Original subtitles

I love being in the military.

I love wearing the uniform. I'm proud to wear the uniform.

I'd have never in a million years...

imagined that I would be going to jail.

After the first murder,

everything that I believed in in the army was gone.

People in my platoon, they just changed.

Something in them changed.

This was the platoon from hell.

Accused of shocking crimes...

that include murdering Afghans for sport.

At the time, what was going on around us didn't--

It wasn't far-fetched. It wasn't bizarre.

It was just, like, "All right. Sure." You know?

"This is okay."

Soldiers allegedly formed a Kill Team,

mutilating corpses, taking pot shots at Afghan civilians.

Right now, if you handed me a human finger,

it would-- it would scare me.

But over there, it's-- it's combat, man. It happens.

Unarmed Afghan civilians...

picked out, stood up, shot and then blown up.

I was so dead set on just avoiding this, staying out of it.

I never wanted to kill anyone ever.

Specialist Adam Winfield's father, Chris, warned the army,

but tragically army officials refused to investigate.

His son now charged in the third killing...

that took place three months later.

Is your son a whistle-blower or a murderer?

He's a whistle-blower. He-- He tried. The army didn't listen.

When we first heard that Adam was brought in...

and we felt like he was safe,

the army told us everything was gonna be okay.

But as soon as he stepped off the airplane,

they arrested him for murder.

We don't-- We don't know what's going on.

We don't know how this has occurred.

We-- We know that months ago,

he tried to tell people what was going on...

and now suddenly he's being charged...

with the same crimes that he reported.

Left. Left, right.

The army says they want to move this case,

but yet every action that they've taken beguiles that very notion.

I mean, we were supposed to be going to trial,

and they're just now coming to the table...

with new evidence they've discovered? Bullshit.

Okay? It's just bullshit.

So my eye is toward getting--

I've been confined...

367 days.

They are trying to get me...

for premeditated murder in the first degree, which is...

a mandatory minimum sentence of life.

So I'm depressed constantly, constantly,

and my anxiety is at levels that I've never experienced before.

- Same guy, right? - Yup.

Same situation. Same guy as this guy.

Same guy as this guy.

So, the army's evidence--

At one point in time, overseas,

the people in my platoon and my squad leader were murdering people.

Are they trying to say this is the victim?

Well, then they come along...

and then they say that this is the victim.

It was, like, I can make a stand out here...

and risk my life, or I can just...

try to stay out of it as best as I can.

You know.

Unfortunately, it didn't pan out that way.

♪ And ripped them away ♪

♪ She was queen for about an hour ♪

♪ After that, shit got sour ♪♪

As infantrymen, your entire existence is like a series of tests.

Are you man enough? Are you tough enough?

Uh, you know, can you pull the trigger?

Can you kill? Can you survive?

Our brigade commander described it before we left.

"Afghanistan is a warrior's paradise."

My first firefight-- We were just getting ready...

to walk into this village through the wall...

and then bullets are flying right over your head.

I mean, hitting the trees right behind you.

And the first thing that came to my mind...

when that was, was "Danger Zone" from Top Gun.

It was intense.

You know, it was-- it was really cool.

You can hear the firefight going on right down the way...

and we've got helicopters and fast movers and, uh, explosions.

All the bullshit paid off right there.

I mean, all the-- all the rock marchin'...

and the dumb shit, it was all worth it.

I mean, I don't know if it was the adrenaline or what it was,

but to finally be able to start and do your job for real was, like,

"All right. Right on. This is cool."

Like, a couple guys-- like, we were laughing our asses off...

the first time we started getting shot at.

You get the reason why you wanted to join...

for all of, you know, 10 minutes-- 10, 15 minutes,

but then it's just back to the grind, you know?

Hating life. Just suckin'.

This is boring as fuck.

So, uh...

here we are.

Middle of nowhere, Afghanistan.

Uh, been out here about three days now.

This sucks a lot.

I expected climbing mountains and firefights every day...

and staying out for days at a time.

It really wasn't anything like that.

You drive out to a village, find the local elder, mullah, whatever,

and the L.T. asks him some questions, and then you drive back.

Ooh, look. There's an I.E.D.

- One-two. - One-two, you okay?

What the hell we were, you know, risking our fuckin' necks for...

driving across the desert, waiting for a buddy to get blown up...

just to go ask some old dude some questions.

Like, for what? You know?

Patrolling the streets of-- Where are we?

We are in Tabin-eh Bulya.

Tabin-eh-- Whatever.

- Yeah. - We're in Afghanistan.

Great place.

Lots of, uh, friendly people here wanting to kill us.

Our biggest fear is stepping on land mines.

Yeah. Look at the ground.

Or pressure plates.

We gotta walk around all day.

Making sure we don't hit any I.E.D.s.

We've been training to do one thing all this time,

counterguerilla stuff.

And, you know, being a warrior and going kicking ass.

And then you get there, and we're forced to go and help them...

and build them a well, a school or whatever.

To do any offensive operation,

you needed the top fuckin' signature from, you know, whoever--

big dog general or President Karzai himself.

You can't shoot somebody because of this reason.

You can't do it because of that reason.

They blow you up and you see them driving away...

It was nothing like what everybody hyped it to be.

And part of that's probably why, you know, things happened.

There are certain facts that are not in dispute.

You have dead guy.

Two people within 15-20 meters pointing their gun at this guy,

unarmed civilian, and he's dead.

Why is that?

