 And by the Frontline Journalism
 Fund, with a grant from
 Millicent Bell through the
 Millicent and Eugene Bell
 Foundation.America.
 I'm Charles Gibson.
>> I'm Diane Sawyer, and it's
 Tuesday, Stember 11, 2001.
( screaming )
>> Just a few moments ago,
 something believed to be a
 plane crashed into the south
 tower of the World Trade
 Center.
>> A plane has crashed into one
 of the towers.
>> It looks almost like a
 mushroom cloud.
>> We're trying to figure out
 exactly what happened, but
 clearly something relatively
 devastating.
>> Welcome back to Fox News.
 We have a very tragic alert for
 you right now.
>> Something hit the Pentagon on
 the outside of the fifth floor.
>> A day unlike any other in the
 long course of American
 history:
 a terrorist act of war against
 this country.
 President Bush saying today
 that freedom has been attacked
 by...
>> BUSH: Make no mistake, the
United States will hunt down and
punish those responsible for
these cowardly acts.
>> CLARKE: President Bush said
to us in the basement of the
White House on the night of
9/11, "You have everything you
need."
And that was true because, as
soon as we went to the Congress,
they said, "Just tell us what
you need."
Blank check.
>> NARRATOR: The President was
determined to spend whatever was
necessary and do whatever was
necessary to conduct a new kind
of war.
>> ASHCROFT: The President
turned to me and said-- in my
direction anyhow-- he said,
"Never let this happen again."
>> TOWNSEND: I understood that
to mean there was no end of the
earth we weren't willing to go
to, there was nothing we weren't
willing to ask for, there was
nobody we wouldn't work with.
>> NARRATOR: The key to the new
war would be secrecy.
>> CHENEY: We'd have to work
through the dark side, if you
will.
We've got to spend time in the
shadows in the intelligence
world.
>> PRIEST: In the first few
days, the entire blueprint for
what would happen over the next
decade was written, all in
secret.
The public didn't know, the
media didn't know, and it would
take us years to find out.
>> NARRATOR: For ten years,
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter
Dana Priest has reported on
hidden military and intelligence
operations.
>> CHENEY: A lot of what needs
to be done here will have to be
done quietly, without any
discussion, using sources and
methods that are available to
our intelligence agencies.
>> PRIEST: In the beginning, we
saw a little bit of this world
everywhere, and we were
gathering bit by bit.
>> CHENEY: It's going to be
vital for us to use any means at
our disposal to achieve our
objective.
>> PRIEST: It really took years
to figure out how big it really
was, and we were shocked.
>> NARRATOR: For Priest, one of
the first hints of the secret
war was revealed at this
Congressional hearing.
>> SENATOR: The joint inquiry
hearing will come to order,
please.
>> BLACK: When I speak, I think
the American people need to look
into my face, and I want to look
the American people in the eye.
My name is Cofer Black.
>> NARRATOR: Cofer Black was in
charge of the CIA's
counterterrorism efforts.
>> BLACK: This is a very highly
classified area.
All you need to know is that
there was a "before 9/11" and
there was an "after 9/11."
After 9/11, the gloves come off.
>> NARRATOR: Beyond that, Black
refused to divulge any details.
>> PRIEST: They just wanted no
information out.
I think the reality is that they
wanted to keep it secret because
they were doing things that a
lot of people would not approve
of, and they wanted to do them
as long as they could without
being found out.
>> NARRATOR: The plan for the
secret war began here at the
Central Intelligence Agency in
the hours right after 9/11.
>> McLAUGHLIN: The reaction in
our building and among our
leadership was pretty simple:
anger and resolve.
We were fighting these guys, and
they won a huge victory on that
day, and it was a huge defeat
for us.
>> BLACK: This one has finally
got past all of our defenses.
We had plans that had been
developed in the past that had
reached their due date with
9/11.
>> PRIEST: He was very
aggressive.
He saw no boundaries to what he
could do.
At one point, he talks about
bringing bin Laden's head on a
platter with flies on the
eyeballs.
>> SCHROEN: When 9/11 happened,
it was Cofer who really took the
lead in... in being the most
vocal person, saying, "Okay,
this is a tragedy, but the
gloves are off.
We're ing to go out and we're
going to defeat Al Qaeda, we're
going to kill bin Laden, and
we're going to win this war."
>> NARRATOR: That night, they
prepared an operational plan.
>> BRENNAN: Cofer and his people
pulled together what was going
to be the next step as far as
going after Al Qaeda, going
after Afghanistan.
And they were the ones that
actually were able to bring the
plans to the table first and
present them at the White House.
>> BLACK: Where everybody else
is looking for their maps on
Afghanistan, we're ready to
rock, ready to roll.
I mean, we were waiting for the
bureaucracy to catch up.
>> NARRATOR: Black would
personally present the plan to
President Bush.
>> BRENNAN: CIA had already done
more homework on Al Qaeda than
any other part of the US
government.
And so, what they were able to
do then was to put together a
proposal and a timeline as far
as how the CIA could be the
vanguard of the US government
move against Al Qaeda.
>> NARRATOR: The CIA code name
for the covert program would
become "Greystone."
>> PRIEST: They had a matrix
that they offered to the White
House that said, "These are the
countries we need to go into.
Go after bin Laden and his
terrorist network.
Kill and capture them and their
supporters."
>> NARRATOR: Greystone was a
challenge to the old ways of
fighting, and the Secretary of
Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, knew
it.
