Serial S02 - Ep. 11: Present for Duty
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The second. Version, you know what? That one is right?

Previously on .

server, they were out there .

handing out water color maps of afghanistan.

All felt like, why are we up here?

This is fucking bullshit. He's in pakistan.

He served the united states with hour. And .

distinction was almost that the guy is a trade is .

not something you can ever come back.

I haven't seen from you or any other journalist a real dig into how the army came to that conclusion.

But to walk at that door, get ready because there there's a shit door. You know, I start going away anytime soon. From this american life in W B E Y, chicago, its cereal, one story told week by week. I'm Sarah ic.

I'm driving to go pick up my dry clean. And I listened tips that whatever IT was, and I was like, where is second using the coast?

And I had a couple of conversations recently that I just want to tell you about. One was with this guy, Justin. He had emailed us. So I gave me Michael .

bombom Jerry, two thousand six. I like, I paused the show and I called my sister, I like jail. You are not going to believe this Albert season too. And she's like, yeah, all like I want to do with this guy.

Coastguard boot camp and he remembers the night tebow broke down. He remembers standing outside on a freezing february night in kate manu jersey while something strange happened inside. You remember seeing blood and broken glass in the bathroom and yellow caution tape.

Justin was seventeen at the time, and there are some details he couldn't recall, but he LED me to another guy, also from that good camp class, john rafa. John was an older recruit, his twenty six, he remembered, but he liked them. He thought he was a nice guy.

One night, a couple of weeks in, john says there was a fire drill. They did not alert these three hours fire drills. Some commander would banging on the top of a garbage can and wake everybody up.

They'll all have to rush outside and muster up. Each person had a number, and they called out in order zero one, zero two, zero three, said a IT became clear. There was a number missing.

Also clear that number was bow. John was at the edge, the group. So his commander sends him in another guy back inside fine ball.

We go running back and go running into the head and there he was he um he had bloody himself pretty good I we were never sure exactly how he did IT. Um but there was quite a bit of blood. There was some blood on the wall, blood on the mire, blood on the on the think the countertop area and he was bleeding from a face there was blood on his hands IT looked like he had came smashed face into the mere um and he was hustled up crying uh he was he was going to bold up um and he was 从 one of those moments you run in and you're like， oh, shit like what is like I just like, step into .

did you try .

to talk I I did he was a sweeping. I was just and he was shocking but know I like the guy so I was trying to find out what happened. I I remember just, can I crouching down next to me, but I hate you. What's going or you're okay he was just sweeping, just like, go away. Leave me alone.

This version is more alarming than the one i'd heard previously from bow or from the army investigation. It's why Justin detail us in the first place to say I shouldn't look like a garden variety panic attack to him. And IT seems IT wasn't a military psychologist.

I talk to said, you don't usually hospitalize someone, much less eject them from the military based on a single panic attack. So whatever was going on with bow must have been more serious than that. So bogut sent home to johna Justin, no big surprise there.

They said coastward training was very demanding psychologically, and IT was clear. Bow couldn't hacked. The big surprise came much later when bow was rescued.

A friend of john ruff has called them and said, can you believe that? P, O, W, it's bow from book camp. John said, IT, take a while .

to put IT together. No, you go by taliban. Like who? Like what? That what is he doing .

in the army? You you're IT like, how do you survive five years with the taliban? And you're like.

how that guy enlist exactly?

Are you still?

Yeah, I like, good. Like I I didn't make any sense to me that just blew my mind. 是， like guys said, he was a really nice guy, but if he couldn't handle the coast start and the coast start is stressful, is there's a lot of things that happened in the cross. I don't to make IT feel like it's .

a cake walk, but he should .

not have gone to another branch again. In his investigation.

general Kenneth doll found the army recruit followed all the regulations when he signed bow up, but doll also wrote that he thought those regulations were inadequate in both case that his coastguard separation should have been looked at more carefully than I was. John spent eight years in the coast guard reserves. Justin became a rescue swimmer. Like the special forces, the coast guard, the guys who will drop out of helicopters into the ocean, presumably they both know a thing or two about the military mindset. Justin had the same question as john, why they let that guy into the army?

Based on what I saw, based on what happened during costco camp? Not at all. There is no, no reason why they should have a lot of them at all.

Sometimes both case is summed up like this, what boded was wrong, walking off his post was wrong. The army shouldn't let him in list in the first place. Plus five years captivity, five years.

So scales are baLanced. The army messed up or messed up, let's move on. But that leaves out of reckoning. And a reckoning is what the military wants, understandable ably to a lot of people who served in afghanistan into their families.

If you don't consider the consequences of both decision to walk off O, P, S, IT feels as if something important and painful has been papered over, and that doesn't feel like justice. They want an accounting. This is our last episode this season, and so I want to try to answer this now.

What exactly should we blame both for what's his fault and what is IT? And the heavy is moral charge against him. The elephant in so many discussions about bow and about the trade and about the military proceedings against him, did any american soldiers die looking for him?

Some people very high up in the military world are saying, yes, people did die looking for both. Michael flin is the highest drinking person i've interviewed so far. He is a retired lutte general.

He was head of dia, the defense intelligence agency, back in two thousand and nine when we went missing. Flin was in afghanistan. He was general standing macro stals, director of intelligence.

A cris stolen, case forgotten, was commander of U. S. In coalition forces for all of afghanistan.

So flin, just under a Crystal, is a big deal. I explained to him that this was one of my outstanding questions about both story. This very thing of, like, will wait, did people die during this search for bergdoll?

As a the, the answer is Sarah, the answer is yes OK OK. If somebody was on a mission to go find in america, you know, there's, what did the guide de did? A soldier walked down a road and I blew up. And if the soldier was walking down that road in an area where he would not have been had IT not been for the search for burg goal, and in fact, his mission, their tactical mission, was to know, conduct a patrol and and try to find intelligence, or try to find any indications of where this soldier might be, and in in fact, was blown up by that ad or others wounded, that's a no brain.

I agree that does .

that are dots, are dots, are dots. I I connect.

Here's the problem though, general flinn's no brain or scenario. I haven't found one like that. When he said those are dots, he connected.

He wasn't thinking of any particular cases of soldiers who died, just he was there. He says he knows that to be true. There have been lots of media stories, declaration stories, citing specific cases of soldiers who died because of the search.

Usually there are six names, all from both vita the first to the vivo first. And we know for sure there was a massive search for boo. He walked off O P.

Mst on june third, two thousand nine, and for the month of july, people were sent out all over packed gue province and beyond, doing nothing but missions to find the dust one, but rather macula sly. No one died on those missions. The six names of soldiers who died, there were all emissions that happened later, seven to ten weeks after both disappeared.

And none of those missions was a searching rescue mission. We've looked into all these incidents. There were four of them.

Talk to soldiers who are there, anti people, hire up who planned and organized them. Official information on these missions is then we've seen army investigations on only two of the four cases. One of those was just a summary.

They were both redacted. So we can't tell what the precise mission orders and objectives were we put in for your requests with the army long ago on all these cases, but haven't gotten anything back again. The army itself hasn't formally investigated the question of whether people died looking for both that we know of. But somehow this idea that people died looking for bow to a lot of people.

It's not a question that has traveled out of the realm of the markey and has solid, tipped into concrete information to the point where a clothing company made a fuck bergdoll t shirt with six stars underneath to represent, quote, the six honnor able soldiers from the first to the fio first that lost their lives all because of burger and quote. Why are some people so sure about this? Where did you come from?

On september fourth, two thousand nine, one of those six soldiers, darren Andrews, was killed in practical province in a village called polo, right near O. P. must.

He was a second lootenant, a plutot leader. His parents, SAndra and andy Andrews, had been told by the army that darren was killed in an R P, G. Attack on a mission to arrest value target a taliban guy.

When the attack happened, he apparently pushed inside other man. He was awarded the silver star postmen sly. About five years later, his parents were on a long drive to the hospital for andy's cancer treatment. When president obama announced bose return, andy says the way he remembers that the rose garden ceremony hadn't even finished before someone .

contacted them talking, I don't find him sound, got a call.

And this classes.

I want glitch. Know what? Vict to break this story and tell the truth of what really happened.

The sophie call was someone in dan's unit. This was the first anian thunder were hearing that darren was actually .

killed on a mission related to bow. And we're the phone from the time we have Cameron to a get in the Anderson three art lighter with abc, C, B, S, A, B, C. I don't body know.

Broward started .

testing and sending messages on facebook and calling and telling me, you know, we're not gonna stand by and let them say he is a heroe. If your son in the other guys or a hero and we're logon, stand for the us. That same day, the six names were put out there online.

By day three, the story had anchored in the mainstream press to sanda. And andy IT was such a joy to that first call because after five years, they'd come to accept the original army issue version of what happened to darren that he'd been killed on a mission to arrest a taliban guy. They weren't looking for someone else to blame.

They were doing okay with what they thought they knew, know we'd color fit the story into our life. We had talked about IT. And then all of that 不是 刚 we had a whole new story to gate us to， and a lot more anger, saunders said.

They felt angry at bow for one thing, and they felt we've been lied to by the army, by daring commander, because no one had ever mentioned burned to them before, which felt fishy to them, like there was a cover up. Two and a half weeks later, the Andrews has went to washington, D. C.

To testify before congressional committee, andy Andrews told the committee that six different soldiers who served with their son had told him in his wife that darren was killed while searching for bow. Sander says, at the very least, bow was a contributing factor in his death. IT may not have been directly, but indirectly he was responsible.

So this story, the six names, the lineup of photos in the press, as far as I can tell, IT originated at the ground level from both both tune mates. And while they didn't have documentation to back up what they were saying, the defense department wasn't seconding these claims. These guys did have reasons they weren't just making IT up.

Take polo. That's where darren Andrews died on september fourth. I was unclear what exactly that mission was about, and I didn't understand what the connection to bow was. So I asked john thurman to explain IT IT to me because he was on that coal mine. And I also knew john was in the camp of soldiers who thought, though, was responsible for the people who died.

They said, we're going out for you up to ten, ten days. And that's basically all I remember.

But what was the mission?

Well, I don't actually know. That was definitely way above my pay grade. We were gonna going into polo, and we were going to be looking around and go in house to house.

We had quite a few attachments that i'd never seen before. We had a female engagement team, and we also had a combat camera team that was with us. So I don't actually .

know this is an unusual actually that a low level soldier doesn't know the overall mission, what's communicated to him as pack for x many days. And then before they go out each day, they're briefed by their immediate leader, in this case dan Andrews, who tells them we're going to go to this location, we're going to knock on doors or head out stuff or meet with afghan security forces, whatever.

I've asked a lot of people, not just john, but italian officers, people doing intel, what was the purpose of the polar mission? Here's what i've gathered. Big picture.