So, we've got to walk a fairly close line...

with the moral piece on this,

because he's not totally clean-gloved.

I guess I'm looking at it from a different perspective.

To somebody who's looking at it in a vacuum,

they've got to decide, is it more likely than not,

or beyond all reasonable doubt, that this guy,

on that day, knew what was about to happen and participated willingly.

And it sounds like he did under one version of the story.

It's plausible. It's possible.

Adam was there. He discharged his weapon.

There are a lot of witnesses that will corroborate that.

The only-- The only distinction is:

What was in his brain at that moment.

Was he a willing participant or not?

We're doing a battalion push on this village.

And, I mean, it wasn't even 30 minutes in.

Pulled up to town. Our squad leader hit an I.E.D.

And, uh, I think severed his left leg.

I only got to see him in the hospital...

before they flew him to Germany, and he was heavily sedated.

He had his eyes closed and we went up and we just said,

"We apologize. We couldn't have been there, man.

You know, you're a brother to us and we love you."

Hey, you fuckin' move.

After that, we were down a guy.

We needed a new squad leader.

And then, it was a couple of weeks later, I guess,

that's when Gibbs showed up.

We'd been in country a while.

You've been training with each other for years and you get a new guy.

You're like, "All right. Who the fuck's this guy?"

I mean, you see him, you're, like, "All right. Well, that's--

that's the mold of an infantryman right there."

If the government was gonna...

push 'em out on an assembly line, that would be the guy.

He was an infantry vet already.

He'd already been in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He wasn't afraid to change the tactics.

Bring the fight to us versus going looking for one that didn't exist.

Other squad leaders follow the rules to a "T."

Gibbs was a much different story.

Odds are, you work for him, you're probably gonna come back in one piece.

Or you could work for the guy who follows the rules and get your ass blown up.

He never talked to me about what he did in Iraq. I did see his tattoos.

He was sittin' there, workin' out...

and I was, like, "Skulls." You know.

"That's cool. What does it mean?"

I didn't get an answer from him, but I asked someone else.

They're, like, "Oh. Those are the dudes he's killed."

People outside this room...

are not our friends, not one.

We have to protect the zone.

Nobody gets in the zone. Nobody comes in this room.

We don't talk to anybody. They-- They--

Nothing. Okay? They are on lockdown.

It is a military justice system.

Unlike the civilian world where there are impartial parties,

the people that are accusing Adam of these very crimes are,

in essence, the same people that determine...

who will hear the case, who will be the jury...

and who will hand down the decision for sentencing.

They are the judge and jury.

Literally, judge and jury.

So, talking to any of them,

even if they have a smile on their face, means absolutely nothing.

They're all the enemy.

And so we go into every meeting,

knowing that we're fighting for his life.

Me and Gibbs spent a lot of time together...

on the same truck for those first couple weeks.

We were just getting to know each other and shooting the shit.

"Hey, what was your last deployment like?"

He spoke specifically about one incident I remember.

Uh, when he was in Iraq, he was a SAW gunner.

And, um, he was crossing a road. I don't know.

And, um, a car was coming at him, didn't stop,

so he opened up on the car, and it ended up being a family.

I think, a mother, father and a small child was killed.

He could have stopped the vehicle...

or let them go by and nothing would have came of it,

but he described it to me as, like, he was looking...

for that opportunity for a while and had been.

'Cause that could have been something very easily turned around and justified.

You could easily justify that situation.

They were charging.

There was no one there to see anything different.

He was, like, "Yeah, dude. I just said this and it was cool.

No one questioned it. You know, it was that easy."

So, that was, like, the first step,

which ultimately ended up leading into our own conversations...

about how we could maybe implement things in that sort of same way.

The first conversation was-- It was based around the idea of a drop weapon.

I've always heard about people, you know,

in Iraq or Afghanistan or whatnot,

when you find a weapon, you know, you hold onto it in case you need it.

In case, you know, some, you know--

A civilian gets hit and you need to drop it on 'em,

so they're not, you know, they don't look innocent.

During one of our smoke sessions, Morlock brought up the fact...

that he could get easy kills by, uh, setting people up.

He said he'd been talking...

with Sergeant Gibbs, and he was telling him how he could get a kill.

Just buy a hand grenade off the books. That's all you need.

The idea he kind of pitched me was, like, "Well, hey, dude.

I've got a couple extra grenades that aren't being tracked."

So, the idea, we could say, was we were approached by a local--

a bad guy, was what we'll call him--

and he approached us, we--

He either threw the grenade at us...

or we noticed the grenade in his hand...

and we detonate the grenade to make it look...

like this guy was attacking us and we had to take him out.

Who in their right mind's...

gonna think that we made this up?

If we-- I mean, it's a believable enough situation to where--

Who's gonna question it? You know what I mean?

So, you're just, like, "Well, you're right.

Doesn't sound-- Yeah. We could pull that off."

On our minds, we'd been here for months.

And nobody's innocent because these guys...

either know the Taliban, they're either working with them--

and they're not working with, or for us,

and we're here to help 'em, and they don't give us any help.

We're just getting blown up every time we go out there...

to, you know, just to talk with them...

or build them a well, so fuck 'em.

Ever since I made...

my first statement, it's just been fear of the guys from my platoon.

I get nightmares about that even, just them hunting me.

And it's always back over there, too.

It's back in the theater.

It's not-- It's never in the States.

It's always-- I'm always over there.

