Jessica Buchanan: "60 Minutes story"

tonight for the first time we have the story of the rescue of Jessica Buchanan it is the tale of a secret mission by Seal Team 6 that few people have heard about until now on a January night in 2012 members of SEAL Team Six jumped from a plane into the Skies of Somalia Jessica Buchanan was being held hostage and the seals were descending just in time Buchanan was a humanitarian Aid worker who had come to to help children in one of the most dangerous places on Earth hers was an ordeal that ended in a flash of violence but had begun 93 days earlier when her car was stopped by bandits in a place she calls hell the story will continue in a moment we stopped very abruptly like so abruptly that I felt like everybody just fall forward and then I start hearing all of this pounding on the windows and the windshield and all this shouting and Somali and there's a man standing there screaming and he has an AK-47 and he's shouting and he's pointing it at us and then he climbs into the car next to me and he points an AK in my face and they're hyped up like they're on speed and all of a sudden we just take off the driver just takes off and we just start slamming all over the place down these camel tracks what did you think they were going to do I figured they were going to rape me and then kill me and I just keep thinking this can't be the end this can't be the end of my life I'm only 32 years old I haven't had any children yet I didn't get to say goodbye to Eric I I I didn't get to say goodbye to my dad like this can't be the end Jessica Buchanan was facing the end at the end of the Earth Somalia on the farthest tip of Africa is war torn and Lawless this is essentially No Man's Land militias Battle over an unforgiving land as we saw while covering a famine there in 2011 it was the same year that Buchanan was with a Danish charity teaching children how to avoid land Minds on October 25th her car was hijacked the driver is driving like just a Madman we're bouncing all over the place my head keeps hitting the window it keeps hitting the roof I'm holding on to the the side uh the handle on the Land Cruiser just trying to keep myself steady what happened next it gets dark and we've changed Vehicles a couple of times more people have come they're screaming and I hear from behind me a higher pitched voice going on and on in Somali and I think my God they have a woman involved in this and I turn around and I see a small child in the back of the Land Cruiser with an AK-47 draped in ammunition and I think the irony of of why I came to Africa in the first place exactly the kid you were trying to save a Child Soldier yeah what was he doing learning the trade she'd been kidnapped along with the coworker Paul fisted they drove into the night and then were ordered to March into the desert and they tell us to get down onto our knees and I think okay this is it like I'm bracing myself to be shot in the back of the head and I think that there's Mercy in the fact that maybe they're not going to rate me first but that it's just going to be quick and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and then all of a sudden somebody shouts from behind us sleep and I think oh my God I didn't hear that correctly did I he just said sleep she collapsed slept through the night and the next morning was met by the man who led the bandits and we ask him are you going to kill us is that why we're here he says no no no no money we just want money how much were they asking for they started out at $45 million they thought you were pretty valuable I guess so the bandits used her cell phone to call her husband Eric landom the two had married on an African Beach 2 years before but his number and the numbers of Buchanan's family had all been disconnected it was part of the Charity's emergency plan the one number that worked was her nirobi office with a hostage negotiator standing by and so began months of talks where did they keep you day in day out under trees outside you were Outdoors for 93 days mhm yeah and in in the night they forced us to sleep out in the open what were the nights like long and cold then the rainy season hit and it would rain all night long and you're already freezing so then you're sitting there wet what were you eating tuna fish maybe once a day um we would get a small can of tuna fish and a piece of bread did you feel like you were beginning to lose your Humanity at any point yeah I mean they treated us like animals to be so sick that you know you're vomiting behind bushes and you can't walk straight and you're laying in the fetal position on the ground under a tree and they don't even they don't care their Duty was to keep me from dying because then I wasn't worth anything they were in the hands of men and boys who were chewing cot it's a plant with the same effect as amphetamines they were so hyped up um on speed it was like drinking pot after pot of coffee and then the crash would come and and then it brought a lot of belligerence and and a lot of uh anger and a lot of temper you and Paul came up with nicknames for a lot of the people who were keeping you that's one of the ways you kept yourself occupied we did the 10-year-old boy crack baby cuz he was cracked out all the time he was chewing Cs and he had two black holes for eyes there was nothing inside this is one of the camps where she was held the bandits hit her pointed their guns at her and put a knife to her throat but it was exposed that took a toll she lost 25 lb after 3 weeks the bandits made a video to prove that she was alive have you seen the video I have Paul and myself Jessica we are safe and we are alive I can tell I'm starting to lose hope at that point but hope would have to