Serial is a new podcast from the creators of This American Life, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial unfolds one story - a true story - over the course of a whole season.

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life. Season one investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee (Hangul: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. Season two focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season three, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area. Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks.^[1]Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story.^[2] As of September 2018, episodes of seasons one and two have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.^[3]

• 1Series overview
  • 1.1Season 1 (2014)
  • 1.2Season 2 (2015–16)
• 2Episodes
• 3Development and release
• 4Reception

Series overview[edit]

Koenig has said that Serial is 'about the basics: love and death and justice and truth. All these big, big things.'^[4] She also has noted, 'this is not an original idea. Maybe in podcast form it is, and trying to do it as a documentary story is really, really hard. But trying to do it as a serial, this is as old as Dickens.'^[5]

New York Magazine reported that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, directors of The Lego Movie and the film 21 Jump Street, would be producing a television program about the podcast that will take a 'behind-the-scenes approach that details how Koenig went from virtual anonymity to creating one of 2014's biggest cultural phenomenons'.^[6]

Season 1 (2014)[edit]

On February 9, 2015, Scott Pelley of CBS News reported Serial's Season 1 episodes had been downloaded more than 68 million times.^[7] By February 2016, the episodes had been downloaded over 80 million times.^[8]

Season one investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee (Korean: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. She was last seen at about 3 p.m. on January 13, 1999.^[9] Her corpse was discovered on February 9 in Leakin Park and identified two days later. The case was immediately treated as a homicide.^[10] On February 12, an anonymous source contacted authorities and suggested that Adnan Masud Syed, Lee's ex boyfriend, might be a suspect.^[11] Syed was arrested on February 28 at 6 a.m. and charged with first-degree murder, which led to 'some closure and some peace' for Lee's family.^[12] A memorial service for Lee was held on March 11 at Woodlawn High School.^[13] Syed's first trial ended in a mistrial, but after a six-week second trial, Syed was found guilty of Lee's murder on February 25, 2000,^[14] and given a life sentence, despite pleading his innocence.^[15] Syed did not speak in front of the jury.^[16]

People involved[edit]

• Hae Min Lee – murder victim, 18-year-old high school student and athlete
• Adnan Syed – former boyfriend of Lee who was convicted of killing her, his conviction was overturned in 2016^[17] On March 29, 2018, Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the decision to grant Syed a new trial. This decision was later overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals on March 8, 2019, and Syed's conviction was reinstated.^[18]
• Jay Wilds^[19] – key witness at Syed's trial and professed accomplice of Syed^[20]
• Stephanie McPherson – Jay's girlfriend and close friend and classmate of Syed
• Don – Lee's boyfriend at the time of her murder and colleague at Lenscrafters, an eyewear shop
• Aisha Pittman – Classmate and Lee's close friend
• Jennifer (Jenn) Pusateri – Jay's close friend
• Debbie Warren – Lee's friend who said Lee told her she was meeting Don after school
• Krista Myers – Classmate and close friend of Lee and Syed, who recalled Syed asked Lee for a ride after school the day she disappeared
• Becky Walker – Classmate/friend who remembered Lee and Syed had talked about a ride, who also said she saw Syed after school
• 'Cathy' – A friend of Pusateri who said she saw Wilds and Syed on the day Lee disappeared
• Saad Chaudry – Syed's best friend
• Asia McClain – Student at Woodlawn High School and acquaintance of Syed and Lee, said she saw Syed in the library at the time of the murder
• Laura Estrada – Classmate who did not believe Syed was guilty, but who did not think Jay would lie about something serious
• Nisha – Student from Silver Spring, Md. and friend of Syed's, who was called from Syed's phone at 3:32pm, a time during which Syed claimed Jay (who did not know Nisha) had his phone
• Yasser Ali – Syed's friend from the mosque
• Rabia Chaudry – friend of Syed's family, older sister of Saad Chaudry, and an attorney, who has been fighting for years to prove Adnan's innocence.^[21]
• 'Mr. S' – discoverer of Lee's body in Leakin Park
• Kevin Urick and Kathleen 'KC' Murphy – state prosecutors at trial
• M. Cristina Gutierrez – Syed's defense attorney
• Detectives Bill Ritz and Greg MacGillivary – lead homicide investigators

