Speaker 1: We haven't been vocal.
Speaker 2: We haven't said how can America, how can they release
Speaker 2: the guys from Guantanamo Bay who have committed the same crimes,
Speaker 2: if not worse, placing them back in the same environment
Speaker 2: that they committed their crimes in.
Speaker 3: Since the start of the US Afghan War, roughly seven
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty alleged war criminals have been held at
Speaker 3: the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, the
Speaker 3: number of detainees is just below fifty. Meanwhile, back Stateside,
Speaker 3: staff Sergeant Robert Bales is currently serving a life sentence
Speaker 3: without parole.
Speaker 2: The part about the Gitmo that bothers me so much
Speaker 2: is the legality versus the morality or the logic of it. Right,
Speaker 2: so we legally there is an argument that these people
Speaker 2: are being detained without trial. I understand that argument, and
Speaker 2: I understand that I've had a trial. But what you're
Speaker 2: saying is these people in Guantanamo Bay are innocent. That's
Speaker 2: not the case. These are the worst people that we
Speaker 2: detained over a fifteen year period that ended up in GITMO.
Speaker 2: And I could sit in prison forever if we'd have
Speaker 2: left the Guantanamo Bay. Guys stay down there because I
Speaker 2: can understand. Look, that's justice. They're doing their time, but
Speaker 2: you let them go. So now that you've let them go,
Speaker 2: let us go. Give us the same damn clemency. Give
Speaker 2: us the same opportunity of having a life outside of
Speaker 2: here that you've already given the terrorists.
Speaker 3: Previously, on the War Within, staff Sergeant Robert Bales told
Speaker 3: the military court his rampage was premeditated and without justification.
Speaker 2: In high school's cabinet, the football team, you take lots
Speaker 2: of hits.
Speaker 1: Bob wanted to make sure everyone was protected. It's a
Speaker 1: guerrilla war. How do you know who you're talking with?
Speaker 2: Haji Wazir, He's the gentleman with the Taliban fighter tattoo.
Speaker 2: These are not innocent people to begin with.
Speaker 1: We have the.
Speaker 4: Evidence some of the Afghan witnesses left their fingerprints on
Speaker 4: bomb parts.
Speaker 1: They took up to Disneyland.
Speaker 3: For God's sake, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the War
Speaker 3: within the Robert Bayles story. In the last episode, Robert
Speaker 3: Bales and John Maher walked us through their belief that
Speaker 3: some of Bales's victims were members of the Taliban in
Speaker 3: their minds. This information completely changes the context of his case.
Speaker 3: We also showed the Afghan families themselves passionately refuting these
Speaker 3: Taliban connections. Many of the people we interviewed were not
Speaker 3: convinced that the Afghans were guilty of anything. One of
Speaker 3: their strongest defenders was Bales's prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 5: We had the State Department, we had the Department of Defense,
Speaker 5: we had the FBI, all on searches, and we found
Speaker 5: no evidence that any of these guys were Taliban. I
Speaker 5: mean they were literally all farmers. There was no evidence, literally,
Speaker 5: not a single piece of evidence. There was nothing in
Speaker 5: any of these houses that could be construed as even
Speaker 5: having them be Taliban sympathizers. Bales was walking around for
Speaker 5: five hours like shooting people. He wasn't opposed once. I
Speaker 5: mean he literally was walking on open roads and nobody
Speaker 5: confronted him once.
Speaker 3: Bailes was working with the same intel as everybody else.
Speaker 3: Special Forces Captain Danny Fields, the commanding officer at the base,
Speaker 3: doesn't think that this information was strong enough could draw
Speaker 3: any conclusions.
Speaker 6: I think that's a convenient truth that helps fit that
Speaker 6: narrative for him. But we being the team actually gathering
Speaker 6: the intel on the ground. You know, I don't think
Speaker 6: we had any specific intelligence that definitively said that any
Speaker 6: of the people that he killed was a Taliban target.
Speaker 6: We had some theories and assumptions at best. There was
Speaker 6: no piece of evidence, even collectively, that we could gather
Speaker 6: and say, hey, we should target this compound.
Speaker 5: I mean, even if.
Speaker 6: We gather all the intelligence, we couldn't have probably fit
Speaker 6: that puzzle together.
Speaker 3: Fields and more spoth say variations of the same thing.
Speaker 3: There was no evidence, but Baiales and his attorney John
Speaker 3: Maher have pointed out specific pieces of evidence which to
Speaker 3: then indicate Taliban connections and American collusion in covering them up.
Speaker 4: The United States, in my assessment, has had this position
Speaker 4: where every Afghan is innocent, and I don't believe that
Speaker 4: is in tune with what we know with our intelligence.
Speaker 4: You can be a village eldern you can also be
Speaker 4: a jihadist. They're not exclusive. And the whole idea in
Speaker 4: these cases that I've handled in in variably the United
Speaker 4: States has to biometric evidence, and it's in the register.
Speaker 7: Biometrics are the most basic understanding that all of us
Speaker 7: have of It is like fingerprints, facial images, iris, scans
Speaker 7: and DNA. Those are all your body metrics.
Speaker 3: American journalist Annie Jacobsen researched biometrics extensively for her book,
Speaker 3: First Platoon and the Process. She learned that it was
Speaker 3: actually quite common for Afghans, Taliban or otherwise to have
Speaker 3: their DNA enrolled in what is called the bats and
Speaker 3: Hides system.
Speaker 7: The goal of the United States Defense Department was to
Speaker 7: create a massive biometric catalog of eighty five percent of
Speaker 7: the population of Afghanistan. Everyone in there was either a
Speaker 7: good guy or a bad guy in air quotes right.
Speaker 7: The conceit of the Defense Department was, if we know
Speaker 7: who everyone is, and we have a platoon out there
Speaker 7: walking into a dangerous area, and some one comes across
Speaker 7: our path and we want to make sure he doesn't
Speaker 7: kill us, let's stop him, take his IRIS scans, and
Speaker 7: have this small machine tell us whether he's friend or Oh,
Speaker 7: how much can go wrong within that system? We can
Speaker 7: talk about that for powers.
Speaker 3: Jacobson is a vocal critic of relying on biometric evidence
Speaker 3: during wartime. She considers the methodology to be imprecise.
Speaker 7: Biometric systems are significant and powerful in a country whereby
Speaker 7: rule of law and a justice system is working in
Speaker 7: a democratic manner, and biometric systems. In a country like Afghanistan,
Speaker 7: where there is no state, it's just simply anarchy. It's
Speaker 7: impossible to even begin to try and use science and
Speaker 7: technology tools to promote justice because the very fundamentals of
Speaker 7: justice don't exist.
Speaker 3: Ever.
Speaker 7: See an FBI crime scene, you know that yellow tape,
Speaker 7: you know, all the scientists with gloves. Why because they
Speaker 7: must preserve the evidence.
Speaker 2: So the very idea that you could be.
Speaker 7: Running around a warth here being shot at and also
Speaker 7: trying to use these tools that are fundamentally based in
Speaker 7: preserving a crime scene, it just opens the door for
Speaker 7: so many problems.
Speaker 3: I mean, Andy, Like just from my own personal experience,
Speaker 3: you know, we had a guy blow himself up with
Speaker 3: an ID and they told us just to go out
Speaker 3: and get a finger. You know that only had like
Speaker 3: half the tip left, and that's what they ran through
Speaker 3: bats and hides, right, And.
Speaker 7: I hate to be so graphic, but how do you
Speaker 7: know that's the finger of the guy who blew himself up?
Speaker 7: What if it's the finger of a nearby farmer who
Speaker 7: got caught in the crossfire.
Speaker 3: More, even if the biometric information is gathered properly, it
Speaker 3: might be used incorrectly later on, especially when dealing with
Speaker 3: common names.
Speaker 7: In every culture, there are names that are incredibly similar
Speaker 7: John Smith, right if you use the example of John Smith.
Speaker 7: If I take the biometrics of John Smith, and we
Speaker 7: know who he is at a cellular level, and we
Speaker 7: just say, okay, John Smith stand right there, and you
Speaker 7: have another individual across the country whose name happens to
Speaker 7: be John Smith. When you have crafty defense attorneys, it's
Speaker 7: a bit like you know the old games at the carnivals,
Speaker 7: where someone's moving the cups of the ball underneath. They're
Speaker 7: just simply moving John Smith number one to John Smith
Speaker 7: number two and calling them john Smith.
Speaker 3: Consider that premise of names intentionally or accidentally being switched around.
Speaker 3: As Robert Bales reads a biometric report he obtained on Rofiula,
Speaker 3: a villager of Alakosi who served as a weakness in
Speaker 3: the trial whose voice you've heard in this podcast, Rafiula
Speaker 3: doesn't have.
Speaker 1: A last name.
Speaker 2: Rafiuola was enrolled in the biometrics system on nine March,
Speaker 2: when number Bravo to Juliet Kilo mic Hotell eighty three.
Speaker 2: An idea even occurred on twenty eight October in Panduak.
Speaker 2: The idea event has references twelve thirty five thirty eight
Speaker 2: The Army Master Rafula this event four days after his
Speaker 2: enrollment thirteen March. But you were bringing him into the
Speaker 2: country to testify against me.
Speaker 7: Well, you always have to take people on a case
Speaker 7: by case basis. But the challenge with biometrics is that
Speaker 7: most people in the Western world, they have been educated
Speaker 7: to perceive science and technology as impeccable, as flawless, even
Speaker 7: many people have watched too many episodes of CSI.
Speaker 3: Asked Attorney John Maher about Annie Jacobson's work and inquired
Speaker 3: about just how conclusive his allegations against the Afghan villagers
Speaker 3: could be given the possible limitations of the bats and
Speaker 3: hide system.
Speaker 4: Detractors are not off putting to me at all. Detractors
Speaker 4: I don't think understand biometrics. I read Annie Jacobson's book,
Speaker 4: I gave her interviews, and she just came out with
Speaker 4: what she believes the story should be. Now, she may
Speaker 4: have found misspellings or last names incorrectly, but you know what,
Speaker 4: I believe that's one person. And I sat with her
Speaker 4: and I disagreed. I said, Annie, I don't think you
Speaker 4: have an understanding of this. One of the things I
Speaker 4: don't think any may have fully and intellectually flexibly embraced
Speaker 4: was this technology. It's as simple as fingerprints.
Speaker 3: And blood and skin. That's all it is. Robert Bayles
Speaker 3: and John Mayer had more to their case than just
Speaker 3: the bats and hides data. Baals also pulled one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty pounds VIDs out of Haiji Mohammad Wazir's home,
Speaker 3: a major reason why Bales targeted Wazir. On March eleventh,
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, Your wife Satal, an Afghan journalist working in
Speaker 3: concert with our production, uncovered the following information when he
Speaker 3: interviewed a villager from Ala Kozai, Haji Mohammed Naim.
Speaker 8: No Tlulu, most of us had enemies in our villages.
Speaker 8: One of Haji Wazir's farmers placed a mine under a
Speaker 8: mulberry tree.
Speaker 3: Presumably that's the same mind that blew off an American
Speaker 3: soldier's leg several days before the attack.
Speaker 8: These enemies told the American forces that it was actually
Speaker 8: Haji Wazir's son who planted the mine.
Speaker 9: So these enemies were giving false reports to the Americans.
Speaker 8: Yes, they gave the American forces the wrong person. After that,
Speaker 8: the American troops attacked our villages. Now eleven people from
Speaker 8: Hadji Wazir's family have been martyred. He no longer has
Speaker 8: young sons.
Speaker 3: According to Naim, the insinuation is this Baals used incomplete
Speaker 3: information to deduce that Wazir was working with the enemy.
Speaker 3: There might have been bombs in Wazir's house, but they
Speaker 3: didn't belong to him. However, Wazir is also notable for
Speaker 3: supposedly having a Taliban tattoo on his hand, another important
Speaker 3: piece of evidence. Here's Lieutenant Colonel Moorese on that point.
Speaker 5: The last guy with the hand tattoo. This is the
Speaker 5: guy who had over ten of his family members were murdered.
Speaker 5: He had three or four tattoos on his hands, and
Speaker 5: we asked about him. There was no evidence. Again, we
Speaker 5: did our research. We worked with both the FBI and
Speaker 5: the State Department, and nobody had any problems with that
Speaker 5: guy's tattoos.
Speaker 3: Morse also had as an explanation for what another potentially
Speaker 3: suspicious Afghan, Mulla Baran, might have been doing to land
Speaker 3: himself in a detention center in Parwan.
Speaker 5: One of the witnesses was held up in customs in
Speaker 5: the US because he came through as having spent a
Speaker 5: day in one of the prisons in Afghanistan, and he
Speaker 5: had been brought in with about sixty other people because
Speaker 5: they were harvesting one of the poppy fields, and so
Speaker 5: he spent a day in there and left. That was it.
Speaker 3: If Afghan civilians like Mulla Baran and Hadji Wazir were Taliban,
Speaker 3: then flying them to the United States on commercial airlines
Speaker 3: to testify against an American soldier is a decision that
Speaker 3: can certainly be scrutinized.
Speaker 4: If people knew that the Taliban was sitting in an
Speaker 4: American courtroom, or terrorists or you know, jihadis or bomb makers,
Speaker 4: I think that they might have had a little bit
Speaker 4: of a different view of the prosecution. How dare you
Speaker 4: flew Herman Goring into an America courtroom? I don't think
Speaker 4: we played like that.
Speaker 3: But if the Afghans are telling the truth and these
Speaker 3: supposed Taliban ties aren't legit, then their travel itinerary becomes
Speaker 3: somewhat of a non issue. We broached that subject with Morse.
Speaker 3: The Afghans they flew commercial correct.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we flew commercial the whole way.
Speaker 3: Were they able to travel around the United States, And
Speaker 3: like one report had them going to like disney World
Speaker 3: or SeaWorld or something like that while they were here.
Speaker 5: So the Disney World issue was when we had the
Speaker 5: youngest girl who was injured shot in the head. I
Speaker 5: thought she was going to die. She went to San
Speaker 5: Diego Naval Hospital. One of the times she was there,
Speaker 5: someone escorted her and her father to I don't think
Speaker 5: it was Disneyland. I think it was one of the
Speaker 5: other parks down there. It wasn't US, and it wasn't
Speaker 5: the government. They paid for it with their own money.
Speaker 5: But the only reason anyone knows that is because I
Speaker 5: had our team disclose it to make sure that the
Speaker 5: defense knew that this had happened.
Speaker 3: Morest vehemently denies the implication that any of the victims
Speaker 3: who he brought to the United States were allied with
Speaker 3: the enemy, but it's hard to blame Bales for asking
Speaker 3: the question. In a place like Panjue, parsing the difference
Speaker 3: between friend and foe was a challenge, As Private James
Speaker 3: Alexander explained in Episode one, the soldiers at VSP Bellumbai
Speaker 3: had troubled tracking the complicated allegiances many villagers. Back in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, the.
Speaker 10: Guy that lived near us was called peg leg Right,
Speaker 10: And for the longest time, we're thinking this guy is
Speaker 10: like a friendly dude, and come to find out he
Speaker 10: actually was like giving information to the Taliban. We hired
Speaker 10: workers onto our base to help build stairs.
Speaker 1: Two brothers.
Speaker 10: Turns out they were Taliban, right, and so it's like
Speaker 10: it's like, Okay, these dudes are all around us and
Speaker 10: we can't even figure out who is right who is wrong.
Speaker 3: It is conceivable that a Taliban operative was among those
Speaker 3: killed on March eleventh, twenty twelve, but the women children,
Speaker 3: at least they were innocent. There was no clear military
Speaker 3: reason for them to die.
Speaker 5: If any of these guys were Taliban, it wouldn't be
Speaker 5: relevant to me, and it wouldn't be relevant to the
Speaker 5: law or the case either. Even if somebody came back
Speaker 5: later and said, Hey, actually this guy was Taliban or
Speaker 5: this guy's uncle or brother or whatever it was Taliban,
Speaker 5: I would still say that that has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with Bail's actions. That presents no viable defense.
Speaker 3: Curdisgrace has experienced fighting in Panshwe he agrees with Morse.
Speaker 11: That changes nothing for me. These are non combatants, They're unarmed,
Speaker 11: they're not presently engaged with you. You went, you hunted
Speaker 11: them down.
Speaker 1: And you shot them.
Speaker 11: Bobby Bails didn't have the power and decision making authority
Speaker 11: to put bullets in their heads.
Speaker 3: In the US military, the chain of command is sacred.
Speaker 3: In our interview with John Mayer, when it Bails's fiercest advocates,
Speaker 3: we asked whether Baals even had the authority to take
Speaker 3: on this self imposed mission. Let's say, at among the
Speaker 3: victims there were Taliban members, there were bomb makers. Bales
Speaker 3: would still have to get you know, I had to
Speaker 3: call an approval for fires. You know, as a weapon
Speaker 3: squad leader, Bals would have to do the same thing.
Speaker 3: So why is that a sticking point or why is
Speaker 3: that something you kind of bring up is that they
Speaker 3: had these connections. But even though he still kind of
Speaker 3: went around, you know, that approval to engage the enemy like.
Speaker 4: That, I think it's fine question. Even though they might
Speaker 4: be Tailorman, they're sleeping in their house, Bales was went
Speaker 4: out with guns and AMMO, and the killings arguably were
Speaker 4: not justified killings, were murders.
Speaker 3: Bales and Marr want the public to know about the
Speaker 3: possible links between the victims and the Taliban. However, when
Speaker 3: it comes to getting a new trial, it can't be
Speaker 3: at the core of their legal defense. Mar said it
Speaker 3: himself the killings were murders. As a result, the defense
Speaker 3: attorneys determined to shift the focus to Robert Bales's brain.
Speaker 4: Where the justification comes in is this, Bales was in
Speaker 4: one of the houses and a kid came from behind
Speaker 4: a door and smashed him in the head with a shovel.
Speaker 4: Bales was nonplus, just turn around, shot him in the face. Now,
Speaker 4: you're tough guy, Mike, I know that. And Bales is
Speaker 4: too taking a blow to the head you know, a shovel.
Speaker 4: I mean, are you really in your right mind? Bales
Speaker 4: would very much like us to candidly proceed with the
Speaker 4: war crime stuff rather than the mental health stuff, because
Speaker 4: that's his sense of ego, of identity. He is not
Speaker 4: the guy who's going to be looking to be characterized
Speaker 4: or portrayed as a.
Speaker 3: Victim traumatic brain injury TBI. It's a common diagnosis for
Speaker 3: soldiers who have seen combat. We spoke to the directors
Speaker 3: of Bringing Injury Research and Medicine from Mount Sinai Hospital
Speaker 3: in New York City. To learn more about these pervasive
Speaker 3: injuries that are plaguing US military veterans, here doctors Miguel
Speaker 3: Escalonne and Kristen Damse O'Connor.
Speaker 9: A traumatic brain injury can happen when there is an
Speaker 9: external force to the head, face, or neck that results
Speaker 9: in either a loss of consciousness or an alteration and
Speaker 9: mental status.
Speaker 12: It could be from me falling and hitting my head.
Speaker 12: It could be from somebody punching me. It could be
Speaker 12: from a projectile that would be like a bullet or
Speaker 12: a knife. Basically anything outside of my body. Any force
Speaker 12: that causes my brain to get bruised directly or punctured
Speaker 12: or jostled around in my head would be a traumatic
Speaker 12: brain injury.
Speaker 9: Some of the acute symptoms that could be noticeable after
Speaker 9: a traumatic brain injury can include things like disorientation, confusion,
Speaker 9: changes with vision, difficulty with.
Speaker 12: Balance, trouble sleeping, memory, agitation, maybe nightmares. Patients have dysregulation
Speaker 12: and mood. They might snap at people and do things
Speaker 12: like that that are out of the ordinary.
Speaker 9: And it's the milder injuries that pose much greater challenge
Speaker 9: to clinicians attempting to diagnose them.
Speaker 3: TBIs often go unrecognized and untreated in the military because,
Speaker 3: unlike with external injuries, it's extremely hard to tell when
Speaker 3: you've gotten more. As doctor Escalone explains.
Speaker 12: I call it an invisible disability. If I said somebody
Speaker 12: took a baseball bat to your knee, and then I said, well,
Speaker 12: guess what, your knee's not going to work. You're gonna
Speaker 12: lamp and it's going to be pained the rest of
Speaker 12: your life, you'd say, Okay, that makes sense. But if
Speaker 12: I say the same about a brain injury, it doesn't
Speaker 12: compute the same way, but it's the same idea. You know,
Speaker 12: like your brain just can't. It's not built to take
Speaker 12: that kind of punishment.
Speaker 3: The doctors from Mount Sinai have never met Bails, Even so,
Speaker 3: their experience suggests that his brain have spent a lifetime
Speaker 3: taking serious punishment. After all, long before the staff sergeant
Speaker 3: enlisted in the Armed Forces, he spent much of his
Speaker 3: childhood playing tackle football.
Speaker 9: There is research to suggest that, especially if a person
Speaker 9: starts playing full contact football early in life, that the
Speaker 9: risk for later life functional decline is greater. Football tends
Speaker 9: to involve repetitive exposure to head trauma, and even when
Speaker 9: those repetitive hits to the head never result in a
Speaker 9: clinically diagnosed concussion, the risk for development of later life
Speaker 9: clinical symptoms appears to increase.
Speaker 3: Our collective understanding of concussions and their effects is much
Speaker 3: better today than it used to be. Back when Bales
Speaker 3: was playing high school football in Norwood, Ohio, We're taking
Speaker 3: and delivering big hits was just part.
Speaker 1: Of the game.
Speaker 2: The best I had in eighth grade, I'll never forget
Speaker 2: it was screen pass and I very much knocked the
Speaker 2: kid out and I was knocked out to I walked
Speaker 2: to the wrong huddle. I got up, staggered back to
Speaker 2: the wrong huddle, you know, kind of get turned around.
Speaker 2: You know. We kept playing and my bells run, you know.
Speaker 2: Late eighties, early nineties, I don't think it was as
Speaker 2: much of a concern that now looking back, and I
Speaker 2: think I had a few concussions, but at the time,
Speaker 2: nobody knew about it.
Speaker 3: Growing up, they all spent seven years playing organized football.
Speaker 3: Then after nine to eleven, he spent another decade in
Speaker 3: the Army. During his service, Bob was exposed to numerous
Speaker 3: ied plasts as his wife Carrie can a test.
Speaker 13: He told me that he had been blown up nine
Speaker 13: times in a striker vehicle. I never got a call home,
Speaker 13: but he'd been blown up. But he didn't get any
Speaker 13: purple hearts because he survived. There are many people that
Speaker 13: got purple hearts for TBI right for being in a
Speaker 13: striker vehicle that blew up. But he's like, no, I
Speaker 13: didn't sign up for it because I survived and it
Speaker 13: was just part of the job.
Speaker 3: An explosion doesn't have to kill or dismember in order
Speaker 3: to be physically devastating. David Wesley served with Bales on
Speaker 3: two deployments in Iraq during the mid two thousands.
Speaker 14: On our first employment, I was on the truck that
Speaker 14: drove Bob, so every time I got hit, he got hit.
Speaker 14: Those are our fun experiences, man. I'll tell you what
Speaker 14: I remember. I was getting hit by an ID and
Speaker 14: it felt like I got hit with a baseball bat
Speaker 14: in my face. I've never been hit harder than that.
Speaker 14: It knocked all the air out of me. You could
Speaker 14: feel the heat, but you're dizzy. It's just it's bad.
Speaker 3: The pressure from an ID blast is overwhelming. I've been
Speaker 3: exposed a few times myself. It feels like you've been
Speaker 3: wrapped in a mattress and then dropped off of the
Speaker 3: Empire State building. Doctor Escalone breaks down just how these
Speaker 3: blasts to deliver serious trauma to the brain.
Speaker 12: So the first thing is just like a result from
Speaker 12: the pressure wave of the bomb. So if you imagine
Speaker 12: a bomb going off like underwater and the waves it
Speaker 12: would create, those waves go through your body, they'll shake
Speaker 12: your brain and they'll shake your internal organs. You can
Speaker 12: get injury to your stomach, your liver, your spleen, your lungs,
Speaker 12: and your brain is no different. Then you can have
Speaker 12: secondary blast injuries, which are from projectiles, so like shrapnel.
Speaker 12: Tertiary blast injury would be kind of like almost being
Speaker 12: in a car accident where your head goes back and
Speaker 12: forth and your brain jostles within. So one blast in
Speaker 12: theory could be three brain injuries. So if every blast
Speaker 12: is a brain injury and you had nine, you could
Speaker 12: have had like twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Before long, such a high level of blast exposure seems
Speaker 3: to have added up for Robert Bay.
Speaker 2: So I started having headaches after my second tour, migraines.
Speaker 2: So there was an explosion as we were heading into
Speaker 2: Solder City in two thousand and seven, and after that
Speaker 2: I got sick, start throwing up, So I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: you know I had a concussion from that.
Speaker 3: TBIs aren't simply painful or disorienting. The resulting trauma can
Speaker 3: change you persons basic ability to function and alter their personality.
Speaker 12: You kind of lose parts of yourself and you become
Speaker 12: really disinhibited. Whereas if you and I get in an argument,
Speaker 12: we might yell, but after some blast injuries, I'll just
Speaker 12: maybe I'll just punch you without even yelling, and so
Speaker 12: you kind of lose your ability to regulate and think clearly.
Speaker 12: From a practical purpose, it's a lot like a form
Speaker 12: of dementia. I mean, basically, your brain can only take
Speaker 12: so much.
Speaker 2: I should have got some help, and I tried, you know,
Speaker 2: I went a couple of times. But in the same token,
Speaker 2: your coward if you do that. So let's say I
Speaker 2: go and I get help and I don't deploy, right,
Speaker 2: So now I leave all those guys that are in
Speaker 2: my platoon count on me.
Speaker 1: Man, I couldn't do that.
Speaker 3: TBI can be a serious disability by itself, but after
Speaker 3: multiple deployments, Bales also began showing signs of post traumatic
Speaker 3: stress disorder, or PTSD. As doctor Damse O'Connor asserts, TBI
Speaker 3: and PTSD often go hand in hand for Army veterans.
Speaker 9: In military service members in particular, TBI and PTSD are
Speaker 9: very commonly co occurring, and these two distinct conditions can
Speaker 9: have implications on behavior that are mutually exacerbated. If you
Speaker 9: have both, it can be harder to function than if
Speaker 9: you had only one. Certainly, hypervigilance would be considered a
Speaker 9: common symptom of PTSD. My understanding is that this individual
Speaker 9: was tasked with protecting people, and so being hyper vigilant
Speaker 9: to the possibility of a threat was adaptive for the
Speaker 9: task that he was assigned.
Speaker 3: Nine times out of ten, hypervigilance is a positive attribute
Speaker 3: and a warrior. For Bales, his attention to detail would
Speaker 3: help his squadifate perilous areas on patrol.
Speaker 2: We were getting id'd heavily in two thousand and six
Speaker 2: and seven and they were devastating. So on the next deployment,
Speaker 2: my thought was, how do we stop that? And so
Speaker 2: the idea was I would take video of routes and
Speaker 2: things like that, and I would compare those video like
Speaker 2: you would compare a football tape. You're looking for tendencies,
Speaker 2: you're looking for formations, so you see things that are different. Right,
Speaker 2: So if you watch the route five different times, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden that you see a car that's there
Speaker 2: at seven o'clock in the morning, why is.
Speaker 1: That car there?
Speaker 2: And so later on you know that was one of
Speaker 2: the things that the doctors used to say, you're paranoid
Speaker 2: to the point that you're doing something that no one
Speaker 2: else in the army is doing.
Speaker 3: Robert Bales's vigilance remained consistent. He regularly cleared houses in combat,
Speaker 3: moving through each room to ensure that the enemy wasn't
Speaker 3: hiding anywhere. After returning home to his family, he found
Speaker 3: himself repeating the process, even though civilian life in Seattle
Speaker 3: doesn't present the same dangers as Arolla Rock. Bob's wife, Kerrie,
Speaker 3: recounts these incidents.
Speaker 13: Why would wake up with night terrors where I thought
Speaker 13: it was a recurring dream where I thought someone was
Speaker 13: in the house.
Speaker 3: This is something I.
Speaker 13: Had, you know, before getting married, but being married to Bob,
Speaker 13: he he would wake up and really think that someone
Speaker 13: was in the house. We had a gun right for protection,
Speaker 13: had a handgun, and he would clear the house with
Speaker 13: it to make sure that there was no one that
Speaker 13: shouldn't have been in the house. And he would also
Speaker 13: clear the perimeter so if he actually went outside and
Speaker 13: make sure there was nobody on our property where you lived.
Speaker 2: I had like, you know, weapons stashed throughout the house
Speaker 2: so I could fight my way to get to a
Speaker 2: point where you get people out of house. People don't
Speaker 2: do that, you know, I mean, logical thinking people don't
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 13: I didn't think to like tell anybody. I just thought, Oh,
Speaker 13: I'm a warrior's wife, right, That's just what they do,
Speaker 13: That's what they're trained to do, and of course they're
Speaker 13: going to protect their family people. In hindsight, everyone's like, well,
Speaker 13: why didn't you, like, I don't know, get help for him.
Speaker 13: That's obviously PTSD.
Speaker 2: Harry, Well, you know you're screwed up, right, Like when
Speaker 2: you can't sleep and you clear your house with a
Speaker 2: pistol on a weekly basis, and how many people work
Speaker 2: out a way to get your family out of the
Speaker 2: house during somebody breaking in.
Speaker 13: Well, at the time, first of all, PTSD wasn't a thing, right,
Speaker 13: wasn't thought of as anything. The army didn't said it
Speaker 13: wasn't a thing, and if you said it was, like
Speaker 13: Bob would tell you, if you ask for help or whatever,
Speaker 13: you were seen as weak and it would impact your career.
Speaker 3: Even though Bales had begun displaying unusual behavior, he kept
Speaker 3: it under wraps from his employer, the US Army. For starters,
Speaker 3: TBI wasn't a well understood condition at the time in
Speaker 3: the military community. Here's doctor Damse O'Connor.
Speaker 9: Many veterans, first of all, struggle to get an official
Speaker 9: diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. Whether that is because the
Speaker 9: clinicians to whom they have access are unable to accurately
Speaker 9: diagnose traumatic brain injury, or because soldiers choose not to
Speaker 9: disclose symptoms.
Speaker 2: Nobody gives two shits about PTSD. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the numbers are, but I know they're crazy, Like eighty
Speaker 2: percent of the military claim some type of PTSD, even
Speaker 2: only ten percent have ever been fired at, you know,
Speaker 2: have actually shot their weapon in combat. And that's why
Speaker 2: I'm very hesitant to seek treatment.
Speaker 9: There is a tendency to push through a person who
Speaker 9: signs up to risk his or her life to defend
Speaker 9: his or her country, and in this case, to protect
Speaker 9: Afghan civilian families. These are individuals who are willing to
Speaker 9: put themselves at risk.
Speaker 3: Every soldier has a different level of tolerance, not just
Speaker 3: for risk, but for physical and mental trauma. After David
Speaker 3: Wesley's two tours, he decided that enough was enough.
