Ames Michael - American cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. tragedy in Afghanistan

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Copyright 2019 by Matt Farwell and Michael Ames

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L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C AT ALOGING-IN- P UBLICATI ON D ATA

Names: Farwell, Matt, author. | Ames, Michael, author.

Title: American cipher : Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. tragedy in Afghanistan / Matt Farwell and Michael Ames.

Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018046632 (print) | LCCN 2018058587 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735221055 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735221048 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Bergdahl, Bowe, 1986- | SoldiersUnited StatesBiography. | Afghan War, 2001- | Bergdahl, Bowe, 1986Trials, litigation, etc. | Trials (Military offenses)United States.

Classification: LCC DS371.43. B47 (ebook) | LCC DS371.43. B47 F37 2019 (print) | DDC 958.104/78 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046632

Version_2

To Dr. Hannah Tyson and Michael Hastings

MATT FAR WELL

For my mom, my friend:

Elyse Ames (19412017)

MICHAEL AMES

PROLOGUE

Five years and five weeks after he walked alone and unarmed into the Afghanistan night, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was scheduled for an interview with the U.S. Army general investigating his crime. They met at eight in the morning in Building 268 on Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Bergdahls civilian attorney, Eugene Fidell, a Yale Law School professor and military justice historian, accompanied him. Major General Kenneth Dahl sat across from them. In an adjoining room, the Army stenographer began the recording.

Sergeant Bergdahl, obviously Im reading you your rights warning certificate because I am the investigating officer conducting an Army Regulation 15-6 investigation. You are the subject of that investigation. Your suspected offenses are absent without leave and desertion.

Bergdahl listened, motionless.

Before I ask you any questions, you must understand your rights. Number one, you do not have to answer my questions or say anything. Do you understand that?

Yes, Bergdahl said.

If you would just initial number one, said Dahl, pointing to the form. Bowe Robert Bergdahl wrote his initialsBRB.

Number two, anything you say or do can be used as evidence against you in a criminal trial. Now do you understand that?

Yes.

I dont mean to insult your intelligence, but its better to be thorough up front, the general explained.

Understood, sir.

With the paperwork complete, Dahl continued, Its great that youre home, welcome home. Everybody is glad youre home. And now there is an opportunity to hear your story.

Bergdahl sat up straight. His square frame filled the shoulders of his drab green civilian shirt. Even in street clothes, he looked every bit the soldier. Let me just start by leaving it open-ended and ask you to relax, get comfortable, Dahl tried. You have to be eager and anxious to tell your story.... So heres an opportunity for you, and I will turn it over to you.

The twenty-eight-year-old sergeant did not move.

Relax, said Fidell.

Yes, absolutely, Dahl said.

You look tense, Fidell said.

Take as much time as you want, Dahl offered. You can lean back and relax.

If I lean back, it hurts my back, Bergdahl said, but did not explain why.

The country seemed to have already made up its mind. Bergdahl was a national disgrace, the loudest voices saida coward and a deserter at the very least, a traitor to many, and probably a de facto member of the Taliban. (Tali-Bowe was a popular moniker on social media.) The prisoner swap that freed Bergdahl in exchange for five high-value Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a rotten deal; according to one poll, 43 percent of Americans felt it was the wrong thing to do. The night of Bergdahls release, Donald Trump, whose political aspirations were only hypothetical at the time, tweeted: At some point Sgt. Bergdahl will have to explain his capture. In 2009 he simply wandered off his base without a weapon. Many questions! Bergdahls hometown of Hailey, Idaho (population: 8,000), announced a celebration party. When the city hall and several businesses were deluged by hundreds of threats by phone and email, and after the local police chief was warned of an imminent invasion from two thousand protesting patriotic bikers, the party was canceled. Bowe wasnt the only targethis family was placed under FBI protection as rumors swirled that his father, Bob Bergdahl, was a closet Muslim. Time magazine asked, Was He Worth It?

To the Pentagon, Sergeant Bergdahl was a public relations disaster. After fourteen years of war, the last thing the Army needed was for all the soldiers who thought the war was dumb to walk off. Dahl was a fifty-two-year-old career officer and a two-star major general expecting a third star. The Army was his lifehis West Point sweetheart and wife of thirty-one years, Lieutenant Colonel Celia FlorCruz, was a decorated helicopter pilotand this investigation, a once-in-a-generation event for the Army, had the potential to ruin his career. His report would be scrutinized at the highest levels of the Pentagon and amplified by the loudest megaphones in the media. But the 15-16 was also a formal, legal process codified by Army regulations. In short, it was his job, and Dahl intended to do it right.

For the prior fifty-two days, since the chief of staff of the Army had assigned him this task, Dahl had been trying to get inside the head of the enigmatic twenty-three-year-old Army private who was now a traumatized twenty-eight-year-old former prisoner. Dahl talked to dozens of government and military officials who had worked the case; he conferred with teams at the Pentagon and at Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa and with Army personnel in Germany, Afghanistan, and San Antonio. He read Bergdahls psychological evaluations and met with his doctors and the experts who debriefed him. He studied classified FBI analyses. He watched the proof-of-life videos filmed by the Haqqani Network in Pakistani safe houses and videos recorded by U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan and Germany after Bergdahls recovery. He spoke with officers at the United States Coast Guard, with whom Bergdahl had briefly attended basic training in 2006. He met with Bergdahls older sister, Sky, and her husband, Lieutenant Commander Michael Albrecht, an Annapolis graduate and naval aviator. He spoke by phone with Bergdahls parents in Idaho and also met Kim Dellacorva, the soldiers surrogate godmother. He chatted for hours with Bergdahls friends, twentysomethings working at coffee shops in Oregon and Idaho. He questioned the soldiers who went to Army basic training with him at Fort Benning, and he spoke with his company and battalion commanders from Afghanistan.