August 10, 2023 • 40 mins
Episode 8 of THE WAR WITHIN investigates the checkered history of the antimalarial drug Mefloquine, which has been theorized to cause major side effects – such as hallucinations and homicidal ideation – in American soldiers throughout the 21st century.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Nobody knew anything. I was first. I'm the first to
get a military diagnosis four injuries related to methicomplexosity. I'm
the first to get a VA rating. They called me
Sheeral number one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
As directed by the US military commander Bill Minofsky, took
an any malarial pill called methliquin for five months at
the dawn of the Iraq War. It's the same drug
that Robert Bails's defense team claims may have altered the
staff sergeant's mental state during his time overseas. Menofsky experience
firsthand how methlicquin can negatively affect a soldier on deployment.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Really nobody was warned.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So what I noticed looking back was I started getting
really angry, and show did most of the guys on
the deployment. There was a lot of anxiety, a lot
of frustration, and people were just snapping each other. I
thought I was drinking too much coffee. That then transitioned
into paranoia, like I was responsible for the problems, like
(01:08):
it was all my fault. And then I started having
the dreams, these crazy, vivid dreams. I had an incident
three days before the Iraq War started. I was out
in the Dari bombing range with Shield Team three Sins
in the dead and night, no moon. We had these
(01:29):
gunships coming right over It's about fifty feet over our head,
really loud, and they were shooting these flashing rockets at
targets down range. So I had all this visual stimuli
coming in and after about five minutes I got sick.
I started getting furtigo really bad, to the point where
I stood up.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I go, guys, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And there I was helping plan the Iraq war and
I'm on a drug that can cause anxiety, depression, hallucinations,
and behavior.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Previously on the war within what you have described here
sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
We were drinking some booze, seven drinks per Guy.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
Bales was in charge of the medics. You could get
whatever the hell he wanted.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
It started taking steroids early February.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
If you take someone who attends towards the violence and
you give them something that could make them even more violent,
it could be a catastrophic situation.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
They didn't remember the name of the drug, right I
remember the effects.
Speaker 8 (02:31):
They called it Mafflickman Monday's We're gonna see fairies we're
gonna seek shit.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Bale's was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was
suffering from hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
When I hear the Bail's story, the first thing I
think of is mufflickrn First.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
On, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the
Robert Bayles story. If Robert Bales has any hope of
one day leaving the Fort Levelworth Disciplinary Barracks a freeman,
it'll likely be because his attorney, John Mayer, successfully argued
(03:08):
that he was experiencing meflquin induced psychosis when he committed
the Kandahar massacre.
Speaker 8 (03:13):
Our team's position is that the mefloquin carries to day.
You're gonna give a guy a poison by order and
not disclose it. The entire landscape of this case could
have changed.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For Marr to be right, two key points would have
to be true. Number One, mefloquin is poison, at least
for some who take it, And two, Bales definitively took
the drug during his time in service. We can begin
to explore whether meflquin is actually toxic by hearing the
story of Commandermanofsky, an outspoken veteran whose life was forever changed.
(03:49):
After beginning his regimen of meflquin.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
My volunteer to go to the Iraq war. Right at
the last minute, I was called into the clinic. The
korman handed me six foil packs of hilarium wrapped in
a rubber band. I didn't even get it in a box.
And they said start taking this once a week, and
I go okay, And that's how I got the drug
and went into this descent of madness.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Larium is the brand name for the drug methotly, just
as advil is really ibuprofen. Some people use the terms interchangeably.
By March of two thousand and three, three months after
he had begun taking to any mallarial, the Commander was
displaying behavior uncharacteristic of a long tenured warrior.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I had flickerburder go like you get in a helicopter.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I went out in the desert, and not to be
too graphic, but I emptied my bowels in the desert.
Then I went back to where the trucks were parked,
and I kid you not, I threw up for an
hour straight.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I timed it.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I then went back to my rack and the tent,
and I was in bed for three days. I got
up the third day went to take a shower, and
that's when I was in the shower the first SCUD
missile was launched into Kuwait. That's when the Iraq War started.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Minowski was a highly trusted operator with top secret security clearance,
but when it came time to fight the Iraqi army,
he could barely trust himself to get through the day.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Shield Team five when I made a deploy with them
to Bagdad to help them do their mission planning there,
and I told him, I said, guys, I can't go.
I was within five minutes of getting on a helicopter
going with them, and I said I can't go. I'm
going to be a met about casualty. I feel like
I got the flu. I mean, I was really sick.
So I went home and I was coughing my lungs out.
(05:41):
Now I thought it was from the dust storms. So
they administered robotusting with coating, and I told him I
cannot take coding.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It makes me sick.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And they flat out told me, if you don't take
this stuff, you're refusing treatment and we don't have to
take care of you anymore. So I started taking the
robotusing with coding and that it was six May two
thousand and three.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's when everything started going downhill.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And after that I was in the hospital five times
for panic attacks. And that's when I started getting the
tremors and the shakes and I started stuttering. I couldn't walk.
If you looked at me, I looked like I had Parkinson's.
That lasted probably a year and a half, and I'm
convinced that I still had the drug in me.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Minofsky was physically eroding in real time. Meanwhile, intermittent hallucinations
were warping his perception of reality.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
When I came back from the war, I had audio hallucinations.
I was in my secretary's office and she went to
pick up the phone. It sounded like somebody dialing a
Touchtowne phone real fast. Now that happened to be the
preamble to the air raid alarm on base in Kuwait.
(07:01):
It always started with this very quick touch tone sound
and then it would go alarm green, alarm, yellow, alarm red.
A couple days later, I was in Walmart with my
wife and I heard the same thing over the intercom
and I looked at my wife and I go did
you hear that, she goes, no.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then I had kind of a visual hallucination one time,
right after a very severe panic attack in my psychologist office,
I came outside and the sky was purple, and there
were purple areas around everything. The craziest thing, and iraq.
Speaker 7 (07:42):
I think I was on you know, day three of
you know, fourteen hour days, and I see walking across
the bridge.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
What looked to be a purple.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Ghosts, purple visions. Menofski and Bales have never met one another,
but elements of their stories do match, for example, a
tendency towards random acts of violence.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
The week of May sixth, two thousand and three, I
took my wife up to the Kern River to go
trout fishing, and she couldn't cast her fishing line. She
didn't know how to use an open real spool, and
I got violently angry at her. I went to punch
her out for that. Meflquin causes rage. I woke up
(08:28):
one night in a cute panic attack. I went and
got my nineteen eleven forty five pistol and I took
it apart out of fear that I would wake up
in the morning with my wife dead in the pool
of blood on the floor in the morning.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
That's how bad this is.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Just a short while after he began taking mefloquin, Minofsky
was nearly unrecognizable. His anti malarial expert, doctor Remington Nevin, explains,
not everybody responds to the drug in the same way.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
For whatever reason, it appears that people have different tolerances.
Most people have some ability to detoxify the drug, but
in some people, we think this drug accumulates in their
brain tissue where it begins to exert its adverse physiological effects,
causing symptoms like disturbed sleep nightmares. You'll start to see
(09:25):
the anxiety and panic, and perhaps over time, as the
drug accumulates, you'll see the more severe symptoms such as
over its psychosis and irreversible neurotoxicity.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Robert Bales may have never been hospitalized for mafloquine toxicity,
but many of the telltale signs were on display at
vsp bellmpy impulsive rage when he beat up an Afghan
truck driver and nod fixation with the tree, disturbed sleep, paranoia.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
You know it's getting worse, bro Like, it's getting worse.
