1. Nation & World | After Robert Bales' arrest, Pentagon tries to erase him f... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017810675_balesscr...
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Originally published March 21, 2012 at 7:22 PM | Page modified March 22, 2012 at 11:00 AM
Why, in the Internet Age, did the Pentagon try to scrub Robert Bales from the Internet in the first place?
By David Goldstein and Matthew Schofield
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Joint
Base Lewis-McChord staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the
U.S. military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service.
Gone were photographs of the suspect, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, and a
recounting in the base newspaper of a 2007 battle in Iraq involving his unit, a
report that quoted him extensively.
But they weren't really gone.
Given the myriad ways information remains accessible on the Internet, despite the
best efforts to remove it, the material about Bales was still there and available, in cached versions of
Web pages. Within minutes of the Pentagon leaking his name Friday evening, news organizations and
others found and published his pictures, the account of the battle — which depicts Bales and other
soldiers in a glowing light — and excerpts from his wife's blog.
So why did the Pentagon try to scrub Bales from the Internet in the first place?
The military said its intention in removing the material wasn't to lessen the Army's embarrassment
over the attack but to protect the privacy of Bales' family.
"Protecting a military family has to be a priority," said a military official, who like several interviewed
for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"I think the feeding frenzy we saw after his name was released was evidence that we were right to try. ...
Of course the pages are cached; we know that. But we owe it to the wife and kids to do what we can."
A second Pentagon official acknowledged that one of the reasons for the delay in releasing Bales' name
was to remove references to his Army service from the Internet. But when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan was
arrested in the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, the Pentagon released his name
immediately.
Several former military officers said they were perplexed that the Army would try to remove
information that already had been public. One called it "unusual."
Experts agreed the effort was futile.
"Once a site has been accessed enough times, it's very, very difficult to remove content," said Dan
Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports
Internet access. "I don't want to say it's impossible, but there's no evidence of it happening in recent
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2. Nation & World | After Robert Bales' arrest, Pentagon tries to erase him f... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017810675_balesscr...
times."
Another likely concern of the military was that criminal charges against Bales are expected soon, and
the case could last a long time. He's at the Army's maximum-security prison at Fort Leavenworth,
Kan.
"The military actually does a very good job of protecting defendants' rights," said Allan Millett, a
military historian at the University of New Orleans and a retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.
"I suspect it was simply a matter of not prejudicing either public opinion or anyone who might be
involved in the case. I'm sure they're leaning over backward."
Bales, 38, is a veteran of multiple combat tours: three to Iraq and one, his most recent, to Afghanistan.
He is the father of two children: a daughter, Quincy, 5, and a son, Bobby, 3. Before his name became
public, the Army moved the Bales family from its Lake Tapps home to the security of Lewis-McChord.
The massacre occurred early March 11. Bales allegedly left his base in southern Afghanistan, walked to
two nearby villages and killed 16 residents, nine of them children.
He then returned to his base, the military says, where he was arrested. The military didn't disclose his
identity until five days later.
A motive for the killings isn't known. But Bales' history of repeated combat tours, including a diagnosis
of traumatic brain injury, has become a subject of speculation.
"Why didn't they spot this guy as a risk?" said Millett, the military historian.
Steven Aftergood, a government-transparency advocate, said secrecy was an "instinctive response" of
the military and government in general, usually to try to avoid controversy or to thwart the news
media.
Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists,
said that in the Bales case, "there are competing interests at stake. But if nothing else, the defendant
deserves a fair trial."
Parts of a blog that Karilyn Bales, the suspect's wife, has been writing for several years also appear to
have been deleted since the killings. It's unclear how that occurred. Her blog, in which she discussed
her husband's disappointment at being passed over for a promotion, among other topics, previously
was available to anyone but now is password-protected.
McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this report. Material from
The Associated Press is included.
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