All language subtitles for Dark.Side.Of.The.90s.S02E09.1080p.WEB.h264-BAE

-On the eve of the millennium,
as some Americans party

like it's 1999...

-Six. Five. Four.

- others believe
the end of the '90s...

-3, 2...

- marks a countdown to the end
of the world.

- 1. Happy 2000!

-Y2K is like a perfect scenario
for the collapse of society.

-For many, the fear is from
a computer glitch long ignored.

-It could happen
that planes fall out of the sky.

-Could the omission
of two simple digits

affect the destiny
of all humankind?

- But for others...
- It's called The Militia,

and by God, no constable is
going to break their door down.

They'll shoot them first.

-Y2K is another government plot
to steal their freedom.

-This is the biggest lie
that's ever been put

before the American public.

-It all spreads
panic and paranoia.

-Countdown to Y2K begins.

Gentlemen, caulk your bunkers.

-Until everyone wonders,
is this "Apocalypse Now?"

-This is not
one of those summer movies

where you can close your eyes
during the scary parts.

♪♪

[ Dial-up modems screeching ]

♪♪

-Randy Weaver brought his family

to the top of this mountain
nine years ago

because he wanted
to be left alone.

Now, a force of 200 police,
federal agents,

and the National Guard
have surrounded the house.

-Early in the 1990s, the ATF
and other federal officers

attempt to execute a warrant

on anti-government survivalist
Randy Weaver

over an outstanding
weapons charge.

It leads to an 11-day standoff
in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

-Weaver is wanted on charges
of selling two illegal

sawed-off shotguns
to a federal informer.

-When the smoke clears,
Weaver's wife,

their 14 year-old-son,
and a U.S. marshal are dead,

leaving anti-government anger
simmering among his supporters.

♪♪

-You're going to burn in hell!

You have a 15-year-old son.
Are you proud of yourself?!

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

-Weaver's charged with murder,

conspiracy,
and some lesser crimes,

but because the FBI and ATF
failed to identify themselves

as law enforcement,
celebrity defense lawyer

Gary Spence successfully
argued self-defense.

-We have to stick
with our rights.

We have to fight for them.

And if we fight for them,
people can hear us.

-The verdict legitimizes
the anti-government hate

at the core
of a growing movement

of militant extremists
across the country.

-It was very easy for right wing
extremists to imagine

that the federal government was
willing to go after anybody

that it disagreed with and use
lethal force in doing that.

-And soon,
that fear and paranoia

will morph a legitimate
worldwide technological crisis

into one more example of how the
feds are plotting to get them.

The crisis is Y2K,
a computer anomaly experts say

could unleash global Armageddon.

-They had proclaimed the world
is going to end tomorrow.

You know, this was doomsday.

-People worried about
technical failures.

My name is Francine Uenuma.
I'm a freelance writer.

And I wrote a piece for Time.com

about the 20-year anniversary
of Y2K.

There was a lot of fears
about power grids,

our broader
sort of infrastructure.

-And nuclear power plants...

♪♪

may cease to generate
the electricity we need.

-It's the kind of tricky
international problem

most people look
to government to solve.

But in the '90s, America's
burgeoning militia movement

sees a trap and is arming itself

in preparation
of a government clampdown.

-The far right was
on their guard.

-5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[ Static ]

-But Y2K didn't have
to be a crisis at all.

Because this Canadian had been
warning everyone

about this moment for 20 years.

-Before Y2K, it was a nobody.

I was a computer operator.

I fed paper into an IBM printer.

And then in 1979,
I noticed the problem.

I'm Peter de Jager, and I'm not
only the Paul Revere of Y2K,

I was also the gloom
and doomster.

♪♪

Back in the 1960s, 1970s,
at the beginning of the day,

when you started up
the computer,

so there was no place
for the computer

to get the date and the time

because the Internet
didn't exist.

So you had to enter it in.

"Tell me what the year is."

And you type in two digits...
'79.

-All these programs were
written, you know,

in the '50s or '60s,
and data was expensive.

And so they shortened the year
to two digits.

-Now, I'd just came out of
university,

studying numerical analysis.

♪♪

And I figured that, well,
something is going to go wrong

on January the 1st, year 2000.

Because we're going to enter
"00"

and the computer
is going to think it's 1900.

♪♪

-It's Peter's lightbulb moment.

The computer's confusion
over what year it is

could lead
to cataclysmic consequences.

♪♪

-I started to try
and make people aware of it...

My boss.

And he said,
"You're worried about a problem

that isn't going to happen
for 21 years.

Get out of my office.
Someone will fix it by then."

-Peter's boss was misguided
because even as he said,

"Someone will fix it,"
those someones had been ignoring

the two-digit date problem
for decades.

♪♪

-In 1970, the Scottish Bank
Widows Bank ran into a problem

when they were entering
in 30-year mortgages.

The closing date of the mortgage
is in the year 2000.

The computer didn't
take kindly to that.

Still the standard phrase was,

"Someone else
will fix this by then."

-Of course, no one does.

And as the world
begins to explore cyberspace,

the issue becomes
even more urgent.

-In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee...
He's a British scientist...

He invented the World Wide Web,

and that set the stage
for the '90s.

[ Dial-up modems screeching ]

I'm Steve Morgan, founder of
Cyber Security Ventures

and Editor in Chief
at Cybercrime magazine.

So we enter the '90s
and it's a whole new world.

It's an online world. Everybody
was living differently.

♪♪

-In the early 1990s,
our personal computers,

the high-end ones,
had 640K of memory.

High-density storage was 360K
on a large floppy drive.

I mean, this was the stone age
of computer time.

♪♪

-And as '90s PC makers
try to change that.

-Featuring the SLC processor...
The fastest in its class.

-By enthusiastically introducing
faster models

with even more memory to.

-The PS2 SLC.

-Peter's becoming
increasingly passionate

about repairing
the looming Y2K bug.

-Truth of the matter is,
Y2K offended me.

It was a stupid, silly problem,
and no one is paying attention.

-Peter's compelled to go public
with his concerns.

-Back in 1993,
I wrote the article

that kicked all of this off...
"Doomsday 2000."

It wasn't my first article
on Y2K.

I had written another one called
"Tick Tock, Tick Tock,

Time's a-Wasting."

Well, that got no attention
at all,

except from one
or two journalists who said,

"Ha ha, silly little programmer
is trying to scare the world.

Isn't this funny?
Ha ha ha."

Computer World, at the time,
was the magazine

for the IT industry,
out to more than

300,000 people
in the US every single week.

-Peter's "Doomsday 2000" article

finally grabs the attention
of the computer community.

-Someone would ask, "Well,
how bad could it be, Peter?"

And the honest answer of that
is pretty bad.

It could happen that planes
fall out of the sky,

elevators go into the ground.

Pharmaceutical companies
have expiry problems,

inventory control problems.

ATM machines.

All computer systems,
especially financial systems.

Wherever you have a computer
controlling something,

there was a possibility

the computer
wouldn't be able to do its job.

-It means every bank,
institution, corporation,

and government in the world

could suffer
massive operational failures

at the turn of the century.

But while some insiders
are listening,

convincing organizations
to take action

against the millennium bug
is nearly impossible.

-In the early 1990s, people at
the top really didn't understand

how much they depended
upon their computer systems.

And then along come people
like myself.

And we have to have this fixed
by the year 2000.

And, oh, by the way, it's going
to cost a truckload of money.

They're going to be very,
very reluctant to believe you.

-But Peter's underlying message
of impending doom and gloom

does find a receptive audience

in America's rising
right wing militia groups,

who increasingly believe
they're at war

with the government
over their freedoms.

♪♪

Eight months after the standoff
with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge,

a compound outside Waco, Texas,
explodes with bloodshed,

igniting even more
anti-government sentiment.

-The Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms

launched a raid on the compound

of a small religious sect
called the Branch Davidians,

who have a sort of
an apocalyptic mindset.

The ATF had information
that they had illegal weapons,

which they did.

[ Gunfire ]

- Get out of here!
- Alright, calm down.

Let me tell you
what they're doing.

Ceasefire.
They're ceasefiring.

They want to move their
injured troops out of there.

-Four agents are killed.

A number of Davidians
are killed or wounded.

This precipitates
a 51-day standoff.

I'm Mark Pitcavage,
and I'm a senior research fellow

with the Anti-Defamation
League Center on Extremism.

[ Police radio chatter ]

[ Clattering ]

The FBI comes in and takes over,

and they basically try to force
an end to the standoff,

which goes horribly awry.

[ Sirens wailing ]

The Davidians start setting
fires on the compound.

Large numbers of them
are burned to death.

-Along with their leader,
David Koresh,

76 Branch Davidians die
in the siege.

-America was shocked.
Both the ATF and the FBI

come under
considerable criticism,

but especially, it agitated
the far right.

In Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992,
and Waco, Texas in 1993,

federal agents killed multiple
people, including children.

♪♪

Both those incidents really
riled up the extreme right,

and in fact, helped generate
a whole new extremist movement

in the United States,
the militia movement.

-And soon, followers of
America's militia movement

will commit
previously-unthinkable acts

to further
their anti-government agenda.

-That was a big wake up call
to people in the United States.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

-In the mid-'90s, Peter de Jager

and a group
of computer programmers

are attempting and failing

to save the world's computers
from the Millennium Bug.

-As I continued to beat
the drum,

I became known
as the Paul Revere of Y2K

or the doomsayer
or the fear monger,

or however
you want to phrase it.

I was that guy.

That was difficult
and that was frustrating.

While Peter and others struggle
to be heard,

another, more sinister group

with their own end
of the world concerns

is making its mark, sparked
by anti-government standoffs

at both Ruby Ridge and Waco.

America's militia movement
is expanding.

-The first militia group
emerges beginning

in '94 with
the Militia of Montana,

and numerous
other groups start popping up

all around the country
within the next few months.

The militia movement believed
that the rest of the world

was essentially controlled
by a global, tyrannical,

socialist One World government.

-They called it
the New World Order.

-They believe our own government

was actually collaborating
with the New World Order

to slowly strip us
of our rights and freedoms,

starting with our right
to keep and bear arms.

Because once
we're rendered defenseless,

we too will be absorbed

essentially as slaves
into the New World Order,

and that is what Americans
have to fight against.

-The militia movement,
Spear of a New World Order,

becomes a rallying cry
for many right wing Americans.

-God bless America and death
to the New World Order!

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Their distrust is fueled
by Bill Clinton,

who signs the federal assault
weapons ban into law in 1994,

providing more ammunition
for the militia movement's rage.

-The people of the United States
must keep their arms.

It's the only way
to stop tyranny.

-It grew remarkably rapidly and
spread across the whole country,

and it brought in a bunch
of new blood to the far right...

A bunch of newly radicalized
people.

-It felt like the Lord is saying
"This is the army of the Lord

in the United States
for this moment."

-The members see themselves
as patriots.

-Like the American
revolutionaries in the 1770s,

who took up arms against
the tyrannical British,

modern Americans
would have to take up arms

against their own government
and against the New World Order.

-As PCs connect people
in cyberspace,

militia organizers use
online bulletin board systems

and chat rooms
to recruit new members.

[ Dial-up modems screeching ]

♪♪

Meanwhile,
Canadian Peter de Jager,

working out of his basement
in Brampton, Ontario,

uses the same resources to warn
the world about a problem.

It's about to earn
its catchy name.

♪♪

-The term Y2K came out of
a shorthand used in a chat room.

♪♪

Y2K sort of has this ring
to it of,

you know... it's like R2D2,
and it kind of added, I think,

to sort of the ominous
or catchy ring, if nothing else.

♪♪

-Despite its easy-to-remember
name,

convincing folks to spend time
and money

to fix Y2K is a hard sell.

-People are reluctant to listen
to bad news.

They go, "Is it working now?"
"Yes."

"Is it fine?"
"Yes."

"Then don't waste
any money on that.

We have other stuff to do."

-While Peter agonizes over
the government doing too little,

the '90s militia movement
continues to sign up members

by arguing the government
is doing too much.

The movement grows
to an estimated

60,000 members nationwide.

Aided by anti-government
propaganda

passed around at gun shows,

including the infamous videotape
"Waco, The Big Lie."

Produced by attorney
Linda Thompson,

the documentary helped sow
the seeds of a catastrophe

in the mind
of a young Gulf War veteran.

- On property they called
the Mt. Carmel Center.

-Timothy McVeigh was
an anti-government extremist,

but what triggered him
was the standoff at Waco.

He actually drove
his pickup truck

to the site of the standoff

to give away or sell extremist
bumper stickers

and other paraphernalia.

