By 2006, the command rapidly expanded, growing from 200 to 300 operators. Vasely later told investigators he saw the operator moving his hand back and forth over the militants neck in a sawing motion. By the time the two dozen Red Team operators departed for Objective Bull, tension had built up between Hyder, a commissioned officer, and the enlisted operators technically under his command. Bottom right: Candid photo of U.S. Navy SEAL Neil Roberts. Bissonnettes bestselling book, No Easy Day, was published in September 2012, four months after he retired and less than two weeks after ONeill got out of the Navy. Today, heis a paid on-air commentator for Fox News and is reportedly eyeing a run for the Senate in his native Montana. Hes just beginning to suffer for what he did, said anotherSEAL Team 6 leader. Smethers threatened to expose the SEALs for what he believed was a series of war crimes; the canoeing incident was just one of several operations in which Smethers alleged that Gold Squadron operators violated the laws of war. Senior leaders at the command knew about the misconduct and did little to eradicate it. Within two weeks of the apparent beheading, Moore deployed to Afghanistan. According to a CIA officer with direct knowledge of the incident, the CIA requested that the SEALs capture, rather than kill, their militant targets. He was Ahmed al Kuwaiti, one of bin Ladens couriers. He was dying, but he rolled over and I didnt know whether he was armed or not. According to three sources familiar with the debrief, Bissonnette never fired his weapon at Kuwaiti. He later told his teammates that it was possible one arm was twitching reflexively as he died, but otherwise he was effectively dead and not a threat. Bravo 2/2B. He was allowed to return to the regular SEAL teams. Former Seal Upvoted by Edward Tomlinson , former Damage Controlman at United States Navy (1988-1992) and Pavanne Halpin , former Manager of Pacemaker/Holter Clinic at United States Navy (2001-2005) Updated 7 mo Bad news. Not provide them., During one Iraq deployment, Howard returned from a raid to an operations center with blood on his hatchet and his uniform. Im telling you the absolute truth., After the deployment, SEAL Team 6s leadership examined Hyders actions during Objective Bull. The SEALs had no authority over the helicopter gunners. When it was commissioned, the Navy had only two SEAL (Sea, Air, and Land) assault teams, but founding officer Cmdr. When he finally entered the bedroom, alone, bin Laden was standing uninjured, a weapon nearby, his wife in front of him like a human shield. It was just good therapy. Top:Photo of helicopter onTakur Ghar. 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. We didnt hit women or kids. Eventually, two other elements of a quick reaction force one of which included Hyder landed at the top of Takur Ghar. After blowing open the iron gate blocking the main stairway, the lead assaulters, among them Bissonnette and ONeill, followed the operator known as Red up the stairs. He even has his own line of clothing. Somebody else is making this up. Survivors began to flee the wreckage, and over the radio, Hyder and his team heard the order that the convoy was now in a free fire zone, allowing the Chinooks gunners to fire at anyone deemed a threat, regardless of whether they were armed. Three weeks after the incident, NCIS closed its investigation, concluding that there was no evidence the SEAL had violated the laws of armed conflict. He hasnt returned since. When SEAL Team 6 operators were occasionally confronted about the desecration, the SEAL leader said, theyd often joke that they were just great shots.. He kept moving toward us, so at 15 meters I put one round in him and he dropped. They were disgusted. He quoted Heath as saying, Im morally flexible but I cant handle that. Heath refused to comment for this article. They also had terrain advantage. ONeill, by contrast, was not considered as clever as his teammate, but he was a deadly sniper and had a successful tour as a team leader in Red Squadron. Several of us confronted the officers, said one former noncommissioned officer who tried to stop the criminal behavior. The intention was to permit women and children to get out of harms way before operators conducted their assault. By late 2007, Slabinski was deployed to Afghanistan as the senior noncommissioned officer in Blue Squadron. Then, in October 2010, SEAL Team 6 set out to rescue a British aid worker named Linda Norgrove, who had been taken captive in Afghanistan. Simply put, the unit is an enlisted mafia, where tactics are driven by the expertise developed by the units enlisted assaulters, whose abilities and experience at making rapid threat decisions make up the commands core resource. According to two senior SEAL Team 6 sources, however, the leadership dynamic in Blue Squadron was a failure. Bottom: McRaven, left, and Capt. Most of the operators held a meeting to discuss