All language subtitles for The Proof Is Out There Military Mysteries 2024 S01 E01_track3_[eng]

- [Rudy] The following program

contains footage of
military operations.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Tonight, on The Proof is Out
There: Military Mysteries.

Combat ops,

photos of an American
fighter shot down over Iraq.

Was the pilot missing in action,

captured, killed,
or all of the above?

- Even though he left
behind a trail of clues,

no one knows what happened
to Michael Scott Speicher.

- [Rudy] Covert ops,

is this a caught-on-camera
assassination

by some of history's
toughest spies?

- I'm 99% sure that this
is the work of Mossad.

- [Rudy] PSYOPs,

behind the photos
of the WWII geniuses

who fought the Nazis with
balloons and cardboard?

- This is one of the most
incredible use of creativity

in the history of warfare.

- [Rudy] And special ops,

unbelievable night footage
of this week's secret weapon

in action.

- It's just death
raining down from above.

(dramatic music)

- [Rudy] In the modern history
of war there are films.

- Shazam!

- [Rudy] Photos,
recordings, and documents

that raise questions.

- So everything about this
story is one big mystery.

- This particular footage has
caused a lot of controversy.

- [Rudy] What's
really happening?

- [Joe] There's so
little information.

- Nothing like this has
been attempted before.

- [Rudy] That's
where we come in.

Our mission,

investigate the battlefield's
strangest images, sounds,

and more.

- [Tim] This photo
blows my mind.

- You can imagine how
terrifying it would be.

- [Rudy] We'll analyze
each with military experts

and try to come up with answers.

- I'm Ronnie Adkins, former
US Army Intelligence Analyst.

- I'm Rudy Reyes, Recon
Marine war veteran.

The proof starts now.

(dramatic music)

- Good evening
everybody and welcome.

I'm Ronnie, he's Rudy.

- We're wheels up and ready
to go and we hope you are too.

- No mystery is
more gut-wrenching

than a soldier or pilot
going MIA behind enemy lines.

- That was the
case with one pilot

in Operation Desert Storm.

The mystery, what
really happened

to Lieutenant Commander
Scott Speicher?

It's December 1993,

nearly two years after the
start of the first Iraq War.

A group of hunters is
in the Iraqi desert

using falcons to
track down prey,

but they end up locating
something much more important.

- The wreckage was in
the middle of nowhere

in a country to which
we didn't have access,

a country that was our enemy.

- [Rudy] This is a
photo of wreckage

from a crashed US Navy
F-18 Charlie Hornet.

Take a close look.

Here you can see the canopy
that encases the cockpit,

but where is the pilot?

- Nobody knew what
happened to him.

- [Rudy] The mystery begins
in the very first hours

of Operation Desert Storm
on January 17, 1991.

- This was a pretty crazy night.

- [Rudy] Ward Carroll,
a former naval aviator,

says a squadron of Hornets
launched from the USS Saratoga.

They're the vanguard
of a mission,

what's known as an alpha strike,

a large attack by
US Navy aircraft.

But something goes wrong.

- Sometime during that strike,
there was a flash in the sky.

At first, nobody
was sure who it was,

and as they started
to return to the ship,

process of elimination,

they realized that it
was Scott Speicher.

- [Rudy] Lieutenant Commander
Scott Speicher's plane

is shot down by an
Iraqi fighter jet.

Mark Sauter, a former US
Army Special Forces Officer,

an expert on American POWs,

says Speicher is initially
listed as missing in action.

The war ends just
six weeks later.

The Iraqis turn
over human remains

they say is a downed US pilot.

Speicher is the
only missing one,

but the tissue doesn't match.

- Why would the Iraqis
send human remains

that were not Speicher's back
to us and claim they were?

This was one of the
first indications

that there was a game afoot.

- Now, once the Iraqis
sent phony remains,

the story gets a whole
lot more complicated.

To follow along,

there are a few things that
we should get straight.

Ronnie?

- Yeah, so you've probably
heard some of these before

but let's make sure.

MIA stands for
missing in action.

KIA means killed in action.

Then you've got KIA/BNR,

and that means killed in
action, body not recovered.

Now last,

there's this status
called missing/captured.

This is also known by a
more common term POW,

a prisoner of war.

