Pod Save the World - Assange arrested, Bernie's foreign policy, Bowe Bergdahl and Afghanistan

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Tommy and Ben discuss the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Bernie's foreign policy, potential war with Iran and the arrest of Chinese scholars. Then J Street's Yael Patir explains the state of liberal political parties in Israel. Then author and Army veteran Matt Farwell joins to discuss Bowe Bergdahl and the war in Afghanistan.

Welcome to Pod Save the World. We have a packed show for you today. We got Julian Assange's arrest. The FBI expelling Chinese scholars. Yale Pateer of Jay Street will dial in from Israel to talk about the state of progressive political parties in Israel. We got Bernie's foreign policy vision, the Trump administration's potential pretext to attack Iran, upcoming elections, and then a conversation about Bobergdahl and Afghanistan with author Matt Farwell. Ben, a lot going on today. Yeah, wow. I'm excited. buckle up, world does. Buckle up, world does. Here we go. So I do think the lead story of the last week is that Ecuador has booted WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange out of its embassy in London after allowing him to have asylum for seven years. Assange was arrested by British authorities. It's likely he's going to be extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he worked with Chelsea Manning to crack a password on a DOD computer network. We all know what WikiLeaks is. They published millions of classified documents. We all, of course, remember them, helpfully releasing the DNC and Podesta emails back in 2016. So, Ben, I can't remember if this happened when I was there or if I had left.

But I know that, you know, the Obama Department of Justice debated whether or not to indict a songe. What do you remember from that debate? And what did you make of this decision to put this indictment forward? Well, you know, the debate under us, I always feel like we have to explain. how things worked in the distant past. Right. The White House didn't tell the Department of Justice what to pursue and what not to pursue. So, you know, I think DOJ just felt like they, under us, didn't have a determination to indict Assange and pursue his extradition.

He obviously was facing legal trouble in European countries, which is what ended up causing him to flee into the arms of the Ecuadorian embassy for asylum. You know, I will say that looking at the, you have to separate out what's interesting about this indictment is they indict him on the manning piece of it. But there's like other crimes that I have to imagine prosecutors would be interested in, including the 2016 election and the work with Russia to potentially hack into the DNC and other emails and to release those and to, you interfere in that way in our election. So I guess the first thing that was interesting is that they're focused on this 2010 collaboration with Manning. I think there's this broader question of what is criminal conduct and what is just odious conduct. And there I think it's going to be an interesting question as to, you know, raises a lot of ethical questions about what is journalism and what isn't, what is criminal and what isn't.

I will tell you where I am on the first of those questions, which is this is not journalism. And I feel really strongly about this. You know, some people kind of get on their high horse and say, well, we have to defend Assange because he's a transparency activist. No, Julian Assange is essentially been operating in least in recent years as an extension of Russian intelligence. His motivation behind what he's doing is not transnational.

transparency. It's not transparency for transparency's sake. It's on behalf of a very specific agenda, which is the Russian government's agenda to interfere in our election, to elect Donald Trump, and to sow division in our politics. And, you know, if you were a normal investigative journalist and Russia came to you with hacked information and said, here you go, put this in your newspaper, I think just about every U.S. news outlet would not do that. I don't know why it's any different if it's through the intermediary of Julian Assange. If he's still operating as a vessel for Russian stolen information, why, if it's Julian Assange and not some Russian guy who works for the FSB,

is that journalism? So on the first question, I really think it's a mistake to put our chips onto Julian Assange. just some kind of emblem of, you know, free speech and journalistic integrity here. This is not a guy who's an investigative journalist. This is a guy who's thrown his lot in with the Russian government, which is a government that stands against the values of the free press. On the criminal question, I think the legal system is just going to have to run this course and see, you know, what the determination is as to whether or not his hacking constituted

criminal conduct. I'm not really able to make that judgment. Yeah, I mean, so Holder, when he's talked about this, Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General, when he's talked about this publicly since leaving government, basically said they were worried that if they indicted Assange for published and classified materials, that might mean that they would then have to go after the New York Times or other news outlets that publish them. So that's sort of the background in the context. I mean, as you know, they're going after this specific collaboration with Chelsea Manning,

who was in the military at the time and leaked a whole bunch of cables and other U.S. government classified materials to Assange. They can add more charges in the future if they get them back over here. But the point, you know, it does seem like they've made this charge very specific because they're trying to make an argument that this was not normal journalism of like publishing information. This would be like telling someone how to break into a vault where the classified documents are and then helping them. So it's a, a conspiracy to get this information. This, there was a similar example of this in, I think 2010 with James Rosen, who was a Fox News

guy, who, you know, was sort of a bumbling idiot about his efforts to solicit classified information from an analyst in the State Department about North Korea and encouraged him to do all these silly cloak and dagger things to meet him to relay the information. And he got indicted as a co-conspirator, which was clearly a mistake and not something that was necessary in any way in this instance, nor should we be criminalizing journalism. But that's the, that's the key thing to understand is that, you know, it's the conspiracy to get more information that they're, they're hanging this indictment on. Well, and I guess here's the, here's the core question. It's the hacking, right? So, you know,

most of us would think if there's some dogged investigative journalist who is talking to government officials and those government officials maybe share secrets or if he's reporting in a war zone and learn sensitive things, or he roots out, you know, corruption by pouring through the books, and, you know, that that is investigative journalism. And even if it crosses over into secret spaces, there's a value in that. The question is whether breaking into your computer and stealing your personal information is journalism or not. And look, we've had some cases where, you know, they were hacking and, you know, they were hacking,

into people's voicemails, you know, celebrities. The Murdox specifically. The UK hacked into, and I think people are- Their news outlets. Yeah, so the Murdox had some tabloid papers that hacked into voicemails and then published it in their tabloids, and people were uncomfortable with that.

I think that's a pretty fair line to set, right? Which is that would you guys want the New York Times or Fox News to be able to hack into your email and report on it? I think that there should be an expectation of some amount of privacy. And for government secrecy, it's obviously a different set of questions, but, you know, similar line being crossed. So I do think it's valid to suggest that there's a difference between kind of dogged, interviewing, you know, document review, et cetera, versus just somebody, you know, hacking into somebody's system. releasing that because, you know, that can very quickly turn into not a transparency interest,

but again, rather a punitive interest to hurt somebody or to serve the agenda of a foreign government. If we are signaling, put it this way, if we are signaling that it is protected, it's okay to hack something as long as it's given to a journalist. That is just a massive blinking green light to Russia or China or anybody else. But isn't Manning being in jail for a long time? doesn't it isn't already not a signal that we're giving permission right i mean they're they're saying that assange that manning asked assange to help him crack some other password that might have helped uh manning disguise her stealing a various classified materials i don't know that they were

successful but don't you think it's punitive to have manning in jail yeah it is sent a some message to you know people who signed a pledge not to release classified information it is and and that's fairly clear cut like she was violating the terms of her source service, essentially, in the U.S. government. I think what's so hard about this is WikiLeaks itself. What is WikiLeaks? You know, if WikiLeaks was the New York Times, as Eric Holder said, I think we would all be very uncomfortable with the idea that if the New York Times published something, like they published the hacked emails from John Podesta. I don't think anybody's suggesting that the editors of the New York Times should go to prison for that. The question is,

if you have some organization like this, it is kind of in between, you know, it's not a journalistic entity. It's not a newspaper. It's not a, it's not even a, you're really a media outlet. It's just an organization that the trades on stolen material. You know, how do you treat that? And I think we have to figure that out. And I don't, you know, I think that's a policy conversation and a legal conversation. I would argue that, again, if you are creating an incentive structure where you're saying to any hacker out there, that you will have the same kind of First Amendment-type protections that journalists do, if you just feel like, you know, stealing other people's information or stealing the government's information or, you know, working in collaboration

with the foreign adversary like Russia to do so that you'll be protected, you know, that will create huge problems because that will, again, essentially legalize, normalize the theft of information by anybody. Yeah, I can see the slippery-sselp argument being complicated in that direction. And you also see the other direction. Yeah, this is going to be a tough one. So, again, Interestingly, Ecuador went on a full PR offensive against Assange. They accused him of braiding embassy guards. He's like putting shit on the wall. He accused him it was smearing poop on the wall, so that's charming.

