July 13, 2023 • 40 mins
Episode 4 of THE WAR WITHIN delves into Robert Bales' contentious military trial, from the perspectives of both the prosecution and the defense. While the US government was intent on achieving its definition of justice for the Kandahar Massacre, Bales' family and team were determined to keep the Staff Sergeant alive.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Do I think Bails is a war criminal in the
sense of sort of that image that we think about
when we hear war criminal. I just think Bales is
a murderer. I think he's a mass murderer. During wartime.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse
prosecuted Robert Bales on behalf of the United States military.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I had peers who asked me why I didn't charge
it as a war crime, and my simple answer was,
I don't need to. I have all the tools I
need at my disposal to prosecute this guy. I really
thought about what I wanted this to look like when
it was done, and so I have all my notes,
Like I kept a journal for a while, and so
(00:49):
I wrote down, I want a conviction one percent playing
by the rules. Number two was that I wanted the
victims to be a spy or at least understand our process.
I didn't want the public to think these were just
a bunch of backwards brown people from the sticks. I
wanted them to understand that these were families, that these
(01:11):
were little girls and little boys, that these were farmers.
I wanted to understand that these people were human.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Beings previously on the war within or.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Flew me out of Panjue and then I ended up
here in Levenworth, Kansas. I really just want to see
my kids again. You know.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
We wanted to get John Nupergound involved because he's really
good with the media.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Carrie was scared, her family was scared. The Secretary of
the Fence, Leon Panetta, actually called for death penalty sent.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
Causey's restorant was getting more and more kicks.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
And the relationship was to tior me too.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
This is an Afghan matter, and we just like took.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
The new to Africa country. Nothing is as it seems.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's all very nice.
Speaker 7 (01:57):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights and they came and
they killed myself.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayle story. It's late March of twenty twelve, two weeks
after the kandaharm massacre. J Morris is looking to convict
(02:28):
Robert Baal's as cleanly as possible. He has no intention
of turning the case into the Army's version of the
OJ Simpson trial.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
The last thing I wanted was no insurmountable mistakes. We're
going to make mistakes, but no mistake is going to
be insurmountable. I don't want any issue. I don't want
any violation of law, any violation of procedure, anything that's
going to allow a higher court to say we did
something wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's an honorable goal, but easier said than done, especially
when your own government is complicating matters. As Morse was
building his argument, the United States paid substantial sums of
money to the families of the Afghan victims as an
apology for the killings. In some scenarios, this could be
seen as witness tampering.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
One of the things I was concerned about was they
were given salatia payments, not by US as a prosper,
like you keep that as far away from me as possible.
I don't want to hear about it. There can't be
anything that looks like I'm somehow manipulating or trying to
curry favor with them.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The families were paid the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars
per death and ten thousand per wounded. U Le Baron,
an Afghan man who lost his brother, explains the process.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
In the beginning, nobody gave us any information. After a
few days, we were told that two point three million
Afghanis will be paid for each market. The Americans said
that this is from Obama and we did not have
any other information where the money came from.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Was this money paid to you in cash.
Speaker 8 (04:05):
Yes, they gave us this money in cash in the province.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
Giving a family compensation or whatever for the loss of life. Well,
that's not really resolving the actual issue of why it
happened to begin with.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Journalist Yalda Hakim spoke personally with the victims during her
journey to the villages of Alakozai and Najabien. From her
point of view, the decision to give money had the
potential to backfire.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
It's kind of a band aid fix to something that
then can also become deeply embedded and resentment is built,
and that then means that the Taliban are able to
use it as part of their propaganda, like the Americans
have come, they've taken over your.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Land, and they've occupied this place.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
And then on top of that they just have the
free reign to go and kill people.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Case in point, Haiji Mohammed Naim almost died in the
Knahem massacre him. The Solasia payments did not have the
desired effect.
Speaker 8 (05:05):
I told the Americans at the airport that we don't
want your money. We just want this person who wronged
us to be executed. They only know money, They do
not know God.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Haji Mohammad Wazir lost six children that night. He added
the following, it.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
Is not acceptable for us. It was not acceptable then
and it will not be acceptable in the future. Even
if the Americans gave us all their money, it would
not be acceptable.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Cash payments were never going to offset the tragic loss
of family members, not to mention, they could have threatened
the sanctity of the Bails trial. So why did the
United States feel the need to pay the Afghan victims?
Robert Bales has a simple theory, as he tells his
appellate lawyer, John Mayer, America wanted to appease Afghan President
(05:58):
Hamid Karzai. The money for the families was funneled through
his regime.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Cars I is a scumbag, all right. I mean, let's
just be honest about it. Because the Seattle Times article,
I don't know if you remember this, where the United
States government was taking bags of money and giving them
to cars I bags. So we're giving him all this
cash to buy his influence, and we weren't. You know here,
here's the thing. We do this all over the world,
except that cars I had the ability to say, Hey,
(06:25):
thanks America, I'm gonna take your money and I'm not
gonna do what you want me to do. I'm gonna
do what I want to do. And so I don't
believe that cars I cared about those people at all.
I believe cars I wanted to make tons of money.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We can't say for sure that cars I used American
funds to enrich himself, but it's certainly possible. AP journalist
Kathy Gannon notes that a lot of American tax payer
dollars were sent to Afghanistan with little payoffs. Where did you.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Spend your money?
Speaker 9 (06:51):
Just the US spent one hundred and forty five billion
dollars in development, not defense, defense, much more. The poverty
level when you left at one hundred and forty five
billion dollars, And what is the state of the country
of Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
To say that twenty twelve Afghanistan was under resourced is
unfortunately to state the obvious for all of the investment
that the country got from the US. Robert Bales recalls
that the local Afghan police force was not a well
oiled machine.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, these Afghan National Civil Arming policemen were not from
this area where, they were not from Bellmar, they were
from the north. They didn't know the area, they didn't
know the people. They were just there as a police
force and they didn't want to leave their little police
station because they realized it was such a bad area.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
In the wake of the Kanahan massacre, the Afghan police
were responsible for gathering evidence from the crime scene. Bals
trial lawyer John Henry Brown doesn't believe that it was
comprehensive in nature.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
But military to their defense was hampered by the inadequacy
of the Afghan police. The photographs of these guys in
their leather jackets walking around the crime scene with no
booties on or anything, you know, not taking any blood samples,
not clicked in the empty casings, you start out with that.
(08:18):
That's the problem. So it wasn't a normal investigation that
we would see on CSI.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Or something a defense attorney calling evidence into question, that's
not shocking. But media reports and even carsi's own men
confirmed that the investigation could not have been conclusive. No
matter the circumstances, Prosecutor J. Moore still had a job
to do.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
A case like Bails was a criminal investigation from the
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Where did the information from the criminal investigation come from?
Was that just the c IDEA agents on the ground.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yes, exactly right, see IDEA agents on the ground, US
our team conducting interviews with with witnesses. Between those two things.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, CID stands for Criminal Investigation Division. They're essentially the
Army's version of Internal Affairs. A full two weeks after
the killings, CID traveled to Alakozai and nonage of bien
On Morris's behalf. Special Forces Captain Danny Fields remembers that
they too quickly learned about the instability of the region.
Speaker 10 (09:22):
CID was being pushed very hard by the Afghan government
that they needed to collect evidence, and of course we said, hey,
look we'll fully support you. I'm going to advise that
if you go to that location, it is very kinetic,
it's very dangerous, and it's likely that you will get
into a firefight, so you will need support. Again, we
had clear orders that we weren't allowed to leave the base,
so that support was not really going to come from US,
(09:44):
So they gathered up their crew, they went down there.
