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

War on Terror and a lot of things that have happened. Essentially, this is a book, I think, really about subculture, subculture and special operations and where it comes off the rails, and we're gonna really take a deep dive on this subject and on Matthew's book tonight. Just a little heads up, we are going to talk about some graphic content here tonight, war crimes, sexual assault, Like, there's some pretty grizzly stuff in here. Just a heads up, some of you are

sensitive to that kind of stuff. Is that a trigger on? That's a trigger warning, man, because people are going to be big triggered in the live chat today, so you know it's coming. So Matthew, if you could just start off telling us a little bit about yourself and kind of what was your entryway into journalism, and then eventually

covering a really specific type of journalism. You know, we've had some people on here, Sean Naylar and Jessica Donatti and David Phillips, like there's but there's not many of us, right, you can count them on, you know, two hands, two and a half hands, people who cover special operations in Jaysock. What was kind of your path into journalism and then winding up in a very specific field.

back over after both buildings had come down. Nine to eleven focused what I was interested in journalism, and almost immediately I was particularly drawn to understanding what had gone on in Afghanistan, and so after graduate school, I really just tried to figure out how as a basically as a freelance reporter how to get myself to Afghanistan. And more importantly, I always felt that when I was watching news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that

I don't know what the sense was. There was something missing to me. It was very cookie cutter, which isn't to denigrate the reporters on the ground who were doing in some cases a very good job under difficult circumstances. But at that time, you know, it was all embeds, and so there was a limitation on the kind of

story that you could do. And so I decided to go to Pakistan on my own, you know, in two thousand and five, and do a reporting trip up in northwest Pakistan, which at the time, although it wasn't the FATSA,

it was it was dicey. And when I was there, I was very close to the Afghan border Neuristan, and I went as it happened, I think I landed in Pakistan probably a week after the lone survivor incident had occurred in Afghanistan, and I was at that time reporting more about the CIA, and I was really struck by the notion I was talking to people who lived in this valley that was near Afghanistan, and I asked, would ask them, you know, did they have any signs or

indications that there was a war going on, you know about an eight hour walk away over the mountains, And they said, no, you know, there's very little as different. You know, there's some people who come through, and you know, there's some white guys, there's some Taliban guys that come through, but you know that don't bother us, and we don't see much difference, and they certainly don't hear or see

anything in the sky. And I thought I was really interested in the notion that there was this sort of invisible line at the border that differentiated one side from the other, and that there was this war going on. And so I ended up embedding a little less than a year later in Afghanistan and went up to Kunar and Nuristan. And at that time I was reporting mostly on the CIA, but I started doing more military coverage or reporting. But you know, abroad, and you know, you

sort of do one piece at a time. I think I've probably always just followed whatever subject I thought was interesting or question I had about something, And I think I've always looked for trying to understand what are we

not seeing here? What is the public not seeing? And so you know, I went I covered the CIA pretty extensively for you know, about ten years, and as towards two thousand and nine, I was an investigative producer at ABC News and I started getting interested in Jaysock and Blackwater,

and so I started pulling that thread. And about two years into reporting on Blackwater, Eric Prince and Jaysock, I was working on something about Stanley McCrystal at the time, and I, you know, someone showed up at my door, so to speak, who mentioned hatchets and Seal Team six. And to be honest with you, at that time, I didn't really know anything about Seal Team six. I mean, I knew they existed, but I had no knowledge whatsoever of their culture and or where they fit into the

world of Jaysock. And you know, but basically I had someone saying, look, if you really want to find something troubling, you got to look into why guys in my unit or carrying hatchets on the battlefield. And that was the beginning. That was the start. It was not a direct path. It was a lot of zigging and zagging as I was working on other things. But you know, the more I worked on it, the more I found that that there was was bigger than just a story of hatchets.

And you know, I think I probably this book is is ultimately a reflection and the result of how I go into a subject or a topic, which is I just want to know everything that's happened, and I really want to know everything. I like to think of it as in three dimensions, you know, which is the good,

the bad, and the ugly. And the more I learned, the more I could see, well, the good has been told over and over, and it's been told very effectively this Navy Seals in general, Seal Team six in particular. But the story had a bunch of key omissions to it, and those emissions were enough to you know, really change our understanding and what the public should know and understand about, you know, what the unit had become, especially after nine to eleven.

I knew. I can tell you where I was at each major terrorist attack from ninety three until two thousand and one, and after the Embassy bombings in ninety eight. Although I couldn't remember his name, when when I watched the second plane hit the second tower on nine to eleven, I knew who it was. I couldn't remember his name. I didn't Al Kaita didn't mean anything to me, but

I could. I actually remembered his face and what with that, you know, it was very common image at that time, with more of a white turban, a little more looking a little more Saudi than he was looking, you know, like he was living in Afghanistan. And you know, so I had an interest, right so after nine to eleven, I had even more of an interest to understand what had happened, How did it come to this? What had occurred? I mean you know, there was nothing, nothing special about that.

I think there were a lot of Americans that felt that way, and so I was interested in the CIA. I was I was when I was in graduate school. I was already a huge fan of Seymour Hirsch at the New Yorker, and I was just reading everything that I could to help me make sense of what world, how the world had just changed, at least from the American perspective. And I started reading every book written by someone from the CIA. That was what I did. And one of the first that I read at the time

was was Bob Behar's book. And so what I did was I was a journal you know, a student journalist. I found a way. It took me a long time, actually, but I eventually got Bob Behar on the phone and I said, I'm a journalist and I want to figure out how to find people like you and get people like you to talk. And he gave me a few pointers and it, you know, it was nothing mind blowing, but it was enough to sort of give me a

sense of what I did. And then at that time, you know, the first three years or so after nine to eleven and the invasion in Afghanistan, a lot of the guys who were in the CAA were writing books, and he had Gary schron and he had Gary Bernston, and so there were I could read the books and then I'd find you know, I'd find them, I'd reach out and I would start to to you know, report basically,

and that's all it was. It was not, you know, it was just a question of talking to talking to people in that community and trying to understand the difference between what they were saying, what I thought I was seeing, and then what the public was seeing. And there was always a difference, and you know, sometimes it was because the government was actively lying. Sometimes it was because it's just really hard to you know, work on these kind of stories and it's not easy with a daily deadline,

you know. So you know, that was that was how I did it. It wasn't It certainly was not anything special at all.

faction within the Seal community. And I think the story about Ensign Penny really tells how dark that really got.

And you know, let's lay out here for a second that historically, the combat Swimmers and the UDT the Frogmen as they were known in World War Two, had a tradition and a subculture completely outside of the regular Navy even then, and a lot of what we know today of the Seals you can see in what was going on in nineteen forty three movies, Hollywood films in nineteen fifty one. They had their own chant and song, which you know, made it very clear that they were, you know,

crazy motherfuckers. They were the craziest bastards in the Navy. The toughest and so there are there are it's like in their DNA, right, there's there's something to them. And they're a really small unit. Right, We're not talking about the history of the eighty second Airborne or parts of the Army. They're a separate from the Navy and very specialized, which means that whatever cultural issues they have, they're were concentrated.

And one of the stories that I had heard over the years was an incident about a young insigdnt an officer who had just graduated from BUDS in the late seventies, who was essentially pushed to his suicide after being hazed shortly after getting out of graduating from BUDS. And it was one of those stories where you know, everyone had everyone had heard something. Oh, I know that story. I heard that story, and then you start to ask, No one knew anything, right, and it was all over the place.

But I had a couple of sources who said, no, it's real, it happened, And you know, initially it took took me a couple of months just to figure out what the victim's name was, and it was INSIGT Ralph Stanley Penny, who had been a Air Force Academy graduate.

