Michael Hastings Dies in Suspicious Car 'Crash'.....

[Peter Lemkin]

I wouldn't put it past the US Military to now put Bergdahl on trial [for desertion et al.] after five years imprisonment. Interesting that Hastings and Bergdahl's lives crossed. ::
As far as the sparks under the car, short of a large explosion, nothing is going to loosen the engine/transmission - it could be some small piece of metal rubbing the road and making sparks or it could be part of the device[s] used to control the car to make it uncontrollable. [i.e. thermite on the brakes or other systems]

[Peter Lemkin]

In this episode of Phreaked Out, we met some of the top security researchers at the center of the car-hacking world. Their goal isn't to make people crash: They highlight security holes to illustrate flaws in car technology, intended to pressure auto manufacturers to be a few steps ahead of their friendly foes.

Information security researcher Mathew Solnik gave us a first-hand demonstration on how to wirelessly send commands to a car and remotely tell it what to do. With a little over a grand and about a month of work, Solnik found time outside of his full-time job to reverse-engineer a car's computer system to make it ready for a takeover.

From his laptop, he was able to manipulate the car's engine, brakes, and security systems by wirelessly tapping into the Controller Area Network, or CAN bus network. Without getting too deep into the detailsboth for legal reasons and due to my own training-wheel knowledge of such thingshe was able to do this by implementing some off-the-shelf chips, a third-party telematic control unit, a GSM-powered wireless transmitter/receiver setup, and a significant amount of know-how he's accrued over the years.

The reason for such additional hardware was to make our older, mid-size sedan function like a newerand arguably more vulnerablestock vehicle, which these days often come with data connections. (We would have loved to tinker with the latest, most connected car on the market, but since we were on a shoestring budget and it's incredibly hard to find a friend who's willing to lend their car for a hacking experiment, our pickings were slim.)

With that said, a car whose network system is connected to a cloud server and accessible by Bluetooth, cell networks, or Wi-Fi is potentially vulnerable to intrusion.

[Keith Millea]

I wouldn't put it past the US Military to now put Bergdahl on trial [for desertion et al.] after five years imprisonment.

This is a big problem Peter.As much as I think Bergdahl is a good person he did desert his post in a wartime situation.This is bad.And,to make things even worse,fellow soldiers were killed while trying to locate him.This is bad.

The military has every right to court martial Bergdahl.That's the way it is.......

[Albert Doyle]

Of course the government will not accept that Bergdahl wandered away from his post because it sank in to him all too clearly that he was fighting for a criminal government that sent him over there on WMD war crimes and set-up the whole deployment by killing 3000 Americans with a false flag attack on 9/11 that was pre-emptively designed to put him over there. Or Bergdahl was on an intelligence op like Oswald.

Another person who got screwed with that military bullshit was John Walker Lindh who was given 20 years for fighting with the Taliban even though he was clearly a Patty Hearst-type Stockholm Syndrome victim who posed no threat to the US. Those cowards who lied to the American public about 9/11 needed Lindh as a scapegoat.

[Kenneth Kapel]

The Bergdahl affair shows the rightwing at his its most hateful and the medias coverage of this is, IMHO, at an all time low, save the JFK-RFK-MLK assassinations. OMG how did I forget the mainstrean media's coverage of 9-1-1, the events leading to the Afgan/Irag wars, the Wall Street bailout, The Gulf of Tonkin, et, al. OMG one might think that the media is controlled. Why everyone knows thats "conspiracy theory" hogwash.

[Peter Lemkin]

I wouldn't put it past the US Military to now put Bergdahl on trial [for desertion et al.] after five years imprisonment.

This is a big problem Peter.As much as I think Bergdahl is a good person he did desert his post in a wartime situation.This is bad.And,to make things even worse,fellow soldiers were killed while trying to locate him.This is bad.

The military has every right to court martial Bergdahl.That's the way it is.......

