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0:12

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0:30

From New York Times

0:32

I'm Michael Alvaro. This is daily.

0:41

Over the past five years, a series

0:43

of investigations by the times has

0:46

revealed the degree to which America's

0:49

air wars which were supposed

0:51

to be the most precise in history,

0:53

have instead brought terror

0:56

and tragedy to the civilians on

0:58

the ground. Today,

1:04

my colleague Dave Phillips follows

1:07

on that reporting. With a look

1:09

at the tool that the program has

1:11

taken on the drone

1:14

pilots, who have carried

1:16

it out.

1:28

It's Monday, May ninth.

1:36

Dave, how did you first come to the story

1:39

of Kevin Larson? It was

1:41

really out of the blue. Kevin Larson

1:43

was this decorated

1:45

drone pilot flying the reaper drone,

1:48

and he'd flown hundreds of missions

1:51

gotten a number of medals for it, and

1:53

then he was charged with drug possession

1:55

and distribution and convicted. And

1:58

it was kind of small case

2:00

and a routine conviction except for

2:02

one thing. After the verdict came

2:04

down, he took off out of the courtroom, basically

2:07

ran and a

2:09

few days later as the police were

2:11

chasing him, they cornered him in a

2:14

rural valley in the mountains of California. And

2:17

he shot himself, well,

2:20

that day I got a call from a military

2:23

lawyer who I'd known for years. Who

2:25

had been in the courtroom when his young officer

2:28

took off and had learned about his death.

2:30

And what he said to

2:32

me was you know, you should try to

2:34

look into this because this isn't just

2:36

a case of, you know, drug use.

2:39

I think it's something more. I I know what

2:41

unit he was in and there's just

2:43

probably a lot more to this young man story

2:45

than just that he was running from

2:47

a pretty minor

2:48

conviction. So this

2:51

guy calls you and says, there's something

2:53

bigger here, and I think you should look into it.

2:55

Howard Bauchner: Right. And that posed its

2:57

own challenge because looking into

2:59

the drone program of the military is almost impossible.

3:02

Everything it touches is either secret

3:04

or top secret. And then you have the

3:06

additional problem that if you try

3:08

to look at the background of any individual

3:12

soldier airmen officer. That's really

3:14

hard too because there's all sorts of laws that

3:16

keep you from seeing personnel

3:18

information. Secret court files or

3:21

confidential court files. So it

3:23

was a story that I immediately recognized,

3:25

yes, there could be something here. But

3:27

how do you get it? So what did you do?

3:31

Sometimes with a deceased service member,

3:33

the family is the best bet. And so I started

3:35

there. And what his friends and his family

3:37

said is that know, this was a

3:40

a really exceptional young man,

3:42

a guy who'd been an eagle scout,

3:45

a really sort of straight arrow who'd been raised

3:47

two police officers in Yakima, Washington,

3:50

and gone to church every Sunday, played

3:53

a lot of sports, always wanted to

3:55

fly until he joined the Air

3:57

Force. But when he joined the Air

3:59

Force, he he was

4:01

basically told yeah, you're

4:03

gonna fly, but you're never gonna leave the ground. We're

4:05

gonna put you into the drone program. Interesting.

4:08

And what his mother said that

4:10

first he was disappointed, but then he really seemed

4:13

to like it because during the last

4:15

ten years, the drone program is really where

4:17

all the action was. And and he got to

4:19

fly a lot of missions. More

4:22

than six hundred combat missions and

4:24

fired about a hundred

4:26

and eighty missile strikes. Mhmm.

4:28

But his his parents said that, you know, their

4:30

son who outwardly was was

4:32

doing amazing was just this well

4:34

liked gregarious good

4:37

looking guy who had a young wife

4:39

who he loved at the same time they worried

4:41

about him because the

4:44

missions that he was doing, he never talked

4:46

about him, at least not in detail. But

4:48

occasionally, he would make some kind

4:50

of a side about what he was doing, and

4:53

you know, what types of people his

4:56

drones were really targeting, and and his

4:58

parents could tell that it was really

5:00

bothering him.

5:05

So his family doesn't really

5:08

know all that much about his work during

5:10

his lifetime. But what they do

5:13

know is that it has left

5:15

him pretty

5:16

uncomfortable. Right. Right.

