Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six | Matthew Cole (throwback ep)

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The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Bark. Hey, everyone,
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Welcome to The Team House, Episode one and thirty six.
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I'm Jack Murphy here with my co host David Park.
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Tonight we have Matthew Cole on the show. He is
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an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country.
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This is a book about Seal Team six and the
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War on Terror and a lot of things that have happened. Essentially,
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this is a book, I think, really about subculture, subculture
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and special operations and where it comes off the rails,
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and we're gonna really take a deep dive on this
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subject and on Matthew's book tonight. Just a little heads up,
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we are going to talk about some graphic content here tonight,
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war crimes, sexual assault, Like, there's some pretty grizzly stuff
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in here. Just a heads up, some of you are
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sensitive to that kind of stuff. Is that a trigger on?
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That's a trigger warning, man, because people are going to
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be big triggered in the live chat today, so you
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know it's coming. So Matthew, if you could just start
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off telling us a little bit about yourself and kind
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of what was your entryway into journalism, and then eventually
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covering a really specific type of journalism. You know, we've
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had some people on here, Sean Naylar and Jessica Donatti
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and David Phillips, like there's but there's not many of us, right,
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you can count them on, you know, two hands, two
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and a half hands, people who cover special operations in Jaysock.
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What was kind of your path into journalism and then
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winding up in a very specific field.
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First, I'm really grateful for you guys having me on.
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I'm really glad that you give me an opportunity to
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talk about the book. I was a graduate student of
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journalism at Columbia when nine to eleven happened, and it
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is absolutely the case that nine eleven, and being in
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New York and downtown, I was about a block and
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a half from the Twin Towers from five am to
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eight am that morning, and then eventually made my way
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back over after both buildings had come down. Nine to
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eleven focused what I was interested in journalism, and almost
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immediately I was particularly drawn to understanding what had gone
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on in Afghanistan, and so after graduate school, I really
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just tried to figure out how as a basically as
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a freelance reporter how to get myself to Afghanistan. And
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more importantly, I always felt that when I was watching
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news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that
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I don't know what the sense was. There was something
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missing to me. It was very cookie cutter, which isn't
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to denigrate the reporters on the ground who were doing
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in some cases a very good job under difficult circumstances.
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But at that time, you know, it was all embeds,
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and so there was a limitation on the kind of
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story that you could do. And so I decided to
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go to Pakistan on my own, you know, in two
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thousand and five, and do a reporting trip up in
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northwest Pakistan, which at the time, although it wasn't the FATSA,
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it was it was dicey. And when I was there,
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I was very close to the Afghan border Neuristan, and
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I went as it happened, I think I landed in
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Pakistan probably a week after the lone survivor incident had
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occurred in Afghanistan, and I was at that time reporting
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more about the CIA, and I was really struck by
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the notion I was talking to people who lived in
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this valley that was near Afghanistan, and I asked, would
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ask them, you know, did they have any signs or
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indications that there was a war going on, you know
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about an eight hour walk away over the mountains, And
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they said, no, you know, there's very little as different.
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You know, there's some people who come through, and you know,
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there's some white guys, there's some Taliban guys that come through,
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but you know that don't bother us, and we don't
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see much difference, and they certainly don't hear or see
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anything in the sky. And I thought I was really
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interested in the notion that there was this sort of
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invisible line at the border that differentiated one side from
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the other, and that there was this war going on.
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And so I ended up embedding a little less than
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a year later in Afghanistan and went up to Kunar
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and Nuristan. And at that time I was reporting mostly
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on the CIA, but I started doing more military coverage
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or reporting. But you know, abroad, and you know, you
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sort of do one piece at a time. I think
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I've probably always just followed whatever subject I thought was
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interesting or question I had about something, And I think
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I've always looked for trying to understand what are we
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not seeing here? What is the public not seeing? And
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so you know, I went I covered the CIA pretty
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extensively for you know, about ten years, and as towards
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two thousand and nine, I was an investigative producer at
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ABC News and I started getting interested in Jaysock and Blackwater,
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and so I started pulling that thread. And about two
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years into reporting on Blackwater, Eric Prince and Jaysock, I
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was working on something about Stanley McCrystal at the time,
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and I, you know, someone showed up at my door,
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so to speak, who mentioned hatchets and Seal Team six.
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And to be honest with you, at that time, I
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didn't really know anything about Seal Team six. I mean,
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I knew they existed, but I had no knowledge whatsoever
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of their culture and or where they fit into the
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world of Jaysock. And you know, but basically I had
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someone saying, look, if you really want to find something troubling,
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you got to look into why guys in my unit
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or carrying hatchets on the battlefield. And that was the beginning.
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That was the start. It was not a direct path.
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It was a lot of zigging and zagging as I
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was working on other things. But you know, the more
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I worked on it, the more I found that that
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there was was bigger than just a story of hatchets.
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And you know, I think I probably this book is
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is ultimately a reflection and the result of how I
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go into a subject or a topic, which is I
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just want to know everything that's happened, and I really
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want to know everything. I like to think of it
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as in three dimensions, you know, which is the good,
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the bad, and the ugly. And the more I learned,
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the more I could see, well, the good has been
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told over and over, and it's been told very effectively
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this Navy Seals in general, Seal Team six in particular.
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But the story had a bunch of key omissions to it,
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and those emissions were enough to you know, really change
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our understanding and what the public should know and understand about,
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you know, what the unit had become, especially after nine
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to eleven.
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I kind of I'm just really really curious about you
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graduating from from school and then ending up in pack
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sentary point. I was sing, how like how did all
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that start? Like how do you start reporting on the CIA?
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Like, you know, it's a good question, you know, I
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you know what I did, I can tell you actually
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the beginning and probably the first part of it, which
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is I was just just reading books. I read every
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book that I wanted to read, you know, after nine
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to eleven, I actually go back a little bit since
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the ninety three the first bombing of the World Trade
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Center in nineteen ninety three. For whatever reason I could,
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I knew. I can tell you where I was at
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each major terrorist attack from ninety three until two thousand
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and one, and after the Embassy bombings in ninety eight.
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Although I couldn't remember his name, when when I watched
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the second plane hit the second tower on nine to eleven,
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I knew who it was. I couldn't remember his name.
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I didn't Al Kaita didn't mean anything to me, but
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I could. I actually remembered his face and what with that,
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you know, it was very common image at that time,
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with more of a white turban, a little more looking
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a little more Saudi than he was looking, you know,
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like he was living in Afghanistan. And you know, so
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I had an interest, right so after nine to eleven,
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I had even more of an interest to understand what
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had happened, How did it come to this? What had occurred?
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I mean you know, there was nothing, nothing special about that.
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I think there were a lot of Americans that felt
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that way, and so I was interested in the CIA.
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I was I was when I was in graduate school.
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I was already a huge fan of Seymour Hirsch at
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the New Yorker, and I was just reading everything that
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I could to help me make sense of what world,
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how the world had just changed, at least from the
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American perspective. And I started reading every book written by
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someone from the CIA. That was what I did. And
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one of the first that I read at the time
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was was Bob Behar's book. And so what I did
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was I was a journal you know, a student journalist.
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I found a way. It took me a long time, actually,
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but I eventually got Bob Behar on the phone and
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I said, I'm a journalist and I want to figure
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out how to find people like you and get people
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like you to talk. And he gave me a few
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pointers and it, you know, it was nothing mind blowing,
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but it was enough to sort of give me a
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sense of what I did. And then at that time,
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you know, the first three years or so after nine
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to eleven and the invasion in Afghanistan, a lot of
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the guys who were in the CAA were writing books,
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and he had Gary schron and he had Gary Bernston,
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and so there were I could read the books and
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then I'd find you know, I'd find them, I'd reach
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out and I would start to to you know, report basically,
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and that's all it was. It was not, you know,
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it was just a question of talking to talking to
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people in that community and trying to understand the difference
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between what they were saying, what I thought I was seeing,
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and then what the public was seeing. And there was
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always a difference, and you know, sometimes it was because
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the government was actively lying. Sometimes it was because it's
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just really hard to you know, work on these kind
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of stories and it's not easy with a daily deadline,
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you know. So you know, that was that was how
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I did it. It wasn't It certainly was not anything
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special at all.
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It's very interesting, though, I would like to jump into
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the book and start with Ralph Penny. There's I mean,
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this is about a special operations subculture coming off the rails.
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But although that was accelerated by the War on Terror,
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I think you really point to in the book about
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how the precursors were kind of always there in the culture.
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This sort of pirate outlaw culture was at least a
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faction within the Seal community. And I think the story
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about Ensign Penny really tells how dark that really got.
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Yeah, I mean, you know, at the end of the day,
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I went into writing this book, I had, you know,
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a cursory knowledge of the history of the Seals, and
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I felt obviously that there's not any way that I
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could write about present day Seal Team six if I
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didn't get into, you know, its origins. And so I
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started at the beginning, which is in World War Two.
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And you know, let's lay out here for a second
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that historically, the combat Swimmers and the UDT the Frogmen
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as they were known in World War Two, had a
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tradition and a subculture completely outside of the regular Navy
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even then, and a lot of what we know today
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of the Seals you can see in what was going
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on in nineteen forty three movies, Hollywood films in nineteen
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fifty one. They had their own chant and song, which
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you know, made it very clear that they were, you know,
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crazy motherfuckers. They were the craziest bastards in the Navy.
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The toughest and so there are there are it's like
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in their DNA, right, there's there's something to them. And
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they're a really small unit. Right, We're not talking about
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the history of the eighty second Airborne or parts of
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the Army. They're a separate from the Navy and very specialized,
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which means that whatever cultural issues they have, they're were concentrated.
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And one of the stories that I had heard over
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the years was an incident about a young insigdnt an
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officer who had just graduated from BUDS in the late seventies,
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who was essentially pushed to his suicide after being hazed
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shortly after getting out of graduating from BUDS. And it
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was one of those stories where you know, everyone had
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everyone had heard something. Oh, I know that story. I
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heard that story, and then you start to ask, No
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one knew anything, right, and it was all over the place.
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But I had a couple of sources who said, no,
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it's real, it happened, And you know, initially it took
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took me a couple of months just to figure out
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what the victim's name was, and it was INSIGT Ralph
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Stanley Penny, who had been a Air Force Academy graduate.
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He had his own really fascinating story, which was that
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his father was a colonel and a pilot in the
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Air Force who had fought flown a ton of missions
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in Vietnam and was a decorated war hero, and his
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son wanted, who had the same name, wanted to do
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as his dad did and become a pilot. But he
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had terrible vision, and so by the time he got
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through part of the Air Force Academy, it became clear
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that he couldn't really be He was never going to fly,
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and so he chose instead to join the Navy to
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get into butts and become a seal. At that time there,
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you know, it was you could go into udt or
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end up as a seal. So he just wanted to
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be a frogman and his father and his mother and father,
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according to his sister who survived him, were very against
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him going. They were religious. The father's experience in Vietnam
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with the seals was that they were drinkers and killers,
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and he didn't want that for his boy, and they
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basically it was not allowed to be talked about. When
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it became clear that Insiant Penny was going to sign
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up and go to buts, and so you know, as
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I was digging, I realized there was a It wasn't
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just something bad at the end of the story. There
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00:14:47.679 --> 00:14:51.600
was really something interesting and sad and compelling about what
258
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had happened to him. It took a while, but ultimately,
259
00:14:55.720 --> 00:15:00.039
you know what what occurred was that he joined He
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joined his team was UDT twenty one on the East
261
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Coast a little bit early because he had done it,
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because he had been in the Air Force, he had
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already done his jumps, he was already certified as a
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as a skydiver, so he got to go early while
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the rest of his buds class went to Fort Benning
266
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to do their their courses there and get their their certification.
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And the officers there decided, since he was going to
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be uh checking in soon, that they would send him
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on a training evolution early with a platoon. And it
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00:15:35.039 --> 00:15:36.480
was not going to be the platoon that he was
271
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going to join, but he was gonna he'd get his
272
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get a little bit of experience. So he was given
273
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to a platoon who was led by then a Lieutenant
274
00:15:46.360 --> 00:15:50.919
Joseph McGuire. We can get into him later, and they
275
00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:54.399
go down to Saint they go down to Vieches where
276
00:15:54.399 --> 00:15:58.360
there was a Seals had of training station and on
277
00:15:58.559 --> 00:16:03.000
a Liberty weekend, and he goes with a East six
278
00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:07.480
or an East seven who was a Vietnam veteran named
279
00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:12.320
Eddie Leisure Fast Eddie Leisure, it was a considered one
280
00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:16.720
of the best, you know, best operators in the Seals
281
00:16:16.799 --> 00:16:21.679
during Vietnam, was highly regarded and he had become he'd gone,
282
00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:23.399
he sort of moved around, but he didn't want to
283
00:16:23.399 --> 00:16:24.720
become a chief. So he must have been an E
284
00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:27.320
six because he had refused. I talked to some people
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who had who had served with him and knew him,
286
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and he had actively avoided becoming a chief because he
287
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:32.879
didn't want to be in charge. He didn't want to
288
00:16:32.919 --> 00:16:37.480
do any paperwork. So he did some training, dive training
289
00:16:37.919 --> 00:16:42.960
and Liberty weekend. He takes Penny to Saint Thomas. And
290
00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:46.919
Saint Thomas during the fifties and sixties had been the
291
00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:51.600
winter home of the East Coast Seals and UDT and
292
00:16:51.919 --> 00:16:56.399
had a was a you know, a long tradition in
293
00:16:56.440 --> 00:17:00.159
the Seals of going to Saint Thomas, whether you were
294
00:17:00.200 --> 00:17:02.639
on training or later in Viekas and traveling or in
295
00:17:02.679 --> 00:17:06.839
Liberty and getting drunk for the weekend, as all good
296
00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:10.119
sailors and servicemen do when they have R and R
297
00:17:11.079 --> 00:17:16.440
or time off. But Saint Thomas was had a very
298
00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:19.839
liberal social dynamic and community at the time, and a
299
00:17:19.960 --> 00:17:23.759
very open gay community at the time, and so there
300
00:17:23.960 --> 00:17:29.680
was a tradition in the Seals with frogmen when they
301
00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:33.200
were out drinking, when they ran out of money, the
302
00:17:33.240 --> 00:17:37.119
youngest guy in the team was they would get him
303
00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:39.960
drunk and they would then sell him off to one
304
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:42.240
of the gay men at the bars for money so
305
00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:44.480
that the rest of the team could drink. And so
306
00:17:44.759 --> 00:17:47.519
as it was described to me, you know, it was
307
00:17:47.799 --> 00:17:49.400
they didn't do it every time, and they didn't do
308
00:17:49.440 --> 00:17:51.720
it to everyone, but it was frequent. It was very
309
00:17:51.759 --> 00:17:54.119
much frequent, and it was part of the hazing culture,
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00:17:55.480 --> 00:17:57.160
and it was very much don't ask, don't tell what
311
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happened the next day. So fast forward in nineteen seventy nine,
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Penny goes with Eddie Leisure and they go out for
313
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a night on the town and Leisure gets him drunk
314
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and over the course of the night, they're at a
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bar at that time, and you'll forgive some of these
316
00:18:16.680 --> 00:18:20.359
awful terms I'm just using the language that was common then,
317
00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:23.880
as it was described to me by my sources down there,
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they had, you know, essentially transgender men dressed as women.
319
00:18:29.279 --> 00:18:31.680
They were known as benny boys in the Seals and
320
00:18:32.039 --> 00:18:36.519
Saint Thomas at the time. And so Penny was at
321
00:18:36.559 --> 00:18:39.680
the bar. He was getting progressively drunk. He was drinking
322
00:18:39.759 --> 00:18:46.799
with a benny boy and wasn't clear. Eventually he became
323
00:18:46.799 --> 00:18:49.839
so blackout drunk it was clear that he didn't know
324
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that this was a man. Nonetheless, he went back to
325
00:18:53.440 --> 00:18:59.000
the hotel and Leisure basically came back to the room
326
00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:03.359
and found him let him be. Came back the next
327
00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:06.519
morning to get a penny and basically said, you know,
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you slept with a man. And when he got they
329
00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:15.160
got back to Viekez, Leisure told the rest of the
330
00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:18.000
platoon the quote was that we sold him to a fag,
331
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which was you know, I want to point out here
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00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:24.240
for people who uh made by the book that in
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00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:28.759
the penny section, I have a quote from an officer,
334
00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:33.640
retired Seal officer, who describes this older tradition in Saint Thomas.
335
00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:37.319
And that quote actually was an on the record quote
336
00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:41.079
of Dick Marsenko. I didn't put his name in because
337
00:19:41.119 --> 00:19:42.720
he doesn't come into the book till later, and I
338
00:19:42.759 --> 00:19:46.319
didn't want to confuse it. But with him passed on
339
00:19:46.599 --> 00:19:52.200
and under the circumstances, he described in great detail what
340
00:19:52.240 --> 00:19:53.759
they did and how they did it. And it was
341
00:19:53.759 --> 00:19:58.559
confirmed by others who who served with Leisure and with
342
00:19:58.559 --> 00:20:04.799
with Marsinko. So Penny was apparently very very distraught. And
343
00:20:05.079 --> 00:20:08.599
let's just also say that, you know, Eddie Leisure is
344
00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:12.039
now dead. He died a few years later. We will
345
00:20:12.079 --> 00:20:16.640
probably never know what happened that evening the the it's
346
00:20:16.759 --> 00:20:20.759
virtually unknowable. What is absolutely the case is whatever did
347
00:20:20.839 --> 00:20:25.559
or did not happen when instant Penny woke up the
348
00:20:25.599 --> 00:20:28.880
next day and came out, he was told, who had
349
00:20:29.279 --> 00:20:33.039
had no memory because he was blacked out, that he
350
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had slept with a man, and he was unbelievably upset.
351
00:20:38.079 --> 00:20:42.519
And what became clear is he came back. The whole
352
00:20:42.559 --> 00:20:47.119
team was told, the whole platoon was told, and then Penny,
353
00:20:47.240 --> 00:20:52.000
on the way flight back to Virginia Beach, was very
354
00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:56.160
distraught and and made a statement on the plane that
355
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this stuff was not going to stand, that he was
356
00:20:58.319 --> 00:21:01.039
gonna he was gonna do something about it. He was
357
00:21:01.119 --> 00:21:05.000
very agitated, is the point they got back the week
358
00:21:05.680 --> 00:21:10.319
before Memorial Day. A few days before Memorial Day, uh
359
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:15.880
Ensign Penny goes and buys a twenty two caliber pistol
360
00:21:17.079 --> 00:21:21.480
in Virginia, and a few days later he uh shoots
361
00:21:21.519 --> 00:21:25.279
himself in the head. It was a small caliber bullet.
362
00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:30.720
The death was very messy and awful, actually, and later
363
00:21:30.799 --> 00:21:35.279
that became a running joke. Also at Little Creek, one
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00:21:35.319 --> 00:21:39.960
of the seals in his unit described a you know
365
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:43.359
they would have after he had died, getting on the
366
00:21:43.799 --> 00:21:46.599
the mic for the for the for the whole Little
367
00:21:46.599 --> 00:21:49.839
Creek and saying something along the lines of insig insant,
368
00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:52.359
penny ins and Penny, You're wanted in the armory to
369
00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:54.720
clean your weapon. Joke being that you know, he had
370
00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:57.279
failed to clean his weapon and so it had misfired
371
00:21:57.319 --> 00:22:01.640
on him and uh not not killed a himself properly basically.
372
00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:07.279
And you know, the Navy did an investigation very quickly.
373
00:22:09.319 --> 00:22:14.400
They determined Their results were that he was depressed and
374
00:22:14.440 --> 00:22:16.799
he had taken his life because he was depressed. There
375
00:22:16.839 --> 00:22:18.799
was no mention of Saint Thomas, there was no mention
376
00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:22.039
of Eddie Leisure, there was nothing about what had occurred,
377
00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:28.039
and so and and when the father, Penny's father, came
378
00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:30.720
with the mother, he confronted the officers and the commander
379
00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.839
at the base and said, this is this story doesn't
380
00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:36.920
make any sense. I know you killed him. My boy
381
00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:41.720
wasn't depressed, you know, they said he was. You know,
382
00:22:42.440 --> 00:22:45.680
they didn't challenge him. They thought he was inconsolable and
383
00:22:45.680 --> 00:22:48.799
and just said we're sorry. You know your your son
384
00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:53.440
was unhappy and he took his own life. So in
385
00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:57.920
some Penny's surviving mother, father, and sisters, sister Rebecca, they
386
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:02.079
knew always that there was something wrong with the They felt,
387
00:23:02.839 --> 00:23:05.880
according to his sister Rebecca, that he must have been
388
00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:09.400
murdered because the story didn't make any sense. He was
389
00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:11.680
not murdered. There's no evidence that that was the case.
390
00:23:12.920 --> 00:23:17.039
But it was a obviously for the family, incredibly traumatic.
391
00:23:17.720 --> 00:23:21.880
They never they never got over it, and it was
392
00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:25.640
a long buried secret, and the question had always been
393
00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:32.640
what did Lieutenant Joseph Maguire, who later became Commander of
394
00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:37.039
warcom No. When I first brought it to him, it
395
00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:39.119
was I know nothing about this is the first I've
396
00:23:39.160 --> 00:23:44.920
ever heard about it. But his spokesperson did call me
397
00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:47.759
and say you know, but we do have the forty
398
00:23:47.839 --> 00:23:50.759
year old NIS Report and I Report, which by the way,
399
00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:53.279
has been destroyed because it's over twenty five years old.
400
00:23:53.319 --> 00:23:55.759
They just happened to have it handy and point out
401
00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:57.799
that there's no mention of Saint Thomas, and there's no
402
00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:02.720
mention of you know, a Vietnam veteran seal except that,
403
00:24:03.279 --> 00:24:05.960
you know, according to the spokesperson, maguire knew that he
404
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:10.079
had gone on Liberty with another another seal opera, you know,
405
00:24:10.119 --> 00:24:13.440
another veteran frogment, which is kind of an interesting thing
406
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:17.039
to know if you didn't know anything about Saint Thomas,
407
00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:22.160
right and you know, so the question is more not
408
00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:26.400
whether then Lieutenant Joe maguire knew, The question is how
409
00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:29.279
could he have not known in a seal platoon when
410
00:24:29.720 --> 00:24:33.559
the rest of the platoon in vis knew immediately afterwards,
411
00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:36.559
you know. So it's it's I don't want to call
412
00:24:36.599 --> 00:24:39.240
it exactly an origin story, but you sort of get
413
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:45.359
every part of this culture of cover up and pushing
414
00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:46.720
people to the edge.
415
00:24:48.119 --> 00:24:51.000
I'm just I'm just curious, I think cause like his
416
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.079
his father said that they were drinkers and killers. I mean,
417
00:24:54.200 --> 00:24:58.359
that could kind of be applied to most special Operations
418
00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:04.960
units in Vietnam, right almost and even today, Like I mean, uh,
419
00:25:05.119 --> 00:25:06.640
not that I'm a color I'm a very nice guy,
420
00:25:06.720 --> 00:25:10.319
but but that that they're they're sort of that origin
421
00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:19.400
like why and and why is why this book? And
422
00:25:19.400 --> 00:25:23.039
why about seals when there are you know, like there
423
00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:26.119
have been crimes and issues and things like that with
424
00:25:26.279 --> 00:25:30.839
other units, Like what what drew you to to the
425
00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:31.880
seals in particular?
426
00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:34.599
So let me just say one thing about the father's comments.
427
00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:37.079
I'm not co signing the father's right, right, right, but
428
00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:41.960
I what what I took actually from that description of
429
00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:44.720
what the father said was more that there was some
430
00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:48.079
kind of intuition by a parent that their child was
431
00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:50.960
going to get eaten alive. In other words, it wasn't
432
00:25:51.400 --> 00:25:54.839
it's not about drinkers and killers. He was a religious guy,
433
00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:56.920
like he dropped bombs on people, And what's the difference
434
00:25:56.960 --> 00:25:58.559
between the guy with a knife and a guy who
435
00:25:58.599 --> 00:26:01.440
drops a you know, a five hundred pound bomb on
436
00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:06.960
a village. In that sense, it was I think more
437
00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:10.680
interesting to me. And obviously we can't know both parents
438
00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:13.480
are dead, and it's we're talking about someone in psychology,
439
00:26:13.519 --> 00:26:16.000
so it's not This is not reporting, per se, but
440
00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:21.039
from as a as a journalist, but also as a
441
00:26:21.039 --> 00:26:22.880
as a father, as a you know, as a human.
442
00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:26.119
I took those words to really mean that on some
443
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:28.079
level there was a sense that he knew that this
444
00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:31.160
kid and his son was not up for the rough
445
00:26:31.160 --> 00:26:33.440
and tumble nature of what this community was.
446
00:26:33.559 --> 00:26:36.160
He didn't have temperament something, yeah, something.
447
00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.279
So that's the first part. The second part is to
448
00:26:38.279 --> 00:26:40.960
answer your question about why the Seals, why Sealed Team
449
00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:46.359
six won. I think that there is a after. I mean,
450
00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:49.200
it was before the twenty year remark, but at twenty
451
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:52.480
years we are at a point where as a country
452
00:26:52.799 --> 00:26:55.920
and as a public, we have to ask ourselves what
453
00:26:55.920 --> 00:26:57.519
what did we just come out of? What did we
454
00:26:57.519 --> 00:27:02.119
get out of this? What happened? And on the commercial side,
455
00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:05.799
on the sort of cultural public uh, you know, commercial
456
00:27:05.799 --> 00:27:09.640
cultural side, the books, the movies, the podcast. The story
457
00:27:09.839 --> 00:27:14.920
is one that's very unambivalent, right. Seals and Seal Team
458
00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:18.279
six are heroes who can do no wrong. They are
459
00:27:18.319 --> 00:27:21.440
the best leaders, they are the best everything. It's a
460
00:27:21.559 --> 00:27:24.559
it's an image that they promote most. I mean the
461
00:27:25.119 --> 00:27:29.039
you know, the Seals drive the biggest recruiting and recruitment
462
00:27:29.119 --> 00:27:31.759
for the Navy. Okay, so there's a bigger picture here
463
00:27:31.799 --> 00:27:35.240
than just a bunch of seal operators who want to
464
00:27:35.240 --> 00:27:39.279
make a little money in there in their post military career,
465
00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:42.920
pushing how great they are and what they can contribute
466
00:27:42.920 --> 00:27:45.759
to society, of which I have no problem with whatsoever.
467
00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:48.680
My issue is, and I think journalistically and as an
468
00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:53.759
investigative reporter, the question is is that we have this story,
469
00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:58.400
this this very clear story, but is it true? And
470
00:27:58.640 --> 00:27:59.960
you know, one of the things that I thought of
471
00:28:00.200 --> 00:28:02.000
when I was thinking about whether I should do a
472
00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:06.480
book was you can have flag of your fathers forty
473
00:28:06.559 --> 00:28:08.400
years after the fact, or you can have flag of
474
00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:11.599
your fathers now. And my sources were coming to me
475
00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:14.720
from inside the sealed community to say, look, we're losing
476
00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:18.480
a battle against guys who are the worst of our community,
477
00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:21.680
who have done some of the worst things both you know,
478
00:28:21.960 --> 00:28:26.559
morally ethically, but just you know, operationally, and they're the
479
00:28:26.599 --> 00:28:30.720
ones who are getting ahead, mostly in public but also inside.
480
00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:34.799
And that is, you know, from their perspective, unconscionable. It's
481
00:28:34.839 --> 00:28:37.359
the opposite of what we're we should be doing right
482
00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:40.000
the military, like anywhere else in our society is supposed
483
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:42.039
to bet you know, they's supposed to be a meritocracy.
484
00:28:42.079 --> 00:28:45.039
Now we can debate whether it is in fact that
485
00:28:45.319 --> 00:28:48.680
everyone I think can experience, you know, can relate to
486
00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:51.880
the experience in the corporate world of watching people fail upward, right,
487
00:28:51.920 --> 00:28:53.359
And I think that in a lot of ways, Code
488
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:58.759
over Country is a case study and failed leadership, and
489
00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:00.599
that's really where the you know, one of the things
490
00:29:00.599 --> 00:29:03.240
that I've always been made myself clear to do is
491
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:08.400
to really name the officers involved, not the enlisted or
492
00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:12.200
senior enlisted, yes, but not the the younger enlisted, because
493
00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:13.680
it's not their responsibility.
