Speaker 1: Ah Beat Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software a Gradio Special Operations,
Speaker 1: Military News and straight Talk with the guys and the
Speaker 1: community Software Radio on Time. On Target we have Michael
Speaker 1: Ames and Studio, the co author of American Cipher, Boberg
Speaker 1: Doll and The US Tragedy in Afghanistan which is co
Speaker 1: written with Matt Farewell. Out and now this show is
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Speaker 1: love on air Drop with that excellent response to the
Speaker 1: last episode with Bob Bear. Really enjoyed doing that one.
Speaker 1: We covered so much ground, So you've got to go
Speaker 1: back and listen to that one if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: But it's getting a ton of plays, a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: and as I said in studio, this episode, we have
Speaker 1: Michael Ames once again, the co author of American Cipher
Speaker 1: bo Burg Doll and the US Tragedy in Afghanistan, And
Speaker 1: we've had on some of the guys who served with
Speaker 1: bou Bourg Doll, um like we've had on Matt beer
Speaker 1: Camp before. And I think it's interesting to revisit this
Speaker 1: with this book that just came out a couple of
Speaker 1: months back, because I think even initially on from what
Speaker 1: we knew and spoke about, there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: misinformation that has now been kind of shot down and
Speaker 1: we have a better idea of why bou Burg Doll
Speaker 1: was released and what went on. So I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get into this. Yeah, I I when he was first released,
Speaker 1: you know, I interviewed a few people from his platoon.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you interviewed a lot of people, um, And
Speaker 1: I mean, just like my curse, re look at how
Speaker 1: all that went down. It's like, this is bizarre, such
Speaker 1: a weird story. Um. So, I'm glad you wrote this book,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, thanks, It's uh, it was many years
Speaker 1: in the making. Farwell and I both had personal connections
Speaker 1: to it. Um seemed like the story chose us as
Speaker 1: much as we chose it. Yeah, how did that happen?
Speaker 1: How did you get involved in this? Well? So, I
Speaker 1: was living and working in Bergdal's hometown of Haley, Idaho,
Speaker 1: as a local journalist when he was captured. His father, Bob,
Speaker 1: was my ups driver, and I was the editor of
Speaker 1: the Sun Valley magazine at the time. Haley's about twelve
Speaker 1: miles south of sun Valley Steve Resort Town. Um, and
Speaker 1: I moved out of Sun Valley. He was still in
Speaker 1: captivity at the time, but when he was released, obviously
Speaker 1: this turned into a major firestorm. And I had done
Speaker 1: some reporting already, I had, I had. I was actually
Speaker 1: working for a l news as a political reporter freelancer
Speaker 1: when Bob Bergdal gave an unannounced speech at a Republican
Speaker 1: fundraiser in Idaho in two thousand ten, and um, I
Speaker 1: had that material and I started reporting on it, and
Speaker 1: I ended up reporting on it for several outlets and magazines,
Speaker 1: and then teamed up with Farwell who had worked on
Speaker 1: it for Rolling Stone, with Michael Hastings. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve they did kind of the first deep dive
Speaker 1: on burg Gal and then three years later, shortly about
Speaker 1: six months after he was released, I did the next
Speaker 1: deep dive story on it for Newsweek. So we each
Speaker 1: had this we kind of book ended the thing from
Speaker 1: a journalistic standpoint, and then we teamed up makes sense
Speaker 1: combined forces. Yeah, and that's how the book came about.
Speaker 1: And I mean, boks are pretty extensive. The obviously the
Speaker 1: amount of working guys did on it. I think we
Speaker 1: have someone in the neighborhood of between eight hundred and
Speaker 1: nine notes. So yeah, it's how many interviews do you
Speaker 1: think you did together? Dozens? Probably over a hundred, I
Speaker 1: mean between the two of us, definitely in in the hundreds.
Speaker 1: We I mean I spoke to dozens of people in
Speaker 1: Idaho who grew up with him. Um, we spoke to
Speaker 1: dozens of people in the army who knew him or
Speaker 1: were involved in the searches in some way, and then
Speaker 1: we just kept going up the chain until you know,
Speaker 1: the nine months before the book was done, I was
Speaker 1: in d C meeting with Chuck Hadrol, talked to Admiral
Speaker 1: Michael Mullen on the phone, went to every leader hearing
Speaker 1: at Fort Bragg, so we we had this thing covered.
Speaker 1: Did you buy any chance to talk to the guys
Speaker 1: we did? Uh? Cody Full and Matt were can't because
Speaker 1: they've been on with us, you know. Uh. Cody Full
Speaker 1: never responded to uh my outreach. Um, but I talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of other guys in the platoon and
Speaker 1: and even more in Blackfoot Company. But in the platoon
Speaker 1: we talked to Gerald Sutton, Joseph co Evan, Buto, Josh Corne,
Speaker 1: Ellison just in second platoon in Blackfoot Company, talked to
Speaker 1: a lot more guys who were involved, I mean a
Speaker 1: whole bunch. And then the kind of breakthrough source for
Speaker 1: me with the news Week reporting was a guy named
Speaker 1: Sergeant Johnny Rice, who was in third platoon, Blackfoot Company,
Speaker 1: who was the one who he was a big source
Speaker 1: for me at the start when I was um because
Speaker 1: he kind of picked up on what was going on
Speaker 1: pretty quick when they were having them go on these
Speaker 1: wild deuce chases for Burgdal after he had as he said,
Speaker 1: come and sense dictates he's no longer even here. Why
Speaker 1: are they sending us to go look for a guy
Speaker 1: when it's pretty clear he's over the border in Pakistan.
Speaker 1: So once I met Johnny Rice, that was that. That
Speaker 1: was a major breakthrough. And he's been a source and
Speaker 1: you know, um, a big help all along. Well, since
Speaker 1: this story is so convoluted, the waters have been muddied
Speaker 1: so much, U, if it's okay with you, start kind
Speaker 1: of at the beginning, like bow Burg Doll came out
Speaker 1: of your hometown, Like, who who was this guy? How
Speaker 1: did he end up in the military? Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: I grew up on the East Coast, but I moved
Speaker 1: to his hometown right after college basically as a ski
Speaker 1: bumb I was a glorified ski bumb I was working
Speaker 1: as a reporter at the local paper and teaching skiing,
Speaker 1: waiting tables, that whole thing. Um Boberg Doll was known
Speaker 1: as an eccentric kid, but there was it was a
Speaker 1: pretty eccentric town. So he wasn't that far off the
Speaker 1: mark in that town. But he rode his bike everywhere,
Speaker 1: I mean everywhere, forty fifty miles in a day. Wasn't
Speaker 1: weird for him. He was super fit. He knew a
Speaker 1: lot about weapons and guns. He worked at the gun club,
Speaker 1: but he was eccentric. He also was in the ballet,
Speaker 1: the local ballet, and he took it really, really seriously.
Speaker 1: And so he was trying to find his way in life.
Speaker 1: And he had these oddyssey years where he was saving
Speaker 1: saving up cash, doing odd jobs in the valley and
Speaker 1: then traveling around the world trying to find his purpose.
Speaker 1: He went to as some of the stuff you may
Speaker 1: have heard, or it's all in the book. Of course,
Speaker 1: he joined the French Foreign Legion. He thought he was
Speaker 1: going to join the French Foreign Legion. Um. He uh
Speaker 1: enrolled in the unlisted in the Coast Guard, but he
Speaker 1: washed out of boot camp three weeks into it with
Speaker 1: an anxiety breakdown. Um he was and um at one point.
Speaker 1: He but he never gave up the idea that he
Speaker 1: was going to be a he was going to be
Speaker 1: an operator, he was going to be a tier one guy.
Speaker 1: And to the extent that a a one of the
Speaker 1: guys who was a big shooter at the gun club
Speaker 1: and Haley was this guy named John Shaw who we
Speaker 1: read about in the book. If you ever heard of him.
Speaker 1: He was an award winning marksman um guy from Memphis,
Speaker 1: and he opened a shooting academy South and Memphis Mid South. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've been there, Okay, Yeah, so he also has He
Speaker 1: opened a kind of a western outpost in Idaho. And
Speaker 1: he was good friends with Bow's dad because Bo's dad
Speaker 1: was his ups driver, so they're friends. He he the
Speaker 1: two families went out to dinner together. They knew each other,
Speaker 1: you know. John Shaw told me that he met them.
Speaker 1: Bow's sister at the time when they met, was dating
Speaker 1: this guy named Michael Albrecht who had grown up in
Speaker 1: a very religious Christian household, just like Bow, and was
Speaker 1: going to the Naval Academy because he wanted to be
Speaker 1: a fighter pilot. Shaw couldn't been more impressed with the
Speaker 1: whole family. He said, you know, this looks like an
Speaker 1: all American military oriented family to me. Said to Bob, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we hire Bow. He can get out of
Speaker 1: this valley. The valley can be very claustrophobic. Come down
Speaker 1: to Mississippi and we'll teach him how it will teach
Speaker 1: him to be an instructor. So they bring him down
Speaker 1: there and they start putt him through this orientation where
Speaker 1: he's not really teaching anybody anything yet. He's just kind
Speaker 1: of doing maintenance. He's cutting grass, you know, he's greasing
Speaker 1: the hinges and he's and he's driving the seals who
Speaker 1: are training there to the casinos down on the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River and he starts idolizing these guys. He does, I
Speaker 1: want to be one of them. And he knew he
Speaker 1: was good enough with guns, and he knew that he
Speaker 1: knew enough about it to do it. But they saw something.
Speaker 1: They saw that he was this kind of gentle spirited
Speaker 1: kid who wouldn't hurt a fly, and he would. He
Speaker 1: wasn't he wasn't cut out for it in their opinion. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't like that, and one day he ups and
Speaker 1: tells Shaw or his manager down there, that he's going
Speaker 1: to quit because he's going to France to join the
Speaker 1: French Foreign Legion. And as you're read in the book,
Speaker 1: that does not go as planned. He doesn't speak a
Speaker 1: word of French, he doesn't anticipate having to speak a
Speaker 1: word of French. And he gets there and they tell
Speaker 1: him this isn't going to work out, and he returns
Speaker 1: home his dreams crushed. So he had these years of
Speaker 1: these of these elaborate dreams that didn't quite that that
Speaker 1: never really worked out. He went to Alaska to go
Speaker 1: fishing um At one point he auditioned for certain sol
Speaker 1: a wow because he was good enough. He was this
Speaker 1: unbelievably fit guy who lived this sort of like Bruce
Speaker 1: Lee monastic lifestyle. He slept on a mat every night.
Speaker 1: He was training himself to do these things. He was
Speaker 1: very much in his own head, as the guy's in
Speaker 1: platoon probably told you. And he was the real deal
Speaker 1: in the sense that he could go out in the
Speaker 1: back country and he was obsessed with bared grills and
Speaker 1: obsessed with survivalism, and he actually walked the walk on
Speaker 1: this stuff. The problem is is that a lot of it,
Speaker 1: the line between reality and fantasy for him, was very blurred.
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's some delusions of grangeur well as
Speaker 1: as a government army psychiatrists later diagnosed him with, and
Speaker 1: a separate group of army psychiatrists that he has this
Speaker 1: personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder. It's a rare disorder. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a schizophrenial light where you don't have full
Speaker 1: psychotic breaks but you live in your head, you live
Speaker 1: in your fantasies, and and and your ability to differentiate
Speaker 1: between reality uh and your fantasy is is pretty affected.
Speaker 1: Cody full at one point said, I think it was
Speaker 1: on Twitter that it always seemed to him like bo
Speaker 1: is living in a movie in his own head. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty much. It's that he cast himself in his
Speaker 1: own film exactly. And so he washes out of the Coastguard.
Speaker 1: Then so he washes out the Coastguard. He's still looking
Speaker 1: for for purpose. And there's there's scenes in the book
Speaker 1: where he goes back to Idaho and he is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's with this kind of like artistic crew in this
Speaker 1: coffee tea house that he was that was run by
Speaker 1: his his friend's mom and Mariel Hemingway would stop by
Speaker 1: and her daughters who were artists and models from l
Speaker 1: A And they're all these rich, unique kids who he's
Speaker 1: trying to fit in with. But meanwhile, he grew up
Speaker 1: in a strict Christian house. He's a millety, he's military obsessed.
Speaker 1: He's ordering gear and weapons to the shop and he's
Speaker 1: hiding them around the shop. Imare so at the time,
Speaker 1: I worked next door one of my odd jobs at
Speaker 1: the time. It's working next door at an art gallery
Speaker 1: and I would go in there and they had these
Speaker 1: weird weapons that you would find around and why is
Speaker 1: this WelCom chucks and stuff? They had a giant chaliley.
Speaker 1: There was this giant, gnarled, freaky looking saliley that they
Speaker 1: kept under the cash register, and I would say, oh,
Speaker 1: Bo put it there. Well, who's bow? Bo? Is this
Speaker 1: incredibly shy blonde kid who would always sit in the
Speaker 1: background and and and be super reserved. I remember him
Speaker 1: that way. When he was taken captive and his name
Speaker 1: got out there, I remembered him as the kids sitting
Speaker 1: in the background, not really interacting with customers. That's crazy
Speaker 1: that that you were was a weird flashback thing when
Speaker 1: his name appeared here, like I've seen this guy. When
Speaker 1: when his I don't remember exactly when I put two
Speaker 1: and two together. I mean he was you know, he
Speaker 1: was captured. He was captured for five years. But um,
Speaker 1: I knew the people at that coffee shop who we
Speaker 1: worked for, and I knew some of his friends. So yeah,
Speaker 1: when I saw his photo, I then remembered him as
Speaker 1: the kids sitting there. Yeah, I mean he was he
Speaker 1: was very shy, and Um, there was a brief period
Speaker 1: of time when I was working next door where like
Speaker 1: he was, he had like gone goth and and his
Speaker 1: friends had like painted his nails black and he was
Speaker 1: like had his hair down in his eyes. But that
Speaker 1: was a brief moment. Back to your question. Comes back
Speaker 1: from France and he's working at the tea shop, and
Speaker 1: in the book you'll you'll see, um, people around him
Speaker 1: are just impressed because he's so shy, so reserved, but
Speaker 1: he's doing this intense stuff all the time. The dude's
Speaker 1: super intense, as we were saying, because he's in his head.
Speaker 1: So he's shoveling and he's building. He built to the
Speaker 1: extent that he built a lounge, just smokers lounge behind
Speaker 1: the building out of snow and ice, with a shovel
Speaker 1: and a hose and with blankets. So he built like
Speaker 1: sofas and chairs and tunnels. It was a big snow year.
Speaker 1: He didn't even smoke, but he wanted a place for
Speaker 1: his friends to go hang out. And he was just
Speaker 1: so committed to it. And and and in the book,
Speaker 1: we interview people from that chapter of his life who said,
Speaker 1: I've never seen someone takes something as you know, like
Speaker 1: as fanciful an idea as let's have a smoker's lounge
Speaker 1: in the back, and take it so seriously that he's
Speaker 1: spent days shoveling and carving ice to make it real.
Speaker 1: And then how did he come to the army, So
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what he's gonna do, right, He the
Speaker 1: Coast Guard was a major failure for him. He he
Speaker 1: washes out in this in this emotional anxiety breakdown which
Speaker 1: we detail in the book. We because he just can't
Speaker 1: adapt to the lifestyle exactly. The whole thing, just just
Speaker 1: the reality versus what his perceptions and his hopes are
Speaker 1: going to be are just completely irreconcilable. That's most of
Speaker 1: us when we joined the Mark, right. It's part of
Speaker 1: how they break you in, right. But it's a big institution.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're just another cog in the wheel.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not a hero, you're not a ninja.
Speaker 1: You know, here's another guy. You're not an individual, right,
Speaker 1: And he was overwhelmed by the reality of the situation
Speaker 1: that he had to save lives, even though it's what
Speaker 1: he intended to do, even though it's why he joined
Speaker 1: when he heard it and was put in that position
Speaker 1: up close, and coast Guard boot camp sounds pretty intense.
Speaker 1: And they're waking you up every hour in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, and they're putting you through stressful situations.
Speaker 1: And after three weeks of this, he has a total
Speaker 1: breakdown and at roll call one night, he's not there,
Speaker 1: and his cohen lists. They find him in the bathroom
Speaker 1: with a nosebleed and broken mirror and blood all over
Speaker 1: the walls, and yeah, yeah, and it was clear he
Speaker 1: didn't belong there, and the coast Guard made it very
Speaker 1: clear that he didn't belong there in the paperwork to
Speaker 1: discharge him with it in his separation paperwork, and they said,
Speaker 1: if if beau Berg Doll wants to rejoin the military
Speaker 1: and anyway to perform, he needs a waiver, he needs
Speaker 1: psychological counseling, and he uh and and and otherwise he
Speaker 1: will not be allowed to enlist. And then he shows
Speaker 1: up at an army recruiter station. Well, then he goes home,
Speaker 1: he builds the snow and ice caves, and he starts
Speaker 1: looking for the next purpose in life, and that includes
Speaker 1: he his parents. So he was raised in this very
Speaker 1: religious household shouldn't leave this out. We have rewind a
Speaker 1: little bit here. He was homeschooled and raised by these
Speaker 1: really I mean good salt of the earth people as
Speaker 1: Jim Mannus called them, but pretty intense religious environment. Um uh.
Speaker 1: You know, his sister was fine coming up through it,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't. And that that that that that happens
Speaker 1: in families as well. And he uh was looking for
Speaker 1: other things to do. And when one opportunity that came
Speaker 1: up was to go to Uganda to teach self well
Speaker 1: to to to be part of a seminary group in
Speaker 1: Uganda at one of these villages and they were having
Speaker 1: issues with the Joseph Coney Army, and both says, well,
Speaker 1: I can go there and teach them self defense because
Speaker 1: I'm a self defense expert. So he tries to go
Speaker 1: to Uganda, but there's no spots left in the seminary.
Speaker 1: Then he comes home again, Well, he already was home.
Speaker 1: Then he he um decides well, I'm going to audition
Speaker 1: for cirk to soul because he was doing ballet and
Speaker 1: he was super fit, and he sees what people do
Speaker 1: there and he was amazed what people could do with
Speaker 1: their bodies. Um. This actually didn't make it into the book,
Speaker 1: so I get it to you guys here exclusively because
Speaker 1: one of the people I was friends with in town
Speaker 1: was one of his um dance or yoga instructors who
Speaker 1: was helping him fine tune his body. Bear in mind,
Speaker 1: this guy didn't drink, He ate incredibly healthy, he slept
Speaker 1: on a mat. He was a pretty fine tuned athlete.
Speaker 1: So he decided to go Serk to sol A. He auditions,
Speaker 1: but then he tells her, well, you know, I decided, Um,
Speaker 1: I decided not to do it, and she said, well
Speaker 1: why not? And he said, you know, I've heard Sark
Speaker 1: to sol A doesn't treat their employees that well and
Speaker 1: if people did hurt and they don't do much about it.
Speaker 1: And that's the last year heard of it. In days later,
Speaker 1: he he rides a dirt bike to Twin Falls to
Speaker 1: an enlistment shop and I mean to a recruiting office
Speaker 1: and listen the army. It's interesting because everything about his
Speaker 1: background that you're saying seems like he really is not
Speaker 1: an ideal candidate for the military. Although it's as you said,
Speaker 1: he has the physical strength and all that he looks
Speaker 1: at himself obviously is much more of an individual than
Speaker 1: you know, a member of a unit. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm not military, so you guys don't know
Speaker 1: better than men neither am I How common is that?
Speaker 1: I mean in the Army, I was having this conversation
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine last night actually, um, I
Speaker 1: picked him up from the airport. Is that, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Army and being in an infantry platoon, it
Speaker 1: is very much a team environment. It's about the unit.
Speaker 1: It's not about you as an individual. And if you
Speaker 1: show up there and you think you're some kind of hero,
Speaker 1: you think you're some kind of badass, you get put
Speaker 1: in your place really quickly because you were just one
Speaker 1: part of the machine, you know, and everyone has to
Speaker 1: work together to make it out of there alive, right
Speaker 1: I think he? I mean, it is absolutely legitimate to
Speaker 1: say that that his case raises questions and flags and
Speaker 1: holds lessons for how the military does mental health screening.
Speaker 1: That said, he was a very unique case that slipped
Speaker 1: through the cracks. He kept his head down, he didn't
Speaker 1: let people, he didn't let a lot of people in
Speaker 1: on and he wasn't like a troublemaker. Know, he was
Speaker 1: a good soldier. Who was one of the fittest guys
Speaker 1: in the platoon. According to everyone we talked to. They
Speaker 1: might not want to admit it, but he was one
Speaker 1: of the fittest dudes there. And he UM. He memorized
Speaker 1: the handbooks, he was always cleaning weapons. He knew what
Speaker 1: to do with the gear, he knew what to do,
Speaker 1: he knew the right things to do. The problem is
Speaker 1: what was going on in his head. And you know,
Speaker 1: to to to ferret someone out like that is tough. Um.
Speaker 1: But by the time he was an Afghanistan, he had
Speaker 1: already showed people enough clues that he was perhaps on
Speaker 1: a different wavelength than there were issues, and he had
Speaker 1: been flagged as a mental health issue. Who flagged him
Speaker 1: and when was that? Well? The official the most official
Speaker 1: flagging we heard was Um, which which was brought up
Speaker 1: in the legal hearings, was in Afghanistan by his first sergeant,
Speaker 1: who or by a sergeant in his platoon who brought
Speaker 1: it up to first sergeant to say, hey, this guy
Speaker 1: is having some issues. Maybe he should talk to a
Speaker 1: to a stress counselor UM. And the first sergeant said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear about it. You know your
Speaker 1: opinion doesn't matter, um. But that was the that's the
Speaker 1: most documented case. But I've also talked to other people
Speaker 1: who were in Alaska with him and thought that he
Speaker 1: was off from the start. So I think it it
Speaker 1: comes down to how close people were paying attention. But
Speaker 1: the whole reason he got through just back again because
Speaker 1: we kind of lost over this. He wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: he would have been turned away at that recruiting station.
Speaker 1: He should have been turned away at that recruiting station.
Speaker 1: The Coast Guard had done its job and and and
Speaker 1: had done the proper paperwork that said he should not
Speaker 1: be recruited, he should not be allowed to enlist. But
Speaker 1: this was in the summer of two thousand eight. This
Speaker 1: was as uh uh we They knew that the surge
Speaker 1: was coming for Afghanistan. The problem they needed bodies. The
Speaker 1: problem was everybody was in Iraq, so they needed to
Speaker 1: lower and listening standards. And in the book, Matt Farwell
Speaker 1: does some great reporting on this. Um. You know, he
Speaker 1: knew it from working in the army for years. They
Speaker 1: lowered enlistening standards significantly now and often that meant taking
Speaker 1: guys with you know, with felony records and with other
Speaker 1: rap sheets and a variety of issues. But it also
Speaker 1: meant taking guys like bo burg Ball, who the Coast
Speaker 1: Guard had done its job said he shouldn't be in
Speaker 1: the army, and then the Army takes them. Anyway. When
Speaker 1: I was talking to people and his platoon in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: I mean, they just described him as just the weirdest
Speaker 1: cat ever. Um that he was like trying to learn Pashto,
Speaker 1: which was not, you know, in of itself bad, but
Speaker 1: he was you know, off by himself most of the time.
Speaker 1: Writing in his diary was one of the things I
Speaker 1: was told. He was just not somebody who was like
Speaker 1: socialized within the platoon. Um. And then we get into
Speaker 1: things where from what I was told, he was like
Speaker 1: he'd like ask his squad leader, like what would happen
Speaker 1: if a gun went missing? You know, stuff like this
Speaker 1: that like in retrospect like, oh my god, well he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, you talked to the guys who weren't his friends.
Speaker 1: He also had friends. Uh, there were certainly more people
Speaker 1: who were not his friend. They were ultimately hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people who did not want to be his friends.
Speaker 1: As one of our sources say, the army is an
Speaker 1: is an organism, and the army rejected Boberg Dolls an
Speaker 1: alien object in the organism. Um. He did have a
Speaker 1: couple of good friends in the platoon though, who we
Speaker 1: interviewed extensively for the book. Namely their names are Joseph
Speaker 1: co and Gerald Sutton. Both great guys, both had their
Speaker 1: own commonalities with Bo so um. Bo grew up home schooled,
Speaker 1: no TV, eight miles out of canyon in a very
Speaker 1: isolated environment with very religious parents. Joe Code grew up
Speaker 1: as the son of mission as a missionary in Venezuela
Speaker 1: in a jungle missionary camp, hours from the nearest town.
Speaker 1: So they bonded over there over their commonalities. Gerald Sutton
Speaker 1: was a super smart guy, went on later to get
Speaker 1: his full Bright scholarship, very bookish. He really looked up
Speaker 1: to Bow's ability to remember everything in the books, and
Speaker 1: he looked up to Bow as a physical specimen because
Speaker 1: the dude was fit. The dude did did appear to
Speaker 1: be a badass soldier when you just looked at him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you've seen him physically
Speaker 1: in person, but he's got this perfect posture. He's he's real,
Speaker 1: broad shouldered, square, John he looks like a soldier. There's
Speaker 1: another reason why I think he slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 1: He had to. He had the look. He had the look,
Speaker 1: but as soon as you started talking to him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a weird cat because he's living with an undiagnosed
Speaker 1: disorder that has him unable to really differentiate between fantasy
Speaker 1: and reality. It doesn't mean he's not smart. He's super smart,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have a formal education. He was homeschooled,
Speaker 1: and he didn't know he was He was naive and
Speaker 1: idealistic to a degree that other people growing up in
Speaker 1: most places in this country can simply not relate to.
Speaker 1: He was it. And I think this is um a
Speaker 1: really fascinating point. When you talk about how I got
Speaker 1: involved in this in the first place, well, why I
Speaker 1: started going down the deeper investigations. The day he was released,
Speaker 1: remember the video of him getting on the helicopter. My
Speaker 1: first thought after seeing him, after all my dad, he's alive,
Speaker 1: was wow, that looks just like Kroy Canyon where he
Speaker 1: grew up. So the Afghan Pakistani border, the altitude, the climate,
Speaker 1: the topography, the humidity, the vegetation. It looks like where
Speaker 1: he grew up in Idaho, and he would go out
Speaker 1: in Idaho on these days long solo trips in the
Speaker 1: back country. He would just to get away, just to
Speaker 1: be away from home, or just to practice his survivalism skills.
Speaker 1: So when he's there as a soldier, he immediately sees
Speaker 1: a place that looks pretty familiar to what he knows
Speaker 1: growing up. So this concept that he comes up with,
Speaker 1: which is is based on legitimate analysis what's going on
Speaker 1: around him, but also a delusional idea that he should
Speaker 1: even consider this. But of going from one base to
Speaker 1: another in the middle of the night eighteen miles, but
Speaker 1: that eighteen miles through backcountry, there's the same distance from
Speaker 1: his parents house to town where he used to go
Speaker 1: all the time. So what sounds to other people like, oh,
Speaker 1: it can't be true, it's impossible, No one want to
Speaker 1: do that. Well, he used to do that on his
Speaker 1: own anyway. And at some point years later, his parents
Speaker 1: were visited by a you know, o g A who
Speaker 1: comes knocking down the door and he says, I've just
Speaker 1: come back from the border region, the Durand Line, and
Speaker 1: I can't believe how much your backyard looks like it.
Speaker 1: They're the hinter lands inter lands of Idaho. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and and we've got photos um from the family in
Speaker 1: the book, and we saw lots of photos of him
Speaker 1: as a kid in the background tree. And you know,
Speaker 1: for kids who grew up in the east coast of
Speaker 1: the Midwest, where there's a mall and you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of miles away, it's hard to imagine what it's
Speaker 1: like going over. Yeah. Well, I mean it goes back
Speaker 1: to that rule versus urban clash in America that we've
Speaker 1: talked so much about in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a big cultural divide in this country. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And look, it's also worth saying what he did in
Speaker 1: this act, which I'm sure everyone listening at this point
Speaker 1: knows what he did. It's it's indefensible, it's stupid, it's knuckleheaded,
Speaker 1: to say the least. But he's not a trader, right, right.
Speaker 1: He didn't join the Taliban, he didn't sympathize, he wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to defect. He wasn't trying to defect. He wasn't
Speaker 1: even trying to desert. And that was the whole issue
Speaker 1: of of that was somewhat surprising when he played guilty
Speaker 1: because it came down to a definition of desertion. He
Speaker 1: was trying to do this stupid stunt that he admits
Speaker 1: was a stupid stunt to go to another base to
Speaker 1: get the attention of a general and to look like
Speaker 1: a hero, to look like a badass who has this
Speaker 1: incredible war story. Um and, and that is indefensible and
Speaker 1: he should be punished for it. But he goes on
Speaker 1: to to five years in brutal isolation and captivity, um
Speaker 1: and and he man's up and he does that captivity,
Speaker 1: He spent over three years in a cage, and then
Speaker 1: he comes home to find out that he's been crucified.
Speaker 1: And the impact of that I think cannot be overstated
Speaker 1: when people are out there, I'm sorry, go ahead, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I was just gonna say, I guess just to
Speaker 1: back up a little bit. And the book gets more
Speaker 1: into this in details, so people do need to pick
Speaker 1: up the book. But what exactly, I still want to
Speaker 1: get some more background on this. What exactly was the
Speaker 1: act that he wanted to do. Where you say he
Speaker 1: wanted to go to another base and have this war story,
Speaker 1: it's just confusing. I think it's confusing to the listeners
Speaker 1: of what he was trying to accomplish exactly right. So
Speaker 1: he was a late deployer. He didn't deploy with the
Speaker 1: rest of his platoon because he got an infectionist foot.
Speaker 1: We into much more detail in the reporting on how
Speaker 1: this all happened. But he gets over there late, and
Speaker 1: he is immediately struck when he gets to FOB Sharona
Speaker 1: by the luxuries and the perks of life on an
Speaker 1: American forward operating base. He can't believe that there's real
Speaker 1: flush toilets, that there's spring mattresses. He hasn't even slept
Speaker 1: on a spring mattress at this point for like eight
Speaker 1: years in cows To Province. In the Christmas of two
Speaker 1: thousand four, two thousand five, on FOB Salerno, we had
Speaker 1: ice sculptures in the chow hall on Christmas Eve. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who worked, as you know, who worked
Speaker 1: in the industry, and traveled over there and came back
Speaker 1: with photos and showed us all on Idaho walking around
Speaker 1: the fob with the burger kings and the pizza huts,
Speaker 1: and we civilians were stunned. We couldn't believe it. So
Speaker 1: here's burg Doll thinking he's going over to being in
Speaker 1: a trench, you know, or or or sleeping sleeping out
Speaker 1: in the rain, and he's watching guys playing video games,
Speaker 1: eating burger king, and he's absolutely just floored. And it
Speaker 1: just immediately starts screwing his head, screwing with his head,
Speaker 1: and screwing with his expectations. Another part of of what
Speaker 1: his mental reality was is he had spent three years
Speaker 1: training for what this was going to be his great
Speaker 1: war story, and he gets over there and sees these
Speaker 1: things that he finds morally offensive. Right, Guys breaking the rules,
Speaker 1: guys you know, um talking about women in ways that
Speaker 1: he found offensive. It was just one thing after another
Speaker 1: that of just normal military culture that in his idealistic
Speaker 1: way was unacceptable, and that started to build up and
Speaker 1: build up to a point that well, that also is
Speaker 1: is then built upon by the illogical and uh, the
Speaker 1: army logic of things that happened. Right now, I was
Speaker 1: an Afghanistan, but I've talked to enough people who were
Speaker 1: to learn that this was not uncommon for people for
Speaker 1: enlisted guys to think that leadership was making stupid orders
Speaker 1: and stupid to say Asians. So when when their leadership
Speaker 1: tells him to build a base on a cemetery, which
Speaker 1: you can read about in detail in the book. He
Speaker 1: is just floored. And when his battalion commander at one
Speaker 1: point comes in and kicks over a grave in front
Speaker 1: of a bunch of Afghans, he's deeply appalled and offended
Speaker 1: by this, and he comes to the conclusion and this
Speaker 1: is so, I think that's a fair analysis for him
Speaker 1: to be appalled. Sure that uh, that that an American
Speaker 1: lieutenant colonel would kick over a grave stone. However, that
Speaker 1: starts to mix with delusional concepts that that same lieutenant
Speaker 1: commander is hates their platoons so much and they were
Speaker 1: a problem platoon, they were a misfit platoon that he
Speaker 1: was going to send that Bow becomes convinced he's going
Speaker 1: to send them on a suicide mission to get rid
Speaker 1: of them. That was delusional, and so he organizes in
Speaker 1: his in this this grandiose plot, that he's gonna go
Speaker 1: for a midnight run from one fob to the other.
Speaker 1: And in his mind, what's that going to accomplish. He's
Speaker 1: going to be Jason Bourne. He goes and buys a disguise,
Speaker 1: he gets cash. He's going to bribe anyone who runs
Speaker 1: into along the way, he's going to be a a
Speaker 1: a hero like from the movies and the books that
Speaker 1: he's read, and he what it will accomplish is he
Speaker 1: will make himself a legend and he will force them
Speaker 1: to pay attention to him and listen to his critiques.
Speaker 1: He's only been there for five weeks, so he was
Speaker 1: a private first class, So he already is way out
Speaker 1: of his death to think that he's going to get
Speaker 1: an interview with a general because he has issues with
Speaker 1: his with his how his chane of command are making orders,
Speaker 1: and then what midway he was stopped so not yeah,
Speaker 1: so he gets all those things together. He asks one
Speaker 1: of his um He asked Shane Cross if he can
Speaker 1: take a gun with him. They tell him if he
Speaker 1: takes a gun, his buddy will get in trouble for
Speaker 1: the missing gun. So he decides not to take a
Speaker 1: gun with him on this adventure because it would be
Speaker 1: breaking the rules. So you can see how fragmented and
Speaker 1: contradictory his thought patterns are. So he goes out there
Speaker 1: after midnight. He's, um, it's it's we go into detail.
Speaker 1: Based on his um in depth testimony about this to
Speaker 1: the army, Um, I don't need to go into all
Speaker 1: the detail here, it's all in the book. But he
Speaker 1: he realizes he's in over his head. He puts on
Speaker 1: his disguise at sunrise and he just keeps walking, and
Speaker 1: sometime before noon, six Taliban motorcycles show up and roll
Speaker 1: him up. And interestingly, he did get America to pay
Speaker 1: attention to him for about two minutes. And then I
Speaker 1: feel like we all just forgot about him for years. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny you say that. What four days
Speaker 1: after after President Trump just tweeted about him again? We
Speaker 1: we he was he was famous for a brief moment
Speaker 1: because he was useful. He is he is case. As
Speaker 1: soon as he was rolled up and smuggled out of there,
Speaker 1: he became useful to a variety of different entities and
Speaker 1: people at a variety of different times who all exploited
Speaker 1: him to the greatest degree possible. That includes the US
Speaker 1: political and entertainment system. So after the exchange, he became
Speaker 1: very useful because that was just a few months before
Speaker 1: the two thousand fourteen mid terms. Um, and you have
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at the time in June two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: being the first person in public should call him a trader.
Speaker 1: Despite having no evidence for that, zero evidence for that whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The the perhaps the juiciest irony of the whole thing
Speaker 1: is that the best UH analysis of those rumors of
Speaker 1: burg Doll as a trader, where does that come from?
Speaker 1: Taliban propaganda? Organized Taliban propaganda while he was captive of
Speaker 1: Taliban operatives setting up interviews, as you'll read in the book,
Speaker 1: with Western journalists telling them that burg Doll had converted
Speaker 1: to Islam, was teaching bomb making seminars to Taliban fighters,
Speaker 1: just totally over the top stuff that got picked up
Speaker 1: and disseminated in the Western press. And then you have
Speaker 1: Donald Trump out there a few years later, just recycling
Speaker 1: Taliban propaganda for them. But just to push back on
Speaker 1: that a little bit, though, I think some people feel
Speaker 1: just him walking off base and going a wall in
Speaker 1: itself is an active treason. Yeah, I mean legally that's
Speaker 1: not true. It's it's not treason is to go a wall.
Speaker 1: It's not even treason as to desert as as Jack noted,
Speaker 1: he was not defecting. He did commit a crime. It's indefensible,
Speaker 1: it's stupid. He himself admitted it and ultimately pled guilty.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could get him on something like sedition. But
Speaker 1: even then I don't know, well, they couldn't even get
Speaker 1: them on the full charge of misbehavior for the enemy.
Speaker 1: I mean, the way the guilty plea came in and
Speaker 1: what it was a pretty narrow tailor guilty plea. The
Speaker 1: fact that that he had deserted for those twenty four
Speaker 1: hours before he was rolled up. And another thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up with you, um, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of heartburn in the special operations community and even
Speaker 1: in infantry units and about bird Doll and the casualties
Speaker 1: the kia s and w I as that these units
Speaker 1: took trying to find bird Doll or get him back.
Speaker 1: And there's something true to that, but at a certain
Speaker 1: point it stops being true because Jay Sock and other
Speaker 1: entities were using Bou bird Dolls an excuse to get
Speaker 1: the green light for their operations. So you'd submit the
Speaker 1: concept of the operations the CONOP and if you said
Speaker 1: it was something about finding Bou bird Doll is much
Speaker 1: likely to much more likely to get approved than if
Speaker 1: it wasn't. So, I mean, there's some legitimacy to this,
Speaker 1: this anger towards bird Doll, but at a certain point
Speaker 1: it just gets completely ridiculous. I think it's totally understandable
Speaker 1: people be angry at him, but I'm really happy to
Speaker 1: hear you talk about the pretext here on this show.
Speaker 1: I I first reported that in news week in and
Speaker 1: ended up being a major part of our book American
Speaker 1: Cipher Um It it just to rewind it. Let's go
Speaker 1: from from the most salacious uh charges backwards the most
Speaker 1: extreme charges that he's responsible for soldiers dying. And there
Speaker 1: are five or six dependently report names listed on those. Well,
Speaker 1: all of those ki has happened in late August and September.
Speaker 1: By late August and September, the army itself had already
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that he was in Pakistan. So
Speaker 1: the the idea. But but where it gets where it
Speaker 1: gets tricky, And what I really want people to understand
Speaker 1: is that two things can be true at once. It
Speaker 1: can be true and it is true that these guys
Speaker 1: were sent on missions to go look for bou Burg
Speaker 1: Doll and that they believed that that's what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and they did it without question, and they did their jobs,
Speaker 1: and they have a right to be piste off about that.
Speaker 1: But it is also true that their leadership did know
Speaker 1: that bou burg Doll was no longer there and that
Speaker 1: they were using him as a pretext to do other
Speaker 1: things and to go stir up the Talban hornets nest.
Speaker 1: And this came out in legal heres. Lieutenant Colonel Baker
Speaker 1: admitted in illegal hearing in San Antonio that they had
Speaker 1: more that they they that that that period of time
Speaker 1: was in a more effective um campaign in in in
Speaker 1: stirring up and finding and rooting out Taliban than at
Speaker 1: any other point while he was there. So these two
Speaker 1: things to be true at once. To to rewind further
Speaker 1: to the to the special Operations community, and namely Jimmy Hatch,
Speaker 1: it can be true that Jimmy Hatch thought that he
Speaker 1: was on a mission that was called and ordered to
Speaker 1: go find and rescue bou burg Doll. I believe that
Speaker 1: he believed that. But I also know that that mission
Speaker 1: had been planned previously and that and that rescuing bo
Speaker 1: burg Doll was not the primary objective, and that no
Speaker 1: one told Jimmy Hatch that. So so to the I've
Speaker 1: been reporting this for years, and what stuns me is
Speaker 1: that no one at the top of the chain of
Speaker 1: command who was responsible for burying this information about where
Speaker 1: he was and using it as a pretext to send
Speaker 1: guys out and do these things. Has admitted it, and
Speaker 1: it brings up all sorts of ethical considerations about, you know,
Speaker 1: lying to your troops and sending them out on one
Speaker 1: mission when really it's about something else, um that you're
Speaker 1: sending I mean, when you're lying on a on a conop.
Speaker 1: And this came up when the with the soldiers who
Speaker 1: were ambushed in Niger. There are a lot of issues
Speaker 1: about was the information on the conop correct, was the
Speaker 1: information on the risk mitigation sheet correct? Or was it fabricated?
Speaker 1: And now what you're talking about is that commanders were
Speaker 1: sending up false reports to hire saying that this operation
Speaker 1: is about bou Berg Doll when really everyone knew damn
Speaker 1: well that it wasn't well. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: far up the chain we can say people knew damn
Speaker 1: well it wasn't but we do know that at the
Speaker 1: very top there was plenty of information, overwhelming information that
Speaker 1: was available to General Gentleman Crystal, General Flynn, Mike Furlong,
Speaker 1: General Reader UH and civilian leadership that new overwhelming evidence.
Speaker 1: Depending on the date where he was or where he
Speaker 1: was headed at what what time? Okay, by July. By
Speaker 1: the middle of July, when the first video of him
Speaker 1: comes out, the U S Intelligence agencies all come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that he's in Pakistan. Meanwhile, they just keep
Speaker 1: these raids going. Even further back um July three fourth,
Speaker 1: just days after he's gone missing, there are credible reports
Speaker 1: that Mike Furlong, who was working for General Flynn at
Speaker 1: the time, gets that shows where burg Doll is and
Speaker 1: how how they had been misled and how they were
Speaker 1: chasing them. For a long was with the d i
Speaker 1: A at the time. Mike for long is is an
Speaker 1: interesting shape character who I hope readers will get into
Speaker 1: when they when they did into this book. Mike Furlong
Speaker 1: was a civilian intelligence UM executive who was had been
Speaker 1: hired by McKiernan and then kept on by Flynn, and
Speaker 1: him and Flynn were having their first meeting on the
Speaker 1: day burg Doll goes missing. So all of this stuff
Speaker 1: that he's speculated on, or shouldn't say you speculated on before,
Speaker 1: but people speculated that we were discussing before of him
Speaker 1: teach bomb making and all this stuff obviously not true.
Speaker 1: But what what did the Talban do with him while
Speaker 1: he was, you know, captured by them? Um? Well they
Speaker 1: so it was five years right, and it's broken down
Speaker 1: into different phases. But he was he was smuggled over
Speaker 1: the border within two or three days. We know that
Speaker 1: we can prove that by comparing and and cross referencing
Speaker 1: his testimony to the Army, the Army's own investigations, Furlong's
Speaker 1: interviews with us. It's it's all in the book. Um
Speaker 1: but but the Taliban took him over the border. Uh
Speaker 1: intentionally led US teams on into alert and bated ambushes
Speaker 1: with with with false reports that they had them. Um
Speaker 1: but they for the he he he escaped twice in
Speaker 1: the first couple of days. He runs away. They then
Speaker 1: chained him to a bed for three months, spread evil
Speaker 1: towards ring him, beating him, cutting him with razors. That
Speaker 1: goes on for three months. Today, what do they want
Speaker 1: to get out of this? I mean, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: any information that they could really use. Right. He was
Speaker 1: captured nine or ten days after David Road escaped. David
Speaker 1: Rhode was a New York Times editor and reporter who
Speaker 1: was the highest value Taliban hostage at that time in
Speaker 1: early two thousand nine David Road Escapes, which you can
Speaker 1: read about in David Rhodes book. Um. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: amazing story in itself. And then they get bo burged
Speaker 1: on all of a sudden they have an even more
Speaker 1: valuable prisoner. Now this isn't just an important civilian, this
Speaker 1: is a U. S. Military. Did you uncover any information
Speaker 1: writing this book about UM legitimate, legitimate planned rescue operations
Speaker 1: where you know, sort of like the ben Laden raid
Speaker 1: could have done across border UM hostage rescue mission and
Speaker 1: was anything like that even close to being launched. It
Speaker 1: was planned, but never close to being launched. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting you bring up in the Laden because as the
Speaker 1: plans to get burg doll so uh as as readers
Speaker 1: will find out in the book, UM, the the you
Speaker 1: know Jaysaw community was was tasked with drawing up legitimate
Speaker 1: rescue operations. Those were never ordered, those were never taken
Speaker 1: off the shelf, but they were drawn up and there
Speaker 1: was a high mission and there was there was a
Speaker 1: high and a low option, and the low option was
Speaker 1: two teams to helicopters over the border stealth operation. It
Speaker 1: was never ordered until two years later when it was
Speaker 1: taken off the shelf and adapted as Operation Neptune Spear.
Speaker 1: Oh really, so the preliminary planning was for to get
Speaker 1: bird Goll back, the planning that went into the bin
Speaker 1: laden raid. The blueprints, as we were told by two
Speaker 1: different sources, were were adapted from blueprints drawn up to
Speaker 1: get burg Doll back. That's really interesting. I've never heard
Speaker 1: that before. It's there's uh there, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: good nuggets in this Yeah, there's. It's it's it's been
Speaker 1: a challenge telling people just you know, one or two
Speaker 1: things in this book, because honestly, the higher narrative of
Speaker 1: burg Doll is so misconstrued and it's so frustrating and
Speaker 1: kind of surreal to be a reporter on case like
Speaker 1: this where you're looking at all these facts and then
Speaker 1: you look on social media and you watch TV and
Speaker 1: the average person who who who is informed by our
Speaker 1: media right now has a version of truth that simply
Speaker 1: isn't based in reality. It strikes me and maybe I'm
Speaker 1: completely off based, and you can weigh in on it.
Speaker 1: That the actual the way we actually got bird Doll back,
Speaker 1: if anything, the thing I can think of that it
Speaker 1: bears the most resemblance to maybe is the Bettencourt operation
Speaker 1: down in Colombia where Jay Sock was involved in the
Speaker 1: periphery of it, but it wasn't a real hostage rescue mission.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some sort of quid pro quo. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is that with the with the contractors who are kept
Speaker 1: for five of Dinah Corps guys. Yeah, yeah, Well there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap with those guys because those guys
Speaker 1: were also brought back to the same rehab facility in
Speaker 1: San Antonio that burg Doll worked through and and interviewed
Speaker 1: by same debriefers that bird Doll was interested by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean bird Doll comes home and this is another Uh.
Speaker 1: This is probably one of the more stark moments of
Speaker 1: narratives versus you know, popular narratives versus reality is when
Speaker 1: he comes back to San Antonio. When he comes back
Speaker 1: is when everyone hears his name here in early two
Speaker 1: thousand in June, and the media just blows up with
Speaker 1: this story, right. So uh that was shortly after the
Speaker 1: Rose Garden debacle with his parents were invited out and
Speaker 1: spontaneously invited to speak, even that the dad had the
Speaker 1: zz top beard and his wife was like wearing a headscarf.
Speaker 1: No head scarf, am I not remembering that right? No?
Speaker 1: The zazy top Beard, yes, and I think it's more
Speaker 1: accurate called his easy top beer than the Taliban beard.
Speaker 1: The guys. It raised questions at the time like what's
Speaker 1: going on? Absolutely, and it didn't look right, and and
Speaker 1: and sources for the book, uh, you know, at cabinet
Speaker 1: level sources told us why they thought that was inappropriate
Speaker 1: and White House uh aids admit that that it was
Speaker 1: not a good idea, um, but it was just it
Speaker 1: was it was. It couldn't have been more perfect for
Speaker 1: what had already been planned as a political operation. So
Speaker 1: so he's back and he has immediately looked at as
Speaker 1: an incredible gold mine of intelligence and information. When they
Speaker 1: start realizing that here's a kid who has for five
Speaker 1: years been cataloging his memories who, yes, he fucked up,
Speaker 1: and now he wants to do something to help, he
Speaker 1: wants to make up for it. He's he's, he's he's
Speaker 1: cataloging these memories about about who's holding him, where they're
Speaker 1: holding him, and they start debriefing him and he starts
Speaker 1: just giving up incredible amounts of information that within a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks is turned into over a dozen classified reports,
Speaker 1: and then the CIA ends a nine month drone ceasefire
Speaker 1: and starts hitting all these targets. This has never been reported.
Speaker 1: It's reported in the book. People need to read the book.
Speaker 1: The CIA had a nine month drone cease fire that
Speaker 1: ends two weeks after bird Doll gets back and miraculously
Speaker 1: starts taking out Hakani targets in western Pakistan. Bird Doll
Speaker 1: getting his revenge well, and bird Doll got awards. He
Speaker 1: was awarded twice for his for his behavior and conduct
Speaker 1: in captivity, in large part because he turned into such
Speaker 1: a gold mine. To use the words of his Pentagon debriefers. Now,
Speaker 1: while he's doing that on TV, Richard Grinnell goes on
Speaker 1: TV the day he's returned, and it's the first person
Speaker 1: to say in public that bird Doll was going to
Speaker 1: look for the Taliban, as you said, to defect. Richard
Speaker 1: Grennell was a political operative so shady and unscrupulous that
Speaker 1: Roger Stone told me in my reporting he considered Richard
Speaker 1: Grenell too shady to work with. Where's Richard Grenelle? Now?
Speaker 1: Where is he? He's the ambassador to Germany? Holy sh it,
Speaker 1: He's Trump's Ambassador Germany. He's a Republican operative, he's a
Speaker 1: loyal follower, he's a loyal water carrier, he's he's good
Speaker 1: at what he does. He's a knife fighter. And now
Speaker 1: he's the he's the Ambassador Germany. He also arranged with
Speaker 1: his assistant Brad Chase, those guys originally to go to
Speaker 1: come up here to New York and to do their
Speaker 1: interviews and to talk about burg Doll in ways that
Speaker 1: some of them felt were twisted and turned into a spectacle.
Speaker 1: As Gerald Sutton told us, it's it's so crazy when
Speaker 1: you hear of some of these people who work in
Speaker 1: the administration that we don't you know, because I was
Speaker 1: unaware of that, be of that. And it's like last
Speaker 1: episode we had Bob Baron and talked about how Erik
Speaker 1: Prince's sisters in the administration. There's a lot of strange
Speaker 1: characters in this administration. The and and and a lot
Speaker 1: of them have done helpful things to for Trump and
Speaker 1: for the Republican Party at moments that were important. Look
Speaker 1: the burg Doll smear campaign, which took a guy who
Speaker 1: did something I want to repeat indefensible. I am not
Speaker 1: here defending bow burg Doll but in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: it's about the institution exploiting somebody who at the end
Speaker 1: of the day is mentally ill and using him in
Speaker 1: ways that you know that that aided them and helped them.
Speaker 1: And and when you have Rick Ronald going out there
Speaker 1: and starting that campaign, when you have Donald Trump at
Speaker 1: the time not even running for president, going on Fox
Speaker 1: News and calling him a trader. By the end of
Speaker 1: that month June two thousand fourteen, Obama's approval ratings hit
Speaker 1: their lowest point of his entire presence. And then the
Speaker 1: whole narrative was, we traded these guys from Guantanamobey for
Speaker 1: for a trader, and people died looking for him. And
Speaker 1: those things are not true. And you don't have to
Speaker 1: call boburg Dolla hero to say those things aren't true.
Speaker 1: The point of our book is to is to talk
Speaker 1: about the facts of the case, which, as far as
Speaker 1: we're concerned, are more interesting than these ridiculous soap opera
Speaker 1: cartoon narratives that have been propagated by so much of
Speaker 1: our media, not just Fox News. Are a lot of networks,
Speaker 1: I mean scared to have you guys on because a
Speaker 1: lot of networks are responsible for building up this narrative
Speaker 1: that is as you're saying, is hyper herbally or just
Speaker 1: not true. I'd love to talk to Jake Tapper, who
Speaker 1: was one person who was just recycling things he was
Speaker 1: hearing from sources at the time. And look, I get it.
Speaker 1: As a journalist, you want your you. You you have
Speaker 1: your relationships with your sources and you and you tend
Speaker 1: to believe your source. And they're close to d C.
Speaker 1: They're getting the leaks out of the Pentagon every day. However,
Speaker 1: they were saying things that were completely completely outrageous, like
Speaker 1: that burg Doll was responsible for what happened to cop
Speaker 1: keating in October, so that's five months after he goes missing.
Speaker 1: And to say that burg Doll is responsible for that,
Speaker 1: for those decisions, which were leadership mistakes, just goes to
Speaker 1: show how much the idea that we can that we
Speaker 1: can use burg Doll as a whipping boy for everything
Speaker 1: that went wrong in a war that was not winnable.
Speaker 1: It just goes, it just goes on and on well,
Speaker 1: and it shows how duplicit is a senior officers are
Speaker 1: in the military as well, that they'll try to pawn
Speaker 1: it off on some private who did something stupid. Um
Speaker 1: that they'll do almost anything to absolve themselves from military
Speaker 1: failures pretty much. I mean it's too bad there aren't
Speaker 1: more guys like you know, like Bassovich, whose career ended
Speaker 1: when he did take responsibility, right, yeah, I mean even
Speaker 1: people like uh like um, General Votel. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen fall on the sword a few times, you know,
Speaker 1: and say, yes, this is the were my guys, I'm
Speaker 1: responsible for it. You know, we met a lot of
Speaker 1: people with a ton of integrity and listed guys and officers.
Speaker 1: The only officers who refused requests for interviews were McCrystal,
Speaker 1: petray Us, and Flynn, who knew who had the information
Speaker 1: where burg Doll was when those men were being sent
Speaker 1: out on missions. When people say, well, guys were hurt
Speaker 1: and killed looking for burg Ball, I would like them
Speaker 1: to ask McCrystal, petray Us, and Flynn what they knew
Speaker 1: when those guys were sent out in those missions. Well,
Speaker 1: there are powerful people who want to lock in the narrative.
Speaker 1: Is what you're describing to me sounds very similar to
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. When I interviewed remember the movie
Speaker 1: Horse Soldiers came out and I interviewed some of those
Speaker 1: guys whore on those O d a s who went
Speaker 1: in early on in the war, and they very much
Speaker 1: had the story that you know, senior officers that colonels
Speaker 1: want to control the narrative. They do not want enlisted guys,
Speaker 1: they don't want n c O s. They don't want
Speaker 1: junior officers speaking out because it ends up contradicting their
Speaker 1: narrative when they go on CNN and make themselves look
Speaker 1: like heroes. Look. And I mentioned Johnny Rice earlier, he
Speaker 1: told me in one of our first interviews. He goes, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't expect civilians to understand it, but I and
Speaker 1: I know they were lying to us. But I support
Speaker 1: what they did because it was the right thing to
Speaker 1: do at the time. That leadership had a decision to make,
Speaker 1: which was either admit that Burgdall was gone in Pakistan
Speaker 1: our ally and call off the searches, or use it
Speaker 1: as a pretext to do to fight the war. They
Speaker 1: wanted to fight the way they wanted to fight at
Speaker 1: a critical moment. That's wild. And I mean, so, I
Speaker 1: mean your book is American Cipher, and I mean that's
Speaker 1: obviously a reference. I think I guess to Birgdall himself
Speaker 1: that he's an enigma. He's an enigma, he's a code
Speaker 1: to help us understand the war that I think we
Speaker 1: still as a nation are unable to really explain and
Speaker 1: unable to really understand, and that history is going to
Speaker 1: look back on and tell us things that will shock
Speaker 1: us twenty years from now, but that we already know
Speaker 1: are already available. The fact that we give so much
Speaker 1: money and aid to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, who themselves
Speaker 1: are funding and training the Taliban that we are fighting
Speaker 1: Afghanistan is this swamp that pulled us in and just
Speaker 1: sunk deeper and deeper in a very Vietnam way. Or
Speaker 1: another metaphor I like for Afghanistan is it's the hole
Speaker 1: in the center of your record player when everything revolves
Speaker 1: around it and the music just keeps playing, but you
Speaker 1: never get to the center. Because we have created this
Speaker 1: structure for forty years now of funding and training the
Speaker 1: people who are fighting against Well, what do we know
Speaker 1: about where Boberg college now? And that's going to ask
Speaker 1: the same thing. We don't know much because he's under
Speaker 1: legal advice not to talk, you know, not to speak out,
Speaker 1: and because he is he's a marked man. I mean,
Speaker 1: he came back and and his family and friends all
Speaker 1: received death threats. Obviously, he there's still people out there
Speaker 1: who'd like to kill him. I just think what I'd
Speaker 1: like people who who would who would um be inspired
Speaker 1: to to do violence to bo burg Doll to think
Speaker 1: about is the fact that he spent three and a
Speaker 1: half years in a cage, he spent five years in
Speaker 1: isolated captivity. He manned up and he did that. He
Speaker 1: screwed up in a big way, but he did his time,
Speaker 1: and he paid his price in that way in ways
Speaker 1: that no pow had since Vietnam. And when he comes home,
Speaker 1: when people call him a trader, and when people say
Speaker 1: he's responsible for these things without evidence, they should think
Speaker 1: about the impact of that on the reality of what
Speaker 1: he did. And one of the reasons our book has
Speaker 1: so much good sourcing, one of the reasons why we
Speaker 1: have almost notes is because people in the military and
Speaker 1: the government who knew the truth were eager to talk
Speaker 1: to us. People who were close to this case wanted
Speaker 1: the facts to get out. Military guys who were still
Speaker 1: in officers who who who were risking their own careers,
Speaker 1: and who are reported in this book under pseudonyms spoke
Speaker 1: out to us because they didn't like the way that
Speaker 1: this story had been politicized. They didn't like the fact
Speaker 1: that that gold Star families had been lied to. So
Speaker 1: is he definitely in the United States? Is he on
Speaker 1: witness protection or anything like that? Um? I think he's
Speaker 1: in the United States. I don't think he's under witness protection. Um.
Speaker 1: I think he's trying to do with his life. The
Speaker 1: last time he spoke to the media, it was to
Speaker 1: a Hollywood screenwriter before he had a lawyer, and as
Speaker 1: readers will find out in the book, that didn't turn
Speaker 1: out very well for him. Yeah. I would just I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just wonder how he goes around under the same
Speaker 1: alias of bo bergdahl In in Delhi wife. I would
Speaker 1: think that's a huge obstacle that you would Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would think you legally change your name at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good question that that that I can't answer.
Speaker 1: But um, he uh, you know, he's not particularly recognizable,
Speaker 1: but you write his name, the name, the name alone.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's a loner, and um, I think
Speaker 1: he wants to just get on with his life. I
Speaker 1: know he wanted to finish his education, and people who
Speaker 1: meet him and people who work with him, as they
Speaker 1: testified in his legal hearing, are left with good impressions.
Speaker 1: He's not he's low drama. You know. One of woman
Speaker 1: who worked with him in Fort Bragg testified in his
Speaker 1: in his core hearing last year, two years ago that, uh,
Speaker 1: he he was a source of less drama than most
Speaker 1: of the guys she worked would come back from the
Speaker 1: ward because a lot of guys are damaged. He was
Speaker 1: obviously damaged, but he did his job. He kept his
Speaker 1: head down. Yeah, I can't imagine the amount of trauma
Speaker 1: that dude must have been through. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: to imagine that he would have severe psychological issues from
Speaker 1: being in captivity. Not I mean he had no one
Speaker 1: to speak English too for five years, five years. Occasionally
Speaker 1: when they would do the videotapes there'd be someone who
Speaker 1: could speak English. But there's no doubt he was traumatized,
Speaker 1: deeply traumatized and will be with him for life. And
Speaker 1: people say, well, what difference does that make when you
Speaker 1: look at the injuries, and you looked at the lives destroyed,
Speaker 1: and people looking at him, and that was the tension
Speaker 1: in the sentencing portion of his hearing, it is it's
Speaker 1: like you're holding him accountable for the entire fucking war exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why the judge made the right decision.
Speaker 1: But but in the book, people reading the book will
Speaker 1: get towards the end where reporting from the legal hearing
Speaker 1: and about the devastating injuries that were brought up at
Speaker 1: the at his sentencing. H Sergeant um Master Sergeant Mark Allen,
Speaker 1: who was shot in the head on one of the
Speaker 1: missions in the first week. And there is no there
Speaker 1: is no questioning that this man and his wife and
Speaker 1: his family have been put through hell. Uh so, But
Speaker 1: people were confused, Well, then why wasn't burged All put
Speaker 1: in prison? And it's because you cannot prove a perfect
Speaker 1: causal link between those two things. That mission that Master
Speaker 1: Sergeant Outleas sent on had been planned prior to burged
Speaker 1: All going missing. They just hadn't sent it out yet.
Speaker 1: So Burgar goes missing, and now we can send out
Speaker 1: this mission, and we'll send it out with guys who
Speaker 1: aren't prepared and who aren't geared up, and who aren't
Speaker 1: don't have the proper supplies, and are all of those
Speaker 1: decisions bo burg Doll's fault. The defense said no, the
Speaker 1: prosecution said yes, and readers of the book will find
Speaker 1: out what happens. So what's the big takeaway for for
Speaker 1: you and your co author Matt Farwell. I mean, did
Speaker 1: you come away from this thinking like I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you alluded to it that there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in this war that's been glossed over, deliberately buried,
Speaker 1: covered up. US political dysfunction is mind boggling. It It's right,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's our weakness and our strength that
Speaker 1: we have a system of checks and balances. But when
Speaker 1: every agency is constantly checking the other one, and the
Speaker 1: warfare that's happening in Washington is more intense than the
Speaker 1: warfare happening to our enemies, we're bogged down under the
Speaker 1: weight of our own system. Um, that's my take. This
Speaker 1: this book is about government dysfunction. Political dyfunction. During the
Speaker 1: Obama years, when one could argue the government was actually
Speaker 1: functioning relatively smoothly, you had a lot of career people
Speaker 1: in these positions, and we still couldn't figure it out
Speaker 1: because the divisions within our own system are so deep
Speaker 1: that getting a unifying policy was almost impossible. Man, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: You've got me excited to read the book. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: good there there, There's there's a lot in it for
Speaker 1: people to take home. Um, you know, it's uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good to be said for where
Speaker 1: boat comes from. You know. Part of why I'm so
Speaker 1: passionate about this is because I lived in his hometown
Speaker 1: for a long time. I saw people mutual friends who
Speaker 1: were on the receiving end of death threats over period
Speaker 1: of years, and anytime his name would come up on
Speaker 1: Fox News for illegal hearing, another wave of death threats
Speaker 1: called into friends of his in Idaho. And our country
Speaker 1: shouldn't shouldn't have to be put through these sort of seizures,
Speaker 1: of of of self hatred and of internal strife. Um,
Speaker 1: just because it's good politics, right when we eat each
Speaker 1: other alive. And that is only getting worse, it's not
Speaker 1: getting better. The media has some real questions answer. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought up the mainstream media, because yes, we
Speaker 1: should be talking about this case. We shouldn't sweep it
Speaker 1: under the rug. People should be talking about the bow
Speaker 1: Berg Doll case and figuring out what it meant and
Speaker 1: what this cipher holds in it for years. So CNN,
Speaker 1: Fox News, MSNBC, if you're listening, this is a legitimate
Speaker 1: issue that that needs to be discussed. Have Michael Amazon,
Speaker 1: I think that this is a really important book because,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, just so much misinformation out there and
Speaker 1: it's important to counter that. So the book is out
Speaker 1: right now. It's American Cipher, bo Burg Doll and the
Speaker 1: US Tragedy in Afghanistan co written with Matt Farewell or
Speaker 1: Farwell right. It's out now and Michael regularly also writes
Speaker 1: for Newsweek, the Daily Beast, a lot of other sites.
Speaker 1: The website is Michael dash Aims dot com, Michael Dash
Speaker 1: a m E s dot com at m I r
Speaker 1: K e l on Twitter, at MGM games on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh So check him out there before we wrap things up.
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Speaker 1: full archive of shows, including the guys who served with Burgdal,
Speaker 1: Matt beer Can't Cody full Fat Matt beer can on
Speaker 1: several times and I I slept over Matt beer Cant's
Speaker 1: house when I went to South So I'm a huge,
Speaker 1: as a lot of these listeners know, I'm a huge
Speaker 1: Like eighties hairbattal Fan and Docan played their last US
Speaker 1: show with like the original group before they played Canada
Speaker 1: in U and played Japan actually in South Dakota, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I have to go see this, and uh,
Speaker 1: Matt beer Can't was like, hey, come stay with me man,
Speaker 1: and uh so, yeah, I got to stay with Matt,
Speaker 1: who's a great guy. I we interviewed Cody once, I
Speaker 1: didn't really get to know him the way I know Matt.
Speaker 1: But Matt is awesome. Um yeah, and that's really have
Speaker 1: to spin a fascinating interview and and it actually, uh
Speaker 1: really just changes the narrative of even what I knew
Speaker 1: because having those two guys on, a lot of what
Speaker 1: was echoed is a lot of what we heard. And
Speaker 1: I honestly think a lot of those guys who even
Speaker 1: served with Burg Doll don't know the back story that
Speaker 1: you know, so things even important for those guys to
Speaker 1: read this, Hey have us on together. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I feel for what those guys went through. I am
Speaker 1: no way diminishing what those guys did or and they
Speaker 1: have a right to be angry, and they are. I
Speaker 1: just think, I mean, there's a picture of Matt vier
Speaker 1: Kent meeting uh Chris Parranto and a fuck bau Berg
Speaker 1: dollars like they're not they're not fans of the guy know,
Speaker 1: and I understand it. I just think they should know
Speaker 1: the full story. I mean, I mean, what the fact
Speaker 1: that bau Berg. Look, everyone was looking for bou Burg Doll,
Speaker 1: bo Berg dollar came like the catch twenty two of
Speaker 1: the whole war. If you were there, you were looking
Speaker 1: for him even though he wasn't there. And this this,
Speaker 1: this carried on, this surreal kind of like Joe carried
Speaker 1: on to the legal hearings. One of my favorite moments,
Speaker 1: these legal hearings, which there were all these resources at
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg devoted to these hearings. Right they would they
Speaker 1: would have like vans and busses and they'd be all
Speaker 1: empty because there are only six reporters there for the case.
Speaker 1: And they'd have all these banded buzzes and all these
Speaker 1: PO I mean dozens of PO guys coming in from
Speaker 1: Fort Bliss and from California for this event. And then
Speaker 1: they just stand around doing nothing. And they would tell
Speaker 1: us that that if um that they started saying bou
Speaker 1: Burg doll ruined my day as a kind of like
Speaker 1: catch all phrase. If anything went wrong, if they got
Speaker 1: a flat tire, some paperwork wasn't right. What happened to
Speaker 1: you today? A bou Berg doll sucked up my dad.
Speaker 1: Boberg doll sucked up my war. Bo Berg doll sucked
Speaker 1: up my day. At some point, the people who keep
Speaker 1: thinking bo Berg doll sucked everything up. Need to look
Speaker 1: at the army and how response where it's responsibility lies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a painful thing for a lot of people
Speaker 1: to do. Um. It calls into question a hole series
Speaker 1: of different things. Actually, But um, this is an important interview.
Speaker 1: I think I think this is gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: like the interview we did with d Rock about the
Speaker 1: extortion seventeen crash that sheds a whole hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of light on something people off, kissing some people off,
Speaker 1: sheds a lot of light on some stuff that was obscured. Um.
Speaker 1: And one last thing, I mean, it makes me wonder
Speaker 1: you were just talking about Trump calling burg dollar trader
Speaker 1: in the past few days. Do you think President Trump
Speaker 1: possibly doesn't even know this whole story. I guarantee you
Speaker 1: he doesn't. I don't need Michael to answer that. People
Speaker 1: assume though he's the president, he knows what's going on you.
Speaker 1: I don't think he does. I don't think he cares.
Speaker 1: But he does need to be corrected and he does
Speaker 1: need to be held to account for it for spreading
Speaker 1: misinformation that was designed by the Taliban to break American morale.
Speaker 1: Good answer, Well, once again, follow Mike on Twitter at
Speaker 1: m I R K k L, Michael dash Aims dot com.
Speaker 1: Anything else that you're promoting, Um, just our book, American Cipher.
Speaker 1: You can get it at your local bookstore or Amazon
Speaker 1: if you choose. But um, it really is worth a
Speaker 1: read if you follow the news at all. This is
Speaker 1: We wrote it as a as a news story, you
Speaker 1: know it is. Uh. I'd like to think that we
Speaker 1: have enough characters. We are the only people to interview
Speaker 1: burg Doll's parents. Um. They we We sat with them
Speaker 1: far Will and I at different points of retire for
Speaker 1: more than twenty hours. Learned about their personal relationships with
Speaker 1: Jim Mattis with Michael Mullen, about their deep background, about
Speaker 1: the fact that Bob Bergdahl was the Marquis speaker at
Speaker 1: Rolling Thunder a few years before Donald Trump was the
Speaker 1: Marquis speaker at Rolling Thunder. So it's been a weird
Speaker 1: time in America, and this story I think gets into
Speaker 1: just how weird it's been and why unreal. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for coming in a lot of fun. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: been listening to Self Red Radio. New episode It's up
Speaker 1: every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter,
Speaker 1: at self. REP radio s