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Previously, on Serial. We all felt like, why are we up here? Going out and shaking hands. Oh yeah, that's a classic. I love it. And this is the one where I said, and I don't want to see anymore of this fucking Lawrence of Arabia shit. And I said out loud, let's do this.
Excuse me, can I talk to somebody? I need to report a missing person.
From This American Life in WBEZ Chicago, it's Serial, one story told week by week. I'm Sarah Koenig. If I were a soldier with some pride, with principles, and I had to come up with a reason for walking off into Afghanistan, for causing a crisis on so many levels, I might engineer something like Beau's explanation, that I was sacrificing myself for the team because I thought they were in danger. It's a way to save face, to say my intentions were noble and good.
Over the months of reporting this story, I have wondered about this, whether Beau was really telling the truth about why he left his platoon, or if he was telling the version he could live with. Mark and I have also debated this, of course. Once when we were talking, Mark took the microphone and started to interview me. Well, I guess I meant just in a more narrow sense, do you think he's lying? I mean, I'm just asking. I feel like, I guess, the coochie tent still bothers me. The coochie's tent still bothers me.
Remember the Coochie tent? The Taliban said they first captured Beau when he wandered into a Coochie tent or near a Coochie tent, which wasn't part of Beau's telling at all. It made me think if Beau had walked into a Coochie tent, maybe he wasn't really headed to Fabshrana to tell someone about leadership problems. Maybe he was just trying to run away and looking for help.
Mark and I had that conversation back in September. I've since moved on from the coochie tent. I don't think it's verifiable or that much of a discrepancy with Beau's version of what happened, actually. So I let it go. But all this is to say I can understand why some of the people Beau served with, when I first talked to them, they didn't buy Beau's story. They thought maybe he concocted it in hindsight. When I put it to one of Beau's platoon mates, Shane Cross, he said, quote, he had some years to work on that, unquote.
There's a litany of reasons why someone could be skeptical of Beau's explanation. First, his premise, that leadership was dangerously bad. For the most part, the soldiers we talked to didn't agree. In fact, most of them said they actually loved some of their leaders, thought they were great. And Lieutenant Colonel Clint Baker, the battalion commander Beau responded to so negatively. Again, overall, they didn't think he was putting them in situations that were crazy risky or that they couldn't handle.
Then the notion that Bode have to do something so dramatic to be listened to. Also not true, they said. Which is so utterly outlandish, it's insulting. Wait, why is that outlandish? Oh man, because of where they were. And a couple of days prior, they were on Fob-Sharana, which is huge and has all sorts of officers. Any one of whom he could have gone and talked to. That's Mark McCrory.
There's an open-door policy that allows you to approach any officer at all with a problem. It doesn't have to be in your chain of command. Though whether an officer would have taken Beau seriously, I have to say, is doubtful. And Beau knew that. A big one I heard from quite a few people was that Beau either was in cahoots with local Afghans or even wanting to contact the Taliban. Here's Daryl Hansen and John Thurman. I mean, for him just to, like, walk out where he did, like, he wasn't afraid of them. He had to have...
had some kind of compassion for him and didn't like us for him to walk away. Again, I have to go back to the question, where are you going to go? Because there's no other option. You've either got our side or the Taliban side.
A lot of people pointed out that Beau hung out with the Afghan police who were also stationed at the outpost at Mest. He had tea with them, ate meals with them. Other people did, too. It was great. It was great food. But some people said Beau was there more often, seemed more interested in them than other people did. Josh Corder said that Beau was once late for a guard shift, and he had to go looking for him. And he found him having tea with the Afghans.
Then, the day Beau went missing, Josh says he heard that two of the ANP guys were also unaccounted for. Two Afghan police were missing as well. So that seemed very logical to me. That all seemed to kind of make sense because, okay, well now he may have two guides or he has two people he is looking to meet up with. Maybe Beau had made a deal with these ANP guys and someone betrayed him or sold him out to the Taliban.
