August 24, 2023 • 37 mins
Episode 10 of THE WAR WITHIN gathers and organizes details gleaned from Robert Bales' many hours of interviews to question whether an astonishing theory from one of the Staff Sergeant's former Privates might completely re-contextualize our collective understanding of what happened in Afghanistan on March 11th, 2012.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
There was been a recruiter, an army recruiter when I
worked at Bank of America who wanted me to come in.
Was like, hey, man, you come over and fill out
some paperwork for me.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Before Robert Bales enlisted in the military in two thousand
and one, he was working in financial services as a
broker dealer, but when two planes crashed into the World
Trade Center, the twenty eight year old felt compelled to
make a change.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
September eleventh happens, and I'm literally in watching it happen.
That morning when we were long oil contracts and oil
and gas futures, the price shot way up. So the
guy I'm working for is happy. He's like, man, we're
going to make tons of money off this. You know,
we're gonna make tons of money. And like the whole
(00:54):
time is sitting here and I'm like, man, I can't
do this. I was like, this is just morally wrong.
And I hear my dad talking to me, Man, life's
more than about money. Life's more than about money, you know.
I went back to that army recruiter and I enlisted
and join the army. And if you're not the first
guy in line stand up for America.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Previously, I'm the war within.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I grew up in Norwith, Ohio, blue collar town.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
We didn't have much money.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
He was really popular before he turned thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Nobody joins the army after September eleventh to be.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I think that people like Bobby Baals are probably inherently broken.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
He started publicly becoming a little bit more unhinged.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Part construe dark Hole, all report over there.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
He starts looking for people like who is here? Who isn't.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights, and they came and
they killed myself.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Baal story. In the mid nineteen nineties, long before his
days as a soldier, Robert Bales went to Ohio State
University with dreams of playing for the famous Buck Guys
(02:15):
football team. After failing to secure a spot on the roster,
he searched for a different way to spend his free time.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I thought maybe I had a chance to play at
Ohio State. I didn't, you know, But when I got
up there, the school wasn't in yet, so I needed
to find a job, right, so I started interning at
Smith Barney.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
At the time, Smith Barney was one of the nation's
premier wealth management firms during the rise of Wall Street.
It was basically a household name, due in part to
a classic commercial.
Speaker 8 (02:48):
Smith Bonnie is among a handful of top investment firms
singled out for their work in research. Smith Barney they
make money the old fashioned way.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
As a college kid, Bales was enticed by the opportunity
to work in this prestigious industry.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I really wanted to be successful. I really wanted not
to have to worry about money the way my mom
and dad did. And I want to be able to
take care of him. And so I started working at
Smith Barney for a broker there and just doing terrible
work really, you know, phone calls and envelope stuffing things
(03:27):
like that. One day there's this other broker that shows
up and he's trying to do business with Smith Barney
and he is one part owner and a small broker
dealer in Columbus, Ohio, and he had had some real
success very early. So the guy's probably thirty five years old.
You know, he's wearing the rolelegs, you know, he's living
the life, you know. So here I am this blue
(03:49):
collar kid with no money, and it's not only attractive,
it's where I want to be. So I started working
for him.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Was decided to drop out of Ohio State before graduation
to pursue his Series seven exam and become a registered
securities trader between the years of nineteen ninety six and
two thousand. He advanced in this cutthroat field.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
If you go to work in a broker dealer, you're
gonna work hard. And so if I'm going to start
at the bottom or something, I want to make sure
that when I climb to the top of that ladder,
it's where I want to be.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
What that guy saw.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
In me was an aggressive nature, to be tenacious to
the point of, you know, telling you what I think
and putting it all on the line. And I think
that he saw a little bit of just you know,
the hunger, you know, the real hunger to do something
other people aren't willing to do. My thought process here,
(04:45):
I saw not only the money, but I saw what
I could do with the money and help people. Like
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but you know,
who's more important than a guy's taking care of the money.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
When someone in bails his position and is elevating your
net worth, there's no better friend to have. But when
their investments aren't making money, it's a different story. Early
on in Bob's tenure as a trader, his firm embarked
on a new strategy we.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Called a bunch of people.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Met a bunch of people, and through one of those people,
they were talking about individual community bank stocks. So they
were very thinly traded, but they were moneymakers, and they
were great investments, and they were great investments over time.
So we would come in and buy out these blocks
of these small community bank stocks, and we would piece
them out instead of to five people in town, and
(05:39):
piece it out to twenty five people or fifty people
in town. And we did very well with this, and
so these were super stable, consistent investments. And this is
a time when the dot com thing was going on,
so everybody's flying these high flying dot com things, and
in my mind, I'm building a business. It's going to
be here for the next fifty years. And I'm a
(06:01):
young guy. I'm aggressive, but at the time I totally
believed in what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
At twenty six years old, Bales was managing over twenty
two million dollars of client funds when his company's previously
sound model took a downturn.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
In nineteen ninety nine, we bought a bank out of
West Virginia. On paper, it was the number one community
bank in the country. The book value was one hundred
dollars more than a share price. I bought stock in it.
I put my family's money into it, I put friends
money into it, and in September of nineteen ninety nine,
they shut the bank down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Full disclosure here. We reached out to a bunch of
people in the hopes of better understanding what happened with
this West Virginia bank, Bob's old boss, some form of clients,
third parties, nobody took us up on our invitation to talk.
What follows is Bob's version of what trans fired.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And what this bank was doing was they were fraudulently
keeping their books. They were cooking the books for lack
of a better way to do it. They were packaging
up loans and selling the loans off, leaving the loans
on the books, and basically inflating what they were doing.
So the company we worked for basically shut down.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That West Virginia Bank was the first national bank of Keystone.
It was supposedly quite profitable, with assets totally over a
billion dollars until a regulatory agency discoveredy five hundred and
fifteen million dollar discrepancy on their books. The US government
would later close the bank, drawing intense scrutiny towards the
brokers who touted it as a good investment.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I had purchased for a client this bank stock and
the bank went out of business. What I did that
was wrong wasn't that I purchased the bank and it
went out of business. It was my client was in
the hospital at the time and I didn't get his authorization.
What I did do, and this is not mitigating because
(08:06):
I contacted his wife. I'd taken this guy from two
hundred thousand dollars to two million dollars. He's not going
to tell me no, right Like, let's be honest about it.
If I did that for you in five years, would
you tell me no? Anyway, I put him into this
bank and lost money, lost a lot of money. There
(08:28):
was an arbitration suit against me, lost my brokerage.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
License in May of two thousand. Bails and his Bosses
were sued by Gary and Janet Leebschner, an aging couple
that had invested with the firm. The suit aledge that
the company systematically pressured elderly customers into buying stock in
the First National Bank of Keystone, falsely implying that the
bank would soon go public. Decades later, Bail still has
(08:55):
a hard time reconciling what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I was greedy to like I literally thought we were
gonna make millions of dollars off this investment. And I
thought it would be enough to where I didn't have
to work like that anymore. You know, I think it
would have changed my life.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It was a true feeling of letting people down, you know,
like people work twenty years, thirty years for this money
and you lose them that money.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Man.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I mean, they trusted me, you know, and think about that.