The trip to pull out was part of a larger, roughly ten day Operation to push into the yao district. U. S.

Forces had been pretty successful in other towns, but farther north, they were working up there with local leaders doing coin, essentially making friends, helping build local government and security. But not so much in yahoo, which was right near O. P.

mast. The villages around there had quite a bit of taliban activity. They were not friendly to us force. And so the italian had planned this mission to try to push back in there. That area was strategic.

IT was between the pakistan border and a main highway in afghanistan that goes up to kao, and then all through the country. The way the italian planned these larger Operations, they weren't just about one objective. You try accomplish a bunch of things at once.

You had all kinds of U. S. Government agencies doing their stuff at the time, the state department or the department of agriculture. They might be assessing which little grapes are best to grow in whatever valley, so you might have them along on this polar mission.

John remembers a female engagement team that likely would have been headed up by a social scientist whose job is to help the U. S. Military understand afghan culture.

John doesn't remember looking for a specific high value taliban guy on that mission, but other people I spoke to who they are do remember that that they infect someone, zip tied hands, guarded him, but they were told by herbs to let him go, which they did again. I even seen the mission order or the after action report, so I can be sure. But here's what john remembers from his vantage point in the driver seat behind the wheel of an emerge. He remembers they had a lot of truck day, maybe seven. They made a court on in the village and john the gunner, we're waiting in the truck while the other guys went door to door about forty five minutes past, Johnson says.

So my gonna and I were sitting in the truck and we just, we had this theory feeling, and we were talking about IT, you know, over some cigarettes like this. This town just didn't feel right. IT didn't give us a good vibe.

And I remember a bunch of kids were congregating under the gigantic tree there, and then they all started to filter back into their houses. And my gonna had actually been in iraq on the deployment prior to ours. And he said, you know, I I got a bad feeling.

We're about to get fucked up. Because when the town clears out, usually IT means that the taliban gna stand something up to bring the civilians back in so that they don't get hurt. They've put the word out, and we're going to attack the americans today. So we radio up and everybody kind of knows what's going on.

They all get ready to leave. And then someone comes out from behind a wall and shoots an RPG at one of their trucks. They shoot back there in a narrow space.

I was truck three, and I just see the first truck just explode. Not the whole thing, obviously. But I see the mine roller in the hood separate from the vehicle.

And they had rolled over a pressure play. I, E, D, and then from then on, you know, IT was R P G valley IT was small arms fire, euless rifles, morals, everything. Because once they took out that first truck, we were stuck .

because you're all behind that truck.

correct? Yeah, that's that's a technique that the taliban had sort of adapted. win. The soviet s. Had invaded is, you know, take out the first truck, shoot up the last truck, and then everybody in the middle completely fucked.

darn. Andrew had been in john's truck. The third truck, john says darren ran out to the first truck, the one that had just gotten blown up to help the guys there.

They set up what's called a casualty collection point, a little field trauma area. And then so many RPG started coming in. John says he watched ed darn Andrews get killed.

He watched mat Martini, john's good friend who'd also been in his truck, get hit that would die in a hospital in germany a week later. John in the gunner are inside the truck during the ambush, stuck there. His dinner is firing at whatever he can and how, but like, how long are you sitting there just like taking this attack?

I think, I think the initial attack kicked off some around fifteen hundred and we didn't get back to mass till zero five, zero six.

Oh my god, you're out .

there all night. Yeah, terrible.

Mr, and I just accept IT IT.

I said, M, I, city, I think we're probably going to die, and I think we are.

So IT was horrible, the whole thing, people died, people were injured. But I asked john again, how was any of this connected to bow? And he said, well, we were always supposed to be looking he said his bottome leader, darn Andrews, didn't mention bow before they set off for polo that day, but he didn't mention bow back at fob seona a few days before they set off on the whole Operation.

I remember the tennant ander saying, you know, and if if you hear see any signs of we need to know about that, I mean that that was just the immune to everything know before any big push.

And IT wasn't IT does not. Also sounds like IT wasn't terribly specific to any one mission. No, got IT. okay. Now in beginning to understand why you could have a mission that is simultaneously not specifi C2Bird dol l and als o inv olving bir d.

Do I see also it's hard.

It's hard because it's like an umbrella over everything you're doing. Exactly.

that's the perfect way to describe IT.

So if you close the umbrella, then you can't make the argument IT was looking for work.

right? But if you open IT, you can.

So it's just depends on who's living under the umbrella.

who is IT. But again, you from my from my small scope is specialist thermal. I don't know who knows what above me, right? You know, I only know what I know.

Joan told me it's totally possible. This was a specific mission to look for you, but that information just never filter down to him. John's baan commander, a lutanist rennel clinton Baker, would probably know I haven't been able to talk to him, but I did talk to his number two command, certain major can wolf.

He's out of the military now, but at the time he was the highest nco in the baton. He knew the commanders, he knew the private. He cared about them.

He took me quite a long time to persuade can to talk to me. He has no love lost for bow he thinks is selfish plan and simple trader to his unit. But finally, after many emails and negotiations can agreed on one condition, he wanted to be able to say this.

the families who who lost sons during this deployment ment let them know .

that their .

their sons did not do looking for pfc. burgo. Their sons didn't dad looking for him.

Explain why why you're saying like why you know this to be true?

Because all you all you've got to do is look at a map and look at a time frame.

Okay, so time frame again. The incidents that resulted in the six deaths in their battle, an happened between Augusta teens and september fifth, about two months after the left.

