New details hint at role of psychology in Bergdahl defense

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Well before Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his Army post in Afghanistan, he washed out of the Coast Guard three weeks into boot camp when he was found on the barracks floor suffering a panic attack, his hands covered in blood from a nosebleed.

Two years later, though, he joined the Army, obtaining a waiver from rules that bar the enlistment of those with certain psychological problems.

The details about his mental health -- including the Army's later diagnosis of Bergdahl as suffering from "schizotypal personality disorder" -- are contained in newly released documents that offer a glimpse of the legal strategy his lawyers may use in the desertion case against him.

Bergdahl, 29, was held five years by the Taliban and its allies before he was swapped in 2014 for five Guantanamo Bay detainees in a deal bitterly criticized by members of Congress. He is charged not only with desertion but with endangering comrades who were sent out to search for him and could get life in prison if convicted at a military trial set to begin this summer.

In a 2014 interview soon after his release, Bergdahl told a general investigating his disappearance he grew up reading about the samurai code and World War II heroes, spending much of his time alone wandering the Idaho woods with cats, dogs and horses. He loved the ocean and found the Coast Guard's domestic mission honorable but admitted in the interview to being overwhelmed around other people.

"Growing up the way I grew up, I also lacked the understanding of how to move through society," he said, according to the documents released by his lawyers.

He found the pressure intense at a Coast Guard boot camp in 2006: "You were right there in the focal point, and every action you were doing was pressured, and it was watched. What ended up happening was, I ended up having a panic attack, about three weeks into it."

The officer who conducted the investigation, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, later testified Bergdahl was found on the floor, blood on his hands. Bergdahl told Dahl at the time his family, especially his father, had been making him feel as if "I can't succeed in anything, that I am a failure."

Bergdahl said a psychiatrist asked him to sign paperwork, and he received an "uncharacterized discharge" from the Coast Guard. In court, his lawyers have described it as a "psychological discharge."

In 2008, however, Bergdahl was granted a waiver to enter the Army, which at the time had relaxed its recruitment standards because it was stretched thin by the fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

He told Dahl he disclosed his panic attack and reasons for leaving the Coast Guard to an Army recruiter. The recruiter then typed a statement for Bergdahl to sign saying he "had a hard time adapting to change" but not mentioning the panic attack, Bergdahl said.

By several accounts, his Army stint was successful until he walked off and fell into the hands of the Taliban, with one sergeant testifying last September: "He was a great soldier."