>> PRIEST: So the CIA was very
much in front of the military,
and that bothered Rumsfeld
greatly.
>> NARRATOR: But Rumsfeld's
generals had no plans for
dealing with Al Qaeda or
Afghanistan.
>> DELONG: We had no plan.
I mean, to be honest, you have
operational plans for different
parts of the world.
There was none for Afghanistan.
>> NARRATOR: Rumsfeld scrambled,
but Cofer Black was way ahead of
him.
In less than a week, the
President initiated Greystone.
>> McLAUGHLIN: We all assembled
in the Cabinet Room, and the
President lays down about 12
decisions, just like that,
machine-gun fashion.
>> INTERVIEWER: What did he say?
>> McLAUGHLIN: Well, of course,
the thing that stands out in my
memory, because it hit me
vividly, was... he said, "I want
CIA in there first."
>> NARRATOR: That day, President
Bush signed a key document, a
finding authorizing Cofer Black
and the CIA to wage a covert
international war.
>> RADSAN: It was a very
comprehensive finding.
It was generally worded.
It was: "Go out and get the bad
guys; disrupt them, kill them,
interrogate them."
This was an overarching
authorization of the CIA.
>> RIZZO: I had never ever seen
a presidential authorization as
far reaching and as aggressive
in scope.
It was... it was simply
extraordinary.
>> TOWNSEND: In a post-9/11
world, we weren't going to be so
prissy.
We were going to work and do
what we needed to do.
No matter how difficult or
undesirable it was, we were
going to do what we needed to do
to get the information we needed
to protect the American people.
>> NARRATOR: The finding would
set the ground rules for the new
war on Al Qaeda.
>> PRIEST: That sets in motion
the largest covert action
program since the height of the
Cold War, and many people inside
the agency will say it's even
larger than that.
>> BLACK: Now, basically in a
nanosecond, we're going from
where we were staked to the
ground like a junkyard dog-- you
can report but you can't do
anything-- to new authorities,
new rules of engagement, lots of
funding to support this.
This is a whole new ball game.
>> NARRATOR: Within two weeks in
Afghanistan, the first phase of
Greystone began.
>> SCHROEN: My team-- seven
officers, including myself and
three air crew-- flew in on the
26th of September.
When I began to distribute
money-- $200,000 here, $250,000
for this-- I think the Afghans
were convinced that we... we
were sincere.
>> BLACK: The action was planned
to be classic CIA.
It's going to be a multi-prong
threat attack where we work with
locals, minimize the American
footprint.
>> BERNTSEN: CIA officers, of
course, in Afghanistan for the
first time since, you know,
World War II, are involved in
battlefields and combat
operations, doing things that we
hadn't done in 60 years.
So I think it's kind of a shock
to the military.
>> PRIEST: The CIA went in right
off the bat, hooked up with the
Northern Alliance, and it was
really quite remarkable what
they accomplished with so few
people on the ground.
( gunfire )
>> NARRATOR: It didn't take long
for the Taliban to fall.
The CIA had demonstrated it
could fight effectively in the
shadows.
( horn honking )
>> BLACK: We'd like the
survivors of 9/11 to know that
those of us in the business
consider it the CIA's finest
hour.
We went in to kick ass, and we
did.
( siren blaring )
>> There have been dramatic
 developments on the ground in
 the war in Afghanistan.
>> The Taliban have suffered a
 series of defeats as Northern
 Alliance...
>> NARRATOR: Washington publicly
celebrated the first victory in
what they began to call "the war
on terror."
>> There were celebrations in
 Afghanistan's capital today.
>> The capture of Kabul follows
 a series of stunning successes
 by the Northern Alliance.
>> HOUSE SERGEANT AT ARMS: Mr.
Speaker, the President of the
United States!
( cheers and applause )
>> BUSH: Terrorists who once
occupied Afghanistan now occupy
cells at Guantanamo Bay.
( cheers and applause )
And this evening, we welcomed
the distinguished interim leader
of a liberated Afghanistan,
Chairman Hamid Karzai.
( cheers and applause )
>> PRIEST: The victory in
Afghanistan came so quickly, and
the ball kept rolling in secret.
And, by and large, it's
continued in secret.
>> NARRATOR: Greystone was under
way well beyond the borders of
Afghanistan.
In more than a dozen countries,
operatives were fighting a
global secret war.
>> DELONG: George Tenet calls me
one morning and said, "We've got
our target."
I said, "Okay, we're good, I'm
going down to the UAV room."
>> NARRATOR: The Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle room was in Tampa,
Florida.
A drone was flying over Yemen.
The target was in an SUV.
>> I got a vehicle moving out.
>> Are the vehicles moving right
 now?
>> DELONG: I'm sitting back like
this, looking at the wall and
talking to George Tenet.
And he goes, "You going to make
the call?"
And I said, "I'll make the
call."
He says, "This SUV over here is
the one that has Ali in it."
I said, "Okay, fine.
You know, shoot 'em."
>> You are clear to engage it.
>> DELONG: They lined it up and
shot it.
>> Score.
 Roll it in.
( gunfire )
 Oh!
 Hey!
>> Good shot.
>> DELONG: It's a pretty good-
sized explosive.
In an SUV, you can imagine a big
explosion.
( gunfire and explosion )
So we knew everybody in the
vehicle was dead.
( gunfire and explosion )
>> An attack in Yemen this week
 killed a top Al Qaeda leader.
>> The US government officials
 called the attack highly
 successful.