Speaker 7 (09:58):
You know you see the bad guy, and you know
what he's going to do, but you can't do anything
about it. Right, You know what's going to happen, right,
You feel it. You feel these things closing in on you,
over and over and over again. It's the anticipation of death,
probably way worse than the death itself.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
You know something's coming.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
In that anticipation of whatever's coming is what makes you paranoid.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Attorney John Marr is not the only person asserting that
methlquhen is toxic, but the question of whether Bales has
ever used this anti mallarial has not been a straightforward.
Prosecutor Jane Morris claims that have found nothing about the
drug in Bales's file.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
There was an allegation that he was on anti malarials
that caused him to do this. We I mean, we
did a more than thorough search of all medical records
for Bail's entire time in the army. You could find
no evidence not only if Bail's not taking larian, but
anyone in his unit ever taking it. My recollection is
that the only evidence that there was ever any mafluquin
(11:07):
was from one person who had been in Baile's company.
Not even in Bales's platoon, who made a sworn statement
that he remembers being given mafluquin's like in two thousand
and six, six years prior to the Act.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
John Mayer puts a lot of stock in that sworn
statement referenced by Mors to him, everything that a jury
needs to know about whether Bales took maflequin can be
answered in the affidavit of what Gregory Rao.
Speaker 8 (11:32):
The direct evidence that we have is that Specialist Rao
was standing next to Bob Information at some point. In
his affidavit, unchallenged by the government, says yo, Yeah, every
Monday we had mafflquin Mondays and they came out. We
all had to drink it. We all had to drop it,
and we look forward to those methicuin Mondays because we'd
all start seeing stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
We also got confirmation from Bailes's former platoon teammate David Wesley,
although our producer Max had to remind him of the
name of the drug.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
You remember the name of the malar drug, U Tuck.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
I think it's it was like methema, meth l chloroquin
or some craziness mathquin.
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Yeah, there is.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
You get these like just fucked up dreams, man like
just wild.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
We took it once a week, remember, Doc states, he
would come around, he had the sheet, he would give
you a pill, he'd check you off your sheet, and
then we had the crazy dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Speaking from personal experience, just about everybody was required to
take methliquin during the height of the Iraq War. It
was just one of many responsibilities that we had as soldiers.
What remains unclear is whether Bales was on anti mallarials
while in Afghanistan. Private Gavin Jones recalls that at VSP
Bellum by most mandatory policies weren't really mandatory.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
No, I did not take any of that. No, I
just didn't didn't seem appealing to me. I'll wrestle with
at malaria before I want to have like stomach ache.
To be honest, now that I think about it, I
don't think anyone took any of that medication.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
No one that actually came out to.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Like, alright, guys taking a builders go like, No, I'm
pretty sure we just tossed that shit up.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Soldier X, the person who will not be named in
this podcast, remembers Mefloquin being at the base, But that
doesn't necessarily mean Bales was taking it.
Speaker 10 (13:14):
You know, I took mof quinn maybe your hair four times,
but it was not as directed every d anybody means,
I don't know that my version of Bales taking morf
quinn in the prescribed manner either.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Why is this such a debate. If Baals took mafliquin,
it should be in his medical records, which were analyzed
by the prosecution, defense and Independent Sanity Board during the
trial in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
So we have an obligation to disclose any evidence that
might go to the favor of the accused, right to
the favor of the defendant. But there's zero evidence of mafloquin,
and so every time they would bring it up the
defense team, we would just say there's zero evidence, Like
you're not allowed to even talk about this.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Mefloquin wasn't in Baal's file, but Commander Minovsky doctor Nevin
claimed that it wasn't in the files of most soldiers
who took it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
If it's not in bals record, it's like it wasn't
in anybody else's record either. My deployment team, they didn't
get it into their record. The hundreds of veterans that
I talked to did not get it in their medical records.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
The events of that era are odd. A couple months
before the events in question, the top doctor of the
military basically said, hey, look, we have a problem. Meflicuin
has been handed out without adequate documentation and without proper
consideration of contraindications. And unfortunately, I think the courts have
(14:42):
been misinformed by the government, by the prosecution that the
evidence is conclusive in showing that bails never took meflick win.
And I think the courts just didn't realize that what
the medical records show is often not a good reflection
of reality, and in this particular case, one has to
probe a little bit more to understand the full picture.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
In the US military, just about everything is written down somewhere.
You can't order pens without putting it in a report.
So for widespread use of mefloquin and its side effects,
to go and document it, it's either completely untrue, a
sign of gross inconfidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Minofsky
(15:27):
told us the following over the phone.
Speaker 11 (15:29):
Our larium came in foil packs. The foil pack was
five pills. There was a blank spot all right where
they wrote the name of the drug and everything down,
and they didn't get it in their medical records. I
think that was deliberate, considering if you look at my
(15:52):
shot cart, it's got everything listed. But I went into
my pharmacy record no record of matlock Win being given
to me. When I found that out on I just
hut blew a galey and I go, you gotta begin.
They knew it was bad.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
To say that the government was providing as soldiers with
an anti mallarial that they knew was defective and dangerous.
That's a potentially explosive development. It's a claim that doctor
Nevin has staked his reputation on proving to be true
both during and after his service.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
I was familiar with Meflicklin. As part of my training,
we were taught that Mefflicklin was safe and effective medication
if used as directed. But I realized that this dogma,
this training that I received on meflick when the institutional
beliefs on the drug were incorrect, the drug was far
more dangerous. As I began to ask questions about Meflicklin,
(16:57):
I was receiving a lot more pushback from my seniors
than I had expected, and so that made me think
maybe there's something to this. I quickly realized that I
could do more work on this issue outside the military.
But it's still understood within the higher offices of the
DODNVA that one should not speak ill of Meflickman, because
(17:18):
what are you doing if you do that? If you
publish a paper that shows this drug is associated with
a significant burden of disability, you've just cost the VA
billions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Attorney and veentor in John Maher applauds Nevin for speaking
up when many others have opted to remain silent.
Speaker 8 (17:36):
Doctor Nevin he sacrificed his army career command surgeon Major
eighty second or more for brad because his research came
around saying this antimilarial drug is killing people.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
When you hear the full scope of doctor Nevn's findings,
it's not terribly surprising to learn that he's no longer
employed by the military after all. Is polarizing opinion is
that this negligence surrounding meflquin had gone on for decades.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Going back to World War Two. It's not an exaggeration
to say that our top military leaders view the availability
of anti malarial drugs the same way they view the
availability of nuclear weapons as a safeguard to national security.
We had very limited stockpiles, and so in the Vietnam era,
a large scale project began to synthesize these drugs, and
(18:28):
that led in nineteen sixty nine to the first reported
synthesis of meflicuin. For whatever reason, the military decided mefloquin
is our drug. They had a handful of alternatives that
were also in development, but the literature from the early
seventies makes it very clear they wanted mefliquin to be
their drug.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
After the military handpicked meflquin as their anti malarial they
were responsible for securing a manufacturer and distributor for the drug.
In this case, that would be a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant
named the Roche.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
Apparently, the military approached every single pharmaceutical manufacturer and none
were willing to get the drug through the approval process
and market the drug, probably because many drugs of this
class caused irreversible, significant lesions to form in the brains
and the brain steps. For whatever reason, Roche raised their
(19:19):
hand and said fine, we'll do it. Perhaps Roche did
the math and realized the military will buy large quantities,
They'll give us a lot of money. They've done all
their research, They've basically paid for the development of the drug.
