S1E8: Discontinued

Nobody knew anything. I was first. I'm the first to get a military diagnosis four injuries related to methicomplexosity. I'm the first to get a VA rating. They called me Sheeral number one.

As directed by the US military commander Bill Minofsky, took an any malarial pill called methliquin for five months at the dawn of the Iraq War. It's the same drug that Robert Bails's defense team claims may have altered the staff sergeant's mental state during his time overseas. Menofsky experience firsthand how methlicquin can negatively affect a soldier on deployment.

Really nobody was warned.

So what I noticed looking back was I started getting really angry, and show did most of the guys on the deployment. There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of frustration, and people were just snapping each other. I thought I was drinking too much coffee. That then transitioned into paranoia, like I was responsible for the problems, like it was all my fault. And then I started having the dreams, these crazy, vivid dreams. I had an incident

I go, guys, I can't do this anymore.

And there I was helping plan the Iraq war and I'm on a drug that can cause anxiety, depression, hallucinations, and behavior.

Previously on the war within what you have described here sounds like a recipe for disaster.

We were drinking some booze, seven drinks per Guy.

Bales was in charge of the medics. You could get whatever the hell he wanted.

It started taking steroids early February.

If you take someone who attends towards the violence and you give them something that could make them even more violent, it could be a catastrophic situation.

They didn't remember the name of the drug, right I remember the effects.

They called it Mafflickman Monday's We're gonna see fairies we're gonna seek shit.

Bale's was paranoid, and he was deluded, and he was suffering from hallucinations.

When I hear the Bail's story, the first thing I think of is mufflickrn First.

On, I'm Mike McGinnis. This is the war within the Robert Bayles story. If Robert Bales has any hope of one day leaving the Fort Levelworth Disciplinary Barracks a freeman, it'll likely be because his attorney, John Mayer, successfully argued that he was experiencing meflquin induced psychosis when he committed the Kandahar massacre.

Our team's position is that the mefloquin carries to day. You're gonna give a guy a poison by order and not disclose it. The entire landscape of this case could have changed.

For Marr to be right, two key points would have to be true. Number One, mefloquin is poison, at least for some who take it, And two, Bales definitively took the drug during his time in service. We can begin to explore whether meflquin is actually toxic by hearing the story of Commandermanofsky, an outspoken veteran whose life was forever changed. After beginning his regimen of meflquin.

My volunteer to go to the Iraq war. Right at the last minute, I was called into the clinic. The korman handed me six foil packs of hilarium wrapped in a rubber band. I didn't even get it in a box. And they said start taking this once a week, and I go okay, And that's how I got the drug and went into this descent of madness.

Larium is the brand name for the drug methotly, just as advil is really ibuprofen. Some people use the terms interchangeably. By March of two thousand and three, three months after he had begun taking to any mallarial, the Commander was displaying behavior uncharacteristic of a long tenured warrior.

I had flickerburder go like you get in a helicopter.

I went out in the desert, and not to be too graphic, but I emptied my bowels in the desert. Then I went back to where the trucks were parked, and I kid you not, I threw up for an hour straight.

I timed it.

I then went back to my rack and the tent, and I was in bed for three days. I got up the third day went to take a shower, and that's when I was in the shower the first SCUD missile was launched into Kuwait. That's when the Iraq War started.

Minowski was a highly trusted operator with top secret security clearance, but when it came time to fight the Iraqi army, he could barely trust himself to get through the day.

Shield Team five when I made a deploy with them to Bagdad to help them do their mission planning there, and I told him, I said, guys, I can't go. I was within five minutes of getting on a helicopter going with them, and I said I can't go. I'm going to be a met about casualty. I feel like I got the flu. I mean, I was really sick. So I went home and I was coughing my lungs out.

It makes me sick.

And they flat out told me, if you don't take this stuff, you're refusing treatment and we don't have to take care of you anymore. So I started taking the robotusing with coding and that it was six May two thousand and three.

That's when everything started going downhill.

And after that I was in the hospital five times for panic attacks. And that's when I started getting the tremors and the shakes and I started stuttering. I couldn't walk. If you looked at me, I looked like I had Parkinson's. That lasted probably a year and a half, and I'm convinced that I still had the drug in me.

