03x08 - Hostages at Sea

[bunniefuu]

- A sailboat
with four Americans

was pirated off of Africa.

They thought,
well, that's American.

We'll get that money.

But there was just
a ton of Navy ships there.

Then it gets a little dicey,

and then these bursts
of g*nf*re.

The SEALs get on board,

and you can hear the medic say,
"Urgent, surgical,"

and then you see guys
starting to do CPR.

- We're just hoping
for their safe return.

- So it turns out the pirates

have a negotiator
that's on land.

They work out the ransom,

and now we have to go
into Somalia to arrest the guy.

- To me, this is,
like, a precedent--

a piracy case
where it was on land.

You're chasing this guy
around Africa.

The local law enforcement's
not gonna help you.

- At the time,
it was literally lawless,

and we're like, there's no way
we're chasing this guy around

and not bringing him back.

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

t*rror1st takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

- Cindy Coppola is
a 23-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked on cases
that included

organized crime and terrorism

and took part in
multinational investigations

into drug trafficking
and money laundering.

Coppola finished her career
with the Los Angeles division,

running two offices,
supervising investigations,

and providing undercover
security for special events.

- My wife was kind of
bugging me.

I was gone a lot,

like, Monday to Friday
almost every week.

She was telling me, "Hey,
you haven't spent a lot of time

with your son lately,"
like, you know.

So I'm like, "All right, I'm
gonna take off early on Friday.

"I'll pick him up from school.

go up
and we'll get some pizza."

- Rob D'Amico served in the
U.S. Marines for 30 years

on active duty and reserves.

He was a member of the FBI's
elite Hostage Rescue Team.

D'Amico became a key link

between the Bureau
and the U.S. Military.

He was deployed to Iraq,
Africa, and Afghanistan

on missions to counter
piracy and terrorism.

- Literally,
I order the pizza.

My phone rings.

It's restricted call,
which you know is coming

from a government office,

and she told me, like,

"Hey, we're hearing
about a pirate thing.

"A sailboat with four Americans
was pirated off of Africa,

and I need you to be ready
to go overseas,"

and I'm like, "You gotta
be f*cking kidding me."

So I drove home,
and then go code blue

all the way up
from North Carolina

to the Navy Command in Virginia
to get on a plane or something.

- Yeah, you can't
miss that flight

because you now have
four Americans in danger,

being held hostage
on that yacht.

- That's a four-hour drive,

and I'm gonna get there
in three hours.

So I'm going blue lights.

I would see traffic,
I would hit the siren.

I'm up by the North Carolina/
Virginia border.

I pass by a cop in the median,

and I'm doing about 95.

I see him pull out,
and all of a sudden

he starts catching me.

I'm like, "Holy sh*t"--
- He's gonna pull you over.

- And I'm like,
"You gotta be kidding me."

So I pull over,
and I'm pissed.

I jump out of the car
with my creds.

And I'm like, "FBI!
What the f*ck are you doing?"

So I said,
"I gotta go--can't explain."

I screech into the parking lot
in this compound,

and I literally park,
and it was three hours...

- On the dot.
- On the dot,

and I run up
to the command center,

and they're talking to the
SEAL commander who's on scene.

This was a true blended

military/law enforcement
operation.

You had the Navy
'cause it was at sea.

You got the SEALs there,
because it's an as*ault team,

and then, you got us, the FBI,
'cause piracy's a crime

that's gonna be prosecuted
back in a U.S. court.

This sailboat,
this U.S. flag sailboat,

The Quest, was pirated by,

they were saying, like,
19 pirates from Somalia.

- So since you're working
counterterrorism at the time,

what did you know about piracy?

- Absolutely, at that point,
nothing.

- Nothing?
- Like, piracy started,

like, for the Somalis defending

their territorial waters
with fishing,

and then they started seeing
these big freighters going by,

grabbing them.

- I think I remember
news reports at the time.

There was a couple from Seattle
and someone from California.

- Ignoring explicit warnings
about pirates, two couples,

Jean and Scott Adam and
Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle,

sailed alone
across the Indian Ocean

in their 58-foot yacht,
The Quest.

- They had been sailing
with the Blue Water Rally,

which planned to stay together
for safety reasons

as it headed from Mumbai
to the Gulf of Aden

on its way to the Suez Canal.

Prayers were said
for the hostages captured

by the Somali pirates.

Jean and Scott Adam
had been distributing Bibles

on their
'round-the-world sail.

The couple are members
of this Santa Monica church.

- We're just hoping
for their safe return.

- Can you imagine
their friends and family

just worried sick about them?

The yacht's
off the coast of Oman,

and there's
an aircraft carrier

and some other ships
sailing towards it.

So we get on a plane.

We get to Oman.

They start talking
about getting us out

to the aircraft carrier,

and there was, like,
one last flight out of Oman.

The three of us get left off.

So I call the Navy Command.

I said, "Hey, Pete, it's Rob.

"I'm in Oman.

"We just got kicked off the
last flight going to the ship.

"You need to call the ship
and have them call the pilots,

"'cause literally,
the plane's about

to start turning propellers,"

and all of a sudden,
sure enough,

we're standing there, and this
crew chief comes running out.

The back of the ramp opens up,

and he's like,
"You guys off, you guys on."

- Outstanding.

- We land
on the aircraft carrier.

But there was just
a ton of Navy ships there.

Admiral McRaven,
the JSOC commander,

had made a call saying,
"Hey, look,

do not let that sailboat get
to Somalia,"

because once they get
to Somalia,

then the chances
of us doing any interdiction

or--it drags on for years.

- The local law enforcement's
not gonna help you.

- At the time,
it was literally lawless.

- Nearly 100 vessels
have been hijacked

off the east coast of Africa
so far this year.

- In three years,
the pirates have netted

an estimated $30 million.

- In all,
Somali pirates are believed

to be holding
17 different ships

and up to 270 crew members
hostage

across the Indian Ocean.

- They were kind of like
mules in the drug world.

It was like the warlords
that would then get

these crews to go out
and do their dirty work.

We're brought
from the aircraft carrier

over to the destroyer

that's literally
right next to The Quest.

- Has anybody made contact
with the Americans yet?

Like, do the Americans know
that there's U.S. Military

or FBI or anybody nearby?

- Yeah, they're above deck.

They can see
that this is going on.

Matter of fact, I think the
gentleman who owned the boat,

Scott Adam,
there were some fuel issues,

and he was helping fix it.

He was doing the thing,
trying to ingratiate himself

with the pirates,
again, which is a tactic--

make yourself human to them...

- Sure.
- And be useful.

So that was going on,

but we're not trying to board
them or do anything like that.

Our ship's negotiator is
talking on this loudspeaker,

and then it gets
a little dicey.

We can hear
some yelling down there.

The sn*pers are reporting like,

"Hey, some things
are going on,"

and then all sudden,

we look at the back
of the ship,

and the guy grabs the RPG--
- It's like, "Holy sh*t."

- And he fires it.

And, like, it goes over us

while we were looking at it
like, "Damn, well"...

- "They're not
messing around now."

- And then all sudden,
I remember, like, looking down

at The Quest, and
just these bursts of g*nf*re.

The SEAL commander
basically gave the go

for emergency as*ault.

The SEALS get on board,
and then all sudden,

the front of the sailboat,

you see there's a hatch that

goes down into the state rooms,

and--and pirates just start

flowing out
with their hands up,

and while we're arresting them,

all sudden, you could hear
the medics start to say,

"Urgent, surgical."
We've been overseas enough

that "Urgent, surgical"
is not good to hear in that,

and then you see some guys
starting to do CPR,

and we heard
one "Urgent, surgical,"

and you heard two,
you heard three,

and you heard four.
- That's a shame.

- And I'm like--

- They were four Americans
sailing around the world.

It was the dream
of their lives,

but it came
to a deadly end today--

k*lled by the Somali pirates,

who seized their yacht
last Friday,

south of Oman.

- I mean, did they just panic?

Do you think, like,
the pirates just panicked?

'Cause what were they
gonna benefit then

from k*lling them, right?

They're not getting any money.
- Yeah, I don't wanna get--

th--th--there was, I think,

two that did the sh**ting,

and they actually
shot their own people.

Like, they had two pirates
and k*lled four Americans

and two of their own.

Like, how does that
even make sense?

What it was
was the pirates thought,

"Well, all these ships here
want the Americans.

"So if we get rid
of the Americans,

they'll go away."

But here I am in the middle

of the freakin' Indian Ocean,

now with the sailboat,
two FBI guys on it,

and a crime scene.

- A crime scene
with four dead Americans

that has to be processed
and protected.

- So the Navy brings us
over on a RHIB.

And we board this thing.

It was horrific.

So here we are
in this sailboat.

Now, we're trying to process

the dead bodies' photograph,

because a couple of 'em are
actually laying on weapons

that we wanted to capture,

and we gotta
get 'em in body bags

and over to the other boat.

"If something is about
to fall off that sailboat,

"take a picture of it,
and then move it

"to where it's safe, but leave

everything you can in place."

So we--we process it,

and it's just one of those--

it is a wreck.
We have the pirates in custody

up on the aircraft carrier,

and I'm like, "We need
to tow this back to Djibouti.

This is the crime scene.
I wanna take it with me."

- Yeah, you can't just
let it float off to sea.

- 'Cause I got 15 guys
that I know that are gonna

probably go to trial over this.

- You can't make this sh*t up.
- No.

- And two days ago,

I was trying
to get pizza with my son.

We're coming
into the port of Djibouti.

They're sending a team
of investigators from New York.

Kevin Coughlin's
the case agent,

and, uh, he's bringing
a team out

to go to that aircraft carrier.

They're getting
all the statements.

Kevin's team's
doing the interviews and stuff.

They have to process
15 pirates

that are gonna go back
to the States, so...

- It's like a big takedown,

but it just happened overseas,

and you gotta bring
all those subjects back

and process them
here in the U.S.

and end it all.
- Yep.

All sudden, now, I--I get this
in the classified radio room

that there's a guy
looking for me

that has some info for me.

We got the phone number

from the pirates
for who to negotiate with.

This guy, Rich, he's with
the special mission unit,

working with some partners,

and those partners go
and basically

knock on a hotel room door

in Galkayo, Somalia,

and this guy answers,

and his name was
Mohammad Shibin.

These military folks
that we're working with

are counterterrorism forces.

So they basically accuse him
of being Al-Shabaab.

- Al-Shabaab is
an Islamist militant group

that's fighting
the UN government in Somalia.

For a long time, it controlled
Southern Somalia,

including the capital,
Mogadishu.

- And then, he goes,
"I'm not Al-Shabaab."

He goes--and he knows--he goes,

"Look, here's my phone,"

and it proves
I'm not Al-Shabaab.

- Hands over the phone
like that?

- He just hands it over.

Rich is, like,
looking at this phone now.

He doesn't have
no techno equipment to do,

like, a real download of it,

and he starts seeing, like,

Google searches
about The Quest.

They start seeing,
"How much is The Quest worth?"

Like, he starts real--like, uh,

"This is, like, evidence."

So he literally takes,

I think it was, 350 pictures

of every screenshot,

every contact.

The pirates have a negotiator

that's on land

that basically,
they work out the ransom

for the yacht
and the hostages--

who, we find out,
Mr. Shibin is this negotiator.

- He's the mastermind.

- Like, they gave him
his phone back.

He didn't keep the phone.
- They were like--

they went back to him and said,

"Okay, yeah,
you're not Al-Shabaab,"

and--and whatever.

So Rich, he's got this CD

of, like, 350 pictures

of everything that was
on this guy's phone.

I'm like, "Holy sh*t."

Like, this, like,

this is evidence.
- "We got a case."

- Of this guy, like--

- Really being involved.
- Really being involved.

But we can't just grab him.

For evidence and what
we looked at the trial,

every single thing had to be
by the letter of the law.

The assistant U.S. attorneys
in Norfolk,

they want me
to testify in court

that that phone
was on that person,

and we need that phone
for evidence.

I'm like, "There's no way

"we're gonna be able
to get out of a car in Somalia

and go do a search
of a hotel room."

So I said, "Okay, hey, look.

"If the Somalis go up
to this hotel room,

"and they've walked
Mr. Shibin out,

"and take his phone
out of his pocket

"and they walk directly to me,

"and hand me that phone
through the window,

"is that good enough for me

"to testify that that phone

came from Mr. Shibin?"
- Yeah, exactly.

