrilla network,

and they quickly devise an ingenious way

to slip goods past the guards.

They have sweet-faced young women

pose as street vendors, and they sell bags of fruit

to prisoners on work detail for just a few centavos.

The bags look completely innocent,

but inside are hollowed out bananas

stuffed with medicine or secret messages,

while some bags have false bottoms

that hide hundreds of pesos.

Soon, Claire is funneling the equivalent

of $20,000 U.S. a week into the camps,

money that's used to buy vital rations

at the camp's commissary.

Thanks to Club Tsubaki, countless lives are saved.

But after almost two years, the curtain finally

comes down on Claire's daring act.

In early 1944, incriminating resistance letters

are discovered inside Cabanatuan

that point directly to Claire.

Soon after, armed policemen storm the club,

and Claire is arrested.

Japanese military police subject Claire

to weeks of brutal interrogation and torture.

She displays incredible resolve,

refusing to reveal the names of co-conspirators

who could be targeted and keeps the details

of her operation completely hidden.

In November 1944, Claire is tried

in a military court and sentenced

to 12 years in prison.

Claire endures brutal conditions.

She's starved and forced to do hard labor.

Her weight drops to a mere 85 pounds,

leaving her on the brink of death.

Her rescue comes in the nick of time

when, in February 1945, U.S. troops retake Manila.

Two years later, she shares her story with the world

in a sensational memoir.

Shortly after, the United States government

awards the singer-turned-spy the Medal of Freedom

for her truly heroic wartime deception.

Imagine relaxing at a five-star beach hotel,

then waking up one morning to find

every member of the staff has left.

That's exactly what happened

to the guests of Arous Dive Resort,

a luxury vacation getaway in Sudan

where nothing was what it seemed.

As a result of the Ethiopian Civil War

and the famine that was produced

as a consequence of it, Ethiopian Jews by the thousands

fled Ethiopia into Sudan.

In total, 16,000 end up packed

into refugee camps in this neighboring country.

Sudan is an Islamist country

and hostile to Judaism.

So the problem for the Ethiopian Jewish refugees

is that in Sudan, they're not safe.

They are actively being hunted,

and they are a target for killing.

So Israel has to find a way to exfiltrate their Jews

out of the refugee camps in Sudan

and smuggle them to Israel.

The Sudanese government won't help.

Time for Mossad to come up with a plan.

Mossad identifies an officer, Dani Limor,

to go to Sudan to try to find a way

to bring these Ethiopian Jews back to Israel.

Well, he knew from the start that he needed something

on the sea because these evacuations

would have to start on the coastline.

The rat line would lead them over water directly to Israel.

So he starts shopping for a location,

when he finds the perfect cover story in the form

of this abandoned Italian dive resort

right on the water's edge.

The resort is called Arous.

For most, it's a collection of crumbling buildings.

For Limor, it's an opportunity.

Nobody would ever suspect a luxurious dive resort

on Sudan's Red Sea Coast

could ever disguise a secret spy op.

So he does a deal with Sudan's government to lease the resort

for $1/4 million.

Mossad rebuilt the resort at Arous

to turn it into a functioning vacation destination

that Europeans would want to go to

and that the Sudanese government

would not want to interfere with.

Mossad would use the resort as a cover story

to slowly and secretly exfiltrate Ethiopian Jews.

During the day, the plan is for Mossad to host guests.

Then at night, they will drive over 500 miles

to collect the refugees.

A two-night truck convoy will then take them to the coast,

where Israeli special forces will ferry them

via Zodiac dinghies to a naval ship offshore

bound for Israel.

The mission is highly classified.

All involved are well aware of the mortal danger

that they face, not only to themselves,

but all the fleeing refugees.

Mossad agents are convinced that anyone who's uncovered

participating in the operation could be hanged in Khartoum.

By spring 1982, this luxury resort

has been rebuilt, and Mossad's escape route opens.

The refugee camps that were holding the Ethiopian Jews

were about 500 miles from the coastline.

But under cover of darkness, the actual agents on the resort

would go to the refugee camps and literally wake up

the Ethiopian Jews to smuggle them by truck.

And then by night, they take the refugees out

and deliver them to the Israeli Navy,

who then takes them back to Israel.

The rescue resort operates

for more than two years.

A thousand refugees escape to a new future in Israel,

until political chaos in Sudan

makes it impossible to continue the mission.

The scuba diving tourists wake one morning

to find that the entire senior staff

have deserted them.

The mission stays secret for more than 20 years,

until a British journalist hears rumors

that lead to Dani Limor.

And Limor, feeling comfortable that enough time

had passed, reveals details about the way

that the Mossad operated a fake dive resort.

