June 29, 2023 • 41 mins
Episode 2 of THE WAR WITHIN covers the events of March 11th, 2012, when Robert Bales walked off his military base to commit the massacre for which he is now known. The incident is broken down with precise detail, from the points of view of Bales, several of the soldiers who were stationed with him, and even the Afghan families who were targeted that fateful night.
THE WAR WITHIN was produced Bungalow Media + Entertainment, Check Point Productions, and Mosquito Park Pictures, in association with iHeart Podcasts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Did you guys hear this story?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Bob that helped drowned back a streaming behind the striker
and sent a whole day trying to chop it up
so that it could never.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Be used again as cover for American soldiers.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's Carrie Bails, Bob's wife of about eighteen years now.
She's talking to two of our producers.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What came to my mind when hearing these details was
where was the support. I'm thinking to myself, this makes
me sad. But if it were somebody else, if it
were a different guy, Bob would have seen it and
have reached out and given support, you know what I mean,
and had been there for his brother like he promised
to do.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
But what makes me really angry.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Is that it seems like nobody saw when Ball moved
it out.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
In March of twenty twelve, Robert Bales's mental health was
deteriorating that back in their family's home in Seattle, Carrie
was in the dark.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
He couldn't tell me what they were doing, which had
kind of been a newer thing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Like the way that he.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Said, I can't tell you what's going on. I hadn't
really paid attention to necessarily what he was going through.
I honestly think I didn't have a good understanding.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Of everything.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Previously on the war within. Robert Bales left his combat
out post alone and murdered sixteen Afghan civilians in cold blood.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Nobody joins the infantry to be the bad guy.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
I think the situation in Afghanistan was so complicated and
Robert Bales is a depiction of the complexities of this conflict.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
This is the heart of Taliban country. I was scared
of death.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
Our rear vehicle was targeted and hit by an ID.
One guy ended up losing his leg below the knee.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
I don't think people understand it's not a matter of
if you're going to die, it's about when.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
If you're going to die.
Speaker 7 (02:03):
Anyway, you have to go out and try to stop
that threat.
Speaker 8 (02:07):
I'm Mike McGinnis.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
This is the War within the Robert Bayles story. Before
deploying to Afghanistan in December twenty eleven, staff Sergeant Robert
Bales had already done three tours in Iraq. David Wesley
served alongside him for the first and second. During those
(02:31):
early years of the Iraq War, Bales and Wesley had
some of the most harrowing experiences of their lives.
Speaker 9 (02:37):
So I joined the army in May fifth, two thousand
and one, and Bob came in. It was shortly after
I came in. We were in the same platoon, so
I met Bob and I just remember how vibrant this
guy was.
Speaker 8 (02:48):
Right.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
It was almost like the best politician in the world,
you know what I'm saying, Like an honest politician, Like
he's not afraid to share his mind. You know, he
was that guy.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Many people want to listen to service straight from high
school or college. For some, the military is their first employer. Bails,
on the other hand, and listed when he was twenty seven.
Among the guys at his rank, he had a level
of maturity and discipline that stood out.
Speaker 9 (03:15):
One of the fondest memories I have with me and
Bob was my girlfriend was coming over and this guy
was on a charge of barracks and as my girlfriend
was coming in, you know, he had said something kind
of messed up, kind of fucked up to her, and
I was told about it. So I was like, all right, man,
I go up to Bob was up there already, and
of course I wanted to fight. There's no if and
(03:37):
buts about that situation, like you said something inappropriate to
my girl.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
I feel like you're a server. I'm a soldier, you
know better.
Speaker 9 (03:44):
We got to fight, and Bob was there to stop us,
and I remember him saying, think about what you're going
to lose. This guy isn't going to make it in life.
You're going to give up everything for this guy. And
I just remember thinking to myself, like, man, I really
(04:05):
want to hit him though, And Bob was like, I
know you do, Man, that you can't, Bro, you can't.
And that was like really who he was as a person,
Like do the right thing, Do.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
The right thing. It's a concept that a lot of
the people who enlisted after nine to eleven took to heart.
After all, they felt it was their patriotic duty to
fight for their country once it was time to deploy
it to in the least idealism clashed with the harsh
reality in front of them.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
When we went over there, we thought fifty percent of
us weren't coming back. They had kind of a going
away parade. They've got this old general up there talking
and saying, you know, you guys are dragon slayers. You
know you're going to go over there and slay the dragon.
And you know many of you aren't coming home, and
you know that kind of thing, you know, so when
your mindset, you know, you're thinking this is going to
(04:58):
be like Vietnam.
Speaker 8 (04:59):
You know you're going to go. Your buddies are all
going to die.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
Getting ready to go, you saw the absolute worst than people.
One guy threw himself down three separate flights and stairs.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
So that he could avoid me. The for everyone was scared.
Speaker 9 (05:15):
Everyone And I remember us being in the contonement area
and we're getting ready to go, and this eerie just
quiet comes over everything. No one wants to talk, nothing,
(05:38):
and it's time to go. And once we went across
that line, we knew it was a game time. I
just remember thinking, man, I hope I died quickly. Once
you're being shot at, I think either you fall away
(05:58):
or you embrace it. There were guys who were super
soldiers when the bullets weren't real.
Speaker 8 (06:04):
You know guys that are fit.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
He screams the loudest, he runs the fastest, he lifts
the most weight, and you put him in a combat situation,
you would be like, oh that guy, he's not gonna
make it.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Bob bails by most accounts. He was somebody that you
could trust out there.
Speaker 8 (06:20):
Bob was always on ready.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
He wanted to make sure everyone was protecting I don't
remember Bob freezing like some of the other guys did.
He quickly separated himself as one of those people that
wanted to fight. He wanted to go home.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
As that first tour progressed, Bail started to get comfortable
in combat. It wasn't long before he developed the confidence
of a veteran.
Speaker 7 (06:46):
I think you have to carry a little bit of
a swagger, a little bit of an edge to yourself
to be able to hey, man, I'm going to go
out here and I'm going to get blown up, and
I'm going to move against the enemy in an elevated position,
shooting me a machine gun, and I'm gonna be all right.
Not only am I gonna be all right, We're gonna
kill that bastard.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Bals proved himself on that tour. When it came time
to redeploy, he had been promoted to team leader. In
that role, not only was he responsible for his group
of guys, but when it came time for the squad
to put themselves in harm's way, he was leading the charge.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
You know we're breaching the doors. Team leaders a first
guy in a door. Uh, team leaders appoint man and uh,
you know, depending upon where the threat is, he's the
guy that's most likely.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Going to engage the enemy first.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Baals is describing the process of entering a room which
might potentially house the enemy and then clearing or making
sure it's safe. It's a vital part of combat. When
that bails and his squad ended up tackling hundreds, not
thousands of times over the course three deployments in a Rock.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
The idea is that you're going to go to your
point of domination and then once we clear, we continue
to move through the house. If we need to take
something down, then we'll have a team clear through us
and move to the following room, and uh, we just
do it over and over. It becomes so methodical. You've
done it so many times you don't even think about it.
It's just it's like water flowing in a picture.
Speaker 8 (08:16):
By that second deployment, we were ready for anything.
Speaker 9 (08:19):
Bob was the team leader by that point, you know,
he had his own boys, and we were monsters.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
That looked like a freaking monster, you know, like and
that's kind of where I'm.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
Little worry about now, you know, of like the monsters.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
As a soldier, if you kill someone who's obviously an insurgent,
that should be an unequivocal success. But that doesn't always
mean you feel great about what happened. For example, take
Bails's story about his first legally sanctioned kill.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
The first one that I know.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
Was mine.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
We were a really terrible spot. We've been rounding pretty
hard for a while, and it was a kid, and
you know, it was one of those things you just
wish ahead and done. You know, He's one of those
things where the kid jumps off, he's shooting an AK.