I tried to check this intel. I called the former governor of Paktika province in Afghanistan, a guy who'd worked pretty closely with the leaders in Bo's battalion, but he wouldn't talk to me on a cell phone. He did invite me to visit in person, which was very nice, but not immediately helpful. I did not see anything about the missing cops in the WikiLeaks reports or in General Dahl's investigation. The executive officer of Bo's battalion told me he'd heard this rumor too about some missing Afghans, but he did not know if anything came of it.
Sammy Youssefzai, the Afghan reporter, asked around about it as well. He told us there was a report of some missing Afghan police, but it was later discredited. Mark had heard this rumor too. He asked Bo about it. Then the idea was you had some A&P guys who were going to help you out or no? Or local police?
No, I knew I couldn't trust anyone. I knew enough of the culture, I knew enough of the situation going on that you do not trust those people. And I was right because those are the guys who are turning on us. And they have every reason to, unfortunately.
Beau said the reason he hung out with the ANP sometimes was because that was part of the mission, build a rapport in case they ever ended up in a firefight together. He was trying to do coin. He says that's also why he tried to learn a little Pashto, which some soldiers also said made them suspicious. The evidence people point to most often, though, to support the idea that Beau was simply deserting, that he had no higher purpose, was that he had talked about doing exactly that, taking off.
Several people told General Dahl they'd heard Bo say things about walking into the mountains of Pakistan or heading to India. He told one person something like this even before he deployed while he was still in Alaska. Here's Chris Ingalls, probably Bo's closest friend in the platoon. I remember him talking about, you know, the mountains and how great they look and, you know, imagining just walking out there. I remember all that stuff. I mean, I was right there when he was talking about it.
Shane Cross said he'd had a conversation with Bo the night before he left the OP. It was evening. Some of the guys were sitting around in the shade of a truck, just talking. And the topic came up, how would you fake your death? I don't know. Jump off a cliff? He tells me that he'd fake his death in Afghanistan in war. That'd be the best place to do it at. You could just disappear. Everyone would assume you're a casualty. And he says that his goal, that if he was to fake his death...
Would they be able to get through Pakistan and to India and join up with a gang over there? Austin Lanford was there too. This was the first time he'd ever talked to Bell, the night before he left the OP. And Austin remembers the conversation about the same way Shane does. Wanting to be a mercenary of sorts. And it was something along the lines of he was going to join a group, go up in their ranks, and then...
kill the leader, and then he'd be known for being a mercenary or something like that. That's what you remember. That's what the gist I got. He said, you know, Russian mob got big influence in India with gangs, and told me he spoke Russian, that he worked his way up through the gang, and then into the Russian mob and become a hitman.
Bo also asked about a weapon. He was issued a saw, a big heavy machine gun. Shane carried a pistol, an M9. Bo didn't take a gun with him when he left.
Looking back on it now, though, Shane says it's like if an ice cream truck drove by and somebody said, hey, I'd like some ice cream. And then the next thing you know, the person's gone. You're going to figure they went after the ice cream truck. For his part, Austin was reluctant to tell me about this conversation because obviously he knows how it sounds. It's a little extreme, and I kind of don't want to make him seem like he was crazy or, you know,
In other words, wanderlusty comments like this, maybe they didn't seem all that strange. So many people told me fear plus stress plus boredom plus war zone means...
Another platoon mate, Jason Fry, told me he wrote letters to a friend when he was in Afghanistan. He got them back years later, and when he read through them, he thought, what was I thinking? Who was I? Here's Mark McCrory. The things that we get away with saying to each other are completely ludicrous. To give you an example, the Fort Hood shooting went on
while we were there. And I remember we were watching it on some grainy television on the Armed Forces Network in the chow hall, and my buddy looks over at me and goes, if we have to go back out again tonight, I'm going to make Fort Hood look like church. Oh. Yeah, just something super dark and creepy. So dark, but, you know, at the time, it's, you know, the only kind of humor we understand. I mean, we're wound up pretty tight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
General Dahl considered all the evidence pointing to the idea that Beau was deserting permanently. He heard about the weird comments about the intel, and he concluded Beau was telling the truth. Beau's, quote, stated motive was well-meaning in his mind, Dahl wrote. Ironically, the basis for his stated motive was incorrect, unquote.