- And that's important because
Scott Speicher's status

would change repeatedly.

(tense music)

In May of 1991,

the Navy determines that
no credible evidence

exists to suggest
Speicher survived.

His status has changed from
missing, or MIA, to KIA/BNR,

killed in action,
body not recovered.

But all that changes

with the discovery of the
wreckage of Speicher's plane

in 1993.

A key clue?

That cockpit canopy, it
isn't near the other debris.

- This indicated to experts

that he had ejected
successfully.

He was not blown up in the air,
he was not killed immediately.

- Let's assume he was alive
when he hit the ground.

Now what?

Right, the plot thickens.

- [Rudy] Two years later,

the Iraqis allow the Red
Cross and US officials

to visit the crash site.

According to an
unclassified CIA report,

that group suspected evidence
had been tampered with.

- They recovered
Speicher's flight suit.

It had been cut up.

Nobody really could figure out,

had it been cut off
of Michael Speicher

when he was alive or dead?

A number of investigators

believed that
Speicher's flight suit

had been planted at the scene.

The mystery only got deeper.

- [Rudy] 90% of F-18
pilots who eject survive,

and there were no human
remains found in the wreckage.

- Was he captured?

It's completely believable
that he's not dead.

- Dead people don't eject.

These planes are
eminently survivable

with a hit on the wing.

It was not the type
of catastrophic hit

that one could assume
the pilot didn't survive.

- [Rudy] In 1997, it's revealed
that several years earlier,

a US spy satellite positioned
over the crash site

captured manmade symbols

suggesting Speicher
not only survived,

but that he was able to initiate

what's called an E&E plan.

- Pilots, they often come
up with a good E&E plan

or an escape and evade plan.

Within that plan, they
have certain things

to indicate to those
who may be watching

that they are actually trying
to make their way to freedom.

- [Rudy] In 1999,
another shoe drops.

An Iraqi defector
tells investigators

that he drove an American
pilot to Baghdad years earlier,

around the time
Speicher disappeared.

Then the Pentagon does
something that it's never done

in 200 years.

- [Ward] His status was
changed from killed in action

to missing in action, first
time this has happened.

- [Rudy] Then, in
October of 2002,

secretary of the Navy
Gordon England writes,

"I am personally convinced
the Iraqis seized him

sometime after his
plane went down."

Speicher's status is
changed yet again.

He is now classified
missing/captured, a POW.

- The reason he was reclassified
was because we were relentless.

I mean, this was their
husband, their dad,

very much a family man.

- [Rudy] The March
2003 invasion of Iraq

brings the area where
Michael Speicher went missing

under US control.

A shocking discovery is
made within weeks in Baghdad

by our own Kevin
Key and his team.

- We were conducting
multiple combat operations,

looking for any kind of evidence
of weapons of mass destruction,

and also looking for evidence
of Michael Scott Speicher.

We were looking throughout the
prisons in Downtown Baghdad.

We saw chiseled graffiti,
mostly in Arabic.

One thing unique
that our team found

was three initials in English

in one of the larger
prison cells, MSS,

Michael Scott Speicher.

I find it very peculiar

that amongst all
this Arabic graffiti

we have his exact initials, MSS.

- Pilots are taught to do this.

They're taught to put
evidence of their survival

where they can.

- [Rudy] Was Speicher
held as a POW for years?

Did the Pentagon do
enough to bring him home?

Just as it seems this
story is about to blow up,

it gets tied up in a bow.

In 2009, Bedouins lead US forces

to a new site.

It is just kilometers

from where Speicher's plane
was discovered years earlier.

There, in the desert,

they find bones and
skeletal remains.

Dental records conclusively
identify the remains

as those of Captain
Michael Speicher.

- The locals said that
his body was buried

the night of the crash
by local Bedouins.

So there's no way to prove
exactly if that is in fact true,

but that's the story.

- The mystery continues.

The US government continues
to keep information

about Michael Speicher's
fate classified.

What are in those
classified documents?

I hope one day we see them.

(tense music)

- So the official story

is that Speicher died on
the night of the crash.

Rudy, are you buying that?

- In one word, hell no.

In my opinion,

Speicher, highly trained pilot,

was identified as a valuable
asset by the Iraqis.

