The enemy had the SEALs outnumbered. Hyder was new to SEAL Team 6, but as the ranking officer on the ground during that operation, he was technically in charge. 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. ONeill entered the room, walked over to where bin Laden lay on the floor, and shot him twice in the face. For some of them, what was most troubling was not that Hyder mighthave taken gratuitous revenge for Robertss death on an unrelated civilian, but that on more than one occasion, as ground force commander, he had fired his own weapon to neutralize perceived threats. Bottom left:Screengrab from drone feed during the battle of Roberts Ridge. As far as the teams are concerned these individuals are persona non gratis. In that brief firefight, the SEALs killed nearly 20 foreign al Qaeda fighters, some of whom carried U.S. military equipment taken from Takur Ghar. Several months after the bin Laden raid, in October 2011, SEAL Team 6 held its annual stump muster, a reunion of current command members and their families, as well as past leaders and senior operators. Other active-duty SEAL Team 6 operators who worked with Bissonnette on his various consulting deals were punished as a result of their profiteering. Even if it was true, I dont know why he would say that. Hyder said he was not aware of the Bagram meeting held by the enlisted operators about him or the accusations. The extreme risks they take forge extreme bonds. But the directive had another benefit. They are taught to live and if necessary die for one another. The former SEAL leader said the extensive amount of training for the mission, combined with Bissonnettes planning role, gave both men ample opportunity to find ways to put themselves on the third floor, in a good position to kill bin Laden. No officers were present, and the enlisted SEALs used the meeting to address Hyders alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan the previous day. A third of the guys literally think theyre Apache warriors, then you had the Muslim way of removing a head. Senior members of SEAL Team 6 felt the pattern of brutality was not only illegal but rose to the level of war crimes. Neil Brown Jr. as Chief Warrant Officer 2 Raymond "Ray" Perry, formerly Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator a.k.a. The raid, several of the SEALs said afterward, was one of the easiest missions theyd ever conducted. 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. They shot an unarmed dude. 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. Its important that you put this stuff in context, the CIA officer said. A SEAL who spoke Arabic interviewed bin Ladens wives and daughters until he was able to get two positive identifications. But we all see what we want to see. Slabinski and the Blue Squadron SEALs deployed to Afghanistan were frustrated, and that book gave them the answers they wanted to see: Terrorize the Taliban and theyd surrender. The only issue was, was his order real, or just talk? said one of the retired SEALs involved. A quarter were basically strap-hangers and a quarter were rock-stars. The prominent mountain range often served as the last geographic refuge for retreating forces entering Pakistan. No investigation into an unjustified killing has ever resulted in formal disciplinary action against a member of SEAL Team 6. After the operation, $30,000 in cash, which the pirates had stashed in a lifeboat, went missing. A. J. Buckley as Special Warfare Operator First Class Percival "Sonny" Quinn a.k.a. I deny it, he said, adding that he didnt understand why Heath would have claimed to have witnessed it. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service then opened an investigation but wasforced to rely on photographs and witness statements because active hostilities made the alleged crime scene inaccessible. 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. They were not the private collection of some individual operator, but the commands official after-action pictures. The SEALs in the unit were furious that the White House revealed to the world that Navy SEALs had carried out the raid, violating the traditional code of silence about their missions. By Brad Knickerbocker Staff writer @bradknick November 8, 2014 The. Late that year, the CIA joined operators from Gold Squadron for an operation near Jalalabad. Others used them to break doorknobs on raids or kill militants in hand-to-hand combat. Id look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment, the retired SEAL said. Top left: Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette in2001. ONeill then fired two rounds. They had detailed plans of the Abbottabad compound provided by the CIA and knew where they could expect to find bin Laden. We said, Let us set down and take a look at the convoy to determine if its al Qaeda. Instead, they dropped several bombs.. 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. The story of the bin Laden raid has been told and retold, but crucial details have never been made public. Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. Fair enough. The group gave him a five-star rating, its most ignoble designation. Yet immediately after the mission, ONeill described shooting bin Laden while he was on the floor. They soon discovered he had violated a series of Navy regulations. He was an outsider, despite having been at the command for many years. When Heath, who witnessed Hyders actions, reported them to his team leader in the presence of other members of the team, several of the guys turned and walked away, said the retired SEAL. By the time Slabinski entered the room where the dead militant lay, according to three former SEAL Team 6 leaders, the operator had severed much of the dead mans neck. 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. They were both talented and competitive, and they were determined to profit from their experiences as SEALs. 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. Oh my gosh. One telling illustration of what had gone wrong with Blue Squadron occurred on December 17, 2007, duringa raid in Helmand province. 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,. During the pre-dawn raid, a small team from Gold Squadron breached a compound that was home to an insurgent cell that had targeted a U.S. base. Conflicting accounts have emerged about how many other SEALs fired rounds into bin Ladens lifeless body, though one former SEAL Team 6 leader who viewed the body in Jalalabad told me the body appeared to be intact aside from the chest wound and obliterated face. The photos and other review documents could be shared with local officials to justify operations. The guys needed that to get back in the saddle because everyone was gun shy., I mean, talk about the funny stuff we do. I shot him about 20 times in the legs, and every time youd kick him, er, shoot him, he would kick up, you could see his body twitching and all that. The prevailing narrative about SEAL Team 6 in news coverage, bestselling books, and Hollywood movies is unambiguously heroic; it centers on the killing of Osama bin Laden and high-profile rescue missions. SEAL TEAM 6 also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) chooses guys from the SEAL teams and put them through a screening process called Green team. The 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. A few of his female relatives were nearby. A fierce firefight erupted between the four SEALs and a much larger enemy force of more than 50 anti-coalition insurgents. After the Chinook miniguns strafed the vehicles and stopped them, Slabinski and his team of snipers landed and moved to a rise several hundred yards away from one of the trucks and began firing sniper rounds at the militants. Previously, the command had required only a frontal shot and a profile of each dead militant. Theres no military purpose for it, a former Red Squadron operator told me. After leaving the compound and returning to their base in Kandahar province, Vasely reported to Moore, his superior officer, that he believed he had witnessed a war crime, a mutilation. That was the end of that. Hyder said that his single shot had blasted open the mans head. Bissonnettes book was the first eyewitness account, and it contradicted the Obama administrations narrative. During the first deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it was common practice to take fingers, scalp, or skin from slain enemy combatants for identification purposes. The units elite stature has insulated its members from the scrutiny and military justice that lesser units would have faced for the same actions. Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward "Eddie" Gallagher, a highly decorated Navy SEAL, is fighting murder charges . Im telling you the absolute truth., After the deployment, SEAL Team 6s leadership examined Hyders actions during Objective Bull. Created in 1980 and based at the. 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. 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. Officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, SEAL Team 6 is today the most celebrated of the U.S. military's special mission units. Over a period of several weeks, a fight erupted between SEAL Team 6 and CIA officers in Afghanistan. Then officials took all three of those details back, though they maintained the al Qaeda leader posed a threat. Youre moving the bar and buying into an emotional justification, War is hell. If youre not disciplining your force, youre saying its OK.. This meant there was less oversight over their missions and less accountability if things went wrong. Today, heis a paid on-air commentator for Fox News and is reportedly eyeing a run for the Senate in his native Montana. The second inquiry also uncovered the head on a platter remark as the instigation for the beheading in December 2007, but the commands senior enlisted leader told Slabinski he would not get the promotion or be allowed to serve at the command again because of the Pantera order. The truth about what happened in bin Ladens bedroom may never be fully known. First, bin Laden was armed, involved in a firefight, and using one of his wives as a human shield. According to a CIA officer with direct knowledge of the incident, the CIA requested that the SEALs capture, rather than kill, their militant targets. And then we move on, said a former SEAL who was present at the meeting. It was just good therapy. Like, hey look at this dude, and the guy would just twitch again. If you have multiple incidents where the ground force commander pulls the trigger on a deployment, you have a total breakdown of operational tactics, said one retired SEAL leader. After being shepherded through the nine-month training, he entered Red Squadron. A retired noncommissioned officer said Howards encouragement and provision of Winkler hatchets was simply adding fuel to the fire. What's more, they found. Other SEALs on the ground proceeded as though the survivors were combatants. 