August 17, 2023 • 36 mins
Episode 9 of THE WAR WITHIN tracks Robert Bales' various appeals efforts over the years – both in the courts and the press. Then, the story travels back to VSP Belambai in Afghanistan, where the claim that the Staff Sergeant was an elite warrior is put under the microscope.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The case to be heard in oral argument is Bales
versus Commandant is mar Whenever you're reading.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, your honors, it's a pleasure to begin here
with you again.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
On September twenty third, twenty twenty one, Robert Bales's attorney,
John Mayer, delivered an oral argument to the US Court
of Appeals in Denver, Colorado. Over four years had passed
since their case was dismissed by the Armies of Pellate Court,
but that loss hasn't dissuaded Mayr not yet.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
This is a case, although it's a very tough case admittedly,
where the accused pled guilty to killing seventeen Afghan civilians.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
There are two.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Fundamental, completely constitutional implications to show why the military courts
did not give full and fair consideration or adequate consideration.
And here's why, if I could break them down briefly.
Mefloquin it has now been determined by the United States
FDA to cause long term psychonic effects.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I want to focus on your medical win argument as
I understand it from the Court's opinion below. There was
no testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that
he took methlicalin In fact, I don't think he ever
said that he took methlaloquin.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I respect to disagree judges.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?
Speaker 7 (01:31):
It?
Speaker 8 (01:36):
Previously on the War within and Iraq, I see what
looked at me, the purple ghosts.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
The best explanation for these delusions is chronic and mefic invoice.
Speaker 8 (01:47):
I started having headaches after my second tour.
Speaker 9 (01:49):
If you get a traumatic fright injury, you kind of
lose parts of yourself and you become really disinhibited.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
You know about the time that bails the shit out
of that jingle truck driver.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
Right is running around with a chicken with the fucking
head coo.
Speaker 8 (02:02):
And I think you have to carry a little bit
of a swagger to say, and I'm gonna be all right.
Not only are gonna be all right, We're gonna kill
that bastard.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayles story. For the past seven years, Robert Bales and
John Mayer have been trying just about everything in order
to give the convicted war criminal who sentenced to life,
(02:33):
a second chance, but thus far, the American legal system
has not looked favorably upon them. In twenty seventeen, they
lost their appeal with the army. Since then, they've tried
to make the argument in various civilian courts.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
First, we find ourselves in the United States District Court
for the District of Kansas, essentially saying that the military
got it wrong. We lost in the District Court in Kansas,
so we filed an appeal to the US Court of
Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which sits in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At the time of our interview with him, mar was
still waiting to hear back on a decision from the
judges in Colorado. The attorney expressed cautious optimism that the
powers that be would give their case a fair look.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
At the very conclusion of the case, I should judge,
you know, how do we let this lie?
Speaker 6 (03:22):
You got to get to the merits of the case.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And I believe, not to quote him, but in other words,
Judge or Bial noted, he says, well, I believe he
might be right. You know, if the government ordered Bails
to take a poison, he took the poison, and he
was an otherwise acquitted himself beautifully under fire and under
duty for the previous forty eight months in infantry combat
a close quarters combat. What explains this departure and behaviors?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
On May eleventh, twenty twenty three, the Colorado Court announced
its decision against Staff Sergeant Bales. If you ask Mar,
the reasons for this rejection are complicated. For starters, Batals
waived some of his rights when he pled guilty. But
there's another, potentially more controversial explanation for what's happening here.
(04:14):
If the military admits that mef luquin was responsible for
the Canahar massacre, it begs the question what other criminal
acts could have been caused by this purportedly harmful drug.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
If there are.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Soldiers out there that may have committed a sexual assault,
if they're soldiers out there who have done physical assault,
you know, or attempted murders that are convicted right now,
and ultimately it turns out that they were ordered to
take meflquin. Well, it's a very strong precedent to undo
a lot of convictions. I think the United States would
probably want to avoid a victory. You're not going to
(04:46):
open up the floodgates, but they're also going to have
an eye on the horizon, saying holy.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Cow, Manars made this point again and again. The US
military protects itself. That's why when he takes on a
case like this, he doesn't always count on winning the
legal battle. But there are multiple ways to advocate for
a man like Robert Bales.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Most of the time when we catch an appeal, we
begin with a multifaceted approach.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
It's not just the court.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
We're going to try to do everything that we can
to get the word out.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In twenty twenty, that strategy even included asking President Donald
Trump for a full, unconditional pardon. At the time, Bob
expressed that he felt a pardon was the only way
he'd ever leave prison.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
I believe the legal system is so screwed up in
the country that the Supreme Court is not going to
hear this case. The only chance I have is the
same guy who's an outsider to the government right now,
and I believe that's President Trump.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
He's the only hope I have. It wasn't a total
long shot. Mahner has been successful at getting clients released
by Trump during his tenure in office. As his presidential
term drew to a close, Bales's request for a harden
put his name back in the headlines, which was news
that his former colleagues, like Private Gavin Jones, were not
(06:07):
thrilled to receive.
Speaker 10 (06:08):
And I'm like, holy shit, that blew me away that
if he was just gonna I'm not gonna say weezel
out of it, because trust me out.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
I'm sure the guy does.
Speaker 10 (06:16):
Have a traumatic brain injury, but that doesn't, you know,
still cover you from being a fucking total piece of shit.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
To be honest, it did really rub.
Speaker 10 (06:22):
Me the wrong way, and I was surprised that people's
memories were got short.
Speaker 11 (06:27):
The idea that Bails should be vindicated of his crimes
or granted clemency is just crazy to me.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's James Alexander, another private who's served under Bales.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
Here's the guy who has killed people in the past,
and he may get a pardon.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I don't need to sleep like that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
In the end, Trump never granted the former staff sergeant
of pardon, and as of twenty twenty three, it remains
questionable whether another president has the potential to be as
sympathetic to Baiales's plight.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We're not necessarily asking president for pardon anymore, and that's
our sensitivity and assessment of this administration. Is there not
necessarily going to be as amenable to good order and
discipline in the military. I don't believe mister Biden or
Miss Harris would ever do it.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
With Bob's chances at freedom shrinking with each passing year,
it can be challenging to hang on to a sense
of hope, and yet his wife, Carrie Bales, still can't
help but try.
Speaker 12 (07:31):
My goal is to get him home right so that
we can be a family. There's nothing more precious than time.
So for me, it's about yes, I believe that punishment
was in order, right, I get them, It's.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Just how long?
Speaker 6 (07:48):
How long do we need to make him suffer?
Speaker 12 (07:50):
Based on all of that, we now know it's just
time to let him come home, let.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
Our warriors hold.
Speaker 6 (07:56):
We let all of them go from Gimo. You know,
we let the terrorists go and not to go back
to wherever.
Speaker 7 (08:01):
They were from.
Speaker 12 (08:03):
So why are we keeping our own American soldiers away
from their families?
Speaker 13 (08:11):
Of course, my dad being in prison affects my everyday life,
my mom's every day life, my brother's every day life,
and really our family every day life in a.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Hole in recent years, carrying Bob's teenage daughter Quincy has
joined the cause, doing what she can to help her father.
Speaker 13 (08:27):
I think that as I get older, I want to
be more involved kind of with sharing the story more
because people think that this whole story is outlandish and crazy.
But I think that once people finally get some facts
and can see it in front of them, then that's
really important. So I'm going to start helping run social media.
My goal is to just start getting it out there.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That advocacy includes speaking at events such as a political
convention that took place in Louisiana in the summer of
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 13 (08:56):
In Louisiana, our trip that we took, get a table
set up, we had information, we had papers, We kind
of stood at the tables, and we just educated people.
People would come up to us ask this question. If
I have a voice, then I should share it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
If you're a convicted murderer who wants your case to
be reviewed, it can help if the American public is
on your side. Just ask Adnan Sayed, the subject of
the popular serial podcast. After over twenty years of imprisonment
and renewed attention from the media, Sayed was released from
his incarceration. Balsers tried to tell his story his way
(09:39):
once before. In twenty fifteen, two years after his conviction,
he spoke with journalist Brendan Vaughan for a piece that
would run in GQ magazine.
Speaker 14 (09:49):
The first I've heard of the Conda Har massacre, as
it was pretty quickly dubbed, if I remember correctly, it
was on the front page of the Times, and I
just immediately my I just went right to it. It
raised questions about the state of mind of our soldiers
and the impact of fighting such a long war. I mean,
there was definitely a sense, as I recall it, you know,
(10:10):
of why are we still there? What is the impact
on our soldiers of being still there? What is the
impact on our country of still being there? If I
remember correctly, I mean, you know, there wasn't even much
news coming out of Afghanistan. The public had certainly moved on.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
In the immediate aftermath of his attacks. Bales' saga was
covered extensively by the media, but then it left the
news cycle, and talking to a magazine writer like Vaughn,
Robert Bales had a natural motive for bringing his name
back into the zeitgeist.
Speaker 14 (10:46):
He wanted to tell his story in a way that
he felt like he had been unable to get it
out prior to that. It was pretty clear that he
wanted the article to humanize him. We talked about a
lot of different things, not just what he did in Afghania,
but his life, his upbringing, his wife, his children, his jobs.
But there was definitely a heaviness to the way that
(11:09):
he came across.
Speaker 11 (11:11):
He was a pretty serious presence on the.
Speaker 14 (11:13):
Phone, and what he had done was pretty serious, and
he didn't deny any of it, so he talked about
it in a really direct way. Every time I got
off the phone. It was still just chilling to have
talked to somebody that was convicted of his massacre.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Many of the topics covered in this podcast also come
up in the written piece, an id explosion several days
prior to the murders, growing paranoia at the VSP. Bails's
explanation for what he had done has also remained constant
up to a point.
Speaker 14 (11:47):
He firmly believed that the people that he was going
after were Taliban.
Speaker 8 (11:51):
They were not innocent civilians, all of them.
Speaker 14 (11:53):
He didn't say that the children were, that the women were,
but that the men involved were, and that he felt
that these people represented a threat to him and the
other soldiers on his base.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
At no point in the GQ piece is the term
methyl queen even referenced. Nobody ever told Vaughn that the
drug could have been important to the story.
Speaker 14 (12:15):
The anti malarial drug that he was on.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
I was aware of it.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
It was a thing that was really kind of deep
in the background.
Speaker 14 (12:22):
Though lots of soldiers were taking this medication at the time,
there was nothing unique about Bails having taken it. He
didn't emphasize it at all. I mean, he might not
even even mentioned it at the time. That doesn't mean
it's not true. I don't know, but the one thing
I can say for sure is that it was a
very minor factor. Back in twenty fifteen, the GQ article
(12:48):
was titled Robert Bale Speaks, Confessions of America's most notorious
war criminal.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
After it was published on October twenty first, twenty fifteen,
it was up to the public to determine and how
they felt.
Speaker 14 (13:01):
I think that the piece was received as something that
had never been told fully because the versions that had
been told had never incorporated Bails's version in a meaningful way.
But it was widely read, and I certainly got a
lot of like appreciative feedback about it that you know,
I'm glad the story is out there.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Not long after the story was released, John Marr joined
the staff Sergeant's defense team.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I think that in a full three sixty treatment of
the issues. But the GQ article didn't have the information
that we have. That's because we weren't on the key
shit and we hadn't discovered it, we hadn't worked it.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Not everybody loved the piece. Private James Alexander felt that
it was skewed towards Bob Bailes's perspective and away from
the facts.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
Bails writes an article for GQ that isn't vetted. We
didn't get talked to at all. There are people enlisted
in the article. For example, at the time he was
my roommate. Doc Orciello was never contacted about the article,
but there he is in the pages of GQ. I
could go point by point on the GQ article and
like refute some of the stuff.
Speaker 14 (14:03):
The article was to be clear like fact checked to
within an inch of its life. I mean, it was
very very thoroughly fact checked over a period of weeks.
It might have even been more than a month that
the fact checker just worked it every day. We addressed
it with attribution as much as we possibly could, by
making clear what came from other places and what came
(14:23):
from Bales himself.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
It was fortunate timing that my counterpoint came out in
the Daily Beast shortly after the GQ article came out.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Captain Danny Fields, the senior man at VSP Bellmby, also
spoke to a journalist to express his point of view
on the Candahar massacre.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
I wanted an outlet.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
I think anyone in that situation would probably feel they'd
ask the question, could I have done something to have
prevented that? You know, looking back, maybe I did it
because it was kind of a defense of myself.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Many of the soldiers in and the Canahar masker really
care about how the incident and their involvement in it
is remembered and perceived. Yes, they want to make sure
that the American public knows the whole story, But in
certain instances they also seem to be delivering messages specifically
to their former colleagues in the US military.
Speaker 14 (15:21):
Bals wanted to make it really clear how sorry he
was to his fellow soldiers for the dishonor that he
had brought upon them in his mind, and for the
tragic errors that he made in both judgment and action
and perpetrating this massacre. He expressed far more emotion for
(15:42):
the soldiers that he felt he let down than the
people that he killed.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
We've established that prior to March eleventh, twenty twelve, Robert
Bales was known for being an elite soldier. We spoke
with Nick Beasley, a former executive officer who oversaw Bales's
platoon in Afghanistan, and gave a very positive review of
this performance. As a noncommissioned officer also known as an NCO.
Speaker 15 (16:04):
Bob is the best NCO I ever worked with as
far as getting stuff done and understanding the intent. He
understood war better than people that wore uniforms in our unit.
But the bomb I knew that the bomb I know
that still exists. Cares deeply about his soldiers, and that
was one of the things we had heard that he
was worried about his soldiers safety. I think everything he
(16:26):
did came from a place and a desire to take
care of his ment.
Speaker 8 (16:31):
I was the guy that people turned to bring their
loved ones back home.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
This reputation as a warrior and a protector. That's always
been a point of pride for bails.
Speaker 8 (16:42):
I still remember a guy's wife on my last tour
coming up and getting me a hug before before we left,
and she's like, you know, bring them back home, you know.
And they asked First Arm Bigham why they sent people
where they sent and he said, you know, they said
bell and By was bad, and I sent my best
guy to bellum By.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
This idea that Baiales was the best has been central
to his defense strategy, both legally and in the press.
For instance, Bailes claims that he was so highly regarded
that he was responsible for preparing his own soldiers for
combat in Afghanistan.
Speaker 8 (17:18):
I'm given pretty much free reign to choose my training.
Speaker 16 (17:22):
You know.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
I still have to follow rules and regulations, but at
the end of the day, I'm given a lot of
latitude to plan my own training.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
James Alexander was one of the soldiers being trained by Bailes.
He didn't feel like their squad was ready for battle.
Speaker 11 (17:38):
We did not have experience. I went through SRP with Baals,
but you're ready in this protocol. So he was right
next to me and he's like, Oh, you don't have
to go to this one.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Oh you don't have to go to that one.
Speaker 11 (17:49):
But again, this is his fourth deployment, so I'm like,
maybe he's giving me some inside knowledge here, like maybe
he just knows, like it's his all bs.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
It's like check the block training.
Speaker 11 (17:56):
But it's still as a brand new soldier, I'm putting
my faith in Rob Bails versus the process.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
And that's the issue. It's like he thought he was
above the process.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
It was really interesting to see how unprepared we were
to go into ball and body and also how unprepared.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Our leadership was.
Speaker 11 (18:14):
I mean, those guys were like they had no clue
where we were going, what we were doing.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
You know what we should even be.
Speaker 11 (18:20):
Training for the job was just to get in there
and you'll get OJT on the job training, and so
like that's what it became.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Private Gavin Jones was brand new to the military in
twenty twelve. Like Alexander. He remembers that the special Forces
at the VSP prepared him for combat more than his
own infantry leaders.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
And C's never really taught me anything. I really didn't
really know.
Speaker 10 (18:41):
It's basically all the SF guys that would teach us
like as we went. In fact, I received more firearm
training from those SF guys than I ever did from Bails.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Combining unproven guys like Gavin with elite special forces is
not a common practice in the US military. This dynamic
allowed infantry troops Jones, Alexander, and the unnamed Silver Acts
to enjoy a much more relaxed environment than usual on
their deployment.
Speaker 10 (19:09):
You're backing up SF guys, and those guys procedurally do
whatever they want to do, so you know you are
following fairly.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I was blessed to have a super dope deployment in
that regard.
Speaker 16 (19:20):
There was no real uniform standard, grew facial hair. It
just it wasn't your typical shape every day make sure
uniforms pristine. It was, Hey, we know, will come in
this hellhole and we're gonna throw some clothes and go
to work.
Speaker 11 (19:36):
I'm eating steaks in the middle of in the middle
of nowhere, like this is I'm eating better here than
I was back home, and we haven't earned any of
those rights. We tried to grow beards, you know, and
tried to fit in, but the reality is those guys
were so far and above and away like more competent
in the jobs that we.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Were in the armed forces. The culture is set by
the people at the top of the chain. At VSP
Bellam by Joe's like Alexander were under the command of
Robbert Bales along with his fellow leaders.
Speaker 11 (20:08):
But became like an incredibly toxic environment. Uh, incredibly toxic
as far as the NCOs. I didn't trust him as
far as I could throw them. And so that was
kind of the situation that I think Fields was kind
of dealt. I'm sure he was pissed because he's expecting,
you know, some great NCOs that are here, and he
got essentially what seemed to be sort.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Of the bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
Man.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
We had one guy that all he could do was PT.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
That was it.
Speaker 11 (20:35):
I mean, he was a fantastic runner, and that made
him a fantastic leader, right, And it was like there's
a complete disconnect here between like being able to run
and being able to lead guys. There was another guy
who flat out was drunk almost all the time, would
show up late to PT almost all the time because
(20:55):
he was drunk, right, Like, we had guys that were, you.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Know, outwardly racist James Alexander is half black. He was
one of the only people of color on the American
side at the VSP.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Bals is a racist.
Speaker 11 (21:09):
I was singing in the shower and you know, singing
hip hop music, and he's like, who's that nigger in
there singing? You know, like okay, first of all, we're
using words like okay, what are you using the the er?
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Okay? Nice?
Speaker 11 (21:20):
Nice, you know, and it's like this was you know
what he would say, but when he saw it was me,
he was like, oh sorry, It's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
How about that fails.
Speaker 10 (21:29):
He'd have his off the cuffs remarks about like minorities
and like people of color.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
He thought might have been like joking in that sense.
Speaker 10 (21:38):
I know for Frank McLaughlin was a stands of racist
shit around and Bals would say some shit too, but again, yeah,
they'd dress it up with vail of.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Comedy or you know, camaraderie if you will.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
He was menacing with it.
Speaker 11 (21:50):
He was just a at times, he's a really menacing,
mean bastard. And unfortunately he also had the ability to
abused power because he's in an authority position.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Speaking as a former infantryman, hearing that a soldiers made
racist comments, that doesn't exactly shock me. Prejudice runs rampant
in the US military. Many soldiers like to treat the
service like a locker room. As Captain Fields can attest.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, you know, some
things might have been said. Not that I'm condoning it,
but I think that's very normal in the military.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
People say a lot of stupid shit. Did I hear
any of that?
Speaker 7 (22:36):
No.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
David Wesley, a black veteran who served two tours with Bails,
refutes this idea that Bails discriminated against African Americans.
Speaker 17 (22:46):
The army is very racist, but Bob wasn't racist, not
though some of the people that he chose to be
friends with were, But Bob wasn't that way. I was
one of like nine people in the Italian that were black,
and so you can imagine what that was like.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
But Bob made sure it wasn't like that with him.
Speaker 17 (23:08):
I remember when I brought my brother to the barracks,
Bob was there, was his roommate in his roommate said
something stupid because he was shit faced drunk.
Speaker 5 (23:19):
That was along the racial line.
Speaker 17 (23:21):
But Bob kind of mushed him into the chair and
was like, bro, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Still, James Alexander knows what he heard and what he saw.
He's confident that Bales felt superior to other races, not
just Black Americans, but Afghans too.
Speaker 11 (23:38):
When you come from a you know, a time that
Beals did, in a place that he did, racism is
kind of sort of a way of life, and so
it gave Bails the ability to be like, you know,
i may be a lot of bad things, but at
least I'm not black.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
At least I'm not an Afghan.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
People always think that, you know, they automatically assume that
I just like Muslim people, right like that that's an assumption.
You know, I'll get letters from people and they'll say
stuff like that, and I would like to think, and
I know it's true that we as American soldiers help
more Muslim people than we heard. You know, how many
people would we take food too, how many people we
(24:17):
take water to? Our perspective is skewed. Now understand that
we're trying to add American values to you know, people
that may not want American values.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Some of Bales's comments across our eighteen hours of interviews
seem to indicate that he wasn't always comfortable as an
American immersed in Afghan culture. Here he is talking about
the Muslim prayers that were regularly chanted around I rock
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
They call the prayers.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
They're they're scary originally because you don't know what it is,
you know, allah far. You know, in my mind, it
immediately clicks some negative connotation, and maybe it's a fear
for me.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Maybe it's whatever it is.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
But you know, you hear the call to prayer, yeah,
which is played over the speakers, it's.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
It drowns out every other sound around.
Speaker 8 (25:13):
It's something that I feared just because it was different.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
This any fear is problematic for a soldier who's supposed
to be allied with certain factions of Afghans. But even
then that's like Panhue podcast host Curtis Grace will argue
that a certain degree of racial profiling is necessary to
being a good soldier.
Speaker 9 (25:38):
If there was any ever kind of negative feelings towards
the Afghan people, it's because we knew that a good
portion of them were trying to kill us.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
I know a lot of guys struggled with this idea.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
Is like, well, fuck the civilians, they're all future Taliban
or they're already Taliban. And I struggle with that a
little bit too. Nobody's one hundred percent good on either spectrum.
It's just like, are the civilians really all Taliban? Obviously
the answers no, but it's kind of hard to say that.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Part of Bales's mission in Panjue was to distinguish the
innocent Afghans from the enemy Taliban. This was a major
adjustment for the staff sergeant. We spent several years on
the offensive under shock and all guidelines in Iraq.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
You know, we did a thing where we gave thirty
family food for thirty days. So we'd take them rice
and grain and other things and we'd take them out
there like cooking oil, and we would hand it out
in these local villages, humanitarian aid kind of thing. But
the truth is I really didn't trust them at all.
