Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny

Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

the rogue missions that broke all the rules,

like the black op to kidnap a Nazi war criminal

in broad daylight.

He's one of the most wanted men in the world,

and they have just one chance to bring him in.

Winston Churchill recruits a boatload of modern-day pirates.

There's fighting dirty, and then there's

fighting like Churchill.

And the wartime spy who goes undercover

in one of the deadliest places in history.

Who's mad enough to actually break into Auschwitz?

These are the most extreme and illicit missions

ever carried out by governments and the people

who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

In 1960, a group of men arrive at Buenos Aires airport.

They look like ordinary businessmen on a sales trip.

In fact, they're intelligence operatives

on a high-stakes operation:

to kidnap a factory worker called Ricardo Klement.

Real name? Adolf Eichmann.

It's been 15 years since the end of World War II,

and Adolf Eichmann is one of the most

notorious Nazi war criminals still evading justice.

Eichmann, more so than almost anyone else,

is the logistical architect of the Holocaust,

turning genocide into an industrial operation.

He escaped justice after the war.

He's still on the loose somewhere, probably alive,

but nobody could find out where.

Then, in 1959, Israeli intelligence gets

a credible tip that Eichmann is living a quiet life

in a suburb of Buenos Aires.

The lead comes from a German refugee

living in Argentina.

Now, this guy's daughter has been dating a guy

who keeps bragging that his dad used to have

a really powerful position in Nazi Germany.

And the dad's name is Ricardo Klement.

But the son goes by the name Eichmann.

The Israeli government gets word of the fact

that this person is possibly Adolf Eichmann.

If there's anyone left who can be

brought to justice for the crimes of the Holocaust,

this is the man.

There's one big obstacle

Argentina.

Israel and Argentina don't have

a working extradition agreement,

and Argentina has a fascist-friendly government.

So if Klement is Eichmann,

there's no way the Argentinian government

is just gonna hand him over.

To get their man, Mossad decides to go rogue.

A top secret group of Mossad agents

is sent to Argentina.

Their mission is to seek out Klement and confirm that

he is the same person as Eichmann.

And if he is, to kidnap him and bring him to Israel.

You're not allowed to do that kind of thing.

That is a blatant disregard for the sovereignty

of another country.

First, the Mossad team stalks their prey.

They position agents all along Klement's daily route

to his job at a Mercedes-Benz plant,

and they snap photographs using cameras

cleverly hidden inside briefcases.

Their plan is to compare the pictures

they take in Argentina against wartime photos of Eichmann.

Getting an image of Klement is easy.

The hard part is finding a picture of Eichmann.

Toward the close of the war, Eichmann deliberately destroyed

every photograph he had of himself.

Mossad have some grainy photographs

from the pre-war period, but what they are lacking

is a photograph that will provide a good view

of his facial features.

This is a problem Mossad manages to solve.

After the war, one agent

seduced Eichmann's previous girlfriend.

And in her personal albums, they were able to find

a picture of Eichmann from the war.

To tell if these snaps

taken over 20 years apart are the same man,

the Mossad team hones in on the one feature

the ear.

The curves and ridges of the human ear

are as distinct as a fingerprint, so Mossad overlays

the two photos and runs a painstaking

ten-point comparison.

And they discover that the two men have an exact match.

Ricardo Klement is Adolf Eichmann.

Now, Mossad needs to capture him.

On the evening of May 11th,

as Eichmann steps off his usual bus home,

a man approaches him casually and says, "Momentito, señor."

Eichmann turns, and in that instant,

he's tackled and dragged into a waiting car.

He is taken to a safe house

on the outskirts of town.

There, he is interrogated, and he ultimately

admits that he is Eichmann.

Capturing Adolf Eichmann is one thing.

Sneaking him out of the country

without the Argentinian authorities realizing,

that's quite another.

To do that, the Mossad team crafts a daring escape plan.

In ten days, a large official Israeli delegation is scheduled

to be in Buenos Aires.

The agents' plan is to dress Eichmann

in an airline crew uniform, blend him into that crowd,

slip him past security, and fly home to Israel.

Before arriving at the airport, a doctor on the team

heavily sedates Eichmann.

They take him through the airport

as part of their delegation, claiming that

he's sick to everyone who's around.

When the Israeli team gets to customs,

they have a fake passport.

That document was made just a couple days ago,

and they've done their best to dirty it and crease it

so it looks like a well-worn passport,

but they don't know if it's going to work.

It's almost as if the Border Patrol officer

can sense that something isn't right.

But ultimately, he clears the group to get on the plane.

At 12:05 on May 21st,

the plane takes off carrying Eichmann.

Two days later, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion

makes a stunning announcement.

Adolf Eichmann is in Israel.

Argentina is beyond upset.

They lodge a protest at the United Nations,

accusing Israel of violating its national sovereignty

and demand Eichmann's return.

Israel refuses, claiming private Nazi hunters

carried out the operation.

A year later, Eichmann finally faces justice.

Eichmann is put on trial.

Survivors of the Holocaust describe in detail

the machines of murder that Eichmann helped construct.

He's found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Then, on May 31, 1962,

Eichmann is executed by hanging.

Only after 50 years does Israel finally

drop the pretense that Mossad had nothing

to do with his capture.

In 2012, the full truth is revealed

when Mossad opens its archives in an exhibition on Eichmann.

They display the briefcase camera,

the forged Israeli passport, and even the ear comparison

that confirmed his identity.

Two decades after Mossad sneak Eichmann out

of Argentina, the CIA begins its own smuggling operation

to secretly funnel an eye-watering $2 billion

into the hands of anti-Soviet fighters.

What follows is the most expensive

and most consequential illicit operation in U.S. history.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union launches a massive attack

on Afghanistan to prop up the Communist government

by sending close to 100,000 troops.

The Soviets seize the cities quickly,

but out in the remote rural expanses,

it's a whole different story.

There, a coalition of Islamist fighters

called the Mujahideen hold their ground guerilla style.

The CIA spots an opportunity.

If they can drag out this fight,

they could drain the power and resources of the Soviet Army.

So they kick start Operation Cyclone

to support the Mujahideen.

The problem is, finding any guerrilla force

fighting the Soviet Army risks igniting World War III,

and these are some highly controversial new allies.

The Mujahideen is funded by the narcotics trade

and are religious fundamentalists

who hold very anti-Western views.

Funding fundamentalist narco barons?

Kind of a tough sell on Capitol Hill.

To help win Congress's approval

for this rogue operation, the CIA teams up

with an unlikely ally.

The CIA turns to Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson.

He's this heavy drinking womanizer,

but he's also politically savvy.

Wilson's influence manages to massively inflate

the CIA's budget for Operation Cyclone.

With Wilson's help, the budget for Operation Cyclone

balloons from $5 million to more than $30 million by 1983.

But to defeat a superpower, the Mujahideen

needs more than just money.

They need something the CIA can't send them: Firepower.

If the CIA flooded

American weapons into Afghanistan,

that would be an open provocation

against the Soviets.

Also, the Mujahideen

don't know how to use American weaponry.

They are trained on Soviet weapons.