August 31, 2023 • 37 mins
Episode 11 of THE WAR WITHIN unveils an explosive final interview with Robert Bales, recorded from Fort Leavenworth Prison in December of 2022, where the convicted war criminal responds to some of the accusations made by others throughout the podcast series.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
So the way that I see this thing going is
Bail's and McLoughlin are drinking. Bail starts talking about, here's
what we need to do. We need to go out
take the fight to the enemy.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Private James Alexander believes that staff Sergeant Robert Bales had
helped from his friends in committing the Canahar massacre. He
outlines his theory on the chain of events that occurred
on March eleventh, twenty twelve Bail's recruits.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
He says, hey, I don't need you to fire, because
this is how Bales is. I don't need you to
shoot people with me. I just need you to hold
the light or I need you to have my back
while I go talk.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
To these people.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
All I want to do is go out there and
scare some folks, right, he says something like that goes
along with it. So they go. Bales loses it, right,
he snaps, he starts killing people. They come back in
through the main gate and Bales takes the rack.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Tell us, go shower, you know, get dressed, get ready
and play like you don't know anything. And then I'm
going to use the useful idiot, which is McLoughlin, and
I'm going to go into his room, and I'm gonna
say I'm the one.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
That did this.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Previously on the war within, the army turned a blind
eye to a soldier that obviously needed NS deployed him
to me, they're COPD.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
Kristin harm Because I was saying, we're hearing that there's
some more than one soldier.
Speaker 7 (01:35):
What is actually going on here?
Speaker 8 (01:36):
Yeah, it was not alone, but it was the Americans
who put the responsibility of this act on this one person.
Speaker 9 (01:43):
People don't remember things the exact same way.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
Sometimes people misplace events in trauma.
Speaker 10 (01:50):
Let's try to walk around my wife. Whatever happened.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
The gate guard has said that two people came in
and one person left is Michael, that Bales was helped
in some way to commit these crimes with the aid of.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
It's been some time since you and I first started
talking about your case and everything, and ultimately we thought
it was only right that Bob Bales at the final say.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayles story. The suspicion that Robert Bales may not have
acted alone in committing the Candahar massacre can be seen
as a breakthrough in a story that has been shrouded
in mystery. It recontextualizes comments that appeared throughout the podcast,
(02:42):
like one Private Gavin Jones made back in the first episode.
Speaker 11 (02:46):
Bales took us aside and had a conversation with about men.
You know, war as hell. I know it gets weird
out there. I basically saying that, like, if you need
to make that shot and there's someone in front of
you that doesn't need to be shot, like you can
make that shot and know that we've got your back
on that.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
According to Gavin, Baals told his squad that if any
of them broke the rules of war, he would step
up and protect them. But that alone doesn't mean that
there's some grand conspiracy here. Brendan Vaughan, the GQ writer
who profiled Bales in twenty fifteen, was not convinced that
other soldiers were involved in the killings.
Speaker 12 (03:21):
Some of the Afghan people have said that there were
anywhere from one other American soldier to lots of other
American soldiers.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
There.
Speaker 12 (03:31):
There are people who have said he was protecting other people.
I suppose that's possible. Look, there is a Hollywood thriller
version of this story where there's a huge military cover
up and it was multiple soldiers and Bales took the fall,
you know, I mean, and I've heard these kinds of
theories before about this case. I just have no reason
(03:51):
to believe any of that.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's concrete.
Speaker 12 (03:55):
One of the most chilling parts of talking to Balls
was when I asked him about this, How could one
soldier do all this damage in such a sort amount
of time, and he said, we're really well trained. I
can't argue with our training. And I thought that was just,
you know, a pretty powerful moment.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Despite this denial by Baals, the sense of uncertainty around
what really happened that night lingers on. Even John Henry Brown,
Bayles's trial lawyer, who encouraged him to plead guilty, equivocated
on the subject during our interview.
Speaker 13 (04:30):
There was a lot of doubt about whether we and
there still is doubt I think about whether Bobby was alone.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Do you believe that there was a second person involved?
Speaker 13 (04:39):
I don't know the answer to that, Bobby, of course,
for there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
There wasn't.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
There wasn't.
Speaker 13 (04:43):
But you know, camaraderie in the military is pretty strong.
If you just do the numbers of what he did
in two different villages in the amount of time. It's
hard to believe it was just one person. But I
do believe that bobbably was one person. But if there
was somebody else Bob, Bobby would ever admit it.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The idea that Baales was the type of person to
not implicate others in his crimes was confirmed by his
wife Carrie, who used some interesting language when speaking to
our producer Max Nelson.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
Bob accept the responsibility for murders, pleaded guilty. Is there
anything that he's ever said that would imply that he
didn't this by himself.
Speaker 14 (05:23):
He's never shied away of owning up to what happened.
He's always been clear that you know, yes, he did this.
He's always said it was him and only him, and
I honestly think he will take that to his death.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Bailes's attorney, John Mayer had the following reaction to this
line of questioning. Well, John's spoken to a few of
the lower enlisted guys and a couple other people that
were stationed at Ballumbay, and they're of the mind that
there was a second person involved in the crimes. You
think there was a second person? This is the first I've.
Speaker 14 (06:02):
Heard of it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Mike, really, what can you tell me?
Speaker 10 (06:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, I mean they seemed to believe that someone accompanied
him when he headed out north and then when he
came back, that this potential second stay. None of that's
in the record of trial. It's it's believe or not,
it's in the CID records. Come on, yeah, I'm shocked her, Mike.
Speaker 15 (06:28):
I've got to look into them whether or not there's
another man there.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bales has never indicated that there might have been.
Speaker 15 (06:33):
A second never, not once in a public record or
in a private conversation, or in any of the writings
that we exchange.
Speaker 14 (06:44):
Not once.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
We didn't know what to make of John Maher's lack
of awareness of these allegations, especially considering he was in
the room, and Bales made remarks like this one in
December twenty seventeen.
Speaker 16 (06:58):
The time, I don't know if you remember this, they
were all reports that there were twelve SF guys out there,
the helicopters are flying around. I ended that I stopped,
that I took that responsibility right, And what does the
government do for my honesty? All this becomes you know,
this guy is crazy, this guy, this guy's insane.
Speaker 17 (07:17):
If you could focus I mean during your missions in panjuwe.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Look, all of this can mean something or it could
mean nothing. You can drive yourself nuts trying to parse
whether Bails and his confident on straight thoughts are pointing
to something hidden secret.
Speaker 16 (07:33):
You know, I'm not a perfect guy.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
You know the I cut corners.
Speaker 16 (07:36):
Do you get things done? Of course I did. Somebody
had to be a dirty work. I'd do it, you
know what I mean, And that's that's fine. It's just
difficult to sit back and think that, you know, you
can say I did all this. Why do we have
to lie about it? Why don't we have to hide
the evidence?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It sounds incriminating, except the evidence Bails is talking about
refers to whether the AFGHANSI killed were Taliban, a thread
we've already covered at length. By the same token, it's
almost impossible to know whether, and talking about his squad
in Afghanistan, Bail simply misspeaks or makes a crucial Freudian slip.
Speaker 16 (08:11):
We had developed a team before we had got there
a little bit. We had heard a lot of negative
connotations about working with regular line infantry unit guys, and uh,
you know, I was going to dispel that. You know,
we were gonna.
Speaker 10 (08:25):
We were going to.
Speaker 16 (08:26):
Be the best, and I think we were. They would
have been impressed with us had we not done what
we did, or had I not done what I did.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That last part one more time.
Speaker 16 (08:42):
They would have been impressed with us had we not
done what we did, or had I not done what
I did.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
These days, true crime is one of the most popular
genres of storytelling. Plenty of people make their living off
of invest gaining an old murder case and searching for
some clue that breaks it wide open. But that kind
of criminology can be a slippery slope when the slim
possibility of an incredible lie becomes more interesting, more sellable
(09:13):
than the simple truth. Here's Curtis Grace of the PANJHWI podcast.
Speaker 18 (09:18):
Our government is not competent enough to cover up any
kind of conspiracy. That's like of any kind of strength.
We can't even afford to buy toilets in bulk without
paying like way too much money for them. You think
we're really capable of, like covering up some grand conspiracy.
It's just not possible. But that being said, the military
does have a history of downplaying things, or maybe omitting things,
(09:42):
or not outright lying, but you know, sometimes don't investigate
that or don't worry about what that soldier said.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We got our guy.
Speaker 10 (09:53):
Did they do that?
Speaker 17 (09:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Whenever we query bail this prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J. Moose,
about potential emissions in this case, he flatly refuted their importance.
It happened with methl quinn TBI steroids. It wasn't much
different this time. When we asked whether Bales acted alone.
Speaker 9 (10:17):
This idea that there was more than one soldier involved
other than Bales. I will tell you that no one
who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, not one.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
There may have been other people in the community who
said that there was a platoon out here. I remember
one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters
that there were helicopters in the area. No one who
was actually there, not the kids. None of them there
said anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
In our interviews, the Afghan villagers clearly felt that more
than one person was involved, but Morse's right to say
that none of them saw multiple American soldiers with their
own eyes. Aji Wazir Baran, the two men who stated
that a whole American squad had attacked. They weren't at
the scene. Here's baran.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
Robert Bayles was not alone. They all did this massacre.
They only presented this one person. These are military tactics.
When the American forces surrounded the house, they would send
one of them in to kill.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Did all of the Americans shoot?
Speaker 8 (11:29):
Only Robert Bayles entered the houses? The people who survived
say that he entered alone.
Speaker 19 (11:35):
So how do you know that the American soldiers were outside, Because.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
We know their military tactics. I think they surrounded other houses.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You think.
Speaker 9 (11:46):
Any allegation that that was other than one person, like
even just the smallest bit of scrutiny, that thing would
fall apart. So any concern I had that the victims
weren't going to tell conflicting stories, I just didn't have
that concern.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Then again, even with Morse's reassurances, the Army made a
couple moves during Robert Bales's trial that might raise the
eyebrows of someone with a k eye for conspiracies, like
how they treated James Alexander's testimony.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
The UCMJ called me, hey, get ready to testify, and
so I testified that yes, two people had come in
one person I'd left that I believed that somebody else
was involved and that being as was taking the rap.
And from there I thought, Okay, I'm gonna sit back,
my phone is gonna ring, and I'm gonna be on
(12:34):
Anderson Cooper, you know, telling the story. And that never happened.
It was like cool, that was it. It was like,
thank you for your service, now leave.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
What's more, the government treated staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin and
Soldier X differently from the other soldiers. First they were
demoted in rank, then they were granted immunity from being
prosecuted themselves. We asked Soldier X about the armies rationale, that's.
Speaker 10 (13:04):
The standard procedure. They want us to be able to
speak comfortably. And we still got reprimanded for the alcohol
consumption trust like we would and I think it was
just like a show of terry. We want you to
speak comfortably about the sensor that tumbles like absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
When immunity is offered to key witnesses in a case,
it's usually in exchange for cooperation. The tactic Hamstrong defense
attorney John Henry Brown's ability to point the finger at
anybody else and bails a squad.
Speaker 13 (13:32):
I think we knew that immunity was being offered a
whole sale because I think the higher ups than the
military didn't really know what the two story was. So
I think they were afraid that people who worked with Bobby,
whether they liked him or not, would do what they.
Speaker 9 (13:47):
Could to cover his ass.
Speaker 13 (13:49):
They learned quickly the influence that superiors have in the military,
so I think that everybody was concerned about their future.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Data script a lot of speculation here. Every claim that
one person makes is contradicted by somebody else, and after
months of interviews and research, it felt like we were
no closer to knowing for sure whether anyone else was
(14:21):
personally responsible for the Canaharan massacre. The only person who
we knew had the answer with Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Okay, so what's the game plan now, and what are
we doing and what's going on? I mean, just give
me a bottom line, guys.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
On December fifteenth, twenty twenty two, our team recorded one
final interview with Baiales. Recording devices aren't allowed into Fort
Leavenworth Prison anymore, so this conversation was held over the
phone on a secure attorney client line arranged by John Marr.
Speaker 17 (14:55):
Okay, so, Bob, We've got ninety minutes this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Okay, man.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It was during this call that Paul Pulowski Max Nelson
broke the subject of Bales for the first time of
him taking the fall for his guys.
Speaker 20 (15:11):
Hey, Bob, if you look up this story on YouTube,
for example, there's this female reporter who speaks to some
of the people in the village of some of the
Afghans and Alla Kozai and Najabian. Some of those Afghans
are like, oh, there were a lot of American soldiers
there that night. It wasn't just one person, it was
a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
This is a Caliban controlled area. This is a Caliban
the village, and they will do what the Caliban tell
them to do. So the Caliban are not stupid people.
The truth is they're very intelligent when it comes to
using information operations in propaganda. That video was propaganda. It
(15:58):
was used to try to get Caliban to come to
their side. That video was used to try to hurt
America's movement to win hearts and minds. It was used
to try to hurt me personally. It was used to
try to discredit anything was being done, and so that
(16:18):
entire video, for the most part, is inaccurate fels and
a bunch of propaganda. They interview these people that are
lying because they're told to lie about what happened that night.
There wasn't fifty people out there, There wasn't twelve people
out there, There wasn't how many people were There was
(16:39):
me that was it, and then I came back and
then nobody went out there until the next afternoon, and
so it's not true. It didn't happen. It's propaganda. It's
another piece of evidence that I am trying to get
people to understand. These were Carara ban and it's pretty
(17:01):
clear and obvious to anybody that's willing to look.
Speaker 14 (17:04):
Well, as a follow up to that, we've discussed you're
a guy with very strong principles. If in fact you
are the only guy out there, you kind of strike
me as.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
A guy that probably wouldn't shut up.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
And take the fall.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
Yeah, and the kind of just not rat anybody out,
given your principles.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
I would never rat out anybody, and I would always
take the fall if that was what needed to be
done for my country on every day, twice on Tuesday.
But that's not what happened here. And if that's what happened,
don't you think my country would take care of me?
Have they taken care of me? Now? They haven't taken
(17:43):
care of me. They been exactly opposite of that. They've
hunged me out to drive. And if they've hung me
out the drive for this long, don't certain thing? Time
have said something? After eleven years of being treated the
way I've been treated, I probably would have at something
at this point, don't.
Speaker 14 (18:01):
You think perhaps? But again, you know a smart man would,
But a principal man sometimes overrides or smarts of the
principles accept the loyalty.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
One way is stupidity, right, that's stupidity. When they let
the Taliban go and they kept me in prison, how's
that justice? Man? You know, up until that point you
could say a lot of things and say, you know,
we're being just, we're being fair. You know, the talibanner
still being held in captivity. You know it's it's right
(18:35):
to each the justice under a law. He let one
hundred and fifty Taliban prisoners on death row go free.
You know they're living way better than I'm living right here.
I know who in their right mind if there was
something in order to tell wouldn't tell it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Bails is adamant and consistent with the stance he's been
espousing for you years. According to him, the United States
has abandoned him, and he sees no reason to lie
on the nation's behalf. Whether he'd cover up information simply
to ensure that his brother in arms would lead a normal,
happy life, that's harder to parse.
Speaker 20 (19:16):
We spoke for a little bit, so just wondering what
your impression card with him was.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Music. Yeah, he was a soldier. I loved him to death.
I mean, I'll tell you right now, of all the
people that I feel like I heard, I feel like
I let him down the most. He's a young man,
just had had a baby, newly married. I brought him
up from a sniper. I'm not sure what happened to
him after that, you know, at the trial or at
(19:43):
the hearing. You know, my wife gave my hug in life.
I went up him the great things for and I
hope he I hope he went on had a happy life.
And I love him. I mean as far as guys
I love. I loved him and he was though he
was a warrior.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Even now, Robert Bale still considers soldier X to be
a friend. Then again, Baals didn't have a bad word
to say about anybody, even the people who he suspected
might not reciprocate, like Special Forces Captain Danny Fields is
superior in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
You know, I know Captain Field's probably had a lot
of negative things to say about me. I respect him, man.
You know, these guys went over there and did what
other people wouldn't do. You know, they raised their hand.
They're willing to go into a fight that other people
aren't willing to go into. I was upset with him
at the time. I think he should have been more aggressive,
(20:40):
and I don't know why he wouldn't fight. But sitting
back looking at it now, I don't know what his
orders were, So tho am I to question him? You
know my job was to due when I was told.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Even James Alexander, one of Bailes's harshest critics, got a
positive review from the imprisoned former staff sergeant Alexander.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Here's another good guy. I you know. He he was
the guy that the army tried to make me out
to be a racist, and they kind of turned his
words and manipulated what Alexander was trying to say, and
then he stood up and said, no, that's not what
I meant by that.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We hadn't heard that story from the time of the trial,
but when we interviewed Alexander, nobody had to coax him
into expressing his opinions.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Bails is a racist, Like, there's no doubt I was
singing in the shower and you know, singing hip hop
music and he's like, who's that nigga in there singing?
But when he saw it was me, he was like,
oh sorry, it's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
The only person Bail spoke negatively about was the man
responsible for putting him away for life. Prosecuting attorney Jane Morse.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So clearly printed Colonel Morris, he was ambitious, right, And
I can't fault anyone for being ambitious. And I think
he wanted to make a name for himself. And so
you know, this is a huge case for anyone. You know,
he's running around trying to you know, get on a
certain of TV and trying to become famous, and you know,
(22:14):
this is his claim to fame. And I think you
know that was what he ultimately wanted. It wasn't about justice.
It wasn't about doing the right thing. It was about
trying to make himself popular, trying to make himself famous,
trying to push his own agenda.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Bails's assessment of Mores is based on more than just
the prosecutor's behavior in his own trial.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
This is what I've understood from the rumor mill right,
is that he assaulted this young captain at this convention,
and it's a sexual assault case against him, as he's
the senior Special victims prosecutor in the United States government.
So Lieutenant Colonel Morris is basically forced to resign his
(23:00):
commission from the army and he's forced out, but he
doesn't have to do prison time.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
In early twenty fourteen, just months after Bals was sentenced
to life, Morse was accused of groping a female captain
several years prior while attending a conference on sexual assault.
He was formally reprimanded and retired soon afterward. To this day,
Morse maintains that the encounter was consensual, but Bales feels
(23:29):
this potential stain on Morris's record isn't factored into his
reputation or his credibility.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
He's out there still running around making his name also
being the guy that prosecutes Barber Bales. So every time
this comes up and somebody else goes and interviews him,
he gets his name back out there and he's like,
I'm the guy, the prosecutor, Robert Bales, I'm this great man.
Look at me, I'm this great upholder of justice. I
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Bales believes that Morse is not a pure hero, just
as he himself is not a comic book villain. In
this case, there are many shades of gray. The same
can be said for the Afghan villagers, who, in Bales's estimation,
were likely working with the Taliban. It's a major point
of contention, the one that Morse rejects wholeheartedly.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
So we have the State Department, we have the Department
of Defense, we had the FBI all on searches, and
we found no evidence that any of these victims were Taliban.
I mean, they were literally all farmers. There was nothing
in any of these houses that could be construed as
even having them be Taliban sympathizers.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Even so, a decade after the events, Bales is steadfast
in his BLUEFS.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And America believes that there a bunch of goat herders
and cave sweilersion. That's not the truth. These men that
lived there in this area were Taliban growing poppy and ash.
That was their main crop. They were putting this crime
on mules, running it up over the desert and to
(25:03):
Pakistan and Pakistan they were bringing back weapons.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
They were there for a reason, just as he expressed
in years prior. Robert Bales is convinced that he neutralized
a Taliban threat on March eleventh, twenty twelve, But this
time he offered a theory on why this essential information
never became public. It has to do with his body
count assigned to him by the United States.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
I said at the time, and they used it. It's
in the record of trial. It's in the stipulation of fact.
I said, I got twenty. They produced they said sixteen,
But nobody ever counted the bodies. So where are the
other four? And if they're so impoverished, where are the men?
And when I come back and I said, you know,
(25:50):
these are the men. Either I don't know what I'm doing,
or I do know what I'm doing, and there's twenty
and I'm right, and they're men. But you can't get
paid for Caliban Canyon and it changes the entire narrative.
Am I bringing in the twenty Caliban?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
After he got back to the VSP there is record
of the staff sergeant saying that he believed he had
killed twenty people. Perhaps he had counted some of the
victims he had shot, but who managed to survive. Mailes
doesn't think so.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Their statements to the prosecution one to make sure he
included in the document that proved that I was kilty,
But they also prove a lot of other things, right.
They also prove a lot of mitigating factors that no
one's even considered.
Speaker 20 (26:40):
Hey, Bob, I wonder if I could follow up on
one thing you said. So you mentioned that you counted
I believe twenty people ultimately at the end of what happened,
and you know the government puts you up for sixteen
Was I hearing that correctly? That you feel like there's
a discrepancy of four people?
Speaker 4 (27:00):
My account was twenty? Where are the other four?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We also wanted to ask Bob about the anti malarial mefloquin. Specifically,
we were hoping to gain some clarity on when he
was administered the drug and whether he had even taken
it in the first place. Questions that have been raised
during the appeals process. Here's an excerpt of their oral
argument from the US Court of Appeals in Colorado.
Speaker 21 (27:34):
I want to focus on your methicalin argument. As I
understand it from the Court's opinion below, there was no
testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that he
took methlicin. In fact, I don't think he ever said
that he took mefloquin.
Speaker 15 (27:51):
I respect to disagree judges.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?
Speaker 7 (27:56):
Not all of them.
Speaker 15 (27:57):
The nation's premier expert, doctor Remington Nevin, who is dedicated
his life to mefloquin. His expert opinion is everything is
consistent with meflicuin intoxication, like more's consistent.
Speaker 21 (28:11):
But point me to where he said I took mefloquin.
Speaker 15 (28:16):
Well, that I cannot do.
Speaker 21 (28:17):
Okay, you can't do that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
We presume that if Bales can answer these questions about
mefloquin definitively, it could be instrumental in someday getting a
reduction in his sentence, even if it didn't happen. In
the District Court of Colorado.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Here's a situation where nothing point I have to be just.
I have to be clear so that you guys understand
I didn't know the drug's name right until later, but
I did have the effects, and we knew the effects
when we took the drug, and we all knew we
were having crazy dreams when we were taking that drug.
(28:52):
Lieutenant Colonel Morris says that methlquin wasn't an issue on
my case, but yet he doesn't say anything about now
you know, I talked about having hallucinated during the first
tour in three and four after having taken He doesn't
talk about other people in my unit having taken it.
And you know, I don't even know if you even
(29:14):
considered it.
Speaker 20 (29:15):
Hey, Bob, did you even know that you were taking
an anti malarial or did you not even know that.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
We knew we were taking an anti malarial? Were we?
I mean, I know what the name of the drug.
You know.
Speaker 20 (29:26):
Do you know whether, like you took an anti malarial
for the VSP bellum by deployment or was it just
for the early deployments.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
The metic wins Like back to the early deployment in Afghanistan,
the question of metic win comes up because we went
back to Kandahar for a couple of days and I
left my regular anti maalarial back at Bellamy and so
we stopped in candor Hor and picked up some stuff there,
some anti malarial mets there, and I don't know what
(29:55):
I got there.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
This was news to us and Bales is recollect meflquin
was not the anti malarial at hand at VSP Bellumby,
but apparently his squad traveled to another base sometime during
the deployment, and what the troops were given there is unclear.
Don't forget the Department of Defense began a review of
methylquin under a week after the Kanahar massacre had upset
(30:19):
the balance of the region and eventually discontinued the use
of the drug entirely.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
It's extremely possible while we were at Kandahar, after we
had went on a mission bomb Bellamy and Candor that
that one was an issue there. So yeah, I can't
tell you what was there. I don't know what the
name of the drug was. I know that sounds crazy
as somebody on the outside world.
Speaker 14 (30:41):
Obviously methlquinn has long term effects. I mean, is it
still something you think you're dealing with Until.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
You're educated about something, you don't know that that effects.
Right when I close my eyes at night, it takes
a few seconds before I don't see stars, so like
I'll see like lights flash and my vision after I
close my eyes at night, and it takes a while,
right even to day, even yeah, even today. So you know,
you hear the stories about and you're so tired you
(31:09):
see shit at the time, you shake it off because
you're working. I mean, I don't know that you realize
how draining a deployment. You know, you're out there for
ten e seven months and you're going every day, and
you know the threat of life or death, the threat
of killing someone, the threat of being killed yourself weighs
(31:29):
on you, and you know you feel exhausted, and exhausted
is probably not enough of a word to use in
this situation. So you shake these things off and until
you become educated about you know, hey, this illusination was
most likely a side effect of this chemical that was
put in your body. You wouldn't equate that with that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
In all likelihood. Biles is separated from his family and
definitely but on top of this, for the rest of
his life, he's afflicted, like so many veterans, with a
fundamentally altered psyche, possibly due to the mefloquin, but almost
definitely in part from his many traumatic brain injuries.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think the doctor actually showing through the brain scan
that there was a TBI between two thousand and six
and two thousand and seven, and the way I thought
it was explained to me, and this has been a while, guys,
I mean it's been ten eleven years now. He explained
it to me is like ruins on a tree. You know,
how there's scarring in trees. They're scarring in the brain
in the similar manner. Mine is about patterns. You know,
(32:37):
one when my verbal and certain abilities are high and
my pattern analysis is super low, and the difference between
the high and the low shows that there's brain damage.
Speaker 14 (32:50):
I mean, so do you think TBI was a component?
Speaker 4 (32:53):
It's difficult when you're in the situation, right, because you're
in an environment where if you're not bleeding, your fine, right,
like you get blown up. Hey man, let's take care
of the blood. Let's get everybody taken care of them,
Let's get back out of here. You know, later on
you might recognize the effects. Like I said, you know,
after two thousand and seven, we did a raid in
Solder City, and on the way we got hit with
(33:15):
an e FP and at the time I didn't even
think about it, you know. I mean, we got rocked,
and you know, that night, I didn't do anything. The
next day I was puking my guts out, now, you know,
and I'll be all right, And that's kind of one
of my headaches started, you know. And after that it
kind of just like, you know, we'd come and then
continue to get worse over time.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
At one point in the call, Bails and attorney John
Marr took some time to debrief on the latest in
their case.
Speaker 17 (33:42):
So Bob, to bring up to speed. As you know,
our case we argued every bit of sixteen months ago.
The court is really looking at this hard.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And in all of my.
Speaker 17 (33:53):
Experience, both in the military and as a civilian guy,
I can't help a thing that the court is agonizing
because they don't want to rule in our favor. That's
the resumption I have. But we made it impossible or
almost impossible, for them not to ruin our favor.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Many years into the appeals process, Robert Bales has hit
to see any significant improvement in his situation. Even the
unconventional President Trump, who granted clemency to numerous controversial veterans
of the military didn't pardon him. At the time of
this conversation, it would seem that the chances of Bails
(34:36):
walking out of Fort Leavenworth a free man are minuscule.
So Paul asked him directly, so, I.
Speaker 14 (34:44):
Mean, let's talk about hope. Given everything that you've been through,
I mean, do you have any considering everything that's happening,
what you're seeing now, how do you keep it alive?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
There was an article written in the Seattle Times after
President Trump decided it not to pardon me. It said,
only in a dystopian society would someone even consider partning Bales.
And I sit back and I think about it now,
and I'm like, only in a dystopian society would you
(35:15):
pardon the enemy and keep your own soldiers in prison.
Only in a dystopian society would that be okay? So
I don't know about hope. I don't really consider that.
I try to focus on a daily basis and trying
to get a little bit better, and that hope seems
like a fantasy to me.
Speaker 19 (35:35):
But we'll see, coming up on the war with it,
has your opinion about America changed because of this massacre
we have.
Speaker 8 (35:48):
A different opinions than about America.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
Took place at a very critical time in the country
and the war, and shaped how the next almost decade
would look.
Speaker 18 (35:58):
I think Pandroid mass occur was kind of the nail
in the coffin for any chance to really control PANDWA.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I don't know what the strategy was from game one
the level of corruption started.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
I'm going to hit and't them for the rest of
my life. And McDowell Barns didn't run in their country.
Speaker 22 (36:14):
I don't know the circumstances of what made Bob Dow
he did. I just know that the Bob that did
that was broken by a system, and to only look
at him to pay the price for is wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
The War Within the Robert Bayles 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 Powers.
(36:55):
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,
(37:16):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satall, 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
So the way that I see this thing going is
Bail's and McLoughlin are drinking. Bail starts talking about, here's
what we need to do. We need to go out
take the fight to the enemy.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Private James Alexander believes that staff Sergeant Robert Bales had
helped from his friends in committing the Canahar massacre. He
outlines his theory on the chain of events that occurred
on March eleventh, twenty twelve Bail's recruits.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
He says, hey, I don't need you to fire, because
this is how Bales is. I don't need you to
shoot people with me. I just need you to hold
the light or I need you to have my back
while I go talk.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
To these people.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
All I want to do is go out there and
scare some folks, right, he says something like that goes
along with it. So they go. Bales loses it, right,
he snaps, he starts killing people. They come back in
through the main gate and Bales takes the rack.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Tell us, go shower, you know, get dressed, get ready
and play like you don't know anything. And then I'm
going to use the useful idiot, which is McLoughlin, and
I'm going to go into his room, and I'm gonna
say I'm the one.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
That did this.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Previously on the war within, the army turned a blind
eye to a soldier that obviously needed NS deployed him
to me, they're COPD.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
Kristin harm Because I was saying, we're hearing that there's
some more than one soldier.
Speaker 7 (01:35):
What is actually going on here?
Speaker 8 (01:36):
Yeah, it was not alone, but it was the Americans
who put the responsibility of this act on this one person.
Speaker 9 (01:43):
People don't remember things the exact same way.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
Sometimes people misplace events in trauma.
Speaker 10 (01:50):
Let's try to walk around my wife. Whatever happened.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
The gate guard has said that two people came in
and one person left is Michael, that Bales was helped
in some way to commit these crimes with the aid of.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
It's been some time since you and I first started
talking about your case and everything, and ultimately we thought
it was only right that Bob Bales at the final say.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayles story. The suspicion that Robert Bales may not have
acted alone in committing the Candahar massacre can be seen
as a breakthrough in a story that has been shrouded
in mystery. It recontextualizes comments that appeared throughout the podcast,
(02:42):
like one Private Gavin Jones made back in the first episode.
Speaker 11 (02:46):
Bales took us aside and had a conversation with about men.
You know, war as hell. I know it gets weird
out there. I basically saying that, like, if you need
to make that shot and there's someone in front of
you that doesn't need to be shot, like you can
make that shot and know that we've got your back
on that.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
According to Gavin, Baals told his squad that if any
of them broke the rules of war, he would step
up and protect them. But that alone doesn't mean that
there's some grand conspiracy here. Brendan Vaughan, the GQ writer
who profiled Bales in twenty fifteen, was not convinced that
other soldiers were involved in the killings.
Speaker 12 (03:21):
Some of the Afghan people have said that there were
anywhere from one other American soldier to lots of other
American soldiers.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
There.
Speaker 12 (03:31):
There are people who have said he was protecting other people.
I suppose that's possible. Look, there is a Hollywood thriller
version of this story where there's a huge military cover
up and it was multiple soldiers and Bales took the fall,
you know, I mean, and I've heard these kinds of
theories before about this case. I just have no reason
(03:51):
to believe any of that.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's concrete.
Speaker 12 (03:55):
One of the most chilling parts of talking to Balls
was when I asked him about this, How could one
soldier do all this damage in such a sort amount
of time, and he said, we're really well trained. I
can't argue with our training. And I thought that was just,
you know, a pretty powerful moment.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Despite this denial by Baals, the sense of uncertainty around
what really happened that night lingers on. Even John Henry Brown,
Bayles's trial lawyer, who encouraged him to plead guilty, equivocated
on the subject during our interview.
Speaker 13 (04:30):
There was a lot of doubt about whether we and
there still is doubt I think about whether Bobby was alone.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Do you believe that there was a second person involved?
Speaker 13 (04:39):
I don't know the answer to that, Bobby, of course,
for there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
There wasn't.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
There wasn't.
Speaker 13 (04:43):
But you know, camaraderie in the military is pretty strong.
If you just do the numbers of what he did
in two different villages in the amount of time. It's
hard to believe it was just one person. But I
do believe that bobbably was one person. But if there
was somebody else Bob, Bobby would ever admit it.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
The idea that Baales was the type of person to
not implicate others in his crimes was confirmed by his
wife Carrie, who used some interesting language when speaking to
our producer Max Nelson.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
Bob accept the responsibility for murders, pleaded guilty. Is there
anything that he's ever said that would imply that he
didn't this by himself.
Speaker 14 (05:23):
He's never shied away of owning up to what happened.
He's always been clear that you know, yes, he did this.
He's always said it was him and only him, and
I honestly think he will take that to his death.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Bailes's attorney, John Mayer had the following reaction to this
line of questioning. Well, John's spoken to a few of
the lower enlisted guys and a couple other people that
were stationed at Ballumbay, and they're of the mind that
there was a second person involved in the crimes. You
think there was a second person? This is the first I've.
Speaker 14 (06:02):
Heard of it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Mike, really, what can you tell me?
Speaker 10 (06:06):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, I mean they seemed to believe that someone accompanied
him when he headed out north and then when he
came back, that this potential second stay. None of that's
in the record of trial. It's it's believe or not,
it's in the CID records. Come on, yeah, I'm shocked her, Mike.
Speaker 15 (06:28):
I've got to look into them whether or not there's
another man there.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bales has never indicated that there might have been.
Speaker 15 (06:33):
A second never, not once in a public record or
in a private conversation, or in any of the writings
that we exchange.
Speaker 14 (06:44):
Not once.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
We didn't know what to make of John Maher's lack
of awareness of these allegations, especially considering he was in
the room, and Bales made remarks like this one in
December twenty seventeen.
Speaker 16 (06:58):
The time, I don't know if you remember this, they
were all reports that there were twelve SF guys out there,
the helicopters are flying around. I ended that I stopped,
that I took that responsibility right, And what does the
government do for my honesty? All this becomes you know,
this guy is crazy, this guy, this guy's insane.
Speaker 17 (07:17):
If you could focus I mean during your missions in panjuwe.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Look, all of this can mean something or it could
mean nothing. You can drive yourself nuts trying to parse
whether Bails and his confident on straight thoughts are pointing
to something hidden secret.
Speaker 16 (07:33):
You know, I'm not a perfect guy.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
You know the I cut corners.
Speaker 16 (07:36):
Do you get things done? Of course I did. Somebody
had to be a dirty work. I'd do it, you
know what I mean, And that's that's fine. It's just
difficult to sit back and think that, you know, you
can say I did all this. Why do we have
to lie about it? Why don't we have to hide
the evidence?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It sounds incriminating, except the evidence Bails is talking about
refers to whether the AFGHANSI killed were Taliban, a thread
we've already covered at length. By the same token, it's
almost impossible to know whether, and talking about his squad
in Afghanistan, Bail simply misspeaks or makes a crucial Freudian slip.
Speaker 16 (08:11):
We had developed a team before we had got there
a little bit. We had heard a lot of negative
connotations about working with regular line infantry unit guys, and uh,
you know, I was going to dispel that. You know,
we were gonna.
Speaker 10 (08:25):
We were going to.
Speaker 16 (08:26):
Be the best, and I think we were. They would
have been impressed with us had we not done what
we did, or had I not done what I did.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That last part one more time.
Speaker 16 (08:42):
They would have been impressed with us had we not
done what we did, or had I not done what
I did.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
These days, true crime is one of the most popular
genres of storytelling. Plenty of people make their living off
of invest gaining an old murder case and searching for
some clue that breaks it wide open. But that kind
of criminology can be a slippery slope when the slim
possibility of an incredible lie becomes more interesting, more sellable
(09:13):
than the simple truth. Here's Curtis Grace of the PANJHWI podcast.
Speaker 18 (09:18):
Our government is not competent enough to cover up any
kind of conspiracy. That's like of any kind of strength.
We can't even afford to buy toilets in bulk without
paying like way too much money for them. You think
we're really capable of, like covering up some grand conspiracy.
It's just not possible. But that being said, the military
does have a history of downplaying things, or maybe omitting things,
(09:42):
or not outright lying, but you know, sometimes don't investigate
that or don't worry about what that soldier said.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We got our guy.
Speaker 10 (09:53):
Did they do that?
Speaker 17 (09:54):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Whenever we query bail this prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J. Moose,
about potential emissions in this case, he flatly refuted their importance.
It happened with methl quinn TBI steroids. It wasn't much
different this time. When we asked whether Bales acted alone.
Speaker 9 (10:17):
This idea that there was more than one soldier involved
other than Bales. I will tell you that no one
who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, not one.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
There may have been other people in the community who
said that there was a platoon out here. I remember
one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters
that there were helicopters in the area. No one who
was actually there, not the kids. None of them there
said anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
In our interviews, the Afghan villagers clearly felt that more
than one person was involved, but Morse's right to say
that none of them saw multiple American soldiers with their
own eyes. Aji Wazir Baran, the two men who stated
that a whole American squad had attacked. They weren't at
the scene. Here's baran.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
Robert Bayles was not alone. They all did this massacre.
They only presented this one person. These are military tactics.
When the American forces surrounded the house, they would send
one of them in to kill.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Did all of the Americans shoot?
Speaker 8 (11:29):
Only Robert Bayles entered the houses? The people who survived
say that he entered alone.
Speaker 19 (11:35):
So how do you know that the American soldiers were outside, Because.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
We know their military tactics. I think they surrounded other houses.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You think.
Speaker 9 (11:46):
Any allegation that that was other than one person, like
even just the smallest bit of scrutiny, that thing would
fall apart. So any concern I had that the victims
weren't going to tell conflicting stories, I just didn't have
that concern.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Then again, even with Morse's reassurances, the Army made a
couple moves during Robert Bales's trial that might raise the
eyebrows of someone with a k eye for conspiracies, like
how they treated James Alexander's testimony.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
The UCMJ called me, hey, get ready to testify, and
so I testified that yes, two people had come in
one person I'd left that I believed that somebody else
was involved and that being as was taking the rap.
And from there I thought, Okay, I'm gonna sit back,
my phone is gonna ring, and I'm gonna be on
(12:34):
Anderson Cooper, you know, telling the story. And that never happened.
It was like cool, that was it. It was like,
thank you for your service, now leave.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
What's more, the government treated staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin and
Soldier X differently from the other soldiers. First they were
demoted in rank, then they were granted immunity from being
prosecuted themselves. We asked Soldier X about the armies rationale, that's.
Speaker 10 (13:04):
The standard procedure. They want us to be able to
speak comfortably. And we still got reprimanded for the alcohol
consumption trust like we would and I think it was
just like a show of terry. We want you to
speak comfortably about the sensor that tumbles like absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
When immunity is offered to key witnesses in a case,
it's usually in exchange for cooperation. The tactic Hamstrong defense
attorney John Henry Brown's ability to point the finger at
anybody else and bails a squad.
Speaker 13 (13:32):
I think we knew that immunity was being offered a
whole sale because I think the higher ups than the
military didn't really know what the two story was. So
I think they were afraid that people who worked with Bobby,
whether they liked him or not, would do what they.
Speaker 9 (13:47):
Could to cover his ass.
Speaker 13 (13:49):
They learned quickly the influence that superiors have in the military,
so I think that everybody was concerned about their future.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Data script a lot of speculation here. Every claim that
one person makes is contradicted by somebody else, and after
months of interviews and research, it felt like we were
no closer to knowing for sure whether anyone else was
(14:21):
personally responsible for the Canaharan massacre. The only person who
we knew had the answer with Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Okay, so what's the game plan now, and what are
we doing and what's going on? I mean, just give
me a bottom line, guys.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
On December fifteenth, twenty twenty two, our team recorded one
final interview with Baiales. Recording devices aren't allowed into Fort
Leavenworth Prison anymore, so this conversation was held over the
phone on a secure attorney client line arranged by John Marr.
Speaker 17 (14:55):
Okay, so, Bob, We've got ninety minutes this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Okay, man.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
It was during this call that Paul Pulowski Max Nelson
broke the subject of Bales for the first time of
him taking the fall for his guys.
Speaker 20 (15:11):
Hey, Bob, if you look up this story on YouTube,
for example, there's this female reporter who speaks to some
of the people in the village of some of the
Afghans and Alla Kozai and Najabian. Some of those Afghans
are like, oh, there were a lot of American soldiers
there that night. It wasn't just one person, it was
a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
This is a Caliban controlled area. This is a Caliban
the village, and they will do what the Caliban tell
them to do. So the Caliban are not stupid people.
The truth is they're very intelligent when it comes to
using information operations in propaganda. That video was propaganda. It
(15:58):
was used to try to get Caliban to come to
their side. That video was used to try to hurt
America's movement to win hearts and minds. It was used
to try to hurt me personally. It was used to
try to discredit anything was being done, and so that
(16:18):
entire video, for the most part, is inaccurate fels and
a bunch of propaganda. They interview these people that are
lying because they're told to lie about what happened that night.
There wasn't fifty people out there, There wasn't twelve people
out there, There wasn't how many people were There was
(16:39):
me that was it, and then I came back and
then nobody went out there until the next afternoon, and
so it's not true. It didn't happen. It's propaganda. It's
another piece of evidence that I am trying to get
people to understand. These were Carara ban and it's pretty
(17:01):
clear and obvious to anybody that's willing to look.
Speaker 14 (17:04):
Well, as a follow up to that, we've discussed you're
a guy with very strong principles. If in fact you
are the only guy out there, you kind of strike
me as.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
A guy that probably wouldn't shut up.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
And take the fall.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
Yeah, and the kind of just not rat anybody out,
given your principles.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
I would never rat out anybody, and I would always
take the fall if that was what needed to be
done for my country on every day, twice on Tuesday.
But that's not what happened here. And if that's what happened,
don't you think my country would take care of me?
Have they taken care of me? Now? They haven't taken
(17:43):
care of me. They been exactly opposite of that. They've
hunged me out to drive. And if they've hung me
out the drive for this long, don't certain thing? Time
have said something? After eleven years of being treated the
way I've been treated, I probably would have at something
at this point, don't.
Speaker 14 (18:01):
You think perhaps? But again, you know a smart man would,
But a principal man sometimes overrides or smarts of the
principles accept the loyalty.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
One way is stupidity, right, that's stupidity. When they let
the Taliban go and they kept me in prison, how's
that justice? Man? You know, up until that point you
could say a lot of things and say, you know,
we're being just, we're being fair. You know, the talibanner
still being held in captivity. You know it's it's right
(18:35):
to each the justice under a law. He let one
hundred and fifty Taliban prisoners on death row go free.
You know they're living way better than I'm living right here.
I know who in their right mind if there was
something in order to tell wouldn't tell it.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Bails is adamant and consistent with the stance he's been
espousing for you years. According to him, the United States
has abandoned him, and he sees no reason to lie
on the nation's behalf. Whether he'd cover up information simply
to ensure that his brother in arms would lead a normal,
happy life, that's harder to parse.
Speaker 20 (19:16):
We spoke for a little bit, so just wondering what
your impression card with him was.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Music. Yeah, he was a soldier. I loved him to death.
I mean, I'll tell you right now, of all the
people that I feel like I heard, I feel like
I let him down the most. He's a young man,
just had had a baby, newly married. I brought him
up from a sniper. I'm not sure what happened to
him after that, you know, at the trial or at
(19:43):
the hearing. You know, my wife gave my hug in life.
I went up him the great things for and I
hope he I hope he went on had a happy life.
And I love him. I mean as far as guys
I love. I loved him and he was though he
was a warrior.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Even now, Robert Bale still considers soldier X to be
a friend. Then again, Baals didn't have a bad word
to say about anybody, even the people who he suspected
might not reciprocate, like Special Forces Captain Danny Fields is
superior in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
You know, I know Captain Field's probably had a lot
of negative things to say about me. I respect him, man.
You know, these guys went over there and did what
other people wouldn't do. You know, they raised their hand.
They're willing to go into a fight that other people
aren't willing to go into. I was upset with him
at the time. I think he should have been more aggressive,
(20:40):
and I don't know why he wouldn't fight. But sitting
back looking at it now, I don't know what his
orders were, So tho am I to question him? You
know my job was to due when I was told.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Even James Alexander, one of Bailes's harshest critics, got a
positive review from the imprisoned former staff sergeant Alexander.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Here's another good guy. I you know. He he was
the guy that the army tried to make me out
to be a racist, and they kind of turned his
words and manipulated what Alexander was trying to say, and
then he stood up and said, no, that's not what
I meant by that.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We hadn't heard that story from the time of the trial,
but when we interviewed Alexander, nobody had to coax him
into expressing his opinions.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Bails is a racist, Like, there's no doubt I was
singing in the shower and you know, singing hip hop
music and he's like, who's that nigga in there singing?
But when he saw it was me, he was like,
oh sorry, it's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
The only person Bail spoke negatively about was the man
responsible for putting him away for life. Prosecuting attorney Jane Morse.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So clearly printed Colonel Morris, he was ambitious, right, And
I can't fault anyone for being ambitious. And I think
he wanted to make a name for himself. And so
you know, this is a huge case for anyone. You know,
he's running around trying to you know, get on a
certain of TV and trying to become famous, and you know,
(22:14):
this is his claim to fame. And I think you
know that was what he ultimately wanted. It wasn't about justice.
It wasn't about doing the right thing. It was about
trying to make himself popular, trying to make himself famous,
trying to push his own agenda.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Bails's assessment of Mores is based on more than just
the prosecutor's behavior in his own trial.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
This is what I've understood from the rumor mill right,
is that he assaulted this young captain at this convention,
and it's a sexual assault case against him, as he's
the senior Special victims prosecutor in the United States government.
So Lieutenant Colonel Morris is basically forced to resign his
(23:00):
commission from the army and he's forced out, but he
doesn't have to do prison time.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
In early twenty fourteen, just months after Bals was sentenced
to life, Morse was accused of groping a female captain
several years prior while attending a conference on sexual assault.
He was formally reprimanded and retired soon afterward. To this day,
Morse maintains that the encounter was consensual, but Bales feels
(23:29):
this potential stain on Morris's record isn't factored into his
reputation or his credibility.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
He's out there still running around making his name also
being the guy that prosecutes Barber Bales. So every time
this comes up and somebody else goes and interviews him,
he gets his name back out there and he's like,
I'm the guy, the prosecutor, Robert Bales, I'm this great man.
Look at me, I'm this great upholder of justice. I
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Bales believes that Morse is not a pure hero, just
as he himself is not a comic book villain. In
this case, there are many shades of gray. The same
can be said for the Afghan villagers, who, in Bales's estimation,
were likely working with the Taliban. It's a major point
of contention, the one that Morse rejects wholeheartedly.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
So we have the State Department, we have the Department
of Defense, we had the FBI all on searches, and
we found no evidence that any of these victims were Taliban.
I mean, they were literally all farmers. There was nothing
in any of these houses that could be construed as
even having them be Taliban sympathizers.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Even so, a decade after the events, Bales is steadfast
in his BLUEFS.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And America believes that there a bunch of goat herders
and cave sweilersion. That's not the truth. These men that
lived there in this area were Taliban growing poppy and ash.
That was their main crop. They were putting this crime
on mules, running it up over the desert and to
(25:03):
Pakistan and Pakistan they were bringing back weapons.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
They were there for a reason, just as he expressed
in years prior. Robert Bales is convinced that he neutralized
a Taliban threat on March eleventh, twenty twelve, But this
time he offered a theory on why this essential information
never became public. It has to do with his body
count assigned to him by the United States.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
I said at the time, and they used it. It's
in the record of trial. It's in the stipulation of fact.
I said, I got twenty. They produced they said sixteen,
But nobody ever counted the bodies. So where are the
other four? And if they're so impoverished, where are the men?
And when I come back and I said, you know,
(25:50):
these are the men. Either I don't know what I'm doing,
or I do know what I'm doing, and there's twenty
and I'm right, and they're men. But you can't get
paid for Caliban Canyon and it changes the entire narrative.
Am I bringing in the twenty Caliban?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
After he got back to the VSP there is record
of the staff sergeant saying that he believed he had
killed twenty people. Perhaps he had counted some of the
victims he had shot, but who managed to survive. Mailes
doesn't think so.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Their statements to the prosecution one to make sure he
included in the document that proved that I was kilty,
But they also prove a lot of other things, right.
They also prove a lot of mitigating factors that no
one's even considered.
Speaker 20 (26:40):
Hey, Bob, I wonder if I could follow up on
one thing you said. So you mentioned that you counted
I believe twenty people ultimately at the end of what happened,
and you know the government puts you up for sixteen
Was I hearing that correctly? That you feel like there's
a discrepancy of four people?
Speaker 4 (27:00):
My account was twenty? Where are the other four?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We also wanted to ask Bob about the anti malarial mefloquin. Specifically,
we were hoping to gain some clarity on when he
was administered the drug and whether he had even taken
it in the first place. Questions that have been raised
during the appeals process. Here's an excerpt of their oral
argument from the US Court of Appeals in Colorado.
Speaker 21 (27:34):
I want to focus on your methicalin argument. As I
understand it from the Court's opinion below, there was no
testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that he
took methlicin. In fact, I don't think he ever said
that he took mefloquin.
Speaker 15 (27:51):
I respect to disagree judges.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?
Speaker 7 (27:56):
Not all of them.
Speaker 15 (27:57):
The nation's premier expert, doctor Remington Nevin, who is dedicated
his life to mefloquin. His expert opinion is everything is
consistent with meflicuin intoxication, like more's consistent.
Speaker 21 (28:11):
But point me to where he said I took mefloquin.
Speaker 15 (28:16):
Well, that I cannot do.
Speaker 21 (28:17):
Okay, you can't do that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
We presume that if Bales can answer these questions about
mefloquin definitively, it could be instrumental in someday getting a
reduction in his sentence, even if it didn't happen. In
the District Court of Colorado.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Here's a situation where nothing point I have to be just.
I have to be clear so that you guys understand
I didn't know the drug's name right until later, but
I did have the effects, and we knew the effects
when we took the drug, and we all knew we
were having crazy dreams when we were taking that drug.
(28:52):
Lieutenant Colonel Morris says that methlquin wasn't an issue on
my case, but yet he doesn't say anything about now
you know, I talked about having hallucinated during the first
tour in three and four after having taken He doesn't
talk about other people in my unit having taken it.
And you know, I don't even know if you even
(29:14):
considered it.
Speaker 20 (29:15):
Hey, Bob, did you even know that you were taking
an anti malarial or did you not even know that.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
We knew we were taking an anti malarial? Were we?
I mean, I know what the name of the drug.
You know.
Speaker 20 (29:26):
Do you know whether, like you took an anti malarial
for the VSP bellum by deployment or was it just
for the early deployments.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
The metic wins Like back to the early deployment in Afghanistan,
the question of metic win comes up because we went
back to Kandahar for a couple of days and I
left my regular anti maalarial back at Bellamy and so
we stopped in candor Hor and picked up some stuff there,
some anti malarial mets there, and I don't know what
(29:55):
I got there.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
This was news to us and Bales is recollect meflquin
was not the anti malarial at hand at VSP Bellumby,
but apparently his squad traveled to another base sometime during
the deployment, and what the troops were given there is unclear.
Don't forget the Department of Defense began a review of
methylquin under a week after the Kanahar massacre had upset
(30:19):
the balance of the region and eventually discontinued the use
of the drug entirely.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
It's extremely possible while we were at Kandahar, after we
had went on a mission bomb Bellamy and Candor that
that one was an issue there. So yeah, I can't
tell you what was there. I don't know what the
name of the drug was. I know that sounds crazy
as somebody on the outside world.
Speaker 14 (30:41):
Obviously methlquinn has long term effects. I mean, is it
still something you think you're dealing with Until.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
You're educated about something, you don't know that that effects.
Right when I close my eyes at night, it takes
a few seconds before I don't see stars, so like
I'll see like lights flash and my vision after I
close my eyes at night, and it takes a while,
right even to day, even yeah, even today. So you know,
you hear the stories about and you're so tired you
(31:09):
see shit at the time, you shake it off because
you're working. I mean, I don't know that you realize
how draining a deployment. You know, you're out there for
ten e seven months and you're going every day, and
you know the threat of life or death, the threat
of killing someone, the threat of being killed yourself weighs
(31:29):
on you, and you know you feel exhausted, and exhausted
is probably not enough of a word to use in
this situation. So you shake these things off and until
you become educated about you know, hey, this illusination was
most likely a side effect of this chemical that was
put in your body. You wouldn't equate that with that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
In all likelihood. Biles is separated from his family and
definitely but on top of this, for the rest of
his life, he's afflicted, like so many veterans, with a
fundamentally altered psyche, possibly due to the mefloquin, but almost
definitely in part from his many traumatic brain injuries.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think the doctor actually showing through the brain scan
that there was a TBI between two thousand and six
and two thousand and seven, and the way I thought
it was explained to me, and this has been a while, guys,
I mean it's been ten eleven years now. He explained
it to me is like ruins on a tree. You know,
how there's scarring in trees. They're scarring in the brain
in the similar manner. Mine is about patterns. You know,
(32:37):
one when my verbal and certain abilities are high and
my pattern analysis is super low, and the difference between
the high and the low shows that there's brain damage.
Speaker 14 (32:50):
I mean, so do you think TBI was a component?
Speaker 4 (32:53):
It's difficult when you're in the situation, right, because you're
in an environment where if you're not bleeding, your fine, right,
like you get blown up. Hey man, let's take care
of the blood. Let's get everybody taken care of them,
Let's get back out of here. You know, later on
you might recognize the effects. Like I said, you know,
after two thousand and seven, we did a raid in
Solder City, and on the way we got hit with
(33:15):
an e FP and at the time I didn't even
think about it, you know. I mean, we got rocked,
and you know, that night, I didn't do anything. The
next day I was puking my guts out, now, you know,
and I'll be all right, And that's kind of one
of my headaches started, you know. And after that it
kind of just like, you know, we'd come and then
continue to get worse over time.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
At one point in the call, Bails and attorney John
Marr took some time to debrief on the latest in
their case.
Speaker 17 (33:42):
So Bob, to bring up to speed. As you know,
our case we argued every bit of sixteen months ago.
The court is really looking at this hard.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And in all of my.
Speaker 17 (33:53):
Experience, both in the military and as a civilian guy,
I can't help a thing that the court is agonizing
because they don't want to rule in our favor. That's
the resumption I have. But we made it impossible or
almost impossible, for them not to ruin our favor.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Many years into the appeals process, Robert Bales has hit
to see any significant improvement in his situation. Even the
unconventional President Trump, who granted clemency to numerous controversial veterans
of the military didn't pardon him. At the time of
this conversation, it would seem that the chances of Bails
(34:36):
walking out of Fort Leavenworth a free man are minuscule.
So Paul asked him directly, so, I.
Speaker 14 (34:44):
Mean, let's talk about hope. Given everything that you've been through,
I mean, do you have any considering everything that's happening,
what you're seeing now, how do you keep it alive?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
There was an article written in the Seattle Times after
President Trump decided it not to pardon me. It said,
only in a dystopian society would someone even consider partning Bales.
And I sit back and I think about it now,
and I'm like, only in a dystopian society would you
(35:15):
pardon the enemy and keep your own soldiers in prison.
Only in a dystopian society would that be okay? So
I don't know about hope. I don't really consider that.
I try to focus on a daily basis and trying
to get a little bit better, and that hope seems
like a fantasy to me.
Speaker 19 (35:35):
But we'll see, coming up on the war with it,
has your opinion about America changed because of this massacre
we have.
Speaker 8 (35:48):
A different opinions than about America.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
Took place at a very critical time in the country
and the war, and shaped how the next almost decade
would look.
Speaker 18 (35:58):
I think Pandroid mass occur was kind of the nail
in the coffin for any chance to really control PANDWA.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I don't know what the strategy was from game one
the level of corruption started.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
I'm going to hit and't them for the rest of
my life. And McDowell Barns didn't run in their country.
Speaker 22 (36:14):
I don't know the circumstances of what made Bob Dow
he did. I just know that the Bob that did
that was broken by a system, and to only look
at him to pay the price for is wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
The War Within the Robert Bayles 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 Powers.
(36:55):
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,
(37:16):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satall, 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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