Revealed: Bowe Bergdahl left letter telling comrades at Afghan base he was 'leaving to start new life and didn't want to fight for America' as Army announces he DOES face desertion charges

Sgt Bowe Bergdahl left a note for his comrades saying he did not want to fight for America any more and was leaving to start a new life

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today said 'it's premature' to think there will be no charges laid against Bergdahl

Army Secretary confirms there will be a full government investigation into the circumstances surrounding his 2009 disappearance



Will put Obama under more pressure after Susan Rice said he served with 'honor and distinction' and freed five Taliban commanders

Obama said today it's 'absolutely' possible the five prisoners the U.S. released from Guantanamo Bay as a trade for Bergdahl could rejoin terrorist cells



President added the US has an obligation not to leave any soldiers behind

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she felt the 'tough' decision was justified

But former Vice President Dick Cheney was not convinced, saying the Taliban leaders will 'most likely' launch retaliatory attacks against the US

Cheney said the Obama administration didn't 'get a very good deal'



Former comrade who was there when Bergdahl disappeared five years ago broke a military gagging order to speak to MailOnline

He said: 'As far as I’m concerned Bergdahl deserted his men and should face a court martial'



‘Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I was right, he had walked off’

Bergdahl was scheduled to be promoted in absentia for a second time this summer before he was found and could receive five years'-worth back pay



Bowe Bergdahl left a note saying he had gone to start a 'new life' and a former comrade broke his military gagging order today to tell MailOnline of the jaw-dropping moment he discovered the Taliban POW had walked off from their Afghanistan base.

That revelation came just hours before two top government officials confirmed that there will be a new, full investigation into Bergdahl's disappearance.



The soldier, who requested anonymity as he is still in the military, said: ‘Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I was right, he had walked off.’

The New York Times reported Bergdahl also left behind a note in which he said he did not want to fight for America any more, did not believe in the war - and was leaving to start a new life.



The letter to his comrades was separate from the email he sent to his parents before he sent his goods home to them, wherein he wrote: 'life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong.... I am ashamed to even be (A)merican.'



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AWOL: Bowe Bergdahl, pictured with pipe in mouth manning an observation post months before his disappearance, left a note telling his fellow soldiers that he was leaving to start a new life, did not want to fight for America and did not believe in war

Trial? Bergdahl (left)faces the threat of desertion charges, the Army announced just days after Obama's national security advisor Susan Rice said he served with 'honor and distinction'

Penalty: A former comrade of Bergdahl's (seated with Blackfoot Company, 1st Battalion 501st infantry Regiment (Airborne) 25th Infantry Division in Afghanistan) said he should face the firing squad for what he did

Rolling Stone reported the email in 2012 and said that Bergdahl had called his battalion commander a 'conceited old fool' and his peers an 'army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies'.

The latest fold in the saga came when General Martin Dempsey wrote today that while if any misconduct is found, Army leaders 'will not look away' but until that time, he is protected by an American ethos of assuming innocence.



'The questions about this particular soldier’s conduct are separate from our effort to recover ANY U.S. service member in enemy captivity. This was likely the last, best opportunity to free him. As for the circumstances of his capture, when he is able to provide them, we’ll learn the facts.



'life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong.... I am ashamed to even be (A)merican' -Bowe Bergdahl wrote in an email to his parents days before 'voluntarily walking off the Army base



'Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty.'

President Obama defended his decision to trade five Guantanamo Bay inmates for Bergdahl during a press conference in Poland on Monday, saying the US had an obligation not to leave any of its military personnel behind.

However he admitted the freed prisoners could now 'return to activities that are detrimental to us'.



Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said on Monday that Obama's decision was both 'tough' and justified.

'This young man, whatever the circumstances, was an American citizen - is an American citizen - was serving in our military,' Clinton said at an event in Denver.

'The idea that you really care for your own citizens and particularly those in uniform, I think is a very noble one.'

But Former Vice President Dick Cheney did not agree, expressing concerns that the Taliban leaders will now plan attacks against the US as soon as they can, according to CBS.

'I think there's a distinct possibility that these five will in fact go into the battle,' Cheney told Fox News on Monday night.

'These are people that are most likely to go back and once again launch strikes or attacks against Americans, against our friends and allies in the region.

'I think the odds are that they will in fact do that and we'll end up paying another kind of price because of the transaction that's been negotiated here.'

Cheney added about the Obama Administration: 'I do think they have in fact negotiated with terrorists and I don't think they got a very good deal.'