Most notably, President Moreno of Ecuador said that Assange had turned the embassy into center for spying and his team blames WikiLeaks for leaking damaging photos of Moreno and his family. I can't tell if I should buy these claims or if you're just obviously going to wage a PR campaign against Assange in this instance of your Ecuador to sort of blunt criticism of decision to turn him over to British authorities? I mean, I think that they're probably both true. You know, Julian Assange is an eccentric guy, and he was already before he went into that embassy, and I can't imagine what somebody becomes like when they're living inside a contained space like that for years.

And it certainly is the case that, you know, Assange traffics with some really shady characters, including Russian intelligence. And so the idea that he might, it's perfectly in character for him that he would kind of weaponize those contacts and try to blackmail Ecuador and say, you know, I'll use my context to inflict damage upon you if you don't protect me. I could see that. I can obviously independently verify it. It's also the case that they probably just wanted it out under this. What people need to remember is when Ecuador took him in, they had this anti-American president and Raphael Correa, who was kind of part of the block with Maduro and the Cubans and some other Latin American leftists. And so this was

just a way for them to stick it to the United States. Now we've got this other president who comes in. He didn't give Assange this protection. He inherited it. And he's probably just looking to get this off his plate. Not so much as a reward to us. But can you imagine having to go to fucking work at the embassy every day? And there's this kind of nutcase. This is hacker skateboarding through the halls. Hacker Russian intel guys skateboarding around. And, and, and, and, and, and, making contact of all kinds of shady characters, you would want him out of your home as well. Yeah, I agree with that.

This whole thing, it's so complicated and so unsatisfying. I was thinking about it a lot over the weekend that obviously if you sign a pledged not to release classified information, that you can't get around that. But I also constantly think about how over classified everything was in government and how when you're tried for these charges,

is the government gets to decide just how bad the charges will be, right? Because the government determines if it's code word level, top secret, secret. And there's no independent review of whether that's ridiculous or not, or whether it's top secret information that you could also find in the newspaper. I can think of 15 examples of that happening. And then you get tried and you could get locked away for a very long time with no way to adjudicate this process. I think there should be some classification reform from both sides. Look, the government overclassifies things.

I think that there are the question of motivation matters. You know, my view of Julian Assange changed, you know, after the dump of all the cables, right? So thousands of thousands of diplomatic cables that Chelsea Manning gave to Manning, the Manning then leaked, working with the Times and Der Spiegel and the Guardian, but also just releasing some of this on their own. you know, I'll never forget being in, well, I won't name a foreign country and talking to a U.S. diplomat who was complaining about this. And I said, well, give me an example of why.

And he said, he had been in Canada at the time of the dump of the cables. Let's get into the context. Because we worked with the New York Times, a bunch of news outlets, to redact names in cables before they were published. Assange saw that happening, got pissed off. And he said, fuck it. I'm just dumping them all. I'm just dumping them all. I'm just dumping them all.

On the internet. That's right. And he said, look, there was this Canadian, there's this person who worked with the embassy, our embassy, the U.S. embassy in Canada, who was from the indigenous population there and kind of used to come in and talk about, here are the troublemakers who are engaged in drug trafficking or what have you, criminality on, you know, in our community. And when this guy's name was published in one of these cables, the diplomat I was talking to said that he just disappeared. And he said, like, I don't know what happened to that guy. I don't know if he had to flee. I don't know if he was killed.

I don't know. And so then I started to ask around. And this was happening around the world because essentially, if you're in, you know, let's say you're in Uzbekistan, like an authoritarian country, and you're meeting with civil society. You're the embassy. And then suddenly the cables leaked that lists all the civil society activists who came into the embassy to report corruption by the government. Those people's lives are literally at risk.

And I know people got tired of hearing this talking point of like, this is putting people labels, laws of risk. But put aside even the American personnel, right, if you care about human rights, isn't it not a bad thing if we are giving the blueprints to every authoritarian government in the world as to which civil society activists are reporting which information in that country and so that you can then go roll them up? And so a responsible news organization like the New York Times would review these cables and would separate out how to convey the news in them from information that would endanger people's lives. And WikiLeaks just didn't do that.

And so for me, their motivation wasn't, again, transparency. Their motivation was to just embarrass the United States and the United States government. And even, by the way, if you're not a big fan of the U.S. foreign policy of the United States government, that's just a different motivation than a journalist wanting to shine a light on abuse or corruption. And it's something that we have to reckon with that it endangers people's lives. And of course Russia likes that kind of thing. Because Russia, as much as anybody else, wants the blueprints for, you know, how civil society is operating around the world and how democratic activists are operating around the world. And so to me, this is why it's so important to say there's a difference between a news outlet that's going to do the actual work of separating out the news from what can be harmful and something like WikiLeaks where this guy just wants to be the center of attention and frankly probably allowed his organization to be taken over in a way by Russia.

to service Russia's very anti-democratic ends. Yeah. I think it's notable that the document dump of all the cables that Assange did, I think ultimately lost him a lot of defenders who were, you know, I think like people like Edward Snowden to criticize that decision. So it was, it was... Even Snowden, you know, who I've had my beef with, you know, tried to apply some tests to the information that was going to get out so as to protect

individual lives. I mean, this is not... If you're an Afghan guy, you're an Afghan farmer talking to the DEA about poppy fields, right, like, you shouldn't be at risk. Yeah. All right, when we come back,

we are going to talk about the state of the progressive movement in Israeli politics. On the line, all the way from Tel Aviv is Yail Patir. She is J Street's Israel director and a Israeli progressive activist. Thank you so much for joining the show. I know it's late over there.

Oh, I'm really happy to join. Thanks for having. me. Appreciate it. So, as you know, B.B. Netanyahu just won re-election. It's an astounding fifth term in office. The Lycoup did very well. They won 36 seats. So now Bibi has to build a coalition with members of other political parties, likely with right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties to get a majority in the Knesset, but it seems like he's going to be able to do that. The thing we keep hearing is that early reports say that Netanyahu's real goal is building an indictment-proof coalition. What does that mean? Well, basically what it means is that if he's going to go to trial, which is something we will know in the coming months, he will be able to pass legislation through a coalition that will be committed to passing legislation that would basically protect him from losing his seat in case of an indictment.

he can actually, according to the law today, Netanyahu can undergo trial while still being prime minister. He doesn't have to leave his post, but if indicted he has to, but he can change the law in a way that will say, as long as he's sitting prime minister, he can remain in office. So, yeah, you know, as an American progressive,

You know, we obviously have been dealing with the, you know, situation of being in the opposition, of seeing a lot of things we care about, either discarded or attacked by, you know, the government. And I'm wondering just kind of how you would describe the mood of Israeli civil society, certainly the progressive types of activists and organizations you've worked with. You've also helped promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Given this Netanyahu agenda that has now had five, you know, terms to saturate in Israeli politics, you know, we see the threat to annex West Bank settlements. We see attacks on media opponents of Netanyahu.

We see this effort that you just spoke about to kind of subvert accountability. What is this strategy for combating? that and for trying to keep alive some of the causes that progressive activists like yourself have worked for in Israel? Good question. So first of all, I mean, I want to say, and I've been saying welcome to the club for the past few years. It's not a nice club to be in. But I think that, you know, the one good thing about it is that you, that American progressives can understand Israeli progress. better than they used to. And as somebody who works for an American organization and get to talk to a lot of Americans and host them in the region,

there's definitely, I think, more of an understanding both of what we have been facing in these last five terms or more so in the last 10 years of Netanyahu, but also about the debates that we have within our camp for how to, to, to, address and how to fight back. And those are evolving, I think, throughout the years. It's important when looking at the results and out our political map to understand two things. One is that we have basically three groups, if you put aside the ultra-Orthodox. We have the self-identified right, center, and left. where, and the center left are bundled together in a center-left block,

which is the second thing that when looking at the Israeli political map, you have to look at two blocks, the center left and the right. And if you look at the results of the last election, in fact, the blocks remain the same. So while Netanyahu indeed when he got more seats for his party, in fact, his block lost two seats and got about 40,000 votes less. So that's just in terms of having the numbers and thinking about what kind of, that it wasn't that big of a win, perhaps, as some see it.

