Before we get on with episodetwo, somenews.
A few daysago, the army announced that it will take Bobergdahl's charges to courtmarshal, totrial,basically.
He's charged with twocrimes, desertion and something called misbehavior before theenemy.
That secondone, it's not used veryoften.
It carries the possibility of a lifesentence, which doesn't seem likely that wouldhappen.
That'd be soextreme. But it does mean Bob could face some amount of prison time if he'sconvicted.
The army's decision to go to courtmarshal.
It's not that it's sosurprising.
Imean, this was always a strongpossibility.
It's just that for a lot of people watching Bob'scase, it's been hard tohandicap.
All outward signs have pointed to an army that has two minds about how to deal with what Bobdid, whether to throw the book athim, or whether tosay,okay,yes, he screwed up in a hugeway, but five years with theTaliban, enough isenough.
On the onehand, the army leveled pretty severe charges againstBob.
But then at a military hearing inSeptember, the two star general in charge of investigating Bob'scase, a man named KennethDahl, who took a 371 page statement fromBob, who assembled a 22 person team who coordinated with 24 governmentagencies, interviewed 56people.
He said he believed that Bob told him the truth about why he did what hedid, that Bob wasremorseful, that Bobrecognizes,quote, that he was young and naive andinexperienced,unquote.
When asked on the stand whether he thought Bob should go tojail, Major General Dahlsaid,quote, I think it would beinappropriate,unquote.
Likewise, the officer in charge of thathearing, Lieutenant Colonel MarkViscar, in his report on what to do about thecharges, he apparently recommended a lesser proceeding called a specialcourt-martial, more like a misdemeanortrial.
He also recommended noconfinement.
In response towhich, Senator John McCain arguably are country's most powerful formerPOW, he was held for five years during the VietnamWar, McCain told a Boston Globe reporter that if Bob got nopunishment, he'd hold a congressional hearing to look into Bergdahl'scase.
And then thisweek, the announcement that the Army will pursue the charges in the most serious waypossible, a generalcourt-martial.
It's almost as if those military officials who've come into close contact with Bob are ready to forgivehim, while the Army as an institution continues to befurious.
A few monthsago, filmmaker Mark Bowle was talking about on thephone, and they were discussing the possibility of a pleadeal.
Of whether Bow would take an offerfor,say,one,two, three years inprison, in exchange for pleadingguilty.
Bow said he didn't think hewould, even though the basic facts of the case aren't indispute.
Bow admits he walked away from his post of his ownvolition.
But Bow told Mark he worried that if he took some pleaoffer, he'd never get to explainhimself.
And people would continue to hatehim, and it's true a lot of people hatehim.
But ever fully understanding his reasons for doing what hedid.
That was hisfear. That after all ofthis, he'd end upmisunderstood.
Youknow, it's exhausted in theaim, and it's just scary that it is going through all ofit.
Youknow, I made it through the last fiveyears, it just kind of seemed stupid to lose whatever it is that's been keeping megoing.
Yeah.Well, I can respectthat.
Imean, I think that to give that up now would almost belike, kind of almost make the whole thingpointless.
Yeah, and basically turn it on to the really stupidjoke.
From this American life in WB EasyChicago, it'sserial.
One story told week byweek.
I'm SarahCanig. Goodevening,everyone.
I know early the release of American servicemen after five years in wartimecaptivity.
Pentagon sources tell NBC that Burkdoll vanished under mysteriouscircumstances.
It's aconvoy,Burkdoll.
Hero orDeserter. The soldiers are engaging in a political smear campaign by raisingquestions.
Parents of some fallen soldiers say their sons would bealive, but Burkdoll had not gone missing from hispost.
In the olddays, Deserter's wishup.
What? The very last thing is just I'm aprisoner.
I want to gohome. Bring mehome.
Please. Give mehome. I was talking on the phone recently to this Talibanfighter.
I'm calling him MujahidRamon, not his realname.
He told me that when they gotBurkdoll, that when they caughthim, the Taliban knew they hadscored.
Ramonsaid,quote, a dead soldier is worthnothing, but he was captured alive and he was like a goldenchicken,unquote.
In the weeks andyears, really following Bo's capture during the tactical push and pull between the insurgents and the USforces, each side would ask itself over and over what is Bo worth tous, what is Bo worth to ourenemy?
How much will weget? How much will wesacrifice?
Mujahid Ramon described one raid by US forces not long after Bodisappeared.
He said something like 15 Taliban werekilled.
An American special operations commander I spoke to described a similarraid, 15 enemykilled.
I asked Ramon through an interpreter who was sitting next tome, was it worthit?
15 of your guys in one raid forBurkdoll.
Some people are worth more than a thousand other individuals and he was worth maybe more than 5,000individuals.
So exactly how did the Taliban get Bo in the firstplace?
And what did they do with them once they realized who hewas?
Mark Bowl looked into this too and it was hiscompany, PageOne, that got in touch with a guy named SammyYusufzai.
Sammy isAfghan. He's areporter, very bravereporter.
He's based inIslamabad, but he travels around a lot for hiswork, covering the war inAfghanistan.
He writes for Newsweek and otherpublications.
In about a year and a halfago, Page One hired Sammy to interview whomever he could and report back what hefound.
Hedid, he didn't record these interviews ontape, but Sammy found about a half dozen people who said they'd either been part of the kidnapping or had interacted with Bo while he was beingheld.
One of the firstpeople, Sammyfound, was this guy namedHalal.
Halal is a Talibanfighter, part of a group that was running missions in Pactika Province where Bo's battalion wasbased.
What Halal told Sammy is that the Taliban had gotten word from the local people in the area that sometimes a westerner was coming close to thevillage, takingphotos, and also that they'd seen a soldier sitting on top of a hill near a UScheckpoint.
So Halal and a few of his guys had come to the village to see if it was true and if it was to work out a plan to grabhim.
