01x01 - Episode 1

[bunniefuu]

[cat yowls]

[phone line ringing]

Man: Hi, I'm calling from The New Yorker magazine's fact-checking department.

There's just a couple of details that I'd like to run by you, if that's okay.

So you describe, um, Sayed as coming from a family of fruit-pickers?

We have here that the bar used to be a hardware store?

Okay.

The question here is that the official inauguration, I'm sure you know this, was in 1925.

You serve white wine on tap.

I see.

So you thought "Age of Ostracism"...

That was a more literal translation. But I guess... both work.

The author here describes kind of a smoked banana taste?

All right.

Joseph doesn't recall the incident, but that's neither here nor there.

The DJ wore big glasses and spun soul records.

Okay. Excellent.

I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today.

It should be out on newsstands Monday.

Have a good day.

[typing]

[radio static]

[radio stations changing]

[radio static continues]

[overlapping radio chatter]

[glass shatters]

Holy cow!

Delusions are fixed ideas that are usually false that people hold on to tenaciously despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

We see every form of mental illness.

Someone who thinks that their neighbor is a vampire, or their blood is not in their body any longer.

One day, this gentleman walked in.

He said that he had cameras in his eyes.

Everyone in his life, his family members, his neighbors, were all actors and were reading from scripts.

He asked me, "Do you know the movie, The Truman Show?"

That's my life.

Over the course of the next couple of years, I saw five guys saying the same thing.

They felt that their lives were being taped for reality television without their consent.

[projector whirring]

♪♪ [acoustic guitar strumming]

Tim: I believe it was the summer after my sophomore year of college.

Things were looking good. I had a really cool apartment.

I had good friends. I was making money on drawings.

I was having all sorts of new ideas, thinking 24 hours a day at a million miles a minute.

Sleep became not a requirement for me.

My own perception was that I had never been better.

Some friends of mine were heading back out to go to school in Colorado.

They said, "Hey, are you interested in a little road trip?"

We're a couple of 20-year-old kids.

We're driving through cornfields for 10 hours at a time.

I've never experienced skies so large.

I was acting increasingly more erratic, and they're looking at me with increasingly concerned eyes.

I just sort of grin with this knowledge that I've never been better, and they just don't quite get it.

One night, probably about a month later, as everyone else is going to bed, I decide to climb up onto the roof.

As the sun is starting to come up, something has really turned a corner in my mind, and I have this sort of realization.

There are cameras everywhere.

I'm being broadcast.

I'm essentially being watched by everyone probably around the whole world.

[radio chatter]

There's a camera in a wall or potentially in a squirrel scurrying by.

I've probably been being watched my entire life.

[electric hum]

Dr. Gold: Delusions have been around as long as people have been around.

The classic example of people thinking that they were Napoleon.

Paranoid delusions during the Cold w*r when someone might believe that the CIA and the FBI was following them.

However, there's something that I think is qualitatively different about the Truman Show delusion.

Other delusions tend to be more narrow.

If I think that my neighbor is trying to poison me, I might go to the police.

Truman Show delusion, the whole world is involved.

The sun's just come up. I hop down off the roof.

I'm walking around the neighborhood.

I'm barefoot. I'm wearing ripped jeans and no shirt.

[birds screeching]

I come to a house, and something about it, whether it's, like, the red truck parked in the driveway or the for-sale sign, I realize that, if I solve the game, "Oh, cool, I get this house."

That would be my prize.

And I'm peeking through windows, looking like a crazy person, and I hop a fence, only to discover that there's two cop cars.

To me, this is just hysterical.

I'm walking up to them and saying, "This is good.

This looks totally legitimate. These costumes look authentic.

You're doing an excellent job of staying in character."

Everyone that I'm encountering at this point, whatever they look like...

You know, surely they look sort of similar to someone I've met throughout my life.

So I'm looking at this police officer and thinking he looks a little bit like my fourth-grade teacher.

You know, maybe there was a limited pool of actors available for this game that is my life.

Eventually they ask if I wanna come with them.

I say, "Absolutely." In my mind, we're hopping in the police car, and we are heading to the reveal.

A huge garage door at the police station is going to open.

Behind that will be my friends, family, old girlfriends, old teachers.

Everyone I've ever known are going to be there.

♪♪ [electro anthem]

Dr. Gold: We are raising our children with the notion that you, too, can be famous tomorrow.

Now people can truly be viewed by tens of millions of people.

When I watch someone juggling cats, and I see that 20 million people have viewed that, what does that do to my mind?

The line between reality and unreality continues to blur.

Tim: When I stumbled back into my folks' home, now, I'm just sort of, like, grinning and laughing.

My mom looks terrified, looking at me like, "Oh, my son's never gonna be the same again."

I think I had been back at my parents' house for about a month.

One day, I wake up, and it's an epiphany.

Like, "Oh. Oh, no, wait, that doesn't make sense.

No, there's no cameras."

♪♪

In a lot of ways, I'm just lucky.

I could see myself having ended up under an overpass somewhere or totally dead by now, if I hadn't had family to keep me in their care.

You know, over the course of several months, thinking 24 hours a day at a million miles a minute, there was probably some really good ideas that I had in there, but my new reality was that I can no longer trust my brain.

Now I'm back to, more or less, my previous self.

Nothing like that has come back.

And I have been able to get back to a creative place.

What reality is to me is...

[sighs]

I really don't have a good answer.

♪♪ [jazz]

♪♪ [orchestral]

[groans, sighs]

[birds twittering]

What a great way to start my day... by drinking a delicious cup of hot coffee.

Coffee Two, down the old hatch and into my stomach.

You know, I love writing, but I also love drinking 50 cups of coffee every single day.

[chuckles]

Oh, rats, put too much cream in that one.

Ah! Too much cream again.

I will learn from this.

[wretches]

This time, I didn't add enough cream.

Nailed the cream ratio, baby.

[groans]

I should have written down the ratio.

"The more a man judges, the less he loves."

I wrote it about coffee, and I should have remembered it when I was complaining about the cream.

[slurping]

Well, that's lucky cup number 10.

Time to get out of bed and do what I do best... writin' stories and tales. [Chuckles]

Well, maybe just one more cup before I officially get out of bed.

Maybe just one more cup before I officially get out of bed.

[slurping]

So I'm out of bed, in my kitchen, and imbibing more of the terrific drink known as coffee.

Without the wonderful bean, I doubt I would have the energy to write the collection of fiction I am most famous for...

"La Comédie humaine."

This tiny bean's juice gives me my power.

Whoo! I need the strength from the bean in order for my imagination to create wonders.

Oh, I drank that one too fast.

Hurt my head.

You'd think I'd have drunk this one slower.

But, nope, it feels even worse.

I drank this one fast, too, thinking it would cancel out the other ones... and I was right.

[laughs] Oh!

Nothing quite like drinking a piping hot cup of coffee without getting a horrible headache from it.

Who's making me all this coffee?

[stomach gurgles]

Oh, my stomach sounds like the angriest sea in the entire world.

[stomach gurgles]

Should I stop?

[whimpers]

I just drank a cup of coffee.

I just drank yet another cup of coffee.

So I'm halfway through my 50 cups.

Unfortunately, it is around this time that I begin to tire slightly of the taste.

Oh, well, I need to push through if I wanna write the good words.

Is it really only 11 a.m.?

[sighs] Sometimes I think I'm overdoing it.

I seriously wonder if this excessive coffee consumption will have an adverse effect on my health.

[stomach gurgles]

I drank 50 cups of coffee every day to be the father of European Realism in literature.

But at what cost?

Hey, maybe someone else can pioneer this damn movement.

Yeah, let's call this hypothetical person something French.

Something French like Flaubert.

No, Flaubert's too pretentious, even for a Frenchman.

Am I making a conscious choice to harm myself?

More of this coffee will absolutely k*ll me.

Oh, there is no way my heart does not give out soon.

I will die at 51 because of the horrible bean!

The bean has given me everything... and it will take everything away.

The bean is crushed to make the coffee, as I am made by the coffee.

[speaks Spanish]

[inhales]

[Spanish continues]

[moans]

Wait a minute, was I just speaking Spanish?

I didn't know I could do that.

Coffee really is incredible.

My heartbeat is so fast.

Sometimes I think it's gonna bust out of my ribcage.

Hold on.

Is the ribcage a prison for the heart?

Yes, the ribcage is a prison for the heart... and the heart is the prisoner inside the ribcage.

I think the coffee is starting to kick in, allowing me to create the good words that I am famous for.

And all the organs, bones, and blood inside us, they are prisoners, too.

Their prison is the skin.

And finally, there is the mind... the greatest prisoner of all.

And that is because the skull that surrounds the mind is very hard.

It now occurs to me that this isn't a very good idea.

I should maybe wait until I've consumed 50 cups before I start having ideas.

[sighs]

[urinating]

One day, I will figure out who makes all this coffee for me.

Oops. [Chuckles]

Well, that's 50. And wouldn't you know it?

I'm beginning to have a really good idea about depicting French society in a realistic manner.

Like usual... [chuckles]

[church bell tolls]

[sighs]

... it's only 11:30 in the morning, and I'm already looking forward to tomorrow, when I get to drink more of the beverage I love.

Coffee.

I'm Honoré de Balzac.

Au revoir !

♪♪ [violins]

[feed shaking]

There they go, guys. There they go.

♪♪ [piano]

I always come up to the same conclusion that 9/11 could have been stopped.

Let people know what happened and why.

We owe that as Americans.

We owe that as human beings to one another.

Male Narrator: After 9/11, investigations revealed that two of the hijackers had arrived in America more than 20 months before the att*cks, and that key CIA officials knew but didn't share the information with the FBI, who had been tracking Al-Qaeda since the mid-90s.

This deception began in 2000, during the FBI's investigation of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

Man: It was very difficult just to be on the boat, to smell the death, to see the faces of the sailors who have lost their buddies and lost their mates.

These moments with them on the ship gave us all the determination to continue the investigation to the end.

Man: This young FBI agent, Ali Soufan, became the case agent.

It was really remarkable that somebody that young would have so much responsibility, but he was uniquely qualified.

He had a penetrating understanding of Al-Qaeda.

Soufan: We were able to arrest a t*rror1st by the name of Fahd al-Quso.

He fought with O*ama b*n L*den in the trenches of North Kabul against the Northern Alliance, and he was involved directly in the U.S.S. Cole.

Quso talked about when he get the phone call from his senior manager in Al-Qaeda, a guy by the name of Khallad.

We knew a lot about Khallad.

We knew he was involved in the operations of Al-Qaeda.

Quso told us, approximately December of 1999, him and the su1c1de bomber in the U.S.S. Cole att*ck were given instruction by Khallad to deliver $36,000 to Southeast Asia.

We were able to track them to Malaysia and to Kuala Lumpur.

We were a little bit surprised that money is actually going from Yemen, which is a poor country, to Southeast Asia, which is more affluent.

We had a lot of theories.

Maybe somebody delivered money from Saudi Arabia.

[overlapping chatter]

... maybe some wealthy Saudi...

... to att*ck a ship.

We asked the CIA. Do you know anything about a meeting that took place in Southeast Asia?

He had a formal request drawn up.

We put the request three times.

Do they have any information about a meeting that might have taken place in Kuala Lumpur.

The answer was no.

Narrator: The CIA was not telling the truth.

Ten months before Ali Soufan's request, the agency had monitored the Malaysia meeting and gained intelligence that would be critical to understanding both the Cole bombing and the 9/11 att*cks.

But the intelligence wasn't shared.

It was sequestered inside CIA's dedicated Bin Laden Unit, nicknamed Alec Station, where two of Ali Soufan's FBI colleagues were detailed.

There was me from New York.

And then Doug got assigned there.

Doug Miller got assigned there from the Washington field office.

It was the greatest thing ever done.

Because without Doug Miller, we never would have known about what we're talking about.

Man: So you guys are in Alec Station, and you're seeing what the CIA is seeing.

Rossini: All right, we're seeing what the CIA wrote.

We're seeing the CIA investigation.

The Malaysia meeting was a meeting of t*rrorists known and unknown to discuss future plots.

This was a summit.

It was the so-called Terror Summit.

Before the Cole bombing, before 9/11, we have a meeting of top operatives of Al-Qaeda.

And the CIA knows about it.

Man: Did the CIA understand that the people who were at the Terror Summit were later involved in the Cole bombing?

Yes. Particularly a gentleman named Khallad, who was the mastermind of the Cole bombing.

Wright: The CIA were hiding this information from an investigator who was trying to solve the m*rder of 17 American sailors.

It's hard for me to understand that except as obstruction of justice.

Man: From the CIA's point of view, how rare of an opportunity was that Malaysia meeting?

Extremely rare.

Here you have real-time information.

You have an opportunity to intercept it and follow them and know what's going on.

Narrator: The implications of the Terror Summit went well beyond the Cole bombing.

Attending the Malaysia meeting were two known Al-Qaeda operatives who would be among the 9/11 hijackers.

Wright: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were rich kids from Mecca, and they had gotten into jihad.

They were willing to be martyrs.

CIA broke into Mihdhar's hotel room in Dubai, and they found his passport, and in the passport they found a visa for the United States.

The CIA knew he was coming to America even before he got here.

Doug Miller said, "This is important.

I'm wanna be able to inform the Bureau."

So he drafted a memo to send over to the FBI.

Doug emails one individual.

He said, "Please hold off for now."

That's when Doug comes up to me and says, "Hey, Mark. My cable's sitting in her queue. It's not going anywhere. Can you find out what the hell's going on?" I said, "Yeah."

There was a senior CIA official...

Michelle...

... who I understand we're calling Michelle.

I said, "Hey, Michelle.

Doug's cable. What's the deal?"

"No, not gonna send it."

Why not?

"Because it's a CIA matter."

What?

You follow t*rrorists halfway around the g*dd*mn globe, you find out they have visas on their passport, and you don't tell the FBI?

I want to know the answer to that question.

I want some... Look me in the eye, and tell me why Doug's memo didn't go.

Narrator: A week after the Malaysia Summit, Hazmi and Mihdhar flew to Los Angeles.

They rented an apartment in San Diego and took flying lessons.

In March 2000, the CIA confirmed their presence in the U.S.

This was nearly a year and a half before 9/11.

That's an awfully long time to have the information that Al-Qaeda's in America.

But they hid that information.

Narrator: All kinds of information was being hidden.

From 2000 to 2001, as many as 20 calls were made between Hazmi and Mihdhar and a known Al-Qaeda number in Yemen.

The NSA never distributed this information to the FBI.

In June 2000, Mihdhar flew from the United States to Yemen to visit his wife and daughter.

After stops in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, he flew back to America, landing in New York without difficulty.

On his customs form, he listed a local address... the Marriott hotel in the World Trade Center.

You know, you just have to ask yourself what's going on?

As soon as the CIA found out that Al-Qaeda was coming to America, I think they began to work on an operation to somehow penetrate an organization they'd had, until then, no luck getting into.

But only the FBI has the warrant and the authority to operate on t*rrorists inside the United States.

Narrator: The FBI and CIA have fundamentally different objectives.

The FBI investigates crimes and prosecutes criminals.

The CIA plays a different game... recruiting spies and gathering intelligence.

There was a hatred... institutional hatred that was manifest in these two personalities: John O'Neill and Michael Scheuer.

The head of Alec Station, Mike Scheuer, is brilliant and obsessed and ruthless.

John O'Neill is one of the most colorful, intriguing characters that ever passed through the FBI.

He looked like a mobster.

He called himself the Sheriff of New York.

The CIA hated him. And they didn't want him, the FBI in the form of him, messing up their recruitment effort, because O'Neill would have went batshit and demanded to know everything.

Wright: In June of 2001, the intelligence agencies are on high alert.

The chatter, as they call it, is just at an insanely high level.

Into this meeting in New York comes an FBI analyst from Alec Station along with her CIA supervisor.

I wasn't involved in the meeting.

I was in Yemen at the time.

But some members of our team were back here in New York.

And we were suspicious. Like, "Okay, why are you giving us these photos?"

Wright: And they put down on the table a picture of Hazmi and Mihdhar, and she wants to know, "Do you know anything about these people?"

My partner at the time, the co-case agent, he said, "No. Who is he?"

And basically that was it. Like, "Oh, don't worry about it."

You cannot come and show me a picture and say, "Don't worry about it."

So we were suspicious that there was something going on.

But I had no reason whatsoever to believe that there is information with that magnitude that's being hidden.

Wright: You know, there was one photograph they didn't show.

There was a picture of Khallad.

They didn't show that picture, because the FBI knew who he was.

And if that picture had hit the table, the FBI and John O'Neill would have taken over the case.

Narrator: Three weeks before 9/11, John O'Neill was forced into retirement from the FBI.

He became Head of Security at the World Trade Center.

Wright: One of O'Neill's friends said, "Oh, John, you'll be safe in the Trade Center."

Because they already hit that. They bombed it in 1993.

And O'Neill said, "No, they'll come back and finish the job."

So he knew... and he instinctively placed himself at Ground Zero.

After 9/11, Michael Scheuer was testifying before Congress, and he said about John O'Neill...

The only good thing that happened to America on 11 September was that the building fell on him, sir.

Okay.

Narrator: By September 2001, Hazmi and Mihdhar had both made their way to the East Coast. On September 11, they passed through security at Dulles International Airport. Two hours later, their plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon.

Soufan: On 9/11, I was in Yemen.

We heard that between 35 to 40 of our colleagues are all missing.

We heard that our boss, former boss by then, John O'Neill, had perished.

We were worried about our families back home.

We went to the office, the CIA office, and I was handed a manila envelope.

I opened it, and there is this big report that includes all the details of what happened in Southeast Asia.

All the information was there, plus photos, surveillance photos.

And I just put it together immediately.

[stammering] I... I... I...

Basically, I ran to the bathroom and just puked.

It was... I could not believe it.

I couldn't function. My brain was just... just...

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to say.

That's when I went into my boss.

I said, "Jimmy, we knew about these guys."

He says, "What do you mean, we knew about these guys? This is January. Doug wrote the CIR."

He said to me, "Mark, it's not on paper, it doesn't exist."

"Here, Jim, read it."

He's frozen.

He's frozen.

He says, "We could have stopped this."

I said, "Yeah, we could have stopped this."

[sighs]

Do we know who had the information that didn't pass it on?

Yes.

Is it now public? Is that part of the... the record?

Unfortunately, their identity is classified.

That's how we protect people in America.

We classify information.

Even the Inspector General of the CIA said that people that knew this in the CIA should have told the FBI, and they should have been held accountable.

And they weren't held accountable. They were promoted.

Man: Give me an example. Who was promoted?

Michelle.

George J. Tenet.

[applause]

Man: Six months after this ceremony honoring the head of the CIA for his leadership, the agency's own inspector general reported that 50 to 60 CIA officials knew of Hazmi and Mihdhar's presence in the United States but didn't tell the FBI.

Of course, the CIA claims that they did pass the information on.

Well, the 9/11 Commission said they didn't.

Their own inspector general said they didn't.

I mean, I know they didn't.

So...

♪♪ [somber violin]