He had his own really fascinating story, which was that his father was a colonel and a pilot in the Air Force who had fought flown a ton of missions in Vietnam and was a decorated war hero, and his son wanted, who had the same name, wanted to do as his dad did and become a pilot. But he had terrible vision, and so by the time he got through part of the Air Force Academy, it became clear that he couldn't really be He was never going to fly, and so he chose instead to join the Navy to

get into butts and become a seal. At that time there, you know, it was you could go into udt or end up as a seal. So he just wanted to be a frogman and his father and his mother and father, according to his sister who survived him, were very against him going. They were religious. The father's experience in Vietnam with the seals was that they were drinkers and killers, and he didn't want that for his boy, and they

basically it was not allowed to be talked about. When it became clear that Insiant Penny was going to sign up and go to buts, and so you know, as I was digging, I realized there was a It wasn't just something bad at the end of the story. There was really something interesting and sad and compelling about what

had happened to him. It took a while, but ultimately, you know what what occurred was that he joined He joined his team was UDT twenty one on the East Coast a little bit early because he had done it, because he had been in the Air Force, he had already done his jumps, he was already certified as a as a skydiver, so he got to go early while the rest of his buds class went to Fort Benning to do their their courses there and get their their certification.

And the officers there decided, since he was going to be uh checking in soon, that they would send him on a training evolution early with a platoon. And it

was not going to be the platoon that he was going to join, but he was gonna he'd get his get a little bit of experience. So he was given to a platoon who was led by then a Lieutenant

Joseph McGuire. We can get into him later, and they go down to Saint they go down to Vieches where there was a Seals had of training station and on a Liberty weekend, and he goes with a East six or an East seven who was a Vietnam veteran named Eddie Leisure Fast Eddie Leisure, it was a considered one of the best, you know, best operators in the Seals during Vietnam, was highly regarded and he had become he'd gone, he sort of moved around, but he didn't want to

become a chief. So he must have been an E six because he had refused. I talked to some people who had who had served with him and knew him, and he had actively avoided becoming a chief because he didn't want to be in charge. He didn't want to do any paperwork. So he did some training, dive training

and Liberty weekend. He takes Penny to Saint Thomas. And Saint Thomas during the fifties and sixties had been the winter home of the East Coast Seals and UDT and had a was a you know, a long tradition in the Seals of going to Saint Thomas, whether you were on training or later in Viekas and traveling or in Liberty and getting drunk for the weekend, as all good sailors and servicemen do when they have R and R

or time off. But Saint Thomas was had a very liberal social dynamic and community at the time, and a very open gay community at the time, and so there was a tradition in the Seals with frogmen when they were out drinking, when they ran out of money, the youngest guy in the team was they would get him drunk and they would then sell him off to one of the gay men at the bars for money so

that the rest of the team could drink. And so as it was described to me, you know, it was they didn't do it every time, and they didn't do it to everyone, but it was frequent. It was very much frequent, and it was part of the hazing culture, and it was very much don't ask, don't tell what

happened the next day. So fast forward in nineteen seventy nine, Penny goes with Eddie Leisure and they go out for a night on the town and Leisure gets him drunk and over the course of the night, they're at a bar at that time, and you'll forgive some of these awful terms I'm just using the language that was common then, as it was described to me by my sources down there, they had, you know, essentially transgender men dressed as women. They were known as benny boys in the Seals and

Saint Thomas at the time. And so Penny was at the bar. He was getting progressively drunk. He was drinking with a benny boy and wasn't clear. Eventually he became so blackout drunk it was clear that he didn't know that this was a man. Nonetheless, he went back to the hotel and Leisure basically came back to the room and found him let him be. Came back the next morning to get a penny and basically said, you know,

you slept with a man. And when he got they got back to Viekez, Leisure told the rest of the platoon the quote was that we sold him to a fag, which was you know, I want to point out here for people who uh made by the book that in the penny section, I have a quote from an officer, retired Seal officer, who describes this older tradition in Saint Thomas. And that quote actually was an on the record quote

of Dick Marsenko. I didn't put his name in because he doesn't come into the book till later, and I didn't want to confuse it. But with him passed on and under the circumstances, he described in great detail what they did and how they did it. And it was confirmed by others who who served with Leisure and with with Marsinko. So Penny was apparently very very distraught. And let's just also say that, you know, Eddie Leisure is

now dead. He died a few years later. We will probably never know what happened that evening the the it's virtually unknowable. What is absolutely the case is whatever did or did not happen when instant Penny woke up the next day and came out, he was told, who had had no memory because he was blacked out, that he had slept with a man, and he was unbelievably upset.

And what became clear is he came back. The whole team was told, the whole platoon was told, and then Penny, on the way flight back to Virginia Beach, was very distraught and and made a statement on the plane that this stuff was not going to stand, that he was gonna he was gonna do something about it. He was very agitated, is the point they got back the week

before Memorial Day. A few days before Memorial Day, uh Ensign Penny goes and buys a twenty two caliber pistol in Virginia, and a few days later he uh shoots himself in the head. It was a small caliber bullet. The death was very messy and awful, actually, and later

that became a running joke. Also at Little Creek, one of the seals in his unit described a you know they would have after he had died, getting on the the mic for the for the for the whole Little Creek and saying something along the lines of insig insant, penny ins and Penny, You're wanted in the armory to clean your weapon. Joke being that you know, he had failed to clean his weapon and so it had misfired on him and uh not not killed a himself properly basically.

And you know, the Navy did an investigation very quickly. They determined Their results were that he was depressed and he had taken his life because he was depressed. There was no mention of Saint Thomas, there was no mention of Eddie Leisure, there was nothing about what had occurred, and so and and when the father, Penny's father, came with the mother, he confronted the officers and the commander at the base and said, this is this story doesn't make any sense. I know you killed him. My boy

wasn't depressed, you know, they said he was. You know, they didn't challenge him. They thought he was inconsolable and and just said we're sorry. You know your your son was unhappy and he took his own life. So in some Penny's surviving mother, father, and sisters, sister Rebecca, they knew always that there was something wrong with the They felt, according to his sister Rebecca, that he must have been murdered because the story didn't make any sense. He was

not murdered. There's no evidence that that was the case. But it was a obviously for the family, incredibly traumatic. They never they never got over it, and it was a long buried secret, and the question had always been what did Lieutenant Joseph Maguire, who later became Commander of warcom No. When I first brought it to him, it was I know nothing about this is the first I've

ever heard about it. But his spokesperson did call me and say you know, but we do have the forty year old NIS Report and I Report, which by the way, has been destroyed because it's over twenty five years old.

They just happened to have it handy and point out that there's no mention of Saint Thomas, and there's no mention of you know, a Vietnam veteran seal except that, you know, according to the spokesperson, maguire knew that he had gone on Liberty with another another seal opera, you know, another veteran frogment, which is kind of an interesting thing to know if you didn't know anything about Saint Thomas, right and you know, so the question is more not

whether then Lieutenant Joe maguire knew, The question is how could he have not known in a seal platoon when the rest of the platoon in vis knew immediately afterwards, you know. So it's it's I don't want to call it exactly an origin story, but you sort of get every part of this culture of cover up and pushing people to the edge.

like why and and why is why this book? And why about seals when there are you know, like there have been crimes and issues and things like that with other units, Like what what drew you to to the seals in particular?

it's not about drinkers and killers. He was a religious guy, like he dropped bombs on people, And what's the difference between the guy with a knife and a guy who drops a you know, a five hundred pound bomb on a village. In that sense, it was I think more

interesting to me. And obviously we can't know both parents are dead, and it's we're talking about someone in psychology, so it's not This is not reporting, per se, but from as a as a journalist, but also as a as a father, as a you know, as a human. I took those words to really mean that on some level there was a sense that he knew that this kid and his son was not up for the rough and tumble nature of what this community was.

cultural side, the books, the movies, the podcast. The story is one that's very unambivalent, right. Seals and Seal Team six are heroes who can do no wrong. They are the best leaders, they are the best everything. It's a it's an image that they promote most. I mean the you know, the Seals drive the biggest recruiting and recruitment

for the Navy. Okay, so there's a bigger picture here than just a bunch of seal operators who want to make a little money in there in their post military career, pushing how great they are and what they can contribute to society, of which I have no problem with whatsoever. My issue is, and I think journalistically and as an investigative reporter, the question is is that we have this story,

this this very clear story, but is it true? And you know, one of the things that I thought of when I was thinking about whether I should do a book was you can have flag of your fathers forty years after the fact, or you can have flag of

your fathers now. And my sources were coming to me from inside the sealed community to say, look, we're losing a battle against guys who are the worst of our community, who have done some of the worst things both you know, morally ethically, but just you know, operationally, and they're the ones who are getting ahead, mostly in public but also inside.

And that is, you know, from their perspective, unconscionable. It's the opposite of what we're we should be doing right the military, like anywhere else in our society is supposed to bet you know, they's supposed to be a meritocracy.

Now we can debate whether it is in fact that everyone I think can experience, you know, can relate to the experience in the corporate world of watching people fail upward, right, And I think that in a lot of ways, Code over Country is a case study and failed leadership, and that's really where the you know, one of the things that I've always been made myself clear to do is to really name the officers involved, not the enlisted or senior enlisted, yes, but not the the younger enlisted, because

it's not their responsibility.

has some truth to it. And so you know, as an investigative reporter, you know, if someone I mean, I want to jump ahead for a second, but you know, you take a story, take two stories like Matt Bissonette and Rob O'Neil, right, and if they don't write books about what they did and what they were involved in, I'm not going to spend any time time as an investigative reporter going into what the story is or isn't, right, I mean, unless it's not about them, I don't care.

at some point writing this book where I realized that what the public doesn't get when they get virtually any news story about a military event, they have no context, right, I mean none, because very few Americans have been to war, right, very few Americans have put on a uniform. Right, That's an issue. And so going back twenty years after, you know.

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Seal Team six. But what people don't un fully appreciate is that when you have a unit this elite, whatever they do eventually trickles down into the white side of

the seals. And so that's how you get Eddie Gallagher, right, That's where you get where it's like, you know, to be expected kind of that eventually you're going to have you know, someone said to me when I was interviewing former seal and member of Seal Team six about Eddie Leisure, and they said, you know, after Vietnam, we had twenty or thirty Eddie leisures in the teams and later, you know,

not later, actually prior to that. When I interviewed someone during the Gallagher during the court martial, it was you know, we have twenty year thirty Eddie Gallaghers and the teams. There's nothing special about them in that sense. What was special was that there were a bunch of kids who came and decided that you know, they would put their careers in jeopardy to try to stop them, right, So you know that's the that's the motivation.

won't deal with it. I mean, the reason why this book exists is because they couldn't clean up their own shop, period, right. And I think you know, we were talking a little bit about this before we went on. Delta had some of the same problems. Early in the war. They had war crimes issues, they were very aggressive. They lost a lot of guys. They were not asking questions. There was not a whole lot of supervision. Rock was a mess, was you know, as you know, you both know very

well battlefield that was just chock full of targets. The guys who were committing wanton acts of desecration, mutilations, war crimes in Delta were all quietly let go afterwards. They weren't brought up on charges. There was no court martial, there's no UCMJ. They were when the deployment was over. They were given time to sort of process through and then they were just asked to leave and there was no there was no answer or explanation. That is something

that you know. They they took care of their virus is the you know they had an illness. They policed their own because because the integrity of the unit was always greater than any individual member of the unit. And that is a cultural issue. And I'm not an expert on Delta. I ask everyone that I talked to, especially in Delta and in the Seals, what's the difference between you guys. And I don't just mean how you hold your guns or how you you know, attack a target.

What are the could issues And that is the biggest one that there are. There's a standard, it has to be met every day, and at Team six, historically it is the opposite. Once you're in, the standards are relaxed. And there's also this team issue. The seals make it through budgs. You become a Seal by working as a Team six in a boat, right, and that concept is what gets you through, and that creates an incredibly intense bond, one that I think is often the envy of other units. They're,

you know, really to close knit. The problem is is that when things go bad, you never want to see your buddy kicked out or screwed over, right, So that the instinct is fix, Yeah, let's fix this in house, keep it in house. And that's what Marsinco did when he set up Seal Team six, and he said so explicitly.

Team six from Red Team, went in by helicopter. One of the seal one of the operators, Neil Roberts, fell out the back of the helicopter after the helicopter was hit by enemy fire at the top of the mountain. They then the helicopter recovered Eventually the team. The surviving team went back in looking for him. That led to the in another ambush and extended firefight with some Alkaido fighters was a very entrenched position. Neil Roberts was killed

pretty quickly. The Seals didn't know that but he was killed pretty quickly, and then the combat controlman who was the CCT attached to the Red Team, John Chapman, was struck. The two other seals in the in the group were hit. They blew smoke and retreated to save the remaining guys. Chapman was left believed to be dead. Turns out he was not dead. He was He later covered from his wounds and fought alone at the top of the mountain for about an hour before a QRF comes in with rangers,

primarily another somewhere. I think there's a total of seven who died that day. There was another five. They were not all rangers, four rangers I think in another air force, maybe a PJ who was killed on the on the mountain. Ultimately, they they got the the the Americans won, took control of the mountain, but they lost seven servicemen. As I said,

the first member of Seal Team six. In the aftermath of Roberts Ridge, the seals discovered that Neil Roberts had been mutilated and that the enemy they in fact had been seen on the ISR coverage as it was happening in certain places. One of the guys that the enemy had tried to cut off his head and almost did, but it failed. And when his body is brought back to Bogram and this I didn't know until I did the book, and I actually I ask you guys whether this was normal. I was told that this was very

unusual and not normal. They basically had most of his teammates, almost all of them, come in and view the body in that condition, and that there was a law. And I actually talked to some people who were there when it was happening, and there was a long line waiting. Needless to say, it was a very traumatic event. They had lost their first teammate, Chapman died. There's a you know, a secondary scandal and issue with Chapman that we can get into later. But the suffice to say what happens

here is sort of two things. Seal Team six, for the first time in their history, is in real war and combat. Right. The reality is is that until nine to eleven in Jaysack and when Special Operations Seal Team six was JV to Delta, it just was they never got the they never got picked for the missions. They finally broke through in Bosnia with with one of the snatches, and so they started get to pick up steam, but

they were never the first choice. Now they were at war and Seal Team six is on the front lines and they get they face get faced with a horrific situation in which, you know, their team leader, Britz Slavinski, is essentially ordered to go up to the top of of a of a mountain and violating all the basic principles of reconnaissance against his own recommendation to his officers.

And I just want to stop here and say that one of the things that is most interesting I think about understanding the culture, and you know, I think that's obviously true. It dealt as well. But Seal Team six, Dick Marsenko built the unit so that the officers command, but the senior enlisted lead. And so when Slabinsky says, I need twenty four hours more and he is told basically shut up and gets to the top, he's following

his orders. And so it's not you know, it is not his responsibility that they were sent up there, but it's also the capitulation from the E seven or the E eight, who definitely knew better than the two men who were ordering him up there, right, he knew better. And it's something that he said, you know, in the interviews that I published, he talks about he knew he was violating this this this cardinal you know, this basic rule of recon and it was eating at him immediately. Right,

So they sort of have this really awful event. They have this horrific thing happened to one of their teammates, and in the immediate aftermath, and I mean immediate, they went on a some of them, not all of them. Some of the unit went on for what later became known as revenge jops. They were at for blood and so, you know, it's trite, but they went up one way

and they came down another. Right, The guys who were on that mountain did not come back down the same and it trickled through most of the team because of the nature of the way the unit was. And there was this sort of other element, you know, which is that we can get into the squadrons. But at the time it was Red Team and they were known as

the Red Men. They had a mascot, Native American mascot, and so there was this this identity issue that grew and in the immediate after math, there were you know, there were war crimes very quickly afterwards within twenty four thirty six hours by the seals, some of the seals, including one of the officers. And so it's your starting point of understanding post nine to eleven how things change. And you know, some of it is obviously they had a culture of cover ups in the Seals and in

Seal Team six unit. But the other thing is, let's be honest, right, it was war for the first time. You guys are seeing war.

it within the bounds of what's acceptable. And I think you know what some almos said to me one time was, you know, it was that there was ever really one moment where we had just gone, where the whole unit had gone totally off the rails. What they said was, on each deployment there were groups of guys in each

squadron that would go too far. But what happened is they were never pulled back, never in fifteen in twenty years, and so the officers never did anything about it, and so each deployment the line moved so that by ten years later, you know, and I get into it in the book, you get Britz Slabinski seven years later, actually from that end, since five years later, asking for a

head on a platter. And there's a debate about whether it was metaphoric or whether it was literal, but some of his men took it as a direct order and tried to obey and comply with it. And that was just one of what was a very bad and very rough deployment in which there was a view that the only way to defeat the Taliban was to be more savage than the savages right right to humanize the enemy and treat them as as they treat the civilian population.

not gone through green teams. So immediately you have a problem because those officers have no respect from the enlisted, and so the officers are leading from behind and from the position of they need the respect of the men. And the way to be respected is to be liked. You don't get liked by by being enforcing discipline and good order. You know, good order and discipline is the Navy requires it. And so what you have are our officers who look the other way. You have officers who

encouraged it, sometimes not using you know. One of the things that's hard to write about our all the euphemisms, and you know there's no directed it's you know, they sent messages just with folks, you.

Native American mascot with two tomahawks. Across blue are the Pirates with the Jolly Roger flag. Black, which is an intelligence. I actually don't know their name, but they have a horse with two lightning bolts. And then later silver they're the Raiders. They have sort of a shield but one of everything. They've got a knife, they've got a hatchet, and a skull face to sort of reflect all of

them because they were the newest of the units. The what you're asking about is really about the three Blue, Gold, and.

there was always a culture involved. They were defined in different generations, but there the Native American subculture in the you know, one of the traditions that in Red squadron was once you were drafted into the squadron after making it through selection and Green team, you had to yard in and yarding in, you had to wear a tradition and I don't know which tribe Native American head piece, and then you had to drink a yard of beer that had a I don't know if it was remember

which hard alcohol it is at the bottom. And if you could do that, you you were in. And they had a culture which was known as sort of harder, not smarter. They were. Their culture was you met violence with more violence, and you solve problems by being stronger and bigger. Right, That was the psyche that had developed within that unit. Blue had you know, different parts in

different places. Their subculture. You know, the way I really understand most of the subculture was in the kind of unfortunately, the kind of atrocities and desecration that each had their own kind of desecration basically, and it could move around. But the you know, Blue used knives and were known for skinning. Red used the hatchets gold. There's some things that I didn't put in the book. Sometimes it was

because I didn't want to. There's enough enough. There's only a certain amount of you know, some of this stuff is gruesome, and it was Gold had a different style, is the best way I could say it. And they had some things that they did that were pretty disturbing. What they had all in common was they were sort of you know, one of the senior enlisted said to me, look, there are sort of three responses in our guys in

how they experience violence. Some their first instinct upon experiencing up close intense violence that is the business recoil and they self select out. And actually after Robert's Ridge, there were a lot of guys in Red Team that left Seal Team six. Several left the Seals altogether. Wasn't spoken about. It was just understood that it was, hey, it's not for me. There was another kind which fits along, you know, I think culturally more of the Red Squadron Red Team,

which was to meet violence with more violence. There was a third which I think is the most actually the most interesting, the hardest to write about because it as an outsider, which is that there were some who saw art as some violence as a sort of art, which is to say, you use it the least amount possible and only when necessary. And you're looking for solutions to a problem. I mean, I think by the way, it's

probably common in other units. You're given a task and you're looking for a way to not kill to accomplish your mission. And a lot of the operators and the senior enlisted who were described to me fitting in that category, for whatever reason, fell into blue. And I don't know, I guess I can't speak to why that culture within the pirates may have existed. They also had, you know, they were off the rails for a couple of years.

They just have different you know, it's the way they compete with each other, it's the way they differentiate from each other. And it happened organically.

be aggressive and when not to be aggressive. Right when you dial it down to the most basic thing, it's when to shoot and when not to shoot, to when you're justified, escalation, escalation of force. And so I think that it is on all of these things you have in a soft unit. You're living on a knife's edge, and you need a leash, you need some kind of discipline to hold it together, or you go to the wrong side. And I think it's Seal Team six in particular.

They have this problem. They ride this edge. They recruit and select for guys who are hyper aggressive, who look to cook cut corners to solve problems and come up with solutions. If you ain't cheat and you ain't trying concept right, And the problem is is that what and this is someone this is These are seals telling me this,

older seals telling me this. That was fine prior to nine to eleven, but no one in the military thought about the effects of fifteen to twenty years of warfare in up close violence on the secondary and tertiary effects for operators.

watching people expire. And you know, in and of itself, it was it's it's tasteless, but it's not necessarily illegal. What the members of Seal Team six, the leaders of Seal Team six that I had interviewed who told me about them, said was the problem was it was a very easy to spot sign early on that there was a lust for this. There was something that was inappropriate going on in terms of making yeah about the about

the enjoyment part. And it was a sign that there was a there was something that needed to be rained in and watched closely right in and of itself. It may not be you weren't going to bring someone up on charges on it, but it was. It was a sign that there was a problem, and no one would say anything about it. They were sort of laughing thing, and and it kept on going for you know, it went on for about two deployments I think, and that seal later was kicked out because he he he struck

a teammate. He got drunk ah undeployment and pistol whiped one of his teammates, so you know, and then the CIA hired him.

a seal operator named Kevin Holland who was in Red Team, who was a avid outdoorsman and was I don't know if he's from North Carolina. I think he's from North Carolina, and he happened to be friends with the bladesmith Daniel Dan Winkler, who at the time was best known in that community for having made all of the appropriate era piece of weapons for the movie Last of the Mohicans, and Holland ended up leaving the Seals prior to nine

to eleven. After nine eleven, he wanted to come back Seal Team six said he would have to do a deployment on the white side. He refused, so he asked Delta if he could joined. They said, if you can pass the uh, the course, you know, in the selection, you're in. He became a member of C Squadron and he got Winkler to excuse me, to make uh these

hatchets tomahawks for his teammates in Delta. They were numbered the original ones on the handles had like one, I don't know if it was two digits, three digits one or one up through you know, ten or eleven. And they were deployed. They were used by and carried by Delta in the early years of the war in Rock Oh four I think five. At that time, Seal Team six was being assigned to do deployments onesie tuoesies do

deployments with CAG and the Seals saw uh. And the some of the Seals who were from Red Team and then later Red Squadron understood, you know, Kevin Holland was a former Red Squadron guy, and they sort of, you know, came upon the idea that hey, we're Red Squadron, we're the Red Men, we should have these tomahawks. So Red Team at that time was led by a young commander named Wyman Howard, and Howard and his master chief, Jimmy Lindell, came up with the idea of getting donors to pay

for making them their custom made. I think on the commercial market they cost six hundred bucks. I think to make they're about three hundred bucks. So he got people to donate three hundred and fifty dollars to have them made and then would hand them out to every member of Red Squadron who had a year of service in the squadron. At that same time, Howard was giving sort of pep talks about because it was the Red Men, about bloodying your hatchet, getting you know, getting blood on

your hatchet. Well, you know, at times it was a euphemism for you know, did you shoot, did you did you kill? You know, you were you in action and in combat? And unfortunately those were words and just the right encouragement for guys in Red Squadron to start using the hatchets. Not everyone carried them, by the way. I talked to plenty of people in Red Squadron who felt that there was zero military utility or use for them. Others who thought, you know, it's great for knocking down

locks and doors. But yes, they used the hatchets. Some of them used the hatchets to desecrate bodies, in part to leave a message for the enemy when they picked their comrades up on the battlefield to bury them, that Red Squadron had been there, that the Americans had been there, that there was psychological there was a psychological warfare component to it. It wasn't a direction, it wasn't in order. It was known, it was understood it was going on.

