S1E6: Of Sound Mind and Memory

We haven't been vocal.

We haven't said how can America, how can they release the guys from Guantanamo Bay who have committed the same crimes, if not worse, placing them back in the same environment that they committed their crimes in.

Since the start of the US Afghan War, roughly seven hundred and eighty alleged war criminals have been held at the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, the number of detainees is just below fifty. Meanwhile, back Stateside, staff Sergeant Robert Bales is currently serving a life sentence without parole.

The part about the Gitmo that bothers me so much is the legality versus the morality or the logic of it. Right, so we legally there is an argument that these people are being detained without trial. I understand that argument, and I understand that I've had a trial. But what you're saying is these people in Guantanamo Bay are innocent. That's not the case. These are the worst people that we detained over a fifteen year period that ended up in GITMO. And I could sit in prison forever if we'd have

Previously, on the War Within, staff Sergeant Robert Bales told the military court his rampage was premeditated and without justification.

In high school's cabinet, the football team, you take lots of hits.

Bob wanted to make sure everyone was protected. It's a guerrilla war. How do you know who you're talking with?

Haji Wazir, He's the gentleman with the Taliban fighter tattoo. These are not innocent people to begin with.

We have the.

Evidence some of the Afghan witnesses left their fingerprints on bomb parts.

They took up to Disneyland.

For God's sake, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the War within the Robert Bayles story. In the last episode, Robert Bales and John Maher walked us through their belief that some of Bales's victims were members of the Taliban in their minds. This information completely changes the context of his case. We also showed the Afghan families themselves passionately refuting these Taliban connections. Many of the people we interviewed were not

We had the State Department, we had the Department of Defense, we had the FBI, all on searches, and we found no evidence that any of these guys were Taliban. I mean they were literally all farmers. There was no evidence, literally, not a single piece of evidence. There was nothing in any of these houses that could be construed as even having them be Taliban sympathizers. Bales was walking around for

Bailes was working with the same intel as everybody else. Special Forces Captain Danny Fields, the commanding officer at the base, doesn't think that this information was strong enough could draw any conclusions.

I think that's a convenient truth that helps fit that narrative for him. But we being the team actually gathering the intel on the ground. You know, I don't think we had any specific intelligence that definitively said that any of the people that he killed was a Taliban target. We had some theories and assumptions at best. There was no piece of evidence, even collectively, that we could gather and say, hey, we should target this compound.

I mean, even if.

We gather all the intelligence, we couldn't have probably fit that puzzle together.

Fields and more spoth say variations of the same thing. There was no evidence, but Baiales and his attorney John Maher have pointed out specific pieces of evidence which to then indicate Taliban connections and American collusion in covering them up.

The United States, in my assessment, has had this position where every Afghan is innocent, and I don't believe that is in tune with what we know with our intelligence. You can be a village eldern you can also be a jihadist. They're not exclusive. And the whole idea in these cases that I've handled in in variably the United States has to biometric evidence, and it's in the register.

Biometrics are the most basic understanding that all of us have of It is like fingerprints, facial images, iris, scans and DNA. Those are all your body metrics.

American journalist Annie Jacobsen researched biometrics extensively for her book, First Platoon and the Process. She learned that it was actually quite common for Afghans, Taliban or otherwise to have their DNA enrolled in what is called the bats and Hides system.

The goal of the United States Defense Department was to create a massive biometric catalog of eighty five percent of the population of Afghanistan. Everyone in there was either a good guy or a bad guy in air quotes right.

Jacobson is a vocal critic of relying on biometric evidence during wartime. She considers the methodology to be imprecise.

Biometric systems are significant and powerful in a country whereby rule of law and a justice system is working in a democratic manner, and biometric systems. In a country like Afghanistan, where there is no state, it's just simply anarchy. It's impossible to even begin to try and use science and technology tools to promote justice because the very fundamentals of justice don't exist.

Ever.

See an FBI crime scene, you know that yellow tape, you know, all the scientists with gloves. Why because they must preserve the evidence.

So the very idea that you could be.

Running around a warth here being shot at and also trying to use these tools that are fundamentally based in preserving a crime scene, it just opens the door for so many problems.

I mean, Andy, Like just from my own personal experience, you know, we had a guy blow himself up with an ID and they told us just to go out and get a finger. You know that only had like half the tip left, and that's what they ran through bats and hides, right, And.

I hate to be so graphic, but how do you know that's the finger of the guy who blew himself up? What if it's the finger of a nearby farmer who got caught in the crossfire.

More, even if the biometric information is gathered properly, it might be used incorrectly later on, especially when dealing with common names.

In every culture, there are names that are incredibly similar John Smith, right if you use the example of John Smith. If I take the biometrics of John Smith, and we know who he is at a cellular level, and we just say, okay, John Smith stand right there, and you have another individual across the country whose name happens to be John Smith. When you have crafty defense attorneys, it's a bit like you know the old games at the carnivals,

Consider that premise of names intentionally or accidentally being switched around. As Robert Bales reads a biometric report he obtained on Rofiula, a villager of Alakosi who served as a weakness in the trial whose voice you've heard in this podcast, Rafiula doesn't have.

A last name.

Rafiuola was enrolled in the biometrics system on nine March, when number Bravo to Juliet Kilo mic Hotell eighty three. An idea even occurred on twenty eight October in Panduak. The idea event has references twelve thirty five thirty eight The Army Master Rafula this event four days after his enrollment thirteen March. But you were bringing him into the country to testify against me.

Well, you always have to take people on a case by case basis. But the challenge with biometrics is that most people in the Western world, they have been educated to perceive science and technology as impeccable, as flawless, even many people have watched too many episodes of CSI.

Asked Attorney John Maher about Annie Jacobson's work and inquired about just how conclusive his allegations against the Afghan villagers could be given the possible limitations of the bats and hide system.

Detractors are not off putting to me at all. Detractors I don't think understand biometrics. I read Annie Jacobson's book, I gave her interviews, and she just came out with what she believes the story should be. Now, she may have found misspellings or last names incorrectly, but you know what, I believe that's one person. And I sat with her and I disagreed. I said, Annie, I don't think you

And blood and skin. That's all it is. Robert Bayles and John Mayer had more to their case than just the bats and hides data. Baals also pulled one hundred and sixty pounds VIDs out of Haiji Mohammad Wazir's home, a major reason why Bales targeted Wazir. On March eleventh, twenty twelve, Your wife Satal, an Afghan journalist working in concert with our production, uncovered the following information when he interviewed a villager from Ala Kozai, Haji Mohammed Naim.

No Tlulu, most of us had enemies in our villages. One of Haji Wazir's farmers placed a mine under a mulberry tree.

Presumably that's the same mind that blew off an American soldier's leg several days before the attack.

These enemies told the American forces that it was actually Haji Wazir's son who planted the mine.

So these enemies were giving false reports to the Americans.

Yes, they gave the American forces the wrong person. After that, the American troops attacked our villages. Now eleven people from Hadji Wazir's family have been martyred. He no longer has young sons.

According to Naim, the insinuation is this Baals used incomplete information to deduce that Wazir was working with the enemy. There might have been bombs in Wazir's house, but they didn't belong to him. However, Wazir is also notable for supposedly having a Taliban tattoo on his hand, another important piece of evidence. Here's Lieutenant Colonel Moorese on that point.

The last guy with the hand tattoo. This is the guy who had over ten of his family members were murdered. He had three or four tattoos on his hands, and we asked about him. There was no evidence. Again, we did our research. We worked with both the FBI and the State Department, and nobody had any problems with that guy's tattoos.

Morse also had as an explanation for what another potentially suspicious Afghan, Mulla Baran, might have been doing to land himself in a detention center in Parwan.

One of the witnesses was held up in customs in the US because he came through as having spent a day in one of the prisons in Afghanistan, and he had been brought in with about sixty other people because they were harvesting one of the poppy fields, and so he spent a day in there and left. That was it.

If Afghan civilians like Mulla Baran and Hadji Wazir were Taliban, then flying them to the United States on commercial airlines to testify against an American soldier is a decision that can certainly be scrutinized.

If people knew that the Taliban was sitting in an American courtroom, or terrorists or you know, jihadis or bomb makers, I think that they might have had a little bit of a different view of the prosecution. How dare you flew Herman Goring into an America courtroom? I don't think we played like that.

But if the Afghans are telling the truth and these supposed Taliban ties aren't legit, then their travel itinerary becomes somewhat of a non issue. We broached that subject with Morse. The Afghans they flew commercial correct.

Oh yeah, we flew commercial the whole way.

Were they able to travel around the United States, And like one report had them going to like disney World or SeaWorld or something like that while they were here.

So the Disney World issue was when we had the youngest girl who was injured shot in the head. I thought she was going to die. She went to San Diego Naval Hospital. One of the times she was there, someone escorted her and her father to I don't think it was Disneyland. I think it was one of the other parks down there. It wasn't US, and it wasn't the government. They paid for it with their own money.