The comments came after Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, said the President served with 'honor and distinction'.

There are a variety of offenses related to a military absence without proper approval, and a number of potential actions could be taken.



Bergdahl could be tried by court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for desertion; he could be given a non-judicial punishment for a lesser charge, such as being away without leave. And he could be given credit for time already served while he was a prisoner.

It will pile further pressure on Obama over his judgement in releasing five top Taliban terror leaders from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for a soldier who now faces charges for abandoning his unit and his oath to the U.S. Army.

Bergdahl was promoted in absentia two years after he went missing, being promoted from private first class to sergeant in September 2011.



It was reported Monday that he was scheduled for a second promotion- to staff sergeant- in June of this year if he was not found in time.



Geoffrey Corn, a South Texas College of Law professor and former judge advocate general, told Business Insider that the Pentagon never followed through on specific criteria held for deserters, meaning that Bergdahl could end up with five years back pay.



'The military has to process paperwork so that you can't get back pay and leave and so that the unit can get a replacement... According to the Pentagon there's no evidence he was ever dropped from the rolls,' Mr Corn said.



The soldier who spoke to MailOnline made his feelings and those of his comrades very clear.



He said: ‘As far as I’m concerned Bergdahl deserted his men and should face a court martial. People died trying to save him. He was a deserter’.

Bergdahl’s platoon anxiously searched the observation post they had set up a remote area of Afghanistan but only found Bergdahl’s sleeping bag that had been neatly folded up.

It also claimed that he did not breach the perimeter wire and left by possibly hiding in a contractor’s vehicle meaning that he would have planned the escape in advance.

A huge search ensued during which time at least six US soldiers are said to have died while hunting for Bergdahl, 28, who has just been released from five years in captivity with the Taliban.

Premeditated: Soldiers claim Bergdahl (pictured in proof of life video) planned his desertion. He sent belongings home, learned the language, did not breach the perimeter fence on the day he disappeared and would spend his time learning the local languages. He even told them he wanted to walk to China



Killed in the search: Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen, 29, (left) and Private First Class Morris Walker, 23, (right) were killed in an IED explosion on August 18, 2009

Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss, (left) a 27-year-old father of two, who died in a firefighter on August 26, 2009. Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey, 25, (right) was killed in an IED blast on September 5, 2009

Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, 34, (left) and Private First Class Matthew Michael Martinek, 20, (right) died after a rocket-propelled grenade ambush on September 4, 2009

Bergdahl was serving with the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment in Paktika province near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan when he went missing in the early hours of 30 June 2009.

He had been at part of an Observation Post with 28 colleagues men and a few trucks set up in a defensive position to protect themselves.

Some of the men were sleeping in the trucks they had driven in on and others were camped out with their sleeping bags in the open. It was not until the 9am roll call that they realized he was gone.

LEGAL CONSEQUENCES: WHAT IS IN STORE FOR BERGDAHL?

There are a variety of offenses related to an absence without proper approval, and a number of potential actions could be taken by the military.

He could be tried by court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for desertion; he could be given a non-judicial punishment for a lesser charge, such as being away without leave. And he could be given credit for time already served while he was a prisoner.

Lisa Schenck, a former military judge who is now a professor at George Washington University's law school, told US News and World Report that Bergdahl already have a charge sheet listing alleged crimes as the remnants of an earlier 2010 Pentagon investigation, where they reportedly found 'incontrovertible' evidence that he left the base voluntarily.

She said that one of the possible punishments for abandoning one's post during a time of war is the death penalty.

Others think that it is unlikely that he will be issued a death order, especially in light of the massive effort that the government went through to retrieve him.

'Death is still a lawful sentence for desertion in a time of war, I’m not suggesting that’s not in the realm of possibilities for a case like this... there could be significant punishment, significant confinement,' Victor Hansen, a former military prosecutor who teaches at the New England School of Law.

In the past 150 years, there have only been two cases when a soldier has been executed for desertion, and the last time was in 1945.

Up until this point Bergdahl had been seen as a strange loner who wouldn't socialize with the other men. Instead, he would stick to his bunk, learning Pashto and Arabic with Rosetta Stone.



A week earlier he had sent his belongings and computer home to his parents after setting out in an email to his father that he was 'ashamed to be an American' after what he had seen in Afghanistan - including soldiers laughing at running over an Afghan boy with an armored vehicle.

Specialist Gerald Sutton, 31, Sutton remembered Bergdahl talking with him and a third soldier just a few days before he walked away.



'He was asking us what it would be like to get lost in the mountains ... and he asked me personally if I thought he could make it to China or India on foot. At the time we thought he was joking.

'About a week or two before he left he mailed some of his stuff home,' he said. 'including his Apple laptop. He sent that home to his parents. That didn't seem suspicious to us at the time, but it made sense after the fact.'



'He left his weapon that day. The only thing he had with him was his diary – that none of us actually saw, so I have no idea what was in there – 2 MREs ['Meals Ready to Eat' rations], his knife, a bottle of water and his compass.'



The soldier who discovered him missing, said: ‘The first I heard was when one of the guards said he could not find Bergdahl.

‘I asked him: "What do you mean you can’t find him?’ He said he couldn’t find him anywhere. We sent two guys to the top of the observation post in case he was sleeping between two trucks, I thought maybe he’s sleeping down there.

‘We also sent one of the men to see if he was drinking tea with the Afghans. We looked at his sleeping bag and it was nicely folded.

‘I said what do we have missing here and one of the younger soldiers said that there were four or five bottles bottles of water missing from a crate that he had. It was chaos. We all knew what would happen if we couldn’t find him.

‘Bergdahl’s backpack was missing, so was his knife. I knew right away he had not been captured - he had walked off.’

Provisions: Bergdahl walked off without his gun, but with water, a compass and two days of rations



The soldier was told by an Afghan boy they spoke to that told them he had seen an American soldier walking away through the fields.



The soldier said: ‘Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I was right, he had walked off.’

The soldiers began a frantic search costing millions of dollars using drones, military tracking dogs and dozens of men for eight days, although the wider operation to find him went on for three months.

Captain Travis Sorenson, the co-pilot of one of the first F15 aircraft sent up to hunt for Bergdahl, said that he heard on intelligence briefings in the next couple of days that he was thought to have been taken East straight away.



‘Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I was right, he had walked off’

The plan was to get him into a cave system over the border with Pakistan because it was away from US soldiers, he said.

Captain Sorenson, 36, who has now left the military, told MailOnline: ‘The operation to try and find Bergdahl must have cost millions.

‘We had F-15s flying constant missions for 48 hours and had 52 planes doing search runs. There were A-10s, Apache helicopters, British Tornadoes, British Navy Harriers and German Tornadoes.



‘When we found out that he had walked off the base we were all extremely angry and could not understand why he did it. We spent a couple of days looking for him when other soldiers were getting bombed, we couldn’t support Navy SEALs and other people.

Backfired: The court of public opinion has swung dramatically away from joy and celebration at Bergdahl's release since the weekend when Obama welcomed his parents, Jani and Bob, to the Rose Garden



Anger: The military ordered members of Bergdahl's unit to sign non-disclosure agreements but they have since spoken out about his 'desertion' and how it cost the lives of those searching for him

‘We couldn’t do our jobs because we were looking for this guy’.

Leaked military communications on Wikileaks show the complete military signal traffic relating to Bergdahl’s release.

The text says that one of the last sightings of him was when he was in a black Toyota Corolla with a bag over his head being escorted by three to five motorcycles.

In intercepted chatter Taliban fighters could be heard asking themselves: ‘Is it true that they captured an American guy?’

The men joke about it and one of them responds that they should ‘cut the head off’.



Soldiers in Bergdahl's platoon have claimed they were forced to sign a highly unusual nondisclosure agreement covering his disappearance in an apparent attempt to cover up what happened.

Two soldiers who spoke to MailOnline said the letter was passed around by commanders to those close to Sgt. Bergdahl.



The ploy backfired, however, as a number of soldiers spoke out regardless in angry Facebook messages and media interviews.



But the irregular action by the military raises fresh and disturbing questions about attempts to control the flow of information about the incident.



Sgt. Evan Buetow, who fought in Sgt. Bergdahl's platoon, said: 'I never signed it. I know there were a couple of soldiers who were closer to Sgt. Bergdahl as friends.

Beheading: Wikileaks files on intercepted Taliban comms showed that they wanted to 'cut his head off'



‘I know a couple of them signed the official nondisclosure letter. We did not have to sign an NDA for other missions.’



Others who have spoken out anonymously on the Facebook page ‘Boweisatraitor’ have also referred to such a letter.



Another soldier from Sgt. Bergdahl’s unit who is still in the military told MailOnline: 'The nondisclosure letters were handed around.'



‘Everyone signed them who was told to – they were just following orders.’



NDA letters are usually signed by soldiers who have security clearances or are working on sensitive missions.

