06-06-2014, 08:14 PM
As the controversy over the prisoner swap grows, new information has emerged about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's time in Afghanistan. On Thursday, administration officials said Bergdahl's life could have been in danger if details of the prisoner swap had been leaked. While some in the media have speculated that Bergdahl became sympathetic to his captors, new reports reveal Bergdahl actually escaped from his captors on at least two occasions, once in the fall of 2011 and again sometime in 2012. In another development, the New York Times reveals a classified military report concluded Bergdahl most likely walked away from his Army outpost in June 2009 on his own free will, but it stops short of concluding that there is solid evidence that he intended to permanently desert. The report also revealed that Bergdahl had wandered away from assigned areas while in the Army at least twice before prior to the day he was captured, including once in Afghanistan. We speak to Matthew Farwell, a journalist and veteran of the Afghan war who has been following the Bergdahl story for years. He helped the late Michael Hastings write his 2012 Rolling Stone article, "America's Last Prisoner of War." Farwell came to know Bergdahl's parents after they attended the funeral of his brother who served and died in Afghanistan.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: President Barack Obama said Thursday he would make "no apologies" for agreeing to a prisoner swap to free Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Guantánamo detainees.
AMY GOODMAN: In another development The New York Times reveals a classified military report concluded Bowe Bergdahl most likely walked away from his army outpost in June 2009 of his own free will, but it stopped short of concluding their is solid evidence he intended to permanently desert. The report also revealed Bergdahl had wandered away from assigned areas while in the Army at least twice before prior to the day he was captured, including once in Afghanistan. Well, we're joined right now by Matthew Farwell, he's a journalist and veteran of the Afghan War who has been following the Bergdahl story for years. He helped the late reporter Michael Hastings write his 2012 Rolling Stone piece headlined, "America's Last Prisoner of War". Matthew Farwell came to know Bergdahl's parents after they attended the funeral of his brother, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and died in an accident in Germany. Matthew Farwell, thank you so much for joining us.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: So why don't you talk about how you met Bowe Bergdahl's parents, Bob and Jani.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I didn't really need them. I was up giving the eulogy for my brother and looked back in the back of the church and saw two people that I thought I recognized, and it was Bob and Jani Bergdahl.
AMY GOODMAN: Because you are from Idaho.
MATTHEW FARWELL: My parents are from Idaho, and I had been following the news so closely.
AMY GOODMAN: What year was this?
MATTHEW FARWELL: This was 2010, ma'am. February 3.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, how did you then come to know them?
MATTHEW FARWELL: After that I kept in touch with them a little bit because I thought that was a classy gesture. And then Michael and I did the story and I have stayed in touch.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: In terms of the story with Michael, how did you decide to focus on the Bergdahl story and begin gathering the information, which is really the definitive work on the Bergdahl saga?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, you know, the FBI actually investigated how that came to be. So, I've got to keep some trade secrets on it.
AMY GOODMAN: No, explain for a moment. This is a side story, but Michael died in a fiery car crash and he had said at the time that he was being investigated by the FBI.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, and in then a Freedom of Information Act request was done by a great journalist named Jason Schapiro. And it came back and he sent it up to me and I saw all of the redacted portions and said, holy cow, they're talking about me right here. And so, I put through a privacy act request, got it back and sure enough, they were looking into our "controversial" reporting on the story, which I think is a little unusual that the FBI is reading Rolling Stone on the job. But I give them credit.
AMY GOODMAN: So tell us about Bowe Bergdahl and what you learned.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, you know, Bowe is an interesting guy. And I'm very conflicted myself about how I feel about him and his case, but he was a young man, homeschooled, grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho. From all accounts, very intelligent. He did a lot of traveling prior to joining the Army.
AMY GOODMAN: His parents came from California?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, ma'am. They came from California to Sun Valley I think the year before his older sister was born. They stayed there ever since. His dad was the Sun Valley UPS man for 30 years.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: As your story in Rolling Stone details, early on he grew dissatisfied with being at home, being homeschooled and decided he wanted to pursue a life of adventure. Could you talk about that?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right. I mean, it seems he went up and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, he traveled around the states on motorcycle, you know, just all the sorts of things that young men who are seeking something seem to do.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And the French Foreign Legion too?
MATTHEW FARWELL: And his father said he tried to join the French Foreign Legion and was disqualified for eyesight.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that is, the French Foreign Legion.