So he was taken and
died in captivity.

- Spycraft is built on secrecy.

When a spy mission
is successful,

you never know what happened.

- So when experienced
spies get caught on camera

allegedly assassinating someone,

the question at hand becomes,

is it a hit job or
is it a frame job?

January 19th, 2010, Dubai.

You're looking at
security camera footage

from the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel.

Watch as a registered guest,

Palestinian merchant
Mahmoud Muhammad,

enters the lobby, gets
into the elevator,

then exits and
heads to his room.

Look again.
(tape rewinding)

It all seems normal.

What's different is the
way this guy checked out.

Later that day, housekeeping
makes a grim discovery,

the guest is dead in his bed.

- At first glimpse, it
looked like natural causes.

This man had died in his sleep.

- [Ronnie] There are no
obvious signs of foul play.

Authorities bring his
body to the morgue

and look for his next of kin.

But soon, the Islamic
militant group Hamas

claims the dead man is
one of their leaders,

Commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh.

They also insist
he was assassinated

and blame the Israeli
spy agency, Mossad.

- Mossad is a
world-class spy agency

that is known to
conduct assassinations

throughout the world.

They are one of
the world's best.

They work in secrecy.

- [Ronnie] Since helping
murder two Israeli soldiers

in 1989,

Al-Mabhouh had been a top
target on Mossad's hit list

and had even survived a
previous assassination attempt.

The Dubai police launch
an investigation.

The coroner's report is
amended to indicate foul play,

but stops short of an
exact cause of death.

- Even today,

the final results of the
autopsy aren't certain.

There's been a couple
different theories

on the assassination.

One that he was
electrocuted to death,

one that he was given
kind of a paralyzing agent

and then suffocated.

- [Ronnie] Things
break wide open

when police review all the
CCTV cameras at the hotel

and discover the
alleged Mossad hit.

- This is one of the most
brazen espionage cases

in modern history,

and it was all
captured on camera.

- The Caesarea branch

is the most elite and
secretive unit within Mossad.

That's who's trusted
with the toughest

and most sensitive missions,

and that's especially
true for wet work.

- So clandestine,

they train these
operatives separately

from the rest of Mossad.

- So when we analyze the tape
of this supposed operation,

we have to ask ourselves, who
are we really looking at here?

(tense music)

To the untrained eye,

this looks like regular
guests checking into a hotel.

Dressing for tennis, sharing
elevators, making a phone call.

But to those trained in
spycraft, it shows odd behavior,

like dressing for tennis
but never leaving to play.

- But they linger at
a lobby of a hotel

for hours and hours and hours,

that did not make
sense, that stood out.

- [Ronnie] Or ducking
into the bathroom

and emerging in a new disguise.

- It's not normal to
walk into a bathroom

and change your wig.

- [Ronnie] Or always
following the guy

who turns up dead later.

- You'll see some of
these tennis players

stay in the same place
for a long period of time

and only get up when
Mahmoud walks by.

- [Ronnie] It all makes sense

if they were
plotting to kill him.

- We now see the alleged target

being followed by
these tennis players,

presumably to identify
his exact location

and his exact hotel room.

- [Ronnie] They follow Mahmoud
out of the elevator on his floor

and once they know
what room he's in,

it's not hard to create a
key card to open the door.

Now all they need is a lookout.

- You can see here the
lady in the poor wig

is likely notifying the
team that he is on his way.

- [Ronnie] And after the
target is neutralized,

there's this final sequence,

the entire team leaving
the hotel at the same time.

- A signal's been given that
now the assassination team

can go ahead and withdraw

and remove themselves
from this area of crime.

- [Ronnie] So if the tape
does reveal an assassination,

we need to ask, why
would elite spies

execute a perfect murder

only to ignore the
first rule of spycraft?

- One of the worst things
in an intelligence operation

is to be caught on camera.

- [Ronnie] Kevin Key thinks
the obvious sloppiness

points to an actual frame job.

- My opinion is that this was
an inside job done by Hamas

to make Mossad and Israel
look more like criminals.

- [Ronnie] That's known
as a false flag operation.

So does the damning tape
actually show us expert spycraft

bungled just enough to draw
attention for the cameras?

