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