how much do we really know about the last american prison of war? the story of sergeant bowe bergdahl has become clouded by politics. join us tonight as we shine a spotlight on the soldier now facing a very different kind of fire. hello, i'm jake tapper, it's a home coming five years in the making. but to what kind of home will sergeant bowe bergdahl return? will he be warmly welcomed as a man finally freed from enemy hands? or will he be branded a deserter?

a charge coming from the number of soldiers with whom he served. the answer may lie in the new details starting to form a clearer picture of what really happened. >> in afghanistan with the white flag of the taliban waving and the wind kicked up by the black hawk helicopter, army sergeant bowe bergdahl walked free of his captors. and blinking in the sun, knowing his final steps on afghanistan soil a fire storm of controversy. >> there would be an exchange of sergeant bergdahl for five taliban. >> totally not following the law. >> i think it was just wrong. >> before the furor, there was joy. >> after nearly five years in captivity, their son bowe is coming home. >> as president obama announced the news of bergdahl's newfound

freedom flanked by his parents, jannie and bob bergdahl. >> i want to say thank you to everyone who has supported bowe. he's had a wonderful team everywhere. we will continue to stay strong for bowe while he recovers. >> the seemingly happy end to a long, determined search for america's only known prisoner of war in afghanistan, a search that started five years before. >> well, i am scared. scared i won't be able to come home. it is very unnerving to be prisoner. >> july 2009, a few short weeks after bergdahl went missing from his observation post in afghanistan. a video issued by the taliban, a proof of life video. showing bergdahl denouncing the

war in afghanistan. >> since i've been here, i've seen how these people live and function, a very independent state and very independent people. >> when they do a video like this, this is also distributed within their own ranks showing, aren't we great? aren't we effective? >> the then 23-year-old bergdahl had become a very precious commodity to the taliban, an american soldier in enemy hands. >> i think they wanted to make it clear that we've got him but we're going to hold him as a prisoner. this is the key. >> halfway around the world, bergdahl's parents bob and jani. >> for them, for a lot of people. >> family friend walt femling remembers those first few days as they absorb the terrible news. >> both of them hadn't slept for two or three days.

it was rough on jani. they were really just praying a lot that bowe would be released and come home. >> for six months, their prayers were left unanswered until the taliban released another video of their son. this time on christmas day dressed in his fatigues, he delivered a critique of american foreign policy. >> did he or even should he trust those who send us the -- >> accompanied by photos of the torture of prisoners at abu ghraib. called a horrible act that exploits a young soldier. over the course of the next year, more videos were released with bergdahl sounding more and more hopeless. >> let me go. get me to come home. release me, you know. every day i want to go home. >> and then, saying nothing at all. the bergdahl family watching their son change before their

eyes grew increasingly frustrated. bowe's older sister sky posted on her blog, i'm relying on god's time in this but i'm quite disappointed in my american people, my american forces and my president in particular. >> these people here will not leave you on the battlefield. your country will not leave you on the battlefield. you are not forgotten. >> jani and bob started speaking out at rallies and to reporters. >> i wake up each morning and my first thought is my son is still prisoner of war in afghanistan. and i need to do something about that. >> bob bergdahl retired after his 28 years as a u.p.s. driver devoted himself full-time to studying the world his son is now living in. >> trying to write or read the language. i probably spend four hours a day reading on the region on the history. >> bob even grew out a beard in

solidarity and spoke directly to bowe's captors. >> to the people of afghanistan, may the peace of god and the blessings that come from god be upon you. >> he had not given up hope. >> a father does not leave his son alone on the battlefield. >> apparently, neither had his son. >> physically fit. and, you know, can do squats. >> some time in 2011, bergdahl managed to escape. reports from taliban sources say his captors stopped keeping a close eye on him and bergdahl took advantage, making a run for it. he managed, according to an account to survive three days on his own. three days of desperate freedom before the taliban found him in the woods, nearly naked and

hiding in the trench he'd dug with his bare hands. upon being discovered, he fought like a boxer, said the source, before succumbing to his captors and being dragged back in shackles. >> i'm not surprised by these reports of an escape. it is not fun being in taliban captivity. frankly, you want it to end. if you're going to die in the escape, you're going to die. >> unbowed, he tried again, running to a nearby village looking for help, but finding no friendly faces. the locals returned him to his captors according to one account. the escape attempt put his captors on high alert, now moving him stealthily through the mountains of pakistan, hoping to keep their golden goose out of the hands of any would be rescuers. but how did bowe bergdahl end up here in the first place? some of his fellow soldiers are not sure. some say he had only himself to blame.

some say he walked right into the enemy's hands. >> the american, he's looking for someone who speaks english so he can talk to the taliban. and i heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio, there's a lot more to the story than just a soldier walking away. >> was bergdahl looking for the taliban? who or what was he searching for? those first fateful hours when we come back. we're moving our company to new york state.

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welcome back to our special cnn spotlight on the growing mystery surrounding bowe bergdahl. as americans debate the circumstances of the prisoner swap that brought him freedom in exchange for five taliban fighters, a critical question remains. how did bergdahl disappear in the first place? was he looking for the taliban? kidnapped while on patrol? is he a good soldier? or is he a deserter? was he on a misguided mission of peace? or was he after something more sinister? or was he searching for something else entirely? >> for bowe bergdahl, the lure of the unknown was powerful.

as a child, he had wondered about what lay beyond the mountains of his idyllic hometown of idaho. as a soldier, his wanderlust did not go unnoticed. an internal investigation by the army conducted in june 2009 found that private bergdahl had wandered off at least twice before. the first time was before he even left for afghanistan during basic training. here at the army's national training center at ft. irwin, california. according to the "new york times," bergdahl's fellow soldiers told investigators he had slipped away to go watch the sunset. the natural world apparently beckoned again in afghanistan where private bergdahl ventured away for a walk outside the wired perimeter of his out post, an unauthorized track never reported up the chain of command. many of his fellow soldiers said he seemed driven by a desire to explore. >> i think he wanted to go on an adventure without having anybody

to answer to, without having anything to worry about. hep wanted to go out and see afghanistan for himself without, you know, the army stopping him. >> a friend from bergdahl's pre-army life in idaho said he often sought time alone in the mountains. >> when he was here, it wasn't unusual for him to take off and go on a hike and sit down in the lotus position and meditate and recenter himself and reevaluate what was going on around him. >> jerry horton was bergdahl's roommate for several years. >> he was very -- always trying to expand his knowledge. she wanted to learn about new and different things. >> that's right. ballet. before he was a soldier, bergdahl was a dancer and quite a good one by all accounts. horton who was the creative director where bergdahl studied said he brought his signature intensity to the dance floor, as well. >> he was a really serious student. he took -- he started late.

so he was really about touching up and getting as much knowledge. so he would take two or three classes, even if it was with the younger children. he was interested in learning as much as he could. >> a characterization you hear over and over again when talking to friends of bergdahl in idaho's sun valley where yellow ribbons are everywhere. some faded from five long years in the sun. the rest of the country may be divided over bergdahl's release, but here, there is palpable relief. >> he'll get a great welcome, i'm sure of it. >> a local police chief and friend of the bergdahl family. he says bergdahl was a seeker. >> bowe was a 20-year-old that lived in a remote area of our county. he was home schooled. so he really didn't have a lot of life experience. and he was adventurous. he was really looking for adventure. and he talked to me about going to alaska. i encouraged him to go and, you

know, seek out those adventures. >> and bergdahl did seek them out, touring europe and venturing to alaska to work on a fishing boat. dylan hauled salmon alongside him. >> when we weren't on the boat, we'd go off walking on the swamplands and go off on little adventures for half days and come back and little talks. >> between his travels, bergdahl would come back to haley, he did a stint at the local gun club before moving on to the coffee shop where messages from well wishers now cover the wall. but soon he was off on his next adventure. joining the army's fight in afghanistan. by may 2009, bergdahl and the rest of the company were in the rural province where they manned a small outpost. >> pretty much as soon as we had gone to afghanistan and things started to turn a little bit harder for all of us, he

immediately started separating himself away from us. and everyone in the platoon and started gravitating more toward the afghan soldiers. >> personally, i thought he took an interest in the culture. and i didn't see any problem with it. >> one of bergdahl's closest friends was gerald sutton. >> every day, we would always eat together and we would always go outside and he would smoke his pipe and sometimes i would smoke with him, too. and we would just relax after work or after we were done with trucks. he wasn't a loner. >> they often talked about what they wanted to do with their lives after the army. bergdahl presented a strange plan. >> three days before he actually left, he asked me what it would be like to get lost in the mountains or do you think he could make it to india or china or something on foot. and i just brushed it off as kind of a joke. >> at the same time, letters bergdahl wrote to his parents not independently verified by

cnn, describe mounting frustration with the mission and his superiors. >> he did talk about how he did not agree with the war effort in afghanistan, or the u.s. army -- the way we were handling our war. >> former sergeant was bergdahl's team leader. came to him one day with a curious question. >> he did come to me at one point and ask me -- he said, what would happen if my sensitive items go missing? >> like bergdahl's gun. >> it's obviously an incredibly huge ordeal. and there's a lot of backlash and it's important we find those items. it was a little odd he would ask me that question. >> soon after buetow found his weapon and other sensitive items like the night vision goggles, but the young soldier, the man himself, was gone. the final clues to where bowe bergdahl went when we come back. (mother vo) when i was pregnant...

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to talk with an insurance expert about everything that comes standard with our base auto policy. and if you switch, you could save up to $423. liberty mutual insurance -- responsibility. what's your policy? welcome back to our special cnn spotlight: bowe bergdahl. we've heard from friends and fellow soldiers who have said bowe bergdahl was a guy who was looking to the horizon and then one day disappeared into it. they had bergdahl's weapon and his body armor, but he -- he was gone. and it was that instance, according to the soldiers with whom he served that their mission became all about bowe bergdahl. >> reporter: for the soldiers of

black foot company, life in afghanistan was hot and dusty. their mission always dangerous, and at times, frustrating. >> these people are so fickle, man. >> and to some, futile. >> these people just want to be left alone. >> -- from the russian for 17 years and now we're here. >> for private bowe bergdahl, the war left him deeply disillusioned. in an e-mail obtained by "rolling stone" magazine but not independently verified by cnn bergdahl wrote of the horrors of war. i am sorry for everything here, bowe told his parents. these people need help. what they get is the most conceded country in the world telling them they are nothing, they are stupid, they have no idea how to live. the horror that is america is disgusting, he wrote. and two days later, bowe bergdahl disappeared. >> he was about to go on guard shift.

someone went to wake him up for his shift and that's when they found out he was not there. >> bergdahl's gun, his bulletproof vest, night vision goggles asker all accounted for. but the soldier himself vanished. >> they said, is he up there? i got on the radio, said, no, he's not up there. and they got back on the radio and said, has anyone seen bergdahl? >> on july 1st, 2009, private bowe bergdahl was classified as duty status whereabouts unknown. >> didn't take long to search the whole o.p. we talked to the afghan army personnel there, as well. bergdahl liked to hang out with them. and spoke with them a lot. they hadn't seen him, didn't know where he was at. didn't take long before it came pretty clear that he was gone. >> once we found out he was nowhere around, it just immediately went into a 100% hands on deck search for him to try to get him back. >> troops fanned out across

southern afghanistan looking for one of their own, one of their brothers. planes, surveillance, other assets were diverted from other parts of afghanistan to help with the search. >> our commanders are sparing no effort to find this young soldier. >> handing out these flyers to locals. one warning, if you do not release the u.s. soldier, you will be hunted. >> we immediately pushed out a patrol into the local village as we left the base, two small boys walked up to us and they told us they saw an american crawling through the weeds by himself. they were saying this was very odd to him. they said we never see the americans walking around by himself. he was by himself. he didn't have a weapon, didn't have any armor, just crawling through the weeds. >> and then, another lead. this one shocking. >> i was standing right next to the radio when they heard that there's an american in a village

about 2 miles from where we were at. it's a village that has a very large presence of taliban. he's looking for someone that speaks english so he can talk to the taliban. i heard it straight from the interpreter's lips. and at that point, it was like, this is kind of still falling out of control. >> one former government official expert in the case says this detail, if true, may not be as nefarious as it sounds. bergdahl may have been on something of a mission to try and broker a peace with the taliban. around that same time, a cnn source describes the dramatic scenes bergdahl appearing in a local village seemingly under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug. >> he didn't speak the local language, they didn't speak english. so there was no meeting of the minds there. and he says that local taliban commanders heard he was there.

they tried to forcibly take bergdahl away. bergdahl resisted. they beat him, they took off his military uniform, put on local clothes, even a local turban and then took him away. >> the military which had launched an internal investigation discovered another startling clue. before his disappearance, bergdahl had mailed his computer and some books back home to his family. and in a sign of how sensitive the situation was becoming, the army told bergdahl's fellow soldiers to sign nondisclosure agreements, making them promise not to talk about the circumstances of his disappearance. until and unless we hear from bowe bergdahl himself, we may never know how he ended up in the taliban's hands. >> behind the patrol when i was captured. >> with bergdahl officially a taliban hostage, the hunt intensified. >> it was 60 days or more, i remember just straight, we

didn't -- all we did was look for bergdahl. all we were doing was going on leads. intel he was in a specific village or being moved from a village to another location and we would act on that intelligence. essentially chasing a ghost because we never came up with anything. >> in the months that followed, the 501st infantry division lost six soldiers. >> bergdahl leaving changed the mission. >> if he wouldn't have deserted us, these soldiers very well could have been in a different place at a different time. >> it was a very big betrayal. >> the military has promised a comprehensive review. >> let's get the facts, but let's first focus on getting sergeant bergdahl well. >> until then, the mystery surrounding bowe bergdahl and what happened to him that fateful night remains. >> bergdahl's hometown of haley, idaho, has decided to cancel the celebration that is planned for

him later this month over concerns that outsiders will flood the streets of their small town. it's a homecoming on hold. jake tapper for continuing coverage of sergeant bowe bergdahl's long journey back, stay tuned to cnn. tonight on "unguarded." unflinching, after making the miracle shots that saved the miami heat last year, ray allen reveals just what kind of burden his team is carrying now. >> it's always laughable when people see you and they say pressure. >> uncommon. tomorrow, california chrome tries to win the first triple crown in 36 years. and there's a tremendous amount at stake. >> if california chrome wins, i think it will bring a lot more people to the sport. >> unprotected. morgan spurlock discovers firsthand how tough it is in the world of college sports. >> it has to be the way.