MATTHEW FARWELL: The French Foreign Legion is France's force of essentially foreign mercenaries who can come from any walk of life. A lot of them are hardened criminals or refugees currently from Eastern Europe. And once you join, you acquire a nom de guerre, you know, a fake name that you get for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Bowe was known around town in Hailey, Idaho. He worked at Zaney's Coffee House. He took up ballet and many had seen his performances.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, ma'am.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how does he end up in U.S. military? How does he end up in Afghanistan?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, he did not just and up in U.S. military, he ended up in the U.S. Army parachute infantry. So, it's the military, about 90%, are support personnel, about 10% are the actual war fighters and trigger pullers. And so he was in that 10%. And it seems he just came back one day and said, hey, dad, I'm thinking about joining the Army. And as we said in the story, are you thinking about joining the Army or did you already sign up? Bowe admitted, well, yeah, I already signed up. So, it's a path a lot of young men take. I took it. Dropped out of the University of Virginia to join the infantry. And aside from that, I don't know.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Your article paints a not very flattering portrait of the unit that he was assigned to. One of the problems he had with the lack of discipline and lack of actual fighting capacity of the unit that he was in, in an outpost, really, in Afghanistan. Could you describe some of those problems?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, it seems from the video that Sean Smith of The Guardian shot after embedding with them for about a month, it seemed to me as a former infantryman who served in that exact area and knows that ground very, very well, that the unit wasn't operating with the same level of professionalism that's required to stay on your game there and keep your men alive and your men apparently from walking off.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Sean Smith's a clip of Sean Smith's first film. He's The"Guardian reporter and he was embedded with Bowe's unit. And then because he had come to know this unit, the Bergdahl's said he could come to Idaho and he did a 12 minute piece about Bob Bergdahl. So, let me go to that piece right now, just a clip of Sean Smith, he is talking to, not to Bowe, but it's other soldiers who are talking here.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I think that pretty much speaks for itself. The guy was clearly not happy where he was, not happy with the people he was serving with. And, you know, that area is a bad, bad area he walked off from. And it's just difficult for me to comprehend what must have been going through his mind when he made that decision, because I have been through there and I was scared out of my mind walking through that town and some of the guys that we're with, you know, intelligence units, always told us, hey, watch yourself when you are in Yaya Kheyl.
AMY GOODMAN: And let's be clear, he had packed up his stuff, sent it to his parents, and left his gun, his body armor, everything at the outpost and then he went and left.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, from what we have heard, he only took a couple bottles of water, his books, and I'm trying to think what else a knife and his camera. And some of the reports that came through the WikiLeaks disclosures indicate that that is what the Afghan villagers saw when they saw him walking by himself. The Afghan villagers thought that was crazy.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: You were in the same area of Afghanistan. What is your sense of the level of the kind of disillusionment that Bowe Bergdahl expressed here? How prevalent was that or is it an isolated situation or was there a sharp degree of disconnect between what the soldiers came there thinking they were going to do versus what they ended up doing?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, like I've said, the area was a very difficult area to operate in. You think, it's crushing poverty, zero percent female literacy literally, no toilets in the entire Providence except for American toilets. And so, a lot of the men in my platoon I was there two years prior to Bowe being there and a lot of the men in my platoon, and myself included, came back with tremendous cases of PTSD from what we were doing there because it was simply a difficult lace to fight a war in. And I think everyone from Alexander the Great up to the Soviets to us have learned that fact the hard way.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to take a break and then come back to this discussion. We are talking with Matthew Farwell. He is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, an Afghan War veteran. He helped the late Michael Hastings write the 2012 article on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl that's become the definitive piece on him called, "America's Last Prisoner of War." Stay with us.
[Break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Matthew Farwell. He served in the military in Afghanistan, like Bowe, two years before him. He met the Bergdahls when they came to his brother's funeral, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and died in service in Germany. We are going to turn now to the media's focus on the Bergdahl family, particularly, his father Bob. I want to turn to comments made by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on his show on Thursday, responding to the e-mail exchange between Bowe Bergdahl and his father, published in Michael Hastings' and Matthew Farwell's piece in Rolling Stone.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yeah, I am stunned by that. That's the first time I've seen that clip. And I was doing a lot of press yesterday about this, and I'm just astounded that all these people that didn't know a thing about this case for the past five years have all of a sudden become experts. No one cares until there's something to politicize and a soundbite to be made.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the whole issue of the criticism that has been leveled against Bowe Bergdahl by his former fellow soldiers. As your article points out, the military, for years, insisted that no one talk about his case, and no one say anything public about this case. And now suddenly, you're getting this enormous outpouring of comments. A lot of it orchestrated by a Republican operative who has been producing some of these soldiers for the media.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yeah, that was one of the biggest things that disturbed me so much about this whole story, and that really got me thinking it must be something, is it's unprecedented to have an entire brigade 3500 people have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about pretty much their entire tour in Afghanistan when they come back home. And so, these guys have bottled up this emotion.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Signing a confidentiality agreement to protect I mean, what was the reason given?
MATTHEW FARWELL: The official reasons was, if they said anything about Bowe Bergdahl, it could hurt him or possibly causing him to be further mistreated by the Taliban or the Haqqani network. But, to me, having served in the Army both as a trigger puller and then as a desk jockey at a four-star general's headquarters, it seemed like it was an exercise in covering the army's butt and trying to not make themselves and this war look as bad as it was.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the soldiers being told not to say anything, having to sign confidentiality agreement. What about the media?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, that is the other funny thing, is how complicit the media was with this. I have spoken with the White House official that was in charge of coordinating the media response and kind of ensuring that no one in the media spoke out or wrote about this. And frankly, he managed to snow a lot of the people in the media, and that is why I've got to give so many props to Michael Hastings, who I wish were sitting in this chair instead of me, and to Rolling Stone for have the guts to go after this story and to really tell it like it needed to be told.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to your media appearances. You were on CNN yesterday. I wanted to go to this clip. This is when you are being interviewed by a CNN host Carol Costello.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, right, which I'm not sure when that became a crime in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: In any of these cases, you just replace it for your own religion, right? Bergdahl's father accused of looking Jewish. Bergdahl's father accused of looking Catholic.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, it seems pretty racist to me.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about the deleted e-mail of Bob Bergdahl a few days before his son was released. The media has made something of this. Just to say what that deleted tweet was that he said I think it was a day or two before his son was released.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, I believe that tweet said something about still working to free all of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay or something to that effect. And he's really taken a lot of criticism for it. But, look, you've got to think about this. Bob and Jani Bergdahl have lived every day of the past five years thinking it might be their only son's last day. I think we as Americans can probably cut them a little bit of slack.
AMY GOODMAN: The tweet said, "I am still working to free all Guantánamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!" He said Arabic for amen. The tweet was subsequently deleted.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, and so, at that point, their son was still in captivity. And Bob was doing everything he could think of to try and get his kid back. My own father, who is the most staunchly conservative person you'll ever meet and who is a wonderful guy, said he would shave his head and go skinny dip and then kiss the President's rear to get me back if I ever went missing. And so, that's a father's love for his son, and I think it is unfair to judge someone too harshly for that.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I'd like to turn if we can to some of the comments by some of the former soldiers that were stationed in Afghanistan with Bergdahl. I think we have the comment of the team leader, Evan Buetow, who was interviewed and who said that the Buetow said that intercepted communication days after his disappearance showed that Bergdahl actively sought to communicate with the Taliban.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, first of all, those comments that his team leader said, I can't verify or confirm or deny them. I can say that they were not reflected in the documents I reviewed that were released by WikiLeaks that said, and I read some of the same ones that seemed to have the same thing, that there is an American, he is looking for someone who speaks English, but there was no mentioned that he was looking to join the Taliban. These guys, they've been under enormous strain too for the past five years because they haven't been able to talk about what is probably one of the most of defining moments of their lives. Going to war as a young person. The men that I have spoken with from this unit, I mean, they took the fact that Bergdahl left and then the fact that they had to spend the rest of their deployment, they felt, looking for him they took it really hard. And that's entirely understandable. I'm not sure how I would have taken it if somebody in my unit had walked off. And so, I think they're, at this point, just unleashing as much of this pent-up frustration and emotion as they have. And they've earned every right to do it. I applaud it for them finally being able to come out and talk.
AMY GOODMAN: And there was suggestion of mismanagement of the team Buetow, who we just saw being the team leader. On Wednesday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioned the motive and timing of Bowe Bergdahl's release.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: You've gotta understand what is going on. They had a Rose Garden ceremony with the man's parents. I think the White House was looking at a twofer to announce in one week that we're going to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending the longest war in U.S. history, and oh, by the way, as commander-in-chief, I secured the last captive of that war, the only captive of that war. That was thought in their mind, I think, to be pretty good political story for that week. It blew up in their face. So the question is, was this release designed to enhance the announcement, to withdrawal from Afghanistan, getting the one guy back, or was it based on a circumstance that was so compelling, this was the moment and only this moment? That is what we need to investigate.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Lindsey Graham. Your response?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I've got a couple of things to say about this. The first thing is, they could have gotten him back two years ago for the exact same terms, this exact same deal. Congress dithered, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee dithered. And we wrote about that in the article. And second, I think it is pretty clear that the White House blundered this. I mean, they got Bowe back, which is an American soldier, regardless of anything else, he is our guy. We bring him back and then we deal with them as appropriate after that. We don't just leave him in the hands of the Taliban as the many people on Capitol Hill seem willing to do for the sake of political expediency.