They believed in me enough to give their labor to me,
and I screwed it.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Up with the arbitration process. In his own fate and
Limbo Biles decided it was time to get out of
Ohio and turn over a new leaf.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I really loved Florida. I figured if I had to
start over, I'm going to go to Florida because it's
son had fun right. So I had a total of
four hundred dollars cash, I had a car that was
paid off. I jumped in my car twenty seven years old.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Drive to Florida.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Ended up meeting some people from a first Investors group
of West Palm Beach and started working trading oil and
gas futures. Like I still thought I could get up,
you know, like I'm in an industry where I can
make money. Once I make the money, I can go
back and take care of.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
This, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And so that was my thought process. And once I
make the money here, I'll come back and take care
of these people here, and then, you know, obviously September
eleventh kind of changed my mind.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
It's SAT fifty two here in New York. We understand
that there has been a plane crash on the southern
tip of Manhattan. We understand that a plane has crashed
into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more
than that.
Speaker 9 (10:47):
I have another one.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
Another plane just hit right.
Speaker 11 (10:50):
Oh my gosh, another.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Plane had just hit hit another building.
Speaker 9 (10:55):
Were right into the middle of it. Explosion was definitely
looked like it was on purpose.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Sitting in Leavenworth. Documentarian Paul Pulowski asked Bales whether, at
such an uncertain moment in his life, America's response to
the nine to eleven attacks presented a different path forward.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
After everything you've been through, obviously, you know, give banked
about where were you kind of seeking some purpose?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You know, that's a that's a good question.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know, was I seeking purpose in my life? And
I would say most definitely when September eleventh happened, it
was a way to give back feeling of trying to
make it right, you know, trying to make something right,
you know what I mean. Hell, I couldn't do anything
else right, I may as well try that.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Bales was already serving in Iraq by the time the
arbitration really came in. When all was sudden done, the
defendants were fined one point two million dollars in damages.
At that point, the trading firm had already filed for
bankruptcy and had been expelled from the industry. The elderly
couple never got the retirement funds back.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I sure don't think I would have lived in my
car if I had a million dollars sitting back somewhere.
I sure, don't think I would have went in the infantry.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
The rationale behind Baals' decision to enlist after nine to
eleven was complex. Yes, he believed it was his patriotic
duty to fight terrorism, but in his mind he also
had debts that he somehow had to repay.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
She told me about it. He could screw up really
God previously and made some core decisions.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
The soldier ex repalls a conversation where Bailes confided in
him about this scandal.
Speaker 12 (12:53):
From his past.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He essentially talked about how he was in charge of
large sums of money for people, and he ultimately wat
I stood all rust a whole bunch of people's party.
He was like, I'll have to do something different with
my life because I felt so bad at this.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Bob also discussed the situation with soldier David Lesley when
they served together. In his retelling of it so many
years later. One comment stands out.
Speaker 9 (13:18):
I remember him telling me a little bit of his story,
and what I gathered the most from what he was
saying was that they were people who weren't doing the
right thing around him, and he had to take blame
for that as well.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
He wanted to make sure everyone was protecting, contacting.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It's a point that Robert Bales has made repeatedly. He
put upon himself the safety and security of his peers
and his loved ones. He bore the burden for the
well being of a lot of people like Wade, his
next door neighbor with special needs.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Wade half falling down a flight of steps, broke his hip.
And so I took a year off before I went
back to Ohio State. And so it was a lot
of rehab to get him back to normal. It wasn't
like this was a job.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
This is my brother on deployments too. Bales wanted to
be the person in charge of getting everybody back to
the States in one piece.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
How was the guy that people turned to to bring
their loved ones back home? Their family members came and
talked to me, and so did I feel responsible?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I felt responsible.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Just days before the killings, Bales blamed himself for another
soldier's dismemberment. In his mind, he should have shot the
person who triggered the faithful ied Asbury.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
They took his leg off of not having shot the Afghan.
You know, it's hard to say, man, I mean I
feel responsible a.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Little bit Why does Bals keep harping on this? Why
is he so eager to tell the world that he
always takes care of other people? Is there something else
that he's implying but not saying about the Kandahar Masaker.
During his interview, David Wesley made another interesting remark that
we've heard whispers of before.
Speaker 9 (15:02):
The army turned a blind eye to a soldier that
obviously needed not to deploy anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
To me, they're culpable.
Speaker 9 (15:12):
What he did was wrong, but he didn't do it
without assistance, and a part of me believes that it
might not have been him alone.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Outside the wire.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
Bob Bels didn't do this alone.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
He had help.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The phrasing of Wesley's point compelled our producer Max Nelson
to follow up.
Speaker 12 (15:32):
You said one thing there that we don't quote people
out of context, So I want to check on one
thing when you said Bob Bells didn't do this alone
yet help.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
What you mean by that?
Speaker 9 (15:43):
I meant exactly what I said, Bob didn't do this
on his own.
Speaker 13 (15:50):
I remember sitting on the ground and turning on my camera.
I was interviewing a little girl sitting there with her grandfather,
and he was saying to her tell her what we saw.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Remember yalde Hakim, the reporter who risked her life to
interview the Afghan victims of Bales's attacks and heard some
startling perspectives in the process.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
But something that stayed with me and that I found
quite chilling, was that she said to me, I saw
many soldiers with lights, dude headlights coming out of their helmets,
and I saw many many soldiers and they came and
they killed my father. Another child was saying there were
(16:35):
multiple people, and then later some of the adults started
to say.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
He wasn't on his own.
Speaker 11 (16:40):
There's multiple people.
Speaker 13 (16:42):
President karas I was then saying, we're hearing that there's
more than one soldier.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
What is actually going on here?
Speaker 4 (16:48):
So that was also clouding the clarity.
Speaker 13 (16:51):
That we were trying to establish in terms of whether
it was just bails or whether there was more to it.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
The United States never took these statements made by the
villagers of Alakosai and Naujabien all that seriously. Baiales's name
was released to the media almost instantly, and he was
the only person tried and convicted under the UCUMJ, But
the Afghan witnesses maintained that they saw multiple American soldiers
(17:18):
during the Kanahar massacre. Do you believe that Robert Bales
did this act all by himself. That's Afghan journalist Merewi
Satal speaking to Haji Mohammad Wazir, an Afghan man who
lost eleven family members that night.
Speaker 12 (17:35):
No, it was not alone, but it was the Americans
who put the responsibility of this act on this one person.