And I think when looking at what we need to do, it's clear that today the center alternative is the stronger argument that says the public is moving to the right, and therefore we need to peel off some votes from the right, and we need to talk in a language that is basically looking at the center, and that's what we saw in this big new party that we had in the last election. Indeed, people voted for an alternative to Netanyahu, but it was not, there wasn't any policy there or any ideas. It was just not having Netanyahu. And what progresses like me are offering is that we're saying we need to put ideas on the table.

We need to propose a different vision for Israel, and we need to broaden our coalition. And our best chance of broadening the coalition is with the Arab people. citizens of Israel or the Palestinian citizens of Israel that are 20% of the population. And one of the good news out of this election is that on the less, the smallest Zionist left party, Merets, actually managed to keep its seats and be in the Knesset this round because of the Arab voters, 30% of their vote, which is unprecedented. And it's just a proof that there are opportunities for the left to expand. And they are at the heart of it, I think, is the partnership between Israeli Jews and Arabs. You're exactly right. I mean, we need to look at

this in terms of blocks, and that's important in terms of coalition building. But it is interesting to see what's happened to the center-left Labor Party. because it was such a force in Israeli politics for, you know, 50 years. But I don't believe that they've had a prime minister since 1999. I believe labor got like six seats in the Knesset this time around. What's happened to labor? And is there an alternative that progresses are going to instead of labor? Or is the country moving to the right?

Like, what do you make of it? So exactly, as I said, there is, we have a strong center. And the center is where people are going from, from labor because they want an alternative to Netanyahu. And the center is a block today that offers an alternative. And it's clear, I think, today for everybody definitely after these elections, that the government that will be an alternative to the Netanyahu government will not be formed by labor.

And it will not be formed by the left as it used to be. It will be formed by the center. And the center will partner with the left parties and it has to also partner with the Arab parties in order to be a viable alternative. Following up on that, Yale, I know you worked for the Shimon Peres Center. And I was with President Obama at Shimon Perra's funeral in 2016. and you couldn't help but feel like the passing of Shimon Perez was also the kind of passing of a certain generation of Israeli leader, you know, that Americans had come to know. Perez, Rabin, in a way, Goldemeyer, you know, the people who built Israel, but who also then,

after winning the wars, tried to make peace and tried to reach out to Palestinians. And Netanyahu, in many ways, has been the bridge. to a different kind of Israeli politics that is left behind that generation. And I'm just wondering where you think the leadership and the vision is going to come from. We've talked about blocks and political strategy, but you also need leadership and you also need individuals who step forward and could put forward that type of vision. You know, what is the, what comes after the Shimon Peres of this world in Israel? And how can a leader in Israel of 2019 with the changing demographics and the changing politics,

you know, kind of build on the legacy of those Israeli leaders that so many Americans came to admire that predated Netanyahu? I mean, that's probably, you know, the million-dollar question. I will highlight again that that leader will probably be somebody that currently exist or somebody that we don't know of yet and is going to come out. And it probably will be somebody that comes from the center, but he or she will be heavily pushed by the left and by the ideas that the progressives will put forward. And it has to be a very clear, it has to be a very,

clear agenda and it has to provide an alternative to the to the current we can call it status quo um separationalist um racist uh regime that that we currently have um there's there's a lot of ideas out there they're not being pushed by the political leadership because the political leadership is is is very very weak and i think that there is a generation that is coming up and that will be pushing for those ideas if it's separation of, in our case, synagogues and state, if it's talking more clearly against the occupation about the price that the Israeli society is paying about the immoral policies that we have towards Palestinians. it's again how to to have equality how to include the different minorities that we have and so on

and there's a lot of you know messaging and stuff that you both know are experts on on on how to package this but I think the push will come it's not you know also Shimon Peres in a way was the man that came with the ideas, and he was able to push Rabin, who wasn't where Shimon Peres was, but to follow the policy that Shimon Peres in a way pushed for. And that's the kind of the dynamic that we need in Israeli politics. And I want to also throw the ball into your court

and to say that one of the things that has made the right in Israel so powerful in Netsaliao is the same. support that he's getting from the U.S. Yeah. Well, and what do you... The massive support. Well, and what, so what would you tell, you know, there's a lot of Democrats and probably a lot of our listeners who are really concerned about the direction in Israel, the potential

for an annexation of settlements in the West Bank, essentially the de facto killing off of the two-state solution. What would you say to Americans, and you meet with some of them, about the ways for the U.S. and the Democratic Party in the United States to apply pressure on the Israeli government or to more directly support Palestinian aspirations? What's the toolbox that you think Americans should be using that we have not yet used to actually try to push Israel

in the direction of ending the occupation and enabling the emergence of a Palestinian state? So I would say, first of all, that, you know, still believe the change in everything, Israel comes from within, and there are people in Israel, like me and others, that are working on that change, and we need to be supported. Understand that we're working against very strong powers on the right that are receiving American support, definitely now from the president, who's basically allowing Netanyahu to promote his vision of killing the possibility of their being a Palestinian state. And so look in two ways in which that support can be given politically and in other ways.

This is number one. Number two, and this is something that is happening, and I'm happy to see happening, is that there has to be a conversation about the U.S.-Israel relationships. Israel needs to pay a price for the policies that it conduct. Definitely, if there are not within the self-interest of safeguarding a Jewish and democratic state and promoting the two-state solution and the end of the occupation. I can't, you know, give you the exact tools that are in that toolbox when it comes to both blocking Israeli attempts to promote annexation, to harm Palestinian human rights and so on. Or what are the price that Israel can be, that Israel will need to pay.

But there need to be a conversation about that. And I think that conversation is happening within the Democratic Party. And I encourage it to happen more. and we need to hear from Democratic candidates what they think about it and expand, expand the possibilities. And it's not something that didn't happen in the past, both with Democrats and with Republicans. There was disagreement between the government, and there were different tools to work through these disagreements. Agreed. Well, Yale, thank you so much for talking to us today.

and good luck. Keep up the good work. We're doing the same thing over here, so we're with you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's impressive what you do. And I remember meeting with some amazing Israeli progressive organizations that were defending human rights in Israel and trying to hold the government accountable in a very difficult situation. So really admire what you guys are doing. Thank you.

All right. Let's talk some 2020, Ben. This week, the New Yorker published an interesting piece on Bernie's foreign policy vision. The peace talks about Yemen, Venezuela, the need to rebalance U.S. support for Iran and Saudi Arabia. That was particularly interesting. He talks about his contempt for the current political leadership in Israel and in Palestine. And he also talks about getting tougher on the Israeli government if they continue this rightward drift. But he stopped short at being specific about whether he'd consider withholding military aid or any other punitive steps.

But I mean, I guess what I liked about it was Bernie's contempt for the foreign policy, establishment. You saw this with Obama. Frankly, you see it now with Trump. Interestingly, the author, Ben Wallace-Wellis, who's a really very smart reporter at the New Yorker believes that the major difference between Bernie and Obama's foreign policy vision is that Bernie's more optimistic. I didn't see that coming. I don't know. I had to say, like, this piece got me excited about Bernie's foreign policy. He's clearly thinking hard about a lot of important issues surrounding himself with smart advisors, like Matt Duss, who we both know. I mean, it was impressive. Yeah, I just, I just, say on the optimism point, we were very optimistic before we came into power, too. Yeah,

that's right. There's something about the eight years in the White House that can grind some of the optimism out of it. Not all of it, though. I mean, the Iran deal is optimistic, Paris Accords is optimistic. Cuba opening's optimistic. But I think what's really telling about this is that if you look at the contrast between Bernie's 2016 campaign and 2020 campaign, one of the most striking areas is foreign policy. Like in 2016, it was an afterthought. I mean, Bernie was running to advocate a set of domestic policies that he cared a lot about, you know, healthcare and other things. He's done the work. I mean, where Bernie should get some credit is, you know, he brought on Matt Duss, a really talented guy to be a Senate of foreign policy advisor.

