S1E7: Poison Pills

What you have described here.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, a situation where we have an individual being placed in charge of multiple people's lives.

Doctor Kristen Damse O'Connor is a neuropsychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She's an expert on the effects of brain injury on military veterans.

I've never met or evaluated this individual, but from what I've been told, it sounds like there was alcohol, sleeping pills, and days and days of sleep deprivation. You're mixing up quite a cocktail here.

Doctor Miguel Escalone, a colleague of Damse O'Connor, agrees with her assessment. Neither doctor has examined staff Sergeant Robert Bales, but they've both seen the devastating effects of TBI and their patients time again.

I think it's common sense to say, if you take someone who attends towards a violence, might have PTSD, all these kinds of things, and you give them something that could make them even more violent, could be a catastrophic situation.

Previously on the war with.

It now looking back, and I think I had a few concussions.

Bob told me that he had been blown up nine times.

A traumatic brain injury can happen when there is an external force that results in an alteration and mental status.

I call it an invisible disability. Your brain is not built to take that kind of punishment.

You can't explain this irrational activity looking at it from normal eyes.

Bales is like running around with a chicken with a fucking headcover.

I reguard that night, I'll see some flashing lights to the north. You have to go out and try to stop that threat.

I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war with it The Robert Bayles story. Robert Bayles's legal defense did not utilize the staff sergeant's history of traumatic brain injury to fight for his innocence in perpetrating the Canaharm massacre, even though many expected them to do so, such as legal analyst Jeff Tubin speaking here to CNN.

The subjective is to establish that Bails is a very damaged man psychologically. He is someone who is not fully responsible for his own actions. And given that the defense appears to have something to work with the fact that he had had a serious head injury, that may be what gets this case to a resolution that involves something other than execution.

Ultimately, defense Attorney John Henry Brown was able to negotiate a plea deal without playing the mental health card, which would have implicated that the Army was culpable for sending Bails back into the field.

It became apparent that Bobby was the product of the government and that he was just a classic soldier that had been forgotten in Very little assistance was given to him when he had his injuries. But we had to make a decision that no, we better just you know, don tell the whole truth of what happened, because the Army will get pissed and he'll get the death penalty.

There's another reason why an argument built around Robert Bales's brain may not have held up at court. Most people can agree that the staff sergeant was not his right mind on the night of March eleventh, twenty twelve. But whether the military industrial complex is responsible for his heightened state, that's a fur debate.

We were drinking some booze, a twenty one ounce Pepsi bottle full of whiskey, and you know, three guys over two and a half hours. You know, we worked it out like seven drinks per guy. This is ten o'clock. Maybe you know, we watch a man on fire. I get up, I try to go to bed, I go in, I take some sleeping pills.

The army might have been negligent in handling his tvis, but getting intoxicated on this kinetic deployment was Bales's own decision and against the rules. Private James Alexander recalls that sleeping pills weren't even available to the other soldiers. At VSP Bellingby.

We had a medshd where you had fentanyl and all kinds of shit that was in there, and the person that was in charge of it was our medics, right, and so Bales's sergeant, he's in charge of the medics, so he could get whatever the hell he wanted. He talks about not being able to sleep, so he got sleep nets.

It's like damn.

Okay, Like, you know, I wish that was an option, because not all could sleep, but we didn't all have the ability just to like go to the candy store and take whatever the hell we wanted.

Alexander's comments are in line with those of Bob's wife, Carrie Vails that Bob relied on substances more than he should.

He was a drinker.

He went to Ohio State, right, he partied a lot. I think that's how alcohol came into his life. And then I think he liked to party it up with his guys as well. I think that maybe after his second deployment and third deployment, there were times when he would just kind of zone out and drink to I think forget.

Honestly, you know, I'd go out on a back porch when we lived in Lake Tabs and you know, I just said, and I mean that's kind of an alcoholism thing too. You know, I'd sit there in a back porch and you know, just drink, you know, I mean, I didn't want to be around anybody.

I think he was in pain.

And those times when he would go off by himself and have a few drinks and smoke his cigars. I think there were times when you would drink to obviously make the pain go away.

