Speaker 1: Did you guys hear this story?
Speaker 2: Bob that helped drowned back a streaming behind the striker
Speaker 2: and sent a whole day trying to chop it up
Speaker 2: so that it could never.
Speaker 1: Be used again as cover for American soldiers.
Speaker 3: That's Carrie Bails, Bob's wife of about eighteen years now.
Speaker 3: She's talking to two of our producers.
Speaker 2: What came to my mind when hearing these details was
Speaker 2: where was the support. I'm thinking to myself, this makes
Speaker 2: me sad. But if it were somebody else, if it
Speaker 2: were a different guy, Bob would have seen it and
Speaker 2: have reached out and given support, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: and had been there for his brother like he promised
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: But what makes me really angry.
Speaker 2: Is that it seems like nobody saw when Ball moved
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: In March of twenty twelve, Robert Bales's mental health was
Speaker 3: deteriorating that back in their family's home in Seattle, Carrie
Speaker 3: was in the dark.
Speaker 2: He couldn't tell me what they were doing, which had
Speaker 2: kind of been a newer thing.
Speaker 1: Like the way that he.
Speaker 2: Said, I can't tell you what's going on. I hadn't
Speaker 2: really paid attention to necessarily what he was going through.
Speaker 2: I honestly think I didn't have a good understanding.
Speaker 1: Of everything.
Speaker 3: Previously on the war within. Robert Bales left his combat
Speaker 3: out post alone and murdered sixteen Afghan civilians in cold blood.
Speaker 4: Nobody joins the infantry to be the bad guy.
Speaker 5: I think the situation in Afghanistan was so complicated and
Speaker 5: Robert Bales is a depiction of the complexities of this conflict.
Speaker 4: This is the heart of Taliban country. I was scared
Speaker 4: of death.
Speaker 6: Our rear vehicle was targeted and hit by an ID.
Speaker 6: One guy ended up losing his leg below the knee.
Speaker 7: I don't think people understand it's not a matter of
Speaker 7: if you're going to die, it's about when.
Speaker 4: If you're going to die.
Speaker 7: Anyway, you have to go out and try to stop
Speaker 7: that threat.
Speaker 8: I'm Mike McGinnis.
Speaker 3: This is the War within the Robert Bayles story. Before
Speaker 3: deploying to Afghanistan in December twenty eleven, staff Sergeant Robert
Speaker 3: Bales had already done three tours in Iraq. David Wesley
Speaker 3: served alongside him for the first and second. During those
Speaker 3: early years of the Iraq War, Bales and Wesley had
Speaker 3: some of the most harrowing experiences of their lives.
Speaker 9: So I joined the army in May fifth, two thousand
Speaker 9: and one, and Bob came in. It was shortly after
Speaker 9: I came in. We were in the same platoon, so
Speaker 9: I met Bob and I just remember how vibrant this
Speaker 9: guy was.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 9: It was almost like the best politician in the world,
Speaker 9: you know what I'm saying, Like an honest politician, Like
Speaker 9: he's not afraid to share his mind. You know, he
Speaker 9: was that guy.
Speaker 3: Many people want to listen to service straight from high
Speaker 3: school or college. For some, the military is their first employer. Bails,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, and listed when he was twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Among the guys at his rank, he had a level
Speaker 3: of maturity and discipline that stood out.
Speaker 9: One of the fondest memories I have with me and
Speaker 9: Bob was my girlfriend was coming over and this guy
Speaker 9: was on a charge of barracks and as my girlfriend
Speaker 9: was coming in, you know, he had said something kind
Speaker 9: of messed up, kind of fucked up to her, and
Speaker 9: I was told about it. So I was like, all right, man,
Speaker 9: I go up to Bob was up there already, and
Speaker 9: of course I wanted to fight. There's no if and
Speaker 9: buts about that situation, like you said something inappropriate to
Speaker 9: my girl.
Speaker 8: I feel like you're a server. I'm a soldier, you
Speaker 8: know better.
Speaker 9: We got to fight, and Bob was there to stop us,
Speaker 9: and I remember him saying, think about what you're going
Speaker 9: to lose. This guy isn't going to make it in life.
Speaker 9: You're going to give up everything for this guy. And
Speaker 9: I just remember thinking to myself, like, man, I really
Speaker 9: want to hit him though, And Bob was like, I
Speaker 9: know you do, Man, that you can't, Bro, you can't.
Speaker 9: And that was like really who he was as a person,
Speaker 9: Like do the right thing, Do.
Speaker 3: The right thing. It's a concept that a lot of
Speaker 3: the people who enlisted after nine to eleven took to heart.
Speaker 3: After all, they felt it was their patriotic duty to
Speaker 3: fight for their country once it was time to deploy
Speaker 3: it to in the least idealism clashed with the harsh
Speaker 3: reality in front of them.
Speaker 7: When we went over there, we thought fifty percent of
Speaker 7: us weren't coming back. They had kind of a going
Speaker 7: away parade. They've got this old general up there talking
Speaker 7: and saying, you know, you guys are dragon slayers. You
Speaker 7: know you're going to go over there and slay the dragon.
Speaker 7: And you know many of you aren't coming home, and
Speaker 7: you know that kind of thing, you know, so when
Speaker 7: your mindset, you know, you're thinking this is going to
Speaker 7: be like Vietnam.