This is why Mossad has the reputation that it has,

because it is willing to rebuild a resort

to smuggle Jews across 500 miles of desert

to take them back to Israel.

The scale of this operation is absolutely mind boggling.

Cover stories can fool the enemy.

They can also ensnare the innocent.

In the hunt for Osama bin Laden,

the CIA tricks thousands of ordinary people

to catch one man.

The United States has been hunting

for Osama bin Laden for well over a decade,

but he's been like a ghost.

But then in August of 2010,

an operation tracking an al-Qaeda courier

leads the CIA to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Satellite imagery shows a man taking

regular walks through the courtyard of this compound.

And visually, it looks like a match to Osama bin Laden,

but it's not a certain match.

And if you're going to undertake a mission like this

in a foreign country, then you need to be

100% certain, or at least as close as possible to that.

Pakistan is a nuclear power,

and a raid like this risks destabilizing the government.

We have to be absolutely sure that Bin Laden is there

before we decide to launch.

We can't just rely on some grainy satellite photos.

The race is on to verify

Bin Laden is inside the compound.

Then the surveillance team spots something,

which leads to a brilliantly devious bit of deception.

Teams watching the compound have observed

that very few people are allowed in,

but one group that is allowed in

is health workers administering polio vaccines.

So the thinking is, one way the CIA can get inside

is to set up a fake inoculation program.

If they can get medical professionals into the compound

and collect blood samples,

they're probably not gonna get his blood,

but they might be able to get blood of his relatives.

The plan is hatched,

but then they discover a critical flaw.

There is no historical sample of Bin Laden's blood,

so we don't actually know what his DNA

specifically looks like.

The CIA does some digging and learns that Bin Laden

has a sister who died in Boston of brain cancer,

and there is some of her genetic material

still in the United States.

Because she's a close blood relative,

they can use this sample to make a DNA match.

With the DNA secured,

now they need to find a local accomplice to run the scheme.

The CIA identifies Dr. Shakil Afridi

as a man who might be able to help them

set up this healthcare scheme without arousing suspicion.

He's a leading physician in the Khyber tribal district

who's already overseen a number

of U.S.-funded vaccination programs in Pakistan.

Even better for the CIA, Afridi needs cash.

Afridi was recently kidnapped

by a local Islamic warlord.

His family paid $10,000 for his release,

and that was money that they didn't have.

So the agency offers him about $60,000 to set up

this covert vaccination scheme.

Afridi accepts the CIA's offer,

and to maintain total secrecy over the operation,

he's not even told who the prime target is.

With their doctor signed up,

the CIA starts devising a program

to get health workers into the compound.

They pick a hepatitis B vaccination program

for their cover because it requires a drop of blood

be taken from the subject and blotted on rapid test strips.

And then the blood can be later tested for DNA.

But ethically, it's quite dubious

because the vaccine needs three rounds to work.

And here, they're only planning to do one.

They're leaving an entire community

thinking they're immune to hepatitis B,

when really, they're not protected.

Ultimately, Bin Laden

is considered such a high-value target

that the CIA decides mass subterfuge

is a price worth paying.

In March 2011, the CIA roll out the scheme.

After administering 1,000 jabs, the time comes

to enter Bin Laden's suspected compound.

In late April, one of Afridi's nurses

is sent to the compound.

If she's denied entry at the door,

the entire scheme, months of work, could come crashing down.

The stakes are incredibly high.

This might be their one shot to confirm that Bin Laden

is actually on the compound.

And then the door opens and she's allowed in.

Exactly what happens next within the compound

is fiercely debated.

A nurse tells a local journalist

that she was able to enter and take a sample

from a young woman whose description

matched Bin Laden's daughter, Mariam,

but she later retracted that statement.

But according to Pakistani intelligence,

the nurse hands over the hep B blood test to Afridi.

As far as the results from those blood samples,

it's still a bit of a mystery today

as all the Bin Laden files haven't been declassified.

Tonight, I can report to the American people

and to the world.

What we do know is that just a few days

after those blood samples were reportedly taken,

President Obama gave the okay to a mission

to go into the compound and either capture or kill

Osama bin Laden.

That's not quite the end of the story.

Three weeks after Bin Laden's death,

Afridi is arrested by Pakistani authorities

for colluding with U.S. intelligence.

A British newspaper investigates the arrest,

revealing the CIA's clandestine operation

to the world.

From phantom armies to fake doctors

and exploding baguettes,

the most powerful weapon in covert warfare isn't force.

It's deception.

But no matter how dark a disguise is,

it will always be revealed in the end.