And after the end
of the standoff,

he obsesses over
Waco conspiracy theories,

and in particular,
the conspiracy videotape

on Waco by Linda Thompson,

who became one of the pioneers
of the militia movement.

- The ATF...
- Thompson claims

in "The Big Lie"
that the Branch Davidians

didn't start the fire
that killed 76 people.

It was a false flag operation,
where government agents

framed the members
of the apocalyptic cult.

-Now they're finishing off
the job right now.

They're destroying
the crime scene.

America, this is the biggest lie
that's ever been put

before the American public ever.

-And Timothy McVeigh watched it
over and over again

and, you know, became outraged

at the federal government,
and, you know,

eventually got the idea
that he wanted to attack.

-And on the second anniversary
of what extremists call

the Waco Massacre...

-Here, tanks methodically push
what remains of the house

and evidence into the fire.

-Timothy McVeigh, along with
Army buddy Terry Nichols,

execute their monstrous plan.

-The Oklahoma City bombing,
which happened on April 19th,

1995, was a huge fertilizer bomb
in a truck.

Tim McVeigh drives it
to the Bureau Federal Building

and sets it off.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

It becomes the worst act

of domestic terrorism
in United States history

and the second worst act
of terrorism, period,

in our country's history,
second only to the 9/11 attacks.

-The bombing in Oklahoma City
was an attack

on innocent children
and defenseless citizens.

-The Oklahoma City bombing
kills 168 innocent people,

including 19 children.

-Oklahoma City was hard for us
to process.

You're looking at that
at a young age

and saying, "What would drive
somebody to do that?"

♪♪

-It shocked the whole country

and the images of firefighters

cradling the bodies
of bloody infants,

you know, that they had taken
out of the rubble

had just a tremendous effect
on everybody.

-But not everyone responds
in the same way.

Despite the carnage
being aired on live TV,

right wing extremists believe
McVeigh is a patsy

taking the fall
in another big lie.

They credit the government
with the attack

and accuse the media
of engineering a cover up...

All of it to convince Americans

to go along
with the New World Order.

-They killed 86 people in Waco.

I don't see why they'd have
a problem with killing 168 more.

-In the summer of 1995,
just a couple of months

after the Oklahoma City bombing.

I actually created a website
about right wing extremism.

And this was at a time when
the World Wide Web was so tiny,

that I literally could
and did look at every mention

of the word "militia"
on the entire Internet.

When these groups
first started popping up

and claiming to be descended
from the original historical,

legitimate militia,
the historian in me was like,

"What? That's totally bogus."

When the U.S. Justice Department
creates

an anti-domestic terrorism
program,

they hire Mark Pitcavage,

who quickly identifies
a new possible trigger

for right wing
extremist attacks...

Y2K.

-For anti-government extremists

who think that the United States
government is collaborating

with the New World Order
to take over,

Y2K is like a perfect scenario
for that.

There could be, you know,
a significant collapse

of society, and the government
would use that as an excuse

to do everything
on its nefarious agenda.

-Militia members look
for any opportunity

to spread their message,

including a surprising
appearance on "Donahue"

before millions of Americans.

-Do you think that the feds
are coming,

they're going to suspend
the Constitution,

they're going to
take your guns away.

-The government comes for my
gun, I'm simply going

to let them have it.
- You'd pull the trigger

on a federal agent
coming up to your place?

-I will. A man's home
is his castle.

If I had to die proving that,
so be it.

♪♪

-Concern that confusion over Y2K

will be the catalyst
for more extremist violence,

Congress calls a hearing
to lay out the facts

and invites
the Paul Revere of Y2K,

Peter de Jager.

-I was a nobody... you know,
Y2K person without portfolio.

And then finally, governments
were beginning to wake up,

and I testified before the U.S..
I testified in Australia.

I did some work with Tony Blair
and them over in the U.K..

-As international governments
wake up to the perils of Y2K,

so do media outlets
around the world.

-The government is not
a little behind,

but way behind.
- Tremendously behind.

The wake-up call is now.

-With pressure mounting
on the U.S. government,

the need arises for someone

to lead
the bureaucratic charge for Y2K.

The question is who.

Having spent 20 years
in the private sector

and 25 in the public sector,

I've, as they say, spent my life
dealing with crises.

So one night,
the president called.

So we talked for about
10 or 15 minutes.