So there's fundamentally no cost to Roche, and beside the
possibility of some lawsuits down the line, very little risk.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The US Food and Drug Administration exist for a reason.
Roche in the military might have agreed to partner on
making methlic win, but an independent agency still needs to
make sure that it's safe for use. That said, the
FDA can't make a decision with information it doesn't have.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
The initial submission to FDA didn't even make mention of
psychiatric effects, So when mefliquin was first being licensed under
pressure from the US military, the doctors at FDA reviewing
the file had no understanding that this drug could cause
psychiatric effects when used in prevention. In nineteen eighty nine,
(20:20):
that was approved. Almost immediately, the World Health Organization comes
out with a document expressing fairly grave concerns, essentially saying,
it looks like this drug has neuropsychiatric potentially, it looks
like this drug causes neuropsychiatric symptoms anxiety and depression. And
so what followed that was a remarkable period over two
(20:41):
or three years, where the military in Roche and others
worked furiously to manufacture doubt about these findings.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Ultimately, Roche in the military went out and almost immediately
mefloquin was being distributed around the globe. But it wasn't
long before troubling incidents began a surface. For example, the
story of Canadian soldier Clayton Matchie in nineteen ninety three,
just four years after the drug received FDA approval.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
During the Somalia crisis, Canadian military sent several thousand troops
over to aid the US military effort, and this was
the first large scale use of meflick in any deployment.
And one of the troops that he was given this
drug was a fellow named Clayton Mashing. He almost immediately
(21:34):
started experiencing fairly severe symptoms from meflick, including symptoms of psychosis.
These symptoms were so severe he came back home on
leave and he was there in bed with his wife
and he woke up in a sweat, white knuckles clenching
his wife. I think he was convinced there was this monster,
this apparition at the foot of his bed, big teeth
(21:56):
was about to eat him, and he begged his wife
to pray with him for this monster, this apparition to
be exercised. So he deploys back over to Somalia, and
I think within a matter of weeks, if I'm not mistaken,
he's in a pit guarding a Somali detainee that had
snuck in under the fence, I think, And according to
witnesses there, he started beating him with a stick and
(22:19):
apparently he was trying to beat these camel spiders that
were covering this Somali detainee. Now, actually he wasn't covered
in camel spiders, but in the midst of this psychosis,
he hallucinated that this detainee was covered in camel spiders,
and so he ended up getting beaten to death. And
for a Canadian soldier to beat a detainee like that
(22:42):
to death seemed just like a symptom of something gone
terribly wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
For Clayton, Matchie Mefloquin was not acting in a vacuum
similar to staffs are to bales. The Canadian warrior was
under the influence of a combination of substances.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
There's a key point here that is kind of overlooked
that they were being administered in Maflequin. They were allowed
to drink beer. Their medics also administered them cough surroup,
most likely robotushing with codeine as a sleep aid, as
a replacement for ambient That's what they took with them.
So these guys are whacked out on some serious stuff
(23:21):
they're drinking. Drinking alcohol with Meflequin is a very dangerous
thing to do. And then Clayton, after he came out
of as stupor, he went to hang himself, but he
it wasn't successful, so he's still alive to this day,
but with serious brain injury.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Make no mistake, Clayton Matchi did what he did that day,
not because he was a bad person, not because there
was something wrong with the Canadian Airborne Regiment. He did
what he did because he was floridly psychotic as a
result of being poisoned by meflic. So this was in
the early nineties. Had we learned from this episode, none
of us would have happened. I'm convinced had we learned
(24:02):
from this episode, we wouldn't be discussing Bales.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Throughout the nineties and beyond, headlines about the dangers of
meflquin would periodically arise. Several young men and women unexpectedly
committed suicide shortly after trips to African nations that required
the use of anti malarials. And then there were the
four Brag killings in the summer of two thousand and two,
which even appeared in an episode of NBC's Dateline.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Within a few short weeks last summer, three young women,
all wives of Army Special Forces soldiers, were murdered by
their husbands returning from the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
The segment is notable for identifying mefloquin under the brand
name Larium, as a potential cause for murder committed by
soldiers a full decade before the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 12 (24:50):
The investigators wondered at first if an anti malarial drug
prescribed for Afghanistan, Larium, had anything to do with the violence.
There has been some s gestion larry A may trigger
hallucinatory or suicidal episodes in some user, but the military
quickly dismissed the drug as a cause.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
When this Dateline episode aired in June of two thousand
and three, Bill Minofsky was laboring under the side effects
of his own experience with larrym. He takes issue with
the methodology the military used to absolve the drug of
any fault in the Fort Bragg murders.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I'm going to leave a name out here because I
don't have permission to use their name right now. But
they were on the investigation team that went down to
Fort Bragg, and essentially the report was rigged. They included
a couple other murders that happened at Fort Bragg at
the time but were unrelated. But in talking to this
(25:45):
person afterwards, they said they knew it was mefloquent, and
that person now is a major advocate against the drug
now that they're retired from the military.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Seven months after he was pulled out of Rock, Minofsky
was furious with the military's refusal to acknowledge the root
cause for his significant health issues.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
When I started asking about the drug, the Navy went
to accuse me of misschanneling classified material, so they went
to court martial. Met people were telling me, go to
the press, go to the press. My wife and I
we'd already been working with UPI. I said, okay, guys,
let's go public with this.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
UPI published the Next Fose on September eighth, two thousand
and three, nine years before the Canaharan massacre. In the piece,
Commander Minofsky was quoted as saying, I was trying not
to pull a foroth brag. After that, the military's tenor
began to shift.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
When these articles came out. We were on shenn The
Navy really backed off. I talked to a Shenier officer
and I go, you know what happened? And he goes
in a meeting. Someone said, Hey, maybe he really is
shick from the drug. I'm the first to get a
military diagnosis for injuries related to methlical toxicity. I'm the
(27:08):
first to get a via writing. Not to sound facetious,
if I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't
be here talking to you. I'd probably, honestly, god, I
would be probably dead. The Navy would have treated me
completely different.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Commander Minofsky's one man cruside helped him earn a disability rating,
essentially confirming that the military accepted blame for his condition.
In the coming years, doctor Nevin's research would start raising
eyebrows among some within the federal government.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I'd like to think that my research has helped to
inform military policy on this issue. Some of my early work,
I think, moved the army away from use of this drug,
and by twenty thirteen all the services had essentially abandoned
the use of mefliq when is a first line drug.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Bailes's killings took place on March eleventh, twenty twelve, before
the program had been shuttered. With all of this in mind,
are we any closer to knowing whether Bales was under
the influence of meflquin induced psychosis. The following excerpt is
from a press conference given by four star General John
Allen on March fifteen, twenty twelve. Alan was arguably the
(28:24):
architect of military strategy in Afghanistan. It's important to note
that this press conference began with Allan addressing the military's
response to the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 13 (28:34):
General, could you elaborate at all about this Defense Department
ordered review of the anti malaria drug when you were
made aware of that, including for deployed troops, and what
explanation you were given for it?
Speaker 14 (28:46):
Was actually made aware of it this morning. The review
was a natural course of periodic reviews, as I understand
it within the department, so that I think that's the
best I could do for.
Speaker 13 (28:57):
You on that you were not told that there was
a specific concert earned regarding troops that were deployed being
given this drug.
