August 3, 2023 • 35 mins
Episode 7 of THE WAR WITHIN concerns the numerous substances that might have altered Robert Bales’ state of mind in 2012 Afghanistan – particularly, a controversial and potentially defective antimalarial drug.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What you have described here.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, a situation where we
have an individual being placed in charge of multiple people's lives.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Doctor Kristen Damse O'Connor is a neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai
Hospital in New York. She's an expert on the effects
of brain injury on military veterans.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I've never met or evaluated this individual, but from what
I've been told, it sounds like there was alcohol, sleeping pills,
and days and days of sleep deprivation. You're mixing up
quite a cocktail here.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Doctor Miguel Escalone, a colleague of Damse O'Connor, agrees with
her assessment. Neither doctor has examined staff Sergeant Robert Bales,
but they've both seen the devastating effects of TBI and
their patients time again.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I think it's common sense to say, if you take
someone who attends towards a violence, might have PTSD, all
these kinds of things, and you give them something that
could make them even more violent, could be a catastrophic situation.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Previously on the war with.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
It now looking back, and I think I had a
few concussions.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Bob told me that he had been blown up nine times.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
A traumatic brain injury can happen when there is an
external force that results in an alteration and mental status.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I call it an invisible disability. Your brain is not
built to take that kind of punishment.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
You can't explain this irrational activity looking at it from
normal eyes.
Speaker 7 (01:48):
Bales is like running around with a chicken with a
fucking headcover.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
I reguard that night, I'll see some flashing lights to
the north. You have to go out and try to
stop that threat.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war with it The
Robert Bayles story. Robert Bayles's legal defense did not utilize
the staff sergeant's history of traumatic brain injury to fight
for his innocence in perpetrating the Canaharm massacre, even though
(02:19):
many expected them to do so, such as legal analyst
Jeff Tubin speaking here to CNN.
Speaker 8 (02:25):
The subjective is to establish that Bails is a very
damaged man psychologically. He is someone who is not fully
responsible for his own actions. And given that the defense
appears to have something to work with the fact that
he had had a serious head injury, that may be
(02:45):
what gets this case to a resolution that involves something
other than execution.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Ultimately, defense Attorney John Henry Brown was able to negotiate
a plea deal without playing the mental health card, which
would have implicated that the Army was culpable for sending
Bails back into the field.
Speaker 9 (03:04):
It became apparent that Bobby was the product of the
government and that he was just a classic soldier that
had been forgotten in Very little assistance was given to
him when he had his injuries. But we had to
make a decision that no, we better just you know,
don tell the whole truth of what happened, because the
(03:26):
Army will get pissed and he'll get the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
There's another reason why an argument built around Robert Bales's
brain may not have held up at court. Most people
can agree that the staff sergeant was not his right
mind on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve. But
whether the military industrial complex is responsible for his heightened state,
that's a fur debate.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
We were drinking some booze, a twenty one ounce Pepsi
bottle full of whiskey, and you know, three guys over
two and a half hours. You know, we worked it
out like seven drinks per guy. This is ten o'clock.
Maybe you know, we watch a man on fire. I
get up, I try to go to bed, I go in,
(04:11):
I take some sleeping pills.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The army might have been negligent in handling his tvis,
but getting intoxicated on this kinetic deployment was Bales's own
decision and against the rules. Private James Alexander recalls that
sleeping pills weren't even available to the other soldiers. At
VSP Bellingby.
Speaker 7 (04:35):
We had a medshd where you had fentanyl and all
kinds of shit that was in there, and the person
that was in charge of it was our medics, right,
and so Bales's sergeant, he's in charge of the medics,
so he could get whatever the hell he wanted. He
talks about not being able to sleep, so he got
sleep nets.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It's like damn.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
Okay, Like, you know, I wish that was an option,
because not all could sleep, but we didn't all have
the ability just to like go to the candy store
and take whatever the hell we wanted.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Alexander's comments are in line with those of Bob's wife,
Carrie Vails that Bob relied on substances more than he should.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He was a drinker.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
He went to Ohio State, right, he partied a lot.
I think that's how alcohol came into his life. And
then I think he liked to party it up with
his guys as well. I think that maybe after his
second deployment and third deployment, there were times when he
would just kind of zone out and drink to I
think forget.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
Honestly, you know, I'd go out on a back porch
when we lived in Lake Tabs and you know, I
just said, and I mean that's kind of an alcoholism
thing too. You know, I'd sit there in a back
porch and you know, just drink, you know, I mean,
I didn't want to be around anybody.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I think he was in pain.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
And those times when he would go off by himself
and have a few drinks and smoke his cigars. I
think there were times when you would drink to obviously
make the pain go away.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Doctor's Damse O'Connor and Escaloone shed light on how TBI
and addiction can often go hand in hand, compounding the
symptoms of each affliction.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Alcohol use.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Substance use is often more common among soldiers who have
sustained a traumatic brain injury. Substances like alcohol can be
a coping mechanism.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It's a way of self medicating.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's a way of turning off all of the enormous
stressors that a person can be exposed to.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
In a combat zone.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
You're much more likely to get addicted and to not
be able to stop yourself because you've lost that inhibition.
If you've lost the ability to tell yourself no, you're
going to get hooked.
Speaker 7 (06:55):
So we're in country in Afghanistan. It's either Christmas or
New Year's. They start shooting off flares like celebrate right.
They were shooting red and green up into the air,
and all of the infantry NCOs are drinking or are drunk.
(07:17):
We didn't know what they were up to. We just
assumed they were doing the right thing like we were.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
James Alexander sent us the following video from that Christmas night,
which he took on his cell phone. But soldiers are
firing flares into the sky like fireworks. For a group
that was tasked with living alongside Afghan farming villages, they
aren't being subtle.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Bobber I even.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
Met at Hey, you're good, big Pepper, did not shoot here,
whapon you're a fag.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
That was Bales, who used the word I won't repeat here.
Apparently getting drunk was normalized. That fell them by so
much so that Private Gavin Jones doesn't recall the infantrydership
or NCOs doing much to mask their in sobriety.
Speaker 10 (08:04):
You know, they'd come over just to check in with
us and have like really hard to heart talks, and
you know it's something that a drug person does, you know,
like an I love you bros.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Situation.
Speaker 10 (08:13):
They'd be coming over from their huts and be like, hey, guys,
just want to make sure that everything's doing okay. A
few of those and you could tell that there was.
They were getting wild over there.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Alexander and Jones were privates lowest on the total poll.
They didn't have the standing to tell their NCOs to
stop drinking. Green Beret Captain Danny Fields was the person
who was responsible for making sure nothing got out of hand.
Speaker 11 (08:36):
I don't think I'm sharing any secrets here to say
that Green Berets will have some kind of alcohol on
their base.
Speaker 12 (08:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
It was also god of big boy rules. You play
by the rules.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
If you're drinking, I don't want to know about it,
but you're also doing it responsibly.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To be clear. Fields in his group were Special Forces
or SF as elite high priority soldiers. Military regulations are
usually more relaxed for them.
Speaker 11 (09:04):
I made it very clear with the team that the
only people that would be drinking would be the SF guys.