Speaker 8: You know you're going to go. Your buddies are all
Speaker 8: going to die.
Speaker 9: Getting ready to go, you saw the absolute worst than people.
Speaker 9: One guy threw himself down three separate flights and stairs.
Speaker 8: So that he could avoid me. The for everyone was scared.
Speaker 9: Everyone And I remember us being in the contonement area
Speaker 9: and we're getting ready to go, and this eerie just
Speaker 9: quiet comes over everything. No one wants to talk, nothing,
Speaker 9: and it's time to go. And once we went across
Speaker 9: that line, we knew it was a game time. I
Speaker 9: just remember thinking, man, I hope I died quickly. Once
Speaker 9: you're being shot at, I think either you fall away
Speaker 9: or you embrace it. There were guys who were super
Speaker 9: soldiers when the bullets weren't real.
Speaker 8: You know guys that are fit.
Speaker 7: He screams the loudest, he runs the fastest, he lifts
Speaker 7: the most weight, and you put him in a combat situation,
Speaker 7: you would be like, oh that guy, he's not gonna
Speaker 7: make it.
Speaker 3: Bob bails by most accounts. He was somebody that you
Speaker 3: could trust out there.
Speaker 8: Bob was always on ready.
Speaker 9: He wanted to make sure everyone was protecting I don't
Speaker 9: remember Bob freezing like some of the other guys did.
Speaker 9: He quickly separated himself as one of those people that
Speaker 9: wanted to fight. He wanted to go home.
Speaker 3: As that first tour progressed, Bail started to get comfortable
Speaker 3: in combat. It wasn't long before he developed the confidence
Speaker 3: of a veteran.
Speaker 7: I think you have to carry a little bit of
Speaker 7: a swagger, a little bit of an edge to yourself
Speaker 7: to be able to hey, man, I'm going to go
Speaker 7: out here and I'm going to get blown up, and
Speaker 7: I'm going to move against the enemy in an elevated position,
Speaker 7: shooting me a machine gun, and I'm gonna be all right.
Speaker 7: Not only am I gonna be all right, We're gonna
Speaker 7: kill that bastard.
Speaker 3: Bals proved himself on that tour. When it came time
Speaker 3: to redeploy, he had been promoted to team leader. In
Speaker 3: that role, not only was he responsible for his group
Speaker 3: of guys, but when it came time for the squad
Speaker 3: to put themselves in harm's way, he was leading the charge.
Speaker 7: You know we're breaching the doors. Team leaders a first
Speaker 7: guy in a door. Uh, team leaders appoint man and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, depending upon where the threat is, he's the
Speaker 7: guy that's most likely.
Speaker 4: Going to engage the enemy first.
Speaker 3: Baals is describing the process of entering a room which
Speaker 3: might potentially house the enemy and then clearing or making
Speaker 3: sure it's safe. It's a vital part of combat. When
Speaker 3: that bails and his squad ended up tackling hundreds, not
Speaker 3: thousands of times over the course three deployments in a Rock.
Speaker 7: The idea is that you're going to go to your
Speaker 7: point of domination and then once we clear, we continue
Speaker 7: to move through the house. If we need to take
Speaker 7: something down, then we'll have a team clear through us
Speaker 7: and move to the following room, and uh, we just
Speaker 7: do it over and over. It becomes so methodical. You've
Speaker 7: done it so many times you don't even think about it.
Speaker 7: It's just it's like water flowing in a picture.
Speaker 8: By that second deployment, we were ready for anything.
Speaker 9: Bob was the team leader by that point, you know,
Speaker 9: he had his own boys, and we were monsters.
Speaker 4: That looked like a freaking monster, you know, like and
Speaker 4: that's kind of where I'm.
Speaker 8: Little worry about now, you know, of like the monsters.
Speaker 3: As a soldier, if you kill someone who's obviously an insurgent,
Speaker 3: that should be an unequivocal success. But that doesn't always
Speaker 3: mean you feel great about what happened. For example, take
Speaker 3: Bails's story about his first legally sanctioned kill.
Speaker 4: The first one that I know.
Speaker 8: Was mine.
Speaker 7: We were a really terrible spot. We've been rounding pretty
Speaker 7: hard for a while, and it was a kid, and
Speaker 7: you know, it was one of those things you just
Speaker 7: wish ahead and done. You know, He's one of those
Speaker 7: things where the kid jumps off, he's shooting an AK.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm kind of behind him cover. I couldn't
Speaker 7: just let him shoot the AK out, you know. I
Speaker 7: remember shoot him in the leg, you know, with the
Speaker 7: yaw of the bullet to tumble, the bullet doesn't kill him,
Speaker 7: and so you remember coming up and shooting him in the.
Speaker 4: Chest and then finally in the face. It was what
Speaker 4: it was, you know what.
Speaker 3: I mean, an AK forty seven will kill you no
Speaker 3: matter who's firing it. For many that's a threat that
Speaker 3: has to be mitigated. David Wesley agrees, I think.
Speaker 9: It was Eilenhower that said, war isn't about going and
Speaker 9: dying for your country. War is about making the other
Speaker 9: sorry bass d die for his right. So it's like
Speaker 9: you kind of adopt that mindset. And if you stack
Speaker 9: my life against the life of any person, and my
Speaker 9: kids depend on me, my wife depends on me, I
Speaker 9: choose to me every time.
Speaker 3: It's February of twenty twelve. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is
Speaker 3: in the middle of his fourth tour. He's thirty eight
Speaker 3: years old, with a wife and two young kids. He
Speaker 3: has every intention of making it back home, but Panjhue,
Speaker 3: Afghanistan is a kinetic region where the Taliban are active,
Speaker 3: and as his tenure at BSP bellon By drags on,
Speaker 3: Bailes thinks the threat levels are only getting higher.
Speaker 7: So twenty fourth of February, we're conducting a patrol down
Speaker 7: south to Najbian, which was one of the villages that
Speaker 7: I went to the night I committed my crime, and
Speaker 7: we came upon a command wired ied the commanded up
Speaker 7: being one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. You know,
Speaker 7: it was a pretty big deal. That command wired led
Speaker 7: back to Haji Wisi.
Speaker 3: Years home, Bales Tell's documentarian Paul Plowski that he suspected
Speaker 3: that Haji Muhammad Vizir was cooperating with the Taliban.
Speaker 7: Upon detonating that ied, we get a bunch of signal
Speaker 7: intelligence that is telling us that these insurgents are moving
Speaker 7: to ambush us, so we take a defensive posture. Even
Speaker 7: though we're in a defensive posture, we become engaged by
Speaker 7: a machine gun fire from an elevated position. The SF
Speaker 7: commander just had to give the word to light up
Speaker 7: these machine gun guys, and he wouldn't do it. And
Speaker 7: I think he was trying to carry out what his
Speaker 7: mission was, more right, more in line with, you know,
Speaker 7: hearts and minds instead of you know, breaking bones. But
Speaker 7: at the time it made me feel like he didn't
Speaker 7: know what he was doing.
Speaker 4: It made me feel like he is soft on the Taliban.
Speaker 3: Uncovering one hundred and sixty pounds of explosive material just
Speaker 3: a mile from your base can be unsettling. To put
Speaker 3: a mild with Bales was still on high alert two
Speaker 3: weeks later, as a nerving incidents kept piling up bombs
Speaker 3: in a nearby house, an IED that took off a
Speaker 3: soldier's leg a huge tree trunk in the VSP On
Speaker 3: the night of Saturday, March tenth, at nine pm, Bales
Speaker 3: goes up to the roof for guard duty, four hours
Speaker 3: before the Kandaharm massacre begins.
Speaker 4: I go to guard that night.
Speaker 7: It just had become dark, and just shortly after we'd
Speaker 7: taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north
Speaker 7: and to the south.
Speaker 4: The guy that was with me was our platoon medic.
Speaker 4: He didn't see the lights.
Speaker 7: I thought at the time it was because he was
Speaker 7: inexperienced and he was.
Speaker 4: Not paying attention.
Speaker 7: So I went over and there we had a high speed,
Speaker 7: high powered scope on the roof that we could get
Speaker 7: a good picture of it. And then I flipped around
Speaker 7: to the south and the south location was Wazir's, which
Speaker 7: was obviously where the one hundred and sixty pounds explosive was.
Speaker 10: That did seem a little I'll admit I did roll
Speaker 10: my eyes a little bit at that.
Speaker 3: That's Brendan Vaughan, the writer of the GQ piece who
Speaker 3: interviewed Bails extensively back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: Full caveat here.
Speaker 10: I can't get inside Bob Bill's brain, but I think
Speaker 10: that in the case of the lights that he was
Speaker 10: seeing in the two villages around the base. Was he
Speaker 10: just looking for reasons to kind of act? My strong
Speaker 10: suspicion is that he was so keyed up and he
Speaker 10: was so agitated by the events of the previous days
Speaker 10: that he was just hyper aware of his surroundings in
Speaker 10: a way that made him not particularly perceptive about what
Speaker 10: these things actually meant.
Speaker 3: At ten PM, Bales goes to hang out with two friends,
Speaker 3: Jason McLoughlin and the man we're calling Soldier X. Together,
Speaker 3: the three of them made up the infantry leadership on
Speaker 3: the VSP. Bals catches up with them midway through watching
Speaker 3: the Denzel Washington revenge thriller Man on Fire. Soldier X
Speaker 3: recalls the evening.
Speaker 11: I don't even recall, like intently watching the movie. I
Speaker 11: think it was we're just more converse than through the
Speaker 11: movie and whatnot. I know he plays a lot of
Speaker 11: significance on it in a lot of the documentation, but
Speaker 11: other than me remembering the movie, I don't know if
Speaker 11: there's any significance to it.
Speaker 3: As they watch Men on Fire, Bales, McLoughlin, and Soldier
Speaker 3: X or drinking liquor. Alcohol is expressly forbidden for soldiers
Speaker 3: on deployments, but that role isn't always enforced, and in
Speaker 3: this case it's the squad leaders who.
Speaker 8: Are breaking it.
Speaker 11: Alohol. It was accessible in everybody, and not that everybody
Speaker 11: was drinking every day or drinking heavily when they drink,
Speaker 11: but it was definitely accessible. Were the arm put in
Speaker 11: Afghanistan a lot of ways and a nightcap every once
Speaker 11: in a while with your buddies is okay.
Speaker 3: Did you feel that your peers had an issue with
Speaker 3: drinking to get drunk?
Speaker 11: No, definitely not. I consume alcohol on probably three or
Speaker 11: four occasions multipoint over. There was never a drink to
Speaker 11: get drunk thing. It was very similar to breaking some bread.
Speaker 11: Did we talk about this or let's figure this out
Speaker 11: and we'll break some bread to go to.
Speaker 3: Do you remember how much everybody drank that night?
Speaker 11: It was something so trivial and not that much that
Speaker 11: we were wasted by the ends.
Speaker 4: You know, this is always a thing like how much
Speaker 4: was it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 7: It was a twenty one ounce Pepsi bottle full of
Speaker 7: whiskey and three guys over two and a half hours.
Speaker 7: You know, we worked out to like seven drinks per guy.
Speaker 3: So all this is happening, you know, right before he
Speaker 3: decides to leave, you know the installation, did Bales ever
Speaker 3: mention that he would go and do something like he did?
Speaker 11: My conversation was about the postal team, and he expressed
Speaker 11: frustrations with the shooty and blown up. But it's more
Speaker 11: of a manner of like breaking bread and the three
Speaker 11: of us trying to hash out problems. But my right
Speaker 11: question is never any inclination that he was going to
Speaker 11: go out and want to cause a whole bunch of harm.
Speaker 11: I do think I'll remember, how do you express anything
Speaker 11: about him wanting to go out?
Speaker 3: After the movie ends, the group calls it a night,
Speaker 3: but Robert Bales apparently can't sleep. According to him, he
Speaker 3: hasn't gotten a good night's rest in a while.
Speaker 7: I didn't sleep Wednesday night. I really I try to
Speaker 7: lay down Thursday. I really didn't lay down Thursday. I
Speaker 7: think maybe I slept an hour on Friday. So from
Speaker 7: Wednesday until after I had committed my crime, I hadn't
Speaker 7: slept more than three hours.
Speaker 4: That Saturday.
Speaker 7: I try to go to bed, I go in, I
Speaker 7: take some sleeping pills, can't go to sleep.
Speaker 3: Bales has a bad feeling and he can't shake it.
Speaker 3: So at around eleven thirty he wakes up Clayton blackshear
Speaker 3: a Special Forces sergeant. Baal's squad was in Afghanistan to
Speaker 3: support the SF so this was clearly his superior.
Speaker 7: I go see the guy that is if responsible for
Speaker 7: the VSP and I'm pretty much tell them. I'm like,
Speaker 7: hey man, we need to go do something. You know,
Speaker 7: this is some bogus stuff. And he said, basically, you know,
Speaker 7: mind your own lane. It saysn't your business go to sleep.
Speaker 7: You know, you need to take care of your guys
Speaker 7: and worry about your lane.
Speaker 4: This is our lane.
Speaker 7: Screw You can't say screwed me, but that was the
Speaker 7: way I took it.
Speaker 3: Bales's adamant. He's seen the flashing lights from the nearby villages.
Speaker 3: It's just not sitting right.
Speaker 4: So I leave, I go back.
Speaker 7: I sit in my chew for a while and I'm like,
Speaker 7: you know, it's closing in. You know, they continues to
Speaker 7: get worse and worse every day. You know, it's the
Speaker 7: anticipation of that probably way worse the death itself.
Speaker 8: That's terrible.
Speaker 11: So when you kind of made that decision, was originally
Speaker 11: to observe for what was it? What was kind of going?
Speaker 11: What you did you think?
Speaker 7: I hope to get out there, find guys that weren't
Speaker 7: planning ID shoot them and come back.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm a little naive. I think I can make
Speaker 4: a difference.
Speaker 3: According to the military's internal investigation, at around one am Sunday,
Speaker 3: March eleventh, staff started in. Bales climbed over the barbed
Speaker 3: wire that separated the esp from its surroundings. As the
Speaker 3: story goes, he wasn't wearing any body armor. All alone
Speaker 3: in the pitch black. He walked north to the impoverished
Speaker 3: village Valakozai. Here's bales chilling description what happened next.
Speaker 4: When I got out there, I saw the compound. I
Speaker 4: go in.
Speaker 7: I start clearing room to room like I would clear
Speaker 7: like I've cleared thousands.
Speaker 4: And thousands of times.
Speaker 7: You know, a lot of women and kids are running
Speaker 7: around going crazy. You know, it's not really what I'm
Speaker 7: looking for. I go out, I come around the other
Speaker 7: side and I pull this guy out, and even the
Speaker 7: prosecution attest to you know, I'm asking for the tailid.
Speaker 3: As Bles tells Paul, his intention was to get intel
Speaker 3: on the Taliban. It wasn't long before that plan devolved.
Speaker 7: I grabbed the first guy I see, and I'm kind
Speaker 7: of working this guy over.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of beating him.
Speaker 11: It's a sport angry or.
Speaker 7: I'm angry, but in my mind, I'm trying to find
Speaker 7: the IDs because it's clear this compound has been used
Speaker 7: in prior engagements to either house or support terrorist activity.
Speaker 7: In my mind, at this point, this is undeniable. I
Speaker 7: know that this is a bad place. All I had
Speaker 7: was my helmet, my rifle, and my pistol. I only
Speaker 7: had one magazine from my rifle and one from my pistol.