I don't know how it would be possible for a
person to go to one village and make four or
five people martyrs, and then go to another village and
make ten or twelve more people martyrs. This is not possible,
(17:56):
nor is it believable to us. One person did not
do this.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Another local farmer, Mulla Baran, made a similar argument.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
We can say for sure that Robert Bales was not alone.
They all did this together. They just presented this one person.
We know their military tactics. When the American forces surround
the house, they send one person inside to kill. I've
seen this before myself. When they claimed that one person
(18:27):
had gone crazy and did this alone, we rejected their
words completely.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Hick Matula is Mulla Baran's nephew. He was just a
child in twenty twelve, but his personal recollections line up
with his uncle's theory.
Speaker 11 (18:43):
Was Robert Bales alone in this?
Speaker 12 (18:47):
He was alone in the room, there were people outside?
Speaker 11 (18:52):
Who were they?
Speaker 12 (18:54):
They were his friends?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It might sound like a stretch. How could such a
serious revelation about this highly publicized tragedy stay hidden for
so long? Yalda Hakim had these questions herself after returning
home from Panhue, Afghanistan.
Speaker 14 (19:11):
Now, after that interview, we spoke to like a trauma
person off the record back in Australia.
Speaker 11 (19:18):
I was worried about driving that multiple soldier narrative if
it had no basis. And one of the things the
trauma expert said was.
Speaker 14 (19:26):
That sometimes people misplace events in trauma and in a
child's mind, they can't quite figure out the sequence of
events and it's all mishmash.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
March eleventh, twenty twelve was likely the worst day that
the Afghans we interviewed whatever hope to live through, And
some of the details they reference would imply that the
attacks were not committed by a lone gunman, but in
an entire platoon. For example, there's this from Hajji Wazir.
Speaker 12 (19:56):
Go Quickly there were twenty to twenty five people there,
because when people came out of their houses in the morning,
they saw the footprints from their boots. About twenty to
twenty five people must have collaborated with him in this act.
Airplanes were with them, providing light for.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Them, airplanes, twenty five people. These points were repeated by
the other villagers.
Speaker 12 (20:23):
He was not alone in doing this act. There were
two or three airplanes with him that night. I went
to the back of our house in our alley and
saw the footprints of twenty five American soldiers.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
In the military's reports on the incident, there's no mention
of planes flying overhead, and the notion of twenty five
soldiers covertly executing this mission is hard to fathom. Y
all who believes it's possible that the Afghan civilians are
confusing the events of that night with what happened the
next morning when Bales was evacuated in a massive commotion
(20:59):
formed outside VSP BELLUMBI.
Speaker 11 (21:02):
I don't know this sure, but it could be the
bails came, the incident took place, and then they came
to get him, and then that's where you have the
multiple soldier theory, where you know then all the other
guys came to pick him up, and that's where the
helicopters then turned up.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Maybe the Afghan's arm is remembering the details like the
aldest trauma specialists suspected, it'd be the easy conclusion to reach,
especially when you're trying to prove an argument beyond a
reasonable doubt, like Bailes's prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Morse.
Speaker 15 (21:34):
If I'm conducting an investigation and there are multiple witnesses
and all the witnesses say the exact same thing, I
got a problem. People don't see things the exact same way,
people don't remember things the exact same way. But as
a prosecutor, I want to make things as simple as possible.
I don't want to make this complex, and I don't
need to. I have all the tools I need at
my disposal to prosecute this guy. One of those first
(21:54):
things I decided was, we're not going to have any
insurmountable mistakes.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
The United States was a global superpower trying to reconcile
and move on from the deadliest war crime perpetrated by
its military in decades, and if one guy was responsible
for it, that's explainable. He's a bad apple. But if
multiple soldiers were involved, that signifies there's an institutional problem.
(22:26):
Here's the thing. The Afghans aren't the only people who
feel this way. Ever since the killings occurred, some of
the Americans stationed at the VSP have had their suspicions,
which was not picked up by the national media. In
the middle of the night, Private James Alexander, one of
the lower enlisted guys, shares his theory based on his
(22:47):
memories from the early morning of March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
I get woken up very early in the morning and
it's like, hey, we need to do one hundred percent accountability.
When we're running out there, Gwynn, who is the guy
on guard, is coming in and he is telling us
this very very important part of the story. He tells
us the gate guard has said that two people came
(23:12):
in and one person left.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Remember, Bales hit two villages that night, first Alkosi and
later Naja Bien. He came back to the VSP in
between three load, which is when he and possibly somebody
else were seen by an Afghan soldier who was guarding
the front gate. When SF Captain Danny Fields was alerted
(23:37):
about a problem. That's the intel.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
He speaking to the gate guard.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You know, I remember him saying something to the effect
of an American left and then an American came back,
or he said somebody came back. My instant fear was
that maybe we've got one more person inside.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
The base than what we should have. The guy on
guard says that he's a man in body arm come
through the gate. Well, we know Bail didn't wear body arm.
He says that I had a beard. Well, Bails couldn't
grow a beard. So it's like this guy's talking about,
you know, these physical characteristics that don't match up to
(24:15):
Robert Bals at all. And the crimes that were committed
at each location were vastly different. The first location, Ala Coosi.
The crimes that were committed there were not nearly as heinous.
There were survivors. In Naja Bien, there were burned bodies,
something that didn't happen. In Alakozi, there were more children,
(24:37):
more people were killed. The horrors of the crime were
ratcheted up in such a way that it almost makes
me feel like there was a presence at Alakosi that
stopped him from going the length that he wanted to do.
And so it is my belief that he was helped
in some way to commit these crimes with the aid of.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
No.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Absolutely not. I tried so hard to suppress all that
crap out.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Soldier X, the unidentified participant with the digitally altered voice
who's been prevalent throughout this podcast. He never told us
why he would have ran us formal consent to use
this interview. But when we broached the subject of potentially
helping to carry out the Candaharm massacre, let's just say,
the mood changed.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
There's a lot of times where, even at twenty years old,
I wish I would have stepped in and stopped it.
Do you have a super faces? You're a super little
girl's face.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Soldier X is a free man and he didn't have
to speak with us in the first place, but he
wanted the opportunity to respond to the actations levied against
him by the soldiers who served alongside him in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
And after all has happened, I let's just try to
walk down of my life like it never happened. And
then one of my Jones associates and contact with me.
So the bs that they're putting out there they're paying
this picture, like, you know, as part of this great
conspiracy anxious refting. All right, I was like, well, I
guess this is time to confront this and go through this.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
This is even after speaking with himself. We've been on
Facebook Messenger and he's explained his side of things. But
in the reality, there's a lot of holes in his
story that directly fly in the face of some of
the things that I saw.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Let's dive in on exactly what Alexander claims to have
seen and heard on March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (26:51):
The person that woke us up was okay. When he
woke us up, he was fresh out of the shower.
It might not seem like a huge deal, but when
you're in Afghanistan and you're showering less than once a day,
you do not take a shower in the morning. His
hair was done, and it was gelled perfectly, and he
(27:13):
smelled He had like a little bit of Colonne or
something on right. He was reasonably clean shaven. When I
say that, he had sort of shaved some of it
down or instead of done some maintenance to it, which
was highly.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Unusual at that point in time. There was someone missing
from VSV bellum By. It was a dust one an
emergency in theory, there shouldn't have been time to shower.
We asked Soldier Ax about this.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
That was an accurate that didn't happen. I made a
showered up VSP BOMBI later, definitely not before I would
and look with them up.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
We also asked Private Gavin Jones to confirm or deny
Alexander's story.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
You know, as soon as we were able to that
dude was straight up like spick and span and showered
up and bade it to go.
Speaker 6 (28:01):
Then we have actions afterwards where he started cleaning up
and throwing away things and walking contraband items to the
bird pair. So he's cleaning up these crimes already. There's
cleaning up evidence of whatever misgivings and misdeeds.
Speaker 16 (28:16):
Were going on, which is very strange that in a
day like this you find that you need to throw
away a bag of us We essentially thought it was
closed because it was a black plastic bag that you
didn't see trashking out of it.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Soldier X had a clear explanation from what he remembers
being in that trash bag.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
One of the CEOs from yourself was like clear, shut up,
went threw aways of alcohol and which investigation knows it
was just our own stuff? Was anything Bill's or anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Don't forget who has proven to be drinking liquor and
discussing tactics with Bails just hours before the killings, Soldier
X the Staff starred with Jason McLoughlin, also known as Mac.
When we approached Mac about this podcast, he asked that
we fuck off his words.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
There is a report one of the people that lived
nearby said that she heard two men drunkenly arguing outside.
Now two men arguing, okay, that could be anything but
drunkenly arguing. That is really, really, really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Then there's the issue of a comment that was made
after Robert Bales had returned to the VSP and had
been detained. Captain Field had called a meeting to discuss
what had just occurred.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
We're all kind of gathered together like a bunch of
little kids on a picnic bench, and Captain Fields is like, Okay,
I'm just gonna tell you guys that we're getting reports
that there are women and children that are cash dows,
and we believe Bobby has been the one that's done it,
and he was in there immediately pipes up and says.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
He did it for you guys, And this is before
we have any idea like what he's intertwined with. He
just told us this fully critic thing of like whatever
did you know?
Speaker 6 (30:07):
He did it for y'all? And that I will never
get that out of my head. I can never get
that out of my head.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Soldier X remember saying something different in that moment.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Danny Fields was like, you're just gonna a brief about
the situation. Like, I was pretty emotionally angry about what
was happening. This is a huge situation, and I didn't
want a bunch of people going on social media and
being like, oh my god, chuck where I'm at right now?
And so I gave very clear, concise information to stay
(30:38):
up social media.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They might sound like minor, harmless details, a shower trash bag,
an attempt at understanding what Bales had just done, but
this perceived odd behavior from another soldier stuck with the
privates so much so that they alerted the Army's Criminal
Investigation Division or see ID.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Of the joes were so nervous and rightfully so that
somebody else was involved from the infantry that we finally
did it. We broke chain a command. We went to
talk to the CID agent and we said, listen, sorry,
we don't know how to put this this way, but
something else is going on here and other people are involved.
(31:22):
You need to talk to these two individuals, that is
Mac and immedium. That night they were flown out, okay,
like they were gone. They then were interviewed by CID
and so forth and so on repetitively to the point
(31:43):
where CID no longer interviewed anyone else.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Some of the previous evidence offered by Alexander and Jones
could be considered to be here set. But on March thirteenth,
twenty twelve, the military flew McLoughlin and Soldier X back
to Kandahart. Their deployment was over. That's indisputable.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
It was pretty quick crd K and they spoke to
us and then they took us back to Canada. Article
for the investigations there be I don't know half four times,
you know, first by CID officers and then you know,
by the prosecuting Attorney's office. It was at hand four times.
Why I got to Candahart. They stuck me in a
(32:26):
wooden box like a little sleeping area. I wasn't allowed
to talk to anybody about my attorney and the chaplain.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
And the thing is, if anyone was going to have
Bails's back like that, it was going to be because
they were on a recon team previously together. That's why
we were all very skeptical of him.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
They acted like best friends and deployed with Bails previously
as part of the sniper section, so they were tight.
They had shared experiences of Iraq, and the reason why
he was chosen for this deployment is because again Bals
got to choose his guys, so he picked somebody at
trust and in a relationship with.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
In our conversation with him, Soldier Eggs grappled with whether
he in some way was accountable for what happened in
the Canahem massacre.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
There's a lot of emotions, a lot of thoughts I'd
go into it. I still figure about those families every day.
There's definitely times where I wish I would have stepped
in and stopped it, maybe would have prevented something. I'm
a firm believer with great power, times great responsibility and
I feel like when Bob did that, it took all
(33:41):
that wind down that sale, like do you really do
you really believe that? Did you step up and do
your part to prevent this?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
As for Bails, during Paul's eighteen hours with him, there
was no grand admission that anyone went with him to
Ala Kosai and not to be in just a few
remarks here and there, which can be interpreted at face
value or not.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I will lay down my life for the guy to
my left and right. In some ways it kind of
helps me get through prison. What is my responsibility here?
I can't go to the facility because then I'm a
rat and I won't do it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Between the years of twenty sixteen and twenty nineteen, we
didn't know about this alternate narrative. It's only later in
retrospect that we began to question whether the story surrounding
one of the most infamous war crimes committed by an
American was actually true and ask which version of events
would be more in line with the man that we
(34:43):
had come to know. The following audio was captured on
December fifteenth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Hey Bob, right off the bat, how are you doing
these days? You know, I'm all right, I'm doing that.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I'm in the same place, you know, I've been in
the same place.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
Yeah, it's been some time since you and I first
started talking about your case and everything. Between then and now,
we've spoken to a lot of people. Some people were
pretty sympathetic, spoke favorably of you, and there were a
fair number of people didn't speak so favorably and weren't
so sympathetic, And ultimately we thought it was only right
(35:30):
that Bob Bales have the final.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Say, Hey, just out of curiosity, how bad was these other.
Speaker 8 (35:36):
Guys, like you know, he was my boy.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I mean, I love them, man, and I just want to.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Know what is it? What he said.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
Coming up on the war within the way that I
see this thing going is bails recruits and goes along
with him.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
Took us aside and had a conversation with about if
you need to make that shot, you know that you've
got your back.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
On that camaraderie and the military is pretty strong.
Speaker 15 (36:06):
If you just do the numbers, it's hard to believe
it's just one person.
Speaker 6 (36:10):
I'm shocked here. I've got to look into them, whether
or not there's another man there.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
He's always said it was him and only him, and
I honestly think he We'll take.
Speaker 9 (36:18):
That to his death.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
They would have been impressed with us had we not
done what we did, or had I not done what
I did.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by
executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers from
Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Power.
(37:00):
The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(37:22):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to the War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcast
There was been a recruiter, an army recruiter when I
worked at Bank of America who wanted me to come in.
Was like, hey, man, you come over and fill out
some paperwork for me.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Before Robert Bales enlisted in the military in two thousand
and one, he was working in financial services as a
broker dealer, but when two planes crashed into the World
Trade Center, the twenty eight year old felt compelled to
make a change.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
September eleventh happens, and I'm literally in watching it happen.
That morning when we were long oil contracts and oil
and gas futures, the price shot way up. So the
guy I'm working for is happy. He's like, man, we're
going to make tons of money off this. You know,
we're gonna make tons of money. And like the whole
(00:54):
time is sitting here and I'm like, man, I can't
do this. I was like, this is just morally wrong.
And I hear my dad talking to me, Man, life's
more than about money. Life's more than about money, you know.
I went back to that army recruiter and I enlisted
and join the army. And if you're not the first
guy in line stand up for America.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Previously, I'm the war within.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I grew up in Norwith, Ohio, blue collar town.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
We didn't have much money.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
He was really popular before he turned thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Nobody joins the army after September eleventh to be.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I think that people like Bobby Baals are probably inherently broken.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
He started publicly becoming a little bit more unhinged.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Part construe dark Hole, all report over there.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
He starts looking for people like who is here? Who isn't.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights, and they came and
they killed myself.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Baal story. In the mid nineteen nineties, long before his
days as a soldier, Robert Bales went to Ohio State
University with dreams of playing for the famous Buck Guys
(02:15):
football team. After failing to secure a spot on the roster,
he searched for a different way to spend his free time.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I thought maybe I had a chance to play at
Ohio State. I didn't, you know, But when I got
up there, the school wasn't in yet, so I needed
to find a job, right, so I started interning at
Smith Barney.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
At the time, Smith Barney was one of the nation's
premier wealth management firms during the rise of Wall Street.
It was basically a household name, due in part to
a classic commercial.
Speaker 8 (02:48):
Smith Bonnie is among a handful of top investment firms
singled out for their work in research. Smith Barney they
make money the old fashioned way.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
As a college kid, Bales was enticed by the opportunity
to work in this prestigious industry.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I really wanted to be successful. I really wanted not
to have to worry about money the way my mom
and dad did. And I want to be able to
take care of him. And so I started working at
Smith Barney for a broker there and just doing terrible
work really, you know, phone calls and envelope stuffing things
(03:27):
like that. One day there's this other broker that shows
up and he's trying to do business with Smith Barney
and he is one part owner and a small broker
dealer in Columbus, Ohio, and he had had some real
success very early. So the guy's probably thirty five years old.
You know, he's wearing the rolelegs, you know, he's living
the life, you know. So here I am this blue
(03:49):
collar kid with no money, and it's not only attractive,
it's where I want to be. So I started working
for him.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Was decided to drop out of Ohio State before graduation
to pursue his Series seven exam and become a registered
securities trader between the years of nineteen ninety six and
two thousand. He advanced in this cutthroat field.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
If you go to work in a broker dealer, you're
gonna work hard. And so if I'm going to start
at the bottom or something, I want to make sure
that when I climb to the top of that ladder,
it's where I want to be.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
What that guy saw.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
In me was an aggressive nature, to be tenacious to
the point of, you know, telling you what I think
and putting it all on the line. And I think
that he saw a little bit of just you know,
the hunger, you know, the real hunger to do something
other people aren't willing to do. My thought process here,
(04:45):
I saw not only the money, but I saw what
I could do with the money and help people. Like
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but you know,
who's more important than a guy's taking care of the money.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
When someone in bails his position and is elevating your
net worth, there's no better friend to have. But when
their investments aren't making money, it's a different story. Early
on in Bob's tenure as a trader, his firm embarked
on a new strategy we.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Called a bunch of people.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Met a bunch of people, and through one of those people,
they were talking about individual community bank stocks. So they
were very thinly traded, but they were moneymakers, and they
were great investments, and they were great investments over time.
So we would come in and buy out these blocks
of these small community bank stocks, and we would piece
them out instead of to five people in town, and
(05:39):
piece it out to twenty five people or fifty people
in town. And we did very well with this, and
so these were super stable, consistent investments. And this is
a time when the dot com thing was going on,
so everybody's flying these high flying dot com things, and
in my mind, I'm building a business. It's going to
be here for the next fifty years. And I'm a
(06:01):
young guy. I'm aggressive, but at the time I totally
believed in what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
At twenty six years old, Bales was managing over twenty
two million dollars of client funds when his company's previously
sound model took a downturn.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
In nineteen ninety nine, we bought a bank out of
West Virginia. On paper, it was the number one community
bank in the country. The book value was one hundred
dollars more than a share price. I bought stock in it.
I put my family's money into it, I put friends
money into it, and in September of nineteen ninety nine,
they shut the bank down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Full disclosure here. We reached out to a bunch of
people in the hopes of better understanding what happened with
this West Virginia bank, Bob's old boss, some form of clients,
third parties, nobody took us up on our invitation to talk.
What follows is Bob's version of what trans fired.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And what this bank was doing was they were fraudulently
keeping their books. They were cooking the books for lack
of a better way to do it. They were packaging
up loans and selling the loans off, leaving the loans
on the books, and basically inflating what they were doing.
So the company we worked for basically shut down.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That West Virginia Bank was the first national bank of Keystone.
It was supposedly quite profitable, with assets totally over a
billion dollars until a regulatory agency discoveredy five hundred and
fifteen million dollar discrepancy on their books. The US government
would later close the bank, drawing intense scrutiny towards the
brokers who touted it as a good investment.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I had purchased for a client this bank stock and
the bank went out of business. What I did that
was wrong wasn't that I purchased the bank and it
went out of business. It was my client was in
the hospital at the time and I didn't get his authorization.
What I did do, and this is not mitigating because
(08:06):
I contacted his wife. I'd taken this guy from two
hundred thousand dollars to two million dollars. He's not going
to tell me no, right Like, let's be honest about it.
If I did that for you in five years, would
you tell me no? Anyway, I put him into this
bank and lost money, lost a lot of money. There
(08:28):
was an arbitration suit against me, lost my brokerage.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
License in May of two thousand. Bails and his Bosses
were sued by Gary and Janet Leebschner, an aging couple
that had invested with the firm. The suit aledge that
the company systematically pressured elderly customers into buying stock in
the First National Bank of Keystone, falsely implying that the
bank would soon go public. Decades later, Bail still has
(08:55):
a hard time reconciling what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I was greedy to like I literally thought we were
gonna make millions of dollars off this investment. And I
thought it would be enough to where I didn't have
to work like that anymore. You know, I think it
would have changed my life.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It was a true feeling of letting people down, you know,
like people work twenty years, thirty years for this money
and you lose them that money.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Man.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I mean, they trusted me, you know, and think about that.