- Knowing what I know about
the way that Mossad operates,

I find it very strange

that they would leave such
an easy path through time,

point the finger at them
as the actual assailant.

- [Ronnie] Preston Stewart
finds this idea interesting.

- Is there somebody out there
who wanted Mahmoud dead,

also hates Mossad enough
to try to frame 'em?

Maybe, maybe that's
why it was so sloppy.

- [Ronnie] But
he's not convinced.

- I'll say I'm 99% sure that
this is the work of Mossad.

There are people in and
around the hotel at the time

that fit the description of
some methods and procedures

that Mossad has
done in the past.

- [Ronnie] Reviewing the
Mossad's greatest hits,

you can see a pattern.

April 1973,

a Palestine Liberation
Organization operative

killed in a hotel room
in Athens, Greece.

June 1980, Paris, France,

an Iraqi nuclear scientist
also killed in his hotel room.

And in October, 1995,

an Islamic Jihad member shot
in front of his hotel in Malta.

That leads us to a
more obvious theory,

that the tape shows the Mossad

not deliberately
flaunting their presence,

but simply taking big
risks for a big target.

- It's not a movie, it's not
Jason Bourne or James Bond.

These are incredibly
complex operations

trying to take place in a
city with cameras everywhere

and cell phones,

and it's hard, there's
going to be mistakes made.

- The word got out that
the Mossad will reach out

and get you no
matter where you are,

where you feel that
you are most secure

even though you're a
major terrorist leader.

Was the risk worth it?

Absolutely.

On my book, it was a
very successful mission.

(tense music)

- So the simplest answer
seems most likely.

Mossad likely executed the hit,

but some of the spycraft
was a bit sloppy.

- Look, they only needed the
assassination to remain secret

long enough to escape the
country, which they did.

So, as far as the
Mossad are concerned,

that's mission accomplished.

- You know, over 65,000 American
planes were lost during WWII?

That's about 50 a day.

Many of those wrecks
are never found though.

- This next incident is about
the wreck of a WWII bomber

that was found.

But why was it so far off course

and where was its crew?

We're asking what happened
to the Lady Be Good?

November 9, 1958,

a British oil exploration team
flying over the Libyan desert

spots something highly unusual,

a large bomber broken
into two pieces.

As you can see in these
photos from the scene,

it's an American B-24 Liberator.

The wreckage leaves Air Force
officials deeply puzzled

for two reasons.

First, they aren't
missing any planes.

Second, the B-24 Liberators

were decommissioned
14 years earlier.

The Air Force sends a
search team to investigate.

- They spot this airplane
almost completely intact,

sort of like a ghost ship.

The electrical system
on board the aircraft

was still operational,

the radios would still work,

and there it was off by
itself in the desert.

- There was water in canteens.

There were some of the
personal effects on board.

They didn't find any
of the crew members.

- [Rudy] There was one
B-24 that went missing,

the Lady Be Good,

but that was back in 1943 and
it was lost over the ocean.

Let's rewind.
(tape rewinding)

April 1943, 25 bombers take
off from a dusty airstrip

in Soluch, Libya

for a high-altitude strike on
a critical target in Italy.

One of those bombers
is the Lady Be Good,

whose nine-man crew is
fresh outta training

and on their very first mission.

- This was the Allied focus
in Europe at the time.

There would've been near
continuous bombing runs

over parts of Italy

at least every day
from multiple airfields

across North Africa.

- [Rudy] From the start, the
mission is beset by problems.

- They take off
during a sandstorm

that is interfering
with the ability

to see the surroundings.

- [Rudy] The vicious sandstorm
forces half the squadron

to turn back

and causes the Lady Be Good

to lose sight of the
rest of her team.

- The Lady Be Good continued.

There was cloud
cover over Naples

and they weren't able to
drop their bombs on target.

They headed back towards Soluch.

- [Rudy] The Lady Be
Good radios command,

asking for a bearing.

It's the last time
she's ever heard from.

- Okay, Rudy, so
we know two things.

This is a super green crew

and this is one of the toughest
planes to fly in combat.

- That's right, Ronnie.

In fact, the crew's nicknamed
it the flying coffin.

You can see the body
rests below the wing,

making it especially
deadly to fly over water

because if you ditch it,

the plane could snap
in half on impact.