Doctor's Damse O'Connor and Escaloone shed light on how TBI and addiction can often go hand in hand, compounding the symptoms of each affliction.

Alcohol use.

Substance use is often more common among soldiers who have sustained a traumatic brain injury. Substances like alcohol can be a coping mechanism.

It's a way of self medicating.

It's a way of turning off all of the enormous stressors that a person can be exposed to.

In a combat zone.

You're much more likely to get addicted and to not be able to stop yourself because you've lost that inhibition. If you've lost the ability to tell yourself no, you're going to get hooked.

So we're in country in Afghanistan. It's either Christmas or New Year's. They start shooting off flares like celebrate right. They were shooting red and green up into the air, and all of the infantry NCOs are drinking or are drunk. We didn't know what they were up to. We just assumed they were doing the right thing like we were.

James Alexander sent us the following video from that Christmas night, which he took on his cell phone. But soldiers are firing flares into the sky like fireworks. For a group that was tasked with living alongside Afghan farming villages, they aren't being subtle.

Bobber I even.

Met at Hey, you're good, big Pepper, did not shoot here, whapon you're a fag.

That was Bales, who used the word I won't repeat here. Apparently getting drunk was normalized. That fell them by so much so that Private Gavin Jones doesn't recall the infantrydership or NCOs doing much to mask their in sobriety.

You know, they'd come over just to check in with us and have like really hard to heart talks, and you know it's something that a drug person does, you know, like an I love you bros.

Situation.

They'd be coming over from their huts and be like, hey, guys, just want to make sure that everything's doing okay. A few of those and you could tell that there was. They were getting wild over there.

Alexander and Jones were privates lowest on the total poll. They didn't have the standing to tell their NCOs to stop drinking. Green Beret Captain Danny Fields was the person who was responsible for making sure nothing got out of hand.

I don't think I'm sharing any secrets here to say that Green Berets will have some kind of alcohol on their base.

Now.

It was also god of big boy rules. You play by the rules.

If you're drinking, I don't want to know about it, but you're also doing it responsibly.

To be clear. Fields in his group were Special Forces or SF as elite high priority soldiers. Military regulations are usually more relaxed for them.

I made it very clear with the team that the only people that would be drinking would be the SF guys. Now what they did after I said that, You know, I have no idea.

Yeah, I think some of that has probably come to light.

Alcohol seemed to be available to almost anyone who wanted it at VSP bellumby Captain Field's outlines how some soldiers managed to transport it to Afghanistan.

If people want something, they're going to find a way to get it. A pretty common way to get alcohol on a base.

Is that people will mail it.

They're not going to maybe mail a bottle of Jack Daniels, Like, here's what I've heard is a bottle of like mouthwash, and that's vodka. And in that maybe you even put some some blue or green food coloring in there to make it look more like mouthwash, and that gets shipped and goes overseas and shows up in somebody's care package.

John Henry Brown seems to think the liquor came from the Special Forces, after all, Bellaby was their base. Furthermore, Baiales's lawyer surmises that alcohol wasn't the only illicit substance used and distributed by the SF.

It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me someone who was provided alcohol and drugs by the Special Forces should be treated the way he was being treated. You know, they had what they called the drug store and the SF campground, which was any drug you wanted was in this box, and Bobby would use them, and he was given steroids by the SF.

So it started taking the steroids probably early February.

They were pretty amazing.

The joint pain goes away, like it's an amazing thing to not feel joint pain. You know, it's an amazing thing to feel better. You know, you're out there doing patrols.

You know, I'm an old man.

I'm thirty eight years old at the time. You know you're carrying, you know, one hundred pounds sometimes.

On your back.

You know, you're doing what you can to keep up, and so I'm not going to apologize for that.

According to Bales, about a month before committing the Canahar massacre, he started taking stenoza law, a synthetic steroid derived from testosterone, just like in pro sports. An authorized use of steroids is not allowed in the armed forces, according to the privates, that didn't stop Bales.

I remember like multiple times he mentioned like doing some steroids and if we ever needed something that like he's he's got our backs. But it wasn't necessarily put like straight to us, like hey you want steroids, but like, hey, you know, if you ever need anything, you know, I got you squared away.

