Speaker 1: John Henry Brown fought his ass off. He had used
Speaker 1: everything he had through it before he entered the plee.
Speaker 2: John Meyer is the attorney that currently represents staff Sergeant
Speaker 2: Robert Bales. Mar makes it clear that he respects the
Speaker 2: lawyer who preceded him and.
Speaker 1: John Henry Brown. I think to his credit, he hung
Speaker 1: up his cleats, if you will, when a death penalty
Speaker 1: came off the table. I believe in his soul and
Speaker 1: his country said, hey, I saved the guy's life. It's
Speaker 1: undoubted that he shot and killed these people. We're seeking
Speaker 1: a death penalty. We saved his life. John Henry Brown
Speaker 1: also did something that to me is the hallmark of
Speaker 1: a probe. He says, listen, fellas, my apologies. I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 1: The two things, the two points that could have exonerated
Speaker 1: or changed the whole thing in this case, I missed him.
Speaker 1: If you need to throw me under the bus and
Speaker 1: blame me, do it.
Speaker 2: Previously, the war within.
Speaker 3: A case like Bales was a criminal investigation from the
Speaker 3: very beginning.
Speaker 4: They're gonna give me the capital punishment. I thought I
Speaker 4: was doing the right thing.
Speaker 5: It's pretty clear what happened in Bales is behind bars
Speaker 5: where he should be.
Speaker 6: This is vesp ballimpy.
Speaker 1: It's a big fuck you to the Taliban. This is
Speaker 1: their home.
Speaker 4: When I got out there, even the prosecution attests to
Speaker 4: I'm asking for the Kailid.
Speaker 1: The u cmchange. They're gonna protect the army and at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, see the army used a client.
Speaker 6: I'm punished.
Speaker 4: I know what I'm missing, my kids here without their father.
Speaker 2: This is the war within the Robert Bayles story. In
Speaker 2: June of twenty thirteen, Robert Bales played guilty to the
Speaker 2: unauthorized murder of sixteen Afghan civilians. His fate was the
Speaker 2: result of a deal made with lead prosecutor Jaye Morse.
Speaker 3: When they came to us and said, what's it gonna
Speaker 3: take to get death penalty off the table? To me,
Speaker 3: it was well, that was my plan. We had been
Speaker 3: doing things correctly. We presented a strong case, We had
Speaker 3: the evidence.
Speaker 2: How did you feel when he pled guilty? Like you
Speaker 2: go through this case, You've been on it for a
Speaker 2: year and a half. What were your personal feelings when
Speaker 2: that plea came in.
Speaker 3: I knew this is the most important thing I will
Speaker 3: ever do in my professional life.
Speaker 2: On the side of the defense attorney John Henry Brown
Speaker 2: hoped that a guilty plea would give his client a
Speaker 2: chance at the best possible sentence.
Speaker 7: We felt it was a long shot that we would
Speaker 7: get life with parole. Of course, being the eternal optimist,
Speaker 7: thought the least they should do for Bobby was to
Speaker 7: give him life with parole.
Speaker 2: Two months later, on August twenty third, Bales would be
Speaker 2: given life in Fort Leavenworth's military prison, no parole.
Speaker 1: Brown was with him when it happened.
Speaker 7: It took him a long while to grasp the reality
Speaker 7: of what a horrific situation he was really in. I
Speaker 7: think he was a traditional soldier in the way that
Speaker 7: he felt that the superiors would back him and not
Speaker 7: turn against him. Of course, that's not excusing what he did.
Speaker 7: There's no excuse.
Speaker 2: During the sentencing hearing, Morse did what he could to
Speaker 2: close the door on any potential sympathy for the defendant.
Speaker 3: I knew that he was going to ask for mercy,
Speaker 3: He's going to ask for leniencine. But I was also
Speaker 3: sure that he was going to ask the panel to
Speaker 3: think about his kids. He had two kids, and I
Speaker 3: just thought that this goes back to this whole idea
Speaker 3: of trying to personalize the victims. I mean, I want
Speaker 3: the jury to have sympathy for Bail's kids like his
Speaker 3: Bail's kids and his wife are victims in this case too.
Speaker 3: I just thought there's a lot of kids here that
Speaker 3: also aren't present in the courtroom, that are in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: And so I said, when you're thinking about Bail's two kids,
Speaker 3: I also want you to think about the forty two
Speaker 3: kids in Afghanistan who are either killed, injured, or lost
Speaker 3: the primary caregiver. And when the judge read the verdict,
Speaker 3: I could hear them crying, like I turn them look back.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are these guys are not only asking
Speaker 3: their Pashtune males like you don't cry, and these guys
Speaker 3: are crying. There wasn't joy, but there was relief. Again
Speaker 3: like I have never been around.
Speaker 2: Moors perceived the Afghans response to the sentencing is positive,
Speaker 2: but hearing from Haji Mohammad Naim, one of the Pashtuon
Speaker 2: males in the gallery that day, it was clear that
Speaker 2: their feelings were mixed.
