Speaker 1: Nobody joins the infantry to be the bad guy. Nobody
Speaker 1: joins the army after September eleventh to be the bad guy.
Speaker 2: The war in Afghanistan has been made a lot more
Speaker 2: complicated by that massacre of seventeen civilians.
Speaker 1: I wish, you know, things would be different. I saw
Speaker 1: the aftermath firsthand. You know, the idea of hurting a kid,
Speaker 1: of killing a kid.
Speaker 3: Come on, in the middle of the night, Robert Bales
Speaker 3: left his combat outpost alone and murdered sixteen Afghan civilians
Speaker 3: in cold blood.
Speaker 4: Nine of them were children.
Speaker 1: Maybe I am wrong, but you have to understand the
Speaker 1: way it went down.
Speaker 5: The United States has formally apologized for the killings, and
Speaker 5: the families of the victims were paid a total of seven.
Speaker 1: Before they even announced my name. The Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: Leon Panetta, he said, you know they're gonna give me
Speaker 1: the capital punishment. That's a pretty outstanding thing. I thought
Speaker 1: I was doing the right thing.
Speaker 4: The soldier is to face multiple murder charges, but we
Speaker 4: are learning compelling details about his troubled life and his
Speaker 4: four deployments to war zones.
Speaker 1: You can continue to get blown up, and you continue
Speaker 1: to get shot at, and you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: Had I not been in the Army, had I not
Speaker 1: been through the countless engagements. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: way possible that I could have done anything like that
Speaker 1: had it not been for all the experiences laid up
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 4: The United States Army are going to have to look
Speaker 4: at this again.
Speaker 2: Are we pushing our troops too far, too fast?
Speaker 4: And are they exposed to too much combat?
Speaker 6: You get post traumatic stress disorder from being in a
Speaker 6: car accident, and so you imagine what it would do
Speaker 6: to you if you're dragging parts of your friend's bodies around.
Speaker 1: The head trauma of the PTSD come back, and you say,
Speaker 1: almost how could it not have happened? How could I
Speaker 1: not have done this?
Speaker 2: His wife, Carolyn said, what has been reported is completely
Speaker 2: out of character of the men I know and admire.
Speaker 5: If you've met you at love and most people are
Speaker 5: blown away at how real he is, how caring he is.
Speaker 2: In a deal, Bailes pleaded guilty to premeditated murder.
Speaker 5: The judge then asked him, what was your reason for
Speaker 5: killing them? Bals replied, there's not a good reason in
Speaker 5: this world for why I did the horrible things I
Speaker 5: did I understand.
Speaker 1: Why I'm here?
Speaker 3: You know, I know our by mistakes.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 8: Because my nightmares tell me every day.
Speaker 4: My name is Mike McGinnis. This is the war within
Speaker 4: the Robert Bayles story. Between the years of twenty twelve
Speaker 4: and twenty thirteen, the story of US Army staff Sergeant
Speaker 4: Robert Baylees was well covered by the mainstream meeting.
Speaker 9: Let's get you chucked up?
Speaker 6: Get on all right, Yeah, I'm by as long as
Speaker 6: he's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Several years ago, Robert Bayle sat down for a series
Speaker 4: of exclusive interviews with a documentarian, Paul Plowski. He's the
Speaker 4: guy with the deep voice in New Jersey accent.
Speaker 6: Just through and just on top. All right.
Speaker 4: Well, if I say something stupid, you look good. The
Speaker 4: other voice is John Mayer, Bail's appellet lawyer Mars, trying
Speaker 4: to help Baals get home to his wife, Carrie and
Speaker 4: their two kids.
Speaker 1: Any other situation is this To manage from the state forward,
Speaker 1: You're always going to have the tractors critics, but it's
Speaker 1: not critic account.
Speaker 4: Bales and mahar are having one of their regular attorney
Speaker 4: client meetings. Paul is sitting in and asking questions. They're
Speaker 4: in a private office of the United States Disciplinary Barracks
Speaker 4: and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Military Prison has been Bail's home
Speaker 4: for the past ten years. Unless something dramatically changes, he'll
Speaker 4: never leave.
Speaker 9: He's already have supporters in those value what you did.
Speaker 9: In those recognize, understand, can see that way, passed it.
Speaker 9: Whatever they have to do to get the mindset to
Speaker 9: support right, that's what we need to cast.
Speaker 4: In total, Paul collected eighteen hours worth of commentary from Bales.
Speaker 4: They discussed his case, what transpired on the night of
Speaker 4: the murders, and plenty of other revelations. Until now, nobody
Speaker 4: has heard the unfiltered story straight from the source. As
Speaker 4: for me, I spent sixteen years in the US Army,
Speaker 4: serving as an infantryman, spending thirteen of them in the
Speaker 4: eighty second Airborn in March of twenty twelve, I was
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan, about thirty miles from Bob Baals when he
Speaker 4: committed what's now known as the kandaharm Masaker. I never
Speaker 4: knew Staff Sergeant Bales, but I know this world. I
Speaker 4: know what it's like to deploy three, four, five times
Speaker 4: to fight the enemy. I was certainly no pacifist out there.
Speaker 4: But I'm also not the kind of veteran that thinks
Speaker 4: America is always the good guy. Sometimes we are, sometimes
Speaker 4: we aren't. In a situation like Robert Bals, kanaharm Masker
Speaker 4: exposes the moral ambiguities that so many soldiers face admit
Speaker 4: the fog of war. Over the next twelve episodes, we're
Speaker 4: going to take a deep dive and explore one of
Speaker 4: the most controversial, impolarizing war crimes in recent memory. Our
Speaker 4: team has conducted exhaustive interviews with Robert Bayle's fierce as
Speaker 4: supporters as well as as big as detractors. You will
Speaker 4: hear from the soldiers who's served on that faithful deployment.
Speaker 3: Everything we did was you're in bal splatoon, like that's
Speaker 3: how you identified yourself.
Speaker 4: Robert Bayales's prominent legal team.
Speaker 9: Whether or not Bob Bales shot and killed those seventeen people,
Speaker 9: he pled guilty to that to save his life, had
Speaker 9: guilty to that to take the death penalty off the table.
Speaker 9: This case smacks of institutional bias.
Speaker 4: Experts who attest this state of Bales's.
Speaker 2: Brain Baile's deployment is merely a symptom of a broken army.
Speaker 2: Its leadership was fully aware that it was scraping the
Speaker 2: bottom of the barrel and sending injured and ill service
Speaker 2: members overseas.
Speaker 4: Bals's wife Carrie.
Speaker 3: He's not just my husband, he is my best friend.
Speaker 3: My goal is to get him hold so that we
Speaker 3: can be a family.
Speaker 4: Their fifteen year old daughter, Quincy.
Speaker 3: I think that we have a great relationship.
Speaker 1: Of course, he can't be involved physically, like he's not
Speaker 1: at home and I don't wake up seeing him every morning.
Speaker 4: And even the Afghan families whose lives were forever changed
Speaker 4: by Baals' actions.
Speaker 3: When the American troops came and night, they committed brutal
Speaker 3: atrocities on us. You see, they took my whole families
Speaker 3: away from me.
Speaker 4: August twenty twenty one marked the official end the US
Speaker 4: Afghan War. Almost immediately after the Americans evacuated, Kable fell
Speaker 4: and the Taliban reclaimed control of the country. After two
Speaker 4: decades of conflict and tragedy, Almost everything is as it
Speaker 4: was after all. Geopolitically, Afghanistan is known as the land
Speaker 4: where history repeats itself.
Speaker 7: Afghanistan, it's known as the Graveyard of the Empires. Whether
Speaker 7: it was a British Empire, and then the Soviet Union
Speaker 7: and now the Americans.
Speaker 4: Kathy Gannon lived in Kable, Afghanistan for thirty five years,
Speaker 4: working as a journalist for the Associated Press.
Speaker 7: And it's not that Afghanist don't like foreigners, because they
Speaker 7: do like foreigners. They like foreigners very much, but they
Speaker 7: do not like foreigners who come in to subjugate them.
Speaker 7: Then the resistance has historically jailed together and they have
Speaker 7: resisted that attempt by whomever to impose their will on them.
Speaker 4: History tells us that if you're a global superpower trying
Speaker 4: to conquer Afghanistan, you're probably not going to win. So
Speaker 4: I did the US.
Speaker 7: Invade, You were attacked on nine to eleven. That's very
Speaker 7: my name to Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Afghanistan didn't topple the Twin Towers. It was Osama bin
Speaker 4: Laden and al Qaeda who committed that unthinkable act. But
Speaker 4: the Bush administration wanted to find bin Laden and he
Speaker 4: was hiding in Afghanistan. The Taliban ruled the country at
Speaker 4: the time, and they refused to cooperate with the search.
Speaker 7: The US government Post nine eleven said to Mullah Omar,
Speaker 7: the head of the Taliban hand over Osama Bin Lauden
Speaker 7: closed down all the training camps that might exist in
Speaker 7: Afghanistan and continue to exist, and we won't go in.
Speaker 3: That's what we want.
Speaker 7: From you, and we wanted from you. Now, willo Omar
Speaker 7: returned with you, give us the evidence of Osami's involvement
Speaker 7: in nine to eleven, and we will.
Speaker 9: Try him here.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: Saudi Arabia should have been real one that America should
Speaker 7: have gone to because all the hijackers were soundly for
Speaker 7: Pete six. But with Sadiya Abia I Vandosam bin Hunt
Speaker 7: to be tried and vound guilty and Sadia Arabia the
Speaker 7: greement and uprising. So on October seventh, two thousand and one,
Speaker 7: the US at Town, Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Ten years later, in twenty eleven, Seal Team six finally
Speaker 4: took out Bin Laden he was in Pakistan, but the
Speaker 4: war in Afghanistan continued. The US had already deposed a
Speaker 4: government propped up a new one. They couldn't just leave
Speaker 4: whenever they wanted.
Speaker 10: I think the situation in Afghanistan was and remained so complicated,
Speaker 10: and Robert Bales is a depiction of the complexities of this.
Speaker 4: Conflict, decorated journalist yealde Hakim was also on the ground
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan at that time.
Speaker 10: It was a twenty year war that was fought twenty
Speaker 10: times every year. The policy seemed to shift and no
Speaker 10: ground was ever gained, and no real understanding outside of
Speaker 10: Cardboll of what the games were. And I am sure
Speaker 10: for Robert Bales that platoon, the servicemen who were there,
Speaker 10: that would have crossed their minds.
Speaker 5: Daily, what are we doing here? Why are we fighting
Speaker 5: this war?
Speaker 10: And that kind of conflict between your duty and what
Speaker 10: you think you're fighting for, and then all of the
Speaker 10: misunderstandings around that. And I think that's what war brings.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Every time we go through this
Speaker 1: and we talk about it, all the events are led
Speaker 1: up to that night, I feel it again on my
Speaker 1: chest right and You're like, how the hell could anyone
Speaker 1: do that? How the hell could I go that far
Speaker 1: off track? And then I go back and I relive
Speaker 1: those days up to that, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I was still alive.
Speaker 11: To drew that.
Speaker 1: I understand how I got where I was as I
Speaker 1: stepped back weeks months coming back to the United States,
Speaker 1: not being surrounded by the culture of the environment. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a heinous act that is very difficult to judge
Speaker 1: with American eyes in America. When you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan, in the birthplace of the Tablat, where every
Speaker 1: day you're in a firefight, when every day you think
Speaker 1: that you or your friends are going to be shot
Speaker 1: or killed, you look at things differently.
Speaker 4: The year was twenty ten, two years before the incident.
Speaker 4: Bob Bales was finishing his third tour in Iraq. Like
Speaker 4: many soldiers who saw that much combat, who was mentally exhausted.
Speaker 1: I thought I was just gonna have some time to
Speaker 1: kind of relax a little bit, reset, retool, and to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I thought about being a recruiter
Speaker 1: and wanted to move down to Tampa just take a break, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, in nine years, I'm deployed, you know,
Speaker 1: three times in nine years, you know, I mean.
Speaker 4: That's a lot. At the same time, the US was
Speaker 4: in the middle of a military surge in Afghanistan. They
Speaker 4: needed all the manpower that could muster and began asking
Speaker 4: decorated Iraq vets to redeploy. So it was less than
Speaker 4: a year before Bob Bales was tapped to lead a
Speaker 4: squad for Tour number four. By then, he had already
Speaker 4: seen over three full years of deadly combat. Bales might
Speaker 4: have been an old pro, but the people placed under
Speaker 4: his command weren't nearly a season. Take Private James Alexander Man, I.
Speaker 3: Have been waiting ten years to talk about this. I'm
Speaker 3: shocked at nobody's come forward before.
Speaker 4: As Robert Bales was getting home from his third year
Speaker 4: in Iraq, James was going into basic training. He was
Speaker 4: in for a rude awakening.
Speaker 3: Twenty ten. I went to the recruiting station and I
Speaker 3: was like, I want to be in the action. I
Speaker 3: wanted the hardest job that you guys could give me.
Speaker 3: And so they were like perfect infantry, you know, and
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, perfect sounds great, you know, like
Speaker 3: another another dumb one signed up kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Going into enlistment. What did you think about the Afghan War?
Speaker 4: Because you know, you said you joined in twenty ten,
Speaker 4: we'd already been in Theeeder for nine years. What were
Speaker 4: your feelings about the war, you know, going into it?
Speaker 4: Did you think it was a good war?
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of when we got been laden
Speaker 3: March of twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, that's what was May of twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that's when I first joined the unit.
Speaker 3: So I thought like, okay, boys, war's over. We've done
Speaker 3: our thing.
Speaker 6: For me.
Speaker 3: The whole purpose was we're going to go to Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: We're gonna make this place inhospitable so that terrorists can't
Speaker 3: go there and we could protect the homeland, but also
Speaker 3: there's real problems there that we can help, like the
Speaker 3: women and children of Afghanistan and all that stuff. I
Speaker 3: thought that we by going there, we'd be doing some
Speaker 3: level of good.
Speaker 4: Bales is a platoon star when you first get there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: what kind of platoon sergeant was WASI?
Speaker 3: Bales was mom, dad, brother, uncle, sister, everything, Every single
Speaker 3: part of that platoon was him. He had been there
Speaker 3: for quite a while, I think, but more so, he
Speaker 3: had really good relationships with all of the other squad
Speaker 3: leaders and so he kind of ran the thing as
Speaker 3: he wanted to. And his job basically was to take
Speaker 3: the toughest mission, and that's the mission that we got.
Speaker 4: Bales and his squad were deployed to Panjue, Afghanistan. The
Speaker 4: region is known as the birthplace of the Taliban. There
Speaker 4: are no easy deployments in such a kinnectic area.
Speaker 1: On that fourth tour, you know, we're heading to Bellum
Speaker 1: by Afghanistan, and we know it's bad.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: We talked to the SF guys back in Candhor and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, where are you going, And we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to Belibay and they're like, oh, man, good luck.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of those things like oh, you
Speaker 1: got cancer.
Speaker 6: Good luck.
Speaker 4: Their base was known as VSP Belumbai. In the military,
Speaker 4: everything is shortened to an acronym. Special Forces becomes SF,
Speaker 4: Improvised explosive device becomes IED, so VSP is short for
Speaker 4: Village Stability Platform. They tended to be placed in areas
Speaker 4: where the Taliban had a major presence.
Speaker 3: This is one of my all time great stories. We
Speaker 3: were getting the brief and there's an SF major who's
Speaker 3: giving us the brief and he's very young. So this
Speaker 3: SF major is pointing at this board is a map
Speaker 3: of Afghanistan and basically pointing at the different vsps that
Speaker 3: we're all going to go to. And each VSP has
Speaker 3: different icons next to it, and some of like you know,
Speaker 3: small arms fire icon and you look at Bellabay and
Speaker 3: it has all the icons, just all of them, and
Speaker 3: he saved it for last, and I'll never forget. He
Speaker 3: kind of pointed at it and was like, this is
Speaker 3: VSP Ballaby. It's a big fuck you to the Taliban.
Speaker 3: That's why it's there. This is their home, this is
Speaker 3: their spiritual place. And we set up this VSP at
Speaker 3: the end of the line as a big like we
Speaker 3: are not leaving kind of situation like, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 3: to the place where the Taliban really want to take Okay,
Speaker 3: good to know, thanks sir.
Speaker 1: Check understand that originally I didn't want to go, but
Speaker 1: you have one or two choices. You either cowered out
Speaker 1: or you cowboy up. And nobody wants to go to
Speaker 1: war with a pussy. So put my head down and
Speaker 1: went as hard as I could, trying to live as
Speaker 1: much life at home as you possibly could, making sure
Speaker 1: my wife and kids knew I love them, making sure
Speaker 1: the guys told their families that, hey, you know, understand
Speaker 1: that we are being told that this was a completely
Speaker 1: different fight. The Taliban was a completely different monster than
Speaker 1: anything we had experienced in Iraq. And when in Iraq,
Speaker 1: you know there were a lot of ambush There's a
Speaker 1: lot of firefights here and there, but they would always flee.
Speaker 1: These guys, the Taliban would engage, flank and maneuver.
Speaker 6: They were different.
Speaker 1: They're good warriors. Let's just say it like that. I
Speaker 1: hate them.
Speaker 6: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't like them. I don't want to say anything
Speaker 1: positive about them. But they grew up fighting and they
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing. So going into this, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to tell you I was scared, but
Speaker 1: I was scared of death, not just for myself, but
Speaker 1: for all these new guys.
Speaker 4: James Alexander was one of those new guys. Gavin Jones
Speaker 4: was another. Sporting a thick mustache in an acoustic guitar.
Speaker 4: Gavin presents himself more like a guy who would have
Speaker 4: been protesting Vietnam decades ago and that way. In others,
Speaker 4: he couldn't have been more different than his squad leader Bails.
Speaker 12: He seemed all right, like in the beginning, a little
Speaker 12: weird like, for example, I know, even before we shipped off,
Speaker 12: he took us aside and had a conversation with about men.
Speaker 3: You know, war as hell.
Speaker 12: I know it gets weird out there I've had plenty
Speaker 12: of other deployments in Iraq, basically saying that like, if
Speaker 12: you need to make that shot and they're so in
Speaker 12: you that doesn't need to be shot, you can make
Speaker 12: that shot and know that we've got your back on that.
Speaker 12: So basically saying that we can do whatever we want
Speaker 12: as long as we can claim that we're protecting someone,
Speaker 12: or basically a blank check.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that, basically big boy rules, as he would
Speaker 3: put it.
Speaker 12: I just assumed that was just like a normal talk
Speaker 12: anyone was gonna give, you know, assuming that you're infantry,
Speaker 12: like you know, you're probably gonna do questionable things in
Speaker 12: order to make sure that your buddy, the guy next
Speaker 12: to you comes home. So I didn't really think too
Speaker 12: much of that conversation at the time, besides the fact like, hey,
Speaker 12: I'm not to go to like Afghanistan about to go
Speaker 12: into war like this, you know, weird shit happens.
Speaker 4: In early December of twenty eleven, Bails and his squad
Speaker 4: shipped off for VSB Ballumbay. There's another quirk you should
Speaker 4: know about the military's naming system. It can be kind
Speaker 4: of like the book nineteen eighty four where the Ministry
Speaker 4: of p sandels war and the Ministry of Love deals
Speaker 4: with torture. In other words, if you were going to
Speaker 4: a village stability platform, you could expect the environment to
Speaker 4: be pretty unstable.
Speaker 5: Our mission was Village Stability Operations, and you know what
Speaker 5: that means is effectively, you send smaller units out into
Speaker 5: the rural population to live with the locals, live like
Speaker 5: the locals in an effort to build trust and confidence
Speaker 5: and rapport.
Speaker 4: As the person tasked with overseeing the soldier station at
Speaker 4: VSP Bellam by Special Forces, Captain Danny Fields was in
Speaker 4: charge of stabilizing the area. It was a green berry
Speaker 4: on his third tour, a rising star by all accounts.
Speaker 5: Once that local populace trust you, essentially you partner with
Speaker 5: them to secure their own area. BEFOREVSO or Village Stability
Speaker 5: Operations was a thing, typically you had the military would
Speaker 5: all be located on a big base, right and they
Speaker 5: would go out and do maybe an overnight mission, kill
Speaker 5: some bad guys, and then come back. Problem with that is,
Speaker 5: well it's a vacuum. Bad guys would come right back
Speaker 5: into that spot. The local population didn't have any trust
Speaker 5: because they felt that the American forces were just going
Speaker 5: to show up, damage some things, get rid of some
Speaker 5: bad guys for.
Speaker 3: A little bit, and then go back home.
Speaker 5: So Vso kind of flipped that on its head. Where
Speaker 5: you live with the locals like the locals.
Speaker 4: Private Alexander didn't get a full sense of what living
Speaker 4: like the locals really meant until he was on the
Speaker 4: ground and panishway Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Probably the moment I knew that I made the biggest
Speaker 3: mistake was the trip out. So we're leaving Camp Brown
Speaker 3: and they're driving us to bell and Buy. The guys
Speaker 3: in the back of the truck were like, make sure
Speaker 3: you put your seat belt on. There's IED's everywhere, and
Speaker 3: I'm just like, uh shit, okay. And so we start,
Speaker 3: you know, we're going out. We're turning down roads and
Speaker 3: we keep making like different turns, and I'm looking out
Speaker 3: of these bulletproof windows and I just see poverty on
Speaker 3: a scale that I've never seen before. And as you
Speaker 3: got further further from the city, you would see just
Speaker 3: outposts with blown up vehicles next to him, and we
Speaker 3: kept going past those, like, oh my god, where are
Speaker 3: we going.
Speaker 1: I don't think people can understand what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in a situation like we were in Belumby like
Speaker 1: it's you know, a lot of military people, you know,
Speaker 1: they have a picture of these huge facilities with massive
Speaker 1: security compound, and that's not what Belumby was. It's a
Speaker 1: piny little place. Fifty Americans could have been overran at
Speaker 1: any point, and you're always on guard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was terrified when you got there.
Speaker 12: And of course we were getting engaged like two times
Speaker 12: a day for a pretty long time.
Speaker 4: When Gavin says getting engaged, he means getting shot at.
Speaker 4: It's another important military phrase to know and remember, Gavin
Speaker 4: and James, these guys were complete rookies being shipped to
Speaker 4: one of the deadliest locations of an endless war. Bails
Speaker 4: group wasn't all alone out there. Their mission was really
Speaker 4: to support the elite Special Forces also stationed there.
Speaker 12: The way he was to us, it's an SF operation, right,
Speaker 12: We're there to help those guys out first and foremost. Now,
Speaker 12: the SF dude's briefed us all on what a BSO
Speaker 12: is supposed to mean, you know, giving logistical support to
Speaker 12: village elders and leaders in order to help out their infrastructure.
Speaker 12: You know, because poor people are what the Taliban take
Speaker 12: advantage of. So we figured that a less hungry Afghan
Speaker 12: would be less eager to help out a Taliban.
Speaker 4: Yavin is describing a military philosophy called counterinsurgency. Politicians in
Speaker 4: the media like to call it winning hearts and minds.
Speaker 4: If you want regular Afghan civilians to support the US
Speaker 4: instead of the Taliban, then you have to develop relationships
Speaker 4: with that population. You're not allowed to shoot somebody just
Speaker 4: for looking at you sideways.
Speaker 1: The idea with the villos stability platform. As you go
Speaker 1: into these villages, you find the elders, you have them
Speaker 1: assign local police force. We train the local police force,
Speaker 1: we arm the local police force. Then we tie them
Speaker 1: back to the district. The district has now tied to
Speaker 1: the central government. The mantra is when the hearts and
Speaker 1: minds right, But people don't understand what that actually meant.
Speaker 1: Winning the hearts and minds doesn't mean that I want
Speaker 1: the Afghani people to like me. I want them to
Speaker 1: like the idea that they're going to be better off
Speaker 1: with me in control than the Taliban. But this is
Speaker 1: the heart of Taliban country. This is where bad people live, other.
Speaker 6: People that are playing those sides. Absolutely, there's absolutely buildiers
Speaker 6: that are playing tho sides, so somebody could absolutely be
Speaker 6: a Throe and you never know.
Speaker 4: Of One of the men stationed at VSP Belembay, gave
Speaker 4: an interview for this podcast, but ultimately declined to sign
Speaker 4: an appearance release for unknown reasons. As a result, we've
Speaker 4: obscured his voice and identity and will refer to him
Speaker 4: only as Soldier ex Soldier X recalls one of the
Speaker 4: reasons why the Taliban was such a challenging enemy to defeat,
Speaker 4: at least in a somewhat ethical manner. Unlike traditional militaries,
Speaker 4: they hide in plain sight.
Speaker 6: I know, we had a couple of local guys that
Speaker 6: would help us like laundry and make a lot of
Speaker 6: our meals and stuff like that. And there was local
Speaker 6: Afghans and had a great relationship with them, our Afghan
Speaker 6: Army counterparts. We thought we had a great relationship. I
Speaker 6: think for the most part we did. We intercept the
Speaker 6: simmunication all night and they were plotting on how they
Speaker 6: were going to take over the USP down Bind. They
Speaker 6: were going to wipe out the Americans, and luckily we
Speaker 6: stopped down and they were gone the next day.
Speaker 3: We had to established who's who and who are the players.
Speaker 3: Who is you know, a friendly guy. The guy that
Speaker 3: lived near us was called peg Leg. For the longest time,
Speaker 3: we're thinking this guy is like a friendly dude, and
Speaker 3: come to find out he actually was giving information to
Speaker 3: the Taliban. We hired workers onto our base to help
Speaker 3: build stairs. Two brothers. Turns out they were talented, right,
Speaker 3: and so it's like, Okay, these dudes are all around
Speaker 3: and we can't even figure out who is right and
Speaker 3: who is wrong. As far as the civilians, how like,
Speaker 3: their general reaction was just go go like we don't
Speaker 3: need you moreover, like you're causing more problems. I can't
Speaker 3: go into my field because you guys might shoot me
Speaker 3: because you don't know who I am.
Speaker 4: To recap, here's the lay of the land. The Americans
Speaker 4: don't trust the Afghans, and the Afghans don't trust the Americans,
Speaker 4: even though the Americans are supposed to protect the Afghans.
Speaker 4: All the while the Taliban continuously attacks the VSP and
Speaker 4: everyone in it. The situation was becoming untenable.
Speaker 1: They call them sticking points. In therapy, you replay these
Speaker 1: sticking points over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: It's March fifth, twenty twelve, six days before Robert Bales
Speaker 4: becomes a war criminal. It starts off as a routine
Speaker 4: patrol of a local village quickly takes a turn.
Speaker 5: We had just done a patrol to the district center.
Speaker 5: It was really just kind of a logistics patrol. So
Speaker 5: we went to go meet up with our B team
Speaker 5: and they were probably dropping off some mail, giving us
Speaker 5: some AMMO and things like that. On our way back,
Speaker 5: we were, you know, just a few hundred yards from
Speaker 5: the front gate at Belenby, and our rear vehicle was
Speaker 5: targeted and hit by an ID.
Speaker 3: I was outside when I heard it, and I've never
Speaker 3: heard anything like that before. It was gut wrenching the
Speaker 3: sound of that metal. I mean, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 5: I think there's totally five or six that were in
Speaker 5: that vehicle, so that vehicle was pretty well destroyed. No
Speaker 5: one had any serious injuries, nothing visible anyway. But because
Speaker 5: of TBI protocol and the severity of the damage in
Speaker 5: the vehicle, I opted to make the decision.
Speaker 4: To men of back everybody. I wanted him to go
Speaker 4: get checked out. I need explosions can cause traumatic brain
Speaker 4: injuries or TBIs, so in essence, this bomb sidelined the
Speaker 4: truck's worth of fighters in response a quick reaction for
Speaker 4: US mobilized from VSP Bellumbai to respond to the possibility
Speaker 4: of a secondary incoming attack.
Speaker 3: I am looking directly at the blast light and there's
Speaker 3: smoke everywhere. It's slightly obscured by very high walls, but
Speaker 3: I can basically see where the vehicle is. I can
Speaker 3: also see the Taliban members that had started to gather
Speaker 3: over some period of time to basically do what would
Speaker 3: be a complex ambush.
Speaker 1: I'm getting guys up at different battle positions. One of
Speaker 1: the guys calls me up to the roof. I go
Speaker 1: up to the roof and he's pointing out a farmer
Speaker 1: that's walking. So I put the scope on the guy
Speaker 1: and I'm noticing him, and he continues to walk towards
Speaker 1: where the ied goes off. In hindsight, the things that
Speaker 1: always happens when IDs go off as people flee, they
Speaker 1: don't go towards an explosion, they go away from.
Speaker 6: It at this point. But what are you potentially suspecting,
Speaker 6: you know, observing this.
Speaker 1: Person, Well, he looks out of place. You know, these
Speaker 1: guys had called me up there for the reason that
Speaker 1: they felt he was out of place. So as I'm
Speaker 1: looking at him, this is all hindsight too. Farmers aren't clean.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy's in a clean white mandras burka whatever.
Speaker 1: He's carrying a clean shovel. You know it's shining, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see the shine of the shovel. But he
Speaker 1: definitely has something in his other hand. Right, So he's
Speaker 1: moving and he's got something in his hand. But I
Speaker 1: can't take the shot because I don't know for sure.
Speaker 4: That's kind of insertaincy for you. If we're going to
Speaker 4: win hearts and minds, we can't just shoot somebody unless
Speaker 4: we know for a fact that they're a threat.
Speaker 5: I asked him nyvy eod to start sweeping around one
Speaker 5: of the tires so that we could recover the tire
Speaker 5: and it couldn't be used later on. So he was
Speaker 5: sweeping around the time and on his way to do that,
Speaker 5: he stepped on an anti personnel mind ended up losing
Speaker 5: his leg below the knee.
Speaker 1: Asbury, they took his leg off. He's a good guy.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: We weren't super close, we weren't, you know, but he
Speaker 1: was an American, he was he was family. As far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned.
Speaker 4: If you've ever seen the hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner's character
Speaker 4: the guy who disabled bombs, that was Asbury. Bailis took
Speaker 4: what happened to him pretty personally.
Speaker 1: Not having shot the guy. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, man. I mean I feel responsible
Speaker 1: a little bit. I feel responsible that, you know, Asbury
Speaker 1: lost his leg and that I could have stopped that
Speaker 1: guy that was actively turning that ied on and I
Speaker 1: just didn't have the ability to squeeze a trigger at
Speaker 1: that time. You know, later that night, you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of all got to get there, had some drinks,
Speaker 1: kind of commiserate, if you will.
Speaker 4: Soldier X was part of the group that gathered for
Speaker 4: drinks after the event.
Speaker 6: Bills and I talked a lot throughout the deployment, so
Speaker 6: with the seed thing, he definitely expressed frustrations that we
Speaker 6: want aggressive enough as a team. We sat back, we assessed,
Speaker 6: and we work in our more methodical approaches to identifying
Speaker 6: who may have wavebid. Bills wanted to go out and
Speaker 6: be aggressive. You want to go out and solve the
Speaker 6: problem right then and there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's getting worse, bro, Like, it's getting worse
Speaker 1: like I've seen this before, right, Like I saw this
Speaker 1: when we were in Iraq. You know, you see the
Speaker 1: bad guy and you know what he's going to do,
Speaker 1: but you can't do anything about it. Right, you know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. You feel it. You feel these
Speaker 1: things closing in on you, over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
Speaker 1: Until you're engaged. We have to wait for the enemy
Speaker 1: to punch us in the mouth before we can do anything.
Speaker 3: The tree that was used as a marker, there's a
Speaker 3: lot to talk about this this tree and how they
Speaker 3: mark the targets and all that, and there's some confusion
Speaker 3: about what actually happened next.
Speaker 4: The Taliban er smart fighters detonate IDs from a distance,
Speaker 4: and they can hurt Americans without putting themselves and harms away.
Speaker 4: But if they're so far away, how do they know
Speaker 4: when to initiate the id. Some thought that a tree
Speaker 4: was a trigger to staging the attack.
Speaker 1: The reason the tree was such an important thing is
Speaker 1: that the tree was the largest terrain feature in a
Speaker 1: wide area. So we believe that the tree had been
Speaker 1: used as a trigger point. So once the truck gets
Speaker 1: to a certain place somebody from a distance can see
Speaker 1: and set off a command wire to destroy the truck.
Speaker 11: He decided that I have to get rid of this tree,
Speaker 11: this tree as a security threat. That makes a certain
Speaker 11: amount of sense. I suppose if he's afraid that the
Speaker 11: tree is going to be used again as a marker
Speaker 11: to blow up American soldiers.
Speaker 4: That's the voice of writer Brennan Vaughn. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 4: he interviewed Bob Bales for a GQ piece titled Confessions
Speaker 4: of America's most Notorious War Criminal.
Speaker 11: In Bals's telling to me, he just felt moved to
Speaker 11: do it as some kind of, I don't know, symbolic
Speaker 11: way to make him feel like he had gotten rid
Speaker 11: of the thing that he blamed himself for playing that
Speaker 11: role in The Soldier who Lost his leg.
Speaker 3: Baiales is like, you know, getting adjutude. His temperature is blown,
Speaker 3: really fixating on this after effect because now this whole
Speaker 3: ego thing that he has of no one's getting hurt
Speaker 3: under my watch and all that stuff. I'm gonna get
Speaker 3: you guys home. He starts talking about he wants to
Speaker 3: destroy the tree the marker, right, which, militarily speaking, that's
Speaker 3: a great idea to do if you want to deny
Speaker 3: the enemy some cuterraine. But the way that we were
Speaker 3: going to do it, We're going to stop in an
Speaker 3: area where we've already taken mortar fire, right outside of
Speaker 3: the Taliban stronghold, and we're gonna cut a tree down.
Speaker 3: Like that's the plan.
Speaker 4: On Thursday Marche three days before the Canahar massacre, bails
Speaker 4: in a squad leave VSP Bellam Bay and head to
Speaker 4: the scene of the crime to cut down a tree. Now,
Speaker 4: these are military guys, not loggers, so they didn't really
Speaker 4: chomp it down. Actually they blew it up.
Speaker 1: So we wrapped a bunch of dead cord around the
Speaker 1: base of the tree and dead cord the tree. Well,
Speaker 1: there are two six foot adobe walls on each side
Speaker 1: of this, and the tree falls awkwardly, so we have
Speaker 1: to flip it around in the six foot wall, which
Speaker 1: became very difficult to do. During this period of time,
Speaker 1: from the north, we start getting signal intelligence hits that
Speaker 1: are saying we're getting ready to move into ambush positions.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody take the shot.
Speaker 4: Private Alexander was responsible for signal intelligence, which means it
Speaker 4: was listening in on the Taliban's conversations.
Speaker 3: So I know where all of the Taliban chatter is
Speaker 3: in the area, and so I'm just like ducking down
Speaker 3: and then I'm listening constantly and it's just chatter. I realize,
Speaker 3: oh my god, they're really closed. Okay, they're right here.
Speaker 3: These guys are right here, these guys are right here.
Speaker 1: It's becoming increasingly aware to all of us that we're
Speaker 1: about to get ambushed and we're stuck in this adobe wall.
Speaker 1: We can't really go forward and leave this blocking this road.
Speaker 1: We're only blocking ourselves in. We have to get this
Speaker 1: tree off this road.
Speaker 3: Balls is like running around with a chicken with a
Speaker 3: fucking head coff.
Speaker 4: And that's when you start taking the fire.
Speaker 3: Right the morning, fire starts happening, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, water's like pretty damn closing. It's definitely incoming.
Speaker 3: I look up in all of the SF guys first
Speaker 3: sprinting into balling body, and so I get up and
Speaker 3: I start sprinting into.
Speaker 1: We end up finally getting the tree trunk turned around
Speaker 1: attached to the vehicle, and we drag it back to
Speaker 1: Fell and by him, Well, I'm in the truck that's
Speaker 1: trying to turn into the VSP. So the kid driving
Speaker 1: the truck didn't understand what the guy on the ground
Speaker 1: was telling him to do. So I'm screaming at this kid,
Speaker 1: turn right, turn right. It's clear that you have to
Speaker 1: turn right. So the private keeps coming straight and he
Speaker 1: runs into the wall, almost hitting the soldier that's trying
Speaker 1: to count people back in the VSP. So at this
Speaker 1: point I lose it. I jump out of the truck,
Speaker 1: I go to the other side. I grab the private,
Speaker 1: I pull him out. I screamed at him and I
Speaker 1: threw him down. I kind of threw him back away
Speaker 1: from it and he fell down. Look, man, we got
Speaker 1: guys that are moving to try to kill us. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't a game to sit here and try to
Speaker 1: teach you how to drive a truck. This is life
Speaker 1: or death. People are trying to kill us.
Speaker 6: I think that he stopped bringing the tree back was
Speaker 6: going to be like, let me show my guys. This
Speaker 6: is important in how we're kind of taking the situation down.
Speaker 6: I understood what he was trying to do. He's trying
Speaker 6: to show him like, hey, this was a marker. This
Speaker 6: was out there to mark the ID and we're going
Speaker 6: to do this as a ceremonious thing. Did I agree
Speaker 6: with it?
Speaker 11: You know?
Speaker 6: Did I think it was dumb? Yeah? But was it
Speaker 6: so egregious that that I dwelled on it? You know,
Speaker 6: I think a lot of younger guys dwelled on it
Speaker 6: as this crazy psychotic thing. I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 6: maybe he's trying to motivate you.
Speaker 4: So crisis averted for the time being. But now there's
Speaker 4: a massive tree trunk and a tiny VSP Fast forward
Speaker 4: to Saturday, one day before the Canahearm massacre. Bales goes
Speaker 4: to work on that tree.
Speaker 1: Saturday morning, We're up and we've got every moving. When
Speaker 1: I start going to work on this tree, other guys,
Speaker 1: when it's just tall to the burn pit, put out
Speaker 1: that we could use it for firewood. So I start
Speaker 1: whacking at this tree early in the morning with a
Speaker 1: hand axe and you know, working on it pretty much
Speaker 1: six eight hours, nine hours.
Speaker 11: He then decided that it wouldn't do to just burn it,
Speaker 11: that he had to actually chop it up into all
Speaker 11: these small pieces. That makes no sense. I mean, that's
Speaker 11: just that's completely nonsensical. There's no reason to do that,
Speaker 11: And that certainly occurred to a lot of the people
Speaker 11: that were watching him do it on the base, like,
Speaker 11: why the hell is he doing this?
Speaker 3: You think about this tree, and he had this infatuation
Speaker 3: with it because again, it was the only thing that
Speaker 3: he could control. From that situation, we had one of
Speaker 3: our soldiers who couldn't walk right because he was so
Speaker 3: messed up from this idea attack, and the only thing
Speaker 3: that Bails seemed to care about was the tree. The
Speaker 3: ultimate level of projection.
Speaker 11: Right, These are all things that really, I think indicated
Speaker 11: somebody who was becoming unmoored and kind of untethered to
Speaker 11: the world that everybody else around him was seeing.
Speaker 4: He was just seeing it differently.
Speaker 1: By that point, you can't explain this irrational activity looking
Speaker 1: at it from normal eyes, right. You can't try to
Speaker 1: solve something that is abnormal looking at it rationally and normally.
Speaker 1: This is an abnormal situation. You know, it's abnormal to
Speaker 1: get blown up, it's abnormal to get shot at, it's
Speaker 1: abnormal to have to deal with us on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: What's going on with everyone is trying to explain this
Speaker 1: abnormal event using rational, normal logic. What it's impossible to do, right,
Speaker 1: It's abnormal situation calls for an abnormal solution, or at
Speaker 1: least an abnormal understanding.
Speaker 4: There's a reason the Department of Defense has millions in
Speaker 4: looking into the effects of war on the human brain.
Speaker 4: War alters the mind. It alters your emotional output. Me personally,
Speaker 4: after dealing with being shot at, after being blown up,
Speaker 4: watching your friends be wounded and possibly killed, your mind
Speaker 4: will go to dark places.
Speaker 6: At the time.
Speaker 1: I don't think people understand it's not a matter of
Speaker 1: if you're going to die, or if your soldiers are
Speaker 1: going to die or be injured or lose a leg
Speaker 1: or whatever it happens to be. It's about when it's
Speaker 1: about happened next patrol. Does it happened next week? Does
Speaker 1: it happen tomorrow? Are we going to get over on tonight?
Speaker 1: And you sit there and you're like, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to die anyway, if it's going to happen anyway, would
Speaker 1: I not rather be on the offensive than the defensive? Obviously, hindsight,
Speaker 1: I would do things differently. But at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're going to die anyway, right, you have to
Speaker 1: go out and try to stop that.
Speaker 4: Threat coming up on the war within.
Speaker 3: I meant Bob and I just remember how fib from
Speaker 3: this guy was.
Speaker 4: He quickly separated himself as one of those people.
Speaker 1: That wanted to How did I get from being the
Speaker 1: good guy, being the leader of my group, being what
Speaker 1: I think I was, a very good soldier, to being
Speaker 1: in prison for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: I got to knock on my door.
Speaker 5: The guard at the gate says that somebody left the
Speaker 5: base and that missing person was Robert Bales.
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking, man, I hope I die quick.
Speaker 4: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Speaker 4: Bungalow Median Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions, and Mosquito Park Pictures in
Speaker 4: partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive
Speaker 4: producers Paul Pulowski and David check. Executive producers for Bungalow
Speaker 4: Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The
Speaker 4: podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and hosted
Speaker 4: by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,
Speaker 4: sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
Speaker 4: an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Speaker 4: Peter Solataroff was production Assistant Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
Speaker 4: Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpy, and Meerwi Satah, as
Speaker 4: well as all of the people who were interviewed for
Speaker 4: the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
Speaker 4: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.