Sure enough, they got in a firefight. One or two
Afghan National Army folks were killed, and yeah, that was
a gruesome scene. I believe they gathered some evidence. I
don't know, you know, the quality of that evidence or
how much or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When the process was happening, the things that frustrated me
was how long it took us to get to the
crime scene. I was frustrated in that because I was
concerned that we were going to lose all the evidence.
If there was any DNA out there that we could
tie to, Bales would be gone. And ultimately it wasn't
a lot of it was gone, but we were able
to recover enough that we could tie DNA at the
scene to DNA on blood on Mail's pants, blood inside
(10:23):
the barrel of his weapon. So that was frustrating at
the time, but it didn't create any issues for me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Morse felt like he ultimately got what he needed, but
not everybody shared his confidence. Private James Alexander, who was
on the base with Captain Fields, wasn't convinced that the case.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
Was so open and shut.
Speaker 11 (10:42):
This is too dangerous of a place for lawyers to be,
investigators to be. They weren't able to go to the
crime scene and get fingerprints. And they did some DNA testing, sure,
but that was like, yeah, you're going to find Bales's
DNA there, obviously, but they didn't talk about all of
the other people's DNA. They weren't able to interview all
of the people nearby that said, yes, we saw two
(11:03):
people here. There is a report one of the people
that lived nearby said that she heard two men drunkenly
arguing outside. Now, two men arguing, okay, that could be
anything but drunkenly arguing. That is really really, really fascinating.
(11:25):
That stuff was all done second and third hand sources
from reporters. It wasn't a military thing.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We ended the last episode with a potential revelation, the
possibility that Robert Bales did not act alone on that
fateful night. During her reporting in Ala Kozai in Najapien,
Yalda Hakim spoke to Afghan survivors who claimed to have
seen multiple American soldiers on the night of March eleven.
Speaker 7 (11:57):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights coming out of their helmets.
I saw many, many soldiers and they came and they
killed my father.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
And then another child was saying, the multiple people, they're helicopters.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
And the multiple people.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Her Keen's reporting was turned into a piece for Australian
news outlet SBS, which premiered on March twenty nine, twenty twelve.
Titled Anatomy of a Massacre. It introduced a new sign
of the story to Western audiences, with the first instance
of a journalist raising doubts around what really happened that
night in Canadar.
Speaker 12 (12:37):
That massacre of seventeen civilians by a rogue US soldier
is still shrouded in mystery and disinformation. We lift that
veil tonight a little, at least with some incredible accusations
from the villages themselves, accusations that more than one American
soldier was involved in the killings. Yelder he Kim and
(12:57):
Camerman Ryan Sheridan have just returned earned from the village
where the killings occurred and reveal a deeply disturbing story
of what happened that evening.
Speaker 13 (13:06):
The story exploded across the globe. Every news network around
the world talked about this reporter who crossed the mindfield
to get access to the massacre scene and spoke to
the witnesses for the first time.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
And I remember CNN running the story every hour at.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The top of the hour.
Speaker 9 (13:24):
When you were speaking with these villagers and you spent
some time with them, did you think they told you everything?
Speaker 11 (13:29):
Were their stories accurate, were they holding anything back or
were they completely upfront?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well?
Speaker 14 (13:34):
I did sense that they were upfront and that their
stories were heartfelt. Of course, there were some disparities between
the stories I spoke to, mainly children, and its always,
you know, machinery.
Speaker 6 (13:45):
Kicks in the news cycle, kicks in news turns into
news from it, so you know, they were dissecting it,
pulling it apart, having conversations about what this meant. And
then we got a kind of letter from the media
watchdog in.
Speaker 7 (14:01):
Saying the complaint has been filed against the film.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
People took issue with what they described as believe it
or not disinformation, that it was false and fabricated, and
the multiple soldier theory was pushed and that was a lie,
and I think they called it the anatomy of fake
news or something.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
In March and April of twenty twelve, the media was
debating whether this staff sergeant had acted alone, but the
US military's list of suspects never expanded beyond Robert Bales.
Lieutenant Colonel Morse explains.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This idea that there was more than one soldier involved
other than Bales. I will tell you that no one
who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No, not one.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There may have been other people in the community who
said that there was a platoon out here. I remember
one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters,
that there were helicopters in the area, like the helicopter
was based doing an aerosault, like dropping off a platon
of people to commit these murders. No one who was
actually there, not the kids. None of them there said
(15:08):
anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Morson Haakim have heard different accounts of the same event,
but neither of them were in Panshwe that night. Only
the Afghan civilians Males himself can truly speak to what
actually happened in the Kanaharmascer. But during the investigation, CID
was not asking this question, and Captain Field's estimation they
(15:35):
didn't need to, Well, do you think CID did a
good job in kind of uncovering what happened.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's pretty clear what happened.
Speaker 10 (15:46):
I'm not an expert at at gathering investigative data and
criminally prosecuting people, but it seems like they did at
least a good enough job because mails he's behind bars
where he should be.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
My job is the prosecutor is not to win. That's
not my job. My job is the prosecutor is to
represent the government in the pursuit of justice.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Robert Bales was tried under the Uniform Code of Military
Justice or UCMJ. Military court is not the same as
regular civilian court, although there is some overlap. As Jade Morris.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Explains, except for the uniforms, you wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between a military court martial and a
civilian criminal court. It looks exactly the same, We follow
the same rules of procedure, lots of similarities.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
The main difference between a civilian trial in a court
martial somewhat obvious. At a court martial, pretty much everybody
is in the military.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
You walk into this courtroom, you're going to see the prosecutor,
sometimes called the trial council. You're going to see the
defense attorney sitting with the defendant. You're going to see
a judge who sits up a little bit higher than
everyone else. That judge is in the military. He or
she tends to be senior officers. And then lastly, your
jury we call it a panel in the military. Your
(17:14):
panels made up of all military members. The qualifications they
have to be senior to the person accused of the crime.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
On some level. Military law should work differently than civilian
law given the extreme circumstances that soldiers face and combat.
The bails in his current attorney, John Mahyr believe that
there's a problem with a judge any jury essentially playing
for the same team.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
You know, the thing is U Smjay is where else
in the world would you three to five guys on
a jury. You know, three guys can put a guy
in prison for one hundred years.
Speaker 9 (17:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Nowhere, and those same three guys are hand selected by
the guy that refers to charges. You know, not only
do you have to agree with me, if you all
agree with me, I'm going to be able to control
your career for the rest of your career.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Innocent until proven guilty, it's one of the tenets of
the American justice system. But Bails and Maher believe that
this mantra doesn't really apply to military cases. In their eyes,
the game is rigged, a point supported by the u
CMJ's high conviction rate.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's ninety eight percent or ninety seven percent conviction rate
in the u cmjy right, that's true. Like the closest
to that is Nazi Germany. I think if you were
a Jew in Nazi Germany, you had a better chance
of not being killed by the Nazis, then you do it.
Not being convicted in the u CMJA ninety eight percent
(18:44):
or ninety seven percent. You can't tell me that the
analytics of that are right.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
John Mayer works with many clients who have been convicted
by the useum J. He has strong opinions on this
cross pollination between judge, jury and prosecution.
Speaker 15 (18:58):
Separation of powers is big deal and candidly, I do
believe the army has its own ideas. UCMJ was created
for good order and discipline, that's it. It was not
meant to be a litigation manual. Military law has evolved
into a whole body of jurisprudence that was not conceived
(19:19):
or visioned at its inception. I do believe and this
is just John Mayer on this, but the UCMJ right now,
they're going to protect the army. At the end of
the day, it see the army who's the client, the individual?
How many times do we see the army throw guys away.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
All the time? Gay Mors doesn't have the same concerns
about the potential for bias in the military justice system.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I frankly have confidence in the system. I believe they
pick in fairness. I believe they follow the rules, especially
the higher up you go. I think the panel system works.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
However, as Robert Bales's court martial began, trial lawyer John
Henry Brown had a bad feeling about the panel who
would determin in his client's fate.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Now, Army, of course chose the jury. The jury was
to decide whether Bobby got life withdrawal or life without role.
That jury looked like Mount Rushmore. They looked like Stone.
They didn't seem to have any empathy at all. But
when you get the commanding officer choosing the jury, and
(20:23):
the commanding officer believes that this guy should get the
death penalty, what do you think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
In a courtroom filled with members of the military. Brown
was the odd man out. He never served. Generally, he
didn't have the same worldview as the people who had.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
But I didn't have a lot of experience in the
military courts. I had represented a couple of deserters who
went to Canada during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But when Carrie Bales asked him to represent her husband,
Brown felt compelled to accept the job.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I was just angry. I was just playing angry about
the way the government was disowning. I mean, here's the
guy who's turned into a rogue monster by the media
and the military superiors.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The Bailes family was not wealthy. They couldn't afford attorney
fees that would run in the mid six figures. Brown
ended up taking the case pro bono.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
I've had a practice in my life, still doing it
now where I don't believe clients in the lurs.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
How many hours and total resources went into defending Robert
Bayals like during his trial, it.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Was about two thousand hours, and that's probably an underestimate.
At one point, I didn't think we could continue representing
Bobby because I just didn't think I could afford it,
but we pulled it off.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
When Brown began to discuss the case of Robert Bayales,
the best line of defense seemed to be abundantly clear.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
When I met Bobby the first time, it was in Leavenworth.
He had been wisted out of Afghanistan and then eventually
ended up in leven Worth within a week or so,
and I ended up going there and meeting with him,
and he was still exhibiting the symptoms of post traumatic
stress disorder. So it was like he couldn't believe that
(22:22):
what he was being accused of. He had really believable
lack of memory of what occurred, which is part of PGSD.
When I read the statement of facts, which is horrible,
he just started crying. I did that.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Here's the problem in the armed forces. Post traumatic stress
isn't seen as a catch all to explain criminal behavior
because most soldiers who have seen combat can reasonably claim
to BETSD.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
This whole idea about every member is a mass murderer
in disguise just waiting to happen. That it's the fault
of you know, the army always rubs me the wrong
way because I think that there are lots of soldiers
who deal with serious PTSD issues. They don't go.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Murder people staff. Sergeant Bales was examined by an independent
sanity board for the trial. He recalls it. They essentially
diagnosed him with PTSD and yet they marked him down
stable and healthy.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
They had these three professional psychologists when and I don't
know what the actual terms were. You know, one was
a pharmacology guy, one was a psychiatrist.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
You know, they.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Convinced me that, you know, due to being blown up
behind times, you know, due to my post traumatic stress
disordered that I saw a threat that other people didn't see.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Now it's interesting because if you see the the video
of him returning from one of the sites, he's wearing
a cape. He put on a cape.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The prevailing theory is the cape was a curtain from
Hajji Mohammad Lazir's house. Bales was using it to avoid
detection as he made his way back to the PSP, and.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Then he's jumping over the walls and not going through
the entry ways because that's where iedse are. So you know,
they were arguing that he certainly had all his mental faculties,
but it was just instinctive. I mean, some of his
behavior when he came back, he asked somebody to smell
the under his gun. I mean, he did all these
really bizarre things.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's also true. Bals told staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin to
smell the barrel of his gun to prove he had
fired it.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
You know, we had him examined some of the best
psychiatrists in the whole United States literally, and they believed
he had diminished capacity basically. But then the Army, of course,
got a chance to evaluate him, even without our permission,
and their conclusion was that he was basically a sociopath.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Nobody brought up mental health as a trial. Nobody brought
that up. Even though we had three different expert witnesses,
they just didn't use them. They chose not to use them.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I think it was either nine or eleven the total
number of expert witnesses they asked for and were given.
They didn't call single one of them a trial.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Based on the Bails trial transcripts, the prosecution called twelve
witnesses and the defense six. None of them had a
background of mental health, and as far as we can tell,
the topic was not examined before the panel.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I think if we had had a civilian jury and
a Sicilian process for Robert Bills. Our psychiatric defense would
have worked. If you just read the statement of allegations,
you're going to go this person's crazy, he's not meaning
he's crazy. And I think we could have pursued that
(26:04):
successfully with a civilian jury, but not with a military jury.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
There was no question in my mind that he was
not suffering from PTSD. If he was suffering from PTSD,
not even remotely close, that would have explained a five
hour killing spree.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
As Robert Bale's attorney, John Henry Brown, was up against
the might of the United States government, which was being
channeled primarily through one man, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
The first time I met Morse, he's a very good
looking guy, looks like a movie star kind of and
you know, he was playing the whole thing and it
was really ridiculous. The guy had a chip on his
shoulder that was big as a brick, and he was
clearly playing to his superiors who went under the death penalty.
He saw this as a career maker.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Morse rejects the idea that he took his orders from
the higher.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Ups President Obama. I don't care what those guys think
that has zero to do with my job. My obligation
as representing the US government was that this was a
death penalty case.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
While the defense searched for mitigating circumstances to clear Robert
Bales's name, the prosecution built a case around eyewitness testimony.
One would think that the soldiers who served with Bails
at ESB. Bellumbat, like Private James Alexander, would be a
big part of that approach.
Speaker 11 (27:34):
When we landed in America, we thought we would kind
of be like we made it man, thank God, like
we're here, we're safe, and we were treated like criminals.
We became, you know, sort of pariahs. And we were
immediately signed to NDAs Like of course, don't you can't
talk about anything. You can't talk to Baales. You have
(27:54):
no contact order with Bails because now it's a prosecution.
Like I know, you guys talked to Colonel Morrise little bit.
Colonel Morris and his team never interviewed us, not once.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
As it turned out, Morse was more interested in the
testimony of another group of people, the Afghan families who
personally encountered Staff Sergeant Baales during his night raid.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I wanted this to be the opportunity for the victims
to make a statement. We could have just taken their
sworn statement, told the investigating officer the witnesses are unavailable,
here's their statements. But I wanted them to be part
of the process. And again, I was looking at this
as an opportunity to refute some of the things that
were out there in the media.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Morse and his team flew nine Afghans from Malakosai and
Najabien to Seattle to testify against Robert Bales in person.
For an American nation fighting a war against Afghan terrorist groups,
it was a highly unusual move.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Up to that point. I don't know that we had
brought back any victims to testify at a court martial
in the US. These were people who rarely left their village.
I just didn't care. I mean, these again, their families
and their human beings. They deserve to have their day
in court.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Hadji Wazir was one of the Afghan men who was
brought overseas to the United States.
Speaker 8 (29:14):
They took us to America twice and they did the
trial with their law about our case, and they judged
us with their blasphemy law. We stayed there for about
thirteen or fourteen days. They explained to us how the
court process works, where we should sit, and what we
(29:34):
should do and what.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Not to do.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Ula Baran, the man who spoke with yalde Hakim, remembers
being asked to produce evidence related to his family's murder.
Speaker 8 (29:45):
But we presented them with items such as a pillow,
quilts and other things that were contaminated with blood. We
gave them a lot of evidence.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Many of the soldiers stationed with Bales at the VIA
were also asked to make public statements before the court.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
The soldiers who justified against Bobby did not want to
be there. Of course, they had all the pressure of
their careers, and it became very clear to me during
my association with the military, and if you did one
thing wrong, your career is over.
Speaker 10 (30:22):
I actually don't think the defense asked me anything, but
you know, Colonel Morris, I believe he was using me
to kind of establish the timeline right.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Captain Fields was a senior man at VSP Bellenbach. According
to the higher ups, he had some explaining to do.
Speaker 10 (30:38):
At what point did I wake up? At what point
did I learn what happened? Why didn't I understand right
out the gate that this guy had murdered a bunch
of people. So just kind of established some of those
basic facts and answer some of those questions that people
are asking. Honestly, the most chilling part of the entire
thing was when I walked into the room. This was
the first time that I had seen Bails since he
(30:59):
took off on a helicopter, and I just remember.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Seeing him and just having intense feelings about it.
Speaker 10 (31:05):
They asked me, you know who Robert Bales was, and
if he was here in the courtroom, point him out,
and I pointed at him, and it was just a
very awkward experience to see him for the first time.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
For Private Alexander, the whole ordeal was outside of anything
he could have expected from his career in the service.
Speaker 11 (31:23):
First of all, they called me, hey, get ready to testify,
out of the blue, just like that. I've not been prepped.
No one's to ask me what I'm gonna say. They're
just like, you're going to testify.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Cool. So I go into this.
Speaker 11 (31:36):
Old building, go down a carpeted hallway, make a left,
and I'm in the smallest courtroom in America, and I'm like,
holy crap, like, and there's Bails in there, his wife
is in there. John Henry Brown is in there. So
you know, I'm sitting down, I testify, and you know,
they're like, we just want to know what was your experience.
And so I started going off because I'm very garrulous
(31:58):
whatever you want to say. It talk too much. And
the judges like, hey, hey, hey, stop talking, you know,
like just answer the question. And from there I thought, okay,
I'm gonna sit back, my phone is gonna ring, and
I'm gonna be on Anderson Cooper, you know, telling the story.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And that never happened.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
That was it.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
It was like, thank you for your service, and now leave.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
As the legal process drew on in twenty twelve became
twenty thirteen, Robert Bales's prospects were heading in the wrong
direction relatively on practice. In the insulated world of the military,
John Henry Brown was having trouble making inroads with the
presiding judge, Colonel Jeffrey Nance.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
The judge assigned to our case. He seemed like a
decent guy, actually, but he clearly was marching to a
drummer that was above him. And one of the things
I said to him in court, which really upset him.
I said, well, you are. I respect you as a
judge because I respect all the judges, but you are
not my superior officer. He didn't care for them.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
The defense had reached a fork in the road. They
could take a risk by crafting a mental health defense that,
if successful, could exonerate Bails completely, or they could work
with the US Army take a plea and ensure that
Bails would not be executed. Brown initially disagreed with his
co consul Emma Scanlon on the strategy.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
We had to make a decision as to whether to
go for broke and basically put on our mental defense.
Bobby and I had an inclination to do that. But
the other side, which Emma, who worked for me, who's
the best lawyer I've ever known, She was of the
more conservative position that, know, we better just not put
(33:50):
out the trash out there because the Army will get
pissed and he'll get the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Are there clients out there that would just rather be
put to death and surrout a sentence where they're stuck
in prison for their natural life.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Yeah, I believe there are people like that, and I
could certainly understand if I was accused of something, they're
horrific and the only option was life in prison without parole.
I could certainly see rationalizing not living anymore. You know,
spending the rest of your life in a cage is
not real attractive. And I know there's others they called volunteers,
(34:29):
and those are people who voluntarily take the death penalty
rather than go spend the rest of their lives in prison.
I believe at one point Bobby felt that way.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
For Carrie Bales, it was paramount that the father of
her children stay alive.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Of course, I.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Didn't want Bob to get the death penalty. We just
wouldn't have ever been able to hug him again, or
you know, we would have always had to see him
behind class. That was like the biggest reason that I
wanted the death penalty off the table, was so that
even if he was incarcerated forever, we would still I'll
be able to hug him and be near him.
Speaker 15 (35:04):
Bob Bales will never admit to you that he's a victim.
Bob Bals is still very much a man. He's still
very much confident, And this.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Kind of makes me frustrated. The idea that I took
the plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It kind of bothers me when people say, now, well,
he took that so that he avoided the death since
and that's not the truth, because there were still guys
on the ground, you know what I mean. You know
there are guys on the ground that are being shot
at every day at that time. And if whatever we
could do to him to kind of get that.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
So your conviction would then wyattee that game of.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Enemy, right, and it wouldn't be as easy for them
to use this as a recruiting video for the Taliban.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Robert Bales claims that he wanted his case to be
resolved to protect the American soldiers still in Afghanistan and
speak to his motivations, but his comments ignore in uncomfortable
reality about the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve, after
Bales had killed sixteen civilians, he put the gun in
his mouth and he decided not to pull the trigger.
(36:16):
GQ writer Brendan Vaughan recollects his conversation with Bails on
the subject.
Speaker 16 (36:21):
He didn't intimate anything about saying that he had a
death wish, but he did describe the dawning on him
of what he had just done. In that moment right
before he puts the gun in his mouth, he describes
realizing what he had done and realizing that his life
(36:41):
was effectively over and that because of that, why not
end it? And he put his gun in his mouth,
and he thought about his kids back in Washington.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And decided not to do it.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
What would it be like to not be in Bob's
life and not take the kids to see their dad
and not be there and have another life? And I
just I couldn't imagine my life like that, and how
sad it would be.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
As a reminder, here's what Baile said to staff Sergeant
McLaughlin in between his trips to Alakosi and Nonage Been.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
I go in and I see my friend and I'm like, hey, man,
I was killed some military age males up and al Kozi.
I'm going to naj Andbian to finish it. I was like,
take care of my wife and kids. Seriously, take care
of my wife and kids.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
A lot of people don't agree on whether a man
like Robert Bales follows moral compass, but this much is clear.
On June fifth, twenty thirteen, Bals pled guilty to the
unlawful killings. He carried out Panjue Afghanistan for many reasons,
but above all, it seems for his family.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Look, we're punished.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I know what I'm missing.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I mean, I know what my kid I am, my kids,
you know, without their father. You know, I don't want
to be here. You know, nobody really wants to be here.
Where there's life, there's hope, and so hopefully you know,
I still have life, still have some hope left that
you know, maybe twenty twenty five years from now, somebody
will review this and say, you know, this guy, let's
(38:37):
let him go, let's let him out.
Speaker 15 (38:43):
Coming up on the war within this case smacks of
institutional bias.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It's time to go whole home.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Whatever we can do to make as much stink, to
make as much notification of this, you need to do it.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
I want the jury to have sympathy for the Afghan victims.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
The job of the infantry is very simply. You want
to find, fix and finish the enemey.
Speaker 15 (39:01):
There's no uniforms in Afghanistan. They blend in with the
population and it's a gorilla war.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We found a picture of Haiji Wazir online, who made
a terrorist video but the whole time he's holding up
his Taliban tattoo.
Speaker 15 (39:14):
That panel, they knew that the Taliban was sitting in
an American courtroom, it might have had a little bit
of a different.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
View of the prosecution.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
How many times do we let Americans die when we
know where the bad guys aren't, we don't go get them?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
The war within the Robert Bayls Story. It is a
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 for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and
Mike Powers. The podcast was written and produced by Max
(39:58):
Nelson and hosted by me McGinnis. Editing was done by
Anna Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy
Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer,
and Peter Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz
Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal,
(40:22):
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 podcast
Do I think Bails is a war criminal in the
sense of sort of that image that we think about
when we hear war criminal. I just think Bales is
a murderer. I think he's a mass murderer. During wartime.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse
prosecuted Robert Bales on behalf of the United States military.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I had peers who asked me why I didn't charge
it as a war crime, and my simple answer was,
I don't need to. I have all the tools I
need at my disposal to prosecute this guy. I really
thought about what I wanted this to look like when
it was done, and so I have all my notes,
Like I kept a journal for a while, and so
(00:49):
I wrote down, I want a conviction one percent playing
by the rules. Number two was that I wanted the
victims to be a spy or at least understand our process.
I didn't want the public to think these were just
a bunch of backwards brown people from the sticks. I
wanted them to understand that these were families, that these
(01:11):
were little girls and little boys, that these were farmers.
I wanted to understand that these people were human.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Beings previously on the war within or.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Flew me out of Panjue and then I ended up
here in Levenworth, Kansas. I really just want to see
my kids again. You know.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
We wanted to get John Nupergound involved because he's really
good with the media.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Carrie was scared, her family was scared. The Secretary of
the Fence, Leon Panetta, actually called for death penalty sent.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
Causey's restorant was getting more and more kicks.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
And the relationship was to tior me too.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
This is an Afghan matter, and we just like took.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
The new to Africa country. Nothing is as it seems.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's all very nice.
Speaker 7 (01:57):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights and they came and
they killed myself.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayle story. It's late March of twenty twelve, two weeks
after the kandaharm massacre. J Morris is looking to convict
(02:28):
Robert Baal's as cleanly as possible. He has no intention
of turning the case into the Army's version of the
OJ Simpson trial.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
The last thing I wanted was no insurmountable mistakes. We're
going to make mistakes, but no mistake is going to
be insurmountable. I don't want any issue. I don't want
any violation of law, any violation of procedure, anything that's
going to allow a higher court to say we did
something wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's an honorable goal, but easier said than done, especially
when your own government is complicating matters. As Morse was
building his argument, the United States paid substantial sums of
money to the families of the Afghan victims as an
apology for the killings. In some scenarios, this could be
seen as witness tampering.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
One of the things I was concerned about was they
were given salatia payments, not by US as a prosper,
like you keep that as far away from me as possible.
I don't want to hear about it. There can't be
anything that looks like I'm somehow manipulating or trying to
curry favor with them.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The families were paid the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars
per death and ten thousand per wounded. U Le Baron,
an Afghan man who lost his brother, explains the process.
Speaker 8 (03:45):
In the beginning, nobody gave us any information. After a
few days, we were told that two point three million
Afghanis will be paid for each market. The Americans said
that this is from Obama and we did not have
any other information where the money came from.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Was this money paid to you in cash.
Speaker 8 (04:05):
Yes, they gave us this money in cash in the province.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
Giving a family compensation or whatever for the loss of life. Well,
that's not really resolving the actual issue of why it
happened to begin with.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Journalist Yalda Hakim spoke personally with the victims during her
journey to the villages of Alakozai and Najabien. From her
point of view, the decision to give money had the
potential to backfire.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
It's kind of a band aid fix to something that
then can also become deeply embedded and resentment is built,
and that then means that the Taliban are able to
use it as part of their propaganda, like the Americans
have come, they've taken over your.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Land, and they've occupied this place.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
And then on top of that they just have the
free reign to go and kill people.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Case in point, Haiji Mohammed Naim almost died in the
Knahem massacre him. The Solasia payments did not have the
desired effect.
Speaker 8 (05:05):
I told the Americans at the airport that we don't
want your money. We just want this person who wronged
us to be executed. They only know money, They do
not know God.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Haji Mohammad Wazir lost six children that night. He added
the following, it.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
Is not acceptable for us. It was not acceptable then
and it will not be acceptable in the future. Even
if the Americans gave us all their money, it would
not be acceptable.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Cash payments were never going to offset the tragic loss
of family members, not to mention, they could have threatened
the sanctity of the Bails trial. So why did the
United States feel the need to pay the Afghan victims?
Robert Bales has a simple theory, as he tells his
appellate lawyer, John Mayer, America wanted to appease Afghan President
(05:58):
Hamid Karzai. The money for the families was funneled through
his regime.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Cars I is a scumbag, all right. I mean, let's
just be honest about it. Because the Seattle Times article,
I don't know if you remember this, where the United
States government was taking bags of money and giving them
to cars I bags. So we're giving him all this
cash to buy his influence, and we weren't. You know here,
here's the thing. We do this all over the world,
except that cars I had the ability to say, Hey,
(06:25):
thanks America, I'm gonna take your money and I'm not
gonna do what you want me to do. I'm gonna
do what I want to do. And so I don't
believe that cars I cared about those people at all.
I believe cars I wanted to make tons of money.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We can't say for sure that cars I used American
funds to enrich himself, but it's certainly possible. AP journalist
Kathy Gannon notes that a lot of American tax payer
dollars were sent to Afghanistan with little payoffs. Where did you.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Spend your money?
Speaker 9 (06:51):
Just the US spent one hundred and forty five billion
dollars in development, not defense, defense, much more. The poverty
level when you left at one hundred and forty five
billion dollars, And what is the state of the country
of Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
To say that twenty twelve Afghanistan was under resourced is
unfortunately to state the obvious for all of the investment
that the country got from the US. Robert Bales recalls
that the local Afghan police force was not a well
oiled machine.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, these Afghan National Civil Arming policemen were not from
this area where, they were not from Bellmar, they were
from the north. They didn't know the area, they didn't
know the people. They were just there as a police
force and they didn't want to leave their little police
station because they realized it was such a bad area.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
In the wake of the Kanahan massacre, the Afghan police
were responsible for gathering evidence from the crime scene. Bals
trial lawyer John Henry Brown doesn't believe that it was
comprehensive in nature.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
But military to their defense was hampered by the inadequacy
of the Afghan police. The photographs of these guys in
their leather jackets walking around the crime scene with no
booties on or anything, you know, not taking any blood samples,
not clicked in the empty casings, you start out with that.
(08:18):
That's the problem. So it wasn't a normal investigation that
we would see on CSI.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Or something a defense attorney calling evidence into question, that's
not shocking. But media reports and even carsi's own men
confirmed that the investigation could not have been conclusive. No
matter the circumstances, Prosecutor J. Moore still had a job
to do.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
A case like Bails was a criminal investigation from the
very beginning.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Where did the information from the criminal investigation come from?
Was that just the c IDEA agents on the ground.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yes, exactly right, see IDEA agents on the ground, US
our team conducting interviews with with witnesses. Between those two things.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, CID stands for Criminal Investigation Division. They're essentially the
Army's version of Internal Affairs. A full two weeks after
the killings, CID traveled to Alakozai and nonage of bien
On Morris's behalf. Special Forces Captain Danny Fields remembers that
they too quickly learned about the instability of the region.
Speaker 10 (09:22):
CID was being pushed very hard by the Afghan government
that they needed to collect evidence, and of course we said, hey,
look we'll fully support you. I'm going to advise that
if you go to that location, it is very kinetic,
it's very dangerous, and it's likely that you will get
into a firefight, so you will need support. Again, we
had clear orders that we weren't allowed to leave the base,
so that support was not really going to come from US,
(09:44):
So they gathered up their crew, they went down there.
Sure enough, they got in a firefight. One or two
Afghan National Army folks were killed, and yeah, that was
a gruesome scene. I believe they gathered some evidence. I
don't know, you know, the quality of that evidence or
how much or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
When the process was happening, the things that frustrated me
was how long it took us to get to the
crime scene. I was frustrated in that because I was
concerned that we were going to lose all the evidence.
If there was any DNA out there that we could
tie to, Bales would be gone. And ultimately it wasn't
a lot of it was gone, but we were able
to recover enough that we could tie DNA at the
scene to DNA on blood on Mail's pants, blood inside
(10:23):
the barrel of his weapon. So that was frustrating at
the time, but it didn't create any issues for me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Morse felt like he ultimately got what he needed, but
not everybody shared his confidence. Private James Alexander, who was
on the base with Captain Fields, wasn't convinced that the case.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
Was so open and shut.
Speaker 11 (10:42):
This is too dangerous of a place for lawyers to be,
investigators to be. They weren't able to go to the
crime scene and get fingerprints. And they did some DNA testing, sure,
but that was like, yeah, you're going to find Bales's
DNA there, obviously, but they didn't talk about all of
the other people's DNA. They weren't able to interview all
of the people nearby that said, yes, we saw two
(11:03):
people here. There is a report one of the people
that lived nearby said that she heard two men drunkenly
arguing outside. Now, two men arguing, okay, that could be
anything but drunkenly arguing. That is really really, really fascinating.
(11:25):
That stuff was all done second and third hand sources
from reporters. It wasn't a military thing.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We ended the last episode with a potential revelation, the
possibility that Robert Bales did not act alone on that
fateful night. During her reporting in Ala Kozai in Najapien,
Yalda Hakim spoke to Afghan survivors who claimed to have
seen multiple American soldiers on the night of March eleven.
Speaker 7 (11:57):
I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
I saw many soldiers with lights coming out of their helmets.
I saw many, many soldiers and they came and they
killed my father.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
And then another child was saying, the multiple people, they're helicopters.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
And the multiple people.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Her Keen's reporting was turned into a piece for Australian
news outlet SBS, which premiered on March twenty nine, twenty twelve.
Titled Anatomy of a Massacre. It introduced a new sign
of the story to Western audiences, with the first instance
of a journalist raising doubts around what really happened that
night in Canadar.
Speaker 12 (12:37):
That massacre of seventeen civilians by a rogue US soldier
is still shrouded in mystery and disinformation. We lift that
veil tonight a little, at least with some incredible accusations
from the villages themselves, accusations that more than one American
soldier was involved in the killings. Yelder he Kim and
(12:57):
Camerman Ryan Sheridan have just returned earned from the village
where the killings occurred and reveal a deeply disturbing story
of what happened that evening.
Speaker 13 (13:06):
The story exploded across the globe. Every news network around
the world talked about this reporter who crossed the mindfield
to get access to the massacre scene and spoke to
the witnesses for the first time.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
And I remember CNN running the story every hour at.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The top of the hour.
Speaker 9 (13:24):
When you were speaking with these villagers and you spent
some time with them, did you think they told you everything?
Speaker 11 (13:29):
Were their stories accurate, were they holding anything back or
were they completely upfront?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well?
Speaker 14 (13:34):
I did sense that they were upfront and that their
stories were heartfelt. Of course, there were some disparities between
the stories I spoke to, mainly children, and its always,
you know, machinery.
Speaker 6 (13:45):
Kicks in the news cycle, kicks in news turns into
news from it, so you know, they were dissecting it,
pulling it apart, having conversations about what this meant. And
then we got a kind of letter from the media
watchdog in.
Speaker 7 (14:01):
Saying the complaint has been filed against the film.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
People took issue with what they described as believe it
or not disinformation, that it was false and fabricated, and
the multiple soldier theory was pushed and that was a lie,
and I think they called it the anatomy of fake
news or something.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
In March and April of twenty twelve, the media was
debating whether this staff sergeant had acted alone, but the
US military's list of suspects never expanded beyond Robert Bales.
Lieutenant Colonel Morse explains.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This idea that there was more than one soldier involved
other than Bales. I will tell you that no one
who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No, not one.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
There may have been other people in the community who
said that there was a platoon out here. I remember
one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters,
that there were helicopters in the area, like the helicopter
was based doing an aerosault, like dropping off a platon
of people to commit these murders. No one who was
actually there, not the kids. None of them there said
(15:08):
anything other than one person.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Morson Haakim have heard different accounts of the same event,
but neither of them were in Panshwe that night. Only
the Afghan civilians Males himself can truly speak to what
actually happened in the Kanaharmascer. But during the investigation, CID
was not asking this question, and Captain Field's estimation they
(15:35):
didn't need to, Well, do you think CID did a
good job in kind of uncovering what happened.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's pretty clear what happened.
Speaker 10 (15:46):
I'm not an expert at at gathering investigative data and
criminally prosecuting people, but it seems like they did at
least a good enough job because mails he's behind bars
where he should be.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
My job is the prosecutor is not to win. That's
not my job. My job is the prosecutor is to
represent the government in the pursuit of justice.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Robert Bales was tried under the Uniform Code of Military
Justice or UCMJ. Military court is not the same as
regular civilian court, although there is some overlap. As Jade Morris.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Explains, except for the uniforms, you wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between a military court martial and a
civilian criminal court. It looks exactly the same, We follow
the same rules of procedure, lots of similarities.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
The main difference between a civilian trial in a court
martial somewhat obvious. At a court martial, pretty much everybody
is in the military.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
You walk into this courtroom, you're going to see the prosecutor,
sometimes called the trial council. You're going to see the
defense attorney sitting with the defendant. You're going to see
a judge who sits up a little bit higher than
everyone else. That judge is in the military. He or
she tends to be senior officers. And then lastly, your
jury we call it a panel in the military. Your
(17:14):
panels made up of all military members. The qualifications they
have to be senior to the person accused of the crime.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
On some level. Military law should work differently than civilian
law given the extreme circumstances that soldiers face and combat.
The bails in his current attorney, John Mahyr believe that
there's a problem with a judge any jury essentially playing
for the same team.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
You know, the thing is U Smjay is where else
in the world would you three to five guys on
a jury. You know, three guys can put a guy
in prison for one hundred years.
Speaker 9 (17:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Nowhere, and those same three guys are hand selected by
the guy that refers to charges. You know, not only
do you have to agree with me, if you all
agree with me, I'm going to be able to control
your career for the rest of your career.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Innocent until proven guilty, it's one of the tenets of
the American justice system. But Bails and Maher believe that
this mantra doesn't really apply to military cases. In their eyes,
the game is rigged, a point supported by the u
CMJ's high conviction rate.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's ninety eight percent or ninety seven percent conviction rate
in the u cmjy right, that's true. Like the closest
to that is Nazi Germany. I think if you were
a Jew in Nazi Germany, you had a better chance
of not being killed by the Nazis, then you do it.
Not being convicted in the u CMJA ninety eight percent
(18:44):
or ninety seven percent. You can't tell me that the
analytics of that are right.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
John Mayer works with many clients who have been convicted
by the useum J. He has strong opinions on this
cross pollination between judge, jury and prosecution.
Speaker 15 (18:58):
Separation of powers is big deal and candidly, I do
believe the army has its own ideas. UCMJ was created
for good order and discipline, that's it. It was not
meant to be a litigation manual. Military law has evolved
into a whole body of jurisprudence that was not conceived
(19:19):
or visioned at its inception. I do believe and this
is just John Mayer on this, but the UCMJ right now,
they're going to protect the army. At the end of
the day, it see the army who's the client, the individual?