>> PRIEST: The CIA had fired an
armed Predator at a car driving
in the desert in Yemen, with a
weapon that we didn't know they
had, in a way that we had never
seen anybody do anything like
this before.
>> DELONG: It's just war.
It's no different than going to
the store to buy some eggs; it's
just something you got to do.
These guys, these are the same
people that had just killed over
3,000 people in the twin towers
and killed over... almost 200
people in the Pentagon.
This was easy.
>> PRIEST: It just begged so
many questions.
Is this assassination?
You know, what rules are they
operating under?
>> Still, it raises a host of
 new questions.
>> Does the Director of Central
 Intelligence now have a James
 Bond-style license to kill?
>> NARRATOR: Drone attacks were
only a part of Greystone.
In Afghanistan, the military
captured thousands but some of
the high-value terrorists
disappeared.
>> PRIEST: I know from the
military people who were on the
ground that not everybody was
going into the military penal
system.
So where were they going, and
what were they doing with them?
>> NARRATOR: Only later did
Priest learn that Cofer Black
and the CIA were using harsh
techniques to extract
information.
>> PRIEST: Someone uses the
term, "Well, these are called
'stress-and-duress' techniques."
And that sort of crystallizes
"'stress-and-duress' techniques,
that doesn't sound like the
military rules."
>> NARRATOR: In secret, the
administration had authorized
the CIA to use what they called
"enhanced interrogation
techniques."
>> RIZZO: The enhanced
interrogation techniques were a
set of techniques that would
work on someone who was thought
to likely have information about
a possible next imminent attack
on the homeland.
>> CANNISTRARO: They can do a
lot of things that used to be
considered torture.
Waterboarding, for example.
By any definition, it's torture.
The Justice Department called it
"enhanced interrogation
methods," and it approved seven
of them, including
waterboarding.
>> NARRATOR: Al Qaeda's Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded
183 times.
It took reporter Dana Priest
years to piece together where
prisoners like Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed were.
They had been hidden in a secret
network of CIA prisons known as
"black sites."
>> PRIEST: In the investigation
of the black sites, I found a
worldwide system of about two
dozen prisons throughout the
world run by the CIA, paid by
the CIA, organized by the CIA,
but with cooperation from other
countries.
>> NARRATOR: Top CIA official
John Rizzo helped authorize the
prisons.
>> RIZZO: Creating a prison
system was something, certainly
in my 25 years, we had never
done.
It was essential that these
people be held in absolute
isolation, with... with access
to the fewest number of people.
That quickly led to the
conclusion that... that
facilities had to be built
oversees, secret facilities.
>> NARRATOR: For the first time,
the White House had approved the
building of an international
prison system entirely in
secret.
>> PRIEST: The amount of secrecy
is phenomenal.
The desire and the willingness
of government to operate in
secret and to deny the public,
the media, the basic facts about
what they were doing was all-
inclusive.
We were falling deeper and
deeper into a secretly-run
government.
>> NARRATOR: And the secrecy was
spreading.
At the Pentagon, by 2002, Donald
Rumsfeld was waging his own
covert campaign inside the
Defense Department.
>> PRIEST: The CIA was very much
in front of the military, and
that bothered Rumsfeld greatly.
And he would write memos saying,
"This cannot stand.
We have to create a capacity
ourselves."
>> RUMSFELD: The only defense
against terrorism is offense.
You have to simply take the
battle to them.
How do you do that?
You don't... you don't do it
with conventional capabilities.
You do it with unconventional
capabilities.
>> IMMERMAN: Rumsfeld was
something of an empire builder,
you know-- to create as much
power in his department as
possible.
>> NARRATOR: Quietly, Rumsfeld
expanded the Pentagon's most
secret group: Joint Special
Operations Command, JSOC.
>> IMMERMAN: It provided a
capability within the Pentagon
that the Pentagon didn't have
before and was not considered
appropriate for the Pentagon to
have before.
>> NARRATOR: Buried deep inside
the Pentagon bureaucracy,
Rumsfeld anointed JSOC with
power and money.
>> MacGREGOR: One of the reasons
that Secretary Rumsfeld became
very enamored of special
operations forces was the
readiness of special operations
forces to deploy and do what
they were asked to do, whereas
the Army presented resistance.
>> NARRATOR: JSOC began a
systematic series of capture and
targeted killing operations.
One by one, they aimed for Al
Qaeda leaders wherever they
found them.
( explosions )
Using conventional war
authorities, they did it all
with less oversight than the
CIA.
>> CLARKE: So, in the past,
covert action was done by CIA,
the President had to approve
covert action and notify the
Congress.
Now, a lot of what looks like
the same sort of thing-- covert
action-- is done by JSOC.
Now, they say when they do it,
it's not covert action; it's a
military operation.
So the President does not by law
have to approve every operation,
and the intelligence committees
are not notified.
>> NARRATOR: Then, in
Afghanistan, a story circulated
that Rumsfeld wanted to use JSOC
forces on a new battlefield:
Iraq.
>> SCHROEN: You could see
changes being made in the US
military staffing in
Afghanistan, that the Green
Beret units-- the 5th Special
Forces group, for the most of
it-- were being pulled out to
refit and get ready for Iraq.
And it was clear that the kind
of guys that I think a lot of us
believed were essential US
military personnel with special
operations capabilities were
being pulled away.
>> SCHEUER: By 2002, in the
springtime, it was almost taken
for granted that we were going
to go to war with Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: The President
needed a convincing reason for
war with Saddam Hussein.
George Tenet and the CIA said
they had no evidence Saddam had
helped Al Qaeda, but Secretary
Rumsfeld did.