Kidnappingforeigners,journalists, aidworkers,missionaries, this was big business for the Taliban at thetime, and it stillis.
I interviewed Sammy about what Halal toldhim.
According toHalal, they've just gotten to this village tomess, infact, where Bo's unit was manning anoutpost, and they're taking a rest at themosque.
At thattime, suddenly somebodyshouted, andsaid, there is afar, far nurse in a kuchitent.
A foreigner in a kuchitent.
Kuchi is a word fornomads.
They keep flocks of animals and live in these bigtents.
Insummer, they open up the sides of the tent for freshair.
And he's asking about Kabul or asking aboutpolice.
And Halalsaid, we wereunexpected, that'sfine, notwho, what isthis.
And then wesaid,okay, let's go and findout.
So Halal and his guys go to this kuchitent.
They drive up on their motorbikes and see thisforeigner.
Sammy tells it from Halal'sperspective.
And we told him that we arepolice.
Imean, American normally working with the localMalaysia, which is not necessarily to be whereuniform.
Right. And we told him police and he looked at us and then he jumped behind ourbike.
So Halal saying that wesaid,oh, we're localpolice.
So to come with us orwhatever.
And Bergdahl seemed to believe that and think he was maybe in safehands.
Yeah, that's why because the kuchi already told him that thisguy, we don't understand hislanguage, but he's asking about police andKabul.
That's what theyunderstand.
Maybe he was asking for somethingelse.
Maybe he was asking for a bus or something or aroad.
And that's why he came and he said he was in a white dress and sendels and he had something in hispocket.
He said there was a pistol or knife orsomething, but we don't know reallyexactly.
Okay. This kuchi tent thing comes up in variousways.
The Taliban say either bow walked into a kuchi tent or near atent.
The Americans got some intel at the time to the same effect and that nomads tipped off theTaliban.
For hispart, bow says he was never in a kuchitent.
He says he was out in the open when armed men rode up on motorcycles and grabbedhim.
This is one of those discrepancies and there will be others where I feel like it's worth mentioning because if bow did walk into a kuchi tent as Halal issaying,well, then it makes his own explanation sound lesssolid.
Maybe he wasn't really trying to cause a dust one by running from opimest to phabshirana.
Maybe he was simplydeserting.
But I also can't tell how much weight I should really give this kuchi tent story because the Taliban bring up all kinds of rumors like that bow is in the village to meet up with a woman or that he was looking fordrugs.
Rumors pretty much anyone who's ever met bow can easilydismiss.
And maybe the truth is somewhere inbetween.
Aspossible, bow was near a kuchi camp and just didn't know it and that the nomads saw him out in the open and alerted the Taliban and bow was never thewiser.
Probably we're not going to get to the bottom of it because we can't fact check the stories these guys toldSammy.
We can't be sure everything they told him istrue.
And the details of what happened do shift around depending on who Sammy's talkingto, which isn't unusual in any kind ofreporting.
What I can say is that the overall chain ofevents, the major plot points that the Taliban describe are pretty consistent person toperson.
In Sammy's interviews with theseguys, they don't seem that interested in pinning down exactly how bow ended up in or near a kuchitent.
More what they want to talk about is how incredible it was that it happened atall.
To Ramon and Halal to everyoneinvolved, this was just miraculous that kuchi'snomads, people they consider unsophisticated anduneducated, snagged thiswesterner.
Not just anywesterner, but anAmerican, an enemy of theQuran, of the Pashtunpeople.
And not just anyAmerican, but asoldier.
Ramon said the wholething, the way they got him and just being up close with your adversary likethat, it was one of those lifetime strangeexperiences.
In the game to into our custody so easily in Afghanistan amongst all the provinces anddistricts, we wereblessed.
We wereblessed. In Sammy'sinterviews, they used this expression they call bow a ready-madeloaf, a gift fromGod.
They felt so lucky that bow came to them that all the desert joints and all the provinces in all ofAfghanistan, he walked intotheirs.
Halal told Sammy that bow fought atfirst, but they subduedhim.
And then once they got him on one of theirbikes, they took him back to themosque.
At one point Halal says bow was againresisting, throwingpunches, or maybe his captors were beating himup, it's notclear.
He said that like Bargital was kind ofresisting, youknow, he start like not giving up and he was a good punching guard and he was a boxer kind ofguy.
And suddenly one PakistaniTaliban.
He came close to him and he sat down on his knees and suddenly Bargital kicked him with his feet because his feet wasopen.
And we were start joking with the Iran that even this guy knows you arePakistani.
Soyeah. I'm laughing here as if I get thejoke.
Idon't. In some of Sammy'sconversations, the Taliban described bow as strong andaggressive.
Other times he's meek andpathetic.
The adjectives they apply to this mythiccaptive, changing to suit thescene.
Halal told Sammy that forthem, for these kuchis who'd maybe never been up close with a westernerbefore, or maybe not even with aninfidel, anon-Muslim, bow wasexotic.
Halal said he was like an animal captured bykids.
His pale skin wasweird, the way he spoke wasweird.
His eyes wereblue, which Sammy says is somewhat suspicious inAfghanistan.
There's a saying that you should keep away from blue eyedpeople.
In themosque, Halal says people had gathered to discuss what to do withbow.
I have Sammy's notes from theseinterviews.
And this one part Halal talks about how bow was sitting in a dark corner of the mosque and another Taliban fighter said tohim,quote,see, you look like a small cat baby with shining blueeyes.
I asked Sammy what thatmeant.
I think this is something explaining somebodyweaknesses.
But I think he said he was veryweak.
He was not like a bigAmericans.
I know like abig, heavy Americans that he was like a weakAmericans.
Yeah, I'm just looking at a note that you wrote that says Bergedal was weak and I thinkbrainless.
Yeah.Yeah, what does he mean bythat?
Oh,brainless, but I wasstupid.
That's why he ended up in theirhands.
Oh, like he was adummy. Youknow, he was like end up in theirhands.