494
00:29:13.960 --> 00:29:14.200
Right.
495
00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:18.400
So the question why the Seals, why Sealed Team six?
496
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:25.000
Because they made themselves a public source of an absolute
497
00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:27.799
brand and by the way, a very powerful brand. They're
498
00:29:27.839 --> 00:29:30.440
really good at it. They're fantastic, you know. I mean,
499
00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:33.680
it's the old Duffel, the Duffel blog thing about Buds,
500
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:36.440
the Buds course, you know, the book writing course at Buds,
501
00:29:36.480 --> 00:29:38.480
you know, the new you know, and it's a it's
502
00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:40.480
a joke obviously, but it's funny and it because it
503
00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:42.720
has some truth to it. And so you know, as
504
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:46.200
an investigative reporter, you know, if someone I mean, I
505
00:29:46.559 --> 00:29:48.079
want to jump ahead for a second, but you know,
506
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:51.160
you take a story, take two stories like Matt Bissonette
507
00:29:51.160 --> 00:29:55.079
and Rob O'Neil, right, and if they don't write books
508
00:29:55.720 --> 00:29:58.319
about what they did and what they were involved in,
509
00:29:58.839 --> 00:30:00.799
I'm not going to spend any time time as an
510
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:05.960
investigative reporter going into what the story is or isn't, right,
511
00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:08.920
I mean, unless it's not about them, I don't care.
512
00:30:09.039 --> 00:30:11.319
They put themselves out there, right. You want to.
513
00:30:11.319 --> 00:30:14.000
Make you know, a couple of million dollars telling this
514
00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:17.839
heroic story of yourself, and you don't want to write
515
00:30:17.880 --> 00:30:19.960
things down that are accurate, or you tell you tell
516
00:30:19.960 --> 00:30:22.559
the story in a way that's not that's inaccurate. I
517
00:30:22.559 --> 00:30:24.880
think you're you. And so that's a small case, but
518
00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:27.200
that's the answer is writ large.
519
00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:27.400
Right.
520
00:30:27.480 --> 00:30:30.839
If you're an organization or a community or a culture
521
00:30:31.079 --> 00:30:36.279
that wants to make money and uh earn fame and
522
00:30:36.599 --> 00:30:40.559
uh sort of put yourself up at this at at
523
00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:44.799
this place culturally, then it better be true.
524
00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:45.480
Right.
525
00:30:45.559 --> 00:30:47.839
And and you know, there's plenty of truth in a
526
00:30:47.880 --> 00:30:50.759
lot of these stories that have been made public, but
527
00:30:51.000 --> 00:30:53.400
it's always the parts that are missing, and the public
528
00:30:53.480 --> 00:30:55.200
is you know the public doesn't. I mean, you guys
529
00:30:55.519 --> 00:30:58.119
can appreciate this because you've experienced this. One of the
530
00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:01.000
things that I was sort of had an Aha moment
531
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.039
at some point writing this book where I realized that
532
00:31:03.119 --> 00:31:07.160
what the public doesn't get when they get virtually any
533
00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:11.480
news story about a military event, they have no context, right,
534
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:17.039
I mean none, because very few Americans have been to war, right,
535
00:31:17.240 --> 00:31:20.240
very few Americans have put on a uniform. Right, That's
536
00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:24.759
an issue. And so going back twenty years after, you know.
537
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:28.119
Seal Team six is probably the one unit, one military unit,
538
00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:30.240
that you can name and people understand what that is.
539
00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:31.319
It's a global brand.
540
00:31:31.359 --> 00:31:33.799
As opposed to any other unit in the military that
541
00:31:33.880 --> 00:31:36.079
we might mention, you would have to stop, take a
542
00:31:36.119 --> 00:31:38.480
moment and kind of explain to the public what that
543
00:31:38.599 --> 00:31:41.039
unit is. And the Seals are probably the one exception
544
00:31:41.119 --> 00:31:43.519
to that. Hey, guys, I want to tell you about
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like some like ligning inside, so it's comfortable you know,
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s E. Thanks guys.
583
00:33:42.359 --> 00:33:45.880
Yeah, and I think that is a the you know,
584
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:47.559
I think the subtitle of this book could have been
585
00:33:47.559 --> 00:33:49.680
The Secrets of Seal Team Six. Could have also been
586
00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:52.079
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Yeah, they've done
587
00:33:52.079 --> 00:33:54.680
some incredibly heroic work. They've done some great work. I
588
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:57.119
know a lot of good Seals from Seal Team six,
589
00:33:57.359 --> 00:34:00.960
and I would venture to say that most good. But
590
00:34:01.079 --> 00:34:06.200
there is a steady core in the Seals and at
591
00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:08.280
Seal Team six. And the thing is is that you
592
00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:10.440
know your listeners know the difference between the Seals and
593
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.199
Seal Team six. But what people don't un fully appreciate
594
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:17.239
is that when you have a unit this elite, whatever
595
00:34:17.280 --> 00:34:21.440
they do eventually trickles down into the white side of
596
00:34:21.599 --> 00:34:25.400
the seals. And so that's how you get Eddie Gallagher, right,
597
00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:28.760
That's where you get where it's like, you know, to
598
00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:31.440
be expected kind of that eventually you're going to have
599
00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:35.519
you know, someone said to me when I was interviewing
600
00:34:36.079 --> 00:34:39.280
former seal and member of Seal Team six about Eddie Leisure,
601
00:34:39.280 --> 00:34:41.440
and they said, you know, after Vietnam, we had twenty
602
00:34:41.559 --> 00:34:45.920
or thirty Eddie leisures in the teams and later, you know,
603
00:34:46.039 --> 00:34:48.320
not later, actually prior to that. When I interviewed someone
604
00:34:48.440 --> 00:34:52.599
during the Gallagher during the court martial, it was you know,
605
00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:55.199
we have twenty year thirty Eddie Gallaghers and the teams.
606
00:34:55.199 --> 00:34:57.440
There's nothing special about them in that sense. What was
607
00:34:57.440 --> 00:34:59.119
special was that there were a bunch of kids who
608
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:02.800
came and decided that you know, they would put their
609
00:35:02.840 --> 00:35:07.039
careers in jeopardy to try to stop them, right, So
610
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:09.519
you know that's the that's the motivation.
611
00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:12.039
Behind So let me ask you them, what is the
612
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:14.159
difference between.
613
00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:20.639
Something like this happening at Seal Team six by something
614
00:35:20.639 --> 00:35:25.400
that happened SF or rangers or like, are we just
615
00:35:25.559 --> 00:35:28.880
looking at individual like these these bad seeds, you know,
616
00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:32.760
these people that you know get through their screening process
617
00:35:32.920 --> 00:35:36.159
and do things that you know, whether you're in combat
618
00:35:36.280 --> 00:35:41.519
or or back home. You know, you know, are war
619
00:35:41.559 --> 00:35:44.360
crimes illegal things like that? Is there a difference between
620
00:35:45.320 --> 00:35:47.360
like when it happens in the sealed community and when
621
00:35:47.360 --> 00:35:48.559
it happens someplace else?
622
00:35:49.039 --> 00:35:53.079
No, I mean, look, crimes of war and violations of
623
00:35:53.119 --> 00:35:55.679
the laws of war are are the same regardless of
624
00:35:55.719 --> 00:35:58.239
who commits them. I think the question is what you
625
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:02.599
do about them and what is the frequency. But it's
626
00:36:02.639 --> 00:36:06.320
beyond that, there is a there are legal questions, There
627
00:36:06.320 --> 00:36:10.599
are ethical questions, and there are moral questions. And Seal
628
00:36:10.639 --> 00:36:18.239
Team six and the Seals are very unique in their
629
00:36:18.639 --> 00:36:24.440
ethical particularly ethical but in some cases moral and legal issues.
630
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:28.320
They have problems, and the real issue is they just
631
00:36:28.360 --> 00:36:32.119
won't deal with it. I mean, the reason why this
632
00:36:32.159 --> 00:36:37.159
book exists is because they couldn't clean up their own shop, period, right.
633
00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:39.159
And I think you know, we were talking a little
634
00:36:39.159 --> 00:36:43.119
bit about this before we went on. Delta had some
635
00:36:43.199 --> 00:36:45.199
of the same problems. Early in the war. They had
636
00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:48.360
war crimes issues, they were very aggressive. They lost a
637
00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:51.320
lot of guys. They were not asking questions. There was
638
00:36:51.360 --> 00:36:54.280
not a whole lot of supervision. Rock was a mess,
639
00:36:54.880 --> 00:36:58.920
was you know, as you know, you both know very
640
00:36:58.920 --> 00:37:05.239
well battlefield that was just chock full of targets. The
641
00:37:05.320 --> 00:37:14.960
guys who were committing wanton acts of desecration, mutilations, war
642
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.719
crimes in Delta were all quietly let go afterwards. They
643
00:37:19.719 --> 00:37:22.400
weren't brought up on charges. There was no court martial,
644
00:37:22.559 --> 00:37:26.000
there's no UCMJ. They were when the deployment was over.
645
00:37:26.599 --> 00:37:28.719
They were given time to sort of process through and
646
00:37:28.719 --> 00:37:30.360
then they were just asked to leave and there was
647
00:37:30.400 --> 00:37:34.119
no there was no answer or explanation. That is something
648
00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:36.559
that you know. They they took care of their virus
649
00:37:36.639 --> 00:37:39.480
is the you know they had an illness. They policed
650
00:37:39.519 --> 00:37:43.400
their own because because the integrity of the unit was
651
00:37:43.559 --> 00:37:46.840
always greater than any individual member of the unit. And
652
00:37:46.880 --> 00:37:49.039
that is a cultural issue. And I'm not an expert
653
00:37:49.119 --> 00:37:52.199
on Delta. I ask everyone that I talked to, especially
654
00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:55.360
in Delta and in the Seals, what's the difference between
655
00:37:55.400 --> 00:37:57.000
you guys. And I don't just mean how you hold
656
00:37:57.039 --> 00:37:59.400
your guns or how you you know, attack a target.
657
00:37:59.480 --> 00:38:03.639
What are the could issues And that is the biggest
658
00:38:03.679 --> 00:38:06.800
one that there are. There's a standard, it has to
659
00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:11.840
be met every day, and at Team six, historically it
660
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:15.960
is the opposite. Once you're in, the standards are relaxed.
661
00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:20.400
And there's also this team issue. The seals make it
662
00:38:20.440 --> 00:38:22.360
through budgs. You become a Seal by working as a
663
00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:25.920
Team six in a boat, right, and that concept is
664
00:38:25.920 --> 00:38:30.000
what gets you through, and that creates an incredibly intense bond,
665
00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:35.199
one that I think is often the envy of other units. They're,
666
00:38:35.480 --> 00:38:37.400
you know, really to close knit. The problem is is
667
00:38:37.440 --> 00:38:39.199
that when things go bad, you never want to see
668
00:38:39.199 --> 00:38:42.079
your buddy kicked out or screwed over, right, So that
669
00:38:42.239 --> 00:38:46.159
the instinct is fix, Yeah, let's fix this in house,
670
00:38:46.280 --> 00:38:48.400
keep it in house. And that's what Marsinco did when
671
00:38:48.440 --> 00:38:50.480
he set up Seal Team six, and he said so explicitly.
672
00:38:50.599 --> 00:38:53.599
There's a lot in your book about Marsenco and about
673
00:38:53.639 --> 00:38:56.360
how it kind of was founded on this pirate culture.
674
00:38:56.440 --> 00:38:59.800
But I do want to skip ahead and talk about
675
00:38:59.800 --> 00:39:02.400
how these problems got accelerated during the War on Terror.
676
00:39:02.440 --> 00:39:04.039
And I was wondering if you could tell us about
677
00:39:04.239 --> 00:39:07.039
what really happened at Roberts Ridge and how that really
678
00:39:09.199 --> 00:39:12.960
started accelerating the problems that the unit was have and
679
00:39:13.559 --> 00:39:17.079
led to other things. But if you could tell the story, sure.
680
00:39:17.079 --> 00:39:20.800
So. The battle at Roberts Ridge was at a mountaintop
681
00:39:20.880 --> 00:39:24.400
known as Talker Gar in eastern Afghanistan in March early
682
00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:27.920
March of two thousand and two. The Seals were part
683
00:39:27.960 --> 00:39:33.039
of the soft Unit, a recon element for a larger,
684
00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:37.880
big army push into what the military believed at the
685
00:39:37.880 --> 00:39:40.239
time was the last valley of stronghold of Taliban and
686
00:39:40.280 --> 00:39:45.159
al Qaeda fighters and there was a deadline to meet
687
00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:50.960
and the Seals, a small seal recon element from Seal
688
00:39:51.039 --> 00:39:55.920
Team six from Red Team, went in by helicopter. One
689
00:39:55.960 --> 00:39:59.400
of the seal one of the operators, Neil Roberts, fell
690
00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:02.519
out the back of the helicopter after the helicopter was
691
00:40:02.599 --> 00:40:05.400
hit by enemy fire at the top of the mountain.
692
00:40:07.039 --> 00:40:13.519
They then the helicopter recovered Eventually the team. The surviving
693
00:40:13.519 --> 00:40:18.480
team went back in looking for him. That led to
694
00:40:19.519 --> 00:40:23.800
the in another ambush and extended firefight with some Alkaido
695
00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:29.559
fighters was a very entrenched position. Neil Roberts was killed
696
00:40:30.159 --> 00:40:32.280
pretty quickly. The Seals didn't know that but he was
697
00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:37.079
killed pretty quickly, and then the combat controlman who was
698
00:40:37.519 --> 00:40:41.840
the CCT attached to the Red Team, John Chapman, was struck.
699
00:40:42.719 --> 00:40:45.920
The two other seals in the in the group were hit.
700
00:40:46.519 --> 00:40:52.760
They blew smoke and retreated to save the remaining guys.
701
00:40:53.239 --> 00:40:57.519
Chapman was left believed to be dead. Turns out he
702
00:40:57.679 --> 00:41:01.480
was not dead. He was He later covered from his
703
00:41:01.519 --> 00:41:03.639
wounds and fought alone at the top of the mountain
704
00:41:03.679 --> 00:41:09.000
for about an hour before a QRF comes in with rangers,
705
00:41:09.400 --> 00:41:13.159
primarily another somewhere. I think there's a total of seven
706
00:41:13.400 --> 00:41:15.920
who died that day. There was another five. They were
707
00:41:15.920 --> 00:41:18.719
not all rangers, four rangers I think in another air force,
708
00:41:18.880 --> 00:41:23.039
maybe a PJ who was killed on the on the mountain. Ultimately,
709
00:41:23.039 --> 00:41:27.239
they they got the the the Americans won, took control
710
00:41:27.280 --> 00:41:32.760
of the mountain, but they lost seven servicemen. As I said,
711
00:41:32.840 --> 00:41:36.440
the first member of Seal Team six. In the aftermath
712
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:44.880
of Roberts Ridge, the seals discovered that Neil Roberts had
713
00:41:44.960 --> 00:41:47.760
been mutilated and that the enemy they in fact had
714
00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:51.639
been seen on the ISR coverage as it was happening
715
00:41:52.239 --> 00:41:55.920
in certain places. One of the guys that the enemy
716
00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:58.440
had tried to cut off his head and almost did,
717
00:41:58.440 --> 00:42:01.440
but it failed. And when his body is brought back
718
00:42:01.480 --> 00:42:04.119
to Bogram and this I didn't know until I did
719
00:42:04.119 --> 00:42:08.280
the book, and I actually I ask you guys whether
720
00:42:08.320 --> 00:42:10.440
this was normal. I was told that this was very
721
00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:15.719
unusual and not normal. They basically had most of his teammates,
722
00:42:15.760 --> 00:42:17.480
almost all of them, come in and view the body
723
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:20.039
in that condition, and that there was a law. And
724
00:42:20.039 --> 00:42:21.760
I actually talked to some people who were there when
725
00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:24.119
it was happening, and there was a long line waiting.
726
00:42:25.239 --> 00:42:27.679
Needless to say, it was a very traumatic event. They
727
00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:32.760
had lost their first teammate, Chapman died. There's a you know,
728
00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:36.920
a secondary scandal and issue with Chapman that we can
729
00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:41.079
get into later. But the suffice to say what happens
730
00:42:41.119 --> 00:42:45.920
here is sort of two things. Seal Team six, for
731
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:48.480
the first time in their history, is in real war
732
00:42:48.599 --> 00:42:52.639
and combat. Right. The reality is is that until nine
733
00:42:52.639 --> 00:42:56.760
to eleven in Jaysack and when Special Operations Seal Team
734
00:42:56.800 --> 00:43:00.440
six was JV to Delta, it just was they never
735
00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:03.159
got the they never got picked for the missions. They
736
00:43:03.320 --> 00:43:08.559
finally broke through in Bosnia with with one of the snatches,
737
00:43:08.679 --> 00:43:10.719
and so they started get to pick up steam, but
738
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:15.840
they were never the first choice. Now they were at
739
00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:18.679
war and Seal Team six is on the front lines
740
00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:22.559
and they get they face get faced with a horrific
741
00:43:22.719 --> 00:43:26.559
situation in which, you know, their team leader, Britz Slavinski,
742
00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:31.000
is essentially ordered to go up to the top of
743
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:35.639
of a of a mountain and violating all the basic
744
00:43:35.719 --> 00:43:41.280
principles of reconnaissance against his own recommendation to his officers.
745
00:43:41.760 --> 00:43:43.239
And I just want to stop here and say that
746
00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:46.599
one of the things that is most interesting I think
747
00:43:47.239 --> 00:43:49.280
about understanding the culture, and you know, I think that's
748
00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:52.559
obviously true. It dealt as well. But Seal Team six,
749
00:43:52.960 --> 00:43:58.119
Dick Marsenko built the unit so that the officers command,
750
00:43:58.159 --> 00:44:03.679
but the senior enlisted lead. And so when Slabinsky says,
751
00:44:03.719 --> 00:44:06.480
I need twenty four hours more and he is told
752
00:44:06.519 --> 00:44:09.840
basically shut up and gets to the top, he's following
753
00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:12.199
his orders. And so it's not you know, it is
754
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:15.519
not his responsibility that they were sent up there, but
755
00:44:15.599 --> 00:44:19.960
it's also the capitulation from the E seven or the
756
00:44:19.960 --> 00:44:22.480
E eight, who definitely knew better than the two men
757
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:25.159
who were ordering him up there, right, he knew better.
758
00:44:25.519 --> 00:44:27.440
And it's something that he said, you know, in the
759
00:44:27.480 --> 00:44:30.119
interviews that I published, he talks about he knew he
760
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:34.639
was violating this this this cardinal you know, this basic
761
00:44:34.719 --> 00:44:40.920
rule of recon and it was eating at him immediately. Right,
762
00:44:42.159 --> 00:44:47.480
So they sort of have this really awful event. They
763
00:44:47.559 --> 00:44:50.639
have this horrific thing happened to one of their teammates,
764
00:44:50.679 --> 00:44:53.679
and in the immediate aftermath, and I mean immediate, they
765
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:55.840
went on a some of them, not all of them.
766
00:44:55.880 --> 00:44:58.199
Some of the unit went on for what later became
767
00:44:58.239 --> 00:45:01.360
known as revenge jops. They were at for blood and so,
768
00:45:04.840 --> 00:45:07.159
you know, it's trite, but they went up one way
769
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:09.679
and they came down another. Right, The guys who were
770
00:45:09.719 --> 00:45:12.039
on that mountain did not come back down the same
771
00:45:12.079 --> 00:45:15.320
and it trickled through most of the team because of
772
00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:18.320
the nature of the way the unit was. And there
773
00:45:18.400 --> 00:45:20.880
was this sort of other element, you know, which is
774
00:45:20.920 --> 00:45:23.519
that we can get into the squadrons. But at the
775
00:45:23.519 --> 00:45:25.360
time it was Red Team and they were known as
776
00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:28.239
the Red Men. They had a mascot, Native American mascot,
777
00:45:28.639 --> 00:45:34.320
and so there was this this identity issue that grew
778
00:45:35.159 --> 00:45:39.000
and in the immediate after math, there were you know,
779
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:42.440
there were war crimes very quickly afterwards within twenty four
780
00:45:42.639 --> 00:45:45.800
thirty six hours by the seals, some of the seals,
781
00:45:45.800 --> 00:45:50.599
including one of the officers. And so it's your starting
782
00:45:50.639 --> 00:45:53.119
point of understanding post nine to eleven how things change.
783
00:45:53.159 --> 00:45:55.480
And you know, some of it is obviously they had
784
00:45:55.519 --> 00:45:59.199
a culture of cover ups in the Seals and in
785
00:45:59.239 --> 00:46:01.480
Seal Team six unit. But the other thing is, let's
786
00:46:01.480 --> 00:46:03.599
be honest, right, it was war for the first time.
787
00:46:03.679 --> 00:46:04.679
You guys are seeing war.
788
00:46:04.559 --> 00:46:05.119
For the first time.
789
00:46:05.199 --> 00:46:07.960
Well, and not only was it war, but they saw
790
00:46:08.719 --> 00:46:12.079
a friend of theirs, a teammate, you know, somebody who
791
00:46:12.119 --> 00:46:15.960
they had spent time with, you know, who they knew personally,
792
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.199
having been savaged, you know, not just killed, but savage.
793
00:46:21.400 --> 00:46:25.519
And I can I can definitely understand sort of that
794
00:46:25.559 --> 00:46:28.800
mentality of all right, well, let's get some right.
795
00:46:28.960 --> 00:46:30.519
I don't think you know, I think that it is
796
00:46:30.559 --> 00:46:33.920
fair to say that that most people can can relate
797
00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:37.320
or appreciate to that feeling. Right, So the notion that
798
00:46:37.400 --> 00:46:40.480
there is an eye for an eye and justice needs
799
00:46:40.480 --> 00:46:42.679
to be served, you know, that there needs to be revenge.
800
00:46:42.880 --> 00:46:47.079
I think what your officers will tell you is is
801
00:46:47.079 --> 00:46:49.239
that that's all well and good, but we have a law.
802
00:46:49.639 --> 00:46:53.079
We have rules and regulations, and we need to keep
803
00:46:53.079 --> 00:46:56.440
it within the bounds of what's acceptable. And I think
804
00:46:57.000 --> 00:46:58.800
you know what some almos said to me one time was,
805
00:46:58.880 --> 00:47:03.119
you know, it was that there was ever really one
806
00:47:03.199 --> 00:47:06.800
moment where we had just gone, where the whole unit
807
00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:10.320
had gone totally off the rails. What they said was,
808
00:47:11.119 --> 00:47:16.880
on each deployment there were groups of guys in each
809
00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:20.840
squadron that would go too far. But what happened is
810
00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:25.679
they were never pulled back, never in fifteen in twenty years,
811
00:47:25.719 --> 00:47:28.119
and so the officers never did anything about it, and
812
00:47:28.199 --> 00:47:32.400
so each deployment the line moved so that by ten
813
00:47:32.480 --> 00:47:34.360
years later, you know, and I get into it in
814
00:47:34.360 --> 00:47:37.360
the book, you get Britz Slabinski seven years later, actually
815
00:47:37.440 --> 00:47:39.679
from that end, since five years later, asking for a
816
00:47:39.719 --> 00:47:42.280
head on a platter. And there's a debate about whether
817
00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:45.480
it was metaphoric or whether it was literal, but some
818
00:47:45.559 --> 00:47:48.599
of his men took it as a direct order and
819
00:47:48.800 --> 00:47:52.360
tried to obey and comply with it. And that was
820
00:47:52.480 --> 00:47:55.760
just one of what was a very bad and very
821
00:47:55.880 --> 00:47:59.119
rough deployment in which there was a view that the
822
00:47:59.159 --> 00:48:02.159
only way to defeat the Taliban was to be more
823
00:48:02.199 --> 00:48:05.639
savage than the savages right right to humanize the enemy
824
00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:09.360
and treat them as as they treat the civilian population.
825
00:48:09.960 --> 00:48:12.519
So it's not just it's not just warfare, but there's
826
00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:13.719
also psychological war.
827
00:48:14.480 --> 00:48:16.639
And so what I would say is is that what
828
00:48:16.719 --> 00:48:20.360
you there is a through line from what happened in
829
00:48:20.360 --> 00:48:24.679
the in the immediate aftermath of Robert's Ridge, to what
830
00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:28.400
happens later. Right, it's a it's a it's a culture,
831
00:48:29.280 --> 00:48:34.119
and it's a there's a lack of accountability, you know,
832
00:48:34.159 --> 00:48:36.079
and that's that's part of one of the one of
833
00:48:36.079 --> 00:48:36.880
the central stories.
834
00:48:36.880 --> 00:48:40.360
And unfortunately, so where were the officers. Why weren't the
835
00:48:40.400 --> 00:48:44.320
officers pulling them back or or like saying, hey, like
836
00:48:44.400 --> 00:48:46.679
we like we need to change these guys out, Like
837
00:48:46.719 --> 00:48:48.559
we need we need somebody to come in and fill
838
00:48:48.559 --> 00:48:50.920
in for them so they can decompress, because like they're
839
00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:52.199
round rely tight right now.
840
00:48:52.719 --> 00:48:56.599
It's an excellent question. The shortest answer is is that
841
00:48:56.679 --> 00:48:58.880
in many of the cases, not all, but many of
842
00:48:58.880 --> 00:49:02.159
the cases, the office who were leading these men were
843
00:49:02.400 --> 00:49:04.599
you know, at Seal Team six. The respect for officers
844
00:49:04.639 --> 00:49:07.679
from the enlisted comes from guys who had the kind
845
00:49:07.719 --> 00:49:10.039
of experience they did, who had gone through Green team
846
00:49:10.360 --> 00:49:13.719
who were you know, were trained and qualified as assaulters
847
00:49:14.079 --> 00:49:17.000
after nine to eleven. In several cases, because they had
848
00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:20.159
to surge up numbers, officers were allowed in who had
849
00:49:20.159 --> 00:49:22.320
not gone through green teams. So immediately you have a
850
00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:27.320
problem because those officers have no respect from the enlisted,
851
00:49:27.400 --> 00:49:30.199
and so the officers are leading from behind and from
852
00:49:30.280 --> 00:49:33.079
the position of they need the respect of the men.
853
00:49:33.119 --> 00:49:34.920
And the way to be respected is to be liked.
854
00:49:35.320 --> 00:49:39.000
You don't get liked by by being enforcing discipline and
855
00:49:39.079 --> 00:49:40.920
good order. You know, good order and discipline is the
856
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:44.760
Navy requires it. And so what you have are our
857
00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:48.440
officers who look the other way. You have officers who
858
00:49:49.079 --> 00:49:52.599
encouraged it, sometimes not using you know. One of the
859
00:49:52.599 --> 00:49:54.840
things that's hard to write about our all the euphemisms,
860
00:49:54.880 --> 00:49:58.639
and you know there's no directed it's you know, they
861
00:49:58.679 --> 00:50:00.440
sent messages just with folks, you.
862
00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:02.519
Know, the body language. Could you dive a little bit
863
00:50:02.519 --> 00:50:05.000
deeper into the culture of each of the squadrons, because
864
00:50:05.039 --> 00:50:07.320
I think this part is really interesting in how each
865
00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:11.639
squadron in dev group has its own identity and how
866
00:50:11.679 --> 00:50:13.599
that kind of expressed itself over the years.
867
00:50:13.800 --> 00:50:18.400
Yeah. Sure, So you know there are historically the squadrons.
868
00:50:19.760 --> 00:50:23.079
Original ones were gold and blue, which reflected the colors
869
00:50:23.079 --> 00:50:26.840
of the Navy at the time. Red is quickly added
870
00:50:27.639 --> 00:50:31.719
into it. Later there is gray, which are boats, there's black,
871
00:50:31.760 --> 00:50:37.360
and eventually silver. That's the rough. Each then develops a name.
872
00:50:37.400 --> 00:50:41.840
They have their own flag and identity. Gold where the
873
00:50:41.840 --> 00:50:45.280
Crusaders or the Knights depending on the year that shifted.
874
00:50:46.639 --> 00:50:49.360
The Red squadron where the red men and had a
875
00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:56.519
Native American mascot with two tomahawks. Across blue are the
876
00:50:56.559 --> 00:51:01.199
Pirates with the Jolly Roger flag. Black, which is an intelligence.