Morest vehemently denies the implication that any of the victims who he brought to the United States were allied with the enemy, but it's hard to blame Bales for asking the question. In a place like Panjue, parsing the difference between friend and foe was a challenge, As Private James Alexander explained in Episode one, the soldiers at VSP Bellumbai had troubled tracking the complicated allegiances many villagers. Back in twenty twelve, the.

Guy that lived near us was called peg leg Right, And for the longest time, we're thinking this guy is like a friendly dude, and come to find out he actually was like giving information to the Taliban. We hired workers onto our base to help build stairs.

Two brothers.

Turns out they were Taliban, right, and so it's like it's like, Okay, these dudes are all around us and we can't even figure out who is right who is wrong.

It is conceivable that a Taliban operative was among those killed on March eleventh, twenty twelve, but the women children, at least they were innocent. There was no clear military reason for them to die.

If any of these guys were Taliban, it wouldn't be relevant to me, and it wouldn't be relevant to the law or the case either. Even if somebody came back later and said, Hey, actually this guy was Taliban or this guy's uncle or brother or whatever it was Taliban, I would still say that that has nothing to do with Bail's actions. That presents no viable defense.

Curdisgrace has experienced fighting in Panshwe he agrees with Morse.

That changes nothing for me. These are non combatants, They're unarmed, they're not presently engaged with you. You went, you hunted them down.

And you shot them.

Bobby Bails didn't have the power and decision making authority to put bullets in their heads.

In the US military, the chain of command is sacred. In our interview with John Mayer, when it Bails's fiercest advocates, we asked whether Baals even had the authority to take on this self imposed mission. Let's say, at among the victims there were Taliban members, there were bomb makers. Bales would still have to get you know, I had to call an approval for fires. You know, as a weapon squad leader, Bals would have to do the same thing.

That, I think it's fine question. Even though they might be Tailorman, they're sleeping in their house, Bales was went out with guns and AMMO, and the killings arguably were not justified killings, were murders.

Bales and Marr want the public to know about the possible links between the victims and the Taliban. However, when it comes to getting a new trial, it can't be at the core of their legal defense. Mar said it himself the killings were murders. As a result, the defense attorneys determined to shift the focus to Robert Bales's brain.

Where the justification comes in is this, Bales was in one of the houses and a kid came from behind a door and smashed him in the head with a shovel. Bales was nonplus, just turn around, shot him in the face. Now, you're tough guy, Mike, I know that. And Bales is too taking a blow to the head you know, a shovel. I mean, are you really in your right mind? Bales would very much like us to candidly proceed with the war crime stuff rather than the mental health stuff, because

Victim traumatic brain injury TBI. It's a common diagnosis for soldiers who have seen combat. We spoke to the directors of Bringing Injury Research and Medicine from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. To learn more about these pervasive injuries that are plaguing US military veterans, here doctors Miguel Escalonne and Kristen Damse O'Connor.

A traumatic brain injury can happen when there is an external force to the head, face, or neck that results in either a loss of consciousness or an alteration and mental status.

It could be from me falling and hitting my head. It could be from somebody punching me. It could be from a projectile that would be like a bullet or a knife. Basically anything outside of my body. Any force that causes my brain to get bruised directly or punctured or jostled around in my head would be a traumatic brain injury.

Some of the acute symptoms that could be noticeable after a traumatic brain injury can include things like disorientation, confusion, changes with vision, difficulty with.

Balance, trouble sleeping, memory, agitation, maybe nightmares. Patients have dysregulation and mood. They might snap at people and do things like that that are out of the ordinary.

And it's the milder injuries that pose much greater challenge to clinicians attempting to diagnose them.

TBIs often go unrecognized and untreated in the military because, unlike with external injuries, it's extremely hard to tell when you've gotten more. As doctor Escalone explains.

I call it an invisible disability. If I said somebody took a baseball bat to your knee, and then I said, well, guess what, your knee's not going to work. You're gonna lamp and it's going to be pained the rest of your life, you'd say, Okay, that makes sense. But if I say the same about a brain injury, it doesn't compute the same way, but it's the same idea. You know, like your brain just can't. It's not built to take that kind of punishment.

The doctors from Mount Sinai have never met Bails, Even so, their experience suggests that his brain have spent a lifetime taking serious punishment. After all, long before the staff sergeant enlisted in the Armed Forces, he spent much of his childhood playing tackle football.

There is research to suggest that, especially if a person starts playing full contact football early in life, that the risk for later life functional decline is greater. Football tends to involve repetitive exposure to head trauma, and even when those repetitive hits to the head never result in a clinically diagnosed concussion, the risk for development of later life clinical symptoms appears to increase.

Our collective understanding of concussions and their effects is much better today than it used to be. Back when Bales was playing high school football in Norwood, Ohio, We're taking and delivering big hits was just part.

Of the game.

The best I had in eighth grade, I'll never forget it was screen pass and I very much knocked the kid out and I was knocked out to I walked to the wrong huddle. I got up, staggered back to the wrong huddle, you know, kind of get turned around. You know. We kept playing and my bells run, you know. Late eighties, early nineties, I don't think it was as much of a concern that now looking back, and I think I had a few concussions, but at the time, nobody knew about it.

Growing up, they all spent seven years playing organized football. Then after nine to eleven, he spent another decade in the Army. During his service, Bob was exposed to numerous ied plasts as his wife Carrie can a test.

He told me that he had been blown up nine times in a striker vehicle. I never got a call home, but he'd been blown up. But he didn't get any purple hearts because he survived. There are many people that got purple hearts for TBI right for being in a striker vehicle that blew up. But he's like, no, I didn't sign up for it because I survived and it was just part of the job.

An explosion doesn't have to kill or dismember in order to be physically devastating. David Wesley served with Bales on two deployments in Iraq during the mid two thousands.

On our first employment, I was on the truck that drove Bob, so every time I got hit, he got hit. Those are our fun experiences, man. I'll tell you what I remember. I was getting hit by an ID and it felt like I got hit with a baseball bat in my face. I've never been hit harder than that. It knocked all the air out of me. You could feel the heat, but you're dizzy. It's just it's bad.

The pressure from an ID blast is overwhelming. I've been exposed a few times myself. It feels like you've been wrapped in a mattress and then dropped off of the Empire State building. Doctor Escalone breaks down just how these blasts to deliver serious trauma to the brain.

So the first thing is just like a result from the pressure wave of the bomb. So if you imagine a bomb going off like underwater and the waves it would create, those waves go through your body, they'll shake your brain and they'll shake your internal organs. You can get injury to your stomach, your liver, your spleen, your lungs, and your brain is no different. Then you can have secondary blast injuries, which are from projectiles, so like shrapnel.

Before long, such a high level of blast exposure seems to have added up for Robert Bay.

So I started having headaches after my second tour, migraines. So there was an explosion as we were heading into Solder City in two thousand and seven, and after that I got sick, start throwing up, So I'm pretty sure you know I had a concussion from that.

TBIs aren't simply painful or disorienting. The resulting trauma can change you persons basic ability to function and alter their personality.

You kind of lose parts of yourself and you become really disinhibited. Whereas if you and I get in an argument, we might yell, but after some blast injuries, I'll just maybe I'll just punch you without even yelling, and so you kind of lose your ability to regulate and think clearly. From a practical purpose, it's a lot like a form of dementia. I mean, basically, your brain can only take so much.

I should have got some help, and I tried, you know, I went a couple of times. But in the same token, your coward if you do that. So let's say I go and I get help and I don't deploy, right, So now I leave all those guys that are in my platoon count on me.

Man, I couldn't do that.

TBI can be a serious disability by itself, but after multiple deployments, Bales also began showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. As doctor Damse O'Connor asserts, TBI and PTSD often go hand in hand for Army veterans.

In military service members in particular, TBI and PTSD are very commonly co occurring, and these two distinct conditions can have implications on behavior that are mutually exacerbated. If you have both, it can be harder to function than if you had only one. Certainly, hypervigilance would be considered a

Nine times out of ten, hypervigilance is a positive attribute and a warrior. For Bales, his attention to detail would help his squadifate perilous areas on patrol.

We were getting id'd heavily in two thousand and six and seven and they were devastating. So on the next deployment, my thought was, how do we stop that? And so the idea was I would take video of routes and things like that, and I would compare those video like you would compare a football tape. You're looking for tendencies,

That car there?

And so later on you know that was one of the things that the doctors used to say, you're paranoid to the point that you're doing something that no one else in the army is doing.

Robert Bales's vigilance remained consistent. He regularly cleared houses in combat, moving through each room to ensure that the enemy wasn't hiding anywhere. After returning home to his family, he found himself repeating the process, even though civilian life in Seattle doesn't present the same dangers as Arolla Rock. Bob's wife, Kerrie, recounts these incidents.

