Bergdahl Had Idea He Was ‘Like Jason Bourne’

U.S. House Republicans accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress about its efforts to release five Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captive U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a report released Thursday, the same day it was announced the soldier’s case would be the topic of a popular podcast. “Suddenly, it really starts to sink in that I really did something bad. No, not bad. But serious”. “Serve&File_id=A94B3614-F4C4-45B0-B9B8-F9FE62857969″>report on President Obama’s swap of five Taliban detainees for Bowe Bergdahl, one former Guantanamo detainee took a bow this week as a new spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, who conducted an Army investigation after Bergdahl was recovered in 2014, said much the same thing at Bergdahl’s Article 32 hearing in September. It’s shocking to hear him describe details in what is ultimately still an active military court case, effectively handing evidence and ammunition to the prosecution.

The first season of Serial was downloaded over 100 million times and earned a Peabody Award.

“Doing what I did is me saying that I am like, I don’t know, Jason Bourne”, said Bergdahl in his interview with Boal. His first interviews are now on the podcast, “Serial”. After all, the season will, Koenig has already said, feature many, many soldiers and an examination of whether Bergdahl was right about his bosses.

“I don’t know what it was, but there I was in the open desert, and I’m not about to outrun a bunch of motorcycles, so I couldn’t do anything against, you know, six or seven guys with AK-47s”, Bergdahl said.

More quibbles: “Serial” apparently will not be interviewing Bergdahl itself, leaving it reliant on questions that were asked in a very different context and before the show reported out the story.

On leaving the base after midnight, he worries about the reception he’ll get once he reappears, and decides to try to get information on who was planting bombs in the area.

It was a decision he would relive during his next five years in Taliban captivity. They also said the DoD “wrongly used $988,400 from a wartime appropriations to facilitate the transfer”, said the report. “So, what are you going to do?'” That would have been a “bonus point”, he added, to mitigate “the hurricane of wrath that was going to hit me”.

His lawyer Eugene Fidell says politicians and would-be politicians have been using Bergdahl as a talking point to push their own agendas for months, a situation he described as creating “gale-force political winds”.

So he set off to gather intelligence and mimic a film idol: Jason Bourne.

In the first episode Sergant Bergdahl said he abandoned the base for two reasons – to draw attention to problems in the USA military, and to be a hero.

He talked about the night he walked away from his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was captured by the Taliban. He said “standing in an empty, dark room hurts – physically, but more than that”.

Evan Buetow, Fmr Army Sgt. and Bergdahl’s team leader, said, “I don’t really know if there’s anyone who can prove that soldiers died on a directed mission to find Bergdahl”.

Bergdahl is charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with one count of Article 85, “Desertion with Intent to Shirk Important or Hazardous Duty”, and one count of Article 99, “Misbehavior Before The Enemy by Endangering the Safety of a Command, Unit or Place”.