Speaker 14 (29:04):
No, that there are reviews constantly of our medical processes
and procedures. That's not uncommon at all. And so when
I hear that one of the anti malarial prophylaxis drugs
is under a periodic review, I think that's a very
natural and important process that is pursued regularly in office
of Secretary of Defense. So I would suggest that you
(29:27):
ask them that question.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Just four days after Bales's attacks, the government embarked on
a review of a drug that had been linked over
the years to illegal murders perpetrated by soldiers. Given the context,
it's hard not to read General Allen's words as a
classic act of deflection. Three months later, in June of
twenty twelve, doctor Nevin was asked to appear before the
(29:50):
Senate Appropriations Committee.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Finstein has been a longstanding supporter of efforts to raise
awareness of mefliquin.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
That'd be dying. Feinstein senior Senator from California, and.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
Of course Feinstein was on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate,
and I was invited to speak to the Senate. At
her invitation, they were interested in perhaps developing some legislation.
I believe I simply alluded to the fact that there
was more to this drug than we had acknowledged, and
certainly to stop use of the drug. Once you have
(30:24):
testimony like this on the record, it becomes difficult for
people to claim they didn't know there was a potential problem.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I think it was July twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I get a call from the Commissioner's office to the
FDA commander Monoski, We'd like you to come to Washington,
d C. To meet with us to express your concerns
regarding the toxicity of mefloquin. And I goes, this is
a joke, and he goes, Nope, we're serious. So February
of twenty thirteen, there was a meeting in Silver Springs, Maryland,
(31:00):
their headquarters. There were twenty five FDA researchers in the room.
Nevin got to give a presentation. He did great.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
I think my argument convinced them. I think they said, okay,
actually this makes sense.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And then the black box warning came out. That's kind
of like the highest level of red flashing light on
a drug that hey, you know, you need to pay
attention to this warning here, there's something wrong with this thing.
That was the stake in the heart from methliquinn.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Robert Bales alone was not the reason why the military
eventually stopped giving its soldiers meflequin, but John Maher theorizes
that such a highly publicized tragedy may have been the
impetus they needed to finally make a change about fifteen months.
Speaker 8 (31:50):
After the canaharm massacre. I think it was probably the
straw that broke the camel's back. It prompted the FDA
to take action, It prompted the Army to take action.
They would have a positive catalytic effect. I believe that
was the right thing to do. If you try to
bury it, it's gonna come out anyway. It's gonna be
worse for you when we find it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The prosecution has repeatedly insisted that no hard evidence exists
connecting mefloquint Bales. Mar on the other hand, suspects that
proof is out there, it's just been hidden.
Speaker 8 (32:20):
If the defense were never provided with mefloquin, it's poisoning
the data, the FDA reports, the ROCHE reports, the manufacturer,
doctor Nevin's affidavits in testimony, as well as US Medcom
and the Military Surgeons General issuing orders to stop issuing
the stuff. All of that should have been disclosed to
the defense to help Bob think about how to defend himself,
(32:45):
because every American is entitled to a meaningful defense.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
If Mayer can successfully make this point to an appellate court,
he can potentially emancipate the man considered to be America's
most notorious war criminal.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
If we prevail, hopefully, what will happen is we'll get
a new trial, at which point we will put on
the mefflic Wood evidence. I think it could be landscape changing.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Reversing a military court's ruling is easier so than done.
In twenty seventeen, two years after taking a Bales's cause,
the defense team was granted an oral argument from the
Army Court of Criminal Appeals also known as AKKA.
Speaker 8 (33:24):
If oral argument is granted in a case, that's a
pretty good tell in poker parlance, that the judges are saying, Hey,
there might be some merit here, and we have questions
and we'd like to look counsel in the eye and
ask those questions. We get them answered.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
It was a small victory for the Baals camp, and
mar and his co counsel put everything they had into
concocting an air tight maflic Wood defense. They even invited
John Henry Brown, Bales's original trial lawyer, down to Virginia
to attend the proceedings, but.
Speaker 15 (33:56):
I was in the audience. I have come there two
days earlier to just help prepare the defense. So we
thought we should at least get a hearing out of it,
and that was the goal.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's not very common for a defense attorney to remain
close to a case years after a decision has been reached,
but something about the Robert Bayles story seems to have
staying power. After all, Brown wasn't the only attorney in
the gallery at Akka, so was Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 9 (34:24):
I'd retired by then, but I'd still been following the case,
and so it was important to me to go and
hear other people who were completely independent of the case.
I knew some of the things that the defense team
had been saying, and so I wanted to go here
if they were actually saying that argument on the record
because some of it was personal to me. Man I
(34:45):
would have been and would be still today horrified if
we had done something procedurally wrong.
Speaker 8 (34:50):
I don't know Jay Morse, but as a former prosecutor myself,
I'd never once attended an appeal that I litigated that once.
That shows me that he had a vested interest in
the case personally rather than professionally. If you lose your
professionalism and lead into personal you're not a pro anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
You're just not with an esteemed crowd and attendance. The
Baials defense team put their Mefloquin related evidence on the
table for review.
Speaker 15 (35:21):
I think the attorneys were great attorneys, and they had
a really good argument. I mean, I thought we would
really might prevail because we had proven that the discovery
was not given to us, that things were fixed, and
I think everybody believed that they might be successful with that,
but we weren't.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I have lots of thoughts about back. I think it's
the same with the military justice system. That's you know,
we cover our ass. Everybody said we kicked ass. Took
names for what the Army Criminal Court of Appeals does
a rubber stamp whatever comes through they're gonna pold it.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Bales and Marr have argued previously that the US Court
of Military Justice is biased against soldiers accused of crimes.
By the same token, they're of the opinion that AKA
does the same thing, simply falling in line with the
decision that came before.
Speaker 8 (36:16):
The military, as you may know, is probably one of
the more trusted institutions in our country. And I believe
that if we peel the layers back and actually expose
some of this stuff, the country would be disappointed and
lose faith in the army. The appellate courts seek to
preserve convictions. The I want to embarrass the army.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
John they wanted AKA. You were there.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
You witnessed them destroying the prosecution, and you witnessed the
judges doing nothing.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
They didn't give us a time of day.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Bales, mar Nevin minofsky Wesley. They all say that for
a while everyone was taking mefloquin. They vouched for the
drug psychiatric effects, right down to the details. And yet
every step of the way it appears that the US military,
(37:06):
the service to which they devoted much of their lives,
refuses to accept any responsibility for its actions. Nobody knows
this better than Commander Billmanofski Maflequins Serial number one.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Bill, in your estimation, how many veterans do we have
out there dealing with methlicuin poisoning.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Tens of thousands. I'm gonna say a lot of these
veterans are no longer with us. People who are suicidal
or who are highly depressed because of this drug. It
does something to the discretion center of your brain. It
makes suicide like you're going to get the mail. I
(37:47):
kept hearing senior Army doctors say, well, hey, you know,
all the suicides are from family trouble or can't pay
the bills or whatever. No larium puts you to the
suicide door and then one foot out and all it
takes is a family argument, a bill that comes in
that you can't pay, and you go get the gun,
(38:11):
and nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 8 (38:18):
Coming up on the word within, I think the United
States would probably want to avoid a victory. They're also
going to have an eye on the horizon saying Holy Child.
Speaker 11 (38:27):
Of course, my dad being in present affects my everyday
life and really our family every day life.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
In a hole. There was an article that came out GQ.
That was very clearly one sided.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Bles wanted to tell his story. It was pretty clear
that he wanted the article to humanize him.
Speaker 7 (38:44):
People automatically assume that I dislike Muslim people.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Bails He'd have is off the cuff, remarks about minorities
and like people of color.
Speaker 5 (38:53):
He was menacing with it at times. He's a really menacing,
mean bastard.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story 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.
