And that was a bona fides that SEAL Team 6 needed to feel comfortable with sending their men out to find her at this location. And two subsequent investigations, first one for JSOC, and which is effectively an internal investigation, and one for the NavyNaval Criminal Investigative Service, the federal law enforcement organization that the Navy has that conducts criminal investigations. 2023 Getty Images. He died in the dark in his pajamas, listening to the sounds of people moving through the house. But I think one of the things I say in the article is, is that this was very dramatic in the world of SEAL Team 6, but even within their own mores, two of the three later returned to the unit. 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. We have already changed to become a much more professional fighting force because it allowed us to get more work, however, we will always have a different mentality than the rest because that's why we were created. MATTHEW COLE: Absolutely. So, after a mission, he tries to cut a mans head off. Trumpistas, flagging and what might be done about it, Propaganda film now out "Patriot anti-Muslim Day". Two things for you young tadpole wannabes: Killing unarmed civilians whether on purpose or by accident has a profoundly harmful effect on the human soul. Controversies: The betrayal of Navy SEAL Team 6 (Photo: XY) A year ago, before they were killed, members of U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 had attained international prominence for one particular reason: They were responsible for the Operation Neptune Spear which resulted with the death of world's most wanted terrorist, Al-Qaida founder, Osama bin Laden. And, you know, theyits a party. So, you are putting this out at the end of the Obama administration. And his response was Ill go to the press. And, in fact, I think, specifically, he threatened to go to The New York Times. AMY GOODMAN: What did Matt Bissonnette say? Grow your brand authentically by sharing brand content with the internets creators. And so, in the subsequent years afterwards, their teammates viewed that lie, that he had killed the courier outside in the adjacent compound, as the beginning of Bissonnettes effort to shape his story so that he could sell it, because you need to have drama whenever youre selling a myth. MATTHEW COLE: So, essentially, ONeill, who is the second to fire shots in bin Laden, puts two rounds in his face or his forehead. Youve closed this ugly part of our commands history, and everyone gets away with it. Both current and former military members say the inter-service fight between the SEALs and the Air Force special operations command has been ugly and unbecoming. I know more than one development group operator and the scars remain forever. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. It makes sense, not just from a moral point of view, but from a strategic one as well. Theyre essentially trophies. According to a former SEAL Team 6 leader and a SEAL Team 6 consultant, the unit caught a senior officer at the command committing travel fraud. So there was a practical side to it, too. And what was interesting, actually, is how much, I learned over the two yearshow much animosity was directed towards the two SEALs who spoke out and exaggerated or lied, whatever you want to say, falsehoods. And, in fact, he had not. In December, The Intercept reported that Republican representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, President-elect Donald Trumps nominee to be secretary of the interior, committed travel fraud when he was an officer at SEAL Team 6, but received no formal punishment. Hes a nice guy. And so, they wrote his evaluation report in such a way that he wouldnt be allowed into SEAL Team 6, but he could leave the unit and continue on as ain his career as an officer in the Navy SEALs. And it was under the command then of Captain Wyman Howard, who had just taken over at SEAL Team 6. MATTHEW COLE: Well, I think the first thingthe first place to start is that, despite what the Obama administration was at pains to try to say in the hours and days after the raid, was that, from the beginning, the order to the SEALs werewas to go in and kill Osama bin Laden. No one was upset that he ordered a beheading or all the men shot even if they were unarmed. MATTHEW COLE: Yeah, you know, a lot of silence. Well, it turned out that that was not what happened. MATTHEW COLE: The Times did a very good job of introducing the public to some of the darker side of SEAL Team 6, whichyou know, that article was very well reported. And Slabinski comes back and says, No foul play. Age Press J to jump to the feed. Despite explicit orders there not to shoot Bin Laden in the face, in order to aid identification of the body, The Intercept reports that Bin Ladens body was canoed as well, and his face was obliterated.. The SEAL Team 6 (ST6) or DEVGRU is an elite special operations team in the US Navy under the direct command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). NOT FDIC INSURED. What everyone learns from this is that cover-ups work dont say anything bad about your teammates, keep quiet and well get through it. And one of my sources, who was a former senior member of the command, said to me somethingIm paraphrasing roughly, but he said, You know, to this day, Slabinski thinks that the guys turned on him. Its murder and its done to use force to take over property of the targeted nation. Slabinski and his team, including John Chapman, rushed out amid small arms fire from the Al Qaeda militants. Theres a propaganda show called What on Earth, some very subjective interpretations of satellite images. What good is our version of civilization if we behave like barbarians when the rubber meets the road. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. We had inclinations. The Trump team, the transition team, called me to say thatthey didnt dispute any facts in the story. ago u/rentmypie. Miller described The Intercept report as an attack on the officers named in the report and said that unfortunately I note that our PA [public affairs] machine is not geared to respond and attack back except in rare cases.. Even if the image is admitted, at the end of each segment, to be benign, they start with a Fox-News-Outrage session about the country in which the mystery images are spotted. You know, one thing that I didnt mention before, and one of the things that needs to be said, is that what they were doing, in large part, was a form of psychological warfare. And here was someone who made some serious mistakes and. Author has 6.8K answers and 134.9M answer views 2 y Related There are many SEALS who say they killed Osama Bin Laden. Navy SEAL Team Six War Crimes exposed in 'Code Over Country' Connecting Vets News 'Code Over Country' calls into question the entire Navy SEAL enterprise Photo credit Courtesy of Jack Murphy By Jack Murphy February 7, 2022 9:15 am My feelings are best summed up with this quote from the article: Its important that you put this stuff in context, the CIA officer said. In reality, its bullshit. They were mad because he spoke to the New York Times and lied., One of the regulations governing military awards, including the Medal of Honor, states that no medal, cross, or bar, or associated emblem or insignia may be awarded or presented to any person or to his representative if his service after he distinguished himself has not been honorable.. There were, frankly, a whole host of criminal activity, excessive violence, brutality, unjustified killings, some of which were not criminal in nature or intent, but were certainly problematic and poor judgment. August 31, 2022. BRITT SLABINSKI: After I shot this dude in the head, there was a guy that had his feet, just his feet, sticking out of some little rut or something over here. Sub humans that take young girls and women as sex slaves and torture and murder without a single thought. However, it is important to note that SEAL Team 6 (also known as DEVGRU or Development . We didnt hit women or kids. Slabinskis military career did not end on March 4, 2002. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/nadia-murad-isis-sex-slave-nobel-peace-prize. That investigation, too, resulted in the SEALs being cleared. E: info@bridgelight.com. Alert: German Newscast Displays Star Trek Logo as Seal Team 6 Patch Ghost Soldiers Us Soldiers Survival Scifi Military Gear Military Army It was like a game. As the SEAL Team 6 operations officer at Bagram Air Base, Szymanski was the mission planner for Slabinskis reconnaissance team. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? As Historic Storms & Flooding Kill 19 in California, Why Is Media Ignoring Role of Climate Change. So, the British government requested that SEAL Team 6 go save her. And he was killed by a SEAL who was the first to encounter him. He was just trying to take gear off of the mans body, and nothingnothing was untoward. But the officer doesnt believe it. And the inquiry finds that, you know, hewas no question that this was a result of Slabinskis leadership. It happened to be the SEALS who were deployed at the time. I think I doI do knowand it wasnt in this piece, but there is more toyou know, he had some subsequent positions in the Navy SEALs that werehad somethere were some ethical flags raised in those positions, as well, towards the end of his career. He is then requested by asomeone who was close to him, who had been another SEAL Team 6 officer, who was in Afghanistan during the Roberts Ridge, Neil Roberts death, and that deployment, who was one of the investigators and the senior SEAL Team 6 member on the ground when the young SEAL had tried to behead the Taliban. He was just a kid relative to someone like Slabinski, and impressionable and easily influenced. They were going to, you know, spank him. We have a set of myths. Copy may not be in its final form. Dam Neck should have rules, and those guys should be violating those rules sometimes, when it's called for, because the moral thing and the right thing and the legal thing are not always the same thing. In addition, SEAL Team 6 operators were "canoeing" dead or dying enemy targets firing bullets at close range to the top of the skull, splitting it open at the forehead and exposing the. Did you know that you can get Democracy Now! MATTHEW COLE: So, SEAL Team 6 hasand any unit can do this, but there are effective ways to get someone to move on, which is that when their time is up, when their pre-assigned task is over, their assignment, the evaluation is written in such a manner, as I understand it, that they cannot get another job within that command afterwards, because of the way the evaluation is written. According to two former SEAL Team 6 leaders, the practice was often documented in post-operation photos stored at the units Virginia Beach headquarters. We continue our conversation with reporter Matthew Cole about his stunning new expos published this week in The Intercept about the elite military unit SEAL Team 6 that reveals a darker side of the group best known for killing Osama bin Laden. He will never work again, and also told the CIA, Hey, were working together here. And he stepped in and conducted a mast and punished, threw out, three members of SEAL Team 6. And after he shifted positions inside SEAL Team 6, the people who followed him discovered his paperwork and realized he had beenhe had a long pattern of it. Related Articles. AMY GOODMAN: You write that even before the killing, that two of the Team 6 members, Matt Bissonnette and Robert ONeill, had an argument that had to be broken up by their fellow SEALs about who would tell the story after. And that man is currently a two-star admiral, Rear Admiral Tim Szymanski. to your inbox each morning. I mean, he was dead. They didnt put his name on after they blacklisted him for suspicion of war crimes. His career should have been over, yet he was given a promotion. MATTHEW COLE: Yeah. Muckraking Awards, Books, Films, and Organizations, joint special operations commander general stanley mccrystal, naval criminal investigative service (ncis), naval special warfare development group (seal team 6), the wedding party massacre (in afghanistan on 6 march 2002), Trump administration/Republican House and Senate/Supreme Court. By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Interesting. Talk about what he did as a Navy SEAL and why, ultimately, he was forced out. Happened to be the SEALS being cleared Slabinskis seal team 6 canoeing photos career did not end on March,... The beat dark in his pajamas, listening to the sounds of people moving through the house as. 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