Otherwise, youknow, he wouldnot, this was reallysomething, youknow, somebody coming and jumping in yourbike.
Was hescared? Like did hesay, what hashappened?
He wasscared. Sometimes he wascrying.
Sometimes he was smiling and we thought what's happened with thisguy.
But most of the time he wassilent.
Anybody givingwater. He was notdrinking.
And he said he was like aBuddha.
Buddha's like a famousAfghanistan, BamyanBuddha, youknow,statue.
So he was actually really reacting to what was going on aroundhim.
We thought he'sdrunk.Oh, theydid.
Yeah, apparentlythe, Imean, they draw him in the watersomewhere, youknow, to release hisdrunknesses.
They thought he wasdrunk, but he was notdrunk.
He was notdrunk. He'd never actually seen a drunkperson, but apparently they tend to think all Westerners aredrunk.
From that pointforward, thatwas, that was survivalmode.
I knew I hadto, do I have to be extremelycareful?
If I was going to survivethat, I knew I had to be extremely careful at what points Iam.
I decided topush.Yeah.
That's Bo talking to Mark on thephone.
Ofcourse,yes, Bo wasscared.
He was only rational to bescared.
When the Taliban guys explained to Sammy how they kidnappedBo, they kind of waxed romantic sometimes or crackedjokes.
There's a swashbuckling quality to Sammy's notes from theseinterviews.
But then you remember Bohimself.
He's completely at theirmercy.
He's terrified for excellentreason.
He's in the hands of people who conduct publicexecutions, massbeheadings, and often film them forpropaganda.
It doesn't matter how many come through movies youwatch, it doesn't matter how long you're a martial artfighter,whatever.
You have to be realistic when you're facing those type ofpeople.
Yeah. Youknow, these people dothings.
They have nohesitation.
They have no problem killingyou.
Yeah. They will kill you just for the amusement of being able to shootyou.
Yeah.So, says there was one guy in the convoy who spoke a littleEnglish, and he asked Boquestions.
Was Bo a bigcommander? Was he an intelligenceofficer?
You saidno. Youknow, he wasthere.
But yousaid,no, I'mnot.
Yeah.No, I saidno, I'mnot.
Did youtell, did you explain to them why you were outthere?
Like the exact reason why I was outthere?
Yeah.Yeah, that came out more orless.
In a version that was more suitable for thesituation.
But what did yousay?Well, I told him I basically was fed up with thecommanders.
Yeah, I remember this is kind of goingthrough.
This is being filtered to the point that I'm trying to get guys who barely speak English to understand what I'msaying.
Yeah,totally.So,basically, I'm relying on the lines that you guys fed up for American commanders because they weredisrespectful, but that didn'twork.
Because they didn't understand what disrespectfulwas.
So, I came up withrude, and they didn't understand what rude was for somestranger.
Bo says his memories from that time are sort ofthin.
In large part because he says he wasblindfolded.
He was focused on what was happening tohim, minute tominute, trying to comprehend his circumstances and how he could possibly reversethem.
They rode me around from a couple differentplaces, and finally he got me to a smallvillage, Iguess.
They pulled me off the motorcycle and that me down on theground.
And all of the guys cameup, Iguess, I don'tknow.
I'm guessing it was like a younger brother or a younger buddy or something likethat.
He had his cell phoneon, he was like taking a video of me and his buddy waslike, youknow, sitting off to thetime, he'slike, youknow, didn't say anythingelse.
He was likeAmerican.Yeah, I just shook my head and then he slappedme.
Andthen, that a fewtimes, all they wanted with thevideo.
And after they weredone, then they put the blindfold backon, they threw a blanket over myhead.
And thenthey, I don't know where thatwent, but then like little kids started throwing rocks atme.
And so I kind of pretended to like flinch from on therock-titting, meanhead, which kind of allowed me to shift myweight.
And I was like trying to get my hands from behind my back and pull themaround.
So I could get them in front ofme.
That didn'twork. So then Bo tried to lean forward so he could use his knee to move the cloth off of hisface.
I kind of got it to a point where it was like half off my left eyealmost.
Imean, I still had a blanket on myhead.
Youknow, and nobody was really stoppingme.
And I didn't hear anyvoices.
So I was justlike,yo, this is the bestday.
The best it's probably going toget.
I just stood up andbolted.
I was as he didn't get more than maybe 20 or 30 feet before he was tackled by what felt like the entirevillage.
That was day one of hiscaptivity.
By 2009 inAfghanistan, the US forces and the Taliban had been fighting for sevenyears.
And in all thattime, there had never been a situation likethis.
An American soldiercaptured.
It was a new kind ofcrisis.
But each side also knew who they were dealingwith.
They could anticipate what each other's moves wouldbe.
In those first fewdays, the US knew that whoever had bow would be moving himconstantly.
Because along you stand oneplace, the more likely you are to getcaught.
And they also knew that the Taliban's goal would be to get bowed to a hideout in the tribal region of WesternPakistan.
Because Pakistan is like homebase.
Or to put it in Tom and Jerryterms, Pakistan is the whole in the base board where Tom cannotgo.
Pakistan is a sovereignnation, our purportedally, we are not at war withPakistan.
So once posed inPakistan, we can't do much aboutit.
InAfghanistan, US forces can go anywhere theywant, can do almost anything theywant.
But inPakistan, it'smuch, much harder for the US military tooperate.
Here's the other thing that happens once Bo gets toPakistan.
He becomes much morevaluable.
Because his captors don't have to get rid of him in ahurry.
They can take their sweet time making the deal they want tomake.
And ofcourse, the Taliban knew that the US knew they'd head forPakistan.
So the Taliban did theopposite.
Instead of heading straight east to the Pakistanborder, the Talibanguys, Sami talked to said they first took Bo West to Ghazni province where Mujahid Rahmanlived.
Yeah, I can head in the oil and I shouldmove.
Sami Yusuf's eye put us in contact withRahman.
He'd already interviewed him a year earlier for pageone.
So thisinterview, Sami had a car pick Rahman up and they talked to me on a burner cell phone from inside thecar, which is parked in a residential neighborhood known to be fairlysafe.
Did you justappear?Yeah.
The call dropped about a half dozen times during ourinterview.
Mujahid Rahman told me by the time Bergdahl came tohim, the plan was alreadyset.
A Taliban commander named Kari Ismail Sulemanzai had taken charge of Bo and had arranged to deliver him to a group known as the Hakani network inPakistan.
In themeantime, Mujahid Rahman's orders were to keep Bo alive and out of sight for a couple of days and nights until the pressure on the border eased a little and they could sneak Boacross.
By the time Rahman took charge of the motorcycleconvoy, about eight people hesaid, it was obvious to the Taliban that US forces were pouring into Eastern Afghanistan to search forBo.
Ofcourse, we could see this massive search and the ground search and also theairplanes.
And that was the reason we were moving around an hour byhour.
We were changing location and we were even changing Bergdahl's dress and we were even changing ourdress.
At onepoint, we came in a close contact with American ground forces by 500 meters while Bergdahl was withus.
Helaal told Sammy that at one point his convoy had come within a kilometer of FabSharana, where Bo's own battalion wasbased.
But even if Bo had wanted to scream or make acommotion, he couldn'thave.
His hands were tied and Rahman said he had a large claw wrapped around hishead, partly to disguise him but partly just to keep the dust off hisface.
They all wore them against thedust.
Rahman says these were probably the most stressful two days of any mission he'd everdone.
Carious Miles stayed in constant contact with his guy in Pakistan from the Hakaninetwork.
Rahman said they used fake names and locations over the Waki Taukes to confuse theAmericans, but that US forces tracked himanyway.
There were locations atNew-E.
We stayed in a location and thentwo, three hourslater, American forces came to thatplace, to that house and searched thathouse.
By thistime, ofcourse, word had spread all over the region that a US soldier had gonemissing.
The military air drop leafletsaying,quote, one of our American guests is missing and gave a phone number tocall.
Number one handed out about two weeks after a boat disappeared was lessgentle.
It showed armed western forces kicking in adoor.
The news report translated the text asquote, if you do not free the Americansoldier, you will betargeted.
The army claimed the leaflets hadhunted, nottargeted, which actually sounds scarier tome.
They also distributedchocolate.
Sammy Yusuf's side interviewed some of the people who lived in or near Mastin Sharan at the time and they remembered the chocolate wrapped in shinypaper.
They also remember helicopters all over the place and that the Americans were saying Bergdahl's name or at least a word that had a B sound init.
The people Sammy talked to said they'd heard the missing soldier had been wandering around drunk when the Taliban grabbedhim, just as Halal hadsuspected.
Those are common rumour that Bo was drunk or that he'd gone to a holy site or that he'd tried to fight off the Taliban withKarate.
Unclassified US military communications released to the public byWikiLeaks, there's all this chatter on the ground that first week after Bo wentmissing.
On July1st,2009, the day after Bodisappears, an LLVI trafficreport.
LLVI stands for low level voiceintercept.
It's technology we use to eavesdrop on enemy voice or datacommunications.
It picks up this conversationquote, is that true that they captured an Americanguy?
Yes theydid. He isalive.
There's nowhere he cango,LL.
I asked a former soldier who regularly read such messages what LL means in this context and he said the only meaning that seemed plausible to him was laugh outloud.
Then a few hours later there's thisintercept.
We were attacking thepost.
He was sitting taking expletive and had no gun withhim.
He was takingexpletive.
He has not cleaned his buttyet.
I think he's a bigshot. That's why they're looking forhim.
Usher he'd Ramon understood Bo was a USsoldier, but he didn't know precisely whatkind.
He said the intensity of the search did suggest Bo was a bigshot.
Since why would they put all that effort and money into looking for him if he wasn'timportant?
Ramon said he'd heard foreign soldiers were sometimes trained in martialarts.
So at first he and his men were very careful around theirprisoner.
But pretty soon Ramon says his main impression of Bo was that he was just reallyscared.
He couldn't eveneat, drink orsleep.
And because he was thinking that what type of people we might be and what are we going to do with him or we're going to killhim.
We're going to behead him or what are we going to do withhim.
So that was hissituation.
He was very scared and we canconfuse.
Ramon said he didn't feel sorry forBo.
He didn't think of him asinnocent.
From his point ofview, Bo was like all USsoldiers.
He traveled halfway around the world voluntarily to invade their country and killMuslims.
But Ramon and most of the guys Samiinterviewed, they also talk about how Bo was theirguest, how humane they were withhim.
Which is a little jarring tohear.
I mean tying your guest to the back of a motorcycle against his will doesn't sound like great hostbehavior.
But Sami explained to me they're not being ironic that in past-tuneculture, a guest is always treated with generosity andrespect.
And so the fact that Bo was labeled a guest in this situation made it clear to the lower down guys under Carious Miles Command that they're not allowed to kill him or even beat the crap out ofhim.
Which Ramon said was a real concern that some al-Qaeda or Talibanfighters, especially if they'd had family members killed byAmericans, might try to kill Bo or to kidnap him forthemselves.
One of the LLVI messages from July 1st the day after Bo leftreads, unidentified malesays,quote, cut the headoff,unquote.
Ramon himself had been a prisoner of theAmericans.
He said he was held at Bogrum for about twoyears.
And he said he made sure to treat Bo better than he'd beentreated.
Quote, someone who is in yourcustody, hesaid, you treat himnicely,unquote.
At one point Ramon says they stopped the convoy and what he calls a winefield, like a grapeorchard.
They'd gone there to hide fromU.S.
helicopters. And Ramon said while they werethere, they tried to help Bo out to make him feelbetter.
Just to boost his morale and to cheer himup, we stopped at thisvineyard.
And we did this littledance, traditional dance called a tan forhim.
So he can starteating. Anaton is an Afghan dance where typically there's a drum and you move in a circle inunison.
Soyeah, apparently they did one for this frightened American soldier in a grapeorchard.
Did itwork? Did it boost his morale and get him toeat?
No, it didn'thelp. It even had a worse effect on him because he did not know why we were doingthis.
That'sBo. Bo says he has no memory of this event that he's never seen inAnaton, except in a video the Taliban showed him muchlater.
Kenneth Wolfe was command sergeant major of the 501st back when Bodisappeared, the battalion's highest ranking non-commissionedofficer.
He said at first he felt they'd findBo.
And I told thecolonel, Isaid, you knowwhat?
I'm going to stick around here for a fewdays.
Because if we findhim, I want to be on the helicopter that picks himup.
And he waslike, why notgo?
They're going to whip hisass.
Meaning Bo's fellow soldiers are going to whip hisass.
Wolfe wasn't wrong to worry aboutthat.
If we were to foundhim, I think a lot of us would have shothim.
That tells youanything.
That's DarrylHansen, one of Bo's platoonmates.
I truly say that with sincerity that we had that much hate towardshim.
We hatedhim. Absolutely hatedhim.
That's MarkMcCory, a specialist in the501st, but in different company fromBo.
It waslike,well, if we seehim, he's not going tolast.
Likeseriously, you're just kind ofblustery, like I'm reallypissed.
Or do you really think like it's possible he could have gotten youdo?
Yeah.Well, Imean, I don't know what kind of light that sheds uson, like sheds onus, but it was one of those things where the conversation had comeup.
I found this shocking and disturbing that some of these guys were saying they might have killed Bo if they'd foundhim.
Butnow, after interviewing more than a dozensoldiers, I still don't sympathize with wanting to killhim.
But I do understand why their anger was soextreme.
I getit. The dust one's search and recovery operations lasted officially for 45days.
And some people contented it went on evenlonger.
But the most frantic time the soldier said was those first fewweeks.
They told me the search for Bo started in the immediate vicinity of where he went missing from op mess to easternAfghanistan.
Rightaway, a nine-man foot patrol headed out from the op toward a boy's school inMalak.
Lieutenant JPBillings, boasabletwo-liter, said they came across a boy who toldBillings,yes, he had seen an American in a field thatmorning.
And he gave a specifictime, 602AM.
He pulled up his sleeve to show his Casiowatch.
There are a bunch of reports like this of boys saying they'd seen an American low crawling on the ground or nearly fainting fromdehydration.
A couple of reports noted that they were also giving out candy to thekids.
In oneinstance, the kid got some poptarts.
Which isnotable. An Army report on boas disappearance suggests maybe it was our initialsearch, maybe even this firstpatrol, that led to Bo'scapture, that the soldiers handing out candy and asking thesequestions, tip the kidsoff.
Andultimately, the adults and then theTaliban, that an American wasmissing.
And so they went out looking for him and grabbedhim.
Which supports what Bo says that the Taliban rode right up to him onmotorbikes.
Bo says he hadn't told anyone what he planned todo.
So no one in his unit or his battalion has any idea why heleft.
How couldthey? All they have to go on is whatever early intel is comingin.
I don't remember where I heard itfrom, but I remember hearing that he was in the town asking if people spokeEnglish.
And then that's where he wasnabbed.
That's AustinLantford, another of Bo's platoonmates.
A bunch of people I spoke to remember a report like this coming over thetransom.
Here's where I think they probably gotit.
In the WikiLeaks release from the day Bo wentmissing, there's an entry saying they picked up LLVI trafficindicating,quote, that an American soldier is talking and is looking for someone who speaksEnglish.
American soldier hascamera,unquote, which conjures an image of Bo's seeking contact or maybehelp.
But several people who know how military intel works told me these LLVI reports can betricky.
They're quick translations of over herchatter, nuance islost, mis-translations are notuncommon, so for what it'sworth.
The search for Bo wasenormous.
By the late afternoon of June30,2009, it hadballooned.
Word goes out thatquote, all operations will cease until missing soldier isfound.
All assets will be focused on the dust one situation and sustainmentoperations,unquote.
They would search all of Pec-Ticaprovince, a neighboring Pec-Tia provincetoo, and into Ghazni province incoast, thousands of squaremiles.
Anything they needed to make ithappen, theygot.
Plains,helicopters,drones,interpreters, eliteunits, specialforces, hundreds of people stopped what they weredoing.
Even if your job was to look for Osama binLaden, now you're going to look for the dustone.
They were snapping into action because of a basic ground floor principle of thearmy.
You do not leave anyone out there in a warzone.
The military knew that the first 24 to 48 hours would be the most critical period if they were going to findhim.
Based on some fancyintel, they understood pretty quickly that Bo had beencaptured, and they knew whoever had him would be on themove, and therefore talking on radios or phones the wholetime, trying to figure out their own nextsteps.
So if you can intercept thatchatter, you can maybe geolocate where Bo mightbe.
Battalion commander requests as much signals intelligence as it canget.
And then of course needs more soldiers to check out all thatintel.
Five more platoons join thesearch, then eight moreplatoons.
The entire brigade gets pulledin.
When Commander told me it was like amini-surge.
Our operational tempo went from sortof, youknow,casual, presencepatrols, drivingaround, handing outstuff, coordinating IEDs till EOD cameout.
This is JohnThurman. He was in BlackfootCompany, Bo'sCompany, differentplatoon.
Two, I meannonstop. It was around theclock.
We'd be kicking indoors oneminute, setting up a blockingposition, and searching every single car an hourlater.
A blocking position was basically aroadblock.
The official mission in Afghanistan in 2009 was counterinsurgency, coin forshort.
American forces were supposed to be containing theinsurgence, but also training Afghan securityforces.
They were supposed to be engaging thelocals, gaining theirtrust, improvinginfrastructure.
All that pretty much stoppednow.
Here's MarkMcCrory. Sure there had been fights that had been goingon, but youknow, they weren't fights that we werepicking.
The bad guys would come to us and we'd fight themoff, youknow.
Whereas this was us going out every night looking for aguy, smashing down theirdoor.
We were just looking and looking andlooking.
John Thurmanagain. Imean,towns, I don't even know if these towns had seen Americansever.
Okay, now we're going to fly you into this BedouinVillage, and you're going to go check every single building a room and check all the women's faces to make sure that they're not hiding him in women'sclothing.
That's BenEvans, a specialist from CharlieCompany.
He said there'd been intel that they'd dressed Bo as awoman, which at times Bo says theydid.
And so we went into this house and whenever you would go into a house to do asearch, all the women would typically huddle into one cornertogether.
And normally we wouldn't pay them anymind, just to leave them aB.
But at thatpoint, we kind of had to walk over and I had to I mimicked removing yourveil, removing your veil so we cansee.
This kind ofstuff, making women lift their veils or kickingindoors, doesn't exactly endear you to the localpopulace.
But they didn't have time to worry about that rightnow.
Any little fragment of actionableintelligence, they're moving him in a whitetruck, they're heading him over to someone at thislocation, they didn't have a luxury to ignore any ofit.
You can see on paper in those WikiLeaks releases all the scrambling that was going on those first fewdays.
From June30th,2009, the dayboleft, update 140Kav has intel that Taliban is planning to move theU.S.
Pax, Paxmean's person or passenger toGardez.
Nextday, July1st,update.
Delaware 36 reports they have received intel that the body of the missingU.S.
soldier is due east of their currentposition.
July4th,update. Spotreport.
MissingU.S. soldier was last seen in a village at grid locationVB611818.
A bag was covering his head and he was wearing dark khaki apparel and soon, day afterday.
Here's MarkMcCrory.Apparently, at onepoint, these guys said they intercepted a phone call where it was one member of the Taliban speaking to another and theysaid,hey, the Americans are rightoutside.
And we've got this guy withus.
Andso, like that goes all the trickles all the way up and then all the way backdown.
Everybodyfrees. Hold what yougot.
Stay where youare. Set out an outer cord on and search wherever everybodyis.
But by the time the information had traveled all the way up the chain and all the way backdown, it was already toolate.
Despite the massive resources at theirdisposal, the Americans were at a certain disadvantage in thatlandscape.
Because any movement ofU.S.
forces in giant armored trucks or in helicopters or whatever makes a lot ofnoise, kicks up a lot ofdust.
The Taliban could be morenimble, skirting around on small roads orpaths, often onmotorcycles.
As soon as they saw or heard that the enemy was coming theirway.
Imean, likeliterally, like we were charging into thesetowns, just running out of our trucks like he's inhere.
We're running to thiscollot.
That's Darrell Hansenagain.
A collot is a kind ofcompound.
Just going in withguns.
Like infact, I'll neverforget.
We ranin. And as we're runningin, this freaking cow has ababy.
Like right next tome, justout.
Imean, it was scared to hell out of thecow.
Youknow, I just had its baby rightthere.
Soyeah, it was veryintense.
Yeah.Just, youknow, we were always seemed like one day behind where isthat?
The Americans were certainly on the righttrack.
The battalion leadership met with a local Afghan leader who reported that Bo had been turned over to the local Talibanleader, KariIsmail, just like Halal toldSammy.
And the US was pretty sure those Taliban guys would turn Bo over to the Hakanis inPakistan.
In NorthWaziristan, to beprecise.
They'd also gotten intel that Bo might be inGhazni, just like Mujahid Ramonsaid.
Infact, Ramon told me that a few days after he returned from delivering Bo toPakistan, he got rolled up by theAmericans,detained, and questioned aboutBo.
Ramon said everyone was getting questioned aboutBo.
People from down south in Kandahar and from out west inHarat.
But here the US had in front of them the very man who had shepherded Bo to theHakanis.
Here's what Ramon toldthem.
I have not seen thisperson, and I don't know thisperson, and I haven't heard ofhim.
So that was my reply all the time to theAmericans.
Pulling into towns you're unfamiliarwith, based on single source intelligence or conflictingintelligence, with almost no time to prepare your team for what's awaitingthem.
It'srisky. In a more typicaloperation, you mitigate thedanger, maximize the chance forsuccess, by doing everything you can in advance to do what's called shape thebattlefield.
And you might take a few days to plan andprepare.
Now commanders were lucky if they got a fewhours.
Sometimes they felt like they were wingingit.
A special operations commander told me his team went on more than 50 missions looking forBo.
And many of those were during theday, rather than atnight, when his guys have theadvantage.
Quote, we don't work in theday, hesaid.
Major Mike Waltz was commander of a special forcescompany.
He was in charge of seven Green Beret and one Navy SEALteam.
He took over the command on June30th, the same day Boleft.
While infantry soldiers were out searching cars or going house to house invillages, Waltz says his teams were conductingraids, usually atnight, targeting specific compounds orhouses, where they had intel Bo either was or hadbeen.
Any shred of evidence that Bergdahl had beenthere, we thought he wasthere, asighting, it wasn't reallyvetted, it wasn't buttressed by other types ofreporting.
There was just no time to check onit.
We justwent. And I can'temphasize, I can't over-emphasize how dangerous thatis.
Waltz says there's one mission that still freaks himout.
His men went toGhazni, he says most of his missions were ordered inGhazni.
And they'd had information that a young white male surrounded by fighters had been seen in a particular compound thatday.
So as fast as theycould, they got the helicopterstogether, they headed outthere, didn't have time to substantiateanything.
They arrive and walk into the compound to find the whole thing isbooby-trapped.
The team went in and looked up and saw the ceiling lined withC4.
And then there was also a car bomb with the trunk packed with explosives sitting in the middle of thecompound.