877
00:51:02.119 --> 00:51:03.760
I actually don't know their name, but they have a
878
00:51:03.840 --> 00:51:10.559
horse with two lightning bolts. And then later silver they're
879
00:51:10.599 --> 00:51:13.400
the Raiders. They have sort of a shield but one
880
00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:16.199
of everything. They've got a knife, they've got a hatchet,
881
00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:20.280
and a skull face to sort of reflect all of
882
00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:23.480
them because they were the newest of the units. The
883
00:51:25.440 --> 00:51:29.320
what you're asking about is really about the three Blue, Gold, and.
884
00:51:29.320 --> 00:51:31.039
The Salt squad The original.
885
00:51:30.719 --> 00:51:36.559
Salt squadrons Blue, Gold, and Red, and prior to not
886
00:51:36.760 --> 00:51:39.880
there was always a culture involved. They were defined in
887
00:51:39.920 --> 00:51:47.639
different generations, but there the Native American subculture in the
888
00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:50.239
you know, one of the traditions that in Red squadron
889
00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:53.800
was once you were drafted into the squadron after making
890
00:51:53.800 --> 00:51:56.280
it through selection and Green team, you had to yard
891
00:51:56.320 --> 00:52:00.119
in and yarding in, you had to wear a tradition
892
00:52:00.440 --> 00:52:04.880
and I don't know which tribe Native American head piece,
893
00:52:05.199 --> 00:52:07.920
and then you had to drink a yard of beer
894
00:52:07.960 --> 00:52:09.960
that had a I don't know if it was remember
895
00:52:09.960 --> 00:52:12.280
which hard alcohol it is at the bottom. And if
896
00:52:12.280 --> 00:52:15.159
you could do that, you you were in. And they
897
00:52:15.239 --> 00:52:17.199
had a culture which was known as sort of harder,
898
00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:22.480
not smarter. They were. Their culture was you met violence
899
00:52:22.519 --> 00:52:26.840
with more violence, and you solve problems by being stronger
900
00:52:26.840 --> 00:52:31.119
and bigger. Right, That was the psyche that had developed
901
00:52:31.159 --> 00:52:39.000
within that unit. Blue had you know, different parts in
902
00:52:39.079 --> 00:52:43.239
different places. Their subculture. You know, the way I really
903
00:52:43.280 --> 00:52:48.599
understand most of the subculture was in the kind of unfortunately,
904
00:52:48.599 --> 00:52:51.039
the kind of atrocities and desecration that each had their
905
00:52:51.039 --> 00:52:54.920
own kind of desecration basically, and it could move around.
906
00:52:56.039 --> 00:53:01.559
But the you know, Blue used knives and were known
907
00:53:01.599 --> 00:53:07.840
for skinning. Red used the hatchets gold. There's some things
908
00:53:07.840 --> 00:53:10.760
that I didn't put in the book. Sometimes it was
909
00:53:10.800 --> 00:53:15.079
because I didn't want to. There's enough enough. There's only
910
00:53:15.400 --> 00:53:19.119
a certain amount of you know, some of this stuff
911
00:53:19.159 --> 00:53:22.360
is gruesome, and it was Gold had a different style,
912
00:53:23.119 --> 00:53:24.400
is the best way I could say it. And they
913
00:53:24.440 --> 00:53:26.159
had some things that they did that were pretty disturbing.
914
00:53:26.920 --> 00:53:30.719
What they had all in common was they were sort
915
00:53:30.719 --> 00:53:34.079
of you know, one of the senior enlisted said to me, look,
916
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:37.599
there are sort of three responses in our guys in
917
00:53:37.679 --> 00:53:46.280
how they experience violence. Some their first instinct upon experiencing
918
00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:50.440
up close intense violence that is the business recoil and
919
00:53:50.480 --> 00:53:53.119
they self select out. And actually after Robert's Ridge, there
920
00:53:53.119 --> 00:53:54.960
were a lot of guys in Red Team that left
921
00:53:55.239 --> 00:54:01.000
Seal Team six. Several left the Seals altogether. Wasn't spoken about.
922
00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:03.199
It was just understood that it was, hey, it's not
923
00:54:03.239 --> 00:54:06.800
for me. There was another kind which fits along, you know,
924
00:54:06.800 --> 00:54:10.280
I think culturally more of the Red Squadron Red Team,
925
00:54:10.519 --> 00:54:15.559
which was to meet violence with more violence. There was
926
00:54:15.599 --> 00:54:17.880
a third which I think is the most actually the
927
00:54:17.880 --> 00:54:21.079
most interesting, the hardest to write about because it as
928
00:54:21.119 --> 00:54:25.079
an outsider, which is that there were some who saw
929
00:54:25.559 --> 00:54:28.679
art as some violence as a sort of art, which
930
00:54:28.719 --> 00:54:32.000
is to say, you use it the least amount possible
931
00:54:32.360 --> 00:54:35.440
and only when necessary. And you're looking for solutions to
932
00:54:35.519 --> 00:54:37.280
a problem. I mean, I think by the way, it's
933
00:54:37.280 --> 00:54:41.079
probably common in other units. You're given a task and
934
00:54:41.400 --> 00:54:45.039
you're looking for a way to not kill to accomplish
935
00:54:45.079 --> 00:54:50.440
your mission. And a lot of the operators and the
936
00:54:51.039 --> 00:54:55.679
senior enlisted who were described to me fitting in that category,
937
00:54:55.679 --> 00:54:58.599
for whatever reason, fell into blue. And I don't know,
938
00:54:58.760 --> 00:55:02.599
I guess I can't speak to why that culture within
939
00:55:02.639 --> 00:55:06.039
the pirates may have existed. They also had, you know,
940
00:55:06.079 --> 00:55:07.960
they were off the rails for a couple of years.
941
00:55:09.559 --> 00:55:11.320
They just have different you know, it's the way they
942
00:55:11.320 --> 00:55:13.239
compete with each other, it's the way they differentiate from
943
00:55:13.239 --> 00:55:15.000
each other. And it happened organically.
944
00:55:15.880 --> 00:55:19.079
I mean, in some cases, I would think that like violence,
945
00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:22.280
you know, you meet violence with more violence is an
946
00:55:22.320 --> 00:55:29.840
appropriate solution. But you're talking about not just violence, not
947
00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:33.679
just violence of action or or hitting targets harder, or
948
00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:39.400
expanding operations. But we're going into skinning, We're going into
949
00:55:39.519 --> 00:55:47.159
things that are probably not healthy expressions of that type
950
00:55:47.159 --> 00:55:47.719
of violence.
951
00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:50.039
Yeah, And I'm not I'm not I'm not saying I'm
952
00:55:50.039 --> 00:55:55.360
not suggesting that meeting violence with more violence is necessarily wrong, right,
953
00:55:55.480 --> 00:55:57.679
and by any way illegal. It is you know, as
954
00:55:58.320 --> 00:56:02.159
you can tell me, right, the job is one of aggression,
955
00:56:02.519 --> 00:56:06.599
but it is also and you know, the the what
956
00:56:06.719 --> 00:56:09.239
everyone will tell you from Seal Team six, of course,
957
00:56:09.360 --> 00:56:13.280
is is that the main skill is knowing when to
958
00:56:13.360 --> 00:56:16.079
be aggressive and when not to be aggressive. Right when
959
00:56:16.079 --> 00:56:18.199
you dial it down to the most basic thing, it's
960
00:56:18.599 --> 00:56:21.480
when to shoot and when not to shoot, to when
961
00:56:21.519 --> 00:56:25.719
you're justified, escalation, escalation of force. And so I think
962
00:56:25.800 --> 00:56:28.400
that it is on all of these things you have
963
00:56:28.639 --> 00:56:31.840
in a soft unit. You're living on a knife's edge,
964
00:56:32.480 --> 00:56:36.039
and you need a leash, you need some kind of
965
00:56:36.039 --> 00:56:38.239
discipline to hold it together, or you go to the
966
00:56:38.320 --> 00:56:40.519
wrong side. And I think it's Seal Team six in particular.
967
00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:44.039
They have this problem. They ride this edge. They recruit
968
00:56:44.119 --> 00:56:47.400
and select for guys who are hyper aggressive, who look
969
00:56:47.440 --> 00:56:50.639
to cook cut corners to solve problems and come up
970
00:56:50.639 --> 00:56:52.599
with solutions. If you ain't cheat and you ain't trying
971
00:56:53.119 --> 00:56:56.119
concept right, And the problem is is that what and
972
00:56:56.400 --> 00:56:58.639
this is someone this is These are seals telling me this,
973
00:56:58.719 --> 00:57:01.400
older seals telling me this. That was fine prior to
974
00:57:01.440 --> 00:57:04.480
nine to eleven, but no one in the military thought
975
00:57:04.519 --> 00:57:07.840
about the effects of fifteen to twenty years of warfare
976
00:57:08.199 --> 00:57:12.920
in up close violence on the secondary and tertiary effects
977
00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:14.199
for operators.
978
00:57:14.559 --> 00:57:18.159
Yeah, I mean, I don't think many of us, certainly
979
00:57:18.199 --> 00:57:21.199
not myself, have a problem with shooting terrorists in the face,
980
00:57:21.360 --> 00:57:24.519
you know, in combat. But I want to talk about
981
00:57:24.559 --> 00:57:27.920
some things that I do think are problematic. Tell us
982
00:57:27.960 --> 00:57:30.000
about the bleedout videos. What was that about?
983
00:57:31.079 --> 00:57:36.519
Well, there was one seal in particular early on in
984
00:57:36.679 --> 00:57:39.559
Red Team, who was on some of the early deployments
985
00:57:40.079 --> 00:57:48.199
whose job was filming after the operation to identify, you know,
986
00:57:48.320 --> 00:57:51.320
who had been killed and you know, gives you know,
987
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:55.039
sort of crime scene photos if you will, for headquarters
988
00:57:55.039 --> 00:58:01.239
and higher and he took a particular glee in replaying
989
00:58:01.280 --> 00:58:05.760
the videos in their hooches basically back at Bagram. Afterwards,
990
00:58:05.760 --> 00:58:09.760
he'd get the group together and watch the videos over
991
00:58:09.800 --> 00:58:14.519
and over and would do a sort of countdown of
992
00:58:14.639 --> 00:58:19.840
watching people expire. And you know, in and of itself,
993
00:58:20.719 --> 00:58:25.920
it was it's it's tasteless, but it's not necessarily illegal.
994
00:58:26.039 --> 00:58:30.079
What the members of Seal Team six, the leaders of
995
00:58:30.079 --> 00:58:31.840
Seal Team six that I had interviewed who told me
996
00:58:31.880 --> 00:58:34.039
about them, said was the problem was it was a
997
00:58:34.159 --> 00:58:38.320
very easy to spot sign early on that there was
998
00:58:38.679 --> 00:58:42.199
a lust for this. There was something that was inappropriate
999
00:58:42.280 --> 00:58:45.719
going on in terms of making yeah about the about
1000
00:58:45.719 --> 00:58:48.360
the enjoyment part. And it was a sign that there
1001
00:58:48.400 --> 00:58:50.239
was a there was something that needed to be rained
1002
00:58:50.280 --> 00:58:52.840
in and watched closely right in and of itself. It
1003
00:58:52.880 --> 00:58:54.960
may not be you weren't going to bring someone up
1004
00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:56.599
on charges on it, but it was. It was a
1005
00:58:56.639 --> 00:58:58.519
sign that there was a problem, and no one would
1006
00:58:58.519 --> 00:59:00.199
say anything about it. They were sort of laughing thing,
1007
00:59:00.239 --> 00:59:01.960
and and it kept on going for you know, it
1008
00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:03.599
went on for about two deployments I think, and that
1009
00:59:03.639 --> 00:59:07.639
seal later was kicked out because he he he struck
1010
00:59:07.639 --> 00:59:11.320
a teammate. He got drunk ah undeployment and pistol whiped
1011
00:59:11.320 --> 00:59:13.559
one of his teammates, so you know, and then the
1012
00:59:13.599 --> 00:59:15.079
CIA hired him.
1013
00:59:16.360 --> 00:59:18.360
What about you mentioned in the in the book also
1014
00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:20.800
that they were staging like martial arts matches.
1015
00:59:20.800 --> 00:59:26.079
At some point said in the book, yeah, well the
1016
00:59:26.119 --> 00:59:29.440
martial arts, I mean, because he talked about Dwayne Dieter
1017
00:59:30.280 --> 00:59:32.880
right in that and then they like, no, no, no,
1018
00:59:32.920 --> 00:59:33.239
not that.
1019
00:59:33.800 --> 00:59:36.159
The martials matches. It's all right, we can go on
1020
00:59:36.280 --> 00:59:38.519
to uh, the skal thing.
1021
00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:40.519
Well you can ask me that I thought that was
1022
00:59:40.519 --> 00:59:45.559
something that I didn't put in, which if I didn't
1023
00:59:45.599 --> 00:59:47.840
put in, I can you know. I don't want to.
1024
00:59:49.000 --> 00:59:50.880
It's reportable if it's in the book. If it's not
1025
00:59:51.000 --> 00:59:53.199
the book that you know, well, well I may have
1026
00:59:53.320 --> 00:59:56.480
enough to support it. Uh No, I don't want to.
1027
00:59:56.679 --> 01:00:00.719
It's mentioned in the book. But I mean, we move
1028
01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:04.639
on to the hatchets, and if you can tell us
1029
01:00:04.679 --> 01:00:09.480
how they migrated into into Seal Team six, how these
1030
01:00:09.519 --> 01:00:11.639
guys started carrying them, and I mean, what the hell
1031
01:00:11.639 --> 01:00:13.360
they were carrying them on target for.
1032
01:00:14.519 --> 01:00:18.280
So there was prior to nine to eleven there was
1033
01:00:18.599 --> 01:00:21.599
a seal operator named Kevin Holland who was in Red Team,
1034
01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:27.280
who was a avid outdoorsman and was I don't know
1035
01:00:27.280 --> 01:00:29.880
if he's from North Carolina. I think he's from North Carolina,
1036
01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:34.000
and he happened to be friends with the bladesmith Daniel
1037
01:00:34.800 --> 01:00:37.119
Dan Winkler, who at the time was best known in
1038
01:00:37.119 --> 01:00:41.119
that community for having made all of the appropriate era
1039
01:00:41.440 --> 01:00:44.719
piece of weapons for the movie Last of the Mohicans,
1040
01:00:45.199 --> 01:00:51.320
and Holland ended up leaving the Seals prior to nine
1041
01:00:51.360 --> 01:00:53.320
to eleven. After nine eleven, he wanted to come back
1042
01:00:53.400 --> 01:00:55.360
Seal Team six said he would have to do a
1043
01:00:55.400 --> 01:00:59.000
deployment on the white side. He refused, so he asked
1044
01:00:59.000 --> 01:01:01.280
Delta if he could joined. They said, if you can
1045
01:01:01.320 --> 01:01:05.639
pass the uh, the course, you know, in the selection,
1046
01:01:05.719 --> 01:01:09.440
you're in. He became a member of C Squadron and
1047
01:01:09.599 --> 01:01:14.880
he got Winkler to excuse me, to make uh these
1048
01:01:16.199 --> 01:01:22.440
hatchets tomahawks for his teammates in Delta. They were numbered
1049
01:01:22.440 --> 01:01:24.920
the original ones on the handles had like one, I
1050
01:01:24.920 --> 01:01:27.320
don't know if it was two digits, three digits one
1051
01:01:27.400 --> 01:01:32.360
or one up through you know, ten or eleven. And
1052
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:35.519
they were deployed. They were used by and carried by
1053
01:01:35.599 --> 01:01:38.119
Delta in the early years of the war in Rock
1054
01:01:38.199 --> 01:01:42.760
Oh four I think five. At that time, Seal Team
1055
01:01:42.880 --> 01:01:47.039
six was being assigned to do deployments onesie tuoesies do
1056
01:01:47.159 --> 01:01:53.880
deployments with CAG and the Seals saw uh. And the
1057
01:01:54.440 --> 01:01:56.320
some of the Seals who were from Red Team and
1058
01:01:56.360 --> 01:02:00.239
then later Red Squadron understood, you know, Kevin Holland was
1059
01:02:00.840 --> 01:02:03.840
a former Red Squadron guy, and they sort of, you know,
1060
01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:06.119
came upon the idea that hey, we're Red Squadron, we're
1061
01:02:06.119 --> 01:02:09.280
the Red Men, we should have these tomahawks. So Red
1062
01:02:09.280 --> 01:02:12.239
Team at that time was led by a young commander
1063
01:02:12.320 --> 01:02:18.400
named Wyman Howard, and Howard and his master chief, Jimmy Lindell,
1064
01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:23.920
came up with the idea of getting donors to pay
1065
01:02:24.039 --> 01:02:27.719
for making them their custom made. I think on the
1066
01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:32.519
commercial market they cost six hundred bucks. I think to
1067
01:02:32.639 --> 01:02:36.199
make they're about three hundred bucks. So he got people
1068
01:02:36.239 --> 01:02:38.920
to donate three hundred and fifty dollars to have them
1069
01:02:38.960 --> 01:02:41.960
made and then would hand them out to every member
1070
01:02:42.119 --> 01:02:44.480
of Red Squadron who had a year of service in
1071
01:02:44.519 --> 01:02:50.039
the squadron. At that same time, Howard was giving sort
1072
01:02:50.079 --> 01:02:52.880
of pep talks about because it was the Red Men,
1073
01:02:53.280 --> 01:02:56.079
about bloodying your hatchet, getting you know, getting blood on
1074
01:02:56.119 --> 01:02:58.480
your hatchet. Well, you know, at times it was a
1075
01:02:58.519 --> 01:03:01.280
euphemism for you know, did you shoot, did you did
1076
01:03:01.280 --> 01:03:04.480
you kill? You know, you were you in action and
1077
01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:11.079
in combat? And unfortunately those were words and just the
1078
01:03:11.159 --> 01:03:16.519
right encouragement for guys in Red Squadron to start using
1079
01:03:16.599 --> 01:03:18.760
the hatchets. Not everyone carried them, by the way. I
1080
01:03:18.920 --> 01:03:20.920
talked to plenty of people in Red Squadron who felt
1081
01:03:20.920 --> 01:03:24.000
that there was zero military utility or use for them.
1082
01:03:24.760 --> 01:03:26.760
Others who thought, you know, it's great for knocking down
1083
01:03:26.800 --> 01:03:30.000
locks and doors. But yes, they used the hatchets. Some
1084
01:03:30.079 --> 01:03:34.039
of them used the hatchets to desecrate bodies, in part
1085
01:03:34.079 --> 01:03:37.440
to leave a message for the enemy when they picked
1086
01:03:37.480 --> 01:03:41.840
their comrades up on the battlefield to bury them, that
1087
01:03:42.119 --> 01:03:44.679
Red Squadron had been there, that the Americans had been there,
1088
01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:48.159
that there was psychological there was a psychological warfare component
1089
01:03:48.519 --> 01:03:51.119
to it. It wasn't a direction, it wasn't in order.
1090
01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:54.039
It was known, it was understood it was going on.
1091
01:03:54.119 --> 01:03:57.480
It was well known within Sealed Team six. And there's
1092
01:03:57.519 --> 01:04:00.280
another case going back to, you know, asking where the
1093
01:04:00.280 --> 01:04:03.079
officers and what are they doing? You know, as long
1094
01:04:03.119 --> 01:04:06.360
as there weren't reports coming up to the five level
1095
01:04:06.440 --> 01:04:08.960
or the six level or outside the unit that this
1096
01:04:09.079 --> 01:04:13.039
was going on, you know who felt bad for the
1097
01:04:13.159 --> 01:04:16.519
enemy and that took on a life. But I think
1098
01:04:16.519 --> 01:04:20.480
it's it. It happens to be pretty symbolic of, you know,
1099
01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:25.440
the lawlessness and the sort of renegade culture that took
1100
01:04:25.519 --> 01:04:30.039
over at you know, during the peak of the wars.
1101
01:04:30.440 --> 01:04:33.320
I'll just read this briefly and if you don't want
1102
01:04:33.320 --> 01:04:36.199
to comment deeper on it, it's it's fine but this
1103
01:04:36.280 --> 01:04:39.840
is on one. The commanding officer of Seal Team six
1104
01:04:39.880 --> 01:04:42.480
at that time, Captain Scott Moore, and his deputy, Captain
1105
01:04:42.519 --> 01:04:46.199
Tim Semanski, received reports from the battlefield their operators were
1106
01:04:46.280 --> 01:04:49.519
using the weapons to hack dead and dying militants. The
1107
01:04:49.599 --> 01:04:52.800
reports were not limited to Howard's Redman. Small groups within
1108
01:04:52.840 --> 01:04:55.599
the command were skinning the dead, and others practice to
1109
01:04:55.679 --> 01:04:59.840
mixed martial arts on detainees. The news that American servicemen
1110
01:05:00.119 --> 01:05:03.559
were engaged in such senseless brutality would seem to shock
1111
01:05:03.599 --> 01:05:06.360
the conscience, but at the command, no one said or
1112
01:05:06.400 --> 01:05:07.400
did anything about it.
1113
01:05:07.480 --> 01:05:12.039
Okay, So at the time that those reports came in,
1114
01:05:12.239 --> 01:05:16.800
I believe in sometime in two thousand and seven, and
1115
01:05:16.880 --> 01:05:21.000
at the time, Gold Squadron had been deployed in Iraq.
1116
01:05:21.760 --> 01:05:28.159
And the description of Gold Squadron again, let's make the
1117
01:05:28.199 --> 01:05:31.039
caveat here. We're not talking about everyone in a squadron.
1118
01:05:31.079 --> 01:05:33.360
We're not even talking about everyone in a troop. We
1119
01:05:33.400 --> 01:05:38.360
are talking largely about onesie twosies. But they traveled. It
1120
01:05:38.440 --> 01:05:40.559
was like having a little virus that would go from
1121
01:05:40.599 --> 01:05:43.480
one group to another, especially if they moved from one
1122
01:05:43.519 --> 01:05:48.159
squadron to another. They were as it was described to me,
1123
01:05:49.000 --> 01:05:55.000
there were some operators in Gold Squadron who would hit
1124
01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:00.760
a compound, would separate the men from the women and
1125
01:06:00.800 --> 01:06:06.320
the children. As it was described to me, if you
1126
01:06:06.440 --> 01:06:09.559
knew who the bad guy was, or there was someone
1127
01:06:09.599 --> 01:06:14.360
who got lippy and aggressive, there was a period of
1128
01:06:14.440 --> 01:06:18.199
time where team six operators again not all of them,
1129
01:06:18.599 --> 01:06:24.320
would bring your offender into a room two seals. One
1130
01:06:24.360 --> 01:06:28.480
would stand by the door with his uniform on, everything
1131
01:06:28.559 --> 01:06:33.119
equipment on the other. One would explain, you know, here's
1132
01:06:33.159 --> 01:06:35.280
a question. Did they do it through a translator? How
1133
01:06:35.280 --> 01:06:38.119
did they Basically he would take off his gear and say,
1134
01:06:38.480 --> 01:06:41.480
we're going to grapple. If you can win, you can
1135
01:06:42.079 --> 01:06:45.079
walk out of here. It was never possible, of course,
1136
01:06:45.079 --> 01:06:49.159
because the teammate was always standing there, and they would
1137
01:06:49.199 --> 01:06:52.280
grapple and use their skills to kill a target. How
1138
01:06:52.280 --> 01:06:55.039
they were on site, so they were all sorts of
1139
01:06:55.599 --> 01:07:01.039
legal gray areas. They were not detainees because they had
1140
01:07:01.079 --> 01:07:04.639
not yet been detained, and part of the purpose was
1141
01:07:04.719 --> 01:07:08.159
to take that individual out to the rest who were
1142
01:07:08.159 --> 01:07:12.400
getting t q'ed and tactical questioning and make it very
1143
01:07:12.400 --> 01:07:15.159
clear verbally and nonverbally that this is what happens if
1144
01:07:15.159 --> 01:07:18.840
you don't cooperate. As it was explained to me, this
1145
01:07:19.000 --> 01:07:21.519
was not done willy nilly with guys who you know
1146
01:07:21.559 --> 01:07:24.760
that the people that they were practicing their m m
1147
01:07:24.840 --> 01:07:28.159
A and martial arts skills on were not innocent. They
1148
01:07:28.159 --> 01:07:31.440
were legitimate targets. Not in that scenario, Let's be clear,
1149
01:07:31.519 --> 01:07:35.519
this was not an acceptable thing. But in the in
1150
01:07:35.559 --> 01:07:38.280
the in the yeah, for the for lack of a
1151
01:07:38.320 --> 01:07:40.400
better term, they were bad guys, and in the spectrum
1152
01:07:40.639 --> 01:07:43.559
of things, no one in the US military was going
1153
01:07:43.599 --> 01:07:47.679
to have any concern about about a this particular individual
1154
01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:54.119
have been deceased, right, you know, it's it's uh a
1155
01:07:54.159 --> 01:07:58.119
pretty awful and upsetting description of of it. There was
1156
01:07:58.320 --> 01:08:01.599
a you know, I looked into it a lot. One
1157
01:08:01.599 --> 01:08:07.280
of the descriptions I got of why was the guys
1158
01:08:08.119 --> 01:08:11.760
didn't have the ability to use their martial art training
1159
01:08:11.800 --> 01:08:14.840
and skills in any other capacity. They had done all
1160
01:08:14.840 --> 01:08:18.439
of this training, They were aggressive, They were doing a
1161
01:08:18.479 --> 01:08:21.039
lot of missions out. You know, I can't tell you
1162
01:08:21.439 --> 01:08:23.840
how many of those incidents there were. There was more
1163
01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:27.640
than one that I can say. And the only reason
1164
01:08:27.680 --> 01:08:29.920
why I wasn't sure I couldn't remember what I put
1165
01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:32.840
in in the book. There there are certain you know,
1166
01:08:33.319 --> 01:08:35.359
I try to limit it sometimes to sort of the
1167
01:08:35.359 --> 01:08:41.279
top level, but you know, it's sort of self explanatory.
1168
01:08:41.319 --> 01:08:44.439
It's a pretty awful thing. And I think, you know,
1169
01:08:44.840 --> 01:08:47.399
I think all of this fits in the category of
1170
01:08:48.479 --> 01:08:52.760
there's so much that we don't know. You know, there
1171
01:08:52.920 --> 01:08:57.479
is more that will never be shared outside of those
1172
01:08:57.479 --> 01:09:01.560
who were there, and it's a you know, it's a
1173
01:09:01.640 --> 01:09:04.960
very dark place. You know, there were some really bad
1174
01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:05.680
stuff that went on.
1175
01:09:06.319 --> 01:09:08.800
Tell us more about Wyman, who seems to be at
1176
01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:11.840
the center of a good deal of this and what
1177
01:09:11.960 --> 01:09:13.680
he's a commander of Warcom now.
1178
01:09:13.600 --> 01:09:14.960
He is, He's a two star.
1179
01:09:15.840 --> 01:09:17.479
He's been pitched in the press, I mean in the
1180
01:09:17.520 --> 01:09:19.680
Associated Press is like the guy who's coming to clean
1181
01:09:19.720 --> 01:09:20.239
everything up.
1182
01:09:20.399 --> 01:09:22.960
That's he's very good at media and he has done,
1183
01:09:23.000 --> 01:09:26.079
by the way, let's give him credit where credit is due.
1184
01:09:26.159 --> 01:09:29.159
Since he took over Warcom in the aftermath of the
1185
01:09:29.319 --> 01:09:34.279
Eddie Gallagher stuff, he has instituted some changes to the
1186
01:09:34.319 --> 01:09:37.680
way the Seals are organized and the way they're trained,
1187
01:09:37.760 --> 01:09:41.760
especially the officers, that the leadership courses and stuff like
1188
01:09:41.800 --> 01:09:44.840
that that are going to be beneficial. They will be
1189
01:09:45.079 --> 01:09:48.479
you know they're good. I will say that there's certainly
1190
01:09:49.000 --> 01:09:54.800
a very strong feeling that Howard's changes with the size
1191
01:09:54.880 --> 01:09:57.479
and makeup of the platoons of the White Side Seals
1192
01:09:57.640 --> 01:10:02.239
is a quantity you know, getting rid of the notion
1193
01:10:02.279 --> 01:10:04.239
of quantity over quality and going back the other way
1194
01:10:04.239 --> 01:10:07.159
to pre nine to eleven. There's another, you know, more
1195
01:10:07.159 --> 01:10:09.800
cynical view, which is that if you dump the number
1196
01:10:09.800 --> 01:10:13.239
of Seals and you keep a good larger portion of
1197
01:10:13.279 --> 01:10:17.239
them from going abroad, you're gonna have fewer problems, which is,
1198
01:10:17.640 --> 01:10:19.079
you know what you hope for when you want to
1199
01:10:19.119 --> 01:10:23.560
ride out a two year term and tour, get your
1200
01:10:23.560 --> 01:10:29.520
third star and move on. Wyman Howard is your absolute
1201
01:10:29.600 --> 01:10:34.600
best example of what Seal Team six was and what
1202
01:10:34.640 --> 01:10:39.000
it became after nine to eleven. Howard is a descendant
1203
01:10:39.239 --> 01:10:44.079
of I think two admirals on either side of his family.