In the last year, I felt kind of...

as the enemy of the platoon, because I was one of the few to come clean and--

And do you die in these nightmares?

You do?Mm-hmm.

How do they kill you?

They blow me up, mostly.

Normally, it involves a grenade.

Couple times, it's been, like, blunt objects.

And it's just not ever even have a chance to run from 'em.

It's just-- They always catch me.

You know, I've said some incriminating things about some of these guys...

and, you know, it's not hard for me to believe...

that they would want some sort of retribution.

And that's the worst part about it.

The same people that I was--

been in fear of the last year are also the same people...

that, you know, I've lived with the last four years.

These people were my friends and, at some point in time,

they were also willing to lay their life down for me.

And I, you know, I have to remember that.

In La'l Mohammad Kalay,

there was an incident with a grenade...

That day, you know, we had our high-ups...

on the top of the hill talking to the village elder.

Myself and, uh, Holmes found ourself...

kind of secluded from the majority of the platoon.

I was, like, "Hey, man. Let's see if we can get one of those guys over there.

There's a guy farming a field."

We talked about specifics.

What was gonna happen.

"Hey, this guy was coming towards us. We told him to stop.

He didn't listen to our commands.

Holmes identified something in his hand. He thought it was a grenade.

Threw something at us, and so we engaged him...

and took cover behind the wall."

And that's what we talked about.

I'm standing back up, getting ready to look back over,

and I have, you know, Morlock scream in my ear, "Grenade! Holmes, shoot him!"

Pulled the grenade, dropped it, got down.

Yelled at Holmes, "Fire." Which, you know, seemed like a fuckin' eternity.

I had five seconds from the time that pin falls off from the grenade...

until it will explode.

He let off a burst from the SAW.

I pulled his ass down. Grenade goes off.

A lot of confusion, a lot of dust come up, you know.

I looked over to my left, 'cause that's where Morlock was.

He had his back against the wall.

He has his radio and he's yelling.

Um, he was telling everyone, "Contact. Contact. Contact."

I just heard, "Contact," and thought we got contact.

Then, as soon as I heard the description...

of what happened, it all clicked.

What that-- He just said...

that someone tried to throw a hand grenade...

at him and Holmes and they shot him.

And that was the same scenario he explained to me.

And I look over and I ask him, you know, "Do we reengage?"

Do we get back up and, you know, shoot the guy or whatnot?

And, uh, Morlock didn't answer me.

He just stood back up, looked over at the guy who was on the ground,

you know, pulled up his M4 and just pop, pop, two more shots.

He didn't register as a person.

He wasn't-- He was just, you know, there.

I was excited. Me and Holmes both kinda were.

I mean, like he said, it plays that whole...

you know, ideology of the infantry world.

It was just like, "Fuck. Right on, man."

We got a kill, whether, you know, it was--

we knew he was a bad guy or not.

So they brought the father down, the brother down.

They said, "Well, do you know this guy?"

The guy goes, "Yeah. That's my son."

And, uh, the brother's sitting there...

and they just-- they're both just crying. You know.

We then put him in a black body bag...

and took him to the top of the village.

And strapped him down to the front of one of the Strykers...

and we took him back to the-- to the FOB.

Jumped back in the truck.

You know, we're all hyped up on all this freakin' adrenaline...

and just not knowing what's gonna happen next.

And we get back to the FOB and, you know, it was--

it was like I was looked upon like a-- like a hero.

They were gettin' all the applause.

Everybody was, you know, giving 'em high fives and handshakes...

and, you know, telling 'em they're, you know, made men...

and, you know, they're the-- everyone needs to look up to them.

And, you know, I knew differently.

And everybody else knew differently too, but it was accepted.

Anybody with half a brain can go,

"Okay. You guys set this guy up to get shot. Whatever."

I didn't care.

And I remember we were smokin', we were high.

And Morlock's like, "Man. You know, we straight murdered that dude."

- Hello?

This call is from a collection facility...

and is subject to monitoring and recording.

Hey.

- Hey. How you doing? - All right.

- How was your day? - It was okay.

Was it? What'd you do today?

Anything? Did you get to go outside at all?

- Got back from rec. - Did you? That's good.

We're probably thinking of Mom coming out next Friday.

- What's the point? - What do you mean, what's the point?

I'm not getting out.

Adam, don't start losing faith now.

I mean, I know that you're there day to day,

but, believe me, my heart breaks every day too.

I know.

And maybe I'm not confined, but I am confined.

When I joined the Marine Corps, it was peacetime.

It was-- It was completely different.

When Adam came home and said he wanted...

to join the service, we were in war.

I had a couple long talks with Adam about that.

You know, he had pretty much told us...

that, you know, "I want your permission,

but, you know, when I turn 18, I'm gonna sign up anyway."

If we made him wait until he was 18,

there was always gonna be that...

"they didn't believe in me and they didn't think I could do this."

And I didn't ever want Adam to feel like we didn't believe in him.

When we flew out there and he said,

"This is it. I'm going to Afghanistan."

I told him, "Don't be a hero.

Just do your job and come home."

Gibbs, like, a couple hours after we got back,

is like, "Hey, Holmes, come check this out."

So, I walked in the tent back to his room...

and he pulls out a little piece of cloth inside of a bag...

and he pulls out a finger...

and he's like, "This is from your guy."

His idea behind it was...

he was gonna take the fingers and then let them decompose...

and then take the bone and make a finger bone necklace out of it.