He's given a series of speeches over the last four years on these topics. He has been leaving force behind the resolution to withdraw all U.S. support for the war in Yemen. So we should say this isn't just a guy who, you know, put together a fact sheet. running for president. And he has a coherent worldview. And the worldview is that we need to end the forever war. We need to terminate the authorizations for this kind of open-ended war. We need to rethink dramatically our relationship with Saudi Arabia and our involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts. We need to have some humility when it comes to regime change policies like the Trump administration is pursuing in Venezuela, you know, and that we need to offer an alternative vision.

where we're working with activists around the world to stand up to authoritarianism and to promote you know democratic values by living them ourselves right and you don't need to agree with every aspect of Bernie's foreign policy but but it's it's a it's a clear and coherent worldview um that would definitively end the chapter the post 9-11 chapter that we've been in um of essentially a number of open-ended wars uh in the Middle East and diminish the role of terrorism in our farm policy and elevate issues like climate change and other things. And so to me, Bernie should at a minimum get some credit for having done the work to prepare this flank of his campaign as he heads into another election. Yeah, I agree. I think he deserves a lot of credit for

putting in the work. So is Elizabeth Warren. She's given a major speech where she talks about inequality, but also the nuclear stockpile and also Afghanistan. But let's unpack one of the things that Bernie was talking about, about sort of getting past the 9-11 era. regarding the authorization for the use of military force. So there was a recent hearing where Senator Rand Paul asked the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if he believes that the 2001 AUMF, that was the thing we passed right after 9-11, that every war has been based on ever since. Paul pressed them on whether the 01 AUMF gives the Trump administration the authority

to declare war with Iran. And frighteningly, Pompeo just, he wouldn't say no. He parsed it. He said, well, there's a legal question. about the AUMF that I defer to lawyers, but there's a factual matter about Iran's connections to al-Qaeda. He really hammered home. And this comes on the heels,

and Paul mentioned this, two of them, designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist organization. So my ears perked up, Rand Paul's ears perked up. I think we need to watch this pretty closely. Yeah, no, we do. And I've been watching this and been worried about it.

And first of all, you know, we tried to unpack this and unwind this in the Obama administration. We try to get a new AUMMFF. for ISIS. There was time bound and geography bound, so it wasn't open-ended. Congress didn't want to take that up. We would have even repealed and tried to replace the 2001 AUMF if we could have, but Congress had no interest in that. So I'm glad Bernie's raising it. On this question, you've seen Pompeo and Bolton lean into this Al-Qaeda connection, and it has felt for some time like they were beginning to lay a pretext that if we end up in a war with Iran, that the

authorization that they will use to make that legal is the 2002 authorization. Do you mean no one? Sorry. Oh, yeah. Now, let's step back and just think about how fucking crazy this is. We went to war in Iraq, right? In part, now, they got an authorization. But remember, the same people were trying to pump up that war by saying there was a connection

between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, which didn't exist, right? the fact that, you know, we like to use the word trope now in our politics, the fact that this Al-Qaeda trope fucking over a decade later is being used to lay a pretext for war next door to Iraq in Iran is insane. And like speaks to the absolute incapacity of any one of these fuckers to learn a single lesson from Iraq. The only lesson they learn from Iraq is that it works. The only lesson that these guys learn from Iraq is to say, oh, what we'll do.

Remember Muhammad Otto was supposed to be meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague? No, it didn't happen. They're saying this on fucking Sunday shows. That's not even get into their fixation on Sunday shows and their misinformation in saying that the smoking gun could be a mushroom crowd and saying that Muhammad Adda's meeting with Iraqi intelligence. Special aluminum tubes. Aluminum tubes.

And now we fast forward. And let's just like, first the facts. Iran is a Shia country, right? Right. Well, and let me offer a major data point. Okay. The New America think tank went through all these documents that were found in Bin Laden's compound after we waxed him.

Yes. And they cast out on any close ties or cooperations between Iran and al-Qaeda. We have new evidence that she just is wrong. And like the Iranians are on the opposite side of this divide in the Islamic world. They are Shia and al-Qaeda is a Sunni organization. And so for them to be trying to cobble together some relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda to justify, think about how crazy this would be. Think about how crazy this would be.

The original AUMF passed after 9-11 was for us to go after al-Qaeda and associated forces, the people responsible for 9-11. Think about how crazy it would be to go to war with Iran 20 years later. Not a good idea. Saying that what they are an associated force of al-Qaeda, that the Iranian government is something like all the caveats that we always have to say about Iran being a bad actor and Iran doing bad things, this ain't it, chief. You know, like, this is not, this is not the, like the, if they, if John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump believe that this nation should go to war with Iran, then they have to put forward the reason for that war. Is it, is it the Iranian nuclear program?

Is it something the Iranians are doing the region? Let them make that case to Congress and let them get authorization. If they don't, this war is illegal. And Congress needs to say that a war that is not authorized by Congress against Iran will be seen as illegal. and Congress won't support it. And Congress, frankly, shouldn't fund it. Yeah.

And it can't be because some Al-Qaeda guy lived in Iran for a few years. Or there was some- Al-Qaeda guys in prison that they released from prison. And so because they release them from prison, they're an associate of al-Q. And like you said, the IRGC has funded all kinds of militia groups in Iraq. Hizbo, bad guys. Yeah, they funded Hesbollah. There's been all sorts of militia.

But then make that case. Make that case. They're not al-Qaeda. Don't do this legal gymnastics here. It is. It was great. Credit to Rand Paul for calling out this bullshit. Yeah, because you could see this bullshit coming a mile away, and everybody should pay attention. It's in Congress. Democrats in Congress should say right now that if a war is not authorized by Congress of Iran, then it's an illegal war.

Agreed. Switching gears a little bit. So the Times have this piece this week that caught my eye about the FBI preventing Chinese scholars from visiting the U.S. because of concerns over spying. Again, obviously, we all know that China's real threat when it comes to espionage. they're especially bad about stealing intellectual property. So I'm not minimizing the risk here. But this policy seemed completely self-defeating because a lot of the scholars in this piece were described as people who care about the U.S.

who understand U.S. values. And they can go back and explain U.S. thinking to the Chinese government and maybe prevent misunderstandings because you know, you do worry about an entire generation of young Chinese military members, for example, who think we are this distant evil empire and have no, you know, actual firsthand understanding. of what's going on. Ben, you worked on a ton of these cultural student academic exchange programs at the White House. Why was that such an important tool to forging better relations between us in other countries? Well, the first point is that in any foreign exchange program, when we're bringing

foreigners to the United States, either on a U.S. government program or on a university exchange, like some of these people are going to end up being like the prime ministers of countries, diplomats for countries, business leaders in countries. We've benefited for decades. from the fact that a lot of the people who ran a lot of the other countries in the world and businesses had studied here and had relationships here and had goodwill built up from their time here. And that proved to be a huge and tangible asset for our foreign policy. And I often used to think in the Obama administration as these people would cycle through, this could end up being like the most important thing we do.

Because if we're helping to expose young people to democratic values and to relationships, with ordinary Americans, this could pay dividends for decades to come as these people move up the ladders in their own society, right? That's the most obvious point to me. Second, there's frankly just an economic benefit, you know, of having students come here, of having exchange students come here. That's all money coming into our economy and money coming to our universities. That's making us better. Sometimes we're getting the best and brightest from these countries doing research in the United States. And I'll tell you the two things that worry me. If we cut this off, you know where that's going to go. It's going to go to

China, right? And you already see this in other parts of the world. More and more foreign students are not coming to the United States because they're scared of Steve Miller and they're going to China instead. Do we really want to see the next generation of leaders from Africa and Latin America and Europe studying in China? And just think about how that's going to color their worldview. And just think about how that's going to color their orientation. We could be like playing ourselves out of the superpower game here by shutting the door to people. And on the China-specific piece, you know, look, if someone's here and we have reason to believe they're spying, sure, kick them out. But if we just start saying we don't want certain types of people here,

doing certain types of work, that's a very slippery slope. Yeah. Because suddenly, you know, you're going to have researchers who don't want to come here. You're going to have Chinese who don't want to come here. You're going to have a sorting out of who can come to the United States and who can go to China. You see the Chinese already reciprocating, kicking out, you know, U.S. business people potentially, just like they've been detaining Canadians after we detain the Huawei person. And we could end up in a real Cold War situation where essentially we're tearing down the bridges between our societies that are necessary to avoid conflict. And that's going to make the next 20 or 30 years a much more dangerous thing. So this may seem like a small story,

but if this is really our approach and our orientation to both China and the kind of foreign exchanges generally, we're going to disarm ourselves from like our most profound source of influence, which is our own example. Yeah, small story here. I'm sure it's front page news. The U.S. is just booting out a bunch of tweed jacket wearing, you know, fuzzy, friendly the academics. And again, if one is the way they'll spin it. And if one of these academics is a spy, then kick him out. But you don't just kind of do it, you know, writ large.

And mess. Last question for you, and it's the most open one of the day. So we got a bunch of major elections coming up this year. India votes in April and in May because it takes like five weeks to deal with 900 million voters, which is just a crazy thing to even imagine how they even conduct elections. Indonesia votes the day this pot is released. Afghanistan goes to the polls on April 20th. Anything you're worried about watching for makes you hopeful?

Well, I think the general point is that we've talked about this contest in the world between authoritarianism and democracy. And there are a number of elections this year that will put some of this to the test. In Indonesia, you have a relatively democratic and non-corrupt leader running for reelection against kind of a military guy who represents kind of the older corrupt establishment. It looks like the current president, Chacoa, is likely to win. I think that's generally a good thing. But we should watch. This is the world's largest Muslim majority country. Over 200 million people.

We wanted to continue to evolve into a more stable democracy. India, Modi has practiced this fairly hardline brand of Hindu nationals politics. He won an outright majority last time. Even if he doesn't lose this election, I think it would be healthy for there to be more competition within India so that it doesn't look like there's a majority. this kind of growing Hindu nationalist movement that is overtaking the country's politics. So I think the important thing to watch in India is not just whether or not Modi wins,

but how much he wins by, and whether it feels like there's a competitive democracy in India because we want that in a country of a billion people. We don't want to see it kind of drift in a hardline direction in a nationalist direction like a lot of other countries are. Canada, we have one later this year where Trudeau has been in trouble. For all the flaws exposed in the recent scandal, I still think losing one of the world's few remaining progressive leaders in the West, at least,

to a pretty hardline right-wing Canadian party that is kind of against action on climate change. That would be bad. So I think Canada is a good litmus test as well. And then lastly, Afghanistan, Tommy, we've been through the last two Afghanistan elections, were hugely destabilizing. The 2009 one in which was massive amounts of fraud led to violence, diminished Karzai. The last one in which neither side really accepted that the other side had lost, and we had to kind of broker a unity government. People should watch this election because if this election in Afghanistan goes off the rails, at the same time that the administration is trying to negotiate something with the Taliban, you could see things really fall apart in Afghanistan.

So what we should be rooting for there is just a clear result that doesn't throw the country into even further chaos. Yeah. If you had a contested election results and then, you know, a declining security situation, it makes the peace talks harder and makes getting our guys out of there harder. It's a mess. And then in Canada, I mean, the other thing I've been watching is, you know, the Canadian right has been increasingly flirting with the same alt-right forces that we have had to deal with for the last couple of years here. And it's a real problem.

Yeah. It's a real problem. They don't have Fox News up there, so that's a good start. But, I mean, there's plenty of bad news. No, I think people should keep it now in Canada. We tend to think of it as our more irrational, you know, cousin to the north. And, you know, they're mild-mannered and they're friendly. And they are.

They're lovely people of Canadians. But the right-wing Canada is in bed with some of the same forces that we've seen sloshing around in the U.S. and the UK with Brexit. You know, you see like a more aggressive right-wing media. you see more aggressive resistance action against climate change. You see kind of more personalized, nasty brand of politics emanating from the right there. So, you know, a victory for the right in Canada would kind of send a message that progressive politics is in the retreat everywhere, you know, even in the north. So that's worth watching.

And our world is in Canada, you know, need to need to not be complacent in this election. Trouble in Westeros. We need the north to stay stable. Okay. When we come back, I'll have my conversation about Afghanistan and Bo Bergdahl with author Matt Farwell. This is a special day for me because I get to welcome my friend Matt Farwell to Crooked Media HQ. You just met the dog. I did. I met my puppy. He's the author of a new book, American Cypher, which chronicles the story of Bo Bergdahl, who was held captive by the Taliban for five years. But it also really tells the broader story of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and it is a fantastic book. I highly recommend you buy it and you read it if you want to understand what actually happened because there's

a lot of bad information out there. Matt, it's great to have you. Thank you. And thanks for the kind words about the book. I really appreciate that. Well, it's true. I mean, first of all, the war has been going on for so long that it's easy to forget the history. For example, we used to arm and fund the guys we're now fighting, so that's not great. It's a blowback, you know? I mean, we know it happens. We just do it. it. Yeah, we know what happens. We could have ended the war before it started because the Taliban made us a peace offer in 2001.

You chronicled all of this. And second, I mean, the reporting about Bobo Erdal has been so egregiously wrong that, like, I worked on this issue in the White House. And I barely knew the full story until I read your book. Well, I mean, the reporting and the story was buried under many, many layers of bullshit. Yeah. And lies. Yeah. So, first question for you.

So you are, I think, also a uniquely credible person to tell this story because you actually served in Afghanistan, I believe you may have served in the same province as Bo Bergdorgetle? Yeah, I knew Yaya Kel and messed fairly well. You knew, so those are the... The places where Bergdahl walked off from. Yeah. And so when you hear about that, you're like, nobody walks off from that place. Like, that dude must have been crazy.

To be, just walk off in the middle of nowhere. It's not really in the middle of nowhere, though, because it's around a lot of kind of towns where you know there's a lot of Taliban activity. like, you know, safe towns. So let's just start with your service in the Army. Like, how long were you in Afghanistan? And what did you do? So I joined the Army.

I dropped out of college, joined the Army in 2005, deployed to Afghanistan as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division, 287 Catamounts in 2006. Was there for initially a 12-month tour. We got extended for four months on the last day. So we were there for like 16 months. They extended you on the last day? Dude, some of our guys were back in Fort Drum. Like, Alpha Company had got back to Fort Drum.

The wives, when the rear detachment commander, the wives and spouses, about rioted, he had to have MPs with them. Jesus. Like, it was not, yeah. Because doing foot patrols in Afghanistan is not a hard enough job. You have to completely jerk a bunch of people around and send them there for another four months. Well, I mean, it's important to wage counterinsurgency or something. All right. Let's start with a basic question that has a complicated answer. So who is Bo Bergdahl and why did he walk off his post in Afghanistan?

Okay. So Bo Bergdahl is a infantryman in First of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, which was in Afghanistan as Task Force Geronimo. And he's kind of a every man character, like a dude from Idaho from kind of a wealthy, like resort town. but he's a local, a townie. So sort of, you know, everyday dude who's a little bit weird, a little bit strange. But anybody who joins the infantry, I mean, you know, is a little bit strange, a little bit weird, right? Like, so one day, June 30th, 2009, he's been in Afghanistan for about five weeks, and he's just like, this sucks. I've had it. And he walks off.

