Bowe Bergdahl Charged With Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy
WASHINGTON
— In the five years he was held captive by the Haqqani insurgent
network, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl recalls that he tried to escape 12 times.
The first time was just a few hours after he was captured in Afghanistan
in 2009.
He was quickly recaptured and beaten. But another attempt, a year later, lasted close to nine days.
“Without
food and only putrid water to drink, my body failed on top of a short
mountain close to evening,” Sergeant Bergdahl wrote in a
page-and-a-half, single-spaced narrative provided by his lawyer to The
New York Times, the first public description of the sergeant’s captivity
in his own words.
“Some moments after I came to in the dying gray light of the evening, I was found by a large Taliban searching group,” he wrote. They hit him, tried to tear out his beard and hair, and returned him to his captors.
On
Wednesday, the Army announced that it was charging Sergeant Bergdahl
with misbehavior before the enemy and desertion, raising the possibility
that he could be imprisoned again, this time for life.
In
announcing the charges against Sergeant Bergdahl, the military
reignited the political firestorm that took place last summer after the
sergeant was released in a swap for five Taliban detainees at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba.
For
President Obama, it reopens the contentious political question of
whether the United States should have agreed to the exchange.
Administration officials have steadfastly maintained that even if
Sergeant Berdahl did voluntarily walk off his remote base in
Afghanistan, it was the duty of the United States to take all
appropriate steps to free him.
The
president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, was harshly
criticized when she said last summer that Sergeant Bergdahl had served
“with honor and distinction” at the same time that his former platoon
members were appearing on television accusing him of deliberately
leaving the base, an act that they said put in danger the lives of the
American military members who searched for him.
Sergeant
Bergdahl is charged with misbehavior before the enemy, which carries a
maximum sentence of up to life in prison, and with desertion, which
carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
He could also face a
dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank and forfeiture of the pay he
was owed while in captivity if he is tried and convicted, Army officials
said during a news conference in Fort Bragg, N.C.
The
case will now go to Fort Sam Houston, Tex., for a hearing that is
similar to a grand jury in a civilian court. After that, a military tribunal will determine whether Sergeant Bergdahl should be court-martialed.
Sergeant
Bergdahl’s lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said Wednesday that the sergeant’s
legal team had not decided how it would proceed, including whether it
would try to negotiate a discharge for Sergeant Bergdahl in lieu of
trial by court-martial. In a March 2 letter to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the
commanding general of United States Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg,
Mr. Fidell wrote that an impartial court-martial would be impossible to
form because of the political tension over Sergeant Bergdahl’s captivity
and release.
“While
many Americans have taken a broader and more sympathetic view, the
depth and breadth of the current hostility to Sergeant Bergdahl are
extraordinary and have enveloped the case with a lynch mob atmosphere,”
Mr. Fidell wrote.
The
materials disclosed by Mr. Fidell say nothing about Sergeant Bergdahl’s
mind-set when he left his platoon at a remote outpost in eastern
Afghanistan, and the Army has not laid out details of the case against
him.
In
his letter to General Milley, Mr. Fidell summarized what he described
as parts of an unreleased report by Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Dahl, who interviewed
Sergeant Bergdahl and conducted the military’s investigation into his
disappearance. Mr. Fidell’s description of the report’s executive
summary suggests that it offers mitigating conclusions that could help
Sergeant Bergdahl at any court-martial.
“While
hedging its bets, the report basically concludes that Sergeant Bergdahl
did not intend to remain away from the Army permanently,” Mr. Fidell
wrote.
“It
also concludes that his specific intent was to bring what he thought
were disturbing circumstances to the attention” of a high-ranking Army
officer.
The
Defense Department has declined to discuss details of the case. Mr.
Fidell declined to comment on any parts of Sergeant Bergdahl’s written
account, which did not describe the “disturbing circumstances” he felt
compelled to discuss with a senior military officer.
Mr.
Fidell also wrote that the Dahl report debunked several assertions
about Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance, including the widely reported
accusation that some American soldiers had died because of the search
for him in the months after his capture.
“The
report properly dismisses a variety of contentions that have been made
about Sergeant Bergdahl,” Mr. Fidell wrote. “No, he was not planning to
walk to China or India. No, there is no evidence that any soldier died
searching for him. No, there is no evidence of misbehavior of any kind
while he was held captive. Nor is there any credible evidence that
Sergeant Bergdahl left in order to get in touch with the Taliban.”
The
Dahl report did quote from a June 27, 2009, email — days before
Sergeant Bergdahl left his post — in which he told his parents that he
was “ashamed to be an American,” Mr. Fidell wrote. Mr. Fidell said that
General Dahl “wisely deemed this email irrelevant to the matter at hand
and made nothing of it.”
In
his account of his time in captivity, Sergeant Bergdahl wrote, “In the
beginning of my captivity, after my first two escape attempts, for about
three months I was chained to a bed spread-eagle and blindfolded.”
It
was only after his captors realized that the resulting muscle atrophy
made it difficult for him to walk that they unchained one of his hands,
he wrote, allowing him to sit up in bed. “Around my ankles where the
chains were, I developed open wounds,” the sergeant wrote.
After
the first year — he had lost so much weight that his ribs and joints
protruded — Sergeant Bergdahl’s captors put him in a metal cage.
“I
was kept in constant isolation during the entire five years, with
little to no understanding of time, through periods of constant
darkness, periods of constant light, and periods of completely random
flickering of light, and absolutely no understanding of anything that
was happening beyond the door I was held behind,” the sergeant wrote.
“I
was continuously shown Taliban videos,” Sergeant Bergdahl wrote. “Told I
was going to be executed. Told I was never going back. Told I would
leave the next day, and the next day told I would be there for 30
years.”
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