In the second case taken up by host Sarah Koenig’s program, the longest-held US prisoner of war since Vietnam speaks out on his captivity

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The podcast phenomenon Serial has returned as a high-profile platform for Bowe Bergdahl, the US army sergeant who spent five years in Taliban captivity after vanishing from his post in Afghanistan, to speak publicly about his alleged desertion for the first time.

Serial recap – season two episode one: DUSTWUN Read more

The first episode appeared on the podcast’s website early Thursday morning. Titled DUSTWUN, it begins by examining a video of Bergdahl’s release.

The podcast opens by describing a video, produced by the Taliban and played by nearly every major newscast at the time, of Bergdahl, head shaved and blinking in the sun, boarding a Black Hawk helicopter with US soldiers.

The story then cuts to pundits after questions about Bergdahl’s disappearance arose.

“Pentagon sources tell NBC that Bergdahl vanished under mysterious circumstances,” one announcer said. He, “left his base unarmed”, said another. Then, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s voice is heard: “In the old days, deserters were shot.”

The last voice is an unfamiliar one: Bergdahl’s.

“The very last thing is, just, I’m a prisoner. I want to go home. Bring me home, please. Bring me home.”

The episode then launches into the political fallout that came as Bergdahl was released to the United States.

Serial’s website and podcast stream was apparently struggling to keep up with demand at launch time, with several listeners unable to listen or download the first episode.

The new batch of episodes promises to deliver fresh details on a murky and controversial case that remains the subject of a military investigation and a political firestorm, with Trump and other Republicans branding the soldier a traitor.

Serial set to tackle Bowe Bergdahl case: our expert panel gives its verdict Read more

Serial, an initiative created by This American Life and associated with US public radio that swiftly became an international sensation, will examine the circumstances surrounding Bergdahl’s capture in 2009 and release last year, when the White House traded him for five Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

The military has charged the 29-year-old with desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

Selecting an active and politically charged case risks incurring the wrath of military and political figures who have expressed concern at Bergdahl being depicted as a victim or hero, rather than a villain who allegedly abandoned and endangered his comrades.

One of the show’s producers acknowledged as much in one of the first episodes on the new season.

“Our first season was about a murder case few people had heard about. Season Two is a story a gazillion people have heard about: the story of Bowe Bergdahl,” Koenig wrote. “It’s been in the newspapers and on TV; it’s been the subject of congressional investigations (in fact, this very day, the House Armed Services Committee is releasing a report on the Bergdahl trade) – and it’s an active case in military court.”

“Unlike our story in season one, this one extends far out into the world,” she said. “It reaches into swaths of the military, the peace talks to end the war, attempts to rescue other hostages, our Guantánamo policy.”

The House armed services committee report released on Thursday, mentioned by Koenig above, was more than one year in the making. Republicans initiated the investigation soon after Bergdahl’s release in May 2014.

The Republican-led report concluded that the Obama administration conducted the trade in secret as a “cloaked” attempt to rid itself of difficult-to-place Taliban fighters held at Guatánamo. While it didn’t comment on Bergdahl’s intentions when leaving the post, writers noted they would watch his disciplinary proceedings closely.



Serial won millions of listeners last year when Koenig investigated the case against Adnan Syed, a Baltimore man serving a life sentence for allegedly murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Koenig’s exhaustive sleuthing poked holes in the prosecution’s case and showcased the journalistic potential of podcasts.

Maryland judge orders Serial subject Adnan Syed’s case reopened Read more

A Baltimore judge reopened Syed’s case last month after considering his petition to include testimony and evidence omitted from his original trials.

In the case of Bergdahl, the mystery is why he left his post, what happened during his apparently brutal captivity, and how the Obama administration negotiated his release, an initial triumph for the White House which swiftly dissolved into political acrimony.

A new congressional report written by the Republican staff of the House armed services committee reportedly criticises the decision to trade the longest-held US prisoner of war of the post-9/11 era for five Taliban prisoners and questions whether it was motivated in part by Obama’s desire to reduce Guantánamo’s prison population.

John McCain, the chairman of the Senate armed services committee, has called Bergdahl a deserter and promised hearings if he escapes jail and disciplinary action.

According to Bergdahl’s lawyers, a lieutenant colonel who headed a hearing in September has recommended “non-judicial punishment”.

If Serial is perceived to sympathise with Bergdahl, it may give Trump an opportunity to simultaneously bash two of his top targets: the media and a soldier whom he has accused of being a “no-good traitor who should have been executed”.

Maxim, which first reported Serial’s choice of topic in September, quoted two former members of Bergdahl’s unit who said they had been interviewed by Serial producers.

Both worried the podcast – which was not yet complete, and which they had not heard – would be biased toward the alleged deserter. “My concern is that the truth is being diluted by those looking to gain from Bowe’s story,” one soldier told the magazine’s website.

“I get it that ... Serial is trying to make a nifty diorama for hipsters to marvel at, but I think it’s the height of crassness for them to do this when it could potentially affect the legal proceedings,” said the other. “I assume it will be a great way to paint us as kooks and sore losers.”

In September, Emily Condon, a production manager for Serial, asked Maxim and other media outlets to give the programme space to do its job: “We’d very much appreciate if fellow journalists would give us some room and not feel the need to attempt to dig into and try to figure out what you think we might be doing.”

Approached by the Guardian on Wednesday, a Serial representative said those behind the show would make no public comment until Thursday.

The production company of Mark Boal, the journalist and screenwriter behind the Oscar-winning film Zero Dark Thirty, worked with the Serial team on the Bergdahl investigation. According to the New Yorker, Boal brought Serial 25 hours of interviews he conducted with Bergdahl after his release, as the soldier declined interviews. Boal had originally intended the interviews only as background for a possible film. Those interviews reportedly form the theme for the podcast – why did Bergdahl leave?

Bergdahl walked off Combat Outpost Mest-Lalak, a tiny base in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, on 30 June 2009, triggering an intense, months-long search which drained and angered his comrades.

Exclusive video shows Bowe Bergdahl days before he walked off his base Read more

His motives remain unclear. His lawyers have argued that he wished to draw attention to miserable conditions he and his comrades endured.

A 2012 Rolling Stone article by reporter Michael Hastings, drawing on emails Bergdahl sent his family, indicated his disgust with the Afghanistan war. “I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting,” Bergdahl wrote.

Once captured by the Taliban, he was beaten, tortured and threatened with execution, he said in a statement to army investigators earlier this year, which his lawyers shared with the media: “I was kept in constant isolation during the entire five years, with little to no understanding of time, through constant periods of constant darkness, periods of constant light, and periods of completely random flickering of light.”

The White House trumpeted his release in May 2014 in a Rose Garden ceremony with Bergdahl’s parents. His hometown of Hailey, Idaho, prepared a welcome-home celebration.

Congressional Republicans, however, erupted, complaining they were not informed in advance, and that the so-called “Taliban Five” – Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Abdul Haq Wasiq – could return to combat after an unspecified “monitoring” period in Qatar.

The army kept Bergdahl under wraps after he returned to the US, and Hailey canceled the celebration. The second episode of the season is expected to bring listeners the Taliban’s side of the Bergdahl story.