AMY GOODMAN: Why two years ago did they not follow through with this? Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton at the time.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense was Robert Gates. And it is my feeling that both of them who would legally have to sign off on the deal, did not want to do it. I believe I don't know Mrs. Clinton's motivations for that and I don't know Robert Gates' motivations for that, but I do know they also faced some pressure from really hard-line chicken hawks in Congress like Senator Saxby Chambliss that they encountered quite a bit of pushback.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And of course the atmosphere in Congress, to the Congress and the White House has only become more poisoned and even more combative in the period since then. I think The New York Times, in their editorial today, essentially said President Obama will face criticism from Congress for whatever he does. He would have faced criticism if he didn't succeed in bringing Bergdahl back and now he's facing criticism for bringing him back.
MATTHEW FARWELL: It's actually really interesting and disgusting in the same way how a lot of the same people that were loudly clamoring for his release when it appeared to be to their political benefit to do this are now loudly condemning it. And I read
AMY GOODMAN: Because then it was proposing President Obama.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, then it was something to slam the White House with and now it is something, again, to slam the White House with.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator McCain has been most astounding because he has been on videotape, right, he's been on shows demanding Bowe Bergdahl's release and saying he would agree to a prisoner swap, and this was the same prisoner swap that was offered two years ago. And now criticizing that very thing.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get the e-mails, Matthew?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, agin, that's part of the sources and methods of being an investigative journalist, and I would rather not talk about that.
AMY GOODMAN: But you stand by those e-mails
MATTHEW FARWELL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: that both sent to his family?MATTHEW FARWELL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: What was his family's response? You've talked to his family. In this piece by Sean Smith, the video piece following Bob Bergdahl, Bowe's dad, it is a stunning piece as he follows him into the woods where he makes a fire and says Bowe spent a lot of time here and he's listening to Dr. King give his speech against the war in Vietnam. You hear some of the call to prayer in the background. And his father was learning Pashto, as he showed in Boise, Idaho, when he addressed his son at what was called a news conference, so they didn't take questions, and said, "Bowe, I am your father."
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, I mean, the family's response has been really interesting and compelling for me to follow because here are two people that are in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, Sun Valley, Idaho, where the billionaires go to ski and hang out, living a pretty idyllic life. And then overnight, it all changes. They find out that their son is a prisoner. We wrote in the story that Jani Bergdahl heard her dog barking outside her dog named Rufus and saw two men come up wearing army uniforms. My own parents know what that is like. Her heart just sank. They said, well, it is not the worst news, but we can't tell you alone yet. Let's get you with your husband. They have been living that same sense of just heart wrenching anxiety ever since. I can't imagine the hell they've gone through.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Have you had a chance to talk with them since the news of the exchange broke?
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I haven't, no. I've reached out to them, but I am respecting the privacy for now and I imagine they have a lot more important things to deal with than talking to me.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Matthew Farwell, we want to thank you for being with us. It is an astounding piece that you did with Michael Hastings. I don't even know if he was being called a POW by the U.S. government at the time that you wrote this.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, technically, anyone is called a listed as missing/captured nowadays, so the designation POW is somewhat beaurocratically obsolete.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Matthew [Farwell] is also a writer for Rolling Stone magazine and an Afghan War veteran. His family is from Idaho. He helped Michael Hastings write the 2012 article on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl headlined, "America's Last Prisoner of War". We'll link to it at democracynow.org. When we come back, we deal with the second controversy around Bowe Bergdahl's release, and that is the controversy of the prisoner swap. We'll speak with one of the lawyers for one of the five men who were just released to Qatar and we'll speak with a reporter who has been covering Guantánamo for years. Stay with us.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.JUAN GONZÃLEZ: President Barack Obama said Thursday he would make "no apologies" for agreeing to a prisoner swap to free Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Guantánamo detainees.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington. Right? That is par for the course. But I will repeat what I said two days ago. We have a basic principle. We do not leave anybody wearing the American uniform behind. We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated, and we were deeply concerned about it. And we saw an opportunity and we seized it. And I make no apologies for that.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: The rescue of Bergdahl has touched off a political firestorm. On Thursday, administration officials said Bergdahl's life could have been in danger if details of the prisoner swap had been leaked. Bergdahl had been held captive by the Haqqani network for five years. While some in the media have speculated that Bergdahl became sympathetic to his captors, new reports reveal Bergdahl actually escaped from his captors on at least two occasions. Once in the fall of 2011 and again sometime in 2012. According to The Daily Beast, in his first escape, Afghan sources said he avoided capture for three days and two nights before searchers finally found him. Exhausted and hiding in a shallow trench, he had dug with his own hands and covered with leaves.AMY GOODMAN: In another development The New York Times reveals a classified military report concluded Bowe Bergdahl most likely walked away from his army outpost in June 2009 of his own free will, but it stopped short of concluding their is solid evidence he intended to permanently desert. The report also revealed Bergdahl had wandered away from assigned areas while in the Army at least twice before prior to the day he was captured, including once in Afghanistan. Well, we're joined right now by Matthew Farwell, he's a journalist and veteran of the Afghan War who has been following the Bergdahl story for years. He helped the late reporter Michael Hastings write his 2012 Rolling Stone piece headlined, "America's Last Prisoner of War". Matthew Farwell came to know Bergdahl's parents after they attended the funeral of his brother, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and died in an accident in Germany. Matthew Farwell, thank you so much for joining us.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: So why don't you talk about how you met Bowe Bergdahl's parents, Bob and Jani.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I didn't really need them. I was up giving the eulogy for my brother and looked back in the back of the church and saw two people that I thought I recognized, and it was Bob and Jani Bergdahl.
