The Kill Team

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.

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.