(39:29):
The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(39:50):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain. Zach Burpi and Meerwi Satall, as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nobody knew anything. I was first. I'm the first to
get a military diagnosis four injuries related to methicomplexosity. I'm
the first to get a VA rating. They called me
Sheeral number one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
As directed by the US military commander Bill Minofsky, took
an any malarial pill called methliquin for five months at
the dawn of the Iraq War. It's the same drug
that Robert Bails's defense team claims may have altered the
staff sergeant's mental state during his time overseas. Menofsky experience
firsthand how methlicquin can negatively affect a soldier on deployment.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Really nobody was warned.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So what I noticed looking back was I started getting
really angry, and show did most of the guys on
the deployment. There was a lot of anxiety, a lot
of frustration, and people were just snapping each other. I
thought I was drinking too much coffee. That then transitioned
into paranoia, like I was responsible for the problems, like
(01:08):
it was all my fault. And then I started having
the dreams, these crazy, vivid dreams. I had an incident
three days before the Iraq War started. I was out
in the Dari bombing range with Shield Team three Sins
in the dead and night, no moon. We had these
(01:29):
gunships coming right over It's about fifty feet over our head,
really loud, and they were shooting these flashing rockets at
targets down range. So I had all this visual stimuli
coming in and after about five minutes I got sick.
I started getting furtigo really bad, to the point where
I stood up.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I go, guys, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And there I was helping plan the Iraq war and
I'm on a drug that can cause anxiety, depression, hallucinations,
and behavior.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Previously on the war within what you have described here
sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
We were drinking some booze, seven drinks per Guy.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
Bales was in charge of the medics. You could get
whatever the hell he wanted.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
It started taking steroids early February.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
If you take someone who attends towards the violence and
you give them something that could make them even more violent,
it could be a catastrophic situation.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
They didn't remember the name of the drug, right I
remember the effects.
Speaker 8 (02:31):
They called it Mafflickman Monday's We're gonna see fairies we're
gonna seek shit.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Bale's was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was
suffering from hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
When I hear the Bail's story, the first thing I
think of is mufflickrn First.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
On, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the
Robert Bayles story. If Robert Bales has any hope of
one day leaving the Fort Levelworth Disciplinary Barracks a freeman,
it'll likely be because his attorney, John Mayer, successfully argued
(03:08):
that he was experiencing meflquin induced psychosis when he committed
the Kandahar massacre.
Speaker 8 (03:13):
Our team's position is that the mefloquin carries to day.
You're gonna give a guy a poison by order and
not disclose it. The entire landscape of this case could
have changed.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For Marr to be right, two key points would have
to be true. Number One, mefloquin is poison, at least
for some who take it, And two, Bales definitively took
the drug during his time in service. We can begin
to explore whether meflquin is actually toxic by hearing the
story of Commandermanofsky, an outspoken veteran whose life was forever changed.
(03:49):
After beginning his regimen of meflquin.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
My volunteer to go to the Iraq war. Right at
the last minute, I was called into the clinic. The
korman handed me six foil packs of hilarium wrapped in
a rubber band. I didn't even get it in a box.
And they said start taking this once a week, and
I go okay, And that's how I got the drug
and went into this descent of madness.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Larium is the brand name for the drug methotly, just
as advil is really ibuprofen. Some people use the terms interchangeably.
By March of two thousand and three, three months after
he had begun taking to any mallarial, the Commander was
displaying behavior uncharacteristic of a long tenured warrior.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I had flickerburder go like you get in a helicopter.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I went out in the desert, and not to be
too graphic, but I emptied my bowels in the desert.
Then I went back to where the trucks were parked,
and I kid you not, I threw up for an
hour straight.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I timed it.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I then went back to my rack and the tent,
and I was in bed for three days. I got
up the third day went to take a shower, and
that's when I was in the shower the first SCUD
missile was launched into Kuwait. That's when the Iraq War started.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Minowski was a highly trusted operator with top secret security clearance,
but when it came time to fight the Iraqi army,
he could barely trust himself to get through the day.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Shield Team five when I made a deploy with them
to Bagdad to help them do their mission planning there,
and I told him, I said, guys, I can't go.
I was within five minutes of getting on a helicopter
going with them, and I said I can't go. I'm
going to be a met about casualty. I feel like
I got the flu. I mean, I was really sick.
So I went home and I was coughing my lungs out.
(05:41):
Now I thought it was from the dust storms. So
they administered robotusting with coating, and I told him I
cannot take coding.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It makes me sick.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And they flat out told me, if you don't take
this stuff, you're refusing treatment and we don't have to
take care of you anymore. So I started taking the
robotusing with coding and that it was six May two
thousand and three.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's when everything started going downhill.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And after that I was in the hospital five times
for panic attacks. And that's when I started getting the
tremors and the shakes and I started stuttering. I couldn't walk.
If you looked at me, I looked like I had Parkinson's.
That lasted probably a year and a half, and I'm
convinced that I still had the drug in me.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Minofsky was physically eroding in real time. Meanwhile, intermittent hallucinations
were warping his perception of reality.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
When I came back from the war, I had audio hallucinations.
I was in my secretary's office and she went to
pick up the phone. It sounded like somebody dialing a
Touchtowne phone real fast. Now that happened to be the
preamble to the air raid alarm on base in Kuwait.
(07:01):
It always started with this very quick touch tone sound
and then it would go alarm green, alarm, yellow, alarm red.
A couple days later, I was in Walmart with my
wife and I heard the same thing over the intercom
and I looked at my wife and I go did
you hear that, she goes, no.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then I had kind of a visual hallucination one time,
right after a very severe panic attack in my psychologist office,
I came outside and the sky was purple, and there
were purple areas around everything. The craziest thing, and iraq.
Speaker 7 (07:42):
I think I was on you know, day three of
you know, fourteen hour days, and I see walking across
the bridge.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
What looked to be a purple.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Ghosts, purple visions. Menofski and Bales have never met one another,
but elements of their stories do match, for example, a
tendency towards random acts of violence.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
The week of May sixth, two thousand and three, I
took my wife up to the Kern River to go
trout fishing, and she couldn't cast her fishing line. She
didn't know how to use an open real spool, and
I got violently angry at her. I went to punch
her out for that. Meflquin causes rage. I woke up
(08:28):
one night in a cute panic attack. I went and
got my nineteen eleven forty five pistol and I took
it apart out of fear that I would wake up
in the morning with my wife dead in the pool
of blood on the floor in the morning.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
That's how bad this is.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Just a short while after he began taking mefloquin, Minofsky
was nearly unrecognizable. His anti malarial expert, doctor Remington Nevin, explains,
not everybody responds to the drug in the same way.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
For whatever reason, it appears that people have different tolerances.
Most people have some ability to detoxify the drug, but
in some people, we think this drug accumulates in their
brain tissue where it begins to exert its adverse physiological effects,
causing symptoms like disturbed sleep nightmares. You'll start to see
(09:25):
the anxiety and panic, and perhaps over time, as the
drug accumulates, you'll see the more severe symptoms such as
over its psychosis and irreversible neurotoxicity.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Robert Bales may have never been hospitalized for mafloquine toxicity,
but many of the telltale signs were on display at
vsp bellmpy impulsive rage when he beat up an Afghan
truck driver and nod fixation with the tree, disturbed sleep, paranoia.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
You know it's getting worse, bro Like, it's getting worse.