So that trigger triggers something called a dust one. Right. Can you explain what that means? That's a duty status whereabouts unknown. A military acronym. The military has tons of acronyms. We're going to try and avoid as many of them as possible. I've been out of the Army for like nine years now.

I've forgotten quite a few, which is good. It's hard. They really drill them into your head. I bet. But it's basically, you know, an amber alert in a war zone. Okay. It's somebody's gone. We got to find this guy.

And so that, in reading the book, I was amazed at how much that one word means in terms of resources redeployed to one area of the country in terms of a bunch of soldiers suddenly doing far more high tempo searches and foot patrols for someone. I mean, it feels like it entirely shifts the focus of the war effort. It does and it doesn't, right? because what it does is it creates an unimaginably good pretext to do whatever the hell you want. Right. Right. It is the, you know, hey, I think I smell weed kind of excuse. We think there's an American in there.

You can pay an informant in Afghanistan money and he'll tell you anything. Right. So it becomes the excuse to do a more aggressive counterinsurgency like by killing everybody, strategy that both McChrystal and Flynn wanted to execute, but sort of couldn't because they were constrained by policy, right? So it means you can kick down doors faster, you can shoot a little easier. Yeah, you don't have to put an Afghan face on everything because you're trying to find an American, you know, no big deal.

You know he's probably in Pakistan within 48 hours, but you can stretch that out for a while because you're really not sure, you know? Yeah. You don't know exactly. Well, so I wanted to ask you about that because, so Bo walks off his base for reasons that were confusing. I mean, I think he was incredibly naive. I think there were leadership challenges at the base he was at, and he wanted to walk to the next base over and report on the people who he thought putting his friends at risk or something, right? Right.

And, I mean, guys in his unit had already gone to their first sergeant, gone to their chain of command and said, hey, there might be something off of this guy. I know before my unit deployed to Afghanistan, we put a guy out for mental health reasons. Really? Yeah, because you don't really like want to be sitting in a gun truck with a dude with an automatic weapon behind you. Right. It's like got some issues, right? Yeah. Beyond the issues we all have to join the infantry in the first place, right?

You want that. And you, and you guys, you know, in the book, you talked about how the military ultimately determined that Bergdahl had some mental health issues. I mean, he washed out of the Coast Guard. and then re-enlisted in the army. But, you know, after his, we'll get into his five years in captivity, but when he finally got home, they took a look at him and it sounded like he had some mental health issues that should probably kept them out.

Yeah, it probably should have been disqualifying. Yeah. Okay, so, you know, regardless, he walks off. There's this massive manhunt that we talked about, the Dust One. And, you know, I think a lot of people who are involved in the search for him were furious, incredibly frustrated, right? I mean, they were forced to search for him. Justifiably so.

I mean, if you're a service member who, there are U.S. service members who feel like their friends were killed or wounded because they had to search for Beau. Is that, is that accurate in your opinion? I mean, is it accurate that there are people who feel that their friends were killed and wounded because they had to search for Beau? That's accurate. Yeah. Is it accurate that people were, like, killed searching for Boe directly? No.

No. Right? There was no. mission that was a direct like go find bow or go recover bow where that was the number one thing on the like intelligence priorities list it was just sort of like underpinning everything it's just tacked on man it's it's it's like stateside an easy way to get a warrant right we think this you know person might be here and you kind of walk through in the book how most people who understood how kidnapping for ransom works or the taliban works knew that they would move him as fast as humanly possible from

Afghanistan across the border to Pakistan. And that the chain of command basically knew he'd been moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan within a few days, but continued this up-tempo search anyway, even though it might have been more dangerous to the guys doing the searching, even though it might have been enraging to the Afghan population that we were trying to win over. Well, that's the key question is maybe you want to enrage and terrify the Afghan population. So what do you make of the decision? I mean, is it just that when you have a guy missing, you have to just do everything you possibly can to find them, even if it... Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it, right?

Like, that's a big part of the soldierly mythos, a big part of, like, what we're trained, what we're, like, kind of programmed to do. It's hard for us to, like, leave a dude behind, right? Like, almost impossible. But that is totally understandable for you. But if you're a four-star general that is making... decisions about the course of the entire war, and you have intelligence that says, look, these searches are ultimately 99% likely to be futile. But what else are they yielding?

Yeah. Because, I mean, you're searching places that you know are, I mean, I know in that grid square cluster where they would be searching, there were hideouts for sub-governor, like shadow sub-governor and governor-level folks, right? So you are kind of taking the fight to the Taliban and Hakani infrastructure in the country. you're doing what the hardcore, like, killers want to do, right? And you have the perfect pretext for doing it. Right, right.

So when Bo was gone, they're quickly cropped up a whole bunch of rumors about why he might have walked off. Right. Now, it's important, I didn't realize until I read the book that a lot of the guys who were asked to search for him, I had to sign essentially non-disclosure agreements. They weren't a lot of talk about it. No, and they were scared to talk about it when Hastings and I did the, the Rolling Stone article in 2012. Yeah, you and Michael Hastings worked on a piece back in the day about Bo Bergdahl.

But so, but early on, like, there was this, there were reports that popped up that said he was a, Beau was a Taliban sympathizer, or maybe he left to go join the Taliban. Right. Is there any evidence for that? Is there any evidence for the claim, Mike Flynn made who listeners of the show probably know best as Trump's disgraced former national security advisor, but at the time was a top military intelligence official. He told...

He was about to become DIA director. He was about to become the boss boss. He told a report in 2009 that Bo was a jihadi. Was there any evidence of that? No.

No. No, I mean, there were, you know, anyone will sell a story, right? So I'm sure there was a story sold up the chain somewhere. But any credible evidence? No.

None of the people we talked to that had access to those sorts of things or that, you know, really seem to know about it, believe that to be the case. Including his debriefers, including the military that, like, kind of threw the book at him. You know, if they could have thrown any of that stuff at him, you better believe they would have. Yeah. Before we, I want to get into like how we got Boe back. But before we do, I do think it's worth just a little bit of get a sense for how he was treated in captivity because he was put through

hell. I mean, the Pentagon's joint personnel recovery agency divided into three categories. There was torture, abuse, and neglect. Can you give us kind of, without being too morbid, I guess, an overview of that treatment? No, I mean, and it's important to, like, not be, like, not be crass about the violence that was inflicted upon a human being, right? But, I mean, he was tortured. He was whipped, right? He was left in isolation. He was, he had physical illness, diarrhea, pretty much the whole time. So imagine there were all sorts of horrible, horrible things. And mostly, I mean, he was alone. And when you look at any of the studies, and I looked at all the POW studies,

captivity and isolation is the hardest thing to deal with. I mean, you think about the debate that we have back in the States about solitary confinement, right? And then you think about solitary confinement in a cage that you're chained to while you're shitting yourself constantly. And the only time people are coming in, they're being mean to you. Yeah. Right? You're not getting adequate food. Like, you don't know if anyone's coming.

You don't know what time it is. You don't know what day it is. It's hard for you to track movements of the sun. You are living mostly inside your mind. You're talking to God because if you're talking to God, you're not crazy. Yeah. Right? So that's five.

And that's a quote from Bo. Five years of his life. Yeah. That's a hard thing to, like, decompress from in any sort of normal state. and then to come back and be put on display the way that he was, I mean, that's a whole other thing to recover from, you know? Yeah. Well, so let's get into how we got Bo back.

I started working on this issue in the White House when I was going to see in 2012 because getting Bo back became a part of our efforts to start peace negotiations with the Taliban. So basically, we structured a series of these confident buildings test to see if the other party could deliver, to see if we could build trust. Basically, they were. The Taliban could open an office in Qatar from which to negotiate.

They would return Bo Bergdahl. And in exchange, we would send five aging Taliban guys from Gitmo back to... I mean, really, like, they've been... Three of them had already surrendered to the Americans

and were somewhat working with them in the same way, the same dudes that we let run the country were working with us, you know, Dostom and guys like that. Yeah. So, yeah, They're Taliban, but who made them Taliban, right?

We kind of threw them in jumpsuits and threw them in prison for that much time. So I want to get into what those guys are ultimately doing in a little bit. But so those confident steps like trading bow, sending those five guys from Gitmo back were seen as a way to get to a bigger peace agreement discussion. Ultimately, those talks blew up for a variety of reasons, including the fact that. Hardliners on both sides really did want talks. He's right. Right, that's right. I mean, the Afghan president, Hami Karzai, was tough to deal with.

So, look, part of the, part of the, part of the, what I would do. That's a generous way to put it, yeah. But part of the thing that I was always asked to do was, you know, we were trying to keep the negotiations around Bo out of the American press because there was a sense that if, you know, hardliners in the Taliban knew that he was part of the big peace deal, that they might then be more incentivized to kill him. I realize that in hindsight after reading the book, that's naive. They all knew damn well what was going on.

Right. It was to keep mistakes quiet and to keep a happy face. or nobody really gave a shit about and they could kind of keep going without having any sort of public repercussions. And POW creates pretty emotional resonance in the states, you know? Yeah. Well, look, but just to be clear, that wasn't why I was making those. No, I know. We were like in good faith trying to get, I didn't even know he'd walked off his base for a long time. No one told me he had. I didn't give a shit. I thought we were just trying to get our guy back. Yeah, it was a strange set of information pipelines.

Agreed on that one. But so, okay, fast forward to 2014. The broader peace deal blows up, but in 2014, the White House decides to go ahead with the prisoner exchange anyway, despite the sort of broader context. So we get Bo back, you know, a helicopter lands in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan. He is rushed into the thing. The exchange occurs. It immediately becomes politicized. Like, why do you think public opinion changed so quickly?

Because initially, there was a lot of support for getting Bo back, right? Yeah, right. Initially, it was, you know, kind of an easy issue to be like, hey, why isn't the White House talking about this more? It was an issue for Republicans to hammer Obama on. Yeah. And they kept a plan in the works to, for any time Bo got back to make it his, we had the quote in the Rolling Stone piece, his Willie Horton moment, right?

To really. And it was a unique operation. opportunity to use an American soldier who normally, you know, the American public has been so trained to genuflect before, right, in their image. And to use an American soldier as a like almost offensive device, right, and to make this guy the villain. Because at this point, too, the war is not going super well. It's been going on for a long time. You know, if you want to talk about the war, you're generally talking about leaving and the way you want to talk about leaving is by making it seem as bad as possible.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I just, every time I worked on this, I just thought that it would be seen as good news to get our guy home. I, not an, it was an amazing and impressive,

like, like, PR campaign to make sure that it wasn't. Right. I mean, I guess I just, but I'm just stunned to this day, and maybe naively,

right, by how viciously regular human beings, people treated Bo Bergdahl, his family, random businesses in the town were getting death threats? Did that shock you at all? I mean, by that point, you know, it was kind of hard to shock me. I've been through some shit. But, yeah, it was surprising how quickly people could pivot and vilify someone that normally, you know,

they stand up for at football games and clap for before going back and totally forgetting the wars going on. Yeah, I mean, like. And, I mean, one of the guys that really helps. helped orchestrate that campaign is now the ambassador to Germany. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, very skilled at what he does. So to explain what that means. So Rick Grinnell, who we've talked about on the show a bunch, who was a walking, breathing, Twitter troll, had a PR company. And what he did was he got a bunch of guys who used to serve with Bo, connected with reporters, and booked them on Fox News.

Now, like, again, that is their right. If the guys who searched for Bo are pissed at him, they should say whatever the hell they think. But it was orchestrated. It was orchestrated and it was, you know, again, a PR campaign where he knew what he was doing. He knew how to frame the thing. We talked to some of the guys that went on those programs and did that stuff. They were unprepared for what they were doing. But they said their peace. If I were them, I would be pissed too.

I am sort of still pissed that a dude walked off from his guys. Like, as a soldier, that offends me. Yeah. Like, that's an offensive proposition. It's not like, it doesn't, like, wound me. of the core, but it, you know, offends my sense of professionalism, too, that his leadership didn't prevent that, right? So this whole sad, like, book is a litany of failures from, you know, the top to the bottom. Yeah, right. One thing that you go through in the book, and I was not in the

White House at the time when this happened, was, you know, there had been a more low-key plan, I think, for how to tell the press that Bo had gotten home. Bo's parents happened to me in Washington, D.C. when it happened. So they were invited to the White House. And then Obama asked them if they wanted to come out to a Rose Garden press conference where Bob Bergdahl was asked to speak and then things quickly went south. I don't want to blame Bob or his wife in any way.

But I think the White House decision to have a Rose Garden press event and to have them speak may have ultimately, you know, made things worse. I mean, first, it's just not super sensitive to a traumatized family, right, or to reintegration efforts to, like, put people on display like that, right? So just from, it's a basic failure of humanity, you know, the whole deal. But it's also kind of an easy political win if you can do it right, right? They didn't do it right. And it became a massive political loss.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think their sense was. I don't know. I think it was like let these, this is a, maybe people will view this in human terms instead of political terms if you see the faces of family members who are just so happy to have their kid home.

But in fact, the opposite happened. Yeah, and I mean, you know, there are all sorts of ways you can like pin blame or, you know, pin responsibility or, you know, say X, Y, or Z should have done this, that, or the other things. But it's sort of the perfect, like, ending to that part of the story, right?

Because the whole story has been defined by, well, if there are three choices, one's right, one's wrong, and one's really wrong, we'll make the really wrong one, right? And so that turns out to be the really wrong choice for a variety of reasons, right? So, Bo gets home and essentially he goes on trial. Right.

And the military starts to prosecute him. He goes on trial while at the same time going through really intensive debrief. briefings and reintegration like prisoner of war therapy, which is down in San Antonio at Fort Sam Houston, you know, very sophisticated program that the U.S. has developed for all detainees coming back, like returning hostages, POWs, et cetera, et cetera. And so, and then, you know, every once in a while getting on a Southwest Airlines flight and flying from San Antonio to rally Durham with his bodyguards, but on a uniform going

into a courtroom sitting there, up in the chair like this with his jaw clenching, as people debate the worst moments in his life. Yeah. Over and over and over and over. Yeah. And so you just reliving that trauma day after day. Must have been really not super fun. No.

No. And you talk about in the book how actually, and this surprised me, that the intelligence that the U.S. was able to gather based on his debriefs was really valuable. How did he learn valuable things being stuck in a cage for five years? Okay, so Bo was held by the Haqani Network, right? Which is a kind of armed mafioso crime syndicate, smuggling network that does off the books hits for Pakistani intelligence, right? They used to work for us in the 80s. You know, they're well trained.

You got a new boss. Yeah, got a new boss. And so he lived in very... prisons that they had, various, like, you know, safe houses. So he could map out some of those networks. Think of, you know, that movie sneakers, right, where they kidnap Robert Redford and he kind of figures out where he is by the patterns and the bridge. He heard ducks quacking or whatever.

Yeah. And Bo is, Bo is highly intelligent. He's very smart, right? And when he trains his attention on something, he goes for it, right? So as a hostage, you kind of made the decision, well, I'll learn as much as I can about these guys so I could be helpful. That's amazing. I just wouldn't think that you would be able to...

Did he know any of the language they were speaking? Did they speak English to him ever? They spoke English to him when they were trying to get either... They very quickly determined he didn't really have any intelligence to give, right? He's a low-ranking soldier. I was that rank in Afghanistan. You don't know anything, right? Like, you know you're going out on patrol.

