Speaker 1: I met a lot of soldiers who empathized with Bobby,
Speaker 1: almost all of them. I didn't rant his soldiers all
Speaker 1: the time, basically saying been there, done that, and I predicted,
Speaker 1: and I said in the newspapers, I said, we better
Speaker 1: get ready for more Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2: John Henry Brown represented staff Sergeant Robert Bales in military
Speaker 2: court after he committed the Candaharm massacre.
Speaker 1: The soldiers I met who knew Bobby, I look very
Speaker 1: highly at them, very highly. He took on becoming a
Speaker 1: role model for younger soldiers. He thought that was part
Speaker 1: of his job. I had never met any of us
Speaker 1: send men. Is that anything bad about Bobby Bails.
Speaker 2: As a lawyer, Brown is known for working with some
Speaker 2: of society's most notorious figures, including serial killer Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2: He titled his autobiography The Devil's Defender. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: he took on his newest client.
Speaker 1: There were a number of titles when I always let
Speaker 1: Bobby alone, and Bobby would cry, and he would not
Speaker 1: cry for himself much, but mostly for what happened. But
Speaker 1: none of us should be judged on the worst day
Speaker 1: of our lives. There's many other aspects to our lives
Speaker 1: that mitigate the worst six that we've done, thank God.
Speaker 2: Previously on the War Within.
Speaker 3: Bob was always on ready. He wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: everyone was protected.
Speaker 4: We came upon one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives.
Speaker 4: I go see the guy that is if responsible for
Speaker 4: the VSP. I'm like, hey, man, we need to go
Speaker 4: do something. He said, basically, you know this isn't your business.
Speaker 4: I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
Speaker 4: planning ID shoot him.
Speaker 5: And come back.
Speaker 6: So I got the knock on the door three am.
Speaker 7: The guard at the gate says that somebody left the base.
Speaker 4: Come back to the VSP. They got their guns drawn
Speaker 4: on me.
Speaker 8: I got call my cell phone and it was Bob
Speaker 8: and the first thing out of his mouth was you.
Speaker 3: Need to run. Something really bad has happened.
Speaker 7: I said, Bales, what the fuck happened? He looked up
Speaker 7: and he said, I think I need a lawyer.
Speaker 2: I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the War Within the Robert
Speaker 2: Bayles story. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was never expected to
Speaker 2: reach this level of notoriety. His conception of himself as
Speaker 2: an all American guy clashes with the pariah that he
Speaker 2: has become, and his extensive interviews with documentarian Paul Blowski,
Speaker 2: Baal's pins picture of an early life that was seemingly
Speaker 2: as normal as anyone else's.
Speaker 9: Let's begin with where are you from, where you're born?
Speaker 5: Where'd you grow up? Hight.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Norwood, Ohio. It's a suburb of Cincinnati,
Speaker 4: blue collar town. We had a General Motors plant there
Speaker 4: until nineteen eighty seven. You know, my dad worked in
Speaker 4: a factory his whole life. My mom never worked, stay
Speaker 4: at home mom.
Speaker 9: So brothers, sisters, you know what. You know, how many
Speaker 9: kids are in the family where it joined.
Speaker 2: I had four brothers.
Speaker 9: I'm the youngest of five.
Speaker 4: So I was a kid that got beat up and protected,
Speaker 4: so you know a little bit of both, you know.
Speaker 4: I think I got a lot of attention. I got
Speaker 4: to spend a lot of quality time with my dad
Speaker 4: that I think my older brothers didn't get.
Speaker 2: Growing up as the baby of a family with five
Speaker 2: growing boys, finances were often spread then.
Speaker 4: We didn't have much money, you know. I think the
Speaker 4: most money on my dad ever made was like twenty
Speaker 4: seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: The one fights that I remember with my mother and
Speaker 4: father were about money, and so I think that left
Speaker 4: a real taste in my mouth. We were the blue
Speaker 4: collar gyes. You know, we were the you know, you
Speaker 4: guys aren't that smart. You know you're going to have to,
Speaker 4: you know, be more physical. You know you're gonna end
Speaker 4: up working in a factory. You know, that's the lifestyle.
Speaker 4: So I think the idea of proving people wrong, proving
Speaker 4: that you can do, and the idea that you know
Speaker 4: you want to get up.
Speaker 2: During his time as an active duty soldier, Robert Bales
Speaker 2: was known for his dedication to his craft. It's a
Speaker 2: work ethic that was developed at a young age on
Speaker 2: the grid iron.
Speaker 4: I love football, you know, as a kid, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean when I was seven, I'd come home in
Speaker 4: the backyard and I had my whole football team, a
Speaker 4: little nerve football out there, throwing my nerve football to
Speaker 4: my fake guys in the backyard. Later in high school,
Speaker 4: I was cabin the football team.
Speaker 9: In those kind of groups, there's some people that are
Speaker 9: kind of the ones that are plotting out and organizing,
Speaker 9: kind of the leaders some of their followers.
Speaker 5: You know, this is the.
Speaker 4: Dynamic I think as far as the leader I don't
Speaker 4: think that really developed until seventh and eighth grade football.
Speaker 4: I think it changed because I just had a knack
Speaker 4: for it. You know, you start doing some things and
Speaker 4: you start getting counted on, and then it carries over.
Speaker 4: I think football carries over to sports in general, carryover
Speaker 4: into life, and then it translates into everything else. So,
Speaker 4: for example, you know, you had to have at least
Speaker 4: a sea average to play football, to play sports, and
Speaker 4: so all of a sudden, you start getting a Sea
Speaker 4: average and you're like, you know what, that's pretty easy.
Speaker 4: Maybe I can do a little better. I think football
Speaker 4: is a great lesson for life. You know, you take
Speaker 4: lots of hits, but you get it up and you
Speaker 4: keep going. You know, you never stay down. You know,
Speaker 4: being a part of that community, being a part of
Speaker 4: the brotherhood, being.
Speaker 2: A part of that fraternity.
Speaker 4: You're working with your best friends. I mean, these guys
Speaker 4: are your best friends in life. You know, you do
Speaker 4: everything together.
Speaker 2: The people who know Bails will attest that he's a
Speaker 2: fiercely loyal person, whether it's on the football field or
Speaker 2: the battlefield. You could argue that he's always had a
Speaker 2: protective streak. Nowhere was this more apparent than with a
Speaker 2: friendship that Bob Foster with his next door neighbor Wade.
Speaker 4: I started working with Wade when I was fourteen. Wade
Speaker 4: has Microsoft offlies, which means that his brain closed too early,
Speaker 4: or the soft spot in his brain closed up so
Speaker 4: his brain could expand.
Speaker 2: Good looking guy.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't know if he was just sitting here that
Speaker 4: he was retarded, but he had. He was severely retarded.
Speaker 4: So you know, he never got he never made it
Speaker 4: past the age of reasoning. They lived next door to me,
Speaker 4: so I kind of grew up with him a little bit.
Speaker 4: And they had a program called Model fifty, which was
Speaker 4: established by Nancy Reagan, I believe, where families could keep
Speaker 4: their children at home and get help from the outside. So,
Speaker 4: you know, basically they hired me to help take care
Speaker 4: of Waite. Well, Wade became, you know, a dashed in
Speaker 4: my hip. Wade and I did everything together. You know,
Speaker 4: we'd go out and hang out, just walk in the mall,
Speaker 4: you know, and so Wade drew a crowd wherever we went.
Speaker 4: You know, he obviously was different. It wasn't like this
Speaker 4: was a job. This is my.
Speaker 5: Brother, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Bob's commitment to his neighbor was the real deal. During
Speaker 2: his freshman year of college, his first year away from home,
Speaker 2: lead hurt himself badly. Baals ended up spending the next
Speaker 2: twelve months back in Norwood.
Speaker 4: After I got out of high school and I was
Speaker 4: at Mount Saint Joseph and Cincinnati for a year. Well,
Speaker 4: Wade half falling down a flight of steps broke his hip,
Speaker 4: and so it was a lot of rehab to get
Speaker 4: him back to normal or get him back up walking,
Speaker 4: and so I spent some time doing that.
Speaker 2: Bals grew up in Ohio in the eighties, so did
Speaker 2: I actually, although Bales is a few years older than me,
Speaker 2: but I can tell you firsthand it was rare for
Speaker 2: the varsity football cap to spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: with his disabled neighbor. That said, he was a young
Speaker 2: man who still had some growing up to do. His wife,
Speaker 2: Carrie thinks Bob was a different person before the two
Speaker 2: of them met his adults.
Speaker 3: He was really popular in high school.
Speaker 8: He was co captain of the football team, he was
Speaker 8: president of his senior class party.
Speaker 3: But he was kind of a.
Speaker 6: Jerk before he turned thirty. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 8: Prior to meeting me when he was in his twenties,
Speaker 8: him and his friends would go out and he would
Speaker 8: go up to a girl, maybe a not so pretty girl,
Speaker 8: and he would pretend like he was shy and giving
Speaker 8: her his.
Speaker 3: Number, and then he would walk away.
Speaker 8: He goes, I'm really shy that you should give me
Speaker 8: a call sometime, right and his friends would be watching
Speaker 8: this and she would open it up and it would
Speaker 8: say call one eight hundred weight watchers. And so I
Speaker 8: told him, I'm like, look, if I met you before
Speaker 8: we were thirty years old, I wouldn't have liked you,
Speaker 8: and you wouldn't have liked me.
Speaker 2: So much of Robert Bayales's childhood sounds like it could
Speaker 2: have been ripped from eighties movie. The big working class family,
Speaker 2: the football, the friendships, the pranks. There aren't many indicators
Speaker 2: that this guy would one day end up in Fort
Speaker 2: Leavenworth Military Prison. Compare that with some of the other
Speaker 2: infamous mass murderers in American history. Frequently, their upbringings were
Speaker 2: more complicated, sometimes rife with disturbing incidents. That's why defense
Speaker 2: attorney John Henry Brown notes stark differences between Bales and
Speaker 2: men like Ted Bundy, another one of his former clients.
Speaker 1: I never believed that people were born evil. I never
Speaker 1: was raised that way, But when I met Ted Bundy,
Speaker 1: I changed my opinion. He was definitely a very evil person.
Speaker 1: Was clearly a sociopath. I don't think that the term
Speaker 1: serial killer was even in our vocabulary until the seventies
Speaker 1: or the eighties, when there were a lot of incidents
Speaker 1: like that. Then Ted came along, and of course that
Speaker 1: label fit him pretty well. There's no way that you
Speaker 1: could compare Bobby Bails to Ted Bundy at all. Bobby
Speaker 1: is not a sociopath. We became really close. I ended
Speaker 1: up really admiring Bob and liking.
Speaker 2: Bob Let's transition from Middle America to the middle of
Speaker 2: the Afghan desert. After coming back to the VSP covered
Speaker 2: in blood, Robert Bales told Special Forces Captain Danny Fields
Speaker 2: that he needed a lawyer. That request would be honored
Speaker 2: the first the military had a more pressing priority.
Speaker 4: So afterwards, you know, it was probably like three o'clock
Speaker 4: when it flew me out of panjaway to Kandahar. And
Speaker 4: there's like some blank times here where everything kind of
Speaker 4: runs together, you know. So I was in Candahar in
Speaker 4: this like little box room there's noiger than a storage closet.
Speaker 4: Then I ended up in like a jail, I think,
Speaker 4: for a few hours, and then they flew me to
Speaker 4: Kuwait put me in like this kennel that was inside
Speaker 4: of a tent for a while, and then I ended
Speaker 4: up here in Levenworth, Kansas, and then from there I
Speaker 4: meet John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 2: Carrie Bales was responsible for recruiting star attorney John Henry
Speaker 2: Brown for one of the most polarizing cases of his career.
Speaker 8: It was seeing my older sister and her husband's idea
Speaker 8: to get John Henry Bound involved because he's really good
Speaker 8: with the media.
Speaker 6: He dealt with other, you know, controversial cases. I didn't
Speaker 6: know who he.
Speaker 8: Was prior to meeting him, right, Like, I didn't go
Speaker 8: Google him or anything like that. He was a smart person,
Speaker 8: you know, who I knew was powerful.
Speaker 2: I guess as.
Speaker 8: In like probably the worst situation ever, and here he
Speaker 8: was someone that was going to that said they would
Speaker 8: you help us, certainly trying to help us.
Speaker 1: I was contacted by Bobby's family. I remember They've been
Speaker 1: driving in my car getting a call on my bluetooth,
Speaker 1: and of course I'd heard in the news what had happened,
Speaker 1: but they had mentioned a name of any soldier involved.
Speaker 1: I just knew the General of publicity about some soldier
Speaker 1: going off the defense basically, so I knew the tragedy
Speaker 1: of the whole event.
Speaker 8: We met with him and got him on board to
Speaker 8: help us.
Speaker 3: Surreal, very surreal.
Speaker 1: Carrie was scared, her family was scared to kids. This
Speaker 1: is a scary situation. The Taliban has nothing to be
Speaker 1: taken lightly. So the army whisked Carrie and her family
Speaker 1: away to a safe house on the base somewhere.
Speaker 8: The military packed up our house for us and moved
Speaker 8: all of our things within that next week. I had
Speaker 8: to get a house on Fort Louis without telling anybody
Speaker 8: who I was. He and my kids definitely saw the
Speaker 8: media circus.
Speaker 2: If you were watching the national news at this time.
Speaker 2: Robert Byles's name and background was hard to avoid.
Speaker 10: His name has not been officially released by the military,
Speaker 10: but the military source now confirmed the suspect is Staff
Speaker 10: Sergeant Robert Bales. Obviously, it's easier now to look at
Speaker 10: his record and all of that.
Speaker 7: He was a first platoon sergeant there in Afghanistan, did
Speaker 7: a lot of work with the tribal elders there.
Speaker 2: Watching the story play out in the public arena. John
Speaker 2: Henry Brown only became more convinced that he was doing
Speaker 2: the right thing, picking up the phone for a defendant
Speaker 2: like Bales at a moment when most other people might
Speaker 2: have hung up.
Speaker 1: I believe the only reason to be a lawyer is
Speaker 1: to help people. I guess I've always been an advocate
Speaker 1: for the underdog, and it just seemed fundamentally unfair to
Speaker 1: me that someone who we created, had four deployments, should
Speaker 1: be treated the way he was being treated.
Speaker 2: Brown sought to put the staff sergeant's strongest advocates front
Speaker 2: and center, but twenty twelve, the list of people willing
Speaker 2: to openly side with an alleged workmaninal was short. Brown
Speaker 2: himself was one, Carrie was another.
Speaker 8: I felt it really important for me show the human
Speaker 8: side of Bob and that Bob is not what has
Speaker 8: been portrayed of him. And I remember thinking that I
Speaker 8: really liked Matt Lauer and that he would be a
Speaker 8: good listener to my story.
Speaker 2: You've spoken to him twice on the phone.
Speaker 3: Did you say, sweetheart, did you do this?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 11: No, I mean, as a spouse, wouldn't you want to
Speaker 11: ask that question quickly, honey, why are they saying these
Speaker 11: things about you?
Speaker 3: Not on a monitored phone call. It was surreal. It
Speaker 3: was like, this isn't happening to me. This is like
Speaker 3: you watch it on TV's this kind.
Speaker 8: Of story, this kind of thing happens to someone else,
Speaker 8: But here I am living this and it was frightening
Speaker 8: and not the way you want to be in the media.
Speaker 8: It just drives me crazy that everybody wants to think
Speaker 8: the absolute possible worst and it's not their family being
Speaker 8: drug through the mud.
Speaker 2: Painful as it might have been. Kerrie went on National
Speaker 2: TV for one clear reason, to literally save Robert Bales' life.
Speaker 1: The Secretary of the Fans, Leon Panetta, actually called for
Speaker 1: a death penalty sentlus, which is first of all, undue
Speaker 1: command influence and should not have been said. And I
Speaker 1: think that was one of the reasons why I ended
Speaker 1: up representing body. Leon Panetta, Well, here's somebody who's kind
Speaker 1: of known internationally as the humanitarian asking for the death penalty,
Speaker 1: and to me, that's inconsistent. Whatever happened. You know, we
Speaker 1: as the nation created Bobby and we were quickly abandoning him.
Speaker 2: Secretary Panetta declined our interview request, so the veracity of
Speaker 2: his claim that Panetta asked for the death penalty is unclear,
Speaker 2: but he did take immediate action after the Canahar massacre,
Speaker 2: giving a press conference just hours after the news had broken.
Speaker 12: Traveling overseas Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Speaker 2: Himself, so the death penalty is a possibility.
Speaker 4: Obviously, we were all deeply shocked and sad by the
Speaker 4: event that occurred there.
Speaker 2: On the afternoon of March fifteenth, twenty twelve, four Star
Speaker 2: General John Allen gave a press conference on the Kandahar killings.
Speaker 2: Allen worked closely with Panetta and was responsible for managing
Speaker 2: the war effort in Afghanistan. His comments reveal a lot
Speaker 2: about how the US would be regarding Robert Bales.
Speaker 10: In the case of Staffs. Sergent Bale's my sincere condolences
Speaker 10: to the loved ones, family members, and friends of those
Speaker 10: who were killed and injured in that senseless act of violence. Charges,
Speaker 10: as you know, have been preferred against Stas Argent Bales.
Speaker 10: Compensation payments to the families of the victims have been paid,
Speaker 10: and both the criminal investigation as well as an administrative
Speaker 10: investigation continues.
Speaker 13: Something went terribly wrong investigation pending something went terribly wrong.
Speaker 13: How are you making sure something like that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 10: We're investigating this one very thoroughly, and I'm looking at
Speaker 10: command climate of that unit.
Speaker 2: In fact, let's go back to the village stability platform.
Speaker 2: The morning of March eleventh, twenty twelve, hours after the
Speaker 2: shit storm began, Brown might have said that the military
Speaker 2: was abandoning Bales, but that's in retrospect. In the heat
Speaker 2: of the moment, soldiers like Captain Fields and Private Alexander
Speaker 2: were left to deal with a volatile situation that Bales created.
Speaker 7: Just having him on the base. After we kind of
Speaker 7: pieced together what we thought that he had done, it
Speaker 7: was a very uncomfortable feeling to have that person near you.
Speaker 7: We said, hey, make sure we're watching this guy, and
Speaker 7: let's let him pack a bag because he's going to
Speaker 7: have to get out of here.
Speaker 6: I don't remember, you.
Speaker 7: Know, exactly how long it was that he was there,
Speaker 7: but it could have been more than a few hours,
Speaker 7: you know. I remember they landed, he got right on
Speaker 7: the plane and took off, so he was gone pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: In the region of panchwe the news of the American
Speaker 2: military breaking into civilian households and killing women and children
Speaker 2: was spreading fast.
Speaker 7: At first light sun came up, there were people at
Speaker 7: our gate, and you know, they said, we want to
Speaker 7: speak to who's in charge. We see footprints that have
Speaker 7: left your base and are at the place where people
Speaker 7: were shot and killed.
Speaker 6: We have the bodies.
Speaker 7: We're going to bring them to you in the back
Speaker 7: of a pickup truck because we want you to see them.
Speaker 6: That we're not lying to you.
Speaker 3: And our front gate is not a gate.
Speaker 14: It's a piece of wood with constantina wire up throughout.
Speaker 15: It's not like some steel fortress thing that you think
Speaker 15: it would be right like in the movie An.
Speaker 2: It's it's not any type of defensive barrier at all.
Speaker 14: The Afghans were not there to inflict damage. What they
Speaker 14: were there to do is get bail. They wanted instant
Speaker 14: retribution for what happened, and they wanted to show us
Speaker 14: the evidence of what it happened.
Speaker 6: These people came to the gate I saw.
Speaker 7: I ended up seeing more people in front of that
Speaker 7: gate than I had in the previous forty five days.
Speaker 7: I don't know where they came from, but these people
Speaker 7: were showing up in force and they demanded. They said,
Speaker 7: we know it was at least one person here, if
Speaker 7: not more. They thought it was the entire base, honestly,
Speaker 7: and we want whoever did this.
Speaker 6: Thank God. I could say, well, I'd love to give
Speaker 6: him to you, but he's not here. I just remember
Speaker 6: having relief that I could say.
Speaker 2: That Captain Field's private Alexander and the man were calling
Speaker 2: Soldier x all guarded the entrance as an anguished, in
Speaker 2: formidable crowd grow outside.
Speaker 7: We were getting intelligence reports that there were some bad
Speaker 7: actors in that crowd who either had some machine gun
Speaker 7: of some sort, or hand grenades or RPGs, but they
Speaker 7: had something that they were intending to use to harm
Speaker 7: us or through.
Speaker 5: A few hours, like there were hundreds of Afghans, pissed
Speaker 5: Afghans outside our gate, bringing like they're bringing by shot
Speaker 5: up by his kids and stuff like that.
Speaker 15: Ten feet away from me, fifteen feet away from you
Speaker 15: are a crowd of Afghans holding dead children, displaying the
Speaker 15: children pointing to them, crying, looking so enraged at us.
Speaker 14: I mean, there's one guy, white Beard, and his eyes
Speaker 14: were just red. There was no call it.
Speaker 3: The red in his eyes.
Speaker 16: It became really personal at that time like, really really personal.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the crowd. I'm like, they're are coming
Speaker 5: and kill us all. They're coming, kill us all. And
Speaker 5: I understood it. I understood their anger. You know, if
Speaker 5: I was a dad and some shirk off came and
Speaker 5: they'ld be held a pay right, so.
Speaker 2: Horrible When Bails attacked Hadji Muhammad Wazir had been spending
Speaker 2: the night his brother's house in another town. He recalls
Speaker 2: the morning after he learned that six of his seven
Speaker 2: children had been killed.
Speaker 17: In the morning, we were having tea when one of
Speaker 17: the people of our village called us and said there
Speaker 17: was a problem in my house. I said, what's wrong?
Speaker 17: When they told me, I understood the situation. I thought
Speaker 17: that either there was a night operation by the Americans
Speaker 17: or it was bombed.
Speaker 7: What was the reaction of you and the people of
Speaker 7: your village after the incident.
Speaker 17: After the incident, all the people were provoked and their
Speaker 17: blood boiled. They say today they did this injustice to
Speaker 17: Haji Wazir. Tomorrow it will happen to me as well.
Speaker 17: Why is such cruelty done to us? Why are Knight
Speaker 17: military operations carried out against us? Why did they enter
Speaker 17: our house at night. What are their rights that an
Speaker 17: infidel enters Muslim house and tramples women, children and babies
Speaker 17: and makes them murdyers by shooting them and then they
Speaker 17: burned them. Neither God nor the law has considered such
Speaker 17: an act as valid.
Speaker 2: Here's Mulla Baran, whose brother was killed by bales.
Speaker 17: We continued our gathering from the morning until the scholars
Speaker 17: and elders told us to bury the martyrs. I am
Speaker 17: very grateful to the people of my place who gathered
Speaker 17: and demonstrated in front of the Americans and warned the
Speaker 17: Afghan government that we are attacking the American forces.
Speaker 2: For both Afghan civilians and American soldiers in the region
Speaker 2: of Panjway, life became even more dangerous after March eleventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve. It started with the tense encounter outside of
Speaker 2: esp Beleambay and it didn't stop.
Speaker 7: I think the second day, I remember waking up with
Speaker 7: almost this question of like was this real or was
Speaker 7: this a dream?
Speaker 6: And then I walked outside and I thought, well, okay, yep,
Speaker 6: this was all real.
Speaker 16: You know, balls got taken away in the helicopter, but
Speaker 16: we had to sleep there and like we had to essentially,
Speaker 16: you know, survive. I mean, it wasn't even cleaning up
Speaker 16: the mess. It was just survive where you are and
Speaker 16: there's nobody coming. It was bad before, but it got
Speaker 16: demonstrably worse after Bales was gone. I mean, the entire
Speaker 16: country of Afghanistan was on the safety standown for two
Speaker 16: weeks because of this incident.
Speaker 6: For thirty days, basically we could do anything.
Speaker 7: So in that month after the incident, when we were
Speaker 7: still in the base, a lot of targeted attacks on
Speaker 7: the base, you know, some order or some a lot
Speaker 7: of small arms fire, mostly just harassing fire.
Speaker 15: The morning prayer that morning was just a geoon, just
Speaker 15: come here kill these people.
Speaker 6: I basically slept with my rifle for a few weeks.
Speaker 2: You know, for the thirty odd soldiers inside the VSP,
Speaker 2: options are limited. Fostering relationships with the locals is an impossibility.
Speaker 2: Fighting back against the Taliban would only create more problems.
Speaker 2: The only reason they're still there is to help the
Speaker 2: army complete in internal investigation otherwise known as AT fifteen
Speaker 2: to six.
Speaker 7: It was identified obviously very shortly after the incident that
Speaker 7: you know, they needed to do an investigation, and in
Speaker 7: that time, basically our job was to answer the questions
Speaker 7: for the fifteen six. There was a I believe it
Speaker 7: was a one star general doing the fifteen to six
Speaker 7: and basically you just needed to be available for when
Speaker 7: he would call your name. And so that was our
Speaker 7: job until the fifteen six was done, and then we
Speaker 7: were going to be replaced.
Speaker 2: The United States knew that the soldiers associated with the
Speaker 2: Kanahar massacre would eventually be going at home, but on
Speaker 2: a macro level, America had a bigger problem on its
Speaker 2: hands tensions with the Afghan central government, namely President Hamid Karzaid.
Speaker 18: In twenty twelve, the relationship with the United States in
Speaker 18: Afghanistan was at an all time low, and every.
Speaker 3: Time krsn I gave an interview, it became more and.
Speaker 18: More evident that the relationship was breaking down with the
Speaker 18: Obama administration.
Speaker 2: That's the voice of journalist Yealda Hakim, who was working
Speaker 2: for the Australian news outlet SBS Dateline in twenty twelve.
Speaker 18: He talked about the sovereignty of the nation. That was
Speaker 18: something that he felt quite strongly about. I had quite
Speaker 18: a sort of an intense conversation with Hamid Kausei about,
Speaker 18: you know, sovereignty and the place of the nation and
Speaker 18: night raids.
Speaker 2: Night raids were a point of contention during this period
Speaker 2: of the Afghan War. Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannett explains.
Speaker 19: Tom mccarzi and the American administration were at art. The
Speaker 19: night rates were relentless, and that was in the middle
Speaker 19: of the night, a rating party of American soldiers goes
Speaker 19: into a village that is supposedly at Alaban Village and
Speaker 19: goes into the halls, separates the men the women. And
Speaker 19: it was a constant feature of the US strategy in Afghanistan.
Speaker 19: And it was strongly opposed by Hamid Karzai. And that's
Speaker 19: because the tribal people themselves were deadly opposed to this.
Speaker 2: One could argue that staff Sergeant Bales took the concept
Speaker 2: of a night raak to its logical yet horrific extreme.
Speaker 2: Several days after the incident, Karzai addressed it in a speech, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: this has been going on for too long. You've heard
Speaker 2: me before. It is by all means the end of
Speaker 2: the rope.
Speaker 18: Here it was clear that the Afghan government had lost
Speaker 18: complete control of the situation. They were no longer masters
Speaker 18: of their own destiny, if they ever were, but certainly
Speaker 18: Karzai in twenty twelve gave off that perception.
Speaker 2: The US military's reaction to the killings added insult to injury.
Speaker 2: Karzai wanted Bales to be tried in Afghanistan, where he
Speaker 2: would be executed in accordance with Afghan justice, but as
Speaker 2: we learned earlier, Bales was rushed back home to face
Speaker 2: trial in America. Kathy Gannon says that was standard operating procedure.
Speaker 19: Nobody ever thought the Americans would bye by Afghan law.
Speaker 19: I mean, it's not like anybody believes that the Americans
Speaker 19: are going to let a military person, whatever his prime
Speaker 19: stay in the country where he committed it.
Speaker 2: Even so, veteran and Panjwai podcast host Curtis Grace argues
Speaker 2: that America's unilateral decision had serious ramifications for Karzai.
Speaker 12: He did look weak when we took Bob Byles out
Speaker 12: of the country within twenty four hours of him doing it,
Speaker 12: and he, I mean, he was gone, like the Afghans
Speaker 12: never got a chance, and it made cars I look
Speaker 12: really weak. And his brother in fact went to Belumby
Speaker 12: and tried to go to nau Gbn and lost him
Speaker 12: of his personal guard trying to go there all to
Speaker 12: try and be like, no, we are in charge here,
Speaker 12: this is an Afghan matter, and we just like took
Speaker 12: the dude out of the country. So I think the
Speaker 12: Pandroid massacre was kind of the nail on the coffin
Speaker 12: for any chance of the central government to really control Panjwai.
Speaker 18: The telebumnel gaining a lot of ground, The war was intensifying.
Speaker 18: Obama was trying to find a solution with a partner
Speaker 18: who was increasingly being backed into a corner and discrudged.
Speaker 18: So Kusai's rhetoric was getting more and more intense and
Speaker 18: the relationship was deteriorating.
Speaker 2: In late March of twenty twelve, yalde Hakim was on
Speaker 2: assignment in Afghanistan.
Speaker 18: I was an Afghan born Western journalist. I had access
Speaker 18: to the Western press and a platform, but my Afghan
Speaker 18: heritage meant I had a level of empathy for the
Speaker 18: country of my birth and for the people and what
Speaker 18: they were going through.
Speaker 2: The region wasn't mourning for the victims of the Kandahar massacre.
Speaker 2: Even so, nobody seemed to know what had actually happened.
Speaker 2: As John Henry Brown recalled, the Afghan police weren't able
Speaker 2: to conduct a proper examination of the crime scene.
Speaker 1: That area became so dangerous after the incident that I
Speaker 1: don't think we the United States went back there and
Speaker 1: did a normal investigation. I mean, you know, there was
Speaker 1: no CSI.
Speaker 2: Like many reporters at the time, Yelda was frustrated by
Speaker 2: this lack of concrete information that existed on the case.
Speaker 18: This whole thing became shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Virtually
Speaker 18: as soon as they went and got fails, he disappeared
Speaker 18: overnight from the face of the earth.
Speaker 3: There wasn't any real acknowledgment of what.
Speaker 18: Had just taken place, and everything just shut down, and
Speaker 18: the Afghan partners were working with the US military to
Speaker 18: kind of do as they were told, which was hide
Speaker 18: the witnesses away, don't let the investigators get involved, don't
Speaker 18: let anyone go out to the field where it happened.
Speaker 3: Diffuse, diffuse, diffuse.
Speaker 18: But that ended up having a detrimental effect, because you know,
Speaker 18: the minute you tell journalists they're not supposed to do something,
Speaker 18: they make sure they do do it.
Speaker 2: Yolder had recently developed a rapport with Karzai. She lobbied
Speaker 2: the Afghan president for access to Alakosa and Najebien. The
Speaker 2: villagers hit by staff Sergeant Bales.
Speaker 18: Because he was so furious and this was such an
Speaker 18: intense time in the country, he sort of said, allow
Speaker 18: her to go and give her full access. I knew
Speaker 18: how this could be told from a very different perspective,
Speaker 18: less from the perspective of the Afghans being the victims,
Speaker 18: and more from the perspective of a soldier, like so
Speaker 18: many others who may have done multiple rotations, who may
Speaker 18: have found themselves in a situation where they're far from
Speaker 18: home and in a situation where PTSD kicks in and
Speaker 18: there is a sense of justification for what happened.
Speaker 2: Her goal was set people, you're perilous, figure out exactly
Speaker 2: what happened on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: We had to provide clarity.
Speaker 18: We were on a fact finding mission trying to report
Speaker 18: or figure out what the truth was. In the last
Speaker 18: fifteen years of reporting from Afghanistan, I've realized nothing is
Speaker 18: as it seems.
Speaker 3: It's all very murky. So my whole aiming.
Speaker 18: As the only journalist on the ground was to provide
Speaker 18: some kind of clear timeline. I knew that I had
Speaker 18: sort of one shot at this, and I knew the
Speaker 18: dangers involved, and I was going to give it my.
Speaker 6: Absolute all.
Speaker 2: Y'all, to quickly learn what Bales and his fellow soldiers
Speaker 2: already knew. The road to Panjway was treacherous.
Speaker 18: I went to the police headquarters in Kandahar and they
Speaker 18: said to me, you want to go to Punchway, not happening.
Speaker 18: No way in hell are you going anywhere in your Punchway.
Speaker 18: If you have a death wish, you got a Punchway.
Speaker 3: We don't have approval from the US military.
Speaker 18: They're not going to support this operation, and we're not
Speaker 18: willing to lose a single man for this.
Speaker 3: But we knew we needed to get.
Speaker 20: To the crime scene, and so me, my cameraman, my
Speaker 20: security traveled to the road heading into Punchway alongside General
Speaker 20: Rosark in his convoy.
Speaker 2: General Rozak was the head of police and Candor Heart.
Speaker 2: He served as the de facto chaperone of the trip.
Speaker 18: I remember sitting in the car with Razakh, and you know,
Speaker 18: he was someone who had all sorts of allegations of
Speaker 18: atrocities in his name and the treatment of human rights violations,
Speaker 18: and we were single handedly holding together Candor Heart against
Speaker 18: it falling to the Taliban and the Americans knew he
Speaker 18: was an important allied there. I am in the car
Speaker 18: with him, and suddenly the convoy comes out of fire
Speaker 18: and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3: Razak jumps out of this armored vehicle and.
Speaker 18: I sort of sum into the car seat, and he
Speaker 18: gets into the front seat, picks up his rifle and
Speaker 18: just randomly.
Speaker 20: Starts shooting into the distance.
Speaker 3: And I just remember being quite horrified, just the randomness.
Speaker 18: Of it, like there's someone shooting an our convoy just
Speaker 18: got out of the car and started shooting randomly.
Speaker 3: And then we got back into the car and it
Speaker 3: was like as you were.
Speaker 2: Once they reached their destination, Yelda and her crew knew
Speaker 2: they had officially entered a warzone.
Speaker 18: You know. I was in my late twenties and no
Speaker 18: real responsibilities in life, and just sort of thinking, well,
Speaker 18: nothing's going to happen to me. But I remember as
Speaker 18: we're walking across, I could hear impasture and durry the
Speaker 18: two police officers.
Speaker 3: They'd said with us. I remember them saying to each other,
Speaker 3: do you think they've really cleared this place of minds?
Speaker 3: You know, we know the Taliban have got booby.
Speaker 2: Traps be careful eyes wide open to the potential risks.
Speaker 2: Yolda and her cameraman forged ahead into the villages.
Speaker 18: So we go to punchwe and we do all that
Speaker 18: filming and then we sort of part ways with the
Speaker 18: police and Razakh.
Speaker 3: And those guys village.
Speaker 18: I went filmed inside Punchwey the home. I saw the
Speaker 18: crime scene. I saw the blood splotted on the walls.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 18: We did all of that, and then we came back
Speaker 18: and then we came back to the police headquarters. We
Speaker 18: were staying at a different hotel, you know. We said
Speaker 18: goodbye to them, and I met Mala Baran at the
Speaker 18: military compound. His brother was killed and he had taken
Speaker 18: in his sister in law with all of her children
Speaker 18: into his home.
Speaker 2: Mala Barran is one of the app hands we interviewed.
Speaker 2: Heard him speak earlier in this episode.
Speaker 18: And Baran said, you know, you have to come to
Speaker 18: this certain area. So we're all getting out the car to.
Speaker 3: Go to the village.
Speaker 18: And he said, no, I'm only taking her. The rest
Speaker 18: of this, like security and your cameramen, they're not coming
Speaker 18: because it's all women. It's our women. I'm not taking
Speaker 18: sort of more white men into my home and it's
Speaker 18: either you or you don't do this. So I look
Speaker 18: at my cameraman and he hands me a little handicap.
Speaker 18: Take this, and you know, are you comfortable to go?
Speaker 3: And I sort of said, I think so.
Speaker 18: There's no lights and we're walking into this neighborhood on
Speaker 18: the outskirts of Kandah. I remember looking back and the
Speaker 18: car that my team were in was getting further and
Speaker 18: further and further away, and then I just had a.
Speaker 3: Moment where I couldn't see the lights.
Speaker 18: From the car anymore, and I just thought to myself,
Speaker 18: Oh my god, I'm walking into a Tullivan trap and
Speaker 18: they're going to hold me for ransom.
Speaker 3: This is the most stupid thing I could do. And
Speaker 3: so I stopped in.
Speaker 18: My tracks and I said to him, I don't want
Speaker 18: to go any further. And he said to me why,
Speaker 18: and he looked at me and he realized I totally
Speaker 18: now was freaking out, and he said, it's okay, It's.
Speaker 3: Going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Let's take a moment to realize just how insane this looks. Yalder,
Speaker 2: a female foreign journalist going alone into villages that had
Speaker 2: just recently been the scenes of grizzly murders for an
Speaker 2: outsider to these tight knit patriarchal clans and families, intrusion
Speaker 2: into their lives, give me death. And here is Yalder
Speaker 2: going above and beyond to shed light on this story.
Speaker 3: I got to the doors.
Speaker 18: I just thought, he's going to open the doors and
Speaker 18: they're just going to be a whole heap of like
Speaker 18: men with guns inside, and that's it.
Speaker 3: And when he opened the doors, it was dark and
Speaker 3: they didn't have any electricity.
Speaker 18: And I looked into the distance and there was a
Speaker 18: woman sitting on the ground with multiple children around her.
Speaker 3: Very small children. We're talking, you know, a.
Speaker 18: Newborn and you know, a one year old, two year old,
Speaker 18: like very very small children, a combination of all of
Speaker 18: our aunt's kids and her own kids after her husband
Speaker 18: was killed. And I remember sitting on the ground and
Speaker 18: turning on my camera and.
Speaker 3: Just doing this interview with her.
Speaker 18: And he was saying to her, tell her what you saw,
Speaker 18: and the children started describing the boot of a soldier
Speaker 18: kicking one of the children in the stomach and stomping
Speaker 18: on one of the children, and then another child was
Speaker 18: saying they were multiple people.
Speaker 3: That was what stayed with me, and that I found
Speaker 3: quite chilling.
Speaker 18: I was interviewing a little girl and she said to me,
Speaker 18: I saw many.
Speaker 3: Soldiers with lights.
Speaker 20: She said, it was lights coming out of their helmets.
Speaker 18: I saw many, many soldiers, and they came and they
Speaker 18: killed my father.
Speaker 2: Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 18: Giving a founding compensation for the loss of life, it's
Speaker 18: kind of a band aid fix.
Speaker 17: I told the Americans that we don't want your money.
Speaker 17: We just want this person who wronged us to be executed.
Speaker 11: My job as the prosecutor is to represent the government
Speaker 11: in the pursuit of justice. I wanted the public to
Speaker 11: understand that these people were human beings.
Speaker 1: The military was hampered by the inadequacy of the Afghan police.
Speaker 15: All of the people nearby said, yes, we saw two
Speaker 15: people here.
Speaker 11: I want a conviction, playing by the rules, no insurmountable mistakes.
Speaker 4: It's ninety seven conviction rate in the u CMJAY. The
Speaker 4: closest to that is Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2: How many times do we see the army throw guys
Speaker 2: away all the time? The War Within the Robert Bailes
Speaker 2: Story is production of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions
Speaker 2: and Mosquito Park Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 2: series was created by executive producers Paul Plowski and David Check.
Speaker 2: Executive producers for Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman
Speaker 2: and Mike Powers. The podcast was written and produced by
Speaker 2: Max Nelson and hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was
Speaker 2: done by Anna Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner.
Speaker 2: Teddy Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an
Speaker 2: associate producer, and Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Liz Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpie,
Speaker 2: and Meerwi Satall, as well as all of the people
Speaker 2: who are interviewed for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to
Speaker 2: The War Within on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts.