you know? i believe you. >> investigators were desperate to repair not only the disks but the damage to their reputations as well. >> so they collected the pieces and sent them to the u.s. military's brand new computer forensics laboratory. >> they said you're not going to believe what happened. we were interviewing this guy he reached into a box and pulls out a diskette and starts cutting up this diskette. they are in the mail to you. i'm like, wow, okay. i'm not a magician i'm a computer crime investigators what are we going to do? >> to their display they couldn't find an instance of someone successfully reassembling a damaged floppy disk. >> we were calling everybody we could think of. all of our contracts. we went to the private sector. we pulledority all the stops. >> one federal agency offered to try but said it would take