- 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 gunfire.
[gunfire]
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.
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪ ♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist 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.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent to agent.
♪ ♪
This is "FBI True."
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- 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 fucking 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.
[sirens wailing]
I see him pull out, and all of a sudden
he starts catching me.
I'm like, "Holy shit"-- - 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 fuck 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 assault 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 snipers 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 shit."
[chuckles] - 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 gunfire.
[gunshots firing]
The SEAL commander basically gave the go
for emergency assault.
♪ ♪
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-- [sighs]
- They were four Americans sailing around the world.
It was the dream of their lives,
but it came to a deadly end today--
killed 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 killing them, right?
They're not getting any money. - Yeah, I don't wanna get--
th--th--there was, I think,
two that did the shooting,
and they actually shot their own people.
Like, they had two pirates and killed 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.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
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 shit up. - No.
- [laughs] - 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 shit."
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.
[rock music]
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.
[dramatic beat]
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.
[dramatic music]
- 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?"
- [laughs] - 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 ammo,
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 murdered Americans,
SEAL team assault,
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 murder of four Americans,
and he looks at me,
and he says, "Are you gonna kill me?"
I said, "No, Mr. Shibin,
"I'm gonna take you back to the U.S.,
"and you're gonna stand trial
for the murder 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 bullet 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 killed 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.