Now what they did after I said that, You know,
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, I think some of that has probably come to light.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Alcohol seemed to be available to almost anyone who wanted
it at VSP bellumby Captain Field's outlines how some soldiers
managed to transport it to Afghanistan.
Speaker 11 (09:26):
If people want something, they're going to find a way
to get it. A pretty common way to get alcohol
on a base.
Speaker 13 (09:33):
Is that people will mail it.
Speaker 11 (09:35):
They're not going to maybe mail a bottle of Jack Daniels, Like,
here's what I've heard is a bottle of like mouthwash,
and that's vodka. And in that maybe you even put
some some blue or green food coloring in there to
make it look more like mouthwash, and that gets shipped
and goes overseas and shows up in somebody's care package.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
John Henry Brown seems to think the liquor came from
the Special Forces, after all, Bellaby was their base. Furthermore,
Baiales's lawyer surmises that alcohol wasn't the only illicit substance
used and distributed by the SF.
Speaker 9 (10:10):
It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me someone who was
provided alcohol and drugs by the Special Forces should be
treated the way he was being treated. You know, they
had what they called the drug store and the SF campground,
which was any drug you wanted was in this box,
and Bobby would use them, and he was given steroids
(10:33):
by the SF.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
So it started taking the steroids probably early February.
Speaker 14 (10:40):
They were pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
The joint pain goes away, like it's an amazing thing
to not feel joint pain. You know, it's an amazing thing
to feel better. You know, you're out there doing patrols.
Speaker 14 (10:49):
You know, I'm an old man.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I'm thirty eight years old at the time. You know
you're carrying, you know, one hundred pounds sometimes.
Speaker 14 (10:55):
On your back.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
You know, you're doing what you can to keep up,
and so I'm not going to apologize for that.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
According to Bales, about a month before committing the Canahar massacre,
he started taking stenoza law, a synthetic steroid derived from testosterone,
just like in pro sports. An authorized use of steroids
is not allowed in the armed forces, according to the privates,
that didn't stop Bales.
Speaker 10 (11:20):
I remember like multiple times he mentioned like doing some
steroids and if we ever needed something that like he's
he's got our backs. But it wasn't necessarily put like
straight to us, like hey you want steroids, but like, hey,
you know, if you ever need anything, you know, I
got you squared away.
Speaker 7 (11:35):
We would work out and he'd just come in and
start trying to wrap three fifteen and it's like all right, dude,
like let's see how this goes. And he'd be able
to get like half a rep and like you could
physically see him ballooning as he was taking the steroids.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Similar to alcohol. Prohibition of steroids is a rule that's
often ignored by deploy soldiers, as Panchway podcast host Curtis
Grace explains.
Speaker 15 (12:05):
I know a lot of people that did it. Steroids
isn't one of the things that's tested for on a
normal drug test. You have to test specifically for steroids.
So unless they have reason to believe that their guys
are doing steroids, they don't test for it.
Speaker 11 (12:17):
Do SF guys use steroids? Yeah, I mean I think
that's fairly common. I don't think that's a big secret.
Were there people using it on our VSP, probably yeah,
but again not I wouldn't say widespread or really well known.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's not like it was advertised.
Speaker 11 (12:36):
If it was being used, whether that resulted in, you know,
poor leadership or just some poor decisions, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The potential side effects of steroids like stenols a law
are well documented, hormonal and balances, headaches, difficulty sleeping. Most notably,
numerous studies have found links between steroids and aggression. Some
call it roid rage.
Speaker 10 (13:08):
You know about the time that bails be the shit
out of that jingle truck driver, right, that.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
Was definitely like another steroid moment for sure, void rage
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
The privates are referring to. An incident from the middle
of February twenty twelve. Bales had started his steroid regimen
a week or two prior when a truck arrived at
VSP Bellumby to make a regularly scheduled delivery.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
So we are getting resupplied by Afghan truck drivers. Halfcan
truck driver. We're there unloading a bunch of food.
Speaker 14 (13:38):
When you're in an.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Area like this, everybody does every job, all hands on
that kind of thing.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I'm down the chain of the truck. The driver of
the truck is the first one touching everything. So he's
moving stuff down the saine. And as he's doing so,
he's moving quicker than bails can grab the stuff.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
And I'm the last guy on the truck and we're
having fun with it.
Speaker 14 (13:58):
We're throwing boxes to each other.
Speaker 12 (14:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
So the first time the guy he throws they're twenty
four ounds soup cans and there's twelve in a bundle,
smacks me right across a jaw. And I mean, first
time it was funny.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
Dales kind of like yells at him, like, don't hit
me again. Right, But the guy doesn't speak English. He
has no idea what you're doing. And so the driver,
you know, goes back immediately to start unloading his truck,
Like what's the big deal, bro, Like keep.
Speaker 14 (14:25):
It moving, you know, I'm seeing stars, you know. But
I understood.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
He is in a hurry because he doesn't want to
be the Afghanis truck driver stuck in Belling by Afghanistan.
When lights go out, when it gets dark outside, he's
gotta die.
Speaker 14 (14:37):
He just delivered goods to Americans? Are you kidding?
Speaker 5 (14:40):
So we're we're unloading again, and he does it again,
smacks me right in ahead.
Speaker 14 (14:46):
Well, I turn around and.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
He's just laughing his ass off, you know, He's just
in the truck, just laughing, and I'm like, nah.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
Dales turns around and starts punching the dude in the
face and wrestling with him inside it this truck, and
I'm just like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 5 (15:05):
You know, he's a typical after anyways, probably one hundred pounds,
you know. So he goes straight down and so once
he went down, you know, the knees started hitting and
I put his lip through his tooth and then, you know,
I kind of like caught myself when I stopped, and
I was like, okay, that's enough.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
But I eventually got pulled out of the truck, calmed down,
and the truck driver's bleeding, you know, and he's yelling
and whatever.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I felt bad about it. So we got him cleaned
up and I offered the guy sixty bucks.
Speaker 10 (15:34):
His first like words are like, oh man, like, what
are they gonna do to me?
Speaker 16 (15:37):
You think I'm gonna be okay? Like, don't say anything
to the guys. What are we gonna tell them? He's
talking about the guys, He's talking about the SF crew.
I don't know if that truck driver needs some kind
of complaint. I think it might have just been just
brushed under the rug.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Many years later, Soldier X believes that in hindsight, it's
hard not to see this altercation with the truck driver
as a warning sign.
Speaker 12 (16:01):
When I saw that happen, I thought it was stupid.
Pe Durvale thought was stupid. Two I thoughably got reprimanded
by the SF commander wherever they pulled him aside, like
you know, what the hell, dude, I hold on with
that juble truck in st pretty pretty hard, because I
do feel like maybe the I past shows stup in
and pulled my trade command. You know, this is the
first straw and the lead you down a bunch of
(16:23):
straws being broken.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
When Robert Bales left the VSP on March eleventh, twenty twelve,
his brain had lost the ability to reach equilibrium. That's
almost indisputable, but isolating the specific factors that contributed to
his mental state is not so simple. As doctor Kristen
Dams O'Connor, at.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Tests, you are looking at the sum total of a
person's lifetime set of brain injuries, systemic health conditions, many
of which have implications for brain pathology, and we are
trying to disentangle the unique contributions of distinct circumstances to
(17:09):
the brain.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The military's prosecutor of the Bails case, Jane Moores, is
convinced that alcohol and steroids alone can't be used as
a reasonable excuse for the murder of sixteen civilians.
Speaker 13 (17:24):
So there were allegations proven that there was alcohol on
the base that there was some steroid use. This was
not important from my point of view as the criminal prosecutor. Steroids, alcohol,
and benadryl is what he was taking. There was no
evidence to suggest that that combination together, or any of
(17:44):
those things by themselves affected his ability to know what
he was doing and to do what he did, zero question.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
In my mind.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Robert Byales actually agrees with Morse on this point.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yes, I believe that the steroids may have had in effect.
Yes I believe that, you know, the sleeping pills had
an effect. Yes, I believe not sleeping for you know
a period of time had an effect.
Speaker 14 (18:09):
But at the end of the day, it's a mitigating factor,
but it's not. It doesn't absolve me of what I did.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
The question remains, how do you get beyond mitigating factor?
How do you get time solution?
Speaker 17 (18:28):
Okay, yeah, make sure that you and I are really
on the same page, and that is we need legal
hooks that they could hanger head.
Speaker 14 (18:35):
A of course, yesday.
Speaker 12 (18:38):
I mean, we scoured the record.
Speaker 17 (18:40):
Now we've got mathacline that changed the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We're back in the game.
Speaker 12 (18:43):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We can go for all of it.
Speaker 12 (18:45):
Right.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
That moral aspect of it is what I believe in
my heart is going to change the opinion of not
only a panel, but of the rest of the world.
And so if we do that, then I believe people say, well,
he may not have had authority to leave that PSP,
but the reason that he did that anyway was because
of this methloquan.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
We spent a lot of time on elements of this
case that might explain Robert Bales's motivations and mindset in
carrying out the candaharm massacred, potential connections between the victims
and the Taliban, traumatic brain injury in PTSD, alcohol, sleeping pills,
and steroids. The problem is none of these elements would
(19:31):
exonerate Bails in a court of law. Perhaps that's one
reason why many lawyers would have hesitated to take him
as a client in the year since his conviction, but
not Attorney John Mayer.
Speaker 17 (19:43):
When the case was presented to me, eleven firms passed
on it. Most firms said, there's nothing we can do.
You just got to go to your time, man, whereas
I was of the mindset to say, well, what can
we do? And candidly, we don't get paid as handsomely
as the market would probably dictate. But you do it
(20:03):
for love, you do it for fulfillment. You do it
because you're soldier. You're an officer. You're not gonna let
you guys.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Don Maer knows the military's legal system about as well
as anybody. During his twenty years of service, he spent
time as a judge advocate for the Army, working criminal cases. Essentially,
his role was similar to that of Lieutenant Colonel J.
Morse and the Bails trial.
Speaker 17 (20:27):
I'm a former prosecutor. We were taught as judge advocates,
and you're obligated to find the truth before you bring
these cases. It's an American soldier sitting over there.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It's our guys.
Speaker 17 (20:39):
We're a team. Only when you are convinced that we
can prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt and it's
the best interest of the army and the soldier, only
then do we bring cases.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Nowadays, mar sits on the opposite side of the room
during courts martial defending alleged American war criminals. He's handled
a bail's appeal since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 14 (21:04):
In that time, he's.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Uncovered a novel, unexplored angle to this heavily screwed nice case.
Speaker 17 (21:10):
It's a defense we're never provided with meflquin. How can
you make a really informed decision about your life?
Speaker 3 (21:16):
What is mefloquin?
Speaker 17 (21:18):
Well, Mike, I'm not going to get up in front
of any court or make any representation saying that I
know what meflquin does. I have to rely on the
information from the experts, from doctor Devon.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Bales's Path of Freedom hinges on an anti malarial drug
called mefloquin, and the expert opinion of Remington Nevin, a
public health and preventive medicine doctor with a notable reputation
and a very specific niche.
Speaker 18 (21:44):
I aim to educate the medical community and policymakers of
the existence of a disease caused by poisoning by meflicuin
and related drugs. It's just the latest in a series
of synthetic drugs that the US military has been developing
to provide our forces with an edge for the type
(22:05):
of large scale worldwide deployments that became essential for our
national security.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
There are many ways that a soldier can lose their
life on a deployment, and in the engagement is the
main one, but diseases like malaria can present a massive
danger to American troops in an unfamiliar climate.
Speaker 18 (22:25):
The threat of malaria is tremendous malaria that can kill
someone of European descent within days, and so without some
type of medication to prevent and treat malaria, militaries had
no way to operate in malarious areas like Africa and
in Central and South America and World War Two, if
(22:45):
our troops were not taking their anti malarials as directed,
we probably would have lost the South Pacific due to malaria.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
For the bulk of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Meflquin
was the military's anti malarial drug of choice.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Lot of us took it.
Speaker 14 (23:01):
I took it.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
During his own tenure in the United States Owned Forces,
doctor Nevin began to hear about the peculiar side effects
of meflick win.
Speaker 18 (23:11):
I signed up for the military prior to nine to eleven,
so a few years before Robert Bales. If you'd seen
that movie Outbreak, I pictured myself being a Dustin Hoffman
type character in the army, and I suppose you have
to be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I was familiar with meflickmen. As part of my training.
Speaker 18 (23:30):
We were taught that Meflickman was safe and effective medication
if used as directed. That there were many rumors and
accusations of the drug being dangerous. When I deployed to
Afghanistan as the preventive medicine doc, I took it myself.
In fact, I was told was reach into his garbage
bag and grab your box of meflickmen.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But within a number of weeks, I.
Speaker 18 (23:53):
Think even I had begun to hear things from others
who had taken the drug, who were experiencing very vivid
treats from the drug, horrific nightmares.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I know exactly what the doctor is describing. I know
those dreams. To be concise, taking methylquin was akin to
me anyway to dropping acid.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I saw behavioral changes in many people in my unit.
Speaker 18 (24:20):
I heard reports from others in my unit of fairly
severe side effects from the drug. And it was actually
the death of someone in my unit that made me
look into this issue more and that began what has
been well over a decade of research into this drug.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Methylquin was very effective in combating malaria cases among warriors overseas,
but doctor Nevin's extensive research has brought him to the
conclusion that the drug is causing an entirely different problem
which could be just as deadly.
Speaker 18 (24:57):
The drug is fundamentally defective and it should have been
abandoned because it was shown to be not fit for purpose.
Many soldiers taking the drug to develop sleep disturbances, vivid dreams,
a sense of foreboding or anxiety, symptoms of panic, paranoia, confusion, restlessness,
(25:17):
and with continued use of the drug in many cases,
this would lead to a full on psychotic break associated
with the usual behaviors in people experiencing psychosis, including suicide
and violence.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Some of these symptoms referenced by doctor Nevin might sound familiar.
That's what John Maher thought when he first unearthed studies
on the side effects of methylquin. He reached out to
Nevin to ask whether the anti malarial could have anything
to do with the twenty twelve killings committed by Robert Bales.
Speaker 18 (25:51):
When we call.
Speaker 17 (25:51):
Doctor Nevin back in twenty fifteen, do you know what
he said to us when he answered the phone. I
have been waiting for this call for three years.
Speaker 14 (25:59):
Where have you ben?
