S1E11: The Redirect

So the way that I see this thing going is Bail's and McLoughlin are drinking. Bail starts talking about, here's what we need to do. We need to go out take the fight to the enemy.

Private James Alexander believes that staff Sergeant Robert Bales had helped from his friends in committing the Canahar massacre. He outlines his theory on the chain of events that occurred on March eleventh, twenty twelve Bail's recruits.

He says, hey, I don't need you to fire, because this is how Bales is. I don't need you to shoot people with me. I just need you to hold the light or I need you to have my back while I go talk.

To these people.

All I want to do is go out there and scare some folks, right, he says something like that goes along with it. So they go. Bales loses it, right, he snaps, he starts killing people. They come back in through the main gate and Bales takes the rack.

Tell us, go shower, you know, get dressed, get ready and play like you don't know anything. And then I'm going to use the useful idiot, which is McLoughlin, and I'm going to go into his room, and I'm gonna say I'm the one.

That did this.

Previously on the war within, the army turned a blind eye to a soldier that obviously needed NS deployed him to me, they're COPD.

Kristin harm Because I was saying, we're hearing that there's some more than one soldier.

What is actually going on here?

Yeah, it was not alone, but it was the Americans who put the responsibility of this act on this one person.

People don't remember things the exact same way.

Sometimes people misplace events in trauma.

Let's try to walk around my wife. Whatever happened.

The gate guard has said that two people came in and one person left is Michael, that Bales was helped in some way to commit these crimes with the aid of.

It's been some time since you and I first started talking about your case and everything, and ultimately we thought it was only right that Bob Bales at the final say.

I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert Bayles story. The suspicion that Robert Bales may not have acted alone in committing the Candahar massacre can be seen as a breakthrough in a story that has been shrouded in mystery. It recontextualizes comments that appeared throughout the podcast, like one Private Gavin Jones made back in the first episode.

Bales took us aside and had a conversation with about men. You know, war as hell. I know it gets weird out there. I basically saying that, like, if you need to make that shot and there's someone in front of you that doesn't need to be shot, like you can make that shot and know that we've got your back on that.

According to Gavin, Baals told his squad that if any of them broke the rules of war, he would step up and protect them. But that alone doesn't mean that there's some grand conspiracy here. Brendan Vaughan, the GQ writer who profiled Bales in twenty fifteen, was not convinced that other soldiers were involved in the killings.

Some of the Afghan people have said that there were anywhere from one other American soldier to lots of other American soldiers.

There.

There are people who have said he was protecting other people. I suppose that's possible. Look, there is a Hollywood thriller version of this story where there's a huge military cover up and it was multiple soldiers and Bales took the fall, you know, I mean, and I've heard these kinds of theories before about this case. I just have no reason to believe any of that.

That's concrete.

One of the most chilling parts of talking to Balls was when I asked him about this, How could one soldier do all this damage in such a sort amount of time, and he said, we're really well trained. I can't argue with our training. And I thought that was just, you know, a pretty powerful moment.

Despite this denial by Baals, the sense of uncertainty around what really happened that night lingers on. Even John Henry Brown, Bayles's trial lawyer, who encouraged him to plead guilty, equivocated on the subject during our interview.

There was a lot of doubt about whether we and there still is doubt I think about whether Bobby was alone.

Do you believe that there was a second person involved?

I don't know the answer to that, Bobby, of course, for there wasn't.

There wasn't.

There wasn't.

But you know, camaraderie in the military is pretty strong. If you just do the numbers of what he did in two different villages in the amount of time. It's hard to believe it was just one person. But I do believe that bobbably was one person. But if there was somebody else Bob, Bobby would ever admit it.

The idea that Baales was the type of person to not implicate others in his crimes was confirmed by his wife Carrie, who used some interesting language when speaking to our producer Max Nelson.

Bob accept the responsibility for murders, pleaded guilty. Is there anything that he's ever said that would imply that he didn't this by himself.

