This video frame grab taken from a Taliban propaganda video released Saturday, July 18, 2009 shows Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, who went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan June 30. The Pentagon on Sunday confirmed that the American soldier who went missing from his base in Afghanistan has been captured and identified him as a private from Idaho serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment. The Defense Department released the name of Pfc. Bergdahl one day after he was seen in a video posted online as saying he was “scared I won’t be able to go home.” (AP Photo/Militant Video)UPDATED:
Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier captured by the Taliban, is known as a born adventurer around his hometown of Ketchum, Idaho — a town made famous for its breathtaking wilderness and those drawn to its challenges.
“Bowe’s a pretty impressive young man,” said Sue Martin, Pcf. Bergdahl’s former employer at Zaney’s River Street Coffee House and a family spokeswoman. She spoke to The Washington Times “America’s Morning News” radio show on Monday morning. “You don’t miss him. He’s a strong presence, very interesting, very diverse — an adventurer. He’s a really great guy.”
The coffee shop, trimmed in yellow ribbons and posters, has become the unofficial home for friends and well-wishers of the Bergdahl family and is about 10 miles outside of Sun Valley and Ketchum, whose valley streams and nearby mountains attracted and inspired American novelist Ernest Hemingway.
“People are happy to find a place where they can show their concerns and support,” Ms. Martin said.
She thinks Pfc. Bergdahl’s captors forced him to say in the video released Saturday that the U.S. government should bring home troops “so that we can be back where we belong and not over here.”
Said Ms. Martin: “We don’t think that’s something that he’d say.”
She also said Pfc. Bergdahl, in the roughly 18 months that he worked at the coffee shop, constantly talk about joining the military and wanted to learn everything about most anything.
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Others who know Pfc Bergdahl, 23, say he was a home-school student who also learned ballet.
Pfc. Bergdahl was serving in a combat-paratrooper unit based in Fort Richardson, Alaska.
He was in Afghanistan about five months before he went missing on June 30.
“Well, I’m scared — scared I won’t be able to go home,” he also said in the video, which appears to have been made in mid-July. “It is very unnerving to be a prisoner.”
He appears in the video with a shaved head and wearing a pajamalike outfit know as a Salwar Qameez, traditional Pakistani attire.
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Joseph Weber is a congressional reporter, his first job upon coming to Washington in 1992. Mr. Weber joined The Washington Times in 2002 as a metro desk editor and ran the section for several years, working on such stories as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Supreme Court case on the District’s handgun law, the D.C. snipers and the 2008 presidential ...
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