Season 2 (2015–16)[edit]

In September 2015, The New York Times reported the second season would focus on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. A spokesperson for Serial only said, 'Over the last few months they've been reporting on a variety of stories for both Seasons 2 and 3 of Serial, along with other podcast projects.'^[22] The first episode of the season was released, without any previous release date announcement, on December 10, 2015.^[23]

Npr Serial Podcast Season 1

For Season Two, Koenig teamed up with Mark Boal, the Academy Award winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, and his production company, Page 1. Boal had conducted a series of interviews with Bergdahl as part of a film production he was working on, and both Boal and Bergdahl gave Koenig permission to use those excerpts of those recorded interviews in episodes of Serial. As Koenig stated in Season Two's first episode: 'They'd come to us saying 'hey, we've been doing all this reporting on the story, and we've also got this tape. Do you think you might want to listen?' And yes, we did, and we were kind of blown away, and so we began working with them. They shared their research with us, and also put us in touch with many of their sources... We don't have anything to do with their movie, but Mark and Page 1 are our partners for Season 2.'^[24]

On December 14, General Robert B. Abrams, head of United States Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina ordered that Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion.^[25]

Sarah Koenig announced on January 12, 2016 that the podcast schedule would be changed to every other week to allow for deeper reporting, and to add more information than initially planned.^[26] Internet radio service Pandora Radio streamed the second season of Serial.^[27]

On November 3, 2017, military judge Col. Jeffery R. Nance rendered a verdict dishonorably discharging Bergdahl from the Army, reducing his rank to private and requiring forfeit of some of his pay for ten months and no prison time. The verdict is subject to review by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, and may also be appealed to the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals.^[28] After the sentencing, Serial announced to be working on a 'coda' for the season.^[29]

Award[edit]

In June 2017, the Radio Television Digital News Association announced Season Two of Serial won the 2017 National Edward R. Murrow Award for a news series and for its website. Murrow Awards are presented in October in New York.^[30]

Persons involved[edit]

• Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl – held for five years by the Taliban, then released in May 2014 in exchange for Taliban prisoners held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He was court-martialed on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in December 2015.
• Lieutenant John Billings – Bergdahl's platoon leader
• Mark Boal – the Academy Award winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker with whom Bergdahl held most of his interviews
• Shane Cross – a friend from the same platoon as Bergdahl
• Ben Evans – soldier who had described OP Mest, where Bergdahl operated out of
• Darrel Hanson – in the same company as Bergdahl
• Kayla Harrison – a friend, and Kim Harrison's daughter
• Kim Harrison – a friend Bergdahl identified as his emergency contact
• Josh Korder – in the same company as Bergdahl, recorded message for Bergdahl over radio
• Austin Landford – soldier whom Bergdahl was supposed to relieve at the end of his shift. It was Landford's noticing Bergdahl's non-presence that notifies the Army that he has gone missing
• Mark McCrorie – in the same company as Bergdahl
• Mujahet Raman (not his real name) – Taliban who speaks about Bergdahl's capture
• Jon Thurman – in the same company as Bergdahl

Season 3 (2018)[edit]

Season Three is meant to be an analysis of the normal operation of the American criminal justice system, as opposed to the previous two seasons, which followed 'extraordinary' cases.^[31] K.Austin Collins of Vanity Fair commented that the third season was 'an overarching account of an institution: the criminal-justice system, writ large'.^[32] Koenig has described Season Three as 'a year watching ordinary criminal justice, in the least exceptional, most middle-of-the-road, most middle-of-the-country place we could find: Cleveland.'^[32] Episodes follow different cases and are taped in Greater Cleveland, with particular focus on cases before the Cuyahoga CountyCourt of Common Pleas at the Justice Center Complex in Downtown Cleveland.

Episodes[edit]

Season 1 (2014)[edit]

Season 2 (2015–16)[edit]

Season 3 (2018)[edit]

Development and release[edit]

The concept for Serial originated with an experiment in Koenig's basement.^[39] Koenig and Snyder had pitched a different idea at a staff meeting for a weekly program on events during the previous seven days, which staff members received without enthusiasm.^[40] When Ira Glass asked Koenig if she had any other ideas, she mentioned podcasting a story that unfolded over time, a serialized narrative. In an interview with Mother Jones, she explained that each episode would return to the same story, telling the next chapter of a long, true narrative.^[5]

Episode one of the series was released on October 3, 2014, with additional episodes released weekly online. Glass introduced it as a spinoff of his popular radio program, This American Life, and aired episode one on his show.^[39] He explained, 'We want to give you the same experience you get from a great HBO or Netflix series, where you get caught up with the characters and the thing unfolds week after week, but with a true story, and no pictures. Like House of Cards, but you can enjoy it while you're driving.'^[39]

Music[edit]

Nicholas Thorburn released the soundtrack for Serial on October 17, 2014.^[41] It includes 15 tracks, all short instrumentals, and is available at the Bandcamp site or streamed from several reviewing sites.^[41][42][43]

Mark Henry Phillips, who mixes the show, has also provided original scores.^[44]

Musical credits for Season 2 include Thorburn and Phillips, as well as Fritz Myers and staff music editor Kate Bilinski.^[45]

Funding[edit]

Serial's launch was sponsored by Mailchimp, a frequent podcast advertiser, and salaried staff positions were initially funded by WBEZ.^[46] Admitting the podcast was funded from This American Life's budget during the launch, producer Koenig noted that Serial would eventually need to generate its own funding. She said, 'Everyone's saying 'It's podcasting! It's internet! Of course there'll be money somewhere.' We're not exactly sure yet.'^[39] Dana Chivvis, another producer, observed that, since the industry is still in its infancy, a business model for podcasting has yet to be established.^[47]

Towards the end of the first season, producers asked for public donations to fund a second season.^[48] Within a week, the staff of Serial posted an announcement that a second season has been made possible by donations and sponsorship.^[49]

Reception[edit]

Season 1 (2014)[edit]

The first season of Serial was both culturally popular and critically well received. Serial was ranked at No. 1 on iTunes even before it débuted, leading iTunes rankings for over three months, well after the first season ended.^[1][50] It also broke records as the fastest podcast ever to reach 5 million downloads at Apple's iTunes store.^[51]David Carr in The New York Times called Serial 'Podcasting's first breakout hit.'^[52]The Guardian characterized it as a 'new genre of audio storytelling'.^[5]

Introducing a PBS NewsHour segment about Serial, Judy Woodruff noted that it is 'an unexpected phenomenon', and Hari Sreenivasan mentioned it has 'five million downloads on iTunes, far more than any other podcast in history'.^[53]

Calling the characters 'rich and intriguing', The Daily Californian noted similarities to the film The Thin Blue Line (1988), and described the podcast as 'gripping' and the story as 'thrilling', while applauding the series for giving 'listeners a unique opportunity to humanize the players'.^[54]

Slate's reviewer pointed out that Serial is not escapist and went on to note: 'Someone in the show is not telling the truth about something very sinister. That's the narrative tension that makes Serial not only compelling but also unlike anything I can remember watching or reading before.'^[34]The Baltimore Sun commented on the inherently riveting subject matter and noted that the top-notch reporting and podcast format yield 'a novel twist on the investigative long-form piece'.^[33]

A critique from the journalism community was more qualified. First noting that some people believe there is a 'podcast renaissance', the reviewer from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab observed that even though podcasts are not new, they are not yet mainstream.^[46]

Not all critiques of the podcasting format have been as equivocal. PopMatters observed that podcasting is a new distribution model, very different from television as a distribution model because it gives users access to media and the freedom to listen to episodes of a long-form story while doing other things. The reviewer applauded the focus on long-form journalism and added, 'Suddenly you feel like the full promise of podcasting has just been unleashed. That long-form narrative nonfiction is really the way to best leverage the potential of podcasting as a distribution model.'^[55] A Wall Street Journal critic observed: 'podcasts have slipped marketers' minds. ZenithOptimedia, for example, put out a forecast predicting 0% growth for the medium after years of positive momentum.'^[56] Discussing the economics of podcast advertising, New York Magazine noted that the personal nature of the podcast format allows higher advertising rates: 'CPM (the cost to an advertiser per thousand impressions, a standard ad-industry unit) was between $20 and $45. Compare that to a typical radio CPM (roughly $1 to $18) or network TV ($5 to $20) or even a regular old web ad ($1 to $20), and the podcast wins.'^[57]

Multiple reviews have commented on the addictive nature of Serial.^{[58][59][60][61]} A review in New York Magazine linked fans' feelings about the possibility of an ambiguous ending with their psychological need for closure.^[62] Reddit hosts a Serial subreddit site.^[63][64]Slate is also 'following the story closely' and presents a podcast discussion of Serial every week following the latest release.^[65]

Several reviews have criticized the ethics of Serial, notably the decision to start broadcasting without the reporting having been finished.^[66][67] Critics said the 'live investigation' format invited listeners to do their own sleuthing, which quickly led to exposure online of the full names and even addresses of people who were questioned by the police. Another point of debate was whether it was legitimate to use the murder of Hae Min Lee as a subject for entertainment.^[68][69]

Sarah Koenig's reporting has also been criticized as being biased in favor of Adnan's innocence, and Katy Waldman's Slate blog noted that some felt Serial undercut Adnan's detractors.^[70][71] An Atlantic roundtable discussion noted that the podcast forces the listener to consider Koenig's 'verification bias', the tendency to seek answers that support her own biased assumptions, and that 'even a well-meaning narrator isn't always credible'.^[72]

One critic asserted that Koenig presented the story of a murder involving two minority teenagers and their cultures through a lens of white privilege, 'a white interpreter 'stomping through communities that she does not understand' '.^[73] A rejoinder in The Atlantic pointed out, 'Serial is a reflection on a murder case and the criminal-justice system reported over 'just' a year, which is to say, it is researched with more effort and depth than 99 percent of journalism produced on any beat in America... Most of all, the response to mistakes should never be to discourage white reporters from telling important stories.'^[74]

Serial was honored with a Peabody award in April 2015, noting 'Serial rocketed podcasting into the cultural mainstream', and that it was an 'experiment in long-form, non-fiction audio storytelling'. It was cited for 'its innovations of form and its compelling, drilling account of how guilt, truth, and reality are decided'.^[75] Dr. Jeffrey P. Jones, Director of the Peabody Awards, commented the podcast showed 'how new avenues and approaches to storytelling can have a major impact on how we understand truth, reality, and events'.^[76]

In an interview with Jon Ronson for The Guardian, Syed's mother Shamim and younger brother Yusuf both said they listened to the podcast and that people sent transcripts to Syed in prison. Yusuf said the podcast had indirectly reconnected the family to his estranged brother Tanveer for the first time in the 15 years since the murder.^[77]

Three 'update' mini-episodes of Serial were posted during Syed's post-conviction hearing in February 2016, coinciding with the run of Season Two. They received limited attention from critics, although Slate's review notably described them as 'ragged, chaotic entries [which] can’t help but hit us as shadows of what was.'^[78]

Season 2 (2015–16)[edit]

The much-anticipated second season of Serial was released in December 2015.^[79] The subject of Season 2 was met with widespread skepticism.^[80][81] Vastly different from the popular murder-mystery story that Season 1 investigated, Season 2's focus on the story behind the U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who disappeared from his post in Afghanistan in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban and subsequently released in 2014, was contentious due in part to the controversial views of the soldier's departure from his post and also because of the high-profile court martial proceeding for his alleged desertion.^{[82][83][84][85]}

The Guardian summarized the season by saying Koenig and her team managed to add to the conversation: 'Not only did they let Bergdahl speak for himself, via a series of interviews with the film-maker Mark Boal, but they also asked and answered a question that no one – including the military or the US government – had seemingly bothered to investigate.'^[86]Season 2 of Serial was less about solving a mystery and more about long-term investigative reporting and storytelling. Zach Baron of GQ Magazine reported that he liked the season overall and thought it gave an invaluable document of what it is like to serve in modern wars, but said it was also 'something of a cultural disappointment, at least compared to last season.'^[87]

Similar to Season 1's critical response, some felt that the lack of answers was 'infuriating.'^[88][89]

Switching to a bi-weekly schedule mid-season caused some to believe the series was losing momentum.^[86][85][90] However, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sarah Koenig and executive producer Julie Snyder said the download numbers for Season 2 were 50 million, higher than the numbers were by the time Season 1 ended.^[88]

Season 3 (2018)[edit]

Season three has initially received mostly positive reviews. Andrew Liptak at The Verge called it a 'return to form'.^[91] Nicholas Quah at Vulture called it 'ambitious, addictive, and completely different'.^[92]

Related podcasts[edit]

The popularity of Serial and the intrigue of the case it covered has spawned several companion podcasts, such as Crime Writers on Serial, The Serial Serial, and Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed, the latter produced by Rabia Chaudry. S-Town, a 2017 collaboration between the teams of 'This American Life' and 'Serial', has also received widespread acclaim.^[93][94][95]

Parodies[edit]

Parodies of Serial have targeted the show's style, its fans' obsessive tendencies, Koenig's curiosity and uncertainties, the charts and graphics posted on the show's website, and the podcast's sponsor MailChimp (especially the meme 'MailKimp').^{[96][97][98][99]}

• The New Yorkerran a cartoon based on Serial.^[100]
• When Koenig appeared on The Colbert Report, Colbert noted that the finale of Serial would be released in competition with Colbert's last episode.^[101]
• Saturday Night Live spoofed Serial with a sketch investigating Kris Kringle, who for years has allegedly been leaving presents in people's homes.^[102]
• As part of the promotion for the video game Halo 5: Guardians, developer 343 Industries is putting out a multi-part, in-universe podcast called Hunt the Truth, investigating the history of the series protagonist, the Master Chief, John-117.^[103] Narrated by comedian Keegan-Michael Key as fictional reporter Benjamin Giraud, it is delivered in the style of the Serial podcast, including the narration delivery style of Sarah Koenig and audio style of her in-person and over-the-phone interviews.
• Funny or Die released a short video starring Michaela Watkins as a frantic Koenig—unsure of how she will end the series—recording the final episode of Serial. The video mimics Serial's style, including asides to the audience demarcated by the Serial theme music. The 'Mail Kimp' and 'Crab Crib' memes are referenced in the popular video, which had over 880,000 views as of October 2015, placing it in the website's 'Immortal: Best of the Best' video category.^[104]
• In the summer of 2015, Under the Gun Theater developed an improvised show format entitled One Story Told Week by Week which satirized Serial. According to Chicago Tribune writer, Nina Metz, the host parodied Koenig's 'distinctively intimate and inquisitive vocal delivery,' as well as contained moments that satirized the podcast's 'attempt at amateur sleuthing.'^[105]
• Sarah Koenig made a cameo appearance in an episode of the animated comedy BoJack Horseman as a ringtone, parodying her introduction to episodes of the podcast.^[106]
• In November and December 2016 Secrets, Crimes and Audiotape, a radio drama anthology podcast series by Wondery, had a five-episode story arc in the form of a musical satire of Serial's Season One, called Wait, Wait, Don't Kill Me. In this so-called 'first-ever serialized podcast musical', young struggling reporter Sarah Koenig is possibly involved in Hae Min Lee's murder and her covering the story boosts her career and leads to her cooperation with Ira Glass. The story among other things also makes extended use of the MailKimp meme.^[107]
• The 2017 Netflix series American Vandal is a mockumentary that parodies the true crime genre in general, and Serial specifically; the characters in American Vandal even acknowledge the similarities to Serial in the fourth episode of the show.^[108]
• Scream (TV series) and Trial & Error (TV series) both featured a podcast host visiting a small town in the aftermath of a murder.

The Case Against Adnan Syed HBO Documentary (2019)[edit]

Based on Serial Season 1, an HBO documentary entitled The Case Against Adnan Syed was released on March 10, 2019. The documentary was released in four parts and reviewed the case leading up to Syed's then-current status as of 2018.^[109] The HBO documentary revealed that Syed turned down a plea bargain in 2018 that would have required him to serve four more years before being released. Subsequently, Syed's mother told him that she had leukemia.^[110]

Serial Episode 11 Summary

References[edit]

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External links[edit]

• Official website

This week on Serial, Sarah Koenig digs into Bowe Bergdahl’s mental state. As the season wraps, she wants to help answer the question: What should we blame Bergdahl for?

As listeners learned a few weeks ago, Bergdahl has been diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, and a military “sanity board” found that he was suffering from a “severe mental disease or defect” – and that was before he was held captive by the Taliban for five years.

Serial recap – season two, episode 10: Thorny Politics

Koenig starts this episode by returning to Bergdahl’s time in the US Coast Guard. He only made it as far as boot camp before he was “separated” from the Coast Guard due to what Bergdahl described as a panic attack. However, Koenig spoke with a fellow Coast Guard recruit who described what happened to Bergdahl as far, far more serious than just a panic attack. What he saw was a brutal bloody scene much more akin to a suicide attempt. When Bergdahl’s Coast Guard cohorts later found out he was being held by the Taliban, they were more surprised that he had been allowed into the army at all. After what they had seen, they didn’t think he was fit for duty. Still, the army found Bergdahl met all their recruitment requirements, although an investigation admitted that perhaps the army should have looked more closely at Bergdahl’s separation from the Coast Guard. Koenig suggests Bergdahl screwed up by walking off base, but the army screwed up by letting him back into the military in the first place.

But in the shadow of Bergdahl’s looming court martial, Koenig knows the military wants Bergdahl to pay the consequences for his decision to walk off duty, especially if any American soldiers died looking for him. The problem is that no one seems to know whether that actually happened.

Former Lt General Michael Flynn, ex-head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was in Afghanistan when Bergdahl went missing acting as Gen Stanley McChrystal’s second in command. He is adamant that soldiers died while searching for Bergdahl, on the grounds that any soldier who was killed or injured by an IED while hunting for Bergdahl, those deaths were basically Bergdahl’s fault. “It’s a no-brainer,” he said. Koenig however has been unable to find a single reported death or injury in those circumstances.

The six soldiers

Bergdahl walked off OP Mest on 30 June 2009 and for the entire month of July people were searching for him. But no one died on those missions. According to Koenig, the six soldiers who died from Bergdahl’s battalion – and who are frequently cited as casualties in the hunt for Bergdahl – died on later missions and none of those was a search and rescue mission. Despite the lack of evidence, people remain convinced that soldiers died due to Bergdahl’s actions.

During one of those later missions, Lt Darryn Andrews was killed in an RPG attack in Paktika Province in Afghanistan. It wasn’t until that infamous Rose Garden ceremony when it was revealed that Bergdahl was coming home, that Andrews’s parents learned their son may have died while hunting for Bergdahl. His parents were irate and took their case to the media and testified in front of Congress to that fact, blaming Bergdahl, at least incidentally, for their son’s death.

But was that really the case? To answer, Koenig dug into the mission in Paktika Province. No one seems to know what the military was doing there that day, which isn’t unusual due to the army’s operational structure, but according to other soldiers on the mission, the scene quickly turned dangerous. They were surrounded by the Taliban and attacked, and held under fire for hours. It was a brutal scene that resulted in at least two deaths, but it’s not clear that the mission had anything to do with Bergdahl, other than the fact that soldiers were always supposed to be looking for him. Koenig points out that searching for Bergdahl was sort of an “umbrella” over all of the military’s operations, meaning whatever mission they were on, they were also supposed to be keeping an eye out for Bergdahl. That’s why it’s easy for the army to hold Bergdahl accountable for the deaths of those six soldiers. Even if he wasn’t the real mission that day, the hunt for him was still ongoing and omnipresent.

‘You could get killed any day’

But even Sergeant Major Ken Wolf, who spoke so bluntly about Bergdahl in episode six and clearly has no love lost for him, doesn’t hold Bergdahl responsible for those deaths. In no uncertain terms, Wolfe told Koenig that he wanted the families who lost sons during that deployment to know one thing: “Their sons did not die looking for Bergdahl.” According to Wolf, at the time of the mission in Paktika Province, the army already knew that Bergdahl was in Pakistan so they wouldn’t have had units on the ground hunting for him in Afghanistan. Despite that assurance, many people still hold Bergdahl accountable because the search for him stretched resources thin. Wolf gets it, but doesn’t buy it. “You’re in a very bad neighborhood regardless,” he said. “You could get killed any day.” Wolf doesn’t begrudge the soldiers their belief that Bergdahl is to blame, though, but he doesn’t think they are correct and does wish they had been more private about their thoughts. According to Koenig this is because Wolf doesn’t want the memories of the fallen soldiers to be “dragged into the Bergdahl morass”.

Koenig then dives into the idea that army leaders were using the search for Bergdahl as an excuse to get extra assets and go “kick in doors”, but were actually doing something else all together. According to an anonymous source, the search for Bergdahl became a sort of trump card that could be played whenever anyone wanted to go on a mission. Simply say you had good intel on Bergdahl’s whereabouts and your mission would be approved. The army has checks to make sure the system wasn’t abused, but as Koenig puts it there may have been “a little cheating, a little massaging, but no scandal”.

But if, as Wolf suggested, the army believed that Bergdahl was being held in Pakistan, why were they still doing searches in Afghanistan? Two reasons: The US had no authority to conduct searches in Pakistan, so they couldn’t search for Bergdahl there, and, it turns out that the army still had credible intelligence that Bergdahl might have been being held in Afghanistan. According to Koenig’s sources, the army was following every lead to find Bergdahl, because they never got to 100% bulletproof evidence where Bergdahl was being held and the army doesn’t willingly leave people behind. As a source told Koenig, “even if they’re a dickhead, you will do everything you can” to get a POW home.

‘The baggage of war’

So many resources were diverted to search for Bergdahl that some soldiers will always hold him accountable for deaths that occurred in the wake of his DUSTWUN. They firmly believe Bergdahl’s actions had a real world ripple effect that caused death or injury to other soldiers. Koenig thinks it’s going too far to blame Bergdahl for the deaths of those six soldiers, but she does admit people suffered psychologically and physically during the search for him. In his upcoming court martial, Bergdahl could be convicted of endangering his unit by deserting them in a war zone. But, according to Koenig, there’s guilt and there’s blame, which is a more delicate and nuanced thing. In wartime, blame becomes cloudy. Many people in the military blame themselves for deaths that are not their fault, which Koenig demonstrates with a series of heart-wrenching interviews with some of the voices we’ve heard over the course of the season of Serial. “You just want to blame something or somebody,” said one fallen soldier’s mother. “I blame the Taliban.”

In the blame game of wartime, it’s understandable that some of that blame falls to Bergdahl. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Paul Edgar told Koenig that Bergdahl’s behavior in wartime was actually pretty run of the mill. “His case is simply a very normal part of war,” he said. “When you sign up for war as a society, you sign up for this. You sign up for disillusioned youth.” He sums up Bergdahl and his behavior as simply “the baggage of war” and he doesn’t think it’s fair to pin all the responsibility for what happens in wartime on a 20-year old. Some of Bergdahl’s former platoon-mates agree Bergdahl shouldn’t hold all the blame. They initially held him accountable, but now realize they were mad at the entire situation. “It was going to suck no matter what,” said one.

Bergdahl isn’t the first soldier to go AWOL. In fact, between 2001 and 2014 more than 3,500 people were convicted of going AWOL and 980 of those were convicted of desertion. Most of those were in the US, but some have happened in war zones, including two cases that were remarkably similar to Bergdahl’s. Those cases didn’t make the news, though, and the soldiers were simply sent home to get some help, because as Koenig notes, walking off a base into Afghanistan is so dangerous you have to be “a head case”.

Serial Podcast Season 1 Episode 11 Transcript

But because Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban, because a DUSTWUN was issued, because there was a search for him and because five Taliban were traded for him, Bergdahl’s case is different. But is that Bergdahl’s fault? Should he be held accountable for that? Possibly not, but the court martial is moving forward regardless.

Observations

• Lt Col Paul Edgar’s thoughts on society’s responsibility for the baggage of war are well worth a listen.
• Nice to hear that at least two of Bergdahl’s platoon-mates have been swayed by the podcast and no longer blame him for the mess.
• Film-maker Mark Boal still talks to Bergdahl occasionally, although he no longer seems to be working on a movie on these events.

Notes

(1) Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder discuss Serial season 2 in exclusive interview

(2) Sgt Bergdahl may not be quite so blameless

(3) The Case of Bowe Bergdahl: Military Justice in a Highly Charged Political Season