Speaker 1: The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Bark. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to The Team House, Episode one and thirty six.
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with my co host David Park.
Speaker 1: Tonight we have Matthew Cole on the show. He is
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country.
Speaker 1: This is a book about Seal Team six and the
Speaker 1: War on Terror and a lot of things that have happened. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this is a book, I think, really about subculture, subculture
Speaker 1: and special operations and where it comes off the rails,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna really take a deep dive on this
Speaker 1: subject and on Matthew's book tonight. Just a little heads up,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about some graphic content here tonight,
Speaker 1: war crimes, sexual assault, Like, there's some pretty grizzly stuff
Speaker 1: in here. Just a heads up, some of you are
Speaker 1: sensitive to that kind of stuff. Is that a trigger on?
Speaker 1: That's a trigger warning, man, because people are going to
Speaker 1: be big triggered in the live chat today, so you
Speaker 1: know it's coming. So Matthew, if you could just start
Speaker 1: off telling us a little bit about yourself and kind
Speaker 1: of what was your entryway into journalism, and then eventually
Speaker 1: covering a really specific type of journalism. You know, we've
Speaker 1: had some people on here, Sean Naylar and Jessica Donatti
Speaker 1: and David Phillips, like there's but there's not many of us, right,
Speaker 1: you can count them on, you know, two hands, two
Speaker 1: and a half hands, people who cover special operations in Jaysock.
Speaker 1: What was kind of your path into journalism and then
Speaker 1: winding up in a very specific field.
Speaker 2: First, I'm really grateful for you guys having me on.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that you give me an opportunity to
Speaker 2: talk about the book. I was a graduate student of
Speaker 2: journalism at Columbia when nine to eleven happened, and it
Speaker 2: is absolutely the case that nine eleven, and being in
Speaker 2: New York and downtown, I was about a block and
Speaker 2: a half from the Twin Towers from five am to
Speaker 2: eight am that morning, and then eventually made my way
Speaker 2: back over after both buildings had come down. Nine to
Speaker 2: eleven focused what I was interested in journalism, and almost
Speaker 2: immediately I was particularly drawn to understanding what had gone
Speaker 2: on in Afghanistan, and so after graduate school, I really
Speaker 2: just tried to figure out how as a basically as
Speaker 2: a freelance reporter how to get myself to Afghanistan. And
Speaker 2: more importantly, I always felt that when I was watching
Speaker 2: news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that
Speaker 2: I don't know what the sense was. There was something
Speaker 2: missing to me. It was very cookie cutter, which isn't
Speaker 2: to denigrate the reporters on the ground who were doing
Speaker 2: in some cases a very good job under difficult circumstances.
Speaker 2: But at that time, you know, it was all embeds,
Speaker 2: and so there was a limitation on the kind of
Speaker 2: story that you could do. And so I decided to
Speaker 2: go to Pakistan on my own, you know, in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five, and do a reporting trip up in
Speaker 2: northwest Pakistan, which at the time, although it wasn't the FATSA,
Speaker 2: it was it was dicey. And when I was there,
Speaker 2: I was very close to the Afghan border Neuristan, and
Speaker 2: I went as it happened, I think I landed in
Speaker 2: Pakistan probably a week after the lone survivor incident had
Speaker 2: occurred in Afghanistan, and I was at that time reporting
Speaker 2: more about the CIA, and I was really struck by
Speaker 2: the notion I was talking to people who lived in
Speaker 2: this valley that was near Afghanistan, and I asked, would
Speaker 2: ask them, you know, did they have any signs or
Speaker 2: indications that there was a war going on, you know
Speaker 2: about an eight hour walk away over the mountains, And
Speaker 2: they said, no, you know, there's very little as different.
Speaker 2: You know, there's some people who come through, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's some white guys, there's some Taliban guys that come through,
Speaker 2: but you know that don't bother us, and we don't
Speaker 2: see much difference, and they certainly don't hear or see
Speaker 2: anything in the sky. And I thought I was really
Speaker 2: interested in the notion that there was this sort of
Speaker 2: invisible line at the border that differentiated one side from
Speaker 2: the other, and that there was this war going on.
Speaker 2: And so I ended up embedding a little less than
Speaker 2: a year later in Afghanistan and went up to Kunar
Speaker 2: and Nuristan. And at that time I was reporting mostly
Speaker 2: on the CIA, but I started doing more military coverage
Speaker 2: or reporting. But you know, abroad, and you know, you
Speaker 2: sort of do one piece at a time. I think
Speaker 2: I've probably always just followed whatever subject I thought was
Speaker 2: interesting or question I had about something, And I think
Speaker 2: I've always looked for trying to understand what are we
Speaker 2: not seeing here? What is the public not seeing? And
Speaker 2: so you know, I went I covered the CIA pretty
Speaker 2: extensively for you know, about ten years, and as towards
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, I was an investigative producer at
Speaker 2: ABC News and I started getting interested in Jaysock and Blackwater,
Speaker 2: and so I started pulling that thread. And about two
Speaker 2: years into reporting on Blackwater, Eric Prince and Jaysock, I
Speaker 2: was working on something about Stanley McCrystal at the time,
Speaker 2: and I, you know, someone showed up at my door,
Speaker 2: so to speak, who mentioned hatchets and Seal Team six.
Speaker 2: And to be honest with you, at that time, I
Speaker 2: didn't really know anything about Seal Team six. I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew they existed, but I had no knowledge whatsoever
Speaker 2: of their culture and or where they fit into the
Speaker 2: world of Jaysock. And you know, but basically I had
Speaker 2: someone saying, look, if you really want to find something troubling,
Speaker 2: you got to look into why guys in my unit
Speaker 2: or carrying hatchets on the battlefield. And that was the beginning.
Speaker 2: That was the start. It was not a direct path.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of zigging and zagging as I
Speaker 2: was working on other things. But you know, the more
Speaker 2: I worked on it, the more I found that that
Speaker 2: there was was bigger than just a story of hatchets.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think I probably this book is
Speaker 2: is ultimately a reflection and the result of how I
Speaker 2: go into a subject or a topic, which is I
Speaker 2: just want to know everything that's happened, and I really
Speaker 2: want to know everything. I like to think of it
Speaker 2: as in three dimensions, you know, which is the good,
Speaker 2: the bad, and the ugly. And the more I learned,
Speaker 2: the more I could see, well, the good has been
Speaker 2: told over and over, and it's been told very effectively
Speaker 2: this Navy Seals in general, Seal Team six in particular.
Speaker 2: But the story had a bunch of key omissions to it,
Speaker 2: and those emissions were enough to you know, really change
Speaker 2: our understanding and what the public should know and understand about,
Speaker 2: you know, what the unit had become, especially after nine
Speaker 2: to eleven.
Speaker 3: I kind of I'm just really really curious about you
Speaker 3: graduating from from school and then ending up in pack
Speaker 3: sentary point. I was sing, how like how did all
Speaker 3: that start? Like how do you start reporting on the CIA?
Speaker 2: Like, you know, it's a good question, you know, I
Speaker 2: you know what I did, I can tell you actually
Speaker 2: the beginning and probably the first part of it, which
Speaker 2: is I was just just reading books. I read every
Speaker 2: book that I wanted to read, you know, after nine
Speaker 2: to eleven, I actually go back a little bit since
Speaker 2: the ninety three the first bombing of the World Trade
Speaker 2: Center in nineteen ninety three. For whatever reason I could,
Speaker 2: I knew. I can tell you where I was at
Speaker 2: each major terrorist attack from ninety three until two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, and after the Embassy bombings in ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Although I couldn't remember his name, when when I watched
Speaker 2: the second plane hit the second tower on nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: I knew who it was. I couldn't remember his name.
Speaker 2: I didn't Al Kaita didn't mean anything to me, but
Speaker 2: I could. I actually remembered his face and what with that,
Speaker 2: you know, it was very common image at that time,
Speaker 2: with more of a white turban, a little more looking
Speaker 2: a little more Saudi than he was looking, you know,
Speaker 2: like he was living in Afghanistan. And you know, so
Speaker 2: I had an interest, right so after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: I had even more of an interest to understand what
Speaker 2: had happened, How did it come to this? What had occurred?
Speaker 2: I mean you know, there was nothing, nothing special about that.
Speaker 2: I think there were a lot of Americans that felt
Speaker 2: that way, and so I was interested in the CIA.
Speaker 2: I was I was when I was in graduate school.
Speaker 2: I was already a huge fan of Seymour Hirsch at
Speaker 2: the New Yorker, and I was just reading everything that
Speaker 2: I could to help me make sense of what world,
Speaker 2: how the world had just changed, at least from the
Speaker 2: American perspective. And I started reading every book written by
Speaker 2: someone from the CIA. That was what I did. And
Speaker 2: one of the first that I read at the time
Speaker 2: was was Bob Behar's book. And so what I did
Speaker 2: was I was a journal you know, a student journalist.
Speaker 2: I found a way. It took me a long time, actually,
Speaker 2: but I eventually got Bob Behar on the phone and
Speaker 2: I said, I'm a journalist and I want to figure
Speaker 2: out how to find people like you and get people
Speaker 2: like you to talk. And he gave me a few
Speaker 2: pointers and it, you know, it was nothing mind blowing,
Speaker 2: but it was enough to sort of give me a
Speaker 2: sense of what I did. And then at that time,
Speaker 2: you know, the first three years or so after nine
Speaker 2: to eleven and the invasion in Afghanistan, a lot of
Speaker 2: the guys who were in the CAA were writing books,
Speaker 2: and he had Gary schron and he had Gary Bernston,
Speaker 2: and so there were I could read the books and
Speaker 2: then I'd find you know, I'd find them, I'd reach
Speaker 2: out and I would start to to you know, report basically,
Speaker 2: and that's all it was. It was not, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a question of talking to talking to
Speaker 2: people in that community and trying to understand the difference
Speaker 2: between what they were saying, what I thought I was seeing,
Speaker 2: and then what the public was seeing. And there was
Speaker 2: always a difference, and you know, sometimes it was because
Speaker 2: the government was actively lying. Sometimes it was because it's
Speaker 2: just really hard to you know, work on these kind
Speaker 2: of stories and it's not easy with a daily deadline,
Speaker 2: you know. So you know, that was that was how
Speaker 2: I did it. It wasn't It certainly was not anything
Speaker 2: special at all.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting, though, I would like to jump into
Speaker 1: the book and start with Ralph Penny. There's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is about a special operations subculture coming off the rails.
Speaker 1: But although that was accelerated by the War on Terror,
Speaker 1: I think you really point to in the book about
Speaker 1: how the precursors were kind of always there in the culture.
Speaker 1: This sort of pirate outlaw culture was at least a
Speaker 1: faction within the Seal community. And I think the story
Speaker 1: about Ensign Penny really tells how dark that really got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I went into writing this book, I had, you know,
Speaker 2: a cursory knowledge of the history of the Seals, and
Speaker 2: I felt obviously that there's not any way that I
Speaker 2: could write about present day Seal Team six if I
Speaker 2: didn't get into, you know, its origins. And so I
Speaker 2: started at the beginning, which is in World War Two.
Speaker 2: And you know, let's lay out here for a second
Speaker 2: that historically, the combat Swimmers and the UDT the Frogmen
Speaker 2: as they were known in World War Two, had a
Speaker 2: tradition and a subculture completely outside of the regular Navy
Speaker 2: even then, and a lot of what we know today
Speaker 2: of the Seals you can see in what was going
Speaker 2: on in nineteen forty three movies, Hollywood films in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty one. They had their own chant and song, which
Speaker 2: you know, made it very clear that they were, you know,
Speaker 2: crazy motherfuckers. They were the craziest bastards in the Navy.
Speaker 2: The toughest and so there are there are it's like
Speaker 2: in their DNA, right, there's there's something to them. And
Speaker 2: they're a really small unit. Right, We're not talking about
Speaker 2: the history of the eighty second Airborne or parts of
Speaker 2: the Army. They're a separate from the Navy and very specialized,
Speaker 2: which means that whatever cultural issues they have, they're were concentrated.
Speaker 2: And one of the stories that I had heard over
Speaker 2: the years was an incident about a young insigdnt an
Speaker 2: officer who had just graduated from BUDS in the late seventies,
Speaker 2: who was essentially pushed to his suicide after being hazed
Speaker 2: shortly after getting out of graduating from BUDS. And it
Speaker 2: was one of those stories where you know, everyone had
Speaker 2: everyone had heard something. Oh, I know that story. I
Speaker 2: heard that story, and then you start to ask, No
Speaker 2: one knew anything, right, and it was all over the place.
Speaker 2: But I had a couple of sources who said, no,
Speaker 2: it's real, it happened, And you know, initially it took
Speaker 2: took me a couple of months just to figure out
Speaker 2: what the victim's name was, and it was INSIGT Ralph
Speaker 2: Stanley Penny, who had been a Air Force Academy graduate.
Speaker 2: He had his own really fascinating story, which was that
Speaker 2: his father was a colonel and a pilot in the
Speaker 2: Air Force who had fought flown a ton of missions
Speaker 2: in Vietnam and was a decorated war hero, and his
Speaker 2: son wanted, who had the same name, wanted to do
Speaker 2: as his dad did and become a pilot. But he
Speaker 2: had terrible vision, and so by the time he got
Speaker 2: through part of the Air Force Academy, it became clear
Speaker 2: that he couldn't really be He was never going to fly,
Speaker 2: and so he chose instead to join the Navy to
Speaker 2: get into butts and become a seal. At that time there,
Speaker 2: you know, it was you could go into udt or
Speaker 2: end up as a seal. So he just wanted to
Speaker 2: be a frogman and his father and his mother and father,
Speaker 2: according to his sister who survived him, were very against
Speaker 2: him going. They were religious. The father's experience in Vietnam
Speaker 2: with the seals was that they were drinkers and killers,
Speaker 2: and he didn't want that for his boy, and they
Speaker 2: basically it was not allowed to be talked about. When
Speaker 2: it became clear that Insiant Penny was going to sign
Speaker 2: up and go to buts, and so you know, as
Speaker 2: I was digging, I realized there was a It wasn't
Speaker 2: just something bad at the end of the story. There
Speaker 2: was really something interesting and sad and compelling about what
Speaker 2: had happened to him. It took a while, but ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know what what occurred was that he joined He
Speaker 2: joined his team was UDT twenty one on the East
Speaker 2: Coast a little bit early because he had done it,
Speaker 2: because he had been in the Air Force, he had
Speaker 2: already done his jumps, he was already certified as a
Speaker 2: as a skydiver, so he got to go early while
Speaker 2: the rest of his buds class went to Fort Benning
Speaker 2: to do their their courses there and get their their certification.
Speaker 2: And the officers there decided, since he was going to
Speaker 2: be uh checking in soon, that they would send him
Speaker 2: on a training evolution early with a platoon. And it
Speaker 2: was not going to be the platoon that he was
Speaker 2: going to join, but he was gonna he'd get his
Speaker 2: get a little bit of experience. So he was given
Speaker 2: to a platoon who was led by then a Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Joseph McGuire. We can get into him later, and they
Speaker 2: go down to Saint they go down to Vieches where
Speaker 2: there was a Seals had of training station and on
Speaker 2: a Liberty weekend, and he goes with a East six
Speaker 2: or an East seven who was a Vietnam veteran named
Speaker 2: Eddie Leisure Fast Eddie Leisure, it was a considered one
Speaker 2: of the best, you know, best operators in the Seals
Speaker 2: during Vietnam, was highly regarded and he had become he'd gone,
Speaker 2: he sort of moved around, but he didn't want to
Speaker 2: become a chief. So he must have been an E
Speaker 2: six because he had refused. I talked to some people
Speaker 2: who had who had served with him and knew him,
Speaker 2: and he had actively avoided becoming a chief because he
Speaker 2: didn't want to be in charge. He didn't want to
Speaker 2: do any paperwork. So he did some training, dive training
Speaker 2: and Liberty weekend. He takes Penny to Saint Thomas. And
Speaker 2: Saint Thomas during the fifties and sixties had been the
Speaker 2: winter home of the East Coast Seals and UDT and
Speaker 2: had a was a you know, a long tradition in
Speaker 2: the Seals of going to Saint Thomas, whether you were
Speaker 2: on training or later in Viekas and traveling or in
Speaker 2: Liberty and getting drunk for the weekend, as all good
Speaker 2: sailors and servicemen do when they have R and R
Speaker 2: or time off. But Saint Thomas was had a very
Speaker 2: liberal social dynamic and community at the time, and a
Speaker 2: very open gay community at the time, and so there
Speaker 2: was a tradition in the Seals with frogmen when they
Speaker 2: were out drinking, when they ran out of money, the
Speaker 2: youngest guy in the team was they would get him
Speaker 2: drunk and they would then sell him off to one
Speaker 2: of the gay men at the bars for money so
Speaker 2: that the rest of the team could drink. And so
Speaker 2: as it was described to me, you know, it was
Speaker 2: they didn't do it every time, and they didn't do
Speaker 2: it to everyone, but it was frequent. It was very
Speaker 2: much frequent, and it was part of the hazing culture,
Speaker 2: and it was very much don't ask, don't tell what
Speaker 2: happened the next day. So fast forward in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: Penny goes with Eddie Leisure and they go out for
Speaker 2: a night on the town and Leisure gets him drunk
Speaker 2: and over the course of the night, they're at a
Speaker 2: bar at that time, and you'll forgive some of these
Speaker 2: awful terms I'm just using the language that was common then,
Speaker 2: as it was described to me by my sources down there,
Speaker 2: they had, you know, essentially transgender men dressed as women.
Speaker 2: They were known as benny boys in the Seals and
Speaker 2: Saint Thomas at the time. And so Penny was at
Speaker 2: the bar. He was getting progressively drunk. He was drinking
Speaker 2: with a benny boy and wasn't clear. Eventually he became
Speaker 2: so blackout drunk it was clear that he didn't know
Speaker 2: that this was a man. Nonetheless, he went back to
Speaker 2: the hotel and Leisure basically came back to the room
Speaker 2: and found him let him be. Came back the next
Speaker 2: morning to get a penny and basically said, you know,
Speaker 2: you slept with a man. And when he got they
Speaker 2: got back to Viekez, Leisure told the rest of the
Speaker 2: platoon the quote was that we sold him to a fag,
Speaker 2: which was you know, I want to point out here
Speaker 2: for people who uh made by the book that in
Speaker 2: the penny section, I have a quote from an officer,
Speaker 2: retired Seal officer, who describes this older tradition in Saint Thomas.