Speaker 5: When the decision was issued and the criminal is sentenced
Speaker 5: to life imprisonment, the criminal's family started out and crying.
Speaker 5: I asked the interpreter, why are they screaming and crying?
Speaker 5: He said, Bales was found guilty and sentenced to life
Speaker 5: in prison. That's why they cried. I said that this
Speaker 5: person took away our family members, away from us forever,
Speaker 5: and now that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Speaker 1: They are crying.
Speaker 5: They can go and see him every day. This person
Speaker 5: made sixteen of US martyrs.
Speaker 2: Haji Mohammed Wazir agrees with his fellow Afghan.
Speaker 5: In the presence of the international media, I said that
Speaker 5: I want the.
Speaker 1: Execution of Robert Bales.
Speaker 5: I said that we do not accept this sentence. We
Speaker 5: want a trial in our own country that takes place
Speaker 5: under the shadow of our Islamic law.
Speaker 2: Before bail shipped off to Fort Leavenworth Military Prison, John
Speaker 2: Henry Brown had one final meeting with his client.
Speaker 6: That was a.
Speaker 7: Cheerful session I had with Bobbie after everybody else left. Yeah,
Speaker 7: he's wearing his dress uniform and those of the uniforms
Speaker 7: are really nice actually, and I need change into his
Speaker 7: prisoner out there.
Speaker 6: But he was emotional.
Speaker 7: You know, how can this happen to me?
Speaker 4: It was just a bad day. That was one of
Speaker 4: those things where you know he didn't really have time.
Speaker 4: You know, we talked about it before, where you don't
Speaker 4: really have time to think about it at the time
Speaker 4: that things are happening. It's afterwards that those kind of
Speaker 4: ring a little bit deeper, a little bit worse.
Speaker 2: Since he received a life sentence in twenty thirteen, staff
Speaker 2: Sergeant Robert Bales has spent just about every waking in
Speaker 2: a prison cell. According to his wife Carrie, Bob manages
Speaker 2: to keep himself busy.
Speaker 8: He did get his bachelor's degree and he's working on
Speaker 8: his master's degree in organizational psychology.
Speaker 6: I think is what it is.
Speaker 8: He's very, very into being physically fit. He does cross
Speaker 8: fit and works out and eats properly and does all
Speaker 8: of that. He's a routine for him and it helps
Speaker 8: him mentally and physically. Never in gold moment. He's always busy.
Speaker 8: He's always doing something. He's always thinking of, you know,
Speaker 8: what's next, how can he help the kids?
Speaker 1: How can he help me?
Speaker 9: But I think he has a lot of tough day.
Speaker 9: I think, well, I'd like to say, you know, it's
Speaker 9: me and the cans that keep him going, but I don't.
Speaker 2: That only goes so far, Carrie has done everything in
Speaker 2: her power to maintain some sense of normalcy within the
Speaker 2: Bales family unit. That includes moving her family from Washington
Speaker 2: to Kansas so that her children, Quincy and Bobby Junior,
Speaker 2: can live close to their father.
Speaker 9: The first job I applied for I got and they helped.
Speaker 9: They pay for us to move out here, and we've
Speaker 9: just sort of.
Speaker 1: Thrived and we love being near Bob.
Speaker 6: It just feels like it's the right place to be
Speaker 6: and we never.
Speaker 8: Have to deal with that.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we only.
Speaker 5: Have one more visit.
Speaker 2: You know, when are we going to see Daddy again?
Speaker 8: My poor sister always wonders, when are you moving back?
Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm not. We're here.
Speaker 6: This is it.
Speaker 9: Family is where you.
Speaker 7: Make it right.
Speaker 9: The kids, Quincy and.
Speaker 1: Bobby were three years apart.
Speaker 9: You think that they are maturing now that We've always
Speaker 9: been upfront with them about Look.
Speaker 10: What questions do you have?
Speaker 8: And we were very thoughtful about how we presented why
Speaker 8: is daddy here?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 10: That's something though, that I appreciate, is that my mom
Speaker 10: never took me away from my dad and he's always
Speaker 10: been involved in my life.
Speaker 2: Bob and Carrey's teenage daughter Quincy spoke to our producers
Speaker 2: about how she and her family managed this atypical arrangement.
Speaker 10: We don't look like a normal family, so people looking in,
Speaker 10: but we have the same I think dynamic as a
Speaker 10: normal family. The co parenting, I think is just different.
Speaker 10: It's unconventional in the way you look at it. But
Speaker 10: they're still like parents. Of course, my dad can't be
Speaker 10: involved physically, like he's not at home and I don't
Speaker 10: wake up seeing him every morning, and I don't come
Speaker 10: home from school seeing him every single day. But we
Speaker 10: can talk on the phone and we do every single day.