Mark spent about a year thinking it through, and he also ended up believing Beau. For lots of reasons, partly just for practical reasons. For instance, Beau was such a careful planner. He was an outdoor kid who'd grown up in the mountains. If he intended to just disappear or permanently desert, why wouldn't he bring more food, more water? Beau sent his computer and some other stuff home in a box before he left the O.P., which some people see as evidence he was leaving for good. Mark sees it as the opposite. Then take it with you if you're going to India. Yeah.
throw it in a backpack and a charger. He sent stuff home, yeah, because he thought he was going stateside because he thought he was going to have an audience with the general and then they were going to throw him in Leavenworth. I think it's probably true that he anticipated getting his computer back. That's why there's nothing really at the end of the day that points to the idea that this was a permanent departure. He just didn't pack for that.
You know? That's a funny way to put it. And that's like, it's just, it's that simple.
But details like this, that's ultimately not what convinced Mark. He's logged something like 25 hours of taped conversations with Beau and many more hours of conversations not on tape. The more I learned about Beau and the more I learned about how his mind worked and the more I talked to him about not just his story but other subjects and realizing that, yeah,
So how does it make sense if you're Bo Bergdahl?
When Beau finally sat down for an interview with General Dahl, he didn't just go back pre-deployment to explain what happened once he got to Afghanistan. He went all the way back, to home, to Idaho, to his childhood there. He'd done a lot of thinking while he was locked up in that cage with the Taliban. You know, I was looking at myself. I was looking at the situation, going, how did I get here?
And that question took me back into my childhood, because it was like, I got here because I made a choice, but that choice was followed. You know, that choice followed another choice, which followed another choice. And it just kind of stair-steps backwards. Bo sorted through his upbringing and found it wanting. I'll give you a bit of a backstory. I literally grew up by myself in the middle of nowhere. And growing up homeschooled and out in the middle of nowhere, I grew up...
by myself, taking care of myself, being completely isolated from human beings. So you just grew up, like, fucking around in the woods and, like, stuff like that? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I grew up following cats, you know. There was usually, like, six cats, and we had dogs and horses and vans. We had chickens, you know. So I grew up wandering around the wilderness with...
Guns, BB guns, air guns, .22s, shotguns. And just, that was it. I just wandered around. Beau grew up on 40 acres, down a dirt road in a valley, outside the small town of Haley. His father worked at UPS, and his mother homeschooled him and his older sister.
Beau had a hard time with the schoolwork. He couldn't read very well then. He couldn't take in what was on the page. And so he wasn't good at his work or he wouldn't do it. And he says he'd get punished for that and for other things in a way that he says felt unpredictable to him. Beau says he was scared all the time of getting in trouble and that he didn't have the greatest relationship with his parents. His dad is a strong personality. If you met him personally, you'd probably like him. It's just that he's a pretty cool person. Uh-huh.
It's just complicated. Beau's solution was the same one teenagers have used for centuries. Get out of the house.
And so I started spending more time at work than at home because work turned into my saving grace, basically, because it got me out of the house for an official reason. So at age 13, I kind of basically started moving out. I spent more time at work and went home to sleep and eat maybe dinner or breakfast and then go back to work.
When he was about 15, Beau fell in with a family that was pretty different from the one he'd grown up with.
Someone he met through his job convinced him to take fencing classes at a little performing arts school in Ketchum, the next town over from Haley. Kim Harrison, she's the one from episode five who told the story about contacting Interpol. Kim was helping run the school. Her son also took fencing classes there. And her daughter, Kayla, took ballet. Soon, Beau was around all the time. He ended up becoming attached to our family. That's Kayla. A few people told me, if you want to know about Beau, talk to Kayla. She understands him.