They believed in me enough to give their labor to me,
and I screwed it.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Up with the arbitration process. In his own fate and
Limbo Biles decided it was time to get out of
Ohio and turn over a new leaf.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I really loved Florida. I figured if I had to
start over, I'm going to go to Florida because it's
son had fun right. So I had a total of
four hundred dollars cash, I had a car that was
paid off. I jumped in my car twenty seven years old.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Drive to Florida.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Ended up meeting some people from a first Investors group
of West Palm Beach and started working trading oil and
gas futures. Like I still thought I could get up,
you know, like I'm in an industry where I can
make money. Once I make the money, I can go
back and take care of.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
This, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And so that was my thought process. And once I
make the money here, I'll come back and take care
of these people here, and then, you know, obviously September
eleventh kind of changed my mind.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
It's SAT fifty two here in New York. We understand
that there has been a plane crash on the southern
tip of Manhattan. We understand that a plane has crashed
into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more
than that.
Speaker 9 (10:47):
I have another one.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
Another plane just hit right.
Speaker 11 (10:50):
Oh my gosh, another.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Plane had just hit hit another building.
Speaker 9 (10:55):
Were right into the middle of it. Explosion was definitely
looked like it was on purpose.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Sitting in Leavenworth. Documentarian Paul Pulowski asked Bales whether, at
such an uncertain moment in his life, America's response to
the nine to eleven attacks presented a different path forward.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
After everything you've been through, obviously, you know, give banked
about where were you kind of seeking some purpose?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
You know, that's a that's a good question.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know, was I seeking purpose in my life? And
I would say most definitely when September eleventh happened, it
was a way to give back feeling of trying to
make it right, you know, trying to make something right,
you know what I mean. Hell, I couldn't do anything
else right, I may as well try that.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Bales was already serving in Iraq by the time the
arbitration really came in. When all was sudden done, the
defendants were fined one point two million dollars in damages.
At that point, the trading firm had already filed for
bankruptcy and had been expelled from the industry. The elderly
couple never got the retirement funds back.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I sure don't think I would have lived in my
car if I had a million dollars sitting back somewhere.
I sure, don't think I would have went in the infantry.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
The rationale behind Baals' decision to enlist after nine to
eleven was complex. Yes, he believed it was his patriotic
duty to fight terrorism, but in his mind he also
had debts that he somehow had to repay.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
She told me about it. He could screw up really
God previously and made some core decisions.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
The soldier ex repalls a conversation where Bailes confided in
him about this scandal.
Speaker 12 (12:53):
From his past.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He essentially talked about how he was in charge of
large sums of money for people, and he ultimately wat
I stood all rust a whole bunch of people's party.
He was like, I'll have to do something different with
my life because I felt so bad at this.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Bob also discussed the situation with soldier David Lesley when
they served together. In his retelling of it so many
years later. One comment stands out.
Speaker 9 (13:18):
I remember him telling me a little bit of his story,
and what I gathered the most from what he was
saying was that they were people who weren't doing the
right thing around him, and he had to take blame
for that as well.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
He wanted to make sure everyone was protecting, contacting.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It's a point that Robert Bales has made repeatedly. He
put upon himself the safety and security of his peers
and his loved ones. He bore the burden for the
well being of a lot of people like Wade, his
next door neighbor with special needs.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Wade half falling down a flight of steps, broke his hip.
And so I took a year off before I went
back to Ohio State. And so it was a lot
of rehab to get him back to normal. It wasn't
like this was a job.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
This is my brother on deployments too. Bales wanted to
be the person in charge of getting everybody back to
the States in one piece.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
How was the guy that people turned to to bring
their loved ones back home? Their family members came and
talked to me, and so did I feel responsible?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I felt responsible.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Just days before the killings, Bales blamed himself for another
soldier's dismemberment. In his mind, he should have shot the
person who triggered the faithful ied Asbury.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
They took his leg off of not having shot the Afghan.
You know, it's hard to say, man, I mean I
feel responsible a.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Little bit Why does Bals keep harping on this? Why
is he so eager to tell the world that he
always takes care of other people? Is there something else
that he's implying but not saying about the Kandahar Masaker.
During his interview, David Wesley made another interesting remark that
we've heard whispers of before.
Speaker 9 (15:02):
The army turned a blind eye to a soldier that
obviously needed not to deploy anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
To me, they're culpable.
Speaker 9 (15:12):
What he did was wrong, but he didn't do it
without assistance, and a part of me believes that it
might not have been him alone.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Outside the wire.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
Bob Bels didn't do this alone.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
He had help.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The phrasing of Wesley's point compelled our producer Max Nelson
to follow up.
Speaker 12 (15:32):
You said one thing there that we don't quote people
out of context, So I want to check on one
thing when you said Bob Bells didn't do this alone
yet help.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
What you mean by that?
Speaker 9 (15:43):
I meant exactly what I said, Bob didn't do this
on his own.
Speaker 13 (15:50):
I remember sitting on the ground and turning on my camera.
I was interviewing a little girl sitting there with her grandfather,
and he was saying to her tell her what we saw.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Remember yalde Hakim, the reporter who risked her life to
interview the Afghan victims of Bales's attacks and heard some
startling perspectives in the process.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
But something that stayed with me and that I found
quite chilling, was that she said to me, I saw
many soldiers with lights, dude headlights coming out of their helmets,
and I saw many many soldiers and they came and
they killed my father. Another child was saying there were
(16:35):
multiple people, and then later some of the adults started
to say.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
He wasn't on his own.
Speaker 11 (16:40):
There's multiple people.
Speaker 13 (16:42):
President karas I was then saying, we're hearing that there's
more than one soldier.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
What is actually going on here?
Speaker 4 (16:48):
So that was also clouding the clarity.
Speaker 13 (16:51):
That we were trying to establish in terms of whether
it was just bails or whether there was more to it.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
The United States never took these statements made by the
villagers of Alakosai and Naujabien all that seriously. Baiales's name
was released to the media almost instantly, and he was
the only person tried and convicted under the UCUMJ, But
the Afghan witnesses maintained that they saw multiple American soldiers
(17:18):
during the Kanahar massacre. Do you believe that Robert Bales
did this act all by himself. That's Afghan journalist Merewi
Satal speaking to Haji Mohammad Wazir, an Afghan man who
lost eleven family members that night.
Speaker 12 (17:35):
No, it was not alone, but it was the Americans
who put the responsibility of this act on this one person.
I don't know how it would be possible for a
person to go to one village and make four or
five people martyrs, and then go to another village and
make ten or twelve more people martyrs. This is not possible,
(17:56):
nor is it believable to us. One person did not
do this.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Another local farmer, Mulla Baran, made a similar argument.
Speaker 12 (18:06):
We can say for sure that Robert Bales was not alone.
