May 24, 2018. Inside the vehicle were one or two rifles, as is customary in Afghanistan, but none of the men wore military clothing or had any extra ammunition. The CIA team on the operation was angry because they had lost an opportunity to interrogate the suspected militants. Later that night, after Blue Squadrons assaulters had successfully carried out the raid, killing three or four armed men and recovering weapons and explosives, Vasely and Slabinski conducted a walk-through of the compound. McRavens other directive required a more extensive post-operation review to document and justify combatant deaths. The guys needed that to get back in the saddle because everyone was gun shy., I mean, talk about the funny stuff we do. What we didnt do was turn him in. After being shepherded through the nine-month training, he entered Red Squadron. He remains on active duty and has not responded to requests for comment. Illustration: Attila Futaki for The Intercept. The story of the bin Laden raid has been told and retold, but crucial details have never been made public. Yet immediately after the mission, ONeill described shooting bin Laden while he was on the floor. War is an adrenaline rush. ONeill has not been shy about the fact that he canoed bin Laden. At the reunion, a few hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a small group of current and former master chiefs stood around drinking and telling war stories. They were disgusted. He quoted Heath as saying, Im morally flexible but I cant handle that. Heath refused to comment for this article. 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. We didnt hit women or kids. Most would speak about the unit only on background or without attribution, because nearly every facet of SEAL Team 6 is classified. 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. Its a work of fiction billed as the Bible, as the truth. Im not condoning the behavior theres no justification to hacking a body but we didnt prepare them either. 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. Iraq was a different kind of war nothing wed ever seen, said the now-retired Team 6 leader. Timothy Szymanski, commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Group, after Slabinski was blackballed by SEAL Team 6 in Norfolk, Va., March 25, 2011. As far as the teams are concerned these individuals are persona non gratis. Robert J. O'Neill. The member of SEAL Team Six claiming to have shot and killed Osama bin Laden in a daring night raid in May 2011 is Robert O'Neill, multiple news sources have confirmed. Within two weeks of the apparent beheading, Moore deployed to Afghanistan. [There was] so much savagery. Bottom left: A Winkler hatchet similar to those issued to Red Squadron. But they are a great way of being part of a team. Because of Howards pedigree, SEAL Team 6 leaders running the training program felt pressure to pass him. 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. Heath fired once, hitting the man, sending him tumbling down the back side of the small rise. You will step over the line and you start dehumanizing people. Thats whats wrong with my community, the former SEAL Team 6 leader told me. Eventually, two other elements of a quick reaction force one of which included Hyder landed at the top of Takur Ghar. Once inside, the SEALs proceeded slowly and methodically. You ask me to go living with the pigs, but I cant go live with pigs and then not get dirty.. Howard, who has since risen through the ranks and is currently a rear admiral, was twice rejected by his superiors for advanced SEAL Team 6 training. If I told you I cut off a head after an operation, explaining that I got caught up in the moment, went over the line one time youd have sympathy for me. 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. The intention was to permit women and children to get out of harms way before operators conducted their assault. 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. They were both talented and competitive, and they were determined to profit from their experiences as SEALs. 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. And then we move on, said a former SEAL who was present at the meeting. Several of their teammates on the mission had to intervene, according to a former SEAL Team 6 operator. There's a strong bias in the Teams where the best guys get out after one or two Platoons and the turds stick around. They had detailed plans of the Abbottabad compound provided by the CIA and knew where they could expect to find bin Laden. Bissonnettes book was the first eyewitness account, and it contradicted the Obama administrations narrative. O'Neill has gone. What's more, they found. After the operation, $30,000 in cash, which the pirates had stashed in a lifeboat, went missing. 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. musical red book full. Private sector and then Delta Force The code is a conspiracy of silence, one that many more are complicit in than just the SEALs themselves. Evidence was presented that Slabinski gave an order to shoot all the men they encountered during another raid, whether or not they were armed. These small teams of CIA, Seal Team 6, and Afghan commandos operated under the agencys Title 50 authority, which governs covert activities. They soon discovered he had violated a series of Navy regulations. who is on the navy seal rock of shame. And part of that was getting rid of Britt Slabinski.. Back at the base, hegave a speech to a group of analysts and nonoperational officers in which he told them that his bloody appearance was a demonstration of how a battlefield commander should lead. In the summer of 1992, he left SEAL Team 8 and checked in to DEVGRU. In reality, its bullshit. The SEALs were suspected of taking the money. Gold Squadron was set to redeploy to the U.S., and the SEALs promised to rein in their operators. But we all see what we want to see. Slabinski and the Blue Squadron SEALs deployed to Afghanistan were frustrated, and that book gave them the answers they wanted to see: Terrorize the Taliban and theyd surrender. 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. We shoot em. ONeill and two or three more assaulters moved past Red intothe bedroom as bin Laden lay on the ground. The hatchet says, We dont care about the Geneva Conventions and that we are above the law and can do whatever we want., Critics inside the command were troubled by the combination of battlefield aggression and Howards lack of military discipline. 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. All six were photographed. 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. By late 2007, Slabinski was deployed to Afghanistan as the senior noncommissioned officer in Blue Squadron. The mission was code-named Objective Bull. After he left the Navy, O'Neill became a right-wing celebrity, including gigs as a paid Fox News contributor and popular public . They were told, Go in, kill him, and bring the body back, said a former SEAL Team 6 leader involved in the raid. The operator accused of the attempted beheading has experienced difficulties as a result of his service. Although the stoppage was not limited to the SEALs, his former unit pushed back against a new set of operational guidelines. Why would I do that? he asked. A third of the guys literally think theyre Apache warriors, then you had the Muslim way of removing a head. The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. And earlier this week, the independent Navy Times reported that six members of SEAL Team 10 tested positive last year for cocaine use and other drugs while serving. Bissonnette and his teammates were nearly killed, and many of the operators aboard ended up with chronic injuries. Just as important as mental toughness and physical fitness are to being a complete operator, spiritual resiliency is an often . But in 1998, after intervention by a senior officer at Dam Neck, Howard was given a slot on Green Team. This organization recruits the top 1% of all SEALS in the Navy. One operator, who confirmed Howards remarks, added his own: Thats the business were in.. 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. He took Robertss death hard. Guys are going out every night killing everything. A SEAL who spoke Arabic interviewed bin Ladens wives and daughters until he was able to get two positive identifications. 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. militarys elite special mission units. Bottom: Winkler hatchet from Bissonnettes personal collection. Allowing a lack of integrity to grow and develop within any organization will lead to abuses like it or not. I assessed he was nearing a distance where he was within an area where he could do damage with a grenade. Hyder said that a week earlier, a militant had detonated a concealed grenade after approaching some American CIA officers, seriously injuring them. The SEALs with Hyder came out and separated into two groups. WASHINGTON Britt K. Slabinski, a former senior chief petty officer of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 6, received the Medal of Honor on Thursday for his . 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