- Okay, it sounds
reasonable to believe

that when the Lady Be Good
didn't return to base,

the command team assumed it
went down in the Mediterranean.

But what caused her to
overshoot the base by 400 miles?

(tense music)

- [Rudy] Military historian,
Martin K.A. Morgan,

says wind conditions
played a major role.

- The navigator on
board this aircraft

made a critical mistake

in that he failed to
adequately compensate

for a significant tailwind

and that's what led the
aircraft, ultimately,

to overfly the airbase and
fly deep into the Sahara.

- [Rudy] The Lady Be Good
likely ran outta fuel

and the airmen bailed
out before she crashed.

- Normally you wouldn't want
to try to stay on an aircraft

that's going down,

especially an
aircraft like the B-24

which does have a bad history.

- [Rudy] Okay, so that
answers the question

about how the plane
ended up in the desert,

but what happened to the crew?

In the summer of 1959,

Air Force and Army
mortuary teams

searched for the crew's remains.

After combing the
desert for six days,

they find nothing.

Finally, 19 miles north
of the crash site,

investigators find
their first clue,

a pair of fleece flight boots.

They seem to have
been left deliberately

as a marker pointing north.

- They leave a trail of items

in hopes that if anyone stumbles
upon either the parachutes

or any of the wreckage,

that they at least
have shown a path

to the direction they're going.

- What the men didn't
know, tragically,

was that they were so far south

that these search parties
never stood a chance

of spotting the
parachutes that they left.

- [Rudy] In February 1960,

after months of searching,
another grim discovery.

Five bodies buried in the sand,

along with diaries

written by Lady Be Good's
co-pilot Robert Toner

and engineer Harold Ripslinger.

- Those journals are found

that provide this
heart-wrenching account

of what the men were going
through as they walked off,

believing that they would walk

to the airfield at
Soluch eventually.

- [Rudy] Ripslinger writes,

"We can hardly walk, a
few drops of water each.

Can't hold out much
longer - pray."

From co-pilot Robert Toner,
"Shelly, rest in peace,

more separate, and
try to go for help.

Eyes bad, all want to die.

Could make it if
we all had water."

The five bodies were
Toner and four of the men.

They had likely been
covered by sandstorms.

The three final crew
members pushed on for help.

Two of their bodies were found,

including Lieutenant
Harold Ripslinger

who made it 109 miles
from the crash site.

The last body was never located.

- We can still marvel at the
fortitude that these men had

to try to survive under
impossible circumstances.

(tense music)

- Ronnie, it's a tragic story.
- It is.

- But it's also heroic.

They survived far longer
than they should have.

Their diaries show how their
training really kicked in.

- It did.

Just the fact that they
found the discipline

to write in 'em at
all is incredible.

- Well, that's
what you're taught,

if you're stranded, you need
to assign yourself tasks

to keep your mind sharp
and maintain hope.

Their story really speaks to
the power of the human spirit.

- You know, there's an
ancient military maxim,

"Appear weak when you are strong

and strong when you are weak."

- My man knows his Sun Tzu.
- Art of War.

- Now keep that quote in mind
as you ponder our next mystery.

How did a division of
tanks appear out of nowhere

to stymie a Nazi counter attack?

Take a good look at this photo.

Looks like a bunch of tanks

stationed near a
country road, right?

But looks can be deceiving.

And what's really going on here

is one of the wildest
stories of WWII.

September 1944, France, just
three months after D-Day,

Allied forces are advancing
swiftly across Western Europe.

George Patton's Third Army

is attacking the
fortress city of Metz.

- In September of 1944,

the Germans have of course
been pushed out of Normandy

and the Allies are
racing across France

as quickly as their supply
lines will allow them to do so,

with the hope of being able to
basically cross into Germany

and try to end the war
before the onset of winter.

- [Ronnie] But
Patton's rapid advance

has put his troops far
ahead of his supply lines

and reinforcements,

spelling potential disaster.

- And once that happens, his
troops become overstretched

and are potentially vulnerable
to German counter attacks

to exploit weaknesses
in his line.

- [Ronnie] German command sees
a mouthwatering opportunity,

but seemingly overnight,

new recon comes in, the
6th Armored Division.

