Summary
Sasha Chanoff was in his mid-20s when he faced an urgent decision unlike any he'd encountered before - and more than 100 lives depended on it.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My boss called me into his office in Nairobi and handed me a list with 112 names on it. |
| 0:07.0 | He said, Sasha, I want you to go into the Congo to get these people out. This story takes place in February 2000. Congo was at war. The |
| 0:19.2 | extremists who were responsible for the Rwandan genocide |
| 0:22.8 | had gathered their forces in the Congo. |
| 0:25.6 | The Congolese president said that all Tutsis in the country |
| 0:29.6 | are the enemy and need to be hunted down and killed. People were being killed in the streets |
| 0:35.8 | in terrible ways. My name is Sasha Chanoff. I live in Somerville, Massachusetts. |
| 0:44.8 | I'd only been in Africa for about six months. |
| 0:48.5 | My boss is David Dirthic at the time, |
| 0:51.8 | and he was spearheading this U.S. rescue operation. |
| 0:55.0 | David said to me, above all you have to stick to this list. You cannot take anybody |
| 1:01.2 | who's not on this list. |
| 1:03.1 | If you try to add more people, the Congolese government, |
| 1:06.2 | you're gonna have to get their permission, |
| 1:07.8 | and then at the last minute, |
| 1:09.0 | maybe even on the plane, they'll pull your people off |
| 1:11.4 | and you won't get anybody out. |
| 1:14.0 | David also said that he was sending in his right-hand woman. |
| 1:18.0 | Her name was Sheka. |
| 1:20.0 | So Sheka and I flew into the capital of Congo. We rented a car and we drove out to this safe haven. |
| 1:28.0 | These big black doors swung open and we drove in. |
| 1:32.0 | Somebody looked in the car and saw her and then this whole mob of people |
... |
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