“If you have multiple incidents where the ground force commander pulls the trigger on a deployment, you have a total breakdown of operational tactics,” said one retired SEAL leader. “You can’t win an investigation on us,” one former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. … Richard Marcinko hoped that the number six would lead the Soviet military to inflate its assessment of the Navy’s SEALs. (The Intercept is withholding the name of the operator, who believed he was following an order. Beginning in 2005 and continuing through 2008, as U.S. Special Operations forces became more central to the American military strategy, the number and frequency of operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan increased dramatically. We needed that … there was not a better group of people to go and do that. The story of the bin Laden raid has been told and retold, but crucial details have never been made public. You really do. O’Neill and two or three more assaulters moved past Red into the bedroom as bin Laden lay on the ground. In what would become part of a pattern of secrecy and silence, the SEAL operators dealt with the issue on their own and kept the incident from their chain of command. “You ask me to go living with the pigs, but I can’t go live with pigs and then not get dirty.”, SEAL Team 6 patches. [There was] so much savagery. Bottom left: A Winkler hatchet similar to those issued to Red Squadron. In that operation, Hyder led a team of Red operators on a nighttime mission to capture suspected al Qaeda militants in a compound. The vehicles were headed east toward the Pakistani border, as if they were trying to escape. The pilot who had warned that one of the helicopters would stall was right. What he has not done is name the practice or reveal that by canoeing bin Laden he had secured the ultimate war trophy, the culmination of a decade’s worth of bloody “sport” by elements of SEAL Team 6 who considered themselves craftsmen of killing. SEAL Team 6 members are alleged to have acted improperly in the rescue of Capt. A few years later, after Hyder’s name was mentioned for another rotation in Red Team, some of Hyder’s former operators informed SEAL Team 6 leadership that he was not welcome back in the unit. The operation commanded high-level interest because Norgrove, though in Afghanistan as an aid worker for DAI, an American NGO, secretly worked with Britain’s MI-6, according to four U.S. military and intelligence sources. After more than 30 years in special operations, he knew that elite forces would inevitably cross ethical, moral, and legal boundaries if they were given too long a leash. Within hours, news trucks and reporters fanned out through the seaside town looking for anything affiliated with Navy SEALs. Howard, according to two of his former operators, was more willing than previous officers to greenlight operations based on “weak” intelligence, leading to more raids and strikes. “You can’t win an investigation on us,” one former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. O’Neill was soon removed from his role as a team leader in Red Squadron after he was observed publicly bragging in Virginia Beach bars that he was the man who shot bin Laden. Yes, we — they committed war crimes. They each entered Red Squadron at the same time, and were both recipients of the Winkler hatchets handed out by Wyman Howard. The SEALs in the unit were furious that the White House revealed to the world that Navy SEALs had carried out the raid, violating the traditional code of silence about their missions. Top right: A bearded Red Squadron SEAL in Afghanistan. Beyond the story of the alleged mutilation, the sight of the dead civilians killed during the opening airstrikes of Objective Bull, especially the women and children, left members of Red Team with deep psychological scars. Yet immediately after the mission, O’Neill described shooting bin Laden while he was on the floor. Although Blue Squadron had avoided criminal charges, their battlefield conduct continued to set off alarms within the command. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service then opened an investigation but was forced to rely on photographs and witness statements because active hostilities made the alleged crime scene inaccessible. The operational tempo was very high. After leaving the compound and returning to their base in Kandahar province, Vasely reported to Moore, his superior officer, that he believed he had witnessed a war crime, a mutilation. The two Chinooks landed separately, one near each end of the convoy. Asked for comment, the British government told The Intercept that it does not comment on security matters and would “neither confirm nor deny” that Norgrove worked for the intelligence agency. In the world of SEAL Team 6, where operators never face criminal charges — despite allegations of war crimes, unjustified killings, and corruption — the admiral’s mast was a serious rebuke. “It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face.” He has even alluded to the grisly practice on Twitter. That operator, known as Red inside the unit, is still an active-duty member of SEAL Team 6 and has never been publicly identified. The SEALs from the other helicopter immediately headed up a steep hill after landing to locate an armed man who had been shot from the helicopter. He even has his own line of clothing. Beyond the story of the alleged mutilation, the sight of the dead civilians killed during the opening airstrikes of Objective Bull, especially the women and children, left members of Red Team with deep psychological scars. Two different SEALs, Robert O’Neill and Matthew Bissonnette, have publicly taken credit for killing bin Laden. Senior leaders at the command knew the grisly circumstances of Roberts’s death had unsettled Red Team. October 13, 2020 by admin 0 Comments. The prominent mountain range often served as the last geographic refuge for retreating forces entering Pakistan. You will step over the line and you start dehumanizing people. Like, ‘hey look at this dude,’ and the guy would just twitch again. Some SEAL Team 6 leaders were appalled by how easily Vasely and Szymanski had folded under Moore’s pressure. “I assessed he was nearing a distance where he was within an area where he could do damage with a grenade.” Hyder said that a week earlier, a militant had detonated a concealed grenade after approaching some American CIA officers, seriously injuring them. Moore, sitting in his office in Virginia Beach, pressed Vasely: What had he actually seen? In an interview, Hyder said the man had approached his position with his arms tucked into his armpits and did not heed warnings from other SEALs to stop. But McRaven, who commanded the operation, had not ordered the snipers to fire, and neither had a SEAL Team 6 officer. “They were disgusted.” He quoted Heath as saying, “I’m morally flexible but I can’t handle that.” Heath refused to comment for this article. Three weeks after the incident, NCIS closed its investigation, concluding that there was no evidence the SEAL had violated the laws of armed conflict. The operators were unhappy about the new restriction, arguing that call outs gave up the tactical advantage of surprise. Special Forces working with Afghan Local Police. O’Neill’s canoeing of bin Laden cost his teammates precious time, but his final shot to bin Laden’s head was unremarkable to them. Hyder finished his tour at SEAL Team 6 shortly after returning from the Afghanistan deployment and was later promoted to the rank of commander, the Navy equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. Men, women, and a small girl, motionless and in the fetal position, appeared dead. A former SEAL Team 6 leader who has knowledge of the episode told me Moore shamed Slabinski and the squadron for their conduct. My word is my bond.” But after 9/11, another code emerged that made lying — especially to protect a teammate or the command from accountability — the more honorable course of action. Tactically, however, the command was winning on the battlefield, and despite McRaven’s directives, there was no serious internal scrutiny of the SEALs’ most excessive conduct. Vic Hyder and more than two dozen operators from SEAL Team 6 boarded two Chinook helicopters en route to eastern Afghanistan hoping that within hours, they would kill or capture Osama bin Laden. “We talked about it … and 35 guys nodded their heads saying this is not who we are. Unlike the hundreds of other assaults SEAL Team 6 had carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the operators would plan and carry out a raid within a matter of hours, this time they had weeks to prepare. Hyder acknowledged that the man likely did not understand English and probably couldn’t see very well. During the mission, the SEALs reported receiving small arms fire from exterior positions, though no one was hit. With few exceptions, a darker, more troubling story has been suppressed and ignored – a story replete with tactical brilliance on battlefields around the world coupled with a pattern of silence and deceit when “downrange” actions lead to episodes of criminal brutality. Top left: Red Squadron tattoo. One, led by an enlisted operator, took in the damage to one of the vehicles. Inside a heated tent, as many as 40 SEAL Team 6 operators asked themselves how they wanted to treat their fallen enemies. Red encountered and shot bin Laden’s son just before the second floor landing, and the SEALs following behind him fanned out into the hallways and rooms on the second floor to search and secure the area. The vehicles were headed east toward the Pakistani border, as if they were trying to escape. Hyder, who was the ground force commander for the Kandahar operation, was cleared in an after-action review of the shooting. According to these sources, whether judged by its own private code or the international laws of war, the command has proven to be incapable and unwilling to hold itself accountable for war crimes. Bissonnette was viewed by Howard as the prototypical SEAL Team 6 operator: a college-educated enlisted man with a savvy understanding of tactics and technology. The morning after Objective Bull, Red Team gathered at Bagram Air Base. Ten officers and master chiefs voted unanimously against allowing Slabinski to return to the command. Last year, the command became concerned about his psychological condition, determining that he was medically unfit to deploy again. The two Chinooks landed separately, one near each end of the convoy. For some of them, what was most troubling was not that Hyder might have taken gratuitous revenge for Roberts’s death on an unrelated civilian, but that on more than one occasion, as ground force commander, he had fired his own weapon to neutralize perceived threats. No cuts were visible in the photos, according to a military official who has reviewed the file. The old sailor put the portfolio down. Should they seek revenge for Roberts? Hyder said that he and a few other SEALs began to bury the casualties near a ravine by piling rocks over them. At the reunion, a few hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a small group of current and former master chiefs stood around drinking and telling war stories. That year’s reunion, the first under Wyman Howard as commanding officer, was held at their new headquarters, a $100 million, state of the art testament to the stature of the command as the home of the “President’s Own,” the clandestine global force capable of striking anywhere, killing anyone, the tip of America’s military spear. As the legend of SEAL Team 6 grew, a rogue culture arose that operated outside of the Navy’s established mechanisms for command and investigation. Questions about battlefield atrocities persisted, though some excused these actions in the name of psychological warfare against the enemy. Senior leaders at the command knew about the misconduct and did little to eradicate it. “The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, that’s equal to or greater than what the criminal justice system would give to the person,” said Susan Raser, a retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent who led the agency’s criminal division but did not investigate this mission. I’m disappointed he didn’t take a knee.”. No single military unit has come to represent American military success or heroism more than SEAL Team 6, officially designated as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group and known in military vernacular as DevGru, Team 6, the Command and Task Force Blue. They soon discovered he had violated a series of Navy regulations. “We said, ‘Let us set down and take a look at the convoy to determine if it’s al Qaeda.’ Instead, they dropped several bombs.”. Red could see bin Laden bleeding out from his chest wound but he still had not entered the bedroom. The CIA declined to comment for this article. For many on the raid, including those who had been present in bin Laden’s bedroom with O’Neill, it was the first time they’d heard anyone in the command say the terrorist leader was standing, posing a threat of any kind. After the publication of “No Easy Day” — which in one chapter describes in great detail the specialized gear, along with brand names, Bissonnette wore on the bin Laden mission — the Navy opened several inquiries into Bissonnette’s outside business contracts. Joining is simple and doesn’t need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. Simply put, the unit is an enlisted mafia, where tactics are driven by the expertise developed by the unit’s enlisted assaulters, whose abilities and experience at making rapid threat decisions make up the command’s core resource. With few exceptions, a darker, more troubling story has been suppressed and ignored — a story replete with tactical brilliance on battlefields around the world coupled with a pattern of silence and deceit when “downrange” actions lead to episodes of criminal brutality. The lack of battlefield discipline was not limited to a single squadron. Created in 1980 and based at the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana near Virginia Beach, the command prided itself on its culture of nonconformity with the larger military. One former SEAL leader who attended the proceeding told me McRaven’s message to the command’s leadership was clear. As he did so, he approached the man Heath had shot. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. In the last year of her harsh sentence, the NSA whistleblower’s bid for clemency is gaining backers. Men, women, and a small girl, motionless and in the fetal position, appeared dead. That was the end of that.” Hyder said that his single shot had blasted open the man’s head. They had bonded over Roberts’s death. When investigators approached the operator accused of mutilating the dead fighter, he exercised his right to remain silent and his right to counsel. Normally, SEAL Team 6’s commanding officer, a captain, would conduct a captain’s mast, a form of non-judicial punishment. According to two senior SEAL Team 6 sources, however, the leadership dynamic in Blue Squadron was a failure. “By the time we moved over to Iraq, we were doing missions as much as five nights a week. “The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, that’s equal to or greater than what the criminal justice system would give to the person.”. A SEAL who spoke Arabic interviewed bin Laden’s wives and daughters until he was able to get two positive identifications. Inside the helicopters, some of the operators had pushed to hold off any air attack, arguing that they had plenty of time to intercept the convoy before it reached the Pakistani border. “These were guys who were running a cell near our base,” the CIA officer said. “His forehead was gruesome,” he later told Esquire magazine. We shoot ’em. Bissonnette was much farther back down the stairwell. Hyder finished his tour at SEAL Team 6 shortly after returning from the Afghanistan deployment and was later promoted to the rank of commander, the Navy equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. If I told you I cut off a head after an operation, explaining that I got caught up in the moment, went over the line one time — you’d have sympathy for me. Some of the assaulters on the mission were also angry with Bissonnette and O’Neill because they neglected their responsibilities after bin Laden’s son was shot. Most SEALs did not commit atrocities, the sources said, but the problem was persistent and recurrent, like a stubborn virus. And from the moment President Obama announced the operation’s successful conclusion in a televised address, a variety of individuals and institutions have sought to profit from the elimination of America’s most hated enemy. The hatchets, paid for by private donations Howard solicited, were custom-made by Daniel Winkler, a highly regarded knife maker in North Carolina who designed several of the period tomahawks and knives used in the movie “The Last of the Mohicans.” Winkler sells similar hatchets for $600 each. Bissonnette and his teammates were nearly killed, and many of the operators aboard ended up with chronic injuries. Even countries that hosted vaccine trials — like Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, and Turkey — will not receive adequate supplies. He hasn’t returned since. Most would speak about the unit only on background or without attribution, because nearly every facet of SEAL Team 6 is classified. “He continued to move towards us,” Hyder said. “These were family weapons,” said the retired SEAL. Two other SEAL Team 6 leaders with a combined 35 years at the command said the removal of Slabinski and the failure to pursue official punishment was an indictment of the senior officers — they had failed one of their most basic duties, to hold themselves and others accountable for wrongdoing. Had the daughters been wearing explosives, Red would have died while shielding his teammates from much of the blast. As he did so, he approached the man Heath had shot. “That’s what’s wrong with my community,” the former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. Vic Hyder and more than two dozen operators from SEAL Team 6 boarded two Chinook helicopters en … There were no heroics, and, apart from al Kuwaiti’s shots, no firefight. Then, as two of bin Laden’s eldest daughters began to scream, Red quickly corralled them at the doorway, a move considered heroic by other SEALs on the mission. Timothy Szymanski, commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Group, after Slabinski was blackballed by SEAL Team 6 in Norfolk, Va., March 25, 2011. For Chapters 2-5, please click here. When SEAL Team 6 first deployed to Afghanistan in January 2002, the command had three assault teams, Red, Blue, and Gold, each with a mascot. Szymanski, according to these sources, was directed by Moore to make the episode disappear. The unit’s name itself is part of an attempt to obscure US capabilities. The unit’s elite stature has insulated its members from the scrutiny and military justice that lesser units would have faced for the same actions. “On my 2005 deployment in Afghanistan, we only went on a handful of ops,” said a retired SEAL who served under Howard. The prevailing narrative about SEAL Team 6 in news coverage, bestselling books and Hollywood movies is unambiguously heroic; it centres on the killing of Osama bin Laden and high-profile rescue missions. Officers like Hyder, who did not pass through the brutal SEAL Team 6 internal training program, known as Green Team, are often viewed with suspicion and occasionally contempt by the enlisted SEAL operators. Senior members of SEAL Team 6 felt the pattern of brutality was not only illegal but rose to the level of war crimes. But even that rule evolved over time. But this started in 2002 and continued through the wars. One former SEAL Team 6 senior leader said that he and others at the command were concerned that the scale and intensity of the violence in Iraq was so great that U.S. operators might be tempted to engage in retaliatory mutilations, a tactic al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency sometimes employed. Tuesday, October 13, 2020 by: Mike Adams Tags: barack obama, Collusion, conspiracy, deep state, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Joe Biden, John Brennan, Osama Bin Laden, Seal Team Six, traitors, treason. “Somebody else is making this up. By the time Slabinski entered the room where the dead militant lay, according to three former SEAL Team 6 leaders, the operator had severed much of the dead man’s neck. The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. Some sources asked for anonymity citing the probability of professional retaliation for speaking out against their peers and teammates. Our job is to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way befitting the American people