what had happened on the mission. Made up of no more than 200 SEAL operators when the Afghan war began, SEAL Team 6 was the lesser known of the U.S. military's elite "special mission" units. Its operators are part of an elite, clandestine cadre. In the ensuing 17-hour battle with the al Qaeda fighters, six more Americans were killed, and several were wounded. The bombing stopped the convoy along a dry wadi, or ravine, with two of the trucks approximately a kilometer apart. They were both talented and competitive, and they were determined to profit from their experiences as SEALs. In the world of SEAL Team 6, where operators never face criminal charges despite allegations of war crimes, unjustified killings, and corruption the admirals mast was a serious rebuke. We just slaughtered those dudes. After describing one particular fighter who from a distance had resembled Osama bin Laden, Slabinksi continued: To this day, weve never had anything as good as that. Our sense of whats right and whats wrong is warped. And earlier this week, the independent Navy Times reported that six members of SEAL Team 10 tested positive last year for cocaine use and other drugs while serving. We shoot em. To understand the violence, you have to begin at Roberts Ridge, said one former member of SEAL Team 6 who deployed several times to Afghanistan. Two different SEALs, Robert ONeill and Matthew Bissonnette, have publicly taken credit for killing bin Laden. The former SEAL leader said the extensive amount of training for the mission, combined with Bissonnettes planning role, gave both men ample opportunity to find ways to put themselves on the third floor, in a good position to kill bin Laden. Two of the operators with Hyder reported afterward that the man was not a threat. Bissonnette was much farther back down the stairwell. Private sector and then Delta Force workers synonym; avoidant personality disorder and generalized anxiety disorder; lor christmas sequences; They realized the man had been trying to protect the women and children. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. Slabinski told Vasely, and later, Navy investigators, that there had been no foul play.. One former SEAL Team 6 leader who was involved in the raid told me he was never too concerned about the discrepancies between ONeills and Bissonnettes claims. Inside, they found six militants, four in one room, all sleeping with weapons near their beds. By the time Robert ONeill entered Osama bin Ladens bedroom in the Abbottabad compound on May 2, 2011, the al Qaeda leader was bleeding out on the floor, possibly already dead, after being shot in the chest and leg by the lead assaulter on the raid. Brian Snyder; Instagram. Photos: U.S. Department of Defense; Screengrab from video by U.S. Department of Defense; U.S. Navy by the Roberts family. The Red Squadron assaulters later gathered in a private area of Bagram Air Base and debriefed the mission in front of a military lawyer. It happens in war. No cuts were visible in the photos, according to a military official who has reviewed the file. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. A fierce firefight erupted between the four SEALs and a much larger enemy force of more than 50 anti-coalition insurgents. . Created in 1980 and based at the. What were originally known as assault teams now formally became squadrons, and by 2008, the expansion led to the creation of Silver, a fourth assault squadron. What do Navy SEALs think about fellow SEALs who cash in on the brand post-service? What youre saying is you have no faith in the commander, he said. The rating means the. The SEAL mission was compromised when the local nationals spotted the team, who presumably reported its presence and location to the Taliban. Top right: Robert ONeill with his tattoo of two bloody feathers, representing his kills. Slabinski retired from the military in 2014 after 25 years in the Navy. . That seems more fair. And here were two guys who set out to make money off a mission that required 23 SEALs to pull off: Its dishonorable., Bissonnette and ONeill are no longer welcome at SEAL Team 6 headquarters. He was awarded the Silver Star for his efforts at Takur Ghar to save Roberts and the rest of the Red Team recon element. The old sailor put the portfolio down. Theres no military purpose for it, a former Red Squadron operator told me. The operation commanded high-level interest because Norgrove, though in Afghanistan as an aid worker for DAI, an American NGO, secretly worked with Britains MI-6, according to four U.S. military and intelligence sources. And part of that was getting rid of Britt Slabinski.. But hidden behind the heroic narratives is a darker, more troubling story of revenge ops, unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities a pattern of criminal violence that emergedsoon after the Afghan war began and was tolerated and covered up by the commands leadership. Vasely told Moore he wanted an investigation into the incident. 