You know, I'm kind of behind him cover. I couldn't
(09:21):
just let him shoot the AK out, you know. I
remember shoot him in the leg, you know, with the
yaw of the bullet to tumble, the bullet doesn't kill him,
and so you remember coming up and shooting him in the.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Chest and then finally in the face. It was what
it was, you know what.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I mean, an AK forty seven will kill you no
matter who's firing it. For many that's a threat that
has to be mitigated. David Wesley agrees, I think.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
It was Eilenhower that said, war isn't about going and
dying for your country. War is about making the other
sorry bass d die for his right. So it's like
you kind of adopt that mindset. And if you stack
my life against the life of any person, and my
kids depend on me, my wife depends on me, I
choose to me every time.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It's February of twenty twelve. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is
in the middle of his fourth tour. He's thirty eight
years old, with a wife and two young kids. He
has every intention of making it back home, but Panjhue,
Afghanistan is a kinetic region where the Taliban are active,
and as his tenure at BSP bellon By drags on,
Bailes thinks the threat levels are only getting higher.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
So twenty fourth of February, we're conducting a patrol down
south to Najbian, which was one of the villages that
I went to the night I committed my crime, and
we came upon a command wired ied the commanded up
being one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. You know,
it was a pretty big deal. That command wired led
(10:58):
back to Haji Wisi.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Years home, Bales Tell's documentarian Paul Plowski that he suspected
that Haji Muhammad Vizir was cooperating with the Taliban.
Speaker 7 (11:08):
Upon detonating that ied, we get a bunch of signal
intelligence that is telling us that these insurgents are moving
to ambush us, so we take a defensive posture. Even
though we're in a defensive posture, we become engaged by
a machine gun fire from an elevated position. The SF
commander just had to give the word to light up
these machine gun guys, and he wouldn't do it. And
(11:29):
I think he was trying to carry out what his
mission was, more right, more in line with, you know,
hearts and minds instead of you know, breaking bones. But
at the time it made me feel like he didn't
know what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It made me feel like he is soft on the Taliban.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Uncovering one hundred and sixty pounds of explosive material just
a mile from your base can be unsettling. To put
a mild with Bales was still on high alert two
weeks later, as a nerving incidents kept piling up bombs
in a nearby house, an IED that took off a
soldier's leg a huge tree trunk in the VSP On
(12:14):
the night of Saturday, March tenth, at nine pm, Bales
goes up to the roof for guard duty, four hours
before the Kandaharm massacre begins.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I go to guard that night.
Speaker 7 (12:26):
It just had become dark, and just shortly after we'd
taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north
and to the south.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
The guy that was with me was our platoon medic.
He didn't see the lights.
Speaker 7 (12:40):
I thought at the time it was because he was
inexperienced and he was.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Not paying attention.
Speaker 7 (12:47):
So I went over and there we had a high speed,
high powered scope on the roof that we could get
a good picture of it. And then I flipped around
to the south and the south location was Wazir's, which
was obviously where the one hundred and sixty pounds explosive was.
Speaker 10 (13:06):
That did seem a little I'll admit I did roll
my eyes a little bit at that.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That's Brendan Vaughan, the writer of the GQ piece who
interviewed Bails extensively back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Full caveat here.
Speaker 10 (13:18):
I can't get inside Bob Bill's brain, but I think
that in the case of the lights that he was
seeing in the two villages around the base. Was he
just looking for reasons to kind of act? My strong
suspicion is that he was so keyed up and he
was so agitated by the events of the previous days
(13:39):
that he was just hyper aware of his surroundings in
a way that made him not particularly perceptive about what
these things actually meant.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
At ten PM, Bales goes to hang out with two friends,
Jason McLoughlin and the man we're calling Soldier X. Together,
the three of them made up the infantry leadership on
the VSP. Bals catches up with them midway through watching
the Denzel Washington revenge thriller Man on Fire. Soldier X
(14:17):
recalls the evening.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
I don't even recall, like intently watching the movie. I
think it was we're just more converse than through the
movie and whatnot. I know he plays a lot of
significance on it in a lot of the documentation, but
other than me remembering the movie, I don't know if
there's any significance to it.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
As they watch Men on Fire, Bales, McLoughlin, and Soldier
X or drinking liquor. Alcohol is expressly forbidden for soldiers
on deployments, but that role isn't always enforced, and in
this case it's the squad leaders who.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
Are breaking it.
Speaker 11 (14:51):
Alohol. It was accessible in everybody, and not that everybody
was drinking every day or drinking heavily when they drink,
but it was definitely accessible. Were the arm put in
Afghanistan a lot of ways and a nightcap every once
in a while with your buddies is okay.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Did you feel that your peers had an issue with
drinking to get drunk?
Speaker 11 (15:12):
No, definitely not. I consume alcohol on probably three or
four occasions multipoint over. There was never a drink to
get drunk thing. It was very similar to breaking some bread.
Did we talk about this or let's figure this out
and we'll break some bread to go to.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Do you remember how much everybody drank that night?
Speaker 11 (15:31):
It was something so trivial and not that much that
we were wasted by the ends.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
You know, this is always a thing like how much
was it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
You know?
Speaker 7 (15:39):
It was a twenty one ounce Pepsi bottle full of
whiskey and three guys over two and a half hours.
You know, we worked out to like seven drinks per guy.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So all this is happening, you know, right before he
decides to leave, you know the installation, did Bales ever
mention that he would go and do something like he did?
Speaker 11 (16:01):
My conversation was about the postal team, and he expressed
frustrations with the shooty and blown up. But it's more
of a manner of like breaking bread and the three
of us trying to hash out problems. But my right
question is never any inclination that he was going to
go out and want to cause a whole bunch of harm.
I do think I'll remember, how do you express anything
(16:24):
about him wanting to go out?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
After the movie ends, the group calls it a night,
but Robert Bales apparently can't sleep. According to him, he
hasn't gotten a good night's rest in a while.
Speaker 7 (16:37):
I didn't sleep Wednesday night. I really I try to
lay down Thursday. I really didn't lay down Thursday. I
think maybe I slept an hour on Friday. So from
Wednesday until after I had committed my crime, I hadn't
slept more than three hours.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That Saturday.
Speaker 7 (16:54):
I try to go to bed, I go in, I
take some sleeping pills, can't go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Bales has a bad feeling and he can't shake it.
So at around eleven thirty he wakes up Clayton blackshear
a Special Forces sergeant. Baal's squad was in Afghanistan to
support the SF so this was clearly his superior.
Speaker 7 (17:14):
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP and I'm pretty much tell them. I'm like,
hey man, we need to go do something. You know,
this is some bogus stuff. And he said, basically, you know,
mind your own lane. It saysn't your business go to sleep.
You know, you need to take care of your guys
and worry about your lane.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
This is our lane.
Speaker 7 (17:33):
Screw You can't say screwed me, but that was the
way I took it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Bales's adamant. He's seen the flashing lights from the nearby villages.
It's just not sitting right.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
So I leave, I go back.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
I sit in my chew for a while and I'm like,
you know, it's closing in. You know, they continues to
get worse and worse every day. You know, it's the
anticipation of that probably way worse the death itself.
Speaker 8 (18:02):
That's terrible.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
So when you kind of made that decision, was originally
to observe for what was it? What was kind of going?
What you did you think?
Speaker 7 (18:13):
I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
planning ID shoot them and come back.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Maybe I'm a little naive. I think I can make
a difference.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
According to the military's internal investigation, at around one am Sunday,
March eleventh, staff started in. Bales climbed over the barbed
wire that separated the esp from its surroundings. As the
story goes, he wasn't wearing any body armor. All alone
in the pitch black. He walked north to the impoverished
village Valakozai. Here's bales chilling description what happened next.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
When I got out there, I saw the compound. I
go in.
Speaker 7 (18:57):
I start clearing room to room like I would clear
like I've cleared thousands.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
And thousands of times.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
You know, a lot of women and kids are running
around going crazy. You know, it's not really what I'm
looking for. I go out, I come around the other
side and I pull this guy out, and even the
prosecution attest to you know, I'm asking for the tailid.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
As Bles tells Paul, his intention was to get intel
on the Taliban. It wasn't long before that plan devolved.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
I grabbed the first guy I see, and I'm kind
of working this guy over.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
I'm kind of beating him.