and the American flag. Instead, he held them back long enough for his teammates, including O’Neill, to enter the bedroom. “Not provide them.”, During one Iraq deployment, Howard returned from a raid to an operations center with blood on his hatchet and his uniform. Jan 28, 2017 #26 Michael Howze said: Let's say all of this is true. The morning after Objective Bull, Red Team gathered at Bagram Air Base. Nonetheless, Red Team did not report Hyder’s alleged battlefield mutilation, a war crime. Inside the command, the incident became known as the Wedding Party bombing after it was learned that the convoy was driving to a wedding. Was it acceptable, as Hyder had done with the wounded man whom he executed, to desecrate the dead? Red Team, known as the Redmen, employed a Native American warrior as a mascot; Blue Team, known as the Pirates, wore the Jolly Roger; and Gold Team, known as the Crusaders or Knights, wore a lion or a crusader’s cross. In 2008, tensions began to rise between SEAL Team 6 and the CIA over operations in Afghanistan. Bypass censorship by sharing this link: You Might Like … But in the eyes of the enlisted SEALs of Red Team, Hyder had killed a man who didn’t have to die. That was the end of that.” Hyder said that his single shot had blasted open the man’s head. Shortly after that operation, Slabinski returned to the SEAL Team 6 base at Dam Neck. “Canoeing them was funny.”. He assumed it was a twisted act of misplaced revenge over the previous days’ events – specifically, the gruesome death of Hyder’s teammate Neil Roberts. “Iraq was a different kind of war — nothing we’d ever seen,” said the now-retired Team 6 leader. They’re telling you how they remember it. Film seal team 6. The first and best-known was the rescue of Capt. “When you see your friend killed, recover his body, and find that the enemy mutilated him? The guys needed that to get back in the saddle because everyone was gun shy.”, “I mean, talk about the funny stuff we do. A veteran of hundreds of raids and assaults during his career, the former SEAL said he disagreed with the order to kill bin Laden, regardless of whether he was armed, and compared it to Britt Slabinski’s order to his Blue Squadron men in 2007. He said it and one of his operators did it because he believed he was following an order.”. According to multiple sources, both of their accounts contain multiple self-serving falsehoods. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. He was Ahmed al Kuwaiti, one of bin Laden’s couriers. According to this source, after shooting the man, who turned out to be unarmed, Hyder proceeded to mutilate his body by stomping in his already damaged skull. “The reason SEAL Team 6 exists is to avoid bombs and collateral damage,” said a retired SEAL Team 6 member who was on the mission. Even before the attack on the convoy and the alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan, Hyder had committed at least one killing with questionable justification. “We said, ‘Let us set down and take a look at the convoy to determine if it’s al Qaeda.’ Instead, they dropped several bombs.”. “That’s when you take away a hatchet,” the retired SEAL said. “Somebody else is making this up. It was at this point that some critics in the military complained that SEAL Team 6 — with their full beards and arms, legs, and torsos covered in tattoos — looked like members of a biker gang. The men who make it through the gruelling training represent roughly the top 10% of all SEALs. While he was there, he confronted the Blue Squadron troop and the operator who’d tried to behead the Taliban fighter. Historically, SEAL Team 6 is known as a unit where officers “rent their lockers,” because they typically serve about three years before rotating out, whereas the enlisted operators remain for much of their careers, often for a decade or more. How are you going to get an American politician to push for prosecution against the seals? Clockwise from top left: Blue Squadron, known as the Pirates; Gold Squadron, known as the Crusaders or Knights; Red Squadron, known as the Redmen; and Silver Squadron. “What you’re saying is you have no faith in the commander,” he said. Although the video had revealed no weapons and the generals had only tenuous intelligence that the convoy was al Qaeda – just suspicions based on the colour of the man’s flowing white garb and the deference others showed him – they were nervous that bin Laden might get away again, as he had a few months earlier after the bombing of the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001. “So many dead bodies, so many, everywhere, and so the potential opportunities for mutilations were great.”. Overall, it had become clear that Slabinski’s run as a leader on the battlefield caused Blue Squadron to come “off the rails,” according to a former SEAL Team 6 leader. The command’s top noncommissioned officer placed their names on the SEAL Team 6 rock of shame, the unofficial list of unit pariahs. Was it acceptable, as Hyder had done with the wounded man whom he executed, to desecrate the dead? The bombing stopped the convoy along a dry wadi, or ravine, with two of the trucks approximately a kilometer apart. 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