It was well known within Sealed Team six. And there's another case going back to, you know, asking where the officers and what are they doing? You know, as long as there weren't reports coming up to the five level or the six level or outside the unit that this was going on, you know who felt bad for the enemy and that took on a life. But I think

it's it. It happens to be pretty symbolic of, you know, the lawlessness and the sort of renegade culture that took over at you know, during the peak of the wars.

mixed martial arts on detainees. The news that American servicemen were engaged in such senseless brutality would seem to shock the conscience, but at the command, no one said or did anything about it.

squadron to another. They were as it was described to me, there were some operators in Gold Squadron who would hit a compound, would separate the men from the women and the children. As it was described to me, if you knew who the bad guy was, or there was someone who got lippy and aggressive, there was a period of time where team six operators again not all of them, would bring your offender into a room two seals. One would stand by the door with his uniform on, everything

equipment on the other. One would explain, you know, here's a question. Did they do it through a translator? How did they Basically he would take off his gear and say, we're going to grapple. If you can win, you can walk out of here. It was never possible, of course, because the teammate was always standing there, and they would grapple and use their skills to kill a target. How they were on site, so they were all sorts of

legal gray areas. They were not detainees because they had not yet been detained, and part of the purpose was to take that individual out to the rest who were getting t q'ed and tactical questioning and make it very clear verbally and nonverbally that this is what happens if you don't cooperate. As it was explained to me, this was not done willy nilly with guys who you know that the people that they were practicing their m m A and martial arts skills on were not innocent. They

were legitimate targets. Not in that scenario, Let's be clear, this was not an acceptable thing. But in the in the in the yeah, for the for lack of a better term, they were bad guys, and in the spectrum of things, no one in the US military was going to have any concern about about a this particular individual have been deceased, right, you know, it's it's uh a pretty awful and upsetting description of of it. There was

a you know, I looked into it a lot. One of the descriptions I got of why was the guys didn't have the ability to use their martial art training and skills in any other capacity. They had done all of this training, They were aggressive, They were doing a lot of missions out. You know, I can't tell you how many of those incidents there were. There was more than one that I can say. And the only reason why I wasn't sure I couldn't remember what I put

in in the book. There there are certain you know, I try to limit it sometimes to sort of the top level, but you know, it's sort of self explanatory. It's a pretty awful thing. And I think, you know, I think all of this fits in the category of there's so much that we don't know. You know, there is more that will never be shared outside of those who were there, and it's a you know, it's a very dark place. You know, there were some really bad stuff that went on.

you know they're good. I will say that there's certainly a very strong feeling that Howard's changes with the size and makeup of the platoons of the White Side Seals is a quantity you know, getting rid of the notion of quantity over quality and going back the other way

to pre nine to eleven. There's another, you know, more cynical view, which is that if you dump the number of Seals and you keep a good larger portion of them from going abroad, you're gonna have fewer problems, which is, you know what you hope for when you want to ride out a two year term and tour, get your third star and move on. Wyman Howard is your absolute best example of what Seal Team six was and what

it became after nine to eleven. Howard is a descendant of I think two admirals on either side of his family. His father was a captain in the Navy. He Naval Academy graduate, was a West Coast seal. I think he was Seal Team one and Seal Team eight. He was at one point the lowest ranked officer at his rank on the East Coast. I believe he was eventually allowed to select for he wasn't selected. He failed selection to

Seal Team six. However, at the time the deputy commander of Seal Team six had been his his OIC and his superior at his previous Seal team liked him and convinced Bert Callen to let him go into Green Team. He was brought into Green Team, and the instructors at Green Team were told that unless he you know, I've been using this hypothetically, unless he kills someone during training, you can't fail him, and so he was allowed to

pass down. He by the description of guys who were in his class at Green Team, he was not the worst. He was in the middle. He was kind of mediocre, not the worst, definitely not. The best point was was that he actually hadn't earned his way into Seal Team six, right. The standard was relaxed so that and as one person said, Cowan said, look, I was told he could do paperwork very well, he was smart, and he was going to

help us administratively. Goes through the Green Team, gets into Green Team, gets put into Red Team, he gets fired or pushed out at Red Team. Nine to eleven happens. He's in what later became Black Team. He basically got pushed forward. He was in Afghanistan early as part of the AFO working for Scottie Miller and resurrected his career. He goes back as the oicee of Red Team a few years later. At that point they were still the

teams and not squadrons, and he does this thing. What makes Howard unusual is is that he ultimately did essentially two they I guess they call it a double pump. He did two rotations as the leader of Red. First it was as Red Team and then later as the

commanding officer of Red Squadron. And so he had an unusually long period of time at Red Squadron, and at that time, with that group and their native American identity and pushing of the hatchets, you start to see and remember again it's Red Squadron that went through what happened up on Robert's Ridge. Right when those guys who get drafted into Red go into the team room, there is Neil Roberts bent weapon on the wall as a reminder of,

you know, the sacrifice and what they lost. And so Howard is by all accounts incredibly intelligent, very bright, very hard working, and you know, was known to essentially look the other way when his men were out using the hatchets to desecrate bodies. There were you know, he ultimately ended up as the commanding officer of Sealed Team six as a as a captain, went to Jaysack, then he was at He did a stint at one of the d O D I don't remember if it was if it was n GA, I can't remember which of the

intelligence agencies he served in. He got a job in the Pentagon, and then he ended up at Sachsen down Tampa, and then he ended up at Warcom. And so if you sort of take his example singularly, a guy who was not qualified or didn't qualify to make it to Seal Team six, but because of connections was allowed to write. And at that time the skipper at Seal Team six, Joe Kernin sorry at the time, which nine to eleven happens?

They plus up at that time he would only promote and allow in officers whould come from the Naval Academy. So there was you know, within a culture, there was another subculture elitism, you know, a mix between a country club and a fraternity, right, and you had someone who wasn't qualified or hadn't qualified got in any way, you know, sort of the syndrome of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, right right, and and then you end up in a leading very aggressive guys, and how

do you maintain their respect? How do you earn their respect? It's not through discipline, That's how it's been described to me. There are most of the operators that I ever interviewed who worked under for Wyman love him. He was highly aggressive. He matched. He very much looked at what M. Crystal was doing and was putting out and matched it. If you you know, if you're not out operating, you're not

doing it right. It's very aggressive. Later there were problems at Sealed Team six under his command with officers who disagreed with how aggressive he was. I was told recently that in the Afghan papers there is a lot of description of Howard's leadership on the battlefield in Afghanistan and criticism about the over aggressiveness and posture of the unit. I haven't seen them myself, so I can't comment about, you know, how accurate that is. But he's sort of

your best example he has. He's got a I think he's got a story that started and also gives you a sense of the Seal Team six, at least part of the Seal Team six culture of the branding. He and his younger officers used to sit around and discuss how great, how great they were as leaders amongst themselves, and the logic went like this, Red Squadron are the

best operators at Seal Team six. Sale Team six is the best unit in the US military, and Red Squadron officers lead these men air go Red Squadron officers are the best leaders of men, and therefore, when we are out of the military, we should become our officers should become senators and presidents. That story was meanwhile, that was discussed among you know, Wyman and his younger his junior

officer corps. At a time, it was a running joke at the rest of the command with the officer corps that it was all invented, that it was this presumption that there was something special about them. You know, we can get into a question of seals and leader leadership and seals later. But by the time he ends up in Tampa as a I don't know if he had a second star yet, but definitely had a one star.

The story now went like this. There's a group of Seal Team six officers who have selected me to be the first member of Seal Team six to run for president of the United States. And you know, I actually I wanted to double check that recently because I put it.

I did an excerpt for the book at the intercept, and I put in some new stuff in there, and I called it a source from the Pentagon who knew Wyman well, And I said, you know, I had already heard the story from several people from the Seals, but I called a friend at the Pentagon and I said, have you ever heard this story about Wyman? You know, running for president? So are you kidding me? Howard tells anyone who will listen, he is going to be the

first Seal Team president in American history. So you get a sense of the ambition, right, and the mindset, which, you know, a massive ego, you know, often I think most people would agree, has very little self awareness.

have been described to me as being very good. And in a couple of years or within a generation, there'll be a better officer Corps. To some extent, That's about

as far as it goes. And I think, you know I mentioned earlier or before we went on that there's a story I'm going to uh break a story I think when the Ukrainian assuming that there's any kind of resolution in Ukraine, but in the future, in the not too distant future, that is another It's a smaller scandal, seal scandal, but it's a scandal and it will reflect

exactly this issue, which is Wyman is not women. Hower is not responsible at all for all of you know, the problems he's he's he is a great example of where their culture went wrong, how it didn't correct itself, and so the notion that he should be picked or being the leader of the larger community, I think is you know, I've talked to a lot of current Seal

officers who were frankly disgusted when he was picked. Now, they had a thin bench, and there was some recognition that on paper he was probably ideal, but they were not happy. The Seals who were in the command long enough, who've been around and have worked with Howard were not happy.