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. The story of the bin Laden raid has been told and retold, but crucial details have never been made public. Senior leaders at the command knew the grisly circumstances of Robertss death had unsettled Red Team. As a result, photographs of canoed enemy fighters virtually ceased to appear in after-action reports. SEAL TEAM 6 also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) chooses guys from the SEAL teams and put them through a screening process called Green team. The SEALs biggest concern was how much time they would have, which was dictated by the amount of fuel the two Black Hawks could carry for the round trip. Should they seek revenge for Roberts? I deny it, he said, adding that he didnt understand why Heath would have claimed to have witnessed it. May 24, 2018. A retired noncommissioned officer said Howards encouragement and provision of Winkler hatchets was simply adding fuel to the fire. The prominent mountain range often served as the last geographic refuge for retreating forces entering Pakistan. It was then that both Bissonnette and ONeill hung back on the stairway. Senior members of SEAL Team 6 felt the pattern of brutality was not only illegal but rose to the level of war crimes. The two leading officers at the command, Moore and Szymanski, were informed that small groups in each of the three squadrons were mutilating and desecrating combatants in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The member of SEAL Team Six claiming to have shot and killed Osama bin Laden in a daring night raid in May 2011 is Robert O'Neill, multiple news sources have confirmed. My character and honor are steadfast. Well, bad news. The commands top noncommissioned officer placed their names on the SEAL Team 6 rock of shame, the unofficial list of unit pariahs. 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. A former SEAL Team 6 leader who has knowledge of the episode told me Moore shamed Slabinski and the squadron for their conduct. Iraq was a target rich environment, and Wyman allowed us to be more aggressive. According to several former SEAL Team 6 leaders, it was JSOC commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal who ordered the increased operational tempo and pushed SEAL Team 6, including Howard, to conduct more frequent raids to help wipe out the insurgency in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a mess.. According to two former SEALs, Slabinski told his teammates and superiors that his remark about wanting a head was figurative and not a literal order. It was disappointing. He then stood above the now indisputably dead man and canoed him, firing a round into his forehead and splitting open the top of his skull, exposing his brain. who is on the navy seal rock of shame. Made up of no more than 200 SEAL operators when the Afghan war began, SEAL Team 6 was the lesser known of the U.S. militarys elite special mission units. He was told that the photographs were part of SEAL Team 6s greatest hits of terrorists killed since 9/11. Since the 1980s, when Red Team was first created, there were many operators in the unit who had experienced a metamorphosis of identity and persona into Native American warriors. He was an outsider, despite having been at the command for many years. The list also includes Britt Slabinski, who was blacklisted in 2015 following the New York Times article that quoted him denying hed ever ordered his men to kill unarmed Afghan targets. These names are on this rock because these people conducted themselves in a way that did not bring glory to the teams. Alarmed at seeing what he believed was a decapitation, he told Slabinski to go inside and see what the young operator was doing. He assumed it was a twisted act of misplaced revenge over the previous days events specifically, the gruesome death of Hyders teammate Neil Roberts. Was it acceptable, as Hyder had done with the wounded man whom he executed, to desecrate the dead? In the book, Bissonnette implies that he was directly behind Red just below the third floor when bin Laden was shot, and was one of the next two SEALs who entered bin Ladens bedroom. Robertss death, and the subsequent operations in eastern Afghanistan during the winter 2002 deployment, left an indelible impression on SEAL Team 6, especially on Red Team. 