Minofsky was physically eroding in real time. Meanwhile, intermittent hallucinations were warping his perception of reality.

When I came back from the war, I had audio hallucinations. I was in my secretary's office and she went to pick up the phone. It sounded like somebody dialing a Touchtowne phone real fast. Now that happened to be the preamble to the air raid alarm on base in Kuwait. It always started with this very quick touch tone sound and then it would go alarm green, alarm, yellow, alarm red.

What are you talking about?

And then I had kind of a visual hallucination one time, right after a very severe panic attack in my psychologist office, I came outside and the sky was purple, and there were purple areas around everything. The craziest thing, and iraq.

I think I was on you know, day three of you know, fourteen hour days, and I see walking across the bridge.

What looked to be a purple.

Ghosts, purple visions. Menofski and Bales have never met one another, but elements of their stories do match, for example, a tendency towards random acts of violence.

The week of May sixth, two thousand and three, I took my wife up to the Kern River to go trout fishing, and she couldn't cast her fishing line. She didn't know how to use an open real spool, and I got violently angry at her. I went to punch her out for that. Meflquin causes rage. I woke up

That's how bad this is.

Just a short while after he began taking mefloquin, Minofsky was nearly unrecognizable. His anti malarial expert, doctor Remington Nevin, explains, not everybody responds to the drug in the same way.

For whatever reason, it appears that people have different tolerances. Most people have some ability to detoxify the drug, but in some people, we think this drug accumulates in their brain tissue where it begins to exert its adverse physiological effects, causing symptoms like disturbed sleep nightmares. You'll start to see the anxiety and panic, and perhaps over time, as the drug accumulates, you'll see the more severe symptoms such as over its psychosis and irreversible neurotoxicity.

Robert Bales may have never been hospitalized for mafloquine toxicity, but many of the telltale signs were on display at vsp bellmpy impulsive rage when he beat up an Afghan truck driver and nod fixation with the tree, disturbed sleep, paranoia.

You know it's getting worse, bro Like, it's getting worse.

You know you see the bad guy, and you know what he's going to do, but you can't do anything about it. Right, You know what's going to happen, right, You feel it. You feel these things closing in on you, over and over and over again. It's the anticipation of death, probably way worse than the death itself.

You know something's coming.

In that anticipation of whatever's coming is what makes you paranoid.

I guess.

Attorney John Marr is not the only person asserting that methlquhen is toxic, but the question of whether Bales has ever used this anti mallarial has not been a straightforward. Prosecutor Jane Morris claims that have found nothing about the drug in Bales's file.

There was an allegation that he was on anti malarials that caused him to do this. We I mean, we did a more than thorough search of all medical records for Bail's entire time in the army. You could find no evidence not only if Bail's not taking larian, but anyone in his unit ever taking it. My recollection is that the only evidence that there was ever any mafluquin was from one person who had been in Baile's company.

John Mayer puts a lot of stock in that sworn statement referenced by Mors to him, everything that a jury needs to know about whether Bales took maflequin can be answered in the affidavit of what Gregory Rao.

The direct evidence that we have is that Specialist Rao was standing next to Bob Information at some point. In his affidavit, unchallenged by the government, says yo, Yeah, every Monday we had mafflquin Mondays and they came out. We all had to drink it. We all had to drop it, and we look forward to those methicuin Mondays because we'd all start seeing stuff.

We also got confirmation from Bailes's former platoon teammate David Wesley, although our producer Max had to remind him of the name of the drug.

You remember the name of the malar drug, U Tuck.

I think it's it was like methema, meth l chloroquin or some craziness mathquin.

Yeah, there is.

You get these like just fucked up dreams, man like just wild.

We took it once a week, remember, Doc states, he would come around, he had the sheet, he would give you a pill, he'd check you off your sheet, and then we had the crazy dreams.

Speaking from personal experience, just about everybody was required to take methliquin during the height of the Iraq War. It was just one of many responsibilities that we had as soldiers. What remains unclear is whether Bales was on anti mallarials while in Afghanistan. Private Gavin Jones recalls that at VSP Bellum by most mandatory policies weren't really mandatory.