Speaker 7: So I end up beating this dude a little bit,
Speaker 7: and I'm just trying to find something and this dog
Speaker 7: comes running up from my left and turn and I
Speaker 7: shoot the dog. You don't keep a dog if you're starving.
Speaker 7: You keep a dog as a warning system if you're
Speaker 7: a taliban, right, So this little girl comes running up
Speaker 7: and she's screaming, and I, uh, I turn and eye
Speaker 7: just I shoot her.
Speaker 4: It's an instinct.
Speaker 7: I thought it was another dog at the time, and
Speaker 7: when I recognized that it was a girl that you know,
Speaker 7: I think, uh, you know, he killed me?
Speaker 11: Man?
Speaker 7: I mean, nobody wants to hurt a kid, you know,
Speaker 7: immediately turn and uh I killed the guy and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, to be honest with you, I don't really
Speaker 7: know a lot about what happens next in that northern village.
Speaker 4: It was not my intent to her with my children. Uh,
Speaker 4: not my intent.
Speaker 3: With the help of two journalists, Leila Amatzai and mere
Speaker 3: wife Satal, Our Production secured interviews with six Afghan civilians
Speaker 3: whose lives were forever changed by Robert Bales's actions that night.
Speaker 3: They were the survivors. Their commentary has been translated from
Speaker 3: their native Pashto. Haji Mohammad Naim and Samiula are the
Speaker 3: patriarchs of the two families Bales encountered in Ala Koza.
Speaker 3: Here's Hajji Naim.
Speaker 12: There's that night the Americans came at two am and
Speaker 12: killed people in a house. After that, the women of
Speaker 12: Samiula's family came to our house.
Speaker 13: She told me that the Americans came and shot her
Speaker 13: husband and daughters. At this time, the Americans threw themselves
Speaker 13: over the wall into our house and come to me.
Speaker 13: I had left the room at that time and was
Speaker 13: standing outside. They chose their laser weapon and shot at me.
Speaker 3: You might have noticed that Hajji Naim said Americans, not American.
Speaker 3: That's not a bad translation. It's what he said.
Speaker 7: Do you have a family relationship with Samuela or are
Speaker 7: your houses next.
Speaker 8: To each other?
Speaker 13: Our houses are next to each other. When the Americans came,
Speaker 13: Samiuli's family all entered our house out of fear. The
Speaker 13: American soldiers stood at the gate of the room and
Speaker 13: shot all of the people inside the room.
Speaker 3: Did they shoot you above your leg or somewhere else?
Speaker 13: No, they shot above my neck and the bullet hit
Speaker 13: my jaw. After that, I fell and I was not
Speaker 13: aware of myself. I was unconscious for a long time.
Speaker 3: By the time Bob Bales leaves Alakosi, he shot at
Speaker 3: least ten people. The exact number is still subject to debate.
Speaker 3: Bayle's charge sheet would later indicate that he had killed
Speaker 3: four in this village. Bail somehow re enters the vsp undetected.
Speaker 3: He goes to the room that he shares with staff
Speaker 3: Sergeant Jason McLaughlin.
Speaker 7: I go in and I see uh, my friend, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, hey, man, I just killed some military age
Speaker 7: males up and ALCOSI I'm going to Najubian to finish it.
Speaker 7: I was like, take care of my wife and kids
Speaker 7: and h he didn't believe me, and I said, no, man, seriously,
Speaker 7: take care of my life from kids and.
Speaker 4: I rolled out.
Speaker 3: McLaughlin declined to be interviewed for the podcast. His response
Speaker 3: to our request was two words, fuck off.
Speaker 7: I realize you know we're dead, Like I figure, I
Speaker 7: have to finish it.
Speaker 3: Bales had come back from the sight of the flashing
Speaker 3: lights he had seen to the north. Now he turned
Speaker 3: his attention to the lights from the south.
Speaker 4: I uh get.
Speaker 7: I think it was three magazines, three twenty grenade launcher,
Speaker 7: grenade bot, a couple more pistol mags.
Speaker 3: Newly armed, Bales leaves the VSP and head south to
Speaker 3: not to be in. He takes the main road, which,
Speaker 3: as of Captain Danny Fields points out, is very dangerous.
Speaker 6: I think he's incredibly lucky. I'm kind of blown away
Speaker 6: that he did not step on an ID. I think
Speaker 6: virtually every time we did a dismount of patrol we
Speaker 6: found an id.
Speaker 3: Baal's first stop is the home of Mohammad da Wud,
Speaker 3: another person who Bails perceieves as a threat.
Speaker 7: I go to the first house on the way, and
Speaker 7: we had pulled a lee Enfield sniper rife while this house.
Speaker 7: In my mind at that time, I think I was
Speaker 7: on autopilot, you know. I was trying to in my
Speaker 7: mind stop the people that were trying to kill us.
Speaker 4: I go in.
Speaker 7: I dragged the guy out, away from his family, and
Speaker 7: I killed him. We believe that his sons had been
Speaker 7: responsible for shooting another American earlier.
Speaker 3: One of those sons was Hick Matula da Wud, although
Speaker 3: he probably wasn't who Bails was referring to. Hick Matula
Speaker 3: was nine at the time.
Speaker 13: Robert Bales entered the house at night. The gate of
Speaker 13: our house was weak, it was a little broken. When
Speaker 13: he entered the house, he first took my father's hand.