You know, they're being kind to us, Are they really
(26:39):
being kind to us? Are they really just going to
stab me in the back?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Sol Drax theorizes that his senior and CEO had a
skewed perspective about what their squad was trying to accomplish
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 16 (26:50):
Thank you often to this final one, Amy isback. I
think all he saw was, man, I just want to
go and beat this badass and kick down doors when
I'm going to take care of business and do is
just because we're badass, just because we want to go
and hurt people. We have an angle in mind of
establishing this place to be a good place. I don't
think Bill saw that.
Speaker 11 (27:10):
It was incredibly disheartening to see the risks that were
taking for no reason.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Our first patrol, he had us trying to kill a
guy on a bike. There's a guy on a bike rolling.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
Up and he's like, shoot that guy, and we're like,
uh no, no, not letting this dude. Then he starts
calling us faggots for not also firing our weapons.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
Did not shooting your weapon, You're a fag. I understood
that at any time we could do whatever we wanted
on a battlefield, and it was only the politicians, the officers,
whoever is creating these rules are engagement that we're holding
us back.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
He really really wanted to be involved in the kill.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
He really wanted to kill.
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Any other time we would engage someone, he would be
the first one there. He would be the one trying
to make the shot among the lower enlisted. I mean
we're brothers, shared experiences, the things you go through. We
were above and beyond tight and that's because we all
had a common enemy. And it wasn't the Afghan, it
(28:23):
was Bails.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Luke Coffee is another veteran who co hosts the Panchway
podcast with Curtis Grace. He has plenty of experience with
NCOs who fit the mold of Robert Bales.
Speaker 18 (28:35):
I think that people like Bobby Bails are probably inherently broken,
and they're like the specific kind of personality that can
squeeze into the power structure and within that minute power
the squad leader, you have a little bit of wiggle
room to be a real toxic casshole to the people
underneath you.
Speaker 11 (28:53):
We were all the victims of our NCOs, essentially their
application of leadership, their inability to do the right thing.
Like there were small things that happened over and over
again where it was the joes, you know, the lower enlisted,
were the ones that would band together and get stuff done.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It wasn't long before the Special Forces took notice of
the strange dynamic on the base. As Gavin Jones recalls.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
They weren't as patient, shall I say, with Bails and
just some of his maneuvers and the way he went
about things or just a weirdo vibe.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
I don't think they invited him into club. Cool guy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And after Bails on a whim hunch n Afkan truck driver,
the SF began to marginalize his role and weaken his power.
Speaker 10 (29:38):
Bails beat the shit out that jingle truck driver right
like his first like words are like, oh man, like
what are they gonna do to me?
Speaker 6 (29:44):
You think I was gonna be okay, Like, don't say
anything to the guys. What are we gonna tell them?
He was talking about the guys, talking about the SF crew.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
If I remember.
Speaker 10 (29:50):
Correctly, that's when some of the SF guys started questioning
us about Bails, about like.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Hey, is that guy like all right, like what's up
with him?
Speaker 10 (29:56):
That's when he started publicly becoming a little bit more unhinged,
being a lot more insecure about his position. He felt
like he was being excluded from certain meetings. I'm sure
that he was, so yeah, there's probably just aided into
his decline.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In contrast to some of the infantry joes, Denie Fields,
the SF captain didn't speak critically of Baals as a
soldier during our interview.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Bill's was just.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
Kind of a normal person.
Speaker 7 (30:25):
Nothing really stuck out to me that he was much
different anyway generally.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
You know, I didn't have a lot of interaction.
Speaker 7 (30:32):
With Bals, but there was nothing that really surfaced, that
was brought to my attention that would have made me
consider that he needed to be removed from that position
or that he was not fit for that position.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
As he sits in Fort Levenworth's prison, Baals doesn't speak
negatively of Fields in the SF, even though he didn't
always agree with their decisions during combat.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
I'm not going to talk negative about those guys because
I think they looking back on it, I think they
had a front mission set. They didn't want to be
that aggressive.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
They wanted to.
Speaker 8 (31:04):
Kind of sit back, and they had us saying, you know,
ten fingers, ten toes, everybody comes back home alive. But
they had set an example that we were going to
let the towelban flee and we weren't going to kill them,
which emboldens them.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
As the top dogs at the VSP. The Special Forces
had the leeway to make unilateral decisions, some of them
were allowed to potentially jeopardize their own safety. James Alexander
explains that.
Speaker 11 (31:31):
We had SF guys that would walk out at night
alone to try to build rapport with the locals. This guy,
he was ANSF guy, obviously spoke the language and he
looked the part, you know. He would walk around in
the village and he would come back with intel.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
This is major. According to Alexander, Bails was not the
first person to leave the base without warning during this deployment.
What's more, Executive Officer Beasley posited that there were ways
for the SSA to make impromptu actions seem like planned
official business. While in Afghanistan.
Speaker 15 (32:06):
We actually had one of our officers that went out
to a site where there was an SF guy doing
black ops, where he would go out and do whatever
he wanted. He'd come back and he'd ride to the
off order and say, hey, we're going to go do this,
but it had already been done. He killed all the
people he needed to kill and came back.
Speaker 11 (32:21):
I mean, I've talked with journalists before and they'd been like, yeah,
I mean, we can't talk about this because the DoD
will be like, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
There was all kinds of other activities going on. I mean,
ESF guys.
Speaker 11 (32:31):
Would go support seals that were doing direct action missions
in the area.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
I was just it was surreal.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
We spent a lot of time parsing through the possible
reasons that Bales would have walked off the VSP. Was
it a methlicuin hallucination mixed with alcohol, steroids, sleeping pills,
and a history of TBI or could he have simply
been trying to emulate the soldiers above him before everything
went horribly wrong. Let's flash back to March tenth, twenty twelve,
(33:03):
two hours before the cand of harm massacre begins.
Speaker 8 (33:07):
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP and I pretty much tell him. I'm like,
hey man, we need to go do something. And he said, basically,
you know, mind your own lane. It saysn't your business,
go to sleep, worry about your lane.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
This is our lane. Screw you.
Speaker 8 (33:23):
But I think I can get out there, see what
it is, make a difference and get.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Back in the infantry. Individuality is discouraged. Follow orders, listen
to your superior officer or Robert Bayale seemed to struggle
with conforming, which ultimately may have led to his undoing.
Speaker 8 (33:43):
When you are in the army, you all look to say,
you all act to say across the board, and so
I personally kind of fought against that. I didn't like that.
Why can't I do everything that everybody's doing, plus be
myself a little bit? I understand now why it's done
(34:03):
the way it's done.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Before Bob, when the army, he was in the stockbroken business.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
I really wanted to be successful. We bought a bank
out of West Virginia, and in September of nineteen ninety
nine they shut the bank down.
Speaker 16 (34:23):
Was a charge of war, sums of money for people,
and the ultimately lost it all.
Speaker 8 (34:27):
When September eleventh happened. It was a way to give back.
People weren't doing the right thing around him, and he
had to take blame for that.
Speaker 6 (34:33):
If I'm conducting an investigation and all the witnesses say
the exact same thing, I got a problem.
Speaker 11 (34:38):
The crimes that were committed at each location were vastly different.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
Sometimes people misplace events in trauma. They can't quite figure
out the sequence of events.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Bob didn't do this on his own. He had help.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story as production of
Bungalow Median Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow
Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
(35:19):
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,
(35:41):
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.