Kayla says with her, Beau was watchful and serious and very sweet. Like one birthday, for my birthday card...
He went around our small little town with a card and just asked random people to sign it for me. Oh, really? And write a little message. Yeah, it was the coolest idea. And knowing Beau and how shy he is and how little he wants to, you know, be noticed and have strangers know who he is, you know, that was an even bigger gesture than it seemed like because, you know, because that's hard for him. He doesn't want to do that. I know he doesn't like that.
Right. This is like teenager Beau. Yeah, teenager Beau is super quiet. He would blush very easily. He's going to be very mad at me for saying that, but he blushes really easily. And so, you know, he was really easy to embarrass. And he just, he didn't, he wanted, I don't know, he didn't.
He was this gentlemanly is a good word. He was very much a gentleman and very, very conscious about saying the wrong thing or being inappropriate or anything like that.
The Harrisons opened up a tea place in Ketchum, which is a ski town. The tea bar was called Strega, and they served food and had a little boutique and held movie nights or hosted performances. It was a hangout, basically. Kayla and her brother worked there. They were both homeschooled, too. And Beau worked there. He'd help me make crepes sometimes. Mostly he would hide weapons everywhere and sit in a corner and watch people.
He was like security. Like I remember we just had like random weapons like hidden everywhere. Like there was like a, you call it like a flail, like the spike ball on the end of a chain. Right. I think was like underneath a cabinet somewhere. And there was like an ice pick hidden next to the cabinet. Like as a joke, tongue in cheek? No, no, no. Well, I mean, kind of. We thought of it as kind of funny. But to him it was like, you know, you need weapons available when you need them.
I have heard her mom say this. In fact, all the friends I spoke to from that circle say the same thing, that he wanted to protect people. Ketchum was kind of far from Beau's house, so Beau began staying at the Harrisons for stretches. For a while, he even slept at Strega.
Kim says, especially when he was younger, it was like Beau was studying their family to see how they operated, how they got along, how they argued, what action would lead to reaction. Other people wandered into Strega, began working there, and also became part of the family. There was Chad and Nick.
All these people love Beau. They talk about how unusual he is, how smart, how playful, how creative, and how totally annoying he could be. He might argue with you unrelentingly just to see how far he could push, or he'd tape his mouth shut for a couple days, see what would happen.
Beau was a teenager who'd never been to school. And now, with the Strager crowd, he was testing out ideas, testing out behaviors. And maybe more than most people, he worked on improving himself, as if he were in training. His friends said it was sometimes a little overboard. He might punch trees or bricks to toughen up his hands. He wanted to get better at things, at reading or dancing or writing. He wrote stories. Mostly, though, he was trying to figure himself out. It really mattered to him.
The seeking and knowing what kind of man he was going to be. Nick was about five years older than Beau. He also worked at Strega. He and Beau would talk and talk for hours sometimes. Nick says it wasn't so much that Beau was searching for something concrete, like a profession. He was wrestling with the big existential questions. And, you know, I really think so much of it had to do with questions of virtue, of what was right. More than anything, I think that's what he...
That's what he was really working on and focused on all the time was coming up with these values for himself. And he just did a lot of watching to see what everyone else did and reflected against it. And he didn't want it to be anyone else's. Beau wasn't going to take anyone else's word for it about what was right, what was moral. He was going to forge his own code. And Kayla says the one he ended up adopting for himself, it was strict and it was uncompromising.
I've had arguments with him about this many times, and he gets really passionate about it. Like, you know there's a problem in the world, but what kind of human are you unless you're doing something about it? Like, you're not a good person if you know that there's something wrong and you're not doing everything in your power to fix it. Really? Mm-hmm.
He holds the world and everybody in it to unrealistically high expectations. And if you don't live by those expectations or by those morals and that honor that he thinks you should and he tries to live himself, then he has no respect for you. Yeah. And he just doesn't understand. Yeah.
It just sounds sort of impossibly idealistic to the point where it kind of is sort of strangles how you move through the world or something. Yeah, it's really handicapping to him. Like, it's a handicap. He's constantly struggling to understand how people are okay with everything. You know what I mean? Like...
Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Yeah.
During his late teens, early 20s, Beau would work for a while in Idaho and then take off somewhere for a job or a trip, then come back and go off again. Kim, Kayla's mom, says Beau had a hunger and an urgency about him, to see the world, to gain experience. He wanted adventure. He loved boats. He loved water. He went off salmon fishing in Alaska, but he didn't like that too much. He was a little bit of a fish.
He went down south to work at a military training camp, a place where special forces guys would go for a week. An experience that taught Beau he'd rather be doing what they were doing than what he was doing. And you listen to all the stories they have, and they listen to all the places they've been, and then after the week is up, they disappear to go off and do things that are just going to give them more stories and take them more places. So he left. He went to Florida to complete a charter boat course—
At some point, he left for France to join the French Foreign Legion, which Kim says she knows he did arrive in France. She's just not completely sure what happened after that. Bo didn't really talk much about it.
They probably thought he was out of his mind for going there and, you know, here's this kid with blonde hair, this young, cute kid from Idaho with blonde hair and blue eyes. I'm enjoying the foreign legion. Hey, sign me up. And they probably thought he was completely bonkers for doing that because he was for doing that. It was just like a really bad choice.
And, of course, when he tells me about it, I think part of the reason he did it was to see my face. Because he didn't tell you about it beforehand. Oh, he did. And I was like, are you kidding me? That is the dumbest thing I've ever— You know, that was the beginning of me getting incredulous at his choices. That was the first—no, maybe not the first. The first of many or one of many choices.
He trained on his bike — Nick said Beau wore a lot of spandex in those days — for a cycling trip down the West Coast, which, like the Foreign Legion, didn't pan out. A few days in, he got hit by an RV, and he was okay, but his bike was ruined. So he came back to Ketchum and started in on the next idea.
Eventually, the next idea became the military, which wasn't a huge surprise to his friends. Beau's brother-in-law was in the Navy, and Beau had that strong protector quality, a romantic version of it, to be sure. He wanted to be invisible, Kayla said, someone who'd be unnoticed in the shadows, looking out for the innocent, swooping in when they needed him.
And they knew Beau wanted to put himself in situations that would require courage and grit, that would test his mettle, so that he could come out the other side and know what kind of man he was. So they understood it, which is not the same as thinking it was a good idea. Please don't do that.
That's Kim, who, it should be noted, is a pacifist to begin with. And he knew how I'd react. It's totally predictable. And I'm, you know, asking him, are you sure this is something you want to do? I think it's a horrible, horrible idea. Not just for, you know, not for everyone, but, you know, for you. For all the above reasons, his romantic expectations, his rigid code of conduct, his judgmentalness. She worried he wouldn't be able to just suck it up, join the crowd, follow orders.
I said, look, I know if you want to do that, I mean, you're not going to listen to me. Of course, you're over 18. You can do whatever you want. But if you're going to do that, look into the Coast Guard because at least then you'll be helping people. You'll be like saving people's lives, saving vessels, you know, patrolling waters, being on the ocean. Those are all things that you like. So if you must, if you absolutely must, then, you know, that's probably a good option. Had he thought of that already? No. No.
So he did. He joined the Coast Guard. In January of 2006, Beau went to Cape May, New Jersey, and started training. He was 19. It lasted only a few weeks. Coast Guard boot camp is still kind of the traditional boot camp. I mean, they're basically, they put as much pressure on you as they possibly can. They're not supposed to swear at you, but they can still yell and scream, and they definitely get the, you know, they're very good at keeping the pressure on people.
