Flaw that it took a decade to recall but now a new report claims that at least five times as many died. So why isnt any of this hurting sales . And the buried lead. People lost it on flights 8,000 times last year alone. Now theres pressure to come up with a global strategy to keep passengers from turning your flight into cray cray theater. Good afternoon and welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. Do you want answers about the captivity of Bowe Bergdahl . So does the army. It will conduct a comprehensive review. For now, bergdahl has not been questioned formally yet. They also say if the army is Still Deciding how the inquiry will go forward. Bergdahl, like anyone in america, is innocent until Proven Guilty and vows that the army will not look away from misconduct if it occurred, close quote. The swap happened fast. So fast that the white house did not bother giving congress 30 days notice as required by law. Dianne feinstein found that very disappointing and the democrat says that the president S Deputy National security adviser called her last night to apologize. The u. S. Traded five taliban combatants. Under the deal, they must stay in the nation of qatar for a minimum of one year. They are allowed to move freely within qatar. Soldiers with second platoon blackfoot company, including bergdahls team leader, from whom youll hear in a few minutes, bergdahl seems to have simply walked away from his post prior to his capture. He is a deserter, not a hero, they say. The president said that the u. S. Owed it to bergdahl and his family no matter how the sergeant ended up in the enemys grabs. President obama expressing some concern there. Our tape obviously didnt work. Michelle c Michelle Kosinski is in poland where the president made those comments. The president has made no apologies to anybody yet his National Security adviser is making apologies in private. What is going on here . Reporter well, this is interesting. And clearly explaining why the last 30 days in which there wasnt time that bergdahls life was in danger. Now were hearing from feinstein and they got calls in the case of feinstein she says it waS Deputy National security adviser tony blinken apologizing. What we just heard again from the National Security team and the way that they are framing it. And hes simply expressing regrets that congress normally would have gotten that circumstanphone call. So its a time issue, that they were not called earlier rather than 30 days ahead of time. Jake . Michelle, i just want to play that sound, president obama talking about the principle that he was operating under when they agreed to do this swap. Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an american soldier back if hes held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We dont condition that. We dont condition that. Strong words from the president , michelle. Did president obama or anyone on his team talk about potential punishment for bergdahl . Reporter yeah. I mean, the president said that thats not being discussed right now. But we are hearing from others, including the joints chief of staff that this is going to be looked into and its not as if the army is going to turn a blind eye if there was misconduct on the part of bergdahl. But all in this kind of explaining and spelling it out, its not sitting well with these highranking members of congress. Its not so much that the white house secured the release of bergdahl for the reasons that the president clearly spelled out, its how it was done and congress is even saying that the president himself said that congress has been involved in these discussions for a long time and said that there were discussions and House Speaker john boehner, senator mccain, dianne feinstein, they didnt know all of the details of this and that back then there was strong, strong bipartisan opposition to releasing tal pib in exchange for bergdahl. Jake . The pentagon has never given a full account of how Sergeant Bergdahl was captured. Number of soldiers claim that the military forced him to sign nondisclosure agreements about the circumstances, helping to keep it all shrouded in secrecy. The army has never classified him as a deserter. Joining me now is former u. S. Army Sergeant Evan, Sergeant Bergdahls team leader when he was there and when bergdahl vanished. Thank you for joining us. Yes, thank you for having me. So the night this happened, you were all at this small observation post. It consisting of two bunkers, youre in one of the bunkers and be bergdahl was supposed to be in a pup tent and how did you learn that he was gone . The first thing said to me was someone called up to the bunker which was called op2, our call sign up there. They said op2, is bergdahl up there . I got on the radio and said, no, hes not up here. They said anybody has anybody seen bergdahl . Ill never forget that line. We searched the whole op and the personnel who were there and that bergdahl liked to hang out with them and spoke with them a lot. They hadnt seen him. They didnt know where he was at and it didnt take long before it became pretty clear that he was gone. And he was supposed to have been on guard duty that night . Yes. He was about to go on guard shift. Someone woke him up for his shift and thats when they found out that he was not there. What was your immediate thought when you learned and the fellow members of your squad and platoon learned that he was gone . When i when i heard that he was gone and we didnt find him on the op and i went and talked to my platoon sergeant, i asked him, i said, is his weapon here, his bulletproof vest here, his night vision here . They said, yes, all of his items are here. I immediately said, he walked away. He walked away. Why . I it was a gut feeling i had. Its incredibly hard to explain, having if you didnt know who he was and you werent there and i know i dont think some people are going to understand but all of the events that led up and the things that he said and the things that he did prior to him leaving, at the time, were alarming. However, when he comes up missing and all of his sensitive items were left behind, it kind of hit us in the head. It was like a light that went on. Man, i just walked away. What had he said prior to his disappearance that, in retrospect, might seem particularly interesting . Had he ever talked about his feelings about the war . Had he ever talked about what would happen if somebody disappeared with their gun, with their night vision goggles . Yes. He did talk about how he did not agree with the war effort in afghanistan, or the u. S. Armys the way we were handling our war in afghanistan, he didnt like that. He did come to me at one point and asked me, he said, what would happen if my sensitive items go missing . Its when youre deployed, any sensitive item goes missing, its obviously an incredibly huge ordeal and theres a lot of backlash and its very important that we find those items. It was a little odd that he would ask me that question. Its kind of any soldier asked him that question it seems rhetorical. You know the answer if youre asking it. He still asked and i told him. It was one of those other things that once he walked away and we had all of the sensitive items left behind, it made perfect sense. Evan, you were part of the immediate search for bergdahl. Where did you go . What did you learn . So, immediately after we looked at our o. P. , we couldnt find him. Our platoon sergeant got on the radio and updated the command and they are like, hey, were missing a soldier right now. This is what were doing. Weve done an extensive search of the o. P. We know hes not here. We immediately pushed out a patrol into the local village. Were kind of running on nothing at this point. Were just trying to find something we can grasp on to to get a decision or something. Immediately as we left the base, two small boys walked up to us and said they found an american crawling through the weeds by himself. I dont recall the direction. They pointed and said he was going that way. They were saying that this was very odd to them. We never see the americans Walking Around by themselves and he was just by himself. He didnt have a weapon with him, he didnt have any armour with him, he was just crawling through the weeds so we had a direction of travel and we did know, yes, hes walking away. Obviously you didnt find him in the ensuing weeks. Your unit and others scoured the province for bergdahl. Were there other missions going on as well in the next coming weeks and months . I ask because you and other soldiers have said have talked about the six men who died, who were killed in the ensuing months and im wondering, were they all specifically necessarily killed looking for bergdahl or were there other missions going on . From what i remember, it was i mean, it was 60 days or more, i remember just straight, all we did was look for bergdahl. All we were doing was going on leads. I cant say for a fact and i dont know if anyone can prove that soldiers died on a directed mission to find bergdahl. However, every mission, especially in the following two or more months, those were directed missions. Everything after that, they were still missions that were in search of bergdahl. We were going on villages based on intelligence that we received. Whether we were there to actively search for bergdahl or to talk to the locals and do a presence patrol, i believe the fact of the matter is, when those soldiers were killed, they would not have been where they were at had bergdahl not level. Bergdahl leaving changed the mission. Those soldiers would not have been in those positions unless bergdahl left. And that is a fact to me. Stay right there. When we come back, more of Bowe Bergdahls former Team Leader Sergeant evan buetow. Ill ask whether he thinks the soldier under duress or willingly was giving intelligent information. Why they are using bergdahls release to go after the white house. You know that dream. On my count. The one where you step up and save the day . 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Its impossible to know for a fact that thats what was going on and it could just be coincidental. But the fact is, before he got in touch with the taliban, he was looking for someone who spoke english so he could talk to the taliban. When we heard that, it told us hes actively seeking out the taliban so at least we know that. And yes, over the next couple months, all the attacks definitely were far more directed where before he left, wed have i. D. S go off virtually every day but they were going off in front of the trucks. They were blowing up mine rollers, blowing up on the side of the road. Following his disappearance, i. D. Started going off directly under the trucks. They are getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes are very methodical, like they knew what we were going to do. Obviously theres no way to prove that bergdahl was feeding them that information. He knew our tactics and how we reacted to certain things. So the fact that attacks definitely were more directed and calculated, its incredibly suspicious to me, although theres no way to prove that bergdahl was feeding them information, whether he was tortured or giving on his own accord. You told me you had gotten intelligence that bergdahl had been seeking out the taliban and looking for somebody who spoke english so he could talk to somebody in the taliban. Where did that information come from . Yes. As obviously in the wake of him leaving, we had almost every asset that you have available to you is in the area searching. They can listen in to cell phone communication and there were teams monitoring that chatter. I was standing right next to the radio when they heard that there is an american in a village which was about two miles from where we were at and its a village that has a very very large presence of taliban, that the american is in this village and looking for someone who speaks english so he can talk to the taliban. And i heard it straight from the interpreters lips as he heard it over the radio. And at that point it was like, this is kind of snowballing out of control a little bit. Theres a lot more to this story than just a soldier walking away. When was this . The day after . Two days after . This was it was either it was one or two days after. I cant remember. It was very quick. And it was only 2 miles away. Do you agree with what president obama said earlier today that no matter what the circumstances of an american soldiers disappearance or capture, the United States of america, the government has a duty to get him or her back . My goal here is to i dont want to get into the political side of anything. My goal is to show that bergdahl is a deserter and hes not a hero and he needs to answer for what he did. I will say that bergdahl is an american citizen. Whether he wanted to be a soldier or whether or not or whether he didnt want to be an american anymore or whatever, the bottom line is, hes an american citizen and its great that hes back and that we can have that very small victory, if you can even call it a victory because i believe what we gave up for that we gave up a lot for what we got back. Thats all i really want to say about that. Evan buetow, thank you so much. Thank you for your service as well. Thank you so much for having me. Im very happy to do it. Coming up, leave no man behind. A commander in chief deciding to swap five prisoners for one soldier. A huge month for General Motors as sales skyrocket despite the company recalling millions of its vehicles. Why are so many buyers flocking to gm . Listen up, thunder dragons, its time to get a hotel. Hey, razor. Check this out. We can save big with priceline express deals. Hey you know what man, these guys aint no dragons. Theyre cool. These deals are legit. Yeah, were cool. Shes cool. Were cool. Priceline express deals are totally legit. Check this, thousands of people book them everyday and score killer deals. Now, priceline is piling on even more savings with its summer sale. So grab your giant beach towel and enter code summer14. Look at me enjoying the deals. Welcome back to the lead. This is the politics lead. The president is telling the nation that the only known afghan prisoner of war is coming home. Now that the deals are coming to light, the backlash from bergdahls fellow soldiers and also from republicans in congress, its been unflenching. I dont like the deal. I think its a bad deal. We were never told that there would be an exchange of bergdahl for the taliban. The hardest of the hardcore should be released and ultimately going to the battlefield in return for Sergeant Bergdahl i think at this stage was just wrong. Lets bring in ben chang and william crystal. Bill, i want to start with you because senator mccain in february sounded very different when asked by Anderson Cooper about a deal very much like this. Listen to this. So if there was a possibility of some sort of exchange, thats something that you would support . I would support obviously i would have to know the details but i would support ways of bringing him home i think its something that we should seriously consider. Kelly ayotte and others are saying that we need to bring bergdahl home and figure out a way to do this. This is the only way that the Obama Administration said that we could get him home and the clock is ticking. The clock is not ticking that fast. We have 32,000 troops there. Incidentally, to really inspire them if you look at what people are saying in the middle east, its the terrorists who are inspired. They are saying its a big win and the Counterterrorism Center is saying its a big win for the taliban. I think the deal is a bad deal but i think what has really infuriated people, the American Public and especially soldiers, susan rice on sunday saying weve got to get back someone who has served in battle. Why would she say that . That was just politicizing. You can put out a statement saying its very difficult, these decisions are very hard and we hate giving up the terrorists, were happy hes back. To boast about it and hide behind a soldier and make the krit he c critics look like they are uncaring. Dianne feinstein was apologized to for not giving her the heads up. Shouldnt susan rice apologize for what she said on sunday . Ben, look, obviously i think we all agree with the principle, leave no man behind. You can argue about its the deal that the israelis once traded 1,000 palestinian soldiers for one