Why would wake up with night terrors where I thought it was a recurring dream where I thought someone was in the house.

This is something I.

Had, you know, before getting married, but being married to Bob, he he would wake up and really think that someone was in the house. We had a gun right for protection, had a handgun, and he would clear the house with it to make sure that there was no one that shouldn't have been in the house. And he would also clear the perimeter so if he actually went outside and make sure there was nobody on our property where you lived.

I had like, you know, weapons stashed throughout the house so I could fight my way to get to a point where you get people out of house. People don't do that, you know, I mean, logical thinking people don't do that.

I didn't think to like tell anybody. I just thought, Oh, I'm a warrior's wife, right, That's just what they do, That's what they're trained to do, and of course they're going to protect their family people. In hindsight, everyone's like, well, why didn't you, like, I don't know, get help for him. That's obviously PTSD.

Harry, Well, you know you're screwed up, right, Like when you can't sleep and you clear your house with a pistol on a weekly basis, and how many people work out a way to get your family out of the house during somebody breaking in.

Well, at the time, first of all, PTSD wasn't a thing, right, wasn't thought of as anything. The army didn't said it wasn't a thing, and if you said it was, like Bob would tell you, if you ask for help or whatever, you were seen as weak and it would impact your career.

Even though Bales had begun displaying unusual behavior, he kept it under wraps from his employer, the US Army. For starters, TBI wasn't a well understood condition at the time in the military community. Here's doctor Damse O'Connor.

Many veterans, first of all, struggle to get an official diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. Whether that is because the clinicians to whom they have access are unable to accurately diagnose traumatic brain injury, or because soldiers choose not to disclose symptoms.

Nobody gives two shits about PTSD. I don't know what the numbers are, but I know they're crazy, Like eighty percent of the military claim some type of PTSD, even only ten percent have ever been fired at, you know, have actually shot their weapon in combat. And that's why I'm very hesitant to seek treatment.

There is a tendency to push through a person who signs up to risk his or her life to defend his or her country, and in this case, to protect Afghan civilian families. These are individuals who are willing to put themselves at risk.

Every soldier has a different level of tolerance, not just for risk, but for physical and mental trauma. After David Wesley's two tours, he decided that enough was enough.

It was clear and apparent that we were going to continue to deploy, and we were going to keep deploying at a rapid rate. Basically, my wife was like, you need to take a break because even after the first employment, waking up and looking for my rifle, you know, second one, same thing, and these bad have they're getting even worse. I remember going and seeing the infantryman and seeing how much more they were on that razor's edge than I was, and I decided I wasn't going to go back.

I was done after that. I think a third one would ruined me.

Bails and David Wesley were on the same two deployments. They had both been exposed to a similar level of ID blasts, but while Wesley was looking to make changes to his life, Baials was trying to push through all the while, the commulative effects of many sustained TBIs were beginning to present themselves. Bob tells a story about an encounter during a night out in Seattle in two thousand and.

Eight the bowling alley.

Think.

So, we had just come back from our second tour and we're at a bowling A whole bunch of us were there all together. Dudes are going out back and smoke him. I don't smoke. I was going out to hand out with the guys. So there's this biker. He's a bigger dude. He's literally blocking the door making out with his chick. So I'm just trying to brush by a high five dude. Right, she catches my hand and she like swats my hand down, ended up hitting her on the ass.

Right. The dude comes.

Out and he must have thought I was a pussy or whatever. I don't know. And I'm like, looks her, you know, I apologize. I meant nothing to buy it, you know, let me let me, let me.

Buy a beer.

And then he shoves me, and I'm like, looks her, I don't want any problem.

I got my family inside there.

I don't want any problems.

Anyway.

He pushes me one more time, and so I just kind of just forward tripped on. He had his long hand so wrapped his hand up my left hand and I'm just I don't even this dude. So bouncers come out, the police came, and that's why it's on a police file. But at that time, I didn't want any problem with that cat, you know what I mean, I like tried to walk away. You know, I'm looking for this stuff, man. It just sort of happens.

Although doctor Escalone never personally examined Bales, he does contend that the Bowling Alley incident aligns with what he's seen from people laboring under the symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

I've had patients get into fights even knowing that they've had brain injuries, and me explaining to them, like, you can't just go get into bar fights because you're just going to get another brain injury. You know, I can't put myself in their exact frame of mind, but it seems like like they can't help it. People totally change, and you have people's family say like, this was not the same person.