Speaker 14: It was clear and apparent that we were going to
Speaker 14: continue to deploy, and we were going to keep deploying
Speaker 14: at a rapid rate. Basically, my wife was like, you
Speaker 14: need to take a break because even after the first employment,
Speaker 14: waking up and looking for my rifle, you know, second one,
Speaker 14: same thing, and these bad have they're getting even worse.
Speaker 14: I remember going and seeing the infantryman and seeing how
Speaker 14: much more they were on that razor's edge than I was,
Speaker 14: and I decided I wasn't going to go back.
Speaker 1: I was done after that. I think a third one
Speaker 1: would ruined me.
Speaker 3: Bails and David Wesley were on the same two deployments.
Speaker 3: They had both been exposed to a similar level of
Speaker 3: ID blasts, but while Wesley was looking to make changes
Speaker 3: to his life, Baials was trying to push through all
Speaker 3: the while, the commulative effects of many sustained TBIs were
Speaker 3: beginning to present themselves. Bob tells a story about an
Speaker 3: encounter during a night out in Seattle in two thousand and.
Speaker 2: Eight the bowling alley.
Speaker 13: Think.
Speaker 2: So, we had just come back from our second tour
Speaker 2: and we're at a bowling A whole bunch of us
Speaker 2: were there all together. Dudes are going out back and
Speaker 2: smoke him. I don't smoke. I was going out to
Speaker 2: hand out with the guys. So there's this biker. He's
Speaker 2: a bigger dude. He's literally blocking the door making out
Speaker 2: with his chick. So I'm just trying to brush by
Speaker 2: a high five dude. Right, she catches my hand and
Speaker 2: she like swats my hand down, ended up hitting her
Speaker 2: on the ass.
Speaker 1: Right. The dude comes.
Speaker 2: Out and he must have thought I was a pussy
Speaker 2: or whatever. I don't know. And I'm like, looks her,
Speaker 2: you know, I apologize. I meant nothing to buy it,
Speaker 2: you know, let me let me, let me.
Speaker 1: Buy a beer.
Speaker 2: And then he shoves me, and I'm like, looks her,
Speaker 2: I don't want any problem.
Speaker 1: I got my family inside there.
Speaker 2: I don't want any problems.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: He pushes me one more time, and so I just
Speaker 2: kind of just forward tripped on. He had his long
Speaker 2: hand so wrapped his hand up my left hand and
Speaker 2: I'm just I don't even this dude. So bouncers come out,
Speaker 2: the police came, and that's why it's on a police file.
Speaker 2: But at that time, I didn't want any problem with
Speaker 2: that cat, you know what I mean, I like tried
Speaker 2: to walk away. You know, I'm looking for this stuff, man.
Speaker 2: It just sort of happens.
Speaker 3: Although doctor Escalone never personally examined Bales, he does contend
Speaker 3: that the Bowling Alley incident aligns with what he's seen
Speaker 3: from people laboring under the symptoms of traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 12: I've had patients get into fights even knowing that they've
Speaker 12: had brain injuries, and me explaining to them, like, you
Speaker 12: can't just go get into bar fights because you're just
Speaker 12: going to get another brain injury. You know, I can't
Speaker 12: put myself in their exact frame of mind, but it
Speaker 12: seems like like they can't help it. People totally change,
Speaker 12: and you have people's family say like, this was not
Speaker 12: the same person.
Speaker 13: It's an interesting thing because hindsight would be like, well,
Speaker 13: why didn't you see it that way? You know, he
Speaker 13: was obviously having issues after the second deployment. He would
Speaker 13: also like sit out on the porch, listening to loud music,
Speaker 13: with a cigar, sit out, maybe with a shadow whiskey
Speaker 13: or whatever, you know, just kind of zone out and
Speaker 13: be in his own place. I think the war was
Speaker 13: definitely with him all the time. I don't think you
Speaker 13: can leave it behind.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and nine, Robert Bales deployed to Iraq
Speaker 3: for the third time. When he came home to his
Speaker 3: family twelve months later, he figured that something had to
Speaker 3: be wrong with the way he was feeling.
Speaker 2: I was home and I was washing the dishes, and
Speaker 2: my daughter come in and I was just pissed at
Speaker 2: her for no reason, like, you know, she's bothering me
Speaker 2: washing dishes. And I realized, man, you know, I probably
Speaker 2: needed to go get some help. So, uh, in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: I went to a mental health clinic k at Fort Lewis.
Speaker 2: I went to it because it was confidential, so I wasn't,
Speaker 2: you know, because if you you know, you have these
Speaker 2: PTSD problems, you're not gonna you know, I surely wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been the sniper section sergeant, right. So I go
Speaker 2: and I do these kind of things with this guy
Speaker 2: for a couple of days, and I really didn't really
Speaker 2: believe in PTSD. I just think I thought of his weakness.
Speaker 2: I fill out this survey and this whole PTSD checklist.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, this is exactly me.
Speaker 3: Before Staff Sergeant Bales ever did, deployed to Afghanistan, the
Speaker 3: Army identified that he had brain injuries. They put him
Speaker 3: in treatment for PTSD, but at no point did they
Speaker 3: tell him that he was unfit to take on a
Speaker 3: fourth toward duty at that time.
Speaker 13: I think Bob knew they did an MRI, but I
Speaker 13: don't think that they told them what they found. I
Speaker 13: don't think they ever said, hey, you have a TBI.
Speaker 13: They diagnosed him with PTSD as well, but they didn't
Speaker 13: do anything about it. They didn't tell him, they didn't
Speaker 13: tell his commanders, they didn't tell anybody. This only came
Speaker 13: out after all of this happened that it was in
Speaker 13: his medical record.
Speaker 3: With this diagnosis, Bals couldn't have taken the trip to
Speaker 3: VESP Bellumby unless he had been clear for combat by
Speaker 3: Army medical which raises the question what were the Army
Speaker 3: standards for physical and mental capacity as it pertained to redeployment.
Speaker 3: Were they rigorous enough?
Speaker 12: If you have a concussion related to blast injury. You
Speaker 12: need to be evaluated, you need to be cleared medically, right,
Speaker 12: and then if there's something particularly cognitive or mental about
Speaker 12: your job, all right, I have to understand strategy or
Speaker 12: I'm leading this team, so I have to make sure
Speaker 12: I make the right decision so I don't lead us
Speaker 12: all into danger. So you have to be put in
Speaker 12: all those scenarios before you should be cleared to go back.
Speaker 12: So in this case for Bails, if that clearance wasn't done,
Speaker 12: then it was a mistake to send them.
Speaker 3: Back, making matters worse. There are some scars from combat
Speaker 3: that don't appear on medical records. David Wesley, Bob's former
Speaker 3: colleague and friend, has first hand experience with the myriad
Speaker 3: ways that the horrors of war can permeate everyday life.
Speaker 1: We already know the dangers of PTSD.
Speaker 14: You cannot see a person get blown up into chunks,
Speaker 14: spread across the street and people walking around picking them up,
Speaker 14: putting them in pretty much grocery bags and be okay.
Speaker 14: You don't get when you smell burning flesh, there's something
Speaker 14: different about it. It makes barbecues different for the rest
Speaker 14: of your life. It's not like the army didn't tell
Speaker 14: us or at least pushed out the stigma that if
Speaker 14: we needed help, we was Pauls.
Speaker 1: They most definitely did.
Speaker 14: Hell if you didn't, if your bone wasn't sticking out,
Speaker 14: are you really hurt?
Speaker 3: It bears repeating many of the Americans who served in
Speaker 3: Iraq and Afghanistan, Bob bails myself. We saw more combat
Speaker 3: than almost any soldier from World War Two. Doctor Damse
Speaker 3: O'Connor points out the inherent issues with keeping the same
Speaker 3: soldiers on the front lines for years on end.
Speaker 9: How much is too much? We invest so heavily in
Speaker 9: training our service members, individuals are being redeployed more times
Speaker 9: than the individual was hoping for, and more redeployments than
Speaker 9: were initially planned. Exposure begins to increase a person's risk
Speaker 9: for long term brain damage.
Speaker 13: We definitely talked about it back and forth. You know,
Speaker 13: I just wanted to be together as a family. Finally,
Speaker 13: you know, here we are. Haven't you done enough? However,
Speaker 13: we also have the conversation of look, Carrie, I'm the
Speaker 13: only one going back with these people that have never
Speaker 13: been to Ward. They're all new, none of them have experience.
Speaker 13: If I don't go and share my knowledge, bad things
Speaker 13: are going to happen to them, you know, basically they're
Speaker 13: all gonna die. Is what he took upon himself in
Speaker 13: a lot of ways, right hindsight twenty twenty. For me,
Speaker 13: I would probably shoot him in the foot, shoot him
Speaker 13: in the hand, do whatever I could to make it
Speaker 13: so that he didn't qualify, let alone TBI and PTSD
Speaker 13: making and disqualify, you know.
Speaker 2: A guy I described it one time. Everybody has a cup,
Speaker 2: and I think my cup was just over full. Man,
Speaker 2: I don't think I could take anymore.
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 2: Regret not getting help before. I regret not staying in
Speaker 2: treatment for the PTSD.
Speaker 1: I regret you know it, just it fell apart.
Speaker 3: Coming up on the war within what you.
Speaker 9: Have described here sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: Dog is a drinker?
Speaker 10: Are you parting a lot?
Speaker 1: Did that shoot your weapon?
Speaker 10: You're effect We had a med shit where you had
Speaker 10: all kinds of shit. Bales could get whatever the hell
Speaker 10: he wanted.
Speaker 3: Bils beat the shit out of that jingle truck driver.
Speaker 4: The government should have disclosed the debilitating effects of a
Speaker 4: boy's and name.
Speaker 1: Ethically, we took here once a week.
Speaker 2: Nobody really thinks that anything is going to happen long term.
Speaker 1: The drug is fundamentally defective. It should have been abandoned.
Speaker 3: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Speaker 3: Bungalow Media and Entertainment Checkpoint Productions in Mosquito Park Pictures,
Speaker 3: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by
Speaker 3: executive producers Paul Plowski and David check Executive producers for
Speaker 3: Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers.
Speaker 3: The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
Speaker 3: hosted by me Mike McGinnis.
Speaker 1: Editing was done.
Speaker 3: By Anna Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner.
Speaker 3: Teddy Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an
Speaker 3: associate producer, and Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks
Speaker 3: to Liz Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpy,
Speaker 3: and Meerwi Satah, as well as all of the people
Speaker 3: who were interviewed for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to
Speaker 3: The War Within on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts.