Tim Szymanski. The situation was not particularly unusual. The operation commanded high-level interest because Norgrove, though in Afghanistan as an aid worker for DAI, an American NGO, secretly worked with Britains MI-6. Vasely, who was wearing night-vision goggles, looked through a window and saw one of his operators, his back turned, squatting over the body of a dead militant. Some of those photographs, especially those taken of casualties from 2005 through 2008, show deceased enemy combatants with their skulls split open by a rifle or pistol round at the upper forehead, exposing their brain matter. workers synonym; avoidant personality disorder and generalized anxiety disorder; lor christmas sequences; Toni Trucks as Lieutenant (junior grade) Lisa Davis. According to a CIA officer with direct knowledge of the incident, the CIA requested that the SEALs capture, rather than kill, their militant targets. After 90 minutes, as the helicopters were nearing the rendezvous point, one of the SEALs alerted Hyder that an old man who had been lying in a ditch nearby was walking toward the SEALs position. His actions, if proven in a court of law, should be punished accordingly. . Both men were notorious among their teammates for their self-promotional tendencies a trait not well-suited for a team-first environment. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Ladens forehead. The book purported to be a true account of an S.S. officer who with dozens of other soldiers escaped Germany after World War II, joined the French Foreign Legion, and spent years in Vietnam brutalizing the insurgency. The texture of those accounts reveals much about what went wrong with the most celebrated special operations command in the U.S. military. The group gave him a five-star rating, its most ignoble designation. The hatchet says, We dont care about the Geneva Conventions and that we are above the law and can do whatever we want., Critics inside the command were troubled by the combination of battlefield aggression and Howards lack of military discipline. So many dead bodies, so many, everywhere, and so the potential opportunities for mutilations were great.. So while O'Neill's account definitely had a few questionable points, such as lining up with the Obama administration's narrative that bin Laden was within reach of a weapon and definitely presented a threat, Matt Bissonette/Mark Owen was probably incentivized to downplay O'Neill's role on the third deck. At the reunion, a few hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a small group of current and former master chiefs stood around drinking and telling war stories. Slabinski experienced, charismatic, and by now legendary bridged the gap. It will mark a sea change in the sea service's clandestine and close-knit cadre of SEALs, a secretive and elite military force that rarely testifies against each other, especially in war crimes. According to two former SEALs, Slabinski told his teammates and superiors that his remark about wanting a head was figurative and not a literal order. The flight took 90 minutes, and as the Black Hawk Bissonnette rode in approached the compound walls, it effectively slammed on the brakes. After participating in May 2011's Operation Neptune Spear with SEAL Team Six, O'Neill was the subject of controversy for claiming to be the sole individual to kill Osama bin Laden . Unlike the SEALs, the man was not wearing night-vision goggles. The planning was so meticulous, one retired SEAL Team 6 leader told me, that a helicopter pilot warned mission planners that one of the two stealth Black Hawks they were to use would likely experience a vortex ring state, which means air disturbed by the rotors would prevent the helicopter from getting the lift necessary to continue hovering. Otherwise we knew its going to get out of control. He said it and one of his operators did it because he believed he was following an order.. They ransacked the compound for documents and media for intelligence, left the survivors inside, and returned to Jalalabad air base with the body. The official SEAL creed reads, in part: Uncompromising integrity is my standard. The extreme risks they take forge extreme bonds. Although Bissonnette was able to sell a book and tell his story first, ONeill arguably got the better deal. The war was entering its seventh year and had become intractable, with no clear path to victory. The mission was code-named Objective Bull. Ten days later, the internal JSOC investigation was closed. . Earlier that evening, general officers from the Joint Special Operations Command had scrambled the SEALs after watching a Predator drone video feed of a man they suspected was bin Laden set off in a convoy of three or four vehicles in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where al Qaeda forces had fortified themselves. Often wed hear, well, theyre savages, the former leadersaid. Raffi Barsoumian as Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Omar Hamza. Killing unarmed civilians whether on purpose or by accident has a profoundly harmful effect on the human soul. The operation commanded high-level interest because Norgrove, though in Afghanistan as an aid worker for DAI, an American NGO, secretly worked with Britains MI-6, according to four U.S. military and intelligence sources. In 1992, Holland went for screening by the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU, Seal Team 6). You guys want to play withthose rules? OK. Although this former SEAL acknowledged that war crimes are wrong, he understood how they happen. And from the moment President Obama announced the operations successful conclusion in a televised address, a variety of individuals and institutions have sought to profit from the elimination of Americas most hated enemy. Made up of no more than 200 SEAL operators when the Afghan war began, SEAL Team 6 was the lesser known of the U.S. military's elite "special mission" units. He was unarmed and wearing pajamas. Our sense of whats right and whats wrong is warped. Some of ONeills teammates were outraged hed been so brazenly inaccurate and self-serving in his account. The truth about what happened in bin Ladens bedroom may never be fully known. They were told, Go in, kill him, and bring the body back, said a former SEAL Team 6 leader involved in the raid. Again their helicopter took fire as it landed near the top.. Bissonnettes bestselling book, No Easy Day, was published in September 2012, four months after he retired and less than two weeks after ONeill got out of the Navy. The units name itself is part of an attempt to obscure U.S. capabilities. And part of that was getting rid of Britt Slabinski.. Illustrations: Attila Futaki, Colorist: Greg Guilhaumond, Matthew Cole[emailprotected]theintercept.com@matthewacole, The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, thats equal to or greater than what the criminal justice system would give to the person.. The enemy had the SEALs outnumbered. He was Ahmed al Kuwaiti, one of bin Ladens couriers. Blue Squadron was led at that time by Cmdr. Bissonnette and a small team of SEALs moved from the helicopter to a small building adjacent to bin Ladens main house. These names are on this rock because these people conducted themselves in a way that did not bring glory to the teams. This directive had one primary purpose: to protect U.S. forces from accusations of unjustified killings by Afghan government officials. I was going around to the different KIAs with my camera to take photos, Hyder told me in an interview, using the military term for enemies killed in action. David Boreanaz as Jason Hayes Max Thieriot as Clay Spenser (episode 1-8) Neil Brown Jr. as Ray Perry AJ Buckley as Sonny Quinn Toni Trucks as Lisa Davis Raffi Barsoumian as Omar Hamza Jessica Par as Mandy Ellis Alona Tal as Stella Baxter Parisa Fakhri . The retired SEAL, who spent the better part of two decades at the command, said he never asked Hyder why he mutilated the corpse. What we didnt do was turn him in. He had already set himself up for a profitable future. This meant there was less oversight over their missions and less accountability if things went wrong. This account of the crimes of SEAL Team 6 results from a two-year investigation drawing on interviews with 18 current and former members of the unit, including four former senior leaders of the command. In 2010, when Slabinski was up for a promotion at the command, SEAL Team 6 leaders conducted two internal inquiries before making a decision. No issues with that. Vasely later told investigators he saw the operator moving his hand back and forth over the militants neck in a sawing motion. There's a strong bias in the Teams where the best guys get out after one or two Platoons and the turds stick around. In exchange, Smethers, who never filed an official allegation or complaint, was sent back to the U.S. Smethers did not respond to requestsfor comment. It was a mess.. WASHINGTON Britt K. Slabinski, a former senior chief petty officer of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 6, received the Medal of Honor on Thursday for his . It happens in war. The operational tempo was very high. Inside the vehicle were one or two rifles, as is customary in Afghanistan, but none of the men wore military clothing or had any extra ammunition. A third of the guys literally think theyre Apache warriors, then you had the Muslim way of removing a head. Six days after Objective Bull, the Pentagon announced at a press conference that an airstrike had killed 14 people,who a spokesperson said were somehow affiliated with al Qaeda. ONeill entered the room, walked over to where bin Laden lay on the floor, and shot him twice in the face. Historically, SEAL Team 6 is known as a unit where officers rent their lockers, because they typically serve about three years before rotating out, whereas the enlisted operators remain for much of their careers, often for a decade or more. They were the only shots not fired by the SEALs during the raid. Consequently, the SEALs initially reported to JSOC senior leaders that Norgrove had been killed by her captors. The raid, several of the SEALs said afterward, was one of the easiest missions theyd ever conducted. Neil Brown Jr. as Chief Warrant Officer 2 Raymond "Ray" Perry, formerly Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator a.k.a. Slabinski did not report the decapitation, however. O'Neill (born 10 April 1976) is a former United States Navy SEAL (1996-2012 . After securing several detainees and cordoning the area, Hyder and his men waited for their helicopters to arrive and extract them. Photos: U.S. Navy; U.S. Air Photo by Force Technical Sgt. A former SEAL Team 6 leader told me that ONeill and Bissonnette originally agreed to cooperate on a book or movie project after the raid was over, but later had a falling out. Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, Devils Guard, published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. While on active duty, hed formed a consulting company with four other SEALs and secured a contract with one of the commands biggest equipment suppliers. Two of these sources told me that the British government informed SEAL Team 6 mission planners that Norgrove worked for the spy agency, and that they had been tracking her movements since the abduction. Howards distribution of the hatchets worried several senior SEAL Team 6 members and some CIA paramilitary officers who worked with his squadron. Our job is to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way befitting the American people and the American flag. Sources at SEAL Team 6 who were present during the operation estimated the number of dead was between 17 and 20. The SEALs biggest concern was how much time they would have, which was dictated by the amount of fuel the two Black Hawks could carry for the round trip. Yet immediately after the mission, ONeill described shooting bin Laden while he was on the floor. Id look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment, the retired SEAL said. Our leadership punted and Im not sure it will ever be corrected., The failure of SEAL Team 6 to hold itself accountable for battlefield atrocities has resulted in lasting consequences for operators at the command. After Robertss death, Slabinksi wanted revenge. It was at this point that some critics in the military complained that SEAL Team 6 with their full beards and arms, legs, and torsos covered in tattoos looked like members of a biker gang. Tactically, however, the command was winning on the battlefield, and despite McRavens directives, there was no serious internal scrutiny of the SEALs most excessive conduct. By 2007, the commands leadership was aware that some Blue Squadron operators were using specialized knives to conduct skinnings. Using the excuse of collecting DNA, which required a small piece of skin containing hair follicles, operators were taking large strips of skin from dead enemy fighters. Moore did not respond to requests for comment. One former SEAL Team 6 leader told me that he feared the practice would lead to members of the unit using the DNA samples as an excuse to mutilate and desecrate the dead. Somebody else is making this up. Ever since SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden, the SEALs who make up less than 5 percent of the nation's active-duty Special Operations forces have been catapulted into the spotlight,. Back at the base, hegave a speech to a group of analysts and nonoperational officers in which he told them that his bloody appearance was a demonstration of how a battlefield commander should lead. At DEVGRU (Team 6 to the uninformed) they have a Grave Stone / Rock of Shame. In March 2013, Esquires profile of ONeill portrayed him as a humble quiet professional who after 16 years in the Navy would no longer have health insurance and was otherwise a downtrodden American hero. The death andattempted decapitation of Neil Roberts on Takur Ghar affected no one so profoundly as Britt Slabinski, the operator who led the rescue team back up the mountainonly to find that Roberts was already dead. Red Team, known as the Redmen, employed a Native American warrior as a mascot; Blue Team, known as the Pirates, wore the Jolly Roger; and Gold Team, known as the Crusaders or Knights, wore a lion or a crusaders cross. Szymanski, according to these sources, was directed by Moore to make the episode disappear. He then stood above the now indisputably dead man and canoed him, firing a round into his forehead and splitting open the top of his skull, exposing his brain. By the time we moved over to Iraq, we were doing missions as much as five nights a week. According to multiple SEAL Team 6 sources, the events of that day set off a cascade of extraordinary violence. One former SEAL leader who attended the proceeding told me McRavens message to the commands leadership was clear. Some of the assaulters on the mission were also angry with Bissonnette and ONeill because they neglected their responsibilities after bin Ladens son was shot. The falsehoods, both significant and slight, demonstrate that even when conducting the most important missions, SEAL Team 6 was unable to rise above the culture of deceit, personal enrichment, and self-aggrandizement that has corrupted a fighting unit legendary for its discipline and code of honor. As a result, Howard became popular among the enlisted SEALs under his command, several of whom defended and praised him. A few days after the attempted interview, investigators obtained photos purporting to be of the dead fighter. It was just good therapy. Bottom left: A Winkler hatchet similar to those issued to Red Squadron. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? He later told his teammates that it was possible one arm was twitching reflexively as he died, but otherwise he was effectively dead and not a threat. The pilot who had warned that one of the helicopters would stall was right. All of us were upset. Theformer SEAL Team 6 leader told me that for the units operators, the greatest punishment was being kicked out of the unit in front of their peers. When he first arrived at Dam Neck, operators in the unit who had served in Vietnam warned him that war crimes and battlefield atrocities hung like a cloud over the entire unit even if only one SEAL had participated. Why would I do that? he asked. A former SEAL filed an appeal Tuesday, Dec. 21, that paints military leaders and their attorneys as corrupt martinets and levels allegations of rampant legal and sexual shenanigans by senior operators inside the ultrasecret Development Group, better known as "SEAL Team 6." That was the only punishment. Two other SEAL Team 6 leaders with a combined 35 years at the command said the removal of Slabinski and the failure to pursue official punishment was an indictment of the senior officers they had failed one of their most basic duties, to hold themselves and others accountable for wrongdoing. Simply put, the unit is an enlisted mafia, where tactics are driven by the expertise developed by the units enlisted assaulters, whose abilities and experience at making rapid threat decisions make up the commands core resource. Well, bad news. The foreign fighters who suffered these V-shaped wounds were either killed in battle and later shot at close range or finished off with a security round while dying. SEAL TEAM 6 also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) chooses guys from the SEAL teams and put them through a screening process called Green team. Mutilation isnt part of the game.. There just isnt a need to carry a two-pound hatchet on the battlefield. For those who favored them, this former SEAL said, the hatchets could be justified as being no more than knives. Men, women, and a small girl, motionless and in the fetal position, appeared dead. When he finally entered the bedroom, alone, bin Laden was standing uninjured, a weapon nearby, his wife in front of him like a human shield. The photos and other review documents could be shared with local officials to justify operations. War crimes case expands to SEAL Team 6. He was partially alive, faced down, his back to me, and he rolled over. But in the eyes of the enlisted SEALs of Red Team, Hyder had killed a man who didnt have to die. In 2007, for example, a Gold Squadron sniper was pushed out of the unit after he killed three unarmed people including a child in at least two different operations. One shot hit bin Laden in the chest and the second shot glanced off his hip or thigh as Bin Laden stumbled backward into his room and fell toward the foot of his bed. When investigators approached the operator accused of mutilating the dead fighter, he exercised his right to remain silentand his right to counsel. Nonetheless, Red Team did not report Hyders alleged battlefield mutilation, a war crime. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. When they reached the hilltop, the operators looked down in disbelief at women and children, along with the man all were dead or mortally wounded from the spray of gunfire from the Chinooks gunners, who had unloaded after the free fire zone had been declared. Over a period of several weeks, a fight erupted between SEAL Team 6 and CIA officers in Afghanistan. Thats whats wrong with my community, the former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. Made up of no more than 200 SEAL operators when the Afghan war began, SEAL Team 6 was the lesser known of the U.S. militarys elite special mission units. But this started in 2002 and continued through the wars. Theyre telling you how they remember it. Beyond the dehumanizing manner in which the al Qaeda fighters had treated his corpse, Robertss death pierced the SEALs self-perception of invincibility. The lack of battlefield discipline was not limited to a single squadron. Gold Squadron was set to redeploy to the U.S., and the SEALs promised to rein in their operators. On my 2005 deployment in Afghanistan, we only went on a handful of ops, said a retired SEAL who served under Howard. Youre moving the bar and buying into an emotional justification, War is hell. If youre not disciplining your force, youre saying its OK.. Howard, who declined to answer questions from The Intercept, rallied his SEALs and others before missions and deployments by telling them to bloody the hatchet. One SEAL I spoke with said that Howards words were meant to be inspirational, like those of a coach, and were not an order to use the hatchets to commit war crimes. Created in 1980 and based at the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana near Virginia Beach, the command prided itself on its culture of nonconformity with the larger military. Bissonnette's name is reportedly inscribed on a "rock of shame" outside SEAL Team 6 headquarters, alongside others who are officially "persona non grata" at that elite unit. Other SEALs on the ground proceeded as though the survivors were combatants. A SEAL who spoke Arabic interviewed bin Ladens wives and daughters until he was able to get two positive identifications. By aflam arabia. There were no heroics, and, apart from al Kuwaitis shots, no firefight. By Emily Cochrane. Just eight months after taking over JSOC, after a series of complaints from the Afghan government over special operations night raids and civilian deaths, McRaven sought to pull Team 6 back from its overly aggressive stance. Howard was often heard asking his operators whether theyd gotten blood on your hatchet when they returned from a deployment. Two different sources said that over a six-year period roughly 2005 through 2011 battlefield reports and accounts of atrocities, particularly mutilations and taking of trophies, were ignored by SEAL Team 6 leadership. But the retired SEAL who was on the mission tells a different story. ONeill then fired two rounds. Later, a JSOC officer watching drone footage of the operation noticed one of the SEALs throw an object that landed and exploded near where Norgroves body was found. And afterwards, we added the psychological warfare.. Once inside, the SEALs proceeded slowly and methodically. After more than 30 years in special operations, he knew that elite forces would inevitably cross ethical, moral, and legal boundaries if they were given too long a leash. They had bonded over Robertss death. McRavens new ordersset off a struggle between the JSOC commander and SEAL Team 6s enlisted ranks that played out in a series of high-profile hostage rescues ordered by President Obama. Previously, the command had required only a frontal shot and a profile of each dead militant. Because of Howards pedigree, SEAL Team 6 leaders running the training program felt pressure to pass him. Red Squadron snipers killed three pirates who were holding Phillips in a lifeboat. You will step over the line and you start dehumanizing people. Theres honor involved and Vic Hyder obviously traipsed all over that, he said. The 23 SEAL Team 6 operators assigned to the mission prepared constantly for the entire month of April 2011, practicing on two different full-scale mock-ups of the bin Laden compound. He took Robertss death hard. Bissonnette claimed he shot and killed al Kuwaiti and had fired bullets into bin Laden on the third floor. No officers were present, and the enlisted SEALs used the meeting to address Hyders alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan the previous day. (The Intercept is withholding the name of the operator, who believed he was following an order. Richard Phillips, captain of the commercial vessel the Maersk Alabama, in April 2009 from Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Iraq was a different kind of war nothing wed ever seen, said the now-retired Team 6 leader. thymeleaf multiple select dropdown. Shortly after that operation, a CIA paramilitary officer named Richard Smethers, who was himself a retired SEAL Team 6 officer, complained to his CIA superiors in Kabul that SEALs were committing atrocities. Canoeing them was funny.. Its a work of fiction billed as the Bible, as the truth. The operation, code-named ANSTRUTHER, an homage to Norgroves Scottish heritage, was authorized by British Prime Minister David Cameron. But McRaven, who commanded the operation, had not ordered the snipers to fire, and neither had a SEAL Team6 officer. You dont whistleblow on the teams and when you win on the battlefield, you dont lose investigations.. Later that night, after Blue Squadrons assaulters had successfully carried out the raid, killing three or