July 6, 2023 • 40 mins
Episode 3 of THE WAR WITHIN tracks the immediate aftermath of the Kandahar Massacre, as Robert Bales’ family hires a prominent lawyer and navigates a growing media frenzy around the story – all while probing deeper into Bales’ backstory.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I met a lot of soldiers who empathized with Bobby,
almost all of them. I didn't rant his soldiers all
the time, basically saying been there, done that, and I predicted,
and I said in the newspapers, I said, we better
get ready for more Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
John Henry Brown represented staff Sergeant Robert Bales in military
court after he committed the Candaharm massacre.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The soldiers I met who knew Bobby, I look very
highly at them, very highly. He took on becoming a
role model for younger soldiers. He thought that was part
of his job. I had never met any of us
send men. Is that anything bad about Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
As a lawyer, Brown is known for working with some
of society's most notorious figures, including serial killer Ted Bundy.
He titled his autobiography The Devil's Defender. In twenty twelve,
he took on his newest client.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
There were a number of titles when I always let
Bobby alone, and Bobby would cry, and he would not
cry for himself much, but mostly for what happened. But
none of us should be judged on the worst day
(01:33):
of our lives. There's many other aspects to our lives
that mitigate the worst six that we've done, thank God.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Previously on the War Within.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Bob was always on ready. He wanted to make sure
everyone was protected.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
We came upon one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives.
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP. I'm like, hey, man, we need to go
do something. He said, basically, you know this isn't your business.
I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
planning ID shoot him.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
And come back.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
So I got the knock on the door three am.
Speaker 7 (02:11):
The guard at the gate says that somebody left the base.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Come back to the VSP. They got their guns drawn
on me.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
I got call my cell phone and it was Bob
and the first thing out of his mouth was you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Need to run. Something really bad has happened.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
I said, Bales, what the fuck happened? He looked up
and he said, I think I need a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the War Within the Robert
Bayles story. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was never expected to
reach this level of notoriety. His conception of himself as
an all American guy clashes with the pariah that he
(02:53):
has become, and his extensive interviews with documentarian Paul Blowski,
Baal's pins picture of an early life that was seemingly
as normal as anyone else's.
Speaker 9 (03:04):
Let's begin with where are you from, where you're born?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Where'd you grow up? Hight.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I grew up in Norwood, Ohio. It's a suburb of Cincinnati,
blue collar town. We had a General Motors plant there
until nineteen eighty seven. You know, my dad worked in
a factory his whole life. My mom never worked, stay
at home mom.
Speaker 9 (03:23):
So brothers, sisters, you know what. You know, how many
kids are in the family where it joined.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I had four brothers.
Speaker 9 (03:28):
I'm the youngest of five.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
So I was a kid that got beat up and protected,
so you know a little bit of both, you know.
I think I got a lot of attention. I got
to spend a lot of quality time with my dad
that I think my older brothers didn't get.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Growing up as the baby of a family with five
growing boys, finances were often spread then.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
We didn't have much money, you know. I think the
most money on my dad ever made was like twenty
seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The one fights that I remember with my mother and
father were about money, and so I think that left
a real taste in my mouth. We were the blue
collar gyes. You know, we were the you know, you
guys aren't that smart. You know you're going to have to,
you know, be more physical. You know you're gonna end
up working in a factory. You know, that's the lifestyle.
(04:17):
So I think the idea of proving people wrong, proving
that you can do, and the idea that you know
you want to get up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
During his time as an active duty soldier, Robert Bales
was known for his dedication to his craft. It's a
work ethic that was developed at a young age on
the grid iron.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I love football, you know, as a kid, you know,
I mean when I was seven, I'd come home in
the backyard and I had my whole football team, a
little nerve football out there, throwing my nerve football to
my fake guys in the backyard. Later in high school,
I was cabin the football team.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
In those kind of groups, there's some people that are
kind of the ones that are plotting out and organizing,
kind of the leaders some of their followers.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
You know, this is the.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Dynamic I think as far as the leader I don't
think that really developed until seventh and eighth grade football.
I think it changed because I just had a knack
for it. You know, you start doing some things and
you start getting counted on, and then it carries over.
I think football carries over to sports in general, carryover
into life, and then it translates into everything else. So,
for example, you know, you had to have at least
(05:21):
a sea average to play football, to play sports, and
so all of a sudden, you start getting a Sea
average and you're like, you know what, that's pretty easy.
Maybe I can do a little better. I think football
is a great lesson for life. You know, you take
lots of hits, but you get it up and you
keep going. You know, you never stay down. You know,
being a part of that community, being a part of
the brotherhood, being.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
A part of that fraternity.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
You're working with your best friends. I mean, these guys
are your best friends in life. You know, you do
everything together.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
The people who know Bails will attest that he's a
fiercely loyal person, whether it's on the football field or
the battlefield. You could argue that he's always had a
protective streak. Nowhere was this more apparent than with a
friendship that Bob Foster with his next door neighbor Wade.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I started working with Wade when I was fourteen. Wade
has Microsoft offlies, which means that his brain closed too early,
or the soft spot in his brain closed up so
his brain could expand.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Good looking guy.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
You wouldn't know if he was just sitting here that
he was retarded, but he had. He was severely retarded.
So you know, he never got he never made it
past the age of reasoning. They lived next door to me,
so I kind of grew up with him a little bit.
And they had a program called Model fifty, which was
(06:43):
established by Nancy Reagan, I believe, where families could keep
their children at home and get help from the outside. So,
you know, basically they hired me to help take care
of Waite. Well, Wade became, you know, a dashed in
my hip. Wade and I did everything together. You know,
we'd go out and hang out, just walk in the mall,
(07:04):
you know, and so Wade drew a crowd wherever we went.
You know, he obviously was different. It wasn't like this
was a job. This is my.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Brother, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Bob's commitment to his neighbor was the real deal. During
his freshman year of college, his first year away from home,
lead hurt himself badly. Baals ended up spending the next
twelve months back in Norwood.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
After I got out of high school and I was
at Mount Saint Joseph and Cincinnati for a year. Well,
Wade half falling down a flight of steps broke his hip,
and so it was a lot of rehab to get
him back to normal or get him back up walking,
and so I spent some time doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Bals grew up in Ohio in the eighties, so did
I actually, although Bales is a few years older than me,
but I can tell you firsthand it was rare for
the varsity football cap to spend a lot of time
with his disabled neighbor. That said, he was a young
man who still had some growing up to do. His wife,
Carrie thinks Bob was a different person before the two
of them met his adults.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
He was really popular in high school.
Speaker 8 (08:16):
He was co captain of the football team, he was
president of his senior class party.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
But he was kind of a.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Jerk before he turned thirty. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
Prior to meeting me when he was in his twenties,
him and his friends would go out and he would
go up to a girl, maybe a not so pretty girl,
and he would pretend like he was shy and giving
her his.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Number, and then he would walk away.
Speaker 8 (08:39):
He goes, I'm really shy that you should give me
a call sometime, right and his friends would be watching
this and she would open it up and it would
say call one eight hundred weight watchers. And so I
told him, I'm like, look, if I met you before
we were thirty years old, I wouldn't have liked you,
and you wouldn't have liked me.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So much of Robert Bayales's childhood sounds like it could
have been ripped from eighties movie. The big working class family,
the football, the friendships, the pranks. There aren't many indicators
that this guy would one day end up in Fort
Leavenworth Military Prison. Compare that with some of the other
infamous mass murderers in American history. Frequently, their upbringings were
(09:20):
more complicated, sometimes rife with disturbing incidents. That's why defense
attorney John Henry Brown notes stark differences between Bales and
men like Ted Bundy, another one of his former clients.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I never believed that people were born evil. I never
was raised that way, But when I met Ted Bundy,
I changed my opinion. He was definitely a very evil person.
Was clearly a sociopath. I don't think that the term
serial killer was even in our vocabulary until the seventies
(09:55):
or the eighties, when there were a lot of incidents
like that. Then Ted came along, and of course that
label fit him pretty well. There's no way that you
could compare Bobby Bails to Ted Bundy at all. Bobby
is not a sociopath. We became really close. I ended
up really admiring Bob and liking.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Bob Let's transition from Middle America to the middle of
the Afghan desert. After coming back to the VSP covered
in blood, Robert Bales told Special Forces Captain Danny Fields
that he needed a lawyer. That request would be honored
(10:41):
the first the military had a more pressing priority.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
So afterwards, you know, it was probably like three o'clock
when it flew me out of panjaway to Kandahar. And
there's like some blank times here where everything kind of
runs together, you know. So I was in Candahar in
this like little box room there's noiger than a storage closet.
Then I ended up in like a jail, I think,
for a few hours, and then they flew me to
(11:06):
Kuwait put me in like this kennel that was inside
of a tent for a while, and then I ended
up here in Levenworth, Kansas, and then from there I
meet John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Carrie Bales was responsible for recruiting star attorney John Henry
Brown for one of the most polarizing cases of his career.
Speaker 8 (11:30):
It was seeing my older sister and her husband's idea
to get John Henry Bound involved because he's really good
with the media.
Speaker 6 (11:38):
He dealt with other, you know, controversial cases. I didn't
know who he.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
Was prior to meeting him, right, Like, I didn't go
Google him or anything like that. He was a smart person,
you know, who I knew was powerful.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I guess as.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
In like probably the worst situation ever, and here he
was someone that was going to that said they would
you help us, certainly trying to help us.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I was contacted by Bobby's family. I remember They've been
driving in my car getting a call on my bluetooth,
and of course I'd heard in the news what had happened,
but they had mentioned a name of any soldier involved.
I just knew the General of publicity about some soldier
(12:22):
going off the defense basically, so I knew the tragedy
of the whole event.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
We met with him and got him on board to
help us.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Surreal, very surreal.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Carrie was scared, her family was scared to kids. This
is a scary situation. The Taliban has nothing to be
taken lightly. So the army whisked Carrie and her family
away to a safe house on the base somewhere.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
The military packed up our house for us and moved
all of our things within that next week. I had
to get a house on Fort Louis without telling anybody
who I was. He and my kids definitely saw the
media circus.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
If you were watching the national news at this time.
Robert Byles's name and background was hard to avoid.
Speaker 10 (13:11):
His name has not been officially released by the military,
but the military source now confirmed the suspect is Staff
Sergeant Robert Bales. Obviously, it's easier now to look at
his record and all of that.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
He was a first platoon sergeant there in Afghanistan, did
a lot of work with the tribal elders there.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Watching the story play out in the public arena. John
Henry Brown only became more convinced that he was doing
the right thing, picking up the phone for a defendant
like Bales at a moment when most other people might
have hung up.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I believe the only reason to be a lawyer is
to help people. I guess I've always been an advocate
for the underdog, and it just seemed fundamentally unfair to
me that someone who we created, had four deployments, should
be treated the way he was being treated.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Brown sought to put the staff sergeant's strongest advocates front
and center, but twenty twelve, the list of people willing
to openly side with an alleged workmaninal was short. Brown
himself was one, Carrie was another.
Speaker 8 (14:09):
I felt it really important for me show the human
side of Bob and that Bob is not what has
been portrayed of him. And I remember thinking that I
really liked Matt Lauer and that he would be a
good listener to my story.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You've spoken to him twice on the phone.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Did you say, sweetheart, did you do this?
Speaker 1 (14:24):
No?
Speaker 11 (14:25):
No, I mean, as a spouse, wouldn't you want to
ask that question quickly, honey, why are they saying these
things about you?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Not on a monitored phone call. It was surreal. It
was like, this isn't happening to me. This is like
you watch it on TV's this kind.
Speaker 8 (14:42):
Of story, this kind of thing happens to someone else,
But here I am living this and it was frightening
and not the way you want to be in the media.
It just drives me crazy that everybody wants to think
the absolute possible worst and it's not their family being
drug through the mud.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Painful as it might have been. Kerrie went on National
TV for one clear reason, to literally save Robert Bales' life.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The Secretary of the Fans, Leon Panetta, actually called for
a death penalty sentlus, which is first of all, undue
command influence and should not have been said. And I
think that was one of the reasons why I ended
up representing body. Leon Panetta, Well, here's somebody who's kind
of known internationally as the humanitarian asking for the death penalty,
(15:34):
and to me, that's inconsistent. Whatever happened. You know, we
as the nation created Bobby and we were quickly abandoning him.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Secretary Panetta declined our interview request, so the veracity of
his claim that Panetta asked for the death penalty is unclear,
but he did take immediate action after the Canahar massacre,
giving a press conference just hours after the news had broken.
Speaker 12 (16:01):
Traveling overseas Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Himself, so the death penalty is a possibility.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Obviously, we were all deeply shocked and sad by the
event that occurred there.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
On the afternoon of March fifteenth, twenty twelve, four Star
General John Allen gave a press conference on the Kandahar killings.
Allen worked closely with Panetta and was responsible for managing
the war effort in Afghanistan. His comments reveal a lot
about how the US would be regarding Robert Bales.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
In the case of Staffs. Sergent Bale's my sincere condolences
to the loved ones, family members, and friends of those
who were killed and injured in that senseless act of violence. Charges,
as you know, have been preferred against Stas Argent Bales.
Compensation payments to the families of the victims have been paid,
and both the criminal investigation as well as an administrative
(16:57):
investigation continues.
Speaker 13 (17:00):
Something went terribly wrong investigation pending something went terribly wrong.
How are you making sure something like that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
We're investigating this one very thoroughly, and I'm looking at
command climate of that unit.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
In fact, let's go back to the village stability platform.
The morning of March eleventh, twenty twelve, hours after the
shit storm began, Brown might have said that the military
was abandoning Bales, but that's in retrospect. In the heat
of the moment, soldiers like Captain Fields and Private Alexander
(17:39):
were left to deal with a volatile situation that Bales created.
Speaker 7 (17:44):
Just having him on the base. After we kind of
pieced together what we thought that he had done, it
was a very uncomfortable feeling to have that person near you.
We said, hey, make sure we're watching this guy, and
let's let him pack a bag because he's going to
have to get out of here.
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I don't remember, you.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
Know, exactly how long it was that he was there,
but it could have been more than a few hours,
you know. I remember they landed, he got right on
the plane and took off, so he was gone pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
In the region of panchwe the news of the American
military breaking into civilian households and killing women and children
was spreading fast.
Speaker 7 (18:22):
At first light sun came up, there were people at
our gate, and you know, they said, we want to
speak to who's in charge. We see footprints that have
left your base and are at the place where people
were shot and killed.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
We have the bodies.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
We're going to bring them to you in the back
of a pickup truck because we want you to see them.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
That we're not lying to you.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And our front gate is not a gate.
Speaker 14 (18:45):
It's a piece of wood with constantina wire up throughout.
Speaker 15 (18:48):
It's not like some steel fortress thing that you think
it would be right like in the movie An.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It's it's not any type of defensive barrier at all.
Speaker 14 (18:55):
The Afghans were not there to inflict damage. What they
were there to do is get bail. They wanted instant
retribution for what happened, and they wanted to show us
the evidence of what it happened.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
These people came to the gate I saw.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
I ended up seeing more people in front of that
gate than I had in the previous forty five days.
I don't know where they came from, but these people
were showing up in force and they demanded. They said,
we know it was at least one person here, if
not more. They thought it was the entire base, honestly,
and we want whoever did this.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
Thank God. I could say, well, I'd love to give
him to you, but he's not here. I just remember
having relief that I could say.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That Captain Field's private Alexander and the man were calling
Soldier x all guarded the entrance as an anguished, in
formidable crowd grow outside.
Speaker 7 (19:45):
We were getting intelligence reports that there were some bad
actors in that crowd who either had some machine gun
of some sort, or hand grenades or RPGs, but they
had something that they were intending to use to harm
us or through.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
A few hours, like there were hundreds of Afghans, pissed
Afghans outside our gate, bringing like they're bringing by shot
up by his kids and stuff like that.
Speaker 15 (20:08):
Ten feet away from me, fifteen feet away from you
are a crowd of Afghans holding dead children, displaying the
children pointing to them, crying, looking so enraged at us.
Speaker 14 (20:23):
I mean, there's one guy, white Beard, and his eyes
were just red. There was no call it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The red in his eyes.
Speaker 16 (20:31):
It became really personal at that time like, really really personal.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
I'm looking at the crowd. I'm like, they're are coming
and kill us all. They're coming, kill us all. And
I understood it. I understood their anger. You know, if
I was a dad and some shirk off came and
they'ld be held a pay right, so.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Horrible When Bails attacked Hadji Muhammad Wazir had been spending
the night his brother's house in another town. He recalls
the morning after he learned that six of his seven
children had been killed.
Speaker 17 (21:08):
In the morning, we were having tea when one of
the people of our village called us and said there
was a problem in my house. I said, what's wrong?
When they told me, I understood the situation. I thought
that either there was a night operation by the Americans
or it was bombed.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
What was the reaction of you and the people of
your village after the incident.
Speaker 17 (21:34):
After the incident, all the people were provoked and their
blood boiled. They say today they did this injustice to
Haji Wazir. Tomorrow it will happen to me as well.
Why is such cruelty done to us? Why are Knight
military operations carried out against us? Why did they enter
(21:55):
our house at night. What are their rights that an
infidel enters Muslim house and tramples women, children and babies
and makes them murdyers by shooting them and then they
burned them. Neither God nor the law has considered such
an act as valid.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Here's Mulla Baran, whose brother was killed by bales.
Speaker 17 (22:18):
We continued our gathering from the morning until the scholars
and elders told us to bury the martyrs. I am
very grateful to the people of my place who gathered
and demonstrated in front of the Americans and warned the
Afghan government that we are attacking the American forces.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
For both Afghan civilians and American soldiers in the region
of Panjway, life became even more dangerous after March eleventh,
twenty twelve. It started with the tense encounter outside of
esp Beleambay and it didn't stop.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
I think the second day, I remember waking up with
almost this question of like was this real or was
this a dream?
Speaker 6 (22:58):
And then I walked outside and I thought, well, okay, yep,
this was all real.
Speaker 16 (23:03):
You know, balls got taken away in the helicopter, but
we had to sleep there and like we had to essentially,
you know, survive. I mean, it wasn't even cleaning up
the mess. It was just survive where you are and
there's nobody coming. It was bad before, but it got
demonstrably worse after Bales was gone. I mean, the entire
(23:25):
country of Afghanistan was on the safety standown for two
weeks because of this incident.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
For thirty days, basically we could do anything.
Speaker 7 (23:32):
So in that month after the incident, when we were
still in the base, a lot of targeted attacks on
the base, you know, some order or some a lot
of small arms fire, mostly just harassing fire.
Speaker 15 (23:44):
The morning prayer that morning was just a geoon, just
come here kill these people.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
I basically slept with my rifle for a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
You know, for the thirty odd soldiers inside the VSP,
options are limited. Fostering relationships with the locals is an impossibility.
Fighting back against the Taliban would only create more problems.
The only reason they're still there is to help the
army complete in internal investigation otherwise known as AT fifteen
to six.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
It was identified obviously very shortly after the incident that
you know, they needed to do an investigation, and in
that time, basically our job was to answer the questions
for the fifteen six. There was a I believe it
was a one star general doing the fifteen to six
and basically you just needed to be available for when
he would call your name. And so that was our
(24:36):
job until the fifteen six was done, and then we
were going to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
The United States knew that the soldiers associated with the
Kanahar massacre would eventually be going at home, but on
a macro level, America had a bigger problem on its
hands tensions with the Afghan central government, namely President Hamid Karzaid.
Speaker 18 (24:56):
In twenty twelve, the relationship with the United States in
Afghanistan was at an all time low, and every.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Time krsn I gave an interview, it became more and.
Speaker 18 (25:05):
More evident that the relationship was breaking down with the
Obama administration.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That's the voice of journalist Yealda Hakim, who was working
for the Australian news outlet SBS Dateline in twenty twelve.
Speaker 18 (25:17):
He talked about the sovereignty of the nation. That was
something that he felt quite strongly about. I had quite
a sort of an intense conversation with Hamid Kausei about,
you know, sovereignty and the place of the nation and
night raids.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Night raids were a point of contention during this period
of the Afghan War. Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannett explains.
Speaker 19 (25:39):
Tom mccarzi and the American administration were at art. The
night rates were relentless, and that was in the middle
of the night, a rating party of American soldiers goes
into a village that is supposedly at Alaban Village and
goes into the halls, separates the men the women. And
(25:59):
it was a constant feature of the US strategy in Afghanistan.
And it was strongly opposed by Hamid Karzai. And that's
because the tribal people themselves were deadly opposed to this.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
One could argue that staff Sergeant Bales took the concept
of a night raak to its logical yet horrific extreme.
Several days after the incident, Karzai addressed it in a speech, saying, quote,
this has been going on for too long. You've heard
me before. It is by all means the end of
the rope.
Speaker 18 (26:34):
Here it was clear that the Afghan government had lost
complete control of the situation. They were no longer masters
of their own destiny, if they ever were, but certainly
Karzai in twenty twelve gave off that perception.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
The US military's reaction to the killings added insult to injury.
Karzai wanted Bales to be tried in Afghanistan, where he
would be executed in accordance with Afghan justice, but as
we learned earlier, Bales was rushed back home to face
trial in America. Kathy Gannon says that was standard operating procedure.
Speaker 19 (27:09):
Nobody ever thought the Americans would bye by Afghan law.
I mean, it's not like anybody believes that the Americans
are going to let a military person, whatever his prime
stay in the country where he committed it.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Even so, veteran and Panjwai podcast host Curtis Grace argues
that America's unilateral decision had serious ramifications for Karzai.
Speaker 12 (27:34):
He did look weak when we took Bob Byles out
of the country within twenty four hours of him doing it,
and he, I mean, he was gone, like the Afghans
never got a chance, and it made cars I look
really weak. And his brother in fact went to Belumby
and tried to go to nau Gbn and lost him
of his personal guard trying to go there all to
try and be like, no, we are in charge here,
this is an Afghan matter, and we just like took
(27:55):
the dude out of the country. So I think the
Pandroid massacre was kind of the nail on the coffin
for any chance of the central government to really control Panjwai.
Speaker 18 (28:05):
The telebumnel gaining a lot of ground, The war was intensifying.
Obama was trying to find a solution with a partner
who was increasingly being backed into a corner and discrudged.
So Kusai's rhetoric was getting more and more intense and
the relationship was deteriorating.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
In late March of twenty twelve, yalde Hakim was on
assignment in Afghanistan.
Speaker 18 (28:31):
I was an Afghan born Western journalist. I had access
to the Western press and a platform, but my Afghan
heritage meant I had a level of empathy for the
country of my birth and for the people and what
they were going through.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
The region wasn't mourning for the victims of the Kandahar massacre.
Even so, nobody seemed to know what had actually happened.
As John Henry Brown recalled, the Afghan police weren't able
to conduct a proper examination of the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
That area became so dangerous after the incident that I
don't think we the United States went back there and
did a normal investigation. I mean, you know, there was
no CSI.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Like many reporters at the time, Yelda was frustrated by
this lack of concrete information that existed on the case.
Speaker 18 (29:21):
This whole thing became shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Virtually
as soon as they went and got fails, he disappeared
overnight from the face of the earth.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
There wasn't any real acknowledgment of what.
Speaker 18 (29:35):
Had just taken place, and everything just shut down, and
the Afghan partners were working with the US military to
kind of do as they were told, which was hide
the witnesses away, don't let the investigators get involved, don't
let anyone go out to the field where it happened.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Diffuse, diffuse, diffuse.
Speaker 18 (29:59):
But that ended up having a detrimental effect, because you know,
the minute you tell journalists they're not supposed to do something,
they make sure they do do it.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yolder had recently developed a rapport with Karzai. She lobbied
the Afghan president for access to Alakosa and Najebien. The
villagers hit by staff Sergeant Bales.
Speaker 18 (30:20):
Because he was so furious and this was such an
intense time in the country, he sort of said, allow
her to go and give her full access. I knew
how this could be told from a very different perspective,
less from the perspective of the Afghans being the victims,
and more from the perspective of a soldier, like so
(30:44):
many others who may have done multiple rotations, who may
have found themselves in a situation where they're far from
home and in a situation where PTSD kicks in and
there is a sense of justification for what happened.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Her goal was set people, you're perilous, figure out exactly
what happened on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
We had to provide clarity.
Speaker 18 (31:08):
We were on a fact finding mission trying to report
or figure out what the truth was. In the last
fifteen years of reporting from Afghanistan, I've realized nothing is
as it seems.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It's all very murky. So my whole aiming.
Speaker 18 (31:25):
As the only journalist on the ground was to provide
some kind of clear timeline. I knew that I had
sort of one shot at this, and I knew the
dangers involved, and I was going to give it my.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
Absolute all.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Y'all, to quickly learn what Bales and his fellow soldiers
already knew. The road to Panjway was treacherous.
Speaker 18 (31:48):
I went to the police headquarters in Kandahar and they
said to me, you want to go to Punchway, not happening.
No way in hell are you going anywhere in your Punchway.
If you have a death wish, you got a Punchway.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We don't have approval from the US military.
Speaker 18 (32:04):
They're not going to support this operation, and we're not
willing to lose a single man for this.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
But we knew we needed to get.
Speaker 20 (32:12):
To the crime scene, and so me, my cameraman, my
security traveled to the road heading into Punchway alongside General
Rosark in his convoy.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
General Rozak was the head of police and Candor Heart.
He served as the de facto chaperone of the trip.
Speaker 18 (32:33):
I remember sitting in the car with Razakh, and you know,
he was someone who had all sorts of allegations of
atrocities in his name and the treatment of human rights violations,
and we were single handedly holding together Candor Heart against
it falling to the Taliban and the Americans knew he
was an important allied there. I am in the car
(32:55):
with him, and suddenly the convoy comes out of fire
and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Razak jumps out of this armored vehicle and.
Speaker 18 (33:04):
I sort of sum into the car seat, and he
gets into the front seat, picks up his rifle and
just randomly.
Speaker 20 (33:13):
Starts shooting into the distance.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
And I just remember being quite horrified, just the randomness.
Speaker 18 (33:20):
Of it, like there's someone shooting an our convoy just
got out of the car and started shooting randomly.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
And then we got back into the car and it
was like as you were.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Once they reached their destination, Yelda and her crew knew
they had officially entered a warzone.
Speaker 18 (33:36):
You know. I was in my late twenties and no
real responsibilities in life, and just sort of thinking, well,
nothing's going to happen to me. But I remember as
we're walking across, I could hear impasture and durry the
two police officers.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
They'd said with us. I remember them saying to each other,
do you think they've really cleared this place of minds?
You know, we know the Taliban have got booby.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Traps be careful eyes wide open to the potential risks.
Yolda and her cameraman forged ahead into the villages.
Speaker 18 (34:09):
So we go to punchwe and we do all that
filming and then we sort of part ways with the
police and Razakh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
And those guys village.
Speaker 18 (34:18):
I went filmed inside Punchwey the home. I saw the
crime scene. I saw the blood splotted on the walls.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 18 (34:25):
We did all of that, and then we came back
and then we came back to the police headquarters. We
were staying at a different hotel, you know. We said
goodbye to them, and I met Mala Baran at the
military compound. His brother was killed and he had taken
in his sister in law with all of her children
(34:47):
into his home.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Mala Barran is one of the app hands we interviewed.
Heard him speak earlier in this episode.
Speaker 18 (34:54):
And Baran said, you know, you have to come to
this certain area. So we're all getting out the car to.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Go to the village.
Speaker 18 (35:01):
And he said, no, I'm only taking her. The rest
of this, like security and your cameramen, they're not coming
because it's all women. It's our women. I'm not taking
sort of more white men into my home and it's
either you or you don't do this. So I look
at my cameraman and he hands me a little handicap.
(35:24):
Take this, and you know, are you comfortable to go?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
And I sort of said, I think so.
Speaker 18 (35:34):
There's no lights and we're walking into this neighborhood on
the outskirts of Kandah. I remember looking back and the
car that my team were in was getting further and
further and further away, and then I just had a.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Moment where I couldn't see the lights.
Speaker 18 (35:53):
From the car anymore, and I just thought to myself,
Oh my god, I'm walking into a Tullivan trap and
they're going to hold me for ransom.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
This is the most stupid thing I could do. And
so I stopped in.
Speaker 18 (36:09):
My tracks and I said to him, I don't want
to go any further. And he said to me why,
and he looked at me and he realized I totally
now was freaking out, and he said, it's okay, It's.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Let's take a moment to realize just how insane this looks. Yalder,
a female foreign journalist going alone into villages that had
just recently been the scenes of grizzly murders for an
outsider to these tight knit patriarchal clans and families, intrusion
into their lives, give me death. And here is Yalder
(36:44):
going above and beyond to shed light on this story.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I got to the doors.
Speaker 18 (36:50):
I just thought, he's going to open the doors and
they're just going to be a whole heap of like
men with guns inside, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And when he opened the doors, it was dark and
they didn't have any electricity.
Speaker 18 (37:03):
And I looked into the distance and there was a
woman sitting on the ground with multiple children around her.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Very small children. We're talking, you know, a.
Speaker 18 (37:14):
Newborn and you know, a one year old, two year old,
like very very small children, a combination of all of
our aunt's kids and her own kids after her husband
was killed. And I remember sitting on the ground and
turning on my camera and.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Just doing this interview with her.
Speaker 18 (37:33):
And he was saying to her, tell her what you saw,
and the children started describing the boot of a soldier
kicking one of the children in the stomach and stomping
on one of the children, and then another child was
saying they were multiple people.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
That was what stayed with me, and that I found
quite chilling.
Speaker 18 (38:03):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Soldiers with lights.
Speaker 20 (38:12):
She said, it was lights coming out of their helmets.
Speaker 18 (38:16):
I saw many, many soldiers, and they came and they
killed my father.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 18 (38:27):
Giving a founding compensation for the loss of life, it's
kind of a band aid fix.
Speaker 17 (38:33):
I told the Americans that we don't want your money.
We just want this person who wronged us to be executed.
Speaker 11 (38:39):
My job as the prosecutor is to represent the government
in the pursuit of justice. I wanted the public to
understand that these people were human beings.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
The military was hampered by the inadequacy of the Afghan police.
Speaker 15 (38:50):
All of the people nearby said, yes, we saw two
people here.
Speaker 11 (38:54):
I want a conviction, playing by the rules, no insurmountable mistakes.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
It's ninety seven conviction rate in the u CMJAY. The
closest to that is Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
How many times do we see the army throw guys
away all the time? 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
(39:26):
series was created by executive producers Paul Plowski and David Check.
Executive producers 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 Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner.
(39:46):
Teddy Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an
associate producer, and Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks
to Liz Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpie,
and Meerwi Satall, as well as all of the people
who are interviewed for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to
(40:08):
The War Within on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
I met a lot of soldiers who empathized with Bobby,
almost all of them. I didn't rant his soldiers all
the time, basically saying been there, done that, and I predicted,
and I said in the newspapers, I said, we better
get ready for more Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
John Henry Brown represented staff Sergeant Robert Bales in military
court after he committed the Candaharm massacre.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The soldiers I met who knew Bobby, I look very
highly at them, very highly. He took on becoming a
role model for younger soldiers. He thought that was part
of his job. I had never met any of us
send men. Is that anything bad about Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
As a lawyer, Brown is known for working with some
of society's most notorious figures, including serial killer Ted Bundy.
He titled his autobiography The Devil's Defender. In twenty twelve,
he took on his newest client.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
There were a number of titles when I always let
Bobby alone, and Bobby would cry, and he would not
cry for himself much, but mostly for what happened. But
none of us should be judged on the worst day
(01:33):
of our lives. There's many other aspects to our lives
that mitigate the worst six that we've done, thank God.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Previously on the War Within.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Bob was always on ready. He wanted to make sure
everyone was protected.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
We came upon one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives.
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP. I'm like, hey, man, we need to go
do something. He said, basically, you know this isn't your business.
I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
planning ID shoot him.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
And come back.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
So I got the knock on the door three am.
Speaker 7 (02:11):
The guard at the gate says that somebody left the base.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Come back to the VSP. They got their guns drawn
on me.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
I got call my cell phone and it was Bob
and the first thing out of his mouth was you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Need to run. Something really bad has happened.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
I said, Bales, what the fuck happened? He looked up
and he said, I think I need a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the War Within the Robert
Bayles story. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was never expected to
reach this level of notoriety. His conception of himself as
an all American guy clashes with the pariah that he
(02:53):
has become, and his extensive interviews with documentarian Paul Blowski,
Baal's pins picture of an early life that was seemingly
as normal as anyone else's.
Speaker 9 (03:04):
Let's begin with where are you from, where you're born?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Where'd you grow up? Hight.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I grew up in Norwood, Ohio. It's a suburb of Cincinnati,
blue collar town. We had a General Motors plant there
until nineteen eighty seven. You know, my dad worked in
a factory his whole life. My mom never worked, stay
at home mom.
Speaker 9 (03:23):
So brothers, sisters, you know what. You know, how many
kids are in the family where it joined.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I had four brothers.
Speaker 9 (03:28):
I'm the youngest of five.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
So I was a kid that got beat up and protected,
so you know a little bit of both, you know.
I think I got a lot of attention. I got
to spend a lot of quality time with my dad
that I think my older brothers didn't get.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Growing up as the baby of a family with five
growing boys, finances were often spread then.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
We didn't have much money, you know. I think the
most money on my dad ever made was like twenty
seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The one fights that I remember with my mother and
father were about money, and so I think that left
a real taste in my mouth. We were the blue
collar gyes. You know, we were the you know, you
guys aren't that smart. You know you're going to have to,
you know, be more physical. You know you're gonna end
up working in a factory. You know, that's the lifestyle.
(04:17):
So I think the idea of proving people wrong, proving
that you can do, and the idea that you know
you want to get up.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
During his time as an active duty soldier, Robert Bales
was known for his dedication to his craft. It's a
work ethic that was developed at a young age on
the grid iron.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I love football, you know, as a kid, you know,
I mean when I was seven, I'd come home in
the backyard and I had my whole football team, a
little nerve football out there, throwing my nerve football to
my fake guys in the backyard. Later in high school,
I was cabin the football team.
Speaker 9 (04:50):
In those kind of groups, there's some people that are
kind of the ones that are plotting out and organizing,
kind of the leaders some of their followers.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
You know, this is the.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Dynamic I think as far as the leader I don't
think that really developed until seventh and eighth grade football.
I think it changed because I just had a knack
for it. You know, you start doing some things and
you start getting counted on, and then it carries over.
I think football carries over to sports in general, carryover
into life, and then it translates into everything else. So,
for example, you know, you had to have at least
(05:21):
a sea average to play football, to play sports, and
so all of a sudden, you start getting a Sea
average and you're like, you know what, that's pretty easy.
Maybe I can do a little better. I think football
is a great lesson for life. You know, you take
lots of hits, but you get it up and you
keep going. You know, you never stay down. You know,
being a part of that community, being a part of
the brotherhood, being.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
A part of that fraternity.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
You're working with your best friends. I mean, these guys
are your best friends in life. You know, you do
everything together.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
The people who know Bails will attest that he's a
fiercely loyal person, whether it's on the football field or
the battlefield. You could argue that he's always had a
protective streak. Nowhere was this more apparent than with a
friendship that Bob Foster with his next door neighbor Wade.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I started working with Wade when I was fourteen. Wade
has Microsoft offlies, which means that his brain closed too early,
or the soft spot in his brain closed up so
his brain could expand.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Good looking guy.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
You wouldn't know if he was just sitting here that
he was retarded, but he had. He was severely retarded.
So you know, he never got he never made it
past the age of reasoning. They lived next door to me,
so I kind of grew up with him a little bit.
And they had a program called Model fifty, which was
(06:43):
established by Nancy Reagan, I believe, where families could keep
their children at home and get help from the outside. So,
you know, basically they hired me to help take care
of Waite. Well, Wade became, you know, a dashed in
my hip. Wade and I did everything together. You know,
we'd go out and hang out, just walk in the mall,
(07:04):
you know, and so Wade drew a crowd wherever we went.
You know, he obviously was different. It wasn't like this
was a job. This is my.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Brother, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Bob's commitment to his neighbor was the real deal. During
his freshman year of college, his first year away from home,
lead hurt himself badly. Baals ended up spending the next
twelve months back in Norwood.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
After I got out of high school and I was
at Mount Saint Joseph and Cincinnati for a year. Well,
Wade half falling down a flight of steps broke his hip,
and so it was a lot of rehab to get
him back to normal or get him back up walking,
and so I spent some time doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Bals grew up in Ohio in the eighties, so did
I actually, although Bales is a few years older than me,
but I can tell you firsthand it was rare for
the varsity football cap to spend a lot of time
with his disabled neighbor. That said, he was a young
man who still had some growing up to do. His wife,
Carrie thinks Bob was a different person before the two
of them met his adults.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
He was really popular in high school.
Speaker 8 (08:16):
He was co captain of the football team, he was
president of his senior class party.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
But he was kind of a.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Jerk before he turned thirty. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
Prior to meeting me when he was in his twenties,
him and his friends would go out and he would
go up to a girl, maybe a not so pretty girl,
and he would pretend like he was shy and giving
her his.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Number, and then he would walk away.
Speaker 8 (08:39):
He goes, I'm really shy that you should give me
a call sometime, right and his friends would be watching
this and she would open it up and it would
say call one eight hundred weight watchers. And so I
told him, I'm like, look, if I met you before
we were thirty years old, I wouldn't have liked you,
and you wouldn't have liked me.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So much of Robert Bayales's childhood sounds like it could
have been ripped from eighties movie. The big working class family,
the football, the friendships, the pranks. There aren't many indicators
that this guy would one day end up in Fort
Leavenworth Military Prison. Compare that with some of the other
infamous mass murderers in American history. Frequently, their upbringings were
(09:20):
more complicated, sometimes rife with disturbing incidents. That's why defense
attorney John Henry Brown notes stark differences between Bales and
men like Ted Bundy, another one of his former clients.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I never believed that people were born evil. I never
was raised that way, But when I met Ted Bundy,
I changed my opinion. He was definitely a very evil person.
Was clearly a sociopath. I don't think that the term
serial killer was even in our vocabulary until the seventies
(09:55):
or the eighties, when there were a lot of incidents
like that. Then Ted came along, and of course that
label fit him pretty well. There's no way that you
could compare Bobby Bails to Ted Bundy at all. Bobby
is not a sociopath. We became really close. I ended
up really admiring Bob and liking.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Bob Let's transition from Middle America to the middle of
the Afghan desert. After coming back to the VSP covered
in blood, Robert Bales told Special Forces Captain Danny Fields
that he needed a lawyer. That request would be honored
(10:41):
the first the military had a more pressing priority.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
So afterwards, you know, it was probably like three o'clock
when it flew me out of panjaway to Kandahar. And
there's like some blank times here where everything kind of
runs together, you know. So I was in Candahar in
this like little box room there's noiger than a storage closet.
Then I ended up in like a jail, I think,
for a few hours, and then they flew me to
(11:06):
Kuwait put me in like this kennel that was inside
of a tent for a while, and then I ended
up here in Levenworth, Kansas, and then from there I
meet John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Carrie Bales was responsible for recruiting star attorney John Henry
Brown for one of the most polarizing cases of his career.
Speaker 8 (11:30):
It was seeing my older sister and her husband's idea
to get John Henry Bound involved because he's really good
with the media.
Speaker 6 (11:38):
He dealt with other, you know, controversial cases. I didn't
know who he.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
Was prior to meeting him, right, Like, I didn't go
Google him or anything like that. He was a smart person,
you know, who I knew was powerful.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I guess as.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
In like probably the worst situation ever, and here he
was someone that was going to that said they would
you help us, certainly trying to help us.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I was contacted by Bobby's family. I remember They've been
driving in my car getting a call on my bluetooth,
and of course I'd heard in the news what had happened,
but they had mentioned a name of any soldier involved.
I just knew the General of publicity about some soldier
(12:22):
going off the defense basically, so I knew the tragedy
of the whole event.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
We met with him and got him on board to
help us.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Surreal, very surreal.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Carrie was scared, her family was scared to kids. This
is a scary situation. The Taliban has nothing to be
taken lightly. So the army whisked Carrie and her family
away to a safe house on the base somewhere.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
The military packed up our house for us and moved
all of our things within that next week. I had
to get a house on Fort Louis without telling anybody
who I was. He and my kids definitely saw the
media circus.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
If you were watching the national news at this time.
Robert Byles's name and background was hard to avoid.
Speaker 10 (13:11):
His name has not been officially released by the military,
but the military source now confirmed the suspect is Staff
Sergeant Robert Bales. Obviously, it's easier now to look at
his record and all of that.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
He was a first platoon sergeant there in Afghanistan, did
a lot of work with the tribal elders there.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Watching the story play out in the public arena. John
Henry Brown only became more convinced that he was doing
the right thing, picking up the phone for a defendant
like Bales at a moment when most other people might
have hung up.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I believe the only reason to be a lawyer is
to help people. I guess I've always been an advocate
for the underdog, and it just seemed fundamentally unfair to
me that someone who we created, had four deployments, should
be treated the way he was being treated.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Brown sought to put the staff sergeant's strongest advocates front
and center, but twenty twelve, the list of people willing
to openly side with an alleged workmaninal was short. Brown
himself was one, Carrie was another.
Speaker 8 (14:09):
I felt it really important for me show the human
side of Bob and that Bob is not what has
been portrayed of him. And I remember thinking that I
really liked Matt Lauer and that he would be a
good listener to my story.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You've spoken to him twice on the phone.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Did you say, sweetheart, did you do this?
Speaker 1 (14:24):
No?
Speaker 11 (14:25):
No, I mean, as a spouse, wouldn't you want to
ask that question quickly, honey, why are they saying these
things about you?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Not on a monitored phone call. It was surreal. It
was like, this isn't happening to me. This is like
you watch it on TV's this kind.
Speaker 8 (14:42):
Of story, this kind of thing happens to someone else,
But here I am living this and it was frightening
and not the way you want to be in the media.
It just drives me crazy that everybody wants to think
the absolute possible worst and it's not their family being
drug through the mud.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Painful as it might have been. Kerrie went on National
TV for one clear reason, to literally save Robert Bales' life.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The Secretary of the Fans, Leon Panetta, actually called for
a death penalty sentlus, which is first of all, undue
command influence and should not have been said. And I
think that was one of the reasons why I ended
up representing body. Leon Panetta, Well, here's somebody who's kind
of known internationally as the humanitarian asking for the death penalty,
(15:34):
and to me, that's inconsistent. Whatever happened. You know, we
as the nation created Bobby and we were quickly abandoning him.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Secretary Panetta declined our interview request, so the veracity of
his claim that Panetta asked for the death penalty is unclear,
but he did take immediate action after the Canahar massacre,
giving a press conference just hours after the news had broken.
Speaker 12 (16:01):
Traveling overseas Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Himself, so the death penalty is a possibility.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Obviously, we were all deeply shocked and sad by the
event that occurred there.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
On the afternoon of March fifteenth, twenty twelve, four Star
General John Allen gave a press conference on the Kandahar killings.
Allen worked closely with Panetta and was responsible for managing
the war effort in Afghanistan. His comments reveal a lot
about how the US would be regarding Robert Bales.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
In the case of Staffs. Sergent Bale's my sincere condolences
to the loved ones, family members, and friends of those
who were killed and injured in that senseless act of violence. Charges,
as you know, have been preferred against Stas Argent Bales.
Compensation payments to the families of the victims have been paid,
and both the criminal investigation as well as an administrative
(16:57):
investigation continues.
Speaker 13 (17:00):
Something went terribly wrong investigation pending something went terribly wrong.
How are you making sure something like that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
We're investigating this one very thoroughly, and I'm looking at
command climate of that unit.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
In fact, let's go back to the village stability platform.
The morning of March eleventh, twenty twelve, hours after the
shit storm began, Brown might have said that the military
was abandoning Bales, but that's in retrospect. In the heat
of the moment, soldiers like Captain Fields and Private Alexander
(17:39):
were left to deal with a volatile situation that Bales created.
Speaker 7 (17:44):
Just having him on the base. After we kind of
pieced together what we thought that he had done, it
was a very uncomfortable feeling to have that person near you.
We said, hey, make sure we're watching this guy, and
let's let him pack a bag because he's going to
have to get out of here.
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I don't remember, you.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
Know, exactly how long it was that he was there,
but it could have been more than a few hours,
you know. I remember they landed, he got right on
the plane and took off, so he was gone pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
In the region of panchwe the news of the American
military breaking into civilian households and killing women and children
was spreading fast.
Speaker 7 (18:22):
At first light sun came up, there were people at
our gate, and you know, they said, we want to
speak to who's in charge. We see footprints that have
left your base and are at the place where people
were shot and killed.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
We have the bodies.
Speaker 7 (18:38):
We're going to bring them to you in the back
of a pickup truck because we want you to see them.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
That we're not lying to you.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And our front gate is not a gate.
Speaker 14 (18:45):
It's a piece of wood with constantina wire up throughout.
Speaker 15 (18:48):
It's not like some steel fortress thing that you think
it would be right like in the movie An.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
It's it's not any type of defensive barrier at all.
Speaker 14 (18:55):
The Afghans were not there to inflict damage. What they
were there to do is get bail. They wanted instant
retribution for what happened, and they wanted to show us
the evidence of what it happened.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
These people came to the gate I saw.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
I ended up seeing more people in front of that
gate than I had in the previous forty five days.
I don't know where they came from, but these people
were showing up in force and they demanded. They said,
we know it was at least one person here, if
not more. They thought it was the entire base, honestly,
and we want whoever did this.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
Thank God. I could say, well, I'd love to give
him to you, but he's not here. I just remember
having relief that I could say.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
That Captain Field's private Alexander and the man were calling
Soldier x all guarded the entrance as an anguished, in
formidable crowd grow outside.