No, I did not take any of that. No, I just didn't didn't seem appealing to me. I'll wrestle with at malaria before I want to have like stomach ache. To be honest, now that I think about it, I don't think anyone took any of that medication.

No one that actually came out to.

Like, alright, guys taking a builders go like, No, I'm pretty sure we just tossed that shit up.

Soldier X, the person who will not be named in this podcast, remembers Mefloquin being at the base, But that doesn't necessarily mean Bales was taking it.

You know, I took mof quinn maybe your hair four times, but it was not as directed every d anybody means, I don't know that my version of Bales taking morf quinn in the prescribed manner either.

Why is this such a debate. If Baals took mafliquin, it should be in his medical records, which were analyzed by the prosecution, defense and Independent Sanity Board during the trial in twenty thirteen.

So we have an obligation to disclose any evidence that might go to the favor of the accused, right to the favor of the defendant. But there's zero evidence of mafloquin, and so every time they would bring it up the defense team, we would just say there's zero evidence, Like you're not allowed to even talk about this.

Mefloquin wasn't in Baal's file, but Commander Minovsky doctor Nevin claimed that it wasn't in the files of most soldiers who took it.

If it's not in bals record, it's like it wasn't in anybody else's record either. My deployment team, they didn't get it into their record. The hundreds of veterans that I talked to did not get it in their medical records.

The events of that era are odd. A couple months before the events in question, the top doctor of the military basically said, hey, look, we have a problem. Meflicuin has been handed out without adequate documentation and without proper consideration of contraindications. And unfortunately, I think the courts have been misinformed by the government, by the prosecution that the evidence is conclusive in showing that bails never took meflick win.

In the US military, just about everything is written down somewhere. You can't order pens without putting it in a report. So for widespread use of mefloquin and its side effects, to go and document it, it's either completely untrue, a sign of gross inconfidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Minofsky told us the following over the phone.

Our larium came in foil packs. The foil pack was five pills. There was a blank spot all right where they wrote the name of the drug and everything down, and they didn't get it in their medical records. I think that was deliberate, considering if you look at my shot cart, it's got everything listed. But I went into my pharmacy record no record of matlock Win being given to me. When I found that out on I just hut blew a galey and I go, you gotta begin. They knew it was bad.

To say that the government was providing as soldiers with an anti mallarial that they knew was defective and dangerous. That's a potentially explosive development. It's a claim that doctor Nevin has staked his reputation on proving to be true both during and after his service.

I was familiar with Meflicklin. As part of my training, we were taught that Mefflicklin was safe and effective medication if used as directed. But I realized that this dogma, this training that I received on meflick when the institutional beliefs on the drug were incorrect, the drug was far more dangerous. As I began to ask questions about Meflicklin, I was receiving a lot more pushback from my seniors than I had expected, and so that made me think

Attorney and veentor in John Maher applauds Nevin for speaking up when many others have opted to remain silent.

Doctor Nevin he sacrificed his army career command surgeon Major eighty second or more for brad because his research came around saying this antimilarial drug is killing people.

When you hear the full scope of doctor Nevn's findings, it's not terribly surprising to learn that he's no longer employed by the military after all. Is polarizing opinion is that this negligence surrounding meflquin had gone on for decades.

Going back to World War Two. It's not an exaggeration to say that our top military leaders view the availability of anti malarial drugs the same way they view the availability of nuclear weapons as a safeguard to national security. We had very limited stockpiles, and so in the Vietnam era, a large scale project began to synthesize these drugs, and that led in nineteen sixty nine to the first reported synthesis of meflicuin. For whatever reason, the military decided mefloquin

After the military handpicked meflquin as their anti malarial they were responsible for securing a manufacturer and distributor for the drug. In this case, that would be a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant named the Roche.