Speaker 13: He said in English, Taliban, Taliban, we did not understand.
Speaker 13: We do not know our past joke properly, Let alone
Speaker 13: understand English. He took my father to the front door
Speaker 13: of the room.
Speaker 8: And shot him above his head.
Speaker 13: When he shot my father, he then came to me
Speaker 13: and knocked me down. Another brother of mine was also there,
Speaker 13: was four months old at the time. Robert Bells held
Speaker 13: a gun over his head and asked us where the
Speaker 13: talle Gun. Were now think about what we should say
Speaker 13: to this.
Speaker 3: Bales continues on to Anji Wazir's compound, the place they
Speaker 3: had dug up IED's two weeks before.
Speaker 7: I end up going to the second place where we
Speaker 7: pulled one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. Out Here
Speaker 7: comes this dog. Dog comes running at me. I shoot
Speaker 7: the dog. There's one room with a light. It's got
Speaker 7: a kerosene lantern in it. As I approached the room,
Speaker 7: I go in too deep. I'm exposed from behind. I
Speaker 7: get smashed over my back left hand side with a shovel.
Speaker 7: So I reach back and I grab the guy that
Speaker 7: hit me in the back and I flip him into
Speaker 7: the room and I basically spray the room. I put
Speaker 7: my weapon on burst and I empty the magazine. Kerosene
Speaker 7: lantern turns over. Some of the blankets catch on fire.
Speaker 7: There's a bunch of dead people.
Speaker 5: In the room.
Speaker 7: Yes, I realized that there were women and children in
Speaker 7: that room. And as I'm leaving, there's an elderly lady
Speaker 7: who surprises me around the corner. I shoot her with
Speaker 7: a pistol and she grabs onto me. And I'm just
Speaker 7: trying to get her off of me. I'm trying to
Speaker 7: push her off of me, and as I push her down,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm stomping her to get her off me.
Speaker 7: And that's kind of when I think I came back
Speaker 7: to myself, if you will, you know, the autopilot kicks
Speaker 7: off and I realized, holy shit, you just killed this
Speaker 7: elderly woman.
Speaker 3: Bales killed eleven members of Hodgi Wazir's family. You don't
Speaker 3: have any eyewitness accounts from the Afghans here. There were
Speaker 3: no survivors.
Speaker 7: So I didn't know what to do at that point,
Speaker 7: you know, like what do I do? So I pick
Speaker 7: up the elderly woman and I take her back in
Speaker 7: with her family.
Speaker 4: And the room's now on fire. So I put her with.
Speaker 8: Her family and.
Speaker 7: I put the gun in my mouth, and uh, I
Speaker 7: just couldn't do it. I was too weak to do it.
Speaker 4: I really just wanted to.
Speaker 7: Uh, you know, I don't know, man, I mean, I
Speaker 7: don't know what.
Speaker 4: Or really just uh, I want to see my kids again.
Speaker 3: As Robert Bales is making his way through to the
Speaker 3: end back at the VSP, people are starting to realize.
Speaker 8: That there's a problem.
Speaker 3: The rumor was that at two thirty am, an Afghan
Speaker 3: guard named Tasha Lee noticed an American soldier walk off
Speaker 3: the base. Ali would later tell the US Army that
Speaker 3: he didn't shoot at the American because he was afraid
Speaker 3: of the repercussions, so instead he ran this intel up
Speaker 3: his chain of command until the news got to Danny Fields.
Speaker 6: So I got the knock on the door at three am.
Speaker 1: He didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 6: Went to the door and he said, hey, the guard
Speaker 6: at the gate says that somebody left the base, to
Speaker 6: which I was very skeptical that that was true. So
Speaker 6: I said, all right, go grab an interpreter, me and
Speaker 6: me at the front gate.
Speaker 11: We're going to talk to this guy.
Speaker 6: So speaking to the gate guard, you know, I remember
Speaker 6: him saying something to the effect of an American left
Speaker 6: and then an American came back, or he said somebody
Speaker 6: came back. So the very first thing I did, I
Speaker 6: woke up my team sergeant and I said, hey, let's
Speaker 6: get a one hundred percent accountability on the base. I
Speaker 6: need to know that everyone's here, and I need to
Speaker 6: know that there's not somebody here that shouldn't be here,
Speaker 6: because I've heard that somebody left and maybe somebody came back.
Speaker 3: As Captain Field spearheaded the search for a missing soldier,
Speaker 3: Private James Alexander did as he was told.
Speaker 14: I get woken up very early in the morning and
Speaker 14: it's like, hey, we need to do one hundred percent accountability.
Speaker 14: Walks over and he starts looking for people, like who
Speaker 14: is here and who isn't.
Speaker 3: Alexander refers to soldier X here by name, we bleep
Speaker 3: that out.
Speaker 14: Doesn't do a head count, doesn't read off a clipboard
Speaker 14: right or any of that stuff. He's just like looking
Speaker 14: to see who is there and who isn't. After a
Speaker 14: minute or two of like confusing rhetoric of like hey,
Speaker 14: who's here, Okay, you're here, he turns the light off
Speaker 14: and tells us to go back to bed. Maybe fifteen
Speaker 14: seconds later comes back in and is like, everybody, get up,
Speaker 14: go to your battle station. Someone is missing, and we're like,
Speaker 14: holy shit, get dressed as fast as we can.
Speaker 3: Nobody at the VSP was prepared for a scenario like this,
Speaker 3: and the heat of the moment facts where I'm clear.
Speaker 6: Shortly after that, I can't remember exactly how much time
Speaker 6: after that I learned that there was somebody missing and
Speaker 6: that missing person was Robert Bayles. My immediate thought was, well,
Speaker 6: this makes no sense to me. Why would he not
Speaker 6: be here? Why if this guard is being truthful, why
Speaker 6: would Bals have left the base?
Speaker 14: I kind of thought like maybe Bales got kidnapped, Like
Speaker 14: the Taliban came in, drug him off, and like they're
Speaker 14: at there and now in a village. There's just so
Speaker 14: many moving parts, so many things happening. And also my
Speaker 14: perspective is, oh, my god, like what is going on?
Speaker 14: Are we being overrun? Am I about to get kidnapped?
Speaker 6: We're starting to ask a lot of questions on the base.
Speaker 6: Has anybody seen him leave? Does anybody know what's going on?
Speaker 6: Shortly after that, we got a phone call back from Zangabad.
Speaker 3: Zangabad's a big American base nearby with a medical.
Speaker 6: Center, and Zangabad said, hey, we just had some people
Speaker 6: brought in who have gunshot wounds. They said that they
Speaker 6: were shot in their house. Do you know anything about this?
Speaker 6: At this point, this is when we started to piece
Speaker 6: things together. Right, We're like, all right, something bad is happening.
Speaker 6: It's clearly with Baals because he's not here. We're getting
Speaker 6: reports of people being shot in an area where he
Speaker 6: seems to be, so something strange is happening.
Speaker 3: As soon as Robert Bales leaves Hajji Wazir's burning house,
Speaker 3: he can tell that the United States military is looking
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 4: I go back outside, and now I'm freezing.
Speaker 7: I go back and I get a door cover and
Speaker 7: I put the door cover around me, and I start
Speaker 7: to make my way back to the VSP. As I'm
Speaker 7: making my way back to the VSP, these guys are
Speaker 7: shooting up flares.
Speaker 6: Paulo actually spots him on his AWS system, which is
Speaker 6: a targeting camera computer thing.
Speaker 1: He spots him in his uh in this marshmallow.
Speaker 8: Coat, which is that big poofy coat wearing like a king.
Speaker 14: And that's when they like stack up a team outside
Speaker 14: to go get him.
Speaker 6: I told my team, Sergeant Hey, put together a small
Speaker 6: interdiction team to get ready to receive him and interdict
Speaker 6: him on his way. Whether he's coming back to us
Speaker 6: or he's bypassing us, We're going to stop him. Get
Speaker 6: the non lethal shotgun rounds, but do what you have
Speaker 6: to to protect yourself because we don't know what state
Speaker 6: of mind he's in.
Speaker 3: Right after suspicion that Bails was kidnapped or worse, he's
Speaker 3: found walking alone back to the VSP. Fields taps Jason
Speaker 3: McLoughlin and Soldier X to receive bails at the entrance
Speaker 3: his drinking buddies from six hours before, so we.
Speaker 11: Can all start to get a little ways. He comes
Speaker 11: running dock and I'm thinking, Mike, I don't know those
Speaker 11: dude's minds up. I don't know what the hell he's doing.
Speaker 11: He's out there people. I was pissed, and I'm thinking, Mike,
Speaker 11: I might have to shoot this guy. I might have
Speaker 11: to kill my produced sergeant.
Speaker 7: So uh, I come back to the VSP and uh,
Speaker 7: they you know, they got their guns drawn on me.
Speaker 7: You know, my friends, my family, They've got their guns
Speaker 7: drawn on me.
Speaker 14: Sergeant Bales is absolutely covered in blood, and I immediately
Speaker 14: start rationalizing like the human that I am. Okay, Bales
Speaker 14: has killed his captors, he has broken free of his restraints,
Speaker 14: and he made his way back, and he's a hero.
Speaker 14: He's gonna win all these medals for what he's doing.
Speaker 11: We put him in the medical show as like a
Speaker 11: little detention area and put guards on him.
Speaker 6: At some point I get a call in the radio, Hey,
Speaker 6: we've got him.
Speaker 13: He's secure.
Speaker 6: And you know, this is an image I'll never forget
Speaker 6: for my life. The door opens up and it's it's Bails.
Speaker 6: He's in, you know, a green T shirt. He's in
Speaker 6: his ACU pants, boots, and he's just covered in blood.
Speaker 6: He's got blood all over him.
Speaker 13: Still not knowing what's happened.
Speaker 6: To his point, I say something to the effect of Bails,
Speaker 6: what the fuck just happened?
Speaker 8: He says nothing.
Speaker 4: I asked him again.
Speaker 6: He says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He sits down on
Speaker 6: the cot, puts his hand in his head, says, I'm
Speaker 6: sorry I let you down.
Speaker 13: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I said, Bail's what the fuck happened?
Speaker 6: And it was kind of creepy, but he looked up
Speaker 6: and he said, I think.
Speaker 11: I need a lawyer.
Speaker 6: And that's when things kind of changed, right, Everything sort
Speaker 6: of changed when he said that.