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 decades worth of bloody sport by elements of SEAL Team 6 who considered themselves craftsmen of killing. I shot him, finished him. Raffi Barsoumian as Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Omar Hamza. Often wed hear, well, theyre savages, the former leadersaid. This meant there was less oversight over their missions and less accountability if things went wrong. Other SEALs on the ground proceeded as though the survivors were combatants. Then ONeill canoed bin Laden with a final shot. First, bin Laden was armed, involved in a firefight, and using one of his wives as a human shield. When they reached the hilltop, the operators looked down in disbelief at women and children, along with the man all were dead or mortally wounded from the spray of gunfire from the Chinooks gunners, who had unloaded after the free fire zone had been declared. The 23 SEAL Team 6 operators assigned to the mission prepared constantly for the entire month of April 2011, practicing on two different full-scale mock-ups of the bin Laden compound. The beauty of what they have constructed, said a former teammate about how Bissonnette and ONeill cornered the market on the bin Laden raid, is that there is only one guy, essentially, who can come forward and say theyre lying and he wont ever talk.. Bin Laden dropped and ONeill fired the security round that canoed him. We killed bad guys. Local residents and media on May 5, 2011, outside the compoundwhere al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Afterward, Kuwaitis wife confirmed that bin Laden could be found on the third floor of the main building, just as the team had been briefed. The group gave him a five-star rating, its most ignoble designation. As a result, Howard became popular among the enlisted SEALs under his command, several of whom defended and praised him. After the operation, $30,000 in cash, which the pirates had stashed in a lifeboat, went missing. As the lead assaulter, it was Reds job to make the most important tactical judgments because he largely blocked the view of the SEALs behind him. Your teammates beside and behind you will cover all the other possible angles and areas of a room as you move forward. Over a period of several weeks, a fight erupted between SEAL Team 6 and CIA officers in Afghanistan. Thats when you take away a hatchet, the retired SEAL said. The SEALs successes throughout 2002 resulted in the Joint Special Operations Command choosing the unit to lead the hunt for al Qaeda, as well as the invasion of Baghdad in March 2003. Toni Trucks as Lieutenant (junior grade) Lisa Davis. The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. Bissonnette and his team then moved to the main house. By Emily Cochrane. The distinction was crucial. 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. Unlike the SEALs, the man was not wearing night-vision goggles. Only inches from his target, ONeill claims, he shot bin Laden twice in the forehead. We talked about it and 35 guys nodded their heads saying this is not who we are. Hyder and an enlisted operator named Monty Heath had gone in a different direction and saw a survivor flee the bombed vehicle toward a nearby berm. Ten officers and master chiefs voted unanimously against allowing Slabinski to return to the command. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. Bissonnettes book was the first eyewitness account, and it contradicted the Obama administrations narrative. To this day, he thinks the guys turned on him, said one of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders. But the directive had another benefit. Several months after the bin Laden raid, in October 2011, SEAL Team 6 held its annual stump muster, a reunion of current command members and their families, as well as past leaders and senior operators. For some of Howards men, however, the hatchets soon became more than symbolic as they were used at times to hack dead fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. We couldve used the intel. Outside the compound, the SEALs were quick to show the photos to others on the assault team. He was awarded a Navy Cross, the second highest battlefield award for heroism. Im not going to tell you this didnt happen. It was like a game. Photos: www.navyseals.hu; Robert J. Fluegel/U.S. Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward "Eddie" Gallagher, a highly decorated Navy SEAL, is fighting murder charges . One result of the growth was that back in Virginia, the captain in command of the entire 300-SEAL force had far less oversight over tactical battlefield decisions. There was a lot of chaos. A drone flying above the convoy showed the occupants of three vehicles were heavily armed. Both Bissonnette and ONeill declined to answer questions for this article. Overall, it had become clear that Slabinskis run as a leader on the battlefield caused Blue Squadron to come off the rails, according to a former SEAL Team 6 leader. Six days after Objective Bull, the Pentagon announced at a press conference that an airstrike had killed 14 people,who a spokesperson said were somehow affiliated with al Qaeda. . Earlier that evening, general officers from the Joint Special Operations Command had scrambled the SEALs after watching a Predator drone video feed of a man they suspected was bin Laden set off in a convoy of three or four vehicles in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where al Qaeda forces had fortified themselves. The SEALs were suspected of taking the money. 