I thin there are more things to consider [or not yet judge him on].....apparently most of the people killed in his unit were NOT out looking for him at the time....and we do NOT know what his state of mind was...he MAY had TECHNICALLY 'deserted' his post...but he may also have gone insane from combat stress et al. We do NOT know.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The Taliban has released a video reportedly showing the handover of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl to U.S. special operations forces five years after he was taken captive. In the video, a clean-shaven Bergdahl is shown sitting in a pickup truck prior to his release. One of the men tells him "don't come back to Afghanistan. Next time we catch you, you won't leave here alive." He is then brought out of the truck as a Blackhawk helicopter lands in a nearby open field. Two of the men, one waving a white flag, lead Bergdahl to meet three men and what appear to be civilian close. The men pat him down and flash a thumbs-up, then lead them into the helicopter where U.S. soldiers appear to be waiting. Seconds later, the helicopter lifts off. Bergdahl was released over the weekend in exchange for five high-ranking Taliban militants who had been held at Guantánamo Bay. The White House has apologized to keep lawmakers for not notifying them of the prisoner swap in advance. Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein said she received a call Monday night.

SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN: Unless something catastrophic happened, I think there was no reason to believe that he was instant danger. There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call and say, I know you all had concerns about this. We consulted in the past, we want you to know we have renewed these negotiations. It would give us an opportunity to ask questions and hopefully obtain answers. Now, that was not there, so therefore, we are hit with a certain set of circumstances, intelligence that we knew, policies that we knew, that were changed and a law that was essentially disregarded.

REPORTER: Senator Reid said he found out about this on Friday, though, and Speaker Boehner didn't find out 'til Saturday. Does it at all concern you about the optics of that, that Senator Reid found out ahead of time?

SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN: I'm not going to get into that.

REPORTER: Have you had an apology from the White House for how this was handled,and ?

SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN: Yes, I did have a call last night from the White House. And they apologi he apologized.

REPORTER: Are they acknowledging the law was broken in that apology?

SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN: No, I didn't ask for that. I mean, it was obvious it's obvious.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner has endorsed a call for congressional hearings to look into the administration's handling of the prisoner swap. Senator John McCain also criticized the deal that led to Bergdahl's release.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: This decision to bring Sergeant Bergdahl home, and we applaud that he is home, is ill founded. It is a mistake and it is putting the lives of American servicemen and women at risk, and to me, and that to me is unacceptable to the American people. These people have dedicated their lives to destroying us. These people have dedicated their very existence. Why do you think when the judgment was made that if they released them, it would cause great risk to the United States of America?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: During a news conference Tuesday in Poland, President Obama responded to the brewing controversy.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Let me just make a very simple point here, and that is, regardless of the circumstances, whatever the circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he's held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We don't condition that. And that is what every mom and dad who sees a son or daughter sent over into war theater should expect from not just their commander-in-chief, but the United States of America.

AMY GOODMAN: All of this comes as Army officials now say they will pursue an investigation into whether Bowe Bergdahl should still be disciplined if they find evidence of misconduct, such as desertion. Several of the men who served with Bergdahl have taken to the media to call him a deserter. Some have also blamed him for the deaths of six to eight soldiers who went out looking for him, they say. But The New York Times reports that a review of casualty reports and military logs suggests the facts surrounding the deaths are far from definitive. Two of the soldiers who died during the most intense period of the search after Bergdahl disappeared June 30, were inside an outpost that came under attack and not on patrol looking for him. The other six soldiers died in late August and early September. For more we're joined by two guests, in Oklahoma City, James Branum is a lawyer who specializes in representing military deserters and conscientious objectors. He's also legal director for the Oklahoma Center for Conscience and Action and author of, "U.S. Army AWOL Defense: A Practical Guide." In London, England, we're joined by Charles Glass, a historian and former ABC news chief correspondent. His book, "Deserter: a Hidden History of the Second World War." In it he tells the stories of three men whose lives dramatize how the strain of war can push a soldier to the breaking point. They are among some 50,000 American soldiers who deserted in the European theater during World War II. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! James Branum, let's begin with you. Your response to the controversy that is growing around the release of Bowe Bergdahl?
JAMES BRANUM: The most important thing we have to remember is that we do not know the facts. Yesterday in The New York Times, the headline was, the facts are murky. We really do not know, and this is really a key thing here. If the allegations are true, even then we have to say that what happened is the result of war itself. This is not uncommon, this is not unexpected. War is messy. Things get crazy. In this case, what has been alleged is that Sergeant Bergdahl was struggling with issues of conscience, that there were major concerns that he had. When people are under the strain of conscience, a feeling like they're violating what they believe, they do things that may not be logical. If the allegation is correct that he left the post, this is not something you do unless you believe you have no other choice but to violate your conscience. It was effectively was a suicidal kind of act. In this case, though, he believed it seems like that, if true, it was a matter of either violate my conscience and stay or potentially suffer my own loss of life. It is unfortunate he did not know the full range of options yet under the law. But, one of the problems is the military does not inform soldiers of their rights under the law to seek a discharge on the grounds of conscience or to seek other ways of relief. I think we have to look at the full context here. Fundamentally, we really don't know the facts yet.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: James Branum, could you elaborate on that? What are some of the options available to soldiers who are struggling with their conscience in conditions of war? What could he have done, Bergdahl, had he known what his options were?
JAMES BRANUM: U.S. Military regulations allow for a service member who is currently a member of the military to file an application for conscientious objector status. In that application, they must explain in detail in an essay format what they believe about war. And they must show a few things. First of all they must show that their beliefs are sincere, that they're not motivated by cowardice or expediency but they are based upon their conscience. Second, they have to show that their beliefs are based on the the religious grounds or deep conscientious grounds. In other words, that they are stemming from the core of their being. Third, they must show that they are opposed to all wars. You can't pick and choose which one you're opposed to. You can't say, I only support just wars, that's not good enough. You have to be opposed to all war. And then finally, you have to show that your beliefs changed sometime after you listed. The reason for this is if you enlisted and had these beliefs, then you would have fraudulently enlisted. Because they ask you about this, at least in theory, when you enlist. But after the time of enlistment, our military recognizes the fact that a person's life can change. It could be religious conversion, it could be a dramatic experience. Many things happen in a service member's lives. And when those things happen, if they reach a point that the service member can no longer serve without violating their conscience, that they can apply for this status. The challenges is here is once they make the application there is a complicated and long process; interviews from a psychiatrist, interviews by a chaplain, and then in a hearing before an independent hearing officer and then it goes up the chain of command all the way up to branch level where final decision is made. It is not an easy process. It is a grueling, grueling process. That said, the process is there. The problem is, most service members do not know they have this right under the law. There's no obligation for the military to for commanders to inform service members of this right. Therefore, a right that you don't know about effectively doesn't exist. This is the logic of the miranda decision and the Supreme Court said that the typical criminal defendant may not know they have the right to not talk to the police. In the same situation here a service member may not know they have the right to apply for this status unless this is told to them. Unfortunately that is not the case, and I think there is a very high likelihood that Sergeant Bergdahl may have struggled with issues of conscience, but did not know this process was there.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to 2012 to the late reporter Michael Hastings who was writing for Rolling Stone about Bowe Bergdahl. He spoke on the TV network Russia Today about Bergdahl's case..

MICHAEL HASTINGS: As to what drove Bowe Bergdahl to leave, first you have to look at, he was a 23-year-old kid who joined the Army and he expected that he was going to go over to Afghanistan and help people and be involved in this nation-building and essentially humanitarian activity. What he found when he got there was completely different. He thought he had been sold a lie. He thought that he was not being treated with respect by the superior officers. There was a serious command problem within his unit within Afghanistan. There was a serious break in command. One officer died and another got fired, three of the people he respected were kicked out. And so, that created this sort of perfect storm. You have this sort of disillusionment happening, plus all of these sort of horrible things he's seeing with war that drove him to the decision to leave.

[Drew Phipps]

Wandering away from your post in a combat situation without authorization is "going AWOL," regardless of your motivation. He's clearly guilty of that, and can be court-martialed for that offense. I know guys at Fort Hood who were court martialed as AWOL for being 15 minutes late to roll call.

Desertion is a different offense and it "presumed" after 30 days of being AWOL. In Bergdahl's case he was captured within 24 hours and not free to return to duty. Because the Army knew that fact early on, they did not "administratively" classify him as a deserter. Getting "administratively" classified as a deserter doesn't have any legal effect on a court martial case; after 30 days of AWOL, it would be Bergdahl's burden in court to prove that he didn't intend to defect. (Have to do some research to see if the burden shifts to Bergdahl if his absence becomes involuntary.)

It seems to me that, when he left, he did not intend to return to his post (which completes the offense of desertion, even if he subsequently thought better of it), though from listening to friends and family talk about him, and his communications, it doesn't seem that his actions were intended to provide any sort of advantage or assistance to the Taliban.

I would hope that the Army would take into account that he's already been deprived of his freedom for five years when assessing a punishment.

[Keith Millea]

He would have done better to just chop off his trigger finger.....seriously!

[Peter Lemkin]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at Bowe Bergdahl's case and the issue of military deserters, we are joined in London by Charles Glass. He is a historian and former ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent. His book, "The Deserters: A Hidden History of the Second World War," was published last year. Charles Glass, welcome to Democracy Now! Could you tell us how you have responded to the news of Bowe Bergdahl's release given your research on military desertions in the Second World War?
CHARLES GLASS: Like most people, I was glad to see any serviceman who has been held hostage released. His experience is not unlike that of some of the deserters that I wrote about in my book. I remember one, John Bain, a British servicemen who witnessed something very horrible in North Africa which was he saw members of his own unit, The Gordon Highlanders, looting the bodies of their fallen comrades on the battlefield. And this sent him into such a psychological state of mind that he simply wandered away through the desert in what he called a fugue, a flight from reality. It reminds me somewhat of what then Private Bergdahl might have felt that night when he was on sentry duty, when he wandered off without a weapon into the unknown. It sounds like a similar sort of fugue to John Bain's where he did not really know where he was going or what he was doing.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we talk more about Bergdahl, can you talk about your own experience, Charles Glass, having been taken hostage yourself?
CHARLES GLASS: Well, I was taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980's at a time when America and Europeans in Beirut, Lebanon were fair game. As you may remember, just before my kidnapping, at the beginning of 1987, it had all come out that the Reagan Administration was exchanging weapons which it sent to Iran in exchange for hostages which the Iranians would order the Hezbollah to release. The Republicans who are criticizing Obama now might recall the Iran-Contra affair and the precedent set about exchanging weapons for hostages now is changing prisoners of war for prisoners of war.
AMY GOODMAN: There has been a lot of coverage over the last few days of fellow soldiers on television talking about their anger at Bowe Bergdahl for what they call deserting. But in terms of the political views of the soldiers who were with Bowe Bergdahl at the time, yesterday on Democracy Now!, we had a fascinating discussion with The Guardian reporter, photographer Sean Smith who actually embedded with the unit in 2009, a month before Bowe Bergdahl left the base. He embedded with Bergdahl's unit in Afghanistan. In this clip, we hear from some of the soldiers who were together with Bergdahl.

SOLDIER ONE: These people just want to be left alone.

