S1E5: BATs and HIIDEs

John Henry Brown fought his ass off. He had used everything he had through it before he entered the plee.

John Meyer is the attorney that currently represents staff Sergeant Robert Bales. Mar makes it clear that he respects the lawyer who preceded him and.

John Henry Brown. I think to his credit, he hung up his cleats, if you will, when a death penalty came off the table. I believe in his soul and his country said, hey, I saved the guy's life. It's undoubted that he shot and killed these people. We're seeking a death penalty. We saved his life. John Henry Brown also did something that to me is the hallmark of a probe. He says, listen, fellas, my apologies. I'm embarrassed.

Previously, the war within.

A case like Bales was a criminal investigation from the very beginning.

They're gonna give me the capital punishment. I thought I was doing the right thing.

It's pretty clear what happened in Bales is behind bars where he should be.

This is vesp ballimpy.

It's a big fuck you to the Taliban. This is their home.

When I got out there, even the prosecution attests to I'm asking for the Kailid.

The u cmchange. They're gonna protect the army and at the end of the day, see the army used a client.

I'm punished.

I know what I'm missing, my kids here without their father.

This is the war within the Robert Bayles story. In June of twenty thirteen, Robert Bales played guilty to the unauthorized murder of sixteen Afghan civilians. His fate was the result of a deal made with lead prosecutor Jaye Morse.

When they came to us and said, what's it gonna take to get death penalty off the table? To me, it was well, that was my plan. We had been doing things correctly. We presented a strong case, We had the evidence.

How did you feel when he pled guilty? Like you go through this case, You've been on it for a year and a half. What were your personal feelings when that plea came in.

I knew this is the most important thing I will ever do in my professional life.

On the side of the defense attorney John Henry Brown hoped that a guilty plea would give his client a chance at the best possible sentence.

We felt it was a long shot that we would get life with parole. Of course, being the eternal optimist, thought the least they should do for Bobby was to give him life with parole.

Two months later, on August twenty third, Bales would be given life in Fort Leavenworth's military prison, no parole.

Brown was with him when it happened.

It took him a long while to grasp the reality of what a horrific situation he was really in. I think he was a traditional soldier in the way that he felt that the superiors would back him and not turn against him. Of course, that's not excusing what he did. There's no excuse.

During the sentencing hearing, Morse did what he could to close the door on any potential sympathy for the defendant.

I knew that he was going to ask for mercy, He's going to ask for leniencine. But I was also sure that he was going to ask the panel to think about his kids. He had two kids, and I just thought that this goes back to this whole idea of trying to personalize the victims. I mean, I want the jury to have sympathy for Bail's kids like his Bail's kids and his wife are victims in this case too. I just thought there's a lot of kids here that also aren't present in the courtroom, that are in Afghanistan.

Moors perceived the Afghans response to the sentencing is positive, but hearing from Haji Mohammad Naim, one of the Pashtuon males in the gallery that day, it was clear that their feelings were mixed.

When the decision was issued and the criminal is sentenced to life imprisonment, the criminal's family started out and crying. I asked the interpreter, why are they screaming and crying? He said, Bales was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. That's why they cried. I said that this person took away our family members, away from us forever, and now that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

They are crying.

They can go and see him every day. This person made sixteen of US martyrs.

Haji Mohammed Wazir agrees with his fellow Afghan.

In the presence of the international media, I said that I want the.

Execution of Robert Bales.

I said that we do not accept this sentence. We want a trial in our own country that takes place under the shadow of our Islamic law.

Before bail shipped off to Fort Leavenworth Military Prison, John Henry Brown had one final meeting with his client.

That was a.

Cheerful session I had with Bobbie after everybody else left. Yeah, he's wearing his dress uniform and those of the uniforms are really nice actually, and I need change into his prisoner out there.

But he was emotional.

You know, how can this happen to me?

It was just a bad day. That was one of those things where you know he didn't really have time. You know, we talked about it before, where you don't really have time to think about it at the time that things are happening. It's afterwards that those kind of ring a little bit deeper, a little bit worse.

Since he received a life sentence in twenty thirteen, staff Sergeant Robert Bales has spent just about every waking in a prison cell. According to his wife Carrie, Bob manages to keep himself busy.

He did get his bachelor's degree and he's working on his master's degree in organizational psychology.

I think is what it is.

He's very, very into being physically fit. He does cross fit and works out and eats properly and does all of that. He's a routine for him and it helps him mentally and physically. Never in gold moment. He's always busy. He's always doing something. He's always thinking of, you know, what's next, how can he help the kids?

How can he help me?

But I think he has a lot of tough day. I think, well, I'd like to say, you know, it's me and the cans that keep him going, but I don't.

That only goes so far, Carrie has done everything in her power to maintain some sense of normalcy within the Bales family unit. That includes moving her family from Washington to Kansas so that her children, Quincy and Bobby Junior, can live close to their father.

The first job I applied for I got and they helped. They pay for us to move out here, and we've just sort of.

Thrived and we love being near Bob.

It just feels like it's the right place to be and we never.

Have to deal with that.

Oh my gosh, we only.

Have one more visit.

You know, when are we going to see Daddy again?

My poor sister always wonders, when are you moving back?

I'm not, I'm not. We're here.

This is it.

Family is where you.

Make it right.

The kids, Quincy and.

Bobby were three years apart.

You think that they are maturing now that We've always been upfront with them about Look.

What questions do you have?

And we were very thoughtful about how we presented why is daddy here?

What happened?

That's something though, that I appreciate, is that my mom never took me away from my dad and he's always been involved in my life.

Bob and Carrey's teenage daughter Quincy spoke to our producers about how she and her family managed this atypical arrangement.

We don't look like a normal family, so people looking in, but we have the same I think dynamic as a normal family. The co parenting, I think is just different. It's unconventional in the way you look at it. But they're still like parents. Of course, my dad can't be involved physically, like he's not at home and I don't wake up seeing him every morning, and I don't come home from school seeing him every single day. But we can talk on the phone and we do every single day.

Maintaining your presence in his family's lives is at the top of Bail's agenda in the day to day, but he's also working on his long term plans, namely appealing his sentence and someday earning the chance to go home to his wife and kids. It's an unlikely goal, but Baals has nothing but time to work out a strategy.

Whatever we can do to make as much stink, to make as much notification.

As this, we need to do it. Being quiet doesn't work.

Being quiet get you a thirty five year prison sentence and by the time I get out of here, my kids are adults.

I mean, that's what we're talking about.

Bales has been working with John Mayer on various appeals since twenty fifteen. They meet several times a year to discuss his case. A former Army officer himself, mar is really the go to attorney for convicted war criminals. His firm's website is Lawyers Defending Warriors dot com.

Mindful of all that passion, mindful of all the legitimacy of everything you just said, Bob, you're going to get into sentence I hearing, or they're going to reassess the sentence. It can be awfully hard for them. Not that I don't want to put pie in the sky, set up a balloon that come down a bulling ball, but the error is so plain and prejudicial.

We gotta be bold, We got to come out, We got to say, you know, how could Bales do this? How could he go out and kill women and children? How could I not go out and try to stop somebody from putting in an ied How many times do I go back and sit on my rock and try my back porch, drink myself into a stupor, knowing that I maybe could have stopped something that didn't happen. How many times do we let Americans die when we know where the bad guys are and we don't go at them.

You've heard a lot about Robert Bale's mindset during his deployment to Afghanistan. In fact, Baiale's mental state can be attributed directly to his training in the start of the Iraq War in two thousand and three.

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly. Yet our purpose is sure the people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace.

With weapons of mass murder.

Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force.

In President Bush's official announcement to the world that the United States would be invading Iraq. He alludes to what would become the nation's unofficial strategy, shock and all or to use the commander in chiefs language, decisive force to overwhelm the enemy.

The job of the infantry is very simply. You want to find, fix, and finish the enemy. You know, it hasn't ever changed. I mean the weapons have changed, the techniques have somewhat changed, but the idea is you're gonna kill the enemy in close combat.

We kill people for a living.

For the average member of the infantry, this meant that they were going to be expected to kill Iraqi soldiers on site, something Bails learned during basic training.

