The political firestorm is continuing over the rescue of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Guantánamo prisoners. The deal has come under partisan attack amidst reports Bergdahl voluntarily left his base after growing opposed to the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times has revealed a classified military report found Bergdahl most likely walked away from his Army outpost in June 2009 on his own free will, but it stops short of concluding that there is solid evidence that he intended to permanently desert. The report also revealed Bergdahl had wandered away from assigned areas while in the Army at least twice before his capture, including once in Afghanistan. On Thursday, President Obama defended the swap.

President Obama: “I’m never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington. Alright, that’s — that’s par for the course. But I’ll repeat what I said two days ago. We have a basic principle: We do not leave anybody wearing the American uniform behind. We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated, and we were deeply concerned about it, and we saw an opportunity, and we seized it. And I make no apologies for that.”

Administration officials defended their decision not to give Congress advance notice of the swap, saying the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if word of the deal leaked. New reports show Bergdahl actually escaped from his captors on at least two occasions, once in the fall of 2011 and again sometime in 2012. We’ll have more on the story after headlines with Matthew Farwell, a former U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who helped the late Michael Hastings write his groundbreaking article on Bowe Bergdahl.