AMY GOODMAN: Because you are from Idaho.
MATTHEW FARWELL: My parents are from Idaho, and I had been following the news so closely.
AMY GOODMAN: What year was this?
MATTHEW FARWELL: This was 2010, ma'am. February 3.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, how did you then come to know them?
MATTHEW FARWELL: After that I kept in touch with them a little bit because I thought that was a classy gesture. And then Michael and I did the story and I have stayed in touch.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: In terms of the story with Michael, how did you decide to focus on the Bergdahl story and begin gathering the information, which is really the definitive work on the Bergdahl saga?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, you know, the FBI actually investigated how that came to be. So, I've got to keep some trade secrets on it.
AMY GOODMAN: No, explain for a moment. This is a side story, but Michael died in a fiery car crash and he had said at the time that he was being investigated by the FBI.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, and in then a Freedom of Information Act request was done by a great journalist named Jason Schapiro. And it came back and he sent it up to me and I saw all of the redacted portions and said, holy cow, they're talking about me right here. And so, I put through a privacy act request, got it back and sure enough, they were looking into our "controversial" reporting on the story, which I think is a little unusual that the FBI is reading Rolling Stone on the job. But I give them credit.
AMY GOODMAN: So tell us about Bowe Bergdahl and what you learned.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, you know, Bowe is an interesting guy. And I'm very conflicted myself about how I feel about him and his case, but he was a young man, homeschooled, grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho. From all accounts, very intelligent. He did a lot of traveling prior to joining the Army.
AMY GOODMAN: His parents came from California?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, ma'am. They came from California to Sun Valley I think the year before his older sister was born. They stayed there ever since. His dad was the Sun Valley UPS man for 30 years.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: As your story in Rolling Stone details, early on he grew dissatisfied with being at home, being homeschooled and decided he wanted to pursue a life of adventure. Could you talk about that?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right. I mean, it seems he went up and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, he traveled around the states on motorcycle, you know, just all the sorts of things that young men who are seeking something seem to do.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And the French Foreign Legion too?
MATTHEW FARWELL: And his father said he tried to join the French Foreign Legion and was disqualified for eyesight.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that is, the French Foreign Legion.
MATTHEW FARWELL: The French Foreign Legion is France's force of essentially foreign mercenaries who can come from any walk of life. A lot of them are hardened criminals or refugees currently from Eastern Europe. And once you join, you acquire a nom de guerre, you know, a fake name that you get for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Bowe was known around town in Hailey, Idaho. He worked at Zaney's Coffee House. He took up ballet and many had seen his performances.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yes, ma'am.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how does he end up in U.S. military? How does he end up in Afghanistan?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, he did not just and up in U.S. military, he ended up in the U.S. Army parachute infantry. So, it's the military, about 90%, are support personnel, about 10% are the actual war fighters and trigger pullers. And so he was in that 10%. And it seems he just came back one day and said, hey, dad, I'm thinking about joining the Army. And as we said in the story, are you thinking about joining the Army or did you already sign up? Bowe admitted, well, yeah, I already signed up. So, it's a path a lot of young men take. I took it. Dropped out of the University of Virginia to join the infantry. And aside from that, I don't know.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Your article paints a not very flattering portrait of the unit that he was assigned to. One of the problems he had with the lack of discipline and lack of actual fighting capacity of the unit that he was in, in an outpost, really, in Afghanistan. Could you describe some of those problems?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, it seems from the video that Sean Smith of The Guardian shot after embedding with them for about a month, it seemed to me as a former infantryman who served in that exact area and knows that ground very, very well, that the unit wasn't operating with the same level of professionalism that's required to stay on your game there and keep your men alive and your men apparently from walking off.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Sean Smith's a clip of Sean Smith's first film. He's The"Guardian reporter and he was embedded with Bowe's unit. And then because he had come to know this unit, the Bergdahl's said he could come to Idaho and he did a 12 minute piece about Bob Bergdahl. So, let me go to that piece right now, just a clip of Sean Smith, he is talking to, not to Bowe, but it's other soldiers who are talking here.
SOLDIER ONE: These people just want to be left alone.
SOLDIER TWO: Yeah, they got dicked with they got dicked with from the Russians for 17 years and then now we're here.
SOLDIER ONE: Same thing in Iraq when I was there. These people just want to be left alone. Have their crops, weddings, stuff like that, that's it man.
SOLDIER TWO: I'm glad they leave them alone.
SEAN SMITH: A few weeks later, Bowe Bergdahl, pictured in this photo, disappeared. The circumstances are unclear.
AMY GOODMAN: That, a report from The Guardian from Sean Smith, embedded with Bowe Bergdahl's unit. Now, according to your piece, the piece that you wrote with Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone, Matthew, Bowe sent a final e-mail to his parents on June 27, three days before he was captured in 2009. He wrote, "The future is too good to waste on lies... And life is way to short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I'm ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. Is is all revolting. I am sorry for everything here... These people need help, yet what they get is the conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. The horror that is America is disgusting." He also saw a U.S. military vehicle roll over an Afghan baby. Matthew Farwell?MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I think that pretty much speaks for itself. The guy was clearly not happy where he was, not happy with the people he was serving with. And, you know, that area is a bad, bad area he walked off from. And it's just difficult for me to comprehend what must have been going through his mind when he made that decision, because I have been through there and I was scared out of my mind walking through that town and some of the guys that we're with, you know, intelligence units, always told us, hey, watch yourself when you are in Yaya Kheyl.
AMY GOODMAN: And let's be clear, he had packed up his stuff, sent it to his parents, and left his gun, his body armor, everything at the outpost and then he went and left.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, from what we have heard, he only took a couple bottles of water, his books, and I'm trying to think what else a knife and his camera. And some of the reports that came through the WikiLeaks disclosures indicate that that is what the Afghan villagers saw when they saw him walking by himself. The Afghan villagers thought that was crazy.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: You were in the same area of Afghanistan. What is your sense of the level of the kind of disillusionment that Bowe Bergdahl expressed here? How prevalent was that or is it an isolated situation or was there a sharp degree of disconnect between what the soldiers came there thinking they were going to do versus what they ended up doing?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, like I've said, the area was a very difficult area to operate in. You think, it's crushing poverty, zero percent female literacy literally, no toilets in the entire Providence except for American toilets. And so, a lot of the men in my platoon I was there two years prior to Bowe being there and a lot of the men in my platoon, and myself included, came back with tremendous cases of PTSD from what we were doing there because it was simply a difficult lace to fight a war in. And I think everyone from Alexander the Great up to the Soviets to us have learned that fact the hard way.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to take a break and then come back to this discussion. We are talking with Matthew Farwell. He is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, an Afghan War veteran. He helped the late Michael Hastings write the 2012 article on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl that's become the definitive piece on him called, "America's Last Prisoner of War." Stay with us.
[Break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Matthew Farwell. He served in the military in Afghanistan, like Bowe, two years before him. He met the Bergdahls when they came to his brother's funeral, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and died in service in Germany. We are going to turn now to the media's focus on the Bergdahl family, particularly, his father Bob. I want to turn to comments made by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on his show on Thursday, responding to the e-mail exchange between Bowe Bergdahl and his father, published in Michael Hastings' and Matthew Farwell's piece in Rolling Stone.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: If my son I've got a 26-year-old son and if my son is out on the wire and he is out there with fellow troops and he writes me up and says he hates America and he is thinking about deserting and he is thinking about leaving his post, I can tell you as a father that 26-year-old or 23 old son, I would say, Joey, you state the hell right there. I would call his commander I would say, get my son, he is not well, get him to a military base in Germany. I would not say, follow your conscience, son. I would not reach out to the voice of Jihad.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to this, Matthew Farwell, if you could understand it? It is Joe Scarborough shouting at the MSNBC reporter Chuck Todd.MATTHEW FARWELL: Yeah, I am stunned by that. That's the first time I've seen that clip. And I was doing a lot of press yesterday about this, and I'm just astounded that all these people that didn't know a thing about this case for the past five years have all of a sudden become experts. No one cares until there's something to politicize and a soundbite to be made.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the whole issue of the criticism that has been leveled against Bowe Bergdahl by his former fellow soldiers. As your article points out, the military, for years, insisted that no one talk about his case, and no one say anything public about this case. And now suddenly, you're getting this enormous outpouring of comments. A lot of it orchestrated by a Republican operative who has been producing some of these soldiers for the media.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yeah, that was one of the biggest things that disturbed me so much about this whole story, and that really got me thinking it must be something, is it's unprecedented to have an entire brigade 3500 people have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about pretty much their entire tour in Afghanistan when they come back home. And so, these guys have bottled up this emotion.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Signing a confidentiality agreement to protect I mean, what was the reason given?