SOLDIER TWO: 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 is from the 2009 video for The Guardian produced by Sean Smith, the film maker. Michael Hastings wrote about that video in 2012 report for Rolling Stone, again noting the footage shows soldiers "breaking even the most basic rules of combat like wearing baseball caps on patrol instead of helmets." But very critical of what they were doing in Afghanistan. So, certainly, if the reports are accurate and the e-mail is accurate that he sent his parents, Bowe Bergdahl was not alone in his disillusionment, Charles Glass.
CHARLES GLASS: Well, we know from many soldiers who came back from Vietnam, many who came back from Iraq and many who've come back from Afghanistan that they all disapprove of what the country was doing in those countries. That they were invaders, occupiers who were telling their soldiers that they were there as liberators and people helping to build a country, and they discovered that it was completely different from what they thought. I'm not surprised to hear those voices from the men in Bergdahl's unit, because they went through what he went through, which is that terrible disillusionment. In my own research in the Second World War, the front-line soldiers and almost all of the deserters in the Second World War were from the front lines, that very small minority of men who actually were in combat in the Second World War. None of their comrades on the front lines ever turned them in because many of them had felt that same impulse themselves. They were under such pressure. It was one of the considerations that they had that they might just run away one day. It was the rear echelon soldiers, those who never saw combat who would in the event turn those deserters in to be court-martialed. Men at the front lines go through all kinds of emotions, conflicting emotions, and sometimes they have such trauma and such stress that they crack. They inflict wounds on themselves to get out of battle, they runaway. The men who are beside them understand it better than those who were in the offices and in the rear echelons.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And Charles Glass, in your research, you found that the leadership of a battalion plays a significant role in the number of desertions from a particular battalion. Could you elaborate on the significance of that?
CHARLES GLASS: Well, in for example, in the 36th Infantry Division in the Second World War, fighting in the high voge [sp], the desertion rates were out of all proportion to other divisions fighting similar battles. In part it was because the officers themselves had had such little time to train and they weren't effective leaders. In another unit, for example, Audie Murphy, who was the most highly decorated of all the American serviceman who served in World War II, he worked his way up through the ranks from private to captain, and he was leading his company. He describes when one of his men broke down and had clear battlefield trauma and couldn't fight anymore. Instead of sending him for court-martial as some of the commanders in the 36 Division did, he' sent him for medical psychiatric treatment. At all frontline medical facilities there were psychiatrists. Because about 25% of all wounds in the Second World War were psychological and not physical.
AMY GOODMAN: Charles Glass, you write that thousands of American soldiers were convicted of desertion during the war. I mean, the numbers are astounding just of deserters. 50,000 Americans, 100,000 British soldiers during World War II. But 49 were sentenced to death. Most were given years of hard labor. One soldier was actually executed, a U.S. Army private from Detroit named Eddie Slovik. She was killed by firing squad January 31, 1945, making him the American soldier, the only the first American soldier to be court-martialed and executed for desertion since the American Civil War. Talk about him and the number of people who deserted and then who was actually punished.
CHARLES GLASS: Well, Eddie Slovik never actually fought. He arrived in France well after D-Day and was sent as an infantry replacement to a unit where he did not know anyone and would not know anyone. As soon as he arrived near the front lines he came under a severe shelling. He was deeply shocked by it. He was shaken. He probably should have been sent immediately for medical treatment and might have been able to serve after that. But, in the event was so frightened, he told his officers that he couldn't fight, indeed, wouldn't fight, he wasn't capable of it. They then were forced to court-martial him. The timing he was convicted. He was convicted and sentenced to death. As many as 48 others were. But when he launched his appeal, the timing couldn't have been worse because the German counter offense known as the Battle of the Bulge had begun and the military did not want to be seen to be condoning desertion, so they carried out his execution. But in this strange kind of military logic, they said they wanted to make an example of him but they kept the execution secret. It wasn't really known until 1948 when William Bradford Huey wrote his first article about Eddie Slovik, in which he didn't even name him, that a soldier had been executed for desertion. No one knew about it. So, it wasn't really much of an example. And by the time he was shot, the Battle of the Bulge was ending in any case.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what happened to the remaining 48? I mean it's an extraordinary thing. Slovik was the first deserter to be executed since the American Civil War.
CHARLES GLASS: First and last for desertion. Many soldiers were executed during the Second World War for rape, murder, and other civilian crimes, but Slovik was the only one executed for desertion. He said by his own admission, he said he was a victim of very bad luck and that if he hadn't been and ex-con he was an ex-con, he'd been a petty criminal before he went into the Army he might not have been executed. He was right. He was very, very unlucky.
AMY GOODMAN: Charles Glass, how many of those that you looked at who deserted, deserted for conscientious reasons, because of their concerns about war, and what was the response of society afterwards?
CHARLES GLASS: Well, in World War II, it wasn't the same as in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. The soldiers who deserted weren't conscientiously opposed to fighting Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany, they simply had severe battlefield trauma and they wandered away from the battlefield because they just couldn't take it anymore psychologically were incapable of taking any more. It was there only mechanism for survival. Many of them, when they reported back were given medical treatment and went back to the front lines. Many were court-martialed. It was on was arbitrary which it would be depending on the superior officer who made the decision. I came across almost no cases of people who were opposed to the war in principle. Those who were opposed to the war in principle were conscientious objector who didn't serve in the military in any case, so that it wasn't the same issue as it would be in the post-World War II wars that America fought.
AMY GOODMAN: Your final reflections, Charles Glass, having written this book and now seeing this story play out of the release of Bowe Bergdahl after five years being held by the Taliban, clearly before he left his base expressing antiwar views?
CHARLES GLASS: Well, I think it's a call for compassion. We have to understand what he was going through. What a young person at the front line, having believed in his country's mission in Afghanistan discovering it was not at all what he was told it was, that saw himself as part of a mechanism of oppression, of killing people, of going into villages and when trying to take out enemy combatants was killing families. What that does to a young man I think we have to wait and see what he says when he leaves Germany and he's finally allowed to speak publicly. And I hope we will understand what he went through and have some compassion for him and for his family. And it's not really an issue of how patriotic he was. He was clearly patriotic enough to join the Army in the first place. He certainly believed in his country enough to do that. But in a way, his country let him down.

[Peter Lemkin]

I wouldn't trust DARPA with a 1 lightyear pole, but here they admit some frightening truths...