Speaker 2: And that quote actually was an on the record quote
Speaker 2: of Dick Marsenko. I didn't put his name in because
Speaker 2: he doesn't come into the book till later, and I
Speaker 2: didn't want to confuse it. But with him passed on
Speaker 2: and under the circumstances, he described in great detail what
Speaker 2: they did and how they did it. And it was
Speaker 2: confirmed by others who who served with Leisure and with
Speaker 2: with Marsinko. So Penny was apparently very very distraught. And
Speaker 2: let's just also say that, you know, Eddie Leisure is
Speaker 2: now dead. He died a few years later. We will
Speaker 2: probably never know what happened that evening the the it's
Speaker 2: virtually unknowable. What is absolutely the case is whatever did
Speaker 2: or did not happen when instant Penny woke up the
Speaker 2: next day and came out, he was told, who had
Speaker 2: had no memory because he was blacked out, that he
Speaker 2: had slept with a man, and he was unbelievably upset.
Speaker 2: And what became clear is he came back. The whole
Speaker 2: team was told, the whole platoon was told, and then Penny,
Speaker 2: on the way flight back to Virginia Beach, was very
Speaker 2: distraught and and made a statement on the plane that
Speaker 2: this stuff was not going to stand, that he was
Speaker 2: gonna he was gonna do something about it. He was
Speaker 2: very agitated, is the point they got back the week
Speaker 2: before Memorial Day. A few days before Memorial Day, uh
Speaker 2: Ensign Penny goes and buys a twenty two caliber pistol
Speaker 2: in Virginia, and a few days later he uh shoots
Speaker 2: himself in the head. It was a small caliber bullet.
Speaker 2: The death was very messy and awful, actually, and later
Speaker 2: that became a running joke. Also at Little Creek, one
Speaker 2: of the seals in his unit described a you know
Speaker 2: they would have after he had died, getting on the
Speaker 2: the mic for the for the for the whole Little
Speaker 2: Creek and saying something along the lines of insig insant,
Speaker 2: penny ins and Penny, You're wanted in the armory to
Speaker 2: clean your weapon. Joke being that you know, he had
Speaker 2: failed to clean his weapon and so it had misfired
Speaker 2: on him and uh not not killed a himself properly basically.
Speaker 2: And you know, the Navy did an investigation very quickly.
Speaker 2: They determined Their results were that he was depressed and
Speaker 2: he had taken his life because he was depressed. There
Speaker 2: was no mention of Saint Thomas, there was no mention
Speaker 2: of Eddie Leisure, there was nothing about what had occurred,
Speaker 2: and so and and when the father, Penny's father, came
Speaker 2: with the mother, he confronted the officers and the commander
Speaker 2: at the base and said, this is this story doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense. I know you killed him. My boy
Speaker 2: wasn't depressed, you know, they said he was. You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't challenge him. They thought he was inconsolable and
Speaker 2: and just said we're sorry. You know your your son
Speaker 2: was unhappy and he took his own life. So in
Speaker 2: some Penny's surviving mother, father, and sisters, sister Rebecca, they
Speaker 2: knew always that there was something wrong with the They felt,
Speaker 2: according to his sister Rebecca, that he must have been
Speaker 2: murdered because the story didn't make any sense. He was
Speaker 2: not murdered. There's no evidence that that was the case.
Speaker 2: But it was a obviously for the family, incredibly traumatic.
Speaker 2: They never they never got over it, and it was
Speaker 2: a long buried secret, and the question had always been
Speaker 2: what did Lieutenant Joseph Maguire, who later became Commander of
Speaker 2: warcom No. When I first brought it to him, it
Speaker 2: was I know nothing about this is the first I've
Speaker 2: ever heard about it. But his spokesperson did call me
Speaker 2: and say you know, but we do have the forty
Speaker 2: year old NIS Report and I Report, which by the way,
Speaker 2: has been destroyed because it's over twenty five years old.
Speaker 2: They just happened to have it handy and point out
Speaker 2: that there's no mention of Saint Thomas, and there's no
Speaker 2: mention of you know, a Vietnam veteran seal except that,
Speaker 2: you know, according to the spokesperson, maguire knew that he
Speaker 2: had gone on Liberty with another another seal opera, you know,
Speaker 2: another veteran frogment, which is kind of an interesting thing
Speaker 2: to know if you didn't know anything about Saint Thomas,
Speaker 2: right and you know, so the question is more not
Speaker 2: whether then Lieutenant Joe maguire knew, The question is how
Speaker 2: could he have not known in a seal platoon when
Speaker 2: the rest of the platoon in vis knew immediately afterwards,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's it's I don't want to call
Speaker 2: it exactly an origin story, but you sort of get
Speaker 2: every part of this culture of cover up and pushing
Speaker 2: people to the edge.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just curious, I think cause like his
Speaker 3: his father said that they were drinkers and killers. I mean,
Speaker 3: that could kind of be applied to most special Operations
Speaker 3: units in Vietnam, right almost and even today, Like I mean, uh,
Speaker 3: not that I'm a color I'm a very nice guy,
Speaker 3: but but that that they're they're sort of that origin
Speaker 3: like why and and why is why this book? And
Speaker 3: why about seals when there are you know, like there
Speaker 3: have been crimes and issues and things like that with
Speaker 3: other units, Like what what drew you to to the
Speaker 3: seals in particular?
Speaker 2: So let me just say one thing about the father's comments.
Speaker 2: I'm not co signing the father's right, right, right, but
Speaker 2: I what what I took actually from that description of
Speaker 2: what the father said was more that there was some
Speaker 2: kind of intuition by a parent that their child was
Speaker 2: going to get eaten alive. In other words, it wasn't
Speaker 2: it's not about drinkers and killers. He was a religious guy,
Speaker 2: like he dropped bombs on people, And what's the difference
Speaker 2: between the guy with a knife and a guy who
Speaker 2: drops a you know, a five hundred pound bomb on
Speaker 2: a village. In that sense, it was I think more
Speaker 2: interesting to me. And obviously we can't know both parents
Speaker 2: are dead, and it's we're talking about someone in psychology,
Speaker 2: so it's not This is not reporting, per se, but
Speaker 2: from as a as a journalist, but also as a
Speaker 2: as a father, as a you know, as a human.
Speaker 2: I took those words to really mean that on some
Speaker 2: level there was a sense that he knew that this
Speaker 2: kid and his son was not up for the rough
Speaker 2: and tumble nature of what this community was.
Speaker 4: He didn't have temperament something, yeah, something.
Speaker 2: So that's the first part. The second part is to
Speaker 2: answer your question about why the Seals, why Sealed Team
Speaker 2: six won. I think that there is a after. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was before the twenty year remark, but at twenty
Speaker 2: years we are at a point where as a country
Speaker 2: and as a public, we have to ask ourselves what
Speaker 2: what did we just come out of? What did we
Speaker 2: get out of this? What happened? And on the commercial side,
Speaker 2: on the sort of cultural public uh, you know, commercial
Speaker 2: cultural side, the books, the movies, the podcast. The story
Speaker 2: is one that's very unambivalent, right. Seals and Seal Team
Speaker 2: six are heroes who can do no wrong. They are
Speaker 2: the best leaders, they are the best everything. It's a
Speaker 2: it's an image that they promote most. I mean the
Speaker 2: you know, the Seals drive the biggest recruiting and recruitment
Speaker 2: for the Navy. Okay, so there's a bigger picture here
Speaker 2: than just a bunch of seal operators who want to
Speaker 2: make a little money in there in their post military career,
Speaker 2: pushing how great they are and what they can contribute
Speaker 2: to society, of which I have no problem with whatsoever.
Speaker 2: My issue is, and I think journalistically and as an
Speaker 2: investigative reporter, the question is is that we have this story,
Speaker 2: this this very clear story, but is it true? And
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that I thought of
Speaker 2: when I was thinking about whether I should do a
Speaker 2: book was you can have flag of your fathers forty
Speaker 2: years after the fact, or you can have flag of
Speaker 2: your fathers now. And my sources were coming to me
Speaker 2: from inside the sealed community to say, look, we're losing
Speaker 2: a battle against guys who are the worst of our community,
Speaker 2: who have done some of the worst things both you know,
Speaker 2: morally ethically, but just you know, operationally, and they're the
Speaker 2: ones who are getting ahead, mostly in public but also inside.
Speaker 2: And that is, you know, from their perspective, unconscionable. It's
Speaker 2: the opposite of what we're we should be doing right
Speaker 2: the military, like anywhere else in our society is supposed
Speaker 2: to bet you know, they's supposed to be a meritocracy.
Speaker 2: Now we can debate whether it is in fact that
Speaker 2: everyone I think can experience, you know, can relate to
Speaker 2: the experience in the corporate world of watching people fail upward, right,
Speaker 2: And I think that in a lot of ways, Code
Speaker 2: over Country is a case study and failed leadership, and
Speaker 2: that's really where the you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've always been made myself clear to do is
Speaker 2: to really name the officers involved, not the enlisted or
Speaker 2: senior enlisted, yes, but not the the younger enlisted, because
Speaker 2: it's not their responsibility.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the question why the Seals, why Sealed Team six?
Speaker 2: Because they made themselves a public source of an absolute
Speaker 2: brand and by the way, a very powerful brand. They're
Speaker 2: really good at it. They're fantastic, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's the old Duffel, the Duffel blog thing about Buds,
Speaker 2: the Buds course, you know, the book writing course at Buds,
Speaker 2: you know, the new you know, and it's a it's
Speaker 2: a joke obviously, but it's funny and it because it
Speaker 2: has some truth to it. And so you know, as
Speaker 2: an investigative reporter, you know, if someone I mean, I
Speaker 2: want to jump ahead for a second, but you know,
Speaker 2: you take a story, take two stories like Matt Bissonette
Speaker 2: and Rob O'Neil, right, and if they don't write books
Speaker 2: about what they did and what they were involved in,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spend any time time as an
Speaker 2: investigative reporter going into what the story is or isn't, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, unless it's not about them, I don't care.
Speaker 1: They put themselves out there, right. You want to.
Speaker 2: Make you know, a couple of million dollars telling this
Speaker 2: heroic story of yourself, and you don't want to write
Speaker 2: things down that are accurate, or you tell you tell
Speaker 2: the story in a way that's not that's inaccurate. I
Speaker 2: think you're you. And so that's a small case, but
Speaker 2: that's the answer is writ large.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If you're an organization or a community or a culture
Speaker 2: that wants to make money and uh earn fame and
Speaker 2: uh sort of put yourself up at this at at
Speaker 2: this place culturally, then it better be true.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And and you know, there's plenty of truth in a
Speaker 2: lot of these stories that have been made public, but
Speaker 2: it's always the parts that are missing, and the public
Speaker 2: is you know the public doesn't. I mean, you guys
Speaker 2: can appreciate this because you've experienced this. One of the
Speaker 2: things that I was sort of had an Aha moment
Speaker 2: at some point writing this book where I realized that
Speaker 2: what the public doesn't get when they get virtually any
Speaker 2: news story about a military event, they have no context, right,
Speaker 2: I mean none, because very few Americans have been to war, right,
Speaker 2: very few Americans have put on a uniform. Right, That's
Speaker 2: an issue. And so going back twenty years after, you know.
Speaker 1: Seal Team six is probably the one unit, one military unit,
Speaker 1: that you can name and people understand what that is.
Speaker 2: It's a global brand.
Speaker 1: As opposed to any other unit in the military that
Speaker 1: we might mention, you would have to stop, take a
Speaker 1: moment and kind of explain to the public what that
Speaker 1: unit is. And the Seals are probably the one exception
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that is a the you know,
Speaker 2: I think the subtitle of this book could have been
Speaker 2: The Secrets of Seal Team Six. Could have also been
Speaker 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Yeah, they've done
Speaker 2: some incredibly heroic work. They've done some great work. I
Speaker 2: know a lot of good Seals from Seal Team six,
Speaker 2: and I would venture to say that most good. But
Speaker 2: there is a steady core in the Seals and at
Speaker 2: Seal Team six. And the thing is is that you
Speaker 2: know your listeners know the difference between the Seals and
Speaker 2: Seal Team six. But what people don't un fully appreciate
Speaker 2: is that when you have a unit this elite, whatever
Speaker 2: they do eventually trickles down into the white side of
Speaker 2: the seals. And so that's how you get Eddie Gallagher, right,
Speaker 2: That's where you get where it's like, you know, to
Speaker 2: be expected kind of that eventually you're going to have
Speaker 2: you know, someone said to me when I was interviewing
Speaker 2: former seal and member of Seal Team six about Eddie Leisure,
Speaker 2: and they said, you know, after Vietnam, we had twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty Eddie leisures in the teams and later, you know,
Speaker 2: not later, actually prior to that. When I interviewed someone
Speaker 2: during the Gallagher during the court martial, it was you know,
Speaker 2: we have twenty year thirty Eddie Gallaghers and the teams.
Speaker 2: There's nothing special about them in that sense. What was
Speaker 2: special was that there were a bunch of kids who
Speaker 2: came and decided that you know, they would put their
Speaker 2: careers in jeopardy to try to stop them, right, So
Speaker 2: you know that's the that's the motivation.
Speaker 4: Behind So let me ask you them, what is the
Speaker 4: difference between.
Speaker 3: Something like this happening at Seal Team six by something
Speaker 3: that happened SF or rangers or like, are we just
Speaker 3: looking at individual like these these bad seeds, you know,
Speaker 3: these people that you know get through their screening process
Speaker 3: and do things that you know, whether you're in combat
Speaker 3: or or back home. You know, you know, are war
Speaker 3: crimes illegal things like that? Is there a difference between
Speaker 3: like when it happens in the sealed community and when
Speaker 3: it happens someplace else?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, look, crimes of war and violations of
Speaker 2: the laws of war are are the same regardless of
Speaker 2: who commits them. I think the question is what you
Speaker 2: do about them and what is the frequency. But it's
Speaker 2: beyond that, there is a there are legal questions, There
Speaker 2: are ethical questions, and there are moral questions. And Seal
Speaker 2: Team six and the Seals are very unique in their
Speaker 2: ethical particularly ethical but in some cases moral and legal issues.
Speaker 2: They have problems, and the real issue is they just
Speaker 2: won't deal with it. I mean, the reason why this
Speaker 2: book exists is because they couldn't clean up their own shop, period, right.
Speaker 2: And I think you know, we were talking a little
Speaker 2: bit about this before we went on. Delta had some
Speaker 2: of the same problems. Early in the war. They had
Speaker 2: war crimes issues, they were very aggressive. They lost a
Speaker 2: lot of guys. They were not asking questions. There was
Speaker 2: not a whole lot of supervision. Rock was a mess,
Speaker 2: was you know, as you know, you both know very
Speaker 2: well battlefield that was just chock full of targets. The
Speaker 2: guys who were committing wanton acts of desecration, mutilations, war
Speaker 2: crimes in Delta were all quietly let go afterwards. They
Speaker 2: weren't brought up on charges. There was no court martial,
Speaker 2: there's no UCMJ. They were when the deployment was over.
Speaker 2: They were given time to sort of process through and
Speaker 2: then they were just asked to leave and there was
Speaker 2: no there was no answer or explanation. That is something
Speaker 2: that you know. They they took care of their virus
Speaker 2: is the you know they had an illness. They policed
Speaker 2: their own because because the integrity of the unit was
Speaker 2: always greater than any individual member of the unit. And
Speaker 2: that is a cultural issue. And I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: on Delta. I ask everyone that I talked to, especially
Speaker 2: in Delta and in the Seals, what's the difference between
Speaker 2: you guys. And I don't just mean how you hold
Speaker 2: your guns or how you you know, attack a target.
Speaker 2: What are the could issues And that is the biggest
Speaker 2: one that there are. There's a standard, it has to
Speaker 2: be met every day, and at Team six, historically it
Speaker 2: is the opposite. Once you're in, the standards are relaxed.
Speaker 2: And there's also this team issue. The seals make it
Speaker 2: through budgs. You become a Seal by working as a
Speaker 2: Team six in a boat, right, and that concept is
Speaker 2: what gets you through, and that creates an incredibly intense bond,
Speaker 2: one that I think is often the envy of other units. They're,
Speaker 2: you know, really to close knit. The problem is is
Speaker 2: that when things go bad, you never want to see
Speaker 2: your buddy kicked out or screwed over, right, So that
Speaker 2: the instinct is fix, Yeah, let's fix this in house,
Speaker 2: keep it in house. And that's what Marsinco did when
Speaker 2: he set up Seal Team six, and he said so explicitly.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in your book about Marsenco and about
Speaker 1: how it kind of was founded on this pirate culture.
Speaker 1: But I do want to skip ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: how these problems got accelerated during the War on Terror.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you could tell us about
Speaker 1: what really happened at Roberts Ridge and how that really
Speaker 1: started accelerating the problems that the unit was have and
Speaker 1: led to other things. But if you could tell the story, sure.
Speaker 2: So. The battle at Roberts Ridge was at a mountaintop
Speaker 2: known as Talker Gar in eastern Afghanistan in March early
Speaker 2: March of two thousand and two. The Seals were part
Speaker 2: of the soft Unit, a recon element for a larger,
Speaker 2: big army push into what the military believed at the
Speaker 2: time was the last valley of stronghold of Taliban and
Speaker 2: al Qaeda fighters and there was a deadline to meet
Speaker 2: and the Seals, a small seal recon element from Seal
Speaker 2: Team six from Red Team, went in by helicopter. One
Speaker 2: of the seal one of the operators, Neil Roberts, fell
Speaker 2: out the back of the helicopter after the helicopter was
Speaker 2: hit by enemy fire at the top of the mountain.
Speaker 2: They then the helicopter recovered Eventually the team. The surviving
Speaker 2: team went back in looking for him. That led to
Speaker 2: the in another ambush and extended firefight with some Alkaido
Speaker 2: fighters was a very entrenched position. Neil Roberts was killed
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. The Seals didn't know that but he was
Speaker 2: killed pretty quickly, and then the combat controlman who was
Speaker 2: the CCT attached to the Red Team, John Chapman, was struck.
Speaker 2: The two other seals in the in the group were hit.
Speaker 2: They blew smoke and retreated to save the remaining guys.