We would work out and he'd just come in and start trying to wrap three fifteen and it's like all right, dude, like let's see how this goes. And he'd be able to get like half a rep and like you could physically see him ballooning as he was taking the steroids.

Similar to alcohol. Prohibition of steroids is a rule that's often ignored by deploy soldiers, as Panchway podcast host Curtis Grace explains.

I know a lot of people that did it. Steroids isn't one of the things that's tested for on a normal drug test. You have to test specifically for steroids. So unless they have reason to believe that their guys are doing steroids, they don't test for it.

Do SF guys use steroids? Yeah, I mean I think that's fairly common. I don't think that's a big secret. Were there people using it on our VSP, probably yeah, but again not I wouldn't say widespread or really well known.

It's not like it was advertised.

If it was being used, whether that resulted in, you know, poor leadership or just some poor decisions, I don't know.

The potential side effects of steroids like stenols a law are well documented, hormonal and balances, headaches, difficulty sleeping. Most notably, numerous studies have found links between steroids and aggression. Some call it roid rage.

You know about the time that bails be the shit out of that jingle truck driver, right, that.

Was definitely like another steroid moment for sure, void rage or whatever.

The privates are referring to. An incident from the middle of February twenty twelve. Bales had started his steroid regimen a week or two prior when a truck arrived at VSP Bellumby to make a regularly scheduled delivery.

So we are getting resupplied by Afghan truck drivers. Halfcan truck driver. We're there unloading a bunch of food.

When you're in an.

Area like this, everybody does every job, all hands on that kind of thing.

I'm down the chain of the truck. The driver of the truck is the first one touching everything. So he's moving stuff down the saine. And as he's doing so, he's moving quicker than bails can grab the stuff.

And I'm the last guy on the truck and we're having fun with it.

We're throwing boxes to each other.

Right.

So the first time the guy he throws they're twenty four ounds soup cans and there's twelve in a bundle, smacks me right across a jaw. And I mean, first time it was funny.

Dales kind of like yells at him, like, don't hit me again. Right, But the guy doesn't speak English. He has no idea what you're doing. And so the driver, you know, goes back immediately to start unloading his truck, Like what's the big deal, bro, Like keep.

It moving, you know, I'm seeing stars, you know. But I understood.

He is in a hurry because he doesn't want to be the Afghanis truck driver stuck in Belling by Afghanistan. When lights go out, when it gets dark outside, he's gotta die.

He just delivered goods to Americans? Are you kidding?

So we're we're unloading again, and he does it again, smacks me right in ahead.

Well, I turn around and.

He's just laughing his ass off, you know, He's just in the truck, just laughing, and I'm like, nah.

Dales turns around and starts punching the dude in the face and wrestling with him inside it this truck, and I'm just like, what the hell is going on?

You know, he's a typical after anyways, probably one hundred pounds, you know. So he goes straight down and so once he went down, you know, the knees started hitting and I put his lip through his tooth and then, you know, I kind of like caught myself when I stopped, and I was like, okay, that's enough.

But I eventually got pulled out of the truck, calmed down, and the truck driver's bleeding, you know, and he's yelling and whatever.

I felt bad about it. So we got him cleaned up and I offered the guy sixty bucks.

His first like words are like, oh man, like, what are they gonna do to me?

You think I'm gonna be okay? Like, don't say anything to the guys. What are we gonna tell them? He's talking about the guys, He's talking about the SF crew. I don't know if that truck driver needs some kind of complaint. I think it might have just been just brushed under the rug.

Many years later, Soldier X believes that in hindsight, it's hard not to see this altercation with the truck driver as a warning sign.

When I saw that happen, I thought it was stupid. Pe Durvale thought was stupid. Two I thoughably got reprimanded by the SF commander wherever they pulled him aside, like you know, what the hell, dude, I hold on with that juble truck in st pretty pretty hard, because I do feel like maybe the I past shows stup in and pulled my trade command. You know, this is the first straw and the lead you down a bunch of straws being broken.

When Robert Bales left the VSP on March eleventh, twenty twelve, his brain had lost the ability to reach equilibrium. That's almost indisputable, but isolating the specific factors that contributed to his mental state is not so simple. As doctor Kristen Dams O'Connor, at.