5:19

And so, you know, not only did his parents

5:21

not know the details, but there

5:23

wasn't much of a way for me to get the details.

5:26

And -- Mhmm. -- I knocked on a lot of doors

5:28

of men who had flown drones with him.

5:30

And I don't think a single

5:32

one even responded to me

5:34

because their community is so secretive.

5:37

And so to be honest, I thought

5:39

that this was one of these stories that was

5:42

probably really interesting, but that I

5:44

couldn't tell. There just wasn't enough

5:46

there. And -- Mhmm. -- for the time being,

5:48

I put it aside not knowing if I'd ever get to

5:50

come back. But

5:53

then something I didn't expect happened

5:56

that opened it back up again, which

5:58

is what? We started doing

6:00

some reporting on irstrikes

6:03

in the fall of two thousand twenty one

6:06

that really revealed that there was

6:08

a pattern of problems in how they

6:10

were picking targets. And the

6:12

result was all sorts of

6:15

people that shouldn't be a legal military

6:17

target, passersby, women,

6:20

children, people just sitting in their homes or their

6:22

cars, were getting killed by drone

6:25

strikes. Right. Something we have

6:27

covered here on the show. Yeah. And

6:29

in that process, I

6:33

talked to a number of people

6:35

who were active in in the drone world,

6:37

who were telling me what they saw. They were

6:39

my sources for this reporting. But

6:42

while I was talking to them, it was very

6:44

clear that the work that these men and women were

6:46

being asked to do was really troubling

6:48

than them. And of course, that

6:50

wasn't the story I was writing at the time.

6:52

Right? We were writing a story about how there were systematic

6:55

problems that were queuing people

6:57

that the government wasn't admitting to. But

7:00

as I went on and I was

7:02

talking to all sorts of

7:04

drone crew members, I

7:06

asked myself, well,

7:08

isn't this the story of Kevin Larson?

7:11

Mhmm. Aren't

7:11

they

7:12

experiencing the same stuff? I mean, they're

7:14

doing the same work during the same time

7:17

period in the same types of units, and

7:19

that allowed me to pick

7:22

the story back up. Because all of sudden

7:24

I had this chorus of people who could

7:26

speak for Kevin's experience when

7:28

he couldn't. Mhmm. What was challenging

7:31

is finding some

7:34

that would actually go on record because

7:36

it's such a secretive community. And in

7:38

some cases, talking about it can even be illegal.

7:41

But, you know, through some work, we were able

7:43

to get a number of people on record,

7:45

and one of them was willing

7:47

to talk to me on tape. He's

7:50

a drone pilot named James

7:52

Klein.

7:53

Hi. Can you hear me? How

7:55

are you, man? Doing well. How are you doing?

7:57

And what should we know? I

7:59

got James Klein. Well,

8:02

he had been in the air force for years

8:04

before becoming a drone pilot.

8:06

I loved traveling. I loved

8:09

the missions we were doing. We went down to

8:11

Haiti when the big earthquake happened.

8:13

We went to Fukushima. Got people

8:15

out of there and brought supplies when that happened.

8:18

I really enjoyed getting to see new

8:20

places, getting to meet new people, getting hear new stories,

8:22

and helping people out. So that's why I was really hoping

8:24

to do as a pilot. And he had been an enlisted

8:27

guy, a guy helping out on a crew of one

8:29

of those giant transport planes. And

8:32

he shifted over to the officer side because

8:34

he wanted to fly. And he ended

8:36

up in a drone squadron.

8:38

And I was like, know what? I could be the roughly

8:41

the forefront of this. Get the one to two

8:43

new technology and see how it plays

8:45

out. What that meant for

8:47

him was he was living in Las

8:49

Vegas, and he was commuting

8:52

every day at several miles north of

8:54

the city to remote base

8:56

called Cree Tier four space. It's

8:58

all in classified area. It's all in

9:00

a skiff. There's no windows. No

9:02

cell phones allowed to leave all your cell phones out.