Speaker 2: Chapman was left believed to be dead. Turns out he
Speaker 2: was not dead. He was He later covered from his
Speaker 2: wounds and fought alone at the top of the mountain
Speaker 2: for about an hour before a QRF comes in with rangers,
Speaker 2: primarily another somewhere. I think there's a total of seven
Speaker 2: who died that day. There was another five. They were
Speaker 2: not all rangers, four rangers I think in another air force,
Speaker 2: maybe a PJ who was killed on the on the mountain. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: they they got the the the Americans won, took control
Speaker 2: of the mountain, but they lost seven servicemen. As I said,
Speaker 2: the first member of Seal Team six. In the aftermath
Speaker 2: of Roberts Ridge, the seals discovered that Neil Roberts had
Speaker 2: been mutilated and that the enemy they in fact had
Speaker 2: been seen on the ISR coverage as it was happening
Speaker 2: in certain places. One of the guys that the enemy
Speaker 2: had tried to cut off his head and almost did,
Speaker 2: but it failed. And when his body is brought back
Speaker 2: to Bogram and this I didn't know until I did
Speaker 2: the book, and I actually I ask you guys whether
Speaker 2: this was normal. I was told that this was very
Speaker 2: unusual and not normal. They basically had most of his teammates,
Speaker 2: almost all of them, come in and view the body
Speaker 2: in that condition, and that there was a law. And
Speaker 2: I actually talked to some people who were there when
Speaker 2: it was happening, and there was a long line waiting.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, it was a very traumatic event. They
Speaker 2: had lost their first teammate, Chapman died. There's a you know,
Speaker 2: a secondary scandal and issue with Chapman that we can
Speaker 2: get into later. But the suffice to say what happens
Speaker 2: here is sort of two things. Seal Team six, for
Speaker 2: the first time in their history, is in real war
Speaker 2: and combat. Right. The reality is is that until nine
Speaker 2: to eleven in Jaysack and when Special Operations Seal Team
Speaker 2: six was JV to Delta, it just was they never
Speaker 2: got the they never got picked for the missions. They
Speaker 2: finally broke through in Bosnia with with one of the snatches,
Speaker 2: and so they started get to pick up steam, but
Speaker 2: they were never the first choice. Now they were at
Speaker 2: war and Seal Team six is on the front lines
Speaker 2: and they get they face get faced with a horrific
Speaker 2: situation in which, you know, their team leader, Britz Slavinski,
Speaker 2: is essentially ordered to go up to the top of
Speaker 2: of a of a mountain and violating all the basic
Speaker 2: principles of reconnaissance against his own recommendation to his officers.
Speaker 2: And I just want to stop here and say that
Speaker 2: one of the things that is most interesting I think
Speaker 2: about understanding the culture, and you know, I think that's
Speaker 2: obviously true. It dealt as well. But Seal Team six,
Speaker 2: Dick Marsenko built the unit so that the officers command,
Speaker 2: but the senior enlisted lead. And so when Slabinsky says,
Speaker 2: I need twenty four hours more and he is told
Speaker 2: basically shut up and gets to the top, he's following
Speaker 2: his orders. And so it's not you know, it is
Speaker 2: not his responsibility that they were sent up there, but
Speaker 2: it's also the capitulation from the E seven or the
Speaker 2: E eight, who definitely knew better than the two men
Speaker 2: who were ordering him up there, right, he knew better.
Speaker 2: And it's something that he said, you know, in the
Speaker 2: interviews that I published, he talks about he knew he
Speaker 2: was violating this this this cardinal you know, this basic
Speaker 2: rule of recon and it was eating at him immediately. Right,
Speaker 2: So they sort of have this really awful event. They
Speaker 2: have this horrific thing happened to one of their teammates,
Speaker 2: and in the immediate aftermath, and I mean immediate, they
Speaker 2: went on a some of them, not all of them.
Speaker 2: Some of the unit went on for what later became
Speaker 2: known as revenge jops. They were at for blood and so,
Speaker 2: you know, it's trite, but they went up one way
Speaker 2: and they came down another. Right, The guys who were
Speaker 2: on that mountain did not come back down the same
Speaker 2: and it trickled through most of the team because of
Speaker 2: the nature of the way the unit was. And there
Speaker 2: was this sort of other element, you know, which is
Speaker 2: that we can get into the squadrons. But at the
Speaker 2: time it was Red Team and they were known as
Speaker 2: the Red Men. They had a mascot, Native American mascot,
Speaker 2: and so there was this this identity issue that grew
Speaker 2: and in the immediate after math, there were you know,
Speaker 2: there were war crimes very quickly afterwards within twenty four
Speaker 2: thirty six hours by the seals, some of the seals,
Speaker 2: including one of the officers. And so it's your starting
Speaker 2: point of understanding post nine to eleven how things change.
Speaker 2: And you know, some of it is obviously they had
Speaker 2: a culture of cover ups in the Seals and in
Speaker 2: Seal Team six unit. But the other thing is, let's
Speaker 2: be honest, right, it was war for the first time.
Speaker 2: You guys are seeing war.
Speaker 1: For the first time.
Speaker 3: Well, and not only was it war, but they saw
Speaker 3: a friend of theirs, a teammate, you know, somebody who
Speaker 3: they had spent time with, you know, who they knew personally,
Speaker 3: having been savaged, you know, not just killed, but savage.
Speaker 3: And I can I can definitely understand sort of that
Speaker 3: mentality of all right, well, let's get some right.
Speaker 2: I don't think you know, I think that it is
Speaker 2: fair to say that that most people can can relate
Speaker 2: or appreciate to that feeling. Right, So the notion that
Speaker 2: there is an eye for an eye and justice needs
Speaker 2: to be served, you know, that there needs to be revenge.
Speaker 2: I think what your officers will tell you is is
Speaker 2: that that's all well and good, but we have a law.
Speaker 2: We have rules and regulations, and we need to keep
Speaker 2: it within the bounds of what's acceptable. And I think
Speaker 2: you know what some almos said to me one time was,
Speaker 2: you know, it was that there was ever really one
Speaker 2: moment where we had just gone, where the whole unit
Speaker 2: had gone totally off the rails. What they said was,
Speaker 2: on each deployment there were groups of guys in each
Speaker 2: squadron that would go too far. But what happened is
Speaker 2: they were never pulled back, never in fifteen in twenty years,
Speaker 2: and so the officers never did anything about it, and
Speaker 2: so each deployment the line moved so that by ten
Speaker 2: years later, you know, and I get into it in
Speaker 2: the book, you get Britz Slabinski seven years later, actually
Speaker 2: from that end, since five years later, asking for a
Speaker 2: head on a platter. And there's a debate about whether
Speaker 2: it was metaphoric or whether it was literal, but some
Speaker 2: of his men took it as a direct order and
Speaker 2: tried to obey and comply with it. And that was
Speaker 2: just one of what was a very bad and very
Speaker 2: rough deployment in which there was a view that the
Speaker 2: only way to defeat the Taliban was to be more
Speaker 2: savage than the savages right right to humanize the enemy
Speaker 2: and treat them as as they treat the civilian population.
Speaker 3: So it's not just it's not just warfare, but there's
Speaker 3: also psychological war.
Speaker 2: And so what I would say is is that what
Speaker 2: you there is a through line from what happened in
Speaker 2: the in the immediate aftermath of Robert's Ridge, to what
Speaker 2: happens later. Right, it's a it's a it's a culture,
Speaker 2: and it's a there's a lack of accountability, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's that's part of one of the one of
Speaker 2: the central stories.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, so where were the officers. Why weren't the
Speaker 3: officers pulling them back or or like saying, hey, like
Speaker 3: we like we need to change these guys out, Like
Speaker 3: we need we need somebody to come in and fill
Speaker 3: in for them so they can decompress, because like they're
Speaker 3: round rely tight right now.
Speaker 2: It's an excellent question. The shortest answer is is that
Speaker 2: in many of the cases, not all, but many of
Speaker 2: the cases, the office who were leading these men were
Speaker 2: you know, at Seal Team six. The respect for officers
Speaker 2: from the enlisted comes from guys who had the kind
Speaker 2: of experience they did, who had gone through Green team
Speaker 2: who were you know, were trained and qualified as assaulters
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven. In several cases, because they had
Speaker 2: to surge up numbers, officers were allowed in who had
Speaker 2: not gone through green teams. So immediately you have a
Speaker 2: problem because those officers have no respect from the enlisted,
Speaker 2: and so the officers are leading from behind and from
Speaker 2: the position of they need the respect of the men.
Speaker 2: And the way to be respected is to be liked.
Speaker 2: You don't get liked by by being enforcing discipline and
Speaker 2: good order. You know, good order and discipline is the
Speaker 2: Navy requires it. And so what you have are our
Speaker 2: officers who look the other way. You have officers who
Speaker 2: encouraged it, sometimes not using you know. One of the
Speaker 2: things that's hard to write about our all the euphemisms,
Speaker 2: and you know there's no directed it's you know, they
Speaker 2: sent messages just with folks, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the body language. Could you dive a little bit
Speaker 1: deeper into the culture of each of the squadrons, because
Speaker 1: I think this part is really interesting in how each
Speaker 1: squadron in dev group has its own identity and how
Speaker 1: that kind of expressed itself over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, So you know there are historically the squadrons.
Speaker 2: Original ones were gold and blue, which reflected the colors
Speaker 2: of the Navy at the time. Red is quickly added
Speaker 2: into it. Later there is gray, which are boats, there's black,
Speaker 2: and eventually silver. That's the rough. Each then develops a name.
Speaker 2: They have their own flag and identity. Gold where the
Speaker 2: Crusaders or the Knights depending on the year that shifted.
Speaker 2: The Red squadron where the red men and had a
Speaker 2: Native American mascot with two tomahawks. Across blue are the
Speaker 2: Pirates with the Jolly Roger flag. Black, which is an intelligence.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know their name, but they have a
Speaker 2: horse with two lightning bolts. And then later silver they're
Speaker 2: the Raiders. They have sort of a shield but one
Speaker 2: of everything. They've got a knife, they've got a hatchet,
Speaker 2: and a skull face to sort of reflect all of
Speaker 2: them because they were the newest of the units. The
Speaker 2: what you're asking about is really about the three Blue, Gold, and.
Speaker 1: The Salt squad The original.
Speaker 2: Salt squadrons Blue, Gold, and Red, and prior to not
Speaker 2: there was always a culture involved. They were defined in
Speaker 2: different generations, but there the Native American subculture in the
Speaker 2: you know, one of the traditions that in Red squadron
Speaker 2: was once you were drafted into the squadron after making
Speaker 2: it through selection and Green team, you had to yard
Speaker 2: in and yarding in, you had to wear a tradition
Speaker 2: and I don't know which tribe Native American head piece,
Speaker 2: and then you had to drink a yard of beer
Speaker 2: that had a I don't know if it was remember
Speaker 2: which hard alcohol it is at the bottom. And if
Speaker 2: you could do that, you you were in. And they
Speaker 2: had a culture which was known as sort of harder,
Speaker 2: not smarter. They were. Their culture was you met violence
Speaker 2: with more violence, and you solve problems by being stronger
Speaker 2: and bigger. Right, That was the psyche that had developed
Speaker 2: within that unit. Blue had you know, different parts in
Speaker 2: different places. Their subculture. You know, the way I really
Speaker 2: understand most of the subculture was in the kind of unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the kind of atrocities and desecration that each had their
Speaker 2: own kind of desecration basically, and it could move around.
Speaker 2: But the you know, Blue used knives and were known
Speaker 2: for skinning. Red used the hatchets gold. There's some things
Speaker 2: that I didn't put in the book. Sometimes it was
Speaker 2: because I didn't want to. There's enough enough. There's only
Speaker 2: a certain amount of you know, some of this stuff
Speaker 2: is gruesome, and it was Gold had a different style,
Speaker 2: is the best way I could say it. And they
Speaker 2: had some things that they did that were pretty disturbing.
Speaker 2: What they had all in common was they were sort
Speaker 2: of you know, one of the senior enlisted said to me, look,
Speaker 2: there are sort of three responses in our guys in
Speaker 2: how they experience violence. Some their first instinct upon experiencing
Speaker 2: up close intense violence that is the business recoil and
Speaker 2: they self select out. And actually after Robert's Ridge, there
Speaker 2: were a lot of guys in Red Team that left
Speaker 2: Seal Team six. Several left the Seals altogether. Wasn't spoken about.
Speaker 2: It was just understood that it was, hey, it's not
Speaker 2: for me. There was another kind which fits along, you know,
Speaker 2: I think culturally more of the Red Squadron Red Team,
Speaker 2: which was to meet violence with more violence. There was
Speaker 2: a third which I think is the most actually the
Speaker 2: most interesting, the hardest to write about because it as
Speaker 2: an outsider, which is that there were some who saw
Speaker 2: art as some violence as a sort of art, which
Speaker 2: is to say, you use it the least amount possible
Speaker 2: and only when necessary. And you're looking for solutions to
Speaker 2: a problem. I mean, I think by the way, it's
Speaker 2: probably common in other units. You're given a task and
Speaker 2: you're looking for a way to not kill to accomplish
Speaker 2: your mission. And a lot of the operators and the
Speaker 2: senior enlisted who were described to me fitting in that category,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, fell into blue. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I guess I can't speak to why that culture within
Speaker 2: the pirates may have existed. They also had, you know,
Speaker 2: they were off the rails for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: They just have different you know, it's the way they
Speaker 2: compete with each other, it's the way they differentiate from
Speaker 2: each other. And it happened organically.
Speaker 3: I mean, in some cases, I would think that like violence,
Speaker 3: you know, you meet violence with more violence is an
Speaker 3: appropriate solution. But you're talking about not just violence, not
Speaker 3: just violence of action or or hitting targets harder, or
Speaker 3: expanding operations. But we're going into skinning, We're going into
Speaker 3: things that are probably not healthy expressions of that type
Speaker 3: of violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm not I'm not I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 2: not suggesting that meeting violence with more violence is necessarily wrong, right,
Speaker 2: and by any way illegal. It is you know, as
Speaker 2: you can tell me, right, the job is one of aggression,
Speaker 2: but it is also and you know, the the what
Speaker 2: everyone will tell you from Seal Team six, of course,
Speaker 2: is is that the main skill is knowing when to
Speaker 2: be aggressive and when not to be aggressive. Right when
Speaker 2: you dial it down to the most basic thing, it's
Speaker 2: when to shoot and when not to shoot, to when
Speaker 2: you're justified, escalation, escalation of force. And so I think
Speaker 2: that it is on all of these things you have
Speaker 2: in a soft unit. You're living on a knife's edge,
Speaker 2: and you need a leash, you need some kind of
Speaker 2: discipline to hold it together, or you go to the
Speaker 2: wrong side. And I think it's Seal Team six in particular.
Speaker 2: They have this problem. They ride this edge. They recruit
Speaker 2: and select for guys who are hyper aggressive, who look
Speaker 2: to cook cut corners to solve problems and come up
Speaker 2: with solutions. If you ain't cheat and you ain't trying
Speaker 2: concept right, And the problem is is that what and
Speaker 2: this is someone this is These are seals telling me this,
Speaker 2: older seals telling me this. That was fine prior to
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, but no one in the military thought
Speaker 2: about the effects of fifteen to twenty years of warfare
Speaker 2: in up close violence on the secondary and tertiary effects
Speaker 2: for operators.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't think many of us, certainly
Speaker 1: not myself, have a problem with shooting terrorists in the face,
Speaker 1: you know, in combat. But I want to talk about
Speaker 1: some things that I do think are problematic. Tell us
Speaker 1: about the bleedout videos. What was that about?
Speaker 2: Well, there was one seal in particular early on in
Speaker 2: Red Team, who was on some of the early deployments
Speaker 2: whose job was filming after the operation to identify, you know,
Speaker 2: who had been killed and you know, gives you know,
Speaker 2: sort of crime scene photos if you will, for headquarters
Speaker 2: and higher and he took a particular glee in replaying
Speaker 2: the videos in their hooches basically back at Bagram. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: he'd get the group together and watch the videos over
Speaker 2: and over and would do a sort of countdown of
Speaker 2: watching people expire. And you know, in and of itself,
Speaker 2: it was it's it's tasteless, but it's not necessarily illegal.
Speaker 2: What the members of Seal Team six, the leaders of
Speaker 2: Seal Team six that I had interviewed who told me
Speaker 2: about them, said was the problem was it was a
Speaker 2: very easy to spot sign early on that there was
Speaker 2: a lust for this. There was something that was inappropriate
Speaker 2: going on in terms of making yeah about the about
Speaker 2: the enjoyment part. And it was a sign that there
Speaker 2: was a there was something that needed to be rained
Speaker 2: in and watched closely right in and of itself. It
Speaker 2: may not be you weren't going to bring someone up
Speaker 2: on charges on it, but it was. It was a
Speaker 2: sign that there was a problem, and no one would
Speaker 2: say anything about it. They were sort of laughing thing,
Speaker 2: and and it kept on going for you know, it
Speaker 2: went on for about two deployments I think, and that
Speaker 2: seal later was kicked out because he he he struck
Speaker 2: a teammate. He got drunk ah undeployment and pistol whiped
Speaker 2: one of his teammates, so you know, and then the
Speaker 2: CIA hired him.
Speaker 1: What about you mentioned in the in the book also
Speaker 1: that they were staging like martial arts matches.
Speaker 5: At some point said in the book, yeah, well the
Speaker 5: martial arts, I mean, because he talked about Dwayne Dieter
Speaker 5: right in that and then they like, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: not that.
Speaker 1: The martials matches. It's all right, we can go on
Speaker 1: to uh, the skal thing.
Speaker 2: Well you can ask me that I thought that was
Speaker 2: something that I didn't put in, which if I didn't
Speaker 2: put in, I can you know. I don't want to.
Speaker 2: It's reportable if it's in the book. If it's not
Speaker 2: the book that you know, well, well I may have
Speaker 2: enough to support it. Uh No, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: It's mentioned in the book. But I mean, we move
Speaker 1: on to the hatchets, and if you can tell us
Speaker 1: how they migrated into into Seal Team six, how these
Speaker 1: guys started carrying them, and I mean, what the hell
Speaker 1: they were carrying them on target for.
Speaker 2: So there was prior to nine to eleven there was
Speaker 2: a seal operator named Kevin Holland who was in Red Team,
Speaker 2: who was a avid outdoorsman and was I don't know
Speaker 2: if he's from North Carolina. I think he's from North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and he happened to be friends with the bladesmith Daniel
Speaker 2: Dan Winkler, who at the time was best known in
Speaker 2: that community for having made all of the appropriate era
Speaker 2: piece of weapons for the movie Last of the Mohicans,
Speaker 2: and Holland ended up leaving the Seals prior to nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. After nine eleven, he wanted to come back
Speaker 2: Seal Team six said he would have to do a
Speaker 2: deployment on the white side. He refused, so he asked
Speaker 2: Delta if he could joined. They said, if you can
Speaker 2: pass the uh, the course, you know, in the selection,
Speaker 2: you're in. He became a member of C Squadron and
Speaker 2: he got Winkler to excuse me, to make uh these
Speaker 2: hatchets tomahawks for his teammates in Delta. They were numbered
Speaker 2: the original ones on the handles had like one, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was two digits, three digits one
Speaker 2: or one up through you know, ten or eleven. And
Speaker 2: they were deployed. They were used by and carried by
Speaker 2: Delta in the early years of the war in Rock
Speaker 2: Oh four I think five. At that time, Seal Team
Speaker 2: six was being assigned to do deployments onesie tuoesies do
Speaker 2: deployments with CAG and the Seals saw uh. And the
Speaker 2: some of the Seals who were from Red Team and
Speaker 2: then later Red Squadron understood, you know, Kevin Holland was
Speaker 2: a former Red Squadron guy, and they sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: came upon the idea that hey, we're Red Squadron, we're
Speaker 2: the Red Men, we should have these tomahawks. So Red
Speaker 2: Team at that time was led by a young commander
Speaker 2: named Wyman Howard, and Howard and his master chief, Jimmy Lindell,
Speaker 2: came up with the idea of getting donors to pay
Speaker 2: for making them their custom made. I think on the
Speaker 2: commercial market they cost six hundred bucks. I think to
Speaker 2: make they're about three hundred bucks. So he got people
Speaker 2: to donate three hundred and fifty dollars to have them
Speaker 2: made and then would hand them out to every member
Speaker 2: of Red Squadron who had a year of service in
Speaker 2: the squadron. At that same time, Howard was giving sort
Speaker 2: of pep talks about because it was the Red Men,
Speaker 2: about bloodying your hatchet, getting you know, getting blood on
Speaker 2: your hatchet. Well, you know, at times it was a
Speaker 2: euphemism for you know, did you shoot, did you did
Speaker 2: you kill? You know, you were you in action and
Speaker 2: in combat? And unfortunately those were words and just the
Speaker 2: right encouragement for guys in Red Squadron to start using
Speaker 2: the hatchets. Not everyone carried them, by the way. I
Speaker 2: talked to plenty of people in Red Squadron who felt
Speaker 2: that there was zero military utility or use for them.
Speaker 2: Others who thought, you know, it's great for knocking down
Speaker 2: locks and doors. But yes, they used the hatchets. Some
Speaker 2: of them used the hatchets to desecrate bodies, in part
Speaker 2: to leave a message for the enemy when they picked
Speaker 2: their comrades up on the battlefield to bury them, that
Speaker 2: Red Squadron had been there, that the Americans had been there,
Speaker 2: that there was psychological there was a psychological warfare component
Speaker 2: to it. It wasn't a direction, it wasn't in order.
Speaker 2: It was known, it was understood it was going on.
Speaker 2: It was well known within Sealed Team six. And there's
Speaker 2: another case going back to, you know, asking where the
Speaker 2: officers and what are they doing? You know, as long
Speaker 2: as there weren't reports coming up to the five level
Speaker 2: or the six level or outside the unit that this
Speaker 2: was going on, you know who felt bad for the
Speaker 2: enemy and that took on a life. But I think
Speaker 2: it's it. It happens to be pretty symbolic of, you know,
Speaker 2: the lawlessness and the sort of renegade culture that took
Speaker 2: over at you know, during the peak of the wars.
Speaker 1: I'll just read this briefly and if you don't want
Speaker 1: to comment deeper on it, it's it's fine but this
Speaker 1: is on one. The commanding officer of Seal Team six
Speaker 1: at that time, Captain Scott Moore, and his deputy, Captain
Speaker 1: Tim Semanski, received reports from the battlefield their operators were
Speaker 1: using the weapons to hack dead and dying militants. The
Speaker 1: reports were not limited to Howard's Redman. Small groups within
Speaker 1: the command were skinning the dead, and others practice to
Speaker 1: mixed martial arts on detainees. The news that American servicemen
Speaker 1: were engaged in such senseless brutality would seem to shock
Speaker 1: the conscience, but at the command, no one said or
Speaker 1: did anything about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So at the time that those reports came in,
Speaker 2: I believe in sometime in two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 2: at the time, Gold Squadron had been deployed in Iraq.
Speaker 2: And the description of Gold Squadron again, let's make the
Speaker 2: caveat here. We're not talking about everyone in a squadron.
Speaker 2: We're not even talking about everyone in a troop. We
Speaker 2: are talking largely about onesie twosies. But they traveled. It
Speaker 2: was like having a little virus that would go from
Speaker 2: one group to another, especially if they moved from one
Speaker 2: squadron to another. They were as it was described to me,
Speaker 2: there were some operators in Gold Squadron who would hit
Speaker 2: a compound, would separate the men from the women and
Speaker 2: the children. As it was described to me, if you
Speaker 2: knew who the bad guy was, or there was someone
Speaker 2: who got lippy and aggressive, there was a period of
Speaker 2: time where team six operators again not all of them,
Speaker 2: would bring your offender into a room two seals. One
Speaker 2: would stand by the door with his uniform on, everything
Speaker 2: equipment on the other. One would explain, you know, here's
Speaker 2: a question. Did they do it through a translator? How
Speaker 2: did they Basically he would take off his gear and say,
Speaker 2: we're going to grapple. If you can win, you can
Speaker 2: walk out of here. It was never possible, of course,
Speaker 2: because the teammate was always standing there, and they would
Speaker 2: grapple and use their skills to kill a target. How
Speaker 2: they were on site, so they were all sorts of
Speaker 2: legal gray areas. They were not detainees because they had
Speaker 2: not yet been detained, and part of the purpose was
Speaker 2: to take that individual out to the rest who were
Speaker 2: getting t q'ed and tactical questioning and make it very
Speaker 2: clear verbally and nonverbally that this is what happens if
Speaker 2: you don't cooperate. As it was explained to me, this
Speaker 2: was not done willy nilly with guys who you know
Speaker 2: that the people that they were practicing their m m
Speaker 2: A and martial arts skills on were not innocent. They
Speaker 2: were legitimate targets. Not in that scenario, Let's be clear,
Speaker 2: this was not an acceptable thing. But in the in
Speaker 2: the in the yeah, for the for lack of a
Speaker 2: better term, they were bad guys, and in the spectrum
Speaker 2: of things, no one in the US military was going
Speaker 2: to have any concern about about a this particular individual
Speaker 2: have been deceased, right, you know, it's it's uh a
Speaker 2: pretty awful and upsetting description of of it. There was
Speaker 2: a you know, I looked into it a lot. One
Speaker 2: of the descriptions I got of why was the guys
Speaker 2: didn't have the ability to use their martial art training
Speaker 2: and skills in any other capacity. They had done all
Speaker 2: of this training, They were aggressive, They were doing a
Speaker 2: lot of missions out. You know, I can't tell you
Speaker 2: how many of those incidents there were. There was more
Speaker 2: than one that I can say. And the only reason
Speaker 2: why I wasn't sure I couldn't remember what I put
Speaker 2: in in the book. There there are certain you know,
Speaker 2: I try to limit it sometimes to sort of the
Speaker 2: top level, but you know, it's sort of self explanatory.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty awful thing. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think all of this fits in the category of
Speaker 2: there's so much that we don't know. You know, there
Speaker 2: is more that will never be shared outside of those
Speaker 2: who were there, and it's a you know, it's a
Speaker 2: very dark place. You know, there were some really bad
Speaker 2: stuff that went on.
Speaker 1: Tell us more about Wyman, who seems to be at
Speaker 1: the center of a good deal of this and what
Speaker 1: he's a commander of Warcom now.
Speaker 2: He is, He's a two star.
Speaker 1: He's been pitched in the press, I mean in the
Speaker 1: Associated Press is like the guy who's coming to clean
Speaker 1: everything up.
Speaker 2: That's he's very good at media and he has done,
Speaker 2: by the way, let's give him credit where credit is due.
Speaker 2: Since he took over Warcom in the aftermath of the
Speaker 2: Eddie Gallagher stuff, he has instituted some changes to the
Speaker 2: way the Seals are organized and the way they're trained,
Speaker 2: especially the officers, that the leadership courses and stuff like
Speaker 2: that that are going to be beneficial. They will be
Speaker 2: you know they're good. I will say that there's certainly
Speaker 2: a very strong feeling that Howard's changes with the size
Speaker 2: and makeup of the platoons of the White Side Seals
Speaker 2: is a quantity you know, getting rid of the notion
Speaker 2: of quantity over quality and going back the other way
Speaker 2: to pre nine to eleven. There's another, you know, more
Speaker 2: cynical view, which is that if you dump the number
Speaker 2: of Seals and you keep a good larger portion of
Speaker 2: them from going abroad, you're gonna have fewer problems, which is,
Speaker 2: you know what you hope for when you want to
Speaker 2: ride out a two year term and tour, get your
Speaker 2: third star and move on. Wyman Howard is your absolute
Speaker 2: best example of what Seal Team six was and what
Speaker 2: it became after nine to eleven. Howard is a descendant
Speaker 2: of I think two admirals on either side of his family.
Speaker 2: His father was a captain in the Navy. He Naval
Speaker 2: Academy graduate, was a West Coast seal. I think he
Speaker 2: was Seal Team one and Seal Team eight. He was
Speaker 2: at one point the lowest ranked officer at his rank
Speaker 2: on the East Coast. I believe he was eventually allowed
Speaker 2: to select for he wasn't selected. He failed selection to
Speaker 2: Seal Team six. However, at the time the deputy commander
Speaker 2: of Seal Team six had been his his OIC and
Speaker 2: his superior at his previous Seal team liked him and
Speaker 2: convinced Bert Callen to let him go into Green Team.
Speaker 2: He was brought into Green Team, and the instructors at
Speaker 2: Green Team were told that unless he you know, I've
Speaker 2: been using this hypothetically, unless he kills someone during training,
Speaker 2: you can't fail him, and so he was allowed to
Speaker 2: pass down. He by the description of guys who were
Speaker 2: in his class at Green Team, he was not the worst.
Speaker 2: He was in the middle. He was kind of mediocre,
Speaker 2: not the worst, definitely not. The best point was was
Speaker 2: that he actually hadn't earned his way into Seal Team six, right.
Speaker 2: The standard was relaxed so that and as one person said,
Speaker 2: Cowan said, look, I was told he could do paperwork
Speaker 2: very well, he was smart, and he was going to
Speaker 2: help us administratively. Goes through the Green Team, gets into
Speaker 2: Green Team, gets put into Red Team, he gets fired
Speaker 2: or pushed out at Red Team. Nine to eleven happens.
Speaker 2: He's in what later became Black Team. He basically got
Speaker 2: pushed forward. He was in Afghanistan early as part of
Speaker 2: the AFO working for Scottie Miller and resurrected his career.
Speaker 2: He goes back as the oicee of Red Team a
Speaker 2: few years later. At that point they were still the
Speaker 2: teams and not squadrons, and he does this thing. What
Speaker 2: makes Howard unusual is is that he ultimately did essentially
Speaker 2: two they I guess they call it a double pump.
Speaker 2: He did two rotations as the leader of Red. First
Speaker 2: it was as Red Team and then later as the
Speaker 2: commanding officer of Red Squadron. And so he had an
Speaker 2: unusually long period of time at Red Squadron, and at
Speaker 2: that time, with that group and their native American identity
Speaker 2: and pushing of the hatchets, you start to see and
Speaker 2: remember again it's Red Squadron that went through what happened
Speaker 2: up on Robert's Ridge. Right when those guys who get
Speaker 2: drafted into Red go into the team room, there is
Speaker 2: Neil Roberts bent weapon on the wall as a reminder of,
Speaker 2: you know, the sacrifice and what they lost. And so
Speaker 2: Howard is by all accounts incredibly intelligent, very bright, very
Speaker 2: hard working, and you know, was known to essentially look
Speaker 2: the other way when his men were out using the
Speaker 2: hatchets to desecrate bodies. There were you know, he ultimately
Speaker 2: ended up as the commanding officer of Sealed Team six
Speaker 2: as a as a captain, went to Jaysack, then he
Speaker 2: was at He did a stint at one of the
Speaker 2: d O D I don't remember if it was if
Speaker 2: it was n GA, I can't remember which of the
Speaker 2: intelligence agencies he served in. He got a job in
Speaker 2: the Pentagon, and then he ended up at Sachsen down Tampa,
Speaker 2: and then he ended up at Warcom. And so if
Speaker 2: you sort of take his example singularly, a guy who
Speaker 2: was not qualified or didn't qualify to make it to
Speaker 2: Seal Team six, but because of connections was allowed to write.
Speaker 2: And at that time the skipper at Seal Team six,
Speaker 2: Joe Kernin sorry at the time, which nine to eleven happens?
Speaker 2: They plus up at that time he would only promote
Speaker 2: and allow in officers whould come from the Naval Academy.
Speaker 2: So there was you know, within a culture, there was
Speaker 2: another subculture elitism, you know, a mix between a country
Speaker 2: club and a fraternity, right, and you had someone who
Speaker 2: wasn't qualified or hadn't qualified got in any way, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of the syndrome of being born with a silver
Speaker 2: spoon in your mouth, right right, and and then you
Speaker 2: end up in a leading very aggressive guys, and how
Speaker 2: do you maintain their respect? How do you earn their respect?
Speaker 2: It's not through discipline, That's how it's been described to me.
Speaker 2: There are most of the operators that I ever interviewed
Speaker 2: who worked under for Wyman love him. He was highly aggressive.
Speaker 2: He matched. He very much looked at what M. Crystal
Speaker 2: was doing and was putting out and matched it. If
Speaker 2: you you know, if you're not out operating, you're not
Speaker 2: doing it right. It's very aggressive. Later there were problems
Speaker 2: at Sealed Team six under his command with officers who
Speaker 2: disagreed with how aggressive he was. I was told recently
Speaker 2: that in the Afghan papers there is a lot of
Speaker 2: description of Howard's leadership on the battlefield in Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: criticism about the over aggressiveness and posture of the unit.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen them myself, so I can't comment about,
Speaker 2: you know, how accurate that is. But he's sort of
Speaker 2: your best example he has. He's got a I think
Speaker 2: he's got a story that started and also gives you
Speaker 2: a sense of the Seal Team six, at least part
Speaker 2: of the Seal Team six culture of the branding. He
Speaker 2: and his younger officers used to sit around and discuss
Speaker 2: how great, how great they were as leaders amongst themselves,
Speaker 2: and the logic went like this, Red Squadron are the
Speaker 2: best operators at Seal Team six. Sale Team six is
Speaker 2: the best unit in the US military, and Red Squadron
Speaker 2: officers lead these men air go Red Squadron officers are
Speaker 2: the best leaders of men, and therefore, when we are
Speaker 2: out of the military, we should become our officers should
Speaker 2: become senators and presidents. That story was meanwhile, that was
Speaker 2: discussed among you know, Wyman and his younger his junior
Speaker 2: officer corps. At a time, it was a running joke
Speaker 2: at the rest of the command with the officer corps
Speaker 2: that it was all invented, that it was this presumption
Speaker 2: that there was something special about them. You know, we
Speaker 2: can get into a question of seals and leader leadership
Speaker 2: and seals later. But by the time he ends up
Speaker 2: in Tampa as a I don't know if he had
Speaker 2: a second star yet, but definitely had a one star.
Speaker 2: The story now went like this. There's a group of
Speaker 2: Seal Team six officers who have selected me to be
Speaker 2: the first member of Seal Team six to run for
Speaker 2: president of the United States. And you know, I actually
Speaker 2: I wanted to double check that recently because I put it.
Speaker 2: I did an excerpt for the book at the intercept,
Speaker 2: and I put in some new stuff in there, and
Speaker 2: I called it a source from the Pentagon who knew
Speaker 2: Wyman well, And I said, you know, I had already
Speaker 2: heard the story from several people from the Seals, but
Speaker 2: I called a friend at the Pentagon and I said,
Speaker 2: have you ever heard this story about Wyman? You know,
Speaker 2: running for president? So are you kidding me? Howard tells
Speaker 2: anyone who will listen, he is going to be the
Speaker 2: first Seal Team president in American history. So you get
Speaker 2: a sense of the ambition, right, and the mindset, which,
Speaker 2: you know, a massive ego, you know, often I think
Speaker 2: most people would agree, has very little self awareness.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He's someone who I think when he went to Congress
Speaker 2: and and AP covered it, his posture was we are humble, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, everyone who's ever worked with him, and that
Speaker 2: as a word that has never come across anyone's mouth.
Speaker 2: Is humble. I mean that was his problem at Seal
Speaker 2: Team six, was that there was virtually no humility.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think this guy's propensity? I mean,
Speaker 1: whatever people think about Seals or Seal Team six or whatever.
Speaker 1: As a previous commander of the Seals said, we have
Speaker 1: a problem that needs to be addressed. Is Wyman the guy?
Speaker 1: I mean? Can he do it? Can he reform and
Speaker 1: get them back on track?
