Ira Glass

Previously, on Serial.

Sarah Koenig

From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago, it's Serial, one story told week by week. I'm Sarah Koenig.

Right after Bowe Bergdahl first went missing from his outpost in Afghanistan, word came down that the higher-ups wanted someone from Bowe's platoon, Second Platoon Blackfoot Company, to record a message to Bowe that they'd play on local radio. They wanted it to be a voice Bowe would recognize. So they chose a guy Bowe was friends with, a guy from Louisiana.

Sarah Koenig

That's Josh Korder, originally from Pennsylvania. He didn't want to make a message to Bowe. He said he felt a little disloyal to his platoon, calling out to the guy who was causing them such turmoil.

Sarah Koenig

Safe to say, Bowe never heard the message. Also safe to say, Bowe was trying really hard to come home. His first year in captivity starts with an escape and ends with an escape, like shitty bookends to a terrible year.

In between the escapes, Bowe was learning necessary twisted lessons of survival: how to smile when you're in agony; that if you ask for something, such as water, you're likely to get less of it or less of something else, such as food; if you're severely dehydrated you can't really drink your own urine, because it turns into a salty brown sludge; that filth and stink are your best weapons—the more disgusting you are, the less your captors want to come near you, which means you can squirrel things away in your bedclothes. The smaller and meeker you can make yourself, the more likely the Taliban are to let you alone. And, as painful as it is to be forgotten, ultimately, that's what you want.

Sarah Koenig

Mullah Sangeen Zadran was a commander in charge of keeping Bowe prisoner up until 2013 when Sangeen was killed in a drone strike.

Sarah Koenig

Back in Afghanistan, the storm of search-and-rescue operations for Bowe had slowed and then dwindled. They'd keep their eyes and ears out, of course, but at a certain point, the military had to call it—while Bowe was in the worst place he could be, if anyone was going to rescue him: locked in a room across the border in Pakistan.

Sarah Koenig

That was Mark Boal's first casual assessment of Bowe, when he heard the early reports that Bowe had walked off. And it was a lot of people's assessment. And it's understandable, based on the information dripping out at the time. An early propaganda video reports that Bowe had converted to Islam.

Sarah Koenig

Information like this—I learned that intelligence analysts refer to it as "stray voltage." By that they mean it's almost certainly untrue. But still, added up, to people judging from the outside, it didn't look good. Mark said it made him feel like maybe Bowe wasn't someone he should be caring about, which is the opposite feeling you usually get when you hear about a POW.

But then, after Bowe came back and was in Germany recovering, Mark talked to someone in the intel world who knew what was going on.

Sarah Koenig

When I finally heard Bowe talk about his time with the Taliban, I thought, no, he does not sound like a traitor. As brutal as Bowe's first year in captivity was, at least he had plans. His singleminded purpose was to get out. As best as Bowe can recall, the first escape—if you don't count the one where he ran 20 or 30 feet before he got tackled—happened the first week he was in Taliban custody.

Taliban fighters, by the way, have confirmed that Bowe did escape once, briefly, early on and then again for a longer time roughly a year later. That first week, Bowe says he was being held at a house of some kind. His feet were tied with ropes. A chain was wrapped in several loops around his wrists. He said he'd noticed that the previous morning a car had arrived with water. And as soon as it did, everyone went inside another room for tea. So when the car came again with the water, Bowe says he saw his chance.

He managed to manipulate the slack in the chain so that he could slip it over his knuckles. He untied his feet. The wooden doors of the room he was in were latched from the outside with a thick wire, so he had to stick his hand through the crack to undo it.

Sarah Koenig

But no one does see. He runs outside, turns right, and then realizes he's in some kind of shallow valley or plateau. He sees three houses about 200 yards off. He starts running. He's shoeless. He says there's mostly jagged rocks underfoot, but he sprints as best he can. At the first house, he sees some kids.

Sarah Koenig

He keeps going, sees a group of men standing around. The men also see him. So Bowe runs toward some trees, passes the second house, comes to the third, decides to climb onto the roof.

Sarah Koenig

But the men found him up there, lead him back down.

Sarah Koenig

Start to finish, the escape lasted maybe 10 or 15 minutes, Bowe says. But the aftermath was severe. They brought Bowe back to where they'd been holding him. And once evening came, Bowe said they beat him with a rubber hose. At first it was one guy who spoke some English. He'd twirl and twirl the hose and then whack it against Bowe's feet. Or if Bowe covered his feet with his hands, he'd whack his hands. He doesn't know exactly how long that lasted, but it was a long while, he says.

The next morning a whole group of men came in with a guy who seemed to be an elder, and they all took turns hitting Bowe with the hose until the older man called them off and took his own turn. And then that evening (Bowe thinks it was evening, he's not sure. He says he was blindfolded this whole time) they moved him.

Sarah Koenig

Three months Bowe was chained spread eagle to a bed and blindfolded. He was allowed to get up twice a day to use the toilet, he says. That's it. In a statement Bowe wrote that was released as part of his legal case, he said that because of the heat and sweat, his body got sore and raw where it was in contact with the bed. His eyes burned from the pressure of the blindfold. He could never wipe the salt from them. He developed open wounds on his ankles, an infection which seemed to spread to his forehead.

They beat the bottoms of his feet and other parts of his body with a copper cable. Bowe says there came a day when he tried to walk and his guard saw his legs were shaking from weakness. After that, they rearranged one of his arms, secured it down by his side instead of over his head, which allowed him to at least sit up. The room had dirt walls and a dirt floor, Bowe says. Every three or four weeks, he could shower and wash his clothes.

By the time six months hit, Bowe had diarrhea. He would have diarrhea for roughly three and a half years—no toilet paper or regular access to water. Most of the time his food was scant and came unpredictably. In the broadest strokes, his captivity consisted of twin torments: isolation and sickness. Or, as Bowe's principal military debriefer described it, there were roughly three phases to Bowe's captivity: phase one, torture; phase two, abuse; phase three, neglect.

Sarah Koenig

The conversations between Bowe and Mark started just a few months after Bowe came back. Bowe talks a lot about how he's numb or distant or disconnected, which actually has the benefit of helping him talk about what happened. Still, the details about the worst episodes are sometimes hard to say and hard for Mark to take in.

Sarah Koenig

Bowe was being held by Haqqanis, a group run by a very powerful Pashtun family allied with the Taliban. They're based in North Waziristan, which is in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan. The Haqqanis had agreed to hold Bowe for the Taliban. And the guy in charge of Bowe's physical person was Mullah Sangeen.

But Bowe says he only saw Sangeen maybe a half dozen times over the years. In all, Bowe says he was kept in maybe eight different locations, different compounds, different rooms made of mud or cement. Bowe says especially at the beginning, the Taliban questioned him. But he said they weren't what you might normally think of as an interrogation. The questions were strange and sometimes incoherent.

Sarah Koenig

This hodgepodge of perfectly reasonable questions: "How did the drones work?" And then a kind of crazy talk: "Is it true all American women are prostitutes, that they sleep with animals?" It makes you wonder whether they're just trying to rile Bowe up or whether their understanding of our world is as paltry as our understanding of theirs.

Sarah Koenig

So either way, they pretty much assume you're lying, which is maybe why they didn't really press him too hard on any of this stuff. A high ranking Taliban told us, through reporter Sami Yousafzai, that yeah, Bowe didn't give them any useful intelligence or cooperation. Besides, Bowe said the Taliban get most of their information, information they consider more trustworthy, from Afghan interpreters who work with U.S. forces. So Bowe's value wasn't in what he knew. It was in the sheer fact of him—a U.S. soldier that belonged to them.

Sarah Koenig

You might have seen some of these videos on the internet. Bowe said they made probably a dozen of them that were never released, but a small handful were. Bowe said the Taliban spent a lot of time making them. They're morale-boosting. Plus, he says, the Taliban love to embarrass the United States any way they can.

But you can't make too many videos or release too many, because every time you do, you're exposing yourself. Details about the staging, or someone's accent, or the production values, or the decor might give your location away. Bowe says they'd sometimes make a number of videos during the same shoot, changing the backdrop or his clothes or his hair or his beard to pretend the videos had been taken at different times in different locations.

The guy who made Bowe's videos spoke English, seemed Western educated—he had a slight British accent. He'd come into Bowe's room always with the same irritating greeting.

Sarah Koenig

After that, they wrote everything down.

Sarah Koenig

In this video, Bowe's wearing a camouflage jacket, a helmet, and sunglasses. He looks really weird. He said the sunglasses were so you couldn't see his eyes reading the paper. And also, maybe because the Taliban think sunglasses look cool—which, agreed.

Sarah Koenig

When he made that video, Bowe says the bed he was chained to, spread eagle, was just off to his left. The videos hit this theme a lot: how well he's being treated compared to how the U.S. treats Taliban prisoners.

Sarah Koenig

He says, "How are Mujahideen treating you?"

Sarah Koenig

The videos also hit other common Taliban talking points, one of which is that the U.S. government is lying to the American public about how many American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

Sarah Koenig

The army has moral guidelines for how a soldier is supposed to behave if he or she is captured by the enemy. It's called the code of conduct. It says, among other things, "If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades." And, when questioned, besides name, rank, and serial number, quote, "I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause," unquote.

Soldiers I talked to from Bowe's battalion told me the fact that Bowe appears in these videos at all, that he's answering their questions, repeating their talking points, that right there is an obvious violation of the code of conduct. They said even if someone has a gun to your head—and, by the way, Bowe says there were guys with guns on these video shoots—you don't participate in the enemy's propaganda campaign.

Well, that's actually an interpretation of the code that military officials do not agree with. That is not the standard the army is asking soldiers to live up to. You are not expected to die refusing to make a video. In the first and second Gulf wars, American POWs showed up in propaganda videos too, and the military didn't blame them for it.

They understand that as a prisoner, you're gonna be compelled to do things you don't want to do. And also, while the U.S. military isn't gonna encourage you to be in a video if you're captured, there is an upside to being filmed: your government has proof you're alive. At a military hearing on Bowe's case, Terence Russell, the guy who debriefed Bowe, said in these videos, Bowe did what he had to do. And that as the videos go on, you can see him getting better at resisting, at minimizing the propaganda value.

In the very first video the Taliban released, mid-July of 2009, about three weeks after Bowe disappeared, Bowe is sitting in front of a table with some green liquid in a big mug. Mark asked Bowe what it was.

Sarah Koenig

It's in this video that Bowe explains how he was captured.

Sarah Koenig

This was widely reported back in the U.S., that Bowe said he was caught while lagging behind on a patrol. And, again, a bunch of the soldiers I talked to mention this—that when they heard it, it made them mad. Because it's such obvious nonsense. U.S. soldiers do not lag behind on patrols in Afghanistan and then just disappear without anyone noticing. It's not a thing.

So when they heard it was in the video, some of them saw it as evidence that Bowe was lying about what happened. Bowe was lying. He says, of course he was lying. He says he knew that Americans listening would know it was baloney. That was the point.

Sarah Koenig

The guys guarding Bowe don't speak English, which makes sense. Why would they? But also that same high ranking Taliban told us they don't necessarily want someone like Bowe near anyone who speaks English because they might say something just inadvertently, and it could help him with an escape. But even if they couldn't really talk to him, Bowe says they interacted with him. They messed with him. They'd throw things at him or point an AK-47 at him: "Just kidding!"

Once they tried to make him smoke a cigarette with a little firecracker in it. When he handed it back, he yelled bang at one of the guards. After that, the guy gave him less food.

Bowe learned not to sleep in the daytime, because it left him open to these guys. They might take any opportunity. Picture being shaved by the Taliban with a straight razor. He's handcuffed. Even then, when he couldn't be more vulnerable, they'd have a laugh at his expense.

Sarah Koenig

Sami Yousafzai, the Afghan reporter, interviewed some people who had dealings with Bowe while he was in captivity—a big shot who came by and talked to Bowe on his cell, a guy who cooked for him, a friend of one of the guards, someone from Mullah Sangeen's entourage.

What Sami took away from these interviews was that keeping Bergdahl was, number one, stressful.

Sarah Koenig

These guards are watching the only U.S. soldier who's ever been taken prisoner in this war. Other groups might want to steal him from them. Sami said the guards had heard talk that some Arabs in masks had almost made it to the house where they were holding Bowe and that Mullah Sangeen had captured and executed some people he thought were being paid by the U.S. for information on Bowe.

Sarah Koenig

That's the other thing Sami heard in these interviews, how tedious it was for them, which is probably where the stupid and sometimes sadistic jokes come in. These guys are mostly young men. They're stuck inside a compound or some other prison location while their pals are maybe out and about enjoying themselves.

Sarah Koenig

Sami talked to a friend of one of the guards who told him that to amuse themselves they'd think up things to do to Bowe or how to get rid of Bowe. They had a long hypothetical discussion about circumcising him. They talked about selling him or maybe calling in a phony tip to the Americans that they had Osama bin Laden so there'd be a raid and they could be done with it. In other words, they're young guys shooting the shit, following orders.

Bowe's keepers would make him watch execution videos of beheadings or suicide bombers. Bowe said the very first day they got him they showed him a video of Mujahideen executing prisoners. He talks to Mark a lot about these videos in part because he's still affected by them. Certain details lodged in his head. In one, a man is about to be beheaded. He looks terrified. He's silent, and a rooster is crowing. For Bowe, the videos were obviously disturbing on their face, but they were also a grisly warning that this could happen to him at any time.

Sarah Koenig

During all this time, Bowe is scheming and plotting, gathering information that he hopes will get him out and that he can deliver back to the U.S., which, by the way, he does. Terrence Russell at the military hearing said he and other debriefers, intelligence debriefers, SERE psychologists, FBI agents all found Bowe eager to download whatever intel he could and, quote, "remarked on the quality of information Sergeant Bergdahl was providing," unquote.

Also, they praised his recall. Bowe said he was trying all the time to store in his memory mental pictures of every detail he could. For this mission, he pretty much starts from zero when he's chained down and blindfolded. When he can't see, he listens, tries to discern the daily patterns of the people who kept him, when they slept, when they ate, how their families work, who's related to whom. He didn't know if it would be useful to him or to someone else back home, but in case.

As he gets moved around from house to house and is allowed marginally more freedom to see and to stand, he sponges up new bits of information. He ends up staying a while at a house owned by a guy he thinks was named Day. By this time, Bowe was so filthy. He smelled so bad. He said the young women and little boys resented having to deal with him. They might spill his food on purpose. Once a boy beat him over the head with his own chain. As best as Bowe could tell, it was because he'd been humming. Bowe started to suss out information.

Sarah Koenig

So maybe that was the name of the place he was in, North Waziristan. Now he'd just have to figure out exactly where North Waziristan was. Everywhere he was held he said except for one place in the mountains he was pretty sure he wasn't too far from what he assumed was an American base. He could hear artillery. He could see helicopters losing altitude to land. He could hear the scream of plane engines. In fact, what he was hearing was almost certainly a Pakistani base, but Bowe couldn't know that. The best he could figure he was still in Afghanistan, very near the border.

Bowe had no special training in how to survive any of this, how to deal with abuse, how to gather intel, how to resist while making it look like you're cooperating. As an army private, he'd had what's called A-level SERE training, the most basic level of survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training. And what it consisted of at the time of Bowe's deployment, according to Bowe's senior debriefer was, quote, "here's the code of conduct," unquote. So he's just puzzling it out as he goes, trying things and then trying them again.

Day's house is a sort of mud hut. Bowe attempts to dig himself out something like five times. To get rid of the dirt he loosed from the wall, he'd mix it with his own urine or feces and then smear it back on the wall. The pebbles and rocks were harder to dispose of. At the same house, there was a dog, a pretty aggressive dog, that the little boys and men especially were scared of. Bowe said the women sometimes gave it leftovers, so it was nicer to them. Bowe knew if he tried to escape, he couldn't have the dog freaking out and barking. So he started sneaking a bit of food out to it when he was led to the latrine, which was right near where the dog slept. In that way, Bowe made peace with the dog who eventually began sleeping in the room where Bowe was, which his captors thought was totally weird.

Incidentally, someone who analyzed intel in Bowe's case told me one of the rumors they heard along the way was that Bowe had a puppy—possibly a German Shepherd puppy—which the analyst took to be silliness. But maybe this sometimes vicious guard dog was the so-called puppy.

Over the months, Bowe managed to gather small items which he turned into tools. And by the end of that first year, taken together, they'd become his escape kit. He had a length of PVC tube, maybe eight inches long, he'd been able to keep with him since the very first house. In one of the rooms, he shoved it into the wall and peed down it so his urine wouldn't just be in the room. The pipe will reappear later as part of a crossbar.

He found a nail in a mud wall. He could make holes with it, scrape away dirt with it, clean his fingernails with it. And when the time came, he'd spend weeks rubbing the head of it on a rock until it was just the right shape to get the old timey shackles off his wrists. He stored the nail in the sole of his shoe.

But probably the biggest score was the key. The men and boys had come into his room. One of the boys was holding a bunch of keys on a string, and he dropped them. And when he did, one of the keys got away. It fell right near the mat where Bowe slept. So Bowe slid it underneath. He said nobody seemed to notice it was missing.

It wasn't the key to the padlocks he needed to open, but Bowe says the locks were these cheaply made Chinese locks and that by wiggling the key just so, he could hit the sweet spot and pop them open.

Sarah Koenig

Bowe had tried many, many escapes. He'd gotten as far as a courtyard, up to a wall. But they were forays, really. His biggest, best chance came when he was at a remote place in the mountains. This was the farthest he ever was from a populated area. It's basically a Taliban prison. Bowe calls it the mountain fortress.

Sarah Koenig

In the mountain fortress, Bowe was kept in a second story room which was padlocked. But there was a window without bars on it, this place was so old. And he seemed so pathetic by that point he says his guards weren't taking extra precautions. Bowe had the nail, the key, the PVC pipe, plus a wooden stake that was in the room. He had an empty liter bottle of Mountain Dew, a hat, a blanket, his sandals. He went for it.

Sarah Koenig

The rope was made from the two chains he'd now liberated, each about six feet long, he says, plus his bedding. It ended up being quite a bit longer than he needed. The drop to the ground was only about 15 feet, but Bowe didn't know that.

Sarah Koenig

There's a reason maybe you haven't heard other American POW escape stories. It's because there hasn't been a successful one since the Vietnam War. Again, the code of conduct says you're supposed to attempt it, but the Army understands, especially since Vietnam, that the odds are usually and overwhelmingly against you. If you're a POW, and you assess the situation, and you decide it's highly unlikely I can make it out that window without being shot, it's highly unlikely that even if I do make it out I'll be able to blend in with the local population, and it's highly likely that if the enemy finds me they will torture or kill me, so no, I'm not going to try to go out that window. That is right and fine. No one will fault you for it.

To me, more than anything, this moment in the mountain fortress puts all the talk about Bowe being a sympathizer to rest. Bowe did not sympathize with the Taliban. He loathed the Taliban, so much so that even when he's sick, when he doesn't have any food, when he's already been punished for escaping the first time—he knows what that's like—and still, he goes out the window.

At the bottom, he makes a bag out of his blanket, puts his water bottle in it, slings it over his shoulder, and starts walking. Bowe says apart from being rescued, it was maybe the best moment of his five years.

Sarah Koenig

It's high desert terrain—cold at night, hot in the day, rocky. There are bushes and trees that Bowe said looked like Joshua trees, and something piney, not a lot of cover. But his immediate objective is not to hide, though he'll have to do a lot of hiding, obviously. But right now, he's trying to get as far away as he can from the fortress. He wants to spread the search party as thinly as possible.

He heads what he hopes is southeast, intending to go into Pakistan. He figures he's got a better shot at encountering someone non-hostile to him in Pakistan. But the terrain is so difficult. He's in these short, steep mazey mountains. You get over one, there's immediately another one. And they're all about the same height, so it's not like you can reach a peak and get your bearings, see the twinkle of a friendly FOB in the distance.

He climbs and descends, sometimes scooting on his butt. All the while he's listening for water to replenish his water bottle. He reaches a valley, and it's populated. He keeps having to veer this way or that, skirt a fence, or a house, or a sheep herder's tent.

Sarah Koenig

Bowe lands on a dry riverbed on his left side. He said the word "oof" actually came out of his mouth, just like in a cartoon, loud enough so that some dogs started barking their heads off.

Sarah Koenig

He's done something terrible to his left leg and his left arm. And the pain of that starts to wash over him, and then just stay. It's getting later. It's going to be light soon. So Bowe uses the small length of bar that had been used to hold his feet together, and he uses it to claw at the earth at the base of a tree to make a hole. It's mulchy and then just rocks underneath, but it's good enough. He piles the dirt around the hole to make a berm and then sticks branches into the berm so it blends into the landscape better. And then he gets into the hole and pulls his blanket over himself.

Sarah Koenig

So that was his first night of freedom. In all, Bowe says this escape lasted about nine days. In interviews with Sami and in other media reports, the Taliban admit this escape happened, though their versions vary in terms of how it happened and how long it lasted. Generally they say two to three days. Bowe's debriefers settled on 8.5 days.

Once morning hits, Bowe has to stay put in the hole. He can't move around in the day. And where he is, it's populated, and it's rural, so people walk everywhere. There are footpaths crisscrossing all over the place. Over the coming week while he's hiding in holes or trenches during the day, Bowe says there were so many close calls—sheep that came close and spooked, women out gathering something or other from the bushes, men—he could tell they were men with guns, he could hear the clack of the metal.

There was a scare with a flashlight, a time when he heard the familiar beeping of those Motorola type walkie talkies the Taliban use, a time when little girls wandered off the road and up the hill where he was hiding.

Sarah Koenig

They pass right by his feet, keep going. They're talking to each other, immersed in whatever they're doing. And then they come back down the hill, and Bowe says they pass right by his head, tiny oblivious girls. Bowe can't walk properly because his left side is hurting so badly, so he's crawling along on a combination of elbows and knees or on his butt. It's not going well.

On top of everything, he really has no idea where he's going. He's completely lost. He'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, but now he can't recall how the Big Dipper relates to the North Star. The water he's drinking is fetid, like it's seen too many sheep. He's eating grass.

Sarah Koenig

It's as if Bowe is shrinking, getting smaller and more helpless, more primitive. His shit is completely green. He's stuck in a hole all day. He's down to nothing, no resources. And right above him, some of the highest tech equipment in the world for seeing and finding, drones, American drones, guided by American eyes. And Bowe and these drone pilots, they can't reach each other. Bowe says he remembers one night being on top of a mountain.

Sarah Koenig

Sometimes he'd think about what he'd do if a friendly convoy or a patrol came by, how he'd safely get their attention. If he ran at them in his Afghan clothes, they might think he was a suicide bomber. So he figured he'd take all his clothes off. Because a tall, skinny, naked white guy coming at you, something to pause over perhaps. If anyone had come across Bowe, they'd probably have taken in the following: He's in pain on his left side. He's in gastric distress. He's starving. He's scared. And he's lost.

Sarah Koenig

Toward the end, Bowe was too debilitated to cover much ground. His hunger pangs were gone, but he was blacking out when he stood up, getting tunnel vision. He didn't exactly stop caring about getting caught, more like he stopped having the energy to be afraid. He remembers one of the last nights, watching the sun go down, and his only thought was that it was beautiful.

On the last day, Bowe says he had passed out on top of a mountain, and when he came to, he started trying to make some sort of brace out of sticks for his left knee. And he heard voices and rustling bushes. And below him, he saw the search party coming up the mountain. He was caught.

Because of the drones, the men wanted to get him off the mountain as quickly as they could. They took him back to the prison. One of the older guys—Bowe thinks he might have been a relative of Mullah Sangeen—attacked him, tried to rip his hair out, his beard out, which Bowe says he mostly succeeded in doing.

But Bowe says he was so out of it he didn't really feel it. He wasn't beaten more than that, he says, maybe because they knew, looking at him, he might not survive a beating. They threw Bowe in a room, let him sleep. The next morning, they cleaned him up and they took him to a meeting with Mullah Sangeen, whose principal message to Bowe was, if you try to escape again, we'll just kill you.

Sarah Koenig

About four years, in fact. And while he's waiting, so many people would be trying to get Bowe away from Sangeen—all these huge military and diplomatic forces about to kick in, just as the United States is realizing, we need to get out of this war. And then things get really interesting. We'll get into all of that when we come back with more episodes of Serial after the new year on January 7.

Serial's produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivvis, and me in partnership with Mark Boal, Megan Ellison, Hugo Lindgren, Jessica Weisberg, Page One, and Annapurna Pictures. Ira Glass is our editorial advisor. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Research by Kevin Garnett. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, copyediting by Anaheed Alani.

Our music is composed by Nick Thorburn, Fritz Myers, and Mark Phillips. The show is mixed by Kate Bilinski. Kristen Taylor's our community editor. Other Serial staff: Seth Lind, Emily Condon, Elise Bergerson, and Kimberly Henderson.

Special thanks this week to Blake Morrison, Studio Rodrigo, Chris Rhoden, and Andrew Kuklewicz.

Our website serialpodcast.org, where you can listen to all of our episodes, sign up for our newsletter, read articles by the Serial staff and check out maps, videos, and more. This week we've posted a photograph that Bowe says was taken right after his big escape, right after his meeting with Mullah Sageen. Again, that's serialpodcast.org. Serial's a production of This American Life and WBEZ Chicago.

Ira Glass

Coming up on the next episode of Serial.