We we, we looked and we looked and we looked and what in funding, but you can't and this is this is where IT gets very difficult for, for people to understand. Because you can never, no one in the army is ever going to say we stop looking for you OK. Right, right? But here here's a deal.

You know, it's it's been forty five plus days at this point. We know where is at his in pakistan, right? A vanilla unit like to favo first is not leaving its battle space and going into pakistan to find him.

That's what can means by look at a map, because if anyone was going after boat in pakistan, IT would be a special forces team, not an infinity unit. Khan says. Of course, they were going to to keep their eyes and ears open.

But if you're commander, you're balancing no man left behind with some very practical matters. Your intel regarding the dust one is drawing up. You're unlikely to find him in afghanistan anyway.

There's an afghan presidential election to prepare for award win. So you're not sending your guys on search missions anymore in terms of Operations, they needed to get back to work. Kn says that polar mission had nothing to do with bow.

What some of the soldiers will say is okay, maybe not directly, but it's still connected to bow, because the search for bow affected every thing. They talk a lot about second and third order effects, a concept that drilled in the soldiers that everything they do has consequences. Once or twice removed the search, changed the course of their deployment, changed the landscape of their overall mission in a bunch of detrimental ways.

And that LED to people dying. I put their argument to can, well, sure, you know, the september four of mission was in spressly, only to go look for bergdoll, say, but because we had been out looking for him for the past two months, we had been making inroads in certain places. And because we had to kind of a pull away from that and focus on looking for and we became much more connected, we became more aggressive.

We are going into places we hadn't been before. We were stretched then that that IT gave the insurgents of football in places, you know, where we are going to kept them at bay. And now those places were more dangerous. Like that's one of the argument still make. I mean, is that a fair argument?

IT doesn't hold water because you, you, you are in A A very bad neighborhood regardless. Okay, you you can get killed .

any day. I an.

if you, you could, you could have been on on a random patrol in polo on the twenty nine of june in and hit an idea as well. So I mean, I get IT. However, it's it's purely speculation and hypothetical speculation .

and hypothetical to can or far cry from, say, knowledge and understanding. Khan says there were so many factors, factors beyond bow. These soldiers are not taking into account so many factors they aren't aware of.

I'll give you a perfect example, he said, and he did. He told me this whole story about yaya cow and the surrounding villages. Different factions had been in conflict there since the early one thousand nine hundred and seventies. Loyalists to the monarch kicking .

around the communist sympathies. Ers, well, and then when the communist come in, they kick the loyalist around. Well, and then when the taliman comes in, you know, they kick the communism around.

And then when we come in, we take the taliman out. So now they retaliate. Or some of these folks, they went across the border in the pakistan because they they want to get kicked around.

And then when they came back, they found that their houses were occupied by the people who were kicked them around, right? So so they're angry. I just come back from pakistan, and when I left here ten years ago, this was my house.

And now you're living in IT. Well, there is. No, you can't go down to the county courthouse in shana and pull up this deed that says, this house belongs to me. So what you do, you fight, or in so IT that IT didn't matter, that psc burgo walked off. There was conflict that was so much deeper than burger, and in, quite Frankly, so much more important than burger, just to solve the the problem in practical, that these guys, they don't understand the guys that are making these arguments is not because their bad guys. It's not because are ill informed.

It's because .

they aren't privy to the same information that I am in. Here's here's a deal. This story I just told you, you know, how long I took me to learn that took me nine months, took me nine months, rolling in there all the time and talking to people before they laid that whole story out for me, right? Their mission is different than mam mission. Mam mission was to go out there and figure out what the problem is. While you, while every time we roll through this one place we got blown up for the .

soldiers who see all of this differently, can doesn't regret them, their perspective, he just wishes they hadn't been so public about IT .

these Young men that that are saying these things. I love every one of them and every one of those guys know they can they can get a hold of me and and i'll do anything in the world for those guys. They know that what they're doing and just don't think that they saw IT through. And by not thinking IT through, they didn't understand the ramifications of their verbalizing and what that was going to have on on the families.

Again, ken's not being protective of bow here. He just thinks the record out to be set straight. And he doesn't want the memories of the guys who died to be dragged into the burgdorf to be solid by IT by the politics of IT. He thinks it's not fair to those man or are their families.

Alright, here's something else i've heard along the way. Maybe some of these guys think they were looking for both, but really their commanders were only using bow as an excuse, top cover to get extra assets and to go kick indoors. In R. C.

East we were actually looking for there did come a point where he did this become an excuse to go out um and do things.

But this is a guy i'm calling Scott arrived in afghanistan in gazi in mid july. His job was classified, which is why he doesn't want na use his name. All he could say he was that he was attached to an elite unit, he said before we left, in order for unit to leave the wire, you had to have good actionable intelligence .

when he disappeared. Those limits, those thresh holds for going out became much, much lower. So if you had very unreliable information about both bert goals wear outs, you can go anywhere. And so we would just use him as an excuse to go wherever we wanted to go.

How do you know that? I mean, you weren't there before key walked off. So how do you know the threshold .

got lower up? Because every other mission that we try to go on um that he that didn't involve him was much more discount to get out the get outside the wire.

So someone would say, I think we need to go to x and would be told, forget IT unless, and involves looking for bird.

Yes, I mean, I I SAT through live briefings where a missions were turned down. And I SAT through live briefings were missions were accepted, they're published. Ed, to been to go for him.

So is this true where people just using the search as a way to get unrelated missions, okay, or the way to scm assets? I asked and I asked, and finally I found luti ic coronal paul egr. He was a guy in charge of managing the search for both. He was Operations officer for the beggar. If you're planning a mission for the vivo first and you wanted special assets, usually aircraft or drones, you had to go through paul.

around mid August, I thought that there were a couple of requests from suborn a units, said h um. That were taking advantage of or attempting to take advantage a little bit of doing something else in the name of looking for for bob g goal.

And when his team saw that they disapprove those missions, polls says he didn't see rampant abuse or anything. He said he was more like a natural inclination to try to sell your own mission, spin your objectives in a way that was gonna be most persuasive to your bosses.

For instance, a couple of the people who helped plan missions lower down at the company and vita level told me that if you wanted extra support for Operation in August or sept, say you might sandwich bow in there. So the Operation paperwork might well have included, among other objectives, language saying they were facilitating recovery of dust one or in support of dust one recovery Operations, just one, meaning bow. If you had that, you were more likely to get additional assets such as the helicopter.

On the other hand, to get approved in the first place, you had to have actual intel backing IT up. Maybe IT wasn't the strongest intel, but still IT had to be legitimately connected to both whereabouts. And then on your mission, you were actually question people about bow.

You couldn't just invent something and get asset for IT because first of this is wrong, resources are scarce. And so you're very aware that if you're getting use of an aircraft, someone else who needs IT just got denied. And second, if you try to manufacture reason someone like paul was gna catch.

So a little cheating, maybe little massaging, but not a scandal. But all this leads to another big question hovering over the search for bow by me. July, common sense told you that was probably in pakistan. So why through August and into september, or U. S.

Soldiers still looking for him in afghanistan at all? Why might an Operation plan for september include a legitimate objective of facilitating recovery of the dust one when the dust one is long gone across the border? In marm shaw, within two or three days of both disappearance, news outlets were quoting taliban sources saying those kidnapping was directed by mulsanne, that those case would be referred to surrender in her coni.

Those guys Operate in pakistan. On july twenty th, right after the taliban released the first proof of life video of bow, A B C ran a story with the headline exclusive, missing U. S. Soldier may be in pakistan. So again, why are they still looking in afghanistan thirty days later, sixty days later and beyond? Well, first of afghanistan's, the only place they really can look, since they can go trumping into pakistan, sovereignties al eeta and paul told me, sure, they saw those news stories sing, boys in pakistan, and they had their own intel, that boys in pakistan, but they also had intel just as persuasive that he was in afghanistan.

What I would say is that we had stuff just as strong as a news report. Yes.

right OK .

so and not dissing news reports, sometimes news right. But if you see something on you, if I see something on um on C N N international um and then I go across the hallway to our eggadi intelligence cell and talk to a number of folks and overlay some different information unless both standing there in front of an unknown landmark's in pakistan with today's newspaper, something like that. Well, i'm A i'm going to looks very seriously and consider very seriously the credibility of of our information versus what what I read on CNN.

A probability that bow was in pakistan wasn't enough. In fact, paul said his best guess was that bow was initially captured by some J. V.

Taliban, and that rather than spiriting him across the border in to pakistan, the taliban had sent a big cheese from pakistan back into afghanistan to handle the situation. So paul was in at all convinced, but wasn't still in afghanistan. Army commanders are literal when they say they needed to know for a fact that bow was in pakistan before they would change course. General fend, the guy who is micro stals intelligence chief at the time, made this clear to me, if you think probably a few weeks after, like yeah, is truly in pakistan.

So what do you want me to say? sorry. Do you want me to say that we're going to give up on? And no, so i'm not going to say that i'm not going to see here. We will never give up, you know, you don't know, you know i'm an american, you know, i'm gonna hold out hope until until the last possible, you know, thing that we can potentially do and even and we would even pull an intelligence threads even after months. I mean, i'm not i'm i'm not a satisfied person is that if if you ever talk to an intelligence officer who who says they're satisfied, there's there's something we call bullet proof intelligence and and when you get bulletproof intelligence that's rare that is rare.

And even when you think you're intel is bullet proof, you double check. Flyin says we've consistently underestimated our enemy in these wars. They use deception. They lie effectively with bow. We never got to one hundred percent on his location.

So the search for bow in afghanistan was never called off because, again, it's an army value, an american value, that you don't give up on a comrade who's fAllen into enemy hands as one battle. An officer said to me, even if they're a decade, you will do everything you can. But but one last word on this, zoom out one level to U.

S. Central command, because IT wasn't just the army calling the shots here. Sent com ultimately controlled defense department assets in afghanistan at the time, planes, helicopters, drones, predators within without weapons attached, about two weeks after boat was captured.

So mid july, a ground level analyst at sent com informed the boss, we think he's in pakistan, but this analyst was told, you can't write that in your assessment unless you have bomb proof evidence, meaning two independent caborn sources, which is not the Normal standard for an intel assessment rather than the standard usually reserved for a recovery mission, say, when you're actually sending people into harms way, not for an intel assessment, but in this case, they weren't allowed to put IT in a report. So they didn't. They waited another thirty, forty days or so until sometime in late August or early september, which meant the intensity of the search for boat remained high in afghanistan for several more weeks, rather than tapering off in middle.

My source wasn't sure why they weren't allowed to call IT earlier, maybe because this was an unprecedented situation. Nobody exactly knew the implications tactically, strategically, politically, of saying A U. S. Soldier was being held in pakistan where the dog had no authority. Luti ic kernel mike walls, the special forces commander, was one of the people who went on TV very early on and said.

people died looking for both men died searching for sargeant burg doll. And we we believed at the time .

it's the short handy, the stating IT as unusual ed fact that I have trouble with IT seems reckless to throw around something like that without solid cause. If you press for the evidence, mike and others will argue on the basis of second and third order effects, so many resources were diverted to look for about depriving other units, resulting in fatalities.

On july forth, just a few days after both walked, there is a big attack at an outpost in packet a called iraq, in which two mother men died. Maybe IT ouldn't have gone down the way I did. If you'd had the intel aircraft, the'd asked for intel aircraft tied up in the search for bow.

In early october, another big attack on an O P located hundreds of mile's north of practical. A eight americans were killed. IT happened three months after bow left, but it's also been linked to him.

Plans to shut down that O, P, which was considered vulnerable, had been delayed partly because of the search. When I interviewed my walls, I pushed him on this, that the causality here is tanee. So why are people saying IT? And he said, look directly or indirectly killed or almost killed, why are we passing this? There were real consequences to what they did.

Why can't we talk about that? Which made me realize this is the root of what these guys are saying, what they've been saying since the day will got traded. And that is, don't tell me it's over. He's back. No harm, no file you could spend, I think.

the rest of eternity passing. Well, IT, was the supply run to the basic? no. And was that indirectly you that was I D. And was that related or not? But look, I mean, for that period of time, that's all we were doing and if if you were hurt, injured, i'd listen to her on the radio. People being met of act during ambushes from TCP that they had set up trying to a fine bergdoll um my own soldiers barely escaped a death from from century an ambush based on that was set up based on information looking for bird doll i'm absolutely adamant my mind that soldiers were either put in harms way or were harmed looking for him and so i'm sorry, I do get a bit not emotional but I I couldn't push back more forcefully that that his actions just had no effect. Um and so the notion that I didn't really affect the election or didn't really do that much um I think it's just it's just absolutely untrue.

I think it's a stretch too far to say people were killed looking for bow or because of bow, but that's not to say there weren't major consequences. For a month or six weeks, the shape and mood of the war end of the U. S.

Mission and regional command changed. Resources were diverted. People stop doing some of the arguably constructive things they were doing to look for bow.

And people suffered, looking for both. They suffered psychologically and physically, in a couple of cases, severely. In september, a nab c. Al named Jimmy hatch went on CNN and talk to Anderson Cooper. Hatch said he was part of a team that flew two helicopters into a compound on the night of july.

N guys had to immediately deal with a pretty major gunpoint.

And at that point, what the, what's the goal?

Goals to get .

that kid find .

bob here fast.

And we were close because things started right away. Hatch didn't wants to talk to me, but I spoke to another person who was on the mission, who backed up patches story, that they had information boys there, and that's why they went IT turned out, but wasn't there. But a lot of taliban were killed in the fighting.

Patch was shot just above the right knee. His bone was shattered. In the CNN story, he talks about how he became depressed suicide.

One day earlier on july ave, sergeant first class mark Allen was with a national guard team going door to door in a village in deal district south of mast. They were handful of americans who happened to go along with a patton's of afghan national army soldiers. Their commander had offered them up.

We spoke to the commander as well as to one of the other guys on that mission. And abo said, yeah, IT was clear. The mission was to look for bow, which, considering the date just a week out, makes sense.

They got attacked. One soldier his right hand was badly wounded. A medic took shrapnel on, was shut in the help.

Mark Allen was shot in the head. He survived, but he's in a wheelchair. He can't walk or talk. He's got a away from two kids, and it's been awful for all of them, obviously.

So yes, during the search for boat, people were very seriously injured in ways that permanently mess with their lives, mess with their families. One of the charges against mow is that he endangered the safety of other soldiers and wrongfully cause search and recovery Operations. If he's convicted of that, he'll be punished.

But punishment is very different from blame. Blame is more delicate. IT comes up almost always in my conversations about bow with soldiers, commanders, civilians, diplomats, everybody really.

And IT can be slippery. IT can lodge where IT shouldn't. And IT can skirt where IT ought to stick. When I was talking to can wolf, those former command sergeant major, going through the list of names of men from the vivo first who died during that deployment, can was explaining, no, this dest are not to do with bow.

But he stopped short when we got to the name curt curtis can said that one, he partly blames himself. He was a firefight in a medical clinic. They're going after a taliban guy who committed some really brutal crimes.

Apparently, staff stent curtis was shot and killed. Curtis was supposed to work from the base in, but can told him, our numbers are low. I need you to deploy to afghanistan.

Cus was married. He had been on something like four deployment ts, already more than most guys. But he said, okay, i'll do IT.

In late August, curtis was on a quick reaction team that was called out to the clinic in a town called Sarah a can. Wolf had been to that clinic many times. He'd tored IT. He said the people in the town had a lot of pride in IT, so he knew the layout Better than anyone. And can said before kurtis and the other guys went out there, they were brief ed on how the road was, where the troubled .

spots were. I did not tell them. And this is what haunts me this day because I just didn't think about IT.

There's this clinic as two parts. You know, it's inside a wall compound, like most places in that part of the world. So you had come to inpatient, outpatient side. And I never told these guys that there were really two different buildings.

And so they they .

went down to the afghan police IT went to the first one that no issues. Then they went in. A second one in cruz was was eating when he went in that building. They say a building with IT, along with his squad and and was killed there that day.

But why won't have mattered if they had known there were two buildings?

Like why does that part? Because they they're ticals plan would have .

changed and maybe kurt wouldn't have died is what he's saying. That's why cans haunted by IT and john thermal, he feels guilty about what happened in palo. Hard for him to talk about the guys who got killed there.

One of them, Matthew Martini, was a radio telephone Operator like john. But that day john was the driver instead, which means you stay in the truck. darn.

Andrews, their potent leader, had called Martinet out of the truck to help when the attack happened. Because mat was R, T, O. That day, not john. And that was just by chance. yeah.

And I was, actually, we were drawing straws, and I had drawn the longer strong one.

Are you literally drew to like, not matter. I like you actually drew street?

Yes, literally.

Oh yeah.

So that's why that once been pretty hard for a really long time.

John is the son of air force veterans who grew up in texas in in washington state. He dcc catalan and was a competitive figure skater as a tig in two thousand and seven when he was a fresh twenty one years old. It's not that he was up to know good to anything.

He was selling shoes at nordstrom, and he learned a lot about shoes, but that was not the direction he wanted his life to take. So he joined the army. I'm not even sure why i'm telling you this, except to remind you, to remind me that these guys who deployed to war zones are so Young and then they are traumatized all of that pretty much and its sucks.

It's not john's fault that matt Martinia died. It's not kansas ault that kurtis died two of the other death in the fio first clay bowen and Morris Walker, they were doing election prep on August eighteen and two thousand nine, when their vehicle ran over an I D. They were both killed.

They were in an armored harvey, not an m rap, which might have protected them. Who's to blame for that? Their behine commander then defend secretary Robert gates, president obama, bow.

just want na blame something or somebody. I blame the taliban, you know.

yeah, that's rea dobler cay boon's mother. When I first talked to john herman last August, he blamed both for the desk in the fio first. But by the time we had this conversation, five, six months later, he had moved off of that, not toward clarity exactly.

And I blame, I blame. I mean, you can point to blame in anybody, but sometimes they, I don't know. Sorry, um sometimes I just think. wars. One of those things that it's hard to pin down whose responsible.

I know, and I feel like that that sounds like a copper.

but you know i've done a ton of therapy on IT. I still haven't you know I made like seventy five percent cents of IT, but right, I still can't get that last twenty five because it's you know, you start playing with variables and the what lives and that's where you can drive yourself insane.

These things happen in war. It's Normal. I was talking to retirement lutnick erl, paul Edgar, the former brigade level officer who managed the search for bow. And he said something that surprised me. He said, bow is also Normal in war as .

a society. We treat bow is some abiram when really his, his case is simply a very Normal part of of war.

Paul said, we signed up for afghanistan, not every single citizen, obviously, but as a country reeling from the september eleven month attacks, nobody put up too much of a fuss about going after a suma ban ladon. But when we signed up, we were also signing up for all the things we tend to forget. But that nevertheless a tend war mistakes, accidents, people dying for avoidable or even ridiculous reasons, an army recruiting system that lowers its standards. When IT needs more bodies, twenty something year olds who quickly become disillusions and do something rh or criminal, it's all unfortunately Normal.

So there's a level of responsibility here, whether it's know whether it's bow in his particulars or the things the baggage of war that goes along with every single one that we signed up for as a society and to take all of that and a politically and otherwise on um you know this twenty year old and he is in my opinion um very, very wrong.

When we first teamed up with mark bowl for this story market, just come to the end of his own extensive reporting on bow, and I wanted to know if there was anything mark still wondered about any outstanding questions he had. And he said, yeah, he did have won.

I think the biggest question that I have is what's the appropriate punishment for what he did? And like, how do you treat? How do you treat this? This guy, who, after all, you know, was put through the ringer by a taliban because he was an american soldier, is there some recognition that that he was coming from a from a place which is basically altruistic, mean, maybe self serving too, but but certainly not, you know, intending to cause harm? So I don't know. I I guess the question of of how the country ultimately views him is interesting to me because IT IT IT speaks to, I think, our in our capacity for forgiveness in some ways, and also that their kind of, I think the ambuLance ance about bow somewhat reflects the know the larger confusion about the wars.

the wars in iraq and afghanistan, mark says, because we don't think of them like more war two, the quote, unquote good war, or like vietnam and a lot of circles, a bad war. So what are these wars?

Because there's just like this, incredible, like he is overall thinking about the war on terrorist because these words just seem to be so you know, hard to define. IT seems like as a country, we don't know what to do with this guy.

A few weeks ago, zac borrow, one of Bobby tune mates, gone in touch with us. I also interviews jack back in the summer, but now he wanted to say something else. He had been listening to the podcast, and IT was bothering him that boo might be listening to getting the idea that everyone was mad at him.

Zack was mad at first. He said he was kind of easier to be mad. You go on any military website, everyone's angry with bow, and you see your friends on TV talking about all the bad stuff but did, and you get IT why they're mad. But after he thought IT through, zac said he realized boes not what he was mad about. Bow had just become a kind of repository.

Maybe you like we're holding on to all this stuff and what in to punish this kid for staff that, you know, we are all the bad situation. Bad stuff happened? Yes, he added to the bad situation.

But I I don't think maybe as much as people blame sometimes, I mean, he was gna suck no matter what. I feel like he's a Young guy who was in a really stressed place and he made a terrible mistake. And I don't know. Maybe we just for myself, I guess maybe I can accept that I can understand that when you're Young and you're done. Obviously, I didn't make that mistake that I could see how that happens to people.