Speaker 7 (19:45):
We were getting intelligence reports that there were some bad
actors in that crowd who either had some machine gun
of some sort, or hand grenades or RPGs, but they
had something that they were intending to use to harm
us or through.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
A few hours, like there were hundreds of Afghans, pissed
Afghans outside our gate, bringing like they're bringing by shot
up by his kids and stuff like that.
Speaker 15 (20:08):
Ten feet away from me, fifteen feet away from you
are a crowd of Afghans holding dead children, displaying the
children pointing to them, crying, looking so enraged at us.
Speaker 14 (20:23):
I mean, there's one guy, white Beard, and his eyes
were just red. There was no call it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The red in his eyes.
Speaker 16 (20:31):
It became really personal at that time like, really really personal.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
I'm looking at the crowd. I'm like, they're are coming
and kill us all. They're coming, kill us all. And
I understood it. I understood their anger. You know, if
I was a dad and some shirk off came and
they'ld be held a pay right, so.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Horrible When Bails attacked Hadji Muhammad Wazir had been spending
the night his brother's house in another town. He recalls
the morning after he learned that six of his seven
children had been killed.
Speaker 17 (21:08):
In the morning, we were having tea when one of
the people of our village called us and said there
was a problem in my house. I said, what's wrong?
When they told me, I understood the situation. I thought
that either there was a night operation by the Americans
or it was bombed.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
What was the reaction of you and the people of
your village after the incident.
Speaker 17 (21:34):
After the incident, all the people were provoked and their
blood boiled. They say today they did this injustice to
Haji Wazir. Tomorrow it will happen to me as well.
Why is such cruelty done to us? Why are Knight
military operations carried out against us? Why did they enter
(21:55):
our house at night. What are their rights that an
infidel enters Muslim house and tramples women, children and babies
and makes them murdyers by shooting them and then they
burned them. Neither God nor the law has considered such
an act as valid.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Here's Mulla Baran, whose brother was killed by bales.
Speaker 17 (22:18):
We continued our gathering from the morning until the scholars
and elders told us to bury the martyrs. I am
very grateful to the people of my place who gathered
and demonstrated in front of the Americans and warned the
Afghan government that we are attacking the American forces.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
For both Afghan civilians and American soldiers in the region
of Panjway, life became even more dangerous after March eleventh,
twenty twelve. It started with the tense encounter outside of
esp Beleambay and it didn't stop.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
I think the second day, I remember waking up with
almost this question of like was this real or was
this a dream?
Speaker 6 (22:58):
And then I walked outside and I thought, well, okay, yep,
this was all real.
Speaker 16 (23:03):
You know, balls got taken away in the helicopter, but
we had to sleep there and like we had to essentially,
you know, survive. I mean, it wasn't even cleaning up
the mess. It was just survive where you are and
there's nobody coming. It was bad before, but it got
demonstrably worse after Bales was gone. I mean, the entire
(23:25):
country of Afghanistan was on the safety standown for two
weeks because of this incident.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
For thirty days, basically we could do anything.
Speaker 7 (23:32):
So in that month after the incident, when we were
still in the base, a lot of targeted attacks on
the base, you know, some order or some a lot
of small arms fire, mostly just harassing fire.
Speaker 15 (23:44):
The morning prayer that morning was just a geoon, just
come here kill these people.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
I basically slept with my rifle for a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
You know, for the thirty odd soldiers inside the VSP,
options are limited. Fostering relationships with the locals is an impossibility.
Fighting back against the Taliban would only create more problems.
The only reason they're still there is to help the
army complete in internal investigation otherwise known as AT fifteen
to six.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
It was identified obviously very shortly after the incident that
you know, they needed to do an investigation, and in
that time, basically our job was to answer the questions
for the fifteen six. There was a I believe it
was a one star general doing the fifteen to six
and basically you just needed to be available for when
he would call your name. And so that was our
(24:36):
job until the fifteen six was done, and then we
were going to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
The United States knew that the soldiers associated with the
Kanahar massacre would eventually be going at home, but on
a macro level, America had a bigger problem on its
hands tensions with the Afghan central government, namely President Hamid Karzaid.
Speaker 18 (24:56):
In twenty twelve, the relationship with the United States in
Afghanistan was at an all time low, and every.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Time krsn I gave an interview, it became more and.
Speaker 18 (25:05):
More evident that the relationship was breaking down with the
Obama administration.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That's the voice of journalist Yealda Hakim, who was working
for the Australian news outlet SBS Dateline in twenty twelve.
Speaker 18 (25:17):
He talked about the sovereignty of the nation. That was
something that he felt quite strongly about. I had quite
a sort of an intense conversation with Hamid Kausei about,
you know, sovereignty and the place of the nation and
night raids.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Night raids were a point of contention during this period
of the Afghan War. Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannett explains.
Speaker 19 (25:39):
Tom mccarzi and the American administration were at art. The
night rates were relentless, and that was in the middle
of the night, a rating party of American soldiers goes
into a village that is supposedly at Alaban Village and
goes into the halls, separates the men the women. And
(25:59):
it was a constant feature of the US strategy in Afghanistan.
And it was strongly opposed by Hamid Karzai. And that's
because the tribal people themselves were deadly opposed to this.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
One could argue that staff Sergeant Bales took the concept
of a night raak to its logical yet horrific extreme.
Several days after the incident, Karzai addressed it in a speech, saying, quote,
this has been going on for too long. You've heard
me before. It is by all means the end of
the rope.
Speaker 18 (26:34):
Here it was clear that the Afghan government had lost
complete control of the situation. They were no longer masters
of their own destiny, if they ever were, but certainly
Karzai in twenty twelve gave off that perception.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
The US military's reaction to the killings added insult to injury.
Karzai wanted Bales to be tried in Afghanistan, where he
would be executed in accordance with Afghan justice, but as
we learned earlier, Bales was rushed back home to face
trial in America. Kathy Gannon says that was standard operating procedure.
Speaker 19 (27:09):
Nobody ever thought the Americans would bye by Afghan law.
I mean, it's not like anybody believes that the Americans
are going to let a military person, whatever his prime
stay in the country where he committed it.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Even so, veteran and Panjwai podcast host Curtis Grace argues
that America's unilateral decision had serious ramifications for Karzai.
Speaker 12 (27:34):
He did look weak when we took Bob Byles out
of the country within twenty four hours of him doing it,
and he, I mean, he was gone, like the Afghans
never got a chance, and it made cars I look
really weak. And his brother in fact went to Belumby
and tried to go to nau Gbn and lost him
of his personal guard trying to go there all to
try and be like, no, we are in charge here,
this is an Afghan matter, and we just like took
(27:55):
the dude out of the country. So I think the
Pandroid massacre was kind of the nail on the coffin
for any chance of the central government to really control Panjwai.
Speaker 18 (28:05):
The telebumnel gaining a lot of ground, The war was intensifying.
Obama was trying to find a solution with a partner
who was increasingly being backed into a corner and discrudged.
So Kusai's rhetoric was getting more and more intense and
the relationship was deteriorating.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
In late March of twenty twelve, yalde Hakim was on
assignment in Afghanistan.
Speaker 18 (28:31):
I was an Afghan born Western journalist. I had access
to the Western press and a platform, but my Afghan
heritage meant I had a level of empathy for the
country of my birth and for the people and what
they were going through.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
The region wasn't mourning for the victims of the Kandahar massacre.
Even so, nobody seemed to know what had actually happened.
As John Henry Brown recalled, the Afghan police weren't able
to conduct a proper examination of the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
That area became so dangerous after the incident that I
don't think we the United States went back there and
did a normal investigation. I mean, you know, there was
no CSI.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Like many reporters at the time, Yelda was frustrated by
this lack of concrete information that existed on the case.
Speaker 18 (29:21):
This whole thing became shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Virtually
as soon as they went and got fails, he disappeared
overnight from the face of the earth.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
There wasn't any real acknowledgment of what.
Speaker 18 (29:35):
Had just taken place, and everything just shut down, and
the Afghan partners were working with the US military to
kind of do as they were told, which was hide
the witnesses away, don't let the investigators get involved, don't
let anyone go out to the field where it happened.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Diffuse, diffuse, diffuse.
Speaker 18 (29:59):
But that ended up having a detrimental effect, because you know,
the minute you tell journalists they're not supposed to do something,
they make sure they do do it.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yolder had recently developed a rapport with Karzai. She lobbied
the Afghan president for access to Alakosa and Najebien. The
villagers hit by staff Sergeant Bales.
Speaker 18 (30:20):
Because he was so furious and this was such an
intense time in the country, he sort of said, allow
her to go and give her full access. I knew
how this could be told from a very different perspective,
less from the perspective of the Afghans being the victims,
and more from the perspective of a soldier, like so
(30:44):
many others who may have done multiple rotations, who may
have found themselves in a situation where they're far from
home and in a situation where PTSD kicks in and
there is a sense of justification for what happened.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Her goal was set people, you're perilous, figure out exactly
what happened on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
We had to provide clarity.
Speaker 18 (31:08):
We were on a fact finding mission trying to report
or figure out what the truth was. In the last
fifteen years of reporting from Afghanistan, I've realized nothing is
as it seems.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It's all very murky. So my whole aiming.
Speaker 18 (31:25):
As the only journalist on the ground was to provide
some kind of clear timeline. I knew that I had
sort of one shot at this, and I knew the
dangers involved, and I was going to give it my.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
Absolute all.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Y'all, to quickly learn what Bales and his fellow soldiers
already knew. The road to Panjway was treacherous.
Speaker 18 (31:48):
I went to the police headquarters in Kandahar and they
said to me, you want to go to Punchway, not happening.
No way in hell are you going anywhere in your Punchway.
If you have a death wish, you got a Punchway.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We don't have approval from the US military.
Speaker 18 (32:04):
They're not going to support this operation, and we're not
willing to lose a single man for this.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
But we knew we needed to get.
Speaker 20 (32:12):
To the crime scene, and so me, my cameraman, my
security traveled to the road heading into Punchway alongside General
Rosark in his convoy.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
General Rozak was the head of police and Candor Heart.
He served as the de facto chaperone of the trip.
Speaker 18 (32:33):
I remember sitting in the car with Razakh, and you know,
he was someone who had all sorts of allegations of
atrocities in his name and the treatment of human rights violations,
and we were single handedly holding together Candor Heart against
it falling to the Taliban and the Americans knew he
was an important allied there. I am in the car
(32:55):
with him, and suddenly the convoy comes out of fire
and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Razak jumps out of this armored vehicle and.
Speaker 18 (33:04):
I sort of sum into the car seat, and he
gets into the front seat, picks up his rifle and
just randomly.
Speaker 20 (33:13):
Starts shooting into the distance.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
And I just remember being quite horrified, just the randomness.
Speaker 18 (33:20):
Of it, like there's someone shooting an our convoy just
got out of the car and started shooting randomly.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
And then we got back into the car and it
was like as you were.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Once they reached their destination, Yelda and her crew knew
they had officially entered a warzone.
Speaker 18 (33:36):
You know. I was in my late twenties and no
real responsibilities in life, and just sort of thinking, well,
nothing's going to happen to me. But I remember as
we're walking across, I could hear impasture and durry the
two police officers.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
They'd said with us. I remember them saying to each other,
do you think they've really cleared this place of minds?
You know, we know the Taliban have got booby.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Traps be careful eyes wide open to the potential risks.
Yolda and her cameraman forged ahead into the villages.
Speaker 18 (34:09):
So we go to punchwe and we do all that
filming and then we sort of part ways with the
police and Razakh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
And those guys village.
Speaker 18 (34:18):
I went filmed inside Punchwey the home. I saw the
crime scene. I saw the blood splotted on the walls.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 18 (34:25):
We did all of that, and then we came back
and then we came back to the police headquarters. We
were staying at a different hotel, you know. We said
goodbye to them, and I met Mala Baran at the
military compound. His brother was killed and he had taken
in his sister in law with all of her children
(34:47):
into his home.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Mala Barran is one of the app hands we interviewed.
Heard him speak earlier in this episode.
Speaker 18 (34:54):
And Baran said, you know, you have to come to
this certain area. So we're all getting out the car to.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Go to the village.
Speaker 18 (35:01):
And he said, no, I'm only taking her. The rest
of this, like security and your cameramen, they're not coming
because it's all women. It's our women. I'm not taking
sort of more white men into my home and it's
either you or you don't do this. So I look
at my cameraman and he hands me a little handicap.
(35:24):
Take this, and you know, are you comfortable to go?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
And I sort of said, I think so.
Speaker 18 (35:34):
There's no lights and we're walking into this neighborhood on
the outskirts of Kandah. I remember looking back and the
car that my team were in was getting further and
further and further away, and then I just had a.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Moment where I couldn't see the lights.
Speaker 18 (35:53):
From the car anymore, and I just thought to myself,
Oh my god, I'm walking into a Tullivan trap and
they're going to hold me for ransom.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
This is the most stupid thing I could do. And
so I stopped in.
Speaker 18 (36:09):
My tracks and I said to him, I don't want
to go any further. And he said to me why,
and he looked at me and he realized I totally
now was freaking out, and he said, it's okay, It's.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Let's take a moment to realize just how insane this looks. Yalder,
a female foreign journalist going alone into villages that had
just recently been the scenes of grizzly murders for an
outsider to these tight knit patriarchal clans and families, intrusion
into their lives, give me death. And here is Yalder
(36:44):
going above and beyond to shed light on this story.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I got to the doors.
Speaker 18 (36:50):
I just thought, he's going to open the doors and
they're just going to be a whole heap of like
men with guns inside, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And when he opened the doors, it was dark and
they didn't have any electricity.
Speaker 18 (37:03):
And I looked into the distance and there was a
woman sitting on the ground with multiple children around her.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Very small children. We're talking, you know, a.
Speaker 18 (37:14):
Newborn and you know, a one year old, two year old,
like very very small children, a combination of all of
our aunt's kids and her own kids after her husband
was killed. And I remember sitting on the ground and
turning on my camera and.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Just doing this interview with her.
Speaker 18 (37:33):
And he was saying to her, tell her what you saw,
and the children started describing the boot of a soldier
kicking one of the children in the stomach and stomping
on one of the children, and then another child was
saying they were multiple people.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
That was what stayed with me, and that I found
quite chilling.
Speaker 18 (38:03):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Soldiers with lights.
Speaker 20 (38:12):
She said, it was lights coming out of their helmets.
Speaker 18 (38:16):
I saw many, many soldiers, and they came and they
killed my father.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 18 (38:27):
Giving a founding compensation for the loss of life, it's
kind of a band aid fix.
Speaker 17 (38:33):
I told the Americans that we don't want your money.
We just want this person who wronged us to be executed.
Speaker 11 (38:39):
My job as the prosecutor is to represent the government
in the pursuit of justice. I wanted the public to
understand that these people were human beings.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
The military was hampered by the inadequacy of the Afghan police.
Speaker 15 (38:50):
All of the people nearby said, yes, we saw two
people here.
Speaker 11 (38:54):
I want a conviction, playing by the rules, no insurmountable mistakes.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
It's ninety seven conviction rate in the u CMJAY. The
closest to that is Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
How many times do we see the army throw guys
away all the time? 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
(39:26):
series was created by executive producers Paul Plowski and David Check.
Executive producers 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 Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner.
(39:46):
Teddy Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an
associate producer, and Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks
to Liz Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpie,
and Meerwi Satall, as well as all of the people
who are interviewed for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to
(40:08):
The War Within on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
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