Speaker 2: I think, as someone said to me, when Wyman was
Speaker 2: chosen as the commander of Warcom, it was truly a
Speaker 2: case of picking the fox to guard the henhouse. You
Speaker 2: cannot expect a Seal Team six leader who is part
Speaker 2: of the creation of the problem and is also a
Speaker 2: product of the problem at Seal Team six that filtered
Speaker 2: down into the larger community over two decades to possibly
Speaker 2: be the person who could deliver the message that we
Speaker 2: have to clean up now. He's smart, and he can
Speaker 2: make changes, and as I said, some of his fixes
Speaker 2: have been described to me as being very good. And
Speaker 2: in a couple of years or within a generation, there'll
Speaker 2: be a better officer Corps. To some extent, That's about
Speaker 2: as far as it goes. And I think, you know
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier or before we went on that there's
Speaker 2: a story I'm going to uh break a story I
Speaker 2: think when the Ukrainian assuming that there's any kind of
Speaker 2: resolution in Ukraine, but in the future, in the not
Speaker 2: too distant future, that is another It's a smaller scandal,
Speaker 2: seal scandal, but it's a scandal and it will reflect
Speaker 2: exactly this issue, which is Wyman is not women. Hower
Speaker 2: is not responsible at all for all of you know,
Speaker 2: the problems he's he's he is a great example of
Speaker 2: where their culture went wrong, how it didn't correct itself,
Speaker 2: and so the notion that he should be picked or
Speaker 2: being the leader of the larger community, I think is
Speaker 2: you know, I've talked to a lot of current Seal
Speaker 2: officers who were frankly disgusted when he was picked. Now,
Speaker 2: they had a thin bench, and there was some recognition
Speaker 2: that on paper he was probably ideal, but they were
Speaker 2: not happy. The Seals who were in the command long enough,
Speaker 2: who've been around and have worked with Howard were not happy.
Speaker 4: Now, is is it possible they just an acts to grind?
Speaker 2: There are always access to grind, and it very well
Speaker 2: could be that there are people who simply don't like him.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of people who don't like them,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who do like him.
Speaker 1: I try my.
Speaker 2: Best, I think, to recognize the difference between someone who
Speaker 2: doesn't like someone because of their personality and someone who
Speaker 2: can point to, hey, here, you know are things A, B, C,
Speaker 2: D and E that this person did when they were
Speaker 2: in charge that were fundamentally wrong or misguided and certainly
Speaker 2: disqualifying for promotion. Let alone you know such a position.
Speaker 2: So it's always the case. Look, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: as an investigative journalist, as any journalist, when you're dealing
Speaker 2: with stories like this, everyone has some acts to grind.
Speaker 2: My job is to try to figure out what that
Speaker 2: acts is and and adjust for it, and you know,
Speaker 2: accept what it is, recognize where it is. You know,
Speaker 2: you find out that someone hates someone because you know
Speaker 2: that someone slept with someone's wife and that there's a
Speaker 2: there's a personal beef or animis and that may be it.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't true, right.
Speaker 1: So in the in the book, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the things that people have to understand about the War
Speaker 1: on Terror is that none of these units work by themselves,
Speaker 1: that there are all these enablers that there's a Joint
Speaker 1: Special Operations Task Force, and on and on and on
Speaker 1: with these different commands and task forces and so on.
Speaker 1: One of the elements the Seals got detached to at
Speaker 1: various times of the was the Omega teams. There's a
Speaker 1: very interesting story in your book about how a CIA
Speaker 1: officer tried to complain about some of these behaviors and
Speaker 1: to try to blow the whistle on it internally in
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy. Could you tell us about that and what
Speaker 1: happened to that guy?
Speaker 2: Sure. First, I want to just say that that one
Speaker 2: of the sources for that section was a at that
Speaker 2: time was a member of the CIA, employee of the CIA,
Speaker 2: but was a former Seal and had a long experience
Speaker 2: with the Seals and Seal Team six. It's important again
Speaker 2: going back to just context and understanding, you know, where
Speaker 2: some of this information comes from, and what the significances
Speaker 2: of who's telling you. It's now I'm blanking on the year,
Speaker 2: but I think we're talking about two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: or two thousand and nine timeframe. I think two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine there had been a series of joint operations
Speaker 2: going out. They weren't always omegas that were going out together.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it was just especially in Jalalabad, the Agency would
Speaker 2: use six to help them conduct operations if they didn't
Speaker 2: have much of a paramilit they didn't have a ground branch,
Speaker 2: and what they kept seeing was a over aggression. There
Speaker 2: was in fact, time and we can get into this,
Speaker 2: there was an incident in which they had gone out
Speaker 2: on an operation. Basically the CIA said look, we want
Speaker 2: you to get these these four guys out. We know
Speaker 2: they're in there. You know, they went in at two
Speaker 2: in the morning, three in the morning, Sealed Team six
Speaker 2: goes in. I think at that time it was Gold
Speaker 2: Gold Squadron went in. The targets were all sleeping, they
Speaker 2: were all armed, you know, had weapons next to them.
Speaker 2: They were legitimate targets. They did a countdown.
Speaker 6: And they.
Speaker 2: Canued. I think six of the eight that were killed
Speaker 2: in the operation came back out and were showing off
Speaker 2: the photos of what they had just done. The CIA,
Speaker 2: in particular the agency officers there were furious because the
Speaker 2: guys that they had been asked to go out and
Speaker 2: get and detain, they wanted for interrogation and further intelligence exploitation.
Speaker 2: The mission was not killed them. They were legitimate targets
Speaker 2: in the sense that they had weapons near them in
Speaker 2: their bed, but they were all sleeping, so it was
Speaker 2: possible to take them into custody. That incident, along with
Speaker 2: several others like it, led to a former member of
Speaker 2: Seal Team six who was then working for Ground Branch
Speaker 2: named Rick Smothers. Richard Smithers, who had been six and
Speaker 2: had once been the captain at Bud's. He complained loudly
Speaker 2: to Seal Team six, first through the CIA and then
Speaker 2: to Seal Team six basically their guys were off the
Speaker 2: rails and that they were committing war crimes and it
Speaker 2: was costing them in their area of operations. It got
Speaker 2: very heated between the two sides, and Smothers and the
Speaker 2: CIA basically warned that if they didn't pull Gold Squadron
Speaker 2: at the time, they were going to go to the
Speaker 2: press with these accusations. There was a gentleman's agreement, in
Speaker 2: part because Smathers was a former member of Seal Team
Speaker 2: six and very respected from his era. He had been
Speaker 2: skipped over actually as to be skipper of Seal Team
Speaker 2: six prior to nine to eleven, and some people felt
Speaker 2: that the reason why he was complaining was because he
Speaker 2: was bitter about that. But that's an aside. As it happened,
Speaker 2: Gold Squadron was set to leave, and I don't remember
Speaker 2: which squadron was replacing him, but it happened to be
Speaker 2: that there was going to be a natural cycle anyway,
Speaker 2: and Seal Team six basically asked CIA to pull smethers
Speaker 2: and let him cool down outside of Afghanistan, go home,
Speaker 2: and you know, basically cool the temperature down. And so
Speaker 2: they did. But there was an acknowledgment on all sides,
Speaker 2: both sides, that Seal Team six was committing war crimes.
Speaker 2: They were violating the rules of engagement, they were violating
Speaker 2: the laws of armed combat. But you know, you keep
Speaker 2: you piss inside the tent, right and so they came
Speaker 2: up with a solution in which both sides were happy
Speaker 2: in the immediate near term, you know, and there was
Speaker 2: never any accountability. And that way, it's a great example
Speaker 2: again of you know, I think I think the book
Speaker 2: is filled with incidents where there could have been accountability
Speaker 2: and there wasn't. I think what one thing to keep
Speaker 2: in mind is is that it's these are only the
Speaker 2: ones that are known because they became at least internally,
Speaker 2: something happened that triggered that other people that other people
Speaker 2: knew about. Much of what went on went on between
Speaker 2: two or three guys on an operation.
Speaker 1: In a room.
Speaker 2: Right, we'll never know about those things, and unless someone
Speaker 2: who was there talks about it, there's nothing to that.
Speaker 2: It's it can't be known right, right.
Speaker 3: And but that could be said about any unit, like
Speaker 3: you know, like we we don't like know when when
Speaker 3: it gets down to that small size. But sort of
Speaker 3: what you're kind of talking about in this is the
Speaker 3: overall the officer enlisted the tendency to not self correct,
Speaker 3: but to just let things keep going, even if it's
Speaker 3: a few guys are like they're like the you know
Speaker 3: that when you when you like pith a fish that
Speaker 3: schools like it, you know, like the rest of the
Speaker 3: school follows it, because you know, that's how they That's
Speaker 3: how psychology works, right, That's how you work.
Speaker 1: And I mean some of the.
Speaker 3: Behaviors are talking to sounds sociopathic. And one of the
Speaker 3: things about sociopaths is they always have a stronger frame
Speaker 3: of reality. I think then then the people around them
Speaker 3: they are one of percent certain that their cause is
Speaker 3: right and whatnot, And it's how like relationships go awry
Speaker 3: and whatnot with right. So if you have a bunch
Speaker 3: of people who are emotional angry, you know, at war,
Speaker 3: and then you have one person that isn't you know
Speaker 3: that it's doing.
Speaker 4: These types of things, it sort of makes it a norm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I once interviewed a former command master
Speaker 2: chief of Sealed Team six from prior to nine to
Speaker 2: eleven who told me that in the eighties, when the
Speaker 2: last of the Vietnam era seals were in the unit,
Speaker 2: one of the things they passed down to the younger
Speaker 2: guys about their experience in Vietnam was that if just
Speaker 2: one guy in the team was committing war crimes, it
Speaker 2: created a psychological cloud over the in time, over the
Speaker 2: rest of the team. That there were these nonverbal you know,
Speaker 2: these were things that weren't necessarily discussed, but they became
Speaker 2: It was like a disease virus that would pass through
Speaker 2: the rest of the unit and go on for the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives. And you know, I will tell
Speaker 2: you that that plenty of the officers gave you know,
Speaker 2: had conversations like this with some of with their men.
Speaker 2: You know, look, don't do anything out there that you
Speaker 2: don't want it you can't live with because you have
Speaker 2: to live with it for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: The problem is is that there are people who think
Speaker 2: that they can live with it or wanted to see
Speaker 2: and test the waters right, And so that's not necessarily
Speaker 2: a strong enough guide, as you know, if you're saying
Speaker 2: that one night, and in the next night you're saying,
Speaker 2: you know, did you get your hatchets bloodied? Right? You know,
Speaker 2: what'd you do with your hatchets kind of thing? And
Speaker 2: so the I think the psychological component to this is
Speaker 2: really important, and it was one that I asked Marsenko about.
Speaker 2: You know, what kind of screening did you do? Well,
Speaker 2: we only had the Minnesota test. Well, yeah, but you
Speaker 2: had a psych right, and and you know, so you
Speaker 2: screened and I interviewed that psych and he, you know,
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, there was no screening. Marsenko picked who
Speaker 2: he liked, and Marsinko said, yeah, I had the shrink there,
Speaker 2: so that when the Navy assessed what the unit that
Speaker 2: I was creating on paper, I looked like I was
Speaker 2: doing all the right things. And the psycho colleges, the
Speaker 2: shrink doctor Mike Whitley, who I interviewed actually not long
Speaker 2: before he died shortly after. As it is Marsenko, I
Speaker 2: don't want to get a reputation. And what Whitley said was, look,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of great guys in the first
Speaker 2: couple of in the first group of Seal Team six,
Speaker 2: but there were several sociopaths.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There was absolutely no way to screen them out because
Speaker 2: they hadn't done any The screening was, as Marsico said,
Speaker 2: who could drink with me, who someone else had recommended,
Speaker 2: who could drink with them, and who could handle their
Speaker 2: liquor with me? Right, and who they had served with
Speaker 2: And that was the That was the system that they used.
Speaker 2: And I you know the other one. I interviewed one
Speaker 2: of the Team six's xos that handled selection after Marsenco,
Speaker 2: and he said it was exactly what was going on.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that Delta had the same problem with their
Speaker 1: initial intake of guys that the psychologist pointed to one
Speaker 1: guy like, no, don't take this guy, and I was
Speaker 1: told beckweth overruled him and said, no, we want this
Speaker 1: guy because he's so good. That was Marshall Brown, who
Speaker 1: turned out to be a serial rapist and is still
Speaker 1: in federal prison to this day. So I mean, the
Speaker 1: lesson I think is the selection process works when you
Speaker 1: actually use it well.
Speaker 2: But you know, but you know, you guys can correct
Speaker 2: me if I'm wrong. Is I understand it? The Delta's
Speaker 2: psychological portion of the selection screening is much more rigorous
Speaker 2: and specific than Seal Team.
Speaker 1: Sits now nowadays, I don't think that would ever happen,
Speaker 1: but this was way back nineteen eighty.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, And I think another thing
Speaker 7: I wanted to follow up on real quick or point out,
Speaker 7: I guess is that you know, there's something to be
Speaker 7: said for having some empathy for the operators, even ostensibly
Speaker 7: war criminals.
Speaker 1: You can see like people flipping out just that we
Speaker 1: have a conversation on an open conversation like this. You know,
Speaker 1: these guys are war fighters. Leave them alone. And it
Speaker 1: really brought that to head when you were talking about
Speaker 1: how a lot of guys think they can handle this
Speaker 1: and they can't, and they acted like big badasses on
Speaker 1: target wanting to scalp people. Okay, here we are ten
Speaker 1: years later, and a lot of those dudes are cracking up,
Speaker 1: and they're cracking up. They're having severe issues with PTSD.
Speaker 1: Combine that with traumatic brain injuries. These guys are a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys are really struggling, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a case to be made now that they need help.
Speaker 1: But I mean, also there's a lesson for leaders now,
Speaker 1: right right at this moment to police this kind of
Speaker 1: behavior with the longevity and the and the responsibility of
Speaker 1: taking care of your troops long term. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I understand how a younger soldier doesn't have the
Speaker 1: maturity or the wisdom to really understand that or think
Speaker 1: long term like that, but there is a responsibility on
Speaker 1: the leadership, if nothing else, to police that kind of behavior.
Speaker 1: And that's another way of taking care of your soldiers.
Speaker 2: You know. I'm Jack, I'm really glad that you you
Speaker 2: raise that point, because it's something that my sources for
Speaker 2: the last five or six years have said sort of privately,
Speaker 2: you know, in describing what their motivations were for talking
Speaker 2: and what they wrestle with and were upset most upset with.
Speaker 2: And I just give you an example. I'm going to
Speaker 2: paraphrase a little bit between they were about four. I
Speaker 2: don't like to get into the difference between which sources
Speaker 2: are officers and which are our NCOs. I will tell
Speaker 2: you that I was most always most surprised that the
Speaker 2: toughest language I heard about, the disgust and the frustration
Speaker 2: came from the NCOs. And given what they're the dynamic,
Speaker 2: they basically were just disgusted with the failure of their
Speaker 2: officers to get a hold of the problem when they
Speaker 2: were warned. One of the things that someone said to
Speaker 2: me once that that really shook me was look and again,
Speaker 2: I'm paraphra We failed these guys. We sent these guys
Speaker 2: out into a meat grinder over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: We gave them none of the tools to handle the
Speaker 2: parts that we gave them no warning or ability to
Speaker 2: handle what they were going to experience and come back.
Speaker 2: And there was a line that we had to hold
Speaker 2: for them because of this issue right that if they
Speaker 2: crossed that line, we're not going to send you to jail.
Speaker 2: We need to pull you back and teach you we
Speaker 2: don't do this right. That's how you fix it. This
Speaker 2: wasn't the genesis of this book and is not Oh
Speaker 2: my god, all of these guys have to go to jail.
Speaker 2: It came from seals who were Seal leaders, Seal Team
Speaker 2: six leaders who were saying, we failed these kids. I
Speaker 2: failed these kids. I tried to do this. I tried
Speaker 2: to do that. Some were tired and left the military
Speaker 2: because they tried to get Seal Team six leaders to
Speaker 2: deal with war crimes and they were ignored, they were refused.
Speaker 2: We don't have a problem. It's not a problem. I
Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. I mean, it was,
Speaker 2: it was a and so the the empathy here is
Speaker 2: and again it goes back to why I don't name
Speaker 2: for the most part, I don't name the younger operators.
Speaker 2: I think part of what I was trying to do
Speaker 2: in the book. And I know that it's probably hard
Speaker 2: for people to understand that. Most people understand this, especially
Speaker 2: if you're coming from the perspective that this is some
Speaker 2: kind of anti Seal book. It's not. What this is
Speaker 2: is a description of failed leadership and how you what
Speaker 2: the cost is to the men who do it. And
Speaker 2: I think, although it may be subtle, one of the
Speaker 2: ways I tried to do that in the reporting was
Speaker 2: the tone that I took in writing about it. I
Speaker 2: made a very concerted effort to never be strident about
Speaker 2: any of what you know, the wrongdoing, and never to
Speaker 2: try to you know, I tried to pull my punches
Speaker 2: a little actually in the reporting because you just want
Speaker 2: to get the message across through the information. You let
Speaker 2: the information speak for itself and the reportings the facts
Speaker 2: speak for itself. There was no need to editorialize or
Speaker 2: to suggest that, you know anything, there's some kind of
Speaker 2: inherent evil here and all like that. And that came
Speaker 2: from very much from my sources who were saying, look,
Speaker 2: the people who are suffering here are the guys that
Speaker 2: we sent out there who did thirteen to fifteen deployments,
Speaker 2: whose families are silently suffering because they don't even have
Speaker 2: a name for the Yes, it's PTSD, yes the trauma,
Speaker 2: but they don't have a name for how it is affecting.
Speaker 2: It will affect their family now, it will affect their
Speaker 2: next generation of their family because of the way, you know,
Speaker 2: the kids are raised in that environment, right and although
Speaker 2: they have some of the best psychologists and they do,
Speaker 2: you know, they have a great post career community for
Speaker 2: supporting each other, and they have there are some initiatives
Speaker 2: that I've heard about that seem promising. Overall, they don't
Speaker 2: do much right. I mean Matt Bissonette said it in
Speaker 2: his book, I mean his second book, you know, he said,
Speaker 2: we get trained at everything to the tea, he said,
Speaker 2: but they do not train us whatsoever for the emotional
Speaker 2: toll and impact of what being on the speeding train
Speaker 2: will do to you.
Speaker 3: Right right, well, I mean, you know, flid still, you know,
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, I hope he's trading it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you know, he's very you know,
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 4: Open about the postma stress he has.
Speaker 3: You know, I think Latrell, you know, when he talks about,
Speaker 3: you know, feeling like a coward, you know, like you know,
Speaker 3: and I think those are the things I think that
Speaker 3: like And they are gonna be people who watch this
Speaker 3: and think this is an anti Seal episode, anti American
Speaker 3: or anti American or anti whatever. And and I'll tell
Speaker 3: you just for myself, I'm all about killing the bad guys.