Speaker 18 (26:01):
In medicine, we tend to discount our intuition, and this
is unwise because medicine is not just a science, it's
an art. I feel quite confident in attributing effects to
meflicuin based on my assessment of people. There's something about
their mannerisms, There's something about their eyes. Bales has the look.
(26:21):
He has that look.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Back in the mid two thousands, meflquin was being administered
basically in mass to the rank and file soldiers deployed
to the Middle East. The weekly doses became so notorious
that they developed their own nickname.
Speaker 17 (26:38):
They call it Meflicuan. Mondays, we're gonna see fairies, We're
gonna see shit. Oh, we can't wait. It's Mefican Mondays.
Speaker 14 (26:45):
We called it like gay Peel Thursday or something like that.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
David Wesley's a veteran who deployed to Iraq twice alongside
Robert Bales. Gay Field Thursday.
Speaker 19 (26:54):
I mean, I know that's a crass way of saying it,
but you gotta think the infantry used to be just
full of one jockstrap.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Wearing Hulugan's pretty much.
Speaker 14 (27:04):
So that's kind of how we talked with you.
Speaker 19 (27:05):
It was like, you get these like just fucked up dreams, man,
like just wild. I'm so glad I don't ever have
to take those again.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
As an American soldier, you're supposed to take whatever medications
the military gives you, no questions asked. Most people trusted
the process.
Speaker 14 (27:23):
I remember before we deployed, I got dosed up with
so much stuff that they.
Speaker 19 (27:28):
Could have gave me anything, but if they told me
it was gonna help me stay alive, I wanted.
Speaker 14 (27:36):
We took it once a week.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Remember Doc Stacey would come around, he had the sheet,
he would give you a pill, he'd check you off
the sheet, and then we had the crazy dreams.
Speaker 14 (27:44):
And we used to joke about it.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
You know, it's one of those things that we joked
about and we made fun of, and nobody really thinks
that anything else is going to happen long term. That's why,
you know, when I heard about the methlquin thing, you know,
I really at first.
Speaker 14 (27:58):
I didn't remember the name with a drug, right. I
remember the effects.
Speaker 18 (28:03):
This class of drug is neurotoxic. Drugs of this class
actually caused physical, irreversible injury to brains. At one point
in Iraq, Bales suffered what sounds like a clear hallucination
in Iraq.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I think I was on day three of fourteen hour days,
and I see walking across the bridge what looked to
be the Purple ghosts. And at the time I thought,
you know, you've heard about stories where you get so
tired you see stuff. So I didn't really equate it
to the methloquin. I equated it to, man, I'm really tired.
Speaker 14 (28:42):
I got to wake up.
Speaker 18 (28:43):
He hallucinated some figures at nighttime while he was on overwatch,
while he was surveying a bridge. That's an indication of
an encephalopathic event. That is an indication of essentially irreversible
side effects from the drug.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
According to Nevin's research, once some methlicquin users starts showing
symptoms of psychosis. They're supposed to stop taking the drug
immediately as the effects could become permanent, but that message
was never delivered to the soldiers. To make matters worse,
Mount Sinai doctors Kristin Damse O'Connor and Miguel Escalonne suggests
(29:19):
that the effects of methlquin can be heightened in people
who have certain pre existing conditions.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There is evidence to suggest that traumatic brain injury can
impact the way a person metabolizes medications. Does that extend
to the effects of anti malarial drugs? I think that
there is evidence to suggest that that's quite possible.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
There's enough articles out there published in reputable journals that
I certainly would think twice before prescribing it to somebody
that had a significant psychiatric history or history of brain injury.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It bears repeating. A lot of the men and women
who serve in combat, especially multiple tours, have incurred TBIs.
PTSD only compounds the problem.
Speaker 18 (30:08):
Let's say someone is experiencing intermittent depressive thoughts even though
they're on an antidepressant. Well, if they start taking mefloquin
and they develop new depressive thoughts. They're at risk of saying, well,
I guess my depressions coming back. They may mislead themselves
into thinking this is just a recurrence of their existing depression,
(30:28):
when in fact it could be the only warning sign
of drug toxicity.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Doctor Nevan wasn't involved with bales camp during his trial
or sentencing, but he observed the case from afar to him.
Details from Bales's were telling of the events preceding the
killings suggests that his mental state was directly attributable to
meflicuin poisoning.
Speaker 18 (30:54):
He was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was
suffering from hallucinations. He believed, in his heart of hearts
that he had to take action against those villagers because
they were plotting an imminent attack and only he could
see this.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
But he wasn't being rational.
Speaker 18 (31:17):
He saw flashing lights being exchanged between the villages.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I have guard that night, and just shortly after we'd
taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north
and I kind of turn around. I see like kind
of like a start and a finish to the south.
You know, maybe they were car headlights, maybe they were
handheld land I'm not sure. What they were, But in
my opinion, they were signaling to each other, telling them
(31:49):
that they were ready to do whatever it was to do.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Who would think this?
Speaker 18 (31:55):
Who would look at lights flashing and conclude that this
was an indication of a conspiracy between the parties? Couldn't
They just walked over to the other village and said, hey,
let's attack the compound at daybreak. And only he could
see this. None of his unit members believed him.
Speaker 14 (32:14):
The guy that was with me was our tone metic.
He didn't see the lights.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
I thought at the time it was because he was
inexperienced and he was.
Speaker 14 (32:26):
Not paying attention.
Speaker 18 (32:27):
The best explanation for these visual hallucinations, perscratory delusions and
paranoia is chronic methic and poisoning.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
There's no better explanation.
Speaker 18 (32:39):
Yes, a little bit of alcohol would probably help further
disinhibit him, and then when one is on steroids, one
tends to get a little more aggressive than one ordinarily would.
But I think even without alcohol and steroids in the mix,
he had the necessary ingredients for doing what he did.
(33:01):
He was in a nutshell crazy, because only a crazy
person would conclude as he did.
Speaker 20 (33:11):
When I hear the Bails story, The first thing I
think of is meflquin. First thing.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Commander Bill Minofsky was an esteemed naval flight officer for
over fifteen years until he began taking meflquin in two
thousand and two.
Speaker 20 (33:32):
Bales's deployment team, as I understand it, came under the
jurisdiction of the Special Forces Medical team there where they
were given meflquin because it was on their head that
if anybody in Bale's team got malaria, they could get
in trouble. And in most cases they were lined up
and made to take it, giving it to ziploc bags,
(33:54):
had people watch them swallow it. We're threatened with court
martiall didn't take it.
Speaker 12 (34:01):
On and on and on.
Speaker 20 (34:03):
The United States government is lucky there were not more
Robert Bales other than the ones that might have not
been reported. My prayers for Robert Bales. It's a tragedy
for him and his family. I don't know how to
resolve it.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Coming up on the war within This drug.
Speaker 20 (34:28):
Does something to the discretion center of your brain.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Meflicuin has been handed out without adequate documentation with.
Speaker 14 (34:35):
The military justice system. That's we cover our ass.
Speaker 17 (34:38):
If the defense were never provided with Meflin. I think
it could be landscape changing.
Speaker 20 (34:44):
If I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't
be here talking to you. Honestly, God, I would be
probably dead.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
The War Within the Robert Bailes story's producttion of Bungalow
Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
producers Paul Pulowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow
Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
(35:18):
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. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(35:39):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satall, as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts
What you have described here.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, a situation where we
have an individual being placed in charge of multiple people's lives.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Doctor Kristen Damse O'Connor is a neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai
Hospital in New York. She's an expert on the effects
of brain injury on military veterans.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I've never met or evaluated this individual, but from what
I've been told, it sounds like there was alcohol, sleeping pills,
and days and days of sleep deprivation. You're mixing up
quite a cocktail here.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Doctor Miguel Escalone, a colleague of Damse O'Connor, agrees with
her assessment. Neither doctor has examined staff Sergeant Robert Bales,
but they've both seen the devastating effects of TBI and
their patients time again.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I think it's common sense to say, if you take
someone who attends towards a violence, might have PTSD, all
these kinds of things, and you give them something that
could make them even more violent, could be a catastrophic situation.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Previously on the war with.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
It now looking back, and I think I had a
few concussions.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Bob told me that he had been blown up nine times.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
A traumatic brain injury can happen when there is an
external force that results in an alteration and mental status.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I call it an invisible disability. Your brain is not
built to take that kind of punishment.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
You can't explain this irrational activity looking at it from
normal eyes.
Speaker 7 (01:48):
Bales is like running around with a chicken with a
fucking headcover.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
I reguard that night, I'll see some flashing lights to
the north. You have to go out and try to
stop that threat.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war with it The
Robert Bayles story. Robert Bayles's legal defense did not utilize
the staff sergeant's history of traumatic brain injury to fight
for his innocence in perpetrating the Canaharm massacre, even though
(02:19):
many expected them to do so, such as legal analyst
Jeff Tubin speaking here to CNN.
Speaker 8 (02:25):
The subjective is to establish that Bails is a very
damaged man psychologically. He is someone who is not fully
responsible for his own actions. And given that the defense
appears to have something to work with the fact that
he had had a serious head injury, that may be
(02:45):
what gets this case to a resolution that involves something
other than execution.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Ultimately, defense Attorney John Henry Brown was able to negotiate
a plea deal without playing the mental health card, which
would have implicated that the Army was culpable for sending
Bails back into the field.
Speaker 9 (03:04):
It became apparent that Bobby was the product of the
government and that he was just a classic soldier that
had been forgotten in Very little assistance was given to
him when he had his injuries. But we had to
make a decision that no, we better just you know,
don tell the whole truth of what happened, because the
(03:26):
Army will get pissed and he'll get the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
There's another reason why an argument built around Robert Bales's
brain may not have held up at court. Most people
can agree that the staff sergeant was not his right
mind on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve. But
whether the military industrial complex is responsible for his heightened state,
that's a fur debate.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
We were drinking some booze, a twenty one ounce Pepsi
bottle full of whiskey, and you know, three guys over
two and a half hours. You know, we worked it
out like seven drinks per guy. This is ten o'clock.
Maybe you know, we watch a man on fire. I
get up, I try to go to bed, I go in,
(04:11):
I take some sleeping pills.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The army might have been negligent in handling his tvis,
but getting intoxicated on this kinetic deployment was Bales's own
decision and against the rules. Private James Alexander recalls that
sleeping pills weren't even available to the other soldiers. At
VSP Bellingby.
Speaker 7 (04:35):
We had a medshd where you had fentanyl and all
kinds of shit that was in there, and the person
that was in charge of it was our medics, right,
and so Bales's sergeant, he's in charge of the medics,
so he could get whatever the hell he wanted. He
talks about not being able to sleep, so he got
sleep nets.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It's like damn.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
Okay, Like, you know, I wish that was an option,
because not all could sleep, but we didn't all have
the ability just to like go to the candy store
and take whatever the hell we wanted.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Alexander's comments are in line with those of Bob's wife,
Carrie Vails that Bob relied on substances more than he should.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He was a drinker.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
He went to Ohio State, right, he partied a lot.
I think that's how alcohol came into his life. And
then I think he liked to party it up with
his guys as well. I think that maybe after his
second deployment and third deployment, there were times when he
would just kind of zone out and drink to I
think forget.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
Honestly, you know, I'd go out on a back porch
when we lived in Lake Tabs and you know, I
just said, and I mean that's kind of an alcoholism
thing too. You know, I'd sit there in a back
porch and you know, just drink, you know, I mean,
I didn't want to be around anybody.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I think he was in pain.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
And those times when he would go off by himself
and have a few drinks and smoke his cigars. I
think there were times when you would drink to obviously
make the pain go away.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Doctor's Damse O'Connor and Escaloone shed light on how TBI
and addiction can often go hand in hand, compounding the
symptoms of each affliction.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Alcohol use.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Substance use is often more common among soldiers who have
sustained a traumatic brain injury. Substances like alcohol can be
a coping mechanism.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It's a way of self medicating.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's a way of turning off all of the enormous
stressors that a person can be exposed to.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
In a combat zone.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
You're much more likely to get addicted and to not
be able to stop yourself because you've lost that inhibition.
If you've lost the ability to tell yourself no, you're
going to get hooked.
Speaker 7 (06:55):
So we're in country in Afghanistan. It's either Christmas or
New Year's. They start shooting off flares like celebrate right.
They were shooting red and green up into the air,
and all of the infantry NCOs are drinking or are drunk.
(07:17):
We didn't know what they were up to. We just
assumed they were doing the right thing like we were.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
James Alexander sent us the following video from that Christmas night,
which he took on his cell phone. But soldiers are
firing flares into the sky like fireworks. For a group
that was tasked with living alongside Afghan farming villages, they
aren't being subtle.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Bobber I even.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
Met at Hey, you're good, big Pepper, did not shoot here,
whapon you're a fag.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
That was Bales, who used the word I won't repeat here.
Apparently getting drunk was normalized. That fell them by so
much so that Private Gavin Jones doesn't recall the infantrydership
or NCOs doing much to mask their in sobriety.
Speaker 10 (08:04):
You know, they'd come over just to check in with
us and have like really hard to heart talks, and
you know it's something that a drug person does, you know,
like an I love you bros.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Situation.
Speaker 10 (08:13):
They'd be coming over from their huts and be like, hey, guys,
just want to make sure that everything's doing okay. A
few of those and you could tell that there was.
They were getting wild over there.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Alexander and Jones were privates lowest on the total poll.
They didn't have the standing to tell their NCOs to
stop drinking. Green Beret Captain Danny Fields was the person
who was responsible for making sure nothing got out of hand.
Speaker 11 (08:36):
I don't think I'm sharing any secrets here to say
that Green Berets will have some kind of alcohol on
their base.
Speaker 12 (08:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
It was also god of big boy rules. You play
by the rules.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
If you're drinking, I don't want to know about it,
but you're also doing it responsibly.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To be clear. Fields in his group were Special Forces
or SF as elite high priority soldiers. Military regulations are
usually more relaxed for them.
Speaker 11 (09:04):
I made it very clear with the team that the
only people that would be drinking would be the SF guys.
Now what they did after I said that, You know,
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, I think some of that has probably come to light.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Alcohol seemed to be available to almost anyone who wanted
it at VSP bellumby Captain Field's outlines how some soldiers
managed to transport it to Afghanistan.
Speaker 11 (09:26):
If people want something, they're going to find a way
to get it. A pretty common way to get alcohol
on a base.
Speaker 13 (09:33):
Is that people will mail it.
Speaker 11 (09:35):
They're not going to maybe mail a bottle of Jack Daniels, Like,
here's what I've heard is a bottle of like mouthwash,
and that's vodka. And in that maybe you even put
some some blue or green food coloring in there to
make it look more like mouthwash, and that gets shipped
and goes overseas and shows up in somebody's care package.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
John Henry Brown seems to think the liquor came from
the Special Forces, after all, Bellaby was their base. Furthermore,
Baiales's lawyer surmises that alcohol wasn't the only illicit substance
used and distributed by the SF.
Speaker 9 (10:10):
It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me someone who was
provided alcohol and drugs by the Special Forces should be
treated the way he was being treated. You know, they
had what they called the drug store and the SF campground,
which was any drug you wanted was in this box,
and Bobby would use them, and he was given steroids
(10:33):
by the SF.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
So it started taking the steroids probably early February.
Speaker 14 (10:40):
They were pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
The joint pain goes away, like it's an amazing thing
to not feel joint pain. You know, it's an amazing thing
to feel better. You know, you're out there doing patrols.
Speaker 14 (10:49):
You know, I'm an old man.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
I'm thirty eight years old at the time. You know
you're carrying, you know, one hundred pounds sometimes.
Speaker 14 (10:55):
On your back.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
You know, you're doing what you can to keep up,
and so I'm not going to apologize for that.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
According to Bales, about a month before committing the Canahar massacre,
he started taking stenoza law, a synthetic steroid derived from testosterone,
just like in pro sports. An authorized use of steroids
is not allowed in the armed forces, according to the privates,
that didn't stop Bales.
Speaker 10 (11:20):
I remember like multiple times he mentioned like doing some
steroids and if we ever needed something that like he's
he's got our backs. But it wasn't necessarily put like
straight to us, like hey you want steroids, but like, hey,
you know, if you ever need anything, you know, I
got you squared away.
Speaker 7 (11:35):
We would work out and he'd just come in and
start trying to wrap three fifteen and it's like all right, dude,
like let's see how this goes. And he'd be able
to get like half a rep and like you could
physically see him ballooning as he was taking the steroids.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Similar to alcohol. Prohibition of steroids is a rule that's
often ignored by deploy soldiers, as Panchway podcast host Curtis
Grace explains.
Speaker 15 (12:05):
I know a lot of people that did it. Steroids
isn't one of the things that's tested for on a
normal drug test. You have to test specifically for steroids.
So unless they have reason to believe that their guys
are doing steroids, they don't test for it.
Speaker 11 (12:17):
Do SF guys use steroids? Yeah, I mean I think
that's fairly common. I don't think that's a big secret.
Were there people using it on our VSP, probably yeah,
but again not I wouldn't say widespread or really well known.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's not like it was advertised.
Speaker 11 (12:36):
If it was being used, whether that resulted in, you know,
poor leadership or just some poor decisions, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The potential side effects of steroids like stenols a law
are well documented, hormonal and balances, headaches, difficulty sleeping. Most notably,
numerous studies have found links between steroids and aggression. Some
call it roid rage.
Speaker 10 (13:08):
You know about the time that bails be the shit
out of that jingle truck driver, right, that.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
Was definitely like another steroid moment for sure, void rage
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
The privates are referring to. An incident from the middle
of February twenty twelve. Bales had started his steroid regimen
a week or two prior when a truck arrived at
VSP Bellumby to make a regularly scheduled delivery.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
So we are getting resupplied by Afghan truck drivers. Halfcan
truck driver. We're there unloading a bunch of food.
Speaker 14 (13:38):
When you're in an.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Area like this, everybody does every job, all hands on
that kind of thing.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I'm down the chain of the truck. The driver of
the truck is the first one touching everything. So he's
moving stuff down the saine. And as he's doing so,
he's moving quicker than bails can grab the stuff.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
And I'm the last guy on the truck and we're
having fun with it.
Speaker 14 (13:58):
We're throwing boxes to each other.
Speaker 12 (14:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
So the first time the guy he throws they're twenty
four ounds soup cans and there's twelve in a bundle,
smacks me right across a jaw. And I mean, first
time it was funny.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
Dales kind of like yells at him, like, don't hit
me again. Right, But the guy doesn't speak English. He
has no idea what you're doing. And so the driver,
you know, goes back immediately to start unloading his truck,
Like what's the big deal, bro, Like keep.
Speaker 14 (14:25):
It moving, you know, I'm seeing stars, you know. But
I understood.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
He is in a hurry because he doesn't want to
be the Afghanis truck driver stuck in Belling by Afghanistan.
When lights go out, when it gets dark outside, he's
gotta die.
Speaker 14 (14:37):
He just delivered goods to Americans? Are you kidding?
Speaker 5 (14:40):
So we're we're unloading again, and he does it again,
smacks me right in ahead.
Speaker 14 (14:46):
Well, I turn around and.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
He's just laughing his ass off, you know, He's just
in the truck, just laughing, and I'm like, nah.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
Dales turns around and starts punching the dude in the
face and wrestling with him inside it this truck, and
I'm just like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 5 (15:05):
You know, he's a typical after anyways, probably one hundred pounds,
you know. So he goes straight down and so once
he went down, you know, the knees started hitting and
I put his lip through his tooth and then, you know,
I kind of like caught myself when I stopped, and
I was like, okay, that's enough.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
But I eventually got pulled out of the truck, calmed down,
and the truck driver's bleeding, you know, and he's yelling
and whatever.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I felt bad about it. So we got him cleaned
up and I offered the guy sixty bucks.
Speaker 10 (15:34):
His first like words are like, oh man, like, what
are they gonna do to me?
Speaker 16 (15:37):
You think I'm gonna be okay? Like, don't say anything
to the guys. What are we gonna tell them? He's
talking about the guys, He's talking about the SF crew.
I don't know if that truck driver needs some kind
of complaint. I think it might have just been just
brushed under the rug.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Many years later, Soldier X believes that in hindsight, it's
hard not to see this altercation with the truck driver
as a warning sign.
Speaker 12 (16:01):
When I saw that happen, I thought it was stupid.
Pe Durvale thought was stupid. Two I thoughably got reprimanded
by the SF commander wherever they pulled him aside, like
you know, what the hell, dude, I hold on with
that juble truck in st pretty pretty hard, because I
do feel like maybe the I past shows stup in
and pulled my trade command. You know, this is the
first straw and the lead you down a bunch of
(16:23):
straws being broken.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
When Robert Bales left the VSP on March eleventh, twenty twelve,
his brain had lost the ability to reach equilibrium. That's
almost indisputable, but isolating the specific factors that contributed to
his mental state is not so simple. As doctor Kristen
Dams O'Connor, at.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Tests, you are looking at the sum total of a
person's lifetime set of brain injuries, systemic health conditions, many
of which have implications for brain pathology, and we are
trying to disentangle the unique contributions of distinct circumstances to
(17:09):
the brain.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The military's prosecutor of the Bails case, Jane Moores, is
convinced that alcohol and steroids alone can't be used as
a reasonable excuse for the murder of sixteen civilians.
Speaker 13 (17:24):
So there were allegations proven that there was alcohol on
the base that there was some steroid use. This was
not important from my point of view as the criminal prosecutor. Steroids, alcohol,
and benadryl is what he was taking. There was no
evidence to suggest that that combination together, or any of
(17:44):
those things by themselves affected his ability to know what
he was doing and to do what he did, zero question.
Speaker 10 (17:50):
In my mind.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Robert Byales actually agrees with Morse on this point.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yes, I believe that the steroids may have had in effect.
Yes I believe that, you know, the sleeping pills had
an effect. Yes, I believe not sleeping for you know
a period of time had an effect.
Speaker 14 (18:09):
But at the end of the day, it's a mitigating factor,
but it's not. It doesn't absolve me of what I did.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
The question remains, how do you get beyond mitigating factor?
How do you get time solution?
Speaker 17 (18:28):
Okay, yeah, make sure that you and I are really
on the same page, and that is we need legal
hooks that they could hanger head.
Speaker 14 (18:35):
A of course, yesday.
Speaker 12 (18:38):
I mean, we scoured the record.
Speaker 17 (18:40):
Now we've got mathacline that changed the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We're back in the game.
Speaker 12 (18:43):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We can go for all of it.
Speaker 12 (18:45):
Right.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
That moral aspect of it is what I believe in
my heart is going to change the opinion of not
only a panel, but of the rest of the world.
And so if we do that, then I believe people say, well,
he may not have had authority to leave that PSP,
but the reason that he did that anyway was because
of this methloquan.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
We spent a lot of time on elements of this
case that might explain Robert Bales's motivations and mindset in
carrying out the candaharm massacred, potential connections between the victims
and the Taliban, traumatic brain injury in PTSD, alcohol, sleeping pills,
and steroids. The problem is none of these elements would
(19:31):
exonerate Bails in a court of law. Perhaps that's one
reason why many lawyers would have hesitated to take him
as a client in the year since his conviction, but
not Attorney John Mayer.
Speaker 17 (19:43):
When the case was presented to me, eleven firms passed
on it. Most firms said, there's nothing we can do.
You just got to go to your time, man, whereas
I was of the mindset to say, well, what can
we do? And candidly, we don't get paid as handsomely
as the market would probably dictate. But you do it
(20:03):
for love, you do it for fulfillment. You do it
because you're soldier. You're an officer. You're not gonna let
you guys.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Don Maer knows the military's legal system about as well
as anybody. During his twenty years of service, he spent
time as a judge advocate for the Army, working criminal cases. Essentially,
his role was similar to that of Lieutenant Colonel J.
Morse and the Bails trial.
Speaker 17 (20:27):
I'm a former prosecutor. We were taught as judge advocates,
and you're obligated to find the truth before you bring
these cases. It's an American soldier sitting over there.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It's our guys.
Speaker 17 (20:39):
We're a team. Only when you are convinced that we
can prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt and it's
the best interest of the army and the soldier, only
then do we bring cases.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Nowadays, mar sits on the opposite side of the room
during courts martial defending alleged American war criminals. He's handled
a bail's appeal since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 14 (21:04):
In that time, he's.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Uncovered a novel, unexplored angle to this heavily screwed nice case.
Speaker 17 (21:10):
It's a defense we're never provided with meflquin. How can
you make a really informed decision about your life?
Speaker 3 (21:16):
What is mefloquin?
Speaker 17 (21:18):
Well, Mike, I'm not going to get up in front
of any court or make any representation saying that I
know what meflquin does. I have to rely on the
information from the experts, from doctor Devon.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Bales's Path of Freedom hinges on an anti malarial drug
called mefloquin, and the expert opinion of Remington Nevin, a
public health and preventive medicine doctor with a notable reputation
and a very specific niche.
Speaker 18 (21:44):
I aim to educate the medical community and policymakers of
the existence of a disease caused by poisoning by meflicuin
and related drugs. It's just the latest in a series
of synthetic drugs that the US military has been developing
to provide our forces with an edge for the type
(22:05):
of large scale worldwide deployments that became essential for our
national security.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
There are many ways that a soldier can lose their
life on a deployment, and in the engagement is the
main one, but diseases like malaria can present a massive
danger to American troops in an unfamiliar climate.
Speaker 18 (22:25):
The threat of malaria is tremendous malaria that can kill
someone of European descent within days, and so without some
type of medication to prevent and treat malaria, militaries had
no way to operate in malarious areas like Africa and
in Central and South America and World War Two, if
(22:45):
our troops were not taking their anti malarials as directed,
we probably would have lost the South Pacific due to malaria.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
For the bulk of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Meflquin
was the military's anti malarial drug of choice.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Lot of us took it.
Speaker 14 (23:01):
I took it.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
During his own tenure in the United States Owned Forces,
doctor Nevin began to hear about the peculiar side effects
of meflick win.
Speaker 18 (23:11):
I signed up for the military prior to nine to eleven,
so a few years before Robert Bales. If you'd seen
that movie Outbreak, I pictured myself being a Dustin Hoffman
type character in the army, and I suppose you have
to be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I was familiar with meflickmen. As part of my training.
Speaker 18 (23:30):
We were taught that Meflickman was safe and effective medication
if used as directed. That there were many rumors and
accusations of the drug being dangerous. When I deployed to
Afghanistan as the preventive medicine doc, I took it myself.
In fact, I was told was reach into his garbage
bag and grab your box of meflickmen.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But within a number of weeks, I.
Speaker 18 (23:53):
Think even I had begun to hear things from others
who had taken the drug, who were experiencing very vivid
treats from the drug, horrific nightmares.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I know exactly what the doctor is describing. I know
those dreams. To be concise, taking methylquin was akin to
me anyway to dropping acid.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I saw behavioral changes in many people in my unit.
Speaker 18 (24:20):
I heard reports from others in my unit of fairly
severe side effects from the drug. And it was actually
the death of someone in my unit that made me
look into this issue more and that began what has
been well over a decade of research into this drug.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Methylquin was very effective in combating malaria cases among warriors overseas,
but doctor Nevin's extensive research has brought him to the
conclusion that the drug is causing an entirely different problem
which could be just as deadly.
Speaker 18 (24:57):
The drug is fundamentally defective and it should have been
abandoned because it was shown to be not fit for purpose.
Many soldiers taking the drug to develop sleep disturbances, vivid dreams,
a sense of foreboding or anxiety, symptoms of panic, paranoia, confusion, restlessness,
(25:17):
and with continued use of the drug in many cases,
this would lead to a full on psychotic break associated
with the usual behaviors in people experiencing psychosis, including suicide
and violence.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Some of these symptoms referenced by doctor Nevin might sound familiar.
That's what John Maher thought when he first unearthed studies
on the side effects of methylquin. He reached out to
Nevin to ask whether the anti malarial could have anything
to do with the twenty twelve killings committed by Robert Bales.
Speaker 18 (25:51):
When we call.
Speaker 17 (25:51):
Doctor Nevin back in twenty fifteen, do you know what
he said to us when he answered the phone. I
have been waiting for this call for three years.
Speaker 14 (25:59):
Where have you ben?
Speaker 18 (26:01):
In medicine, we tend to discount our intuition, and this
is unwise because medicine is not just a science, it's
an art. I feel quite confident in attributing effects to
meflicuin based on my assessment of people. There's something about
their mannerisms, There's something about their eyes. Bales has the look.
(26:21):
He has that look.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Back in the mid two thousands, meflquin was being administered
basically in mass to the rank and file soldiers deployed
to the Middle East. The weekly doses became so notorious
that they developed their own nickname.
Speaker 17 (26:38):
They call it Meflicuan. Mondays, we're gonna see fairies, We're
gonna see shit. Oh, we can't wait. It's Mefican Mondays.
Speaker 14 (26:45):
We called it like gay Peel Thursday or something like that.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
David Wesley's a veteran who deployed to Iraq twice alongside
Robert Bales. Gay Field Thursday.
Speaker 19 (26:54):
I mean, I know that's a crass way of saying it,
but you gotta think the infantry used to be just
full of one jockstrap.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Wearing Hulugan's pretty much.
Speaker 14 (27:04):
So that's kind of how we talked with you.
Speaker 19 (27:05):
It was like, you get these like just fucked up dreams, man,
like just wild. I'm so glad I don't ever have
to take those again.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
As an American soldier, you're supposed to take whatever medications
the military gives you, no questions asked. Most people trusted
the process.
Speaker 14 (27:23):
I remember before we deployed, I got dosed up with
so much stuff that they.
Speaker 19 (27:28):
Could have gave me anything, but if they told me
it was gonna help me stay alive, I wanted.
Speaker 14 (27:36):
We took it once a week.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Remember Doc Stacey would come around, he had the sheet,
he would give you a pill, he'd check you off
the sheet, and then we had the crazy dreams.
Speaker 14 (27:44):
And we used to joke about it.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
You know, it's one of those things that we joked
about and we made fun of, and nobody really thinks
that anything else is going to happen long term. That's why,
you know, when I heard about the methlquin thing, you know,
I really at first.
Speaker 14 (27:58):
I didn't remember the name with a drug, right. I
remember the effects.
Speaker 18 (28:03):
This class of drug is neurotoxic. Drugs of this class
actually caused physical, irreversible injury to brains. At one point
in Iraq, Bales suffered what sounds like a clear hallucination
in Iraq.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I think I was on day three of fourteen hour days,
and I see walking across the bridge what looked to
be the Purple ghosts. And at the time I thought,
you know, you've heard about stories where you get so
tired you see stuff. So I didn't really equate it
to the methloquin. I equated it to, man, I'm really tired.
Speaker 14 (28:42):
I got to wake up.
Speaker 18 (28:43):
He hallucinated some figures at nighttime while he was on overwatch,
while he was surveying a bridge. That's an indication of
an encephalopathic event. That is an indication of essentially irreversible
side effects from the drug.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
According to Nevin's research, once some methlicquin users starts showing
symptoms of psychosis. They're supposed to stop taking the drug
immediately as the effects could become permanent, but that message
was never delivered to the soldiers. To make matters worse,
Mount Sinai doctors Kristin Damse O'Connor and Miguel Escalonne suggests
(29:19):
that the effects of methlquin can be heightened in people
who have certain pre existing conditions.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There is evidence to suggest that traumatic brain injury can
impact the way a person metabolizes medications. Does that extend
to the effects of anti malarial drugs? I think that
there is evidence to suggest that that's quite possible.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
There's enough articles out there published in reputable journals that
I certainly would think twice before prescribing it to somebody
that had a significant psychiatric history or history of brain injury.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It bears repeating. A lot of the men and women
who serve in combat, especially multiple tours, have incurred TBIs.
PTSD only compounds the problem.
Speaker 18 (30:08):
Let's say someone is experiencing intermittent depressive thoughts even though
they're on an antidepressant. Well, if they start taking mefloquin
and they develop new depressive thoughts. They're at risk of saying, well,
I guess my depressions coming back. They may mislead themselves
into thinking this is just a recurrence of their existing depression,
(30:28):
when in fact it could be the only warning sign
of drug toxicity.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Doctor Nevan wasn't involved with bales camp during his trial
or sentencing, but he observed the case from afar to him.
Details from Bales's were telling of the events preceding the
killings suggests that his mental state was directly attributable to
meflicuin poisoning.
Speaker 18 (30:54):
He was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was
suffering from hallucinations. He believed, in his heart of hearts
that he had to take action against those villagers because
they were plotting an imminent attack and only he could
see this.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
But he wasn't being rational.
Speaker 18 (31:17):
He saw flashing lights being exchanged between the villages.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I have guard that night, and just shortly after we'd
taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north
and I kind of turn around. I see like kind
of like a start and a finish to the south.
You know, maybe they were car headlights, maybe they were
handheld land I'm not sure. What they were, But in
my opinion, they were signaling to each other, telling them
(31:49):
that they were ready to do whatever it was to do.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Who would think this?
Speaker 18 (31:55):
Who would look at lights flashing and conclude that this
was an indication of a conspiracy between the parties? Couldn't
They just walked over to the other village and said, hey,
let's attack the compound at daybreak. And only he could
see this. None of his unit members believed him.
Speaker 14 (32:14):
The guy that was with me was our tone metic.
He didn't see the lights.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
I thought at the time it was because he was
inexperienced and he was.
Speaker 14 (32:26):
Not paying attention.
Speaker 18 (32:27):
The best explanation for these visual hallucinations, perscratory delusions and
paranoia is chronic methic and poisoning.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
There's no better explanation.
Speaker 18 (32:39):
Yes, a little bit of alcohol would probably help further
disinhibit him, and then when one is on steroids, one
tends to get a little more aggressive than one ordinarily would.
But I think even without alcohol and steroids in the mix,
he had the necessary ingredients for doing what he did.
(33:01):
He was in a nutshell crazy, because only a crazy
person would conclude as he did.
Speaker 20 (33:11):
When I hear the Bails story, The first thing I
think of is meflquin. First thing.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Commander Bill Minofsky was an esteemed naval flight officer for
over fifteen years until he began taking meflquin in two
thousand and two.
Speaker 20 (33:32):
Bales's deployment team, as I understand it, came under the
jurisdiction of the Special Forces Medical team there where they
were given meflquin because it was on their head that
if anybody in Bale's team got malaria, they could get
in trouble. And in most cases they were lined up
and made to take it, giving it to ziploc bags,
(33:54):
had people watch them swallow it. We're threatened with court
martiall didn't take it.
Speaker 12 (34:01):
On and on and on.
Speaker 20 (34:03):
The United States government is lucky there were not more
Robert Bales other than the ones that might have not
been reported. My prayers for Robert Bales. It's a tragedy
for him and his family. I don't know how to
resolve it.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Coming up on the war within This drug.
Speaker 20 (34:28):
Does something to the discretion center of your brain.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Meflicuin has been handed out without adequate documentation with.
Speaker 14 (34:35):
The military justice system. That's we cover our ass.
Speaker 17 (34:38):
If the defense were never provided with Meflin. I think
it could be landscape changing.
Speaker 20 (34:44):
If I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't
be here talking to you. Honestly, God, I would be
probably dead.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
The War Within the Robert Bailes story's producttion of Bungalow
Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
producers Paul Pulowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow
Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
(35:18):
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. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(35:39):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satall, as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts
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