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