Speaker 1: Nobody knew anything. I was first. I'm the first to
Speaker 1: get a military diagnosis four injuries related to methicomplexosity. I'm
Speaker 1: the first to get a VA rating. They called me
Speaker 1: Sheeral number one.
Speaker 2: As directed by the US military commander Bill Minofsky, took
Speaker 2: an any malarial pill called methliquin for five months at
Speaker 2: the dawn of the Iraq War. It's the same drug
Speaker 2: that Robert Bails's defense team claims may have altered the
Speaker 2: staff sergeant's mental state during his time overseas. Menofsky experience
Speaker 2: firsthand how methlicquin can negatively affect a soldier on deployment.
Speaker 3: Really nobody was warned.
Speaker 1: So what I noticed looking back was I started getting
Speaker 1: really angry, and show did most of the guys on
Speaker 1: the deployment. There was a lot of anxiety, a lot
Speaker 1: of frustration, and people were just snapping each other. I
Speaker 1: thought I was drinking too much coffee. That then transitioned
Speaker 1: into paranoia, like I was responsible for the problems, like
Speaker 1: it was all my fault. And then I started having
Speaker 1: the dreams, these crazy, vivid dreams. I had an incident
Speaker 1: three days before the Iraq War started. I was out
Speaker 1: in the Dari bombing range with Shield Team three Sins
Speaker 1: in the dead and night, no moon. We had these
Speaker 1: gunships coming right over It's about fifty feet over our head,
Speaker 1: really loud, and they were shooting these flashing rockets at
Speaker 1: targets down range. So I had all this visual stimuli
Speaker 1: coming in and after about five minutes I got sick.
Speaker 1: I started getting furtigo really bad, to the point where
Speaker 1: I stood up.
Speaker 3: I go, guys, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1: And there I was helping plan the Iraq war and
Speaker 1: I'm on a drug that can cause anxiety, depression, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: and behavior.
Speaker 4: Previously on the war within what you have described here
Speaker 4: sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 5: We were drinking some booze, seven drinks per Guy.
Speaker 6: Bales was in charge of the medics. You could get
Speaker 6: whatever the hell he wanted.
Speaker 5: It started taking steroids early February.
Speaker 2: If you take someone who attends towards the violence and
Speaker 2: you give them something that could make them even more violent,
Speaker 2: it could be a catastrophic situation.
Speaker 7: They didn't remember the name of the drug, right I
Speaker 7: remember the effects.
Speaker 8: They called it Mafflickman Monday's We're gonna see fairies we're
Speaker 8: gonna seek shit.
Speaker 6: Bale's was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was
Speaker 6: suffering from hallucinations.
Speaker 1: When I hear the Bail's story, the first thing I
Speaker 1: think of is mufflickrn First.
Speaker 2: On, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the
Speaker 2: Robert Bayles story. If Robert Bales has any hope of
Speaker 2: one day leaving the Fort Levelworth Disciplinary Barracks a freeman,
Speaker 2: it'll likely be because his attorney, John Mayer, successfully argued
Speaker 2: that he was experiencing meflquin induced psychosis when he committed
Speaker 2: the Kandahar massacre.
Speaker 8: Our team's position is that the mefloquin carries to day.
Speaker 8: You're gonna give a guy a poison by order and
Speaker 8: not disclose it. The entire landscape of this case could
Speaker 8: have changed.
Speaker 2: For Marr to be right, two key points would have
Speaker 2: to be true. Number One, mefloquin is poison, at least
Speaker 2: for some who take it, And two, Bales definitively took
Speaker 2: the drug during his time in service. We can begin
Speaker 2: to explore whether meflquin is actually toxic by hearing the
Speaker 2: story of Commandermanofsky, an outspoken veteran whose life was forever changed.
Speaker 2: After beginning his regimen of meflquin.
Speaker 1: My volunteer to go to the Iraq war. Right at
Speaker 1: the last minute, I was called into the clinic. The
Speaker 1: korman handed me six foil packs of hilarium wrapped in
Speaker 1: a rubber band. I didn't even get it in a box.
Speaker 1: And they said start taking this once a week, and
Speaker 1: I go okay, And that's how I got the drug
Speaker 1: and went into this descent of madness.
Speaker 2: Larium is the brand name for the drug methotly, just
Speaker 2: as advil is really ibuprofen. Some people use the terms interchangeably.
Speaker 2: By March of two thousand and three, three months after
Speaker 2: he had begun taking to any mallarial, the Commander was
Speaker 2: displaying behavior uncharacteristic of a long tenured warrior.
Speaker 3: I had flickerburder go like you get in a helicopter.
Speaker 1: I went out in the desert, and not to be
Speaker 1: too graphic, but I emptied my bowels in the desert.
Speaker 1: Then I went back to where the trucks were parked,
Speaker 1: and I kid you not, I threw up for an
Speaker 1: hour straight.
Speaker 3: I timed it.
Speaker 1: I then went back to my rack and the tent,
Speaker 1: and I was in bed for three days. I got
Speaker 1: up the third day went to take a shower, and
Speaker 1: that's when I was in the shower the first SCUD
Speaker 1: missile was launched into Kuwait. That's when the Iraq War started.
Speaker 2: Minowski was a highly trusted operator with top secret security clearance,
Speaker 2: but when it came time to fight the Iraqi army,
Speaker 2: he could barely trust himself to get through the day.
Speaker 1: Shield Team five when I made a deploy with them
Speaker 1: to Bagdad to help them do their mission planning there,
Speaker 1: and I told him, I said, guys, I can't go.
Speaker 1: I was within five minutes of getting on a helicopter
Speaker 1: going with them, and I said I can't go. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a met about casualty. I feel like
Speaker 1: I got the flu. I mean, I was really sick.
Speaker 1: So I went home and I was coughing my lungs out.
Speaker 1: Now I thought it was from the dust storms. So
Speaker 1: they administered robotusting with coating, and I told him I
Speaker 1: cannot take coding.
Speaker 3: It makes me sick.
Speaker 1: And they flat out told me, if you don't take
Speaker 1: this stuff, you're refusing treatment and we don't have to
Speaker 1: take care of you anymore. So I started taking the
Speaker 1: robotusing with coding and that it was six May two
Speaker 1: thousand and three.
Speaker 3: That's when everything started going downhill.
Speaker 1: And after that I was in the hospital five times
Speaker 1: for panic attacks. And that's when I started getting the
Speaker 1: tremors and the shakes and I started stuttering. I couldn't walk.
Speaker 1: If you looked at me, I looked like I had Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: That lasted probably a year and a half, and I'm
Speaker 1: convinced that I still had the drug in me.
Speaker 2: Minofsky was physically eroding in real time. Meanwhile, intermittent hallucinations
Speaker 2: were warping his perception of reality.
Speaker 1: When I came back from the war, I had audio hallucinations.
Speaker 1: I was in my secretary's office and she went to
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. It sounded like somebody dialing a
Speaker 1: Touchtowne phone real fast. Now that happened to be the
Speaker 1: preamble to the air raid alarm on base in Kuwait.
Speaker 1: It always started with this very quick touch tone sound
Speaker 1: and then it would go alarm green, alarm, yellow, alarm red.
Speaker 1: A couple days later, I was in Walmart with my
Speaker 1: wife and I heard the same thing over the intercom
Speaker 1: and I looked at my wife and I go did
Speaker 1: you hear that, she goes, no.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And then I had kind of a visual hallucination one time,
Speaker 1: right after a very severe panic attack in my psychologist office,
Speaker 1: I came outside and the sky was purple, and there
Speaker 1: were purple areas around everything. The craziest thing, and iraq.
Speaker 7: I think I was on you know, day three of
Speaker 7: you know, fourteen hour days, and I see walking across
Speaker 7: the bridge.
Speaker 5: What looked to be a purple.
Speaker 2: Ghosts, purple visions. Menofski and Bales have never met one another,
Speaker 2: but elements of their stories do match, for example, a
Speaker 2: tendency towards random acts of violence.
Speaker 1: The week of May sixth, two thousand and three, I
Speaker 1: took my wife up to the Kern River to go
Speaker 1: trout fishing, and she couldn't cast her fishing line. She
Speaker 1: didn't know how to use an open real spool, and
Speaker 1: I got violently angry at her. I went to punch
Speaker 1: her out for that. Meflquin causes rage. I woke up
Speaker 1: one night in a cute panic attack. I went and
Speaker 1: got my nineteen eleven forty five pistol and I took
Speaker 1: it apart out of fear that I would wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning with my wife dead in the pool
Speaker 1: of blood on the floor in the morning.
Speaker 3: That's how bad this is.
Speaker 2: Just a short while after he began taking mefloquin, Minofsky
Speaker 2: was nearly unrecognizable. His anti malarial expert, doctor Remington Nevin, explains,
Speaker 2: not everybody responds to the drug in the same way.
Speaker 6: For whatever reason, it appears that people have different tolerances.
Speaker 6: Most people have some ability to detoxify the drug, but
Speaker 6: in some people, we think this drug accumulates in their
Speaker 6: brain tissue where it begins to exert its adverse physiological effects,
Speaker 6: causing symptoms like disturbed sleep nightmares. You'll start to see
Speaker 6: the anxiety and panic, and perhaps over time, as the
Speaker 6: drug accumulates, you'll see the more severe symptoms such as
Speaker 6: over its psychosis and irreversible neurotoxicity.
Speaker 2: Robert Bales may have never been hospitalized for mafloquine toxicity,
Speaker 2: but many of the telltale signs were on display at
Speaker 2: vsp bellmpy impulsive rage when he beat up an Afghan
Speaker 2: truck driver and nod fixation with the tree, disturbed sleep, paranoia.
Speaker 5: You know it's getting worse, bro Like, it's getting worse.
Speaker 7: You know you see the bad guy, and you know
Speaker 7: what he's going to do, but you can't do anything
Speaker 7: about it. Right, You know what's going to happen, right,
Speaker 7: You feel it. You feel these things closing in on you,
Speaker 7: over and over and over again. It's the anticipation of death,
Speaker 7: probably way worse than the death itself.
Speaker 5: You know something's coming.
Speaker 7: In that anticipation of whatever's coming is what makes you paranoid.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 2: Attorney John Marr is not the only person asserting that
Speaker 2: methlquhen is toxic, but the question of whether Bales has
Speaker 2: ever used this anti mallarial has not been a straightforward.
Speaker 2: Prosecutor Jane Morris claims that have found nothing about the
Speaker 2: drug in Bales's file.
Speaker 9: There was an allegation that he was on anti malarials
Speaker 9: that caused him to do this. We I mean, we
Speaker 9: did a more than thorough search of all medical records
Speaker 9: for Bail's entire time in the army. You could find
Speaker 9: no evidence not only if Bail's not taking larian, but
Speaker 9: anyone in his unit ever taking it. My recollection is
Speaker 9: that the only evidence that there was ever any mafluquin
Speaker 9: was from one person who had been in Baile's company.
Speaker 9: Not even in Bales's platoon, who made a sworn statement
Speaker 9: that he remembers being given mafluquin's like in two thousand
Speaker 9: and six, six years prior to the Act.
Speaker 2: John Mayer puts a lot of stock in that sworn
Speaker 2: statement referenced by Mors to him, everything that a jury
Speaker 2: needs to know about whether Bales took maflequin can be
Speaker 2: answered in the affidavit of what Gregory Rao.
Speaker 8: The direct evidence that we have is that Specialist Rao
Speaker 8: was standing next to Bob Information at some point. In
Speaker 8: his affidavit, unchallenged by the government, says yo, Yeah, every
Speaker 8: Monday we had mafflquin Mondays and they came out. We
Speaker 8: all had to drink it. We all had to drop it,
Speaker 8: and we look forward to those methicuin Mondays because we'd
Speaker 8: all start seeing stuff.
Speaker 2: We also got confirmation from Bailes's former platoon teammate David Wesley,
Speaker 2: although our producer Max had to remind him of the
Speaker 2: name of the drug.
Speaker 6: You remember the name of the malar drug, U Tuck.
Speaker 7: I think it's it was like methema, meth l chloroquin
Speaker 7: or some craziness mathquin.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there is.
Speaker 8: You get these like just fucked up dreams, man like
Speaker 8: just wild.
Speaker 7: We took it once a week, remember, Doc states, he
Speaker 7: would come around, he had the sheet, he would give
Speaker 7: you a pill, he'd check you off your sheet, and
Speaker 7: then we had the crazy dreams.
Speaker 2: Speaking from personal experience, just about everybody was required to
Speaker 2: take methliquin during the height of the Iraq War. It
Speaker 2: was just one of many responsibilities that we had as soldiers.
Speaker 2: What remains unclear is whether Bales was on anti mallarials
Speaker 2: while in Afghanistan. Private Gavin Jones recalls that at VSP
Speaker 2: Bellum by most mandatory policies weren't really mandatory.
Speaker 4: No, I did not take any of that. No, I
Speaker 4: just didn't didn't seem appealing to me. I'll wrestle with
Speaker 4: at malaria before I want to have like stomach ache.
Speaker 4: To be honest, now that I think about it, I
Speaker 4: don't think anyone took any of that medication.
Speaker 3: No one that actually came out to.
Speaker 4: Like, alright, guys taking a builders go like, No, I'm
Speaker 4: pretty sure we just tossed that shit up.
Speaker 2: Soldier X, the person who will not be named in
Speaker 2: this podcast, remembers Mefloquin being at the base, But that
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean Bales was taking it.
Speaker 10: You know, I took mof quinn maybe your hair four times,
Speaker 10: but it was not as directed every d anybody means,
Speaker 10: I don't know that my version of Bales taking morf
Speaker 10: quinn in the prescribed manner either.
Speaker 2: Why is this such a debate. If Baals took mafliquin,
Speaker 2: it should be in his medical records, which were analyzed
Speaker 2: by the prosecution, defense and Independent Sanity Board during the
Speaker 2: trial in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 9: So we have an obligation to disclose any evidence that
Speaker 9: might go to the favor of the accused, right to
Speaker 9: the favor of the defendant. But there's zero evidence of mafloquin,
Speaker 9: and so every time they would bring it up the
Speaker 9: defense team, we would just say there's zero evidence, Like
Speaker 9: you're not allowed to even talk about this.
Speaker 2: Mefloquin wasn't in Baal's file, but Commander Minovsky doctor Nevin
Speaker 2: claimed that it wasn't in the files of most soldiers
Speaker 2: who took it.
Speaker 1: If it's not in bals record, it's like it wasn't
Speaker 1: in anybody else's record either. My deployment team, they didn't
Speaker 1: get it into their record. The hundreds of veterans that
Speaker 1: I talked to did not get it in their medical records.
Speaker 6: The events of that era are odd. A couple months
Speaker 6: before the events in question, the top doctor of the
Speaker 6: military basically said, hey, look, we have a problem. Meflicuin
Speaker 6: has been handed out without adequate documentation and without proper
Speaker 6: consideration of contraindications. And unfortunately, I think the courts have
Speaker 6: been misinformed by the government, by the prosecution that the
Speaker 6: evidence is conclusive in showing that bails never took meflick win.
Speaker 6: And I think the courts just didn't realize that what
Speaker 6: the medical records show is often not a good reflection
Speaker 6: of reality, and in this particular case, one has to
Speaker 6: probe a little bit more to understand the full picture.
Speaker 2: In the US military, just about everything is written down somewhere.
Speaker 2: You can't order pens without putting it in a report.
Speaker 2: So for widespread use of mefloquin and its side effects,
Speaker 2: to go and document it, it's either completely untrue, a
Speaker 2: sign of gross inconfidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Minofsky
Speaker 2: told us the following over the phone.
Speaker 11: Our larium came in foil packs. The foil pack was
Speaker 11: five pills. There was a blank spot all right where
Speaker 11: they wrote the name of the drug and everything down,
Speaker 11: and they didn't get it in their medical records. I
Speaker 11: think that was deliberate, considering if you look at my
Speaker 11: shot cart, it's got everything listed. But I went into
Speaker 11: my pharmacy record no record of matlock Win being given
Speaker 11: to me. When I found that out on I just
Speaker 11: hut blew a galey and I go, you gotta begin.
Speaker 11: They knew it was bad.
Speaker 2: To say that the government was providing as soldiers with
Speaker 2: an anti mallarial that they knew was defective and dangerous.
Speaker 2: That's a potentially explosive development. It's a claim that doctor
Speaker 2: Nevin has staked his reputation on proving to be true
Speaker 2: both during and after his service.
Speaker 6: I was familiar with Meflicklin. As part of my training,
Speaker 6: we were taught that Mefflicklin was safe and effective medication
Speaker 6: if used as directed. But I realized that this dogma,
Speaker 6: this training that I received on meflick when the institutional
Speaker 6: beliefs on the drug were incorrect, the drug was far
Speaker 6: more dangerous. As I began to ask questions about Meflicklin,
Speaker 6: I was receiving a lot more pushback from my seniors
Speaker 6: than I had expected, and so that made me think
Speaker 6: maybe there's something to this. I quickly realized that I
Speaker 6: could do more work on this issue outside the military.
Speaker 6: But it's still understood within the higher offices of the
Speaker 6: DODNVA that one should not speak ill of Meflickman, because
Speaker 6: what are you doing if you do that? If you
Speaker 6: publish a paper that shows this drug is associated with
Speaker 6: a significant burden of disability, you've just cost the VA
Speaker 6: billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Attorney and veentor in John Maher applauds Nevin for speaking
Speaker 2: up when many others have opted to remain silent.
Speaker 8: Doctor Nevin he sacrificed his army career command surgeon Major
Speaker 8: eighty second or more for brad because his research came
Speaker 8: around saying this antimilarial drug is killing people.
Speaker 2: When you hear the full scope of doctor Nevn's findings,
Speaker 2: it's not terribly surprising to learn that he's no longer
Speaker 2: employed by the military after all. Is polarizing opinion is
Speaker 2: that this negligence surrounding meflquin had gone on for decades.
Speaker 6: Going back to World War Two. It's not an exaggeration
Speaker 6: to say that our top military leaders view the availability
Speaker 6: of anti malarial drugs the same way they view the
Speaker 6: availability of nuclear weapons as a safeguard to national security.
Speaker 6: We had very limited stockpiles, and so in the Vietnam era,
Speaker 6: a large scale project began to synthesize these drugs, and
Speaker 6: that led in nineteen sixty nine to the first reported
Speaker 6: synthesis of meflicuin. For whatever reason, the military decided mefloquin
Speaker 6: is our drug. They had a handful of alternatives that
Speaker 6: were also in development, but the literature from the early
Speaker 6: seventies makes it very clear they wanted mefliquin to be
Speaker 6: their drug.
Speaker 2: After the military handpicked meflquin as their anti malarial they
Speaker 2: were responsible for securing a manufacturer and distributor for the drug.
Speaker 2: In this case, that would be a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant
Speaker 2: named the Roche.
Speaker 6: Apparently, the military approached every single pharmaceutical manufacturer and none
Speaker 6: were willing to get the drug through the approval process
Speaker 6: and market the drug, probably because many drugs of this
Speaker 6: class caused irreversible, significant lesions to form in the brains
Speaker 6: and the brain steps. For whatever reason, Roche raised their
Speaker 6: hand and said fine, we'll do it. Perhaps Roche did
Speaker 6: the math and realized the military will buy large quantities,
Speaker 6: They'll give us a lot of money. They've done all
Speaker 6: their research, They've basically paid for the development of the drug.
Speaker 6: So there's fundamentally no cost to Roche, and beside the
Speaker 6: possibility of some lawsuits down the line, very little risk.
Speaker 2: The US Food and Drug Administration exist for a reason.
Speaker 2: Roche in the military might have agreed to partner on
Speaker 2: making methlic win, but an independent agency still needs to
Speaker 2: make sure that it's safe for use. That said, the
Speaker 2: FDA can't make a decision with information it doesn't have.
Speaker 6: The initial submission to FDA didn't even make mention of
Speaker 6: psychiatric effects, So when mefliquin was first being licensed under
Speaker 6: pressure from the US military, the doctors at FDA reviewing
Speaker 6: the file had no understanding that this drug could cause
Speaker 6: psychiatric effects when used in prevention. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 6: that was approved. Almost immediately, the World Health Organization comes
Speaker 6: out with a document expressing fairly grave concerns, essentially saying,
Speaker 6: it looks like this drug has neuropsychiatric potentially, it looks
Speaker 6: like this drug causes neuropsychiatric symptoms anxiety and depression. And
Speaker 6: so what followed that was a remarkable period over two
Speaker 6: or three years, where the military in Roche and others
Speaker 6: worked furiously to manufacture doubt about these findings.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Roche in the military went out and almost immediately
Speaker 2: mefloquin was being distributed around the globe. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: long before troubling incidents began a surface. For example, the
Speaker 2: story of Canadian soldier Clayton Matchie in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: just four years after the drug received FDA approval.
Speaker 6: During the Somalia crisis, Canadian military sent several thousand troops
Speaker 6: over to aid the US military effort, and this was
Speaker 6: the first large scale use of meflick in any deployment.
Speaker 6: And one of the troops that he was given this
Speaker 6: drug was a fellow named Clayton Mashing. He almost immediately
Speaker 6: started experiencing fairly severe symptoms from meflick, including symptoms of psychosis.
Speaker 6: These symptoms were so severe he came back home on
Speaker 6: leave and he was there in bed with his wife
Speaker 6: and he woke up in a sweat, white knuckles clenching
Speaker 6: his wife. I think he was convinced there was this monster,
Speaker 6: this apparition at the foot of his bed, big teeth
Speaker 6: was about to eat him, and he begged his wife
Speaker 6: to pray with him for this monster, this apparition to
Speaker 6: be exercised. So he deploys back over to Somalia, and
Speaker 6: I think within a matter of weeks, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 6: he's in a pit guarding a Somali detainee that had
Speaker 6: snuck in under the fence, I think, And according to
Speaker 6: witnesses there, he started beating him with a stick and
Speaker 6: apparently he was trying to beat these camel spiders that
Speaker 6: were covering this Somali detainee. Now, actually he wasn't covered
Speaker 6: in camel spiders, but in the midst of this psychosis,
Speaker 6: he hallucinated that this detainee was covered in camel spiders,
Speaker 6: and so he ended up getting beaten to death. And
Speaker 6: for a Canadian soldier to beat a detainee like that
Speaker 6: to death seemed just like a symptom of something gone
Speaker 6: terribly wrong.
Speaker 2: For Clayton, Matchie Mefloquin was not acting in a vacuum
Speaker 2: similar to staffs are to bales. The Canadian warrior was
Speaker 2: under the influence of a combination of substances.
Speaker 1: There's a key point here that is kind of overlooked
Speaker 1: that they were being administered in Maflequin. They were allowed
Speaker 1: to drink beer. Their medics also administered them cough surroup,
Speaker 1: most likely robotushing with codeine as a sleep aid, as
Speaker 1: a replacement for ambient That's what they took with them.
Speaker 1: So these guys are whacked out on some serious stuff
Speaker 1: they're drinking. Drinking alcohol with Meflequin is a very dangerous
Speaker 1: thing to do. And then Clayton, after he came out
Speaker 1: of as stupor, he went to hang himself, but he
Speaker 1: it wasn't successful, so he's still alive to this day,
Speaker 1: but with serious brain injury.
Speaker 6: Make no mistake, Clayton Matchi did what he did that day,
Speaker 6: not because he was a bad person, not because there
Speaker 6: was something wrong with the Canadian Airborne Regiment. He did
Speaker 6: what he did because he was floridly psychotic as a
Speaker 6: result of being poisoned by meflic. So this was in
Speaker 6: the early nineties. Had we learned from this episode, none
Speaker 6: of us would have happened. I'm convinced had we learned
Speaker 6: from this episode, we wouldn't be discussing Bales.
Speaker 2: Throughout the nineties and beyond, headlines about the dangers of
Speaker 2: meflquin would periodically arise. Several young men and women unexpectedly
Speaker 2: committed suicide shortly after trips to African nations that required
Speaker 2: the use of anti malarials. And then there were the
Speaker 2: four Brag killings in the summer of two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: which even appeared in an episode of NBC's Dateline.
Speaker 6: Within a few short weeks last summer, three young women,
Speaker 6: all wives of Army Special Forces soldiers, were murdered by
Speaker 6: their husbands returning from the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: The segment is notable for identifying mefloquin under the brand
Speaker 2: name Larium, as a potential cause for murder committed by
Speaker 2: soldiers a full decade before the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 12: The investigators wondered at first if an anti malarial drug
Speaker 12: prescribed for Afghanistan, Larium, had anything to do with the violence.
Speaker 12: There has been some s gestion larry A may trigger
Speaker 12: hallucinatory or suicidal episodes in some user, but the military
Speaker 12: quickly dismissed the drug as a cause.
Speaker 2: When this Dateline episode aired in June of two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, Bill Minofsky was laboring under the side effects
Speaker 2: of his own experience with larrym. He takes issue with
Speaker 2: the methodology the military used to absolve the drug of
Speaker 2: any fault in the Fort Bragg murders.
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave a name out here because I
Speaker 1: don't have permission to use their name right now. But
Speaker 1: they were on the investigation team that went down to
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg, and essentially the report was rigged. They included
Speaker 1: a couple other murders that happened at Fort Bragg at
Speaker 1: the time but were unrelated. But in talking to this
Speaker 1: person afterwards, they said they knew it was mefloquent, and
Speaker 1: that person now is a major advocate against the drug
Speaker 1: now that they're retired from the military.
Speaker 2: Seven months after he was pulled out of Rock, Minofsky
Speaker 2: was furious with the military's refusal to acknowledge the root
Speaker 2: cause for his significant health issues.
Speaker 1: When I started asking about the drug, the Navy went
Speaker 1: to accuse me of misschanneling classified material, so they went
Speaker 1: to court martial. Met people were telling me, go to
Speaker 1: the press, go to the press. My wife and I
Speaker 1: we'd already been working with UPI. I said, okay, guys,
Speaker 1: let's go public with this.
Speaker 2: UPI published the Next Fose on September eighth, two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, nine years before the Canaharan massacre. In the piece,
Speaker 2: Commander Minofsky was quoted as saying, I was trying not
Speaker 2: to pull a foroth brag. After that, the military's tenor
Speaker 2: began to shift.
Speaker 1: When these articles came out. We were on shenn The
Speaker 1: Navy really backed off. I talked to a Shenier officer
Speaker 1: and I go, you know what happened? And he goes
Speaker 1: in a meeting. Someone said, Hey, maybe he really is
Speaker 1: shick from the drug. I'm the first to get a
Speaker 1: military diagnosis for injuries related to methlical toxicity. I'm the
Speaker 1: first to get a via writing. Not to sound facetious,
Speaker 1: if I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here talking to you. I'd probably, honestly, god, I
Speaker 1: would be probably dead. The Navy would have treated me
Speaker 1: completely different.
Speaker 2: Commander Minofsky's one man cruside helped him earn a disability rating,
Speaker 2: essentially confirming that the military accepted blame for his condition.
Speaker 2: In the coming years, doctor Nevin's research would start raising
Speaker 2: eyebrows among some within the federal government.
Speaker 6: I'd like to think that my research has helped to
Speaker 6: inform military policy on this issue. Some of my early work,
Speaker 6: I think, moved the army away from use of this drug,
Speaker 6: and by twenty thirteen all the services had essentially abandoned
Speaker 6: the use of mefliq when is a first line drug.
Speaker 2: Bailes's killings took place on March eleventh, twenty twelve, before
Speaker 2: the program had been shuttered. With all of this in mind,
Speaker 2: are we any closer to knowing whether Bales was under
Speaker 2: the influence of meflquin induced psychosis. The following excerpt is
Speaker 2: from a press conference given by four star General John
Speaker 2: Allen on March fifteen, twenty twelve. Alan was arguably the
Speaker 2: architect of military strategy in Afghanistan. It's important to note
Speaker 2: that this press conference began with Allan addressing the military's
Speaker 2: response to the Canahar massacre.
Speaker 13: General, could you elaborate at all about this Defense Department
Speaker 13: ordered review of the anti malaria drug when you were
Speaker 13: made aware of that, including for deployed troops, and what
Speaker 13: explanation you were given for it?
Speaker 14: Was actually made aware of it this morning. The review
Speaker 14: was a natural course of periodic reviews, as I understand
Speaker 14: it within the department, so that I think that's the
Speaker 14: best I could do for.
Speaker 13: You on that you were not told that there was
Speaker 13: a specific concert earned regarding troops that were deployed being
Speaker 13: given this drug.
Speaker 14: No, that there are reviews constantly of our medical processes
Speaker 14: and procedures. That's not uncommon at all. And so when
Speaker 14: I hear that one of the anti malarial prophylaxis drugs
Speaker 14: is under a periodic review, I think that's a very
Speaker 14: natural and important process that is pursued regularly in office
Speaker 14: of Secretary of Defense. So I would suggest that you
Speaker 14: ask them that question.
Speaker 2: Just four days after Bales's attacks, the government embarked on
Speaker 2: a review of a drug that had been linked over
Speaker 2: the years to illegal murders perpetrated by soldiers. Given the context,
Speaker 2: it's hard not to read General Allen's words as a
Speaker 2: classic act of deflection. Three months later, in June of
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, doctor Nevin was asked to appear before the
Speaker 2: Senate Appropriations Committee.
Speaker 6: Finstein has been a longstanding supporter of efforts to raise
Speaker 6: awareness of mefliquin.
Speaker 2: That'd be dying. Feinstein senior Senator from California, and.
Speaker 6: Of course Feinstein was on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate,
Speaker 6: and I was invited to speak to the Senate. At
Speaker 6: her invitation, they were interested in perhaps developing some legislation.
Speaker 6: I believe I simply alluded to the fact that there
Speaker 6: was more to this drug than we had acknowledged, and
Speaker 6: certainly to stop use of the drug. Once you have
Speaker 6: testimony like this on the record, it becomes difficult for
Speaker 6: people to claim they didn't know there was a potential problem.
Speaker 3: I think it was July twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: I get a call from the Commissioner's office to the
Speaker 1: FDA commander Monoski, We'd like you to come to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. To meet with us to express your concerns
Speaker 1: regarding the toxicity of mefloquin. And I goes, this is
Speaker 1: a joke, and he goes, Nope, we're serious. So February
Speaker 1: of twenty thirteen, there was a meeting in Silver Springs, Maryland,
Speaker 1: their headquarters. There were twenty five FDA researchers in the room.
Speaker 1: Nevin got to give a presentation. He did great.
Speaker 6: I think my argument convinced them. I think they said, okay,
Speaker 6: actually this makes sense.
Speaker 1: And then the black box warning came out. That's kind
Speaker 1: of like the highest level of red flashing light on
Speaker 1: a drug that hey, you know, you need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to this warning here, there's something wrong with this thing.
Speaker 1: That was the stake in the heart from methliquinn.
Speaker 2: Robert Bales alone was not the reason why the military
Speaker 2: eventually stopped giving its soldiers meflequin, but John Maher theorizes
Speaker 2: that such a highly publicized tragedy may have been the
Speaker 2: impetus they needed to finally make a change about fifteen months.
Speaker 8: After the canaharm massacre. I think it was probably the
Speaker 8: straw that broke the camel's back. It prompted the FDA
Speaker 8: to take action, It prompted the Army to take action.
Speaker 8: They would have a positive catalytic effect. I believe that
Speaker 8: was the right thing to do. If you try to
Speaker 8: bury it, it's gonna come out anyway. It's gonna be
Speaker 8: worse for you when we find it.
Speaker 2: The prosecution has repeatedly insisted that no hard evidence exists
Speaker 2: connecting mefloquint Bales. Mar on the other hand, suspects that
Speaker 2: proof is out there, it's just been hidden.
Speaker 8: If the defense were never provided with mefloquin, it's poisoning
Speaker 8: the data, the FDA reports, the ROCHE reports, the manufacturer,
Speaker 8: doctor Nevin's affidavits in testimony, as well as US Medcom
Speaker 8: and the Military Surgeons General issuing orders to stop issuing
Speaker 8: the stuff. All of that should have been disclosed to
Speaker 8: the defense to help Bob think about how to defend himself,
Speaker 8: because every American is entitled to a meaningful defense.
Speaker 2: If Mayer can successfully make this point to an appellate court,
Speaker 2: he can potentially emancipate the man considered to be America's
Speaker 2: most notorious war criminal.
Speaker 8: If we prevail, hopefully, what will happen is we'll get
Speaker 8: a new trial, at which point we will put on
Speaker 8: the mefflic Wood evidence. I think it could be landscape changing.
Speaker 2: Reversing a military court's ruling is easier so than done.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, two years after taking a Bales's cause,
Speaker 2: the defense team was granted an oral argument from the
Speaker 2: Army Court of Criminal Appeals also known as AKKA.
Speaker 8: If oral argument is granted in a case, that's a
Speaker 8: pretty good tell in poker parlance, that the judges are saying, Hey,
Speaker 8: there might be some merit here, and we have questions
Speaker 8: and we'd like to look counsel in the eye and
Speaker 8: ask those questions. We get them answered.
Speaker 2: It was a small victory for the Baals camp, and
Speaker 2: mar and his co counsel put everything they had into
Speaker 2: concocting an air tight maflic Wood defense. They even invited
Speaker 2: John Henry Brown, Bales's original trial lawyer, down to Virginia
Speaker 2: to attend the proceedings, but.
Speaker 15: I was in the audience. I have come there two
Speaker 15: days earlier to just help prepare the defense. So we
Speaker 15: thought we should at least get a hearing out of it,
Speaker 15: and that was the goal.
Speaker 2: It's not very common for a defense attorney to remain
Speaker 2: close to a case years after a decision has been reached,
Speaker 2: but something about the Robert Bayles story seems to have
Speaker 2: staying power. After all, Brown wasn't the only attorney in
Speaker 2: the gallery at Akka, so was Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.
Speaker 9: I'd retired by then, but I'd still been following the case,
Speaker 9: and so it was important to me to go and
Speaker 9: hear other people who were completely independent of the case.
Speaker 9: I knew some of the things that the defense team
Speaker 9: had been saying, and so I wanted to go here
Speaker 9: if they were actually saying that argument on the record
Speaker 9: because some of it was personal to me. Man I
Speaker 9: would have been and would be still today horrified if
Speaker 9: we had done something procedurally wrong.
Speaker 8: I don't know Jay Morse, but as a former prosecutor myself,
Speaker 8: I'd never once attended an appeal that I litigated that once.
Speaker 8: That shows me that he had a vested interest in
Speaker 8: the case personally rather than professionally. If you lose your
Speaker 8: professionalism and lead into personal you're not a pro anymore.
Speaker 2: You're just not with an esteemed crowd and attendance. The
Speaker 2: Baials defense team put their Mefloquin related evidence on the
Speaker 2: table for review.
Speaker 15: I think the attorneys were great attorneys, and they had
Speaker 15: a really good argument. I mean, I thought we would
Speaker 15: really might prevail because we had proven that the discovery
Speaker 15: was not given to us, that things were fixed, and
Speaker 15: I think everybody believed that they might be successful with that,
Speaker 15: but we weren't.
Speaker 7: I have lots of thoughts about back. I think it's
Speaker 7: the same with the military justice system. That's you know,
Speaker 7: we cover our ass. Everybody said we kicked ass. Took
Speaker 7: names for what the Army Criminal Court of Appeals does
Speaker 7: a rubber stamp whatever comes through they're gonna pold it.
Speaker 2: Bales and Marr have argued previously that the US Court
Speaker 2: of Military Justice is biased against soldiers accused of crimes.
Speaker 2: By the same token, they're of the opinion that AKA
Speaker 2: does the same thing, simply falling in line with the
Speaker 2: decision that came before.
Speaker 8: The military, as you may know, is probably one of
Speaker 8: the more trusted institutions in our country. And I believe
Speaker 8: that if we peel the layers back and actually expose
Speaker 8: some of this stuff, the country would be disappointed and
Speaker 8: lose faith in the army. The appellate courts seek to
Speaker 8: preserve convictions. The I want to embarrass the army.
Speaker 5: John they wanted AKA. You were there.
Speaker 7: You witnessed them destroying the prosecution, and you witnessed the
Speaker 7: judges doing nothing.
Speaker 5: They didn't give us a time of day.
Speaker 2: Bales, mar Nevin minofsky Wesley. They all say that for
Speaker 2: a while everyone was taking mefloquin. They vouched for the
Speaker 2: drug psychiatric effects, right down to the details. And yet
Speaker 2: every step of the way it appears that the US military,
Speaker 2: the service to which they devoted much of their lives,
Speaker 2: refuses to accept any responsibility for its actions. Nobody knows
Speaker 2: this better than Commander Billmanofski Maflequins Serial number one.
Speaker 6: Bill, in your estimation, how many veterans do we have
Speaker 6: out there dealing with methlicuin poisoning.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands. I'm gonna say a lot of these
Speaker 1: veterans are no longer with us. People who are suicidal
Speaker 1: or who are highly depressed because of this drug. It
Speaker 1: does something to the discretion center of your brain. It
Speaker 1: makes suicide like you're going to get the mail. I
Speaker 1: kept hearing senior Army doctors say, well, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: all the suicides are from family trouble or can't pay
Speaker 1: the bills or whatever. No larium puts you to the
Speaker 1: suicide door and then one foot out and all it
Speaker 1: takes is a family argument, a bill that comes in
Speaker 1: that you can't pay, and you go get the gun,
Speaker 1: and nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 8: Coming up on the word within, I think the United
Speaker 8: States would probably want to avoid a victory. They're also
Speaker 8: going to have an eye on the horizon saying Holy Child.
Speaker 11: Of course, my dad being in present affects my everyday
Speaker 11: life and really our family every day life.
Speaker 3: In a hole. There was an article that came out GQ.
Speaker 3: That was very clearly one sided.
Speaker 5: Bles wanted to tell his story. It was pretty clear
Speaker 5: that he wanted the article to humanize him.
Speaker 7: People automatically assume that I dislike Muslim people.
Speaker 4: Bails He'd have is off the cuff, remarks about minorities
Speaker 4: and like people of color.
Speaker 5: He was menacing with it at times. He's a really menacing,
Speaker 5: mean bastard.
Speaker 2: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is a production
Speaker 2: of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions, and Mosquito Park
Speaker 2: Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created
Speaker 2: by executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers
Speaker 2: for 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 producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and
Speaker 2: Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
Speaker 2: Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkain. Zach Burpi and Meerwi Satall, as
Speaker 2: well as all of the people who were 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 podcasts.