Apparently, the military approached every single pharmaceutical manufacturer and none were willing to get the drug through the approval process and market the drug, probably because many drugs of this class caused irreversible, significant lesions to form in the brains and the brain steps. For whatever reason, Roche raised their hand and said fine, we'll do it. Perhaps Roche did the math and realized the military will buy large quantities,

The US Food and Drug Administration exist for a reason. Roche in the military might have agreed to partner on making methlic win, but an independent agency still needs to make sure that it's safe for use. That said, the FDA can't make a decision with information it doesn't have.

The initial submission to FDA didn't even make mention of psychiatric effects, So when mefliquin was first being licensed under pressure from the US military, the doctors at FDA reviewing the file had no understanding that this drug could cause psychiatric effects when used in prevention. In nineteen eighty nine,

Ultimately, Roche in the military went out and almost immediately mefloquin was being distributed around the globe. But it wasn't long before troubling incidents began a surface. For example, the story of Canadian soldier Clayton Matchie in nineteen ninety three, just four years after the drug received FDA approval.

During the Somalia crisis, Canadian military sent several thousand troops over to aid the US military effort, and this was the first large scale use of meflick in any deployment. And one of the troops that he was given this drug was a fellow named Clayton Mashing. He almost immediately started experiencing fairly severe symptoms from meflick, including symptoms of psychosis.

For Clayton, Matchie Mefloquin was not acting in a vacuum similar to staffs are to bales. The Canadian warrior was under the influence of a combination of substances.

There's a key point here that is kind of overlooked that they were being administered in Maflequin. They were allowed to drink beer. Their medics also administered them cough surroup, most likely robotushing with codeine as a sleep aid, as a replacement for ambient That's what they took with them. So these guys are whacked out on some serious stuff they're drinking. Drinking alcohol with Meflequin is a very dangerous

Make no mistake, Clayton Matchi did what he did that day, not because he was a bad person, not because there was something wrong with the Canadian Airborne Regiment. He did what he did because he was floridly psychotic as a result of being poisoned by meflic. So this was in the early nineties. Had we learned from this episode, none of us would have happened. I'm convinced had we learned from this episode, we wouldn't be discussing Bales.

Throughout the nineties and beyond, headlines about the dangers of meflquin would periodically arise. Several young men and women unexpectedly committed suicide shortly after trips to African nations that required the use of anti malarials. And then there were the four Brag killings in the summer of two thousand and two, which even appeared in an episode of NBC's Dateline.

Within a few short weeks last summer, three young women, all wives of Army Special Forces soldiers, were murdered by their husbands returning from the war in Afghanistan.

The segment is notable for identifying mefloquin under the brand name Larium, as a potential cause for murder committed by soldiers a full decade before the Canahar massacre.

The investigators wondered at first if an anti malarial drug prescribed for Afghanistan, Larium, had anything to do with the violence. There has been some s gestion larry A may trigger hallucinatory or suicidal episodes in some user, but the military quickly dismissed the drug as a cause.

When this Dateline episode aired in June of two thousand and three, Bill Minofsky was laboring under the side effects of his own experience with larrym. He takes issue with the methodology the military used to absolve the drug of any fault in the Fort Bragg murders.

I'm going to leave a name out here because I don't have permission to use their name right now. But they were on the investigation team that went down to Fort Bragg, and essentially the report was rigged. They included a couple other murders that happened at Fort Bragg at the time but were unrelated. But in talking to this person afterwards, they said they knew it was mefloquent, and that person now is a major advocate against the drug now that they're retired from the military.

Seven months after he was pulled out of Rock, Minofsky was furious with the military's refusal to acknowledge the root cause for his significant health issues.

When I started asking about the drug, the Navy went to accuse me of misschanneling classified material, so they went to court martial. Met people were telling me, go to the press, go to the press. My wife and I we'd already been working with UPI. I said, okay, guys, let's go public with this.

UPI published the Next Fose on September eighth, two thousand and three, nine years before the Canaharan massacre. In the piece, Commander Minofsky was quoted as saying, I was trying not to pull a foroth brag. After that, the military's tenor began to shift.

When these articles came out. We were on shenn The Navy really backed off. I talked to a Shenier officer and I go, you know what happened? And he goes in a meeting. Someone said, Hey, maybe he really is shick from the drug. I'm the first to get a military diagnosis for injuries related to methlical toxicity. I'm the first to get a via writing. Not to sound facetious, if I was a corporal or a sergeant, I wouldn't be here talking to you. I'd probably, honestly, god, I

Commander Minofsky's one man cruside helped him earn a disability rating, essentially confirming that the military accepted blame for his condition. In the coming years, doctor Nevin's research would start raising eyebrows among some within the federal government.

I'd like to think that my research has helped to inform military policy on this issue. Some of my early work, I think, moved the army away from use of this drug, and by twenty thirteen all the services had essentially abandoned the use of mefliq when is a first line drug.

Bailes's killings took place on March eleventh, twenty twelve, before the program had been shuttered. With all of this in mind, are we any closer to knowing whether Bales was under the influence of meflquin induced psychosis. The following excerpt is from a press conference given by four star General John Allen on March fifteen, twenty twelve. Alan was arguably the

General, could you elaborate at all about this Defense Department ordered review of the anti malaria drug when you were made aware of that, including for deployed troops, and what explanation you were given for it?

Was actually made aware of it this morning. The review was a natural course of periodic reviews, as I understand it within the department, so that I think that's the best I could do for.

You on that you were not told that there was a specific concert earned regarding troops that were deployed being given this drug.

No, that there are reviews constantly of our medical processes and procedures. That's not uncommon at all. And so when I hear that one of the anti malarial prophylaxis drugs is under a periodic review, I think that's a very natural and important process that is pursued regularly in office of Secretary of Defense. So I would suggest that you ask them that question.

Just four days after Bales's attacks, the government embarked on a review of a drug that had been linked over the years to illegal murders perpetrated by soldiers. Given the context, it's hard not to read General Allen's words as a classic act of deflection. Three months later, in June of twenty twelve, doctor Nevin was asked to appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Finstein has been a longstanding supporter of efforts to raise awareness of mefliquin.

That'd be dying. Feinstein senior Senator from California, and.

Of course Feinstein was on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, and I was invited to speak to the Senate. At her invitation, they were interested in perhaps developing some legislation. I believe I simply alluded to the fact that there was more to this drug than we had acknowledged, and certainly to stop use of the drug. Once you have testimony like this on the record, it becomes difficult for people to claim they didn't know there was a potential problem.

I think it was July twenty twelve.

I get a call from the Commissioner's office to the FDA commander Monoski, We'd like you to come to Washington, d C. To meet with us to express your concerns regarding the toxicity of mefloquin. And I goes, this is a joke, and he goes, Nope, we're serious. So February of twenty thirteen, there was a meeting in Silver Springs, Maryland, their headquarters. There were twenty five FDA researchers in the room. Nevin got to give a presentation. He did great.

I think my argument convinced them. I think they said, okay, actually this makes sense.

And then the black box warning came out. That's kind of like the highest level of red flashing light on a drug that hey, you know, you need to pay attention to this warning here, there's something wrong with this thing. That was the stake in the heart from methliquinn.

Robert Bales alone was not the reason why the military eventually stopped giving its soldiers meflequin, but John Maher theorizes that such a highly publicized tragedy may have been the impetus they needed to finally make a change about fifteen months.

After the canaharm massacre. I think it was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. It prompted the FDA to take action, It prompted the Army to take action. They would have a positive catalytic effect. I believe that was the right thing to do. If you try to bury it, it's gonna come out anyway. It's gonna be worse for you when we find it.

The prosecution has repeatedly insisted that no hard evidence exists connecting mefloquint Bales. Mar on the other hand, suspects that proof is out there, it's just been hidden.

If the defense were never provided with mefloquin, it's poisoning the data, the FDA reports, the ROCHE reports, the manufacturer, doctor Nevin's affidavits in testimony, as well as US Medcom and the Military Surgeons General issuing orders to stop issuing the stuff. All of that should have been disclosed to the defense to help Bob think about how to defend himself, because every American is entitled to a meaningful defense.

If Mayer can successfully make this point to an appellate court, he can potentially emancipate the man considered to be America's most notorious war criminal.