1204
01:10:44.600 --> 01:10:48.760
His father was a captain in the Navy. He Naval
1205
01:10:49.119 --> 01:10:53.199
Academy graduate, was a West Coast seal. I think he
1206
01:10:53.239 --> 01:10:56.560
was Seal Team one and Seal Team eight. He was
1207
01:10:57.680 --> 01:11:03.399
at one point the lowest ranked officer at his rank
1208
01:11:04.880 --> 01:11:08.520
on the East Coast. I believe he was eventually allowed
1209
01:11:08.560 --> 01:11:11.560
to select for he wasn't selected. He failed selection to
1210
01:11:11.600 --> 01:11:14.760
Seal Team six. However, at the time the deputy commander
1211
01:11:14.760 --> 01:11:19.119
of Seal Team six had been his his OIC and
1212
01:11:19.199 --> 01:11:23.319
his superior at his previous Seal team liked him and
1213
01:11:23.520 --> 01:11:28.000
convinced Bert Callen to let him go into Green Team.
1214
01:11:28.920 --> 01:11:32.960
He was brought into Green Team, and the instructors at
1215
01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:36.760
Green Team were told that unless he you know, I've
1216
01:11:36.760 --> 01:11:39.840
been using this hypothetically, unless he kills someone during training,
1217
01:11:40.119 --> 01:11:42.359
you can't fail him, and so he was allowed to
1218
01:11:42.399 --> 01:11:44.720
pass down. He by the description of guys who were
1219
01:11:44.720 --> 01:11:49.159
in his class at Green Team, he was not the worst.
1220
01:11:49.199 --> 01:11:50.920
He was in the middle. He was kind of mediocre,
1221
01:11:51.239 --> 01:11:54.760
not the worst, definitely not. The best point was was
1222
01:11:54.760 --> 01:11:58.079
that he actually hadn't earned his way into Seal Team six, right.
1223
01:11:58.159 --> 01:12:01.800
The standard was relaxed so that and as one person said,
1224
01:12:02.039 --> 01:12:04.840
Cowan said, look, I was told he could do paperwork
1225
01:12:04.920 --> 01:12:06.680
very well, he was smart, and he was going to
1226
01:12:06.720 --> 01:12:10.159
help us administratively. Goes through the Green Team, gets into
1227
01:12:10.199 --> 01:12:13.680
Green Team, gets put into Red Team, he gets fired
1228
01:12:13.960 --> 01:12:17.319
or pushed out at Red Team. Nine to eleven happens.
1229
01:12:17.359 --> 01:12:21.000
He's in what later became Black Team. He basically got
1230
01:12:21.319 --> 01:12:23.720
pushed forward. He was in Afghanistan early as part of
1231
01:12:23.720 --> 01:12:28.520
the AFO working for Scottie Miller and resurrected his career.
1232
01:12:29.119 --> 01:12:32.600
He goes back as the oicee of Red Team a
1233
01:12:32.600 --> 01:12:37.079
few years later. At that point they were still the
1234
01:12:37.119 --> 01:12:41.560
teams and not squadrons, and he does this thing. What
1235
01:12:42.159 --> 01:12:46.159
makes Howard unusual is is that he ultimately did essentially
1236
01:12:46.239 --> 01:12:48.560
two they I guess they call it a double pump.
1237
01:12:48.560 --> 01:12:52.600
He did two rotations as the leader of Red. First
1238
01:12:52.600 --> 01:12:54.279
it was as Red Team and then later as the
1239
01:12:54.319 --> 01:12:57.199
commanding officer of Red Squadron. And so he had an
1240
01:12:57.319 --> 01:13:01.920
unusually long period of time at Red Squadron, and at
1241
01:13:01.960 --> 01:13:06.840
that time, with that group and their native American identity
1242
01:13:06.960 --> 01:13:09.920
and pushing of the hatchets, you start to see and
1243
01:13:09.960 --> 01:13:13.680
remember again it's Red Squadron that went through what happened
1244
01:13:13.760 --> 01:13:15.840
up on Robert's Ridge. Right when those guys who get
1245
01:13:15.880 --> 01:13:19.880
drafted into Red go into the team room, there is
1246
01:13:20.520 --> 01:13:26.000
Neil Roberts bent weapon on the wall as a reminder of,
1247
01:13:27.439 --> 01:13:31.079
you know, the sacrifice and what they lost. And so
1248
01:13:31.319 --> 01:13:36.920
Howard is by all accounts incredibly intelligent, very bright, very
1249
01:13:36.960 --> 01:13:42.319
hard working, and you know, was known to essentially look
1250
01:13:42.359 --> 01:13:45.880
the other way when his men were out using the
1251
01:13:45.920 --> 01:13:53.119
hatchets to desecrate bodies. There were you know, he ultimately
1252
01:13:53.199 --> 01:13:55.479
ended up as the commanding officer of Sealed Team six
1253
01:13:55.520 --> 01:13:59.760
as a as a captain, went to Jaysack, then he
1254
01:13:59.760 --> 01:14:04.479
was at He did a stint at one of the
1255
01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:08.279
d O D I don't remember if it was if
1256
01:14:08.279 --> 01:14:11.359
it was n GA, I can't remember which of the
1257
01:14:11.359 --> 01:14:14.800
intelligence agencies he served in. He got a job in
1258
01:14:14.800 --> 01:14:19.000
the Pentagon, and then he ended up at Sachsen down Tampa,
1259
01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:22.039
and then he ended up at Warcom. And so if
1260
01:14:22.079 --> 01:14:27.439
you sort of take his example singularly, a guy who
1261
01:14:27.960 --> 01:14:30.560
was not qualified or didn't qualify to make it to
1262
01:14:30.600 --> 01:14:34.439
Seal Team six, but because of connections was allowed to write.
1263
01:14:34.520 --> 01:14:39.079
And at that time the skipper at Seal Team six,
1264
01:14:39.199 --> 01:14:42.880
Joe Kernin sorry at the time, which nine to eleven happens?
1265
01:14:44.119 --> 01:14:46.560
They plus up at that time he would only promote
1266
01:14:46.560 --> 01:14:49.720
and allow in officers whould come from the Naval Academy.
1267
01:14:50.159 --> 01:14:52.600
So there was you know, within a culture, there was
1268
01:14:52.760 --> 01:14:56.640
another subculture elitism, you know, a mix between a country
1269
01:14:56.680 --> 01:15:00.960
club and a fraternity, right, and you had someone who
1270
01:15:01.039 --> 01:15:06.079
wasn't qualified or hadn't qualified got in any way, you know,
1271
01:15:06.199 --> 01:15:08.079
sort of the syndrome of being born with a silver
1272
01:15:08.119 --> 01:15:10.359
spoon in your mouth, right right, and and then you
1273
01:15:10.520 --> 01:15:14.920
end up in a leading very aggressive guys, and how
1274
01:15:14.920 --> 01:15:18.000
do you maintain their respect? How do you earn their respect?
1275
01:15:18.199 --> 01:15:21.840
It's not through discipline, That's how it's been described to me.
1276
01:15:22.399 --> 01:15:25.079
There are most of the operators that I ever interviewed
1277
01:15:25.079 --> 01:15:29.279
who worked under for Wyman love him. He was highly aggressive.
1278
01:15:29.760 --> 01:15:34.039
He matched. He very much looked at what M. Crystal
1279
01:15:34.159 --> 01:15:37.520
was doing and was putting out and matched it. If
1280
01:15:37.560 --> 01:15:40.239
you you know, if you're not out operating, you're not
1281
01:15:40.960 --> 01:15:44.079
doing it right. It's very aggressive. Later there were problems
1282
01:15:44.600 --> 01:15:47.880
at Sealed Team six under his command with officers who
1283
01:15:47.920 --> 01:15:51.239
disagreed with how aggressive he was. I was told recently
1284
01:15:51.319 --> 01:15:54.199
that in the Afghan papers there is a lot of
1285
01:15:54.239 --> 01:15:59.880
description of Howard's leadership on the battlefield in Afghanistan and
1286
01:16:00.039 --> 01:16:04.520
criticism about the over aggressiveness and posture of the unit.
1287
01:16:04.680 --> 01:16:06.920
I haven't seen them myself, so I can't comment about,
1288
01:16:07.520 --> 01:16:11.359
you know, how accurate that is. But he's sort of
1289
01:16:11.359 --> 01:16:15.760
your best example he has. He's got a I think
1290
01:16:16.119 --> 01:16:20.479
he's got a story that started and also gives you
1291
01:16:20.640 --> 01:16:23.720
a sense of the Seal Team six, at least part
1292
01:16:23.720 --> 01:16:26.199
of the Seal Team six culture of the branding. He
1293
01:16:26.279 --> 01:16:29.600
and his younger officers used to sit around and discuss
1294
01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:33.159
how great, how great they were as leaders amongst themselves,
1295
01:16:34.560 --> 01:16:37.640
and the logic went like this, Red Squadron are the
1296
01:16:37.680 --> 01:16:40.520
best operators at Seal Team six. Sale Team six is
1297
01:16:40.520 --> 01:16:46.000
the best unit in the US military, and Red Squadron
1298
01:16:46.039 --> 01:16:50.600
officers lead these men air go Red Squadron officers are
1299
01:16:50.640 --> 01:16:53.760
the best leaders of men, and therefore, when we are
1300
01:16:53.760 --> 01:16:57.159
out of the military, we should become our officers should
1301
01:16:57.159 --> 01:17:01.279
become senators and presidents. That story was meanwhile, that was
1302
01:17:01.319 --> 01:17:04.920
discussed among you know, Wyman and his younger his junior
1303
01:17:05.079 --> 01:17:08.159
officer corps. At a time, it was a running joke
1304
01:17:08.199 --> 01:17:10.119
at the rest of the command with the officer corps
1305
01:17:10.239 --> 01:17:12.520
that it was all invented, that it was this presumption
1306
01:17:12.600 --> 01:17:15.600
that there was something special about them. You know, we
1307
01:17:15.640 --> 01:17:18.199
can get into a question of seals and leader leadership
1308
01:17:18.279 --> 01:17:21.239
and seals later. But by the time he ends up
1309
01:17:21.239 --> 01:17:23.399
in Tampa as a I don't know if he had
1310
01:17:23.399 --> 01:17:25.159
a second star yet, but definitely had a one star.
1311
01:17:25.520 --> 01:17:30.560
The story now went like this. There's a group of
1312
01:17:30.600 --> 01:17:34.760
Seal Team six officers who have selected me to be
1313
01:17:34.920 --> 01:17:37.079
the first member of Seal Team six to run for
1314
01:17:37.159 --> 01:17:40.840
president of the United States. And you know, I actually
1315
01:17:41.039 --> 01:17:43.960
I wanted to double check that recently because I put it.
1316
01:17:44.000 --> 01:17:45.840
I did an excerpt for the book at the intercept,
1317
01:17:45.880 --> 01:17:49.359
and I put in some new stuff in there, and
1318
01:17:49.399 --> 01:17:51.439
I called it a source from the Pentagon who knew
1319
01:17:51.479 --> 01:17:53.760
Wyman well, And I said, you know, I had already
1320
01:17:54.119 --> 01:17:56.159
heard the story from several people from the Seals, but
1321
01:17:56.199 --> 01:18:00.800
I called a friend at the Pentagon and I said,
1322
01:18:00.800 --> 01:18:03.359
have you ever heard this story about Wyman? You know,
1323
01:18:03.640 --> 01:18:07.560
running for president? So are you kidding me? Howard tells
1324
01:18:07.680 --> 01:18:11.119
anyone who will listen, he is going to be the
1325
01:18:11.159 --> 01:18:16.039
first Seal Team president in American history. So you get
1326
01:18:16.039 --> 01:18:20.840
a sense of the ambition, right, and the mindset, which,
1327
01:18:21.000 --> 01:18:24.439
you know, a massive ego, you know, often I think
1328
01:18:24.479 --> 01:18:27.000
most people would agree, has very little self awareness.
1329
01:18:28.239 --> 01:18:28.439
You know.
1330
01:18:28.479 --> 01:18:30.479
He's someone who I think when he went to Congress
1331
01:18:30.520 --> 01:18:35.159
and and AP covered it, his posture was we are humble, right,
1332
01:18:35.239 --> 01:18:37.640
I mean, everyone who's ever worked with him, and that
1333
01:18:37.760 --> 01:18:39.840
as a word that has never come across anyone's mouth.
1334
01:18:39.960 --> 01:18:43.680
Is humble. I mean that was his problem at Seal
1335
01:18:43.760 --> 01:18:46.079
Team six, was that there was virtually no humility.
1336
01:18:46.119 --> 01:18:48.880
Well, what do you think this guy's propensity? I mean,
1337
01:18:48.880 --> 01:18:52.399
whatever people think about Seals or Seal Team six or whatever.
1338
01:18:53.239 --> 01:18:56.119
As a previous commander of the Seals said, we have
1339
01:18:56.159 --> 01:18:59.920
a problem that needs to be addressed. Is Wyman the guy?
1340
01:19:00.039 --> 01:19:02.319
I mean? Can he do it? Can he reform and
1341
01:19:02.359 --> 01:19:03.560
get them back on track?
1342
01:19:03.880 --> 01:19:07.399
I think, as someone said to me, when Wyman was
1343
01:19:07.479 --> 01:19:10.199
chosen as the commander of Warcom, it was truly a
1344
01:19:10.239 --> 01:19:14.640
case of picking the fox to guard the henhouse. You
1345
01:19:14.920 --> 01:19:22.199
cannot expect a Seal Team six leader who is part
1346
01:19:22.319 --> 01:19:26.399
of the creation of the problem and is also a
1347
01:19:26.439 --> 01:19:29.640
product of the problem at Seal Team six that filtered
1348
01:19:29.680 --> 01:19:33.880
down into the larger community over two decades to possibly
1349
01:19:33.920 --> 01:19:36.079
be the person who could deliver the message that we
1350
01:19:36.159 --> 01:19:38.439
have to clean up now. He's smart, and he can
1351
01:19:38.520 --> 01:19:41.359
make changes, and as I said, some of his fixes
1352
01:19:41.359 --> 01:19:43.880
have been described to me as being very good. And
1353
01:19:43.920 --> 01:19:46.439
in a couple of years or within a generation, there'll
1354
01:19:46.439 --> 01:19:51.880
be a better officer Corps. To some extent, That's about
1355
01:19:51.880 --> 01:19:53.760
as far as it goes. And I think, you know
1356
01:19:54.000 --> 01:19:58.479
I mentioned earlier or before we went on that there's
1357
01:19:58.560 --> 01:20:02.439
a story I'm going to uh break a story I
1358
01:20:02.439 --> 01:20:06.039
think when the Ukrainian assuming that there's any kind of
1359
01:20:06.039 --> 01:20:08.079
resolution in Ukraine, but in the future, in the not
1360
01:20:08.119 --> 01:20:11.560
too distant future, that is another It's a smaller scandal,
1361
01:20:11.720 --> 01:20:15.079
seal scandal, but it's a scandal and it will reflect
1362
01:20:15.119 --> 01:20:18.199
exactly this issue, which is Wyman is not women. Hower
1363
01:20:18.279 --> 01:20:20.720
is not responsible at all for all of you know,
1364
01:20:20.800 --> 01:20:26.359
the problems he's he's he is a great example of
1365
01:20:26.439 --> 01:20:29.840
where their culture went wrong, how it didn't correct itself,
1366
01:20:30.720 --> 01:20:33.479
and so the notion that he should be picked or
1367
01:20:33.600 --> 01:20:37.840
being the leader of the larger community, I think is
1368
01:20:38.640 --> 01:20:41.159
you know, I've talked to a lot of current Seal
1369
01:20:41.199 --> 01:20:45.039
officers who were frankly disgusted when he was picked. Now,
1370
01:20:45.119 --> 01:20:47.079
they had a thin bench, and there was some recognition
1371
01:20:47.119 --> 01:20:51.439
that on paper he was probably ideal, but they were
1372
01:20:51.439 --> 01:20:54.359
not happy. The Seals who were in the command long enough,
1373
01:20:55.119 --> 01:20:57.840
who've been around and have worked with Howard were not happy.
1374
01:20:57.880 --> 01:21:01.159
Now, is is it possible they just an acts to grind?
1375
01:21:01.840 --> 01:21:04.920
There are always access to grind, and it very well
1376
01:21:04.960 --> 01:21:08.399
could be that there are people who simply don't like him.
1377
01:21:08.399 --> 01:21:09.680
There are a lot of people who don't like them,
1378
01:21:09.680 --> 01:21:11.000
there are a lot of people who do like him.
1379
01:21:13.159 --> 01:21:13.960
I try my.
1380
01:21:14.000 --> 01:21:19.079
Best, I think, to recognize the difference between someone who
1381
01:21:19.079 --> 01:21:22.880
doesn't like someone because of their personality and someone who
1382
01:21:22.960 --> 01:21:28.039
can point to, hey, here, you know are things A, B, C,
1383
01:21:28.399 --> 01:21:31.359
D and E that this person did when they were
1384
01:21:31.399 --> 01:21:37.920
in charge that were fundamentally wrong or misguided and certainly
1385
01:21:38.000 --> 01:21:42.800
disqualifying for promotion. Let alone you know such a position.
1386
01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:45.119
So it's always the case. Look, I think, you know,
1387
01:21:45.199 --> 01:21:47.520
as an investigative journalist, as any journalist, when you're dealing
1388
01:21:47.520 --> 01:21:50.000
with stories like this, everyone has some acts to grind.
1389
01:21:50.479 --> 01:21:51.920
My job is to try to figure out what that
1390
01:21:51.960 --> 01:21:56.760
acts is and and adjust for it, and you know,
1391
01:21:56.840 --> 01:21:59.720
accept what it is, recognize where it is. You know,
1392
01:21:59.800 --> 01:22:02.800
you find out that someone hates someone because you know
1393
01:22:02.840 --> 01:22:04.840
that someone slept with someone's wife and that there's a
1394
01:22:04.880 --> 01:22:07.720
there's a personal beef or animis and that may be it.
1395
01:22:07.760 --> 01:22:10.439
That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't true, right.
1396
01:22:10.279 --> 01:22:13.239
So in the in the book, I mean, one of
1397
01:22:13.279 --> 01:22:15.600
the things that people have to understand about the War
1398
01:22:15.640 --> 01:22:18.680
on Terror is that none of these units work by themselves,
1399
01:22:18.720 --> 01:22:20.920
that there are all these enablers that there's a Joint
1400
01:22:20.920 --> 01:22:23.239
Special Operations Task Force, and on and on and on
1401
01:22:23.279 --> 01:22:26.760
with these different commands and task forces and so on.
1402
01:22:26.760 --> 01:22:29.319
One of the elements the Seals got detached to at
1403
01:22:29.399 --> 01:22:32.359
various times of the was the Omega teams. There's a
1404
01:22:32.439 --> 01:22:35.720
very interesting story in your book about how a CIA
1405
01:22:35.880 --> 01:22:39.800
officer tried to complain about some of these behaviors and
1406
01:22:39.880 --> 01:22:42.000
to try to blow the whistle on it internally in
1407
01:22:42.039 --> 01:22:44.479
the bureaucracy. Could you tell us about that and what
1408
01:22:44.640 --> 01:22:45.439
happened to that guy?
1409
01:22:45.560 --> 01:22:49.520
Sure. First, I want to just say that that one
1410
01:22:49.560 --> 01:22:54.680
of the sources for that section was a at that
1411
01:22:54.800 --> 01:22:59.680
time was a member of the CIA, employee of the CIA,
1412
01:22:59.800 --> 01:23:05.079
but was a former Seal and had a long experience
1413
01:23:05.159 --> 01:23:08.920
with the Seals and Seal Team six. It's important again
1414
01:23:09.159 --> 01:23:12.880
going back to just context and understanding, you know, where
1415
01:23:12.920 --> 01:23:15.800
some of this information comes from, and what the significances
1416
01:23:15.880 --> 01:23:22.840
of who's telling you. It's now I'm blanking on the year,
1417
01:23:22.920 --> 01:23:26.000
but I think we're talking about two thousand and eight
1418
01:23:27.239 --> 01:23:29.720
or two thousand and nine timeframe. I think two thousand
1419
01:23:29.760 --> 01:23:35.399
and nine there had been a series of joint operations
1420
01:23:35.479 --> 01:23:37.800
going out. They weren't always omegas that were going out together.
1421
01:23:37.880 --> 01:23:44.000
Sometimes it was just especially in Jalalabad, the Agency would
1422
01:23:44.239 --> 01:23:49.119
use six to help them conduct operations if they didn't
1423
01:23:49.119 --> 01:23:51.279
have much of a paramilit they didn't have a ground branch,
1424
01:23:52.479 --> 01:23:58.640
and what they kept seeing was a over aggression. There
1425
01:23:58.840 --> 01:24:02.359
was in fact, time and we can get into this,
1426
01:24:03.960 --> 01:24:06.039
there was an incident in which they had gone out
1427
01:24:06.520 --> 01:24:10.920
on an operation. Basically the CIA said look, we want
1428
01:24:10.960 --> 01:24:13.600
you to get these these four guys out. We know
1429
01:24:13.640 --> 01:24:15.359
they're in there. You know, they went in at two
1430
01:24:15.359 --> 01:24:20.039
in the morning, three in the morning, Sealed Team six
1431
01:24:20.079 --> 01:24:21.600
goes in. I think at that time it was Gold
1432
01:24:21.920 --> 01:24:25.920
Gold Squadron went in. The targets were all sleeping, they
1433
01:24:25.920 --> 01:24:27.840
were all armed, you know, had weapons next to them.
1434
01:24:27.840 --> 01:24:32.560
They were legitimate targets. They did a countdown.
1435
01:24:33.680 --> 01:24:34.319
And they.
1436
01:24:36.079 --> 01:24:38.800
Canued. I think six of the eight that were killed
1437
01:24:38.800 --> 01:24:41.720
in the operation came back out and were showing off
1438
01:24:41.720 --> 01:24:44.279
the photos of what they had just done. The CIA,
1439
01:24:44.399 --> 01:24:49.199
in particular the agency officers there were furious because the
1440
01:24:49.199 --> 01:24:51.000
guys that they had been asked to go out and
1441
01:24:51.039 --> 01:24:56.199
get and detain, they wanted for interrogation and further intelligence exploitation.
1442
01:24:56.520 --> 01:25:01.199
The mission was not killed them. They were legitimate targets
1443
01:25:01.199 --> 01:25:03.439
in the sense that they had weapons near them in
1444
01:25:03.479 --> 01:25:05.319
their bed, but they were all sleeping, so it was
1445
01:25:06.199 --> 01:25:10.159
possible to take them into custody. That incident, along with
1446
01:25:10.359 --> 01:25:15.039
several others like it, led to a former member of
1447
01:25:15.079 --> 01:25:17.880
Seal Team six who was then working for Ground Branch
1448
01:25:19.079 --> 01:25:24.039
named Rick Smothers. Richard Smithers, who had been six and
1449
01:25:24.119 --> 01:25:28.279
had once been the captain at Bud's. He complained loudly
1450
01:25:28.800 --> 01:25:33.079
to Seal Team six, first through the CIA and then
1451
01:25:33.079 --> 01:25:35.520
to Seal Team six basically their guys were off the
1452
01:25:35.600 --> 01:25:37.520
rails and that they were committing war crimes and it
1453
01:25:37.560 --> 01:25:42.399
was costing them in their area of operations. It got
1454
01:25:42.600 --> 01:25:47.520
very heated between the two sides, and Smothers and the
1455
01:25:47.560 --> 01:25:52.279
CIA basically warned that if they didn't pull Gold Squadron
1456
01:25:52.319 --> 01:25:53.960
at the time, they were going to go to the
1457
01:25:53.960 --> 01:25:58.920
press with these accusations. There was a gentleman's agreement, in
1458
01:25:58.920 --> 01:26:01.119
part because Smathers was a former member of Seal Team
1459
01:26:01.159 --> 01:26:05.680
six and very respected from his era. He had been
1460
01:26:05.680 --> 01:26:09.720
skipped over actually as to be skipper of Seal Team
1461
01:26:09.760 --> 01:26:12.800
six prior to nine to eleven, and some people felt
1462
01:26:12.800 --> 01:26:14.600
that the reason why he was complaining was because he
1463
01:26:14.640 --> 01:26:19.760
was bitter about that. But that's an aside. As it happened,
1464
01:26:19.800 --> 01:26:25.520
Gold Squadron was set to leave, and I don't remember
1465
01:26:25.520 --> 01:26:28.479
which squadron was replacing him, but it happened to be
1466
01:26:28.560 --> 01:26:30.960
that there was going to be a natural cycle anyway,
1467
01:26:31.359 --> 01:26:36.199
and Seal Team six basically asked CIA to pull smethers
1468
01:26:36.239 --> 01:26:39.439
and let him cool down outside of Afghanistan, go home,
1469
01:26:39.840 --> 01:26:42.960
and you know, basically cool the temperature down. And so
1470
01:26:43.039 --> 01:26:45.960
they did. But there was an acknowledgment on all sides,
1471
01:26:46.600 --> 01:26:50.520
both sides, that Seal Team six was committing war crimes.
1472
01:26:50.600 --> 01:26:53.800
They were violating the rules of engagement, they were violating
1473
01:26:53.800 --> 01:26:58.359
the laws of armed combat. But you know, you keep
1474
01:26:58.439 --> 01:27:01.479
you piss inside the tent, right and so they came
1475
01:27:01.600 --> 01:27:04.960
up with a solution in which both sides were happy
1476
01:27:05.399 --> 01:27:09.640
in the immediate near term, you know, and there was
1477
01:27:09.680 --> 01:27:12.000
never any accountability. And that way, it's a great example
1478
01:27:12.039 --> 01:27:14.960
again of you know, I think I think the book
1479
01:27:15.000 --> 01:27:19.800
is filled with incidents where there could have been accountability
1480
01:27:19.880 --> 01:27:22.399
and there wasn't. I think what one thing to keep
1481
01:27:22.399 --> 01:27:25.000
in mind is is that it's these are only the
1482
01:27:25.000 --> 01:27:27.840
ones that are known because they became at least internally,
1483
01:27:28.720 --> 01:27:32.199
something happened that triggered that other people that other people
1484
01:27:32.279 --> 01:27:34.920
knew about. Much of what went on went on between
1485
01:27:34.920 --> 01:27:37.359
two or three guys on an operation.
1486
01:27:37.119 --> 01:27:38.000
In a room.
1487
01:27:38.079 --> 01:27:40.920
Right, we'll never know about those things, and unless someone
1488
01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:43.640
who was there talks about it, there's nothing to that.
1489
01:27:43.840 --> 01:27:46.119
It's it can't be known right, right.
1490
01:27:46.359 --> 01:27:49.000
And but that could be said about any unit, like
1491
01:27:49.159 --> 01:27:52.000
you know, like we we don't like know when when
1492
01:27:52.039 --> 01:27:55.119
it gets down to that small size. But sort of
1493
01:27:55.119 --> 01:27:57.199
what you're kind of talking about in this is the
1494
01:27:57.319 --> 01:28:04.960
overall the officer enlisted the tendency to not self correct,
1495
01:28:05.119 --> 01:28:09.600
but to just let things keep going, even if it's
1496
01:28:09.600 --> 01:28:13.199
a few guys are like they're like the you know
1497
01:28:13.239 --> 01:28:15.600
that when you when you like pith a fish that
1498
01:28:15.800 --> 01:28:18.279
schools like it, you know, like the rest of the
1499
01:28:18.319 --> 01:28:21.319
school follows it, because you know, that's how they That's
1500
01:28:21.359 --> 01:28:23.399
how psychology works, right, That's how you work.