Speaker 3: I mean, fuck him up, right, they're they're bad guys
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: That's you know.
Speaker 3: I even I agree with someone worthy off the book,
Speaker 3: you know, off the board.
Speaker 1: Type methods, but but it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Do the war effort, it doesn't do the unit, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't do the soul any good too, to get
Speaker 3: caught up in the combat as anything other than combat,
Speaker 3: anything other than you know, the mission. When it becomes
Speaker 3: when you make it personal, when you make it personal,
Speaker 3: when when you engage in you know, you know, mutilations
Speaker 3: or things like that, the person is dead regardless of
Speaker 3: any of that.
Speaker 1: That's something that lives.
Speaker 3: Like, That's not something I think that most people like
Speaker 3: you know, like you said, it's a virus, right, It's
Speaker 3: like suicide. If if a suicide happens in a unit,
Speaker 3: it's a mimetic, it's a meme, it's a virus of
Speaker 3: the mind. It spreads and it's will increase in that unit.
Speaker 3: But but social behaviors are the same type of thing.
Speaker 3: This is the same type of thing.
Speaker 4: That there are people who would never There are seals
Speaker 4: who had never in their entire life do something like this.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't occur to them.
Speaker 3: But if it becomes sort of this thematic thing where
Speaker 3: it's acceptable and normalized, normalized, then you know, when we're
Speaker 3: in this environment of combat and chaos and emotions and loss,
Speaker 3: and we're dealing with all these different things, you know,
Speaker 3: we're vulnerable, right, and so to be subjected to that
Speaker 3: and then to not have anybody the officers reach in
Speaker 3: and and and yank that back. Yeah, to have the
Speaker 3: to not you know, and to cover it up. And
Speaker 3: I'm not again, I'm not saying send the guys to jail,
Speaker 3: like take care of them, like make it so this
Speaker 3: isn't a normal thing, because twenty years from now, like
Speaker 3: you said, this is a family thing, right, and then
Speaker 3: it becomes a generational thing.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the stories in the book speaking
Speaker 2: about slab was this incident in two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: with I think it was an E six at the time,
Speaker 2: maybe I think it was E six who his commanding
Speaker 2: officer caught a glimpse of him trying to cut a
Speaker 2: head off of a Taliban fighter that they had killed
Speaker 2: on an operation. And Slabinski, who was the master chief
Speaker 2: at the time, had told his men that he wanted
Speaker 2: a head on a platter, and there was you know,
Speaker 2: some of the older guys heard it as it could
Speaker 2: have easily been, which was just metaphorical and slab being dramatic,
Speaker 2: but the younger guys didn't know the difference, and so
Speaker 2: and there had been a ton of group think within
Speaker 2: their unit at the time, within their troop in particular,
Speaker 2: and there had been war crimes going on for the
Speaker 2: whole deployment and that young man. They covered it up.
Speaker 2: They got out of the NCIS investigation. Everyone was cleared,
Speaker 2: but that seal at operator eventually, I think it took
Speaker 2: another eight years or so. He eventually basically became medically
Speaker 2: unfit to deploy. He was a psychological mess. He left
Speaker 2: the unit. After he pulled himself from deploying. They sent
Speaker 2: him to the Pykes. He was not fit. They sent
Speaker 2: him to Group two, to the White Side where he
Speaker 2: could and at that point he said he didn't want
Speaker 2: to said to others, not to me, that he ever
Speaker 2: wanted to deploy again. And as I understand it, he
Speaker 2: has spent years in intensive therapy because he was young
Speaker 2: and impressionable and with a group of seasoned enlisted out officers,
Speaker 2: enlisted members of Seal Team six who believed that chopping
Speaker 2: the heads off the enemy was gonna win the war.
Speaker 2: And there were you know, there was some pulling back
Speaker 2: of guys after that incident. There was some yelling, but
Speaker 2: they also covered it up and there was zero accountability.
Speaker 2: Fast forward three years later, when Slovinsky is going to
Speaker 2: come back for a senior position at the command. The
Speaker 2: officers and the other master chiefs at the command voted
Speaker 2: him out, basically refused to let him back in. They
Speaker 2: blacklisted him. And that actually acts as the only time
Speaker 2: that I know of and that anyone else knows of,
Speaker 2: that Seal Team six held any of their own accountable
Speaker 2: for this failure of leadership and and and war crimes
Speaker 2: and it and and as someone to that, We're never
Speaker 2: going to send him to the brig We were never
Speaker 2: going to send them to n c I S or
Speaker 2: rat them out. We just never wanted him back at
Speaker 2: Seal Team six. We wanted to send a message. Now
Speaker 2: fast forward to that he gets awarded a medal, is
Speaker 2: upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and that became you know,
Speaker 2: there is just as Gallagher was, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: Dave Phillips did just a fantastic job in Alpha describing
Speaker 2: the cultural war inside the teams between you know, the
Speaker 2: the the good and the ugly really is what it is,
Speaker 2: right and unfortunately the ugly really won in that case.
Speaker 2: You know, when Slabinsky gets kicked out of Seal Team
Speaker 2: six or blacklist is the more accurate. It's a good
Speaker 2: description of when some where they were able to write
Speaker 2: the ship on their own. It's an example, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a singular example, which is part of the problem.
Speaker 2: When he gets awarded the upgrade to the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 2: it is absolutely a message to everybody else in Seal
Speaker 2: Team six and in the teams that the cover up wins,
Speaker 2: that there is you know, you are giving out the
Speaker 2: highest award for valor the military that the government gives out.
Speaker 2: And it's not a question of what may or may
Speaker 2: not have occurred up on top of Tucker Gar although
Speaker 2: that's certainly an issue that was that was broad Chapman,
Speaker 2: but regards wordless of that, and that's not one that
Speaker 2: I I I you know, never fought in need, you know,
Speaker 2: thigh deep snow on the top of a mountain, you know,
Speaker 2: under an ambush. But for everything that occurred after the fact,
Speaker 2: which by the way, the regulations of the Medal of
Speaker 2: Honor are you know, their actions and conduct after an
Speaker 2: event are are part of the consideration. And there were
Speaker 2: multiple incidents with Slabinski. He was you know, punted from
Speaker 2: a unit because of war crimes and for for illegal
Speaker 2: allegations of illegal orders, right, and so when he won
Speaker 2: the upgrade. There were guys my phone was was just
Speaker 2: the groaning. You know, I'm disgusted, We're disgusted.
Speaker 6: With with with the message that's as sending to everybody
Speaker 6: else in the teams who knows and and the truth
Speaker 6: right so, and that that's what the book is.
Speaker 2: It's not I'm not trying to make a judgment. I'm
Speaker 2: literally just trying to put out the story as it is,
Speaker 2: as it was, and as it is.
Speaker 3: I feel as though the whole Chatman Medal of Honor episode,
Speaker 3: even notwithstanding a Slovensky like not, but but what the
Speaker 3: seals did, what the Seal Command did during that that
Speaker 3: speaks more to me about the overall like not speaks
Speaker 3: more to me. But that to me is more demonstrative
Speaker 3: of the the problem with with the the Seal Command,
Speaker 3: that that that seal culture then it were not than
Speaker 3: any of these other things.
Speaker 1: But I think it it.
Speaker 3: Is easier to point to that outside of saying, well,
Speaker 3: you know, you have cover ups on regular army basis
Speaker 3: right where you know there's a sexual assault and the
Speaker 3: commanding officer covers it up because he doesn't want it
Speaker 3: to be his problem. And again I agree that there's
Speaker 3: this history of this where it's in the command. I'm
Speaker 3: just saying that the whole Chapman Medal of Honor thing
Speaker 3: shows sort of what that Naval command, what that Seal command,
Speaker 3: how they act, because when it came when Chapman's name
Speaker 3: came up, they immediately immediately turned on him.
Speaker 1: Yep, you know.
Speaker 3: And here was somebody who Slovinski originally for his uh
Speaker 3: you know, is uh the air the Air.
Speaker 2: Cross right that he would get the Navy Cross or
Speaker 2: no for chat O Chapman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, yeah, who you know.
Speaker 3: Slovinsky had said he saved our lives when he took
Speaker 3: Bunker one. He saved our lives, right, give it. I
Speaker 3: hope he gets any award. Then when it comes to
Speaker 3: the upgrade, the Seals are so fervently against it and
Speaker 3: and undermining it and and everything else.
Speaker 4: And to me, that is like who does that?
Speaker 1: That's you know, that's the part that's dishonorable about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, a botched operation that happens, you.
Speaker 3: Know, you know, I don't even blame Slovensky for leaving
Speaker 3: him per se, because nobody knows what was going on.
Speaker 3: They were under heavy fire, there was snow on the ground.
Speaker 3: You know, Robert's body was there, that Selenskin every acknowledge
Speaker 3: it could be that he thought that was that nobody knows,
Speaker 3: Like I don't even necessarily blame him for that, because
Speaker 3: in the fog war, the only person who knows what
Speaker 3: happened is the person's there, and even sometimes they don't
Speaker 3: know what happened. But but the way the Navy handled
Speaker 3: it is like, Okay, that's that's what you expect, you know,
Speaker 3: or that's what that would be.
Speaker 2: Take that's the tell and I you know, the reason,
Speaker 2: the reason why that story ultimately is you know, the
Speaker 2: central sort of spine of the book with three chapters,
Speaker 2: because it's, you know, it's a tragic saga of you know,
Speaker 2: the the best and the worst, and yes, the worst
Speaker 2: part about it is not you know, and what happened
Speaker 2: up on the mountain at all. What if the worst
Speaker 2: was the way in which they went fourteen years after
Speaker 2: the event, everything that they claimed happened now changed so
Speaker 2: that they could protect their brand, their honor, their guy.
Speaker 2: And that is the part that you know, it's dishonorable.
Speaker 2: That's the part that's I think the the you know,
Speaker 2: for people not in the seals who served in the military,
Speaker 2: who have served with the Seals. That's the thing you
Speaker 2: hear the most is like, yeah, well that's how they are, right.
Speaker 2: That's and I don't like to make generalizations. I haven't
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't served. I've never served with the Seal.
Speaker 2: I can't speak to that. But as a reporter, that
Speaker 2: story is prevalent. That's the story here over and over,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, they have their brand looks like this,
Speaker 2: and they make a lot of money with that brand,
Speaker 2: and anything that goes against that brand or suggests that
Speaker 2: they are not totally heroic and totally flawless, or that
Speaker 2: the story that they told may not be as accurate
Speaker 2: as they as they proceed, you know, made it sound
Speaker 2: they circle the wagons.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, there's one thing I definitely wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about about somebody who's not interested in profiting
Speaker 1: off the brand necessarily or at all. We've heard a
Speaker 1: lot about the Bin Laden raid. There's a lot about
Speaker 1: it in your book. We've heard a lot about O'Neill
Speaker 1: and Bissonett, a lot out there about those guys. Tell
Speaker 1: us about this one operator whose call sign was red.
Speaker 2: Read yeah, well, Red should be known as the seal
Speaker 2: operator who fired into bin Laden and effectively killed him
Speaker 2: in Pakistan in twenty eleven. He was at the head
Speaker 2: of the stack that went up. I think, in fact,
Speaker 2: as it happens, he also shot bin Laden's son on
Speaker 2: the second second deck, and as I understand it, and
Speaker 2: I think, as I reported in the book, he fired
Speaker 2: two shots, at least two shots. The first hit beIN
Speaker 2: Lauden grazed him somewhere, not quite clear if it was
Speaker 2: the hip or the leg, but then he got him
Speaker 2: center mass, and at that point bin Laden fell back
Speaker 2: into the room and onto the ground, A key detail
Speaker 2: because everyone else who came into the door afterwards fired
Speaker 2: into him while he was down on the ground. According
Speaker 2: to my sources, and although it's no longer available, I
Speaker 2: will tell you that on Twitter about a year ago,
Speaker 2: a member of the unit who was there confirmed my
Speaker 2: version of what was reported and with the version that's
Speaker 2: in this book, and describes O'Neil I think, as being
Speaker 2: the fourth guy through the doorway and the fourth man
Speaker 2: to shoot bin Lauden. So red, you know, is one
Speaker 2: guy who says silent professional, silent professional, and and you know,
Speaker 2: I think quote quoted one of those former teammates who
Speaker 2: who uh no been u Bissinette and O'Neil very well
Speaker 2: who said, you know that the genius of what they
Speaker 2: had done in constructing their versions of the story was
Speaker 2: that there was really only one person who could contradict them,
Speaker 2: and that guy's never going to talk. I think my
Speaker 2: last I checked. I believe he's no longer in. I
Speaker 2: think he's out, and uh, you know, it's just never
Speaker 2: hear from him.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a little part of it that kind of
Speaker 1: like makes me smile. I guess because there's this dude
Speaker 1: out there who killed high value target number one, first
Speaker 1: guy through the door, smoke's been laed in a historic shot,
Speaker 1: has nothing to say about it. He's out there living
Speaker 1: his best life, I guess, you know, and good for him,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I think what is interesting to me is that what
Speaker 2: you can sort of surmise from from listening to all
Speaker 2: of this is is that in general, the seals that
Speaker 2: are out making the most money telling the most stories
Speaker 2: are not necessarily the ones who were held in the
Speaker 2: highest esteem inside. And we hear over and over again
Speaker 2: it's you know, there was a terrible irony that it
Speaker 2: is not the best of our community that is out
Speaker 2: representing us. It's sort of like an inverse relation, which
Speaker 2: is not to say that that you know, O'Neill's teammates
Speaker 2: loved him, business teammates loved him. They've got lots of
Speaker 2: problems with them, but that doesn't mean that.
Speaker 3: They, by all accounts, was a great operator, phenomenal operator.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: And and they're courageous. It's not like their cow like
Speaker 3: they're they're they're good operators. They're curages.
Speaker 8: Just maybe there's nothing that there's nothing in the reporting
Speaker 8: here is about how they're bad seals or bad soldiers,
Speaker 8: are not good at their job.
Speaker 2: They're incredibly good at their job, right right. The question
Speaker 2: is not about whether they're what they did on their
Speaker 2: best day. The question is what they did on their
Speaker 2: worst day.
Speaker 3: It's not about whether they got two solar stars but
Speaker 3: are happy with the one they.
Speaker 2: Write that there's a full senday and and you know
Speaker 2: the it's not a I will say obviously, as a
Speaker 2: reporter who is writing about this stuff, I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not going to win any popularity contests. I've gotten over
Speaker 2: the years some fantastic hate mail about on reporting on
Speaker 2: this stuff, and I you know, I read it all.
Speaker 2: I enjoy some of it, but I think it's really
Speaker 2: really important for the you know, I don't think that
Speaker 2: this book is going to change anyone's life. I think
Speaker 2: that it's the book that as a citizen, as an
Speaker 2: interested citizen, wants to know what happened in America's name
Speaker 2: during the wars part of it, right, we know, Look,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of books and stories about all the
Speaker 2: great and heroic deeds. There's no shortage of them, and
Speaker 2: I have nothing against them whatsoever. I do happen to
Speaker 2: have a fealty towards the truth and think that that's
Speaker 2: like kind of really important. It's like a you know,
Speaker 2: a must have. And I think that the American public
Speaker 2: deserves to understand what the consequences of a blank check
Speaker 2: for twenty years of war are, for the men who served,
Speaker 2: for the institutions that that refuse to hold itself accountable,
Speaker 2: and ultimately for the civilian leadership that allowed it to happen,
Speaker 2: who are supposed to oversee the officers. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's that's what's supposed to happen in a democracy.
Speaker 2: And that's not partisan, that's not a you know, this
Speaker 2: isn't a left book, This isn't a right book. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 2: almost every one of my sources leans to one party,
Speaker 2: and it's not the party that you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people will think I vote for. My work is
Speaker 2: non partisan in that it is just geared towards understanding
Speaker 2: and finding out uncomfortable truths, because that's what I imagined
Speaker 2: journalism was supposed to be when I started.
Speaker 1: Your book does contain I mean, there are two other
Speaker 1: vignettes in the book that I thought were very illuminating,
Speaker 1: to say the least was I think these are the
Speaker 1: most complete accounts I have read about the Captain Phillips rescue,
Speaker 1: the Linda Norgrove rescue that went bad, and that the
Speaker 1: heinous murder of Sergeant Logan Melgar. I don't know, I know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of starting to run low on time.
Speaker 2: Which one do you really want to hear about?
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, the nord Grove one is very
Speaker 1: well written. I think the Melgar one we should probably
Speaker 1: dive into because it's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm you want me to start from
Speaker 2: the top. I mean, I don't know how much the reader,
Speaker 2: your audience.
Speaker 1: I think they're all familiar with that a couple of
Speaker 1: seals murdered a Green Beret in Mali, and our audience
Speaker 1: has a general familiarity at least with that story.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the Logan Melgar story unfortunately acts as like
Speaker 2: a sort of you know, capstone on this post nine
Speaker 2: to eleven, uh Forever wars and and seal culture. You know,
Speaker 2: these two operators, one who had only been in country
Speaker 2: for twenty four hours, basically set up to haze and
Speaker 2: that that was their description in Hayes.
Speaker 1: I think that the book, like professional remediation.
Speaker 2: That was yes, the language that was used in court
Speaker 2: to to downplay what they were doing was was was
Speaker 2: comical if it weren't for the fact that someone ended
Speaker 2: up dead. I think my point is is they the
Speaker 2: seals and the two uh marine uh I think you
Speaker 2: call them raiders raiders. Raiders did not intend to kill
Speaker 2: right Melgar. What I reported both at the intercepted in
Speaker 2: the book was Melgar. First of all, they didn't get
Speaker 2: along Melgar their personalities, but they were sharing a house
Speaker 2: or an apartment, a compound, and they didn't get along.
Speaker 2: Melgar became aware that one of the Seals who later
Speaker 2: kills him and the second member from Seal Team six
Speaker 2: had been stealing from a operational fund for informants. It
Speaker 2: was cash there. You get a lot of written receipts.
Speaker 2: It's a well known means of making a small amount
Speaker 2: of money undeployment. It's been going on. It's not just
Speaker 2: in Seal Team six, but it particularly at a Tier
Speaker 2: one because there's so much autonomy and so little oversight
Speaker 2: and had in some where. I don't know if he
Speaker 2: had confronted him, but they knew that he knew. And
Speaker 2: as I understand it, and I think when you both
Speaker 2: listened to the testimony in court during the court martial
Speaker 2: and read between the lines, it's pretty clear. I think
Speaker 2: one of the guys involved said it was they were
Speaker 2: going to sexually assault him and film it and use
Speaker 2: it essentially as blackmail.
Speaker 3: They said that they were gonna that they were going
Speaker 3: to they were going to have the molly guy like
Speaker 3: fake sexually assault.
Speaker 2: The seal said that Kevin Maxwell, who was the Marine
Speaker 2: raider who ended up flipping second, said that no, the
Speaker 2: plan was they were going to sexually assault him in
Speaker 2: some manner. I believe it was because that's why it
Speaker 2: came up with Operation uh Toss Salad. They were going
Speaker 2: to use and in fact, my according to my sources,
Speaker 2: the molly and guard that they picked that they asked
Speaker 2: to come was chosen because for whatever reason in their group,
Speaker 2: they knew that that was a particular thing that he
Speaker 2: liked to do. And so they said, do you want
Speaker 2: to do this on this guy? He says yes, and
Speaker 2: so he's in the room. They're going to film it,
Speaker 2: and they're going to show Melgar the film of it
Speaker 2: afterwards and as a form of Blackmount shut up, you know,
Speaker 2: professional remediation in the term that Adam Matthews, the member
Speaker 2: of Seal Team six who was also involved, would later say,
Speaker 2: they were incredibly drunk and Melgar fought back, which.
Speaker 1: And Melgar was not drunk. He had been in his room.
Speaker 1: He didn't drink.
Speaker 2: We'll get we'll get drink at all. No, he did drink,
Speaker 2: but he was not drunk at the time he died.
Speaker 2: We'll get into that in a second. He fought back
Speaker 2: during the resistance. They the plan was to choke him
Speaker 2: out quickly, film this thing, this act some form of it,
Speaker 2: and then you know, when he came to they would
Speaker 2: show him and hold it over him. He came two
Speaker 2: after the initial choke out, and so Tony Dedolph, who
Speaker 2: is now currently in military prison after playing uh, I
Speaker 2: can remember if he pled homicide or involuntary manslaughter. He's
Speaker 2: got ten years, choked him out a second time, this
Speaker 2: time pressing the way his body was and positioned. His
Speaker 2: face was into the bed in Melgar's face was into
Speaker 2: the bed, and he joked him out and he crushed
Speaker 2: his his trachea. I mean, he crushed his throat and
Speaker 2: he was dead. They then, you know, started to CPR
Speaker 2: and trying to revive him that failed. I think the
Speaker 2: thing that I was struck most by, and I'll start
Speaker 2: with this because this ultimately is the point. Two of
Speaker 2: America's most highly trained operators, who the government spends over
Speaker 2: the course of a career millions of dollars to train
Speaker 2: and then maintain their training, plus all of the equipment
Speaker 2: and everything that goes with are standing over a now
Speaker 2: deceased Green Beret, a fellow American, a service member, and
Speaker 2: they have a choice. They can do the right thing
Speaker 2: or they can do the wrong thing. And with his
Speaker 2: body still warm, they immediately began to engage in a
Speaker 2: cover up. And the point that I think this story
Speaker 2: is really about is that if two of America's best
Speaker 2: can make that decision after killing one of their own,
Speaker 2: not on a battlefield, not with an enemy, not with
Speaker 2: a legitimate target, with a roommate, to ask yourself.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that point, what the hell.
Speaker 2: Else has been going on? Because there is, you know,
Speaker 2: there is again accidents happen, right, I'm not right. Everything
Speaker 2: that I've just described, by the way, sounds an enormous
Speaker 2: amount like the insignt penny.
Speaker 3: You know, it's weird that hazing has has like these
Speaker 3: homo erotic things. Like to me, hazing is like smoking,
Speaker 3: you know, smoking, making them do push ups till you know,
Speaker 3: till leave sweats blood.
Speaker 2: There's a in particular with the seals hazing.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There is some that's just like torturous. There are others
Speaker 2: that is very homo rotic, you know, very homo rotic.
Speaker 2: I'm not a psychologist, and I didn't I didn't delve
Speaker 2: it into the book.
Speaker 1: A bunch of user questions I'm going to hit you
Speaker 1: with real quick here. Matthew Marcelo says, why did mc
Speaker 1: raven give the UBL mission to Seal Team six, even
Speaker 1: after issues on the Captain Phillips mission, seems like Delta
Speaker 1: could have handled that mission.
Speaker 2: Well to reasons. The first practical one was that the
Speaker 2: Seals had Seal Team six had at the Afghanistan AO
Speaker 2: and had been truly training and preparing for a mission there.
Speaker 2: That's one part of it. There's the second part of it,
Speaker 2: which is mccraven in particular was very fond of the
Speaker 2: commanding officer of the Red Squadron at the time and
Speaker 2: may have played that into favor. What people don't realize,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure you know, some of this has
Speaker 2: been published before. He actually initially had chosen the Rangers
Speaker 2: to lead to be in command of Seal Team six
Speaker 2: on the ground for the mission, which led to a
Speaker 2: blow up during the during the the read into Petevan
Speaker 2: who Captain Pete Van Hoosier at the time, and that
Speaker 2: didn't happen, So it was you know. And the other
Speaker 2: thing is is, by the way, Emerald craven's a Seal
Speaker 2: and you know, he may have been a four star
Speaker 2: and he's he's one of the good ones, I think,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean he is in parochial.
Speaker 1: Carlos asks, could you guys discuss why and if rules
Speaker 1: of engagement and standards of professional conduct on and off
Speaker 1: the X are important to these types of units. There
Speaker 1: seems to be some sentiment that there's that they should
Speaker 1: be allowed to do anything.
Speaker 2: That that Tier one guys should be allowed to operate
Speaker 2: on their own.
Speaker 1: I think that's what he's saying, that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who like, fuck the ro O,
Speaker 1: we don't need any r O. E.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, and and I think that
Speaker 2: ultimately the next question is and then what right the
Speaker 2: next if there is there are rules of of there
Speaker 2: are laws of war, and they're there for a reason.
Speaker 2: The US signed up for them. We everyone who serves
Speaker 2: in the uniform agrees to it. They are bound by it,
Speaker 2: and whether it's popular or not. And you know, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there isn't lots and lots of gray room.
Speaker 2: But as as one of my sources always said was,
Speaker 2: you know, they give Seal Team six and Delta so
Speaker 2: much latitude. Legally, it's not hard in that way, It's
Speaker 2: rarely actually an issue. And that's why the old standard
Speaker 2: Seal Team six was if you had one gray shoot,
Speaker 2: you were gone. One incident where you shot someone who
Speaker 2: wasn't armed, regardless of the answer being they're maneuvering, doesn't matter, right,
Speaker 2: there's the difference between the threat and non threat. That
Speaker 2: changed after nine to eleven, and again the standard dropped,
Speaker 2: and I think to I think most Sealed Team six
Speaker 2: operators would agree that that standard is important.
Speaker 1: I'll just add on that point real quick that yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the rules of engagement are important, but the
Speaker 1: ROE is separate from international law. The ROE meets or
Speaker 1: exceeds international law it has to, and the ROE is
Speaker 1: blessed off on and signed off on by unit commanders
Speaker 1: on the ground, and a lot of times they're roes
Speaker 1: and their interpretations of the laws and the interpretations of
Speaker 1: how they get to the ROE is fucked up. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they don't know the law themselves. They
Speaker 1: don't even have the background to begin to understand the law.
Speaker 1: And that's when you see asinine restrictions put on soldiers.
Speaker 3: That don't make sense, Like you have to fill out
Speaker 3: a report every time you fire a weapon.
Speaker 1: Well, that's done to cover the ass afterwards. But I
Speaker 1: mean when you find like in Afghanistan, where we had
Speaker 1: troops under fire in contact with the enemy, and we
Speaker 1: could not call in aircraft to drop bombs on them.
Speaker 1: That's because the commanders on the ground don't fucking understand
Speaker 1: their own ro right and roes.
Speaker 3: I mean they I think they change too, like if
Speaker 3: from deployment to deployment. Yeah, roe's changed, but but there's
Speaker 3: a massive difference between having an ROE that is, like,
Speaker 3: you can only shoot somebody who is engaging you first,
Speaker 3: you can only shoot somebody's who's holding weapon first. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna shoot everybody on target, regardless of what they're doing.
Speaker 1: The whole thing.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that's what the Seals are doing.
Speaker 3: I'm just using that as an example.
Speaker 1: Jackson says, do you foresee pirate culture dying off anytime
Speaker 1: soon in Seals? I assume it seems like social media, games, movies,
Speaker 1: and books glorify war crimes and hatchets, which we have
Speaker 1: seen these hatchets appear in various forms of media over
Speaker 1: the last ten years.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's a winning brand. It's a it's
Speaker 2: a money making machine. I think that there's there's still
Speaker 2: a conflict inside the Seals about this, a cultural conflict.
Speaker 2: I think the rogue side is very much winning and
Speaker 2: probably with smaller numbers as a very loud minority within
Speaker 2: the teams. But I don't think that there's I don't
Speaker 2: think it's going anywhere.
Speaker 4: I mean there's something there.
Speaker 3: Pirate culture is attractive, and I mean there there are
Speaker 3: things about it, you know, the whole kind of marine corps, you.
Speaker 1: Know, improvised, adapt and overcome it.
Speaker 3: It's but like, but what specifically is pirate culture right
Speaker 3: is Like I had someone contact me once getting upset
Speaker 3: with something I said, and he was like, because he's like, listen, man,
Speaker 3: the thing with the hatchet's like after my first firefight,
Speaker 3: my teammates gave me a tomahawk and I was like, dude,
Speaker 3: that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. Like goes
Speaker 1: up on your wall, it's a memento. That's cool, Like
Speaker 1: why not? It's all the other stuff beyond that. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you right now.
Speaker 3: I carried a tomahawk for like two ops, and when
Speaker 3: I realized it was completely because I wanted I want it.
Speaker 4: I wanted a hatchet kill. What can I say?
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna like hit somebody when they're dead, but
Speaker 3: but then when.
Speaker 4: I realized how absolutely unfeasible it is.
Speaker 1: I'm lugging this thing around.
Speaker 4: You've got your primary, you've got your secondary. How on
Speaker 4: the hell am I gonna, you know, pull out a hatchet.
Speaker 1: You know, without somebody shooting me first.
Speaker 4: So you know, it never went on another op.
Speaker 3: But but I mean there's there's I don't know, you
Speaker 3: know where that came from. Was that old Vietnam alert painting,
Speaker 3: you know, And there there's like a tradition or a
Speaker 3: heritage behind it, and it is a tool.
Speaker 1: But I mean, so's a musket. Yeah, Elliott says, what
Speaker 1: is the current status of dev grew in this regard?
Speaker 1: What does Matthew see as the future of dev grew
Speaker 1: after the kind of op tempo that they've seen during
Speaker 1: the Global War on Terror.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. Two years ago, I think
Speaker 2: at the end of the Trump administration, I asked someone
Speaker 2: at the Pentagon what the differences between Delta and Sale
Speaker 2: Team six were on the issue of sort of pivoting
Speaker 2: away from the Global War on Terror and counter terrorism,
Speaker 2: And at that time, the senior official said that Delta
Speaker 2: had done a much better job of shifting away from
Speaker 2: counter terrorism and towards more some of the more traditional
Speaker 2: the sort of genre or operations that they did which
Speaker 2: were not necessarily kinetic, a lot more intelligence gathering and
Speaker 2: collect and things that fit under the realm of unconventional warfare,
Speaker 2: and that Seal Team six had been slow. I don't
Speaker 2: know where that's at today. I think, you know, there
Speaker 2: are fewer places for Seal Team six right now to operate,
Speaker 2: because we're not in Afghanistan, for instance, whereas Delta still
Speaker 2: obviously is Rock Syria, and although there's some seals there,
Speaker 2: it's less there area of operations. So I think that's
Speaker 2: a challenge for Seal Team six is to figure out
Speaker 2: how to go back to, for instance, one of I
Speaker 2: don't think they were very good at, which was being
Speaker 2: part of the counterproliferation efforts against Iran in North Korea.
Speaker 3: Last question here, actually we have some you asked this,
Speaker 3: but we have some that we missed. Yeah, they went
Speaker 3: up and chat, So I've got to shoe Paul asks.
Speaker 1: He says, in your book, you mentioned a child metavact
Speaker 1: to Bagram after a civ cast incident, who was then
Speaker 1: cared for by Jay Sock and Seal Team six. Do
Speaker 1: you know what happened to him.
Speaker 2: He lived, The kid lived. I did know what happened
Speaker 2: to him. It's actually it's a good story, not a
Speaker 2: bad one. I just can't remember whether the child was
Speaker 2: brought out of Afghanistan or eventually transferred. I think he
Speaker 2: actually lived. He was nursed by one of the officers
Speaker 2: in Bogram for the entire deployment, and then it had
Speaker 2: a happy ending. It was not a bad ending. I
Speaker 2: just can't remember.
Speaker 3: And you know, and that's interesting too, because that that
Speaker 3: happened right after Roberts Trodry and and they go on
Speaker 3: this they're gonna do a v I vehicle vehicle interdiction
Speaker 3: and the Air Force bombs these vehicles instead, and the
Speaker 3: seals are upset about that, not because they wanted to
Speaker 3: get their kill on, but because like nobody knew who
Speaker 3: was in these vehicles. And they go down there and
Speaker 3: they find these civilians and you know, there may have been,
Speaker 3: you know, a seal.
Speaker 1: Who you know, did something and you know that it.
Speaker 3: Was questionable, but for the most part, most of these
Speaker 3: seals were like scarned about these civilians.
Speaker 4: And they metivact, the boy who was the child who
Speaker 4: was still on.
Speaker 2: That particular you know that particular incident, and I know
Speaker 2: I've interviewed several people who are on that operation was
Speaker 2: very traumatic for having discovered the scene of coming upon
Speaker 2: in particular women and children who had been hit by
Speaker 2: the shrapnel from one of the bombs that had been
Speaker 2: missiles that had been fired by the Air Force. And
Speaker 2: that was something that was also part of the the
Speaker 2: you call it trauma, but the secondary tertiary effects of
Speaker 2: that first deployment in Afghanistan. There was also, as it happened,
Speaker 2: retribution from Robert's Ridge that came down in terms of
Speaker 2: the officer who was there, one of the officers, and
Speaker 2: in that case it was it's another scenario where you
Speaker 2: had a bunch of seasoned operators being led by a
Speaker 2: naval a cat the officer who had not gone through
Speaker 2: a green team and had been put in charge as
Speaker 2: an officer who had no respect from his men, and
Speaker 2: it was because he wasn't qualified, right, he had been
Speaker 2: a boats guy, and that was that dynamic is like
Speaker 2: playing out through through years and years at Seal Team six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get through the rest of the questions.
Speaker 3: So, first off, David A, thank you very much for
Speaker 3: the two JAVERI. General Stone Nations, Jackson, what was it?
Speaker 3: I don't know if you you know, what is the
Speaker 3: darkest story event that you or Jack.
Speaker 4: Noah that didn't make it into the book.
Speaker 1: And why is there anything?
Speaker 2: Because yes, there's a murder of a child in Afghanistan
Speaker 2: early in the war that while I confirmed that it
Speaker 2: happened and I know who is responsible, I did not
Speaker 2: have enough details to you know, everything in this book
Speaker 2: is it's been fact checked very thoroughly, it's been legally vetted,
Speaker 2: and it has multiple sourcing. This one, although I had
Speaker 2: multiple sources, I didn't have enough of the details, the
Speaker 2: narrative details to justify putting it in. But it was
Speaker 2: an example early in my reporting of describing a very
Speaker 2: talented seal whose Seal Team six has has described me
Speaker 2: had broken because he had done this. They covered it
Speaker 2: up and they moved on, and it was you know,
Speaker 2: enough said, I mean, you know, the murder of a
Speaker 2: child is a difficult one to stomach. So that didn't
Speaker 2: make it in, and you know, I just just assume
Speaker 2: probably it'll never be public.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just real quick, because we talked about fact check,
Speaker 3: there was one tiny little detail in your book, right.
Speaker 2: There was I made an error about Delta and what
Speaker 2: the requirements are. And actually I had someone who for
Speaker 2: you to point it out. Someone else had sent me
Speaker 2: an email I think, I don't remember how it was
Speaker 2: written in the book, but essentially I suggested that you
Speaker 2: don't have to be in the military to join Delta,
Speaker 2: which obviously isn't true. What I really meant was, you
Speaker 2: don't have to be in the army to be drafted
Speaker 2: into Delta, to be selected in and pass the course
Speaker 2: and air is regretful and all my own and suture
Speaker 2: editions will have a fix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anybody who's like going to nitpick that, just
Speaker 3: know that, Like he was just trying to say, you
Speaker 3: didn't have to be in the army, and it didn't
Speaker 3: quite come out that way. So anyway, Jackson, does Delta
Speaker 3: really do a better job policing their own in comparison
Speaker 3: Seal Team of Six given their recent history historically?
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the short answer. Absolutely. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are plenty of things. Maybe my next
Speaker 2: book will be about them.
Speaker 4: How much did pirate culture bleed over into the non
Speaker 4: shooter parts of Seal Team Six, such as Black.
Speaker 2: Squadron, uh, Black Squadron you know, So I intentionally did
Speaker 2: not write about Black Squadron. They had some problems, and
Speaker 2: there are some issues, but there were a lot of
Speaker 2: sensitive programs that I know about that I didn't think reporting.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it was just I couldn't justify reporting
Speaker 2: about them in the sense that the problems there were
Speaker 2: not anywhere near what was going on in the Assault squadrons.
Speaker 2: They have some issues, but those issues I had to
Speaker 2: balance it against exposing some things that were, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty sensitive, and I tried to err on the side
Speaker 2: of you know, this book frankly, it has a lot
Speaker 2: of It has a lot of secrets and a lot
Speaker 2: of dirt, but there's not that much that's actually classified.
Speaker 2: It's not a tell all it's not meant to be
Speaker 2: a tell all right, So, but you know, they have
Speaker 2: some problems, not as much as the Assault squadrons.
Speaker 3: And thank you Connor for that mark, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: How many current and former seals did you interview for
Speaker 3: the book?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's in the book between thirty and
Speaker 2: forty and then you start to but that's not including
Speaker 2: that's not including all of the people who worked with
Speaker 2: Seal Team six and people from Jaysak and other services
Speaker 2: who were on some of the missions or who were there.
Speaker 2: So I think in all, I have to look at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the book, and I can't remember I've
Speaker 2: been interviewing people for ten years off and on, so seals.
Speaker 2: It's probably close to about forty but that that could
Speaker 2: be wrong, could be fifty I have, you know, I
Speaker 2: actually have a list somewhere. Yeah, but it's not on
Speaker 2: the top of my head.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the challenging things with
Speaker 3: your book, right is because a lot of your sources
Speaker 3: are you know, unnamed seal form or former seal and.
Speaker 1: You know, so.
Speaker 3: I mean you've done these people in service of you know,
Speaker 3: listening to them, corroborating their stuff. But also I'm sure
Speaker 3: it's very hard hard for you as a as a
Speaker 3: reporter not to list your sources.
Speaker 2: There is nothing I want more than to have people
Speaker 2: on the record. This area of reporting. It's just not feasible,
Speaker 2: not in our current you know, I don't know that
Speaker 2: it'll ever be feasible, and and I think it's it's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: I think there is honor and anonymity in this kind
Speaker 2: of reporting. And I think that if I could write
Speaker 2: a book or have added to the book the details
Speaker 2: even without names, of where, how my sources came to
Speaker 2: some of this information, what their experiences were at Seal
Speaker 2: Team six, how essentially this book came to be I
Speaker 2: can I can assure you that it would be incredibly
Speaker 2: compelling and far more in that sense, not that I
Speaker 2: think there's anything in my book that's not believable. It's
Speaker 2: I undersell it, but it would be even more compelling
Speaker 2: than what I have, because their stories are you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, if they didn't just have or you know,
Speaker 2: courage to join, to make it, to do well in
Speaker 2: the battlefields and lead men, they had moral courage when
Speaker 2: it mattered, and that I think is you know, unfortunately
Speaker 2: you know too rare, so you know, and obviously in
Speaker 2: that sense I'm biased.
Speaker 4: Jack, And thank you elaborate on Blue Team being more professional.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I said more professional. I think
Speaker 2: there was an element to Blue Team as it was
Speaker 2: described to me historically and culturally, that had some senior
Speaker 2: enlisted guys who were interested in solving the problem, whatever
Speaker 2: the mission was. In the operation where pulling a trigger
Speaker 2: was the option of last resort, they wouldn't hesitate, but
Speaker 2: there was an art they I mean, someone described to
Speaker 2: me a particular incident that happened in Afghanistan where they
Speaker 2: kind of were trying to imagine themselves ninjas, how to
Speaker 2: get in and out of a place silently and make
Speaker 2: someone disappear, not kill them, but make someone disappear, because
Speaker 2: the effect of having grabbed them in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night while no one else who was in the
Speaker 2: compound sleeping was the wiser was more terrifying to wake
Speaker 2: up to to have someone who disappeared than to find
Speaker 2: you know, their their comrade or their family member killed.
Speaker 2: And so that's sort of what I.
Speaker 3: Meant, you know, one of the things that and I
Speaker 3: don't mean to we have a couple more questions, but
Speaker 3: one of the things that was really interesting to me
Speaker 3: is how some of the seals felt that when the
Speaker 3: policy became doing call outs that that was like sort
Speaker 3: of a chicken shit way of doing it, because you know,
Speaker 3: it was, you know, to protect the women's children.
Speaker 4: Why would we give up that advantage?
Speaker 3: And that's not why callouts started though, because you know,
Speaker 3: so many people were taking casualties from doing this hostage
Speaker 3: rescue technique on a target where there were no hostages
Speaker 3: that it was safer for the troops to do call out.
Speaker 3: You know, it became because then you do a call out,
Speaker 3: if they start shooting, you can pull off and just
Speaker 3: bomb the target. You don't have to run into a building.
Speaker 3: But it was interesting that it was the series interpreted,
Speaker 3: it was the Seals interpretation.
Speaker 1: It was it was a sea squadron that got really
Speaker 1: chewed up I think in like two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: and they started using that.
Speaker 3: And the Rangers started doing it, and yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and it just became the standard because it was it
Speaker 3: was dumb to run into a building. They would barricade
Speaker 3: against CQB, you know, where they understood the tactic and
Speaker 3: we're ready for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, Paul, thank you.
Speaker 3: You spent quite a bit of a lot of the
Speaker 3: time on the book with Dwayne Dieter and we didn't
Speaker 3: get to that at all, but it was great content.
Speaker 1: What drew you to his story?
Speaker 3: And do you think dropping CQD had an impact on
Speaker 3: dev Group's problem?
Speaker 2: H Yes, I think it's very clear. I make the
Speaker 2: the book makes the inference that by dropping Deeter and
Speaker 2: when they did their ethical lapses and problems. Rose let
Speaker 2: me make a caveat here that there is I've always
Speaker 2: known that there is another civil war inside the teams
Speaker 2: between Deeterer's CQD and non deeterer Offen MMA. And I
Speaker 2: am not a expert in tactics by any reason, by
Speaker 2: any measure, and I don't try to be. What became
Speaker 2: clear early on for me was Deeter had a list.
Speaker 2: He keeps meticulous records of every training he's ever done.
Speaker 2: Deeterer had a list, and he was so involved with
Speaker 2: these guys at Seal Team six early on that he
Speaker 2: had a list of problem Seals in his training, Guys
Speaker 2: who when they did the hood and the Hood came off.
Speaker 2: Even though they were supposedly the best wrestlers, they were
Speaker 2: flailing and they would fail. And almost actually frequently the
Speaker 2: most aggressive are the ones that the worst in the
Speaker 2: initial hood drill. What he had was a list of
Speaker 2: all the Seals who had issues in his training, ethical problems,
Speaker 2: signs that there was something off ethically, morally okay, problems
Speaker 2: with the dial up and dial down. Right, it happened,
Speaker 2: and this is true story was almost an identical list
Speaker 2: of everyone after three years of reporting that my sources
Speaker 2: had identified were some of the worst in committing war
Speaker 2: crimes or abetting them. And you know, I'm not a psychologist,
Speaker 2: and I'm not even an expert at the time, but
Speaker 2: I just don't think that's coincidence. I think it was
Speaker 2: very clear that there was some connection to be drawn
Speaker 2: between a list of problems in this system and a
Speaker 2: list of problems on the battlefield and culturally. And then
Speaker 2: as I reported more and more, what became clear was
Speaker 2: no disputes how good the hood is right sense, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's not a you know, I mean Matt Bisonette takes
Speaker 2: an entire chapter of his book where he refuses to
Speaker 2: name what it is or who did it, but talks
Speaker 2: about the power of the hood right. So Deeter was
Speaker 2: doing something right. And the fact that he was pushed out, now,
Speaker 2: you know, I know what some of the criticism is
Speaker 2: about why they targeted getting rid of CQD and Deeter,
Speaker 2: which was that they felt that he was doing too
Speaker 2: much and trying to adapt his stuff into everything, and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of pushback against that. But the
Speaker 2: reporting shows that there was an interest to commercialize and
Speaker 2: brand training outside of dam Neck and the Seal and
Speaker 2: the Seal Command to make it profitable and Deeterer wouldn't
Speaker 2: go along with right and that was a problem, and
Speaker 2: so they removed him. And I think that there is
Speaker 2: had they kept it, yeah, the would have been fewer problems.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I'm more in full ked, I'd rather
Speaker 3: do a muscle strike than a double a takedown.
Speaker 4: YEA, all right, let's see here, I think, let's see.
Speaker 1: Let me just make sure, Matthew, I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: what's been the reception to this book so far? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the book that a lot of people, I
Speaker 1: think in this country don't really want to hear about
Speaker 1: or read about. The Navy certainly doesn't want you reading it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's been mixed. I mean, you know, first
Speaker 2: of all, it came out a few days before Putin
Speaker 2: decided to invade Ukraine, so unfortunately there's been a more
Speaker 2: significant and obviously more urgent story. And the reception has
Speaker 2: been good in the sense that I have gotten calls
Speaker 2: from people on Twitter, dms for people who have read it,
Speaker 2: who are in the seals, who are in the Navy,
Speaker 2: who thanked me for writing it. And frankly, that's the
Speaker 2: most satisfying I got. Someone who was obviously I'm not
Speaker 2: going to name them, but someone who had been a
Speaker 2: jag for NSW who for a significant amount of time,
Speaker 2: who reached out to thank me for it and say
Speaker 2: that that everything in there had rung true from his
Speaker 2: experience dealing with some of the officers. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think that this is a book that will take
Speaker 2: a little bit of time, uh to dies. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that I occurred to
Speaker 2: me when I first started writing it is that there
Speaker 2: is no there had been no prior to Code over
Speaker 2: Country history of Seal Team six or even the Seals
Speaker 2: really that had not been written by either someone from
Speaker 2: the seal community or someone who was a fan of
Speaker 2: the seal community. It was mostly hagiography. And so in
Speaker 2: that sense, Code over Country happens to be in many
Speaker 2: ways the most objective and certainly the most journalistic history
Speaker 2: of Seal Team six. And I think you know that
Speaker 2: there's there's a long life for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's let's say these people during side I just
Speaker 3: want to get to there. We didn't ask Elliott said, we, uh,
Speaker 3: what is the current status of dev group?
Speaker 1: We did?
Speaker 4: Okay, sorry about that, Carlos, thank you.
Speaker 1: Follow up.
Speaker 3: That's why I asked he was asked he's a guy
Speaker 3: who asked about the Roe. Guys in chats seem to
Speaker 3: think it's okay to ignore Roe standards professional.
Speaker 4: Look.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's easy to like say, you know that
Speaker 3: these guys are on the cutting edge of combat and
Speaker 3: they're in ward they have to be warriors, and there there,
Speaker 3: there is that, But there's a huge dividing line between
Speaker 3: taking the fight to the enemy, you know, lay in
Speaker 3: the hate and and doing things that are psychologically damage
Speaker 3: to yourself and and just not in a cording wad.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also the other thing is it's not just
Speaker 2: we're not talking about ROE s really talking about when
Speaker 2: when something goes wrong, though. The other thing is their
Speaker 2: instinct is to cover it up, right, And there's nothing
Speaker 2: honorable in that. There's nothing just in that scenario, and
Speaker 2: and there's no internal accountability for it. So that's really
Speaker 2: you know, a bigger issue. And that's why to your
Speaker 2: point about what happened with the Chapman incident, is that
Speaker 2: what is you know, let's forget about what happened at
Speaker 2: the top of the mountain right for a second, and
Speaker 2: let's just go to what happens when their image or
Speaker 2: their story is threatened, right they turn.
Speaker 4: And the thing is it wasn't even actively. They weren't
Speaker 4: even actively the.
Speaker 3: Air Force agreed to award of the Metal Honor just
Speaker 3: for what happened in at Bunker one. To not even
Speaker 3: talk about that he got up back up.
Speaker 2: After No, no, no, that's not that's not true. That the
Speaker 2: Air Force always had. There are two parts of the
Speaker 2: award and two citations, two full citations. The agreement became
Speaker 2: to make this second citation, which is for the after
Speaker 2: getting back up and fighting for an hour, that became classified.
Speaker 2: And that was a political decision. You make it classified
Speaker 2: so that the public doesn't have to hear that one
Speaker 2: guy got an award for one part the seal, but
Speaker 2: you know, mistakenly left another guy behind and then that
Speaker 2: guy got back up and fought for another hour on
Speaker 2: his own. So that was too embarrassing. So that was
Speaker 2: a political decision. But what they what they but I
Speaker 2: want to correct you about something. What they did was
Speaker 2: they actively went in and changed their story and misled
Speaker 2: some of the senior officials of the Pentagon about what
Speaker 2: had happened on there. And they they and you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things I'm most proud of in the
Speaker 2: reporting of this book is that I was able to
Speaker 2: get a transcript and the recordings of a long interview
Speaker 2: that Slabinsky did for a book in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: most of which was never published, and he lays out
Speaker 2: in great detail what happened up there as he remembered.
Speaker 2: It was consistent with all the things he had said previously,
Speaker 2: was the story that he stuck to all the way
Speaker 2: until the moment in which he was confronted with the
Speaker 2: new video and the updated imagery, and then the story changes.
Speaker 2: And that's the issue, right, It's the it's the lie, right,
Speaker 2: it's the it's the the untruth, it's the misstatements.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's where you get to the heart of the problem.
Speaker 2: And that's the code, you know.
Speaker 1: So that was the.
Speaker 3: Any other nations have these issues, We've seen this with
Speaker 3: the Aussies, anybody else.
Speaker 2: I think every country and every military force that's ever
Speaker 2: fought in war has these issues. And I think actually
Speaker 2: probably true that America historically that are continue to evolve
Speaker 2: in the in the good way, which is less and
Speaker 2: less and fewer and fewer. Unfortunately, it's that what you
Speaker 2: really don't want to see is if this is being
Speaker 2: done by privates in the army, young marines, you know,
Speaker 2: E three, Z four, Z fives, there is to some
Speaker 2: extent it's understandable, don't acceptable when you have this level
Speaker 2: of skill of training to veer off into the illegal
Speaker 2: them morally unethical. It's much worse. And that's why the
Speaker 2: officers have to be held accountable.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things that's struck me about
Speaker 3: the whole mulgar thing is you're not talking about a
Speaker 3: couple of nineteen year olds it like got drunk. You're
Speaker 3: talking about an E six and seven, right, you know, Carlos,
Speaker 3: Thank you. Another question. One other argument that's out there
Speaker 3: and in this chat is the enemy does worst our
Speaker 3: guys to city, so we should respond accordingly. Valid argument,
Speaker 3: valid argument. Question mark, FYI not trying to drop money
Speaker 3: to roast someone. I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this entire episode answers that question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't think there's any Look, if war
Speaker 2: crimes are human, and they are, it's understandable. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it's justifiable. And there is a difference between I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, and the next question is is if it's
Speaker 2: okay to chop a guy's head off after you kill them,
Speaker 2: or chop his head off? What what isn't okay?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 2: I mean that the the there's a reason why there
Speaker 2: are lying.
Speaker 3: If they if they sexually assault a female soldiers, does
Speaker 3: that mean we can go in their village like it?
Speaker 1: Kill them?
Speaker 4: Like kill them?
Speaker 1: They're bad guys? Kill them? But what more do you
Speaker 1: need to do after that? Brandon?
Speaker 4: Thank you? Brian? Sorry guys, Brian Ron spears, Band of
Speaker 4: brother fame.
Speaker 3: How to decorate a career in people want to remember
Speaker 3: for what he never wanted to remember, for what he
Speaker 3: never wanted to brag about.
Speaker 1: I was talking about one of the guys was accused
Speaker 1: of war crimes, executing German POWs during the war. It's
Speaker 1: in the Band of Brothers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean, what do you do with when
Speaker 4: you're out?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: One hundred miles from so. The book is Code over
Speaker 1: Country by Matthew Cole. Matthew, what's next for you? Are
Speaker 1: you doing anything like a book tour with the book?
Speaker 1: Do you have anything else you're working on? What can
Speaker 1: we expect?
Speaker 2: We can expect you can expect I've got a story
Speaker 2: coming for the Intercept where I'm an investigative reporter about
Speaker 2: the Seals. A scandal, small scandal, but a scandal. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: I think I'm now going to do some tours. I
Speaker 2: think when we first book first came out, Omicron had
Speaker 2: still the mandates were all around. I think there's a
Speaker 2: more little more freedom. So I hope to and I
Speaker 2: have another investigation going on that may or may not
Speaker 2: turn out to be a book, but I can't, unfortunately
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 4: Sure well, I hope that we're some of the first
Speaker 4: people you do tell about.
Speaker 2: I will be, I will be. I'm very grateful for
Speaker 2: being on.
Speaker 1: Guys can go pick up the book. It's ebook, it's
Speaker 1: on Amazon, it's wherever you guys.
Speaker 2: Shop audio, ebook, hardcover, and.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more in here that we didn't cover up.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of great content there. And again this
Speaker 3: isn't to hate on seals and say that seals are
Speaker 3: horrible human beings. This is just to show a problem
Speaker 3: in that community. It really has to do with the leader.
Speaker 2: Seals are not horrible human beings. There's an enormous amount
Speaker 2: of honorable men who serve as seals, many of whom
Speaker 2: frankly were sources for this book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even even Silenski, even though we talked about
Speaker 3: and change the problem, what he did was very courageous,
Speaker 3: you know, going up there, going up again to.
Speaker 1: Try to get Robert. You know, absolutely like you know it.
Speaker 3: It's hard in these types of situations to look at
Speaker 3: a person and judging by one action, because there's so
Speaker 3: much more than it goes into it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely know. I think that one of the things I
Speaker 2: thought as I was writing about this is that in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, this is a book about good
Speaker 2: men doing bad things. Yeah, and it's hard for people
Speaker 2: to balance or conceive of the idea that good men
Speaker 2: do bad things, bad men do good things. And that's
Speaker 2: a tough you know, when they're mixed in, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2: It doesn't fit neatly in this you know, a black
Speaker 2: and white world where everything is easy to identify what's
Speaker 2: good and what's bad. You know, this is a book
Speaker 2: about the Grays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so guys, don't be afraid of the book.
Speaker 1: Out of one hundred and thirty six episodes we've done
Speaker 1: on this show, every once in a while there's one,
Speaker 1: what the one that they even phillips that's like not
Speaker 1: so cool, you know, but it's important to have these
Speaker 1: kinds of conversations and I hope we can keep having them.
Speaker 1: Next Friday, we're going to have a woman on the
Speaker 1: show who served with the Cultural Support Teams and so
Speaker 1: she's the first CST we've had on the show. So
Speaker 1: looking forward to talking to her. And you guys, got
Speaker 1: anything else? No, I'm really happy you have the intercept.
Speaker 4: Where else can they find you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The intercept. I'm an investigative reporter. You google me. I'm
Speaker 2: on Twitter. I don't tweet much, but you can find
Speaker 2: me there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Make sure you subscribe to the channel if you
Speaker 1: haven't already joined our Patreon check the links down the
Speaker 1: description by the book. Buy the book, check out the description,
Speaker 1: check out code over con