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. His forehead was gruesome, he later told Esquire magazine. By then, there was no question about whether the attempted beheading had occurred; the question was why. 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. asking for money). Outside the main entrance stands a 30-foot trident sculpted out of a fragment of the World Trade Center. We shoot em. It wasnt complex, and had it been several one-off events, a guy chopping a head off it wouldnt be such a failure. No single military unit has come to represent American military success or heroism more than SEAL Team 6, officially designated as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group andknown in military vernacular as DevGru, Team 6, the Command, and Task Force Blue. 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. Already a popular motivational speaker, ONeill now charges up to $35,000 per speech. 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. There was a lot of chaos. It didnt make a difference. Neil Fifi Roberts, a member of the SEAL recon team, fell 10 feet from the back of a Chinook and was stranded as the helicopter took fire from foreign al Qaeda fighters who were already on the snow-covered mountaintop. Questions about battlefield atrocities persisted, though some excused these actions in the name of psychological warfare against the enemy. Scott Moore, and his deputy, Capt. But this started in 2002 and continued through the wars. One of the two SEALs who knew about the grenade eventually told his team leader, who then failed to inform his commanders until he was confronted the next day. You really do. 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. It was then that both Bissonnette and ONeill hung back on the stairway. Beyond the story of the alleged mutilation, the sight of the dead civilians killed during the opening airstrikes of Objective Bull, especially the women and children, left members of Red Team with deep psychological scars. Some of ONeills teammates were outraged hed been so brazenly inaccurate and self-serving in his account. 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. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. Parts of SEAL Team 6 began acting with an air of impunity that disturbed observers within the command. . There were no heroics, and, apart from al Kuwaitis shots, no firefight. As far as the teams are concerned these individuals are persona non gratis. The morning after Objective Bull, Red Team gathered at Bagram Air Base. Normally, SEAL Team 6s commanding officer, a captain, would conduct a captains mast, a form of non-judicial punishment. After he left the Navy, O'Neill became a right-wing celebrity, including gigs as a paid Fox News contributor and popular public . Scott Moore, right, then commander of SEAL Team 6. 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. Three weeks after the incident, NCIS closed its investigation, concluding that there was no evidence the SEAL had violated the laws of armed conflict. 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 rules of engagement allowed the ground force commander to shoot anyone he viewed as a threat, regardless of whether they were armed at the time of the shooting. 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 . According to the New York Times, Afghans accused Blue Squadron of killing civilians during that operation, but a subsequent military investigation determined that all those killed had been armed and hostile. Had the daughters been wearing explosives, Red would have died while shielding his teammates from much of the blast. In the end, their inclusion in the bin Laden raid and their roles defined where they fit in: Bissonnette worked closely with the CIA and SEAL Team 6 superiors during the planning phase to help plot out the assault, and would lead a team of operators to find and kill bin Ladens courier. Here, commanders returning from a deployment leave their hard drives with technicians who transfer PowerPoints, after-actions reports, and photos of each operation a squadron conducted abroad. Despite orders to detain the men, the SEALs killed all six. The operational tempo was very high. The power of the Native American mascot, he said, was not to be dismissed. Tyrese wasn't happy with Chris Rock for taking shots at Jada Pinkett Smith and shared his thoughts with fans via Instagram. The SEAL mission was compromised when the local nationals spotted the team, who presumably reported its presence and location to the Taliban. who is on the navy seal rock of shame. 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. We needed that there was not a better group of people to go and do that. Former US Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, identified in news accounts as the member of SEAL Team Six who killed Osama bin Laden. In ONeills account, he did not see Red fire his shots at bin Laden because he was looking back down the stairs for reinforcements. 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. SEAL Team 6 headquarters at Dam Neck naval annex, Virginia Beach, Va., showing the 30-foot trident sculpted from a fragment of the World Trade Center. Bissonnette was much farther back down the stairwell. Some SEAL Team 6 leaders were appalled by how easily Vasely and Szymanski had folded under Moores pressure. Both teams exited the helicopters to find a grim scene. Not provide them., During one Iraq deployment, Howard returned from a raid to an operations center with blood on his hatchet and his uniform. Only inches from his target, ONeill claims, he shot bin Laden twice in the forehead. In that mission, known as Objective Wolverine, Slabinski and his fellow SEALs were sent in Chinook helicopters to follow a convoy they believed was filled with al Qaeda fighters escaping to Pakistan. Thin and lanky, he was less physically imposing than many SEALs but was charismatic and dedicated. Top right: A bearded Red Squadron SEAL in Afghanistan. After the publication of No Easy Day which in one chapter describes in great detail the specialized gear, along with brand names, Bissonnette wore on the bin Laden mission the Navy opened several inquiries into Bissonnettes outside business contracts. Hyder finished his tour at SEAL Team 6 shortly after returning from the Afghanistan deployment and was later promoted to the rank of commander, the Navy equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. The SEALs had no authority over the helicopter gunners. By late 2007, Slabinski was deployed to Afghanistan as the senior noncommissioned officer in Blue Squadron. According to multiple members of SEAL Team 6, the fight with the CIA was one of the few instances in which the commands battlefield misconduct was in danger of being exposed. 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. 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. By all accounts, Slabinski, a second-generation SEAL who joined Team 6 in 1993, was an excellent sniper and reconnaissance operator. Other military and intelligence officials who have served with or investigated the unit were also interviewed. Almost immediately, the issue that received the most scrutiny was the December 2007 attempted beheading. 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. As the special operations helicopters approached the convoy from the north and west, Air Force jets dropped two bombs, halting the vehicles and killing several people instantly. The member of SEAL Team Six claiming to have shot and killed Osama bin Laden in a daring night raid in May 2011 is Robert O'Neill, multiple news sources have confirmed. One operator, who confirmed Howards remarks, added his own: Thats the business were in.. In the book, Bissonnette implies that he was directly behind Red just below the third floor when bin Laden was shot, and was one of the next two SEALs who entered bin Ladens bedroom. Howards distribution of the hatchets worried several senior SEAL Team 6 members and some CIA paramilitary officers who worked with his squadron. After the bodies were recovered, Hyder and the other members of Red Team were forced to reckon with the mutilation and near beheading of their fellow SEAL. Somebody else is making this up. . Operators and officers prided themselves on their ability to kill only those who were deemed a threat. 471K views 6 years ago http://democracynow.org - A stunning new expos published today in The Intercept about the elite military unit SEAL Team 6 reveals a darker side of the group best. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Ladens forehead. In his interview with the Times, Slabinski asserted that it was he who had witnessed the operator slashing at the dead fighters throat, saying, It appeared he was mutilating a body. Slabinski portrayed himself as trying to police his men and said that he gave them a very stern speech. He claimed to the Times that he told his men, If any of you feel a need to do any retribution, you should call me. Slabinski says nothing in the Times story about Vasely ordering him to investigate the scene or the remark about a head on a platter. On my 2005 deployment in Afghanistan, we only went on a handful of ops, said a retired SEAL who served under Howard. It ruined some of these guys, said the former SEAL operator on the mission. When you see your friend killed, recover his body, and find that the enemy mutilated him? 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. We just slaughtered those dudes. After describing one particular fighter who from a distance had resembled Osama bin Laden, Slabinksi continued: To this day, weve never had anything as good as that. They realized the man had been trying to protect the women and children. A few days after the attempted interview, investigators obtained photos purporting to be of the dead fighter. Most of the operators held a meeting to discuss what had happened on the mission. The hatchet was too intimate, too closely aligned with a tomahawk, to have been a good idea. The former SEAL, who himself had served in Red during his career, said that by giving operators the weapon of their battlefield persona, Howard sent an unmistakable message to his men: Use it. By 2007, when Howard and Red Squadron showed up with their hatchets in Iraq, internal reports of operators using the weapons to hack dead and dying militants were provided to both the commanding officer of SEAL Team 6 at that time, Capt. Officers like Hyder, who did not pass through the brutal SEAL Team 6 internal training program, known as Green Team, are often viewed with suspicion and occasionally contempt by the enlisted SEAL operators. It was like a game. 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. 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