Then the next night,
the vice president,

Al Gore, called me,
and I said, "You know,

if you get the pope
to call me tomorrow night,

I might take this job."

I'm John Koskinen.
I was the chair

of the president's council
on year 2000 conversion.

I'm responsible for coordinating

the federal government's role

in ultimately 170 countries
around the world.

♪♪

So, needless to say,

I signed up to take
on the responsibility for Y2K.

-But is it too little, too late?

With only two years
until the year 2000,

people fear Koskinen
won't be able to avert disaster.

We went from, "This is silly.
This is nonsense."

To, "Oh, my God, we're not going
to have enough time to fix it."

[ Indistinct shouting ]

-There he is.

-These things that you're
talking about...

You did them to Jerry..

-Jerry is very
is very dangerous.

-By 1998,
even as Hollywood turns

right wing conspiracy theories

into a movie storyline,
far right talk radio hosts

are claiming Y2K is
a legitimate government plot.

-You're the children,
and the government's

your mommy and daddy.
Big brother.

Let me tell you something.

Let me tell you something
right now...

They're going to do this.

-Y2K has a very significant
impact on the far right

in the United States
in the late 1990s.

-You had so many people
who truly believed

that these events were connected

and part of something larger
and more nefarious.

I remember in the '90s,
driving around and seeing,

you know, the bumper stickers
on the truck,

"I love my country,
but I fear my government."

-But behind the scenes,

despite the potentially huge
cost of failure

and his exceptionally
late start,

John Koskinen's work
as the new man in charge of Y2K

is much more mundane
than nefarious.

-The president gave me the job
and an office and said,

"Don't let the world stop."

So I show up in the old
executive office building

and I flip on the light switch.

And it occurred to me what
happens on January 1st, 2000

if you flip the switch
and there's no power.

Stoplights don't work.
Phones don't work.

You know,
criminals can run wild.

So the art form
was to get everybody

who had a system worried enough
to pay attention to it

without panicking everybody
who depended on those systems.

-Ultimately, Koskinen has to get

tens of thousands of
organizations

to fix their systems by changing
two-digit dates

to four-digit dates in millions
of lines of computer code.

-Social Security had
52 million lines of code.

So there were thoughtful
people who thought,

"You're never going to get
it done. It's impossible."

-With the Y2K clock
counting down,

Peter de Jager steps up
his speaking engagements

to help spread the word.

-The vibe was John the Baptist.

A cartoonist for one of
the newspapers over in the UK,

drew a caricature
of me in robes,

you know,
ringing a bell type of thing.

We certainly played into that.

My ties always
had clocks on them.

♪♪

-When he's not on the road,

Peter's focused on
his burgeoning website traffic.

-We had an online mailing list,
and at one point,

we had 80,000 subscribers.

We used to get 4-500 emails to
the mail list every single day.

Well, this was me working out
of my office in the basement,

organizing this
global communications network.

♪♪

-Peter also teams up
with John Koskinen

to coordinate their efforts.

-One of my strategies was to
talk to people

to see what they knew.

Peter de Jager was,
to his great credit,

one of the early warners
about the risk of Y2K.

-We would keep in regular
communications, which was key.

John Koskinen approached it
from an organizational issue.

We started at programmer level
and raised the threat

of lawyers getting involved
so that directors

would open up the purse strings
and get this done.

-But the downside to successful
Y2K messaging

is how easily those messages
get distorted

in the new '90s Internet age.

-When you create enough noise
and the media gets on...

-And more and more experts
are warning

that the year 2000 could bring
a date with disaster.

Then people who know nothing
about the problem,

all they hear is this fear
mongering that's going on...

And there was
a tremendous amount of it.

-And there won't be any
elections in the year 2000.

There will be a declaration
of martial law.

You must teach your children

to use a weapon and use it well.

-Many people on the far right
became convinced that Y2K

could cause
the collapse of society.

So, for example,
for white supremacists,

they are concerned
about society collapsing.

[ Sirens wailing ]

And all the non-whites
coming out of the cities

into the countryside,

and that this could
start a race war.

-The far right's fear
of a collapse of society

helps revive survivalism
across America.

-We have about a year's supply
of food here for Y2K.

-You have to stockpile food,
weapons,

survival goods, and gear.

-If it's a case of my family
or some other one,

then I'm going to opt
for protecting my family.

-And as you get closer
to the end of the decade,

you have a lot of survival expos
more explicitly,

call themselves, like,
Y2K survival expos.

-As these events flourish,
they give militia groups

the opportunity
to meet in the real world

and exchange their incendiary
government beliefs.

-It becomes one
of the core beliefs

of the militia movement
of the 1990s,

that there are actually
600-800 concentration camps

already built in
the United States, fully manned,

but empty, but ready for people
to be rounded up when Y2K occurs

and the government steps in

to do all
of its nefarious things.

And so they go to look
for evidence of these camps,

get over fences
and take photographs

of federal facilities
that they think have been turned

into a concentration camp
or are scheduled to be turned

into a concentration camp.

-The militia movement's
suspicion triggers

a deadly plan in Texas.

-A militia cell with members
from a variety

of different states plotted
to attack U.S. military bases

that they thought were housing
"New World Order"

foreign soldiers, and settled
upon Fort Hood in Texas.

They wanted to attack
on the 4th of July.

And if it weren't
for some undercover officers

on the Missouri State
Highway Patrol,

they might have been successful.

-Instead, the FBI arrests Kansas
militia leader Bradley Glover

and accomplice Michael Dorsett
in a Texas campground

with a lethal cache of weapons.

In late '90s America,
with the specter of Y2K looming,

extremist threats of all kinds
are increasing.

1999 arrives with a cacophony
of doomsday predictions

about the end times.

-The doomsday preppers
started to get involved.

They were basically saying,
"We're all going to die."

♪♪

-Our island in space.
Our civilization.

-As the one-year countdown
to the millennium begins,

Leonard Nimoy goes
where no one has gone before,

delivering
the Y2K Family Survival Guide.

-How could the omission
of two simple digits

affect the destiny
of all humankind?

-The New Year ushers in
a heightened level of anxiety

from the spiritual realm.

-I believe that Y2K may be God's
instrument to shake this nation,

humble this nation,
start revival

that spreads
the face of the earth

before the rapture
of the church.

-Some fringe religious groups
become convinced

that the end of the world
is near

or some other cataclysmic event
is coming soon.

-One such apocalyptic cult is
Colorado's Concerned Christians,

led by Monte Kim Miller,

a former pharmaceutical
executive.

America is Satan's kingdom,
counterfeiting

the true earthly kingdom of God
to come from Israel.

-Miller believes
the U.S. president

and the Antichrist
are one and the same,

and that Y2K will bring
the second coming of Christ.

♪♪

He even moves his
Concerned Christians

to Jerusalem to prepare for it.

-In what form did God
speak to you about this?

-He speaks through my mouth.

♪♪

-Just months later,
on January 3rd, 1999,

police in Israel arrest
and deport Miller

and 13 other cult members.

-Police suspect they plan
to carry out violent acts

to bring about an apocalypse
in the year 2000.

-While America's doomsday cults
are stirring up trouble abroad,

on U.S. soil,
survivalism is on the rise.

-The number of patriots
for profit,

so to speak, really were huge...

People trying to make a buck

by selling you a year's supply
of dried beans,

by selling you
40,000 rounds of ammunition.

They would have like
these big, underground,

like, plastic bomb shelters...

Like, they looked
like septic tanks,

except you're supposed to live
in them.

You know, bury it underground,
fill it full

of supplies and stuff.

"And we got a sale this Sunday!"
You know?

"Conveniently just for you."

-Call now and order
your ultimate Y2K survival kit.

-Y2K survivalist goods are in
high demand across America.

John Koskinen and Peter de Jager
are forced to do damage control

to stave off the public panic

that could cause desperate runs
on the nation's supply chain.

-Are you really confident
that you were all ready?

-We're confident
that the basic infrastructure

of the United States is going to
function effectively.

-I did more than 2000
media interviews.

-Everywhere where
there's a computer program,

you are affected.

-The noise level got very,
very high.

I remember one conference
where the speaker in front of me

was actually
telling the audience

that nuclear weapons
were going to launch...

That there is a nuclear
holocaust going to happen.

I got up and said,
"The speaker you just heard...

That's absolute B.S..
It's nonsense."

[ Crowd cheering ]

-But end-of-the-world paranoia
is reaching a fever pitch

in mainstream media.