How many times do we see the army throw guys away.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
All the time? Gay Mors doesn't have the same concerns
about the potential for bias in the military justice system.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I frankly have confidence in the system. I believe they
pick in fairness. I believe they follow the rules, especially
the higher up you go. I think the panel system works.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
However, as Robert Bales's court martial began, trial lawyer John
Henry Brown had a bad feeling about the panel who
would determin in his client's fate.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Now, Army, of course chose the jury. The jury was
to decide whether Bobby got life withdrawal or life without role.
That jury looked like Mount Rushmore. They looked like Stone.
They didn't seem to have any empathy at all. But
when you get the commanding officer choosing the jury, and
(20:23):
the commanding officer believes that this guy should get the
death penalty, what do you think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
In a courtroom filled with members of the military. Brown
was the odd man out. He never served. Generally, he
didn't have the same worldview as the people who had.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
But I didn't have a lot of experience in the
military courts. I had represented a couple of deserters who
went to Canada during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But when Carrie Bales asked him to represent her husband,
Brown felt compelled to accept the job.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I was just angry. I was just playing angry about
the way the government was disowning. I mean, here's the
guy who's turned into a rogue monster by the media
and the military superiors.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The Bailes family was not wealthy. They couldn't afford attorney
fees that would run in the mid six figures. Brown
ended up taking the case pro bono.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
I've had a practice in my life, still doing it
now where I don't believe clients in the lurs.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
How many hours and total resources went into defending Robert
Bayals like during his trial, it.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Was about two thousand hours, and that's probably an underestimate.
At one point, I didn't think we could continue representing
Bobby because I just didn't think I could afford it,
but we pulled it off.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
When Brown began to discuss the case of Robert Bayales,
the best line of defense seemed to be abundantly clear.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
When I met Bobby the first time, it was in Leavenworth.
He had been wisted out of Afghanistan and then eventually
ended up in leven Worth within a week or so,
and I ended up going there and meeting with him,
and he was still exhibiting the symptoms of post traumatic
stress disorder. So it was like he couldn't believe that
(22:22):
what he was being accused of. He had really believable
lack of memory of what occurred, which is part of PGSD.
When I read the statement of facts, which is horrible,
he just started crying. I did that.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Here's the problem in the armed forces. Post traumatic stress
isn't seen as a catch all to explain criminal behavior
because most soldiers who have seen combat can reasonably claim
to BETSD.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
This whole idea about every member is a mass murderer
in disguise just waiting to happen. That it's the fault
of you know, the army always rubs me the wrong
way because I think that there are lots of soldiers
who deal with serious PTSD issues. They don't go.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Murder people staff. Sergeant Bales was examined by an independent
sanity board for the trial. He recalls it. They essentially
diagnosed him with PTSD and yet they marked him down
stable and healthy.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
They had these three professional psychologists when and I don't
know what the actual terms were. You know, one was
a pharmacology guy, one was a psychiatrist.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
You know, they.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Convinced me that, you know, due to being blown up
behind times, you know, due to my post traumatic stress
disordered that I saw a threat that other people didn't see.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Now it's interesting because if you see the the video
of him returning from one of the sites, he's wearing
a cape. He put on a cape.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The prevailing theory is the cape was a curtain from
Hajji Mohammad Lazir's house. Bales was using it to avoid
detection as he made his way back to the PSP, and.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Then he's jumping over the walls and not going through
the entry ways because that's where iedse are. So you know,
they were arguing that he certainly had all his mental faculties,
but it was just instinctive. I mean, some of his
behavior when he came back, he asked somebody to smell
the under his gun. I mean, he did all these
really bizarre things.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
That's also true. Bals told staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin to
smell the barrel of his gun to prove he had
fired it.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
You know, we had him examined some of the best
psychiatrists in the whole United States literally, and they believed
he had diminished capacity basically. But then the Army, of course,
got a chance to evaluate him, even without our permission,
and their conclusion was that he was basically a sociopath.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Nobody brought up mental health as a trial. Nobody brought
that up. Even though we had three different expert witnesses,
they just didn't use them. They chose not to use them.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I think it was either nine or eleven the total
number of expert witnesses they asked for and were given.
They didn't call single one of them a trial.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Based on the Bails trial transcripts, the prosecution called twelve
witnesses and the defense six. None of them had a
background of mental health, and as far as we can tell,
the topic was not examined before the panel.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I think if we had had a civilian jury and
a Sicilian process for Robert Bills. Our psychiatric defense would
have worked. If you just read the statement of allegations,
you're going to go this person's crazy, he's not meaning
he's crazy. And I think we could have pursued that
(26:04):
successfully with a civilian jury, but not with a military jury.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
There was no question in my mind that he was
not suffering from PTSD. If he was suffering from PTSD,
not even remotely close, that would have explained a five
hour killing spree.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
As Robert Bale's attorney, John Henry Brown, was up against
the might of the United States government, which was being
channeled primarily through one man, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
The first time I met Morse, he's a very good
looking guy, looks like a movie star kind of and
you know, he was playing the whole thing and it
was really ridiculous. The guy had a chip on his
shoulder that was big as a brick, and he was
clearly playing to his superiors who went under the death penalty.
He saw this as a career maker.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Morse rejects the idea that he took his orders from
the higher.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Ups President Obama. I don't care what those guys think
that has zero to do with my job. My obligation
as representing the US government was that this was a
death penalty case.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
While the defense searched for mitigating circumstances to clear Robert
Bales's name, the prosecution built a case around eyewitness testimony.
One would think that the soldiers who served with Bails
at ESB. Bellumbat, like Private James Alexander, would be a
big part of that approach.
Speaker 11 (27:34):
When we landed in America, we thought we would kind
of be like we made it man, thank God, like
we're here, we're safe, and we were treated like criminals.
We became, you know, sort of pariahs. And we were
immediately signed to NDAs Like of course, don't you can't
talk about anything. You can't talk to Baales. You have
(27:54):
no contact order with Bails because now it's a prosecution.
Like I know, you guys talked to Colonel Morrise little bit.
Colonel Morris and his team never interviewed us, not once.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
As it turned out, Morse was more interested in the
testimony of another group of people, the Afghan families who
personally encountered Staff Sergeant Baales during his night raid.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I wanted this to be the opportunity for the victims
to make a statement. We could have just taken their
sworn statement, told the investigating officer the witnesses are unavailable,
here's their statements. But I wanted them to be part
of the process. And again, I was looking at this
as an opportunity to refute some of the things that
were out there in the media.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Morse and his team flew nine Afghans from Malakosai and
Najabien to Seattle to testify against Robert Bales in person.
For an American nation fighting a war against Afghan terrorist groups,
it was a highly unusual move.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Up to that point. I don't know that we had
brought back any victims to testify at a court martial
in the US. These were people who rarely left their village.
I just didn't care. I mean, these again, their families
and their human beings. They deserve to have their day
in court.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Hadji Wazir was one of the Afghan men who was
brought overseas to the United States.
Speaker 8 (29:14):
They took us to America twice and they did the
trial with their law about our case, and they judged
us with their blasphemy law. We stayed there for about
thirteen or fourteen days. They explained to us how the
court process works, where we should sit, and what we
(29:34):
should do and what.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Not to do.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Ula Baran, the man who spoke with yalde Hakim, remembers
being asked to produce evidence related to his family's murder.
Speaker 8 (29:45):
But we presented them with items such as a pillow,
quilts and other things that were contaminated with blood. We
gave them a lot of evidence.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Many of the soldiers stationed with Bales at the VIA
were also asked to make public statements before the court.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
The soldiers who justified against Bobby did not want to
be there. Of course, they had all the pressure of
their careers, and it became very clear to me during
my association with the military, and if you did one
thing wrong, your career is over.
Speaker 10 (30:22):
I actually don't think the defense asked me anything, but
you know, Colonel Morris, I believe he was using me
to kind of establish the timeline right.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Captain Fields was a senior man at VSP Bellenbach. According
to the higher ups, he had some explaining to do.
Speaker 10 (30:38):
At what point did I wake up? At what point
did I learn what happened? Why didn't I understand right
out the gate that this guy had murdered a bunch
of people. So just kind of established some of those
basic facts and answer some of those questions that people
are asking. Honestly, the most chilling part of the entire
thing was when I walked into the room. This was
the first time that I had seen Bails since he
(30:59):
took off on a helicopter, and I just remember.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Seeing him and just having intense feelings about it.
Speaker 10 (31:05):
They asked me, you know who Robert Bales was, and
if he was here in the courtroom, point him out,
and I pointed at him, and it was just a
very awkward experience to see him for the first time.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
For Private Alexander, the whole ordeal was outside of anything
he could have expected from his career in the service.
Speaker 11 (31:23):
First of all, they called me, hey, get ready to testify,
out of the blue, just like that. I've not been prepped.
No one's to ask me what I'm gonna say. They're
just like, you're going to testify.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Cool. So I go into this.
Speaker 11 (31:36):
Old building, go down a carpeted hallway, make a left,
and I'm in the smallest courtroom in America, and I'm like,
holy crap, like, and there's Bails in there, his wife
is in there. John Henry Brown is in there. So
you know, I'm sitting down, I testify, and you know,
they're like, we just want to know what was your experience.
And so I started going off because I'm very garrulous
(31:58):
whatever you want to say. It talk too much. And
the judges like, hey, hey, hey, stop talking, you know,
like just answer the question. And from there I thought, okay,
I'm gonna sit back, my phone is gonna ring, and
I'm gonna be on Anderson Cooper, you know, telling the story.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And that never happened.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
That was it.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
It was like, thank you for your service, and now leave.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
As the legal process drew on in twenty twelve became
twenty thirteen, Robert Bales's prospects were heading in the wrong
direction relatively on practice. In the insulated world of the military,
John Henry Brown was having trouble making inroads with the
presiding judge, Colonel Jeffrey Nance.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
The judge assigned to our case. He seemed like a
decent guy, actually, but he clearly was marching to a
drummer that was above him. And one of the things
I said to him in court, which really upset him.
I said, well, you are. I respect you as a
judge because I respect all the judges, but you are
not my superior officer. He didn't care for them.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
The defense had reached a fork in the road. They
could take a risk by crafting a mental health defense that,
if successful, could exonerate Bails completely, or they could work
with the US Army take a plea and ensure that
Bails would not be executed. Brown initially disagreed with his
co consul Emma Scanlon on the strategy.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
We had to make a decision as to whether to
go for broke and basically put on our mental defense.
Bobby and I had an inclination to do that. But
the other side, which Emma, who worked for me, who's
the best lawyer I've ever known, She was of the
more conservative position that, know, we better just not put
(33:50):
out the trash out there because the Army will get
pissed and he'll get the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Are there clients out there that would just rather be
put to death and surrout a sentence where they're stuck
in prison for their natural life.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Yeah, I believe there are people like that, and I
could certainly understand if I was accused of something, they're
horrific and the only option was life in prison without parole.
I could certainly see rationalizing not living anymore. You know,
spending the rest of your life in a cage is
not real attractive. And I know there's others they called volunteers,
(34:29):
and those are people who voluntarily take the death penalty
rather than go spend the rest of their lives in prison.
I believe at one point Bobby felt that way.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
For Carrie Bales, it was paramount that the father of
her children stay alive.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Of course, I.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Didn't want Bob to get the death penalty. We just
wouldn't have ever been able to hug him again, or
you know, we would have always had to see him
behind class. That was like the biggest reason that I
wanted the death penalty off the table, was so that
even if he was incarcerated forever, we would still I'll
be able to hug him and be near him.
Speaker 15 (35:04):
Bob Bales will never admit to you that he's a victim.
Bob Bals is still very much a man. He's still
very much confident, And this.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Kind of makes me frustrated. The idea that I took
the plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It kind of bothers me when people say, now, well,
he took that so that he avoided the death since
and that's not the truth, because there were still guys
on the ground, you know what I mean. You know
there are guys on the ground that are being shot
at every day at that time. And if whatever we
could do to him to kind of get that.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
So your conviction would then wyattee that game of.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Enemy, right, and it wouldn't be as easy for them
to use this as a recruiting video for the Taliban.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Robert Bales claims that he wanted his case to be
resolved to protect the American soldiers still in Afghanistan and
speak to his motivations, but his comments ignore in uncomfortable
reality about the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve, after
Bales had killed sixteen civilians, he put the gun in
his mouth and he decided not to pull the trigger.
(36:16):
GQ writer Brendan Vaughan recollects his conversation with Bails on
the subject.
Speaker 16 (36:21):
He didn't intimate anything about saying that he had a
death wish, but he did describe the dawning on him
of what he had just done. In that moment right
before he puts the gun in his mouth, he describes
realizing what he had done and realizing that his life
(36:41):
was effectively over and that because of that, why not
end it? And he put his gun in his mouth,
and he thought about his kids back in Washington.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And decided not to do it.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
What would it be like to not be in Bob's
life and not take the kids to see their dad
and not be there and have another life? And I
just I couldn't imagine my life like that, and how
sad it would be.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
As a reminder, here's what Baile said to staff Sergeant
McLaughlin in between his trips to Alakosi and Nonage Been.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
I go in and I see my friend and I'm like, hey, man,
I was killed some military age males up and al Kozi.
I'm going to naj Andbian to finish it. I was like,
take care of my wife and kids. Seriously, take care
of my wife and kids.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
A lot of people don't agree on whether a man
like Robert Bales follows moral compass, but this much is clear.
On June fifth, twenty thirteen, Bals pled guilty to the
unlawful killings. He carried out Panjue Afghanistan for many reasons,
but above all, it seems for his family.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Look, we're punished.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I know what I'm missing.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I mean, I know what my kid I am, my kids,
you know, without their father. You know, I don't want
to be here. You know, nobody really wants to be here.
Where there's life, there's hope, and so hopefully you know,
I still have life, still have some hope left that
you know, maybe twenty twenty five years from now, somebody
will review this and say, you know, this guy, let's
(38:37):
let him go, let's let him out.
Speaker 15 (38:43):
Coming up on the war within this case smacks of
institutional bias.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It's time to go whole home.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Whatever we can do to make as much stink, to
make as much notification of this, you need to do it.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
I want the jury to have sympathy for the Afghan victims.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
The job of the infantry is very simply. You want
to find, fix and finish the enemey.
Speaker 15 (39:01):
There's no uniforms in Afghanistan. They blend in with the
population and it's a gorilla war.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We found a picture of Haiji Wazir online, who made
a terrorist video but the whole time he's holding up
his Taliban tattoo.
Speaker 15 (39:14):
That panel, they knew that the Taliban was sitting in
an American courtroom, it might have had a little bit
of a different.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
View of the prosecution.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
How many times do we let Americans die when we
know where the bad guys aren't, we don't go get them?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
The war within the Robert Bayls Story. It is a
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 for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and
Mike Powers. The podcast was written and produced by Max
(39:58):
Nelson and hosted by me McGinnis. Editing was done by
Anna Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy
Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer,
and Peter Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz
Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal,
(40:22):
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 podcast
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