A secret unit at the Pentagon
claimed it had found a
connection.
>> GOODMAN: They needed an
office that would produce the
intelligence that the CIA
wouldn't produce.
Rumsfeld said, "I can solve your
problem," and they created the
Office of Special Plans.
>> BENJAMIN: So they're going to
do their own analysis.
They're going to show what the
CIA's been missing all along
about the true relationship
between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
>> NARRATOR: They worked in a
vault deep inside the Pentagon.
They had what is known as "all
source clearances"-- total
access to intelligence
information.
>> MALOOF: I went into the
system, our classified system,
to see what did we know about
terrorist groups and their
relationships, as well as their
connection, associations with
not only Al Qaeda but also with
state sponsors.
>> NARRATOR: The information was
rarely vetted.
Instead, it moved up the chain
of command to the office of the
Vice President.
>> GOODMAN: And this became
material that was then used,
sort of in white paper-like
fashion, to be leaked to
journalists or to create links
between Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda.
>> NARRATOR: It was delivered to
the American public and the
world...
>> CHENEY: New information has
come to light, and we spent time
looking at that relationship
between Iraq on the one hand and
the Al Qaeda organization on the
other.
And there has been reporting
that suggests that there have
been a number of contacts over
the years.
>> NARRATOR: ...and they began
relying on a new phrase,
"weapons of mass destruction."
>> RICE: But we don't want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom
cloud.
>> POWELL: Leaving Saddam
Hussein in possession of weapons
of mass destruction for a few
more months or years is not an
option, not in a post-September
11th world.
>> A rapid series of 40
 explosions lit up Baghdad in
 the early morning hours.
>> Military officials have been
 using the term "shock and awe"
 to describe the assault on
 Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: By the spring of
2003, the US had attacked Iraq.
>> ...engaged in direct combat
 against Saddam Hussein's
 Republican guard.
>> ...of the third infantry
 division...
>> NARRATOR: Fast and mobile,
Rumsfeld's JSOC teams secretly
paved the way.
>> ...are now reported to be
 about 30 miles from the
 outskirts of...
>> NARRATOR: Fighting a
conventional war
unconventionally seemed at first
to work.
>> RUMSFELD: Scenes of free
Iraqis celebrating in the
streets, riding American tanks,
tearing down the statues of
Saddam Hussein in the center of
Baghdad, are breathtaking.
>> BUSH: On September 11, 2001,
our freedom and way of life came
under attack by brutal enemies
who killed nearly 3,000 innocent
Americans.
>> NARRATOR: On the night of
9/11, the CIA had planned a
secret war abroad.
>> BUSH: And since September 11,
we've been on the offensive
against the terrorists plotting
within our borders.
>> NARRATOR: At home, another
front had been opened: the
battle to prect the American
homeland.
>> ASHCROFT: We had to move from
proving what happened to
preventing something from
happening because the costs that
came with a mass destruction
event like 9/11, we can't allow
that.
>> NARRATOR: The President asked
the nation's largest and most
secret intelligence agency to
step forward.
>> HAYDEN: A couple weeks into
the war, we were asked, "Is
there anything more we can do to
defend the homeland?"
>> NARRATOR: At that time,
Michael Hayden ran the National
Security Agency, the NSA.
>> HAYDEN: We began a
conversation with the Vice
President and then with the
President, saying that, "Here
are some additional things we
could do, but we cannot do them
because we do not currently have
the authorities to do them."
That was the basis of the
evolution of what became the
Terrorist Surveillance Program.
>> NARRATOR: The Terrorist
Surveillance Program authorized
the NSA to intercept certain
telephone calls and emails of
American citizens without a
warrant.
>> HAYDEN: It clearly was
atypical when it came to where
the traditional boundaries of
the National Security Agency had
been, when it came to
communications, one end of which
was in the United States.
That was a change.
>> PRIEST: Nobody was in a mood
to say, "Well, wait a minute.
Are you infringing on privacy?"
You know, privacy versus another
9/11 attack, there was no real
question about what was going to
win over that.
>> NARRATOR: From inside their
secure Maryland headquarters,
the NSA was now focused on
trying to prevent the next
terrorist attack.
>> HAYDEN: I began to lay out to
the people of NSA what our
mission had become, and it was
clear it was going to be
counterterrorism.
I said we will be shifting over
to the offense and that we would
be an integral part of that
offensive move.
>> NARRATOR: The NSA created a
global electronic dragnet
capable of reaching into
America's communication
networks, capturing 1.7 billion
intercepts every day.
>> CLARKE: The National Security
Agency has a huge vacuum cleaner
around the world, and it is
sucking down information from
computer networks, from radios,
from telephone calls all over
the world.
So much information that no
human being could ever go
through it on a daily basis.
>> PILLAR: The other basic
challenge is in sorting through
the huge volume of information.
The analogy is not so much a
"needle in a haystack," it's "a
needle in a stack of needles."
>> NARRATOR: But finding the
exact needle would take
manpower, lots of it and in a
hurry.
The NSA turned to a new force in
the covert war: private
contractors.
>> PRIEST: You had this boom in
the corporate intelligence
world, as well.
Companies like CACI, Lockheed
Martin, General Dynamics, just
all the old-fashioned,
industrial "We're building ships
and submarines"-type
corporations quickly moved into
the intelligence and information
space.
>> NARRATOR: The NSA spent
billions of dollars on more than
480 private companies.
Michael Hayden led the effort in
the days right after 9/11.
>> HAYDEN: I did it at NSA,
George did it at... at CIA.
We... we all did it.
It was a way to go out there
and... and to get these
capabilities into the flow
infinitely more quickly than you
would have been able to do had
you gone through the government
personnel system.
>> NARRATOR: In office parks
near the NSA, thousands of
private contractors-- many
making much more money than
federal employees-- help digest
data.
>> PRIEST: This war was not a
war that required a lot of
tanks, a lot of fighter jets.
It required information.
And information flows in a
different way and is... is
analyzed by machines.
>> NARRATOR: Exactly how much
money the NSA was spending in
the years after 9/11 is one of
the government's most closely
guarded secrets.
The agency's budget, like it's
work, is a state secret.
>> ARKIN: Well, have you
actually looked at this building
on a satellite map yet?
>> PRIEST: No.
>> ARKIN: It's gigantic.
I mean, it's... it's...
>> NARRATOR: In Vermont, a
reporter and former defense
analyst, William Arkin, spent
years trying to track the post-
9/11 growth of America's hidden
intelligence world.
>> ARKIN: It's a government
organization.
It shows up nowhere.
It's in a pizza parlor.
It looks like it's a cover
address.
There's no defense organization
there.
I'll have to go look at it, or
you'll have to go look at it.
>> PRIEST: Okay.
>> NARRATOR: Working with Dana
Priest, the two would do what no
one else had done: identify one
by one the buildings and
companies in what they called
"Top Secret America."
>> ARKIN: The Defense Policy
Analysis Office.
The Defense Program Support
Activity.
The Asymmetric Warfare Group.
Project 7116.
The Special Security
Organization.
The CIA and FBI and NSA and all
the other agencies.
It took me about a year to
complete a decent catalogue of
the government entities and
corporate entities that work in
this world.
>> NARRATOR: They discovered
they were the only people in the
country collecting such detailed
information.
The only way they could verify
any of it was to go there in
person, hundreds of secret
locations hiding in plain sight
in office parks.
>> PRIEST: This is a gate to...
to the NSA?
>> LANE: There's a government
facility back in there.
You'll see it better after we
turn down this road.
>> NARRATOR: Inside buildings
like these, they launch drone
strikes, gather and spread
secret information, engage in
cyber conflict.
>> LANE: You've got Titan in
here.
CSC is in one of these
buildings.
General Dynamics.
>> PRIEST: So you really have
the big mega-firms, the giants
of this whole industry here:
Northrup Grumman, Boeing...
>> LANE: With a security station
here at the front where they...
they check out the cars and look
underneath.
>> PRIEST: Yeah, that... so
maybe you should put the camera
down now.
>> LANE: Because you just never
know who's watching over here.
>> PRIEST: All right, so can we
just go over what you have?
>> WILLIAMSON: Sure.
>> NARRATOR: At the "Washington
Post," Priest and her team
compiled what they found.
>> WILLIAMSON: This is the
picture that I went up to that
credit union place.
>> PRIEST: Uh-huh.
>> WILLIAMSON: For the rest of
my life, I will never see the
world the same way again,
especially around Washington.
Yeah, so, had it not been for
the leaves off the trees and at
night, you just... you would
never see this thing.
>> PRIEST: And yet, it's
gigantic.
>> WILLIAMSON: These buildings
that... they might only be four
stories high, but they go down
ten stories.
And there's a whole world down
there, like shops and places to
eat, that you don't know about
that's just for them.
>> NARRATOR: They had uncovered
a new, secret world that had
grown up in the years after
9/11.
>> PRIEST: We could put the dots
on the map.
You had an alternate geography
of the United States, a secret
geography that is so important,
that guides how this country
keeps itself safe, and yet it is
not revealed to the public even
though it may be next to your
back door.
>> CLARKE: They didn't put it in
one place.
If they had, it would have been
the size of the District of
Columbia.
What they did instead was
scatter it around so it fits
into the fabric of metropolitan
Washington and on up into
Baltimore, and it looks like
commercial office space.
A huge new bureaucracy that you
can't really see.
>> There was more fierce
 fighting between U.S. forces
 and the Shiite militia.
>> NARRATOR: In Iraq, by 2004,
the public war was going badly.
>> ...one of several places
 where there was violence in
 Iraq over the weekend.
( explosions )
>> The number of American troops
 killed is now over 1,000.
>> Reports of mortar attacks in
 Baghdad...
>> Several others were wounded
 when a car bomb exploded today.
>> NARRATOR: Rumsfeld's light
force wasn't able to stop the
growing insurgency.
>> ...by roadside bombs...
>> PRIEST: There aren't enough
troops, and worse, they're in
the middle of an insurgency that
they don't know how to conquer.
( explosion )
>> NARRATOR: And they hadn't
found any sign of those weapons
of mass destruction.
>> KERR: Early on in the war, it
seemed quite clear that they
were not going to find major
stockpiles of weapons, that we
were looking at kind of an empty
shelf.
>> NARRATOR: David Kay had been
given the job of finding the
weapons.
>> KAY: From very early on, I
said, "Things are not panning
out the way you thought they
existed here."
And it was specific cases,
whether we were talking about
the aluminum tubes or we're
talking about the nuclear
program in general, or the
biological program.
>> After eight months of
 searching Iraq for weapons of
 mass destruction, David Kay
 reached a simple conclusion:
 there aren't any.
>> The political stakes are
 rising in the overestimation of
 Iraq's weapons.
 The cost...
>> NARRATOR: It was an
intelligence failure that
reverberated throughout
Washington.
>> ...one of the most damaging
 intelligence failure in recent
 US history and says the harm to
 US credibility will take years
 to undo.
>> KAY: I think the intelligence
community understood that if the
American people and the policy
makers really understood the
message I was delivering, that
there would have to be a major
shake-up of the way the American
intelligence is done, because
this was just inexcusable.
>> NARRATOR: George Tenet and
the CIA took most of the blame.
>> Outraged lawmakers are
 demanding to know whether the
 CIA was pressured to come up
 with answers the administration
 wanted to justify going to war.
>> NARRATOR: The bipartisan 9/11
Commission proposed stripping
the CIA of its oversight of
national intelligence.
>> PRIEST: The 9/11 Commission
actually suggested that the
country have a Director of
Intelligence to make sure that
all the different agencies would
share their dots, and who could
be in charge of the agencies in
order to make sure that they
weren't overlapping, that they
were playing well together, that
they were getting efficiencies
out of the system.
>> BUSH: Today, I'm asking
Congress to create the position
of a National Intelligence
Director.
The National Intelligence
Director...
>> LOWENTHAL: Congress starts
working on the bill, and they
produce a bill in almost no time
at all.
And there's very little debate
and there's very little
consideration.
>> NARRATOR: As the bill made
it's way through Congress, the
existing intelligence agencies
pushed back.
The Secretary of Defense led the
charge.
>> TOWNSEND: The Secretary of
Defense was not anxious to lose
power, direct authority over the
intelligence assets in the
Department of Defense.
He felt very strongly and fought
very hard not to lose that
authority.
>> MURRAY: The authority of the
DNI, which was written into the
law as it was drafted, was
gradually reduced day after day
after day to the point where it
became almost meaningless.
>> NARRATOR: John Negroponte was
the first nominee for Director
of National Intelligence.
>> NEGROPONTE: I got a call from
Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff
for the President, asking me,
"How would you like to be the
first Director of National
Intelligence?"
I didn't know anything about how
Congress envisaged the position
or anything else.
So, the first thing I did was
downloaded the law, all 200-plus
pages of it, to get some kind of
sense of what was envisaged.
>> NARRATOR: To run America's
$80 billion intelligence
community, Negroponte was given
a small staff and a few rooms in
the old Executive Office
Building.
>> NEGROPONTE: The actual
Director's office is non-
existent.
There wasn't even somebody to
answer the phones when I first
got there.
>> POWELL: I recall one time the
Secretary of Defense coming into
the office and the Secretary of
State walking by, peeking in and
just chuckling.
And it was all funny to see them
crowded around this small table,
kind of the National Security
team.
>> HAYDEN: We covered the walls
with butcher paper and said,
"Well, how about this
organizational structure?"
I mean, we really did, and then
tried to lay it out.
>> NARRATOR: Negroponte quickly
discovered he had little
authority to bring order to the
sprawling intelligence
community.
>> NEGROPONTE: There were some
things that were lacking.
The authority to hire and fire.
I believe that it would have
been better to have more
budgetary authorities than...
than, in fact, I actually ended
up having.
>> KEANE: If you're going to try
to maintain true authorities
over a subordinate organization,
you will have to have some
control over policy formulation
of that organization and also
the resources that are applied
to it.
And much of that does not exist
in that position, so you... you
have a sort of an emperor
without any clothes.
Negroponte served as Director
of National Intelligence for
just two years..
In the seven years it has
existed there have been
five different DNIs.s.s.s.s.s.s.
>> BOND: We gave the DNI a lot
of responsibilities and high
expectations.
In my view, we did not give that
person the authority over the
intelligence community to
realize the benefits that were
supposed to be derived.
>> NARRATOR: Despite the
inability to control other
intelligence agencies, the DNI
did what other bureaucracies
inside Top Secret America do: it
grew.
>> PRIEST: It started out 11
people in the Old Executive
Office Building.
But that wasn't big enough, so
they moved to some of the
priciest real estate in the
Washington area.
And now they are gigantic--
500,000 square feet, five
Walmarts stacked on top of each
other.
And if you ask most people in
the intelligence world, they
don't know exactly what they do
still.
>> It's the inauguration day of
 the nation's first African
 American president.
>> NARRATOR: In 2009, the new
President would inherit a war in
Iraq, a war in Afghanistan and
terrorism threats abroad and at
home.
>> This will be the largest
 security challenge here since
 9/11.
>> ...the tightest security for
 an inauguration ever.
>> NARRATOR: There had even been
a threat to the President-elect.
>> PRIEST: A week before, they'd
gotten a reasonable tip that
there was a plot on the part of
a Somalian immigrant to disrupt
the inauguration, and they took
that seriously.
>> TOWNSEND: There was enough
there that you understood, even
if it turned out later not to be
real, they had an obligation to
take it seriously.
>> PRIEST: The Bush
administration national security
team briefed the incoming
national security team about
that threat, and it was
mentioned that perhaps they
should consider canceling the
inauguration.
>> NARRATOR: But all of Top
Secret America was on hand to
protect the President.
>> PRIEST: What was happening
behind the scenes was
phenomenal.
It was an unprecedented virtual
security cocoon.
>> PERREN: We have the
Intelligence Operations Center,
Tactical Operations Center, and
then we have our bomb
technicians, our WMD experts,
our evidence response team.
>> NARRATOR: They used eye-in-
the-sky satellites and hundreds
of closed circuit cameras.
