Reports from Private Intelligence Group Claim Bergdahl Declared Jihad and Called Himself a Mujhadin in 2010

Here are those further allegations James Rosen said would be coming.

These reports were from "The Eclipse Group," a "shadowy" (the article says so) group of former spooks who I guess do contract intelligence work for the government.

You should probably read the whole article, about the Eclipse Group and all of it, because it's interesting, and because you should know how probative these reports are -- or aren't.

Here's how Rosen describes Eclipse at the end of the article:

The New York Times, in its 2011 profile of Clarridge, described his agents' dispatches as "an amalgam of fact, rumor, analysis and uncorroborated reports." The fabled ex-spook made the more than one dozen SITREPs that Eclipse prepared on the Bergdahl case -- all previously unpublished -- available to Fox News because he wanted to demonstrate, as he put it: "We know what we're talking about."

I don't know-- uncorroborated reports from informants (who are incentivized to lie about stuff, because you're paying them money for "information") aren't the strongest sources I can imagine. I know that's how intelligence is done a lot of the time, but I'm uncomfortable hanging this guy as a traitor on such reeds.

Deserter? Oh yeah. Traitor? Jihadi? Mujadin? Ehhh... I think that's too far, without more information.

But here is what the reports claim.

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a "mujahid," or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

The reports indicate that Bergdahl's relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, "he became much more of an accepted fellow" than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.

...

Experts consulted by Fox News said that SITREP # 3023 presents a picture of an American captive who, if not an active collaborator, may have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome -- the dynamic by which hostages can become enamored of their captors and join their cause -- or simply feigned allegiance in order to survive.

Worth reading, as I said, in full.

Thanks to @BrentCochran1, or, as I think of him, BrentCochran2.

Oh, and, by the way: The Administration is considering doing that thing in Your Mouth again.

Oh Good God Almighty: Well, we had the chance to demand civilian hostages be returned, along with the deserter Bergdahl, but apparently Professor Weakchin decided it would be too much to ask that from the Taliban.

So American civilian hostages remain in Taliban hands.

But we got Bowe Bergdahl back.

yayyyy and stuff

posted by Ace at 05:41 PM

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