Speaker 11 (19:31):
It's a sport angry or.
Speaker 7 (19:33):
I'm angry, but in my mind, I'm trying to find
the IDs because it's clear this compound has been used
in prior engagements to either house or support terrorist activity.
In my mind, at this point, this is undeniable. I
know that this is a bad place. All I had
was my helmet, my rifle, and my pistol. I only
(19:53):
had one magazine from my rifle and one from my pistol.
So I end up beating this dude a little bit,
and I'm just trying to find something and this dog
comes running up from my left and turn and I
shoot the dog. You don't keep a dog if you're starving.
(20:18):
You keep a dog as a warning system if you're
a taliban, right, So this little girl comes running up
and she's screaming, and I, uh, I turn and eye
just I shoot her.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's an instinct.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
I thought it was another dog at the time, and
when I recognized that it was a girl that you know,
I think, uh, you know, he killed me?
Speaker 11 (21:03):
Man?
Speaker 7 (21:03):
I mean, nobody wants to hurt a kid, you know,
immediately turn and uh I killed the guy and uh,
you know, to be honest with you, I don't really
know a lot about what happens next in that northern village.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
It was not my intent to her with my children. Uh,
not my intent.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
With the help of two journalists, Leila Amatzai and mere
wife Satal, Our Production secured interviews with six Afghan civilians
whose lives were forever changed by Robert Bales's actions that night.
They were the survivors. Their commentary has been translated from
their native Pashto. Haji Mohammad Naim and Samiula are the
(21:54):
patriarchs of the two families Bales encountered in Ala Koza.
Here's Hajji Naim.
Speaker 12 (22:01):
There's that night the Americans came at two am and
killed people in a house. After that, the women of
Samiula's family came to our house.
Speaker 13 (22:14):
She told me that the Americans came and shot her
husband and daughters. At this time, the Americans threw themselves
over the wall into our house and come to me.
I had left the room at that time and was
standing outside. They chose their laser weapon and shot at me.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You might have noticed that Hajji Naim said Americans, not American.
That's not a bad translation. It's what he said.
Speaker 7 (22:44):
Do you have a family relationship with Samuela or are
your houses next.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
To each other?
Speaker 13 (22:49):
Our houses are next to each other. When the Americans came,
Samiuli's family all entered our house out of fear. The
American soldiers stood at the gate of the room and
shot all of the people inside the room.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Did they shoot you above your leg or somewhere else?
Speaker 13 (23:04):
No, they shot above my neck and the bullet hit
my jaw. After that, I fell and I was not
aware of myself. I was unconscious for a long time.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
By the time Bob Bales leaves Alakosi, he shot at
least ten people. The exact number is still subject to debate.
Bayle's charge sheet would later indicate that he had killed
four in this village. Bail somehow re enters the vsp undetected.
He goes to the room that he shares with staff
(23:40):
Sergeant Jason McLaughlin.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
I go in and I see uh, my friend, and
I'm like, hey, man, I just killed some military age
males up and ALCOSI I'm going to Najubian to finish it.
I was like, take care of my wife and kids
and h he didn't believe me, and I said, no, man, seriously,
take care of my life from kids and.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I rolled out.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
McLaughlin declined to be interviewed for the podcast. His response
to our request was two words, fuck off.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
I realize you know we're dead, Like I figure, I
have to finish it.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Bales had come back from the sight of the flashing
lights he had seen to the north. Now he turned
his attention to the lights from the south.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I uh get.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
I think it was three magazines, three twenty grenade launcher,
grenade bot, a couple more pistol mags.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Newly armed, Bales leaves the VSP and head south to
not to be in. He takes the main road, which,
as of Captain Danny Fields points out, is very dangerous.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
I think he's incredibly lucky. I'm kind of blown away
that he did not step on an ID. I think
virtually every time we did a dismount of patrol we
found an id.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Baal's first stop is the home of Mohammad da Wud,
another person who Bails perceieves as a threat.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
I go to the first house on the way, and
we had pulled a lee Enfield sniper rife while this house.
In my mind at that time, I think I was
on autopilot, you know. I was trying to in my
mind stop the people that were trying to kill us.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
I go in.
Speaker 7 (25:23):
I dragged the guy out, away from his family, and
I killed him. We believe that his sons had been
responsible for shooting another American earlier.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
One of those sons was Hick Matula da Wud, although
he probably wasn't who Bails was referring to. Hick Matula
was nine at the time.
Speaker 13 (25:44):
Robert Bales entered the house at night. The gate of
our house was weak, it was a little broken. When
he entered the house, he first took my father's hand.
He said in English, Taliban, Taliban, we did not understand.
We do not know our past joke properly, Let alone
understand English. He took my father to the front door
(26:06):
of the room.
Speaker 8 (26:07):
And shot him above his head.
Speaker 13 (26:09):
When he shot my father, he then came to me
and knocked me down. Another brother of mine was also there,
was four months old at the time. Robert Bells held
a gun over his head and asked us where the
talle Gun. Were now think about what we should say
to this.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Bales continues on to Anji Wazir's compound, the place they
had dug up IED's two weeks before.
Speaker 7 (26:34):
I end up going to the second place where we
pulled one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. Out Here
comes this dog. Dog comes running at me. I shoot
the dog. There's one room with a light. It's got
a kerosene lantern in it. As I approached the room,
I go in too deep. I'm exposed from behind. I
(26:55):
get smashed over my back left hand side with a shovel.
So I reach back and I grab the guy that
hit me in the back and I flip him into
the room and I basically spray the room. I put
my weapon on burst and I empty the magazine. Kerosene
lantern turns over. Some of the blankets catch on fire.
(27:20):
There's a bunch of dead people.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
In the room.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
Yes, I realized that there were women and children in
that room. And as I'm leaving, there's an elderly lady
who surprises me around the corner. I shoot her with
a pistol and she grabs onto me. And I'm just
trying to get her off of me. I'm trying to
push her off of me, and as I push her down,
(27:46):
you know, I'm stomping her to get her off me.
And that's kind of when I think I came back
to myself, if you will, you know, the autopilot kicks
off and I realized, holy shit, you just killed this
elderly woman.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Bales killed eleven members of Hodgi Wazir's family. You don't
have any eyewitness accounts from the Afghans here. There were
no survivors.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
So I didn't know what to do at that point,
you know, like what do I do? So I pick
up the elderly woman and I take her back in
with her family.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
And the room's now on fire. So I put her with.
Speaker 8 (28:25):
Her family and.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
I put the gun in my mouth, and uh, I
just couldn't do it. I was too weak to do it.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
I really just wanted to.
Speaker 7 (28:41):
Uh, you know, I don't know, man, I mean, I
don't know what.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Or really just uh, I want to see my kids again.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
As Robert Bales is making his way through to the
end back at the VSP, people are starting to realize.
Speaker 8 (29:03):
That there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The rumor was that at two thirty am, an Afghan
guard named Tasha Lee noticed an American soldier walk off
the base. Ali would later tell the US Army that
he didn't shoot at the American because he was afraid
of the repercussions, so instead he ran this intel up
his chain of command until the news got to Danny Fields.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
So I got the knock on the door at three am.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
He didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Went to the door and he said, hey, the guard
at the gate says that somebody left the base, to
which I was very skeptical that that was true. So
I said, all right, go grab an interpreter, me and
me at the front gate.
Speaker 11 (29:45):
We're going to talk to this guy.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
So speaking to the gate guard, 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. So the very first thing I did, I
woke up my team sergeant and I said, hey, let's
get a one hundred percent accountability on the base. I
need to know that everyone's here, and I need to
(30:09):
know that there's not somebody here that shouldn't be here,
because I've heard that somebody left and maybe somebody came back.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
As Captain Field spearheaded the search for a missing soldier,
Private James Alexander did as he was told.
Speaker 14 (30:24):
I get woken up very early in the morning and
it's like, hey, we need to do one hundred percent accountability.
Walks over and he starts looking for people, like who
is here and who isn't.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Alexander refers to soldier X here by name, we bleep
that out.
Speaker 14 (30:42):
Doesn't do a head count, doesn't read off a clipboard
right or any of that stuff. He's just like looking
to see who is there and who isn't. After a
minute or two of like confusing rhetoric of like hey,
who's here, Okay, you're here, he turns the light off
and tells us to go back to bed. Maybe fifteen
seconds later comes back in and is like, everybody, get up,
(31:06):
go to your battle station. Someone is missing, and we're like,
holy shit, get dressed as fast as we can.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Nobody at the VSP was prepared for a scenario like this,
and the heat of the moment facts where I'm clear.
Speaker 6 (31:20):
Shortly after that, I can't remember exactly how much time
after that I learned that there was somebody missing and
that missing person was Robert Bayles. My immediate thought was, well,
this makes no sense to me. Why would he not
be here? Why if this guard is being truthful, why
would Bals have left the base?
Speaker 14 (31:39):
I kind of thought like maybe Bales got kidnapped, Like
the Taliban came in, drug him off, and like they're
at there and now in a village. There's just so
many moving parts, so many things happening. And also my
perspective is, oh, my god, like what is going on?
Are we being overrun? Am I about to get kidnapped?
Speaker 6 (31:56):
We're starting to ask a lot of questions on the base.
Has anybody seen him leave? Does anybody know what's going on?
Shortly after that, we got a phone call back from Zangabad.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Zangabad's a big American base nearby with a medical.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
Center, and Zangabad said, hey, we just had some people
brought in who have gunshot wounds. They said that they
were shot in their house. Do you know anything about this?
At this point, this is when we started to piece
things together. Right, We're like, all right, something bad is happening.
It's clearly with Baals because he's not here. We're getting
reports of people being shot in an area where he
(32:32):
seems to be, so something strange is happening.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
As soon as Robert Bales leaves Hajji Wazir's burning house,
he can tell that the United States military is looking
for him.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I go back outside, and now I'm freezing.
Speaker 7 (32:48):
I go back and I get a door cover and
I put the door cover around me, and I start
to make my way back to the VSP. As I'm
making my way back to the VSP, these guys are
shooting up flares.
Speaker 6 (33:00):
Paulo actually spots him on his AWS system, which is
a targeting camera computer thing.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
He spots him in his uh in this marshmallow.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
Coat, which is that big poofy coat wearing like a king.
Speaker 14 (33:12):
And that's when they like stack up a team outside
to go get him.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
I told my team, Sergeant Hey, put together a small
interdiction team to get ready to receive him and interdict
him on his way. Whether he's coming back to us
or he's bypassing us, We're going to stop him. Get
the non lethal shotgun rounds, but do what you have
to to protect yourself because we don't know what state
of mind he's in.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Right after suspicion that Bails was kidnapped or worse, he's
found walking alone back to the VSP. Fields taps Jason
McLoughlin and Soldier X to receive bails at the entrance
his drinking buddies from six hours before, so we.
Speaker 11 (33:50):
Can all start to get a little ways. He comes
running dock and I'm thinking, Mike, I don't know those
dude's minds up. I don't know what the hell he's doing.
He's out there people. I was pissed, and I'm thinking, Mike,
I might have to shoot this guy. I might have
to kill my produced sergeant.
Speaker 7 (34:07):
So uh, I come back to the VSP and uh,
they you know, they got their guns drawn on me.
You know, my friends, my family, They've got their guns
drawn on me.
Speaker 14 (34:18):
Sergeant Bales is absolutely covered in blood, and I immediately
start rationalizing like the human that I am. Okay, Bales
has killed his captors, he has broken free of his restraints,
and he made his way back, and he's a hero.
He's gonna win all these medals for what he's doing.
Speaker 11 (34:34):
We put him in the medical show as like a
little detention area and put guards on him.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
At some point I get a call in the radio, Hey,
we've got him.
Speaker 13 (34:44):
He's secure.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
And you know, this is an image I'll never forget
for my life. The door opens up and it's it's Bails.
He's in, you know, a green T shirt. He's in
his ACU pants, boots, and he's just covered in blood.
He's got blood all over him.
Speaker 13 (35:03):
Still not knowing what's happened.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
To his point, I say something to the effect of Bails,
what the fuck just happened?
Speaker 8 (35:08):
He says nothing.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I asked him again.
Speaker 6 (35:11):
He says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He sits down on
the cot, puts his hand in his head, says, I'm
sorry I let you down.
Speaker 13 (35:18):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I said, Bail's what the fuck happened?
Speaker 6 (35:21):
And it was kind of creepy, but he looked up
and he said, I think.
Speaker 11 (35:24):
I need a lawyer.
Speaker 6 (35:26):
And that's when things kind of changed, right, Everything sort
of changed when he said that.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Soon after, Robert Bales asked for a lawyer. He's escorted
into a helicopter and flown off the VSP. About twelve
hours later, his wife, Carrie, is doing Sunday morning errands
in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I loved to go on grocery shopping.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I remember that day I was picking up ribs for
my parents because they were going to have a barbecue,
and I called.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Them to say, hey, I got this, they're on sale.
Speaker 15 (35:56):
How many do you want or something like that, and
my dad said, oh, yeah, I get And hey, did
you see the news about that thirty eight year old
staff sergeant that shot ups the people in Afghanistand and
I remember it like, you know, time almost stands still
when he said.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Thirty eight year old staff sergeant.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
And I remember finishing my shopping and I probably spent
two hundred dollars on food that we never got to eat.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I took the kids home and put them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Down for a nap and kind of waited for whatever
was going to be next, because I did have a
feeling that it was Bob. And then I remember the
next feeling was relief because I got a phone call
and not a knock at the door. Because a phone
call met Mom was alive and I'd be able to
talk to him again and he didn't die over there.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So if I'd gotten a knock at the door, then
I would have meant that it was over, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I remember getting the phone call and them saying we'll
probably be there in about an hour, telling what's going on,
and I'm all I wanted to know is the bomb
safe and what going on?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
And they said they would tell me when they got there.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
At that time, I asked my parents, can you stay
with me until the army people come? So I remember
sitting at our kitchen table. It was me and my parents.
At one end army people came in. There was I
vaguely remember them. There was a woman that.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Was a civilian or in civilian clothes.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Maybe one or two other army men in their uniforms right,
And I only vaguely remember what they told me.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
My question was when do I get to talk to him?
When can I talk to him? When can I talk
to my husband? And they said they didn't know, but
they told me that then for our safety, that.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
They recommended that we packed up an overnight bag and
move on to post because they didn't know when they
would be releasing his name.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The military packed up our house for us and moved
all of our things.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
They kind of knew that there would be a big
media thing, and so that night we went and we
stayed in a hotel.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
When you marry a soldier, in many ways, you're marrying
the military. But Carrie could never have fathomed the scenario
when she set her vows without any warning her husband
had been detained by the nation that he had sworn
to serve.
Speaker 7 (38:17):
So, you know, this is going to sound kind of crazy,
But I sit back and I ask, how did I
get to where I'm at? Like, how did I get
from you know, being the good guy, you know, being
the leader of my group. I think I was a
(38:38):
very good soldier to being in prison for the rest
of my life. How did I go from one to
the other? And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
We were in the hotel that first night, and it's
probably about midnight.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I got to call my cell phone and it.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Was Bob, and the first thing out of his mouth was,
you need to run.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Something really bad has happened. You need to run as
far away from me as you can.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Get away and get saved, get the kids safe, get away.
There's very few times when I've seen or heard my
husband cry, but we both cried at the end of
that phone call because we didn't know what was next.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
We didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Coming up on the war within Bills got taken away
in the helicopter, but we had to essentially survive or.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
Flew me out of Panjuway, and then I ended up
here in Leavenworth, Kansas, and then from there I meet
John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 9 (39:55):
It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me that someone who
we created and had four deployment should be treated the
way it was being treated.
Speaker 8 (40:02):
So I was started with the war on trial.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Me and my kids definitely saw the media circus. It
was surreal. It was like, this isn't happening to me.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
It was clear that the Afghan government had lost complete
control of the situation. We were on a fact finding
mission trying to figure out what the truth.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Was 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
(40:46):
for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers.
