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. Beyond the dehumanizing manner in which the al Qaeda fighters had treated his corpse, Robertss death pierced the SEALs self-perception of invincibility. Simply claiming to be a current or former member of the military is not illegal. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. What youre saying is you have no faith in the commander, he said. Bin Laden dropped and ONeill fired the security round that canoed him. For two hours, SEAL Team 6 and officers from the Joint Special Operations Command scrambled a rescue force to recover Roberts. The bombing stopped the convoy along a dry wadi, or ravine, with two of the trucks approximately a kilometer apart. Most would speak about the unit only on background or without attribution, because nearly every facet of SEAL Team 6 is classified. These names are on this rock because these people conducted themselves in a way that did not bring glory to the teams. Red came to a stop and fired two shots with his suppressed rifle. One retired senior SEAL Team 6 leader was there who led the unit during the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. SEAL TEAM 6 also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) chooses guys from the SEAL teams and put them through a screening process called Green team. The morning after Objective Bull, Red Team gathered at Bagram Air Base. Nonetheless, Red Team did not report Hyders alleged battlefield mutilation, a war crime. They ransacked the compound for documents and media for intelligence, left the survivors inside, and returned to Jalalabad air base with the body. Within two weeks of the apparent beheading, Moore deployed to Afghanistan. According to this source, after shooting the man, who turned out to be unarmed, Hyder proceeded to mutilate his body by stomping in his already damaged skull. Audio from an unpublished interview with Britt Slabinksi conducted by Malcolm MacPherson, author of a 2005 book on the battle of Roberts Ridge. What we didnt do was turn him in. Shortly after that operation, a CIA paramilitary officer named Richard Smethers, who was himself a retired SEAL Team 6 officer, complained to his CIA superiors in Kabul that SEALs were committing atrocities. 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. McRaven, who was informed of the killings only after he knew Phillips was safe, was incensed. Just as important as mental toughness and physical fitness are to being a complete operator, spiritual resiliency is an often . SEAL Team 6 patches. He hasnt returned since. Red Squadron snipers killed three pirates who were holding Phillips in a lifeboat. Bissonnette and a small team of SEALs moved from the helicopter to a small building adjacent to bin Ladens main house. 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. Other SEALs on the ground proceeded as though the survivors were combatants. 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. In keeping with Red Squadrons appropriation of Native American culture, Howard came up with the idea to bestow 14-inch hatchets on each SEAL who had a year of service in the squadron. Slabinski told MacPherson that Wolverine had been really good payback., Just a phenomenal, phenomenal day. Im disappointed he didnt take a knee.. The 23 SEAL Team 6 operators assigned to the mission prepared constantly for the entire month of April 2011, practicing on two different full-scale mock-ups of the bin Laden compound. The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. The discussion covered battlefield ethics. But they are a great way of being part of a team. Bravo 2/2B. It was at this point that some critics in the military complained that SEAL Team 6 with their full beards and arms, legs, and torsos covered in tattoos looked like members of a biker gang. You guys want to play withthose rules? OK. Although this former SEAL acknowledged that war crimes are wrong, he understood how they happen. The operator accused of the attempted beheading has experienced difficulties as a result of his service. 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. 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. 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. Top left: Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette in2001. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. As a result, Howard became popular among the enlisted SEALs under his command, several of whom defended and praised him. 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. The texture of those accounts reveals much about what went wrong with the most celebrated special operations command in the U.S. military. Robert J. O'Neill (born 10 April 1976) is a former United States Navy SEAL (1996-2012), TV news contributor, and author. According to his own description, the first two rounds hit bin Ladens forehead. 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. He kept moving toward us, so at 15 meters I put one round in him and he dropped. Night after night of kill or be killed. 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. Because of Howards pedigree, SEAL Team 6 leaders running the training program felt pressure to pass him. Not provide them., During one Iraq deployment, Howard returned from a raid to an operations center with blood on his hatchet and his uniform. 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. Top right: Adm.William McRaven. Was there another explanation? The CIA team on the operation was angry because they had lost an opportunity to interrogate the suspected militants. 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. Less than 48 hours before Objective Bull commenced, a small reconnaissance group from SEAL Team 6s Red Team had tried to establish an observation post on the 10,000-foot peak of Takur Ghar, overlooking the Shah-i-Kot valley, where forces from the Armys 10th Mountain Division intended to strike the last redoubt of al Qaeda forces massed in Afghanistan. The Red Squadron assaulters later gathered in a private area of Bagram Air Base and debriefed the mission in front of a military lawyer. They were disgusted. He quoted Heath as saying, Im morally flexible but I cant handle that. Heath refused to comment for this article. The intention was to permit women and children to get out of harms way before operators conducted their assault. They were both talented and competitive, and they were determined to profit from their experiences as SEALs. Often wed hear, well, theyre savages, the former leadersaid. The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, thats equal to or greater than what the criminal justice system would give to the person, said Susan Raser, a retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent who led the agencys criminal division but did not investigate this mission. (The Intercept is withholding the name of the operator, who believed he was following an order. Bottom left:Screengrab from drone feed during the battle of Roberts Ridge. They each entered Red Squadron at the same time, and were both recipients of the Winkler hatchets handed out by Wyman Howard. 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. 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 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. 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. Paramilitary officers from the CIA, including a covert joint unit under the agencys command called the Omega program, worked closely with the SEALs. The pilot who had warned that one of the helicopters would stall was right. Bissonnette claimed he shot and killed al Kuwaiti and had fired bullets into bin Laden on the third floor. After I shot this dude in the head, there was a guy who had his feet, just his feet, sticking out of some little rut or something over here. It wasnt complex, and had it been several one-off events, a guy chopping a head off it wouldnt be such a failure. 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.. Its a great way to explain it away, but they have the hatchets to flaunt the law. Robertss death, and the subsequent operations in eastern Afghanistan during the winter 2002 deployment, left an indelible impression on SEAL Team 6, especially on Red Team. . He was an outsider, despite having been at the command for many years. Im telling you the absolute truth., After the deployment, SEAL Team 6s leadership examined Hyders actions during Objective Bull. His superiors believed he had become unglued over the 2007 deployment. Brian Snyder; Instagram. A Predator drone video feed filmed an enemy fighter standing over Robertss body for two minutes, trying to behead the dead American with a knife. According to three sources familiar with the debrief, Bissonnette never fired his weapon at Kuwaiti. The enemy had the SEALs outnumbered. After three or four deployments in, you need more to get that stimulation. Szymanski, according to these sources, was directed by Moore to make the episode disappear. 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. 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