Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, has said he walked off his base in Afghanistan because he wanted to be like action hero Jason Bourne.
The Army sergeant compared himself to the rogue CIA assassin - played by Matt Damon in the movies - as he gave his first media interview since his release last year.
"Doing what I did is me saying that I am like, I dunno, Jason Bourne," he said on the podcast Serial, which released its second season on Thursday, devoted to Bergdahl's case.
"I had this fantastic idea that I was going to prove to the world that I was the real thing.
"You know, that I could be what it is that all those guys out there that go to the movies and watch those movies, they all want to be that, but I wanted to prove that I was that."
He said he walked away from his base in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009 because he was trying to trigger a massive manhunt that would ultimately expose issues within the Army.
But soon after he left his post, he said he realised it was a mistake and decided to make his way instead to a larger US military headquarters in the area.
Bergdahl said he became lost and was taken prisoner by enemy fighters on motorcycles, hours after leaving his post.
"I was in the open desert, and I'm not about to outrun a bunch of motorcycles, so I couldn't do anything against, you know, six or seven guys with AK-47s," Bergdahl said.
Serial used excerpts of telephone calls between Bergdahl and Hollywood screenwriter and producer Mark Boal for the episode.
The political ramifications of the soldier's May 2014 release in exchange for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay are still being felt on Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee released a report saying the Obama administration "broke the law" by failing to give Congress 30 days' notice of the prisoner swap.
In March, Bergdahl was charged with desertion and "misbehaviour before the enemy".
Serial's hit first season resulted in a Maryland court giving its subject, a man convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1999, a chance to appeal his sentence.
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