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 Gard. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
(41:06):
Peter Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yell Marsh,
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal, as
well as all of the people who are interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(41:27):
podcast
Did you guys hear this story?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Bob that helped drowned back a streaming behind the striker
and sent a whole day trying to chop it up
so that it could never.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Be used again as cover for American soldiers.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's Carrie Bails, Bob's wife of about eighteen years now.
She's talking to two of our producers.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What came to my mind when hearing these details was
where was the support. I'm thinking to myself, this makes
me sad. But if it were somebody else, if it
were a different guy, Bob would have seen it and
have reached out and given support, you know what I mean,
and had been there for his brother like he promised
to do.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
But what makes me really angry.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Is that it seems like nobody saw when Ball moved
it out.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
In March of twenty twelve, Robert Bales's mental health was
deteriorating that back in their family's home in Seattle, Carrie
was in the dark.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
He couldn't tell me what they were doing, which had
kind of been a newer thing.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Like the way that he.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Said, I can't tell you what's going on. I hadn't
really paid attention to necessarily what he was going through.
I honestly think I didn't have a good understanding.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Of everything.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Previously on the war within. Robert Bales left his combat
out post alone and murdered sixteen Afghan civilians in cold blood.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Nobody joins the infantry to be the bad guy.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
I think the situation in Afghanistan was so complicated and
Robert Bales is a depiction of the complexities of this conflict.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
This is the heart of Taliban country. I was scared
of death.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
Our rear vehicle was targeted and hit by an ID.
One guy ended up losing his leg below the knee.
Speaker 7 (01:56):
I don't think people understand it's not a matter of
if you're going to die, it's about when.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
If you're going to die.
Speaker 7 (02:03):
Anyway, you have to go out and try to stop
that threat.
Speaker 8 (02:07):
I'm Mike McGinnis.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
This is the War within the Robert Bayles story. Before
deploying to Afghanistan in December twenty eleven, staff Sergeant Robert
Bales had already done three tours in Iraq. David Wesley
served alongside him for the first and second. During those
(02:31):
early years of the Iraq War, Bales and Wesley had
some of the most harrowing experiences of their lives.
Speaker 9 (02:37):
So I joined the army in May fifth, two thousand
and one, and Bob came in. It was shortly after
I came in. We were in the same platoon, so
I met Bob and I just remember how vibrant this
guy was.
Speaker 8 (02:48):
Right.
Speaker 9 (02:49):
It was almost like the best politician in the world,
you know what I'm saying, Like an honest politician, Like
he's not afraid to share his mind. You know, he
was that guy.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Many people want to listen to service straight from high
school or college. For some, the military is their first employer. Bails,
on the other hand, and listed when he was twenty seven.
Among the guys at his rank, he had a level
of maturity and discipline that stood out.
Speaker 9 (03:15):
One of the fondest memories I have with me and
Bob was my girlfriend was coming over and this guy
was on a charge of barracks and as my girlfriend
was coming in, you know, he had said something kind
of messed up, kind of fucked up to her, and
I was told about it. So I was like, all right, man,
I go up to Bob was up there already, and
of course I wanted to fight. There's no if and
(03:37):
buts about that situation, like you said something inappropriate to
my girl.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
I feel like you're a server. I'm a soldier, you
know better.
Speaker 9 (03:44):
We got to fight, and Bob was there to stop us,
and I remember him saying, think about what you're going
to lose. This guy isn't going to make it in life.
You're going to give up everything for this guy. And
I just remember thinking to myself, like, man, I really
(04:05):
want to hit him though, And Bob was like, I
know you do, Man, that you can't, Bro, you can't.
And that was like really who he was as a person,
Like do the right thing, Do.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
The right thing. It's a concept that a lot of
the people who enlisted after nine to eleven took to heart.
After all, they felt it was their patriotic duty to
fight for their country once it was time to deploy
it to in the least idealism clashed with the harsh
reality in front of them.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
When we went over there, we thought fifty percent of
us weren't coming back. They had kind of a going
away parade. They've got this old general up there talking
and saying, you know, you guys are dragon slayers. You
know you're going to go over there and slay the dragon.
And you know many of you aren't coming home, and
you know that kind of thing, you know, so when
your mindset, you know, you're thinking this is going to
(04:58):
be like Vietnam.
Speaker 8 (04:59):
You know you're going to go. Your buddies are all
going to die.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
Getting ready to go, you saw the absolute worst than people.
One guy threw himself down three separate flights and stairs.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
So that he could avoid me. The for everyone was scared.
Speaker 9 (05:15):
Everyone And I remember us being in the contonement area
and we're getting ready to go, and this eerie just
quiet comes over everything. No one wants to talk, nothing,
(05:38):
and it's time to go. And once we went across
that line, we knew it was a game time. I
just remember thinking, man, I hope I died quickly. Once
you're being shot at, I think either you fall away
(05:58):
or you embrace it. There were guys who were super
soldiers when the bullets weren't real.
Speaker 8 (06:04):
You know guys that are fit.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
He screams the loudest, he runs the fastest, he lifts
the most weight, and you put him in a combat situation,
you would be like, oh that guy, he's not gonna
make it.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Bob bails by most accounts. He was somebody that you
could trust out there.
Speaker 8 (06:20):
Bob was always on ready.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
He wanted to make sure everyone was protecting I don't
remember Bob freezing like some of the other guys did.
He quickly separated himself as one of those people that
wanted to fight. He wanted to go home.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
As that first tour progressed, Bail started to get comfortable
in combat. It wasn't long before he developed the confidence
of a veteran.
Speaker 7 (06:46):
I think you have to carry a little bit of
a swagger, a little bit of an edge to yourself
to be able to hey, man, I'm going to go
out here and I'm going to get blown up, and
I'm going to move against the enemy in an elevated position,
shooting me a machine gun, and I'm gonna be all right.
Not only am I gonna be all right, We're gonna
kill that bastard.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Bals proved himself on that tour. When it came time
to redeploy, he had been promoted to team leader. In
that role, not only was he responsible for his group
of guys, but when it came time for the squad
to put themselves in harm's way, he was leading the charge.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
You know we're breaching the doors. Team leaders a first
guy in a door. Uh, team leaders appoint man and uh,
you know, depending upon where the threat is, he's the
guy that's most likely.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Going to engage the enemy first.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Baals is describing the process of entering a room which
might potentially house the enemy and then clearing or making
sure it's safe. It's a vital part of combat. When
that bails and his squad ended up tackling hundreds, not
thousands of times over the course three deployments in a Rock.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
The idea is that you're going to go to your
point of domination and then once we clear, we continue
to move through the house. If we need to take
something down, then we'll have a team clear through us
and move to the following room, and uh, we just
do it over and over. It becomes so methodical. You've
done it so many times you don't even think about it.
It's just it's like water flowing in a picture.
Speaker 8 (08:16):
By that second deployment, we were ready for anything.
Speaker 9 (08:19):
Bob was the team leader by that point, you know,
he had his own boys, and we were monsters.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
That looked like a freaking monster, you know, like and
that's kind of where I'm.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
Little worry about now, you know, of like the monsters.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
As a soldier, if you kill someone who's obviously an insurgent,
that should be an unequivocal success. But that doesn't always
mean you feel great about what happened. For example, take
Bails's story about his first legally sanctioned kill.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
The first one that I know.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
Was mine.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
We were a really terrible spot. We've been rounding pretty
hard for a while, and it was a kid, and
you know, it was one of those things you just
wish ahead and done. You know, He's one of those
things where the kid jumps off, he's shooting an AK.
