now david martin on assignment for 60 minutes the u.s airstrike against iranian-backed militias
thursday night was the latest chapter in the poisonous relationship with iran president biden
inherited from the trump administration 13 months ago the two countries came perilously close to war
it began with an american drone strike which killed iran's most powerful general and ended
with an iranian ballistic missile attack against u.s troops in iraq it was the largest ballistic
missile attack ever against americans tonight we will show you for the first time drone video of
the attack and talk to the troops who were there the night the u.s and iran went to the brink
the story will continue in a moment
hey buddy if you're seeing this video some bad things happened to dad last night
so i need you to be strong okay for mom
and just always know in your heart that i love you okay
bye buddy a few hours after army major allen johnson recorded that message to his son iranian
ballistic missiles began raining down on al-assad air base in iraq where 2 000 u.s troops were based
as a drone recorded the attack americans caught in the crosshairs could do nothing but run or
duck and cover holy holy god damn each missile carried a warhead weighing more than 1 000 pounds
stay right here bro don't move well words can't even describe the amount of energy
that is released by these these missiles johnson was taking cover in a bunker designed to protect
troops against much smaller warheads weighing only 60 pounds knocked the wind out of me followed by
the most putrid tasting ammonia tasting dust that swept through the bunker coated your teeth after
the blast wave and debris came the flames the fire was just rolling over the bunkers you know like
70 feet in the air johnson's monker provided no protection from that we're going to burn to death
we start heading down 135 meters make it about a third of the way there the big voice we call it
clicks in incoming incoming take cover take cover take cover i've got another football
field to run i don't know when this next missile is going to hit can you hear the incoming like
a freight train going by you johnson wasn't the only one frantically searching for cover it's six
people running for their lives to get to this next bunker uh we get to the bunker and realize there's
roughly 40 people trying to stuff themselves into this bunker that's made for about 10 folks
and i grab the guy in front of me i'm just like you got to get in the bunker and just like like
shoved everybody in there but when you're running between bunkers it's just a matter of what luck
look the only thing i can actually come up was that the hand of god protected us because really
nobody should have lived through this things are happening that could take us to war if
if we don't take make the correct move here marine general frank mckenzie commander of
u.s forces in the middle east monitored the attack from his headquarters at tampa florida
ducking into this small room off his main operations center where he could talk directly
to the only two people above him in the chain of command they bring in the secretary of defense
and then a little bit later they brought in the president to this conversation
we're listening to the reports of the missiles flying have you ever been on one like this i've
never been on one like this where real missiles being fired at our forces and where i thought the
risks were so high the iranian attack on al-assad was in retaliation for a stunning u.s operation
president trump ordered six nights earlier a drone strike which killed iran's most powerful general
qasim suleimani the blood of many americans is on the hands of kasim solimani he was as close
to an indispensable man as you could find inside iran where he went violence and death followed
during the american occupation of iraq suleimani had orchestrated attacks which killed more than
600 u.s troops and according to mckenzie he was planning to do it again we saw intelligence
reports where kasim solomoni was moving various attack streams forward against our forces in iraq
against our embassy and against other bases there or the imminent perhaps in hours perhaps in days
probably not weeks until then the u.s had shied away from going after suleimani for fear
killing such a high-ranking government official would only provoke more iranian attacks i never
take killing anyone as a as an easy decision but i think the risk of not acting in this case
outweighed the risks of acting so yes i was good with the decision
on january 3 of last year an airport security camera recorded suleimani's arrival in baghdad
on a commercial flight from damascus mackenzie was watching from a different angle you have
the drones overhead do you see him get off the airplane yes yes as suleimani's entourage pulled
away from the plane mackenzie gave the kill order to the commander controlling the drones
and then i said take your shot when you got it missiles slammed into both vehicles simultaneously
there's no back slapping there's no cheering because now i have to prepare to deal with the
consequences of the action general mackenzie was sure iran would retaliate but he didn't know how
and neither for a while did the iranians i believe they went into a period of disorganization
because they had lost the officer who really spoke up and shaped everything
up and told them what they were going to do so it was kind of a ominous silence
it was a very ominous silence and what was the first sign that iran might really be thinking of a
ballistic missile attack they began to move their ballistic missiles the attack was just hours
away when major allen johnson got the word iran's most powerful weapons were aiming for al-assad my
intelligence officer pulled me aside and basically said sir i've got some bad news for you what's up