1501
01:28:25.039 --> 01:28:27.399
And I mean some of the.
1502
01:28:27.359 --> 01:28:30.560
Behaviors are talking to sounds sociopathic. And one of the
1503
01:28:30.560 --> 01:28:33.720
things about sociopaths is they always have a stronger frame
1504
01:28:34.039 --> 01:28:37.000
of reality. I think then then the people around them
1505
01:28:37.039 --> 01:28:39.119
they are one of percent certain that their cause is
1506
01:28:39.640 --> 01:28:43.960
right and whatnot, And it's how like relationships go awry
1507
01:28:44.000 --> 01:28:46.800
and whatnot with right. So if you have a bunch
1508
01:28:46.800 --> 01:28:52.079
of people who are emotional angry, you know, at war,
1509
01:28:52.520 --> 01:28:55.680
and then you have one person that isn't you know
1510
01:28:55.840 --> 01:28:56.920
that it's doing.
1511
01:28:56.640 --> 01:28:59.720
These types of things, it sort of makes it a norm.
1512
01:29:00.079 --> 01:29:05.560
Yeah, you know, I once interviewed a former command master
1513
01:29:05.640 --> 01:29:09.079
chief of Sealed Team six from prior to nine to
1514
01:29:09.119 --> 01:29:14.920
eleven who told me that in the eighties, when the
1515
01:29:15.039 --> 01:29:19.600
last of the Vietnam era seals were in the unit,
1516
01:29:19.760 --> 01:29:22.600
one of the things they passed down to the younger
1517
01:29:22.640 --> 01:29:27.039
guys about their experience in Vietnam was that if just
1518
01:29:27.159 --> 01:29:30.399
one guy in the team was committing war crimes, it
1519
01:29:30.520 --> 01:29:36.319
created a psychological cloud over the in time, over the
1520
01:29:36.359 --> 01:29:41.720
rest of the team. That there were these nonverbal you know,
1521
01:29:42.000 --> 01:29:45.079
these were things that weren't necessarily discussed, but they became
1522
01:29:45.960 --> 01:29:48.840
It was like a disease virus that would pass through
1523
01:29:48.840 --> 01:29:50.600
the rest of the unit and go on for the
1524
01:29:50.640 --> 01:29:52.520
rest of their lives. And you know, I will tell
1525
01:29:52.520 --> 01:29:57.119
you that that plenty of the officers gave you know,
1526
01:29:57.199 --> 01:29:59.600
had conversations like this with some of with their men.
1527
01:29:59.680 --> 01:30:02.000
You know, look, don't do anything out there that you
1528
01:30:02.000 --> 01:30:04.319
don't want it you can't live with because you have
1529
01:30:04.359 --> 01:30:05.840
to live with it for the rest of your life.
1530
01:30:06.039 --> 01:30:08.039
The problem is is that there are people who think
1531
01:30:08.079 --> 01:30:10.399
that they can live with it or wanted to see
1532
01:30:10.439 --> 01:30:13.720
and test the waters right, And so that's not necessarily
1533
01:30:13.720 --> 01:30:15.960
a strong enough guide, as you know, if you're saying
1534
01:30:15.960 --> 01:30:18.119
that one night, and in the next night you're saying,
1535
01:30:18.520 --> 01:30:21.760
you know, did you get your hatchets bloodied? Right? You know,
1536
01:30:21.800 --> 01:30:23.800
what'd you do with your hatchets kind of thing? And
1537
01:30:24.079 --> 01:30:28.479
so the I think the psychological component to this is
1538
01:30:29.479 --> 01:30:32.319
really important, and it was one that I asked Marsenko about.
1539
01:30:32.720 --> 01:30:36.199
You know, what kind of screening did you do? Well,
1540
01:30:36.239 --> 01:30:38.920
we only had the Minnesota test. Well, yeah, but you
1541
01:30:38.960 --> 01:30:41.720
had a psych right, and and you know, so you
1542
01:30:41.760 --> 01:30:45.319
screened and I interviewed that psych and he, you know,
1543
01:30:45.359 --> 01:30:48.000
he said, yeah, there was no screening. Marsenko picked who
1544
01:30:48.000 --> 01:30:52.600
he liked, and Marsinko said, yeah, I had the shrink there,
1545
01:30:52.840 --> 01:30:55.680
so that when the Navy assessed what the unit that
1546
01:30:55.720 --> 01:30:57.880
I was creating on paper, I looked like I was
1547
01:30:57.920 --> 01:31:00.640
doing all the right things. And the psycho colleges, the
1548
01:31:00.680 --> 01:31:04.800
shrink doctor Mike Whitley, who I interviewed actually not long
1549
01:31:04.880 --> 01:31:09.600
before he died shortly after. As it is Marsenko, I
1550
01:31:09.640 --> 01:31:15.159
don't want to get a reputation. And what Whitley said was, look,
1551
01:31:15.880 --> 01:31:17.680
there were a lot of great guys in the first
1552
01:31:18.079 --> 01:31:20.640
couple of in the first group of Seal Team six,
1553
01:31:20.680 --> 01:31:22.479
but there were several sociopaths.
1554
01:31:22.600 --> 01:31:22.800
Right.
1555
01:31:23.039 --> 01:31:25.239
There was absolutely no way to screen them out because
1556
01:31:25.279 --> 01:31:27.319
they hadn't done any The screening was, as Marsico said,
1557
01:31:27.319 --> 01:31:30.159
who could drink with me, who someone else had recommended,
1558
01:31:30.600 --> 01:31:32.560
who could drink with them, and who could handle their
1559
01:31:32.560 --> 01:31:35.039
liquor with me? Right, and who they had served with
1560
01:31:35.159 --> 01:31:38.159
And that was the That was the system that they used.
1561
01:31:38.159 --> 01:31:39.920
And I you know the other one. I interviewed one
1562
01:31:39.960 --> 01:31:44.359
of the Team six's xos that handled selection after Marsenco,
1563
01:31:44.399 --> 01:31:46.600
and he said it was exactly what was going on.
1564
01:31:46.680 --> 01:31:49.760
It's interesting that Delta had the same problem with their
1565
01:31:49.760 --> 01:31:54.000
initial intake of guys that the psychologist pointed to one
1566
01:31:54.000 --> 01:31:57.159
guy like, no, don't take this guy, and I was
1567
01:31:57.199 --> 01:31:59.399
told beckweth overruled him and said, no, we want this
1568
01:31:59.439 --> 01:32:02.319
guy because he's so good. That was Marshall Brown, who
1569
01:32:02.399 --> 01:32:04.279
turned out to be a serial rapist and is still
1570
01:32:04.279 --> 01:32:06.800
in federal prison to this day. So I mean, the
1571
01:32:06.880 --> 01:32:09.600
lesson I think is the selection process works when you
1572
01:32:09.640 --> 01:32:11.840
actually use it well.
1573
01:32:11.840 --> 01:32:14.000
But you know, but you know, you guys can correct
1574
01:32:14.000 --> 01:32:16.319
me if I'm wrong. Is I understand it? The Delta's
1575
01:32:16.920 --> 01:32:21.760
psychological portion of the selection screening is much more rigorous
1576
01:32:21.800 --> 01:32:23.720
and specific than Seal Team.
1577
01:32:23.640 --> 01:32:26.079
Sits now nowadays, I don't think that would ever happen,
1578
01:32:26.199 --> 01:32:29.159
but this was way back nineteen eighty.
1579
01:32:29.079 --> 01:32:33.239
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, And I think another thing
1580
01:32:33.239 --> 01:32:36.119
I wanted to follow up on real quick or point out,
1581
01:32:36.119 --> 01:32:39.079
I guess is that you know, there's something to be
1582
01:32:39.159 --> 01:32:44.399
said for having some empathy for the operators, even ostensibly
1583
01:32:44.479 --> 01:32:45.279
war criminals.
1584
01:32:46.359 --> 01:32:48.479
You can see like people flipping out just that we
1585
01:32:48.560 --> 01:32:51.720
have a conversation on an open conversation like this. You know,
1586
01:32:51.760 --> 01:32:55.760
these guys are war fighters. Leave them alone. And it
1587
01:32:55.880 --> 01:32:58.359
really brought that to head when you were talking about
1588
01:32:58.399 --> 01:33:00.760
how a lot of guys think they can handle this
1589
01:33:00.920 --> 01:33:03.960
and they can't, and they acted like big badasses on
1590
01:33:04.039 --> 01:33:07.720
target wanting to scalp people. Okay, here we are ten
1591
01:33:07.800 --> 01:33:10.159
years later, and a lot of those dudes are cracking up,
1592
01:33:10.640 --> 01:33:13.720
and they're cracking up. They're having severe issues with PTSD.
1593
01:33:14.960 --> 01:33:18.520
Combine that with traumatic brain injuries. These guys are a
1594
01:33:18.520 --> 01:33:20.920
lot of these guys are really struggling, and I think
1595
01:33:20.960 --> 01:33:23.960
there's a case to be made now that they need help.
1596
01:33:24.039 --> 01:33:27.520
But I mean, also there's a lesson for leaders now,
1597
01:33:28.119 --> 01:33:30.920
right right at this moment to police this kind of
1598
01:33:30.960 --> 01:33:38.640
behavior with the longevity and the and the responsibility of
1599
01:33:38.680 --> 01:33:42.560
taking care of your troops long term. And you know,
1600
01:33:42.640 --> 01:33:45.880
maybe I understand how a younger soldier doesn't have the
1601
01:33:45.920 --> 01:33:48.880
maturity or the wisdom to really understand that or think
1602
01:33:48.920 --> 01:33:52.039
long term like that, but there is a responsibility on
1603
01:33:52.079 --> 01:33:55.039
the leadership, if nothing else, to police that kind of behavior.
1604
01:33:55.359 --> 01:33:58.279
And that's another way of taking care of your soldiers.
1605
01:33:58.239 --> 01:34:00.119
You know. I'm Jack, I'm really glad that you you
1606
01:34:00.680 --> 01:34:05.000
raise that point, because it's something that my sources for
1607
01:34:05.079 --> 01:34:10.479
the last five or six years have said sort of privately,
1608
01:34:10.760 --> 01:34:14.399
you know, in describing what their motivations were for talking
1609
01:34:14.800 --> 01:34:19.760
and what they wrestle with and were upset most upset with.
1610
01:34:20.119 --> 01:34:21.760
And I just give you an example. I'm going to
1611
01:34:21.800 --> 01:34:27.079
paraphrase a little bit between they were about four. I
1612
01:34:27.079 --> 01:34:29.479
don't like to get into the difference between which sources
1613
01:34:29.520 --> 01:34:31.960
are officers and which are our NCOs. I will tell
1614
01:34:31.960 --> 01:34:36.119
you that I was most always most surprised that the
1615
01:34:37.479 --> 01:34:40.600
toughest language I heard about, the disgust and the frustration
1616
01:34:40.720 --> 01:34:45.359
came from the NCOs. And given what they're the dynamic,
1617
01:34:45.399 --> 01:34:48.479
they basically were just disgusted with the failure of their
1618
01:34:48.479 --> 01:34:51.880
officers to get a hold of the problem when they
1619
01:34:51.880 --> 01:34:54.239
were warned. One of the things that someone said to
1620
01:34:54.279 --> 01:34:59.439
me once that that really shook me was look and again,
1621
01:34:59.439 --> 01:35:02.800
I'm paraphra We failed these guys. We sent these guys
1622
01:35:02.840 --> 01:35:07.520
out into a meat grinder over and over and over again.
1623
01:35:07.960 --> 01:35:10.119
We gave them none of the tools to handle the
1624
01:35:10.159 --> 01:35:14.039
parts that we gave them no warning or ability to
1625
01:35:14.079 --> 01:35:17.159
handle what they were going to experience and come back.
1626
01:35:17.199 --> 01:35:19.920
And there was a line that we had to hold
1627
01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:22.960
for them because of this issue right that if they
1628
01:35:22.960 --> 01:35:25.920
crossed that line, we're not going to send you to jail.
1629
01:35:26.119 --> 01:35:28.479
We need to pull you back and teach you we
1630
01:35:28.560 --> 01:35:30.439
don't do this right. That's how you fix it. This
1631
01:35:30.600 --> 01:35:35.159
wasn't the genesis of this book and is not Oh
1632
01:35:35.159 --> 01:35:36.760
my god, all of these guys have to go to jail.
1633
01:35:36.800 --> 01:35:40.119
It came from seals who were Seal leaders, Seal Team
1634
01:35:40.239 --> 01:35:44.119
six leaders who were saying, we failed these kids. I
1635
01:35:44.319 --> 01:35:48.119
failed these kids. I tried to do this. I tried
1636
01:35:48.159 --> 01:35:51.399
to do that. Some were tired and left the military
1637
01:35:51.760 --> 01:35:55.079
because they tried to get Seal Team six leaders to
1638
01:35:55.720 --> 01:35:59.520
deal with war crimes and they were ignored, they were refused.
1639
01:35:59.520 --> 01:36:02.359
We don't have a problem. It's not a problem. I
1640
01:36:02.359 --> 01:36:04.279
don't know what you're talking about. I mean, it was,
1641
01:36:04.399 --> 01:36:09.119
it was a and so the the empathy here is
1642
01:36:09.399 --> 01:36:11.119
and again it goes back to why I don't name
1643
01:36:11.720 --> 01:36:13.840
for the most part, I don't name the younger operators.
1644
01:36:15.720 --> 01:36:17.720
I think part of what I was trying to do
1645
01:36:17.760 --> 01:36:19.880
in the book. And I know that it's probably hard
1646
01:36:19.920 --> 01:36:22.560
for people to understand that. Most people understand this, especially
1647
01:36:22.600 --> 01:36:24.920
if you're coming from the perspective that this is some
1648
01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:29.279
kind of anti Seal book. It's not. What this is
1649
01:36:29.279 --> 01:36:33.960
is a description of failed leadership and how you what
1650
01:36:33.960 --> 01:36:35.600
the cost is to the men who do it. And
1651
01:36:35.880 --> 01:36:37.880
I think, although it may be subtle, one of the
1652
01:36:37.880 --> 01:36:40.199
ways I tried to do that in the reporting was
1653
01:36:40.239 --> 01:36:42.680
the tone that I took in writing about it. I
1654
01:36:42.800 --> 01:36:48.159
made a very concerted effort to never be strident about
1655
01:36:48.439 --> 01:36:52.279
any of what you know, the wrongdoing, and never to
1656
01:36:53.920 --> 01:36:57.640
try to you know, I tried to pull my punches
1657
01:36:57.720 --> 01:37:03.600
a little actually in the reporting because you just want
1658
01:37:03.640 --> 01:37:06.479
to get the message across through the information. You let
1659
01:37:06.479 --> 01:37:08.880
the information speak for itself and the reportings the facts
1660
01:37:08.880 --> 01:37:12.319
speak for itself. There was no need to editorialize or
1661
01:37:12.760 --> 01:37:16.439
to suggest that, you know anything, there's some kind of
1662
01:37:16.439 --> 01:37:19.520
inherent evil here and all like that. And that came
1663
01:37:19.600 --> 01:37:22.520
from very much from my sources who were saying, look,
1664
01:37:22.760 --> 01:37:25.319
the people who are suffering here are the guys that
1665
01:37:25.359 --> 01:37:28.960
we sent out there who did thirteen to fifteen deployments,
1666
01:37:29.159 --> 01:37:32.439
whose families are silently suffering because they don't even have
1667
01:37:32.479 --> 01:37:36.840
a name for the Yes, it's PTSD, yes the trauma,
1668
01:37:36.880 --> 01:37:40.000
but they don't have a name for how it is affecting.
1669
01:37:41.039 --> 01:37:43.680
It will affect their family now, it will affect their
1670
01:37:43.720 --> 01:37:46.319
next generation of their family because of the way, you know,
1671
01:37:46.359 --> 01:37:49.239
the kids are raised in that environment, right and although
1672
01:37:49.279 --> 01:37:51.439
they have some of the best psychologists and they do,
1673
01:37:51.640 --> 01:37:54.800
you know, they have a great post career community for
1674
01:37:55.319 --> 01:37:58.159
supporting each other, and they have there are some initiatives
1675
01:37:58.159 --> 01:38:03.199
that I've heard about that seem promising. Overall, they don't
1676
01:38:03.199 --> 01:38:05.680
do much right. I mean Matt Bissonette said it in
1677
01:38:05.720 --> 01:38:07.640
his book, I mean his second book, you know, he said,
1678
01:38:07.680 --> 01:38:11.079
we get trained at everything to the tea, he said,
1679
01:38:11.119 --> 01:38:14.279
but they do not train us whatsoever for the emotional
1680
01:38:14.760 --> 01:38:17.760
toll and impact of what being on the speeding train
1681
01:38:17.800 --> 01:38:18.439
will do to you.
1682
01:38:18.560 --> 01:38:23.000
Right right, well, I mean, you know, flid still, you know,
1683
01:38:23.960 --> 01:38:25.800
I think, I mean, I hope he's trading it.
1684
01:38:25.800 --> 01:38:27.680
I don't know, but you know, he's very you know,
1685
01:38:27.720 --> 01:38:28.039
he was.
1686
01:38:28.000 --> 01:38:30.159
Open about the postma stress he has.
1687
01:38:30.880 --> 01:38:34.439
You know, I think Latrell, you know, when he talks about,
1688
01:38:34.560 --> 01:38:38.640
you know, feeling like a coward, you know, like you know,
1689
01:38:39.359 --> 01:38:41.039
and I think those are the things I think that
1690
01:38:41.199 --> 01:38:43.439
like And they are gonna be people who watch this
1691
01:38:43.560 --> 01:38:48.279
and think this is an anti Seal episode, anti American
1692
01:38:48.359 --> 01:38:51.199
or anti American or anti whatever. And and I'll tell
1693
01:38:51.239 --> 01:38:54.239
you just for myself, I'm all about killing the bad guys.
1694
01:38:54.279 --> 01:38:58.199
I mean, fuck him up, right, they're they're bad guys
1695
01:38:58.319 --> 01:38:59.119
like that.
1696
01:38:59.119 --> 01:39:00.600
That's you know.
1697
01:39:00.800 --> 01:39:04.680
I even I agree with someone worthy off the book,
1698
01:39:04.760 --> 01:39:05.760
you know, off the board.
1699
01:39:05.560 --> 01:39:08.239
Type methods, but but it doesn't.
1700
01:39:07.880 --> 01:39:11.239
Do the war effort, it doesn't do the unit, and
1701
01:39:11.279 --> 01:39:15.000
it doesn't do the soul any good too, to get
1702
01:39:15.039 --> 01:39:18.880
caught up in the combat as anything other than combat,
1703
01:39:19.000 --> 01:39:22.880
anything other than you know, the mission. When it becomes
1704
01:39:22.880 --> 01:39:25.720
when you make it personal, when you make it personal,
1705
01:39:26.119 --> 01:39:31.920
when when you engage in you know, you know, mutilations
1706
01:39:32.000 --> 01:39:37.439
or things like that, the person is dead regardless of
1707
01:39:37.479 --> 01:39:39.520
any of that.
1708
01:39:39.520 --> 01:39:41.800
That's something that lives.
1709
01:39:41.840 --> 01:39:47.520
Like, That's not something I think that most people like
1710
01:39:48.039 --> 01:39:50.720
you know, like you said, it's a virus, right, It's
1711
01:39:50.760 --> 01:39:53.640
like suicide. If if a suicide happens in a unit,
1712
01:39:54.039 --> 01:39:56.800
it's a mimetic, it's a meme, it's a virus of
1713
01:39:56.880 --> 01:40:01.960
the mind. It spreads and it's will increase in that unit.
1714
01:40:02.520 --> 01:40:04.840
But but social behaviors are the same type of thing.
1715
01:40:04.920 --> 01:40:06.319
This is the same type of thing.
1716
01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:09.479
That there are people who would never There are seals
1717
01:40:09.479 --> 01:40:12.199
who had never in their entire life do something like this.
1718
01:40:12.279 --> 01:40:13.359
It wouldn't occur to them.
1719
01:40:13.920 --> 01:40:18.279
But if it becomes sort of this thematic thing where
1720
01:40:18.279 --> 01:40:22.920
it's acceptable and normalized, normalized, then you know, when we're
1721
01:40:22.920 --> 01:40:27.199
in this environment of combat and chaos and emotions and loss,
1722
01:40:27.319 --> 01:40:30.520
and we're dealing with all these different things, you know,
1723
01:40:31.319 --> 01:40:35.439
we're vulnerable, right, and so to be subjected to that
1724
01:40:35.600 --> 01:40:38.880
and then to not have anybody the officers reach in
1725
01:40:39.520 --> 01:40:44.279
and and and yank that back. Yeah, to have the
1726
01:40:44.760 --> 01:40:47.760
to not you know, and to cover it up. And
1727
01:40:47.800 --> 01:40:50.760
I'm not again, I'm not saying send the guys to jail,
1728
01:40:51.079 --> 01:40:53.680
like take care of them, like make it so this
1729
01:40:53.720 --> 01:40:57.039
isn't a normal thing, because twenty years from now, like
1730
01:40:57.079 --> 01:41:00.680
you said, this is a family thing, right, and then
1731
01:41:00.720 --> 01:41:02.279
it becomes a generational thing.
1732
01:41:02.399 --> 01:41:04.560
You know. One of the stories in the book speaking
1733
01:41:04.560 --> 01:41:06.760
about slab was this incident in two thousand and seven
1734
01:41:06.840 --> 01:41:09.560
with I think it was an E six at the time,
1735
01:41:09.600 --> 01:41:14.119
maybe I think it was E six who his commanding
1736
01:41:14.119 --> 01:41:17.000
officer caught a glimpse of him trying to cut a
1737
01:41:17.039 --> 01:41:21.319
head off of a Taliban fighter that they had killed
1738
01:41:21.319 --> 01:41:25.239
on an operation. And Slabinski, who was the master chief
1739
01:41:25.239 --> 01:41:26.880
at the time, had told his men that he wanted
1740
01:41:26.880 --> 01:41:29.399
a head on a platter, and there was you know,
1741
01:41:29.439 --> 01:41:32.920
some of the older guys heard it as it could
1742
01:41:32.920 --> 01:41:36.319
have easily been, which was just metaphorical and slab being dramatic,
1743
01:41:36.640 --> 01:41:38.680
but the younger guys didn't know the difference, and so
1744
01:41:39.840 --> 01:41:42.359
and there had been a ton of group think within
1745
01:41:42.399 --> 01:41:44.640
their unit at the time, within their troop in particular,
1746
01:41:45.399 --> 01:41:47.359
and there had been war crimes going on for the
1747
01:41:47.399 --> 01:41:52.279
whole deployment and that young man. They covered it up.
1748
01:41:52.640 --> 01:41:56.199
They got out of the NCIS investigation. Everyone was cleared,
1749
01:41:56.760 --> 01:42:00.880
but that seal at operator eventually, I think it took
1750
01:42:00.960 --> 01:42:06.279
another eight years or so. He eventually basically became medically
1751
01:42:06.319 --> 01:42:10.560
unfit to deploy. He was a psychological mess. He left
1752
01:42:10.640 --> 01:42:13.600
the unit. After he pulled himself from deploying. They sent
1753
01:42:13.720 --> 01:42:17.199
him to the Pykes. He was not fit. They sent
1754
01:42:17.279 --> 01:42:19.520
him to Group two, to the White Side where he
1755
01:42:19.560 --> 01:42:23.159
could and at that point he said he didn't want
1756
01:42:23.239 --> 01:42:26.000
to said to others, not to me, that he ever
1757
01:42:26.079 --> 01:42:27.960
wanted to deploy again. And as I understand it, he
1758
01:42:28.000 --> 01:42:33.840
has spent years in intensive therapy because he was young
1759
01:42:33.880 --> 01:42:39.000
and impressionable and with a group of seasoned enlisted out officers,
1760
01:42:39.119 --> 01:42:45.800
enlisted members of Seal Team six who believed that chopping
1761
01:42:45.800 --> 01:42:48.359
the heads off the enemy was gonna win the war.
1762
01:42:49.079 --> 01:42:52.720
And there were you know, there was some pulling back
1763
01:42:52.920 --> 01:42:56.680
of guys after that incident. There was some yelling, but
1764
01:42:57.079 --> 01:43:00.800
they also covered it up and there was zero accountability.
1765
01:43:01.520 --> 01:43:04.279
Fast forward three years later, when Slovinsky is going to
1766
01:43:04.319 --> 01:43:08.119
come back for a senior position at the command. The
1767
01:43:08.199 --> 01:43:12.399
officers and the other master chiefs at the command voted
1768
01:43:12.479 --> 01:43:14.880
him out, basically refused to let him back in. They
1769
01:43:14.920 --> 01:43:20.039
blacklisted him. And that actually acts as the only time
1770
01:43:20.399 --> 01:43:23.039
that I know of and that anyone else knows of,
1771
01:43:23.279 --> 01:43:27.640
that Seal Team six held any of their own accountable
1772
01:43:28.239 --> 01:43:32.760
for this failure of leadership and and and war crimes
1773
01:43:32.760 --> 01:43:34.800
and it and and as someone to that, We're never
1774
01:43:34.840 --> 01:43:38.000
going to send him to the brig We were never
1775
01:43:38.039 --> 01:43:40.000
going to send them to n c I S or
1776
01:43:40.439 --> 01:43:42.640
rat them out. We just never wanted him back at
1777
01:43:42.640 --> 01:43:45.239
Seal Team six. We wanted to send a message. Now
1778
01:43:45.279 --> 01:43:47.760
fast forward to that he gets awarded a medal, is
1779
01:43:47.960 --> 01:43:51.199
upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and that became you know,
1780
01:43:51.239 --> 01:43:54.560
there is just as Gallagher was, and I think, you know,
1781
01:43:54.680 --> 01:43:59.239
Dave Phillips did just a fantastic job in Alpha describing
1782
01:43:59.319 --> 01:44:05.159
the cultural war inside the teams between you know, the
1783
01:44:05.159 --> 01:44:09.279
the the good and the ugly really is what it is,
1784
01:44:09.399 --> 01:44:12.600
right and unfortunately the ugly really won in that case.
1785
01:44:13.680 --> 01:44:16.239
You know, when Slabinsky gets kicked out of Seal Team
1786
01:44:16.319 --> 01:44:20.359
six or blacklist is the more accurate. It's a good
1787
01:44:20.520 --> 01:44:24.239
description of when some where they were able to write
1788
01:44:24.239 --> 01:44:26.359
the ship on their own. It's an example, it's a
1789
01:44:26.439 --> 01:44:29.720
it's a singular example, which is part of the problem.
1790
01:44:29.960 --> 01:44:33.079
When he gets awarded the upgrade to the Medal of Honor,
1791
01:44:33.560 --> 01:44:36.840
it is absolutely a message to everybody else in Seal
1792
01:44:36.920 --> 01:44:40.479
Team six and in the teams that the cover up wins,
1793
01:44:41.159 --> 01:44:43.720
that there is you know, you are giving out the
1794
01:44:43.840 --> 01:44:48.880
highest award for valor the military that the government gives out.
1795
01:44:49.359 --> 01:44:51.960
And it's not a question of what may or may
1796
01:44:52.000 --> 01:44:55.319
not have occurred up on top of Tucker Gar although
1797
01:44:55.840 --> 01:44:59.319
that's certainly an issue that was that was broad Chapman,
1798
01:44:59.479 --> 01:45:01.239
but regards wordless of that, and that's not one that
1799
01:45:01.279 --> 01:45:07.000
I I I you know, never fought in need, you know,
1800
01:45:07.560 --> 01:45:09.680
thigh deep snow on the top of a mountain, you know,
1801
01:45:09.800 --> 01:45:14.079
under an ambush. But for everything that occurred after the fact,
1802
01:45:14.119 --> 01:45:16.279
which by the way, the regulations of the Medal of
1803
01:45:16.319 --> 01:45:21.439
Honor are you know, their actions and conduct after an
1804
01:45:21.439 --> 01:45:26.920
event are are part of the consideration. And there were
1805
01:45:27.359 --> 01:45:34.000
multiple incidents with Slabinski. He was you know, punted from
1806
01:45:34.000 --> 01:45:37.720
a unit because of war crimes and for for illegal
1807
01:45:38.399 --> 01:45:41.920
allegations of illegal orders, right, and so when he won
1808
01:45:42.439 --> 01:45:46.000
the upgrade. There were guys my phone was was just
1809
01:45:46.039 --> 01:45:50.119
the groaning. You know, I'm disgusted, We're disgusted.