Speaker 7 (09:58):
You know you see the bad guy, and you know
what he's going to do, but you can't do anything
about it. Right, You know what's going to happen, right,
You feel it. You feel these things closing in on you,
over and over and over again. It's the anticipation of death,
probably way worse than the death itself.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
You know something's coming.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
In that anticipation of whatever's coming is what makes you paranoid.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Attorney John Marr is not the only person asserting that
methlquhen is toxic, but the question of whether Bales has
ever used this anti mallarial has not been a straightforward.
Prosecutor Jane Morris claims that have found nothing about the
drug in Bales's file.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
There was an allegation that he was on anti malarials
that caused him to do this. We I mean, we
did a more than thorough search of all medical records
for Bail's entire time in the army. You could find
no evidence not only if Bail's not taking larian, but
anyone in his unit ever taking it. My recollection is
that the only evidence that there was ever any mafluquin
(11:07):
was from one person who had been in Baile's company.
Not even in Bales's platoon, who made a sworn statement
that he remembers being given mafluquin's like in two thousand
and six, six years prior to the Act.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
John Mayer puts a lot of stock in that sworn
statement referenced by Mors to him, everything that a jury
needs to know about whether Bales took maflequin can be
answered in the affidavit of what Gregory Rao.
Speaker 8 (11:32):
The direct evidence that we have is that Specialist Rao
was standing next to Bob Information at some point. In
his affidavit, unchallenged by the government, says yo, Yeah, every
Monday we had mafflquin Mondays and they came out. We
all had to drink it. We all had to drop it,
and we look forward to those methicuin Mondays because we'd
all start seeing stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
We also got confirmation from Bailes's former platoon teammate David Wesley,
although our producer Max had to remind him of the
name of the drug.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
You remember the name of the malar drug, U Tuck.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
I think it's it was like methema, meth l chloroquin
or some craziness mathquin.
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Yeah, there is.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
You get these like just fucked up dreams, man like
just wild.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
We took it once a week, remember, Doc states, he
would come around, he had the sheet, he would give
you a pill, he'd check you off your sheet, and
then we had the crazy dreams.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Speaking from personal experience, just about everybody was required to
take methliquin during the height of the Iraq War. It
was just one of many responsibilities that we had as soldiers.
What remains unclear is whether Bales was on anti mallarials
while in Afghanistan. Private Gavin Jones recalls that at VSP
Bellum by most mandatory policies weren't really mandatory.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
No, I did not take any of that. No, I
just didn't didn't seem appealing to me. I'll wrestle with
at malaria before I want to have like stomach ache.
To be honest, now that I think about it, I
don't think anyone took any of that medication.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
No one that actually came out to.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Like, alright, guys taking a builders go like, No, I'm
pretty sure we just tossed that shit up.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Soldier X, the person who will not be named in
this podcast, remembers Mefloquin being at the base, But that
doesn't necessarily mean Bales was taking it.
Speaker 10 (13:14):
You know, I took mof quinn maybe your hair four times,
but it was not as directed every d anybody means,
I don't know that my version of Bales taking morf
quinn in the prescribed manner either.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Why is this such a debate. If Baals took mafliquin,
it should be in his medical records, which were analyzed
by the prosecution, defense and Independent Sanity Board during the
trial in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
So we have an obligation to disclose any evidence that
might go to the favor of the accused, right to
the favor of the defendant. But there's zero evidence of mafloquin,
and so every time they would bring it up the
defense team, we would just say there's zero evidence, Like
you're not allowed to even talk about this.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Mefloquin wasn't in Baal's file, but Commander Minovsky doctor Nevin
claimed that it wasn't in the files of most soldiers
who took it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
If it's not in bals record, it's like it wasn't
in anybody else's record either. My deployment team, they didn't
get it into their record. The hundreds of veterans that
I talked to did not get it in their medical records.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
The events of that era are odd. A couple months
before the events in question, the top doctor of the
military basically said, hey, look, we have a problem. Meflicuin
has been handed out without adequate documentation and without proper
consideration of contraindications. And unfortunately, I think the courts have
(14:42):
been misinformed by the government, by the prosecution that the
evidence is conclusive in showing that bails never took meflick win.
And I think the courts just didn't realize that what
the medical records show is often not a good reflection
of reality, and in this particular case, one has to
probe a little bit more to understand the full picture.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
In the US military, just about everything is written down somewhere.
You can't order pens without putting it in a report.
So for widespread use of mefloquin and its side effects,
to go and document it, it's either completely untrue, a
sign of gross inconfidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Minofsky
(15:27):
told us the following over the phone.
Speaker 11 (15:29):
Our larium came in foil packs. The foil pack was
five pills. There was a blank spot all right where
they wrote the name of the drug and everything down,
and they didn't get it in their medical records. I
think that was deliberate, considering if you look at my
(15:52):
shot cart, it's got everything listed. But I went into
my pharmacy record no record of matlock Win being given
to me. When I found that out on I just
hut blew a galey and I go, you gotta begin.
They knew it was bad.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
To say that the government was providing as soldiers with
an anti mallarial that they knew was defective and dangerous.
That's a potentially explosive development. It's a claim that doctor
Nevin has staked his reputation on proving to be true
both during and after his service.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
I was familiar with Meflicklin. As part of my training,
we were taught that Mefflicklin was safe and effective medication
if used as directed. But I realized that this dogma,
this training that I received on meflick when the institutional
beliefs on the drug were incorrect, the drug was far
more dangerous. As I began to ask questions about Meflicklin,
(16:57):
I was receiving a lot more pushback from my seniors
than I had expected, and so that made me think
maybe there's something to this. I quickly realized that I
could do more work on this issue outside the military.
But it's still understood within the higher offices of the
DODNVA that one should not speak ill of Meflickman, because
(17:18):
what are you doing if you do that? If you
publish a paper that shows this drug is associated with
a significant burden of disability, you've just cost the VA
billions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Attorney and veentor in John Maher applauds Nevin for speaking
up when many others have opted to remain silent.
Speaker 8 (17:36):
Doctor Nevin he sacrificed his army career command surgeon Major
eighty second or more for brad because his research came
around saying this antimilarial drug is killing people.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
When you hear the full scope of doctor Nevn's findings,
it's not terribly surprising to learn that he's no longer
employed by the military after all. Is polarizing opinion is
that this negligence surrounding meflquin had gone on for decades.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Going back to World War Two. It's not an exaggeration
to say that our top military leaders view the availability
of anti malarial drugs the same way they view the
availability of nuclear weapons as a safeguard to national security.
We had very limited stockpiles, and so in the Vietnam era,
a large scale project began to synthesize these drugs, and
(18:28):
that led in nineteen sixty nine to the first reported
synthesis of meflicuin. For whatever reason, the military decided mefloquin
is our drug. They had a handful of alternatives that
were also in development, but the literature from the early
seventies makes it very clear they wanted mefliquin to be
their drug.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
After the military handpicked meflquin as their anti malarial they
were responsible for securing a manufacturer and distributor for the drug.
In this case, that would be a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant
named the Roche.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
Apparently, the military approached every single pharmaceutical manufacturer and none
were willing to get the drug through the approval process
and market the drug, probably because many drugs of this
class caused irreversible, significant lesions to form in the brains
and the brain steps. For whatever reason, Roche raised their
(19:19):
hand and said fine, we'll do it. Perhaps Roche did
the math and realized the military will buy large quantities,
They'll give us a lot of money. They've done all
their research, They've basically paid for the development of the drug.
So there's fundamentally no cost to Roche, and beside the
possibility of some lawsuits down the line, very little risk.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The US Food and Drug Administration exist for a reason.
