The highly anticipated second season of the podcast Serial dropped on Thursday, this time focused on the high-profile military case against USA soldier, Bowe Bergdahl.
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San Antonio: Accused US Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, who was held captive by the Taliban for five years, said in a podcast launched on Thursday that he left his post in Afghanistan to draw attention to “leadership failure” in his unit.
“All I was seeing”, he said, “was basically leadership failure – to the point the lives of the guys standing next to me were in serious danger of something going wrong, somebody being killed”. At one point he says he was trying to be a real-life Jason Bourne.
Further complicating things was the prisoner exchange that President Obama executed in 2014 to rescue Bergdahl from Taliban captivity – something that wasn’t universally well received in the States. He said “standing in an empty, dark room hurts – physically, but more than that”.
It also features interviews directly with Bergdahl, who has avoided commenting publicly and in the press amid the furor about his return. They describe the awful conditions at OP Mest, where Bergdahl’s platoon would spend days on watch.
Since the requests to release Bergdahl’s interviews during the investigation were not granted, Fidell hopes the “Serial” podcast will help silence critics by giving his client the chance to express his side of the story. You know, that breath that you’re trying to breathe, that release that you’re trying to get – everything is beyond that door. Instead of simply walking 18 miles from his outpost to a forward operating base, Bergdahl decided he would first try to track Taliban insurgents placing improvised explosive.devices.
The second series of weekly podcast Serial has dropped without warning, exciting fans of the non-fiction program which has revolutionised the broadcasting platform.
Bergdahls interview is another coup for makers of Serial, which established podcasts as a viable outlet when the first season was downloaded more than 100 million times. In a statement, Fidell called the podcast “a step in the right direction”.
That’s when Bergdahl says he changed his plan.
An Army officer has recommended that Bergdahl’s case be referred to a special court-martial, a misdemeanour-level forum, but the final decision rests with a general overseeing the case.
“The basic fats in the case of Bergdahl are known, and most parties involved agree on what they are”, explains The New Yorker.
A Taliban propaganda video released Saturday, July 18, 2009 shows Bowe Bergdahl as a prisoner.
Bergdahl, 29, of Hailey, Idaho, has been charged with desertion and “misbehaviour before the enemy” after disappearing from his post in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009.
“This one idiosyncratic guy makes a radical decision at the age of 23 to walk away into Afghanistan”.
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“Our report finds that the administration clearly broke the law in not notifying Congress of the transfer”, said Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas and the chairman of the panel.