You know, I'm kind of behind him cover. I couldn't
(09:21):
just let him shoot the AK out, you know. I
remember shoot him in the leg, you know, with the
yaw of the bullet to tumble, the bullet doesn't kill him,
and so you remember coming up and shooting him in the.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Chest and then finally in the face. It was what
it was, you know what.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I mean, an AK forty seven will kill you no
matter who's firing it. For many that's a threat that
has to be mitigated. David Wesley agrees, I think.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
It was Eilenhower that said, war isn't about going and
dying for your country. War is about making the other
sorry bass d die for his right. So it's like
you kind of adopt that mindset. And if you stack
my life against the life of any person, and my
kids depend on me, my wife depends on me, I
choose to me every time.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It's February of twenty twelve. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is
in the middle of his fourth tour. He's thirty eight
years old, with a wife and two young kids. He
has every intention of making it back home, but Panjhue,
Afghanistan is a kinetic region where the Taliban are active,
and as his tenure at BSP bellon By drags on,
Bailes thinks the threat levels are only getting higher.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
So twenty fourth of February, we're conducting a patrol down
south to Najbian, which was one of the villages that
I went to the night I committed my crime, and
we came upon a command wired ied the commanded up
being one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. You know,
it was a pretty big deal. That command wired led
(10:58):
back to Haji Wisi.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Years home, Bales Tell's documentarian Paul Plowski that he suspected
that Haji Muhammad Vizir was cooperating with the Taliban.
Speaker 7 (11:08):
Upon detonating that ied, we get a bunch of signal
intelligence that is telling us that these insurgents are moving
to ambush us, so we take a defensive posture. Even
though we're in a defensive posture, we become engaged by
a machine gun fire from an elevated position. The SF
commander just had to give the word to light up
these machine gun guys, and he wouldn't do it. And
(11:29):
I think he was trying to carry out what his
mission was, more right, more in line with, you know,
hearts and minds instead of you know, breaking bones. But
at the time it made me feel like he didn't
know what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It made me feel like he is soft on the Taliban.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Uncovering one hundred and sixty pounds of explosive material just
a mile from your base can be unsettling. To put
a mild with Bales was still on high alert two
weeks later, as a nerving incidents kept piling up bombs
in a nearby house, an IED that took off a
soldier's leg a huge tree trunk in the VSP On
(12:14):
the night of Saturday, March tenth, at nine pm, Bales
goes up to the roof for guard duty, four hours
before the Kandaharm massacre begins.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I go to guard that night.
Speaker 7 (12:26):
It just had become dark, and just shortly after we'd
taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north
and to the south.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
The guy that was with me was our platoon medic.
He didn't see the lights.
Speaker 7 (12:40):
I thought at the time it was because he was
inexperienced and he was.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Not paying attention.
Speaker 7 (12:47):
So I went over and there we had a high speed,
high powered scope on the roof that we could get
a good picture of it. And then I flipped around
to the south and the south location was Wazir's, which
was obviously where the one hundred and sixty pounds explosive was.
Speaker 10 (13:06):
That did seem a little I'll admit I did roll
my eyes a little bit at that.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That's Brendan Vaughan, the writer of the GQ piece who
interviewed Bails extensively back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Full caveat here.
Speaker 10 (13:18):
I can't get inside Bob Bill's brain, but I think
that in the case of the lights that he was
seeing in the two villages around the base. Was he
just looking for reasons to kind of act? My strong
suspicion is that he was so keyed up and he
was so agitated by the events of the previous days
(13:39):
that he was just hyper aware of his surroundings in
a way that made him not particularly perceptive about what
these things actually meant.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
At ten PM, Bales goes to hang out with two friends,
Jason McLoughlin and the man we're calling Soldier X. Together,
the three of them made up the infantry leadership on
the VSP. Bals catches up with them midway through watching
the Denzel Washington revenge thriller Man on Fire. Soldier X
(14:17):
recalls the evening.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
I don't even recall, like intently watching the movie. I
think it was we're just more converse than through the
movie and whatnot. I know he plays a lot of
significance on it in a lot of the documentation, but
other than me remembering the movie, I don't know if
there's any significance to it.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
As they watch Men on Fire, Bales, McLoughlin, and Soldier
X or drinking liquor. Alcohol is expressly forbidden for soldiers
on deployments, but that role isn't always enforced, and in
this case it's the squad leaders who.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
Are breaking it.
Speaker 11 (14:51):
Alohol. It was accessible in everybody, and not that everybody
was drinking every day or drinking heavily when they drink,
but it was definitely accessible. Were the arm put in
Afghanistan a lot of ways and a nightcap every once
in a while with your buddies is okay.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Did you feel that your peers had an issue with
drinking to get drunk?
Speaker 11 (15:12):
No, definitely not. I consume alcohol on probably three or
four occasions multipoint over. There was never a drink to
get drunk thing. It was very similar to breaking some bread.
Did we talk about this or let's figure this out
and we'll break some bread to go to.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Do you remember how much everybody drank that night?
Speaker 11 (15:31):
It was something so trivial and not that much that
we were wasted by the ends.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
You know, this is always a thing like how much
was it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
You know?
Speaker 7 (15:39):
It was a twenty one ounce Pepsi bottle full of
whiskey and three guys over two and a half hours.
You know, we worked out to like seven drinks per guy.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So all this is happening, you know, right before he
decides to leave, you know the installation, did Bales ever
mention that he would go and do something like he did?
Speaker 11 (16:01):
My conversation was about the postal team, and he expressed
frustrations with the shooty and blown up. But it's more
of a manner of like breaking bread and the three
of us trying to hash out problems. But my right
question is never any inclination that he was going to
go out and want to cause a whole bunch of harm.
I do think I'll remember, how do you express anything
(16:24):
about him wanting to go out?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
After the movie ends, the group calls it a night,
but Robert Bales apparently can't sleep. According to him, he
hasn't gotten a good night's rest in a while.
Speaker 7 (16:37):
I didn't sleep Wednesday night. I really I try to
lay down Thursday. I really didn't lay down Thursday. I
think maybe I slept an hour on Friday. So from
Wednesday until after I had committed my crime, I hadn't
slept more than three hours.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That Saturday.
Speaker 7 (16:54):
I try to go to bed, I go in, I
take some sleeping pills, can't go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Bales has a bad feeling and he can't shake it.
So at around eleven thirty he wakes up Clayton blackshear
a Special Forces sergeant. Baal's squad was in Afghanistan to
support the SF so this was clearly his superior.
Speaker 7 (17:14):
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP and I'm pretty much tell them. I'm like,
hey man, we need to go do something. You know,
this is some bogus stuff. And he said, basically, you know,
mind your own lane. It saysn't your business go to sleep.
You know, you need to take care of your guys
and worry about your lane.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
This is our lane.
Speaker 7 (17:33):
Screw You can't say screwed me, but that was the
way I took it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Bales's adamant. He's seen the flashing lights from the nearby villages.
It's just not sitting right.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
So I leave, I go back.
Speaker 7 (17:46):
I sit in my chew for a while and I'm like,
you know, it's closing in. You know, they continues to
get worse and worse every day. You know, it's the
anticipation of that probably way worse the death itself.
Speaker 8 (18:02):
That's terrible.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
So when you kind of made that decision, was originally
to observe for what was it? What was kind of going?
What you did you think?
Speaker 7 (18:13):
I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
planning ID shoot them and come back.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Maybe I'm a little naive. I think I can make
a difference.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
According to the military's internal investigation, at around one am Sunday,
March eleventh, staff started in. Bales climbed over the barbed
wire that separated the esp from its surroundings. As the
story goes, he wasn't wearing any body armor. All alone
in the pitch black. He walked north to the impoverished
village Valakozai. Here's bales chilling description what happened next.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
When I got out there, I saw the compound. I
go in.
Speaker 7 (18:57):
I start clearing room to room like I would clear
like I've cleared thousands.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
And thousands of times.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
You know, a lot of women and kids are running
around going crazy. You know, it's not really what I'm
looking for. I go out, I come around the other
side and I pull this guy out, and even the
prosecution attest to you know, I'm asking for the tailid.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
As Bles tells Paul, his intention was to get intel
on the Taliban. It wasn't long before that plan devolved.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
I grabbed the first guy I see, and I'm kind
of working this guy over.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
I'm kind of beating him.
Speaker 11 (19:31):
It's a sport angry or.
Speaker 7 (19:33):
I'm angry, but in my mind, I'm trying to find
the IDs because it's clear this compound has been used
in prior engagements to either house or support terrorist activity.
