On March 25th, 1971, President Yahya Khan launches Operation Searchlight in East Pakistan, a brutal military crackdown intended to snuff out Bengali separatism and restore West Pakistani authority. Meanwhile, an American diplomat in Dacca named Archer Blood begins reporting and documenting the slaughter, hoping to convince his government to step in and restrain Yahya. In Washington, D.C., President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger weigh the political costs of intervening in the atrocities, while secretly planning a groundbreaking outreach to Communist China. 

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