last for two more months as the many weeks went by did you think the American government's watching me they know where I am and somebody's going to get me out of here no why because I'm just an aid worker you didn't imagine that the president of the United States knew your name never never in a million years after 3 months in the desert Buchanan had a serious urinary tract infection and in a final call to the hostage negotiator she said this I become so ill that I couldn't stand up I couldn't walk I was in so much pain and I said I think I have a kidney infection and I started to cry and I said I think I'm afraid I'm going to die out here when that call was received here in Nairobi it set off a chain of events that led all the way to the Oval Office the FBI and the military consulted doctors who said that if Jessica had a kidney infection she might have just 2 weeks to live that was transmitted to the president who was also informed that in just a few days there would be a new moon perfect Darkness for a Seal Team rescue Jessica Buchanan had chosen a star in the Somali Sky to represent her mother who had passed away a year before she spoke to it every night and with no moon it was especially bright on January 25th what did you say that night please tell God that I need some help we need to get out of here you couldn't have known that that prayer would be answered that night I had no idea she was on a mat trying to sleep when she heard a faint scratching noise one of the bandits she nicknamed helper heard it too and I see this look of just sheer Terror on helper's face and then all of a sudden it's just this eruption of gunfire fire and I think okay well this is it this really is truly the end and I cover up with my blanket again and I just start saying oh God oh God oh God and I just remember thinking or maybe I'm saying out loud like I cannot survive this she thought she was being taken by a rival group maybe al-shabab Islamic extremists who would surely kill her and then all of a sudden I feel all these hands on me roughly grabbing at me and I try to protect myself and I pull the blanket closer on top of me and then I hear my name but it's not a Somali accent it's an American accent and I can't compute like I can't understand that somebody with an American accent knows my name and they say Jessica we're with the American Military we're here to take you home and you're safe and I pull the blanket down from my face and all I see is black black masks black guy and all I can say over and over is you're American you're American I don't I I don't understand you're Americans thinking how did you get here and I I'm still alive and they ask me where my shoes are and I don't know and one of them picks me up and starts running he runs for several minutes and and puts me down on the the ground and then they identify themselves and that they knew I was very sick and they have medicine they have water they have food and they've come to to take me home at one point I think they thought they heard something I don't know this group of men who's risked their life for me already asks me to lie down on the ground because they're concerned that there might be somewhere someone out there and then they make a circle around me and then they lie down on top of me to protect me and we lay like that until the helicopters come in when all of those seals laid down on top of you you were the most important thing in the world to them yeah that's really hard to comprehend they were going to take a bullet for you mhm and they're so kind and they're so gentle and they are trying to assist me to get to the helicopter but I think I've been out here for months I can run to this helicopter myself and so I just break away and I just take off running through the scrub through the bush and I throw myself onto that helicopter and push myself up against the wall and I don't start breathing until we actually lift up off the ground and they hand me an American flag that's folded what did you think of that I just started to cry at that point in time I have never in my life been so proud and so very happy to be an American the seals left on other helicopters she didn't see their faces didn't hear their names they appeared and they were gone the only thing left in the camp were Nine Dead Bandits Mr Speaker it all ended just hours before the State of the Union Address as the president walked in he had a secret with defense secretary Leon Panetta that almost no one understood until later good job tonight good job tonight after the speech President Obama called Buchanan's father Jessica met her husband Eric at a US base in Italy I just couldn't believe he was standing there and that I was standing there and we had a we had a second chance and then uh later we flew to Portland Oregon and I was reunited with my father and my brother my sister and her husband what was the first thing you said to your father Daddy I'm just I'm so sorry that you had to go through this but we made it so did her Danish coworker Paul fisted who was also rescued by the seals he said later that his lucky break was being captured with an American Jessica Buchanan has told her story in a new book impossible odds coming out this week you may recall that she said that her first thought when being taken was that she was too young to die because she hadn't had children well she's taken care of that too she and her husband have a baby boy and they've moved back to the States from East Africa

Channel: eSpeakers

Views: 43,464

Keywords: #Motivation, #Inspirational, #Patriotic, #Adversity, #CrisisManagement, #Author, #Education, #Nonprofit, #JessicaBuchanan, #eSpeakers

Id: xG7DEvu8iIE

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019