>> PERREN: A lot of camera
footage, a lot of live footage
being fed into the command post.
So everybody's looking at the
crowds in real-time, everyone's
looking at hot spots in real-
time.
>> NARRATOR: They watched the
entrances into the city.
Police and their technology were
everywhere.
>> PRIEST: You had license plate
scanners all up and down the
Eastern seaboard on alert.
You had sharpshooters out.
They used the most exquisite
technology.
>> CLARKE: Sensors scattered
around the city, picking up the
wind, analyzing it every minute
to see what's in it.
And all of that information
being fed in real-time into the
operations center.
>> PERREN: Everybody was
watching and working, and it was
like a crescendo.
Everybody's anxiety level builds
up.
The phone calls, you're getting
more and more phone calls.
( cheers and applause )
( musical fanfare )
You... you can feel the tension
in the air.
>> OBAMA: ...to preserve protect
and defend the Constitution of
the United States.
>> PERREN: And then you can see
the collective sigh of relief
when the President was sworn in.
>> ROBERTS: So help you God?
>> OBAMA: So help me God.
>> ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr.
President.
( cheers and applause )
( "Hail to the Chief" playing )
>> NARRATOR: The reports of the
Somali threat turned out not to
be true, but as the new
President took office there was
an open question about the
future of Top Secret America.
On the campaign trail, candidate
Obama had said it should be
dramatically reigned in.
>> OBAMA: That means no more
illegal wiretapping of American
citizens.
>> PRIEST: Barack Obama came in
pledging a new era of
transparency.
>> OBAMA: My administration will
take a top-to-bottom review of
the threats we face and our
ability to confront them.
Too often, this administration's
approach to homeland security
has been to scatter money around
and avoid hard choices.
>> NARRATOR: Now the president
would be read into the
classified programs, receiving
daily briefings on threats to
the homeland.
>> He begins to get the
intelligence brief.
He begins to see the substance
behind... on the inner workings
of government.
>> You start getting reports
about individuals.
"This known terrorist may be on
the move from here to there."
"This known terrorist was
intercepted talking about a
planned attack."
>> I think all of that--
including what he had to go
through in terms of a security
briefing for the inauguration--
influences then how he sees the
threat and his own
responsibility.
>> NARRATOR: It didn't take long
for the new president to make
clear where he stood.
>> His people were signaling to
us, I think partly to try to
assure us they weren't going to
come in and dismantle the
place, that they were going to
be just as tough, if not
tougher, than the Bush people.
>> NARRATOR: No one in the Obama
administration would talk to
 Frontline about Top Secret
America.
But the president had
reauthorized almost all of the
dark side operations.
Greystone-- the hunt for Bin
Laden and al-Qaeda-- continued.
>> Authorities were continued
that we were originally granted
by President Bush beginning
shortly after 9/11.
Those were all picked up,
reviewed and endorsed by the
Obama administration.
>> NARRATOR: At home, the
president decided to expand the
growth of Top Secret America.
>> They've done nothing to roll
it back.
They've done very little to look
inside of it, to say what is it
that works, what doesn't work,
what do we really need, and in
this time of economic hardship,
what don't we need?
>> NARRATOR: The president
understood the political
realities.
>> There's going to be a
terrorist strike some day, and
when there is, if you've reduced
the terrorism budget, the other
party, whoever the other party
is at the time, is going to say
that you were responsible for
the terrorist strike because you
cut back the budget.
And so it's a very, very risky
thing to do.
>> NARRATOR: In his first year
in office, the massive
Department of Homeland Security
began construction of their new
$3.4-billion headquarters.
It will rival the Pentagon as
the largest government complex
ever built in Washington.
And DHS has continued a
nationwide spending spree,
sending billions of dollars to
state and local police.
>> What DHS wants to do is to
turn all of the local and state
law enforcement personnel into
the tipsters for the FBI, into
the front line foot soldiers
looking for possible
terrorists.
>> NARRATOR: DHS funded high-
tech terrorism centers around
the country.
>> Every state has at least one.
There's 74 fusion centers in the
United States.
>> Contractors went in, put in
the large flat-screen TVs, put
in the mission control to the
moon kind of facilities.
>> NARRATOR: Now state and local
police are using surveillance
cameras, biometric scanners,
high-tech license plate readers.
>> The software with the system,
when it sees what it thinks is a
license plate, it will read it
using OCR, optical character
recognition, and make a
crosscheck against a database.
>> NARRATOR: While it's been a
high-tech bonanza for the
states, there are questions
about its effectiveness.
>> You can look, if you're
objective, at all of this money
and all of this effort and say,
"What would have happened if we
hadn't done that?"
And in almost every case,
nothing would have happened.
>> NARRATOR: One troubling
example: at Christmastime in
2009, a young Nigerian boarded a
plane from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Somehow evading the security
net, he was carrying a bomb in
his underwear.
>> ...tried to blow up more than
250 fellow passengers...
>> What exactly went wrong?
>> He actually got to the point
of triggering the device, which
means at that point the only
thing that's going to stop that
is what happened, a technical
failure, or maybe a human
failure.
>> NARRATOR: There had been
early warnings about Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab.
>> The kid had gone to Yemen for
training.
>> His father had gone to the
American embassy to say, "My son
is now with al-Qaeda.
I think he's... he may be a
terrorist."
>> There are more questions than
answers to that...
>> There were no red flags
raised.
>> NARRATOR: But no one in Top
Secret America had connected the
dots.