Tests, you are looking at the sum total of a person's lifetime set of brain injuries, systemic health conditions, many of which have implications for brain pathology, and we are trying to disentangle the unique contributions of distinct circumstances to the brain.

The military's prosecutor of the Bails case, Jane Moores, is convinced that alcohol and steroids alone can't be used as a reasonable excuse for the murder of sixteen civilians.

So there were allegations proven that there was alcohol on the base that there was some steroid use. This was not important from my point of view as the criminal prosecutor. Steroids, alcohol, and benadryl is what he was taking. There was no evidence to suggest that that combination together, or any of those things by themselves affected his ability to know what he was doing and to do what he did, zero question.

In my mind.

Robert Byales actually agrees with Morse on this point.

Yes, I believe that the steroids may have had in effect. Yes I believe that, you know, the sleeping pills had an effect. Yes, I believe not sleeping for you know a period of time had an effect.

But at the end of the day, it's a mitigating factor, but it's not. It doesn't absolve me of what I did.

The question remains, how do you get beyond mitigating factor? How do you get time solution?

Okay, yeah, make sure that you and I are really on the same page, and that is we need legal hooks that they could hanger head.

A of course, yesday.

I mean, we scoured the record.

Now we've got mathacline that changed the whole thing.

We're back in the game.

We're back.

We can go for all of it.

Right.

That moral aspect of it is what I believe in my heart is going to change the opinion of not only a panel, but of the rest of the world. And so if we do that, then I believe people say, well, he may not have had authority to leave that PSP, but the reason that he did that anyway was because of this methloquan.

We spent a lot of time on elements of this case that might explain Robert Bales's motivations and mindset in carrying out the candaharm massacred, potential connections between the victims and the Taliban, traumatic brain injury in PTSD, alcohol, sleeping pills, and steroids. The problem is none of these elements would

When the case was presented to me, eleven firms passed on it. Most firms said, there's nothing we can do. You just got to go to your time, man, whereas I was of the mindset to say, well, what can we do? And candidly, we don't get paid as handsomely as the market would probably dictate. But you do it for love, you do it for fulfillment. You do it because you're soldier. You're an officer. You're not gonna let you guys.

Don Maer knows the military's legal system about as well as anybody. During his twenty years of service, he spent time as a judge advocate for the Army, working criminal cases. Essentially, his role was similar to that of Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse and the Bails trial.

I'm a former prosecutor. We were taught as judge advocates, and you're obligated to find the truth before you bring these cases. It's an American soldier sitting over there.

It's our guys.

We're a team. Only when you are convinced that we can prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt and it's the best interest of the army and the soldier, only then do we bring cases.

Nowadays, mar sits on the opposite side of the room during courts martial defending alleged American war criminals. He's handled a bail's appeal since twenty fifteen.

In that time, he's.

Uncovered a novel, unexplored angle to this heavily screwed nice case.

It's a defense we're never provided with meflquin. How can you make a really informed decision about your life?

What is mefloquin?

Well, Mike, I'm not going to get up in front of any court or make any representation saying that I know what meflquin does. I have to rely on the information from the experts, from doctor Devon.

Bales's Path of Freedom hinges on an anti malarial drug called mefloquin, and the expert opinion of Remington Nevin, a public health and preventive medicine doctor with a notable reputation and a very specific niche.

I aim to educate the medical community and policymakers of the existence of a disease caused by poisoning by meflicuin and related drugs. It's just the latest in a series of synthetic drugs that the US military has been developing to provide our forces with an edge for the type of large scale worldwide deployments that became essential for our national security.

There are many ways that a soldier can lose their life on a deployment, and in the engagement is the main one, but diseases like malaria can present a massive danger to American troops in an unfamiliar climate.

The threat of malaria is tremendous malaria that can kill someone of European descent within days, and so without some type of medication to prevent and treat malaria, militaries had no way to operate in malarious areas like Africa and in Central and South America and World War Two, if our troops were not taking their anti malarials as directed, we probably would have lost the South Pacific due to malaria.

