--:-- [Sound of a podcast intro]
--:-- Shamita: Hi, this is Shamita, and we're bringing you a bonus episode of Apple News today. Our colleagues over at Apple TV Plus have just launched a new investigative podcast called The Line.
--:-- Shamita: In 2018, a group of Navy SEALs broke ranks and accused their chief, Eddie Gallagher, of murder, pulling them all into the biggest war crimes trial in a generation. Did a Navy SEAL cross the line in Iraq? We're sharing the first episode with you now.
--:-- Shamita: New episodes come out every Tuesday. You can listen and subscribe to The Line on Apple Podcasts.
--:-- Shamita: Hey there, before we start, just know that this episode contains descriptions of violence in war and a reference to suicide. Thanks for listening.
--:-- Shamita: Episode 1, We Have a Problem.
--:-- Shamita: When Alpha Platoon of SEAL Team 7 found themselves in Mosul, Iraq in 2017, in the middle of one of the most kinetic battles in a decade, they considered themselves lucky as hell.
--:-- Shamita: This is them shooting mortars at a target in the city.
--:-- Shamita: The mission? ISIS had occupied Mosul for the past two years, holding much of the city hostage. And the SEALs were here to help Iraqi forces clear ISIS out.
--:-- Shamita: Fuck yeah! Block by block.
--:-- Shamita: Alright, day one, heading into Mosul. Master Craig, Tom, Bobby on the gun. See if we can do some work.
--:-- Shamita: For a fighting force known for being secretive, you would be amazed at how much of it they record on their personal GoPros that they attach to their helmets.
--:-- Shamita: Like teenagers shooting their own skate videos in the Best Buy parking lot.
--:-- Shamita: Where we're going to live tonight.
--:-- Shamita: That building is to be ISIS headquarters.
--:-- Shamita: And you can see it in these videos.
--:-- Shamita: After 18 months of training for this one mission, these SEALs have become close.
--:-- Shamita: And that closeness is a big part of what makes them work so well as a team.
--:-- Shamita: But that bond between them, it would begin to break down.
--:-- Shamita: A fracture that grew from one day, from one moment in particular.
--:-- Shamita: May 3rd, 2017.
--:-- Shamita: The SEALs order an airstrike on a building in Old West Mosul, where several ISIS fighters are hiding out.
--:-- Shamita: The building is destroyed.
--:-- Shamita: Five ISIS guys are killed, but the rest escape.
--:-- Shamita: And after a firefight, Iraqi forces capture a lone ISIS fighter who was left behind.
--:-- Shamita: This is the voice of that fighter, lying in rubble, wounded but alive.
--:-- Shamita: An Iraqi war reporter had been there on the scene, and he questions the fighter.
--:-- Shamita: The first thing you notice is how young this fighter seems, with a beginner's mustache and the stretched-out limbs of a growth spurt only halfway done.
--:-- Shamita: He is a kid.
--:-- Shamita: And now, in the hands of the Iraqi army, a prisoner.
--:-- Shamita: Reporter, why did you work with them? Did they force you or was it your choice?
--:-- Shamita: ISIS fighter, my father used to hit me and he told me not to join them.
--:-- Shamita: Then why did you go?
--:-- Shamita: Because they said it would be a good job.
--:-- Shamita: So for the good job, yes, Amo.
--:-- Shamita: That's Arabic for uncle.
--:-- Shamita: Yes, uncle.
--:-- Shamita: Then the reporter moves on to other matters of war.
--:-- Shamita: Not realizing just how newsworthy this kid was about to become.
--:-- Shamita: The prisoner is injured, a wound to the leg and possibly more.
--:-- Shamita: And so the Iraqis pick him up and they drive him a little farther back from the front line.
--:-- Shamita: To the seals of Al-Batun.
--:-- Shamita: Who have been working with the Iraqis to clear Mosul.
--:-- Shamita: A seal helmet cam captures this scene as the Iraqis pull up with a wounded fighter draped over the hood of the Humvee, like a deer.
--:-- Shamita: Then, someone cuts through the crowd that is already forming.
--:-- Shamita: Wearing dusty desert camo and about 50 pounds of gear, Chief Eddie Gallagher.
--:-- Shamita: Gallagher is the top enlisted guy in the platoon.
--:-- Shamita: Intense and aggressive.
--:-- Shamita: He's also a trained medic.
--:-- Shamita: Although, along with wearing the standard pack of medical supplies on the back of his belt, he had taken to wearing a hunting knife.
--:-- Shamita: And a leather sheath there as well.
--:-- Shamita: Gallagher approaches the prisoner on the ground.
--:-- Shamita: He kneels over him and rips open the kid's pant leg.
--:-- Shamita: The kid screams and raises up.
--:-- Shamita: Gallagher pushes him down.
--:-- Shamita: Then, the video stops.
--:-- Shamita: That's the end of it.
--:-- Shamita: Leaving us stuck on a final image.
--:-- Shamita: A freeze frame.
--:-- Shamita: A young prisoner, unarmed and wounded, the last known image of him alive.
--:-- Shamita: And kneeling over him, Chief Eddie Gallagher, a decorated Navy SEAL, about to do something or not do something, depending on who you believe, that would brand him to many as a war criminal.
--:-- Shamita: We'll keep coming back to this freeze frame, because it's the catalyst for this war story, about where the line is between right and wrong in war.
--:-- Shamita: And when that line becomes blurry, what happens to the hearts and souls of the warriors fighting?
--:-- Shamita: Or to the rest of us?
--:-- Shamita: The ones who send them out there to fight in the first place.
--:-- Shamita: I'm Dan Taberski, and this is The Line.
--:-- Dan Taberski: There are three types of people in this world.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's the beginning of a parable that the Navy SEALs I've talked to over the past year like to toss around to explain how they see themselves and their place in the world.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The sheep are me, and probably you, just regular people living our lives.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The wolves, they are the bad people, the evil people, who want nothing more than to kill us sheep.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And then there are the sheepdogs.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The sheepdogs like to kill too, but they like to kill wolves to protect the sheep.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The sheepdogs are a little bit scary.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They're a little bit aggro, but they're honorable and necessary.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, there's a lot of guys out there like, oh, I'm a sheepdog.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm a sheepdog. I'm a sheepdog. I'm a sheepdog.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm like, I'm not.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is Dan.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan was a SEAL for 11 years, and he has got a slight amendment to that parable.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, basically a sheepdog protects sheep, and he hangs out with sheep, and he looks like sheep.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And he waits to get attacked.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Fuck that.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm a fucking lion.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm hunting wolves.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm not waiting for wolves to hunt me.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm looking for that motherfucker, and I'm daring him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Come down this hill.
--:-- Dan Taberski: As a matter of fact, I'm coming to the hill to you, right?
--:-- Dan Taberski: And every now and then I'll eat a sheepdog and I'll eat a fucking lamb if it gets in my way.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's been my mentality.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm trying to tone it down.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan is absolutely terrifying.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And also, kind of a good hang.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Which is how I would describe a lot of the SEALs I've met over the past year.
--:-- Dan Taberski: If you're looking for intensity, go find yourself a SEAL.
--:-- Dan Taberski: There's only around 2,500 SEALs.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's about as many kids as there were in my high school.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And at least as much drama as we're going to come to see.
--:-- Dan Taberski: There's a SEAL Team 1, a SEAL Team 2, 3, all the way through 10.
--:-- Dan Taberski: With SEAL Team 6 being the most elite of the elite.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Although there's no SEAL Team 9 for some reason.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Or at least the navies never acknowledge the existence of one.
--:-- Dan Taberski: What the SEALs do often seems to be described in the negative.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The Navy SEALs are unconventional forces.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They engage in irregular warfare.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They are built to be autonomous, have a small footprint, and make things happen that other forces can't.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They call it direct action.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This operation has been in the planning stages for more than eight months.
--:-- Dan Taberski: If you're familiar with any of their work, it is probably their greatest hits.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Like killing Osama bin Laden in 2011.
--:-- Dan Taberski: ...helicopters carried about 25 Navy SEALs into the compound.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Inside, bin Laden and his men engaged in a firefight.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Bin Laden was killed by a shot...
--:-- Dan Taberski: Or in 2009, when SEAL snipers saved a container ship captain being held hostage by Somali pirates.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Cargo ship captain Richard Phillips is safe and unhurt tonight after U.S. Navy SEAL snipers from the deck of a warship...
--:-- Dan Taberski: Three pirates, three bullets to the head, and Tom Hanks playing Captain Phillips in the movie version Taboo.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But besides the one or two sexy stories that are deemed major motion picture worthy to show heroes being heroes, the SEAL teams do all of it in secret.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Covert action.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We get just the outlines, the bare minimum.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But even that, last year the Department of Defense reported that U.S. special operations are active in 141 countries.
--:-- Dan Taberski: A whole world of warfare.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We're left to just guess at.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So my granddad was Navy, my dad was Navy, and then I wanted to be Navy, but I wanted to do the best.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is Kevin.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He served on SEAL Team 4.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So I did three deployments with the SEAL teams, and I did 10 or 15 more with the other government agencies.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Other government agencies.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Yeah.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Should we just leave it at that?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Yeah, we can leave it there.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Kevin began his SEAL training at age 17.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You need special dispensation to join up so young, but he was ready.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I just kind of like always felt that that was my purpose.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, like to be a warrior and to kind of protect people and just fuck up bad guys.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's what I wanted to do.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, there's evil in the world and there's people that need to kind of be between the good people and the bad people.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know what I mean?
--:-- Dan Taberski: So there's got to be a barrier between the good people and the bad people.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I think that's what the fighters are.
--:-- Dan Taberski: If you're between the good people and the bad people, what are you?
--:-- Dan Taberski: I feel like you're a little bit good, you a little bit bad
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know what I mean
--:-- Dan Taberski: Trying to get a group that calls themselves the Quiet Professionals to not be quiet is no easy task
--:-- Dan Taberski: We talked to over 50 current and former SEALs and other special operators for this project.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I went to SEAL Team 2. Team 5. SEAL Team 1. Team 10. And SEAL Team 7.
--:-- Dan Taberski: For SEALs not directly involved in this case, we're going to use first names only, and sometimes pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We began talking to SEALs to understand the story of Alphabatoon from Team 7 and Chief Gallagher in that freeze frame.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But it became clear pretty quickly that the story of what happened in Alphabatoon is the story of the SEALs writ large.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Now working on the edges, the gray areas, between a little bit good and a little bit bad can be perilous.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Setting up a situation in which you may find yourself on the wrong side of that line.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Or, after the fact, realizing that the line may never have been there at all.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's become a tradition at the teens, at the end of deployment, to take all that GoPro footage that the SEALs shot and cut it together in a platoon video.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Like a video yearbook, just for them.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is the video Alf Patoon made at the end of their mission to Mosul.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And this is a soundtrack they chose.
--:-- Dan Taberski: God help us all.
--:-- Dan Taberski: A couple things to glean from this video.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The guys in the platoon, they gave each other nicknames, like Stinky Steve and the Firestarter.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Also, they are very big on mooning the camera, which I am ashamed to say makes me laugh every time.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But the biggest takeaway, whatever you think of the war and why we are even there fighting, what these guys actually did in Mosul is incredible.
--:-- Dan Taberski: To actually see it, treating wounded Iraqis with a calm hand and rescuing each other from sticky situations, acts of real valor and heroism.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They experienced something truly amazing together.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So no surprise that when the deployment was over and they returned to the states, it doesn't take long for the group texting to start.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Tolbert, anyone need any help with anything today?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Friends, washing my back?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Tolbert, we're going to need all afternoon to get that in.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This goes on for months.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Poop jokes galore, and the word fag kicked back and forth like a hacky sack.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But noticeably not on the thread?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Their chief, Eddie Gallagher.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And all those dumb jokes belie the nervousness that creeps in about the uncomfortable topic that these seals keep coming back to.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Tolbert, I know some of y'all just got back and don't want to hear this, but I guess Eddie is out for blood.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We need to talk to someone ASAP.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Arrington, what have you heard and who have you heard it from?
--:-- Dan Taberski: A smaller group of them, seven seals, breaks off into a separate thread that they call the sewing circle.
--:-- Dan Taberski: As a goof.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's what Gallagher used to call them for being gossipy.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And it's here where they hash out how they are going to do what it is they are about to do.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Tolbert. Seriously, I think Monday this has to happen.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Delay. I agree.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Arrington. In.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They're about to take a massive risk.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Gallagher was seen as a hero.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's up for medals.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And Mosul was considered a huge success.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And some of these guys are trying to land a spot now on SEAL Team 6, The best of the best.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Being labeled snitches would be like taking a lighter to all of it.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Miller, and what do we do when Master Chief says, get the fuck out of my office?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Arrington, we'll go to the next person.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They know that the blowback is going to be severe.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But in spring of 2018, seven months after they returned from Mosul, they do it anyway.
--:-- Dan Taberski: All right, so today's the 23rd of May.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's about 1735.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm here with...
--:-- Dan Taberski: Here's my ID, so you know, I am indeed a special agent with NCIS.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm Joe Warplinski.
--:-- Dan Taberski: These are recordings of the initial interviews they gave to NCIS in a tiny white interrogation room, the kind where nothing pleasant ever happens.
--:-- Dan Taberski: What this might be about and what you guess?
--:-- Dan Taberski: I would probably guess Chief Bay Officer Gallagher.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Correct.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And despite being some of the toughest men on the planet, their resolve seems shaky.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This could really fuck up.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It could be skewed and make everybody look like a bunch of rats.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Well aware of the shitstorm, an official investigation into a fellow SEAL would unleash.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm nervous, you know, because I just don't know anything about this stuff.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And there's a lot at stake.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Together, these SEALs and their statements to the investigators, they tell a story about a deployment where they expected to see a lot of action and a chief they were psyched to work for.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I mean, everybody was talking about like, oh, you have Chief Gallagher?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Like, he's great.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's a physical stud.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, he's a good performer.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's aggressive.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I loved him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's my mentor.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's a legend.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Great leader.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Great reputation.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And everyone knows him, like, a guy you can fall back on.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And he made an awesome platoon of, like, really, really solid stand-up guys that were really, really good at their jobs.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Definitely a family man and was real good at us guys and was pretty well-respected before deployment.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And then I noticed a change kind of right as we got in-country.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Once in Mosul, that's when many of them say that they watched Gallagher become a different person.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He started, like, distancing himself from the platoon.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He spent a lot of his time in his room, watching movies and playing video games after we'd get back from ops.
--:-- Dan Taberski: What type of performance issues?
--:-- Dan Taberski: I mean, just a severe decline in professionalism.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He was going around with some other guys' stuff while we were gone, and he'd go and ruffle through and take, like, stuff out of our care packages and stuff.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He was just very aggressive, unpredictable.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It was just easier for me to steer clear.
--:-- Dan Taberski: If I didn't need to talk to him, I wasn't going to talk to him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: 100% his priority was to just get up and snipe.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is SO1 Corey Scott.
--:-- Dan Taberski: SO stands for Special Operator.
--:-- Dan Taberski: SO1 Scott describes Gallagher as becoming interested in pretty much one thing above all else.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Racking up kills.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It kind of turned into the platoon being Eddie's personal, like, sniper escort to get in from place to place so he could try to do his sniper ops.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And you'd make comments that he was, like, okay with killing women and kids, things like that.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He was sitting on his sniper rifle all day long, just, like, taking shots.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is S01 DeLay, also a sniper.
--:-- Dan Taberski: In fact, it was unusual for a chief to be on a sniper rifle at all.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So much so that he hadn't been issued one.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He would use other SEALs' weapons to snipe with.
--:-- Dan Taberski: DeLay accuses Gallagher of scratching his itch to kill with tactics that were dangerous and irresponsible.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Just a case study for what not to do.
--:-- Dan Taberski: For example, returning over and over to the same sniper position, making them all easy targets for ISIS.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We would constantly go to him to be like, hey, this is a bad idea to go back to the same building.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And he said, we're going back.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Well, then a SPG-9 missile hits that sniper hide.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And it's like, OK, let's not go back.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Well, we're going to go back.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I spoke to someone in special operations who referred to combat as the controlled management of violence.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But the platoon chief these SEALs described to NCIS is one that seems to be losing that control.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, we're trained to kill bad guys.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's easy to kill people.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's not hard at all.
--:-- Dan Taberski: SO2 Villanueva was the most junior in the platoon.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But he didn't have that discipline, and I don't think he should have been in the back with a sniper rifle.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Just anyone that he would see out, he would try to engage him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Are you talking about civilians as well?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Yes, that definitely did.
--:-- Dan Taberski: As they interview more and more SEALs from the platoon, investigators begin to home in on one day in particular.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That day in May 2017, when word came over the radio that the Iraqi partner force had captured an ISIS fighter.
