matthew farwell, thank you so much for joining us. why don't you talk about how you met bowe bergdahl's parents, bob and jani. >> i did not really need them. i was giving the eulogy for my brother and looked back in the back of the church and saw to the people i thought i recognized, and it was the bergdahl's. >> your from idaho. >> my parents are from idaho. >> what year was this? >> february 3, 2010. >> how did you then come to know them? >> after that i kept in touch with them a little bit because i thought that was a classy gesture. then michael and i did the story and i have stayed in touch. >> in terms of the story with michael, how did you decide to focus on the bergdahls story and gather the information, which is really definitive work on the bergdahl saga? >> the fbi investigated how they came to be. i have to keep some trade secrets on it. >> explained for a moment. this is a side story, but michael died in a fiery car he had said at the time that he was being investigated by the fbi. yes, and in the freedom of information a

matthew farwell, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> the debate in washington ispletely about whether bergdahl was a hostage or whether he was a hero or whether he was a deserter. it seems like it is somewhere in between, it is a more complicated story than that. >> yeah, it's a more complicated and more nuanced storiment but at the end of the day the guy was a u.s. soldier in the hands of somebody we're fighting with. and regardless of any other circumstance, he needed to be brought home. and brought back into u.s. custody and u.s. jurisdiction. >> ifill: let's go back and tell people a little bit about who bowe bergdahl is. who he is. how did he come to be in the army in the first place? >> you know, he grew up in sun valley, idaho. and joined the army a little bit later on in life, i believe he was about 23 when he joined which was the same age i was when i joined. and i think you know, he didn't just join the army, he joined the infant ree and the parachute infant ree at that. and so like a lot of people, i imagine he joined for many different reasons. idealis

white house faces more attacks over the american pow-taliban prisoner swap, we will speak with matthew farwell

matthew farwell believes there's no way to link those deaths directly. >> they died because they wereut there doing their jobs as soldiers, right? which is running patrols, looking for the enemy, doing movements to contact and doing their jobs as soldiers. >> former military officials tell cnn there were number rous operations going on in that province, not all related to the search for bergdahl. the taliban was gaining strength there. attacks were on the rise according to the confidential military logs released to wiki leaks. they realized the situation in afghanistan was worst than first thought. >> it's a very dangerous area and any time you flood the zone with a bunch of is soldiers, that's going to wind up getting people killed. >> if the casualties can't be directly traced to the search, the soldiers say it diverted resources and create add more dangerous environment. ultimately, the military will decide whether bergdahl should be prosecuted for those deaths. >> the government would have to prove the intent that he was not going to return. when he left, he had no intention of re

he had a partner on this story, a former infantry man named matthew farwell. farwell was deployed to afghanistan for 16 months. he helped hastings with a lot of reporting about bergdahl and i spoke with him earlier about the press' role. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> you called this the most important story you've ever written. why is that? >> probably ever will write. it deals with eternal themes. war, captivity, problems, and because we wrote it at a time two years ago michael hastings and i wrote this for "rolling stone," nobody covered it. nobody cared. and people were being shut up by the white house about it. >> tell me what you mean about that. how were they being shut up? >> one of my white house sources was in charge of coordinating the getting the press to not write about this story. >> to not talk too much about him. what were the reasons for that? i would think it might be because they were concerned that it would affect the negotiations that were under way. >> officially that's the story. but because it reflects badly on th

joining me now, matthew farwell, former veteran and now a writer for "rolling stone." >> good morning. >> you know the bergdahl family. they say he sent suspicious tweets out and he deleted them and kind of looks like a muslim now. does he deserve this kind of criticism? >> no, absolutely not. look, bill o'reilly, the most dangerous thing that guy's ever done is walk across the street in new york to buy a burger. you know? so any of this criticism going out at bob bergdahl is disgusting. i know the bergdahls. they're good people. his father was an all-american football player with ucla. he was the postman, the u.p.s. guy in sun valley, idaho, for 30 years. like they're the most american family you can have. and the guy's had his son be a captive of the taliban for the past five years. he's a father. he's going to do anything he can to get his kid back. >> why did he grow his beard out? >> so that he would have some sympathy with the people that were holding his kid hostage. >> and this was not really an attempt to become a member of the taliban. it was more to convince

. >>> "outfront" tonight matthew farwell who contributed to the report on bergdahl's disappearance, alsoeran and served in the same area of afghanistan as bergdahl. also a reporter embedded with the u.s. troops in afghanistan. best-selling author recently of "the most faithful spy." great to have both of you with us. alex, the u.s. military has this motto, right, leave no soldier behind. and you just heard tom's reporting. in this case, was it the right thing to do? is there ever a case where it isn't? >> no, i don't think there is ever a case where it isn't right to do. maybe we don't know for sure. it certainly looks like he is on the deserter side of that chasm. but that doesn't mean you don't go get him. among other things, until you get him you don't know whether or not he is a deserter. he should be subject to our justice system, not the taliban's justice system. so anybody who says he was not worth getting, i don't buy that. anybody who says we shouldn't have traded taliban commanders for him, i think that's a total misreading of what the situation in afghanistan is right now. the

matthew farwell served in that region before bergdahl went over there.the show. in talking to chris he said it actually seemed more formal dress for that region which speaks to the fact that they see this as a propaganda video for themselves. >> i think so. they want to show that they took care of him, returned him in health, right, in decent health. but under their control, right? on their terms. they got what they wanted. and that's -- that's something that they're going to advertise. of course, the second part of the tape, as we saw later, showed the handoff in qatar of the five taliban prisoners released from guantanamo. >> hopefully we'll get back to it in video as we're kind of showing it on the loop. at one point right when the special forces walk up they shake hands with the taliban that are bringing him and they go right to the back of bowe bergdahl, clearly rying to check if there's anything back there a as they approach the helicopter he gets a more extensive patdown. >> the concern could be, you know, not necessarily bergdahl intentions but w