For the bulk of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Meflquin was the military's anti malarial drug of choice.

Lot of us took it.

I took it.

During his own tenure in the United States Owned Forces, doctor Nevin began to hear about the peculiar side effects of meflick win.

I signed up for the military prior to nine to eleven, so a few years before Robert Bales. If you'd seen that movie Outbreak, I pictured myself being a Dustin Hoffman type character in the army, and I suppose you have to be careful what you wish for.

I was familiar with meflickmen. As part of my training.

We were taught that Meflickman was safe and effective medication if used as directed. That there were many rumors and accusations of the drug being dangerous. When I deployed to Afghanistan as the preventive medicine doc, I took it myself. In fact, I was told was reach into his garbage bag and grab your box of meflickmen.

But within a number of weeks, I.

Think even I had begun to hear things from others who had taken the drug, who were experiencing very vivid treats from the drug, horrific nightmares.

I know exactly what the doctor is describing. I know those dreams. To be concise, taking methylquin was akin to me anyway to dropping acid.

I saw behavioral changes in many people in my unit.

I heard reports from others in my unit of fairly severe side effects from the drug. And it was actually the death of someone in my unit that made me look into this issue more and that began what has been well over a decade of research into this drug.

Methylquin was very effective in combating malaria cases among warriors overseas, but doctor Nevin's extensive research has brought him to the conclusion that the drug is causing an entirely different problem which could be just as deadly.

The drug is fundamentally defective and it should have been abandoned because it was shown to be not fit for purpose. Many soldiers taking the drug to develop sleep disturbances, vivid dreams, a sense of foreboding or anxiety, symptoms of panic, paranoia, confusion, restlessness, and with continued use of the drug in many cases, this would lead to a full on psychotic break associated with the usual behaviors in people experiencing psychosis, including suicide and violence.

Some of these symptoms referenced by doctor Nevin might sound familiar. That's what John Maher thought when he first unearthed studies on the side effects of methylquin. He reached out to Nevin to ask whether the anti malarial could have anything to do with the twenty twelve killings committed by Robert Bales.

When we call.

Doctor Nevin back in twenty fifteen, do you know what he said to us when he answered the phone. I have been waiting for this call for three years.

Where have you ben?

In medicine, we tend to discount our intuition, and this is unwise because medicine is not just a science, it's an art. I feel quite confident in attributing effects to meflicuin based on my assessment of people. There's something about their mannerisms, There's something about their eyes. Bales has the look. He has that look.

Back in the mid two thousands, meflquin was being administered basically in mass to the rank and file soldiers deployed to the Middle East. The weekly doses became so notorious that they developed their own nickname.

They call it Meflicuan. Mondays, we're gonna see fairies, We're gonna see shit. Oh, we can't wait. It's Mefican Mondays.

We called it like gay Peel Thursday or something like that.

David Wesley's a veteran who deployed to Iraq twice alongside Robert Bales. Gay Field Thursday.

I mean, I know that's a crass way of saying it, but you gotta think the infantry used to be just full of one jockstrap.

Wearing Hulugan's pretty much.

So that's kind of how we talked with you.

It was like, you get these like just fucked up dreams, man, like just wild. I'm so glad I don't ever have to take those again.

As an American soldier, you're supposed to take whatever medications the military gives you, no questions asked. Most people trusted the process.

I remember before we deployed, I got dosed up with so much stuff that they.

Could have gave me anything, but if they told me it was gonna help me stay alive, I wanted.

We took it once a week.

Remember Doc Stacey would come around, he had the sheet, he would give you a pill, he'd check you off the sheet, and then we had the crazy dreams.

And we used to joke about it.

You know, it's one of those things that we joked about and we made fun of, and nobody really thinks that anything else is going to happen long term. That's why, you know, when I heard about the methlquin thing, you know, I really at first.

I didn't remember the name with a drug, right. I remember the effects.

This class of drug is neurotoxic. Drugs of this class actually caused physical, irreversible injury to brains. At one point in Iraq, Bales suffered what sounds like a clear hallucination in Iraq.