More than 8,000 men with tanks

has appeared out of nowhere
to shore up Patton's flank.

That photo we showed you

captures a little bit of what
the Germans would've seen.

It spooks them and
they turn back.

For decades, the Pentagon
refuses to divulge

how the division suddenly
appeared like superhumans.

- I'm going out on a limb here.

The disinformation campaigns
put on by the Allies

at the end of WWII

may have been the best
in military history.

- I'd agree, they had
this uncanny ability

to keep the German recon

looking at what they
wanted 'em to see,

all while hiding what they
needed to keep secret.

- So these tactics
were so effective,

they were kept top
secret for decades.

So while heroes like
General George Patton

got all the credit in the
world for winning the war,

these geniuses remained
unsung 'til now.

(tense music)

- [Ronnie] The secret of how
the 6th Armored Division

appeared out of nowhere
is that they didn't.

What the Germans really
saw was a different unit,

the 23rd Headquarters Special
Troops, the Ghost Army.

- The 23rd Special
Headquarters Troops unit

was the first multimedia
military deception unit

and it was there to
basically confuse

and deceive the Germans

about Allied strengths as
they advanced towards Germany.

- [Ronnie] These
military magicians

could make their small,
agile force of 500

look like a fearsome
wrecking crew of 8,000.

- Denial and
deception operations

are pivotal in warfare
and in this operation

that was the key to
defeating the Nazis.

- [Ronnie] As you can see in
this footage shot by the Army,

the Ghost Army's weapons were
visual and sonic deception.

- The people that are
actually there are there

to create the illusions
of this much larger unit.

- [Ronnie] What kind of soldier
was needed to pull this off?

The kind with special skills
not typical of combat units.

- The people who did this
were artists and designers,

real creative types.

- [Ronnie] The visual deception
involved inflatable equipment

that looked like tanks and
artillery from a distance.

This model, which is about
as deadly as a beach ball,

is an inflatable replica of
the legendary Sherman tank.

And this is a dummy
Howitzer artillery cannon.

For sonic deception,

they transmitted a division's
worth of radio traffic.

- The Ghost Army was able to
simulate the radio traffic,

for example, of
American divisions.

- [Ronnie] And to sell the
hoax, they used sonic trucks

to play the sounds of
thousands of men and equipment

for anyone listening.

- You have some of the soldiers

deploying some of
the inflatables here,

while some of the
images that you'll see

now seem even laughable.

How could this be real?

But you gotta think about,

based on the
technologies at the time,

of what the enemy would be
able to see from the air,

from an aircraft,
or from a distance.

This will look very real to
them, and that's what mattered.

- [Ronnie] Seeing is believing,

and what the Germans
thought they saw

was more than they could handle,

so they delayed any action

long enough for some real
Allied reinforcement to arrive

and replace those
inflatable tanks.

The Ghost Army

would pull off almost two
dozen similar operations

during the war,

keeping the German command

scratching their
race-obsessed, power-mad heads

across the European theater.

- You're trying to
confuse the enemy

when you're trying to project

that you have more power
than what you really have.

You want them to see you
as the 10-foot-tall man

and when, in fact, you are not.

Now they fear what is coming.

You've created a legend.

(tense music)

- After the war,

many in the 23rd's
ranks became well known.

Folks like fashion
designer, Bill Blass,

sculptor Ellsworth Kelly,

and wildlife artist,
Arthur Singer.

- Amazing, Ronnie.

The Ghost Army was able to
do its magic again and again.

Quite the sleight of hand.

- Some of the scariest
weapons in military history

are biological and
chemical agents,

like the mustard gas used
on the battlefield in WWI.

- It's even more terrifying

when these weapons kill
innocent civilians.

Let's go back 40 years to an
incident that left dozens dead

in a town in Siberia.

The question,

what was happening at the secret
base known as Compound 19?

You're looking at the
graves of the victims.

People whose lives
were cut short,

people whose deaths
were covered up,

people whose story
can only now be told.

It was May 1979.

Several residents in the
Cold War city of Sverdlovsk

turn up at hospitals
with disturbing symptoms.

- They have fever,
they're vomiting,

and they're unsure
what's happening.

At first, they think it
might be a polio outbreak.