In my mind, at this point, this is undeniable. I
know that this is a bad place. All I had
was my helmet, my rifle, and my pistol. I only
(19:53):
had one magazine from my rifle and one from my pistol.
So I end up beating this dude a little bit,
and I'm just trying to find something and this dog
comes running up from my left and turn and I
shoot the dog. You don't keep a dog if you're starving.
(20:18):
You keep a dog as a warning system if you're
a taliban, right, So this little girl comes running up
and she's screaming, and I, uh, I turn and eye
just I shoot her.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's an instinct.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
I thought it was another dog at the time, and
when I recognized that it was a girl that you know,
I think, uh, you know, he killed me?
Speaker 11 (21:03):
Man?
Speaker 7 (21:03):
I mean, nobody wants to hurt a kid, you know,
immediately turn and uh I killed the guy and uh,
you know, to be honest with you, I don't really
know a lot about what happens next in that northern village.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
It was not my intent to her with my children. Uh,
not my intent.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
With the help of two journalists, Leila Amatzai and mere
wife Satal, Our Production secured interviews with six Afghan civilians
whose lives were forever changed by Robert Bales's actions that night.
They were the survivors. Their commentary has been translated from
their native Pashto. Haji Mohammad Naim and Samiula are the
(21:54):
patriarchs of the two families Bales encountered in Ala Koza.
Here's Hajji Naim.
Speaker 12 (22:01):
There's that night the Americans came at two am and
killed people in a house. After that, the women of
Samiula's family came to our house.
Speaker 13 (22:14):
She told me that the Americans came and shot her
husband and daughters. At this time, the Americans threw themselves
over the wall into our house and come to me.
I had left the room at that time and was
standing outside. They chose their laser weapon and shot at me.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You might have noticed that Hajji Naim said Americans, not American.
That's not a bad translation. It's what he said.
Speaker 7 (22:44):
Do you have a family relationship with Samuela or are
your houses next.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
To each other?
Speaker 13 (22:49):
Our houses are next to each other. When the Americans came,
Samiuli's family all entered our house out of fear. The
American soldiers stood at the gate of the room and
shot all of the people inside the room.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Did they shoot you above your leg or somewhere else?
Speaker 13 (23:04):
No, they shot above my neck and the bullet hit
my jaw. After that, I fell and I was not
aware of myself. I was unconscious for a long time.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
By the time Bob Bales leaves Alakosi, he shot at
least ten people. The exact number is still subject to debate.
Bayle's charge sheet would later indicate that he had killed
four in this village. Bail somehow re enters the vsp undetected.
He goes to the room that he shares with staff
(23:40):
Sergeant Jason McLaughlin.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
I go in and I see uh, my friend, and
I'm like, hey, man, I just killed some military age
males up and ALCOSI I'm going to Najubian to finish it.
I was like, take care of my wife and kids
and h he didn't believe me, and I said, no, man, seriously,
take care of my life from kids and.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I rolled out.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
McLaughlin declined to be interviewed for the podcast. His response
to our request was two words, fuck off.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
I realize you know we're dead, Like I figure, I
have to finish it.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Bales had come back from the sight of the flashing
lights he had seen to the north. Now he turned
his attention to the lights from the south.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
I uh get.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
I think it was three magazines, three twenty grenade launcher,
grenade bot, a couple more pistol mags.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Newly armed, Bales leaves the VSP and head south to
not to be in. He takes the main road, which,
as of Captain Danny Fields points out, is very dangerous.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
I think he's incredibly lucky. I'm kind of blown away
that he did not step on an ID. I think
virtually every time we did a dismount of patrol we
found an id.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Baal's first stop is the home of Mohammad da Wud,
another person who Bails perceieves as a threat.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
I go to the first house on the way, and
we had pulled a lee Enfield sniper rife while this house.
In my mind at that time, I think I was
on autopilot, you know. I was trying to in my
mind stop the people that were trying to kill us.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
I go in.
Speaker 7 (25:23):
I dragged the guy out, away from his family, and
I killed him. We believe that his sons had been
responsible for shooting another American earlier.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
One of those sons was Hick Matula da Wud, although
he probably wasn't who Bails was referring to. Hick Matula
was nine at the time.
Speaker 13 (25:44):
Robert Bales entered the house at night. The gate of
our house was weak, it was a little broken. When
he entered the house, he first took my father's hand.
He said in English, Taliban, Taliban, we did not understand.
We do not know our past joke properly, Let alone
understand English. He took my father to the front door
(26:06):
of the room.
Speaker 8 (26:07):
And shot him above his head.
Speaker 13 (26:09):
When he shot my father, he then came to me
and knocked me down. Another brother of mine was also there,
was four months old at the time. Robert Bells held
a gun over his head and asked us where the
talle Gun. Were now think about what we should say
to this.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Bales continues on to Anji Wazir's compound, the place they
had dug up IED's two weeks before.
Speaker 7 (26:34):
I end up going to the second place where we
pulled one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. Out Here
comes this dog. Dog comes running at me. I shoot
the dog. There's one room with a light. It's got
a kerosene lantern in it. As I approached the room,
I go in too deep. I'm exposed from behind. I
(26:55):
get smashed over my back left hand side with a shovel.
So I reach back and I grab the guy that
hit me in the back and I flip him into
the room and I basically spray the room. I put
my weapon on burst and I empty the magazine. Kerosene
lantern turns over. Some of the blankets catch on fire.
(27:20):
There's a bunch of dead people.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
In the room.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
Yes, I realized that there were women and children in
that room. And as I'm leaving, there's an elderly lady
who surprises me around the corner. I shoot her with
a pistol and she grabs onto me. And I'm just
trying to get her off of me. I'm trying to
push her off of me, and as I push her down,
(27:46):
you know, I'm stomping her to get her off me.
And that's kind of when I think I came back
to myself, if you will, you know, the autopilot kicks
off and I realized, holy shit, you just killed this
elderly woman.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Bales killed eleven members of Hodgi Wazir's family. You don't
have any eyewitness accounts from the Afghans here. There were
no survivors.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
So I didn't know what to do at that point,
you know, like what do I do? So I pick
up the elderly woman and I take her back in
with her family.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
And the room's now on fire. So I put her with.
Speaker 8 (28:25):
Her family and.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
I put the gun in my mouth, and uh, I
just couldn't do it. I was too weak to do it.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
I really just wanted to.
Speaker 7 (28:41):
Uh, you know, I don't know, man, I mean, I
don't know what.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Or really just uh, I want to see my kids again.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
As Robert Bales is making his way through to the
end back at the VSP, people are starting to realize.
Speaker 8 (29:03):
That there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The rumor was that at two thirty am, an Afghan
guard named Tasha Lee noticed an American soldier walk off
the base. Ali would later tell the US Army that
he didn't shoot at the American because he was afraid
of the repercussions, so instead he ran this intel up
his chain of command until the news got to Danny Fields.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
So I got the knock on the door at three am.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
He didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Went to the door and he said, hey, the guard
at the gate says that somebody left the base, to
which I was very skeptical that that was true. So
I said, all right, go grab an interpreter, me and
me at the front gate.
Speaker 11 (29:45):
We're going to talk to this guy.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
So speaking to the gate guard, 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. So the very first thing I did, I
woke up my team sergeant and I said, hey, let's
get a one hundred percent accountability on the base. I
need to know that everyone's here, and I need to
(30:09):
know that there's not somebody here that shouldn't be here,
because I've heard that somebody left and maybe somebody came back.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
As Captain Field spearheaded the search for a missing soldier,
Private James Alexander did as he was told.
Speaker 14 (30:24):
I get woken up very early in the morning and
it's like, hey, we need to do one hundred percent accountability.
Walks over and he starts looking for people, like who
is here and who isn't.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Alexander refers to soldier X here by name, we bleep
that out.