MATTHEW FARWELL: The official reasons was, if they said anything about Bowe Bergdahl, it could hurt him or possibly causing him to be further mistreated by the Taliban or the Haqqani network. But, to me, having served in the Army both as a trigger puller and then as a desk jockey at a four-star general's headquarters, it seemed like it was an exercise in covering the army's butt and trying to not make themselves and this war look as bad as it was.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the soldiers being told not to say anything, having to sign confidentiality agreement. What about the media?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, that is the other funny thing, is how complicit the media was with this. I have spoken with the White House official that was in charge of coordinating the media response and kind of ensuring that no one in the media spoke out or wrote about this. And frankly, he managed to snow a lot of the people in the media, and that is why I've got to give so many props to Michael Hastings, who I wish were sitting in this chair instead of me, and to Rolling Stone for have the guts to go after this story and to really tell it like it needed to be told.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to your media appearances. You were on CNN yesterday. I wanted to go to this clip. This is when you are being interviewed by a CNN host Carol Costello.
CAROL COSTELLO: Why did he is growing his beard out?
MATTHEW FARWELL: So that he would have some sympathy with the people that were holding his kid hostage.
CAROL COSTELLO: And this was not really an attempt to become a member of the Taliban, it was more to convince them that, you know, hey, maybe I can see things your way so that my son will be released, but he didn't really mean that? Is that the sort of thing that were talking about?
MATTHEW FARWELL: No, so that his son would be treated decently. I mean, remember, you're talking about a family that every night goes to sleep thinking their son might be tortured every day. Can you imagine what that must be like? I can't, and I've lost a brother in the war and I have fought in the war.
AMY GOODMAN: That is our guest today, Matthew Farwell, yesterday on CNN. Former soldier from Idaho who served in Afghanistan. At the end of the clip, the text on the screen read "Bergdahl's father accused of looking Muslim." Now, you don't see that because you're just on air, but that's what the lower third, as we call it, said. "Bergdahl's father accused of looking Muslim."MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, right, which I'm not sure when that became a crime in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: In any of these cases, you just replace it for your own religion, right? Bergdahl's father accused of looking Jewish. Bergdahl's father accused of looking Catholic.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, it seems pretty racist to me.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about the deleted e-mail of Bob Bergdahl a few days before his son was released. The media has made something of this. Just to say what that deleted tweet was that he said I think it was a day or two before his son was released.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, I believe that tweet said something about still working to free all of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay or something to that effect. And he's really taken a lot of criticism for it. But, look, you've got to think about this. Bob and Jani Bergdahl have lived every day of the past five years thinking it might be their only son's last day. I think we as Americans can probably cut them a little bit of slack.
AMY GOODMAN: The tweet said, "I am still working to free all Guantánamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!" He said Arabic for amen. The tweet was subsequently deleted.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, and so, at that point, their son was still in captivity. And Bob was doing everything he could think of to try and get his kid back. My own father, who is the most staunchly conservative person you'll ever meet and who is a wonderful guy, said he would shave his head and go skinny dip and then kiss the President's rear to get me back if I ever went missing. And so, that's a father's love for his son, and I think it is unfair to judge someone too harshly for that.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I'd like to turn if we can to some of the comments by some of the former soldiers that were stationed in Afghanistan with Bergdahl. I think we have the comment of the team leader, Evan Buetow, who was interviewed and who said that the Buetow said that intercepted communication days after his disappearance showed that Bergdahl actively sought to communicate with the Taliban.
EVAN BUETOW: The American is in Yaya Kheyl. He is looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban. I heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio. At that point, it was like, this is kind of snowballing out-of-control a little bit. There's a lot more to the story than just a soldier walking away.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: But, we also have reports from The Daily Beast that he tried to escape twice from the Taliban when he was in captivity. Your response to some of these statements now by some of his fellow soldiers?MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, first of all, those comments that his team leader said, I can't verify or confirm or deny them. I can say that they were not reflected in the documents I reviewed that were released by WikiLeaks that said, and I read some of the same ones that seemed to have the same thing, that there is an American, he is looking for someone who speaks English, but there was no mentioned that he was looking to join the Taliban. These guys, they've been under enormous strain too for the past five years because they haven't been able to talk about what is probably one of the most of defining moments of their lives. Going to war as a young person. The men that I have spoken with from this unit, I mean, they took the fact that Bergdahl left and then the fact that they had to spend the rest of their deployment, they felt, looking for him they took it really hard. And that's entirely understandable. I'm not sure how I would have taken it if somebody in my unit had walked off. And so, I think they're, at this point, just unleashing as much of this pent-up frustration and emotion as they have. And they've earned every right to do it. I applaud it for them finally being able to come out and talk.
AMY GOODMAN: And there was suggestion of mismanagement of the team Buetow, who we just saw being the team leader. On Wednesday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioned the motive and timing of Bowe Bergdahl's release.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: You've gotta understand what is going on. They had a Rose Garden ceremony with the man's parents. I think the White House was looking at a twofer to announce in one week that we're going to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending the longest war in U.S. history, and oh, by the way, as commander-in-chief, I secured the last captive of that war, the only captive of that war. That was thought in their mind, I think, to be pretty good political story for that week. It blew up in their face. So the question is, was this release designed to enhance the announcement, to withdrawal from Afghanistan, getting the one guy back, or was it based on a circumstance that was so compelling, this was the moment and only this moment? That is what we need to investigate.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Lindsey Graham. Your response?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, I've got a couple of things to say about this. The first thing is, they could have gotten him back two years ago for the exact same terms, this exact same deal. Congress dithered, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee dithered. And we wrote about that in the article. And second, I think it is pretty clear that the White House blundered this. I mean, they got Bowe back, which is an American soldier, regardless of anything else, he is our guy. We bring him back and then we deal with them as appropriate after that. We don't just leave him in the hands of the Taliban as the many people on Capitol Hill seem willing to do for the sake of political expediency.
AMY GOODMAN: Why two years ago did they not follow through with this? Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton at the time.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense was Robert Gates. And it is my feeling that both of them who would legally have to sign off on the deal, did not want to do it. I believe I don't know Mrs. Clinton's motivations for that and I don't know Robert Gates' motivations for that, but I do know they also faced some pressure from really hard-line chicken hawks in Congress like Senator Saxby Chambliss that they encountered quite a bit of pushback.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And of course the atmosphere in Congress, to the Congress and the White House has only become more poisoned and even more combative in the period since then. I think The New York Times, in their editorial today, essentially said President Obama will face criticism from Congress for whatever he does. He would have faced criticism if he didn't succeed in bringing Bergdahl back and now he's facing criticism for bringing him back.
MATTHEW FARWELL: It's actually really interesting and disgusting in the same way how a lot of the same people that were loudly clamoring for his release when it appeared to be to their political benefit to do this are now loudly condemning it. And I read
AMY GOODMAN: Because then it was proposing President Obama.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, then it was something to slam the White House with and now it is something, again, to slam the White House with.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator McCain has been most astounding because he has been on videotape, right, he's been on shows demanding Bowe Bergdahl's release and saying he would agree to a prisoner swap, and this was the same prisoner swap that was offered two years ago. And now criticizing that very thing.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get the e-mails, Matthew?
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, agin, that's part of the sources and methods of being an investigative journalist, and I would rather not talk about that.
AMY GOODMAN: But you stand by those e-mails
MATTHEW FARWELL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: that both sent to his family?MATTHEW FARWELL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: What was his family's response? You've talked to his family. In this piece by Sean Smith, the video piece following Bob Bergdahl, Bowe's dad, it is a stunning piece as he follows him into the woods where he makes a fire and says Bowe spent a lot of time here and he's listening to Dr. King give his speech against the war in Vietnam. You hear some of the call to prayer in the background. And his father was learning Pashto, as he showed in Boise, Idaho, when he addressed his son at what was called a news conference, so they didn't take questions, and said, "Bowe, I am your father."
MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, I mean, the family's response has been really interesting and compelling for me to follow because here are two people that are in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, Sun Valley, Idaho, where the billionaires go to ski and hang out, living a pretty idyllic life. And then overnight, it all changes. They find out that their son is a prisoner. We wrote in the story that Jani Bergdahl heard her dog barking outside her dog named Rufus and saw two men come up wearing army uniforms. My own parents know what that is like. Her heart just sank. They said, well, it is not the worst news, but we can't tell you alone yet. Let's get you with your husband. They have been living that same sense of just heart wrenching anxiety ever since. I can't imagine the hell they've gone through.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Have you had a chance to talk with them since the news of the exchange broke?
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: I haven't, no. I've reached out to them, but I am respecting the privacy for now and I imagine they have a lot more important things to deal with than talking to me.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Matthew Farwell, we want to thank you for being with us. It is an astounding piece that you did with Michael Hastings. I don't even know if he was being called a POW by the U.S. government at the time that you wrote this.
MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, technically, anyone is called a listed as missing/captured nowadays, so the designation POW is somewhat beaurocratically obsolete.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Matthew [Farwell] is also a writer for Rolling Stone magazine and an Afghan War veteran. His family is from Idaho. He helped Michael Hastings write the 2012 article on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl headlined, "America's Last Prisoner of War". We'll link to it at democracynow.org. When we come back, we deal with the second controversy around Bowe Bergdahl's release, and that is the controversy of the prisoner swap. We'll speak with one of the lawyers for one of the five men who were just released to Qatar and we'll speak with a reporter who has been covering Guantánamo for years. Stay with us.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass