In March 2013, Esquires profile of ONeill portrayed him as a humble quiet professional who after 16 years in the Navy would no longer have health insurance and was otherwise a downtrodden American hero. During a late-night raid at a northern Kunar compound, Silver Squadron operators killed several captors but accidentally killed Norgrove when an inexperienced SEAL threw a fragment grenade at one of the captors. Several weeks earlier, in January 2002, Hyder killed an unarmed Afghan man north of Kandahar during the units first ground assault of the war. MostSEALs did not commit atrocities, the sources said, but the problem was persistent and recurrent, like a stubborn virus. Its a question, why was he a threat? He ordered a pause in most SEAL and JSOC operations over a two-week period in February 2009. You ask me to go living with the pigs, but I cant go live with pigs and then not get dirty.. In what would become part of a pattern of secrecy and silence, the SEAL operators dealt with the issue on their own and kept the incident from their chain of command. SEAL Team 6 patches. Beyond the dehumanizing manner in which the al Qaeda fighters had treated his corpse, Robertss death pierced the SEALs self-perception of invincibility. You dont whistleblow on the teams and when you win on the battlefield, you dont lose investigations.. They didnt know it, but Roberts was already dead, shot at close range in the head shortly after his helicopter departed the mountaintop. Top:Photo of helicopter onTakur Ghar. Top: Capt. Less than a week before the assault, Bissonnette and ONeill got into a shouting match at the Dam Neck base over who would sell the inside story of the raid. Allowing a lack of integrity to grow and develop within any organization will lead to abuses like it or not. Clockwise from top left: Blue Squadron, known as the Pirates; Gold Squadron, known as the Crusaders or Knights; Red Squadron, known as the Redmen; and Silver Squadron. When Szymanski, who was then commanding officer of all regular East Coast-based SEAL teams, heard that Slabinski had been rejected by Team 6, he requested him as his senior enlisted adviser. Peter Vasely with members of Blue Squadron in Afghanistan. Its sport., The former SEAL Team 6 leader said that he first noticed canoeing in 2004, and that it does occur accidentally on the battlefield, but rarely. But they are a great way of being part of a team. ), One of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders, who investigated several Blue Squadron incidents, including the mutilation of bodies, said he repeatedly asked the operators why they felt the need to commit such acts. The distinction was crucial. During the first deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it was common practice to take fingers, scalp, or skin from slain enemy combatants for identification purposes. To understand the violence, you have to begin at Roberts Ridge, said one former member of SEAL Team 6 who deployed several times to Afghanistan. In the end, their inclusion in the bin Laden raid and their roles defined where they fit in: Bissonnette worked closely with the CIA and SEAL Team 6 superiors during the planning phase to help plot out the assault, and would lead a team of operators to find and kill bin Ladens courier. But this started in 2002 and continued through the wars. Created in 1980 and based at the. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. When he finally entered the bedroom, alone, bin Laden was standing uninjured, a weapon nearby, his wife in front of him like a human shield. Hyder and an enlisted operator named Monty Heath had gone in a different direction and saw a survivor flee the bombed vehicle toward a nearby berm. The falsehoods, both significant and slight, demonstrate that even when conducting the most important missions, SEAL Team 6 was unable to rise above the culture of deceit, personal enrichment, and self-aggrandizement that has corrupted a fighting unit legendary for its discipline and code of honor. For some of Howards men, however, the hatchets soon became more than symbolic as they were used at times to hack dead fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fair enough. After blowing open the iron gate blocking the main stairway, the lead assaulters, among them Bissonnette and ONeill, followed the operator known as Red up the stairs. With few exceptions, a darker, more troubling story has been suppressed and ignored a story replete with tactical brilliance on battlefields around the world coupled with a pattern of silence and deceit when downrange actions lead to episodes of criminal brutality. Army 1942-1945 WW II S/Sgt 4/26/1916 6/21/20072126th AAF BU,. The database contains photographs of persons killed by SEAL operators during their missions and other mission documentation. Smethers threatened to expose the SEALs for what he believed was a series of war crimes; the canoeing incident was just one of several operations in which Smethers alleged that Gold Squadron operators violated the laws of war. Although the stoppage was not limited to the SEALs, his former unit pushed back against a new set of operational guidelines. Id look through the post-op photos and see multiple canoes on one objective, several times a deployment, the retired SEAL said. McRaven became the first Navy SEAL to lead JSOC and was already familiar with Dam Necks status as the disrespectful sibling in the U.S. special operations family. 36 39 Sponsored by The Penny Hoarder War is an adrenaline rush. In that operation, Hyder led a team of Red operators on a nighttime mission to capture suspected al Qaeda militants in a compound. Gold Squadron was set to redeploy to the U.S., and the SEALs promised to rein in their operators. Officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, SEAL Team 6 is today the most celebrated of the U.S. military's special mission units. They were not the private collection of some individual operator, but the commands official after-action pictures. Then, as two of bin Ladens eldest daughters began to scream, Red quickly corralled themat the doorway, a move considered heroic by other SEALs on the mission. As the legend of SEAL Team 6 grew, a rogue culture arose that operated outside of the Navys established mechanisms for command and investigation. As he approached the third floor bedroom, Red saw bin Laden standing in the doorway, peering out. We just slaughtered those dudes. After describing one particular fighter who from a distance had resembled Osama bin Laden, Slabinksi continued: To this day, weve never had anything as good as that. Here, commanders returning from a deployment leave their hard drives with technicians who transfer PowerPoints, after-actions reports, and photos of each operation a squadron conducted abroad. Made up of no more than 200 SEAL operators when the Afghan war began, SEAL Team 6 was the lesser known of the U.S. military's elite "special mission" units. First, the SEALs would now be required to do call outs before entering a compound. A fierce firefight erupted between the four SEALs and a much larger enemy force of more than 50 anti-coalition insurgents. Unlike the SEALs, the man was not wearing night-vision goggles. Top right: Robert ONeill with his tattoo of two bloody feathers, representing his kills. This is multiple times on each deployment.. For several years afterward, the leaders at the command limited Slabinskis battlefield exposure assigning him to Green Team as an instructor, for example hoping the psychological wounds from Roberts Ridge would heal. And it takes the team, it takes individuals to pull you back. His account credits Red with the shot that felled bin Laden and holds that he and a third SEAL presumably ONeill fired several rounds into bin Laden as he was lying on the floor. After participating in May 2011's Operation Neptune Spear with SEAL Team Six, O'Neill was the subject of controversy for claiming to be the sole individual to kill Osama bin Laden . He was awarded the Silver Star for his efforts at Takur Ghar to save Roberts and the rest of the Red Team recon element. Illustration: Attila Futaki for The Intercept. Red watched bin Laden fall. Men, women, and a small girl, motionless and in the fetal position, appeared dead. Slabinski has not responded to multiple queries and requests for comment, though he did deny to the New York Times in 2015 that he gave the illegal pre-mission guidance to kill all males. The publication came as a surprise to the Pentagon because Bissonnette had failed to clear it as required. One former SEAL Team 6 leader told me that he feared the practice would lead to members of the unit using the DNA samples as an excuse to mutilate and desecrate the dead. They ransacked the compound for documents and media for intelligence, left the survivors inside, and returned to Jalalabad air base with the body. That years reunion, the first under Wyman Howard as commanding officer, was held at their new headquarters, a $100 million, state of the art testament to the stature of the command as the home of the Presidents Own, the clandestine global force capable of striking anywhere, killing anyone, the tip of Americas military spear. As the lead assaulter, it was Reds job to make the most important tactical judgments because he largely blocked the view of the SEALs behind him. Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, Devils Guard, published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. Seal team 6 rock of shame. My character and honor are steadfast. He was partially alive, faced down, his back to me, and he rolled over. The beauty of what they have constructed, said a former teammate about how Bissonnette and ONeill cornered the market on the bin Laden raid, is that there is only one guy, essentially, who can come forward and say theyre lying and he wont ever talk.. Vasely later told investigators he saw the operator moving his hand back and forth over the militants neck in a sawing motion. Audio from an unpublished interview with Britt Slabinksi conducted by Malcolm MacPherson, author of a 2005 book on the battle of Roberts Ridge. According to a CIA officer with direct knowledge of the incident, the CIA requested that the SEALs capture, rather than kill, their militant targets. Two different SEALs, Robert ONeill and Matthew Bissonnette, have publicly taken credit for killing bin Laden. Should they seek revenge for Roberts? Bissonnette left Red Squadron soon after the raid and retired from the Navy almost one year later. There was no plan for capture, and no contingency for a surrender. One shot hit bin Laden in the chest and the second shot glanced off his hip or thigh as Bin Laden stumbled backward into his room and fell toward the foot of his bed. The SEALs successes throughout 2002 resulted in the Joint Special Operations Command choosing the unit to lead the hunt for al Qaeda, as well as the invasion of Baghdad in March 2003. Former Seal Upvoted by Edward Tomlinson , former Damage Controlman at United States Navy (1988-1992) and Pavanne Halpin , former Manager of Pacemaker/Holter Clinic at United States Navy (2001-2005) Updated 7 mo Bad news. By Brad Knickerbocker Staff writer @bradknick November 8, 2014 The. Thin and lanky, he was less physically imposing than many SEALs but was charismatic and dedicated. Bottom left:Screengrab from drone feed during the battle of Roberts Ridge. Once inside, the SEALs proceeded slowly and methodically. Im telling you the absolute truth., After the deployment, SEAL Team 6s leadership examined Hyders actions during Objective Bull. Night after night of kill or be killed. Several months after the bin Laden raid, in October 2011, SEAL Team 6 held its annual stump muster, a reunion of current command members and their families, as well as past leaders and senior operators. Ever since SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden, the SEALs who make up less than 5 percent of the nation's active-duty Special Operations forces have been catapulted into the spotlight,. SEAL Team 6 headquarters at Dam Neck naval annex, Virginia Beach, Va., showing the 30-foot trident sculpted from a fragment of the World Trade Center. We needed that there was not a better group of people to go and do that. The hatchet was too intimate, too closely aligned with a tomahawk, to have been a good idea. The former SEAL, who himself had served in Red during his career, said that by giving operators the weapon of their battlefield persona, Howard sent an unmistakable message to his men: Use it. Others were much more critical. Private sector and then Delta Force ONeill and two or three more assaulters moved past Red intothe bedroom as bin Laden lay on the ground. But his former teammates credit another operative with killing bin Laden before O'Neill entered the room and pumped the rounds into his head, The Intercept notes. Questions about battlefield atrocities persisted, though some excused these actions in the name of psychological warfare against the enemy. Instead of helping search and secure the second floor, both headed to the third floor, hoping to get a chance for the historic kill. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. Moore, sitting in his office in Virginia Beach, pressed Vasely: What had he actually seen? The SEALs were suspected of taking the money. Hyder acknowledged that the man likely did not understand English and probably couldnt see very well. These small teams of CIA, Seal Team 6, and Afghan commandos operated under the agencys Title 50 authority, which governs covert activities. The retired SEAL, who spent the better part of two decades at the command, said he never asked Hyder why he mutilated the corpse. Hyder, who was the ground force commander for the Kandahar operation, was cleared in an after-action review of the shooting. David Boreanaz as Jason Hayes Max Thieriot as Clay Spenser (episode 1-8) Neil Brown Jr. as Ray Perry AJ Buckley as Sonny Quinn Toni Trucks as Lisa Davis Raffi Barsoumian as Omar Hamza Jessica Par as Mandy Ellis Alona Tal as Stella Baxter Parisa Fakhri . His name was added to SEAL. The enemy had the SEALs outnumbered. Beyond the story of the alleged mutilation, the sight of the dead civilians killed during the opening airstrikes of Objective Bull, especially the women and children, left members of Red Team with deep psychological scars. Im not going to tell you this didnt happen. Bottom: McRaven, left, and Capt. Against this backdrop, in 2006, Hugh Wyman Howard III, a descendant of an admiral and himself a Naval Academy graduate, took command of Red Squadron and its roughly 50 operators. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Ladens forehead. The SEAL mission was compromised when the local nationals spotted the team, who presumably reported its presence and location to the Taliban. A drone flying above the convoy showed the occupants of three vehicles were heavily armed. They were both talented and competitive, and they were determined to profit from their experiences as SEALs. When Heath, who witnessed Hyders actions, reported them to his team leader in the presence of other members of the team, several of the guys turned and walked away, said the retired SEAL. Just as important as mental toughness and physical fitness are to being a complete operator, spiritual resiliency is an often . This meant there was less oversight over their missions and less accountability if things went wrong. They dont play by the rules, so why should we?, The Intercept submitted three pages of questions to both Adm.Szymanksi, who as head of Naval Special Warfare now commands all SEALs in the Navy, and Capt. The planning was so meticulous, one retired SEAL Team 6 leader told me, that a helicopter pilot warned mission planners that one of the two stealth Black Hawks they were to use would likely experience a vortex ring state, which means air disturbed by the rotors would prevent the helicopter from getting the lift necessary to continue hovering. 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