>> The information on that
person was buried in the 5,000
other pieces of information that
the Counterterrorism Center gets
every day.
>> Because the Nigerian guy's
name was misspelled by one
letter, he did not pop up.
The little bits of data about
him did not... were not
correlated.
Those dots were not connected.
>> Google does it.
If you mistype something on
Google, it says, "Did you mean
this?"
Despite spending all the
billions of dollars on
databases, that simple spell
check "Did you mean this?" kind
of software wasn't operating.
>> NARRATOR: And then five
months later, the Times Square
bomber.
>> You can be assured that the
FBI and their partners in this
process have all the tools and
experience they need...
>> The Times Square bomber was a
horrendously run operation.
A bunch of vendors in Times
Square said to the cops,
"There's a problem with this
car."
>> Both those cases, it was not
the intelligence agencies, it
was private citizens.
On the plane, it was a private
citizen who jumped the guy.
Times Square, it was a vendor
saying, "Something's wrong
there," letting the law
enforcement authorities know it.
So we were lucky because we
have an alert citizenry.
>> NARRATOR: Then the Boston
Marathon...
>> Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
>> Two explosions near the
finish line just a short while
ago...
>> ...looks increasingly like
some sort of a terrorist
attack...
>> The first mass casualty
terror attack on American soil
in a dozen years.
>> NARRATOR: In the immediate
aftermath, there were again
questions about why Top Secret
America had not prevented the
bombing.
>> Did the FBI miss a chance to
stop the bombings...
>> Was there a missed
opportunity when a warning
perhaps given...
>> What did they see, what if
anything did they miss?
And that's going to be heavily
scrutinized...
>> NARRATOR: The government
asked the public for their
help.
>> Today we are enlisting the
public's help to identify the
two suspects.
They are identified as suspect 1
and suspect 2...
>> NARRATOR: Even though one of
the suspects had been on the
radar of American Intelligence
agencies years before...
>> ...was wearing a dark hat...
>> NARRATOR: ...the high-tech
tools of Top Secret America
never identified him as a
danger.
>> We consider them to be armed
and extremely dangerous.
No one should approach them...
>> Shots fired!
Shots fired!
>> NARRATOR: Just hours after
the FBI plea for help, the
suspects went on a violent
rampage.
>> They're setting up a
perimeter.
>> A gunfight on the streets of
nearby Watertown left one
suspect dead, suspect #1...
>> There are police and swat
vehicles streaming in that
direction...
>> And an overwhelming presence
of law enforcement...
>> NARRATOR: The hardware of
Top Secret America rolled out in
hot pursuit...
>> Police have told people to
stay home...
>> Swat teams and police are
going door to door looking for
the remaining bombing suspect.
>> Suspect #2 has been cornered
in the back yard of a home...
>> We heard police talking about
"He's in a boat, he's in a
boat"...
>> NARRATOR: Once again it was
only after a tip from an
observant citizen that police
finally got their man.
>> Apparently a woman called in
a report of blood in a back
yard leading to a boat...
>> She called authorities.
That lead them to this scene.
>> The suspect's in custody.
Nobody is to come in the
perimeter, it's still a hot
scene.
>> NARRATOR: In the wake of the
Boston bombing, the question
remains-- has Top Secret America
made us any safer?
>> We're never going to bat a
thousand in stopping terrorist
attacks.
And we're always going to be
that hockey goalie that
unfortunately lets one puck go
by every once in a while.
>> Even if we're at the top of
our game, it does not guarantee
that bad things won't happen to
America.
>> When something happens, it's
very important that we as a
society not panic the way we did
after 9/11.
And we all panicked.
And we all engaged in sort of
wretched excess.
More is good.
A hell of a lot more can be bad.
>> Sometimes our expectations of
being all knowing is somewhat
unrealistic.
At the end of the day, there are
people out there who mean harm
to us, are thinking about doing
harm to us, are motivated to do
it, and we don't know what that
is.
And that's the reality of it.
>> I was five
when I was smuggled
out of the Warsaw ghetto
to hide among the Christians.
>> (translated):
Do you remember me, sister?
>> I am not alone in this quest.
>> "Please, I want to live!"
>> The last witnesses
of the Holocaust...
>> I had nothing!
>> ...we came here with fragile
pieces of our memories,
afraid that after us,
they may be erased.
>> This report continues online,
 with more on this
 administration's expansion of
 Top Secret America, things we
 still don't know-- how many
 secret programs and how
 effective are they?
 Read an excerpt from the
 reporter's new book...
>> Okay.
>> ...plus more of our exclusive
 interview with former top CIA
 lawyer John Rizzo...
>> They were going to be just as
tough.
>> ...and other key officials.
>> ...huge new bureaucracy.
>> Follow Frontline on Facebook
 and Twitter, or join the
 discussion at pbs.org.
>> Frontline is made possible
by contributions to your PBS
station from viewers like you.
And by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting.
Major support for Frontline 
is provided
by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation,
committed to building
a more just, verdant
and peaceful world.
More information is available
at macfound.org.
Additional funding is provided
by the Park Foundation,
dedicated to heightening public
awareness of critical issues.
 And by the Frontline Journalism
 Fund, with a grant from
 Millicent Bell through the
 Millicent and Eugene Bell
 Foundation.
 Captioned by
 Media Access Group at WGBH
 access.wgbh.org
 For more on this and other
Frontline programs, visit our
 web site at pbs.org.
Frontline's "Top Secret America-
9/11 to the Boston Bombings" 
is available on iTunes