--:-- Dan Taberski: S01 delay.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, that was like, holy shit, you know, we're going to see an ISIS dude, like, in the face.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Legitimately excited to see an ISIS guy up close, rather than through the scope of his sniper rifle.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You know, I was curious.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I wanted to look into, you know, his eyes this close and see what, you know, what he was.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But DeLay says Gallagher heard that same news and chimed in.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Eddie came over the radio and said, no one touch him, he's all mine.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That is when the Iraqis rolled into the compound with the wounded fighter draped over the hood of the Humvee.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They brought the guy in, and he didn't look like he was doing very well.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Can you describe, like, how old this person appeared to be?
--:-- Dan Taberski: 13, 14.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And, you know, this guy was, you know, he was real thin.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm a skinny guy.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And he was, I mean, he was skinny.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And they were, like, throwing water on his face, you know, trying to kind of revive him a little bit.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I think it was a shrapnel wound.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Lead Petty Officer Miller.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is actually Eddie's number two in the platoon.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I was walking behind the home bee and around it.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I look over and Eddie was there.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And that brings us back to our freeze frame, that last image before it cuts off.
--:-- Dan Taberski: S01 Scott a medic in the platoon says he saw what happened next.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It was an unconscious kid I could see a leg wound
--:-- Dan Taberski: He had like a chest tube in
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I think they did a crike while I was there
--:-- Dan Taberski: A crike
--:-- Dan Taberski: That inserting a tube in the throat to create an airway.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They kind of had everything under control.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So I had the patient's head while they were working with him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So I was kind of there monitoring the patient.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And that is when he says the situation turned.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And then all of a sudden, maybe you start stabbing the dude.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Did he say anything when he did this?
--:-- Dan Taberski: He pulled out a knife and started stabbing him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: One time, multiple times?
--:-- Dan Taberski: It was probably two or three times.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Okay.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Was it like just a stab in or was it like a stab in and like turn it?
--:-- Dan Taberski: It was just like a stab about right here, just in a few times.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So your point is like the base of your neck?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Yeah, face of the neck, like going down into the neck ones.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The right or left side of the guy, do you remember?
--:-- Dan Taberski: The guy's right side.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Is there any possible way that what he was doing would be interpreting as for medical purposes to help this guy?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Stabbing that ISIS fighter a few hours earlier in combat, it would have been on the level.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Killing ISIS was the reason they were there.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But the minute he became a prisoner, he was off limits.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's not just breaking a Navy rule or a federal law.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's something that pretty much the entire world got together with the Geneva Conventions and agreed was wrong.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I was kind of shocked at first.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I kind of looked around, like, who else is seeing this?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Lead Petty Officer Miller says he was seeing it.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I see Petty laying over on with the knife.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Sitting under his neck.
--:-- Dan Taberski: If he were to say that somebody else stabbed him and you just saw him pulling out the knife?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Is that possible?
--:-- Dan Taberski: No, I saw him put the knife in the neck.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's without a doubt.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And there's nothing I could do at this point.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And so I left that scene and just tried to catch my breath.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I tried to just think about what I just saw.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I remember I was thinking, man, He knows it.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I know this.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Esso once got again.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And then, like, I kind of stayed at the dude's head and then, like, for a few minutes until he died.
--:-- Dan Taberski: After the prisoner had died, the platoon has stopped down for a while, waiting to return to base.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And that is when some of the SEALs begin taking photos with the body.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Trophy photos.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Including one of Gallagher holding his knife in one hand and propping up the head of the corpse with the other.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Then, group shots.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It was like, hey, we're taking a group picture.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Get in this fucking picture.
--:-- Dan Taberski: S01 delay.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And, you know, at first I was just kind of acting like I didn't hear it.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I was like, dude, come on, get in the fucking picture.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I was like, fuck no, I'm not getting in that picture.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So I stood in the back and...
--:-- Dan Taberski: S01 Miller again.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I just felt like I didn't have a choice there.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Miller was one of seven Alpha platoon SEALs in that picture, the body of the young ISIS fighter propped up in the middle.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And after that, I was like, we need to go.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We need to leave.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This has just turned into something that's just like for...
--:-- Dan Taberski: This morning, a decorated Navy SEAL facing court-martial later today for the murder of an ISIS fighter in Iraq.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He has been charged with four counts of violating military law, including premeditated murder.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Cheered by supporters who called him a hero, but accused by the military of being a war criminal.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Fourteen months after giving these statements to investigators, eight SEALs from Alpha Platoon would testify in court about what they say they saw.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And Eddie Gallagher would be labeled a war criminal, or a war hero, depending on what channel you watch.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But the story would also be tossed onto an already considerable pile of Navy SEAL scandals over the last few years.
--:-- Dan Taberski: In 2017, three SEALs are charged with war crimes for beating prisoners in Afghanistan.
--:-- Dan Taberski: In 2018, two SEALs are charged with the murder of a Green Beret while on deployment in Mali.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That same year, multiple Team 10 SEALs get kicked out for drugs, and an internal investigation shows rampant cocaine use by SEALs, snorting it, spiking drinks with it, and widespread gaming of the drug testing system.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And even that Captain Phillips rescue on that container ship, three pirates, three bullets to the head in 2009.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Five years later, on that same ship, two former SEALs turned private security are found dead, both from a heroin overdose.
--:-- Dan Taberski: All these disparate events.
--:-- Dan Taberski: But just to look at them as crimes or scandal or even just bad behavior, I think it's missing the point.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm a fucking lion.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm hunting wolves.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Remember Dan?
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm not waiting for wolves to hunt me.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm looking for that motherfucker, and I'm daring him.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Come down this hill.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan was also on Team 7, but a decade earlier, before Gallagher, before the sewing circle.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan's career as a team guy straddles a critical point.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Before 9-11, and then after.
--:-- Dan Taberski: When what I think is fair to call a sickness began.
--:-- Dan Taberski: For the SEAL teams as an organization, and for many of the SEALs just as humans in their own bodies, and mines because of what they're asked to do in the name of protecting the sheep.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I had come in the teams to do all these missions and didn't do shit.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan earned his SEAL trident in 1995, a time when the Cold War was just won and the relative peace was bad news for a SEAL looking for action.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So I deployed the first two times to the Middle East on what's called an ARG Alpha.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And ARG Alphas absolutely suck.
--:-- Dan Taberski: You put a SEAL platoon on a ship and it floats for six months to the Middle East and it does circles.
--:-- Dan Taberski: With the SEALs at the ready to run missions at a moment's notice.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So basically the team just floats around and waits.
--:-- Dan Taberski: I did two missions and one like semi-undercover, which is the lamest, stupidest thing in the world.
--:-- Dan Taberski: He's bored silly.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So Dan begins working toward a degree in finance.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And in 2001, he starts to transition out of the teams.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And then 9-11.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's like I'm laying in bed with my wife.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And so I turned the TV on and right as I turned it on, I saw the second plane hit the tower.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And we kind of laid there for a little while longer.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And my wife said, you're not getting out, are you?
--:-- Dan Taberski: I'm like, I'm not getting out.
--:-- Dan Taberski: The American people understand that this is a different kind of war.
--:-- Dan Taberski: This is a different type of war.
--:-- Dan Taberski: There will be a conventional component to the conflict, but much of what takes place will never make it onto the TV screens.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Much of the efforts that we talked about in the Oval Office will be efforts that you'll never see until people are brought to justice.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And where special operations was niche before, a break glass in case of emergency type force, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we would be breaking glass constantly.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And I'm like, this is what I've been waiting for.
--:-- Dan Taberski: We're going to go fucking jack some dudes up, you know?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan joins Team 7, which still has that new team smell.
--:-- Dan Taberski: It's one of two teams created after 9-11.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Dan's first deployment with the team is to Baghdad in 2003.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And their specialty? Kill capture missions.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And your job was basically manhunting.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That was, I mean, we didn't go there for anything else, right?
--:-- Dan Taberski: That was our focus.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Capture them to get intel.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Capture them to get intel.
--:-- Dan Taberski: So we captured hundreds upon hundreds of people.
--:-- Dan Taberski: How did that work?
--:-- Dan Taberski: You were doing night raids?
--:-- Dan Taberski: Correct.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They keep vampire hours.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They wake at one in the afternoon.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They work out.
--:-- Dan Taberski: They prep their vehicles and their equipment.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And as soon as dinner was over, we'd have our PLO.
--:-- Dan Taberski: That's platoon leader's orders.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And so PLO is where the big mission brief is.
--:-- Dan Taberski: And we go through the entire mission brief of who's here's the guy.
--:-- Dan Taberski: Here's what we're looking for