It's an interesting thing because hindsight would be like, well, why didn't you see it that way? You know, he was obviously having issues after the second deployment. He would also like sit out on the porch, listening to loud music, with a cigar, sit out, maybe with a shadow whiskey or whatever, you know, just kind of zone out and be in his own place. I think the war was definitely with him all the time. I don't think you can leave it behind.

In two thousand and nine, Robert Bales deployed to Iraq for the third time. When he came home to his family twelve months later, he figured that something had to be wrong with the way he was feeling.

I was home and I was washing the dishes, and my daughter come in and I was just pissed at her for no reason, like, you know, she's bothering me washing dishes. And I realized, man, you know, I probably needed to go get some help. So, uh, in twenty ten, I went to a mental health clinic k at Fort Lewis. I went to it because it was confidential, so I wasn't, you know, because if you you know, you have these PTSD problems, you're not gonna you know, I surely wouldn't

I'm like, man, this is exactly me.

Before Staff Sergeant Bales ever did, deployed to Afghanistan, the Army identified that he had brain injuries. They put him in treatment for PTSD, but at no point did they tell him that he was unfit to take on a fourth toward duty at that time.

I think Bob knew they did an MRI, but I don't think that they told them what they found. I don't think they ever said, hey, you have a TBI. They diagnosed him with PTSD as well, but they didn't do anything about it. They didn't tell him, they didn't tell his commanders, they didn't tell anybody. This only came out after all of this happened that it was in his medical record.

With this diagnosis, Bals couldn't have taken the trip to VESP Bellumby unless he had been clear for combat by Army medical which raises the question what were the Army standards for physical and mental capacity as it pertained to redeployment. Were they rigorous enough?

If you have a concussion related to blast injury. You need to be evaluated, you need to be cleared medically, right, and then if there's something particularly cognitive or mental about your job, all right, I have to understand strategy or I'm leading this team, so I have to make sure I make the right decision so I don't lead us all into danger. So you have to be put in all those scenarios before you should be cleared to go back.

Back, making matters worse. There are some scars from combat that don't appear on medical records. David Wesley, Bob's former colleague and friend, has first hand experience with the myriad ways that the horrors of war can permeate everyday life.

We already know the dangers of PTSD.

You cannot see a person get blown up into chunks, spread across the street and people walking around picking them up, putting them in pretty much grocery bags and be okay. You don't get when you smell burning flesh, there's something different about it. It makes barbecues different for the rest of your life. It's not like the army didn't tell us or at least pushed out the stigma that if we needed help, we was Pauls.

They most definitely did.

Hell if you didn't, if your bone wasn't sticking out, are you really hurt?

It bears repeating many of the Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bob bails myself. We saw more combat than almost any soldier from World War Two. Doctor Damse O'Connor points out the inherent issues with keeping the same soldiers on the front lines for years on end.

How much is too much? We invest so heavily in training our service members, individuals are being redeployed more times than the individual was hoping for, and more redeployments than were initially planned. Exposure begins to increase a person's risk for long term brain damage.

We definitely talked about it back and forth. You know, I just wanted to be together as a family. Finally, you know, here we are. Haven't you done enough? However, we also have the conversation of look, Carrie, I'm the only one going back with these people that have never been to Ward. They're all new, none of them have experience. If I don't go and share my knowledge, bad things are going to happen to them, you know, basically they're all gonna die. Is what he took upon himself in

A guy I described it one time. Everybody has a cup, and I think my cup was just over full. Man, I don't think I could take anymore.

And I.

Regret not getting help before. I regret not staying in treatment for the PTSD.

I regret you know it, just it fell apart.

Coming up on the war within what you.

Have described here sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Dog is a drinker?

Are you parting a lot?

Did that shoot your weapon?

You're effect We had a med shit where you had all kinds of shit. Bales could get whatever the hell he wanted.

Bils beat the shit out of that jingle truck driver.

The government should have disclosed the debilitating effects of a boy's and name.

Ethically, we took here once a week.

Nobody really thinks that anything is going to happen long term.

The drug is fundamentally defective. It should have been abandoned.

The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of Bungalow Media and Entertainment Checkpoint Productions in Mosquito Park Pictures, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive producers Paul Plowski and David check Executive producers for 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 Hoverman, sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was an archival producer, Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer, and Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh, Nicole Rubin, Marcy Barkin, Zach Burpy, and Meerwi Satah, as well as all of the people who were interviewed for the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.