I'm not trying to talk negative of the army, but this is what the infantry does. For example, the one that I always used was from sniper's school. Right, the instructor comes in, older guy comes in from day one, He's like, why do you want to be a sniper, And so everybody has some answer that people want to hear, right, like oh, you know, I want to be a force multiplier on a battlefield, or you know, I want to make sure I save my buddies and he's like, you're

Bail spent his first two deployment in a Rock fighting under shock and all guidelines, finding, fixing, and finishing the enemy. By the time his third tour came around in two thousand and nine, the army's mission had changed. The Iraq War was drawing on longer than anyone had hoped. Obama had taken over for Bush, and the US was pivoting its approach to something called counterinsurgency, using the military to improve a Rock's infrastructure and empower small communities, winning hearts

We didn't really even comprehend the difference in the mission until.

We're on the ground. Iraq is now.

Very docile compared to what it was in two thousand and six and seven, and so the mission had shifted to try.

To really rebuild this area.

So we're doing a lot of these micro grant programs which you would find business owners. So there's a lady that wants to build a dress shop. So you know, we grant her like thirty five hundred dollars to make a dress shop. The problem with this was that we knew a lot of this money went back to conducting terrorist operations. You know, I think we would all like to say that, you know, if we give this food to family, that family's going to be fed for thirty days.

Bails take about the unintended consequences of counterinsurgency is supported.

By Soldier X.

The man from VSB Bellumbine will not be identified here.

At that time, there was a new administration. They're trying different tactics on how to engage with the local populations and instead of being aggressive and going and solving the issue and not menterally, they try to do the whole hearts and minds and see if we can essentially buy their love. I mean, was it worth trying?

Sure?

Maybe as we're trying, but I think we should have maybe recalked and win a different direction. Not Creed Ferdada wasn't good. So in those incidents, Veils I think probably was pretty frustrated. As a leader. We're trained to be aggressive, we're trained to do those things the whole you know, give it out money and give it out hordes of food. You knows, not our wheelhouse.

As March.

Bob Bale's Ford Deployment Afghanistan twenty twelve, it's another counterinsurgency mission. The soldiers at VSP Bellaby can't proactively confront the enemy, in large part because the Taliban intentionally blended in with the civilian population. John Mayer explains, there's.

No uniforms in Afghanistan, so no opponents or no enemy, or no fighter who's going to be against you is going to be wearing his uniform. They blend in with the population and it's a guerrilla war. So the challenge for American soldiers is the idea, how do you know who you're talking with?

By hiding among the locals, the Taliban puts American forces at a disadvantage. Unidentified Afghans are supposed to be presumed innocent. It's a philosophy that requires American troops to be reactive, not proactive.

Here's J.

Moore's So generally, if you are in a declared war, you can use a lethal force against somebody on the opposing force. Anytime you can sneak into their barracks room and kill them while they sleep. If you see a guy in the woods taking a bathroom break and his weapons away from him, you can shoot that guy. What you can't do is destroy things that are civilian objects

In twenty twelve, Stab Sergeant Robert Bailee as a combat venter who's been conditioned to kill the enemy. Ten years into his service in a highly kinetic area, his orders are to sit tight and wait to be engaged before firing back at the enemy. It's a different approach that takes them getting used to.

It's the anticipation of death, probably way worse than the death itself.

I don't know.

I haven't died, so I can't really say that. But you know that waiting for something to happen is terrible, you know.

What I mean?

You know something's coming, in that anticipation of whatever's coming is what.

Makes you paranoid.

I guess What's more, Bales feels confident that he knows the location of undercovered Taliban operatives. Remember one of the houses that he targeted that night, belonging to Haji Wazir, had just been found to contain over one hundred pounds of bomb making materials.

The twenty fourth of February, we're conducting a patrol. We came upon a command wired ied. The command wired ied ended up being one hundred and sixty pounds of explosives. You know, it was a pretty big deal that command wired led back to Wazir's holme. Haji Wazir, as you know, is the gentleman who came to the United States and testified against me as prosecution witness number twelve. And he's the gentleman with the Taliban fighter tattoo on his right hand.

These supposed Taliban ties are a big part of Robert Bales's efforts to clear his name. In his eyes, if the public knew that he actually killed Taliban members on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve, it could have changed everything.

I feel like I cave during the trial because I there was this information that wasn't out there that would have changed the idea of me taking a plea deal. I would have never taken a plea deal. I'll go and we'll let the pieces fall where they fall. But at least I go in and say, look, these people had conducted terry activity from these locations before. I don't think you would put people in your house where you made your explosives that you were going to go kill

To be clear, Afghan women and children are not eligible to join the Taliban. But if Bales is right and he actually did kill Taliban, the paradigm changes. Even Lieutenant Colonel Morse can attest that sometimes for the US military, the death of civilians can be viewed as unfortunate but necessary collateral damage.

Commanders are facing those decisions every day, and it's sort of most visceral format. That might be a drone strike on a car with a terrorist leader in it, and he's also got his wife and two kids in the car. The commander has decided whether or not he's causing unnecessary harm by firing.

On that target.

As Bales carries out his life sentence, he can't help and ask whether American drone operators are guilty of the same crimes as he is, without suffering the same consequences.

I looked it upon Wikipedia.

The civilian casualties thirty one thousand in Afghanistan up to twenty sixteen, according to the US government.

I didn't intend to go.

Out and kill civilians the same way that the people that are sitting in Arizona or Nevada who drop from the drone don't intend to kill civilians, But yet it happens the end result comes out to the same. So why are they not sitting in here with me?

Whether targety drone strikes on innocent civilians are moral, well, that's certainly a conundrum. But with the prior authorization they are legal, and by Baales's logic, sanctioned drone strikes and imprompting night raids, essentially they're one and the same. Drafting off this line of thinking, let's probe whether Baales's hypothesis is true. Did he find, fix and finish the enemy that night. We know about the one hundred and sixty

We found a picture of Haji Wazir online who had made a terrorist video. And on the video, the man has a cross swords tattoo. It's on his right hand. And during the video and he's talking about, you know, called the Candahar massacre. You know, he's talking about this, but the whole time he's holding up his terrorist tattoo, his Taliban tattoo. Why was he doing that? Because it's a recruiting video. That wasn't a fresh tattoo. He didn't get that after he got that way before.

And we knew that John Henry Brown wasn't convinced by Wazir's supposed rationale for getting the tattoo.

An older gentleman actually had a tattoo on his hand, which I knew because I read one of those books that there and he puts out of things you'd look forward to identify Taliban. And when I.

Said, well, what's that on your hand?

Because oh, a tattoo? And I said, wait, something not a Taliban tattoo? No, No, I knew it to oppress the girls.

That's two instances of circumstantial evidence against Haji Wazir IED's in his house and a tattoo on his hand had the flashing lights that Bail saw the night before the attacks, and perhaps a pattern begins to form. However, the Bail's camps strongest point lies with the US military's database on Taliban members in a system called bats and Hides, which Robert Bales and his attorney John Mayer know, well, how many.

Times did you enroll guys with bats or hides?

Daily?

Multiple times daily?

For example, Let's say I take a guy down right now, and I don't have the access to the information that he's a bad guy. I can tell right away that he's a bad guy because I can directly link back to that database. Sure, sure, so you know again, it's it's a handheld device. It looks almost like an old school Pom pilot. So you'd basically find a person that

You have to make the treator on the ground as a guy who directly used this stuff, you as a sergeant and your soldiers.

Was it reliable? One hundred percent reliable?

The Bats and Hides information was always you know, in my opinion, it's always been good.

You know.

How do you argue DNA and biometric data.

In his interview, John Maher backs up his client's assertion that the data collected from Bats and Hides is almost unassailable. He believes this because his colleague, biometrics expert Bill Carney, has drawn this conclusion from his findings in the field.

Bill Kearney, I trust his work implicitly. If we come across a d site where we're gonna have explosive ordinance, you know, d come up there and diffuse it, or after the bomb goes off, we pick up all the forensic tidbits and then we run it fingerprints, because that terrorist is not gonna wear gloves when he twists the wires, and that's gonna leave his skin on there. Most of the time, it leaves this perspiration on there. Sometimes it

Bill Carney declined to participate in this podcast. Samar and Bales relay his findings on the biometric evidence he found on the Appian victims.

Of the Afghan witnesses left their fingerprints in DNA at great co ordinates on bomb parts nied parts. Four of them left their fingerprints.

Prosecution witness number five, Rafaula. Rafaula is the young boy was.

Involved in the biometric system on nine March twenty thirteen. The first prosecution witness, Mula Baran, was enrolled in biometric system on twenty two May two thousand and nine.

I have a letter here from the detention facility in part one, and they believe that Mula Baran, witness number one was a ten from the coalition.

You've heard the voices of Mulla Baran and Rafaula in earlier episodes. Both of their names came up during a scrub bats and Hines. Baran was also at one point detained in that in jail. What's more, Baals defense team learned this through their own legwork, not from the military's records. For Jay Morse in the prosecution.

The farmers that they brought from Afghanistan to testify, we were never told that these young people were clearly Taliban, which I think would have made a difference if we'd been told that, But we never found out out till the end of the whole procedure.

By all accounts, John Henry Brown inquired about whether all of Bale's victims were simple farmers, but the powers that be made it clear that the AFGHANSI testified were not on trial Colonel Morris.

He gets up and he says, the State Department informed us that Muli Barrian might have been a detainee at the detention facility in Parwan. But then the judge says, I'm not going to make a congressional case about this challenge. Defense should have been jumping up and down.

They were not forthcoming with the defense. And there's this big safe in our office at JBLM.

JBLM is Joint Base Lewis McCord where the trial took place.

And I asked one of the people I won't mention because I'm not get him in trouble. I said, well, what's it there? And they said, well, that's all the stuff that you're not supposed to see. And I said, well, is there anything in there that I should know about? And he goes no.

It can't have a guy got away for life or plead guilty without making sure that the government of the United States has shared all the exonerating evidence. Prosecutor Jane Morris stand bright in the court. Well, the State Department says, they're not going to turn him over to us, What fuck go get him? Bob's police should never been taken until a complete forensic criminal investigation was completed in a wild Because the bodies were taken away and burned and

They weren't allowed to ask Mula Baran if he was a member of a terrorist organization. Our government wouldn't let us ask that question. We know that Mulla Baran was held at some detention center hadju Wazir.

You can't ask him if he's a terrorist.

Oh really, So the Taliban tattoo on his right hand doesn't mean anything to you, even though it's documented in the US Army Book of Symbols. There's a Taliban tattoo. You know it is, and you can't ask for that question.

Here's the last piece of the puzzle for this dilemma posed by Bails in his defense. Not only were the Afghan victims part of the Taliban. Not only did those Taliban connections go uninvestigated, but those same Afghans were flown to America on commercial airlines.

The United States flew twelve Afghan civilians into the United States into Atlanta, Georgia, with the American flying public. They were under fake social security numbers, fake passports, fake work visas, they were held out as government contractors, and then they were on Delta Airlines was truly innocent American flying public to Seattle.

How would you feel if you were on this flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Seattle, Washington at eight twenty am on August eighteen, twenty thirteen. How would you feel about riding next to a.

Guy there was a bomb maker?

You feel comfortable flying on Delta Airlines flight eighteen eighty four. You're flying and coach, You're sitting next to Mula Baran who's been detained at Parwan form building bombs.

Perhaps you can see what marn Bales are getting at with this. After all, the global war and tear began with a couple of extremists taking control of passenger planes. Furthering your point, when the Afghans arrived in the US to testify they were afforded a fair number of American luxuries.

We take them to the SeaWorld, right, That's what our government did. They took them to SeaWorld.

They took them to Disneyland, for God's sake, you know, the prosecutors in civilian cases usually don't take their witnesses to Disneyland. They obviously had new clothes that were very nice, you know, Afghan style, but clearly high quality stuff.

Do you think that had an effect on their testimony?

Yeah, for sure.

Bales, mar and Brown are presenting a narrative of the events that runs counter to what was depicted by the government in the media. For John Maher, the potential emission of evidence in mitigating circumstances is a big reason why Robert Bales serve as a new trial.

I'd like to repeat what John Henry Brown said, the fingerprints I wish I would have had, It would have been a wholly different show. But if you can't find that evidence because your countrymen kept it from you, what are you gonna do?

For Bales himself? This unearth intel goes even further at a personal level. It can clear its name by revealing his true motivation for leaving the VSP on March eleventh, twenty twelve.

If I want to walk in and kill everybody, why not just go in and kill everybody? Why not in the first village go in and kill everybody?

Because that wasn't what the attempt was The attempt was to try to stop people from putting in IDs. Naja being Alcozi. These are not innocent locations to begin with.

We have the evidence. Your wife is a Tall.

That's the name of the journalist who interviewed six Afghans from Alakozai and Najabien on behalf of our production. Attall currently lives in Afghanistan, which is to say he lives under Taliban rule. It's important to mention this before we tell you that A Tall asked each Afghan participant whether they in twenty twelve were actively working in service of an enemy of the United States. Here's a Tall speaking to Mulla Baran, the man who was once held in a detention facility.

Robert Bales claims that he wanted to kill Taliban the night he entered your brother's house. Was any member of your family in the Taliban or was your brother connected to the Taliban?

The claim of Robert Bales is one percent false. In this age of technology, the Americans have equipment that can distinguish civilians from non civilians. This was an intentional act.

Hadji Wazir is the patriarch who lost eleven family members who suppose has the Taliban tattoo at all asked him the same question.

Robert Bales claims that he wanted to kill Taliban. Then was any member of your family in the Taliban?

No, nobody in our family was in the Taliban, nor did we cooperate with them. Most of my family were miners less than fifteen years old. Robert Bales has no evidence against me in this case.

Rafiola was around fifteen years old in twenty twelve. According to Bales, his prints came up in the Bats and Hide system one year after the attack.

Yeah.

Right, We had no interest in the Taliban. My family members were farmers. We farmed domestic animals. We want to live in our country and be calm. It doesn't matter what government it is, as long as there is peace and security so that we could be happy in our lives.

What other effects did this incident have on your life? Do you still have the same angers?

I myself were shot in my legs. Now these parts of my body heard at night. When I think about this and I look at my sister who is now paralyzed, my emotions increase. We want to tell the world that after this incident, no help was given to us. They have not paid any attention to us. We asked the world to help us to treat our wounded, continue to help the families of the martyrs.

About six weeks after our production interviewed Rafula, one of our contacts, Leila ahmed Zai, informed us that he had tragically passed away in a swimming accident.

That's all we know. One thing is clear.

The Afghans who spoke with a Tall categorically denied Bales's assertions that they were enemy and sergeants ten years ago. But a tragedy like this one, such devastation, has the potential to change allegiances. After nine to eleven, many Americans decided that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan were our new enemies. Perhaps the Kanahar masker had similar effect on the villagers of the Panjwei region, after all, Nowadays, Mulla Baran approves of the Taliban government, but the Tanyan.

We like the Islamic Emirate. You may ask why I say that all the people of Afghanistan have been burning in the fire of war for forty years. Now, there is one hundred percent security in Afghanistan. The wealth and honor of all people are protected in it the voice of a poor man is heard. The Islamic Emirate is good not only for you and me, but for all people.

Mulla Baran's news is named hick Matula. He's about nineteen years old here. Up until the withdrawal in late summer of twenty twenty one, hick Matula had spent his entire life under American occupation. His poignant perspective says a lot.

The Reithims minder.

The presence of the Taliban was very low when I was young. We didn't even see them once a week. Yeah, no one in our family was a member of the Taliban. But after the incident, we became Taliban tedder will you now we are with the Taliban.

Coming up on the war within.

We found no evidence that any of these guys were Taliban.

These are non combatants. They're unarmed. You hunted them down and you shot them.

Bales was in one of the houses and the kits smashed him in the head with a shovel.

A traumatic brain injury can happen when they're is an external force to the head, face, or neck.

I call it an invisible disability looking back, and I think I had a few concussions.

Bill's is not looking to be portrayed as a victim.

I should have gotten some help.

The War Within the Robert Bailes 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 form 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,