He's never shied away of owning up to what happened. He's always been clear that you know, yes, he did this. He's always said it was him and only him, and I honestly think he will take that to his death.

Bailes's attorney, John Mayer had the following reaction to this line of questioning. Well, John's spoken to a few of the lower enlisted guys and a couple other people that were stationed at Ballumbay, and they're of the mind that there was a second person involved in the crimes. You think there was a second person? This is the first I've.

Heard of it.

Mike, really, what can you tell me?

Uh?

Well, I mean they seemed to believe that someone accompanied him when he headed out north and then when he came back, that this potential second stay. None of that's in the record of trial. It's it's believe or not, it's in the CID records. Come on, yeah, I'm shocked her, Mike.

I've got to look into them whether or not there's another man there.

Bales has never indicated that there might have been.

A second never, not once in a public record or in a private conversation, or in any of the writings that we exchange.

Not once.

We didn't know what to make of John Maher's lack of awareness of these allegations, especially considering he was in the room, and Bales made remarks like this one in December twenty seventeen.

The time, I don't know if you remember this, they were all reports that there were twelve SF guys out there, the helicopters are flying around. I ended that I stopped, that I took that responsibility right, And what does the government do for my honesty? All this becomes you know, this guy is crazy, this guy, this guy's insane.

If you could focus I mean during your missions in panjuwe.

Look, all of this can mean something or it could mean nothing. You can drive yourself nuts trying to parse whether Bails and his confident on straight thoughts are pointing to something hidden secret.

You know, I'm not a perfect guy.

You know the I cut corners.

Do you get things done? Of course I did. Somebody had to be a dirty work. I'd do it, you know what I mean, And that's that's fine. It's just difficult to sit back and think that, you know, you can say I did all this. Why do we have to lie about it? Why don't we have to hide the evidence?

It sounds incriminating, except the evidence Bails is talking about refers to whether the AFGHANSI killed were Taliban, a thread we've already covered at length. By the same token, it's almost impossible to know whether, and talking about his squad in Afghanistan, Bail simply misspeaks or makes a crucial Freudian slip.

We had developed a team before we had got there a little bit. We had heard a lot of negative connotations about working with regular line infantry unit guys, and uh, you know, I was going to dispel that. You know, we were gonna.

We were going to.

Be the best, and I think we were. They would have been impressed with us had we not done what we did, or had I not done what I did.

That last part one more time.

They would have been impressed with us had we not done what we did, or had I not done what I did.

These days, true crime is one of the most popular genres of storytelling. Plenty of people make their living off of invest gaining an old murder case and searching for some clue that breaks it wide open. But that kind of criminology can be a slippery slope when the slim possibility of an incredible lie becomes more interesting, more sellable than the simple truth. Here's Curtis Grace of the PANJHWI podcast.

Our government is not competent enough to cover up any kind of conspiracy. That's like of any kind of strength. We can't even afford to buy toilets in bulk without paying like way too much money for them. You think we're really capable of, like covering up some grand conspiracy.

We got our guy.

Did they do that?

I don't know.

Whenever we query bail this prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel J. Moose, about potential emissions in this case, he flatly refuted their importance. It happened with methl quinn TBI steroids. It wasn't much different this time. When we asked whether Bales acted alone.

This idea that there was more than one soldier involved other than Bales. I will tell you that no one who was an eyewitness says anything other than one person.

No, not one.

There may have been other people in the community who said that there was a platoon out here. I remember one person apparently said, not to us, but elector reporters that there were helicopters in the area. No one who was actually there, not the kids. None of them there said anything other than one person.

In our interviews, the Afghan villagers clearly felt that more than one person was involved, but Morse's right to say that none of them saw multiple American soldiers with their own eyes. Aji Wazir Baran, the two men who stated that a whole American squad had attacked. They weren't at the scene. Here's baran.

Robert Bayles was not alone. They all did this massacre. They only presented this one person. These are military tactics. When the American forces surrounded the house, they would send one of them in to kill.

Did all of the Americans shoot?

Only Robert Bayles entered the houses? The people who survived say that he entered alone.

So how do you know that the American soldiers were outside, Because.

We know their military tactics. I think they surrounded other houses.

You think.

Any allegation that that was other than one person, like even just the smallest bit of scrutiny, that thing would fall apart. So any concern I had that the victims weren't going to tell conflicting stories, I just didn't have that concern.

Then again, even with Morse's reassurances, the Army made a couple moves during Robert Bales's trial that might raise the eyebrows of someone with a k eye for conspiracies, like how they treated James Alexander's testimony.

The UCMJ called me, hey, get ready to testify, and so I testified that yes, two people had come in one person I'd left that I believed that somebody else was involved and that being as was taking the rap. And from there I thought, Okay, I'm gonna sit back, my phone is gonna ring, and I'm gonna be on Anderson Cooper, you know, telling the story. And that never happened. It was like cool, that was it. It was like, thank you for your service, now leave.

What's more, the government treated staff Sergeant Jason McLoughlin and Soldier X differently from the other soldiers. First they were demoted in rank, then they were granted immunity from being prosecuted themselves. We asked Soldier X about the armies rationale, that's.

The standard procedure. They want us to be able to speak comfortably. And we still got reprimanded for the alcohol consumption trust like we would and I think it was just like a show of terry. We want you to speak comfortably about the sensor that tumbles like absolutely.

When immunity is offered to key witnesses in a case, it's usually in exchange for cooperation. The tactic Hamstrong defense attorney John Henry Brown's ability to point the finger at anybody else and bails a squad.

I think we knew that immunity was being offered a whole sale because I think the higher ups than the military didn't really know what the two story was. So I think they were afraid that people who worked with Bobby, whether they liked him or not, would do what they.

Could to cover his ass.

They learned quickly the influence that superiors have in the military, so I think that everybody was concerned about their future.

Data script a lot of speculation here. Every claim that one person makes is contradicted by somebody else, and after months of interviews and research, it felt like we were no closer to knowing for sure whether anyone else was personally responsible for the Canaharan massacre. The only person who we knew had the answer with Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.

Okay, so what's the game plan now, and what are we doing and what's going on? I mean, just give me a bottom line, guys.

On December fifteenth, twenty twenty two, our team recorded one final interview with Baiales. Recording devices aren't allowed into Fort Leavenworth Prison anymore, so this conversation was held over the phone on a secure attorney client line arranged by John Marr.

Okay, so, Bob, We've got ninety minutes this afternoon.

Okay, man.

It was during this call that Paul Pulowski Max Nelson broke the subject of Bales for the first time of him taking the fall for his guys.

Hey, Bob, if you look up this story on YouTube, for example, there's this female reporter who speaks to some of the people in the village of some of the Afghans and Alla Kozai and Najabian. Some of those Afghans are like, oh, there were a lot of American soldiers there that night. It wasn't just one person, it was a lot of people.

This is a Caliban controlled area. This is a Caliban the village, and they will do what the Caliban tell them to do. So the Caliban are not stupid people. The truth is they're very intelligent when it comes to using information operations in propaganda. That video was propaganda. It was used to try to get Caliban to come to their side. That video was used to try to hurt America's movement to win hearts and minds. It was used

Well, as a follow up to that, we've discussed you're a guy with very strong principles. If in fact you are the only guy out there, you kind of strike me as.

A guy that probably wouldn't shut up.

And take the fall.

Yeah, and the kind of just not rat anybody out, given your principles.

I would never rat out anybody, and I would always take the fall if that was what needed to be done for my country on every day, twice on Tuesday. But that's not what happened here. And if that's what happened, don't you think my country would take care of me? Have they taken care of me? Now? They haven't taken care of me. They been exactly opposite of that. They've hunged me out to drive. And if they've hung me out the drive for this long, don't certain thing? Time

You think perhaps? But again, you know a smart man would, But a principal man sometimes overrides or smarts of the principles accept the loyalty.

One way is stupidity, right, that's stupidity. When they let the Taliban go and they kept me in prison, how's that justice? Man? You know, up until that point you could say a lot of things and say, you know, we're being just, we're being fair. You know, the talibanner still being held in captivity. You know it's it's right to each the justice under a law. He let one hundred and fifty Taliban prisoners on death row go free. You know they're living way better than I'm living right here.

Bails is adamant and consistent with the stance he's been espousing for you years. According to him, the United States has abandoned him, and he sees no reason to lie on the nation's behalf. Whether he'd cover up information simply to ensure that his brother in arms would lead a normal, happy life, that's harder to parse.

We spoke for a little bit, so just wondering what your impression card with him was.

Music. Yeah, he was a soldier. I loved him to death. I mean, I'll tell you right now, of all the people that I feel like I heard, I feel like I let him down the most. He's a young man, just had had a baby, newly married. I brought him up from a sniper. I'm not sure what happened to him after that, you know, at the trial or at the hearing. You know, my wife gave my hug in life. I went up him the great things for and I hope he I hope he went on had a happy life.

Even now, Robert Bale still considers soldier X to be a friend. Then again, Baals didn't have a bad word to say about anybody, even the people who he suspected might not reciprocate, like Special Forces Captain Danny Fields is superior in Afghanistan.

You know, I know Captain Field's probably had a lot of negative things to say about me. I respect him, man. You know, these guys went over there and did what other people wouldn't do. You know, they raised their hand. They're willing to go into a fight that other people aren't willing to go into. I was upset with him at the time. I think he should have been more aggressive, and I don't know why he wouldn't fight. But sitting back looking at it now, I don't know what his

Even James Alexander, one of Bailes's harshest critics, got a positive review from the imprisoned former staff sergeant Alexander.

Here's another good guy. I you know. He he was the guy that the army tried to make me out to be a racist, and they kind of turned his words and manipulated what Alexander was trying to say, and then he stood up and said, no, that's not what I meant by that.

We hadn't heard that story from the time of the trial, but when we interviewed Alexander, nobody had to coax him into expressing his opinions.

Bails is a racist, Like, there's no doubt I was singing in the shower and you know, singing hip hop music and he's like, who's that nigga in there singing? But when he saw it was me, he was like, oh sorry, it's like cool, fuck, You're sorry.

The only person Bail spoke negatively about was the man responsible for putting him away for life. Prosecuting attorney Jane Morse.

So clearly printed Colonel Morris, he was ambitious, right, And I can't fault anyone for being ambitious. And I think he wanted to make a name for himself. And so you know, this is a huge case for anyone. You know, he's running around trying to you know, get on a certain of TV and trying to become famous, and you know, this is his claim to fame. And I think you know that was what he ultimately wanted. It wasn't about justice.

Bails's assessment of Mores is based on more than just the prosecutor's behavior in his own trial.

This is what I've understood from the rumor mill right, is that he assaulted this young captain at this convention, and it's a sexual assault case against him, as he's the senior Special victims prosecutor in the United States government. So Lieutenant Colonel Morris is basically forced to resign his commission from the army and he's forced out, but he doesn't have to do prison time.

In early twenty fourteen, just months after Bals was sentenced to life, Morse was accused of groping a female captain several years prior while attending a conference on sexual assault. He was formally reprimanded and retired soon afterward. To this day, Morse maintains that the encounter was consensual, but Bales feels this potential stain on Morris's record isn't factored into his reputation or his credibility.

He's out there still running around making his name also being the guy that prosecutes Barber Bales. So every time this comes up and somebody else goes and interviews him, he gets his name back out there and he's like, I'm the guy, the prosecutor, Robert Bales, I'm this great man. Look at me, I'm this great upholder of justice. I don't get it.

Bales believes that Morse is not a pure hero, just as he himself is not a comic book villain. In this case, there are many shades of gray. The same can be said for the Afghan villagers, who, in Bales's estimation, were likely working with the Taliban. It's a major point of contention, the one that Morse rejects wholeheartedly.

So we have the State Department, we have the Department of Defense, we had the FBI all on searches, and we found no evidence that any of these victims were Taliban. I mean, they were literally all farmers. There was nothing in any of these houses that could be construed as even having them be Taliban sympathizers.

Even so, a decade after the events, Bales is steadfast in his BLUEFS.

And America believes that there a bunch of goat herders and cave sweilersion. That's not the truth. These men that lived there in this area were Taliban growing poppy and ash. That was their main crop. They were putting this crime on mules, running it up over the desert and to Pakistan and Pakistan they were bringing back weapons.

They were there for a reason, just as he expressed in years prior. Robert Bales is convinced that he neutralized a Taliban threat on March eleventh, twenty twelve, But this time he offered a theory on why this essential information never became public. It has to do with his body count assigned to him by the United States.

I said at the time, and they used it. It's in the record of trial. It's in the stipulation of fact. I said, I got twenty. They produced they said sixteen, But nobody ever counted the bodies. So where are the other four? And if they're so impoverished, where are the men? And when I come back and I said, you know, these are the men. Either I don't know what I'm doing, or I do know what I'm doing, and there's twenty

After he got back to the VSP there is record of the staff sergeant saying that he believed he had killed twenty people. Perhaps he had counted some of the victims he had shot, but who managed to survive. Mailes doesn't think so.

Their statements to the prosecution one to make sure he included in the document that proved that I was kilty, But they also prove a lot of other things, right. They also prove a lot of mitigating factors that no one's even considered.

Hey, Bob, I wonder if I could follow up on one thing you said. So you mentioned that you counted I believe twenty people ultimately at the end of what happened, and you know the government puts you up for sixteen Was I hearing that correctly? That you feel like there's a discrepancy of four people?

My account was twenty? Where are the other four?

We also wanted to ask Bob about the anti malarial mefloquin. Specifically, we were hoping to gain some clarity on when he was administered the drug and whether he had even taken it in the first place. Questions that have been raised during the appeals process. Here's an excerpt of their oral argument from the US Court of Appeals in Colorado.

I want to focus on your methicalin argument. As I understand it from the Court's opinion below, there was no testimony at all that he was prescribed mefloquin, that he took methlicin. In fact, I don't think he ever said that he took mefloquin.

I respect to disagree judges.

Okay, on which one of those do you disagree?

Not all of them.

The nation's premier expert, doctor Remington Nevin, who is dedicated his life to mefloquin. His expert opinion is everything is consistent with meflicuin intoxication, like more's consistent.

But point me to where he said I took mefloquin.

Well, that I cannot do.

Okay, you can't do that.

We presume that if Bales can answer these questions about mefloquin definitively, it could be instrumental in someday getting a reduction in his sentence, even if it didn't happen. In the District Court of Colorado.

Here's a situation where nothing point I have to be just. I have to be clear so that you guys understand I didn't know the drug's name right until later, but I did have the effects, and we knew the effects when we took the drug, and we all knew we were having crazy dreams when we were taking that drug.

Hey, Bob, did you even know that you were taking an anti malarial or did you not even know that.

We knew we were taking an anti malarial? Were we? I mean, I know what the name of the drug. You know.

Do you know whether, like you took an anti malarial for the VSP bellum by deployment or was it just for the early deployments.

The metic wins Like back to the early deployment in Afghanistan, the question of metic win comes up because we went back to Kandahar for a couple of days and I left my regular anti maalarial back at Bellamy and so we stopped in candor Hor and picked up some stuff there, some anti malarial mets there, and I don't know what I got there.

This was news to us and Bales is recollect meflquin was not the anti malarial at hand at VSP Bellumby, but apparently his squad traveled to another base sometime during the deployment, and what the troops were given there is unclear. Don't forget the Department of Defense began a review of methylquin under a week after the Kanahar massacre had upset the balance of the region and eventually discontinued the use of the drug entirely.

It's extremely possible while we were at Kandahar, after we had went on a mission bomb Bellamy and Candor that that one was an issue there. So yeah, I can't tell you what was there. I don't know what the name of the drug was. I know that sounds crazy as somebody on the outside world.

Obviously methlquinn has long term effects. I mean, is it still something you think you're dealing with Until.

You're educated about something, you don't know that that effects. Right when I close my eyes at night, it takes a few seconds before I don't see stars, so like I'll see like lights flash and my vision after I close my eyes at night, and it takes a while, right even to day, even yeah, even today. So you know, you hear the stories about and you're so tired you see shit at the time, you shake it off because you're working. I mean, I don't know that you realize

In all likelihood. Biles is separated from his family and definitely but on top of this, for the rest of his life, he's afflicted, like so many veterans, with a fundamentally altered psyche, possibly due to the mefloquin, but almost definitely in part from his many traumatic brain injuries.

I think the doctor actually showing through the brain scan that there was a TBI between two thousand and six and two thousand and seven, and the way I thought it was explained to me, and this has been a while, guys, I mean it's been ten eleven years now. He explained it to me is like ruins on a tree. You know, how there's scarring in trees. They're scarring in the brain

I mean, so do you think TBI was a component?

It's difficult when you're in the situation, right, because you're in an environment where if you're not bleeding, your fine, right, like you get blown up. Hey man, let's take care of the blood. Let's get everybody taken care of them, Let's get back out of here. You know, later on you might recognize the effects. Like I said, you know, after two thousand and seven, we did a raid in Solder City, and on the way we got hit with an e FP and at the time I didn't even

At one point in the call, Bails and attorney John Marr took some time to debrief on the latest in their case.

So Bob, to bring up to speed. As you know, our case we argued every bit of sixteen months ago. The court is really looking at this hard.

And in all of my.

Experience, both in the military and as a civilian guy, I can't help a thing that the court is agonizing because they don't want to rule in our favor. That's the resumption I have. But we made it impossible or almost impossible, for them not to ruin our favor.

Many years into the appeals process, Robert Bales has hit to see any significant improvement in his situation. Even the unconventional President Trump, who granted clemency to numerous controversial veterans of the military didn't pardon him. At the time of this conversation, it would seem that the chances of Bails walking out of Fort Leavenworth a free man are minuscule. So Paul asked him directly, so, I.

Mean, let's talk about hope. Given everything that you've been through, I mean, do you have any considering everything that's happening, what you're seeing now, how do you keep it alive?

There was an article written in the Seattle Times after President Trump decided it not to pardon me. It said, only in a dystopian society would someone even consider partning Bales. And I sit back and I think about it now, and I'm like, only in a dystopian society would you pardon the enemy and keep your own soldiers in prison. Only in a dystopian society would that be okay? So I don't know about hope. I don't really consider that.

But we'll see, coming up on the war with it, has your opinion about America changed because of this massacre we have.

A different opinions than about America.

Took place at a very critical time in the country and the war, and shaped how the next almost decade would look.

I think Pandroid mass occur was kind of the nail in the coffin for any chance to really control PANDWA.

I don't know what the strategy was from game one the level of corruption started.

I'm going to hit and't them for the rest of my life. And McDowell Barns didn't run in their country.

I don't know the circumstances of what made Bob Dow he did. I just know that the Bob that did that was broken by a system, and to only look at him to pay the price for is wrong.

The War Within the Robert Bayles Story is production of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers from Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers. The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoberman,