American soldiers who served with Bowe Bergdahl blasted the prisoner-swap POW Monday as a “deserter” whose disappearance from his military post caused the deaths of at least six Americans during search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan.
“I was pissed off then, and I am even more so now with everything going on,” said former Sgt. Matt Vierkant.
“Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war, and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him,” Vierkant told CNN.
The parents of one slain serviceman, 2nd Lt. Darryn Andrews, said they were lied to by Army brass, who claimed their son was killed while trying to hunt down a Taliban commander when in fact he was searching for Bergdahl.
Devastated father Andy Andrews told the Daily Mail that since Bergdahl’s release Saturday in a controversial exchange for five Taliban detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay, he and his wife, Sondra, got “several e-mails and phone calls” from soldiers who had served with their son.
“They say their mission was to search for Bergdahl. He [Darryn] was killed in the search,” Andrews said. “We cannot tell you how devastated we are that the government would do this. They lied to us.”
Andrews compared the unfolding story to the scandal over the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
“It’s a big coverup like Benghazi, just like everything [President] Obama has done. We want the truth to come out,” Andrews said.
The mounting outrage came as details continued to emerge about Bergdahl’s disappearance and release. They include:
— In 2010, a secret Pentagon investigation concluded that Bergdahl walked away from his unit and officials scaled back efforts to find him, a former top-level defense official told The Associated Press. The Obama administration then decided to try and get him back through negotiations.
— Bergdahl is the subject of “a major classified file” and many members of the intelligence community suspect he may have been an active collaborator with the Taliban, a senior Defense Department official told Fox News.
— Many Executive Branch officials were “quite baffled” by Obama’s decision to announce Bergdahl’s release while standing next to Bergdahl’s dad, Bob on Saturday, sources told Fox News. The elder Bergdahl has publicly criticized the US role in Afghanistan and on Wednesday reportedly sent a since-deleted Tweet to a Taliban spokesman that said: “I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen!”
Anger at Bergdahl has exploded online, with more than 22,000 people joining the Facebook group “Bowe Bergdahl is a Traitor” and several soliders who served with him changing their profile pictures to an image of Bergdahl in captivity, emblazoned with the word “TRAITOR.”
About 6,000 people also signed an online White House petition calling on President Obama to order Bergdahl court-martialed.
Bergdahl is being treated at an Army hospital in Germany, with Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren saying: “He’s got some nutrition problems, he hasn’t eaten well over the last five years, so we’re focusing on that.”
According to a 2012 report in Rolling Stone magazine, Bowe Bergdahl disappeared three days after sending his parents an e-mail that said, “I am ashamed to even be American” and “The horror that is America is disgusting.”
Both CNN and The Daily Beast, in a column written by ex-soldier Nathan Bethea, on Monday identified six men from Bergdahl’s unit who died during military operations try and find him.
In addition to Andrews, they included Pfc. Matthew Martinek, who died of injuries from the same Sept. 4, 2009, ambush, and Staff Sgt. Michael Murphrey, who stepped on an improvised land mine the following day while approaching a village linked to Bergdahl’s captors.
Killed earlier were Pfc. Morris Walker and Staff Sgt. Clayton Bowen, who died in an IED attack on Aug. 18, 2009, and Staff Sgt. Kurt Curtiss, who was shot in the face on Aug. 26, 2009.
Bethea also said the search efforts were widely blamed for diverting resources that led to an insurgent attack on a joint US-Afghan outpost, killing two other Americans, Pfc. Aaron Fairbairn and Pfc. Justin Casillas.
Bethea noted that he and other soldiers were ordered never to discuss Bergdahl’s disappearance “for fear of endangering him,” but now that he’s safe “it is time to speak the truth.”
“Many have suffered because of [Bergdahl’s] actions: his fellow soldiers, their families, his family, the Afghan military, the unaffiliated Afghan civilians in Paktika, and none of this suffering was inevitable,” Bethea wrote.
“None of it had to happen.”