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Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny
In the razor's-edge theater of global brinkmanship, the world has come closer to annihilation than most ever knew. A NATO war game once spooked the Soviets toward a potential nuclear strike, while a daring Cold War project produced a drone-bomber hybrid capable of carrying 16 nuclear weapons. From experimental war machines to the Presidential "Doomsday Plane" built to command America through apocalypse, these are the plans that reveal how near we've stood to the unthinkable.
Step inside hidden areas where history was steered in secret, from Churchill's wartime bunker, complete with a direct line to FDR concealed inside his private bathroom, to a Soviet weapons base in the desert exposed only by a daring U-2 spy mission.
David Duchovny exposes a clandestine nuclear blast set off deep below Mississippi soil, and secret experiments conducted on citizens in the New York subway system.
A French Resistance operative hides explosives in baguettes to cripple a Nazi factory, an American soldier parachutes behind enemy lines to destroy critical supply routes, and Ukrainian forces deploy AI-guided drones to strike a Russian bomber fleet.
From a British scheme to launch airborne balloons against Nazi Germany, to American bats fitted with incendiary devices, to a covert effort to manipulate monsoon rains in Vietnam.
A stranded American pilot in Vietnam is rescued through a code built around familiar golf courses, while Navajo Code Talkers transmit messages that help turn the tide in the Pacific during WWII.
Behind official policy often stands unofficial actors. Discover the audacious operations of Red Cell.
Follow the secretive flights of Project Argus, that sent nuclear warheads into space to test whether radiation could cripple Soviet weapons, while Operation LAC covertly released chemical agents over American communities to simulate biological warfare.
David Duchovny takes us into the long-spun elaborate tales governments have employed to blanket their boldest missions, showing us how the illusion works – or until it doesn't.
Some rescues read like Hollywood - except they were real. In Operation Halyard, villagers and resistance fighters built an airstrip by hand to spirit stranded airmen out of Nazi territory, while Operation Mount Hope saw American forces steal a Soviet helicopter from the African desert under cover of darkness. Decades earlier, the SAS hijacked a train in occupied Italy to liberate 200 prisoners - an extraordinary feat that proved extraction can be as daring as any assault.
To outmaneuver the enemy, you have to sell the illusion. An FBI agent goes so deep undercover he's the best man at a Mafia wedding, while the Stasi deploys a covert network of charmers across borders to win trust and steal secrets. And in Egypt, a German-born Jewish spy poses as a high-flying, champagne-soaked ex-Nazi to infiltrate its missile program for Israel. Different missions, one rule: if they believe you, you're already inside.
Some missions are so risky, they're denied before they even begin. From a covert Mossad operation to abduct a Nazi war criminal in Argentina-identified through the smallest detail, the shape of his ears-to a chilling CIA plot that used a jazz tour as cover for an assassination attempt in the Congo; to one resistance fighter volunteering to be captured and sent to Auschwitz to reveal the horrors within-these operations are proof that the most dangerous missions are often the most unthinkable.
Sometimes when governments can't negotiate their way to victory, they steal it; when the KGB sets its sights on a NATO missile, they enlist a smooth-talking German playboy armed with only a wheelbarrow, a carpet and a postage stamp; an Israeli covert operation hijacks 200 tons of uranium on the high seas to fuel a secret nuclear arsenal, while during WWII, the Allies deploy a female agent to steal top-secret naval codes, solely with seductive charm.
When conventional tactics fail, governments have been known to test the boundaries of reality; in the darkest days of World War II, Britain turns to an astrologer who claims he can alter the course of war using the power of the stars; in the jungles of Vietnam, U.S. forces turn to dowsing rods and ancient mystical practices to locate enemies hidden underground.
Some deals are made to announce headlines, while others are steered in the shadows; when the CIA wants to take out the Iraqi Prime Minister, they turn to a 20-year-old law student named Saddam Hussein, while in Guatemala, a banana company colludes with the CIA to topple the country's leader to protect its profits; decades later in Ukraine, a top-secret unit of CIA operatives thwarts Russia's invasion plans, before the world even knows the battle has begun.
Some strongholds are built to defend a nation, others to survive its darkest hour. From deception to survival to espionage, these hidden sites reveal the lengths nations go to when the stakes couldn't be higher.
Every spy needs a cover story – and the best gadgets have one, too. In the jungles of Vietnam, the U.S. military built sensors that could sniff out hidden enemies. Sometimes the most dangerous weapon in the room is the one nobody realizes is there.
Before they became instruments of war, they sounded like impossible ideas. An American medical student develops a closed-circuit rebreather that allows Allied frogmen to slip beneath enemy harbors without a single bubble.
Some targets are taken by force, others require a game of cat and mouse played out across continents and years of relentless chase; when the DEA fails to corner an international arms dealer, they turn not to a spy, but to a retired bush pilot to lure him out; the CIA hunts an insider from within its own headquarters, and across Europe, the world's most wanted warlord hides in plain sight as a reinvented mystic healer; while the prey changes, the pursuit never does.
Some disguises hide an individual, others conceal an entire operation. A CIA vaccination campaign masks a global manhunt for the world's most wanted terrorist. Sometimes the safest place to hide a secret is right out in the open.