It's going to suck. And, like, you know, you're probably going... All right. We'll get back and like, you know, maybe, maybe be able to like use a real toilet. That would be cool, you know? Yeah. Yeah, something else, Bo didn't get to do. So in the midst of this trial, Beau becomes, gets connected with Mark Bull, who's did the

Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirteen, some other films. And they do a bunch of hours of conversations. And then Mark Bull makes a deal with Sarah Kahnick, who is the host of, of the host of serial and Beau's story becomes a subject of season two of serial. You were not a huge fan of that decision, correct? I mean, I understand why that decision was made by, you know, pretty much everybody, but it didn't seem to really work out for anybody. So why?

Well, for Beau, because he, on the first episode of serial, self-incriminated and admitted to what he had done and gave kind of a crazy reason for doing it that he wanted to be like Jason Bourne. right before General Robert Abrams was set to make the decision on what kind of court-martial, essentially the military difference between like traffic court and like criminal court, right? What sort of trial he's going to get? Well, the general hears that, of course. And you decide, all right, you know, I almost have to like throw the book at this guy to preserve morale among the ranks, right?

And that was part of the feeling in the military, even if, you know, among some of the, the senior leadership that we're able to see beyond some of the issues and some of the junior leadership as well. A lot of people, you know, a lot of smart people in the military. That, you know, even if Bo doesn't deserve this as a person, he deserves this as a symbol, right?

Right. So we have to do this even though it's kind of a bummer that we have to do this. Yeah. So they throw the book at him. You know, that process is ongoing. Ultimately, he gets a sentence he pleads guilty pleads guilty

an 11th hour 11th hour guilty plea change of heart why do you think he changed his plea I don't know like many things Bo Bergdahl related it's an enigma

I think I think he probably was like you know what I've had it I did walk off like I was AWOL for those hours because he pled guilty to desertion for a very limited portion of time right it was basically the time that he walked

off from OP Mest to the time he first got picked up by the Taliban dudes with automatic weapons and motorcycles, right, that started selling them up the chain. So, I mean, I don't know, when my unit got back from Afghanistan, we had quite a few guys go AWOL, right? Like, AWOLs, yeah, all right, it happens. In a combat zone, it's insane that it happens, right? But, you know, if you didn't have the intent to just say, like, peace out, guys, I'm out of the army, right? That's sort of a different deal. Got it, yeah. So when the exchange was made to transfer the Taliban guys and Gitmo for Bo, people like, you know, McCain and Lindsey Graham, we mentioned this earlier, they actually like these guys were Rambo and Bin Laden rolled into one. Well, a general name John Kelly was in charge of Southcom at the time, and he was really upset about this.

He was upset about it. Now it turns out that those five guys are part of the Taliban team trying to negotiate a peace agreement with us. that makes my head explosion. I mean, but if you just view history, right, with kind of an open eye to it, Nelson Mandela was put in prison by the South Africans as a terrorist based on information provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, right? And then later came out to broker a piece, right? I'm not in any way, shape, or form comparing these guys.

Connecting some dots here, Farwell. But I'm saying that, you know, I don't necessarily think dudes that have been in prison for a long time can't be peacemakers, right? I agree. I just, it makes me the cravenness of those comments from McCain and Graham and those who demagogue this drives me nuts. I mean, I just, I have no confidence in politicians of any stripe of any, you know, on any side of the aisle at this point, honestly. And it's sort of depressing. Sort of. You know, I mean, yeah, it's kind of depressing.

So one of the thing the books gets into is how unfortunately shitty that the U.S. has been to detainees in their families in the past until pretty recently. I mean, if there's one good thing that maybe comes out of Bo's story, it's that I think it helps spurred some changes, right? I mean, I would hope so, you know, and I think in a lot of ways during Bo's captivity, his family was treated quite respectfully. respectfully even while they were kind of let around a little bit, you know, like, you can say what you want about the Pentagon, but they provided access to Bob, right? They provided him with the feeling that he had been heard. And in return for that, they got some, like, they were able to restrain some Bob's impulses, like, to fly to Peshawar and be like, hey, I'm that dude that you're holding hostage's father. Like, like, trade me for him. How about that? Let him go. Bobby Bob Bergdahl, Bo's father, who literally wanted to go and try to exchange himself. Who tried to. Yeah. Got talked out of it at the last minute. Did General Mattis fly to his home in Idaho? Yeah. I mean, it's not like you can't get Pentagon flights out to Sun Valley pretty easily.

They do a lot of training out there. Sure, but I have to say, that speaks pretty well, General Mattis, that he was the head of Sencom at the time and jumped on a plane. And Bob and General Mattis got along quite well. So you and I met in. in like 2013 or 2014, I think. 2013. You had been working with Michael Hastings on a story, I think there was a profile of John Brennan.

Correct. Until he tragically passed away in a car accident. Correct. Do you want to just tell people about Michael Hastings, what he meant to you? Because, you know, he was a hell of a good journalist. Yeah. I mean, I dedicated this book to Michael Hastings.

He got me and started on this path. He took a guy that was kind of fresh out of the army, like in a super self-destructive mode. you met me at a time when I was like slamming back beers and you know he we talked about you know we got in contact after his book the operators came out which I thought was hilarious and I knew some of the players involved in that I'm a crystal in his team and yeah and about just how like arrogant they were you know which is ultimately a lot of the problem in American foreign policy and military culture in the past you know or foreign policy culture in the past while is just

arrogance, right? Yeah, he meant a lot to me, got me started on this, and when he died, it was really hard. So you met me in the, like, aftermath of that. Well, you were dealing with that, and you would also, I mean, upon returning home, you would, you had been battling with PTSD or a stress injury for seven years. Fairly recently, you wrote an incredible piece, was it for Playboy? Yeah. Playboy. Yeah. That's something called the Godshot. What's the Godshot? That was an injection of lytocaine and bivocane into my neck by the spinal column that trimmed away the stellate ganglion, like basically the nerve cells that build up around your brainstem in response to trauma. So I'm over in Afghanistan for 16 months, right? If I hear a gunshot, I react to it.

If I heard a car backfiring back in the States, like I've been known to like push people down, like, you know, get down myself. all that stuff. So I went up, I had stopped drinking about a month before I went up, got this shot. And my dad, who's an old enlisted submarine sailor, we were up in Chicago. So the day after I got the shot, he had to kind of observe me and make sure I was okay. We went to where they have a submarine in the museum. You know, it's like clanging metal and like lights and confined area and people. Basically all the like big PTSD like stress, you know, points, right?

And we're about halfway through the tour. And my dad's like, you notice that you're not, like, stressing out. And I started sleeping better, you know. So my life kind of like, and then I got the contract to write this book. And so in a lot of ways, like, you know, I've been on the Bergdahl story since it happened, right? And it's been a hell of a journey. But, like, it's got me to a really nice place. It's got me in this room, like, you know, talking to nice people, right?

Like, I can't complain. What it got you was a hell of a good book. Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. I think you are able to tell it from experience, but you still keep your empathy for everybody involved somehow. I mean, it's... In a story where there was no empathy for anyone for a very long time in the national media.

But we've elevated all these things to be such symbols that we forget that people are behind it, right? And like it can be hard even like even in those jobs, right? Like when you were in the White House when I was in the military, it's hard to like remember like that there are humans behind all of this, right? And I was at a bookstore in Tulsa doing a reading the other day. And I got a question about like, you know, does the U.S. know we're like at war in Afghanistan? And I'm like, well, you know, maybe people in the U.S. don't,

but people in Afghanistan do. People in Syria know where it war. People in Iraq. Right. Yeah. Matt Farwell, great to see you, man. Thank you.

Congrats on the book. Thank you very much. Everyone should go out and buy American Cipher. Yeah, please do. It would really help. Let me write another book. Get them while you still can't. Do it.

They're flying off the shelves. And I draw really good pictures. Yeah, he'll draw you a DIY if you see him in person. I will. That's it for Ponce of the World this week. Thank you guys all for tuning in. and catch you next week.