Speaker 10: We talk about everything. The big thing that both my
Speaker 10: parents betray is they're always very, very positive. Of course,
Speaker 10: our situation leaves room for being negative. But he's always
Speaker 10: taught that just because you have it bad, it doesn't
Speaker 10: mean somebody else doesn't have it worse, and so you
Speaker 10: always have to look up and keep pushing. And my dad,
Speaker 10: I family always comes first and is always one of
Speaker 10: his top pillars in life.
Speaker 2: Maintaining your presence in his family's lives is at the
Speaker 2: top of Bail's agenda in the day to day, but
Speaker 2: he's also working on his long term plans, namely appealing
Speaker 2: his sentence and someday earning the chance to go home
Speaker 2: to his wife and kids. It's an unlikely goal, but
Speaker 2: Baals has nothing but time to work out a strategy.
Speaker 4: Whatever we can do to make as much stink, to
Speaker 4: make as much notification.
Speaker 6: As this, we need to do it. Being quiet doesn't work.
Speaker 4: Being quiet get you a thirty five year prison sentence
Speaker 4: and by the time I get out of here, my
Speaker 4: kids are adults.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Bales has been working with John Mayer on various appeals
Speaker 2: since twenty fifteen. They meet several times a year to
Speaker 2: discuss his case. A former Army officer himself, mar is
Speaker 2: really the go to attorney for convicted war criminals. His
Speaker 2: firm's website is Lawyers Defending Warriors dot com.
Speaker 1: Mindful of all that passion, mindful of all the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of everything you just said, Bob, you're going to get
Speaker 1: into sentence I hearing, or they're going to reassess the sentence.
Speaker 1: It can be awfully hard for them. Not that I
Speaker 1: don't want to put pie in the sky, set up
Speaker 1: a balloon that come down a bulling ball, but the
Speaker 1: error is so plain and prejudicial.
Speaker 4: We gotta be bold, We got to come out, We
Speaker 4: got to say, you know, how could Bales do this?
Speaker 4: How could he go out and kill women and children?
Speaker 4: How could I not go out and try to stop
Speaker 4: somebody from putting in an ied How many times do
Speaker 4: I go back and sit on my rock and try
Speaker 4: my back porch, drink myself into a stupor, knowing that
Speaker 4: I maybe could have stopped something that didn't happen. How
Speaker 4: many times do we let Americans die when we know
Speaker 4: where the bad guys are and we don't go at them.
Speaker 2: You've heard a lot about Robert Bale's mindset during his
Speaker 2: deployment to Afghanistan. In fact, Baiale's mental state can be
Speaker 2: attributed directly to his training in the start of the
Speaker 2: Iraq War in two thousand and three.
Speaker 11: Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly. Yet our purpose is
Speaker 11: sure the people of the United States and our friends
Speaker 11: and allies will not live at the mercy of an
Speaker 11: outlaw regime that threatens the peace.
Speaker 1: With weapons of mass murder.
Speaker 11: Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit
Speaker 11: its duration is to apply decisive force.
Speaker 2: In President Bush's official announcement to the world that the
Speaker 2: United States would be invading Iraq. He alludes to what
Speaker 2: would become the nation's unofficial strategy, shock and all or
Speaker 2: to use the commander in chiefs language, decisive force to
Speaker 2: overwhelm the enemy.
Speaker 4: The job of the infantry is very simply. You want
Speaker 4: to find, fix, and finish the enemy. You know, it
Speaker 4: hasn't ever changed. I mean the weapons have changed, the
Speaker 4: techniques have somewhat changed, but the idea is you're gonna
Speaker 4: kill the enemy in close combat.
Speaker 6: We kill people for a living.
Speaker 2: For the average member of the infantry, this meant that
Speaker 2: they were going to be expected to kill Iraqi soldiers
Speaker 2: on site, something Bails learned during basic training.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to talk negative of the army, but
Speaker 4: this is what the infantry does. For example, the one
Speaker 4: that I always used was from sniper's school. Right, the
Speaker 4: instructor comes in, older guy comes in from day one,
Speaker 4: He's like, why do you want to be a sniper,
Speaker 4: And so everybody has some answer that people want to hear, right,
Speaker 4: like oh, you know, I want to be a force
Speaker 4: multiplier on a battlefield, or you know, I want to
Speaker 4: make sure I save my buddies and he's like, you're
Speaker 4: all a bunch of fucking liars. There's only one reason
Speaker 4: you want to be a sniper, and that's to see
Speaker 4: the Red Mist.
Speaker 2: Bail spent his first two deployment in a Rock fighting
Speaker 2: under shock and all guidelines, finding, fixing, and finishing the enemy.
Speaker 2: By the time his third tour came around in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, the army's mission had changed. The Iraq
Speaker 2: War was drawing on longer than anyone had hoped. Obama
Speaker 2: had taken over for Bush, and the US was pivoting
Speaker 2: its approach to something called counterinsurgency, using the military to
Speaker 2: improve a Rock's infrastructure and empower small communities, winning hearts
Speaker 2: and minds. From Robert Bales's point of view, this was
Speaker 2: a questionable new strategy.
Speaker 4: We didn't really even comprehend the difference in the mission until.
Speaker 6: We're on the ground. Iraq is now.
Speaker 4: Very docile compared to what it was in two thousand
Speaker 4: and six and seven, and so the mission had shifted
Speaker 4: to try.
Speaker 6: To really rebuild this area.
Speaker 4: So we're doing a lot of these micro grant programs
Speaker 4: which you would find business owners. So there's a lady
Speaker 4: that wants to build a dress shop. So you know,
Speaker 4: we grant her like thirty five hundred dollars to make
Speaker 4: a dress shop. The problem with this was that we
Speaker 4: knew a lot of this money went back to conducting
Speaker 4: terrorist operations. You know, I think we would all like
Speaker 4: to say that, you know, if we give this food
Speaker 4: to family, that family's going to be fed for thirty days.
Speaker 4: But the truth is we just made that family a target.
Speaker 2: Bails take about the unintended consequences of counterinsurgency is supported.
Speaker 1: By Soldier X.
Speaker 2: The man from VSB Bellumbine will not be identified here.
Speaker 12: At that time, there was a new administration. They're trying
Speaker 12: different tactics on how to engage with the local populations
Speaker 12: and instead of being aggressive and going and solving the
Speaker 12: issue and not menterally, they try to do the whole
Speaker 12: hearts and minds and see if we can essentially buy
Speaker 12: their love. I mean, was it worth trying?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 12: Maybe as we're trying, but I think we should have
Speaker 12: maybe recalked and win a different direction. Not Creed Ferdada
Speaker 12: wasn't good. So in those incidents, Veils I think probably
Speaker 12: was pretty frustrated. As a leader. We're trained to be aggressive,
Speaker 12: we're trained to do those things the whole you know,
Speaker 12: give it out money and give it out hordes of food.
Speaker 12: You knows, not our wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: As March.
Speaker 2: Bob Bale's Ford Deployment Afghanistan twenty twelve, it's another counterinsurgency mission.
Speaker 2: The soldiers at VSP Bellaby can't proactively confront the enemy,
Speaker 2: in large part because the Taliban intentionally blended in with
Speaker 2: the civilian population. John Mayer explains, there's.
Speaker 1: No uniforms in Afghanistan, so no opponents or no enemy,
Speaker 1: or no fighter who's going to be against you is
Speaker 1: going to be wearing his uniform. They blend in with
Speaker 1: the population and it's a guerrilla war. So the challenge
Speaker 1: for American soldiers is the idea, how do you know
Speaker 1: who you're talking with?
Speaker 2: By hiding among the locals, the Taliban puts American forces
Speaker 2: at a disadvantage. Unidentified Afghans are supposed to be presumed innocent.
Speaker 2: It's a philosophy that requires American troops to be reactive,
Speaker 2: not proactive.
Speaker 1: Here's J.
Speaker 3: Moore's So generally, if you are in a declared war,
Speaker 3: you can use a lethal force against somebody on the
Speaker 3: opposing force. Anytime you can sneak into their barracks room
Speaker 3: and kill them while they sleep. If you see a
Speaker 3: guy in the woods taking a bathroom break and his
Speaker 3: weapons away from him, you can shoot that guy. What
Speaker 3: you can't do is destroy things that are civilian objects
Speaker 3: or cause intentional harm to civilians. If you know that
Speaker 3: you're going to cause some sort of civilian harm or
Speaker 3: civilian damage, there has to be some sort of military
Speaker 3: necessity to take out that particular parted.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, Stab Sergeant Robert Bailee as a combat
Speaker 2: venter who's been conditioned to kill the enemy. Ten years
Speaker 2: into his service in a highly kinetic area, his orders
Speaker 2: are to sit tight and wait to be engaged before
Speaker 2: firing back at the enemy. It's a different approach that
Speaker 2: takes them getting used to.
Speaker 4: It's the anticipation of death, probably way worse than the
Speaker 4: death itself.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I haven't died, so I can't really say that. But
Speaker 4: you know that waiting for something to happen is terrible,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 12: What I mean?
Speaker 4: You know something's coming, in that anticipation of whatever's coming
Speaker 4: is what.
Speaker 6: Makes you paranoid.
Speaker 2: I guess What's more, Bales feels confident that he knows
Speaker 2: the location of undercovered Taliban operatives. Remember one of the
Speaker 2: houses that he targeted that night, belonging to Haji Wazir,
Speaker 2: had just been found to contain over one hundred pounds
Speaker 2: of bomb making materials.
Speaker 4: The twenty fourth of February, we're conducting a patrol. We
Speaker 4: came upon a command wired ied. The command wired ied
Speaker 4: ended up being one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives.
Speaker 4: You know, it was a pretty big deal that command
Speaker 4: wired led back to Wazir's holme. Haji Wazir, as you know,
Speaker 4: is the gentleman who came to the United States and
Speaker 4: testified against me as prosecution witness number twelve. And he's
Speaker 4: the gentleman with the Taliban fighter tattoo on his right hand.
Speaker 2: These supposed Taliban ties are a big part of Robert
Speaker 2: Bales's efforts to clear his name. In his eyes, if
Speaker 2: the public knew that he actually killed Taliban members on
Speaker 2: the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve, it could have
Speaker 2: changed everything.
Speaker 4: I feel like I cave during the trial because I
Speaker 4: there was this information that wasn't out there that would
Speaker 4: have changed the idea of me taking a plea deal.
Speaker 4: I would have never taken a plea deal. I'll go
Speaker 4: and we'll let the pieces fall where they fall. But
Speaker 4: at least I go in and say, look, these people
Speaker 4: had conducted terry activity from these locations before. I don't
Speaker 4: think you would put people in your house where you
Speaker 4: made your explosives that you were going to go kill
Speaker 4: people with. I wouldn't as a father. I don't think
Speaker 4: most fathers would put their family in a situation like that. Now,
Speaker 4: it doesn't excuse what I did, and I'm not trying
Speaker 4: to do that. I'm just saying it would have been
Speaker 4: nice to have had the truth all the way through
Speaker 4: on both sides.
Speaker 2: To be clear, Afghan women and children are not eligible
Speaker 2: to join the Taliban. But if Bales is right and
Speaker 2: he actually did kill Taliban, the paradigm changes. Even Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Colonel Morse can attest that sometimes for the US military,
Speaker 2: the death of civilians can be viewed as unfortunate but
Speaker 2: necessary collateral damage.
Speaker 3: Commanders are facing those decisions every day, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of most visceral format. That might be a drone strike
Speaker 3: on a car with a terrorist leader in it, and
Speaker 3: he's also got his wife and two kids in the car.
Speaker 3: The commander has decided whether or not he's causing unnecessary
Speaker 3: harm by firing.
Speaker 6: On that target.
Speaker 2: As Bales carries out his life sentence, he can't help
Speaker 2: and ask whether American drone operators are guilty of the
Speaker 2: same crimes as he is, without suffering the same consequences.
Speaker 6: I looked it upon Wikipedia.
Speaker 4: The civilian casualties thirty one thousand in Afghanistan up to
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, according to the US government.
Speaker 6: I didn't intend to go.
Speaker 4: Out and kill civilians the same way that the people
Speaker 4: that are sitting in Arizona or Nevada who drop from
Speaker 4: the drone don't intend to kill civilians, But yet it
Speaker 4: happens the end result comes out to the same. So
Speaker 4: why are they not sitting in here with me?
Speaker 2: Whether targety drone strikes on innocent civilians are moral, well,
Speaker 2: that's certainly a conundrum. But with the prior authorization they
Speaker 2: are legal, and by Baales's logic, sanctioned drone strikes and
Speaker 2: imprompting night raids, essentially they're one and the same. Drafting
Speaker 2: off this line of thinking, let's probe whether Baales's hypothesis
Speaker 2: is true. Did he find, fix and finish the enemy
Speaker 2: that night. We know about the one hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: pounds of explosives in Hadji Wazir's house. Now what about
Speaker 2: this Taliban tattoo.
Speaker 4: We found a picture of Haji Wazir online who had
Speaker 4: made a terrorist video. And on the video, the man
Speaker 4: has a cross swords tattoo. It's on his right hand.
Speaker 4: And during the video and he's talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: called the Candahar massacre. You know, he's talking about this,
Speaker 4: but the whole time he's holding up his terrorist tattoo,
Speaker 4: his Taliban tattoo. Why was he doing that? Because it's
Speaker 4: a recruiting video. That wasn't a fresh tattoo. He didn't
Speaker 4: get that after he got that way before.
Speaker 2: And we knew that John Henry Brown wasn't convinced by
Speaker 2: Wazir's supposed rationale for getting the tattoo.
Speaker 7: An older gentleman actually had a tattoo on his hand,
Speaker 7: which I knew because I read one of those books
Speaker 7: that there and he puts out of things you'd look
Speaker 7: forward to identify Taliban. And when I.
Speaker 1: Said, well, what's that on your hand?
Speaker 7: Because oh, a tattoo? And I said, wait, something not
Speaker 7: a Taliban tattoo? No, No, I knew it to oppress
Speaker 7: the girls.
Speaker 2: That's two instances of circumstantial evidence against Haji Wazir IED's
Speaker 2: in his house and a tattoo on his hand had
Speaker 2: the flashing lights that Bail saw the night before the attacks,
Speaker 2: and perhaps a pattern begins to form. However, the Bail's
Speaker 2: camps strongest point lies with the US military's database on
Speaker 2: Taliban members in a system called bats and Hides, which
Speaker 2: Robert Bales and his attorney John Mayer know, well, how many.
Speaker 1: Times did you enroll guys with bats or hides?
Speaker 12: Daily?
Speaker 6: Multiple times daily?
Speaker 4: For example, Let's say I take a guy down right now,
Speaker 4: and I don't have the access to the information that
Speaker 4: he's a bad guy. I can tell right away that
Speaker 4: he's a bad guy because I can directly link back
Speaker 4: to that database. Sure, sure, so you know again, it's
Speaker 4: it's a handheld device. It looks almost like an old
Speaker 4: school Pom pilot. So you'd basically find a person that
Speaker 4: you want to enroll. The reason you'd want to enroll
Speaker 4: and is, let's say he happened to be around an
Speaker 4: ID site when something goes off, so you ask him
Speaker 4: to come over and you know, fingerprint them. You know,
Speaker 4: do the biometric data, and I basically ask him who
Speaker 4: you are, what village you're from, you know, who's what's
Speaker 4: your family name? Now, normally they're gonna lie to you
Speaker 4: norm or it's not gonna translate correctly. So we never
Speaker 4: really put a lot of faith in the information told us.
Speaker 4: But then we would get a retinal scan, usually do
Speaker 4: a fingerprint and some other type of match. So I
Speaker 4: would take one device, playing it up to the computer,
Speaker 4: enter that information. The information went into a main database
Speaker 4: and it comes back and it tells you, Hey, that
Speaker 4: guy that you had detained today, he is wanted for X,
Speaker 4: Y and Z.
Speaker 1: You have to make the treator on the ground as
Speaker 1: a guy who directly used this stuff, you as a
Speaker 1: sergeant and your soldiers.
Speaker 6: Was it reliable? One hundred percent reliable?
Speaker 4: The Bats and Hides information was always you know, in
Speaker 4: my opinion, it's always been good.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 6: How do you argue DNA and biometric data.
Speaker 2: In his interview, John Maher backs up his client's assertion
Speaker 2: that the data collected from Bats and Hides is almost unassailable.
Speaker 2: He believes this because his colleague, biometrics expert Bill Carney,
Speaker 2: has drawn this conclusion from his findings in the field.
Speaker 1: Bill Kearney, I trust his work implicitly. If we come
Speaker 1: across a d site where we're gonna have explosive ordinance,
Speaker 1: you know, d come up there and diffuse it, or
Speaker 1: after the bomb goes off, we pick up all the
Speaker 1: forensic tidbits and then we run it fingerprints, because that
Speaker 1: terrorist is not gonna wear gloves when he twists the wires,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna leave his skin on there. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, it leaves this perspiration on there. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: leaves blood on there, and it leaves fingerprints. Fingerprints in
Speaker 1: DNA are over one hundred years old. Though, if we
Speaker 1: can begin to enroll folks and then identify who they are,
Speaker 1: then we're able to delineate and discern who's opponent and
Speaker 1: who's not.
Speaker 2: Bill Carney declined to participate in this podcast. Samar and
Speaker 2: Bales relay his findings on the biometric evidence he found
Speaker 2: on the Appian victims.
Speaker 1: Of the Afghan witnesses left their fingerprints in DNA at
Speaker 1: great co ordinates on bomb parts nied parts. Four of
Speaker 1: them left their fingerprints.
Speaker 6: Prosecution witness number five, Rafaula. Rafaula is the young boy was.
Speaker 4: Involved in the biometric system on nine March twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: The first prosecution witness, Mula Baran, was enrolled in biometric
Speaker 4: system on twenty two May two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from the detention facility in
Speaker 1: part one, and they believe that Mula Baran, witness number
Speaker 1: one was a ten from the coalition.
Speaker 2: You've heard the voices of Mulla Baran and Rafaula in
Speaker 2: earlier episodes. Both of their names came up during a
Speaker 2: scrub bats and Hines. Baran was also at one point
Speaker 2: detained in that in jail. What's more, Baals defense team
Speaker 2: learned this through their own legwork, not from the military's records.
Speaker 2: For Jay Morse in the prosecution.
Speaker 7: The farmers that they brought from Afghanistan to testify, we
Speaker 7: were never told that these young people were clearly Taliban,
Speaker 7: which I think would have made a difference if we'd
Speaker 7: been told that, But we never found out out till
Speaker 7: the end of the whole procedure.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, John Henry Brown inquired about whether all
Speaker 2: of Bale's victims were simple farmers, but the powers that
Speaker 2: be made it clear that the AFGHANSI testified were not
Speaker 2: on trial Colonel Morris.
Speaker 1: He gets up and he says, the State Department informed
Speaker 1: us that Muli Barrian might have been a detainee at
Speaker 1: the detention facility in Parwan. But then the judge says,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make a congressional case about this challenge.
Speaker 1: Defense should have been jumping up and down.
Speaker 7: They were not forthcoming with the defense. And there's this
Speaker 7: big safe in our office at JBLM.
Speaker 2: JBLM is Joint Base Lewis McCord where the trial took place.
Speaker 7: And I asked one of the people I won't mention
Speaker 7: because I'm not get him in trouble. I said, well,
Speaker 7: what's it there? And they said, well, that's all the
Speaker 7: stuff that you're not supposed to see. And I said, well,
Speaker 7: is there anything in there that I should know about?
Speaker 7: And he goes no.
Speaker 1: It can't have a guy got away for life or
Speaker 1: plead guilty without making sure that the government of the
Speaker 1: United States has shared all the exonerating evidence. Prosecutor Jane
Speaker 1: Morris stand bright in the court. Well, the State Department says,
Speaker 1: they're not going to turn him over to us, What
Speaker 1: fuck go get him? Bob's police should never been taken
Speaker 1: until a complete forensic criminal investigation was completed in a
Speaker 1: wild Because the bodies were taken away and burned and
Speaker 1: buried and disposed of. Was Bob's team able to get
Speaker 1: the police reports on whether the forensics matched. Something as
Speaker 1: simple as that never happened.
Speaker 4: They weren't allowed to ask Mula Baran if he was
Speaker 4: a member of a terrorist organization. Our government wouldn't let
Speaker 4: us ask that question. We know that Mulla Baran was
Speaker 4: held at some detention center hadju Wazir.
Speaker 6: You can't ask him if he's a terrorist.
Speaker 4: Oh really, So the Taliban tattoo on his right hand
Speaker 4: doesn't mean anything to you, even though it's documented in
Speaker 4: the US Army Book of Symbols. There's a Taliban tattoo.
Speaker 4: You know it is, and you can't ask for that question.
Speaker 2: Here's the last piece of the puzzle for this dilemma
Speaker 2: posed by Bails in his defense. Not only were the
Speaker 2: Afghan victims part of the Taliban. Not only did those
Speaker 2: Taliban connections go uninvestigated, but those same Afghans were flown
Speaker 2: to America on commercial airlines.
Speaker 1: The United States flew twelve Afghan civilians into the United
Speaker 1: States into Atlanta, Georgia, with the American flying public. They
Speaker 1: were under fake social security numbers, fake passports, fake work visas,
Speaker 1: they were held out as government contractors, and then they
Speaker 1: were on Delta Airlines was truly innocent American flying public
Speaker 1: to Seattle.
Speaker 4: How would you feel if you were on this flight
Speaker 4: from Atlanta, Georgia to Seattle, Washington at eight twenty am
Speaker 4: on August eighteen, twenty thirteen. How would you feel about
Speaker 4: riding next to a.
Speaker 6: Guy there was a bomb maker?
Speaker 4: You feel comfortable flying on Delta Airlines flight eighteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: You're flying and coach, You're sitting next to Mula Baran
Speaker 4: who's been detained at Parwan form building bombs.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you can see what marn Bales are getting at
Speaker 2: with this. After all, the global war and tear began
Speaker 2: with a couple of extremists taking control of passenger planes.
Speaker 2: Furthering your point, when the Afghans arrived in the US
Speaker 2: to testify they were afforded a fair number of American luxuries.
Speaker 4: We take them to the SeaWorld, right, That's what our
Speaker 4: government did. They took them to SeaWorld.
Speaker 7: They took them to Disneyland, for God's sake, you know,
Speaker 7: the prosecutors in civilian cases usually don't take their witnesses
Speaker 7: to Disneyland. They obviously had new clothes that were very nice,
Speaker 7: you know, Afghan style, but clearly high quality stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you think that had an effect on their testimony?
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Bales, mar and Brown are presenting a narrative of the
Speaker 2: events that runs counter to what was depicted by the
Speaker 2: government in the media. For John Maher, the potential emission
Speaker 2: of evidence in mitigating circumstances is a big reason why
Speaker 2: Robert Bales serve as a new trial.
Speaker 1: I'd like to repeat what John Henry Brown said, the
Speaker 1: fingerprints I wish I would have had, It would have
Speaker 1: been a wholly different show. But if you can't find
Speaker 1: that evidence because your countrymen kept it from you, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: For Bales himself? This unearth intel goes even further at
Speaker 2: a personal level. It can clear its name by revealing
Speaker 2: his true motivation for leaving the VSP on March eleventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve.
Speaker 6: If I want to walk in and kill everybody, why
Speaker 6: not just go in and kill everybody? Why not in
Speaker 6: the first village go in and kill everybody?
Speaker 4: Because that wasn't what the attempt was The attempt was
Speaker 4: to try to stop people from putting in IDs. Naja
Speaker 4: being Alcozi. These are not innocent locations to begin with.
Speaker 6: We have the evidence. Your wife is a Tall.
Speaker 2: That's the name of the journalist who interviewed six Afghans
Speaker 2: from Alakozai and Najabien on behalf of our production. Attall
Speaker 2: currently lives in Afghanistan, which is to say he lives
Speaker 2: under Taliban rule. It's important to mention this before we
Speaker 2: tell you that A Tall asked each Afghan participant whether
Speaker 2: they in twenty twelve were actively working in service of
Speaker 2: an enemy of the United States. Here's a Tall speaking
Speaker 2: to Mulla Baran, the man who was once held in
Speaker 2: a detention facility.
Speaker 13: Robert Bales claims that he wanted to kill Taliban the
Speaker 13: night he entered your brother's house. Was any member of
Speaker 13: your family in the Taliban or was your brother connected
Speaker 13: to the Taliban?
Speaker 5: The claim of Robert Bales is one percent false. In
Speaker 5: this age of technology, the Americans have equipment that can
Speaker 5: distinguish civilians from non civilians. This was an intentional act.
Speaker 2: Hadji Wazir is the patriarch who lost eleven family members
Speaker 2: who suppose has the Taliban tattoo at all asked him
Speaker 2: the same question.
Speaker 13: Robert Bales claims that he wanted to kill Taliban. Then
Speaker 13: was any member of your family in the Taliban?
Speaker 5: No, nobody in our family was in the Taliban, nor
Speaker 5: did we cooperate with them. Most of my family were
Speaker 5: miners less than fifteen years old. Robert Bales has no
Speaker 5: evidence against me in this case.
Speaker 2: Rafiola was around fifteen years old in twenty twelve. According
Speaker 2: to Bales, his prints came up in the Bats and
Speaker 2: Hide system one year after the attack.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, We had no interest in the Taliban. My family
Speaker 5: members were farmers. We farmed domestic animals. We want to
Speaker 5: live in our country and be calm. It doesn't matter
Speaker 5: what government it is, as long as there is peace
Speaker 5: and security so that we could be happy in our lives.
Speaker 13: What other effects did this incident have on your life?
Speaker 13: Do you still have the same angers?
Speaker 5: I myself were shot in my legs. Now these parts
Speaker 5: of my body heard at night. When I think about
Speaker 5: this and I look at my sister who is now paralyzed,
Speaker 5: my emotions increase. We want to tell the world that
Speaker 5: after this incident, no help was given to us. They
Speaker 5: have not paid any attention to us. We asked the
Speaker 5: world to help us to treat our wounded, continue to
Speaker 5: help the families of the martyrs.
Speaker 2: About six weeks after our production interviewed Rafula, one of
Speaker 2: our contacts, Leila ahmed Zai, informed us that he had
Speaker 2: tragically passed away in a swimming accident.
Speaker 6: That's all we know. One thing is clear.
Speaker 2: The Afghans who spoke with a Tall categorically denied Bales's
Speaker 2: assertions that they were enemy and sergeants ten years ago.
Speaker 2: But a tragedy like this one, such devastation, has the
Speaker 2: potential to change allegiances. After nine to eleven, many Americans
Speaker 2: decided that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan were our new enemies.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the Kanahar masker had similar effect on the villagers
Speaker 2: of the Panjwei region, after all, Nowadays, Mulla Baran approves
Speaker 2: of the Taliban government, but the Tanyan.
Speaker 5: We like the Islamic Emirate. You may ask why I
Speaker 5: say that all the people of Afghanistan have been burning
Speaker 5: in the fire of war for forty years. Now, there
Speaker 5: is one hundred percent security in Afghanistan. The wealth and
Speaker 5: honor of all people are protected in it the voice
Speaker 5: of a poor man is heard. The Islamic Emirate is
Speaker 5: good not only for you and me, but for all people.
Speaker 2: Mulla Baran's news is named hick Matula. He's about nineteen
Speaker 2: years old here. Up until the withdrawal in late summer
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty one, hick Matula had spent his entire
Speaker 2: life under American occupation. His poignant perspective says a lot.
Speaker 1: The Reithims minder.
Speaker 5: The presence of the Taliban was very low when I
Speaker 5: was young. We didn't even see them once a week. Yeah,
Speaker 5: no one in our family was a member of the Taliban.
Speaker 5: But after the incident, we became Taliban tedder will you
Speaker 5: now we are with the Taliban.
Speaker 2: Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 3: We found no evidence that any of these guys were Taliban.
Speaker 6: These are non combatants. They're unarmed. You hunted them down
Speaker 6: and you shot them.
Speaker 1: Bales was in one of the houses and the kits
Speaker 1: smashed him in the head with a shovel.
Speaker 13: A traumatic brain injury can happen when they're is an
Speaker 13: external force to the head, face, or neck.
Speaker 6: I call it an invisible disability looking back, and I
Speaker 6: think I had a few concussions.
Speaker 1: Bill's is not looking to be portrayed as a victim.
Speaker 6: I should have gotten some help.
Speaker 2: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Speaker 2: Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures
Speaker 2: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by
Speaker 2: executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers form
Speaker 2: Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers.
Speaker 2: The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
Speaker 2: hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
Speaker 2: sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
Speaker 2: an archival. Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and Peter
Speaker 2: Solatarov was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yell Marsh,
Speaker 2: Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpee, and Meerwi Satal, as
Speaker 2: well as all of the people who are interviewed for
Speaker 2: the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
Speaker 2: podcast