Serial interview
Bergdahl is interviewed on the Serial podcast.
All I was seeing was basically, leadership failure to the point that the lives of the guys standing next to me, were, literally, from what I could see, in danger of something seriously going wrong and somebody being killed.
When the interviewer calls his actions a “gutsy move”:
Gutsy, but still stupid…Twenty minutes out, I’m going ‘good grief. I’m way over my head’… suddenly it really starts to sink in. I really did something bad. Well, not bad, but I really did something serious.
He says it took the Taliban about a day to find him.
I couldn’t do anything against six or seven guys with AK-47s, and they pulled up and that was it.
On captivity:
To the point where you just want to scream, and like I can’t scream. I can’t risk that, so it’s like you’re standing there, screaming in your mind.
Claims he intended to return to base
Bergdahl tells investigators he left his base to report on misconduct in his unit and that he had intended to come right back. His lawyer plans to argue that Bergdahl was AWOL rather than a deserter. The difference in terminology could spare Bergdahl from receiving a life sentence.
He had concerns about certain conditions in the unit and things that happened in the unit and he figured that the only way to get any attention to them would be to get that information to a general officer.