I think I was on day three of fourteen hour days, and I see walking across the bridge what looked to be the Purple ghosts. And at the time I thought, you know, you've heard about stories where you get so tired you see stuff. So I didn't really equate it to the methloquin. I equated it to, man, I'm really tired.

I got to wake up.

He hallucinated some figures at nighttime while he was on overwatch, while he was surveying a bridge. That's an indication of an encephalopathic event. That is an indication of essentially irreversible side effects from the drug.

According to Nevin's research, once some methlicquin users starts showing symptoms of psychosis. They're supposed to stop taking the drug immediately as the effects could become permanent, but that message was never delivered to the soldiers. To make matters worse, Mount Sinai doctors Kristin Damse O'Connor and Miguel Escalonne suggests that the effects of methlquin can be heightened in people who have certain pre existing conditions.

There is evidence to suggest that traumatic brain injury can impact the way a person metabolizes medications. Does that extend to the effects of anti malarial drugs? I think that there is evidence to suggest that that's quite possible.

There's enough articles out there published in reputable journals that I certainly would think twice before prescribing it to somebody that had a significant psychiatric history or history of brain injury.

It bears repeating. A lot of the men and women who serve in combat, especially multiple tours, have incurred TBIs. PTSD only compounds the problem.

Let's say someone is experiencing intermittent depressive thoughts even though they're on an antidepressant. Well, if they start taking mefloquin and they develop new depressive thoughts. They're at risk of saying, well, I guess my depressions coming back. They may mislead themselves into thinking this is just a recurrence of their existing depression, when in fact it could be the only warning sign of drug toxicity.

Doctor Nevan wasn't involved with bales camp during his trial or sentencing, but he observed the case from afar to him. Details from Bales's were telling of the events preceding the killings suggests that his mental state was directly attributable to meflicuin poisoning.

He was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was suffering from hallucinations. He believed, in his heart of hearts that he had to take action against those villagers because they were plotting an imminent attack and only he could see this.

But he wasn't being rational.

He saw flashing lights being exchanged between the villages.

I have guard that night, and just shortly after we'd taken guard, I see some flashing lights to the north and I kind of turn around. I see like kind of like a start and a finish to the south. You know, maybe they were car headlights, maybe they were handheld land I'm not sure. What they were, But in my opinion, they were signaling to each other, telling them that they were ready to do whatever it was to do.

Who would think this?

Who would look at lights flashing and conclude that this was an indication of a conspiracy between the parties? Couldn't They just walked over to the other village and said, hey, let's attack the compound at daybreak. And only he could see this. None of his unit members believed him.

The guy that was with me was our tone metic. He didn't see the lights.

I thought at the time it was because he was inexperienced and he was.

Not paying attention.

The best explanation for these visual hallucinations, perscratory delusions and paranoia is chronic methic and poisoning.

There's no better explanation.

Yes, a little bit of alcohol would probably help further disinhibit him, and then when one is on steroids, one tends to get a little more aggressive than one ordinarily would. But I think even without alcohol and steroids in the mix, he had the necessary ingredients for doing what he did. He was in a nutshell crazy, because only a crazy person would conclude as he did.

When I hear the Bails story, The first thing I think of is meflquin. First thing.

Commander Bill Minofsky was an esteemed naval flight officer for over fifteen years until he began taking meflquin in two thousand and two.

Bales's deployment team, as I understand it, came under the jurisdiction of the Special Forces Medical team there where they were given meflquin because it was on their head that if anybody in Bale's team got malaria, they could get in trouble. And in most cases they were lined up and made to take it, giving it to ziploc bags, had people watch them swallow it. We're threatened with court martiall didn't take it.

On and on and on.

The United States government is lucky there were not more Robert Bales other than the ones that might have not been reported. My prayers for Robert Bales. It's a tragedy for him and his family. I don't know how to resolve it.

Coming up on the war within This drug.

Does something to the discretion center of your brain.

Meflicuin has been handed out without adequate documentation with.

The military justice system. That's we cover our ass.

If the defense were never provided with Meflin. I think it could be landscape changing.

If I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't be here talking to you. Honestly, God, I would be probably dead.

The War Within the Robert Bailes story's producttion of Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by executive producers Paul Pulowski 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,