- [Ronnie] Within
days, dozens are dead.

Authorities quickly release an
explanation to calm the city.

- The Soviet government

initially tried to say that
the residents who had died

were killed from
eating spoiled meat.

- [Ronnie] Okay, it happens.

In fact, in 2017,

an outbreak of listeria
from contaminated deli meat

killed 216 people
in South Africa.

But infected meat would kill
people in a random pattern.

These deaths occurred
following a straight line

that just happened to match
the prevailing wind direction.

That means that whatever is
killing them is airborne.

That raises the
possibility of bioweapons.

But hang on, the Soviets
agreed with the US

and other nations

to abandon bioweapons
programs in 1972.

Could they still be
developing them in secret?

You betcha.

In fact, in 1979, their
agency known as Biopreparat

is building the largest
biological warfare program

in history,

and the city of Sverdlovsk
is actually a secret city

built just for that
deadly purpose.

- Sverdlovsk was
built specifically

to explore and develop
biological weapons.

Even the people that lived there

didn't necessarily
know where they were,

they didn't show up on a map.

They were completely hidden.

- You weren't really allowed
to tell people where you lived,

you weren't allowed
to visit with anybody.

- Once you went to a
place like Sverdlovsk,

that was your home likely
for the rest of your life.

- I really wonder
how bad an accident

at one of these secret
cities would have to be

for the Soviets to cop
to it as a safety issue.

- The Chernobyl meltdown

could have contaminated the
drinking water in Europe

for like, 1,000 years

and they kept that a secret
as long as they could.

- And that wasn't even
military weaponry,

much less illegal
military weaponry.

So I wanna find out,

was this some kind of crazy
treatment-resistant superbug?

And what happened to it?

(tense music)

- [Ronnie] The biological weapon

being manufactured
at Compound 19

was none other than anthrax.

- Anthrax is an incredibly
deadly bacteria,

and as a biological weapon
is extremely dangerous.

- [Ronnie] But how
did it leak out?

- What went wrong
at this facility

was the scientists have
to replace the air filters

every so often and
what happened was

the scientists took
the air filters out,

but they forgot to
put them back in.

And then, over the weekend,
10 kilograms of anthrax

was released out through
that unfiltered vent.

- And the wind picked them
up in just the right way

to deliver these spores
to the population.

- [Ronnie] And despite
dozens of people

dying from anthrax exposure,

it's actually far from
the worst-case scenario.

- They're actually lucky

because if the wind
had been blowing

in the opposite direction,

hundreds of thousands of
people could have died.

- [Ronnie] Ingesting
naturally-occurring anthrax

has a 60% fatality rate,

roughly twice that of smallpox.

Weaponized anthrax has
a 90% fatality rate.

- Worst-case scenario, somebody
would weaponize anthrax

and modify it so
that the vaccine

wouldn't work against it,

or that it could be
contagious between people.

Right now, anthrax
in its original form

only infects that first person.

- [Ronnie] And the Soviets
had an entire secret city

engineering this stuff?

Actually, they had
more than 50 cities.

In closed sites across the USSR,

scientists were
working to weaponize

the viruses that caused
the bubonic plague,

smallpox, Legionnaires' disease,

and even a close
cousin to Ebola.

How do we know all this?

Because in 1992, the Russians
finally copped to it.

- It isn't until 1992 when
the Soviet Union collapses

that Boris Yeltsin
comes out and admits

that this was a Soviet
military program.

- [Ronnie] To usher in a
new era of transparency,

Russia signs a new pact

forbidding bioweapons
development.

So whatever happened to the
anthrax from Sverdlovsk?

- All of the spores that
were in this factory

were destroyed,
covered in bleach,

and then they were buried
on Resurrection Island

in the Aral Sea.

This was thought to be the
safest way to dispose of them.

- [Ronnie] Is the
Russian military

living up to its renewed
promise to abandon bioweapons?

Maybe not.

In 2006, former KGB agent

and vocal Putin critic
Alexander Litvinenko

was poisoned with polonium,

a rare radioactive bioweapon.

Also in the UK in 2018,

Sergei Skripal, a former
Russian military officer

turned double agent
for the British,

was poisoned along
with his daughter Yulia

with a bioagent.

So the Russian bioweapon
program may be alive and well

and still super secret.

(tense music)

In 2016, biologists
were able to test tissue

from the victims

and map the genome of the
anthrax that killed them.

Good news, it was
not re-engineered

into some crazy superbug.

It could be treated if you
caught it early enough.

- So it's just your
everyday, run-of-the-mill,

super-deadly anthrax.

I guess it's better
than the alternative.

- You're not wrong.

- Now it's time for our
regular secret weapons feature.

This is where we
take a close look

at some of history's
game-changing military tech.

- And the footage you're about
to see will make you ask,

what is this monster raining
hellfire down on the enemy?

- [Rudy] You're
looking at footage

from a gun sighting camera
over Afghanistan in 2012.

US airmen from Special
Operations Command

circle above a
Taliban stronghold.

The mission, seek and destroy
high-value enemy targets.

The air support
platform, an old standby,

the AC-130 gunship.

- The AC-130 is typically
used by Special Forces

and is usually operated
in close air support

or CAS, known as C-A-S.

- [Rudy] Within minutes
of the AC-130's arrival,

we see an enemy vehicle

in the crosshairs of
American firepower.

- [Rudy] A direct hit
alerts the Taliban.

- [Rudy] Vehicles attempt to
speed away from the blast,

but they're too late.

The targeting system
effortlessly tracks them

on the move and fires
with devastating effect.

- [Rudy] And this gunship can
take out more than vehicles,

it can annihilate
entire buildings.

- The amount of
firepower coming down

and the explosions
all around you,

it's gotta be
completely overwhelming.

It's just death raining
down from above.

- [Rudy] So what
do videos like this

reveal about the AC-130 gunship?

- I gotta say it
looks a little wack,

but there's a method
to this madness.

First, you gotta
check out this part.

Those are its guns and as
it comes into that bank,

oh man, things are
about to get heavy.

- And brother, it may
look a little weird,

but this is a 105
mike-mike howitzer,

artillery from the sky!

I'll tell you what,

having one of these bad bears
on your side redefines BFF.

- Now to get at how this
thing does its thing,

we turn back to our experts.

(tense music)

- [Rudy] This video is revealing
because it's so steady.

At first glance, you might
think it's from a chopper

or a hovering drone,

but it's actually the AC-130

performing a maneuver
called a pylon turn,

which keeps it
focused on the target

for an extended period of time.

- It's able to maintain
its weapon stability

with the use of gyroscopes,

while the AC-130 is circling
and traveling at speed,

they're also able to
put rounds on target

with extreme accuracy as well.

- [Rudy] The rounds this
gunship can put on target

come from a dizzying
array of weapons.

We'll start with the
little one, so to speak,

a 25-millimeter Gatling Gun.

Nicknamed the Equalizer,

this five-barreled gun can
fire 1,800 rounds a minute.

Moving on and up in caliber,
we have a 40 mike-mike cannon.

It serves up as many
as 120 rounds a minute.

And before taking to the skies,

this weapon started out life
as an anti-aircraft gun.

- While I was in Afghanistan,

the AC-130 was always there

and could aid us in
neutralizing targets.

- [Rudy] As we were
just showing you,

the 105 rounds out the
caliber of ammunition

this deadly machine delivers.

Once upon a war,

this cannon was a
terrestrial light towable

field artillery piece.

In the aerial realm,

it can blast out as many
as 10 shells a minute.

(explosions booming)

- The blast of
what you're seeing

is just a portion of the
area that could kill you.

There's shrapnel comes from
every one of those rounds

that flies out
much, much further

than each one of the visual
blasts on the screen.

(gunshots firing)

(tense music)

- Wow, the sheer freakin' power.

A whole different kind of beast.

Swoops in low, hovers,
circles like a dragon,

locks in on targets,
and bang, bang, bang!

- And it's the
precision that gets me.

There's really no
enemy on the ground

that can match this thing.

It's impressive.

- But unfortunately,
as Afghanistan shows,

sometimes you can show up
with the right weaponry,

the right training, and
win battle after battle,

but still not win the war.

- That's our show for tonight,
thanks for watching.

Remember, keep your powder dry.

- And your head on
a swivel, goodnight.

(dramatic music)