Bodyguard of Lies

Okay. Okay.

-(CLEARS THROAT) -(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)

Okay, everybody, smile. It's okay.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the President of the United States.

How do you prove

that someone's not telling the truth?

So, uh, how's it feel

being out here in Afghanistan?

We're making good progress.

There is progress.

The progress that Afghanistan is making is remarkable.

Progress across all lines of effort.

We are making progress.

We are seeing significant progress.

Indisputable progress.

We're making real progress.

If the news was good, we're really making progress.

If the news was bad, it's like, well, we had a setback,

but we're still making progress.

Progress with the roads being built,

so farmers can get product to market. That's progress.

Look, I'll be very real with you.

There are times when you get in front of a camera.

It's not that you're lying, but you're gonna--

you're gonna paint

a pretty good picture on the pig.

I remember somebody who was far wiser than me

once telling me this.

The only thing that's classified in this town is bad news.

You know, I heard a four-star in Afghanistan say one time

it's not about winning,

it's about the perception of winning.

And I thought, what bullshit.

-We are winning. -We are winning.

We can and will accomplish this mission.

Across the board, we are winning.

I sincerely believe we're winning. -I do, too.

We're on track.

Every single day, we're making progress. We're winning.

The conditions are set for winning this war.

Everything changed with a tip

we had gotten about an interview that Michael Flynn had given

to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

It wasn't classified,

but the government didn't want it getting out.

Is it all right if we record?

This is off the record.

So, if we're doing such a great job,

why does it feel like we're losing?

You know, every measurable activity

is failing.

The narrative was completely at odds

with what the public had been told.

We basically know what we're doing out here.

We're basically fighting the wrong way.

We had to go to court, and we found out

there were hundreds of other interviews like this.

There were people who served in uniform,

diplomats, aid workers, Afghans, NATO allies.

There were people who-- If they really speak the truth,

they'll never get a job in this town.

But we could offer

the protection of giving anonymity.

So, it allowed these witnesses

to actually speak with a lot more candor.

You might not have thought

things were as bad as they are.

No, I always thought they were bad.

Well, at least it looks good.

Probably will never work.

We were never going to succeed.

Yeah.

People were basically saying,

yeah, I was there in 2008, I was there in 2010.

And it was a total disaster. And we told the people.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) But as it went up the chain,

all the bad stuff had been taken out

or watered down.

It was like they were talking about a completely different war

in a completely different country.

No, that's all we got left.

That's all we got left?

Welcome to Afghanistan.

I'm gonna ask a lot of you

over the next few weeks and the next few months,

and I know you can do it. I know you're ready.

Down four, five.

Run.

That's the building they took off out of,

running that way, that tree line.

Split this way. Hey, get that soldier.

Don't go any closer! -(RAPID GUNFIRE)

No, you know, it became--

We were there so long. Let's be honest.

And part of the reason

we may be doing a documentary

is that the American public doesn't understand.

A lot of them tuned it out, you know.

It was just another-- We had the Afg--

We had Iraq shoved in there for the X number of years.

Um, so it became sort of the background noise.

It was a war that was going on. And the, uh,

you know, everyone wanted to be there in '01, '02, '03.

-(BROODING MUSIC PLAYING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)

I like to say, uh, I won the lottery

or I got the, uh, gold ring on the carousel

when I was selected to be the deputy of what became

the Jawbreaker team, the first team to go in.

CIA had a preexisting relationship

with the Northern Alliance, which was the...

the non-Taliban part of... of Afghanistan,

a small sliver in the northeast portion of the country

that the Taliban did not control.

Tonight, the United States of America

makes the following demands on the Taliban.

Deliver to United States authorities

all the leaders of Al-Qaeda who hide in your land.

They will hand over the terrorists...

or they will share in their fate.

They wanted us to bring bin Laden's head back

in a hat box on dry ice.

This is not about revenge. It's not about retaliation.

This is about self-defense.

I don't agree with that.

The American people wanted revenge.

I wanted revenge. You probably wanted revenge.

I don't think President Bush had any other recourse

to his own constituency

than to say, we know it emanated from here.

There is no government to deal with to say,

"Hey, you fix this."

There's no government in Afghanistan.

It's a civil war.

The big thing we took in with us was money.

We took in three million dollars in cash to help, um,

get the Northern Alliance, uh, onside, to work with assets,

-(GUNSHOTS) -and enable them to prosecute the campaign that we would need.

Taliban, Taliban.

I don't know how we came up with three million.

It was enough for the first, uh, two weeks or so.

And then we needed more.

Where is the American Army?

Where is the American Army?

Yes.

Kabul fell, I think, early November.

-(CROWD CLAMORING) And that really signaled the end.

"The Taliban" were routed.

They had either gone back into the countryside, hiding,

or they had retreated across the border,

their leadership, into Pakistan.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(MUSIC CONCLUDES)

On the streets of an Afghan city,

life appears to be returning to normal

following the fall of the hardline Islamic regime.

(IN ENGLISH) Yes, the Taliban were routed.

I had high hopes

that Afghanistan would be a safer place.

But we had not gotten UBL yet or Al-Qaeda's senior leadership.

And I think until we got that,

no one thought the mission was over.

I don't know that. I don't think he's vanished--

He's either dead in some tunnel, or he's alive.

And if he's alive,

he's either in Afghanistan, or he isn't.

-(EXPLOSION) Local Afghan militia commanders say

they've overrun a cave

where they suspect Osama bin Laden himself

may have been taking refuge.

In what must surely be the closing stages of at least

-the Afghan phase of this conflict-- -Get down!

So, I got there in, like, February of '02.

We land in Kandahar,

and we're standing on the airfield.

The aircraft takes off.

And a 107 round comes flying across the... the runway,

and it hits a mosque and explodes.

And I remember my sergeant major Dave Bruner saying,

"Well, I guess the... the Taliban didn't get the memo

that the war is over." And it was game on.

The course of this conflict is not known.

Yet its outcome is certain.

The question at that point in the war was not,

"Are we focused on Al-Qaeda?"

It's, "How much beyond Al-Qaeda?"

And one of the first and most obvious questions

was this question of the Taliban.

There was a tendency

to kind of aggregate those two together.

The Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies...