Speaker 1: The case to be heard in oral argument is Bales
Speaker 1: versus Commandant is mar Whenever you're reading.
Speaker 2: Good morning, your honors, it's a pleasure to begin here
Speaker 2: with you again.
Speaker 3: On September twenty third, twenty twenty one, Robert Bales's attorney,
Speaker 3: John Mayer, delivered an oral argument to the US Court
Speaker 3: of Appeals in Denver, Colorado. Over four years had passed
Speaker 3: since their case was dismissed by the Armies of Pellate Court,
Speaker 3: but that loss hasn't dissuaded Mayr not yet.
Speaker 4: This is a case, although it's a very tough case admittedly,
Speaker 4: where the accused pled guilty to killing seventeen Afghan civilians.
Speaker 5: There are two.
Speaker 2: Fundamental, completely constitutional implications to show why the military courts
Speaker 2: did not give full and fair consideration or adequate consideration.
Speaker 2: And here's why, if I could break them down briefly.
Speaker 2: Mefloquin it has now been determined by the United States
Speaker 2: FDA to cause long term psychonic effects.
Speaker 1: I want to focus on your medical win argument as
Speaker 1: I understand it from the Court's opinion below. There was
Speaker 1: no testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that
Speaker 1: he took methlicalin In fact, I don't think he ever
Speaker 1: said that he took methlaloquin.
Speaker 6: I respect to disagree judges.
Speaker 1: Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?
Speaker 7: It?
Speaker 8: Previously on the War within and Iraq, I see what
Speaker 8: looked at me, the purple ghosts.
Speaker 1: The best explanation for these delusions is chronic and mefic invoice.
Speaker 8: I started having headaches after my second tour.
Speaker 9: If you get a traumatic fright injury, you kind of
Speaker 9: lose parts of yourself and you become really disinhibited.
Speaker 6: You know about the time that bails the shit out
Speaker 6: of that jingle truck driver.
Speaker 5: Right is running around with a chicken with the fucking
Speaker 5: head coo.
Speaker 8: And I think you have to carry a little bit
Speaker 8: of a swagger to say, and I'm gonna be all right.
Speaker 8: Not only are gonna be all right, We're gonna kill
Speaker 8: that bastard.
Speaker 3: I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert
Speaker 3: Bayles story. For the past seven years, Robert Bales and
Speaker 3: John Mayer have been trying just about everything in order
Speaker 3: to give the convicted war criminal who sentenced to life,
Speaker 3: a second chance, but thus far, the American legal system
Speaker 3: has not looked favorably upon them. In twenty seventeen, they
Speaker 3: lost their appeal with the army. Since then, they've tried
Speaker 3: to make the argument in various civilian courts.
Speaker 2: First, we find ourselves in the United States District Court
Speaker 2: for the District of Kansas, essentially saying that the military
Speaker 2: got it wrong. We lost in the District Court in Kansas,
Speaker 2: so we filed an appeal to the US Court of
Speaker 2: Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which sits in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3: At the time of our interview with him, mar was
Speaker 3: still waiting to hear back on a decision from the
Speaker 3: judges in Colorado. The attorney expressed cautious optimism that the
Speaker 3: powers that be would give their case a fair look.
Speaker 2: At the very conclusion of the case, I should judge,
Speaker 2: you know, how do we let this lie?
Speaker 6: You got to get to the merits of the case.
Speaker 2: And I believe, not to quote him, but in other words,
Speaker 2: Judge or Bial noted, he says, well, I believe he
Speaker 2: might be right. You know, if the government ordered Bails
Speaker 2: to take a poison, he took the poison, and he
Speaker 2: was an otherwise acquitted himself beautifully under fire and under
Speaker 2: duty for the previous forty eight months in infantry combat
Speaker 2: a close quarters combat. What explains this departure and behaviors?
Speaker 3: On May eleventh, twenty twenty three, the Colorado Court announced
Speaker 3: its decision against Staff Sergeant Bales. If you ask Mar,
Speaker 3: the reasons for this rejection are complicated. For starters, Batals
Speaker 3: waived some of his rights when he pled guilty. But
Speaker 3: there's another, potentially more controversial explanation for what's happening here.
Speaker 3: If the military admits that mef luquin was responsible for
Speaker 3: the Canahar massacre, it begs the question what other criminal
Speaker 3: acts could have been caused by this purportedly harmful drug.
Speaker 5: If there are.
Speaker 2: Soldiers out there that may have committed a sexual assault,
Speaker 2: if they're soldiers out there who have done physical assault,
Speaker 2: you know, or attempted murders that are convicted right now,
Speaker 2: and ultimately it turns out that they were ordered to
Speaker 2: take meflquin. Well, it's a very strong precedent to undo
Speaker 2: a lot of convictions. I think the United States would
Speaker 2: probably want to avoid a victory. You're not going to
Speaker 2: open up the floodgates, but they're also going to have
Speaker 2: an eye on the horizon, saying holy.
Speaker 3: Cow, Manars made this point again and again. The US
Speaker 3: military protects itself. That's why when he takes on a
Speaker 3: case like this, he doesn't always count on winning the
Speaker 3: legal battle. But there are multiple ways to advocate for
Speaker 3: a man like Robert Bales.
Speaker 2: Most of the time when we catch an appeal, we
Speaker 2: begin with a multifaceted approach.
Speaker 5: It's not just the court.
Speaker 2: We're going to try to do everything that we can
Speaker 2: to get the word out.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, that strategy even included asking President Donald
Speaker 3: Trump for a full, unconditional pardon. At the time, Bob
Speaker 3: expressed that he felt a pardon was the only way
Speaker 3: he'd ever leave prison.
Speaker 8: I believe the legal system is so screwed up in
Speaker 8: the country that the Supreme Court is not going to
Speaker 8: hear this case. The only chance I have is the
Speaker 8: same guy who's an outsider to the government right now,
Speaker 8: and I believe that's President Trump.
Speaker 3: He's the only hope I have. It wasn't a total
Speaker 3: long shot. Mahner has been successful at getting clients released
Speaker 3: by Trump during his tenure in office. As his presidential
Speaker 3: term drew to a close, Bales's request for a harden
Speaker 3: put his name back in the headlines, which was news
Speaker 3: that his former colleagues, like Private Gavin Jones, were not
Speaker 3: thrilled to receive.
Speaker 10: And I'm like, holy shit, that blew me away that
Speaker 10: if he was just gonna I'm not gonna say weezel
Speaker 10: out of it, because trust me out.
Speaker 6: I'm sure the guy does.
Speaker 10: Have a traumatic brain injury, but that doesn't, you know,
Speaker 10: still cover you from being a fucking total piece of shit.
Speaker 6: To be honest, it did really rub.
Speaker 10: Me the wrong way, and I was surprised that people's
Speaker 10: memories were got short.
Speaker 11: The idea that Bails should be vindicated of his crimes
Speaker 11: or granted clemency is just crazy to me.
Speaker 3: That's James Alexander, another private who's served under Bales.
Speaker 11: Here's the guy who has killed people in the past,
Speaker 11: and he may get a pardon.
Speaker 5: I don't need to sleep like that.
Speaker 3: In the end, Trump never granted the former staff sergeant
Speaker 3: of pardon, and as of twenty twenty three, it remains
Speaker 3: questionable whether another president has the potential to be as
Speaker 3: sympathetic to Baiales's plight.
Speaker 2: We're not necessarily asking president for pardon anymore, and that's
Speaker 2: our sensitivity and assessment of this administration. Is there not
Speaker 2: necessarily going to be as amenable to good order and
Speaker 2: discipline in the military. I don't believe mister Biden or
Speaker 2: Miss Harris would ever do it.
Speaker 3: With Bob's chances at freedom shrinking with each passing year,
Speaker 3: it can be challenging to hang on to a sense
Speaker 3: of hope, and yet his wife, Carrie Bales, still can't
Speaker 3: help but try.
Speaker 12: My goal is to get him home right so that
Speaker 12: we can be a family. There's nothing more precious than time.
Speaker 12: So for me, it's about yes, I believe that punishment
Speaker 12: was in order, right, I get them, It's.
Speaker 5: Just how long?
Speaker 6: How long do we need to make him suffer?
Speaker 12: Based on all of that, we now know it's just
Speaker 12: time to let him come home, let.
Speaker 7: Our warriors hold.
Speaker 6: We let all of them go from Gimo. You know,
Speaker 6: we let the terrorists go and not to go back
Speaker 6: to wherever.
Speaker 7: They were from.
Speaker 12: So why are we keeping our own American soldiers away
Speaker 12: from their families?
Speaker 13: Of course, my dad being in prison affects my everyday life,
Speaker 13: my mom's every day life, my brother's every day life,
Speaker 13: and really our family every day life in a.
Speaker 3: Hole in recent years, carrying Bob's teenage daughter Quincy has
Speaker 3: joined the cause, doing what she can to help her father.
Speaker 13: I think that as I get older, I want to
Speaker 13: be more involved kind of with sharing the story more
Speaker 13: because people think that this whole story is outlandish and crazy.
Speaker 13: But I think that once people finally get some facts
Speaker 13: and can see it in front of them, then that's
Speaker 13: really important. So I'm going to start helping run social media.
Speaker 13: My goal is to just start getting it out there.
Speaker 3: That advocacy includes speaking at events such as a political
Speaker 3: convention that took place in Louisiana in the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 13: In Louisiana, our trip that we took, get a table
Speaker 13: set up, we had information, we had papers, We kind
Speaker 13: of stood at the tables, and we just educated people.
Speaker 13: People would come up to us ask this question. If
Speaker 13: I have a voice, then I should share it.
Speaker 3: If you're a convicted murderer who wants your case to
Speaker 3: be reviewed, it can help if the American public is
Speaker 3: on your side. Just ask Adnan Sayed, the subject of
Speaker 3: the popular serial podcast. After over twenty years of imprisonment
Speaker 3: and renewed attention from the media, Sayed was released from
Speaker 3: his incarceration. Balsers tried to tell his story his way
Speaker 3: once before. In twenty fifteen, two years after his conviction,
Speaker 3: he spoke with journalist Brendan Vaughan for a piece that
Speaker 3: would run in GQ magazine.
Speaker 14: The first I've heard of the Conda Har massacre, as
Speaker 14: it was pretty quickly dubbed, if I remember correctly, it
Speaker 14: was on the front page of the Times, and I
Speaker 14: just immediately my I just went right to it. It
Speaker 14: raised questions about the state of mind of our soldiers
Speaker 14: and the impact of fighting such a long war. I mean,
Speaker 14: there was definitely a sense, as I recall it, you know,
Speaker 14: of why are we still there? What is the impact
Speaker 14: on our soldiers of being still there? What is the
Speaker 14: impact on our country of still being there? If I
Speaker 14: remember correctly, I mean, you know, there wasn't even much
Speaker 14: news coming out of Afghanistan. The public had certainly moved on.
Speaker 3: In the immediate aftermath of his attacks. Bales' saga was
Speaker 3: covered extensively by the media, but then it left the
Speaker 3: news cycle, and talking to a magazine writer like Vaughn,
Speaker 3: Robert Bales had a natural motive for bringing his name
Speaker 3: back into the zeitgeist.
Speaker 14: He wanted to tell his story in a way that
Speaker 14: he felt like he had been unable to get it
Speaker 14: out prior to that. It was pretty clear that he
Speaker 14: wanted the article to humanize him. We talked about a
Speaker 14: lot of different things, not just what he did in Afghania,
Speaker 14: but his life, his upbringing, his wife, his children, his jobs.
Speaker 14: But there was definitely a heaviness to the way that
Speaker 14: he came across.
Speaker 11: He was a pretty serious presence on the.
Speaker 14: Phone, and what he had done was pretty serious, and
Speaker 14: he didn't deny any of it, so he talked about
Speaker 14: it in a really direct way. Every time I got
Speaker 14: off the phone. It was still just chilling to have
Speaker 14: talked to somebody that was convicted of his massacre.
Speaker 3: Many of the topics covered in this podcast also come
Speaker 3: up in the written piece, an id explosion several days
Speaker 3: prior to the murders, growing paranoia at the VSP. Bails's
Speaker 3: explanation for what he had done has also remained constant
Speaker 3: up to a point.
Speaker 14: He firmly believed that the people that he was going
Speaker 14: after were Taliban.
Speaker 8: They were not innocent civilians, all of them.
Speaker 14: He didn't say that the children were, that the women were,
Speaker 14: but that the men involved were, and that he felt
Speaker 14: that these people represented a threat to him and the
Speaker 14: other soldiers on his base.
Speaker 3: At no point in the GQ piece is the term
Speaker 3: methyl queen even referenced. Nobody ever told Vaughn that the
Speaker 3: drug could have been important to the story.
Speaker 14: The anti malarial drug that he was on.
Speaker 8: I was aware of it.
Speaker 5: It was a thing that was really kind of deep
Speaker 5: in the background.
Speaker 14: Though lots of soldiers were taking this medication at the time,
Speaker 14: there was nothing unique about Bails having taken it. He
Speaker 14: didn't emphasize it at all. I mean, he might not
Speaker 14: even even mentioned it at the time. That doesn't mean
Speaker 14: it's not true. I don't know, but the one thing
Speaker 14: I can say for sure is that it was a
Speaker 14: very minor factor. Back in twenty fifteen, the GQ article
Speaker 14: was titled Robert Bale Speaks, Confessions of America's most notorious
Speaker 14: war criminal.
Speaker 3: After it was published on October twenty first, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: it was up to the public to determine and how
Speaker 3: they felt.
Speaker 14: I think that the piece was received as something that
Speaker 14: had never been told fully because the versions that had
Speaker 14: been told had never incorporated Bails's version in a meaningful way.
Speaker 14: But it was widely read, and I certainly got a
Speaker 14: lot of like appreciative feedback about it that you know,
Speaker 14: I'm glad the story is out there.
Speaker 3: Not long after the story was released, John Marr joined
Speaker 3: the staff Sergeant's defense team.
Speaker 2: I think that in a full three sixty treatment of
Speaker 2: the issues. But the GQ article didn't have the information
Speaker 2: that we have. That's because we weren't on the key
Speaker 2: shit and we hadn't discovered it, we hadn't worked it.
Speaker 3: Not everybody loved the piece. Private James Alexander felt that
Speaker 3: it was skewed towards Bob Bailes's perspective and away from
Speaker 3: the facts.
Speaker 11: Bails writes an article for GQ that isn't vetted. We
Speaker 11: didn't get talked to at all. There are people enlisted
Speaker 11: in the article. For example, at the time he was
Speaker 11: my roommate. Doc Orciello was never contacted about the article,
Speaker 11: but there he is in the pages of GQ. I
Speaker 11: could go point by point on the GQ article and
Speaker 11: like refute some of the stuff.
Speaker 14: The article was to be clear like fact checked to
Speaker 14: within an inch of its life. I mean, it was
Speaker 14: very very thoroughly fact checked over a period of weeks.
Speaker 14: It might have even been more than a month that
Speaker 14: the fact checker just worked it every day. We addressed
Speaker 14: it with attribution as much as we possibly could, by
Speaker 14: making clear what came from other places and what came
Speaker 14: from Bales himself.
Speaker 7: It was fortunate timing that my counterpoint came out in
Speaker 7: the Daily Beast shortly after the GQ article came out.
Speaker 3: Captain Danny Fields, the senior man at VSP Bellmby, also
Speaker 3: spoke to a journalist to express his point of view
Speaker 3: on the Candahar massacre.
Speaker 5: I wanted an outlet.
Speaker 7: I think anyone in that situation would probably feel they'd
Speaker 7: ask the question, could I have done something to have
Speaker 7: prevented that? You know, looking back, maybe I did it
Speaker 7: because it was kind of a defense of myself.
Speaker 3: Many of the soldiers in and the Canahar masker really
Speaker 3: care about how the incident and their involvement in it
Speaker 3: is remembered and perceived. Yes, they want to make sure
Speaker 3: that the American public knows the whole story, But in
Speaker 3: certain instances they also seem to be delivering messages specifically
Speaker 3: to their former colleagues in the US military.
Speaker 14: Bals wanted to make it really clear how sorry he
Speaker 14: was to his fellow soldiers for the dishonor that he
Speaker 14: had brought upon them in his mind, and for the
Speaker 14: tragic errors that he made in both judgment and action
Speaker 14: and perpetrating this massacre. He expressed far more emotion for
Speaker 14: the soldiers that he felt he let down than the
Speaker 14: people that he killed.
Speaker 3: We've established that prior to March eleventh, twenty twelve, Robert
Speaker 3: Bales was known for being an elite soldier. We spoke
Speaker 3: with Nick Beasley, a former executive officer who oversaw Bales's
Speaker 3: platoon in Afghanistan, and gave a very positive review of
Speaker 3: this performance. As a noncommissioned officer also known as an NCO.
Speaker 15: Bob is the best NCO I ever worked with as
Speaker 15: far as getting stuff done and understanding the intent. He
Speaker 15: understood war better than people that wore uniforms in our unit.
Speaker 15: But the bomb I knew that the bomb I know
Speaker 15: that still exists. Cares deeply about his soldiers, and that
Speaker 15: was one of the things we had heard that he
Speaker 15: was worried about his soldiers safety. I think everything he
Speaker 15: did came from a place and a desire to take
Speaker 15: care of his ment.
Speaker 8: I was the guy that people turned to bring their
Speaker 8: loved ones back home.
Speaker 3: This reputation as a warrior and a protector. That's always
Speaker 3: been a point of pride for bails.
Speaker 8: I still remember a guy's wife on my last tour
Speaker 8: coming up and getting me a hug before before we left,
Speaker 8: and she's like, you know, bring them back home, you know.
Speaker 8: And they asked First Arm Bigham why they sent people
Speaker 8: where they sent and he said, you know, they said
Speaker 8: bell and By was bad, and I sent my best
Speaker 8: guy to bellum By.
Speaker 3: This idea that Baiales was the best has been central
Speaker 3: to his defense strategy, both legally and in the press.
Speaker 3: For instance, Bailes claims that he was so highly regarded
Speaker 3: that he was responsible for preparing his own soldiers for
Speaker 3: combat in Afghanistan.
Speaker 8: I'm given pretty much free reign to choose my training.
Speaker 16: You know.
Speaker 8: I still have to follow rules and regulations, but at
Speaker 8: the end of the day, I'm given a lot of
Speaker 8: latitude to plan my own training.
Speaker 3: James Alexander was one of the soldiers being trained by Bailes.
Speaker 3: He didn't feel like their squad was ready for battle.
Speaker 11: We did not have experience. I went through SRP with Baals,
Speaker 11: but you're ready in this protocol. So he was right
Speaker 11: next to me and he's like, Oh, you don't have
Speaker 11: to go to this one.
Speaker 5: Oh you don't have to go to that one.
Speaker 11: But again, this is his fourth deployment, so I'm like,
Speaker 11: maybe he's giving me some inside knowledge here, like maybe
Speaker 11: he just knows, like it's his all bs.
Speaker 5: It's like check the block training.
Speaker 11: But it's still as a brand new soldier, I'm putting
Speaker 11: my faith in Rob Bails versus the process.
Speaker 5: And that's the issue. It's like he thought he was
Speaker 5: above the process.
Speaker 11: It was really interesting to see how unprepared we were
Speaker 11: to go into ball and body and also how unprepared.
Speaker 5: Our leadership was.
Speaker 11: I mean, those guys were like they had no clue
Speaker 11: where we were going, what we were doing.
Speaker 5: You know what we should even be.
Speaker 11: Training for the job was just to get in there
Speaker 11: and you'll get OJT on the job training, and so
Speaker 11: like that's what it became.
Speaker 3: Private Gavin Jones was brand new to the military in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. Like Alexander. He remembers that the special Forces
Speaker 3: at the VSP prepared him for combat more than his
Speaker 3: own infantry leaders.
Speaker 6: And C's never really taught me anything. I really didn't
Speaker 6: really know.
Speaker 10: It's basically all the SF guys that would teach us
Speaker 10: like as we went. In fact, I received more firearm
Speaker 10: training from those SF guys than I ever did from Bails.
Speaker 3: Combining unproven guys like Gavin with elite special forces is
Speaker 3: not a common practice in the US military. This dynamic
Speaker 3: allowed infantry troops Jones, Alexander, and the unnamed Silver Acts
Speaker 3: to enjoy a much more relaxed environment than usual on
Speaker 3: their deployment.
Speaker 10: You're backing up SF guys, and those guys procedurally do
Speaker 10: whatever they want to do, so you know you are
Speaker 10: following fairly.
Speaker 6: I was blessed to have a super dope deployment in
Speaker 6: that regard.
Speaker 16: There was no real uniform standard, grew facial hair. It
Speaker 16: just it wasn't your typical shape every day make sure
Speaker 16: uniforms pristine. It was, Hey, we know, will come in
Speaker 16: this hellhole and we're gonna throw some clothes and go
Speaker 16: to work.
Speaker 11: I'm eating steaks in the middle of in the middle
Speaker 11: of nowhere, like this is I'm eating better here than
Speaker 11: I was back home, and we haven't earned any of
Speaker 11: those rights. We tried to grow beards, you know, and
Speaker 11: tried to fit in, but the reality is those guys
Speaker 11: were so far and above and away like more competent
Speaker 11: in the jobs that we.
Speaker 3: Were in the armed forces. The culture is set by
Speaker 3: the people at the top of the chain. At VSP
Speaker 3: Bellam by Joe's like Alexander were under the command of
Speaker 3: Robbert Bales along with his fellow leaders.
Speaker 11: But became like an incredibly toxic environment. Uh, incredibly toxic
Speaker 11: as far as the NCOs. I didn't trust him as
Speaker 11: far as I could throw them. And so that was
Speaker 11: kind of the situation that I think Fields was kind
Speaker 11: of dealt. I'm sure he was pissed because he's expecting,
Speaker 11: you know, some great NCOs that are here, and he
Speaker 11: got essentially what seemed to be sort.
Speaker 5: Of the bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 11: We had one guy that all he could do was PT.
Speaker 5: That was it.
Speaker 11: I mean, he was a fantastic runner, and that made
Speaker 11: him a fantastic leader, right, And it was like there's
Speaker 11: a complete disconnect here between like being able to run
Speaker 11: and being able to lead guys. There was another guy
Speaker 11: who flat out was drunk almost all the time, would
Speaker 11: show up late to PT almost all the time because
Speaker 11: he was drunk, right, Like, we had guys that were, you.
Speaker 3: Know, outwardly racist James Alexander is half black. He was
Speaker 3: one of the only people of color on the American
Speaker 3: side at the VSP.
Speaker 5: Bals is a racist.
Speaker 11: I was singing in the shower and you know, singing
Speaker 11: hip hop music, and he's like, who's that nigger in
Speaker 11: there singing? You know, like okay, first of all, we're
Speaker 11: using words like okay, what are you using the the er?
Speaker 5: Okay? Nice?
Speaker 11: Nice, you know, and it's like this was you know
Speaker 11: what he would say, but when he saw it was me,
Speaker 11: he was like, oh sorry, It's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.
Speaker 5: How about that fails.
Speaker 10: He'd have his off the cuffs remarks about like minorities
Speaker 10: and like people of color.
Speaker 6: He thought might have been like joking in that sense.
Speaker 10: I know for Frank McLaughlin was a stands of racist
Speaker 10: shit around and Bals would say some shit too, but again, yeah,
Speaker 10: they'd dress it up with vail of.
Speaker 6: Comedy or you know, camaraderie if you will.
Speaker 5: He was menacing with it.
Speaker 11: He was just a at times, he's a really menacing,
Speaker 11: mean bastard. And unfortunately he also had the ability to
Speaker 11: abused power because he's in an authority position.
Speaker 3: Speaking as a former infantryman, hearing that a soldiers made
Speaker 3: racist comments, that doesn't exactly shock me. Prejudice runs rampant
Speaker 3: in the US military. Many soldiers like to treat the
Speaker 3: service like a locker room. As Captain Fields can attest.
Speaker 7: It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, you know, some
Speaker 7: things might have been said. Not that I'm condoning it,
Speaker 7: but I think that's very normal in the military.
Speaker 6: People say a lot of stupid shit. Did I hear
Speaker 6: any of that?
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 3: David Wesley, a black veteran who served two tours with Bails,
Speaker 3: refutes this idea that Bails discriminated against African Americans.
Speaker 17: The army is very racist, but Bob wasn't racist, not
Speaker 17: though some of the people that he chose to be
Speaker 17: friends with were, But Bob wasn't that way. I was
Speaker 17: one of like nine people in the Italian that were black,
Speaker 17: and so you can imagine what that was like.
Speaker 5: But Bob made sure it wasn't like that with him.
Speaker 17: I remember when I brought my brother to the barracks,
Speaker 17: Bob was there, was his roommate in his roommate said
Speaker 17: something stupid because he was shit faced drunk.
Speaker 5: That was along the racial line.
Speaker 17: But Bob kind of mushed him into the chair and
Speaker 17: was like, bro, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3: Still, James Alexander knows what he heard and what he saw.
Speaker 3: He's confident that Bales felt superior to other races, not
Speaker 3: just Black Americans, but Afghans too.
Speaker 11: When you come from a you know, a time that
Speaker 11: Beals did, in a place that he did, racism is
Speaker 11: kind of sort of a way of life, and so
Speaker 11: it gave Bails the ability to be like, you know,
Speaker 11: i may be a lot of bad things, but at
Speaker 11: least I'm not black.
Speaker 5: At least I'm not an Afghan.
Speaker 8: People always think that, you know, they automatically assume that
Speaker 8: I just like Muslim people, right like that that's an assumption.
Speaker 8: You know, I'll get letters from people and they'll say
Speaker 8: stuff like that, and I would like to think, and
Speaker 8: I know it's true that we as American soldiers help
Speaker 8: more Muslim people than we heard. You know, how many
Speaker 8: people would we take food too, how many people we
Speaker 8: take water to? Our perspective is skewed. Now understand that
Speaker 8: we're trying to add American values to you know, people
Speaker 8: that may not want American values.
Speaker 3: Some of Bales's comments across our eighteen hours of interviews
Speaker 3: seem to indicate that he wasn't always comfortable as an
Speaker 3: American immersed in Afghan culture. Here he is talking about
Speaker 3: the Muslim prayers that were regularly chanted around I rock
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: They call the prayers.
Speaker 8: They're they're scary originally because you don't know what it is,
Speaker 8: you know, allah far. You know, in my mind, it
Speaker 8: immediately clicks some negative connotation, and maybe it's a fear
Speaker 8: for me.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's whatever it is.
Speaker 8: But you know, you hear the call to prayer, yeah,
Speaker 8: which is played over the speakers, it's.
Speaker 5: It drowns out every other sound around.
Speaker 8: It's something that I feared just because it was different.
Speaker 3: This any fear is problematic for a soldier who's supposed
Speaker 3: to be allied with certain factions of Afghans. But even
Speaker 3: then that's like Panhue podcast host Curtis Grace will argue
Speaker 3: that a certain degree of racial profiling is necessary to
Speaker 3: being a good soldier.
Speaker 9: If there was any ever kind of negative feelings towards
Speaker 9: the Afghan people, it's because we knew that a good
Speaker 9: portion of them were trying to kill us.
Speaker 5: I know a lot of guys struggled with this idea.
Speaker 9: Is like, well, fuck the civilians, they're all future Taliban
Speaker 9: or they're already Taliban. And I struggle with that a
Speaker 9: little bit too. Nobody's one hundred percent good on either spectrum.
Speaker 9: It's just like, are the civilians really all Taliban? Obviously
Speaker 9: the answers no, but it's kind of hard to say that.
Speaker 3: Part of Bales's mission in Panjue was to distinguish the
Speaker 3: innocent Afghans from the enemy Taliban. This was a major
Speaker 3: adjustment for the staff sergeant. We spent several years on
Speaker 3: the offensive under shock and all guidelines in Iraq.
Speaker 8: You know, we did a thing where we gave thirty
Speaker 8: family food for thirty days. So we'd take them rice
Speaker 8: and grain and other things and we'd take them out
Speaker 8: there like cooking oil, and we would hand it out
Speaker 8: in these local villages, humanitarian aid kind of thing. But
Speaker 8: the truth is I really didn't trust them at all.
Speaker 8: You know, they're being kind to us, Are they really
Speaker 8: being kind to us? Are they really just going to
Speaker 8: stab me in the back?
Speaker 3: Sol Drax theorizes that his senior and CEO had a
Speaker 3: skewed perspective about what their squad was trying to accomplish
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan.
Speaker 16: Thank you often to this final one, Amy isback. I
Speaker 16: think all he saw was, man, I just want to
Speaker 16: go and beat this badass and kick down doors when
Speaker 16: I'm going to take care of business and do is
Speaker 16: just because we're badass, just because we want to go
Speaker 16: and hurt people. We have an angle in mind of
Speaker 16: establishing this place to be a good place. I don't
Speaker 16: think Bill saw that.
Speaker 11: It was incredibly disheartening to see the risks that were
Speaker 11: taking for no reason.
Speaker 5: Our first patrol, he had us trying to kill a
Speaker 5: guy on a bike. There's a guy on a bike rolling.
Speaker 11: Up and he's like, shoot that guy, and we're like,
Speaker 11: uh no, no, not letting this dude. Then he starts
Speaker 11: calling us faggots for not also firing our weapons.
Speaker 8: Did not shooting your weapon, You're a fag. I understood
Speaker 8: that at any time we could do whatever we wanted
Speaker 8: on a battlefield, and it was only the politicians, the officers,
Speaker 8: whoever is creating these rules are engagement that we're holding
Speaker 8: us back.
Speaker 11: He really really wanted to be involved in the kill.
Speaker 5: He really wanted to kill.
Speaker 11: Any other time we would engage someone, he would be
Speaker 11: the first one there. He would be the one trying
Speaker 11: to make the shot among the lower enlisted. I mean
Speaker 11: we're brothers, shared experiences, the things you go through. We
Speaker 11: were above and beyond tight and that's because we all
Speaker 11: had a common enemy. And it wasn't the Afghan, it
Speaker 11: was Bails.
Speaker 3: Luke Coffee is another veteran who co hosts the Panchway
Speaker 3: podcast with Curtis Grace. He has plenty of experience with
Speaker 3: NCOs who fit the mold of Robert Bales.
Speaker 18: I think that people like Bobby Bails are probably inherently broken,
Speaker 18: and they're like the specific kind of personality that can
Speaker 18: squeeze into the power structure and within that minute power
Speaker 18: the squad leader, you have a little bit of wiggle
Speaker 18: room to be a real toxic casshole to the people
Speaker 18: underneath you.
Speaker 11: We were all the victims of our NCOs, essentially their
Speaker 11: application of leadership, their inability to do the right thing.
Speaker 11: Like there were small things that happened over and over
Speaker 11: again where it was the joes, you know, the lower enlisted,
Speaker 11: were the ones that would band together and get stuff done.
Speaker 3: It wasn't long before the Special Forces took notice of
Speaker 3: the strange dynamic on the base. As Gavin Jones recalls.
Speaker 10: They weren't as patient, shall I say, with Bails and
Speaker 10: just some of his maneuvers and the way he went
Speaker 10: about things or just a weirdo vibe.
Speaker 6: I don't think they invited him into club. Cool guy.
Speaker 3: And after Bails on a whim hunch n Afkan truck driver,
Speaker 3: the SF began to marginalize his role and weaken his power.
Speaker 10: Bails beat the shit out that jingle truck driver right
Speaker 10: like his first like words are like, oh man, like
Speaker 10: what are they gonna do to me?
Speaker 6: You think I was gonna be okay, Like, don't say
Speaker 6: anything to the guys. What are we gonna tell them?
Speaker 6: He was talking about the guys, talking about the SF crew.
Speaker 5: If I remember.
Speaker 10: Correctly, that's when some of the SF guys started questioning
Speaker 10: us about Bails, about like.
Speaker 6: Hey, is that guy like all right, like what's up
Speaker 6: with him?
Speaker 10: That's when he started publicly becoming a little bit more unhinged,
Speaker 10: being a lot more insecure about his position. He felt
Speaker 10: like he was being excluded from certain meetings. I'm sure
Speaker 10: that he was, so yeah, there's probably just aided into
Speaker 10: his decline.
Speaker 3: In contrast to some of the infantry joes, Denie Fields,
Speaker 3: the SF captain didn't speak critically of Baals as a
Speaker 3: soldier during our interview.
Speaker 6: Bill's was just.
Speaker 5: Kind of a normal person.
Speaker 7: Nothing really stuck out to me that he was much
Speaker 7: different anyway generally.
Speaker 6: You know, I didn't have a lot of interaction.
Speaker 7: With Bals, but there was nothing that really surfaced, that
Speaker 7: was brought to my attention that would have made me
Speaker 7: consider that he needed to be removed from that position
Speaker 7: or that he was not fit for that position.
Speaker 3: As he sits in Fort Levenworth's prison, Baals doesn't speak
Speaker 3: negatively of Fields in the SF, even though he didn't
Speaker 3: always agree with their decisions during combat.
Speaker 8: I'm not going to talk negative about those guys because
Speaker 8: I think they looking back on it, I think they
Speaker 8: had a front mission set. They didn't want to be
Speaker 8: that aggressive.
Speaker 5: They wanted to.
Speaker 8: Kind of sit back, and they had us saying, you know,
Speaker 8: ten fingers, ten toes, everybody comes back home alive. But
Speaker 8: they had set an example that we were going to
Speaker 8: let the towelban flee and we weren't going to kill them,
Speaker 8: which emboldens them.
Speaker 3: As the top dogs at the VSP. The Special Forces
Speaker 3: had the leeway to make unilateral decisions, some of them
Speaker 3: were allowed to potentially jeopardize their own safety. James Alexander
Speaker 3: explains that.
Speaker 11: We had SF guys that would walk out at night
Speaker 11: alone to try to build rapport with the locals. This guy,
Speaker 11: he was ANSF guy, obviously spoke the language and he
Speaker 11: looked the part, you know. He would walk around in
Speaker 11: the village and he would come back with intel.
Speaker 3: This is major. According to Alexander, Bails was not the
Speaker 3: first person to leave the base without warning during this deployment.
Speaker 3: What's more, Executive Officer Beasley posited that there were ways
Speaker 3: for the SSA to make impromptu actions seem like planned
Speaker 3: official business. While in Afghanistan.
Speaker 15: We actually had one of our officers that went out
Speaker 15: to a site where there was an SF guy doing
Speaker 15: black ops, where he would go out and do whatever
Speaker 15: he wanted. He'd come back and he'd ride to the
Speaker 15: off order and say, hey, we're going to go do this,
Speaker 15: but it had already been done. He killed all the
Speaker 15: people he needed to kill and came back.
Speaker 11: I mean, I've talked with journalists before and they'd been like, yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean, we can't talk about this because the DoD
Speaker 11: will be like, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 5: There was all kinds of other activities going on. I mean,
Speaker 5: ESF guys.
Speaker 11: Would go support seals that were doing direct action missions
Speaker 11: in the area.
Speaker 5: I was just it was surreal.
Speaker 3: We spent a lot of time parsing through the possible
Speaker 3: reasons that Bales would have walked off the VSP. Was
Speaker 3: it a methlicuin hallucination mixed with alcohol, steroids, sleeping pills,
Speaker 3: and a history of TBI or could he have simply
Speaker 3: been trying to emulate the soldiers above him before everything
Speaker 3: went horribly wrong. Let's flash back to March tenth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: two hours before the cand of harm massacre begins.
Speaker 8: I go see the guy that is if responsible for
Speaker 8: the VSP and I pretty much tell him. I'm like,
Speaker 8: hey man, we need to go do something. And he said, basically,
Speaker 8: you know, mind your own lane. It saysn't your business,
Speaker 8: go to sleep, worry about your lane.
Speaker 5: This is our lane. Screw you.
Speaker 8: But I think I can get out there, see what
Speaker 8: it is, make a difference and get.
Speaker 3: Back in the infantry. Individuality is discouraged. Follow orders, listen
Speaker 3: to your superior officer or Robert Bayale seemed to struggle
Speaker 3: with conforming, which ultimately may have led to his undoing.
Speaker 8: When you are in the army, you all look to say,
Speaker 8: you all act to say across the board, and so
Speaker 8: I personally kind of fought against that. I didn't like that.
Speaker 8: Why can't I do everything that everybody's doing, plus be
Speaker 8: myself a little bit? I understand now why it's done
Speaker 8: the way it's done.
Speaker 3: Coming up on the war within.
Speaker 2: Before Bob, when the army, he was in the stockbroken business.
Speaker 8: I really wanted to be successful. We bought a bank
Speaker 8: out of West Virginia, and in September of nineteen ninety
Speaker 8: nine they shut the bank down.
Speaker 16: Was a charge of war, sums of money for people,
Speaker 16: and the ultimately lost it all.
Speaker 8: When September eleventh happened. It was a way to give back.
Speaker 8: People weren't doing the right thing around him, and he
Speaker 8: had to take blame for that.
Speaker 6: If I'm conducting an investigation and all the witnesses say
Speaker 6: the exact same thing, I got a problem.
Speaker 11: The crimes that were committed at each location were vastly different.
Speaker 6: Sometimes people misplace events in trauma. They can't quite figure
Speaker 6: out the sequence of events.
Speaker 5: Bob didn't do this on his own. He had help.
Speaker 3: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story as production of
Speaker 3: Bungalow Median Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in
Speaker 3: partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
Speaker 3: producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers for Bungalow
Speaker 3: Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
Speaker 3: podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and hosted
Speaker 3: by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoverman,
Speaker 3: sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
Speaker 3: an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Speaker 3: Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
Speaker 3: Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpi, and Meerwi Satall, as
Speaker 3: well as all of the people who were interviewed for
Speaker 3: the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
Speaker 3: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.