Another platform ate Austin landforms told me he decided not to blame bow anymore either. He said when he was in afghanistan, he had crazy thought. Sometimes too, he said, I hate IT IT over there.

I wanted to leave extremely bad sometimes, he said, that could have been me. The army gave us some numbers. From two thousand one to twenty fourteen, more than three thousand five hundred people were convicted of being a wall, and nine hundred and eighty of those were convicted of desertion.

Most of those happen here in the U. S. People not showing up their basis, for example, but there have been cases not unlike bows.

A military therapies told us about a guy who left his father in canada a in twenty twelve, apparently trying to walk to an outpost to rejoin his cartoon, kind of a reverse of what both said he was planning. He was quickly picked up by afghan police. He wasn't charged with anything.

And in twenty ten, eight months after boat disappeared, a Young soldier sneaked off fob sha A A M. About seven hours later, afghan n police found him wandering around and they hit him back over to the army. When this kid was questioned, evidently, he said he planned to walk to eastern europe, get a slept bag, first state kit, food and water, sunscreen and ornamental sword and ornamental battle acts journal, and an english to pah toe translation guide.

According to an army report, he, quote, planned to make IT like he had been kidnapped. And quote, he had cut his left hand and left a trail of blood from his bank to the fense line of the fab, and then cut his way through the fans. You haven't heard of him because he didn't get kidnapped by taliban because he wasn't declare dust one because there was no search.

You haven't heard of him because no one noticed. He was even gone until the afghan police called. You haven't heard of him because we didn't trade five guys out of one tonio bay to get him back.

We talk to someone in this guy's command group. He told us as a group, they SAT down and they talked about what to do about this soldier. Quote, unlike bergdoll, which gained a lot of publicity, this was very low key, didn't make the news, so there was no pressure from anybody higher.

And quote, the kid wasn't charged with any crimes. The guy from the command told us he was sent home to get the help needed. About a year later, he was medically retired from the army. That military therapies we talked to said, these soldiers who walk off into afghanistan, the army treats them as head cases, is so dangerous, you kind of have to be crazy to do IT or suicide. He compared them to astronauts taking off their helmets in space.

Both court martial is scheduled to start in August, but right now the proceedings are stayed because the defense in the government are fighting over this massive trove of classified documents, more than three hundred thousand pages, apparently, and who knows what's in there? So IT seems very unlikely to me that anything's gna start this summer in one of the recordings of markin boo, there's this part where boo explains that most of the time he was a prisoner just dealing with the day to day, his mind felt kind of num.

But then he said there were couple of times, brief moments when he got this surge like he could breathe for a second. One of those times, he said, was during his first year, he was being held in a mud compound. The one worry, he said he made friends with a dog and had tried to tunnel himself out one night. Boo managed to slip outside into the courtyard, and he looked up.

SHE was created everything night by clover and warning any clouds. So is just no light pollution or anything like that just for sky stars. I am just sitting there, and after totally months, so have been in the world the speed that M E like this, invest space about me.

He was rilin a sense. Things went so far beyond me and is just that relief of knowing that the stupidity doesn't go any further than that little planet, or the little country, or a little house or whatever is. You know, if something is a bigger, that then IT almost like you don't have to be scared.

Mark still talks to about occasionally, not as much as he used to. Mark says there isn't much more to say until the military settles both case bow in the army, our adversaries, legally speaking, but bow is still a soldier as soon as he was rescued somewhere in a government office, someone filled out a department of the army form four, one, eight, seven. They changed both status from missing, captured to present for duty.

After knocking down this huge long sentence of geopolitical dominos, boo was assigned to an office job on his face and sentence o. He's fighting the charges against him, which means he waits a lot longer than he thought. You have to, but waiting is something bone knows how to do.

Serials produced Julie snider, dana chivas and me in partnership with mark boal, Megan ellison, hugo england, Jessica whisper, g page one and anointed pictures. right? Every episode for the past ten weeks i've spun through the credits pretty fast because none of you really gives a hood about the credits my own.

But I do. I care so much. And if you listen to this whole story i'm telling you, you do care. You just don't know IT. This reporting project was enormous, but it's always me talking.

So what you don't know is that entire sections of this story were doggedly and expertly reported by dan achieves and then Kevin garnett and wittner danger field. They also hunted down so much information, really interesting step, that I don't even know to look for iron glass SAT in on endless edits, no matter when they fell. Even if he was in a taxi coming home after a red I flight, he died to help us.

I won't go on and on. It's just that i've been waiting all season to say how dependence, sly, grateful I am for the cracker jack skill of everyone I work with. Least Michelle Harris are fact checker Benjamin fAiling he did additional research for us this week on hit a loni did our copy editing joe level helped edit this week?

Emily condon is our line producer. Our music is composed by nick thuban ne and fitz mires fitz was on call for us all season. Mad block played trumpet for a thy music on thanksgiving weekend.

Carl burne to the art works for each episode. Thanks also to rich or as for his work on the website. The show is mixed by kate bolinski.

Christian Taylor is our community editor, other serial staff settlin aleem, ger son and kimberley henderson. Finally, a special thanks this week to mark sparrow and bend shire, our website serial podcast dot org. We will be watching both cases as IT moves through the court, and its possible will update you depending on what happens there.

Plus there's just a lot of great stuff on the website right now, including new stuff. So please check IT out and sign up for our mAiling list. Also, do not forget to listen to this american life. You will be so happy did .

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