we have uh information that iran is fueling 27 medium-range ballistic missiles
and their intention is to level this base and we may not survive this was a completely different
um threat lieutenant colonel tim garland commanded an army battalion at al assad
a sprawling air base about 120 miles west of baghdad where the u.s operated scores of
helicopters drones and other aircraft did the base have any defense against ballistic missiles no sir
it was such a unprecedented threat i don't think it was ever calculated so the the capability to
prevent a ballistic missile attack it wasn't there did you have a plan for what to do
we we came up with a plan the only real defense against a ballistic missile attack
is to get out of harm's way air force lieutenant colonel stacy coleman and the rest of al-assad
scrambled to evacuate more than 50 aircraft and 1 000 troops before the missiles hit but the base
still had to be manned we still needed to be able to do our mission so the first decision
was to split our team by combat capability what did you think was going to happen to the
people you were telling to stay the honest truth is
i didn't think that we were going to survive the best shelter was air raid bunkers built
during the rule of saddam hussein but there weren't enough of them and i just remember
a very heavy sinking feeling setting in i was like man we we are not going to come up with a bunker
plan that's going to be adequate for the number of people that we're talking about so garland sent
most of his soldiers out into the desert where they watched the attack from a safe distance
there was a lot of people who didn't want to leave
they didn't want to be that guy that was going to relative safety a lot of people might have
trouble understanding what you just said tell me why a soldier wouldn't want to go to a safe place
they want to carry the burden they want to share in the danger from his headquarters
in tampa general frank mckenzie had tried to time the evacuation just right if you go too early you
risk the problem that the enemy will see what you have done and adjust his plans
the iranians monitored al-assad by purchasing photos like these taken by commercial satellites
mckenzie waited until after iran had downloaded its last picture for the day so the last time
the iranians took a look with their commercially acquired spy photos what would they have seen they
would have seen airplanes on the ground and people working so when they launched those missiles
they thought that was going to be a full flight line i think they expected to destroy a number
of u.s aircraft and to kill a number of u.s service members a clock stopped
at 1 34 a.m when it was knocked off the wall recorded the moment the first missile landed
it's like the sun rising instantaneous that's how bright it was air force master sergeant john
haynes and his security team were outside their armored patrol vehicle when the first missile
struck across the radio we heard incoming incoming incoming and what do you do i just threw the phone
down and ran to my vehicle and once that impact happened the back pressure blew our doors closed
and then you just see cloud of dirt fire they call it a a shock wave and and you kind of feel that
that wave almost internally like you it's almost as if your organs are you know kind of wavering
around inside sergeant kimo kelts was outside the bunkers manning a guard post in case the missile
barrage was followed by a ground assault we got down and we protected our vital organs our heads
and we waited did it blow you around one of the closest ones i had hit um
directly near us had actually lifted my body
about two inches off the ground iran fired a total of 16 missiles from three locations five missed
11 landed at al assad this was an attack like no other it was attacked certainly like nothing
i've ever seen or experienced what have you learned so far their missiles are accurate
did that surprise you we knew it but to see it they fired those missiles to significant range
and they hit pretty much where they wanted to hit from first launch to last impact was 80 minutes
somehow no one was killed when the sun came up the survivors surveyed the damage
shells of a building you know skeletal frames left with nothing else craters
about a room size deep into the ground concrete barriers blown across a field or a street
it looked like a scene from a movie where everything is destroyed around you
but yet no one was killed i still have no idea or understanding other than you know god being
on our side that no one was seriously injured and there were no you know no no fatalities
the news traveled fast up the chain of command and president trump tweeted all as well that turned
out to be premature there are people throwing up uh everybody had headaches i had a concussion for
two weeks what did it feel like someone hitting me over the head with a hammer over and over and over
finally you know hours later we realized we have a mass casualty event here of traumatic brain injury
military doctors diagnosed more than 100 cases of traumatic brain injury
major allen johnson and 28 other soldiers received purple hearts
do you have any lingering effects today headaches every day horrible tinnitus or ringing in the ears
ptsd i'll be willing to admit that i still have nightmares but the nightmare of war with iran
had been averted had americans been killed it would have been very different have you ever
done an estimate on if you hadn't evacuated the damage that would have been done so i think we
might have lost uh 20 or 30 airplanes and we might have lost 100 to 150 us personnel you had a plan
to retaliate if they killed americans david we had a plan to retaliate if americans had died
iran was on alert for a possible u.s strike and hours later mistakenly shot down
a ukrainian airliner thinking it was an american bomber 176 entirely innocent people died