Survivors began to flee the wreckage, and over the radio, Hyder and his team heard the order that the convoy was now in a free fire zone, allowing the Chinooks gunners to fire at anyone deemed a threat, regardless of whether they were armed. The retired SEAL, who spent the better part of two decades at the command, said he never asked Hyder why he mutilated the corpse. In 2014, ONeill unveiled himself as the man who killed bin Laden in an hourlong Fox News special, just as Bissonnette published a second book. You dont whistleblow on the teams and when you win on the battlefield, you dont lose investigations.. 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. Photos: U.S. Navy; U.S. Air Photo by Force Technical Sgt. Both teams exited the helicopters to find a grim scene. Three weeks after the incident, NCIS closed its investigation, concluding that there was no evidence the SEAL had violated the laws of armed conflict. When he first arrived at Dam Neck, operators in the unit who had served in Vietnam warned him that war crimes and battlefield atrocities hung like a cloud over the entire unit even if only one SEAL had participated. 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. He has told at least one former SEAL Team 6 teammate that he hopes to never deploy again. Beyond the dehumanizing manner in which the al Qaeda fighters had treated his corpse, Robertss death pierced the SEALs self-perception of invincibility. By the rules of engagement he became a legitimate target and it was supported. The list also includes Britt Slabinski, who was blacklisted in 2015 following the New York Times article that quoted him denying hed ever ordered his men to kill unarmed Afghan targets. ), 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. Sitting with old friends, the retired SEAL was handed a ring-bound portfolio. The SEALs from the other helicopter immediately headed up a steep hill after landing to locate an armed man who had been shot from the helicopter. Theres no military purpose for it, a former Red Squadron operator told me. Howards critics argue that the hatchets were emblems of the rogue, at times criminal, conduct on the battlefield the commander was encouraging. According to multiple sources, both of their accounts contain multiple self-serving falsehoods. Other active-duty SEAL Team 6 operators who worked with Bissonnette on his various consulting deals were punished as a result of their profiteering. You guys want to play withthose rules? OK. Although this former SEAL acknowledged that war crimes are wrong, he understood how they happen. After being shepherded through the nine-month training, he entered Red Squadron. ONeill was closer to Red, one of the first five assaulters. With more extensive photographic documentation, SEAL operators had less time to fire unnecessary rounds into the dead, and they had to use the photos to explain why they fired their weapon. One, led by an enlisted operator, took in the damage to one of the vehicles. 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. What were originally known as assault teams now formally became squadrons, and by 2008, the expansion led to the creation of Silver, a fourth assault squadron. The lack of battlefield discipline was not limited to a single squadron. Scott Moore, and his deputy, Capt. Every one of us is issued and carries a suppressed weapon, said one former senior SEAL, referring to the Heckler & Koch assault rifles, equipped with silencers, issued to the operators. Red Team, known as the Redmen, employed a Native American warrior as a mascot; Blue Team, known as the Pirates, wore the Jolly Roger; and Gold Team, known as the Crusaders or Knights, wore a lion or a crusaders cross. Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. McRaven, who was informed of the killings only after he knew Phillips was safe, was incensed. He was awarded a Navy Cross, the second highest battlefield award for heroism. Top left: CIA paramilitary officer and former SEAL Team 6 member Richard Smethers. A veteran of hundreds of raids and assaults during his career, the former SEAL said he disagreed with the order to kill bin Laden, regardless of whether he was armed, and compared it to Britt Slabinskis order to his Blue Squadron men in 2007. ONeill then fired two rounds. The SEALs had no authority over the helicopter gunners. Bottom: McRaven, left, and Capt. You really do. Both operators were accused of breaking with standard operating procedure to get themselves in position to be among the first to see or kill bin Laden. If you have multiple incidents where the ground force commander pulls the trigger on a deployment, you have a total breakdown of operational tactics, said one retired SEAL leader. Even before the attack on the convoy and the alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan, Hyder had committed at least one killing with questionable justification. There just isnt a need to carry a two-pound hatchet on the battlefield. For those who favored them, this former SEAL said, the hatchets could be justified as being no more than knives. Questions about battlefield atrocities persisted, though some excused these actions in the name of psychological warfare against the enemy. Hyder finished his tour at SEAL Team 6 shortly after returning from the Afghanistan deployment and was later promoted to the rank of commander, the Navy equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. Slabinski experienced, charismatic, and by now legendary bridged the gap. In the summer of 1992, he left SEAL Team 8 and checked in to DEVGRU. Neither wasloaded. It was just good therapy. Most of the operators held a meeting to discuss what had happened on the mission. In an interview, Hyder said the man had approached his position with his arms tucked into his armpits and did not heed warnings from other SEALs to stop. We didnt hit women or kids. Navy. The truth about what happened in bin Ladens bedroom may never be fully known. Over a period of several weeks, a fight erupted between SEAL Team 6 and CIA officers in Afghanistan. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. [There was] so much savagery. Late that year, the CIA joined operators from Gold Squadron for an operation near Jalalabad. Tim Szymanski. At that point, Hyder began assessing the damage and surveying the dead. 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. I shot him, finished him. The guys needed that to get back in the saddle because everyone was gun shy., I mean, talk about the funny stuff we do. Allowing a lack of integrity to grow and develop within any organization will lead to abuses like it or not. On my 2005 deployment in Afghanistan, we only went on a handful of ops, said a retired SEAL who served under Howard. Private sector and then Delta Force Moore did not respond to requests for comment. The intention was to permit women and children to get out of harms way before operators conducted their assault. Red came to a stop and fired two shots with his suppressed rifle. It was like a game. Created in 1980 and based at the. Bin Laden dropped and ONeill fired the security round that canoed him. In that brief firefight, the SEALs killed nearly 20 foreign al Qaeda fighters, some of whom carried U.S. military equipment taken from Takur Ghar. In the early years of the war, SEAL Team 6 had an inflexible standard: Shooting people who were unarmed was forbidden and anyone who did so had to demonstrate the targethad displayed hostile intent. The CIA declined to comment for this article. In ONeills account, he did not see Red fire his shots at bin Laden because he was looking back down the stairs for reinforcements. The publication came as a surprise to the Pentagon because Bissonnette had failed to clear it as required. O'Neill (born 10 April 1976) is a former United States Navy SEAL (1996-2012 . Both men were notorious among their teammates for their self-promotional tendencies a trait not well-suited for a team-first environment. Created in 1980 and based at the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana near Virginia Beach, the command prided itself on its culture of nonconformity with the larger military. The rise of JSOC as the sharp tip of Americas military effort led to a similar increase in size and responsibility for SEAL Team 6 in the early years of Americas two post-9/11 wars. Senior members of SEAL Team 6 felt the pattern of brutality was not only illegal but rose to the level of war crimes. Ten officers and master chiefs voted unanimously against allowing Slabinski to return to the command. Earlier that evening, general officers from the Joint Special Operations Command had scrambled the SEALs after watching a Predator drone video feed of a man they suspected was bin Laden set off in a convoy of three or four vehicles in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where al Qaeda forces had fortified themselves. Im telling you the absolute truth., After the deployment, SEAL Team 6s leadership examined Hyders actions during Objective Bull. The book purported to be a true account of an S.S. officer who with dozens of other soldiers escaped Germany after World War II, joined the French Foreign Legion, and spent years in Vietnam brutalizing the insurgency. Two different sources said that over a six-year period roughly 2005 through 2011 battlefield reports and accounts of atrocities, particularly mutilations and taking of trophies, were ignored by SEAL Team 6 leadership. A few years later, after Hyders name was mentioned for another rotation in Red Team, some of Hyders former operators informed SEAL Team 6 leadership that he was not welcome back in the unit. They were told, Go in, kill him, and bring the body back, said a former SEAL Team 6 leader involved in the raid. Tactically, however, the command was winning on the battlefield, and despite McRavens directives, there was no serious internal scrutiny of the SEALs most excessive conduct. Paramilitary officers from the CIA, including a covert joint unit under the agencys command called the Omega program, worked closely with the SEALs. 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 . The SEALs in the unit were furious that the White House revealed to the world that Navy SEALs had carried out the raid, violating the traditional code of silence about their missions. Its a schoolyard mentality. It happens in war. 36 39 Sponsored by The Penny Hoarder Instead of helping search and secure the second floor, both headed to the third floor, hoping to get a chance for the historic kill. In exchange, Smethers, who never filed an official allegation or complaint, was sent back to the U.S. Smethers did not respond to requestsfor comment. This account of the crimes of SEAL Team 6 results from a two-year investigation drawing on interviews with 18 current and former members of the unit, including four former senior leaders of the command. 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. ONeill was chosen as a team leader for a group providing external security but ultimately traded that leadership role for a junior spot on the team he and Bissonnette believed would get the first shot at bin Laden. I understand the desire, I dont condone it, but there was definite retaliation., Hyder told me that he did not desecrate the body. Our job is to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way befitting the American people and the American flag. He took Robertss death hard. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. He later told his teammates that it was possible one arm was twitching reflexively as he died, but otherwise he was effectively dead and not a threat. Unlawful violence, aberrations from rules of engagement, mutilations, and disrespect of enemy casualties, actions that had been isolated at the beginning of the Afghan war, had by this point spread throughout SEAL Team 6. The sniper team leader acted under his own emergency assault authority to kill the pirates as soon as all three could be taken out at the same time. In 2007, for example, a Gold Squadron sniper was pushed out of the unit after he killed three unarmed people including a child in at least two different operations. By the time Slabinski entered the room where the dead militant lay, according to three former SEAL Team 6 leaders, the operator had severed much of the dead mans neck. After all that activity, hed been hiding in a ditch for 90 minutes, he gets up, hes spoken to, yelled at in the dark its disturbing. This was a crucial moment: Kill bin Laden now and the war could be over after only six months. Bissonnette eventually settled his legal case with the government, agreeing to return $6.7 million in profits from the sale of No Easy Day and giving up any proceeds from future sales of the book. . They were smiling, almost gleeful, he said. Why would I do that? he asked. Thats whats wrong with my community, the former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. He ordered a pause in most SEAL and JSOC operations over a two-week period in February 2009. Despite orders to detain the men, the SEALs killed all six. The pilot who had warned that one of the helicopters would stall was right. Morale at Red Squadron fell apart shortly after the team returned to Virginia Beach from Afghanistan. But what happened during Objective Bull, the assault on the convoy in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, has never been previously reported. After Robertss death, Slabinksi wanted revenge. Red watched bin Laden fall. A former SEAL Team 6 leader who has knowledge of the episode told me Moore shamed Slabinski and the squadron for their conduct. My word is my bond. But after 9/11, another code emerged that made lying especially to protect a teammate or the command from accountability the more honorable course of action. He told Vasely that the operator had been trying to remove the dead fighters chest rack, a small vest that can hold ammunition and clips. The texture of those accounts reveals much about what went wrong with the most celebrated special operations command in the U.S. military. The hatchets Howard obtained were stamped with a Native American warrior in a headdress and crossed tomahawks. Rob O'Neill, the SEAL Team Six operator who claims to have shot Osama bin Laden, praised Greitens as a "combat leader," spoke at his rallies, and offered signed versions of the ISIS bumper. Canoeing them was funny.. The sixth season of SEAL Team has been ordered on February 1, 2022, then has premiered on September 18 and concluded on November 20, 2022. It was given as an honor, one more step to strive for, another sign that youre doing a good job.. As far as the teams are concerned these individuals are persona non gratis. Nonetheless, Red Team did not report Hyders alleged battlefield mutilation, a war crime. Among members of SEAL Team 6, this practice of desecrating enemy casualties was called canoeing., The canoeing photos are dramatic documentary evidence of the extreme and unnecessary violence that began to occur during multiple high-risk, exhausting, and traumatizing tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He assumed it was a twisted act of misplaced revenge over the previous days events specifically, the gruesome death of Hyders teammate Neil Roberts. Some SEAL Team 6 leaders were appalled by how easily Vasely and Szymanski had folded under Moores pressure. War is an adrenaline rush. This is multiple times on each deployment.. Outside the main entrance stands a 30-foot trident sculpted out of a fragment of the World Trade Center. Six days after Objective Bull, the Pentagon announced at a press conference that an airstrike had killed 14 people,who a spokesperson said were somehow affiliated with al Qaeda. According to two senior SEAL Team 6 sources, however, the leadership dynamic in Blue Squadron was a failure. Former US Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, identified in news accounts as the member of SEAL Team Six who killed Osama bin Laden. 