four armed men and recovering weapons and explosives, Vasely and Slabinski conducted a walk-through of the compound. He assumed it was a twisted act of misplaced revenge over the previous days events specifically, the gruesome death of Hyders teammate Neil Roberts. To understand the violence, you have to begin at Roberts Ridge, said one former member of SEAL Team 6 who deployed several times to Afghanistan. But even that rule evolved over time. . Your teammates beside and behind you will cover all the other possible angles and areas of a room as you move forward. Instead, he heldthemback long enough for his teammates, including ONeill, to enter the bedroom. My word is my bond. But after 9/11, another code emerged that made lying especially to protect a teammate or the command from accountability the more honorable course of action. Like, hey look at this dude, and the guy would just twitch again. Howard, according to two of his former operators, was more willing than previous officers to greenlight operations based on weak intelligence, leading to more raids and strikes. Hyder said that he and a few other SEALs began to bury the casualties near a ravine by piling rocks over them. His name was added to SEAL. We talked about it and 35 guys nodded their heads saying this is not who we are. We knew what needed to be done to police the kids. The former senior enlisted leader said he pressed several commanding officers to address what he believed were war crimes. ONeill and two or three more assaulters moved past Red intothe bedroom as bin Laden lay on the ground. Vasely told Moore he wanted an investigation into the incident. By then, there was no question about whether the attempted beheading had occurred; the question was why. At that point, Hyder began assessing the damage and surveying the dead. The sniper team leader acted under his own emergency assault authority to kill the pirates as soon as all three could be taken out at the same time. The SEALs quickly intervened and made a deal with the CIA station in Kabul. Bottom: McRaven, left, and Capt. He ordered a pause in most SEAL and JSOC operations over a two-week period in February 2009. But hidden behind the heroic narratives is a darker, more troubling story of revenge ops, unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities a pattern of criminal violence that emergedsoon after the Afghan war began and was tolerated and covered up by the commands leadership. Unlike the hundreds of other assaults SEAL Team 6 had carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the operators would plan and carry out a raid within a matter of hours, this time they had weeks to prepare. Senior leaders at the command knew about the misconduct and did little to eradicate it. He told Vasely that the operator had been trying to remove the dead fighters chest rack, a small vest that can hold ammunition and clips. Unfortunately, it turned out he had an audiocassette in his hand. Audio from an unpublished interview with Britt Slabinksi conducted by Malcolm MacPherson, author of a 2005 book on the battle of Roberts Ridge. Both should have remained on the second floor. Bottom right: Candid photo of U.S. Navy SEAL Neil Roberts. The rise of JSOC as the sharp tip of Americas military effort led to a similar increase in size and responsibility for SEAL Team 6 in the early years of Americas two post-9/11 wars. He reminded us all that our first loyalty was to the Constitution.. I assessed he was nearing a distance where he was within an area where he could do damage with a grenade. Hyder said that a week earlier, a militant had detonated a concealed grenade after approaching some American CIA officers, seriously injuring them. One result of the growth was that back in Virginia, the captain in command of the entire 300-SEAL force had far less oversight over tactical battlefield decisions. Late that year, the CIA joined operators from Gold Squadron for an operation near Jalalabad. Already a popular motivational speaker, ONeill now charges up to $35,000 per speech. There was no discussion of a visible weapon, no claims that one of bin Ladens wives had been used as a shield or a threat. Bottom: Winkler hatchet from Bissonnettes personal collection. After a short while, he quietly left the base. Like Vic Hyder, he struggled to command the respect of his men. After all that activity, hed been hiding in a ditch for 90 minutes, he gets up, hes spoken to, yelled at in the dark its disturbing. Several of us confronted the officers, said one former noncommissioned officer who tried to stop the criminal behavior. They were not the private collection of some individual operator, but the commands official after-action pictures. The discussion covered battlefield ethics. Morale at Red Squadron fell apart shortly after the team returned to Virginia Beach from Afghanistan. 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