They all did this together. They just presented this one person.
We know their military tactics. When the American forces surround
the house, they send one person inside to kill. I've
seen this before myself. When they claimed that one person
(18:27):
had gone crazy and did this alone, we rejected their
words completely.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Hick Matula is Mulla Baran's nephew. He was just a
child in twenty twelve, but his personal recollections line up
with his uncle's theory.
Speaker 11 (18:43):
Was Robert Bales alone in this?
Speaker 12 (18:47):
He was alone in the room, there were people outside?
Speaker 11 (18:52):
Who were they?
Speaker 12 (18:54):
They were his friends?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It might sound like a stretch. How could such a
serious revelation about this highly publicized tragedy stay hidden for
so long? Yalda Hakim had these questions herself after returning
home from Panhue, Afghanistan.
Speaker 14 (19:11):
Now, after that interview, we spoke to like a trauma
person off the record back in Australia.
Speaker 11 (19:18):
I was worried about driving that multiple soldier narrative if
it had no basis. And one of the things the
trauma expert said was.
Speaker 14 (19:26):
That sometimes people misplace events in trauma and in a
child's mind, they can't quite figure out the sequence of
events and it's all mishmash.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
March eleventh, twenty twelve was likely the worst day that
the Afghans we interviewed whatever hope to live through, And
some of the details they reference would imply that the
attacks were not committed by a lone gunman, but in
an entire platoon. For example, there's this from Hajji Wazir.
Speaker 12 (19:56):
Go Quickly there were twenty to twenty five people there,
because when people came out of their houses in the morning,
they saw the footprints from their boots. About twenty to
twenty five people must have collaborated with him in this act.
Airplanes were with them, providing light for.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Them, airplanes, twenty five people. These points were repeated by
the other villagers.
Speaker 12 (20:23):
He was not alone in doing this act. There were
two or three airplanes with him that night. I went
to the back of our house in our alley and
saw the footprints of twenty five American soldiers.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
In the military's reports on the incident, there's no mention
of planes flying overhead, and the notion of twenty five
soldiers covertly executing this mission is hard to fathom. Y
all who believes it's possible that the Afghan civilians are
confusing the events of that night with what happened the
next morning when Bales was evacuated in a massive commotion
(20:59):
formed outside VSP BELLUMBI.
Speaker 11 (21:02):
I don't know this sure, but it could be the
bails came, the incident took place, and then they came
to get him, and then that's where you have the
multiple soldier theory, where you know then all the other
guys came to pick him up, and that's where the
helicopters then turned up.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Maybe the Afghan's arm is remembering the details like the
aldest trauma specialists suspected, it'd be the easy conclusion to reach,
especially when you're trying to prove an argument beyond a
reasonable doubt, like Bailes's prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Morse.
Speaker 15 (21:34):
If I'm conducting an investigation and there are multiple witnesses
and all the witnesses say the exact same thing, I
got a problem. People don't see things the exact same way,
people don't remember things the exact same way. But as
a prosecutor, I want to make things as simple as possible.
I don't want to make this complex, and I don't
need to. I have all the tools I need at
my disposal to prosecute this guy. One of those first
(21:54):
things I decided was, we're not going to have any
insurmountable mistakes.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
The United States was a global superpower trying to reconcile
and move on from the deadliest war crime perpetrated by
its military in decades, and if one guy was responsible
for it, that's explainable. He's a bad apple. But if
multiple soldiers were involved, that signifies there's an institutional problem.
(22:26):
Here's the thing. The Afghans aren't the only people who
feel this way. Ever since the killings occurred, some of
the Americans stationed at the VSP have had their suspicions,
which was not picked up by the national media. In
the middle of the night, Private James Alexander, one of
the lower enlisted guys, shares his theory based on his
(22:47):
memories from the early morning of March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
I get woken up very early in the morning and
it's like, hey, we need to do one hundred percent accountability.
When we're running out there, Gwynn, who is the guy
on guard, is coming in and he is telling us
this very very important part of the story. He tells
us the gate guard has said that two people came
(23:12):
in and one person left.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Remember, Bales hit two villages that night, first Alkosi and
later Naja Bien. He came back to the VSP in
between three load, which is when he and possibly somebody
else were seen by an Afghan soldier who was guarding
the front gate. When SF Captain Danny Fields was alerted
(23:37):
about a problem. That's the intel.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
He speaking to the gate guard.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You know, I remember him saying something to the effect
of an American left and then an American came back,
or he said somebody came back. My instant fear was
that maybe we've got one more person inside.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
The base than what we should have. The guy on
guard says that he's a man in body arm come
through the gate. Well, we know Bail didn't wear body arm.
He says that I had a beard. Well, Bails couldn't
grow a beard. So it's like this guy's talking about,
you know, these physical characteristics that don't match up to
(24:15):
Robert Bals at all. And the crimes that were committed
at each location were vastly different. The first location, Ala Coosi.
The crimes that were committed there were not nearly as heinous.
There were survivors. In Naja Bien, there were burned bodies,
something that didn't happen. In Alakozi, there were more children,
(24:37):
more people were killed. The horrors of the crime were
ratcheted up in such a way that it almost makes
me feel like there was a presence at Alakosi that
stopped him from going the length that he wanted to do.
And so it is my belief that he was helped
in some way to commit these crimes with the aid of.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
No.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Absolutely not. I tried so hard to suppress all that
crap out.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Soldier X, the unidentified participant with the digitally altered voice
who's been prevalent throughout this podcast. He never told us
why he would have ran us formal consent to use
this interview. But when we broached the subject of potentially
helping to carry out the Candaharm massacre, let's just say,
the mood changed.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
There's a lot of times where, even at twenty years old,
I wish I would have stepped in and stopped it.
Do you have a super faces? You're a super little
girl's face.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Soldier X is a free man and he didn't have
to speak with us in the first place, but he
wanted the opportunity to respond to the actations levied against
him by the soldiers who served alongside him in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
And after all has happened, I let's just try to
walk down of my life like it never happened. And
then one of my Jones associates and contact with me.
So the bs that they're putting out there they're paying
this picture, like, you know, as part of this great
conspiracy anxious refting. All right, I was like, well, I
guess this is time to confront this and go through this.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
This is even after speaking with himself. We've been on
Facebook Messenger and he's explained his side of things. But
in the reality, there's a lot of holes in his
story that directly fly in the face of some of
the things that I saw.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Let's dive in on exactly what Alexander claims to have
seen and heard on March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (26:51):
The person that woke us up was okay. When he
woke us up, he was fresh out of the shower.
It might not seem like a huge deal, but when
you're in Afghanistan and you're showering less than once a day,
you do not take a shower in the morning. His
hair was done, and it was gelled perfectly, and he
(27:13):
smelled He had like a little bit of Colonne or
something on right. He was reasonably clean shaven. When I
say that, he had sort of shaved some of it
down or instead of done some maintenance to it, which
was highly.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Unusual at that point in time. There was someone missing
from VSV bellum By. It was a dust one an
emergency in theory, there shouldn't have been time to shower.
We asked Soldier Ax about this.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
That was an accurate that didn't happen. I made a
showered up VSP BOMBI later, definitely not before I would
and look with them up.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
We also asked Private Gavin Jones to confirm or deny
Alexander's story.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
You know, as soon as we were able to that
dude was straight up like spick and span and showered
up and bade it to go.
Speaker 6 (28:01):
Then we have actions afterwards where he started cleaning up
and throwing away things and walking contraband items to the
bird pair. So he's cleaning up these crimes already. There's
cleaning up evidence of whatever misgivings and misdeeds.
Speaker 16 (28:16):
Were going on, which is very strange that in a
day like this you find that you need to throw
away a bag of us We essentially thought it was
closed because it was a black plastic bag that you
didn't see trashking out of it.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Soldier X had a clear explanation from what he remembers
being in that trash bag.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
One of the CEOs from yourself was like clear, shut up,
went threw aways of alcohol and which investigation knows it
was just our own stuff? Was anything Bill's or anything
like that.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Don't forget who has proven to be drinking liquor and
discussing tactics with Bails just hours before the killings, Soldier
X the Staff starred with Jason McLoughlin, also known as Mac.
When we approached Mac about this podcast, he asked that
we fuck off his words.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
There is a report one of the people that lived
nearby said that she heard two men drunkenly arguing outside.
Now two men arguing, okay, that could be anything but
drunkenly arguing. That is really, really, really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Then there's the issue of a comment that was made
after Robert Bales had returned to the VSP and had
been detained. Captain Field had called a meeting to discuss
what had just occurred.
Speaker 6 (29:37):
We're all kind of gathered together like a bunch of
little kids on a picnic bench, and Captain Fields is like, Okay,
I'm just gonna tell you guys that we're getting reports
that there are women and children that are cash dows,
and we believe Bobby has been the one that's done it,
and he was in there immediately pipes up and says.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
He did it for you guys, And this is before
we have any idea like what he's intertwined with. He
just told us this fully critic thing of like whatever
did you know?
Speaker 6 (30:07):
He did it for y'all? And that I will never
get that out of my head. I can never get
that out of my head.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Soldier X remember saying something different in that moment.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Danny Fields was like, you're just gonna a brief about
the situation. Like, I was pretty emotionally angry about what
was happening. This is a huge situation, and I didn't
want a bunch of people going on social media and
being like, oh my god, chuck where I'm at right now?
And so I gave very clear, concise information to stay
(30:38):
up social media.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They might sound like minor, harmless details, a shower trash bag,
an attempt at understanding what Bales had just done, but
this perceived odd behavior from another soldier stuck with the
privates so much so that they alerted the Army's Criminal
Investigation Division or see ID.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Of the joes were so nervous and rightfully so that
somebody else was involved from the infantry that we finally
did it. We broke chain a command. We went to
talk to the CID agent and we said, listen, sorry,
we don't know how to put this this way, but
something else is going on here and other people are involved.
(31:22):
You need to talk to these two individuals, that is
Mac and immedium. That night they were flown out, okay,
like they were gone. They then were interviewed by CID
and so forth and so on repetitively to the point
(31:43):
where CID no longer interviewed anyone else.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Some of the previous evidence offered by Alexander and Jones
could be considered to be here set. But on March thirteenth,
twenty twelve, the military flew McLoughlin and Soldier X back
to Kandahart. Their deployment was over. That's indisputable.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
It was pretty quick crd K and they spoke to
us and then they took us back to Canada. Article
for the investigations there be I don't know half four times,
you know, first by CID officers and then you know,
by the prosecuting Attorney's office. It was at hand four times.
Why I got to Candahart. They stuck me in a
(32:26):
wooden box like a little sleeping area. I wasn't allowed
to talk to anybody about my attorney and the chaplain.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
And the thing is, if anyone was going to have
Bails's back like that, it was going to be because
they were on a recon team previously together. That's why
we were all very skeptical of him.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
They acted like best friends and deployed with Bails previously
as part of the sniper section, so they were tight.
They had shared experiences of Iraq, and the reason why
he was chosen for this deployment is because again Bals
got to choose his guys, so he picked somebody at
trust and in a relationship with.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
In our conversation with him, Soldier Eggs grappled with whether
he in some way was accountable for what happened in
the Canahem massacre.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
There's a lot of emotions, a lot of thoughts I'd
go into it. I still figure about those families every day.
There's definitely times where I wish I would have stepped
in and stopped it, maybe would have prevented something. I'm
a firm believer with great power, times great responsibility and
I feel like when Bob did that, it took all
(33:41):
that wind down that sale, like do you really do
you really believe that? Did you step up and do
your part to prevent this?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
As for Bails, during Paul's eighteen hours with him, there
was no grand admission that anyone went with him to
Ala Kosai and not to be in just a few
remarks here and there, which can be interpreted at face
value or not.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I will lay down my life for the guy to
my left and right. In some ways it kind of
helps me get through prison. What is my responsibility here?
I can't go to the facility because then I'm a
rat and I won't do it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Between the years of twenty sixteen and twenty nineteen, we
didn't know about this alternate narrative. It's only later in
retrospect that we began to question whether the story surrounding
one of the most infamous war crimes committed by an
American was actually true and ask which version of events
would be more in line with the man that we
(34:43):
had come to know. The following audio was captured on
December fifteenth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Hey Bob, right off the bat, how are you doing
these days? You know, I'm all right, I'm doing that.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I'm in the same place, you know, I've been in
the same place.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
For a while.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
Yeah, it's been some time since you and I first
started talking about your case and everything. Between then and now,
we've spoken to a lot of people. Some people were
pretty sympathetic, spoke favorably of you, and there were a
fair number of people didn't speak so favorably and weren't
so sympathetic, And ultimately we thought it was only right
(35:30):
that Bob Bales have the final.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Say, Hey, just out of curiosity, how bad was these other.
Speaker 8 (35:36):
Guys, like you know, he was my boy.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I mean, I love them, man, and I just want to.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Know what is it? What he said.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
Coming up on the war within the way that I
see this thing going is bails recruits and goes along
with him.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
Took us aside and had a conversation with about if
you need to make that shot, you know that you've
got your back.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
On that camaraderie and the military is pretty strong.
Speaker 15 (36:06):
If you just do the numbers, it's hard to believe
it's just one person.
Speaker 6 (36:10):
I'm shocked here. I've got to look into them, whether
or not there's another man there.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
He's always said it was him and only him, and
I honestly think he We'll take.
Speaker 9 (36:18):
That to his death.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
They would have been impressed with us had we not
done what we did, or had I not done what
I did.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by
executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers from
Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Power.
(37:00):
The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(37:22):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to the War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcast
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