-100 day countdown to Y2K
begins.

Gentlemen, caulk your bunkers.

[ Explosion ]

♪♪

-To prevent an
international crisis,

Koskinen organizes an emergency
meeting of the United Nations.

-We had 170 countries gathered
at the United Nations,

which was the largest meeting
in history,

other than the General Assembly
meeting at the U.N..

-But despite Koskinen's
best efforts,

anxiety and doom
continue to spread.

-People thought that this was
going to be

a disaster for everybody.

- What if they're right?
- My gosh.

-The survival of millions
hangs in the balance.

"Y2K: The Movie."

-In November of '99,
an internal FBI report

detailing the threats
of Y2K domestic terrorism

is leaked to the public.

-We did have a concern
of terrorist groups

would try to take advantage
of any chaos that happened,

because you're going
to have huge crowds.

One of my concerns also
was people hacking into systems.

-Towards the end of 1999,

there's inside information
about the hackers of the world

putting together a Y2K virus
that will strike at midnight.

-There are also threats
to disrupt or destroy

some of the nation's
critical infrastructure.

In the days leading up
to the millennium,

the Feds move against
the far right extremists

they consider most dangerous.

-There were members of a militia
cell in California

arrested, plotting to blow up
energy-related facilities,

and a militia leader in Florida

who were plotting to attack
a nuclear power plant.

-Border police in Washington
state also catch a fugitive,

Ahmed Ressam,
sneaking in from Canada

with £130 of explosives
in his car.

His plan? To detonate
a suitcase bomb at LAX

on New Year's Day 2000.

Despite his arrest, U.S.
authorities are forced to wonder

how many more terrorists
are still out there.

♪♪

The last day of 1999
finally arrives.

♪♪

At 8 a.m. in Washington DC.,

Auckland, New Zealand
will be the first city

to meet the year 2000.

John Koskinen
is anxiously watching

from the Y2K command post
two blocks from the White House.

-We've got a control center,
and then we have

a couple
of hundred workstations.

We got Mexico and Canada.

We've got
all the federal agencies,

some industry groups.

-7... 6... 5...

4... 3... 2...

1!

[ Fireworks explode,
crowd cheers ]

-And so as we started monitoring
New Zealand,

we're watching the world turn,

and you can see these
celebrations,

and nobody is, you know, dying
or nothing's blowing up.

-While we are encouraged by
the positive reports thus far,

we should all remember

that we have many miles
to go before we sleep.

-With half the world
still in 1999,

Koskinen has devised
a special way

to demonstrate his confidence
in America's Y2K preparations.

♪♪

-People were saying,
"Hey, you know,

planes are going
to drop out of the sky."

-So at 6:30 p.m., Koskinen
boards a commuter flight

from Washington to New York,
so he can be in the air

for London's New Year's
celebration

at midnight Greenwich Mean Time.

-I needed to demonstrate, if
we were confident at 7:00,

we were going to be okay.

♪♪

While Mark Pitcavage
is attending

a New Year's House party,

he's also on standby
for ABC News

so he can respond in case
there's a terrorist attack.

-And I said, "You know, look,

if all the computers
do collapse,

I'm not sure you're really going
to be able to air your program.

But if something happens
and extremists do something,

I'm going to be
at a friend's house

celebrating New Year's Eve.
Here's their number."

-So I'm on the plane.
Virtually and nobody's flying...

13 people, and four or five
of whom are reporters.

And a young reporter
from The New York Times

says, "The guy in the tux
in the first row

is now very nervous
because he didn't realize

he was flying to New York during
the transition period of Y2K."

-When the new millennium arrives
in London without incident,

it marks another Y2K milestone,

but America still awaits
its arrival.

Not even the hosts of late night

are joking about
the potential dangers.

-This terrorism thing
is kind of frightening.

- And no one knows.
- Right.

-Well, one of them is.

-Top ten effects of Y2K,
here we go.

Number 10...

-Stuff's gonna 'splode.

♪♪

-With the millennium just
seconds away, the countdown

in Times Square begins.

-Are you ready?

-Of course,
everybody's counting off.

You know, it's not often
you get to count...

Count down to a new millennium,
right?

-In 10, 9, 8, 7...

-There were all of these
predictions of doom and gloom.

-5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

-And what happened?

-Happy 2000!