The case to be heard in oral argument is Bales
versus Commandant is mar Whenever you're reading.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, your honors, it's a pleasure to begin here
with you again.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
On September twenty third, twenty twenty one, Robert Bales's attorney,
John Mayer, delivered an oral argument to the US Court
of Appeals in Denver, Colorado. Over four years had passed
since their case was dismissed by the Armies of Pellate Court,
but that loss hasn't dissuaded Mayr not yet.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
This is a case, although it's a very tough case admittedly,
where the accused pled guilty to killing seventeen Afghan civilians.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
There are two.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Fundamental, completely constitutional implications to show why the military courts
did not give full and fair consideration or adequate consideration.
And here's why, if I could break them down briefly.
Mefloquin it has now been determined by the United States
FDA to cause long term psychonic effects.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I want to focus on your medical win argument as
I understand it from the Court's opinion below. There was
no testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that
he took methlicalin In fact, I don't think he ever
said that he took methlaloquin.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I respect to disagree judges.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?
Speaker 7 (01:31):
It?
Speaker 8 (01:36):
Previously on the War within and Iraq, I see what
looked at me, the purple ghosts.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
The best explanation for these delusions is chronic and mefic invoice.
Speaker 8 (01:47):
I started having headaches after my second tour.
Speaker 9 (01:49):
If you get a traumatic fright injury, you kind of
lose parts of yourself and you become really disinhibited.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
You know about the time that bails the shit out
of that jingle truck driver.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
Right is running around with a chicken with the fucking
head coo.
Speaker 8 (02:02):
And I think you have to carry a little bit
of a swagger to say, and I'm gonna be all right.
Not only are gonna be all right, We're gonna kill
that bastard.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Bayles story. For the past seven years, Robert Bales and
John Mayer have been trying just about everything in order
to give the convicted war criminal who sentenced to life,
(02:33):
a second chance, but thus far, the American legal system
has not looked favorably upon them. In twenty seventeen, they
lost their appeal with the army. Since then, they've tried
to make the argument in various civilian courts.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
First, we find ourselves in the United States District Court
for the District of Kansas, essentially saying that the military
got it wrong. We lost in the District Court in Kansas,
so we filed an appeal to the US Court of
Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which sits in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At the time of our interview with him, mar was
still waiting to hear back on a decision from the
judges in Colorado. The attorney expressed cautious optimism that the
powers that be would give their case a fair look.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
At the very conclusion of the case, I should judge,
you know, how do we let this lie?
Speaker 6 (03:22):
You got to get to the merits of the case.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And I believe, not to quote him, but in other words,
Judge or Bial noted, he says, well, I believe he
might be right. You know, if the government ordered Bails
to take a poison, he took the poison, and he
was an otherwise acquitted himself beautifully under fire and under
duty for the previous forty eight months in infantry combat
a close quarters combat. What explains this departure and behaviors?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
On May eleventh, twenty twenty three, the Colorado Court announced
its decision against Staff Sergeant Bales. If you ask Mar,
the reasons for this rejection are complicated. For starters, Batals
waived some of his rights when he pled guilty. But
there's another, potentially more controversial explanation for what's happening here.
(04:14):
If the military admits that mef luquin was responsible for
the Canahar massacre, it begs the question what other criminal
acts could have been caused by this purportedly harmful drug.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
If there are.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Soldiers out there that may have committed a sexual assault,
if they're soldiers out there who have done physical assault,
you know, or attempted murders that are convicted right now,
and ultimately it turns out that they were ordered to
take meflquin. Well, it's a very strong precedent to undo
a lot of convictions. I think the United States would
probably want to avoid a victory. You're not going to
(04:46):
open up the floodgates, but they're also going to have
an eye on the horizon, saying holy.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Cow, Manars made this point again and again. The US
military protects itself. That's why when he takes on a
case like this, he doesn't always count on winning the
legal battle. But there are multiple ways to advocate for
a man like Robert Bales.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Most of the time when we catch an appeal, we
begin with a multifaceted approach.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
It's not just the court.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
We're going to try to do everything that we can
to get the word out.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In twenty twenty, that strategy even included asking President Donald
Trump for a full, unconditional pardon. At the time, Bob
expressed that he felt a pardon was the only way
he'd ever leave prison.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
I believe the legal system is so screwed up in
the country that the Supreme Court is not going to
hear this case. The only chance I have is the
same guy who's an outsider to the government right now,
and I believe that's President Trump.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
He's the only hope I have. It wasn't a total
long shot. Mahner has been successful at getting clients released
by Trump during his tenure in office. As his presidential
term drew to a close, Bales's request for a harden
put his name back in the headlines, which was news
that his former colleagues, like Private Gavin Jones, were not
(06:07):
thrilled to receive.
Speaker 10 (06:08):
And I'm like, holy shit, that blew me away that
if he was just gonna I'm not gonna say weezel
out of it, because trust me out.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
I'm sure the guy does.
Speaker 10 (06:16):
Have a traumatic brain injury, but that doesn't, you know,
still cover you from being a fucking total piece of shit.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
To be honest, it did really rub.
Speaker 10 (06:22):
Me the wrong way, and I was surprised that people's
memories were got short.
Speaker 11 (06:27):
The idea that Bails should be vindicated of his crimes
or granted clemency is just crazy to me.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's James Alexander, another private who's served under Bales.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
Here's the guy who has killed people in the past,
and he may get a pardon.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I don't need to sleep like that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
In the end, Trump never granted the former staff sergeant
of pardon, and as of twenty twenty three, it remains
questionable whether another president has the potential to be as
sympathetic to Baiales's plight.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We're not necessarily asking president for pardon anymore, and that's
our sensitivity and assessment of this administration. Is there not
necessarily going to be as amenable to good order and
discipline in the military. I don't believe mister Biden or
Miss Harris would ever do it.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
With Bob's chances at freedom shrinking with each passing year,
it can be challenging to hang on to a sense
of hope, and yet his wife, Carrie Bales, still can't
help but try.
Speaker 12 (07:31):
My goal is to get him home right so that
we can be a family. There's nothing more precious than time.
So for me, it's about yes, I believe that punishment
was in order, right, I get them, It's.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Just how long?
Speaker 6 (07:48):
How long do we need to make him suffer?
Speaker 12 (07:50):
Based on all of that, we now know it's just
time to let him come home, let.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
Our warriors hold.
Speaker 6 (07:56):
We let all of them go from Gimo. You know,
we let the terrorists go and not to go back
to wherever.
Speaker 7 (08:01):
They were from.
Speaker 12 (08:03):
So why are we keeping our own American soldiers away
from their families?
Speaker 13 (08:11):
Of course, my dad being in prison affects my everyday life,
my mom's every day life, my brother's every day life,
and really our family every day life in a.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Hole in recent years, carrying Bob's teenage daughter Quincy has
joined the cause, doing what she can to help her father.
Speaker 13 (08:27):
I think that as I get older, I want to
be more involved kind of with sharing the story more
because people think that this whole story is outlandish and crazy.
But I think that once people finally get some facts
and can see it in front of them, then that's
really important. So I'm going to start helping run social media.
My goal is to just start getting it out there.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That advocacy includes speaking at events such as a political
convention that took place in Louisiana in the summer of
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 13 (08:56):
In Louisiana, our trip that we took, get a table
set up, we had information, we had papers, We kind
of stood at the tables, and we just educated people.