1810
01:45:49.600 --> 01:45:54.439
With with with the message that's as sending to everybody
1811
01:45:54.520 --> 01:45:58.000
else in the teams who knows and and the truth
1812
01:45:58.199 --> 01:46:00.000
right so, and that that's what the book is.
1813
01:46:00.319 --> 01:46:02.880
It's not I'm not trying to make a judgment. I'm
1814
01:46:02.920 --> 01:46:05.199
literally just trying to put out the story as it is,
1815
01:46:05.920 --> 01:46:07.279
as it was, and as it is.
1816
01:46:07.359 --> 01:46:14.880
I feel as though the whole Chatman Medal of Honor episode,
1817
01:46:16.239 --> 01:46:21.319
even notwithstanding a Slovensky like not, but but what the
1818
01:46:21.399 --> 01:46:26.960
seals did, what the Seal Command did during that that
1819
01:46:27.039 --> 01:46:30.760
speaks more to me about the overall like not speaks
1820
01:46:30.760 --> 01:46:33.760
more to me. But that to me is more demonstrative
1821
01:46:34.279 --> 01:46:39.520
of the the problem with with the the Seal Command,
1822
01:46:39.600 --> 01:46:43.640
that that that seal culture then it were not than
1823
01:46:43.720 --> 01:46:44.880
any of these other things.
1824
01:46:45.039 --> 01:46:48.239
But I think it it.
1825
01:46:47.479 --> 01:46:51.399
Is easier to point to that outside of saying, well,
1826
01:46:51.439 --> 01:46:53.720
you know, you have cover ups on regular army basis
1827
01:46:53.840 --> 01:46:56.000
right where you know there's a sexual assault and the
1828
01:46:56.039 --> 01:46:58.039
commanding officer covers it up because he doesn't want it
1829
01:46:58.079 --> 01:47:03.319
to be his problem. And again I agree that there's
1830
01:47:03.359 --> 01:47:06.079
this history of this where it's in the command. I'm
1831
01:47:06.119 --> 01:47:09.920
just saying that the whole Chapman Medal of Honor thing
1832
01:47:10.880 --> 01:47:15.520
shows sort of what that Naval command, what that Seal command,
1833
01:47:16.439 --> 01:47:20.560
how they act, because when it came when Chapman's name
1834
01:47:20.680 --> 01:47:24.800
came up, they immediately immediately turned on him.
1835
01:47:25.000 --> 01:47:25.680
Yep, you know.
1836
01:47:26.159 --> 01:47:30.119
And here was somebody who Slovinski originally for his uh
1837
01:47:30.319 --> 01:47:33.760
you know, is uh the air the Air.
1838
01:47:33.600 --> 01:47:36.399
Cross right that he would get the Navy Cross or
1839
01:47:37.319 --> 01:47:38.359
no for chat O Chapman.
1840
01:47:38.399 --> 01:47:40.520
Yeah, sorry, yeah, who you know.
1841
01:47:40.600 --> 01:47:43.199
Slovinsky had said he saved our lives when he took
1842
01:47:43.199 --> 01:47:46.319
Bunker one. He saved our lives, right, give it. I
1843
01:47:46.359 --> 01:47:48.760
hope he gets any award. Then when it comes to
1844
01:47:48.840 --> 01:47:53.439
the upgrade, the Seals are so fervently against it and
1845
01:47:53.439 --> 01:47:56.159
and undermining it and and everything else.
1846
01:47:56.279 --> 01:48:00.119
And to me, that is like who does that?
1847
01:48:00.119 --> 01:48:02.279
That's you know, that's the part that's dishonorable about it.
1848
01:48:02.319 --> 01:48:05.119
I mean, a botched operation that happens, you.
1849
01:48:05.079 --> 01:48:08.800
Know, you know, I don't even blame Slovensky for leaving
1850
01:48:08.920 --> 01:48:12.279
him per se, because nobody knows what was going on.
1851
01:48:12.399 --> 01:48:15.399
They were under heavy fire, there was snow on the ground.
1852
01:48:15.800 --> 01:48:18.920
You know, Robert's body was there, that Selenskin every acknowledge
1853
01:48:19.000 --> 01:48:21.560
it could be that he thought that was that nobody knows,
1854
01:48:22.000 --> 01:48:25.399
Like I don't even necessarily blame him for that, because
1855
01:48:25.600 --> 01:48:28.079
in the fog war, the only person who knows what
1856
01:48:28.159 --> 01:48:30.600
happened is the person's there, and even sometimes they don't
1857
01:48:30.600 --> 01:48:34.239
know what happened. But but the way the Navy handled
1858
01:48:34.239 --> 01:48:38.760
it is like, Okay, that's that's what you expect, you know,
1859
01:48:39.000 --> 01:48:40.319
or that's what that would be.
1860
01:48:40.319 --> 01:48:42.600
Take that's the tell and I you know, the reason,
1861
01:48:42.640 --> 01:48:46.199
the reason why that story ultimately is you know, the
1862
01:48:46.359 --> 01:48:49.800
central sort of spine of the book with three chapters,
1863
01:48:49.840 --> 01:48:53.760
because it's, you know, it's a tragic saga of you know,
1864
01:48:53.840 --> 01:48:57.760
the the best and the worst, and yes, the worst
1865
01:48:57.800 --> 01:49:00.720
part about it is not you know, and what happened
1866
01:49:00.800 --> 01:49:03.520
up on the mountain at all. What if the worst
1867
01:49:03.840 --> 01:49:07.800
was the way in which they went fourteen years after
1868
01:49:07.840 --> 01:49:12.319
the event, everything that they claimed happened now changed so
1869
01:49:12.399 --> 01:49:16.239
that they could protect their brand, their honor, their guy.
1870
01:49:16.880 --> 01:49:20.079
And that is the part that you know, it's dishonorable.
1871
01:49:20.119 --> 01:49:24.079
That's the part that's I think the the you know,
1872
01:49:24.119 --> 01:49:28.319
for people not in the seals who served in the military,
1873
01:49:28.319 --> 01:49:30.600
who have served with the Seals. That's the thing you
1874
01:49:30.680 --> 01:49:33.840
hear the most is like, yeah, well that's how they are, right.
1875
01:49:33.880 --> 01:49:36.840
That's and I don't like to make generalizations. I haven't
1876
01:49:37.039 --> 01:49:39.079
you know, I haven't served. I've never served with the Seal.
1877
01:49:39.359 --> 01:49:43.079
I can't speak to that. But as a reporter, that
1878
01:49:43.199 --> 01:49:45.479
story is prevalent. That's the story here over and over,
1879
01:49:45.560 --> 01:49:48.960
which is, you know, they have their brand looks like this,
1880
01:49:49.039 --> 01:49:50.800
and they make a lot of money with that brand,
1881
01:49:50.840 --> 01:49:53.279
and anything that goes against that brand or suggests that
1882
01:49:53.279 --> 01:49:57.079
they are not totally heroic and totally flawless, or that
1883
01:49:57.159 --> 01:49:59.319
the story that they told may not be as accurate
1884
01:49:59.439 --> 01:50:03.560
as they as they proceed, you know, made it sound
1885
01:50:04.399 --> 01:50:06.239
they circle the wagons.
1886
01:50:06.479 --> 01:50:08.640
Speaking of which, there's one thing I definitely wanted to
1887
01:50:08.680 --> 01:50:12.880
ask you about about somebody who's not interested in profiting
1888
01:50:12.920 --> 01:50:17.119
off the brand necessarily or at all. We've heard a
1889
01:50:17.119 --> 01:50:18.960
lot about the Bin Laden raid. There's a lot about
1890
01:50:18.960 --> 01:50:21.760
it in your book. We've heard a lot about O'Neill
1891
01:50:21.800 --> 01:50:24.640
and Bissonett, a lot out there about those guys. Tell
1892
01:50:24.720 --> 01:50:29.560
us about this one operator whose call sign was red.
1893
01:50:29.279 --> 01:50:34.039
Read yeah, well, Red should be known as the seal
1894
01:50:34.119 --> 01:50:39.760
operator who fired into bin Laden and effectively killed him
1895
01:50:42.000 --> 01:50:47.039
in Pakistan in twenty eleven. He was at the head
1896
01:50:47.039 --> 01:50:49.039
of the stack that went up. I think, in fact,
1897
01:50:49.199 --> 01:50:51.439
as it happens, he also shot bin Laden's son on
1898
01:50:51.479 --> 01:50:56.880
the second second deck, and as I understand it, and
1899
01:50:56.920 --> 01:51:00.000
I think, as I reported in the book, he fired
1900
01:51:00.199 --> 01:51:03.960
two shots, at least two shots. The first hit beIN
1901
01:51:04.039 --> 01:51:07.560
Lauden grazed him somewhere, not quite clear if it was
1902
01:51:07.600 --> 01:51:10.439
the hip or the leg, but then he got him
1903
01:51:10.439 --> 01:51:14.960
center mass, and at that point bin Laden fell back
1904
01:51:15.000 --> 01:51:17.600
into the room and onto the ground, A key detail
1905
01:51:18.239 --> 01:51:21.640
because everyone else who came into the door afterwards fired
1906
01:51:21.680 --> 01:51:24.680
into him while he was down on the ground. According
1907
01:51:24.680 --> 01:51:28.640
to my sources, and although it's no longer available, I
1908
01:51:28.680 --> 01:51:31.600
will tell you that on Twitter about a year ago,
1909
01:51:32.039 --> 01:51:36.680
a member of the unit who was there confirmed my
1910
01:51:36.840 --> 01:51:39.840
version of what was reported and with the version that's
1911
01:51:39.840 --> 01:51:42.359
in this book, and describes O'Neil I think, as being
1912
01:51:42.359 --> 01:51:46.079
the fourth guy through the doorway and the fourth man
1913
01:51:46.199 --> 01:51:52.880
to shoot bin Lauden. So red, you know, is one
1914
01:51:52.880 --> 01:51:56.159
guy who says silent professional, silent professional, and and you know,
1915
01:51:56.199 --> 01:51:59.239
I think quote quoted one of those former teammates who
1916
01:51:59.479 --> 01:52:04.199
who uh no been u Bissinette and O'Neil very well
1917
01:52:04.199 --> 01:52:06.520
who said, you know that the genius of what they
1918
01:52:06.560 --> 01:52:09.159
had done in constructing their versions of the story was
1919
01:52:09.199 --> 01:52:12.960
that there was really only one person who could contradict them,
1920
01:52:13.279 --> 01:52:16.439
and that guy's never going to talk. I think my
1921
01:52:17.000 --> 01:52:19.359
last I checked. I believe he's no longer in. I
1922
01:52:19.399 --> 01:52:24.720
think he's out, and uh, you know, it's just never
1923
01:52:24.840 --> 01:52:25.399
hear from him.
1924
01:52:25.399 --> 01:52:25.600
I guess.
1925
01:52:25.680 --> 01:52:27.159
Yeah, there's a little part of it that kind of
1926
01:52:27.199 --> 01:52:30.359
like makes me smile. I guess because there's this dude
1927
01:52:30.359 --> 01:52:33.760
out there who killed high value target number one, first
1928
01:52:33.760 --> 01:52:37.119
guy through the door, smoke's been laed in a historic shot,
1929
01:52:37.880 --> 01:52:39.800
has nothing to say about it. He's out there living
1930
01:52:39.800 --> 01:52:42.159
his best life, I guess, you know, and good for him,
1931
01:52:42.359 --> 01:52:42.560
you know.
1932
01:52:42.680 --> 01:52:47.479
I think what is interesting to me is that what
1933
01:52:48.880 --> 01:52:53.359
you can sort of surmise from from listening to all
1934
01:52:53.399 --> 01:52:58.600
of this is is that in general, the seals that
1935
01:52:58.680 --> 01:53:01.960
are out making the most money telling the most stories
1936
01:53:02.520 --> 01:53:04.640
are not necessarily the ones who were held in the
1937
01:53:04.680 --> 01:53:08.199
highest esteem inside. And we hear over and over again
1938
01:53:08.239 --> 01:53:11.319
it's you know, there was a terrible irony that it
1939
01:53:11.439 --> 01:53:14.560
is not the best of our community that is out
1940
01:53:15.119 --> 01:53:19.479
representing us. It's sort of like an inverse relation, which
1941
01:53:19.520 --> 01:53:23.079
is not to say that that you know, O'Neill's teammates
1942
01:53:23.960 --> 01:53:27.520
loved him, business teammates loved him. They've got lots of
1943
01:53:27.520 --> 01:53:29.239
problems with them, but that doesn't mean that.
1944
01:53:29.199 --> 01:53:33.920
They, by all accounts, was a great operator, phenomenal operator.
1945
01:53:34.039 --> 01:53:34.279
Right.
1946
01:53:35.000 --> 01:53:37.840
And and they're courageous. It's not like their cow like
1947
01:53:37.880 --> 01:53:40.600
they're they're they're good operators. They're curages.
1948
01:53:40.880 --> 01:53:44.840
Just maybe there's nothing that there's nothing in the reporting
1949
01:53:44.880 --> 01:53:50.000
here is about how they're bad seals or bad soldiers,
1950
01:53:50.199 --> 01:53:51.199
are not good at their job.
1951
01:53:51.199 --> 01:53:54.680
They're incredibly good at their job, right right. The question
1952
01:53:54.840 --> 01:53:57.239
is not about whether they're what they did on their
1953
01:53:57.279 --> 01:53:58.880
best day. The question is what they did on their
1954
01:53:58.920 --> 01:53:59.359
worst day.
1955
01:53:59.439 --> 01:54:01.840
It's not about whether they got two solar stars but
1956
01:54:02.119 --> 01:54:03.840
are happy with the one they.
1957
01:54:03.840 --> 01:54:11.000
Write that there's a full senday and and you know
1958
01:54:11.079 --> 01:54:16.560
the it's not a I will say obviously, as a
1959
01:54:16.760 --> 01:54:19.960
reporter who is writing about this stuff, I'm not I'm
1960
01:54:19.960 --> 01:54:23.479
not going to win any popularity contests. I've gotten over
1961
01:54:23.520 --> 01:54:28.119
the years some fantastic hate mail about on reporting on
1962
01:54:28.159 --> 01:54:30.920
this stuff, and I you know, I read it all.
1963
01:54:31.159 --> 01:54:35.399
I enjoy some of it, but I think it's really
1964
01:54:35.479 --> 01:54:37.880
really important for the you know, I don't think that
1965
01:54:37.960 --> 01:54:41.239
this book is going to change anyone's life. I think
1966
01:54:41.279 --> 01:54:47.399
that it's the book that as a citizen, as an
1967
01:54:47.439 --> 01:54:56.000
interested citizen, wants to know what happened in America's name
1968
01:54:56.720 --> 01:54:59.199
during the wars part of it, right, we know, Look,
1969
01:55:00.039 --> 01:55:02.439
there are plenty of books and stories about all the
1970
01:55:02.479 --> 01:55:05.079
great and heroic deeds. There's no shortage of them, and
1971
01:55:05.239 --> 01:55:07.840
I have nothing against them whatsoever. I do happen to
1972
01:55:07.880 --> 01:55:10.279
have a fealty towards the truth and think that that's
1973
01:55:10.319 --> 01:55:13.319
like kind of really important. It's like a you know,
1974
01:55:13.399 --> 01:55:17.840
a must have. And I think that the American public
1975
01:55:17.920 --> 01:55:22.800
deserves to understand what the consequences of a blank check
1976
01:55:22.840 --> 01:55:26.199
for twenty years of war are, for the men who served,
1977
01:55:26.680 --> 01:55:31.279
for the institutions that that refuse to hold itself accountable,
1978
01:55:31.520 --> 01:55:35.319
and ultimately for the civilian leadership that allowed it to happen,
1979
01:55:35.319 --> 01:55:37.920
who are supposed to oversee the officers. And I think
1980
01:55:37.960 --> 01:55:41.279
that that's that's what's supposed to happen in a democracy.
1981
01:55:41.319 --> 01:55:43.800
And that's not partisan, that's not a you know, this
1982
01:55:43.920 --> 01:55:46.079
isn't a left book, This isn't a right book. I mean,
1983
01:55:46.119 --> 01:55:48.119
I think it's I think it's fair to say that
1984
01:55:48.159 --> 01:55:50.680
almost every one of my sources leans to one party,
1985
01:55:51.640 --> 01:55:54.399
and it's not the party that you know, a lot
1986
01:55:54.439 --> 01:55:57.680
of people will think I vote for. My work is
1987
01:55:58.039 --> 01:56:01.520
non partisan in that it is just geared towards understanding
1988
01:56:01.880 --> 01:56:05.439
and finding out uncomfortable truths, because that's what I imagined
1989
01:56:05.720 --> 01:56:07.560
journalism was supposed to be when I started.
1990
01:56:07.880 --> 01:56:10.840
Your book does contain I mean, there are two other
1991
01:56:11.079 --> 01:56:14.119
vignettes in the book that I thought were very illuminating,
1992
01:56:14.159 --> 01:56:17.199
to say the least was I think these are the
1993
01:56:17.199 --> 01:56:21.239
most complete accounts I have read about the Captain Phillips rescue,
1994
01:56:21.560 --> 01:56:25.439
the Linda Norgrove rescue that went bad, and that the
1995
01:56:25.479 --> 01:56:31.039
heinous murder of Sergeant Logan Melgar. I don't know, I know,
1996
01:56:31.119 --> 01:56:32.920
we're kind of starting to run low on time.
1997
01:56:34.479 --> 01:56:35.880
Which one do you really want to hear about?
1998
01:56:38.520 --> 01:56:41.279
I think that, uh, the nord Grove one is very
1999
01:56:41.319 --> 01:56:45.399
well written. I think the Melgar one we should probably
2000
01:56:45.439 --> 01:56:47.079
dive into because it's pretty bad.
2001
01:56:47.840 --> 01:56:52.199
Yeah, you know, I'm you want me to start from
2002
01:56:52.239 --> 01:56:54.600
the top. I mean, I don't know how much the reader,
2003
01:56:54.680 --> 01:56:55.319
your audience.
2004
01:56:55.600 --> 01:56:58.359
I think they're all familiar with that a couple of
2005
01:56:58.640 --> 01:57:03.920
seals murdered a Green Beret in Mali, and our audience
2006
01:57:03.920 --> 01:57:06.079
has a general familiarity at least with that story.
2007
01:57:06.119 --> 01:57:12.439
Okay, So the Logan Melgar story unfortunately acts as like
2008
01:57:12.600 --> 01:57:19.800
a sort of you know, capstone on this post nine
2009
01:57:19.840 --> 01:57:26.560
to eleven, uh Forever wars and and seal culture. You know,
2010
01:57:26.640 --> 01:57:28.960
these two operators, one who had only been in country
2011
01:57:29.000 --> 01:57:34.319
for twenty four hours, basically set up to haze and
2012
01:57:34.680 --> 01:57:36.119
that that was their description in Hayes.
2013
01:57:36.279 --> 01:57:39.680
I think that the book, like professional remediation.
2014
01:57:39.359 --> 01:57:41.680
That was yes, the language that was used in court
2015
01:57:41.720 --> 01:57:45.439
to to downplay what they were doing was was was
2016
01:57:45.479 --> 01:57:47.439
comical if it weren't for the fact that someone ended
2017
01:57:47.479 --> 01:57:50.520
up dead. I think my point is is they the
2018
01:57:50.600 --> 01:57:56.960
seals and the two uh marine uh I think you
2019
01:57:57.000 --> 01:58:00.880
call them raiders raiders. Raiders did not intend to kill
2020
01:58:01.159 --> 01:58:06.000
right Melgar. What I reported both at the intercepted in
2021
01:58:06.039 --> 01:58:08.479
the book was Melgar. First of all, they didn't get
2022
01:58:08.479 --> 01:58:12.760
along Melgar their personalities, but they were sharing a house
2023
01:58:12.840 --> 01:58:15.880
or an apartment, a compound, and they didn't get along.
2024
01:58:16.319 --> 01:58:22.760
Melgar became aware that one of the Seals who later
2025
01:58:23.880 --> 01:58:26.399
kills him and the second member from Seal Team six
2026
01:58:26.760 --> 01:58:30.960
had been stealing from a operational fund for informants. It
2027
01:58:31.000 --> 01:58:34.520
was cash there. You get a lot of written receipts.
2028
01:58:34.520 --> 01:58:38.960
It's a well known means of making a small amount
2029
01:58:39.000 --> 01:58:42.159
of money undeployment. It's been going on. It's not just
2030
01:58:42.159 --> 01:58:45.479
in Seal Team six, but it particularly at a Tier
2031
01:58:45.520 --> 01:58:48.680
one because there's so much autonomy and so little oversight
2032
01:58:50.640 --> 01:58:53.720
and had in some where. I don't know if he
2033
01:58:53.760 --> 01:58:57.000
had confronted him, but they knew that he knew. And
2034
01:58:57.039 --> 01:58:59.840
as I understand it, and I think when you both
2035
01:59:00.119 --> 01:59:04.920
listened to the testimony in court during the court martial
2036
01:59:05.840 --> 01:59:08.840
and read between the lines, it's pretty clear. I think
2037
01:59:08.880 --> 01:59:11.880
one of the guys involved said it was they were
2038
01:59:11.880 --> 01:59:14.000
going to sexually assault him and film it and use
2039
01:59:14.039 --> 01:59:15.279
it essentially as blackmail.
2040
01:59:15.880 --> 01:59:18.039
They said that they were gonna that they were going
2041
01:59:18.079 --> 01:59:21.960
to they were going to have the molly guy like
2042
01:59:22.319 --> 01:59:24.079
fake sexually assault.
2043
01:59:23.800 --> 01:59:28.279
The seal said that Kevin Maxwell, who was the Marine
2044
01:59:28.359 --> 01:59:34.520
raider who ended up flipping second, said that no, the
2045
01:59:34.600 --> 01:59:39.159
plan was they were going to sexually assault him in
2046
01:59:39.760 --> 01:59:42.960
some manner. I believe it was because that's why it
2047
01:59:43.000 --> 01:59:48.680
came up with Operation uh Toss Salad. They were going
2048
01:59:48.760 --> 01:59:52.560
to use and in fact, my according to my sources,
2049
01:59:52.960 --> 01:59:56.640
the molly and guard that they picked that they asked
2050
01:59:56.640 --> 02:00:01.000
to come was chosen because for whatever reason in their group,
2051
02:00:01.039 --> 02:00:03.920
they knew that that was a particular thing that he
2052
02:00:04.119 --> 02:00:06.359
liked to do. And so they said, do you want
2053
02:00:06.399 --> 02:00:09.279
to do this on this guy? He says yes, and
2054
02:00:09.359 --> 02:00:11.600
so he's in the room. They're going to film it,
2055
02:00:12.159 --> 02:00:15.560
and they're going to show Melgar the film of it
2056
02:00:15.640 --> 02:00:18.880
afterwards and as a form of Blackmount shut up, you know,
2057
02:00:18.960 --> 02:00:24.119
professional remediation in the term that Adam Matthews, the member
2058
02:00:24.119 --> 02:00:27.199
of Seal Team six who was also involved, would later say,
2059
02:00:28.479 --> 02:00:34.680
they were incredibly drunk and Melgar fought back, which.
2060
02:00:34.479 --> 02:00:37.159
And Melgar was not drunk. He had been in his room.
2061
02:00:37.159 --> 02:00:37.760
He didn't drink.
2062
02:00:38.239 --> 02:00:40.600
We'll get we'll get drink at all. No, he did drink,
2063
02:00:40.640 --> 02:00:42.319
but he was not drunk at the time he died.
2064
02:00:42.319 --> 02:00:45.960
We'll get into that in a second. He fought back
2065
02:00:47.000 --> 02:00:49.119
during the resistance. They the plan was to choke him
2066
02:00:49.119 --> 02:00:53.359
out quickly, film this thing, this act some form of it,
2067
02:00:54.359 --> 02:00:56.560
and then you know, when he came to they would
2068
02:00:56.600 --> 02:01:00.720
show him and hold it over him. He came two
2069
02:01:00.840 --> 02:01:06.600
after the initial choke out, and so Tony Dedolph, who
2070
02:01:06.640 --> 02:01:13.079
is now currently in military prison after playing uh, I
2071
02:01:13.119 --> 02:01:18.079
can remember if he pled homicide or involuntary manslaughter. He's
2072
02:01:18.079 --> 02:01:21.359
got ten years, choked him out a second time, this
2073
02:01:21.520 --> 02:01:24.720
time pressing the way his body was and positioned. His
2074
02:01:24.840 --> 02:01:29.920
face was into the bed in Melgar's face was into
2075
02:01:30.000 --> 02:01:33.359
the bed, and he joked him out and he crushed
2076
02:01:33.359 --> 02:01:38.319
his his trachea. I mean, he crushed his throat and
2077
02:01:38.399 --> 02:01:44.479
he was dead. They then, you know, started to CPR
2078
02:01:44.600 --> 02:01:48.439
and trying to revive him that failed. I think the
2079
02:01:48.479 --> 02:01:51.039
thing that I was struck most by, and I'll start
2080
02:01:51.039 --> 02:01:56.079
with this because this ultimately is the point. Two of
2081
02:01:56.199 --> 02:02:03.279
America's most highly trained operators, who the government spends over
2082
02:02:03.319 --> 02:02:07.439
the course of a career millions of dollars to train
2083
02:02:07.800 --> 02:02:11.560
and then maintain their training, plus all of the equipment
2084
02:02:11.560 --> 02:02:16.479
and everything that goes with are standing over a now
2085
02:02:16.600 --> 02:02:21.800
deceased Green Beret, a fellow American, a service member, and
2086
02:02:21.840 --> 02:02:29.000
they have a choice. They can do the right thing
2087
02:02:29.600 --> 02:02:32.479
or they can do the wrong thing. And with his
2088
02:02:32.560 --> 02:02:36.880
body still warm, they immediately began to engage in a
2089
02:02:36.920 --> 02:02:40.720
cover up. And the point that I think this story
2090
02:02:40.760 --> 02:02:46.319
is really about is that if two of America's best
2091
02:02:47.319 --> 02:02:53.079
can make that decision after killing one of their own,
2092
02:02:53.279 --> 02:02:56.479
not on a battlefield, not with an enemy, not with
2093
02:02:56.560 --> 02:03:01.279
a legitimate target, with a roommate, to ask yourself.
2094
02:03:01.039 --> 02:03:03.079
I'll get to that point, what the hell.
2095
02:03:02.920 --> 02:03:08.159
Else has been going on? Because there is, you know,
2096
02:03:08.199 --> 02:03:13.479
there is again accidents happen, right, I'm not right. Everything
2097
02:03:13.520 --> 02:03:15.920
that I've just described, by the way, sounds an enormous
2098
02:03:15.920 --> 02:03:17.560
amount like the insignt penny.
2099
02:03:17.920 --> 02:03:21.479
You know, it's weird that hazing has has like these
2100
02:03:21.600 --> 02:03:25.079
homo erotic things. Like to me, hazing is like smoking,
2101
02:03:25.399 --> 02:03:28.840
you know, smoking, making them do push ups till you know,
2102
02:03:29.000 --> 02:03:30.199
till leave sweats blood.
2103
02:03:31.000 --> 02:03:33.640
There's a in particular with the seals hazing.
2104
02:03:33.880 --> 02:03:34.319
Uh.
2105
02:03:34.760 --> 02:03:37.199
There is some that's just like torturous. There are others
2106
02:03:37.199 --> 02:03:40.279
that is very homo rotic, you know, very homo rotic.
2107
02:03:42.439 --> 02:03:44.239
I'm not a psychologist, and I didn't I didn't delve
2108
02:03:44.279 --> 02:03:44.800
it into the book.
2109
02:03:45.680 --> 02:03:47.800
A bunch of user questions I'm going to hit you
2110
02:03:47.800 --> 02:03:51.640
with real quick here. Matthew Marcelo says, why did mc
2111
02:03:51.720 --> 02:03:55.239
raven give the UBL mission to Seal Team six, even
2112
02:03:55.239 --> 02:03:57.840
after issues on the Captain Phillips mission, seems like Delta
2113
02:03:57.880 --> 02:03:59.279
could have handled that mission.