-What a sight
in New York City...

Ringing in the new millennium
on Times Square.

-After years of anticipation
and anxiety,

Y2K has arrived in America.

-It was 12:01 a.m.,

and the ball had dropped
in New York

and all the TVs were still on

and people were checking
their microwave ovens.

They're checking their phones.
All the phones work.

You know, by and large,
everything worked.

-Sure enough,
there were no viruses.

No planes fell out of the sky.

Elevators didn't plummet
to the ground.

-It was nothing
but just a big yawner.

-No major problems to report,

not only in the United States,
but in fact,

throughout the world.

-Now, the reality is that
there were tens of thousands

of Y2K problems,
but the thing is,

you didn't hear about them.

-It's true. Behind the scenes
in Washington,

Koskinen's been
putting out fires all night.

-The Japanese reported that
the computer safety systems

monitoring their nuclear plants
wasn't functioning well.

The Department of Transportation
is saying the low-level

wind shear detectors
at all the airports

in the United States failed.

And I sent them
a note back saying,

"Well, you're kidding, right?"
And he said no.

[ Clears throat ]
"When you landed at LaGuardia,

there were no low-level
wind shear detectors

and the defense intelligence
satellite system has gone down."

So I had a conference
with the Defense Department,

the State Department,
and the CIA,

and sure enough, it went well.

There were things that didn't
work, but nothing systemic.

-One bomb does go off,
but it's in Russia...

When President Boris Yeltsin
announces he's stepping down,

the Vladimir Putin era begins

in the midst
of millennium celebrations.

-[ Speaking in Russian ]

♪♪

-Koskinen has been working
two years

to prevent a catastrophe
in the U.S.,

but as they say,
no good deed goes unpunished.

-Only took about 6 hours
before the media began

to be full of stories saying,

"Well, that was a hoax.
What a waste of money."

-Things couldn't be going
more smoothly... so smoothly,

some are even asking if all that
preparing was necessary.

-So at midnight, I took
a big cake up to the reporters,

and Sam Donaldson of ABC
was there and he said,

"Well, this is all
a big waste of time."

And I told him, I said, "Sam,

you all don't care
because nobody died."

I said, "If there's not blood
in the street,

you think it's not a problem."

-The public backlash
against the two faces of Y2K

is harsh and immediate.

-So the guy who wrote
the Paul Revere story...

I would have loved
to have seen him having coffee

the next morning and, you know,

like everything's okay.
Like, how do you live with that?

-Peter struggled as a result
of having been

so visibly associated with Y2K,

which was a great shame,
because he did a wonderful job

and was very responsible
about it.

-The year 2000 was difficult.

I'm bipolar, okay?

And basically, I was in
a one-decade-long manic stage.

And then when I came down,

I stopped doing
media interviews at all.

We received death threats.

People were upset.

The reality is,
Y2K was an issue.

We know it was an issue
because we went

and tested, systems failed,

and rather than have them fail,
we spent money to fix them.

-Those Y2K fixes cost

an estimated
$400 billion worldwide.

♪♪

-It was the first time
the world came together

on a single project.

If John Koskinen had had not
been appointed to that position,

I do not believe
the US government would have

gotten its act together in time.

-Couple of months later,
I'm renting a car

from a local company
in Raleigh Durham Airport,

and I get charged $10
for underage driver.

And I said, "What's that?"

And the guy said,
"Oh, that's our Y2K problem.

It keeps thinking
you were born in 1839 or 1939

and it's now 1900 and you're
actually -39 years old."

And I said, "Where were you guys
when I needed you?"

-Surprisingly,
over the last year or two,

there's a growing realization
that we did dodged a bullet,

and I think that has been
exacerbated by COVID.

If we ran Y2K like
we were running COVID,

we would have failed.

Y2K had a single message.

-In allegiance
to the Constitution

of the United States...

-If Y2K happened today,

you would have everybody
cherry-picking

and getting their information
from their own sources.

It's not that misinformation
is new.

It's that it wasn't as easy
and it wasn't as prevalent.

♪♪

We truly were
that '90s generation.

We were the last ones
that really kind of remember

growing up without technology.

From a historic lens,
it's a seismic shift.

And I think in 100 years,
they'll be talking

about the '90s as the era
where everything went,

you know, digital and became
this whole technological world

Kind of crazy.