So it's always the case. Look, I think, you know, as an investigative journalist, as any journalist, when you're dealing with stories like this, everyone has some acts to grind. My job is to try to figure out what that acts is and and adjust for it, and you know, accept what it is, recognize where it is. You know, you find out that someone hates someone because you know that someone slept with someone's wife and that there's a there's a personal beef or animis and that may be it.

That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't true, right.

various times of the was the Omega teams. There's a very interesting story in your book about how a CIA officer tried to complain about some of these behaviors and to try to blow the whistle on it internally in the bureaucracy. Could you tell us about that and what happened to that guy?

or two thousand and nine timeframe. I think two thousand and nine there had been a series of joint operations going out. They weren't always omegas that were going out together. Sometimes it was just especially in Jalalabad, the Agency would use six to help them conduct operations if they didn't have much of a paramilit they didn't have a ground branch,

and what they kept seeing was a over aggression. There was in fact, time and we can get into this, there was an incident in which they had gone out on an operation. Basically the CIA said look, we want you to get these these four guys out. We know they're in there. You know, they went in at two in the morning, three in the morning, Sealed Team six goes in. I think at that time it was Gold

Gold Squadron went in. The targets were all sleeping, they were all armed, you know, had weapons next to them. They were legitimate targets. They did a countdown.

The mission was not killed them. They were legitimate targets in the sense that they had weapons near them in their bed, but they were all sleeping, so it was possible to take them into custody. That incident, along with several others like it, led to a former member of Seal Team six who was then working for Ground Branch named Rick Smothers. Richard Smithers, who had been six and

had once been the captain at Bud's. He complained loudly to Seal Team six, first through the CIA and then to Seal Team six basically their guys were off the rails and that they were committing war crimes and it was costing them in their area of operations. It got very heated between the two sides, and Smothers and the CIA basically warned that if they didn't pull Gold Squadron at the time, they were going to go to the

press with these accusations. There was a gentleman's agreement, in part because Smathers was a former member of Seal Team six and very respected from his era. He had been skipped over actually as to be skipper of Seal Team six prior to nine to eleven, and some people felt that the reason why he was complaining was because he

was bitter about that. But that's an aside. As it happened, Gold Squadron was set to leave, and I don't remember which squadron was replacing him, but it happened to be that there was going to be a natural cycle anyway, and Seal Team six basically asked CIA to pull smethers and let him cool down outside of Afghanistan, go home, and you know, basically cool the temperature down. And so

they did. But there was an acknowledgment on all sides, both sides, that Seal Team six was committing war crimes. They were violating the rules of engagement, they were violating the laws of armed combat. But you know, you keep you piss inside the tent, right and so they came up with a solution in which both sides were happy in the immediate near term, you know, and there was

never any accountability. And that way, it's a great example again of you know, I think I think the book is filled with incidents where there could have been accountability and there wasn't. I think what one thing to keep in mind is is that it's these are only the ones that are known because they became at least internally, something happened that triggered that other people that other people knew about. Much of what went on went on between two or three guys on an operation.

it gets down to that small size. But sort of what you're kind of talking about in this is the overall the officer enlisted the tendency to not self correct, but to just let things keep going, even if it's a few guys are like they're like the you know that when you when you like pith a fish that schools like it, you know, like the rest of the school follows it, because you know, that's how they That's how psychology works, right, That's how you work.

rest of the team. That there were these nonverbal you know, these were things that weren't necessarily discussed, but they became It was like a disease virus that would pass through the rest of the unit and go on for the rest of their lives. And you know, I will tell you that that plenty of the officers gave you know, had conversations like this with some of with their men.

You know, look, don't do anything out there that you don't want it you can't live with because you have to live with it for the rest of your life. The problem is is that there are people who think that they can live with it or wanted to see and test the waters right, And so that's not necessarily a strong enough guide, as you know, if you're saying that one night, and in the next night you're saying, you know, did you get your hatchets bloodied? Right? You know,

what'd you do with your hatchets kind of thing? And so the I think the psychological component to this is really important, and it was one that I asked Marsenko about. You know, what kind of screening did you do? Well, we only had the Minnesota test. Well, yeah, but you had a psych right, and and you know, so you screened and I interviewed that psych and he, you know,

he said, yeah, there was no screening. Marsenko picked who he liked, and Marsinko said, yeah, I had the shrink there, so that when the Navy assessed what the unit that I was creating on paper, I looked like I was doing all the right things. And the psycho colleges, the shrink doctor Mike Whitley, who I interviewed actually not long before he died shortly after. As it is Marsenko, I

don't want to get a reputation. And what Whitley said was, look, there were a lot of great guys in the first couple of in the first group of Seal Team six, but there were several sociopaths.

Combine that with traumatic brain injuries. These guys are a lot of these guys are really struggling, and I think there's a case to be made now that they need help. But I mean, also there's a lesson for leaders now, right right at this moment to police this kind of behavior with the longevity and the and the responsibility of

taking care of your troops long term. And you know, maybe I understand how a younger soldier doesn't have the maturity or the wisdom to really understand that or think long term like that, but there is a responsibility on the leadership, if nothing else, to police that kind of behavior. And that's another way of taking care of your soldiers.

are officers and which are our NCOs. I will tell you that I was most always most surprised that the toughest language I heard about, the disgust and the frustration came from the NCOs. And given what they're the dynamic, they basically were just disgusted with the failure of their officers to get a hold of the problem when they were warned. One of the things that someone said to me once that that really shook me was look and again,

I'm paraphra We failed these guys. We sent these guys out into a meat grinder over and over and over again. We gave them none of the tools to handle the parts that we gave them no warning or ability to handle what they were going to experience and come back. And there was a line that we had to hold for them because of this issue right that if they crossed that line, we're not going to send you to jail. We need to pull you back and teach you we

don't do this right. That's how you fix it. This wasn't the genesis of this book and is not Oh my god, all of these guys have to go to jail. It came from seals who were Seal leaders, Seal Team six leaders who were saying, we failed these kids. I failed these kids. I tried to do this. I tried to do that. Some were tired and left the military because they tried to get Seal Team six leaders to deal with war crimes and they were ignored, they were refused.

We don't have a problem. It's not a problem. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, it was, it was a and so the the empathy here is and again it goes back to why I don't name for the most part, I don't name the younger operators. I think part of what I was trying to do in the book. And I know that it's probably hard for people to understand that. Most people understand this, especially if you're coming from the perspective that this is some

kind of anti Seal book. It's not. What this is is a description of failed leadership and how you what the cost is to the men who do it. And I think, although it may be subtle, one of the ways I tried to do that in the reporting was the tone that I took in writing about it. I made a very concerted effort to never be strident about any of what you know, the wrongdoing, and never to try to you know, I tried to pull my punches a little actually in the reporting because you just want

to get the message across through the information. You let the information speak for itself and the reportings the facts speak for itself. There was no need to editorialize or to suggest that, you know anything, there's some kind of

inherent evil here and all like that. And that came from very much from my sources who were saying, look, the people who are suffering here are the guys that we sent out there who did thirteen to fifteen deployments, whose families are silently suffering because they don't even have a name for the Yes, it's PTSD, yes the trauma, but they don't have a name for how it is affecting.

It will affect their family now, it will affect their next generation of their family because of the way, you know, the kids are raised in that environment, right and although they have some of the best psychologists and they do, you know, they have a great post career community for supporting each other, and they have there are some initiatives that I've heard about that seem promising. Overall, they don't

do much right. I mean Matt Bissonette said it in his book, I mean his second book, you know, he said, we get trained at everything to the tea, he said, but they do not train us whatsoever for the emotional toll and impact of what being on the speeding train will do to you.

to not you know, and to cover it up. And I'm not again, I'm not saying send the guys to jail, like take care of them, like make it so this isn't a normal thing, because twenty years from now, like you said, this is a family thing, right, and then it becomes a generational thing.

on an operation. And Slabinski, who was the master chief at the time, had told his men that he wanted a head on a platter, and there was you know, some of the older guys heard it as it could have easily been, which was just metaphorical and slab being dramatic, but the younger guys didn't know the difference, and so and there had been a ton of group think within their unit at the time, within their troop in particular, and there had been war crimes going on for the

whole deployment and that young man. They covered it up. They got out of the NCIS investigation. Everyone was cleared, but that seal at operator eventually, I think it took another eight years or so. He eventually basically became medically unfit to deploy. He was a psychological mess. He left the unit. After he pulled himself from deploying. They sent

him to the Pykes. He was not fit. They sent him to Group two, to the White Side where he could and at that point he said he didn't want to said to others, not to me, that he ever wanted to deploy again. And as I understand it, he has spent years in intensive therapy because he was young and impressionable and with a group of seasoned enlisted out officers, enlisted members of Seal Team six who believed that chopping the heads off the enemy was gonna win the war.

And there were you know, there was some pulling back of guys after that incident. There was some yelling, but they also covered it up and there was zero accountability. Fast forward three years later, when Slovinsky is going to come back for a senior position at the command. The officers and the other master chiefs at the command voted him out, basically refused to let him back in. They

blacklisted him. And that actually acts as the only time that I know of and that anyone else knows of, that Seal Team six held any of their own accountable for this failure of leadership and and and war crimes and it and and as someone to that, We're never going to send him to the brig We were never going to send them to n c I S or rat them out. We just never wanted him back at

Seal Team six. We wanted to send a message. Now fast forward to that he gets awarded a medal, is upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and that became you know, there is just as Gallagher was, and I think, you know, Dave Phillips did just a fantastic job in Alpha describing the cultural war inside the teams between you know, the the the good and the ugly really is what it is, right and unfortunately the ugly really won in that case. You know, when Slabinsky gets kicked out of Seal Team

six or blacklist is the more accurate. It's a good description of when some where they were able to write the ship on their own. It's an example, it's a it's a singular example, which is part of the problem. When he gets awarded the upgrade to the Medal of Honor, it is absolutely a message to everybody else in Seal Team six and in the teams that the cover up wins, that there is you know, you are giving out the highest award for valor the military that the government gives out.

And it's not a question of what may or may not have occurred up on top of Tucker Gar although that's certainly an issue that was that was broad Chapman, but regards wordless of that, and that's not one that I I I you know, never fought in need, you know, thigh deep snow on the top of a mountain, you know, under an ambush. But for everything that occurred after the fact, which by the way, the regulations of the Medal of Honor are you know, their actions and conduct after an

event are are part of the consideration. And there were multiple incidents with Slabinski. He was you know, punted from a unit because of war crimes and for for illegal allegations of illegal orders, right, and so when he won the upgrade. There were guys my phone was was just the groaning. You know, I'm disgusted, We're disgusted.

this history of this where it's in the command. I'm just saying that the whole Chapman Medal of Honor thing shows sort of what that Naval command, what that Seal command, how they act, because when it came when Chapman's name came up, they immediately immediately turned on him.

know what happened. But but the way the Navy handled it is like, Okay, that's that's what you expect, you know, or that's what that would be.

up on the mountain at all. What if the worst was the way in which they went fourteen years after the event, everything that they claimed happened now changed so that they could protect their brand, their honor, their guy. And that is the part that you know, it's dishonorable. That's the part that's I think the the you know, for people not in the seals who served in the military, who have served with the Seals. That's the thing you hear the most is like, yeah, well that's how they are, right.

That's and I don't like to make generalizations. I haven't you know, I haven't served. I've never served with the Seal. I can't speak to that. But as a reporter, that

story is prevalent. That's the story here over and over, which is, you know, they have their brand looks like this, and they make a lot of money with that brand, and anything that goes against that brand or suggests that they are not totally heroic and totally flawless, or that the story that they told may not be as accurate as they as they proceed, you know, made it sound they circle the wagons.

two shots, at least two shots. The first hit beIN Lauden grazed him somewhere, not quite clear if it was the hip or the leg, but then he got him center mass, and at that point bin Laden fell back into the room and onto the ground, A key detail because everyone else who came into the door afterwards fired

into him while he was down on the ground. According to my sources, and although it's no longer available, I will tell you that on Twitter about a year ago, a member of the unit who was there confirmed my version of what was reported and with the version that's in this book, and describes O'Neil I think, as being the fourth guy through the doorway and the fourth man

to shoot bin Lauden. So red, you know, is one guy who says silent professional, silent professional, and and you know, I think quote quoted one of those former teammates who who uh no been u Bissinette and O'Neil very well who said, you know that the genius of what they had done in constructing their versions of the story was that there was really only one person who could contradict them, and that guy's never going to talk. I think my

last I checked. I believe he's no longer in. I think he's out, and uh, you know, it's just never hear from him.

representing us. It's sort of like an inverse relation, which is not to say that that you know, O'Neill's teammates loved him, business teammates loved him. They've got lots of problems with them, but that doesn't mean that.

this book is going to change anyone's life. I think that it's the book that as a citizen, as an interested citizen, wants to know what happened in America's name during the wars part of it, right, we know, Look, there are plenty of books and stories about all the great and heroic deeds. There's no shortage of them, and I have nothing against them whatsoever. I do happen to have a fealty towards the truth and think that that's like kind of really important. It's like a you know,

a must have. And I think that the American public deserves to understand what the consequences of a blank check for twenty years of war are, for the men who served, for the institutions that that refuse to hold itself accountable, and ultimately for the civilian leadership that allowed it to happen, who are supposed to oversee the officers. And I think that that's that's what's supposed to happen in a democracy. And that's not partisan, that's not a you know, this

isn't a left book, This isn't a right book. I mean, I think it's I think it's fair to say that almost every one of my sources leans to one party, and it's not the party that you know, a lot of people will think I vote for. My work is non partisan in that it is just geared towards understanding and finding out uncomfortable truths, because that's what I imagined journalism was supposed to be when I started.

the book was Melgar. First of all, they didn't get along Melgar their personalities, but they were sharing a house or an apartment, a compound, and they didn't get along. Melgar became aware that one of the Seals who later kills him and the second member from Seal Team six had been stealing from a operational fund for informants. It was cash there. You get a lot of written receipts. It's a well known means of making a small amount

of money undeployment. It's been going on. It's not just in Seal Team six, but it particularly at a Tier one because there's so much autonomy and so little oversight and had in some where. I don't know if he had confronted him, but they knew that he knew. And as I understand it, and I think when you both listened to the testimony in court during the court martial

and read between the lines, it's pretty clear. I think one of the guys involved said it was they were going to sexually assault him and film it and use it essentially as blackmail.

liked to do. And so they said, do you want to do this on this guy? He says yes, and so he's in the room. They're going to film it, and they're going to show Melgar the film of it afterwards and as a form of Blackmount shut up, you know, professional remediation in the term that Adam Matthews, the member of Seal Team six who was also involved, would later say, they were incredibly drunk and Melgar fought back, which.

can remember if he pled homicide or involuntary manslaughter. He's got ten years, choked him out a second time, this time pressing the way his body was and positioned. His face was into the bed in Melgar's face was into the bed, and he joked him out and he crushed his his trachea. I mean, he crushed his throat and he was dead. They then, you know, started to CPR and trying to revive him that failed. I think the thing that I was struck most by, and I'll start

with this because this ultimately is the point. Two of America's most highly trained operators, who the government spends over

the course of a career millions of dollars to train and then maintain their training, plus all of the equipment and everything that goes with are standing over a now deceased Green Beret, a fellow American, a service member, and they have a choice. They can do the right thing or they can do the wrong thing. And with his body still warm, they immediately began to engage in a

cover up. And the point that I think this story is really about is that if two of America's best can make that decision after killing one of their own, not on a battlefield, not with an enemy, not with a legitimate target, with a roommate, to ask yourself.

That's one part of it. There's the second part of it, which is mccraven in particular was very fond of the commanding officer of the Red Squadron at the time and may have played that into favor. What people don't realize, and I'm not sure you know, some of this has

been published before. He actually initially had chosen the Rangers to lead to be in command of Seal Team six on the ground for the mission, which led to a blow up during the during the the read into Petevan who Captain Pete Van Hoosier at the time, and that didn't happen, So it was you know. And the other thing is is, by the way, Emerald craven's a Seal and you know, he may have been a four star and he's he's one of the good ones, I think, but that doesn't mean he is in parochial.

much latitude. Legally, it's not hard in that way, It's rarely actually an issue. And that's why the old standard Seal Team six was if you had one gray shoot, you were gone. One incident where you shot someone who wasn't armed, regardless of the answer being they're maneuvering, doesn't matter, right,

there's the difference between the threat and non threat. That changed after nine to eleven, and again the standard dropped, and I think to I think most Sealed Team six operators would agree that that standard is important.

lot of times they don't know the law themselves. They don't even have the background to begin to understand the law. And that's when you see asinine restrictions put on soldiers.

were not necessarily kinetic, a lot more intelligence gathering and collect and things that fit under the realm of unconventional warfare, and that Seal Team six had been slow. I don't know where that's at today. I think, you know, there are fewer places for Seal Team six right now to operate, because we're not in Afghanistan, for instance, whereas Delta still obviously is Rock Syria, and although there's some seals there,

it's less there area of operations. So I think that's a challenge for Seal Team six is to figure out how to go back to, for instance, one of I don't think they were very good at, which was being part of the counterproliferation efforts against Iran in North Korea.

that first deployment in Afghanistan. There was also, as it happened, retribution from Robert's Ridge that came down in terms of the officer who was there, one of the officers, and in that case it was it's another scenario where you had a bunch of seasoned operators being led by a naval a cat the officer who had not gone through a green team and had been put in charge as an officer who had no respect from his men, and it was because he wasn't qualified, right, he had been

a boats guy, and that was that dynamic is like playing out through through years and years at Seal Team six.

narrative details to justify putting it in. But it was an example early in my reporting of describing a very talented seal whose Seal Team six has has described me had broken because he had done this. They covered it up and they moved on, and it was you know, enough said, I mean, you know, the murder of a child is a difficult one to stomach. So that didn't make it in, and you know, I just just assume probably it'll never be public.

which obviously isn't true. What I really meant was, you don't have to be in the army to be drafted into Delta, to be selected in and pass the course and air is regretful and all my own and suture editions will have a fix.

They have some issues, but those issues I had to balance it against exposing some things that were, you know, pretty sensitive, and I tried to err on the side of you know, this book frankly, it has a lot of It has a lot of secrets and a lot of dirt, but there's not that much that's actually classified. It's not a tell all it's not meant to be a tell all right, So, but you know, they have some problems, not as much as the Assault squadrons.

It's probably close to about forty but that that could be wrong, could be fifty I have, you know, I actually have a list somewhere. Yeah, but it's not on the top of my head.

of reporting. And I think that if I could write a book or have added to the book the details even without names, of where, how my sources came to some of this information, what their experiences were at Seal Team six, how essentially this book came to be I can I can assure you that it would be incredibly compelling and far more in that sense, not that I

think there's anything in my book that's not believable. It's I undersell it, but it would be even more compelling than what I have, because their stories are you know, I mean, if they didn't just have or you know, courage to join, to make it, to do well in the battlefields and lead men, they had moral courage when it mattered, and that I think is you know, unfortunately you know too rare, so you know, and obviously in that sense I'm biased.

there was an art they I mean, someone described to me a particular incident that happened in Afghanistan where they kind of were trying to imagine themselves ninjas, how to get in and out of a place silently and make someone disappear, not kill them, but make someone disappear, because the effect of having grabbed them in the middle of the night while no one else who was in the compound sleeping was the wiser was more terrifying to wake up to to have someone who disappeared than to find

you know, their their comrade or their family member killed. And so that's sort of what I.

He keeps meticulous records of every training he's ever done. Deeterer had a list, and he was so involved with these guys at Seal Team six early on that he had a list of problem Seals in his training, Guys who when they did the hood and the Hood came off. Even though they were supposedly the best wrestlers, they were flailing and they would fail. And almost actually frequently the most aggressive are the ones that the worst in the

initial hood drill. What he had was a list of all the Seals who had issues in his training, ethical problems, signs that there was something off ethically, morally okay, problems with the dial up and dial down. Right, it happened, and this is true story was almost an identical list of everyone after three years of reporting that my sources had identified were some of the worst in committing war

crimes or abetting them. And you know, I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not even an expert at the time, but I just don't think that's coincidence. I think it was very clear that there was some connection to be drawn between a list of problems in this system and a

list of problems on the battlefield and culturally. And then as I reported more and more, what became clear was no disputes how good the hood is right sense, I mean, that's not a you know, I mean Matt Bisonette takes an entire chapter of his book where he refuses to name what it is or who did it, but talks about the power of the hood right. So Deeter was

doing something right. And the fact that he was pushed out, now, you know, I know what some of the criticism is about why they targeted getting rid of CQD and Deeter, which was that they felt that he was doing too much and trying to adapt his stuff into everything, and

there was a lot of pushback against that. But the reporting shows that there was an interest to commercialize and brand training outside of dam Neck and the Seal and the Seal Command to make it profitable and Deeterer wouldn't go along with right and that was a problem, and so they removed him. And I think that there is had they kept it, yeah, the would have been fewer problems.

most satisfying I got. Someone who was obviously I'm not going to name them, but someone who had been a jag for NSW who for a significant amount of time, who reached out to thank me for it and say that that everything in there had rung true from his experience dealing with some of the officers. And you know, I think that this is a book that will take

a little bit of time, uh to dies. Yeah, it's you know, one of the things that I occurred to me when I first started writing it is that there is no there had been no prior to Code over Country history of Seal Team six or even the Seals really that had not been written by either someone from the seal community or someone who was a fan of the seal community. It was mostly hagiography. And so in that sense, Code over Country happens to be in many

ways the most objective and certainly the most journalistic history of Seal Team six. And I think you know that there's there's a long life for that.

you know, a bigger issue. And that's why to your point about what happened with the Chapman incident, is that what is you know, let's forget about what happened at the top of the mountain right for a second, and let's just go to what happens when their image or their story is threatened, right they turn.

And that was a political decision. You make it classified so that the public doesn't have to hear that one guy got an award for one part the seal, but you know, mistakenly left another guy behind and then that guy got back up and fought for another hour on his own. So that was too embarrassing. So that was a political decision. But what they what they but I

want to correct you about something. What they did was they actively went in and changed their story and misled some of the senior officials of the Pentagon about what

had happened on there. And they they and you know, one of the things I'm most proud of in the reporting of this book is that I was able to get a transcript and the recordings of a long interview that Slabinsky did for a book in two thousand and four, most of which was never published, and he lays out in great detail what happened up there as he remembered.

It was consistent with all the things he had said previously, was the story that he stuck to all the way until the moment in which he was confronted with the new video and the updated imagery, and then the story changes. And that's the issue, right, It's the it's the lie, right, it's the it's the the untruth, it's the misstatements.

less and fewer and fewer. Unfortunately, it's that what you really don't want to see is if this is being done by privates in the army, young marines, you know, E three, Z four, Z fives, there is to some extent it's understandable, don't acceptable when you have this level of skill of training to veer off into the illegal them morally unethical. It's much worse. And that's why the officers have to be held accountable.

good and what's bad. You know, this is a book about the Grays.

looking forward to talking to her. And you guys, got anything else? No, I'm really happy you have the intercept.