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. Hed been told that Blue Squadron had collected ears and that mutilations had become common. Ten days later, the internal JSOC investigation was closed. His name was added to SEAL Team 6's "rock of shame," an unofficial list of pariahs from the famed unit, the outlet said. 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. In 1992, Holland went for screening by the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU, Seal Team 6). When you see your friend killed, recover his body, and find that the enemy mutilated him? Several of Bissonnettes teammates later informed their superiors that he had lied about his actions. Less than a week before the assault, Bissonnette and ONeill got into a shouting match at the Dam Neck base over who would sell the inside story of the raid. Our job is to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way befitting the American people and the American flag. 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 mans neck. Top right: A bearded Red Squadron SEAL in Afghanistan. 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. No officers were present, and the enlisted SEALs used the meeting to address Hyders alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan the previous day. A third of the guys literally think theyre Apache warriors, then you had the Muslim way of removing a head. 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. Shortly after that operation, Slabinski returned to the SEAL Team 6 base at Dam Neck. The SEALs had been specifically asked to avoid shooting bin Laden in the face. Id look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment, the retired SEAL said. The enemy had the SEALs outnumbered. Army 1942-1945 WW II S/Sgt 4/26/1916 6/21/20072126th AAF BU,. The war was entering its seventh year and had become intractable, with no clear path to victory. Mutilation isnt part of the game.. They ransacked the compound for documents and media for intelligence, left the survivors inside, and returned to Jalalabad air base with the body. One of Bissonnettes teammates then put his gun through the front door, which was now slightly ajar, and shot the gunman in the head. Im not condoning the behavior theres no justification to hacking a body but we didnt prepare them either. We failed to fix the problem, he said. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. They had detailed plans of the Abbottabad compound provided by the CIA and knew where they could expect to find bin Laden. Illustrations: Attila Futaki, Colorist: Greg Guilhaumond, Matthew Cole[emailprotected]theintercept.com@matthewacole, The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, thats equal to or greater than what the criminal justice system would give to the person.. A former SEAL filed an appeal Tuesday, Dec. 21, that paints military leaders and their attorneys as corrupt martinets and levels allegations of rampant legal and sexual shenanigans by senior operators inside the ultrasecret Development Group, better known as "SEAL Team 6." Normally, SEAL Team 6s commanding officer, a captain, would conduct a captains mast, a form of non-judicial punishment. During the investigation, Bissonnette surrendered a photo of bin Ladens dead body that he had unlawfully retained. 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. That years 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 Presidents Own, the clandestine global force capable of striking anywhere, killing anyone, the tip of Americas military spear. So many dead bodies, so many, everywhere, and so the potential opportunities for mutilations were great.. And then we move on, said a former SEAL who was present at the meeting. Hed left the SEALs before the worst of the atrocities had taken place, though his former teammates would occasionally call him to report what was happening on deployments. The planning was so meticulous, one retired SEAL Team 6 leader told me, that a helicopter pilot warned mission planners that one of the two stealth Black Hawks they were to use would likely experience a vortex ring state, which means air disturbed by the rotors would prevent the helicopter from getting the lift necessary to continue hovering. With more extensive photographic documentation, SEAL operators had less time to fire unnecessary rounds into the dead, and they had to use the photos to explain why they fired their weapon. The second inquiry also uncovered the head on a platter remark as the instigation for the beheading in December 2007, but the commands senior enlisted leader told Slabinski he would not get the promotion or be allowed to serve at the command again because of the Pantera order. Even if it was true, I dont know why he would say that. Hyder said he was not aware of the Bagram meeting held by the enlisted operators about him or the accusations. 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