Roche in the military might have agreed to partner on
making methlic win, but an independent agency still needs to
make sure that it's safe for use. That said, the
FDA can't make a decision with information it doesn't have.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
The initial submission to FDA didn't even make mention of
psychiatric effects, So when mefliquin was first being licensed under
pressure from the US military, the doctors at FDA reviewing
the file had no understanding that this drug could cause
psychiatric effects when used in prevention. In nineteen eighty nine,
(20:20):
that was approved. Almost immediately, the World Health Organization comes
out with a document expressing fairly grave concerns, essentially saying,
it looks like this drug has neuropsychiatric potentially, it looks
like this drug causes neuropsychiatric symptoms anxiety and depression. And
so what followed that was a remarkable period over two
(20:41):
or three years, where the military in Roche and others
worked furiously to manufacture doubt about these findings.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Ultimately, Roche in the military went out and almost immediately
mefloquin was being distributed around the globe. But it wasn't
long before troubling incidents began a surface. For example, the
story of Canadian soldier Clayton Matchie in nineteen ninety three,
just four years after the drug received FDA approval.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
During the Somalia crisis, Canadian military sent several thousand troops
over to aid the US military effort, and this was
the first large scale use of meflick in any deployment.
And one of the troops that he was given this
drug was a fellow named Clayton Mashing. He almost immediately
(21:34):
started experiencing fairly severe symptoms from meflick, including symptoms of psychosis.
These symptoms were so severe he came back home on
leave and he was there in bed with his wife
and he woke up in a sweat, white knuckles clenching
his wife. I think he was convinced there was this monster,
this apparition at the foot of his bed, big teeth
(21:56):
was about to eat him, and he begged his wife
to pray with him for this monster, this apparition to
be exercised. So he deploys back over to Somalia, and
I think within a matter of weeks, if I'm not mistaken,
he's in a pit guarding a Somali detainee that had
snuck in under the fence, I think, And according to
witnesses there, he started beating him with a stick and
(22:19):
apparently he was trying to beat these camel spiders that
were covering this Somali detainee. Now, actually he wasn't covered
in camel spiders, but in the midst of this psychosis,
he hallucinated that this detainee was covered in camel spiders,
and so he ended up getting beaten to death. And
for a Canadian soldier to beat a detainee like that
(22:42):
to death seemed just like a symptom of something gone
terribly wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
For Clayton, Matchie Mefloquin was not acting in a vacuum
similar to staffs are to bales. The Canadian warrior was
under the influence of a combination of substances.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
There's a key point here that is kind of overlooked
that they were being administered in Maflequin. They were allowed
to drink beer. Their medics also administered them cough surroup,
most likely robotushing with codeine as a sleep aid, as
a replacement for ambient That's what they took with them.
So these guys are whacked out on some serious stuff
(23:21):
they're drinking. Drinking alcohol with Meflequin is a very dangerous
thing to do. And then Clayton, after he came out
of as stupor, he went to hang himself, but he
it wasn't successful, so he's still alive to this day,
but with serious brain injury.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Make no mistake, Clayton Matchi did what he did that day,
not because he was a bad person, not because there
was something wrong with the Canadian Airborne Regiment. He did
what he did because he was floridly psychotic as a
result of being poisoned by meflic. So this was in
the early nineties. Had we learned from this episode, none
of us would have happened. I'm convinced had we learned
(24:02):
from this episode, we wouldn't be discussing Bales.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Throughout the nineties and beyond, headlines about the dangers of
meflquin would periodically arise. Several young men and women unexpectedly
committed suicide shortly after trips to African nations that required
the use of anti malarials. And then there were the
four Brag killings in the summer of two thousand and two,
which even appeared in an episode of NBC's Dateline.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Within a few short weeks last summer, three young women,
all wives of Army Special Forces soldiers, were murdered by
their husbands returning from the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
The segment is notable for identifying mefloquin under the brand
name Larium, as a potential cause for murder committed by
soldiers a full decade before the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 12 (24:50):
The investigators wondered at first if an anti malarial drug
prescribed for Afghanistan, Larium, had anything to do with the violence.
There has been some s gestion larry A may trigger
hallucinatory or suicidal episodes in some user, but the military
quickly dismissed the drug as a cause.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
When this Dateline episode aired in June of two thousand
and three, Bill Minofsky was laboring under the side effects
of his own experience with larrym. He takes issue with
the methodology the military used to absolve the drug of
any fault in the Fort Bragg murders.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
I'm going to leave a name out here because I
don't have permission to use their name right now. But
they were on the investigation team that went down to
Fort Bragg, and essentially the report was rigged. They included
a couple other murders that happened at Fort Bragg at
the time but were unrelated. But in talking to this
(25:45):
person afterwards, they said they knew it was mefloquent, and
that person now is a major advocate against the drug
now that they're retired from the military.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Seven months after he was pulled out of Rock, Minofsky
was furious with the military's refusal to acknowledge the root
cause for his significant health issues.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
When I started asking about the drug, the Navy went
to accuse me of misschanneling classified material, so they went
to court martial. Met people were telling me, go to
the press, go to the press. My wife and I
we'd already been working with UPI. I said, okay, guys,
let's go public with this.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
UPI published the Next Fose on September eighth, two thousand
and three, nine years before the Canaharan massacre. In the piece,
Commander Minofsky was quoted as saying, I was trying not
to pull a foroth brag. After that, the military's tenor
began to shift.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
When these articles came out. We were on shenn The
Navy really backed off. I talked to a Shenier officer
and I go, you know what happened? And he goes
in a meeting. Someone said, Hey, maybe he really is
shick from the drug. I'm the first to get a
military diagnosis for injuries related to methlical toxicity. I'm the
(27:08):
first to get a via writing. Not to sound facetious,
if I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't
be here talking to you. I'd probably, honestly, god, I
would be probably dead. The Navy would have treated me
completely different.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Commander Minofsky's one man cruside helped him earn a disability rating,
essentially confirming that the military accepted blame for his condition.
In the coming years, doctor Nevin's research would start raising
eyebrows among some within the federal government.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I'd like to think that my research has helped to
inform military policy on this issue. Some of my early work,
I think, moved the army away from use of this drug,
and by twenty thirteen all the services had essentially abandoned
the use of mefliq when is a first line drug.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Bailes's killings took place on March eleventh, twenty twelve, before
the program had been shuttered. With all of this in mind,
are we any closer to knowing whether Bales was under
the influence of meflquin induced psychosis. The following excerpt is
from a press conference given by four star General John
Allen on March fifteen, twenty twelve. Alan was arguably the
(28:24):
architect of military strategy in Afghanistan. It's important to note
that this press conference began with Allan addressing the military's
response to the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 13 (28:34):
General, could you elaborate at all about this Defense Department
ordered review of the anti malaria drug when you were
made aware of that, including for deployed troops, and what
explanation you were given for it?
Speaker 14 (28:46):
Was actually made aware of it this morning. The review
was a natural course of periodic reviews, as I understand
it within the department, so that I think that's the
best I could do for.
Speaker 13 (28:57):
You on that you were not told that there was
a specific concert earned regarding troops that were deployed being
given this drug.