Speaker 14 (30:42):
Doesn't do a head count, doesn't read off a clipboard
right or any of that stuff. He's just like looking
to see who is there and who isn't. After a
minute or two of like confusing rhetoric of like hey,
who's here, Okay, you're here, he turns the light off
and tells us to go back to bed. Maybe fifteen
seconds later comes back in and is like, everybody, get up,
(31:06):
go to your battle station. Someone is missing, and we're like,
holy shit, get dressed as fast as we can.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Nobody at the VSP was prepared for a scenario like this,
and the heat of the moment facts where I'm clear.
Speaker 6 (31:20):
Shortly after that, I can't remember exactly how much time
after that I learned that there was somebody missing and
that missing person was Robert Bayles. My immediate thought was, well,
this makes no sense to me. Why would he not
be here? Why if this guard is being truthful, why
would Bals have left the base?
Speaker 14 (31:39):
I kind of thought like maybe Bales got kidnapped, Like
the Taliban came in, drug him off, and like they're
at there and now in a village. There's just so
many moving parts, so many things happening. And also my
perspective is, oh, my god, like what is going on?
Are we being overrun? Am I about to get kidnapped?
Speaker 6 (31:56):
We're starting to ask a lot of questions on the base.
Has anybody seen him leave? Does anybody know what's going on?
Shortly after that, we got a phone call back from Zangabad.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Zangabad's a big American base nearby with a medical.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
Center, and Zangabad said, hey, we just had some people
brought in who have gunshot wounds. They said that they
were shot in their house. Do you know anything about this?
At this point, this is when we started to piece
things together. Right, We're like, all right, something bad is happening.
It's clearly with Baals because he's not here. We're getting
reports of people being shot in an area where he
(32:32):
seems to be, so something strange is happening.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
As soon as Robert Bales leaves Hajji Wazir's burning house,
he can tell that the United States military is looking
for him.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I go back outside, and now I'm freezing.
Speaker 7 (32:48):
I go back and I get a door cover and
I put the door cover around me, and I start
to make my way back to the VSP. As I'm
making my way back to the VSP, these guys are
shooting up flares.
Speaker 6 (33:00):
Paulo actually spots him on his AWS system, which is
a targeting camera computer thing.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
He spots him in his uh in this marshmallow.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
Coat, which is that big poofy coat wearing like a king.
Speaker 14 (33:12):
And that's when they like stack up a team outside
to go get him.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
I told my team, Sergeant Hey, put together a small
interdiction team to get ready to receive him and interdict
him on his way. Whether he's coming back to us
or he's bypassing us, We're going to stop him. Get
the non lethal shotgun rounds, but do what you have
to to protect yourself because we don't know what state
of mind he's in.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Right after suspicion that Bails was kidnapped or worse, he's
found walking alone back to the VSP. Fields taps Jason
McLoughlin and Soldier X to receive bails at the entrance
his drinking buddies from six hours before, so we.
Speaker 11 (33:50):
Can all start to get a little ways. He comes
running dock and I'm thinking, Mike, I don't know those
dude's minds up. I don't know what the hell he's doing.
He's out there people. I was pissed, and I'm thinking, Mike,
I might have to shoot this guy. I might have
to kill my produced sergeant.
Speaker 7 (34:07):
So uh, I come back to the VSP and uh,
they you know, they got their guns drawn on me.
You know, my friends, my family, They've got their guns
drawn on me.
Speaker 14 (34:18):
Sergeant Bales is absolutely covered in blood, and I immediately
start rationalizing like the human that I am. Okay, Bales
has killed his captors, he has broken free of his restraints,
and he made his way back, and he's a hero.
He's gonna win all these medals for what he's doing.
Speaker 11 (34:34):
We put him in the medical show as like a
little detention area and put guards on him.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
At some point I get a call in the radio, Hey,
we've got him.
Speaker 13 (34:44):
He's secure.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
And you know, this is an image I'll never forget
for my life. The door opens up and it's it's Bails.
He's in, you know, a green T shirt. He's in
his ACU pants, boots, and he's just covered in blood.
He's got blood all over him.
Speaker 13 (35:03):
Still not knowing what's happened.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
To his point, I say something to the effect of Bails,
what the fuck just happened?
Speaker 8 (35:08):
He says nothing.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I asked him again.
Speaker 6 (35:11):
He says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He sits down on
the cot, puts his hand in his head, says, I'm
sorry I let you down.
Speaker 13 (35:18):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I said, Bail's what the fuck happened?
Speaker 6 (35:21):
And it was kind of creepy, but he looked up
and he said, I think.
Speaker 11 (35:24):
I need a lawyer.
Speaker 6 (35:26):
And that's when things kind of changed, right, Everything sort
of changed when he said that.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Soon after, Robert Bales asked for a lawyer. He's escorted
into a helicopter and flown off the VSP. About twelve
hours later, his wife, Carrie, is doing Sunday morning errands
in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I loved to go on grocery shopping.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I remember that day I was picking up ribs for
my parents because they were going to have a barbecue,
and I called.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Them to say, hey, I got this, they're on sale.
Speaker 15 (35:56):
How many do you want or something like that, and
my dad said, oh, yeah, I get And hey, did
you see the news about that thirty eight year old
staff sergeant that shot ups the people in Afghanistand and
I remember it like, you know, time almost stands still
when he said.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Thirty eight year old staff sergeant.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
And I remember finishing my shopping and I probably spent
two hundred dollars on food that we never got to eat.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I took the kids home and put them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Down for a nap and kind of waited for whatever
was going to be next, because I did have a
feeling that it was Bob. And then I remember the
next feeling was relief because I got a phone call
and not a knock at the door. Because a phone
call met Mom was alive and I'd be able to
talk to him again and he didn't die over there.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So if I'd gotten a knock at the door, then
I would have meant that it was over, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I remember getting the phone call and them saying we'll
probably be there in about an hour, telling what's going on,
and I'm all I wanted to know is the bomb
safe and what going on?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
And they said they would tell me when they got there.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
At that time, I asked my parents, can you stay
with me until the army people come? So I remember
sitting at our kitchen table. It was me and my parents.
At one end army people came in. There was I
vaguely remember them. There was a woman that.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Was a civilian or in civilian clothes.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Maybe one or two other army men in their uniforms right,
And I only vaguely remember what they told me.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
My question was when do I get to talk to him?
When can I talk to him? When can I talk
to my husband? And they said they didn't know, but
they told me that then for our safety, that.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
They recommended that we packed up an overnight bag and
move on to post because they didn't know when they
would be releasing his name.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The military packed up our house for us and moved
all of our things.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
They kind of knew that there would be a big
media thing, and so that night we went and we
stayed in a hotel.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
When you marry a soldier, in many ways, you're marrying
the military. But Carrie could never have fathomed the scenario
when she set her vows without any warning her husband
had been detained by the nation that he had sworn
to serve.
Speaker 7 (38:17):
So, you know, this is going to sound kind of crazy,
But I sit back and I ask, how did I
get to where I'm at? Like, how did I get
from you know, being the good guy, you know, being
the leader of my group. I think I was a
(38:38):
very good soldier to being in prison for the rest
of my life. How did I go from one to
the other? And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
We were in the hotel that first night, and it's
probably about midnight.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I got to call my cell phone and it.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Was Bob, and the first thing out of his mouth was,
you need to run.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Something really bad has happened. You need to run as
far away from me as you can.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Get away and get saved, get the kids safe, get away.
There's very few times when I've seen or heard my
husband cry, but we both cried at the end of
that phone call because we didn't know what was next.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
We didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Coming up on the war within Bills got taken away
in the helicopter, but we had to essentially survive or.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
Flew me out of Panjuway, and then I ended up
here in Leavenworth, Kansas, and then from there I meet
John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 9 (39:55):
It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me that someone who
we created and had four deployment should be treated the
way it was being treated.
Speaker 8 (40:02):
So I was started with the war on trial.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Me and my kids definitely saw the media circus. It
was surreal. It was like, this isn't happening to me.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
It was clear that the Afghan government had lost complete
control of the situation. We were on a fact finding
mission trying to figure out what the truth.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Was 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
(40:46):
for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers.
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 Gard. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
(41:06):
Peter Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yell Marsh,
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal, as
well as all of the people who are interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(41:27):
podcast
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