It's chain of custody,
and yeah.

- So they thought about it,

and they're like,
"Yeah, we can do that."

- So I mean, I get what you
guys did and everything,

but you know, most people won't
even know why you're following,

you know,
the letter of the law, right?

- Even the military folks,
they just didn't understand

the other--like,
getting there and getting back

and all that crazy stuff--

we broke all kinds of, like,

precedents of how to do it.
- Sure.

- But the law and the court--

because when you testify,
you gotta tell a juror

that this phone was
with this person at this time.

So they approved this plan
for us to fly into Somalia

drive down to Galkayo,

and then do this.

Four Americans are dead.

We've gone
from the piracy at sea

to investigation of the guy

arranging the ransom

to a mission to arrest him.

We thought,
"Hey, this is gonna be--"

- Quick and done.
- Quick and done and go home,

and then all sudden,
they come in,

and they're like,

"We think he's in Zambia."

Like, what?

I'm like,
"I gotta look at the map,

figure out where Zambia is,
you know?"

- Yeah.
- So, like--and we gotta

get there.
- Why'd he go there?

- Well, there's
a big Somali population.

We think, because of The Quest
made the news,

and it was getting, like--
- He wanted to get out

of there.
- He knew the heat was on.

We get on a commercial flight

over to Zambia,
set up a meeting

with the
Zambian intelligence service

who, kind of, like,
knows where this guy's at.

There was two areas in Zambia

where
the Somali's population were.

They finally zeroed in.

So right in the middle
of that meeting, though,

we basically get word
that he's left Zambia.

We don't know
exactly where he went,

but we know he's not here.

The plane that we flew in on,

we found out later,
he was on the flight

going out.
- So you went all the way

out of your way--
- Yeah.

- You're chasing this guy
around Africa.

- Oh, this is
"Catch Me If You Can"

across Africa.
- Africa.

- So we get to the airport.
We jump on the plane.

We fly back to Djibouti.

That's the hub of all
U.S. government operations

in Northeast Africa.

Now, a bunch of people
in D.C. are like,

"Hey, you guys
need to come home"--

both FBI, state department,

and we're like, "No.
There's no way

"we're chasing this guy around

and not bringing him back."

I even forget
how many weeks we were gone.

At this point,
it was just kind of a blur.

By now, we got feelers out
all over Africa

looking for this guy.
And at one point, like,

I get this call,
like the "Urgent."

I go down, and it's one
of the Special Forces guys

in Boosaaso, Somalia.

He drives by and looks
at this corner tea shop

and says, "Isn't that our guy?"

- So they radio back

to the Somalis
in the follow vehicle.

- That's awesome.
- Like, "Hey, is that Shib?"

- And they're like,
"Yeah, that's him."

So they literally
went around the corner,

pulled over,

and radioed back to the--
to the, you know,

the JOC and said,
"Hey, we found him.

What do you want us to do?"
- So you guys just jumped up--

- Well, I just made
the decision.

I'm like, "You know what?

"Go get him.
Like, just grab him now.

"We lost him for, like,
God knows how long.

"I don't know
if we're gonna get him.

Just grab him.
We'll figure it out later."

So we get brought in.

We're driving
through these streets,

just hustling people
out of the way.

And we get to the compound,

and there's Mr. Shib,

and I'm like, "Finally."

He's sitting
on a bunch of a*mo,

chewing khat,
and he's high as a kite,

so we're like--obviously,
we can't interview him.

So in the morning,
we find out we only have

so many hour--
we're gonna turn him over

to Boosaaso PD,

and they're gonna bring him
to an airfield,

and we're gonna fly him out.

We read him his rights.

We had him in Somali.

He goes,
"My English is perfect,"

and he signed Waiver of Rights,

um, in English,

and he--he actually
spoke very well.

So after all that,

four m*rder*d Americans,

SEAL team as*ault,

chase this guy
all over Africa,

we pick him up in a tea shop,

and he agrees
to be interviewed.

We want the phone
to connect him to the crime

and make the case,
but it turns out

the phone was not on him.

- Okay.
- Now, before we left Somalia,

we did a photo lineup.

His phone, we had pictures

of it from--from Rich,

and then we took
all the incriminating messages

he had sent
or searches on Google.

We had him
contacting his bosses

and doing searches
on Americans for ransom.

So we had those with us.

We knew that we had
to get that into evidence.

- Sure.
- That he did those searches,

and that was his phone.
We basically say,

"Hey, Mr. Shibin,
is this your phone?"

He says, "Yes."
We say, "If that's your phone,

go ahead and sign
those papers saying it is,"

and he does, and then we said,

"With that phone,
did you do these searches?"

And he signs all those
documents saying, "I did that."

So--
- So you mean to tell me

had he never
handed his phone over

in Galkayo,

he never would've
been arrested?

- No.
- I mean, that's crazy.

How stupid!
- Well, I mean--well, I mean,

as you know,
criminals do some dumb things.

- Yeah.
- He just didn't--

- He was clueless.

- And then word
in the town got out

that we had taken Mr. Shibin.

So there's starting to be

some noise
outside the compound.

- Right.
- So the whole handoff

now started going
out the window.

- Yeah, like,
you gotta get him out.

- We go out at midnight,
blackened out airfield.

It's a dirt trip.

There's a plane
all blacked out sitting there,

and they start
bringing Mr. Shibin out.

We're like, "Holy cow."
He shows up.

They had a hood on him,
and we take the hood off,

and he sees me,

and I said, "Mr. Shibin,
you're under arrest

for m*rder of four Americans,

and he looks at me,

and he says,
"Are you gonna k*ll me?"

I said, "No, Mr. Shibin,

"I'm gonna take you
back to the U.S.,

"and you're gonna stand trial

for the m*rder
of those Americans,"

and he kind of looked at me,
I think, thinking, like,

in his country
or somewhere else,

they would just put
a b*llet in his head,

I get on the plane and leave.

- Yeah.
- But that's not what we do.

- So you got
Shibin in custody.

He gets into the U.S.

- Yeah.
- The case agents

then take it from there.
They go to trial.

- Yeah.
- They follow all the process

with the U.S. Attorney's
office,

and I mean, to me,

this is, like, a precedent.

Like, this is a precedent

for, you know, a piracy case

where the po--it was on land.

Like, he wasn't even on sea,
right?

He was captured on land.

- Yeah,
so when they charged him,

they charged him
with piracy on the high seas,

and the big thing
was they had to prove

that he knew
the pirates were going out

to pirate a ship
before they left,

and the interviews
with Mr. Shibin,

we got that out of him.

So when I testified,

the family of the victims

never knew the story
of what we went through

to get him.
It never really got out there,

and after I testified,
I get off the stand,

the daughter comes up to me,
and she's like,

"Oh, my God, I never knew,"

and I'm like, "Yeah,
it was really a crazy thing,"

and she goes,

"I would love
to thank the SEALs,"

and I'm say--I looked at her.

I said, "I'm sorry, you can't."

She goes, "I understand
the secrecy thing."

I said, "No, actually,

"unfortunately,
six months after that op,

"that SEAL troop
that did the boarding,

they all died in Afghanistan."

- Afghan officials say
a NATO Chinook helicopter

crashed during
anti-Taliban mission

overnight in a region
west of Kabul.

- The majority of those
k*lled in this incident

are believed to be
U.S. Navy SEALs.

This may, in fact, become,

sadly, a historic loss

for U.S. Navy SEALs...

- How do you feel,

um, now, you know,
being retired and--

about this case?

- Looking back on it,
it--it--loo--

one, it was
the unbelievable team effort

to bring this guy
to justice in the right way--

- Yeah.
- Preserving all his rights.

Truly,
that's what I'm most proud of--

to bring this one person back

and then to have him sit
in a court of law

just like anyone else

and get convicted by a jury.

- So on a personal level,

you were sitting there,
having pizza with your son,

and you get called,
and then you're gone.

So how did that impact

your family and you--
- Well, this one,

I actually got a medal for.

I got the
Meritorious Achievement Medal,

and at first,
I was embarrassed.

I'm like, "I don't want it,"
and I forget

who in the Bureau told me--
he said, "Hey, the medal's

not for you.
It's for your family.

So when my family
went up to D.C.,

to get the medal,

it, to them,
I think, explained,

like, what I was doing

and how it was worth it

and why Dad was gone so much.