He didn't want to be weak. He didn't want to not be able to participate in that system to achieve those goals. But his sensitivities and his way of pondering and overthinking things made it incredibly difficult in that environment to survive. So as far as I was concerned, you know, I've never actually, you know, needed anything. I've just been a failure. And then I got to the Coast Guard. It's like listening, you know, seeing what was going on there.
It didn't take him long to realize he wanted to get out of there, that he'd made a mistake. And in the communications that I had from him at the time, they were becoming increasingly more worrisome.
I was just in pain for him. You know, I'd read these little notes. You know, they were only like, it was little spiral notebooks you flip. Yeah, like the little team notes. Three and a half, yeah, by five. Maybe this was a four by five, a four by six. With the ripped off spirals at the top and just writing really small. And the writing would change too, you know, as his stress level increased. But at the same time, I was thinking how important a Coast Guard's job is
And seeing that, you know, it's not just the people who are out there whose lives, you know, who, you know, they're depending upon me to save their lives. But it's also the, you know, the shipmates next to me, you know, their lives are depending upon me being able to keep their backs safe.
The tone was changing. It was more rambling. It was more desperate. It was just rapidly, you know, eroding. I think I wrote a couple letters back like, you know, are you okay? I'm getting really worried. This needs to end. You know, what can I do? One day, out of the blue, Beau shows up at Strega, the tea bar. He's back.
They're all thrilled to see him and also confused. Like, what happened? Why are you back? He told them something about a psych discharge, which he said he pretty much faked. But Kim and the others, they didn't really believe him. According to General Dahl's investigation, what happened is that on Bo's third week of training, he was found on the floor with blood on his hands and face. It wasn't serious. It was a nosebleed.
Beau says now he doesn't remember how he ended up on the floor, but that he was told later he was in a fetal position and shaking and crying. He was taken to the hospital. He told the intake people there he felt overwhelmed. He spent the next day there, where a psychiatrist assessed him and, according to Dahl's report, quote, unquote.
And he recommended discharging him, noting he would need to receive stress management counseling and have, quote, "clearance by a psychiatrist prior to reenlistment," unquote. So Beau gets disqualified for continued service in the Coast Guard because of a diagnosis of adjustment disorder with depression. And he goes back to Idaho. That got me washed out, but, you know, that didn't sit right with me, which is one of the reasons why I ended up joining the Army, was because I wanted to prove myself in the Army.
you know, to family in general, you know, father, mother, sister, in-laws, all the people who like basically I knew when I wasn't there, you know, because I heard things from people that were, you know, were just friends of the family. They basically thought I was the failure, the black sheep of the family that, you know, just wouldn't listen and wouldn't do the right things and all that. So, and I figured I could do the army because the army was more, you know, it was more my field.
The Coast Guard really wasn't, because the Coast Guard's mission is more of a
life-saving, whereas the Army is more of a military mission. Obviously, a complete military mission. And I was older, and I had worked for the Coast Guard. I saw what I was lacking, and I needed that work on social skills and needed to work on a lot of other things. So I set out to do that. So when I joined the Army, I thought I was in a much better position. I ended up being in a much better position.
Because of the way that Beau had been what's called separated from the Coast Guard, there was a code in his military record indicating he'd need a waiver if he ever wanted to reenlist. In other words, the Army would have to waive its usual standards to let Beau in. In May 2008, when Beau signed up, happened to be a good time to get a waiver. There'd been a surge in Iraq. There'd be another one coming in Afghanistan. The Army was hurting for recruits, easing up on restrictions such as criminal records that might have disqualified people in the past.
To give you a sense, in 2001, about 4% of Army recruits got waivers. By 2007, it was 20%. 2008, the year Beau enlisted, it was about 17%. Because his Coast Guard discharge was labeled uncharacterized, it seems pretty much all Beau had to do to get a waiver was write a paragraph explaining to the Boise recruiter why he'd been separated from the Coast Guard.
So he said he'd had a hard time adapting to change, didn't feel prepared to be on his own, had some family stuff going on. All true. The statement, which was typed up by the recruiter as he was speaking with Beau, says, quote, I have matured and know that I am prepared to go into the Army. Please do not allow my past record to prevent me from coming into the Army, unquote.
A week later, Beau also showed the recruiter his DOD medical history form, but apparently it didn't include any mention of his panic attack or his hospitalization or the doctor's note saying he needed clearance by a psychiatrist prior to reenlistment. And Beau didn't mention this note to the Army recruiter either. He says he didn't even know about it. So evidently that note was never seen by the Army. It's not clear, in fact, if anyone ever took notice of it apart from the doctor who wrote it.
So spring of 2008, Beau is accepted into the Army. This time, he hadn't told anyone in advance. He was being very evasive, and I just was getting really annoyed. Like, all right, what's going on? You're lying. I can tell you're lying to me. You're not telling me what's going on. And this went on for a couple months. And then all of a sudden, he shows up in his uniform. Yeah. Yeah.
I launched, literally launched myself. I'm like, and grabbed his shoulders and like shaking his shoulders. What are you doing? Did you sign the thing already? Is this a done deal? And he's like being really quiet and kind of got the smirk, smile on his face. Like, I knew you would react like this is why I didn't tell you. And I was just out of my mind. I just freaked out. And this is because, again, you...
you'd had these fears about his suitability before he went to the Coast Guard. Those fears were borne out. Yes. And now he was doing it again. Yes. And you just knew this is not... This is a really bad idea. This is just the worst idea ever. And it was the Army. Setting aside the question of whether it was a good idea for Beau to join the Army, should the Army have let Beau in? Next time on Serial...
Serials produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas and me in partnership with Mark Boll, Megan Ellison, Hugo Lindgren, Jessica Weisberg, Page One and Annapurna Pictures. Ira Glass is our editorial advisor. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Research by Kevin Garnett. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Copy editing by Anahita Lani. Emily Condon is our line producer. Our music is composed by Nick Thorburn, Fritz Meyers and Mark Phillips. The show is mixed by Kate Balinski.
Kristen Taylor is our community editor. Other serial staff, Seth Lind, Elise Bergersen, and Kimberly Henderson. Special thanks this week to Joey Palacios, Captain Nicole Eldridge, Heather Hansen, and Ben Mannion. And a big thank you to Jonathan Menjivar and Robin Simeon, our great colleagues at This American Life, for helping us so much this week and last week. Thank you, guys.
Our website is SerialPodcast.org, where this week you can find a chart about Army recruits and waivers, which gives a really good picture of the surges in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, that's SerialPodcast.org. Stay tuned for a preview of our next episode, which is actually part two of this episode. But first...
Hey, serial listeners, go deeper into one detainee's story in Letters from Guantanamo on Audible. Mansour Addaifi was 18 when he was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to the CIA. As one of the first prisoners at Guantanamo, he endured unbearable
unimaginable torture. Starting as an act of rebellion, he wrote to the Pope, President Bush, MLK, and others. For the first time, hear these letters that celebrate the strength of human spirit and that ultimately bring catharsis to Mansour. Letters from Guantanamo is free with membership at audible.com slash Guantanamo. Serial is a production of This American Life and WBEZ Chicago. Coming up on the next episode of Serial... I wanted to be a soldier, but I wanted to be a soldier...
You know, he's writing these things, these notes, sending emails, he's sending all these cryptic things. He's in a state of mind that was obvious to me. It was stretched. They incorrectly interpret events, you know, belief in sort of special powers, persistent and excessive social anxiety. It's something so huge and such a big decision that I feel like you almost have to be God to make that kind of decision. That's not something you can ever come back from. I don't care where your head was.
Bo, you still fucking did it. It really does tell the story of Bo, unfortunately, you know?