9:05

And there, essentially, the drone pilots

9:07

would go through a secure top

9:09

secret door every day. And inside,

9:12

they had cockpits that were linked by

9:14

satellite to drones on the other side

9:16

of the

9:16

world. So

9:17

if I looked to my right immediately, I have my sensor

9:19

operator, pilots always in the left, sensors

9:21

always in the right, and next to him was

9:23

someone who was operating the cameras and

9:25

the sensors. And they would receive

9:28

orders to go on missions, to fly the

9:30

drone to a certain spot, to watch, to

9:32

aim and occasionally to

9:34

fire. But it was ultimately

9:37

an office job. You were working shifts

9:40

commuting sitting in a chair even though

9:42

you were doing

9:43

combat. So these things can step twenty four

9:45

plus hours depending on how you use them to think how

9:47

far the bases and anything like

9:49

that. And they have cameras on them that are just mind

9:51

boggling, and they have other technology on that. That's

9:53

just, you know, it's insane. And and what they can do

9:55

is crazy. James Klein, when

9:58

he started this work, he

10:00

really was a supporter of it because he felt

10:02

that this tool that predator drone

10:04

and the reaper drone, they were amazing because

10:07

he could fly over some remote

10:10

valley in a dangerous land where

10:12

in the past you might have had to put one hundred,

10:15

two hundred Marines. But here you

10:17

could have a very precise

10:20

weapon system with an amazing camera,

10:22

and he felt that if that was used

10:24

right and

10:25

deliberately, it was better than

10:27

any alternative.

10:28

And for a year and a half, two years, you'll

10:31

build your spider network up, and you'll

10:33

find out, okay, this guy's always meeting with

10:35

him and we've got some, you know, assets on

10:37

the ground or whatnot that are also helping us. Oh,

10:39

we have found this network and

10:41

now we can paint a picture and we know

10:43

who's doing what what's

10:45

really important. Maybe we don't wanna

10:47

kill all these

10:48

people. Maybe we wanna do something else with these people. Maybe.

10:50

And he said that for a long time,

10:53

it was used right. They had

10:55

very strict protocols in

10:57

place. They would watch a target

11:00

to figure out who is the exact precise

11:03

high level leader that we need to hit to

11:05

take this threat apart, and they

11:07

would wait for the moment when they could do that

11:09

without causing any other

11:10

casualties. So he's comfortable

11:13

with the checks and balances and

11:15

the decision

11:16

making process that he is participating in.

11:18

Yeah. At least at first.

11:21

You gotta understand that the pilots, they

11:23

launch the

11:23

missile, but they don't get to make the decision

11:25

about

11:26

who they launch it at. I mean,

11:28

a pilot's perspective versus a taxi giant. That's

11:30

all we do. We That comes from someone that

11:32

that they universally referred to

11:35

as the customer. And

11:38

the customer could be a lot of different

11:40

people. It could be the CIA. It

11:42

could be a colonel who's running a bunch

11:44

of ground troops on the ground in Afghanistan. It

11:47

could be a secret special operations

11:49

strike cell that's looking at targets

11:51

and

11:52

saying, hey, okay, here's the bad guys.

11:54

Hit them now. We drive

11:56

the signals intelligence that we have

11:59

on the aircraft and and we drive the hellfires

12:01

to wherever the customer requires them

12:03

to

12:04

be. And then we position

12:06

the aircraft way we know best

12:08

for what they want. Whatever

12:10

the customer wants, the

12:12

pilot's supposed to give it to them. The initial

12:14

customer I came in with cared only

12:17

about building up those networks. And

12:20

I would almost say elimination was secondary.

12:23

To that. It was it was much more important for

12:25

them to build those networks and be able to

12:29

like

12:29

I said, maybe not even eliminate. Maybe do something

12:31

else on the ground. And

12:34

that was fine when he started because

12:36

he had a lot of faith in the customer. The customer

12:39

seemed to be deliberate and well

12:42

informed and patient. The

12:44

biggest shift for me was

12:46

changing squadrons. I changed squadrons. I had

12:48

a new

12:48

customer. But As

12:51

time went on, the customer started to

12:53

change. Whereas, you know, the first customer

12:56

oh, you found something. Let's follow it for two years. Discuss

12:58

maybe

12:59

like, found something, give us thirty minutes

13:01

here real quick. Alright. Pass on

13:03

it or, hey, we think, You

13:05

should be doing something with this prepared

13:07

to strike. Late in the Obama

13:09

administration, ISIS invaded

13:12

Syria and Iraq, and they

13:14

loosened the restrictions on who

13:16

could be the customer. And then

13:18

president Trump came into the White House and

13:20

he loosened them even more And

13:23

so at

13:25

one point, the customer was sometimes

13:27

the brazone of the United States or more

13:29

often a high level general or

13:31

admiral. But over time as

13:33

these rules loosened, the customer

13:36

became oftentimes a

13:38

mid level enlisted person

13:40

on the ground, and the targets that they

13:42

were picking and approving were

13:46

much bless careful. What

13:48

drone pilots were telling me about this

13:50

era was that the

13:52

strikes became I

13:55

think problematic is probably too nice

13:57

of a word. You know, a rushed strike

13:59

might be targeting what people

14:01

thought was enemy command post except

14:03

it's a school and it's full of civilians

14:06

or it's a market or the car

14:09

that they thought was carrying the terrorist leader, in

14:11

fact, was caring a family. Mhmm.

14:14

So James, he

14:16

was not only watching this, but he was

14:18

launching a lot of this stuff and he became very

14:20

troubled because

14:22

he lost faith that the customer really knew

14:24

what they were doing. So my

14:27

sensor and I were flying and

14:28

flying around this town. I believe at the time, it

14:31

was during the ISIS thing at the time.

14:33

One story he told me about was a time

14:35

when he was asked to watch a river

14:37

that ISIS was using to transport supplies.

14:41

So we're watching this river. And there's, you know, there's

14:43

ISIS on both sides of it. So we see two

14:45

guys walking and there's a

14:47

lot of dust in the air on this day. But you see

14:49

two guys and they've got two things on their

14:50

back, which, you know, the

14:53

the JTAC's like, do you think those could be?

14:56

AKs or anything like that? His

14:58

drone was told by the customer to follow

15:00

two men along the river in

15:02

Syria because they appeared to

15:05

be

15:05

armed. And then

15:06

analysts goes, hey, it looks kind of like fishing poles.

15:09

And we

15:09

look at them and they're like, oh, yeah. Those are those are fishing poles.

15:11

We didn't know what they were before, but the more they

15:13

said they were fishing poles. And, like, five minutes later

15:16

down there fishing. And he

15:18

and his essentially co pilot, the man

15:20

whose job it is to look at the video

15:22

feed, said, wait a minute, these guys

15:25

they're not armed. Mhmm. And

15:28

the customer's response

15:29

was, well, stay ready

15:31

to fire anyway because we might need to take

15:33

these guys out.

15:34

I went, like, hey, man, these are fishing poles.

15:37

That's what the analysts is saying, oh, are

15:39

we still looking at these? He's

15:40

like, well, you know, you just never know. And

15:43

his response essentially was no. He

15:45

refused to fire that day.

15:49

And my sensor on that day was

15:51

one of the guys that had come from the first unit with me

15:53

and both of us were staring each other

15:55

like, what are

15:55

they doing? What are these guys doing?

15:58

Why are they so adamant about shooting.

16:00

Why does this guy still wanna shoot too fisherman?

16:06

And that afternoon, he prevails.

16:09

The shot is not taken. These men

16:11

are are not vaporized on the side

16:13

of the river. And you would think

16:15

that he'd feel pretty good about that. But

16:18

in the moment, I think that was the point

16:20

where he started to really

16:23

doubt what he was doing and and

16:25

the system as a whole.

16:27

And it

16:27

was at that point that I realized, what

16:29

if I didn't wanna push back? Then

16:32

yeah, maybe there's two fishermen who end up dying that

16:34

day. We'll

16:49

be right back.

16:56

Uncheck climate change is a costly choice.

16:58

If global warming, there's three degrees Celsius

17:00

toward the end of the century, It could cost the US

17:02

economy fourteen point five trillion dollars

17:05

over the next fifty years, according to Deloitte's

17:07

The Turning Point Report, making it more challenging

17:09

for communities to prosper. The analysis

17:12

lures the cost of inaction and action and

17:14

shows how the US could realize a three trillion

17:16

dollar gain to the US economy by twenty seventy

17:18

if it adopts a holistic path toward rapid

17:20

decarbonization. Learn more at deloitte

17:23

dot com slash u s slash climate.

17:26

I'm Carol Rosenberg from The New York

17:28

Times. Right now, I'm

17:30

sitting alone in the press room at the US

17:32

Navy basic Guantanamo Bay. I've

17:35

probably spent around two thousand nights

17:37

at this Navy base. I've

17:39

been coming here since four months after

17:41

the nine eleven attacks. I watched

17:43

the first prisoners arrive in those orange

17:45

jumpsuits from faraway Afghanistan. Some

17:48

of these prisoners, they still don't

17:50

have a trial date. It's

17:53

hard to get here. It's hard to get news

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from the prison. Often, you know,

17:57

I'm the only reporter here. If

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18:28

So, Dave, this is clearly a

18:30

kind of turning point for James?

18:33

Well, yes and no.

18:35

Like, it's a turning point in in his attitude

18:37

towards the drone program and and

18:39

whether it's right or wrong. Mhmm. But

18:42

it's not a tendering point for the air force.

18:44

The air force still expects him to show up to

18:47

work the next day. Right? And that's really

18:49

hard because he doesn't know

18:51

what the customer's gonna ask him to do.

18:53

He may ask him to target

18:55

another pair of fishermen or

18:57

something worse. Mhmm. And that

19:00

really, really starts to

19:02

weigh on him

19:04

depression shows in different ways for me it was

19:06

I'm just going to shut

19:08

myself inside basically inside myself,

19:10

not not tell anyone about what's going

19:12

on, just be, you know, a crime engine all the time.

19:14

It affects his sleep.

19:18

It affects his mood. Every day

19:20

he wakes up fearful of going in

19:22

and what he's gonna be asked to do, and it

19:24

basically makes him totally

19:26

miserable. And is he able

19:29

to talk to anyone about all this

19:31

inside the military? Well, that's

19:33

really tough because the Air Force

19:35

for sure has spent a lot

19:38

of money and effort in getting mental health professionals

19:41

into these drone squadrons.

19:43

So there is some help there.

19:45

But James, he didn't necessarily see

19:48

that as help he could use because

19:52

I think there's a lot of stigma in the military.

19:54

And if you say the wrong thing,

19:56

you'll be taken off a flight status.

19:59

And he just wasn't sure that

20:01

going in and and talking to someone would

20:03

do any

20:04

good, and and it might do a lot of harm.

20:06

Mhmm.

20:08

So it doesn't seem like much of an option.

20:10

So basically, he's stuck. Right.

20:16

I knew in my head, I

20:19

was sabotaging my life.

20:23

I was almost leaning into how

20:26

much I disliked it. So basically,

20:28

he decided to just

20:30

suck it up. So I

20:33

didn't enjoy what I was doing.

20:36

I would focus on it intentionally all day

20:38

almost. And

20:40

then question myself out why felt so

20:43

terrible all the time. Pretend nothing

20:45

was wrong. My wife's confused as to why

20:47

I'm not really talking anymore.

20:50

I'm always moody.

20:52

She's trying to help but I'm not letting

20:54

her. But, you know, pretending

20:56

nothing was wrong at work

20:58

didn't necessarily work at home.

21:01

She just be like, you know, how's work

21:03

going? I'm like, that's going great. And she'd be like,

21:05

do you wanna go out and eat? No. I don't. Well, you

21:07

just went out to the bar with all your friends last night.

21:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna go. I just wanna go to

21:11

sleep. Why don't you sleep last night? Like,

21:13

as around the conversation, I'd be, like, I really should

21:15

be hanging out with your morning. I should just let her, but

21:17

then I'd be, like, no. You

21:20

shouldn't be happy right

21:21

now. So don't go

21:23

do it. Don't be happy. The

21:28

stress, the anger

21:30

that he was feeling, you know, inevitably was

21:32

taken out on his relationship with

21:35

his

21:35

wife. And then I would use that the next day

21:37

of, like,

21:38

Oh, now your marriage isn't doing great.

21:40

Great. Look what you've done kind of thing. He couldn't

21:42

talk about what was bothering him because

21:45

it was all classified, but it was

21:47

still eroding their relationship.

21:50

The trick of point was she's like, I can't do this.

21:52

Mhmm. And finally, it comes

21:54

to a head when his wife

21:55

says, I think

21:57

I need to leave you. And I was

21:59

like, I completely understand. I

22:01

completely understand why you can't do this because

22:03

I know what I'm

22:04

doing. Fully aware of what I'm doing to myself.

22:07

And this is the moment when he realizes that

22:10

he really needs to take

22:11

action. But

22:12

I was like, you know what? I need to get out of this.

22:15

So I was just gonna say, I can't do this anymore.

22:17

I need something different. And he ends up getting

22:19

transferred to another unit where he's

22:22

still working with drones, but he's not anywhere

22:24

near emissions where he pulse the trigger.

22:26

Mhmm. And he spends a couple years doing

22:28

that until he finishes out his air force contract

22:31

and leaves the military. When

22:33

I spoke to him, he was on the other side

22:35

of this experience. He works in insurance

22:38

now. He's reconciled with his wife,

22:40

and he and his wife have a child. But,

22:43

you know, he's still, to

22:46

this day, I think, trying to

22:49

make sense of those years

22:51

that he was in the seat of a reaper

22:54

and and trying to heal from him.

22:57

So for James, the only way to

22:59

solve this is for him

23:01

to leave the drone program altogether.

23:06

Right? Because you can't fix the program. You

23:08

can't continue to

23:11

refuse to do what the customer wants. You know,

23:13

pilots have very little say

23:16

in all of this, even though, you know, physically,

23:18

they control everything. And

23:21

what he said is that there were lot

23:23

of other people like that, people that just couldn't

23:25

take it. And so they quietly sort

23:27

of dripped out of the the

23:29

system. So I'm really

23:31

curious, since James'

23:33

story, was a way for

23:35

you to understand the

23:38

experience of Kevin Larsen, this

23:40

drone pilot who took his own life.

23:43

What exactly did it end up

23:45

revealing to you? Well,

23:49

Kevin Larsen's father had told me this

23:51

story. And I didn't really get

23:53

it until I talked to guys like

23:55

James Klein. It

23:57

was a story where one day he was sitting

23:59

with his son at home and and asked him, so what

24:01

are you doing down at that air force

24:03

base? And his son

24:06

sort of in a moment of candor shook his

24:08

head and told him, you know, on this recent

24:10

mission, I was told to

24:13

go track an Al Qaeda terrorist and kill

24:15

him. And then

24:17

once he was dead, I was told to track

24:19

the body and follow it to the cemetery

24:21

and then whoever showed up for the funeral

24:25

I

24:25

was told to kill all of them too. Wow.

24:28

And his dad was

24:31

really troubled by it. And he

24:33

said his son was too. And

24:35

of course, who wouldn't be, but I

24:37

didn't understand that a lot

24:39

came along with that. You know, not only is

24:41

the customer asking you to

24:43

do things that you

24:46

don't wanna do. But

24:48

you don't know if the customer's gonna do the

24:50

same thing the next day and the day after

24:52

that. And you don't feel

24:55

that you have anyone to turn to that you

24:57

can talk to about it. In fact,

25:00

because of the stigma of not being

25:03

real combat troops, quote unquote,

25:05

you're not even sure if you're deserving of

25:07

feeling that trauma. And so

25:09

all of that stuff, it just

25:12

stays inside and and slowly

25:14

erodes these

25:17

pilots. You know, it erodes their relationships.

25:19

It erodes their marriage. It erodes their

25:23

selves. And

25:25

that helped me make sense not only of

25:27

how heavy that experience was for

25:30

Kevin Larsen, but why this

25:32

guy who had been an eagle scout

25:34

raised by cops going to church

25:36

every Sunday, why he ended

25:39

up with drug

25:41

conviction that ended his

25:43

Air Force career. Let's explain that.

25:46

Well, the types of drugs he was doing

25:48

was very specific. It was

25:50

mushrooms and and it was MDMA, which

25:53

commonly called ecstasy or Moly. Those

25:56

are two psychedelic drugs. And

25:59

they are both drugs that there is

26:01

a lot of clinical evidence to

26:04

show they really can help

26:06

with depression, with PTSD.

26:09

And what his wife said is that

26:11

it was working, you know, for weeks afterwards,

26:14

she would see an improvement in his mood,

26:16

in his sleep, and everything. But

26:19

of course, this type of thing is also

26:21

completely illegal in

26:23

the military. Right. And when the

26:25

air force could found out, of course, they

26:28

charged him with a number of crimes, and

26:30

they sent him to court martial and

26:33

to trial. And what's interesting

26:35

is that the trial, it's not

26:37

a question of, hey, was this guy traumatized

26:40

by killing civilians in

26:42

a foreign land. It's just a question

26:44

of did he do the drugs or not?

26:46

Mhmm. You know, his mental health never came up.

26:49

And very quickly, the

26:51

jury convicted him, and

26:54

he was waiting for sentencing. Wow.

26:56

So they were supposed to do the sentencing

26:59

after lunch. And

27:01

the judge let everybody out and said, be

27:03

back in an hour. Mhmm. And

27:06

Kevin Larsen never came back. Instead,

27:12

he rushed off the base

27:15

across town to his house packed

27:17

up some food and some supplies in his jeep

27:20

and took off, not telling anyone

27:22

where he was going. He headed

27:24

into the mountains of California, and

27:26

he started heading north. And

27:28

while he's driving, the air force

27:30

is putting out essentially an

27:32

APB saying, be on the lookout for this

27:35

guy. He's a desire -- Mhmm. -- with the

27:37

drug conviction, he may be armed,

27:39

he may be dangerous, apprehend

27:41

him if you can. And

27:44

he's in Northern California in Redwood

27:46

Valley when highway

27:48

patrol spots him and

27:50

pulls him over. He

27:52

stops, but as soon as the officer

27:55

reaches his window, he gasses it

27:57

and takes off and tries to lose

27:59

the police out on a

28:02

windy dirt road up in the mountains. But

28:04

the police know something that he doesn't. It's

28:08

a dead end road and there's no way out for

28:10

him. So they just sort of park

28:12

at the bottom of the valley and wait

28:14

and wait. Eventually

28:17

night falls. And in

28:20

the morning with reinforcements,

28:22

the police officers

28:24

from the air force, officers from

28:26

the sheriff's department all head up there

28:29

to try and see if they can flush him

28:31

out. So at that point,

28:33

Kevin Larsen's basically trapped. And

28:37

he's been waiting all night behind a

28:39

a big boulder. He's got

28:41

assault rifle with him. He's got his phone, but

28:44

there's no service, so he can't call his family

28:46

or the police. So he

28:48

just makes a recording. Starts

28:51

talking to his family saying to each

28:54

one of them that he he loves them, that

28:56

he's sorry that all this happened. But

28:59

he doesn't wanna

29:01

go to prison and and he doesn't see any

29:04

other way out. And

29:06

there's

29:07

so much in there that he doesn't say.

29:09

He doesn't talk about the more than six hundred

29:12

missions he went

29:12

on. He doesn't talk about any

29:14

of the air strikes. And

29:17

maybe it's because he runs out of time because

29:19

at the end of the video, he

29:21

sort stops and looks up and There's

29:24

an angry buzzing sort of like a high of the

29:26

bees. And he says, I

29:28

can hear the

29:28

drones. They're looking for me.

29:33

They were hunting him like he had hunted people

29:35

before. He

29:37

he very quickly realizes that

29:40

this is the end. And

29:45

he shoots himself.

29:52

So when

29:54

that lawyer called

29:56

you and said

29:58

about Kevin Larsen, You

30:01

should look into this. There's a bigger story

30:02

here. The bigger

30:05

story that he was referring

30:07

to and bigger story that you found is

30:09

really a mental health crisis

30:11

among air force drone pilots. Yeah.

30:15

I mean, The Air Force has been

30:17

tracking and surveying these

30:20

drone crews for years, and they

30:22

know that this stuff is traumatic. They

30:24

know that twenty percent of them have

30:28

clinically high levels of emotional distress.

30:31

They know that witnessing

30:34

civilian casualties can

30:36

make you eight times more likely to have

30:38

PTSD They know

30:40

all of this stuff.

30:43

They just don't know what to do about it.

30:45

Mhmm.

30:46

So after the

30:49

story about Kevin Larsen came

30:51

out, I called James Klein and

30:54

I asked him what I always asked sources. After

30:56

a really big story comes out, I asked, you

30:58

know, did I screw it up? And

31:00

he laughed. He said, no. You know, you did pretty

31:02

good. And I said, okay.

31:04

Well, what do you think is the larger

31:07

story of this? And

31:10

the weird part is you know, they say it's like

31:12

a video game and you kind of have to desensitize

31:14

yourself to where it

31:16

is. And he's like, well,

31:19

You know, we have this new

31:22

kind of warfare, drone warfare, and

31:24

everyone thought it would be better. And

31:26

in fact, it's just different.

31:29

What's combat? Is it getting shot

31:32

at? Is it watching somebody die?

31:35

I mean, we kill people.

31:38

And, you know, in a lot of cases, these guys

31:40

were were conducting more combat than

31:42

anyone else in the United

31:44

States military.

31:45

You know, what

31:46

infantry doesn't have to do is they don't have to follow that

31:48

body to the funeral. They don't have to watch the

31:50

wife and kids cry. They don't have to watch the friends

31:52

and stuff like that.

31:54

But because they were not in a war zone,

31:57

they weren't counted as as combat

31:59

troops. You can look at their personnel

32:01

files and it'll it'll say essentially

32:03

that they had no exposure to war.

32:08

So what became clear to me talking to James

32:11

was that the United States had built

32:13

this whole system of drones intended

32:17

to keep troops out of harm's way. But

32:20

by removing them from the battle

32:22

they had, in fact, expose

32:26

them to just a ton of

32:28

unseen trauma. Well,

32:34

Dave, thank you very much.

32:36

Really appreciate it. Thanks, Michael.

32:54

We'll be right back.

32:57

Rapid shifts are disruptive, but

33:00

solving climate change is an economic and

33:02

moral imperative. Deloitte's

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the turning point analysis lays out a path

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to a low emissions future through four phases

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33:13

When the economic benefits of decarbonization can

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com slash u s slash climate.

33:31

Here's what else you need to know

33:33

today. In Eastern

33:35

Ukraine, dozens of civilians

33:38

are feared dead after a

33:40

Russian airstrike leveled a school

33:42

where local officials said that about

33:44

ninety civilians had been sheltering.

33:47

In what could be one of the deadliest

33:50

attacks since Russia renewed

33:52

its offensive, in the region.

33:55

But Today, we send

33:57

a resounding message to the world

34:00

that Canada and our allies

34:02

continue to stand shoulder to

34:04

shoulder with Ukraine. In

34:06

a sign of how much Western Ukraine

34:09

is beginning to return to We'll

34:11

see. First lady, Jill

34:13

Biden and Canadian prime

34:15

minister Justin Trudeau, both

34:18

made visits over the weekend in

34:21

a show of support for

34:23

president Volodymyr Zelensky. Butin

34:26

and his accomplices will fail,

34:28

Ukraine will prevail, SlavA

34:31

Putin. And

34:34

rallies in defense of abortion rights

34:37

were held in cities across the

34:39

US over the weekend as

34:41

supporters of Roe versus Wade

34:43

reacted with fury to the

34:45

draft supreme court opinion

34:48

striking it

34:49

down. The only thing the other

34:51

side is interested in is power. Power

34:53

over women's body

34:55

control over the women of the state of

34:57

Texas. The largest rally

34:59

appeared to be in Texas whose

35:01

Republican governor, Greg

35:03

Abbott, has passed one of the most

35:05

restrictive abortion laws in the

35:07

country. A law denounced

35:10

during the rally by his democratic

35:12

rival, former congressman, Beto

35:15

O'Rourke. And when we win,

35:17

every woman in the state of Texas

35:19

makes her own decisions about her own

35:21

body, her own future, and her

35:23

own health care.

35:32

Today's episode was produced by

35:34

Oscar Chattervady, Wu Shady,

35:36

and Caitlin Roberts. It

35:38

was edited by Mark George

35:40

and Michael Benoit, contains original

35:43

music from Mary and Lozano and

35:45

Dan Powell. And was engineered

35:48

by Chris Wood. Our theme music

35:50

is by Jim Bloomberg and Ben

35:52

Lanther, a voyeur. That's

36:00

it for the day lane. I'm Michael Alborrow.

36:03

See you tomorrow.

36:10

Building a competitive low emissions US

36:12

economy will require an industrial and technological

36:14

revolution. According to Deloitte's the turning

36:17

point reported, the analysis shows the costs

36:19

and economic benefits of climate policy and

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36:25

acts quickly to decarbonize its economy.

36:28

A better future is possible Together,

36:30

let's make an impact that matters. Learn

36:32

more at deloitte dot com slash u

36:34

s slash climate.