© 2020 The SOFREP Media Group. 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. "The report also tried to put to rest a persistent rumor that began after the attacks that the CIA had been using the Benghazi base to covertly smuggle Libyan weapons to Syrian rebels. Several of their teammates on the mission had to intervene, according to a former SEAL Team 6 operator. Why? No cuts were visible in the photos, according to a military official who has reviewed the file. AMY GOODMAN: You write that even before the killing, that two of the Team 6 members, Matt Bissonnette and Robert O’Neill, had an argument that had to … Our leadership punted and I’m not sure it will ever be corrected.”, The failure of SEAL Team 6 to hold itself accountable for battlefield atrocities has resulted in lasting consequences for operators at the command. It was on my antiquated AT&T iPhone 4 and the cell records are all there, the call is well documented. Neither was loaded. In reality, it’s bullshit. Veterans write books for many reasons and motives. The SEALs quickly intervened and made a deal with the CIA station in Kabul. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. The CIA team on the operation was angry because they had lost an opportunity to interrogate the suspected militants. However, I believe that SOCOM, JSOC, and WARCOM will become stronger as a result. Why regarding the latter? Smethers threatened to expose the SEALs for what he believed was a series of war crimes; the canoeing incident was just one of several operations in which Smethers alleged that Gold Squadron operators violated the laws of war. The Red Squadron assaulters later gathered in a private area of Bagram Air Base and debriefed the mission in front of a military lawyer. Shortly after that operation, Slabinski returned to the SEAL Team 6 base at Dam Neck. “The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves, that’s 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 agency’s criminal division but did not investigate this mission. Otherwise we knew it’s going to get out of control. Fanning the media fire further are the inconsistencies in the UBL story as told by Bissonette and O’Neill, this make matters even worse. O’Neill’s and Bissonnette’s careers mirrored one another. The truth about what happened in bin Laden’s bedroom may never be fully known. Two of these sources told me that the British government informed SEAL Team 6 mission planners that Norgrove worked for the spy agency, and that they had been tracking her movements since the abduction. The hatchet was too intimate, too closely aligned with a tomahawk, to have been a good idea.” The former SEAL, who himself had served in Red during his career, said that by giving operators the weapon of their battlefield persona, Howard sent an unmistakable message to his men: Use it. ... Robert … Smethers’s threat to expose Team 6 came just as Vice Adm. William McRaven settled in as the new commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. After blowing open the iron gate blocking the main stairway, the lead assaulters, among them Bissonnette and O’Neill, followed the operator known as Red up the stairs. “If a guy cuts off another guy’s head and nothing happens, that becomes the standard,” said one of the former SEAL Team 6 leaders. The Message Hidden in the Super Bowl Trifecta Flyover, You May Have Been Identified as an Extremist within the Ranks and Had No Idea, The Slow Death of Facebook and the “Woke” Police. Total Loss of Neutrality, Swedish Troops Join SOF Task Force Takuba in Mali. Canoeing was just one of several acts of mutilation frequently carried out by SEALs. I have only to point to a small wooden sign hung over a back door entrance to a place most people will never go or see, which has the following words burned into it: Editors note: This post was modified slightly from its original published format. Just eight months after taking over JSOC, after a series of complaints from the Afghan government over special operations night raids and civilian deaths, McRaven sought to pull Team 6 back from its overly aggressive stance. Bissonnette and a small team of SEALs moved from the helicopter to a small building adjacent to bin Laden’s main house. Afghanistan’s 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 Pakistan’s tribal areas. Then, as two of bin Laden’s eldest daughters began to scream, Red quickly corralled them at the doorway, a move considered heroic by other SEALs on the mission. Robert J. Matt Bissonnette's book on the famous raid was called a national security threat and he was threatened with prison. O'Neill had recounted his version of the bin Laden raid in February 2013 to Esquire magazine, which identified him only as "the shooter". After SOFREP reported on O’Neill’s coming out party (don’t shoot the messenger) on Fox news, SOFREP opted out of the  UBL “Shooter” drama. Former SEAL Team 6 member Matt Bissonnette wrote a book under a pseudonym of his firsthand account of the raid, stating the point man discharged the death shots. O’Neill’s behavior prompted his superiors to counsel him that the operation was classified, the former official said.” –The Daily Beast. Maybe not a formal stand down but a ridiculous delay. A drone flying above the convoy showed the occupants of three vehicles were heavily armed. Szymanski, according to these sources, was directed by Moore to make the episode disappear. Evidence was presented that Slabinski gave an order to shoot all the men they encountered during another raid, whether or not they were armed. In the book, Bissonnette implies that he was directly behind Red just below the third floor when bin Laden was shot, and was one of the next two SEALs who entered bin Laden’s bedroom. You can say, “POTUS said this and POTUS said that,” but you and I don’t know what was or was not classified. O’Neill entered the room, walked over to where bin Laden lay on the floor, and shot him twice in the face. And it takes the team, it takes individuals to pull you back. Slabinkski and others in the squadron had fallen under the influence of an obscure war novel, “Devil’s Guard,” published in 1971 by George Robert Elford. matt bissonnette vs robert o'neill. That was not how the SEALs wanted the mission to develop. 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 official SEAL creed reads, in part: “Uncompromising integrity is my standard. No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden (2012) is a military memoir by a former member of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) who participated in the mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.The book was written by Matt Bissonnette under the pen name Mark Owen. Popular shows like True Detective and The Shield on TV, while fiction, do teach something about motive and consequence. He made the revelation in an interview with Washington Post. And there was no weapons smuggling being done by the CIA to syria. Was there another explanation? The operation, code-named ANSTRUTHER, an homage to Norgrove’s Scottish heritage, was authorized by British Prime Minister David Cameron. The rules of engagement allowed the ground force commander to shoot anyone he viewed as a threat, regardless of whether they were armed at the time of the shooting. Inside a heated tent, as many as 40 SEAL Team 6 operators asked themselves how they wanted to treat their fallen enemies. Bissonnette’s book was the first eyewitness account, and it contradicted the Obama administration’s narrative. Inside the command, the incident became known as the Wedding Party bombing after it was learned that the convoy was driving to a wedding. Rob O’Neill Wants The Photos Of Bin Laden’s Corpse Released To The Public. Unless the point man was confident that the threat was neutralized from the shots he fired to the head (the only exposed part he had to engage). That year’s reunion, the first under Wyman Howard as commanding officer, was held at their new headquarters, a $100 million, state of the art testament to the stature of the command as the home of the “President’s Own,” the clandestine global force capable of striking anywhere, killing anyone, the tip of America’s military spear. (The Intercept is withholding the name of the operator, who believed he was following an order. Then O’Neill canoed bin Laden with a final shot. Both Bissonette and O’Neill have conflicting narratives, and while no two people experience events alike, there are fundamental inconsistencies with their two stories.