Now by the grace ofGod, they evacuated before the thing could go off and it neverdid, but I would have easily lost 20 to 30 American green berets thatnight, had that thing gooff.
And it quickly became very apparent to us that the Taliban knew and our sources began telling us that the Taliban and the Hakani network knew that we were pulling out all the stops to find him and were feeding false information into our informantnetworks.
Allright. You've got the most advanced military in theworld, throwing all thiseffort, all this expertise and technology at trying to find oneperson.
They do pull out all the stops just to get one soldierback.
That's reallysomething.
But then they can't findhim.
And not onlythat, in someinstances, they're being played by theenemy, learned intotraps.
What is goingon? I don't quite understand if we should be impressed by this operation ordismayed.
I asked a guy named Jason Dempsey to answer this question forme.
At the time Bodisappeared, Jason was a major in the 10th MountainDivision, an operationsofficer, meaning he planned military operations for battalion based in LoguearProvince, just north of Pactica andPactia.
I've interviewed Jason a couple of times now and what I've learned is that he's very smart and that he can't stopfidgeting.
Can't sitstill. If we're ostensibly conducting counterinsurgency in2000, sorry aboutthat.
Iforgot. Backgroundnoise.
Are you washingdishes?
Yeah. Jason's got a PhD and is taught at WestPoint.
He's done tours in both Iraq andAfghanistan.
And he's thought a lot about what we did and didn't accomplish inAfghanistan.
He is not surprised we didn't findBo.
When I think about what washappening, I just have this image of like this bigmachine, youknow, that's like moving around in this region in Afghanistan and there's just like a mouse running through the legs of themachine.
Like, orlike, I don'tknow, like an ad ad on StarWars, youknow.
That's a great way to doit.
Luke comes with this little thing and he just like ties up the legs and it fallsover.
Imean, I know that's notfair,but.
Not absolutelytrue. And it's a greatanalogy,right?
You've got this big lumbering machine movingthrough, thinking to destroyanything, faceon, but it can'tget, it has no idea on a granularlevel.
What's belowit? Jason says what's down there on the ground are towns we don'tunderstand, where regular people and government officials and the Taliban are impossiblyenmeshed.
Where civilians might hate theTaliban, but they might hate the Karzai government evenmore.
So it's not clear at all that the US is the team to rootfor, tohelp.
It's not as simple as these people are loyal to our side and those people are loyal to theirside.
It'sfluid. And at thattime, in that part ofAfghanistan, we just didn't understand the incredibly complicated politics of thesetowns.
Youknow, we can target or track individualnetworks, but we never really were able to tiein.
Okay, which towns and villages and peoplewho, youknow, they're relatives who are happy to give them safe passageor, youknow, they can walkthrough, evenafter, even after seven years of war at thispoint, we don'tknow, we don't know the networks wellenough.
No, andremember, when you say seven years ofwar, it means we rotated a few thousand dudes through their every seven to 12months.
Right, there is no institutional knowledge with the US military andAfghanistan,right?
Nearlynone. We never were there long enough to actually get engagedwith.
And this applies unfortunately after 2010 aswell.
We've never had anybody fully engaged at all levels with Afghanpolitics.
But Jasonsaid, that's the whole thing rightthere.
Despite our web ofconnections, we never coulduntangle.
We had come into Afghanistan in 2001 and ousted theTaliban.
And we did a pretty good job of that through2003.
But thenafterwards, Jasonsaid, our missionlanguished.
And the Taliban used the intervening years to refresh andregroup, to learn how weoperate, how we trackthem.
And now they were pushing back into the country in a bigway.
In exactly thisregion.
Pactica,Pactia,coast.
Right where Boge wasmissing.
But that's what the soldiers of the 501st were upagainst.
They were total outsiders looking for theirguy.
And knowing their chances of finding him were diminishing every day thatpassed.
ClintBaker, commander of the first battalion of the501st, said it was as high risk in operation as he's everhad.
In part because there was no clear endpoint.
In a military hearing hetestified,quote, and Imean,frankly, I felt a bit at a losson, youknow, what todo.
In my entire time in thearmy, I can't think of a time where I felt that kind of adversity just period and really didnot, youknow, wasn't able to overcomeit,unquote.
The relentlessness was what was socrushing.
Here's JohnThurman, and then DarrylHanson.
It got to the point wheresleep, Imean, sort of became a distantreality.
Just 24 hours aday, seven days aweek, nosleep, nonothing.
Just ran out ofjuice, all the guys are justmiserable.
It's just like hell onearth, youknow.
Ofcourse, Afghanistan was dangerous and conditions were rough before Bo leftalso.
But now because Operation Tempo was roughly doubled or even tripled in somecases, there was just more contact with thedanger.
Blackfoot ThirdPlatoon, forinstance, hit three IEDs in oneday.
MajorSalvino, a Salvino testified that the battalionsM-Raps, those huge armored trucks that are built to sustain IEDexplosions, that about80% of them were damaged during this searchperiod, and about half the damage was caused byIEDs.
Their four minerollers alldestroyed.
Those numbers are one way to quantify the danger and thedamage, but a full reckoning of theconsequences, including the enormous question of whether people were wounded or died looking forBo, would come publicly much later after Bo camehome.
I saw some pictures Darryl Hanson took from thattime.
One shows him and another guy standing next to a carcass on aspit.
Is that agoat?Yes, that's agoat.
What was going on in thatpicture?
What's going on is they were tired ofMREs, so they'd buy a goat off a localfarmer, have some meat that wasn't vacuumpacked.
Some of these units couldn't go back to their fobs for what's calledrefit, where you clean and resupply yourequipment, or youshower, you get a hotmeal, for weeks onend.
Secondplatoon, Bo'splatoon, they got sent out for 19 daysstraight.
So that's outside thewire, living intrucks, or just on theground, for nearly threeweeks, doing non-stopmissions.
Another platoon from Charlie Company was sent out for 37 daysstraight.
You've got all your gearon, full battlerattle, and it weighs between 60 and 100pounds, depending on what kind of weapon you'recarrying, or whether you're a radio operator who has to have extrabatteries.
It might be 90 degrees during theday, or 100degrees.
Atnight, the temperature might drop by as much as 30degrees.
Major Sivino said in a military hearing that the men would huddle together at night to keepwarm.
Quote, they wouldliterally, I'll call itspoon,unquote.
JP Billings was one of the people who was out for 19 daysstraight.
He testified that he'd gotten diarrheaearly,and,quote, youknow, I'd shit mypants,unquote.
He did have an extrapair, but it had ripped up the inside leg on some concertinawire.
Quote, so knowing that I was going out and talking tolocals, potentially females andwhatever, andvillages, I couldn't necessarily have an exposed region like that on mypants,unquote.
So Billings wore the shit pants for 19days.
People's t-shirts gotshredded, their socksrotted.
People got sores on theirskin.
They could only wash with baby wipes and maybe bottledwater.
Undergarments falling off ofthem.
Oh,really?Yeah,clothes, youknow, like something you would think of in Malaysia orBurma, youknow, clothes just fallingapart.
That's KenWolff, the command sergeantmajor.
The hard part was they hadn't planned forthis.
No one knew how long the search was going to goon.
Imean,eventually, because we had to start figuring itout.
How are we going to rotate guys backin?
How do we resupplythem?
Because they'reeverywhere.
Our guys areeverywhere.
They're spread outeverywhere.
Imean, it was justcomplete, just a logisticsnightmare.
And thenalso, it wasn't just ourbattalion.
The other battigians within the organization were looking for themtoo.
And sowhat, youknow, how does it make you feel when you've walked for 15 daysstraight, looking for a guy who walkedoff, and he's not even in yourunit.
And so you see somebody and they'relike,hey,man, fuckyou.
We're out here looking for thisguy.
Maybe you're thinking all this complaining about how hard that timewas, CrimeaRiver.
They're soldiers and it'swar.
And this is what they signed upfor.
Well, yes andno. Their job was to go find and rescue one of theirown.
They knew that and they acceptedit.
It was the right thing to do to go look forthem.
And they genuinely wanted to findhim.
But they alsoknew, or were at least prettyconfident, that Bo had left Mesdopevoluntarily.
And now they felt like they were going through hell on hisbehalf.
And it wasn't just Bo's own cartoon doingit, but other platoons from otherbattigians.
Most of the people I talked to about thistime, they said the search inflicted such major damage onmorale, which can be a delicate thing to maintain in the best oftimes.
At the end ofJuly, about a monthin, Major LarryGlaskak, the battalion's executiveofficer, went on leave back to Fort Richardson inAlaska, where the battalion isbased.
His boss had asked him to meet with a group ofsoldiers' family members who knew that their soldiers were out looking forBergdahl.
The families knew that we were conducting significant operations and that we were stepping up our kinetic activities against insurgents to try and findhim.
So they knew that the risk in Afghanistan for our battalion hadincreased.
And it was atough, toughmeeting.
There was a lot ofconcern.
There were a lot of scared wives that rightfullyso.
They wanted answers and they wantedcomfort.
They wanted to know that their husband was going to beokay.
And youknow, not in a position to make those kinds ofpromises.
Shane Cross was in Bo'splatoon.
He was friendly withBo.
Yeah, Istill... Istill, I think I'm still angry aboutit.
Shane was out on that 19-day stint with theplatoon.
When they finally made it back to the fob on July20th, it would be for only a few hours it turnedout, rather than the day or two they'd hopedfor.
Shane shot himself in the foot with his 9-millimeter pistol while he was in the bathroom and got senthome.
Shane said it was anaccident.
He said the armyagreed.
But the other guys saw it as a statement about how beaten down they allwere, how they'd hadenough.
Commander said they could see in their faces how emotionally busted their soldierswere, howangry.
They were starting to bicker with eachother.
Major Sivino testified that he'd given them peptalks,but,quote, I couldhear,well, youknow,mumbling,mumbling,grumbling,grumbling,expletives,blah,blah,blah,unquote.
As the weeks wenton, they started to hit more and more dryholes.
They'd aerosol it into some village or target and they'd findnothing.
I asked Ken Wolf how he tried to keep moraleup.
Ken, tome, seems like the kind of guy who can scare the crap out of you and also hug you in the sameencounter.
Ken told me he tried whatever he could to get his soldiersthrough, including asking his wife to send over Copenhagen's snuff from thestates, which shedid.
She bought rules and rules of it and Ken passed itaround.
I remember talking to a group of guys and Igo,hey, we don't knowthe, we don't know everything at thispoint.
We don'tknow. Andthen, youknow, this is ourmission.
He's one of ourguys. We got to findhim.
We're going to doit. So that was oneway, the otherway, youknow, giving out cans ofCopenhagen, telling dirtyjokes, putting people in theheadlock, that's how you doit.
Just being affectionate withthem,basically.
Yeah. Andsaying,hey, what you're doing is good and honorable and we just got to keeplooking.
Yeah. And knowing in the back of mymind, this is fuckingbullshit.
In what way wasit,bullshit?
Because he's inPakistan.
It'strue, but wasn'tPakistan.
What's the next thing is July14th,2009?
This is the first hostagevideo, the Taliban release ofBo.
What's thename? My name is BoBerkho.
Bo would spend the next year figuring out how toescape.
Next time oncereal. Serial is produced by JulieSnyder, DanaChibisani, and partnership with MarkBowle, MeganEllison, HugoLindgren, JessicaWeisberg, PageOne, and Anna PernaPictures.
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Coming up on the next episode ofSerial.
The best description I could probably give you is if you took a literally not even ananimal, take some one taking thebag, throw it into thecloset, showing the door and just forgetting aboutit.