Speaker 3: Soon after, Robert Bales asked for a lawyer. He's escorted
Speaker 3: into a helicopter and flown off the VSP. About twelve
Speaker 3: hours later, his wife, Carrie, is doing Sunday morning errands
Speaker 3: in Seattle.
Speaker 1: I loved to go on grocery shopping.
Speaker 2: I remember that day I was picking up ribs for
Speaker 2: my parents because they were going to have a barbecue,
Speaker 2: and I called.
Speaker 1: Them to say, hey, I got this, they're on sale.
Speaker 15: How many do you want or something like that, and
Speaker 15: my dad said, oh, yeah, I get And hey, did
Speaker 15: you see the news about that thirty eight year old
Speaker 15: staff sergeant that shot ups the people in Afghanistand and
Speaker 15: I remember it like, you know, time almost stands still
Speaker 15: when he said.
Speaker 1: Thirty eight year old staff sergeant.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And I remember finishing my shopping and I probably spent
Speaker 2: two hundred dollars on food that we never got to eat.
Speaker 1: I took the kids home and put them.
Speaker 2: Down for a nap and kind of waited for whatever
Speaker 2: was going to be next, because I did have a
Speaker 2: feeling that it was Bob. And then I remember the
Speaker 2: next feeling was relief because I got a phone call
Speaker 2: and not a knock at the door. Because a phone
Speaker 2: call met Mom was alive and I'd be able to
Speaker 2: talk to him again and he didn't die over there.
Speaker 1: So if I'd gotten a knock at the door, then
Speaker 1: I would have meant that it was over, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 2: I remember getting the phone call and them saying we'll
Speaker 2: probably be there in about an hour, telling what's going on,
Speaker 2: and I'm all I wanted to know is the bomb
Speaker 2: safe and what going on?
Speaker 1: And they said they would tell me when they got there.
Speaker 2: At that time, I asked my parents, can you stay
Speaker 2: with me until the army people come? So I remember
Speaker 2: sitting at our kitchen table. It was me and my parents.
Speaker 2: At one end army people came in. There was I
Speaker 2: vaguely remember them. There was a woman that.
Speaker 1: Was a civilian or in civilian clothes.
Speaker 2: Maybe one or two other army men in their uniforms right,
Speaker 2: And I only vaguely remember what they told me.
Speaker 1: My question was when do I get to talk to him?
Speaker 1: When can I talk to him? When can I talk
Speaker 1: to my husband? And they said they didn't know, but
Speaker 1: they told me that then for our safety, that.
Speaker 2: They recommended that we packed up an overnight bag and
Speaker 2: move on to post because they didn't know when they
Speaker 2: would be releasing his name.
Speaker 1: The military packed up our house for us and moved
Speaker 1: all of our things.
Speaker 2: They kind of knew that there would be a big
Speaker 2: media thing, and so that night we went and we
Speaker 2: stayed in a hotel.
Speaker 3: When you marry a soldier, in many ways, you're marrying
Speaker 3: the military. But Carrie could never have fathomed the scenario
Speaker 3: when she set her vows without any warning her husband
Speaker 3: had been detained by the nation that he had sworn
Speaker 3: to serve.
Speaker 7: So, you know, this is going to sound kind of crazy,
Speaker 7: But I sit back and I ask, how did I
Speaker 7: get to where I'm at? Like, how did I get
Speaker 7: from you know, being the good guy, you know, being
Speaker 7: the leader of my group. I think I was a
Speaker 7: very good soldier to being in prison for the rest
Speaker 7: of my life. How did I go from one to
Speaker 7: the other? And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 2: We were in the hotel that first night, and it's
Speaker 2: probably about midnight.
Speaker 1: I got to call my cell phone and it.
Speaker 2: Was Bob, and the first thing out of his mouth was,
Speaker 2: you need to run.
Speaker 1: Something really bad has happened. You need to run as
Speaker 1: far away from me as you can.
Speaker 2: Get away and get saved, get the kids safe, get away.
Speaker 2: There's very few times when I've seen or heard my
Speaker 2: husband cry, but we both cried at the end of
Speaker 2: that phone call because we didn't know what was next.
Speaker 1: We didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 3: Coming up on the war within Bills got taken away
Speaker 3: in the helicopter, but we had to essentially survive or.
Speaker 7: Flew me out of Panjuway, and then I ended up
Speaker 7: here in Leavenworth, Kansas, and then from there I meet
Speaker 7: John Henry Brown for the first time.
Speaker 9: It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me that someone who
Speaker 9: we created and had four deployment should be treated the
Speaker 9: way it was being treated.
Speaker 8: So I was started with the war on trial.
Speaker 1: Me and my kids definitely saw the media circus. It
Speaker 1: was surreal. It was like, this isn't happening to me.
Speaker 5: It was clear that the Afghan government had lost complete
Speaker 5: control of the situation. We were on a fact finding
Speaker 5: mission trying to figure out what the truth.
Speaker 3: Was the war within The Robert Bailes Story is production
Speaker 3: of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park
Speaker 3: Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created
Speaker 3: by executive producers Paul Polowski and David check. Executive producers
Speaker 3: for 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. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
Speaker 3: Sound design and mix by John Gard. Teddy Gannon was
Speaker 3: an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Speaker 3: Peter Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yell Marsh,
Speaker 3: Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satal, as
Speaker 3: well as all of the people who are 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: podcast