If we prevail, hopefully, what will happen is we'll get a new trial, at which point we will put on the mefflic Wood evidence. I think it could be landscape changing.

Reversing a military court's ruling is easier so than done. In twenty seventeen, two years after taking a Bales's cause, the defense team was granted an oral argument from the Army Court of Criminal Appeals also known as AKKA.

If oral argument is granted in a case, that's a pretty good tell in poker parlance, that the judges are saying, Hey, there might be some merit here, and we have questions and we'd like to look counsel in the eye and ask those questions. We get them answered.

It was a small victory for the Baals camp, and mar and his co counsel put everything they had into concocting an air tight maflic Wood defense. They even invited John Henry Brown, Bales's original trial lawyer, down to Virginia to attend the proceedings, but.

I was in the audience. I have come there two days earlier to just help prepare the defense. So we thought we should at least get a hearing out of it, and that was the goal.

It's not very common for a defense attorney to remain close to a case years after a decision has been reached, but something about the Robert Bayles story seems to have staying power. After all, Brown wasn't the only attorney in the gallery at Akka, so was Lieutenant Colonel J. Morse.

I'd retired by then, but I'd still been following the case, and so it was important to me to go and hear other people who were completely independent of the case. I knew some of the things that the defense team had been saying, and so I wanted to go here if they were actually saying that argument on the record because some of it was personal to me. Man I would have been and would be still today horrified if we had done something procedurally wrong.

I don't know Jay Morse, but as a former prosecutor myself, I'd never once attended an appeal that I litigated that once. That shows me that he had a vested interest in the case personally rather than professionally. If you lose your professionalism and lead into personal you're not a pro anymore.

You're just not with an esteemed crowd and attendance. The Baials defense team put their Mefloquin related evidence on the table for review.

I think the attorneys were great attorneys, and they had a really good argument. I mean, I thought we would really might prevail because we had proven that the discovery was not given to us, that things were fixed, and I think everybody believed that they might be successful with that, but we weren't.

I have lots of thoughts about back. I think it's the same with the military justice system. That's you know, we cover our ass. Everybody said we kicked ass. Took names for what the Army Criminal Court of Appeals does a rubber stamp whatever comes through they're gonna pold it.

Bales and Marr have argued previously that the US Court of Military Justice is biased against soldiers accused of crimes. By the same token, they're of the opinion that AKA does the same thing, simply falling in line with the decision that came before.

The military, as you may know, is probably one of the more trusted institutions in our country. And I believe that if we peel the layers back and actually expose some of this stuff, the country would be disappointed and lose faith in the army. The appellate courts seek to preserve convictions. The I want to embarrass the army.

John they wanted AKA. You were there.

You witnessed them destroying the prosecution, and you witnessed the judges doing nothing.

They didn't give us a time of day.

Bales, mar Nevin minofsky Wesley. They all say that for a while everyone was taking mefloquin. They vouched for the drug psychiatric effects, right down to the details. And yet every step of the way it appears that the US military, the service to which they devoted much of their lives, refuses to accept any responsibility for its actions. Nobody knows this better than Commander Billmanofski Maflequins Serial number one.

Bill, in your estimation, how many veterans do we have out there dealing with methlicuin poisoning.

Tens of thousands. I'm gonna say a lot of these veterans are no longer with us. People who are suicidal or who are highly depressed because of this drug. It does something to the discretion center of your brain. It makes suicide like you're going to get the mail. I kept hearing senior Army doctors say, well, hey, you know, all the suicides are from family trouble or can't pay

Coming up on the word within, I think the United States would probably want to avoid a victory. They're also going to have an eye on the horizon saying Holy Child.

Of course, my dad being in present affects my everyday life and really our family every day life.

In a hole. There was an article that came out GQ. That was very clearly one sided.

Bles wanted to tell his story. It was pretty clear that he wanted the article to humanize him.

People automatically assume that I dislike Muslim people.

Bails He'd have is off the cuff, remarks about minorities and like people of color.

He was menacing with it at times. He's a really menacing, mean bastard.

The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is a 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 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 Hoberman,