America's Hidden Stories

An exclusive tour of the CIA's private museum reveals some of the agency's most remarkable spycraft and the daring missions on which they were used. The CIA Museum opens its doors and vaults to reveal the top secret stories behind agency documents, "Argo" artifacts, a Soviet helicopter used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and more.

The story of how great heroes and white men won the American West is one of the West's most powerful myths. This special tells the flip side of that myth. The idea of being a cowboy exemplified freedom for many Americans. Yet few of us know that the first cowboys were actually enslaved Black men looking after cattle herds on Texas ranches. In 1875, one in four American cowboys were Black — Black sheriffs, Black trappers, and Black soldiers. Some had been adopted as children by Native American tribes, while others had escaped slavery. Historians chronicle the untold stories of Black settlers who journeyed to the Wild West in search of freedom and opportunity, examining their various roles. These anonymous heroes inspired many great Westerns, yet Hollywood has erased them from the silver screen. Pieced together from archives, carefully crafted reenactments, and firsthand historical accounts, America's Hidden Stories: The Black Wild West restores these invisible heroes to their rightful place in history.

This episode tells the true story of the Osage "Reign of Terror" in the 1920s and its enduring legacy. This account of the hundreds of murders and unexplained deaths occurred on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma after the discovery of oil made the residents the wealthiest people per capita in the world. An investigation into some of the murders led to the birth of the FBI. 

In 1980, after a rescue attempt of American hostages in Iran goes tragically wrong, President Carter secretly authorized a clandestine army intelligence unit. They were called the Field Operations Group (later renamed the Intelligence Support Activity), and though the unit existed for just a decade, they laid the foundation for some of America's greatest enemy takedowns, including Noriega, Hussein, and bin Laden. Now, through recently declassified documents and firsthand accounts, we reveal the origin story of this group of shadow warriors.

In 1977, a highway construction project in Maryland unearthed a cemetery dating back to pre-Civil War times. It contained the remains of more than 100 enslaved Black people who once worked at nearby Catoctin Iron Furnace. Who were they? And what happened to this vanished community? Join us as we pore over historical documents, examine bones, and use the latest scientific equipment to learn more about these forgotten workers and the uncredited role they played in helping to create and drive America's Industrial Revolution.

They were once considered the future of warfare: flying aircraft carriers the size of the Titanic, able to hold five fighter planes. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the U.S. military had high hopes for these zeppelins, but instead of carrying aviation forward, the airship era would be brief and tragic. Witness the rise and fall of this failed weapon of war and follow a team of scientists as they race to retrieve key artifacts from a recently discovered sunken airship in hopes of shedding new light on this lost chapter of history.