And you're, yeah, well, fuck, lookin' at it,

it's like, "All right. That's pretty fuckin' crazy, dude."

But, at the same time, like, our mind-sets...

are not on the normal level of everybody else's...

and so it was just like--

I mean, war trophies have been, you know, since the Bible.

They cut Solomon's head off. You know what I mean? So, it's just like--

Then we're there, and you're seeing bluts and gore all the time.

It's war, and you're just like, "All right. Well, whatever."

I'm not gonna make a fuckin' bone necklace,

but if you want one, man, whatever.

That's cool. It's your thing. Go for it.

I just thought, "What happened to these guys?

What happened to the guys that I knew?

Why are they all okay with this?

Why isn't anyone stepping up?

Like, why am I the only one that's not okay with this?

Why is it just me?"

Adam had to actually tell me in the Facebook chat,

"Don't you understand what I'm saying?

That they're killing people here...

that are innocent."

I had to do a double take and it just was like, "Whew."

It was, like, uh, a rush just came over me. Just--

The only thing I could think of was...

he was, like, 8,000 miles away...

and there was nothing I could do.

I couldn't take any more.

I wanted to tell somebody what was going on.

I didn't have access to the M.P.s.

If I told someone...

in the chain of command, it would come right back,

'cause that's how things are in the infantry.

We tend to handle things in house.

I felt like I had nowhere to go in the platoon.

Everybody was on Sergeant Gibbs' side, and he had their loyalty.

So, it's my word against 30 other guys.

Someone had told us that Winfield...

was gonna go out and talk to the chaplain...

'cause he was having, uh, issues.

I can tell the chaplain. He's not gonna fail me.

He's the chaplain.

And, uh, before I went over there...

to talk to the chaplain, Sergeant Gibbs escorted me.

As we're walking down there, he says,

"You're not thinking about saying anything...

that you shouldn't be talking about, are you?"

So, Gibbs-- I don't even know...

when it took place.

You know, brought up the idea, kinda like,

"Hey. man, Winfield might be a liability.

I might have to take that guy out."

I go, "What the fuck you talkin' about, man?"

He says, "Well, you know, he knows a lot of stuff...

about what's going on and what we've done...

and, you know, it's too easy."

"What are you-- What do you mean, it's too easy?"

And he says we could--

We could take him to the gym, drop a weight on his head.

We can drop a tow bar on him, so he'll go away.

I asked Morlock about it a few times.

"Hey, man, what's going on? Are you guys plottin' on me or something?"

And he even told me straight up, "Yeah.

You know, we're thinkin' about doing something to you.

Don't know what, but something, definitely."

Okay. So you got safety on on white.

Mm-hmm.

Flip it up to red. You're ready to go.

Mm-hmm.Okay?

You know, this has become a big story in the press...

and we had people standing at our front door with cameras.

We had people following us everywhere I went.

You get people that think the worst of everything...

and they, you know, they hear,

"Oh, he's arrested for murder, then he must be guilty."

Three.

How many can you put in there?Eleven.

We have had some threats.

I mean, not in so many words,

but, you know, you can read between the lines...

that "we know where you live, we know your address."

And I have to protect my family.

It's a 9mm Ruger.

I have it sitting by the bedside, loaded and ready to go.

We don't want to be caught with our guard down.

So, I started making phone calls. I didn't know who to call.

I was getting voice mail everywhere I called, for the most part.

Um, and I was leaving messages,

hoping somebody would call me back.

I thought about, you know, what I would have to do...

if they came after me in the middle of the night.

I kept a gun always around me...

and, you know, a knife on me handy and stuff like that...

and always looked over my shoulder all the time.

I was frantic. I was just-- I was just panicking.

I was loud. I was, "Please call me back."

I mean, there was stress in my voice,

and I-- and, you know, I was just-- I did not--

I was scrambling. I didn't know who to call.

Gibbs seemed like he was recruiting more people...

to this Kill Team idea, basically.

I, you know, I see other squad leaders, other soldiers...

going up to Sergeant Gibbs,

"Hey, man, you gotta get me a kill.

You gotta help me get something."

And he'd be, like, "Just tell me when."

I called the army. Called the army hotline.

I called, um, Army C.I.D. in Virginia,

the main C.I.D. office.

I called the C.I.D. office in Fort--

I kept calling, I kept calling, I kept calling numbers.

I called Senator Bill Nelson's office.

Figured somebody would definitely be there...

at the army chaplain's office at Fort Lewis.

Chaplain and the assistant chaplain. I called both, got messages,

voice messages on both of 'em.

Sergeant Gibbs, the whole time, he was talking shit to me,

calling me a pussy and this and that.

Saying, you know, I should be down to kill. They're all savages.

And, you know, they're pieces of shit.

They're not worth anything.

And that was just everyone's attitude, really.

I finally got a hold of somebody at Fort Lewis...

at the-- at the-- at the Command Center...

and I told the guy the whole story.

The guy said, "Nothin' I can do about it.

It's your son's word against everybody else's.

Unless somebody else comes out and says the same story,

then I can't do anything."

And I expected, within a few days,

someone to just come grab me in the middle of the night...

and say, "Hey. Come with us. It's over. You're safe."

And then it never happened.

This is another option on the table.

I think this is the realest and most truest option.

There's been talk of a plea deal.

My lawyer is trying to talk the charge down.

That it's not--

That I'm not guilty of first-degree murder.

Don't get visceral on me, just hear what I'm saying. Okay?

Cowardly conduct. Okay?

"That the accused committed an act of cowardice." Okay?

In this scenario, you didn't stop them from doing something bad.

Mm-hmm.Okay? 'Cause you were scared.

"Conduct is cowardly only if it amounts to misbehavior...

which was motivated by fear.

A mere display of apprehension is not sufficient.

Cowardly conduct is the refusal or abandonment...

of the performance of duty before or in the presence...

of the enemy as a result of fear." Okay?

Well, the enemy in this case was not only the Taliban man, but it was also Gibbs.

I mean, the guy was continuing to threaten to kill you.

What's the-- What are you looking at?

I mean, I get the misbehavior before the enemy, cowardly conduct charge.

Mm-hmm.

What are you looking for as the cap to--

Eight years.

Time went on and the second murder happened,

which, at first, I didn't even know it was a murder again.

I thought this was a real engagement.

I heard Morlock and Sergeant Gibbs...

joking and talking about it.

And I found out what really happened.

Set up a kill with an AK. Shot a dude, just, you know, in cold blood.

Dropped the AK next to him and said it was a legit shoot.

It seemed like everything was falling apart...

just from the seams.

My whole unit, my whole, just, concept of...

the military and honor and integrity...

and just, you know, the image you get from a soldier,

what you would expect a soldier to be.

About to show you what Apaches do...

to fuckin' bodies. All right?

It's a good shoot. He's dead as a motherfucker.

Word.Don't show 'em that shit, man.

Everybody had their own cameras.

Take a picture of your little combat experience. Sure. Why the hell not?

You sit down with all your squad leaders and, you know, other guys...

and they all bust out their DVDs and discs of their prior deployments,

and, you know, "Hey, look at these dead guys we killed here."

Death and dead bodies...

and bluts and gore, and, you know, that thing--

You get taught to be the norm and be okay with it.

It was just that I was pissed at everything.

I was pissed at the whole situation. Just--

What is-- Just-- What's the point of all this?

And the thing that really got me was,

from other stories I've heard from people from other units,

I knew that this stuff happens more than--

Well, I knew that it was...

happening really more than people were letting on.

If I were to do it all over again, I would probably have kept calling,

but it's easy to say that now as I'm sitting here.

At the time, I was just worried what is--

If I continue to do this, am I gonna get my son killed?

It was-- It was probably the most difficult decision...

I have ever had to make in my life.

You know, he only had a couple more months...

and he would be home, and we would report it...

and he would be safe.

And it just didn't turn out that way.

Adam used to go in my closet and put on my uniform on.

He would always look through my Marine Corps books.

Essentials of a Marine.

Adam probably read that book 50 times.

Before he was supposed to ship off to boot camp, he was about 100 pounds.

He was too light, so...

they picked up a gallon of water before they went in there...

and they made him drink it and said, "Don't pee until you get weighed."

So I just kind of stepped on the scale real fast...

and got off and went to the bathroom and threw it up.

But you know, I was-- I was really motivated to get in.

And he's putting a pack that weighs 80 pounds on his body.

It's, you know, almost heavier than him.

So, you know, he had a lot-- He had a huge uphill battle to climb.

See him, you're, like, ah, there's no--

That guy's in the infantry? No fuckin' way, you know what I mean?

But he's got heart. If we were rockin' 20 miles, he's rockin' 20 miles.

You'd run into some guy and-- "Oh, he's not infantry.

Look at that scrawny little bastard."

You could go up to him and be, like, "Hey, listen, motherfucker.

He's probably the most squared-away, bad-ass infantryman I fuckin' know."

It just sounds heinous. It just sounds, you know--

Manslaughter just sounds horrible.

Just came from the prosecutor. They came back with--

This is what they are offering.

Involuntary manslaughter.

They're saying he failed to act when he could have acted.

What they expect him to have done, I still don't quite understand.

I don't know how Adam's gonna react to that.

What do you think he's gonna say?

Maybe, in his mind, it would be better to do involuntary manslaughter...

than cowardice.

I don't know. I don't know.

The whole thing sucks. Bottom line.

Yeah. They just still want to say...

"Well, see, we got him and he was the bad guy."

I think that's a bunch of crap.

They still have to try to get him for eight years to make it look good?

I've been saying that same thing.

You know, at this point,

we don't have a choice.

He's being forced to make another decision that...

isn't right...

no matter what he chooses.

Again.

Going on leave is probably one of the worst parts of deployment,

'cause you go home, and you want everything to be normal.

But nothing's normal. You're angry and you're pissed off.

I mean, you know, you're surrounding yourself...

by people that love you and care about you,

but you don't know how to deal with their emotions,

'cause you don't have a grasp on your own, and it was just--

I don't know. It just all weighed on me.

I actually spent some time thinking about it quite a bit. Who I would tell.

Would I talk to my girlfriend or my brother or my mom?

But how do you tell somebody something like that, you know?

And so, I don't know. I did what most guys do.

Or, you know, most fuckin' macho.

I just turned it inward. You know what I mean?

I've never been a guy that's been really good with emotion to begin with,

and so I did what I always did, you know?

Buried-- Buried it and fuckin' powered through it.

So, I got back, I think, sometime early, early April,

and then, you know, instantly--

I mean, not even a day or an hour--

I literally got off the Black Hawk and made my way to my room...

and ran straight into Gibbs.

"Hey, look at all the fuckin' goodies I got while you were gone.

And soon as I get back from patrol, I'll tell you...

all the cool shit you missed while you were gone," you know?

It was right there, right back into it.

As long as they have, you know, open season...

on whatever sentence the case they want to put,

the worst he's going to get, regardless of the facts, is eight years.

That's what the government's saying. The worst.

So, what-- What the hell matters is the charge.

I can't reconcile with the fact that they won't move off this eight,

regardless of what the charge is,

when that's what Morlock got for murdering people.

And I'm not saying that Adam was innocent...

and that he made every single right decision,

but I also know that on January 20, he e-mailed us--

as early as January 20-- saying, "There's something I need to talk to you about."

And then February comes. Oh, well, you know what? Just suck it up.

Suck it up and be a man.

Gibbs is, what, a 200- and-something-pound man?

This is the ultimate case of bullying,

and I can't reconcile with the fact that they're just gonna say,

"Well, let's give him eight years."

The government can excuse themselves...

from all of the missteps they made.

But let's get-- Let's get, in your own words,

let's get our pound of flesh from Adam Winfield,

even though, of all the people out there,

he was the only one that did anything.

I-I-I have a problem with that.

And I guess ultimately, it's not my issue. It's Adam's issue.

But I have a problem with that, 'cause, to me, that's not justice.

The army still has my son,

and unless we do what they say, I never get him back.

Listen, I know you're a mom.

I know that's your child. I'm tracking on all that.

But you are the only mom in the world to him.

To everybody else, he's a soldier.

Thank you.

So, what do you think?

Fine.

I don't really have a problem with it.

Are you sure?

'Cause ultimately, worst case scenario,

everything falls apart, it's eight years.

And I don't want you to feel like we're giving up on you.

Why are we making this deal?

What else are we gonna do, Emma? We don't have a choice.

Do we go to trial? No.

We can't.

I don't know, Chris. I just feel like in some ways...

we're just leading him to the slaughter.

I should have done more.

I shouldn't have accepted the answer that I got.

I've been thinking about that for a long time.

It's always on my mind.

And we wouldn't be standing here right now if I'd done something more.

March went by, April went by, and--

You know, we're coming up to the end.

We got maybe one more big mission.

I knew Sergeant Gibbs had a lot of stuff planned.

If I could just hold out...

two more months till June, July, and it's all over.

The task on that day was...

to go re-engage an individual...

that had been arrested while I was on leave.

They found an I.D. or something in his house,

so the P.O. wanted to check him out and see what he's up to.

Me and Winfield ended up leaving that compound...

and then making our way towards an adjacent compound that's kind of attached to it.

And then we ended up running into an individual, a local there.

Sergeant Gibbs was coming around the other side.

He had a few other guys with him.

Most of the guys that were with him...

kind of had an idea of what's going on, what--

You know, these sort of scenario things that had been taking place.

Um, and then-- So, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation.

I knew right then and there that I couldn't kill an innocent person.

I couldn't shoot an innocent man just in cold blood. I couldn't do it.

I didn't have it-- I didn't have any drive or want to do it.

I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be there.

I didn't want that situation.

I wanted to get up and just run.

Sergeant Gibbs started,

you know, telling us how things were gonna go.

Saying, you know, "We're gonna set this up...

to make it look like we're doing a movement...

and this guy came out and attacked us when we were passing through."

"We saw a grenade. We had to shoot him.

And that's, you know, that's the way it'll play out."

My heart started going 1,000 miles a minute. Just--

Just started getting nervous.

My muscles started to twitch. Just--

I just froze.

We were laying right next to each other,

so I kinda just talked him through it,

speaking in his ear, letting him know, "Hey, yeah.

Nothing to worry about, man. It's too easy.

We've done it before. You got nothing to worry about.

Stick to the story, and just get it over with."

I can stand up and shoot Gibbs and Morlock.

But shooting one of our own guys...

over, in their opinion, over a worthless Afghan?

Reason to show me absolutely no mercy.

I fired...

a couple shots off after the grenade blew up.

I didn't aim at him. I didn't--

I just-- I drew my weapon away from him.

After the dust settled from the explosion,

Sergeant Gibbs walked up and, uh, smile on his face,

and he just shot the guy two more times.

Then he said, "Hey.

Come take a picture with me with the body."

And he told me that I was a made man...

and I didn't have anything to worry about from him ever again.

What, what-- What just happened? How did I get in--

I was doing fine just avoiding it, and now I'm in it.

His face is-- I can't forget his face.Yeah.

It's his dead face.

His head just,

you know, with shrapnel, and it's so swollen.

I just see it staring at me all the time.

Like whenever I think about it.

And that scream from that woman.

I'd never heard anything like it before.

I've never heard such serious grief.Yeah.

And that's, I'd say, the hardest part to live with is that.

Yeah.

And just the smile on his face when he shot that guy again.

Gibbs' smile on his face?

Yeah. It just-- He was pleased. He was happy.

He just had this huge smile, a grin.

And just looked straight at me, smiling.Oh.

And then I just-- The thought that I know...

he would have the same smile if he did it to me.

I'm living a nightmare right now.

If I don't take sleeping medicine, I, I'm--

You know, I have nightmares.

I fight-- I gotta fight this-- this evil monster in my dreams.

A lot of times, I don't remember what they are.

I just know that they're violent.

I'll jump up and I'll try to get something...

or grab it or stop it from coming.

And I've actually physically fell out of bed a couple times doing that.

I worry about Chris.

Um, I think he's dealing with...

maybe some guilt.

Did I raise him right? You know, did I--

Should I have let him go in the army?

Should I have continued to pursue it?

You know, that-- It's--

You know, he's a great father.

And when your son comes to you and asks for help...

and you're not able to help him--

We tried to do the right thing, and...

it still wasn't good enough.

We only had a couple months left deployment.

We're safe from here on out.

The lid's on everything and the stories were in line...

and we've got nothing to worry about.

And that's when the whole incident with Stoner arose.

Stoner went and expressed his concern...

about guys in his platoon smoking hash,

which led to him getting beat up.

Why would you get stoned in my room?

Why would you do that?

The shit reeked.

And who are they gonna blame? The private.

And I heard the knock on the door, so I--

You know, I just opened it and let them in.

I knew it was coming. I knew what was gonna happen.

He said some cheese dick line like, "I understand you guys are here to beat my ass.

Go ahead and-- Go ahead and do it."

So after that, it was just, like, "All right."

My entire goal the entire time...

was just don't give 'em the pleasure of letting 'em know it hurts.

I'm just sitting here and I'm gonna take it, and I'm just gonna deal with it.

But you're the weak ones for snapping like this.

Now we got an issue, 'cause he's rattin' us about fuckin' hash.

You know, what else is he rattin' us about?

Gibbs was very polite, actually.

He was almost like a crazy, happy, nice person.

Um, he explained to me, you know, "You understand why we did that."

Gibbs went so far as to tell me,

"We could stick you in a Hesco barrier and kill you.

You know, no one will ever find you.

Fill you in with dirt. No big deal.

Or take you out on a mission. Kill you.

No one would ever know the difference."

He wanted to prove his point...

by rolling out the guy's fingers,

which were his war trophies,

you know, out on the floor.

The next day, an acquaintance of mine down--

a medic down at the aid station--

I was going down there for some shit.

She's like, "Stoner was just down here and saw our major,

and they were all super-secretive and shit."

They took me into his personal tent...

to talk to me about everything that had happened.

It didn't take a brain surgeon...

to realize that I'd just gotten my ass whupped.

And of course, he just immediately contacts the guy higher than him,

and it just goes higher and higher and higher.

When C.I.D. got involved, they, uh, started asking other questions.

The one thing I did know about was the body parts.

Once that was said, that opened up the door to everything.

Five U.S. soldiers stand accused of shocking crimes...

that include murdering Afghans for sport.

Today near Seattle, the alleged ringleader of...

The story's out. They got Gibbs locked up. Morlock's locked up.

Um, they brought everybody else in.

And so, initially, we were, like, "Okay. Good.

So, it's out there. He's safe."

The Army C.I.D. people came here, and they told us--

You know, we asked them, "Does Adam need a lawyer?"

They said, "No, he shouldn't need a lawyer."

It was really from the direction of Adam that had said,

"You can call my parents. Go talk to my parents.

I told them about this back in February."

"He's fine. He's just-- He's-- He's the witness here.

He's the main witness. Everything's gonna be okay."

I was relieved, you know? A huge weight just got lifted.

I finally got to express everything...

and really tell somebody about what I'd been wanting to say...

for the last, like, six months, almost.

They told me that I was gonna help them...

with their case against Sergeant Gibbs.

That they're not coming after me.

But they lied to me.

You thought they had lied to you?

Yeah. They just tricked me.

I was at work, and, um,

Emma-- Emma called me.

She said that the commander at the base had called her and told them...

that Adam had been charged with first-degree murder.

And she was--

Emma was hysteric, and I was just, like, "What?"

I mean, "What? What--" I was stunned.

I mean, I-- I was stunned.

I mean, I-- I, like, lost it.

I was just-- I, like-- I started hyperventilating.

I fell on the floor.

You know, I was, like-- I couldn't believe it.

I almost killed myself that night.

It's like I'm gonna do it tonight for sure.

Tonight's the night.

Just kept thinking about it.

I was having panic attacks the whole night and, um--

I was sitting at the desk, and I had an M4 sitting right next to me.

I loaded it. It was ready to go.

I had one in the chamber already.

Um, and I was getting ready to write a note.

To whom?

Uh, my parents.

Apologizing for everything. Sorry for leaving this way, and--

So, um--

As I was looking for some paper and a pen to write,

I actually found a Bible instead.

Started reading that.

Started praying.

Started crying and asking God for forgiveness, and--

I just kept reading the Bible, and it said something about your--

You'll be brought before kings and the judges in the synagogues and judged,

but, um,

if you stay faithful and suffer for my sake,

then I'll be with you.

So, I just--

I just kept praying all morning.

Unloaded the weapon and put it back.

He smiled at everything.

Just talked a thousand miles an hour.

He was, like, the happy-go-lucky kid.

You know, a mom, a dad, a house, jobs, three kids--

This is what we hoped for.

This is what every American family hopes for.

And we had it.

He reads all the history books,

and he reads all about these great American patriots and how heroic they were.

He wanted to prove to himself that he could do something like that.

The trial's finally here.

I'm pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

My other charges...

of premeditated murder and conspiracy are being dropped.

The army is just wanting to, you know, make this all go away,

and they're trying to drop it down to the lowest common denominator.

They want the lowest guys to pay for it.

There's nobody been charged--

You know, staff sergeant or below, and that's it.

There's no officers have any responsibility for anything.

It's huge. This thing is big.

It's bigger than Adam. It's bigger than me.

It's bigger than everybody right now.

Best-case scenario, um, the judge awards me time served,

and I'd walk out with my family that day.

Worst case, I get an eight-year sentence.

If Adam would have went to somebody out there, he would have been dead.

He would have came home in a body bag if we were lucky.

'Cause, you know, Gibbs had threatened him...

that he would cut him up in a million pieces...

and throw him to the wild dog packs out there,

and nobody would ever find him.

The only remnants he would have would be Adam's finger on his necklace...

that he was making of body parts.

It's all about getting that first kill...

and going home with a mark that says you killed somebody.

You know, you get the badge that says you been over there and that you fought in a war,

and that's what they're all shooting for,

regardless if it's legitimate or not.

And it's just ridic-- It just makes me sick to my stomach.

Part of my job over there was to protect civilians.

I had a responsibility to put a stop to what was going on.

You know, I feel-- You know, I am guilty.

Adam's a pawn in the big picture, is what he was.

He was stuck in the middle of nowhere.

He had the Taliban shooting at him on one side.

He had his own guys threatening to kill him if he didn't--

if he said anything on his other side.

He had guns pointed at him in both directions.

What do you do? What do you do?

It'll be the first time I've seen you in those.

I've never seen you in your dress blues.

No. It's the second time I've actually worn them. So--

Will you-- Will you have to wear those for the rest of the trials?

No.Okay.

It depends on what happens,

and if I'm still in,

whatever I'm wearing in the jail.

All right.

After tomorrow, no matter what,

either he's out, or we can circle a date on a calendar and say...

we have "x" number of days till you're home.

We have one less day until you're home.

And I think that's huge for him,

that he can at least say...

it's gonna be over.

He told me he doesn't expect to walk away tomorrow,

but we'll see.

I sure would like him to.

Take two, three deep breaths, and then just go into what you're gonna say.

And just keep that in mind and keep an image,

and then you might want to look at your parents.

Mm-hmm. Okay.Okay?

Don't give up.

Promise me that, all right?I won't.

Things are gonna be okay.Mm-hmm.

Okay.

All rise.

Specialist Winfield understood on May 2, 2010...

that they were blowing up an innocent man.

He could have made a scene that day.

He could have done anything.

What does Specialist Winfield do?

Nothing. He had the opportunity over and over and over again...

to ensure he did the right thing.

And he himself told you he failed.

And that failure had catastrophic consequences.

Sir, not protecting that man was--

It's haunted me for the last year now.

And--

I just want to go home, sir. Sorry.

Specialist Adam Christopher Winfield,

this court martial sentences you...

to be confined for three years,

and to be discharged from the army...

with a bad conduct discharge.

I'm all right.

I can do this.

I'm sorry we didn't protect you.It's okay.

Mom. Hey. He got three years.

Three years.

And a bad conduct discharge.

- Are you okay? Are you okay? - I'm fine.

Just promise me you're not gonna do anything to yourself.

I'm not gonna do anything.Okay? Good.

I was proud of you today.So was I.

You're stronger than me.

I've already been through the worst of this.

It's over right now.It doesn't matter what-- I mean, you know what?

They can't do anything else to you. It's over.

Exactly. It's all done.

It's all over.

I find myself thinking sometimes...

how are you gonna tell this story later on?

Somebody told me the way to look at it...

is it's not that you're a murderer.

You were convicted of murder.

Pretty much initially after the first incident,

it was, like, "Fuck, welcome to the club, Morlock."

You know? "You're a grown-ass man now."

That's what every infantryman's looking for.

They're looking to be-- to fulfill their job.

To fulfill, you know, the way of life of an infantryman.

And so, I mean--

Your superiors, in a way, kind of become your father figures.

They become the guys that you most want to impress,

and this was the way to do it.

I was 19. Fresh out of high school.

I thought I knew everything that there was to know,

but, man, I was really, really wrong.

I didn't know who to talk to, you know?

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to think.

'Cause these were the guys that I was walking into combat.

I was doing patrols with these guys, and I didn't want to--

I didn't want them to, you know, think different of me.

We're training you...

from the day you join to the day you're out...

to kill.

Your job is to kill. You're infantry.

Your job is to kill everything that gets in your way.

Well, then why the hell are you pissed off when we do it?

I never want to be referred to as a whistle-blower,

'cause it's worse than what they're being portrayed as.

If I could go back, I wouldn't have said anything.

Everything we did was put into the media...

as we're horrible, we're the Kill Team,

we're rogue platoon, we're all these things.

I don't care what the military wants to say,

but this goes on more than just us.

We're just the ones that got caught.

There was no way for me not to be a part of it.

There's no way not to be surrounded by Gibbs.

There's no way not to be pressured into these things.

The constant pressure of having to kill...

and then the risk of being killed yourself--

It was impossible not to surrender to the insanity of it all.

I think about it a lot. The war.

All the stuff that the guys in my platoon were doing.

I never understood it. I--

Even now, I don't understand.

I just-- I don't know. I'll never understand, I guess.

War is dirty.

It's not how they portray it in the movies where, you know,

there's just a bunch of honorable men...

with, you know, unshakable patriotism.

It's just a bunch of guys with guns.

And I wish that I could fix it.

And I wish--

I don't know. I wish that none of that had to happen to them.

Um--

And I wish I could tell them that myself.