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. On its ``Wall of Shame,' CyberSEALs says Nolan claimed to be a member of Seal teams 2 and 6. Scott Moore, right, then commander of SEAL Team 6. 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.. The official SEAL creed reads, in part: Uncompromising integrity is my standard. That was the only punishment. At least two of Bissonnettes teammates who were with him when al Kuwaiti was killed were angry about the deception taking credit for a teammates actions on a mission was unprecedented and dishonorable but did not contradict him in the presence of a military lawyer. As attorney and crime author Andrew Vachss once wrote, "it takes a village to rape a child." The criminals are ultimately enabled by everyone around them who maintains the code of silence. A spokesperson at Naval Special Warfare, which oversees SEAL Team 6, declined repeated requests for interviews and refused to answer a detailed list of questions, writing in a statement, We do not entertain or support public discussion of classified information because it puts our forces, their families and our future operations at great risk. The SEAL command asserted that all members of Naval Special Warfare are required to comply with the Laws of Armed Conflict in the conduct of military operations.. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Ladens forehead. In 2010, when Slabinski was up for a promotion at the command, SEAL Team 6 leaders conducted two internal inquiries before making a decision. Otherwise we knew its going to get out of control. Youre moving the bar and buying into an emotional justification, War is hell. If youre not disciplining your force, youre saying its OK.. After the publication of No Easy Day which in one chapter describes in great detail the specialized gear, along with brand names, Bissonnette wore on the bin Laden mission the Navy opened several inquiries into Bissonnettes outside business contracts. Photos: www.navyseals.hu; Robert J. Fluegel/U.S. By Navy Times staff. 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,. In the early 1980s, a group of seasoned enlisted SEAL Team 6 operators kicked McRaven off a training exercise, relieving him of his already tenuous command for being too rule-bound. Bottom left:Screengrab from drone feed during the battle of Roberts Ridge. I was going around to the different KIAs with my camera to take photos, Hyder told me in an interview, using the military term for enemies killed in action. Szymanski, according to these sources, was directed by Moore to make the episode disappear. His forehead was gruesome, he later told Esquire magazine. War is awful and its human to go too far, but this isnt one time. The morning after Objective Bull, Red Team gathered at Bagram Air Base. He had already set himself up for a profitable future. By the time we moved over to Iraq, we were doing missions as much as five nights a week. Bottom right: Undated photo of Adm.Wyman Howard. The novel, which glorifies Nazi military practices, describes counterinsurgency tactics such as mass slaughter and desecration and other forms of wanton violence as a means of waging psychological warfare against the savage Vietnamese. The operation commanded high-level interest because Norgrove, though in Afghanistan as an aid worker for DAI, an American NGO, secretly worked with Britains MI-6. 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. I didnt give their different accounts much thought, the SEAL said. The bombing stopped the convoy along a dry wadi, or ravine, with two of the trucks approximately a kilometer apart. Timothy Szymanski, commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Group, after Slabinski was blackballed by SEAL Team 6 in Norfolk, Va., March 25, 2011. Bissonnettes book was the first eyewitness account, and it contradicted the Obama administrations narrative. A quarter were basically strap-hangers and a quarter were rock-stars. The first and best-known was the rescue of Capt. The flight took 90 minutes, and as the Black Hawk Bissonnette rode in approached the compound walls, it effectively slammed on the brakes. No issues with that. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face. He has even alludedto the grisly practiceon Twitter. The defense contractor, Atlantic Diving Supply, or ADS, has military supply and equipment contracts with SEAL Team 6, according to several former SEAL Team 6 operators, as well as other. Bottom: Winkler hatchet from Bissonnettes personal collection. Oh my gosh. Local residents and media on May 5, 2011, outside the compoundwhere al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He said it and one of his operators did it because he believed he was following an order.. Afghanistans Paktia province is about the size of New Hampshire, with 10,000-foot ridgelines and arid valleys with dried riverbeds below, nestled along the border with Pakistans tribal areas. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. The mission was code-named Objective Bull. Despite claims by John O. Brennan, President Obamas chief counterterrorism adviser, that the raid was a capture or kill operation, the SEALs were told explicitly to kill bin Laden. Two other SEAL Team 6 leaders with a combined 35 years at the command said the removal of Slabinski and the failure to pursue official punishment was an indictment of the senior officers they had failed one of their most basic duties, to hold themselves and others accountable for wrongdoing. Officers like Hyder, who did not pass through the brutal SEAL Team 6 internal training program, known as Green Team, are often viewed with suspicion and occasionally contempt by the enlisted SEAL operators. After the bodies were recovered, Hyder and the other members of Red Team were forced to reckon with the mutilation and near beheading of their fellow SEAL. The operator accused of the attempted beheading has experienced difficulties as a result of his service. We couldve used the intel. Outside the compound, the SEALs were quick to show the photos to others on the assault team. It was really good therapy for everybody who was there.. But the directive had another benefit. Peter Vasely with members of Blue Squadron in Afghanistan. Some of those photographs, especially those taken of casualties from 2005 through 2008, show deceased enemy combatants with their skulls split open by a rifle or pistol round at the upper forehead, exposing their brain matter. When you see your friend killed, recover his body, and find that the enemy mutilated him? One retired senior SEAL Team 6 leader was there who led the unit during the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As he did so, he approached the manHeath had shot. The pilot noted that the two mock-up compounds had chain link fences around the buildings, allowing the air to disperse, while the real compound had thick concrete walls. It ruined some of these guys, said the former SEAL operator on the mission. Army 1942-1945 WW II S/Sgt 4/26/1916 6/21/20072126th AAF BU,. Although the video had revealed no weapons, and the generals had only tenuous intelligence that the convoy was al Qaeda just suspicions based on the color of the mans flowing white garb and the deference others showed him they were nervous that bin Laden might get away again, as he had a few months earlier after the bombing of the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001. In the ensuing 17-hour battle with the al Qaeda fighters, six more Americans were killed, and several were wounded. We talked about it and 35 guys nodded their heads saying this is not who we are. Inside, they found six militants, four in one room, all sleeping with weapons near their beds. Historically, SEAL Team 6 is known as a unit where officers rent their lockers, because they typically serve about three years before rotating out, whereas the enlisted operators remain for much of their careers, often for a decade or more. The operational tempo was very high. ONeills teammates shot and killed Kuwaitis brother and his wife on the first floor. At that point, the second inquiry was commissioned by the SEAL Team 6 commanding officer, Pete Van Hooser. The operations team leader believed that a suicide vest had been detonated by one of the captors, and two Silver Squadron operators initially withheldthe fact that a grenade had been thrown. A fierce firefight erupted between the four SEALs and a much larger enemy force of more than 50 anti-coalition insurgents. Howard, who declined to answer questions from The Intercept, rallied his SEALs and others before missions and deployments by telling them to bloody the hatchet. One SEAL I spoke with said that Howards words were meant to be inspirational, like those of a coach, and were not an order to use the hatchets to commit war crimes. Theres honor involved and Vic Hyder obviously traipsed all over that, he said. According to three sources familiar with the debrief, Bissonnette never fired his weapon at Kuwaiti. Somebody else is making this up. Bottom left: A Winkler hatchet similar to those issued to Red Squadron. What youre saying is you have no faith in the commander, he said. Our sense of whats right and whats wrong is warped. 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. Some of ONeills teammates were outraged hed been so brazenly inaccurate and self-serving in his account. 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. The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. Within hours, news trucks and reporters fanned out through the seaside town looking for anything affiliated with Navy SEALs. No officers were present, and the enlisted SEALs used the meeting to address Hyders alleged mutilation of the dead Afghan the previous day. Was it acceptable, as Hyder had done with the wounded man whom he executed, to desecrate the dead? As a result, Howard became popular among the enlisted SEALs under his command, several of whom defended and praised him. Bissonnette and his teammates were nearly killed, and many of the operators aboard ended up with chronic injuries. After the operation, $30,000 in cash, which the pirates had stashed in a lifeboat, went missing. 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They found six militants, four in one room, all sleeping with weapons near beds. As much as five nights a week the level of war crimes an emotional justification, is. Hyder began assessing the damage and surveying the dead Afghan the previous day hours, news trucks and reporters out! A grim scene and his wife on the mission stashed in a headdress and tomahawks... On our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account fell. So we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account Red one...

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