People would come up to us ask this question. If
I have a voice, then I should share it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
If you're a convicted murderer who wants your case to
be reviewed, it can help if the American public is
on your side. Just ask Adnan Sayed, the subject of
the popular serial podcast. After over twenty years of imprisonment
and renewed attention from the media, Sayed was released from
his incarceration. Balsers tried to tell his story his way
(09:39):
once before. In twenty fifteen, two years after his conviction,
he spoke with journalist Brendan Vaughan for a piece that
would run in GQ magazine.
Speaker 14 (09:49):
The first I've heard of the Conda Har massacre, as
it was pretty quickly dubbed, if I remember correctly, it
was on the front page of the Times, and I
just immediately my I just went right to it. It
raised questions about the state of mind of our soldiers
and the impact of fighting such a long war. I mean,
there was definitely a sense, as I recall it, you know,
(10:10):
of why are we still there? What is the impact
on our soldiers of being still there? What is the
impact on our country of still being there? If I
remember correctly, I mean, you know, there wasn't even much
news coming out of Afghanistan. The public had certainly moved on.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
In the immediate aftermath of his attacks. Bales' saga was
covered extensively by the media, but then it left the
news cycle, and talking to a magazine writer like Vaughn,
Robert Bales had a natural motive for bringing his name
back into the zeitgeist.
Speaker 14 (10:46):
He wanted to tell his story in a way that
he felt like he had been unable to get it
out prior to that. It was pretty clear that he
wanted the article to humanize him. We talked about a
lot of different things, not just what he did in Afghania,
but his life, his upbringing, his wife, his children, his jobs.
But there was definitely a heaviness to the way that
(11:09):
he came across.
Speaker 11 (11:11):
He was a pretty serious presence on the.
Speaker 14 (11:13):
Phone, and what he had done was pretty serious, and
he didn't deny any of it, so he talked about
it in a really direct way. Every time I got
off the phone. It was still just chilling to have
talked to somebody that was convicted of his massacre.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Many of the topics covered in this podcast also come
up in the written piece, an id explosion several days
prior to the murders, growing paranoia at the VSP. Bails's
explanation for what he had done has also remained constant
up to a point.
Speaker 14 (11:47):
He firmly believed that the people that he was going
after were Taliban.
Speaker 8 (11:51):
They were not innocent civilians, all of them.
Speaker 14 (11:53):
He didn't say that the children were, that the women were,
but that the men involved were, and that he felt
that these people represented a threat to him and the
other soldiers on his base.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
At no point in the GQ piece is the term
methyl queen even referenced. Nobody ever told Vaughn that the
drug could have been important to the story.
Speaker 14 (12:15):
The anti malarial drug that he was on.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
I was aware of it.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
It was a thing that was really kind of deep
in the background.
Speaker 14 (12:22):
Though lots of soldiers were taking this medication at the time,
there was nothing unique about Bails having taken it. He
didn't emphasize it at all. I mean, he might not
even even mentioned it at the time. That doesn't mean
it's not true. I don't know, but the one thing
I can say for sure is that it was a
very minor factor. Back in twenty fifteen, the GQ article
(12:48):
was titled Robert Bale Speaks, Confessions of America's most notorious
war criminal.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
After it was published on October twenty first, twenty fifteen,
it was up to the public to determine and how
they felt.
Speaker 14 (13:01):
I think that the piece was received as something that
had never been told fully because the versions that had
been told had never incorporated Bails's version in a meaningful way.
But it was widely read, and I certainly got a
lot of like appreciative feedback about it that you know,
I'm glad the story is out there.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Not long after the story was released, John Marr joined
the staff Sergeant's defense team.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I think that in a full three sixty treatment of
the issues. But the GQ article didn't have the information
that we have. That's because we weren't on the key
shit and we hadn't discovered it, we hadn't worked it.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Not everybody loved the piece. Private James Alexander felt that
it was skewed towards Bob Bailes's perspective and away from
the facts.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
Bails writes an article for GQ that isn't vetted. We
didn't get talked to at all. There are people enlisted
in the article. For example, at the time he was
my roommate. Doc Orciello was never contacted about the article,
but there he is in the pages of GQ. I
could go point by point on the GQ article and
like refute some of the stuff.
Speaker 14 (14:03):
The article was to be clear like fact checked to
within an inch of its life. I mean, it was
very very thoroughly fact checked over a period of weeks.
It might have even been more than a month that
the fact checker just worked it every day. We addressed
it with attribution as much as we possibly could, by
making clear what came from other places and what came
(14:23):
from Bales himself.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
It was fortunate timing that my counterpoint came out in
the Daily Beast shortly after the GQ article came out.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Captain Danny Fields, the senior man at VSP Bellmby, also
spoke to a journalist to express his point of view
on the Candahar massacre.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
I wanted an outlet.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
I think anyone in that situation would probably feel they'd
ask the question, could I have done something to have
prevented that? You know, looking back, maybe I did it
because it was kind of a defense of myself.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Many of the soldiers in and the Canahar masker really
care about how the incident and their involvement in it
is remembered and perceived. Yes, they want to make sure
that the American public knows the whole story, But in
certain instances they also seem to be delivering messages specifically
to their former colleagues in the US military.
Speaker 14 (15:21):
Bals wanted to make it really clear how sorry he
was to his fellow soldiers for the dishonor that he
had brought upon them in his mind, and for the
tragic errors that he made in both judgment and action
and perpetrating this massacre. He expressed far more emotion for
(15:42):
the soldiers that he felt he let down than the
people that he killed.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
We've established that prior to March eleventh, twenty twelve, Robert
Bales was known for being an elite soldier. We spoke
with Nick Beasley, a former executive officer who oversaw Bales's
platoon in Afghanistan, and gave a very positive review of
this performance. As a noncommissioned officer also known as an NCO.
Speaker 15 (16:04):
Bob is the best NCO I ever worked with as
far as getting stuff done and understanding the intent. He
understood war better than people that wore uniforms in our unit.
But the bomb I knew that the bomb I know
that still exists. Cares deeply about his soldiers, and that
was one of the things we had heard that he
was worried about his soldiers safety. I think everything he
(16:26):
did came from a place and a desire to take
care of his ment.
Speaker 8 (16:31):
I was the guy that people turned to bring their
loved ones back home.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
This reputation as a warrior and a protector. That's always
been a point of pride for bails.
Speaker 8 (16:42):
I still remember a guy's wife on my last tour
coming up and getting me a hug before before we left,
and she's like, you know, bring them back home, you know.
And they asked First Arm Bigham why they sent people
where they sent and he said, you know, they said
bell and By was bad, and I sent my best
guy to bellum By.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
This idea that Baiales was the best has been central
to his defense strategy, both legally and in the press.
For instance, Bailes claims that he was so highly regarded
that he was responsible for preparing his own soldiers for
combat in Afghanistan.
Speaker 8 (17:18):
I'm given pretty much free reign to choose my training.
Speaker 16 (17:22):
You know.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
I still have to follow rules and regulations, but at
the end of the day, I'm given a lot of
latitude to plan my own training.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
James Alexander was one of the soldiers being trained by Bailes.
He didn't feel like their squad was ready for battle.
Speaker 11 (17:38):
We did not have experience. I went through SRP with Baals,
but you're ready in this protocol. So he was right
next to me and he's like, Oh, you don't have
to go to this one.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Oh you don't have to go to that one.
Speaker 11 (17:49):
But again, this is his fourth deployment, so I'm like,
maybe he's giving me some inside knowledge here, like maybe
he just knows, like it's his all bs.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
It's like check the block training.
Speaker 11 (17:56):
But it's still as a brand new soldier, I'm putting
my faith in Rob Bails versus the process.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
And that's the issue. It's like he thought he was
above the process.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
It was really interesting to see how unprepared we were
to go into ball and body and also how unprepared.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Our leadership was.
Speaker 11 (18:14):
I mean, those guys were like they had no clue
where we were going, what we were doing.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
You know what we should even be.
Speaker 11 (18:20):
Training for the job was just to get in there
and you'll get OJT on the job training, and so
like that's what it became.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Private Gavin Jones was brand new to the military in
twenty twelve. Like Alexander. He remembers that the special Forces
at the VSP prepared him for combat more than his
own infantry leaders.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
And C's never really taught me anything. I really didn't
really know.
Speaker 10 (18:41):
It's basically all the SF guys that would teach us
like as we went. In fact, I received more firearm
training from those SF guys than I ever did from Bails.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Combining unproven guys like Gavin with elite special forces is
not a common practice in the US military. This dynamic
allowed infantry troops Jones, Alexander, and the unnamed Silver Acts
to enjoy a much more relaxed environment than usual on
their deployment.
Speaker 10 (19:09):
You're backing up SF guys, and those guys procedurally do
whatever they want to do, so you know you are
following fairly.
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I was blessed to have a super dope deployment in
that regard.
Speaker 16 (19:20):
There was no real uniform standard, grew facial hair. It
just it wasn't your typical shape every day make sure
uniforms pristine. It was, Hey, we know, will come in
this hellhole and we're gonna throw some clothes and go
to work.
Speaker 11 (19:36):
I'm eating steaks in the middle of in the middle
of nowhere, like this is I'm eating better here than
I was back home, and we haven't earned any of
those rights. We tried to grow beards, you know, and
tried to fit in, but the reality is those guys
were so far and above and away like more competent
in the jobs that we.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Were in the armed forces. The culture is set by
the people at the top of the chain. At VSP
Bellam by Joe's like Alexander were under the command of
Robbert Bales along with his fellow leaders.
Speaker 11 (20:08):
But became like an incredibly toxic environment. Uh, incredibly toxic
as far as the NCOs. I didn't trust him as
far as I could throw them. And so that was
kind of the situation that I think Fields was kind
of dealt. I'm sure he was pissed because he's expecting,
you know, some great NCOs that are here, and he
got essentially what seemed to be sort.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Of the bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
Man.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
We had one guy that all he could do was PT.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
That was it.
Speaker 11 (20:35):
I mean, he was a fantastic runner, and that made
him a fantastic leader, right, And it was like there's
a complete disconnect here between like being able to run
and being able to lead guys. There was another guy
who flat out was drunk almost all the time, would
show up late to PT almost all the time because
(20:55):
he was drunk, right, Like, we had guys that were, you.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Know, outwardly racist James Alexander is half black. He was
one of the only people of color on the American
side at the VSP.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Bals is a racist.
Speaker 11 (21:09):
I was singing in the shower and you know, singing
hip hop music, and he's like, who's that nigger in
there singing? You know, like okay, first of all, we're
using words like okay, what are you using the the er?
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Okay? Nice?
Speaker 11 (21:20):
Nice, you know, and it's like this was you know
what he would say, but when he saw it was me,
he was like, oh sorry, It's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
How about that fails.
Speaker 10 (21:29):
He'd have his off the cuffs remarks about like minorities
and like people of color.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
He thought might have been like joking in that sense.
Speaker 10 (21:38):
I know for Frank McLaughlin was a stands of racist
shit around and Bals would say some shit too, but again, yeah,
they'd dress it up with vail of.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Comedy or you know, camaraderie if you will.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
He was menacing with it.
Speaker 11 (21:50):
He was just a at times, he's a really menacing,
mean bastard. And unfortunately he also had the ability to
abused power because he's in an authority position.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Speaking as a former infantryman, hearing that a soldiers made
racist comments, that doesn't exactly shock me. Prejudice runs rampant
in the US military. Many soldiers like to treat the
service like a locker room. As Captain Fields can attest.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, you know, some
things might have been said. Not that I'm condoning it,
but I think that's very normal in the military.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
People say a lot of stupid shit. Did I hear
any of that?
Speaker 7 (22:36):
No.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
David Wesley, a black veteran who served two tours with Bails,
refutes this idea that Bails discriminated against African Americans.
Speaker 17 (22:46):
The army is very racist, but Bob wasn't racist, not
though some of the people that he chose to be
friends with were, But Bob wasn't that way. I was
one of like nine people in the Italian that were black,
and so you can imagine what that was like.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
But Bob made sure it wasn't like that with him.
Speaker 17 (23:08):
I remember when I brought my brother to the barracks,
Bob was there, was his roommate in his roommate said
something stupid because he was shit faced drunk.
Speaker 5 (23:19):
That was along the racial line.
Speaker 17 (23:21):
But Bob kind of mushed him into the chair and
was like, bro, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Still, James Alexander knows what he heard and what he saw.
He's confident that Bales felt superior to other races, not
just Black Americans, but Afghans too.
Speaker 11 (23:38):
When you come from a you know, a time that
Beals did, in a place that he did, racism is
kind of sort of a way of life, and so
it gave Bails the ability to be like, you know,
i may be a lot of bad things, but at
least I'm not black.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
At least I'm not an Afghan.
Speaker 8 (23:56):
People always think that, you know, they automatically assume that
I just like Muslim people, right like that that's an assumption.
You know, I'll get letters from people and they'll say
stuff like that, and I would like to think, and
I know it's true that we as American soldiers help
more Muslim people than we heard. You know, how many
people would we take food too, how many people we
(24:17):
take water to? Our perspective is skewed. Now understand that
we're trying to add American values to you know, people
that may not want American values.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Some of Bales's comments across our eighteen hours of interviews
seem to indicate that he wasn't always comfortable as an
American immersed in Afghan culture. Here he is talking about
the Muslim prayers that were regularly chanted around I rock
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
They call the prayers.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
They're they're scary originally because you don't know what it is,
you know, allah far. You know, in my mind, it
immediately clicks some negative connotation, and maybe it's a fear
for me.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Maybe it's whatever it is.
Speaker 8 (25:04):
But you know, you hear the call to prayer, yeah,
which is played over the speakers, it's.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
It drowns out every other sound around.
Speaker 8 (25:13):
It's something that I feared just because it was different.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
This any fear is problematic for a soldier who's supposed
to be allied with certain factions of Afghans. But even
then that's like Panhue podcast host Curtis Grace will argue
that a certain degree of racial profiling is necessary to
being a good soldier.
Speaker 9 (25:38):
If there was any ever kind of negative feelings towards
the Afghan people, it's because we knew that a good
portion of them were trying to kill us.
Speaker 5 (25:45):
I know a lot of guys struggled with this idea.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
Is like, well, fuck the civilians, they're all future Taliban
or they're already Taliban. And I struggle with that a
little bit too. Nobody's one hundred percent good on either spectrum.
It's just like, are the civilians really all Taliban? Obviously
the answers no, but it's kind of hard to say that.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Part of Bales's mission in Panjue was to distinguish the
innocent Afghans from the enemy Taliban. This was a major
adjustment for the staff sergeant. We spent several years on
the offensive under shock and all guidelines in Iraq.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
You know, we did a thing where we gave thirty
family food for thirty days. So we'd take them rice
and grain and other things and we'd take them out
there like cooking oil, and we would hand it out
in these local villages, humanitarian aid kind of thing. But
the truth is I really didn't trust them at all.
You know, they're being kind to us, Are they really
(26:39):
being kind to us? Are they really just going to
stab me in the back?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Sol Drax theorizes that his senior and CEO had a
skewed perspective about what their squad was trying to accomplish
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 16 (26:50):
Thank you often to this final one, Amy isback. I
think all he saw was, man, I just want to
go and beat this badass and kick down doors when
I'm going to take care of business and do is
just because we're badass, just because we want to go
and hurt people. We have an angle in mind of
establishing this place to be a good place. I don't
think Bill saw that.
Speaker 11 (27:10):
It was incredibly disheartening to see the risks that were
taking for no reason.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Our first patrol, he had us trying to kill a
guy on a bike. There's a guy on a bike rolling.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
Up and he's like, shoot that guy, and we're like,
uh no, no, not letting this dude. Then he starts
calling us faggots for not also firing our weapons.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
Did not shooting your weapon, You're a fag. I understood
that at any time we could do whatever we wanted
on a battlefield, and it was only the politicians, the officers,
whoever is creating these rules are engagement that we're holding
us back.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
He really really wanted to be involved in the kill.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
He really wanted to kill.
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Any other time we would engage someone, he would be
the first one there. He would be the one trying
to make the shot among the lower enlisted. I mean
we're brothers, shared experiences, the things you go through. We
were above and beyond tight and that's because we all
had a common enemy. And it wasn't the Afghan, it
(28:23):
was Bails.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Luke Coffee is another veteran who co hosts the Panchway
podcast with Curtis Grace. He has plenty of experience with
NCOs who fit the mold of Robert Bales.
Speaker 18 (28:35):
I think that people like Bobby Bails are probably inherently broken,
and they're like the specific kind of personality that can
squeeze into the power structure and within that minute power
the squad leader, you have a little bit of wiggle
room to be a real toxic casshole to the people
underneath you.
Speaker 11 (28:53):
We were all the victims of our NCOs, essentially their
application of leadership, their inability to do the right thing.
Like there were small things that happened over and over
again where it was the joes, you know, the lower enlisted,
were the ones that would band together and get stuff done.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It wasn't long before the Special Forces took notice of
the strange dynamic on the base. As Gavin Jones recalls.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
They weren't as patient, shall I say, with Bails and
just some of his maneuvers and the way he went
about things or just a weirdo vibe.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
I don't think they invited him into club. Cool guy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And after Bails on a whim hunch n Afkan truck driver,
the SF began to marginalize his role and weaken his power.
Speaker 10 (29:38):
Bails beat the shit out that jingle truck driver right
like his first like words are like, oh man, like
what are they gonna do to me?
Speaker 6 (29:44):
You think I was gonna be okay, Like, don't say
anything to the guys. What are we gonna tell them?
He was talking about the guys, talking about the SF crew.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
If I remember.
Speaker 10 (29:50):
Correctly, that's when some of the SF guys started questioning
us about Bails, about like.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Hey, is that guy like all right, like what's up
with him?
Speaker 10 (29:56):
That's when he started publicly becoming a little bit more unhinged,
being a lot more insecure about his position. He felt
like he was being excluded from certain meetings. I'm sure
that he was, so yeah, there's probably just aided into
his decline.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In contrast to some of the infantry joes, Denie Fields,
the SF captain didn't speak critically of Baals as a
soldier during our interview.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Bill's was just.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
Kind of a normal person.
Speaker 7 (30:25):
Nothing really stuck out to me that he was much
different anyway generally.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
You know, I didn't have a lot of interaction.
Speaker 7 (30:32):
With Bals, but there was nothing that really surfaced, that
was brought to my attention that would have made me
consider that he needed to be removed from that position
or that he was not fit for that position.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
As he sits in Fort Levenworth's prison, Baals doesn't speak
negatively of Fields in the SF, even though he didn't
always agree with their decisions during combat.
Speaker 8 (30:54):
I'm not going to talk negative about those guys because
I think they looking back on it, I think they
had a front mission set. They didn't want to be
that aggressive.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
They wanted to.
Speaker 8 (31:04):
Kind of sit back, and they had us saying, you know,
ten fingers, ten toes, everybody comes back home alive. But
they had set an example that we were going to
let the towelban flee and we weren't going to kill them,
which emboldens them.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
As the top dogs at the VSP. The Special Forces
had the leeway to make unilateral decisions, some of them
were allowed to potentially jeopardize their own safety. James Alexander
explains that.
Speaker 11 (31:31):
We had SF guys that would walk out at night
alone to try to build rapport with the locals. This guy,
he was ANSF guy, obviously spoke the language and he
looked the part, you know. He would walk around in
the village and he would come back with intel.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
This is major. According to Alexander, Bails was not the
first person to leave the base without warning during this deployment.
What's more, Executive Officer Beasley posited that there were ways
for the SSA to make impromptu actions seem like planned
official business. While in Afghanistan.
Speaker 15 (32:06):
We actually had one of our officers that went out
to a site where there was an SF guy doing
black ops, where he would go out and do whatever
he wanted. He'd come back and he'd ride to the
off order and say, hey, we're going to go do this,
but it had already been done. He killed all the
people he needed to kill and came back.
Speaker 11 (32:21):
I mean, I've talked with journalists before and they'd been like, yeah,
I mean, we can't talk about this because the DoD
will be like, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
There was all kinds of other activities going on. I mean,
ESF guys.
Speaker 11 (32:31):
Would go support seals that were doing direct action missions
in the area.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
I was just it was surreal.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
We spent a lot of time parsing through the possible
reasons that Bales would have walked off the VSP. Was
it a methlicuin hallucination mixed with alcohol, steroids, sleeping pills,
and a history of TBI or could he have simply
been trying to emulate the soldiers above him before everything
went horribly wrong. Let's flash back to March tenth, twenty twelve,
(33:03):
two hours before the cand of harm massacre begins.
Speaker 8 (33:07):
I go see the guy that is if responsible for
the VSP and I pretty much tell him. I'm like,
hey man, we need to go do something. And he said, basically,
you know, mind your own lane. It saysn't your business,
go to sleep, worry about your lane.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
This is our lane. Screw you.
Speaker 8 (33:23):
But I think I can get out there, see what
it is, make a difference and get.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Back in the infantry. Individuality is discouraged. Follow orders, listen
to your superior officer or Robert Bayale seemed to struggle
with conforming, which ultimately may have led to his undoing.
Speaker 8 (33:43):
When you are in the army, you all look to say,
you all act to say across the board, and so
I personally kind of fought against that. I didn't like that.
Why can't I do everything that everybody's doing, plus be
myself a little bit? I understand now why it's done
(34:03):
the way it's done.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Before Bob, when the army, he was in the stockbroken business.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
I really wanted to be successful. We bought a bank
out of West Virginia, and in September of nineteen ninety
nine they shut the bank down.
Speaker 16 (34:23):
Was a charge of war, sums of money for people,
and the ultimately lost it all.
Speaker 8 (34:27):
When September eleventh happened. It was a way to give back.
People weren't doing the right thing around him, and he
had to take blame for that.
Speaker 6 (34:33):
If I'm conducting an investigation and all the witnesses say
the exact same thing, I got a problem.
Speaker 11 (34:38):
The crimes that were committed at each location were vastly different.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
Sometimes people misplace events in trauma. They can't quite figure
out the sequence of events.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Bob didn't do this on his own. He had help.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The War Within the Robert Bailes Story as production of
Bungalow Median Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in
partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow
Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
(35:19):
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,
(35:41):
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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