Speaker 14 (29:04):
No, that there are reviews constantly of our medical processes
and procedures. That's not uncommon at all. And so when
I hear that one of the anti malarial prophylaxis drugs
is under a periodic review, I think that's a very
natural and important process that is pursued regularly in office
of Secretary of Defense. So I would suggest that you
(29:27):
ask them that question.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Just four days after Bales's attacks, the government embarked on
a review of a drug that had been linked over
the years to illegal murders perpetrated by soldiers. Given the context,
it's hard not to read General Allen's words as a
classic act of deflection. Three months later, in June of
twenty twelve, doctor Nevin was asked to appear before the
(29:50):
Senate Appropriations Committee.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Finstein has been a longstanding supporter of efforts to raise
awareness of mefliquin.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
That'd be dying. Feinstein senior Senator from California, and.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
Of course Feinstein was on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate,
and I was invited to speak to the Senate. At
her invitation, they were interested in perhaps developing some legislation.
I believe I simply alluded to the fact that there
was more to this drug than we had acknowledged, and
certainly to stop use of the drug. Once you have
(30:24):
testimony like this on the record, it becomes difficult for
people to claim they didn't know there was a potential problem.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I think it was July twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I get a call from the Commissioner's office to the
FDA commander Monoski, We'd like you to come to Washington,
d C. To meet with us to express your concerns
regarding the toxicity of mefloquin. And I goes, this is
a joke, and he goes, Nope, we're serious. So February
of twenty thirteen, there was a meeting in Silver Springs, Maryland,
(31:00):
their headquarters. There were twenty five FDA researchers in the room.
Nevin got to give a presentation. He did great.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
I think my argument convinced them. I think they said, okay,
actually this makes sense.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And then the black box warning came out. That's kind
of like the highest level of red flashing light on
a drug that hey, you know, you need to pay
attention to this warning here, there's something wrong with this thing.
That was the stake in the heart from methliquinn.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Robert Bales alone was not the reason why the military
eventually stopped giving its soldiers meflequin, but John Maher theorizes
that such a highly publicized tragedy may have been the
impetus they needed to finally make a change about fifteen months.
Speaker 8 (31:50):
After the canaharm massacre. I think it was probably the
straw that broke the camel's back. It prompted the FDA
to take action, It prompted the Army to take action.
They would have a positive catalytic effect. I believe that
was the right thing to do. If you try to
bury it, it's gonna come out anyway. It's gonna be
worse for you when we find it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The prosecution has repeatedly insisted that no hard evidence exists
connecting mefloquint Bales. Mar on the other hand, suspects that
proof is out there, it's just been hidden.
Speaker 8 (32:20):
If the defense were never provided with mefloquin, it's poisoning
the data, the FDA reports, the ROCHE reports, the manufacturer,
doctor Nevin's affidavits in testimony, as well as US Medcom
and the Military Surgeons General issuing orders to stop issuing
the stuff. All of that should have been disclosed to
the defense to help Bob think about how to defend himself,
(32:45):
because every American is entitled to a meaningful defense.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
If Mayer can successfully make this point to an appellate court,
he can potentially emancipate the man considered to be America's
most notorious war criminal.
Speaker 8 (32:58):
If we prevail, hopefully, what will happen is we'll get
a new trial, at which point we will put on
the mefflic Wood evidence. I think it could be landscape changing.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Reversing a military court's ruling is easier so than done.
In twenty seventeen, two years after taking a Bales's cause,
the defense team was granted an oral argument from the
Army Court of Criminal Appeals also known as AKKA.
Speaker 8 (33:24):
If oral argument is granted in a case, that's a
pretty good tell in poker parlance, that the judges are saying, Hey,
there might be some merit here, and we have questions
and we'd like to look counsel in the eye and
ask those questions. We get them answered.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
It was a small victory for the Baals camp, and
mar and his co counsel put everything they had into
concocting an air tight maflic Wood defense. They even invited
John Henry Brown, Bales's original trial lawyer, down to Virginia
to attend the proceedings, but.
Speaker 15 (33:56):
I was in the audience. I have come there two
days earlier to just help prepare the defense. So we
thought we should at least get a hearing out of it,
and that was the goal.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's not very common for a defense attorney to remain
close to a case years after a decision has been reached,
but something about the Robert Bayles story seems to have
staying power. After all, Brown wasn't the only attorney in
the gallery at Akka, so was Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 9 (34:24):
I'd retired by then, but I'd still been following the case,
and so it was important to me to go and
hear other people who were completely independent of the case.
I knew some of the things that the defense team
had been saying, and so I wanted to go here
if they were actually saying that argument on the record
because some of it was personal to me. Man I
(34:45):
would have been and would be still today horrified if
we had done something procedurally wrong.
Speaker 8 (34:50):
I don't know Jay Morse, but as a former prosecutor myself,
I'd never once attended an appeal that I litigated that once.
That shows me that he had a vested interest in
the case personally rather than professionally. If you lose your
professionalism and lead into personal you're not a pro anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
You're just not with an esteemed crowd and attendance. The
Baials defense team put their Mefloquin related evidence on the
table for review.
Speaker 15 (35:21):
I think the attorneys were great attorneys, and they had
a really good argument. I mean, I thought we would
really might prevail because we had proven that the discovery
was not given to us, that things were fixed, and
I think everybody believed that they might be successful with that,
but we weren't.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I have lots of thoughts about back. I think it's
the same with the military justice system. That's you know,
we cover our ass. Everybody said we kicked ass. Took
names for what the Army Criminal Court of Appeals does
a rubber stamp whatever comes through they're gonna pold it.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Bales and Marr have argued previously that the US Court
of Military Justice is biased against soldiers accused of crimes.
By the same token, they're of the opinion that AKA
does the same thing, simply falling in line with the
decision that came before.
Speaker 8 (36:16):
The military, as you may know, is probably one of
the more trusted institutions in our country. And I believe
that if we peel the layers back and actually expose
some of this stuff, the country would be disappointed and
lose faith in the army. The appellate courts seek to
preserve convictions. The I want to embarrass the army.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
John they wanted AKA. You were there.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
You witnessed them destroying the prosecution, and you witnessed the
judges doing nothing.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
They didn't give us a time of day.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Bales, mar Nevin minofsky Wesley. They all say that for
a while everyone was taking mefloquin. They vouched for the
drug psychiatric effects, right down to the details. And yet
every step of the way it appears that the US military,
(37:06):
the service to which they devoted much of their lives,
refuses to accept any responsibility for its actions. Nobody knows
this better than Commander Billmanofski Maflequins Serial number one.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Bill, in your estimation, how many veterans do we have
out there dealing with methlicuin poisoning.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Tens of thousands. I'm gonna say a lot of these
veterans are no longer with us. People who are suicidal
or who are highly depressed because of this drug. It
does something to the discretion center of your brain. It
makes suicide like you're going to get the mail. I
(37:47):
kept hearing senior Army doctors say, well, hey, you know,
all the suicides are from family trouble or can't pay
the bills or whatever. No larium puts you to the
suicide door and then one foot out and all it
takes is a family argument, a bill that comes in
that you can't pay, and you go get the gun,
(38:11):
and nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 8 (38:18):
Coming up on the word within, I think the United
States would probably want to avoid a victory. They're also
going to have an eye on the horizon saying Holy Child.
Speaker 11 (38:27):
Of course, my dad being in present affects my everyday
life and really our family every day life.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
In a hole. There was an article that came out GQ.
That was very clearly one sided.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Bles wanted to tell his story. It was pretty clear
that he wanted the article to humanize him.
Speaker 7 (38:44):
People automatically assume that I dislike Muslim people.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Bails He'd have is off the cuff, remarks about minorities
and like people of color.
Speaker 5 (38:53):
He was menacing with it at times. He's a really menacing,
mean bastard.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story 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.
(39:29):
The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
(39:50):
Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain. Zach Burpi and Meerwi Satall, as
well as all of the people who were interviewed for
the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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