2114
02:03:59.279 --> 02:04:03.359
Well to reasons. The first practical one was that the
2115
02:04:03.399 --> 02:04:06.439
Seals had Seal Team six had at the Afghanistan AO
2116
02:04:06.800 --> 02:04:11.119
and had been truly training and preparing for a mission there.
2117
02:04:11.239 --> 02:04:13.039
That's one part of it. There's the second part of it,
2118
02:04:13.079 --> 02:04:16.560
which is mccraven in particular was very fond of the
2119
02:04:16.560 --> 02:04:21.000
commanding officer of the Red Squadron at the time and
2120
02:04:21.279 --> 02:04:24.439
may have played that into favor. What people don't realize,
2121
02:04:24.439 --> 02:04:27.239
and I'm not sure you know, some of this has
2122
02:04:27.239 --> 02:04:31.119
been published before. He actually initially had chosen the Rangers
2123
02:04:31.159 --> 02:04:35.960
to lead to be in command of Seal Team six
2124
02:04:36.039 --> 02:04:38.520
on the ground for the mission, which led to a
2125
02:04:38.560 --> 02:04:43.239
blow up during the during the the read into Petevan
2126
02:04:43.279 --> 02:04:45.359
who Captain Pete Van Hoosier at the time, and that
2127
02:04:45.439 --> 02:04:48.399
didn't happen, So it was you know. And the other
2128
02:04:48.439 --> 02:04:51.239
thing is is, by the way, Emerald craven's a Seal
2129
02:04:51.640 --> 02:04:53.680
and you know, he may have been a four star
2130
02:04:53.720 --> 02:04:56.039
and he's he's one of the good ones, I think,
2131
02:04:56.399 --> 02:04:58.399
but that doesn't mean he is in parochial.
2132
02:04:58.520 --> 02:05:02.439
Carlos asks, could you guys discuss why and if rules
2133
02:05:02.479 --> 02:05:05.479
of engagement and standards of professional conduct on and off
2134
02:05:05.479 --> 02:05:07.880
the X are important to these types of units. There
2135
02:05:07.880 --> 02:05:10.760
seems to be some sentiment that there's that they should
2136
02:05:10.760 --> 02:05:12.520
be allowed to do anything.
2137
02:05:13.720 --> 02:05:17.000
That that Tier one guys should be allowed to operate
2138
02:05:18.159 --> 02:05:18.640
on their own.
2139
02:05:18.680 --> 02:05:20.199
I think that's what he's saying, that there's a lot
2140
02:05:20.199 --> 02:05:22.039
of people out there who like, fuck the ro O,
2141
02:05:22.279 --> 02:05:23.359
we don't need any r O. E.
2142
02:05:23.920 --> 02:05:26.319
Well, I mean, you know, and and I think that
2143
02:05:27.560 --> 02:05:31.199
ultimately the next question is and then what right the
2144
02:05:31.239 --> 02:05:35.479
next if there is there are rules of of there
2145
02:05:35.520 --> 02:05:37.439
are laws of war, and they're there for a reason.
2146
02:05:38.000 --> 02:05:40.359
The US signed up for them. We everyone who serves
2147
02:05:40.399 --> 02:05:43.239
in the uniform agrees to it. They are bound by it,
2148
02:05:43.720 --> 02:05:47.199
and whether it's popular or not. And you know, that
2149
02:05:47.239 --> 02:05:49.880
doesn't mean that there isn't lots and lots of gray room.
2150
02:05:49.920 --> 02:05:53.039
But as as one of my sources always said was,
2151
02:05:54.039 --> 02:05:56.279
you know, they give Seal Team six and Delta so
2152
02:05:56.439 --> 02:06:00.439
much latitude. Legally, it's not hard in that way, It's
2153
02:06:00.600 --> 02:06:03.760
rarely actually an issue. And that's why the old standard
2154
02:06:03.840 --> 02:06:06.760
Seal Team six was if you had one gray shoot,
2155
02:06:06.800 --> 02:06:09.800
you were gone. One incident where you shot someone who
2156
02:06:09.840 --> 02:06:14.560
wasn't armed, regardless of the answer being they're maneuvering, doesn't matter, right,
2157
02:06:14.560 --> 02:06:16.439
there's the difference between the threat and non threat. That
2158
02:06:16.640 --> 02:06:19.800
changed after nine to eleven, and again the standard dropped,
2159
02:06:20.319 --> 02:06:25.520
and I think to I think most Sealed Team six
2160
02:06:25.560 --> 02:06:28.920
operators would agree that that standard is important.
2161
02:06:29.319 --> 02:06:32.960
I'll just add on that point real quick that yeah,
2162
02:06:33.039 --> 02:06:35.239
I think the rules of engagement are important, but the
2163
02:06:35.399 --> 02:06:39.399
ROE is separate from international law. The ROE meets or
2164
02:06:39.439 --> 02:06:43.039
exceeds international law it has to, and the ROE is
2165
02:06:43.520 --> 02:06:46.640
blessed off on and signed off on by unit commanders
2166
02:06:46.720 --> 02:06:50.800
on the ground, and a lot of times they're roes
2167
02:06:51.039 --> 02:06:54.399
and their interpretations of the laws and the interpretations of
2168
02:06:54.479 --> 02:06:56.680
how they get to the ROE is fucked up. A
2169
02:06:56.720 --> 02:06:59.000
lot of times they don't know the law themselves. They
2170
02:06:59.000 --> 02:07:01.399
don't even have the background to begin to understand the law.
2171
02:07:01.840 --> 02:07:06.319
And that's when you see asinine restrictions put on soldiers.
2172
02:07:05.960 --> 02:07:08.159
That don't make sense, Like you have to fill out
2173
02:07:08.159 --> 02:07:09.920
a report every time you fire a weapon.
2174
02:07:10.000 --> 02:07:12.880
Well, that's done to cover the ass afterwards. But I
2175
02:07:12.920 --> 02:07:15.520
mean when you find like in Afghanistan, where we had
2176
02:07:15.520 --> 02:07:19.359
troops under fire in contact with the enemy, and we
2177
02:07:19.399 --> 02:07:22.199
could not call in aircraft to drop bombs on them.
2178
02:07:22.479 --> 02:07:25.239
That's because the commanders on the ground don't fucking understand
2179
02:07:25.279 --> 02:07:27.319
their own ro right and roes.
2180
02:07:27.520 --> 02:07:30.520
I mean they I think they change too, like if
2181
02:07:30.560 --> 02:07:34.279
from deployment to deployment. Yeah, roe's changed, but but there's
2182
02:07:34.319 --> 02:07:38.479
a massive difference between having an ROE that is, like,
2183
02:07:39.560 --> 02:07:43.520
you can only shoot somebody who is engaging you first,
2184
02:07:43.560 --> 02:07:47.079
you can only shoot somebody's who's holding weapon first. I'm
2185
02:07:47.119 --> 02:07:49.840
just gonna shoot everybody on target, regardless of what they're doing.
2186
02:07:49.680 --> 02:07:50.119
The whole thing.
2187
02:07:50.119 --> 02:07:52.319
And I'm not saying that's what the Seals are doing.
2188
02:07:52.319 --> 02:07:53.960
I'm just using that as an example.
2189
02:07:55.199 --> 02:07:58.680
Jackson says, do you foresee pirate culture dying off anytime
2190
02:07:58.760 --> 02:08:02.880
soon in Seals? I assume it seems like social media, games, movies,
2191
02:08:02.880 --> 02:08:06.680
and books glorify war crimes and hatchets, which we have
2192
02:08:06.800 --> 02:08:10.359
seen these hatchets appear in various forms of media over
2193
02:08:10.399 --> 02:08:11.560
the last ten years.
2194
02:08:12.439 --> 02:08:15.079
No, I think it's a winning brand. It's a it's
2195
02:08:15.079 --> 02:08:20.319
a money making machine. I think that there's there's still
2196
02:08:20.680 --> 02:08:24.359
a conflict inside the Seals about this, a cultural conflict.
2197
02:08:25.039 --> 02:08:29.720
I think the rogue side is very much winning and
2198
02:08:30.319 --> 02:08:37.079
probably with smaller numbers as a very loud minority within
2199
02:08:37.159 --> 02:08:39.520
the teams. But I don't think that there's I don't
2200
02:08:39.520 --> 02:08:40.359
think it's going anywhere.
2201
02:08:40.439 --> 02:08:41.640
I mean there's something there.
2202
02:08:42.119 --> 02:08:46.239
Pirate culture is attractive, and I mean there there are
2203
02:08:46.359 --> 02:08:49.520
things about it, you know, the whole kind of marine corps, you.
2204
02:08:49.479 --> 02:08:52.520
Know, improvised, adapt and overcome it.
2205
02:08:52.520 --> 02:08:58.079
It's but like, but what specifically is pirate culture right
2206
02:08:58.239 --> 02:09:01.479
is Like I had someone contact me once getting upset
2207
02:09:01.840 --> 02:09:05.920
with something I said, and he was like, because he's like, listen, man,
2208
02:09:05.960 --> 02:09:08.359
the thing with the hatchet's like after my first firefight,
2209
02:09:08.680 --> 02:09:11.279
my teammates gave me a tomahawk and I was like, dude,
2210
02:09:11.319 --> 02:09:12.399
that's not what I'm talking about.
2211
02:09:12.399 --> 02:09:15.039
I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. Like goes
2212
02:09:15.119 --> 02:09:17.399
up on your wall, it's a memento. That's cool, Like
2213
02:09:17.920 --> 02:09:21.880
why not? It's all the other stuff beyond that. I'll
2214
02:09:21.880 --> 02:09:22.600
tell you right now.
2215
02:09:22.760 --> 02:09:25.640
I carried a tomahawk for like two ops, and when
2216
02:09:25.640 --> 02:09:28.800
I realized it was completely because I wanted I want it.
2217
02:09:28.920 --> 02:09:31.760
I wanted a hatchet kill. What can I say?
2218
02:09:31.920 --> 02:09:34.960
I'm not gonna like hit somebody when they're dead, but
2219
02:09:34.960 --> 02:09:35.560
but then when.
2220
02:09:35.399 --> 02:09:37.800
I realized how absolutely unfeasible it is.
2221
02:09:38.279 --> 02:09:39.520
I'm lugging this thing around.
2222
02:09:39.560 --> 02:09:42.439
You've got your primary, you've got your secondary. How on
2223
02:09:42.479 --> 02:09:45.399
the hell am I gonna, you know, pull out a hatchet.
2224
02:09:45.319 --> 02:09:46.800
You know, without somebody shooting me first.
2225
02:09:46.800 --> 02:09:49.159
So you know, it never went on another op.
2226
02:09:49.239 --> 02:09:52.880
But but I mean there's there's I don't know, you
2227
02:09:52.920 --> 02:09:57.319
know where that came from. Was that old Vietnam alert painting,
2228
02:09:57.800 --> 02:10:00.920
you know, And there there's like a tradition or a
2229
02:10:01.000 --> 02:10:02.880
heritage behind it, and it is a tool.
2230
02:10:04.319 --> 02:10:10.359
But I mean, so's a musket. Yeah, Elliott says, what
2231
02:10:10.479 --> 02:10:12.680
is the current status of dev grew in this regard?
2232
02:10:12.800 --> 02:10:15.199
What does Matthew see as the future of dev grew
2233
02:10:15.600 --> 02:10:18.000
after the kind of op tempo that they've seen during
2234
02:10:18.039 --> 02:10:19.439
the Global War on Terror.
2235
02:10:19.560 --> 02:10:23.199
That's a really good question. Two years ago, I think
2236
02:10:23.199 --> 02:10:25.800
at the end of the Trump administration, I asked someone
2237
02:10:25.840 --> 02:10:30.680
at the Pentagon what the differences between Delta and Sale
2238
02:10:30.720 --> 02:10:33.079
Team six were on the issue of sort of pivoting
2239
02:10:33.119 --> 02:10:36.880
away from the Global War on Terror and counter terrorism,
2240
02:10:37.319 --> 02:10:41.600
And at that time, the senior official said that Delta
2241
02:10:41.920 --> 02:10:45.880
had done a much better job of shifting away from
2242
02:10:46.119 --> 02:10:50.239
counter terrorism and towards more some of the more traditional
2243
02:10:53.520 --> 02:10:56.000
the sort of genre or operations that they did which
2244
02:10:56.039 --> 02:10:59.119
were not necessarily kinetic, a lot more intelligence gathering and
2245
02:10:59.680 --> 02:11:04.960
collect and things that fit under the realm of unconventional warfare,
2246
02:11:05.920 --> 02:11:07.880
and that Seal Team six had been slow. I don't
2247
02:11:07.920 --> 02:11:12.000
know where that's at today. I think, you know, there
2248
02:11:12.039 --> 02:11:14.600
are fewer places for Seal Team six right now to operate,
2249
02:11:14.640 --> 02:11:19.319
because we're not in Afghanistan, for instance, whereas Delta still
2250
02:11:19.359 --> 02:11:23.880
obviously is Rock Syria, and although there's some seals there,
2251
02:11:23.960 --> 02:11:28.239
it's less there area of operations. So I think that's
2252
02:11:28.279 --> 02:11:30.159
a challenge for Seal Team six is to figure out
2253
02:11:30.199 --> 02:11:32.479
how to go back to, for instance, one of I
2254
02:11:32.600 --> 02:11:34.239
don't think they were very good at, which was being
2255
02:11:34.319 --> 02:11:39.560
part of the counterproliferation efforts against Iran in North Korea.
2256
02:11:40.520 --> 02:11:43.439
Last question here, actually we have some you asked this,
2257
02:11:43.560 --> 02:11:45.720
but we have some that we missed. Yeah, they went
2258
02:11:45.800 --> 02:11:48.079
up and chat, So I've got to shoe Paul asks.
2259
02:11:48.279 --> 02:11:50.720
He says, in your book, you mentioned a child metavact
2260
02:11:50.800 --> 02:11:53.920
to Bagram after a civ cast incident, who was then
2261
02:11:53.960 --> 02:11:56.079
cared for by Jay Sock and Seal Team six. Do
2262
02:11:56.079 --> 02:11:57.039
you know what happened to him.
2263
02:11:57.159 --> 02:12:00.880
He lived, The kid lived. I did know what happened
2264
02:12:00.920 --> 02:12:02.760
to him. It's actually it's a good story, not a
2265
02:12:02.800 --> 02:12:06.680
bad one. I just can't remember whether the child was
2266
02:12:06.720 --> 02:12:11.680
brought out of Afghanistan or eventually transferred. I think he
2267
02:12:11.720 --> 02:12:14.479
actually lived. He was nursed by one of the officers
2268
02:12:15.720 --> 02:12:20.520
in Bogram for the entire deployment, and then it had
2269
02:12:20.520 --> 02:12:22.279
a happy ending. It was not a bad ending. I
2270
02:12:22.319 --> 02:12:23.079
just can't remember.
2271
02:12:23.479 --> 02:12:25.479
And you know, and that's interesting too, because that that
2272
02:12:25.640 --> 02:12:30.760
happened right after Roberts Trodry and and they go on
2273
02:12:30.800 --> 02:12:34.079
this they're gonna do a v I vehicle vehicle interdiction
2274
02:12:34.760 --> 02:12:38.880
and the Air Force bombs these vehicles instead, and the
2275
02:12:38.920 --> 02:12:41.560
seals are upset about that, not because they wanted to
2276
02:12:41.560 --> 02:12:44.119
get their kill on, but because like nobody knew who
2277
02:12:44.199 --> 02:12:46.279
was in these vehicles. And they go down there and
2278
02:12:46.319 --> 02:12:51.119
they find these civilians and you know, there may have been,
2279
02:12:51.319 --> 02:12:53.840
you know, a seal.
2280
02:12:53.600 --> 02:12:56.600
Who you know, did something and you know that it.
2281
02:12:56.479 --> 02:12:59.079
Was questionable, but for the most part, most of these
2282
02:12:59.079 --> 02:13:01.319
seals were like scarned about these civilians.
2283
02:13:01.680 --> 02:13:04.800
And they metivact, the boy who was the child who
2284
02:13:04.840 --> 02:13:05.319
was still on.
2285
02:13:05.439 --> 02:13:08.760
That particular you know that particular incident, and I know
2286
02:13:09.039 --> 02:13:13.119
I've interviewed several people who are on that operation was
2287
02:13:13.439 --> 02:13:16.960
very traumatic for having discovered the scene of coming upon
2288
02:13:17.319 --> 02:13:21.159
in particular women and children who had been hit by
2289
02:13:21.159 --> 02:13:24.520
the shrapnel from one of the bombs that had been
2290
02:13:25.119 --> 02:13:29.840
missiles that had been fired by the Air Force. And
2291
02:13:29.880 --> 02:13:33.159
that was something that was also part of the the
2292
02:13:34.359 --> 02:13:37.920
you call it trauma, but the secondary tertiary effects of
2293
02:13:38.359 --> 02:13:42.840
that first deployment in Afghanistan. There was also, as it happened,
2294
02:13:43.079 --> 02:13:47.159
retribution from Robert's Ridge that came down in terms of
2295
02:13:47.439 --> 02:13:50.680
the officer who was there, one of the officers, and
2296
02:13:50.760 --> 02:13:55.039
in that case it was it's another scenario where you
2297
02:13:55.119 --> 02:13:59.239
had a bunch of seasoned operators being led by a
2298
02:13:59.359 --> 02:14:01.840
naval a cat the officer who had not gone through
2299
02:14:01.840 --> 02:14:05.720
a green team and had been put in charge as
2300
02:14:05.760 --> 02:14:09.920
an officer who had no respect from his men, and
2301
02:14:09.960 --> 02:14:12.720
it was because he wasn't qualified, right, he had been
2302
02:14:12.760 --> 02:14:15.399
a boats guy, and that was that dynamic is like
2303
02:14:15.439 --> 02:14:18.880
playing out through through years and years at Seal Team six.
2304
02:14:20.000 --> 02:14:22.039
Yeah, get through the rest of the questions.
2305
02:14:22.560 --> 02:14:26.920
So, first off, David A, thank you very much for
2306
02:14:26.960 --> 02:14:30.399
the two JAVERI. General Stone Nations, Jackson, what was it?
2307
02:14:31.520 --> 02:14:33.560
I don't know if you you know, what is the
2308
02:14:33.640 --> 02:14:36.880
darkest story event that you or Jack.
2309
02:14:36.800 --> 02:14:39.840
Noah that didn't make it into the book.
2310
02:14:40.039 --> 02:14:41.439
And why is there anything?
2311
02:14:42.079 --> 02:14:45.479
Because yes, there's a murder of a child in Afghanistan
2312
02:14:45.560 --> 02:14:53.039
early in the war that while I confirmed that it
2313
02:14:53.159 --> 02:14:57.560
happened and I know who is responsible, I did not
2314
02:14:57.840 --> 02:15:01.600
have enough details to you know, everything in this book
2315
02:15:02.840 --> 02:15:06.479
is it's been fact checked very thoroughly, it's been legally vetted,
2316
02:15:07.159 --> 02:15:11.159
and it has multiple sourcing. This one, although I had
2317
02:15:11.279 --> 02:15:14.159
multiple sources, I didn't have enough of the details, the
2318
02:15:14.279 --> 02:15:19.079
narrative details to justify putting it in. But it was
2319
02:15:19.119 --> 02:15:24.960
an example early in my reporting of describing a very
2320
02:15:25.039 --> 02:15:28.800
talented seal whose Seal Team six has has described me
2321
02:15:29.000 --> 02:15:32.560
had broken because he had done this. They covered it
2322
02:15:32.640 --> 02:15:35.880
up and they moved on, and it was you know,
2323
02:15:38.439 --> 02:15:40.279
enough said, I mean, you know, the murder of a
2324
02:15:40.359 --> 02:15:43.520
child is a difficult one to stomach. So that didn't
2325
02:15:43.520 --> 02:15:46.840
make it in, and you know, I just just assume
2326
02:15:46.880 --> 02:15:48.000
probably it'll never be public.
2327
02:15:48.159 --> 02:15:50.760
Yeah, and just real quick, because we talked about fact check,
2328
02:15:50.840 --> 02:15:53.600
there was one tiny little detail in your book, right.
2329
02:15:53.479 --> 02:15:56.479
There was I made an error about Delta and what
2330
02:15:56.520 --> 02:16:00.199
the requirements are. And actually I had someone who for
2331
02:16:00.399 --> 02:16:02.680
you to point it out. Someone else had sent me
2332
02:16:02.680 --> 02:16:05.399
an email I think, I don't remember how it was
2333
02:16:05.399 --> 02:16:07.439
written in the book, but essentially I suggested that you
2334
02:16:07.520 --> 02:16:11.520
don't have to be in the military to join Delta,
2335
02:16:11.520 --> 02:16:13.680
which obviously isn't true. What I really meant was, you
2336
02:16:13.720 --> 02:16:16.840
don't have to be in the army to be drafted
2337
02:16:16.840 --> 02:16:19.000
into Delta, to be selected in and pass the course
2338
02:16:19.039 --> 02:16:24.039
and air is regretful and all my own and suture
2339
02:16:24.159 --> 02:16:25.079
editions will have a fix.
2340
02:16:25.319 --> 02:16:28.159
Yeah, So anybody who's like going to nitpick that, just
2341
02:16:28.239 --> 02:16:29.880
know that, Like he was just trying to say, you
2342
02:16:29.920 --> 02:16:32.680
didn't have to be in the army, and it didn't
2343
02:16:32.760 --> 02:16:36.479
quite come out that way. So anyway, Jackson, does Delta
2344
02:16:36.520 --> 02:16:38.479
really do a better job policing their own in comparison
2345
02:16:38.520 --> 02:16:41.719
Seal Team of Six given their recent history historically?
2346
02:16:41.760 --> 02:16:44.319
Yes, that's the short answer. Absolutely. I mean, I you know,
2347
02:16:45.440 --> 02:16:47.559
I'm sure there are plenty of things. Maybe my next
2348
02:16:47.559 --> 02:16:49.399
book will be about them.
2349
02:16:49.479 --> 02:16:52.239
How much did pirate culture bleed over into the non
2350
02:16:52.280 --> 02:16:54.479
shooter parts of Seal Team Six, such as Black.
2351
02:16:54.239 --> 02:17:00.920
Squadron, uh, Black Squadron you know, So I intentionally did
2352
02:17:00.959 --> 02:17:03.639
not write about Black Squadron. They had some problems, and
2353
02:17:03.639 --> 02:17:07.680
there are some issues, but there were a lot of
2354
02:17:08.000 --> 02:17:14.159
sensitive programs that I know about that I didn't think reporting.
2355
02:17:14.479 --> 02:17:16.920
I didn't think it was just I couldn't justify reporting
2356
02:17:16.959 --> 02:17:20.280
about them in the sense that the problems there were
2357
02:17:20.360 --> 02:17:22.920
not anywhere near what was going on in the Assault squadrons.
2358
02:17:24.399 --> 02:17:26.760
They have some issues, but those issues I had to
2359
02:17:26.760 --> 02:17:30.440
balance it against exposing some things that were, you know,
2360
02:17:30.520 --> 02:17:32.959
pretty sensitive, and I tried to err on the side
2361
02:17:32.959 --> 02:17:36.440
of you know, this book frankly, it has a lot
2362
02:17:36.440 --> 02:17:38.399
of It has a lot of secrets and a lot
2363
02:17:38.440 --> 02:17:40.639
of dirt, but there's not that much that's actually classified.
2364
02:17:40.680 --> 02:17:42.520
It's not a tell all it's not meant to be
2365
02:17:42.639 --> 02:17:45.440
a tell all right, So, but you know, they have
2366
02:17:45.520 --> 02:17:49.079
some problems, not as much as the Assault squadrons.
2367
02:17:50.000 --> 02:17:52.920
And thank you Connor for that mark, Thank you very much.
2368
02:17:53.040 --> 02:17:55.639
How many current and former seals did you interview for
2369
02:17:55.680 --> 02:17:56.040
the book?
2370
02:17:57.319 --> 02:18:05.079
Well, I think it's in the book between thirty and
2371
02:18:05.159 --> 02:18:09.280
forty and then you start to but that's not including
2372
02:18:11.399 --> 02:18:14.120
that's not including all of the people who worked with
2373
02:18:14.399 --> 02:18:18.120
Seal Team six and people from Jaysak and other services
2374
02:18:18.719 --> 02:18:21.280
who were on some of the missions or who were there.
2375
02:18:21.319 --> 02:18:23.399
So I think in all, I have to look at
2376
02:18:23.440 --> 02:18:25.239
the beginning of the book, and I can't remember I've
2377
02:18:25.239 --> 02:18:29.680
been interviewing people for ten years off and on, so seals.
2378
02:18:29.680 --> 02:18:33.440
It's probably close to about forty but that that could
2379
02:18:33.440 --> 02:18:35.120
be wrong, could be fifty I have, you know, I
2380
02:18:35.200 --> 02:18:38.040
actually have a list somewhere. Yeah, but it's not on
2381
02:18:38.040 --> 02:18:38.680
the top of my head.
2382
02:18:39.120 --> 02:18:40.840
And I think that's one of the challenging things with
2383
02:18:40.879 --> 02:18:44.000
your book, right is because a lot of your sources
2384
02:18:44.079 --> 02:18:48.280
are you know, unnamed seal form or former seal and.
2385
02:18:49.799 --> 02:18:50.360
You know, so.
2386
02:18:51.799 --> 02:18:54.159
I mean you've done these people in service of you know,
2387
02:18:55.120 --> 02:18:59.239
listening to them, corroborating their stuff. But also I'm sure
2388
02:18:59.239 --> 02:19:01.840
it's very hard hard for you as a as a
2389
02:19:01.879 --> 02:19:05.399
reporter not to list your sources.
2390
02:19:06.760 --> 02:19:09.600
There is nothing I want more than to have people
2391
02:19:09.639 --> 02:19:14.680
on the record. This area of reporting. It's just not feasible,
2392
02:19:14.760 --> 02:19:18.280
not in our current you know, I don't know that
2393
02:19:18.319 --> 02:19:21.200
it'll ever be feasible, and and I think it's it's unfortunate.
2394
02:19:21.600 --> 02:19:24.559
I think there is honor and anonymity in this kind
2395
02:19:24.600 --> 02:19:28.680
of reporting. And I think that if I could write
2396
02:19:28.680 --> 02:19:31.760
a book or have added to the book the details
2397
02:19:31.879 --> 02:19:37.040
even without names, of where, how my sources came to
2398
02:19:37.120 --> 02:19:40.319
some of this information, what their experiences were at Seal
2399
02:19:40.360 --> 02:19:43.760
Team six, how essentially this book came to be I
2400
02:19:43.760 --> 02:19:46.840
can I can assure you that it would be incredibly
2401
02:19:46.920 --> 02:19:49.719
compelling and far more in that sense, not that I
2402
02:19:49.719 --> 02:19:51.959
think there's anything in my book that's not believable. It's
2403
02:19:52.040 --> 02:19:55.040
I undersell it, but it would be even more compelling
2404
02:19:55.799 --> 02:20:00.120
than what I have, because their stories are you know,
2405
02:20:00.319 --> 02:20:04.559
I mean, if they didn't just have or you know,
2406
02:20:05.000 --> 02:20:09.719
courage to join, to make it, to do well in
2407
02:20:09.719 --> 02:20:12.319
the battlefields and lead men, they had moral courage when
2408
02:20:12.319 --> 02:20:15.559
it mattered, and that I think is you know, unfortunately
2409
02:20:15.879 --> 02:20:18.920
you know too rare, so you know, and obviously in
2410
02:20:18.959 --> 02:20:20.360
that sense I'm biased.
2411
02:20:21.360 --> 02:20:24.239
Jack, And thank you elaborate on Blue Team being more professional.
2412
02:20:26.079 --> 02:20:28.200
I don't know if I said more professional. I think
2413
02:20:29.079 --> 02:20:31.680
there was an element to Blue Team as it was
2414
02:20:31.719 --> 02:20:36.239
described to me historically and culturally, that had some senior
2415
02:20:36.319 --> 02:20:43.680
enlisted guys who were interested in solving the problem, whatever
2416
02:20:43.719 --> 02:20:48.200
the mission was. In the operation where pulling a trigger
2417
02:20:48.280 --> 02:20:51.280
was the option of last resort, they wouldn't hesitate, but
2418
02:20:51.399 --> 02:20:54.520
there was an art they I mean, someone described to
2419
02:20:54.559 --> 02:20:58.440
me a particular incident that happened in Afghanistan where they
2420
02:20:58.520 --> 02:21:00.840
kind of were trying to imagine themselves ninjas, how to
2421
02:21:00.879 --> 02:21:03.799
get in and out of a place silently and make
2422
02:21:03.840 --> 02:21:07.040
someone disappear, not kill them, but make someone disappear, because
2423
02:21:07.079 --> 02:21:09.559
the effect of having grabbed them in the middle of
2424
02:21:09.600 --> 02:21:11.120
the night while no one else who was in the
2425
02:21:11.159 --> 02:21:15.440
compound sleeping was the wiser was more terrifying to wake
2426
02:21:15.520 --> 02:21:18.520
up to to have someone who disappeared than to find
2427
02:21:18.639 --> 02:21:22.040
you know, their their comrade or their family member killed.
2428
02:21:22.520 --> 02:21:24.280
And so that's sort of what I.
2429
02:21:24.319 --> 02:21:26.559
Meant, you know, one of the things that and I
2430
02:21:26.600 --> 02:21:29.079
don't mean to we have a couple more questions, but
2431
02:21:29.200 --> 02:21:30.680
one of the things that was really interesting to me
2432
02:21:30.920 --> 02:21:34.399
is how some of the seals felt that when the
2433
02:21:34.440 --> 02:21:39.520
policy became doing call outs that that was like sort
2434
02:21:39.520 --> 02:21:41.360
of a chicken shit way of doing it, because you know,
2435
02:21:41.719 --> 02:21:43.479
it was, you know, to protect the women's children.
2436
02:21:43.559 --> 02:21:45.159
Why would we give up that advantage?
2437
02:21:45.239 --> 02:21:49.840
And that's not why callouts started though, because you know,
2438
02:21:50.600 --> 02:21:53.719
so many people were taking casualties from doing this hostage
2439
02:21:53.760 --> 02:21:57.200
rescue technique on a target where there were no hostages
2440
02:21:57.559 --> 02:22:00.600
that it was safer for the troops to do call out.
2441
02:22:01.040 --> 02:22:03.879
You know, it became because then you do a call out,
2442
02:22:03.920 --> 02:22:06.079
if they start shooting, you can pull off and just
2443
02:22:06.120 --> 02:22:09.120
bomb the target. You don't have to run into a building.
2444
02:22:09.360 --> 02:22:11.680
But it was interesting that it was the series interpreted,
2445
02:22:11.639 --> 02:22:13.360
it was the Seals interpretation.
2446
02:22:13.440 --> 02:22:15.360
It was it was a sea squadron that got really
2447
02:22:15.440 --> 02:22:17.280
chewed up I think in like two thousand and four,
2448
02:22:17.479 --> 02:22:18.719
and they started using that.
2449
02:22:18.760 --> 02:22:21.040
And the Rangers started doing it, and yeah, you know,
2450
02:22:21.200 --> 02:22:23.559
and it just became the standard because it was it
2451
02:22:23.639 --> 02:22:28.079
was dumb to run into a building. They would barricade
2452
02:22:28.079 --> 02:22:32.399
against CQB, you know, where they understood the tactic and
2453
02:22:32.760 --> 02:22:33.399
we're ready for it.
2454
02:22:33.520 --> 02:22:37.200
Yeah. Uh, Paul, thank you.
2455
02:22:37.200 --> 02:22:39.840
You spent quite a bit of a lot of the
2456
02:22:39.879 --> 02:22:41.600
time on the book with Dwayne Dieter and we didn't
2457
02:22:41.600 --> 02:22:43.200
get to that at all, but it was great content.
2458
02:22:43.559 --> 02:22:44.920
What drew you to his story?
2459
02:22:44.959 --> 02:22:47.600
And do you think dropping CQD had an impact on
2460
02:22:47.639 --> 02:22:49.159
dev Group's problem?
2461
02:22:49.879 --> 02:22:54.680
H Yes, I think it's very clear. I make the
2462
02:22:54.680 --> 02:22:59.799
the book makes the inference that by dropping Deeter and
2463
02:23:00.799 --> 02:23:07.000
when they did their ethical lapses and problems. Rose let
2464
02:23:07.079 --> 02:23:10.000
me make a caveat here that there is I've always
2465
02:23:10.040 --> 02:23:12.840
known that there is another civil war inside the teams
2466
02:23:12.879 --> 02:23:18.479
between Deeterer's CQD and non deeterer Offen MMA. And I
2467
02:23:18.559 --> 02:23:23.360
am not a expert in tactics by any reason, by
2468
02:23:23.360 --> 02:23:28.000
any measure, and I don't try to be. What became
2469
02:23:28.040 --> 02:23:33.159
clear early on for me was Deeter had a list.
2470
02:23:33.559 --> 02:23:39.079
He keeps meticulous records of every training he's ever done.
2471
02:23:39.440 --> 02:23:42.200
Deeterer had a list, and he was so involved with
2472
02:23:42.280 --> 02:23:44.799
these guys at Seal Team six early on that he
2473
02:23:44.879 --> 02:23:48.799
had a list of problem Seals in his training, Guys
2474
02:23:48.840 --> 02:23:51.360
who when they did the hood and the Hood came off.
2475
02:23:51.399 --> 02:23:54.280
Even though they were supposedly the best wrestlers, they were
2476
02:23:54.280 --> 02:23:58.680
flailing and they would fail. And almost actually frequently the
2477
02:23:58.719 --> 02:24:00.760
most aggressive are the ones that the worst in the
2478
02:24:00.799 --> 02:24:06.920
initial hood drill. What he had was a list of
2479
02:24:07.000 --> 02:24:10.920
all the Seals who had issues in his training, ethical problems,
2480
02:24:11.040 --> 02:24:15.319
signs that there was something off ethically, morally okay, problems
2481
02:24:15.319 --> 02:24:19.280
with the dial up and dial down. Right, it happened,
2482
02:24:19.440 --> 02:24:23.159
and this is true story was almost an identical list
2483
02:24:23.200 --> 02:24:26.680
of everyone after three years of reporting that my sources
2484
02:24:26.680 --> 02:24:30.879
had identified were some of the worst in committing war
2485
02:24:30.920 --> 02:24:39.600
crimes or abetting them. And you know, I'm not a psychologist,
2486
02:24:39.840 --> 02:24:42.319
and I'm not even an expert at the time, but
2487
02:24:42.360 --> 02:24:44.280
I just don't think that's coincidence. I think it was
2488
02:24:44.399 --> 02:24:47.120
very clear that there was some connection to be drawn
2489
02:24:47.520 --> 02:24:52.360
between a list of problems in this system and a
2490
02:24:52.440 --> 02:24:56.760
list of problems on the battlefield and culturally. And then
2491
02:24:56.920 --> 02:24:59.440
as I reported more and more, what became clear was
2492
02:24:59.760 --> 02:25:02.520
no disputes how good the hood is right sense, I mean,
2493
02:25:02.520 --> 02:25:05.120
that's not a you know, I mean Matt Bisonette takes
2494
02:25:05.159 --> 02:25:07.840
an entire chapter of his book where he refuses to
2495
02:25:07.959 --> 02:25:10.239
name what it is or who did it, but talks
2496
02:25:10.280 --> 02:25:13.280
about the power of the hood right. So Deeter was
2497
02:25:13.280 --> 02:25:18.280
doing something right. And the fact that he was pushed out, now,
2498
02:25:18.319 --> 02:25:20.200
you know, I know what some of the criticism is
2499
02:25:20.479 --> 02:25:25.799
about why they targeted getting rid of CQD and Deeter,
2500
02:25:25.959 --> 02:25:27.440
which was that they felt that he was doing too
2501
02:25:27.520 --> 02:25:31.200
much and trying to adapt his stuff into everything, and
2502
02:25:31.239 --> 02:25:33.600
there was a lot of pushback against that. But the
2503
02:25:33.639 --> 02:25:37.559
reporting shows that there was an interest to commercialize and
2504
02:25:37.639 --> 02:25:41.879
brand training outside of dam Neck and the Seal and
2505
02:25:42.000 --> 02:25:45.399
the Seal Command to make it profitable and Deeterer wouldn't
2506
02:25:45.399 --> 02:25:48.200
go along with right and that was a problem, and
2507
02:25:48.239 --> 02:25:50.559
so they removed him. And I think that there is
2508
02:25:51.000 --> 02:25:53.200
had they kept it, yeah, the would have been fewer problems.
2509
02:25:53.520 --> 02:25:55.600
I mean, if I'm more in full ked, I'd rather
2510
02:25:55.639 --> 02:25:59.239
do a muscle strike than a double a takedown.
2511
02:25:59.319 --> 02:26:04.959
YEA, all right, let's see here, I think, let's see.
2512
02:26:05.239 --> 02:26:07.879
Let me just make sure, Matthew, I want to ask you,
2513
02:26:07.920 --> 02:26:10.840
what's been the reception to this book so far? I mean,
2514
02:26:10.879 --> 02:26:12.360
this is the book that a lot of people, I
2515
02:26:12.360 --> 02:26:14.680
think in this country don't really want to hear about
2516
02:26:14.799 --> 02:26:18.239
or read about. The Navy certainly doesn't want you reading it.
2517
02:26:18.680 --> 02:26:20.680
Yeah, well, it's been mixed. I mean, you know, first
2518
02:26:20.719 --> 02:26:23.360
of all, it came out a few days before Putin
2519
02:26:23.399 --> 02:26:28.559
decided to invade Ukraine, so unfortunately there's been a more
2520
02:26:28.600 --> 02:26:34.159
significant and obviously more urgent story. And the reception has
2521
02:26:34.200 --> 02:26:37.840
been good in the sense that I have gotten calls
2522
02:26:37.879 --> 02:26:41.040
from people on Twitter, dms for people who have read it,
2523
02:26:41.159 --> 02:26:43.120
who are in the seals, who are in the Navy,
2524
02:26:43.360 --> 02:26:46.959
who thanked me for writing it. And frankly, that's the
2525
02:26:47.000 --> 02:26:50.520
most satisfying I got. Someone who was obviously I'm not
2526
02:26:50.520 --> 02:26:52.799
going to name them, but someone who had been a
2527
02:26:53.440 --> 02:26:57.600
jag for NSW who for a significant amount of time,
2528
02:26:57.639 --> 02:26:59.879
who reached out to thank me for it and say
2529
02:26:59.920 --> 02:27:02.760
that that everything in there had rung true from his
2530
02:27:02.840 --> 02:27:07.239
experience dealing with some of the officers. And you know,
2531
02:27:07.680 --> 02:27:09.479
I think that this is a book that will take
2532
02:27:09.520 --> 02:27:13.399
a little bit of time, uh to dies. Yeah, it's
2533
02:27:13.479 --> 02:27:14.959
you know, one of the things that I occurred to
2534
02:27:14.959 --> 02:27:17.079
me when I first started writing it is that there
2535
02:27:17.280 --> 02:27:20.319
is no there had been no prior to Code over
2536
02:27:20.360 --> 02:27:24.200
Country history of Seal Team six or even the Seals
2537
02:27:24.200 --> 02:27:26.959
really that had not been written by either someone from
2538
02:27:27.040 --> 02:27:30.559
the seal community or someone who was a fan of
2539
02:27:30.600 --> 02:27:35.159
the seal community. It was mostly hagiography. And so in
2540
02:27:35.200 --> 02:27:38.799
that sense, Code over Country happens to be in many
2541
02:27:38.840 --> 02:27:42.399
ways the most objective and certainly the most journalistic history
2542
02:27:42.440 --> 02:27:45.079
of Seal Team six. And I think you know that
2543
02:27:45.360 --> 02:27:48.159
there's there's a long life for that.
2544
02:27:48.920 --> 02:27:52.559
Yeah, let's let's say these people during side I just
2545
02:27:52.639 --> 02:27:55.000
want to get to there. We didn't ask Elliott said, we, uh,
2546
02:27:55.120 --> 02:27:56.600
what is the current status of dev group?
2547
02:27:56.680 --> 02:27:56.920
We did?
2548
02:27:57.000 --> 02:28:01.000
Okay, sorry about that, Carlos, thank you.
2549
02:28:01.680 --> 02:28:02.120
Follow up.
2550
02:28:02.159 --> 02:28:03.879
That's why I asked he was asked he's a guy
2551
02:28:03.879 --> 02:28:06.719
who asked about the Roe. Guys in chats seem to
2552
02:28:06.719 --> 02:28:09.520
think it's okay to ignore Roe standards professional.
2553
02:28:09.719 --> 02:28:09.920
Look.
2554
02:28:09.959 --> 02:28:12.280
I mean, it's easy to like say, you know that
2555
02:28:12.360 --> 02:28:14.239
these guys are on the cutting edge of combat and
2556
02:28:14.319 --> 02:28:17.280
they're in ward they have to be warriors, and there there,
2557
02:28:17.319 --> 02:28:20.920
there is that, But there's a huge dividing line between
2558
02:28:21.280 --> 02:28:23.600
taking the fight to the enemy, you know, lay in
2559
02:28:23.680 --> 02:28:27.920
the hate and and doing things that are psychologically damage
2560
02:28:28.079 --> 02:28:31.959
to yourself and and just not in a cording wad.
2561
02:28:32.000 --> 02:28:33.639
Well, there's also the other thing is it's not just
2562
02:28:33.719 --> 02:28:36.159
we're not talking about ROE s really talking about when
2563
02:28:36.360 --> 02:28:38.520
when something goes wrong, though. The other thing is their
2564
02:28:38.559 --> 02:28:40.760
instinct is to cover it up, right, And there's nothing
2565
02:28:40.840 --> 02:28:44.559
honorable in that. There's nothing just in that scenario, and
2566
02:28:44.559 --> 02:28:47.840
and there's no internal accountability for it. So that's really
2567
02:28:48.280 --> 02:28:50.280
you know, a bigger issue. And that's why to your
2568
02:28:50.319 --> 02:28:52.760
point about what happened with the Chapman incident, is that
2569
02:28:53.120 --> 02:28:55.600
what is you know, let's forget about what happened at
2570
02:28:55.600 --> 02:28:57.559
the top of the mountain right for a second, and
2571
02:28:57.680 --> 02:29:01.239
let's just go to what happens when their image or
2572
02:29:01.239 --> 02:29:03.799
their story is threatened, right they turn.
2573
02:29:04.079 --> 02:29:06.399
And the thing is it wasn't even actively. They weren't
2574
02:29:06.399 --> 02:29:07.639
even actively the.
2575
02:29:07.559 --> 02:29:11.360
Air Force agreed to award of the Metal Honor just
2576
02:29:11.440 --> 02:29:14.319
for what happened in at Bunker one. To not even
2577
02:29:14.600 --> 02:29:17.120
talk about that he got up back up.
2578
02:29:17.040 --> 02:29:19.159
After No, no, no, that's not that's not true. That the
2579
02:29:19.200 --> 02:29:21.360
Air Force always had. There are two parts of the
2580
02:29:21.399 --> 02:29:26.079
award and two citations, two full citations. The agreement became
2581
02:29:26.600 --> 02:29:31.280
to make this second citation, which is for the after
2582
02:29:32.360 --> 02:29:35.520
getting back up and fighting for an hour, that became classified.
2583
02:29:35.559 --> 02:29:38.280
And that was a political decision. You make it classified
2584
02:29:38.280 --> 02:29:41.280
so that the public doesn't have to hear that one
2585
02:29:41.319 --> 02:29:44.680
guy got an award for one part the seal, but
2586
02:29:44.959 --> 02:29:47.799
you know, mistakenly left another guy behind and then that
2587
02:29:47.840 --> 02:29:50.239
guy got back up and fought for another hour on
2588
02:29:50.280 --> 02:29:52.719
his own. So that was too embarrassing. So that was
2589
02:29:52.760 --> 02:29:55.479
a political decision. But what they what they but I
2590
02:29:55.600 --> 02:29:58.159
want to correct you about something. What they did was
2591
02:29:58.639 --> 02:30:03.239
they actively went in and changed their story and misled
2592
02:30:03.280 --> 02:30:05.719
some of the senior officials of the Pentagon about what
2593
02:30:05.799 --> 02:30:08.520
had happened on there. And they they and you know,
2594
02:30:08.559 --> 02:30:10.399
one of the things I'm most proud of in the
2595
02:30:10.399 --> 02:30:13.040
reporting of this book is that I was able to
2596
02:30:13.079 --> 02:30:16.319
get a transcript and the recordings of a long interview
2597
02:30:16.600 --> 02:30:19.600
that Slabinsky did for a book in two thousand and four,
2598
02:30:19.799 --> 02:30:24.440
most of which was never published, and he lays out
2599
02:30:24.639 --> 02:30:27.959
in great detail what happened up there as he remembered.
2600
02:30:28.000 --> 02:30:31.040
It was consistent with all the things he had said previously,
2601
02:30:31.600 --> 02:30:34.040
was the story that he stuck to all the way
2602
02:30:34.120 --> 02:30:36.879
until the moment in which he was confronted with the
2603
02:30:36.920 --> 02:30:40.559
new video and the updated imagery, and then the story changes.
2604
02:30:40.760 --> 02:30:44.079
And that's the issue, right, It's the it's the lie, right,
2605
02:30:44.159 --> 02:30:47.040
it's the it's the the untruth, it's the misstatements.
2606
02:30:47.120 --> 02:30:47.280
Right.
2607
02:30:47.479 --> 02:30:49.559
That's where you get to the heart of the problem.
2608
02:30:49.600 --> 02:30:51.159
And that's the code, you know.
2609
02:30:55.399 --> 02:30:56.280
So that was the.
2610
02:30:58.440 --> 02:31:01.319
Any other nations have these issues, We've seen this with
2611
02:31:01.440 --> 02:31:02.799
the Aussies, anybody else.
2612
02:31:03.760 --> 02:31:07.000
I think every country and every military force that's ever
2613
02:31:07.040 --> 02:31:10.079
fought in war has these issues. And I think actually
2614
02:31:10.200 --> 02:31:15.000
probably true that America historically that are continue to evolve
2615
02:31:15.440 --> 02:31:17.840
in the in the good way, which is less and
2616
02:31:17.920 --> 02:31:20.840
less and fewer and fewer. Unfortunately, it's that what you
2617
02:31:20.920 --> 02:31:24.200
really don't want to see is if this is being
2618
02:31:24.239 --> 02:31:28.920
done by privates in the army, young marines, you know,
2619
02:31:29.200 --> 02:31:31.799
E three, Z four, Z fives, there is to some
2620
02:31:31.840 --> 02:31:38.079
extent it's understandable, don't acceptable when you have this level
2621
02:31:38.200 --> 02:31:43.959
of skill of training to veer off into the illegal
2622
02:31:44.159 --> 02:31:48.159
them morally unethical. It's much worse. And that's why the
2623
02:31:48.719 --> 02:31:50.200
officers have to be held accountable.
2624
02:31:50.239 --> 02:31:52.120
And that's one of the things that's struck me about
2625
02:31:52.159 --> 02:31:54.200
the whole mulgar thing is you're not talking about a
2626
02:31:54.200 --> 02:31:56.399
couple of nineteen year olds it like got drunk. You're
2627
02:31:56.399 --> 02:32:01.760
talking about an E six and seven, right, you know, Carlos,
2628
02:32:01.799 --> 02:32:04.559
Thank you. Another question. One other argument that's out there
2629
02:32:04.600 --> 02:32:06.840
and in this chat is the enemy does worst our
2630
02:32:06.879 --> 02:32:10.440
guys to city, so we should respond accordingly. Valid argument,
2631
02:32:10.559 --> 02:32:13.639
valid argument. Question mark, FYI not trying to drop money
2632
02:32:13.680 --> 02:32:14.840
to roast someone. I'm just curious.
2633
02:32:16.079 --> 02:32:18.360
I mean, I think this entire episode answers that question.
2634
02:32:18.440 --> 02:32:22.600
Yeah, yeah, I don't think there's any Look, if war
2635
02:32:22.680 --> 02:32:27.040
crimes are human, and they are, it's understandable. That doesn't
2636
02:32:27.079 --> 02:32:30.159
mean it's justifiable. And there is a difference between I mean,
2637
02:32:30.360 --> 02:32:32.280
you know, and the next question is is if it's
2638
02:32:32.280 --> 02:32:34.959
okay to chop a guy's head off after you kill them,
2639
02:32:35.079 --> 02:32:37.959
or chop his head off? What what isn't okay?
2640
02:32:38.000 --> 02:32:38.159
Then?
2641
02:32:38.200 --> 02:32:40.440
I mean that the the there's a reason why there
2642
02:32:40.440 --> 02:32:40.879
are lying.
2643
02:32:40.920 --> 02:32:44.360
If they if they sexually assault a female soldiers, does
2644
02:32:44.360 --> 02:32:47.000
that mean we can go in their village like it?
2645
02:32:47.319 --> 02:32:47.920
Kill them?
2646
02:32:48.440 --> 02:32:48.959
Like kill them?
2647
02:32:49.079 --> 02:32:51.319
They're bad guys? Kill them? But what more do you
2648
02:32:51.319 --> 02:32:54.280
need to do after that? Brandon?
2649
02:32:54.399 --> 02:32:58.399
Thank you? Brian? Sorry guys, Brian Ron spears, Band of
2650
02:32:58.440 --> 02:32:58.959
brother fame.
2651
02:32:59.000 --> 02:33:01.079
How to decorate a career in people want to remember
2652
02:33:01.559 --> 02:33:03.840
for what he never wanted to remember, for what he
2653
02:33:03.920 --> 02:33:04.840
never wanted to brag about.
2654
02:33:05.440 --> 02:33:07.799
I was talking about one of the guys was accused
2655
02:33:07.840 --> 02:33:15.200
of war crimes, executing German POWs during the war. It's
2656
02:33:15.200 --> 02:33:16.040
in the Band of Brothers.
2657
02:33:16.120 --> 02:33:18.479
Yeah, but I mean, what do you do with when
2658
02:33:18.479 --> 02:33:18.840
you're out?
2659
02:33:18.920 --> 02:33:19.120
You know?
2660
02:33:19.319 --> 02:33:23.280
One hundred miles from so. The book is Code over
2661
02:33:23.360 --> 02:33:27.479
Country by Matthew Cole. Matthew, what's next for you? Are
2662
02:33:27.520 --> 02:33:29.600
you doing anything like a book tour with the book?
2663
02:33:29.760 --> 02:33:32.079
Do you have anything else you're working on? What can
2664
02:33:32.079 --> 02:33:32.959
we expect?
2665
02:33:33.319 --> 02:33:35.920
We can expect you can expect I've got a story
2666
02:33:35.959 --> 02:33:39.159
coming for the Intercept where I'm an investigative reporter about
2667
02:33:39.159 --> 02:33:44.040
the Seals. A scandal, small scandal, but a scandal. Nonetheless,
2668
02:33:45.280 --> 02:33:47.920
I think I'm now going to do some tours. I
2669
02:33:47.920 --> 02:33:51.239
think when we first book first came out, Omicron had
2670
02:33:51.280 --> 02:33:54.200
still the mandates were all around. I think there's a
2671
02:33:54.200 --> 02:33:57.040
more little more freedom. So I hope to and I
2672
02:33:57.200 --> 02:34:01.280
have another investigation going on that may or may not
2673
02:34:01.319 --> 02:34:03.239
turn out to be a book, but I can't, unfortunately
2674
02:34:03.319 --> 02:34:03.879
talk about it.
2675
02:34:04.040 --> 02:34:06.440
Sure well, I hope that we're some of the first
2676
02:34:06.440 --> 02:34:07.280
people you do tell about.
2677
02:34:07.319 --> 02:34:09.559
I will be, I will be. I'm very grateful for
2678
02:34:09.639 --> 02:34:09.920
being on.
2679
02:34:10.280 --> 02:34:13.719
Guys can go pick up the book. It's ebook, it's
2680
02:34:13.719 --> 02:34:15.680
on Amazon, it's wherever you guys.
2681
02:34:15.440 --> 02:34:18.520
Shop audio, ebook, hardcover, and.
2682
02:34:18.520 --> 02:34:20.479
There's a lot more in here that we didn't cover up.
2683
02:34:20.639 --> 02:34:23.600
There's a lot of great content there. And again this
2684
02:34:23.760 --> 02:34:26.399
isn't to hate on seals and say that seals are
2685
02:34:26.440 --> 02:34:29.879
horrible human beings. This is just to show a problem
2686
02:34:30.360 --> 02:34:32.280
in that community. It really has to do with the leader.
2687
02:34:32.319 --> 02:34:35.319
Seals are not horrible human beings. There's an enormous amount
2688
02:34:35.319 --> 02:34:38.520
of honorable men who serve as seals, many of whom
2689
02:34:38.600 --> 02:34:40.760
frankly were sources for this book.
2690
02:34:40.959 --> 02:34:43.239
Yeah, and even even Silenski, even though we talked about
2691
02:34:43.280 --> 02:34:45.600
and change the problem, what he did was very courageous,
2692
02:34:45.639 --> 02:34:48.000
you know, going up there, going up again to.
2693
02:34:47.959 --> 02:34:50.879
Try to get Robert. You know, absolutely like you know it.
2694
02:34:51.120 --> 02:34:54.239
It's hard in these types of situations to look at
2695
02:34:54.280 --> 02:34:57.360
a person and judging by one action, because there's so
2696
02:34:57.479 --> 02:34:58.879
much more than it goes into it.
2697
02:34:59.000 --> 02:35:01.600
Absolutely know. I think that one of the things I
2698
02:35:01.680 --> 02:35:03.239
thought as I was writing about this is that in
2699
02:35:03.239 --> 02:35:05.040
a lot of ways, this is a book about good
2700
02:35:05.040 --> 02:35:07.840
men doing bad things. Yeah, and it's hard for people
2701
02:35:07.920 --> 02:35:13.120
to balance or conceive of the idea that good men
2702
02:35:13.159 --> 02:35:15.479
do bad things, bad men do good things. And that's
2703
02:35:15.479 --> 02:35:18.879
a tough you know, when they're mixed in, it's it's tough.
2704
02:35:18.879 --> 02:35:22.200
It doesn't fit neatly in this you know, a black
2705
02:35:22.239 --> 02:35:26.319
and white world where everything is easy to identify what's
2706
02:35:26.360 --> 02:35:28.440
good and what's bad. You know, this is a book
2707
02:35:28.440 --> 02:35:29.120
about the Grays.
2708
02:35:30.079 --> 02:35:32.440
Yeah, yeah, so guys, don't be afraid of the book.
2709
02:35:32.639 --> 02:35:34.760
Out of one hundred and thirty six episodes we've done
2710
02:35:34.799 --> 02:35:37.239
on this show, every once in a while there's one,
2711
02:35:37.360 --> 02:35:39.319
what the one that they even phillips that's like not
2712
02:35:39.520 --> 02:35:42.399
so cool, you know, but it's important to have these
2713
02:35:42.479 --> 02:35:45.680
kinds of conversations and I hope we can keep having them.
2714
02:35:46.360 --> 02:35:49.440
Next Friday, we're going to have a woman on the
2715
02:35:49.440 --> 02:35:53.559
show who served with the Cultural Support Teams and so
2716
02:35:53.719 --> 02:35:55.719
she's the first CST we've had on the show. So
2717
02:35:55.920 --> 02:35:59.079
looking forward to talking to her. And you guys, got
2718
02:35:59.120 --> 02:36:02.440
anything else? No, I'm really happy you have the intercept.
2719
02:36:02.479 --> 02:36:03.319
Where else can they find you?
2720
02:36:03.399 --> 02:36:03.600
Yeah?
2721
02:36:03.600 --> 02:36:07.360
The intercept. I'm an investigative reporter. You google me. I'm
2722
02:36:07.360 --> 02:36:10.680
on Twitter. I don't tweet much, but you can find
2723
02:36:10.680 --> 02:36:10.879
me there.
2724
02:36:10.920 --> 02:36:12.719
Yeah. Make sure you subscribe to the channel if you
2725
02:36:12.719 --> 02:36:15.440
haven't already joined our Patreon check the links down the
2726
02:36:15.440 --> 02:36:18.680
description by the book. Buy the book, check out the description,
2727
02:36:19.000 --> 02:36:20.000
check out code over con