We Have a Problem

Hey there, before we start, just know that this episode contains descriptions of violence in war and a reference to suicide. Thanks for listening. Episode 1. We have a problem. Alright, said more. Yeah. Alright, we're doing the impact. Just send these. We're on. Send them. When Alpha Batoon 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. This is them shooting mortars at a target in the city. 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. Block by block. Alright, they won. Hello, Mosul. Master Craig. Tom. Bobby, I'm a gun. If we can do some work. For a fighting force known for being secretive, you would be amazed at how much of it they record on their personal go-proves that they attach to their helmets, like teenagers shooting their own skate videos in the Best Buy parking lot. And you can see it in these videos. After 18 months of training for this one mission, these SEALs have become close. That closeness is a big part of what makes them work so well as a team. But that bond between them would begin to break down. A fracture that grew from one day, from one moment, in particular. May 3rd, 2017. The SEALs order an airstrike on a building in Old West Mosul where several ISIS fighters are hiding out. The building is destroyed. Five ISIS guys are killed with the rest escape. And after a firefight, Iraqi forces capture a lone ISIS fighter who was left behind. This is the voice of that fighter. Lying in rubble wounded but alive. And Iraqi war reporter had been there on the scene and he questions the fighter. 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, he is a kid. And now, in the hands of the Iraqi army, a prisoner. Reporter, why did you work with them? Did they force you or was it your choice? ISIS fighter. My father used to hit me and he told me not to join them. Then why did you go? Because they said it would be a good job. So for the good job, yes, I'm old. That's Arabic for uncle. Yes, uncle. Then the reporter moves on to other matters of war, not realizing just how newsworthy this kid was about to become. The prisoner is injured, wound to the leg and possibly more. And so the Iraqis pick him up and they drive him a little farther back from the front line to the seals of Al-Batun who have been working with the Iraqis to clear Mosul. A seal helmet cam captures this scene. The Iraqis pull up with a wounded fighter draped over the hood of the home, like a deer. Then someone cuts through the crowd that is already forming. Wearing dusty desert camo and about 50 pounds of gear, chief Eddie Gallagher. Gallagher is the top enlisted guy in the platoon. Intense and aggressive. He's also a trained medic. Although, along with wearing the standard pack of medical supplies in the back of his belt, he had taken to wearing a hunting knife and a leather sheath there as well. Gallagher approaches the prisoner on the ground. He kneels over him and rips open the kid's pant leg. The kid screams and raises up. Gallagher pushes him down. Then the video stops. That's the end of it. Leaving a stuck on a final image. A freeze frame. A young prisoner, unarmed and wounded, the last known image of him alive. 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. 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 and war. And when that line becomes blurry, what happens to the hearts and souls of the warriors fighting? Or to the rest of us, the ones who send them out there to fight in the first place? I'm Dan Tabersky, and this is the line. There are three types of people in this world. Cheap, wolves, and sheep dogs. That's the beginning of a parable, that the Navy seals I've talked to you over the past year like to toss around, to explain how they see themselves and their place in the world. The sheep are me, and probably you, just regular people, living our lives. The wolves, they are the bad people, the evil people, who want nothing more than to kill us sheep. And then there are the sheep dogs. The sheep dogs like to kill too, but they like to kill wolves to protect the sheep. The sheep dogs are a little bit scary, they're a little bit aggro, but they're honorable, necessary. You know, there's a lot of guys out there like, "Oh, I'm a sheep dog, I'm a sheep dog, I'm a sheep dog," I'm like, "I'm not." This is Dan. Dan was a seal for 11 years, and he has got a slight amendment to that parable. You know, basically a sheep dog protects sheep, and he hangs out with sheep, and he looks like sheep, and he waits to get attacked. Fuck that. I'm a fucking lion. I'm hunting wolves. I'm not waiting for wolves to hunt me. I'm looking for that motherfucker, and I'm daring, and come down this hill. Actually, no matter if I come into the hill to you, right? And every now and then, I'll eat a sheep dog, and I'll eat a fucking lamb if it gets in my way. Wow. That's been my mentality. I'm trying to tone it down. You know what I'm saying? Dan is absolutely terrifying, and also kind of a good hang, which is how I would describe a lot of the seals I've met over the past year. If you're looking for intensity, go find yourself a seal. There's only around 2500 seals. It's about as many kids as they're wearing my high school, and at least as much drama as we're going to come to see. There's a seal team one, a seal team two, three, all the way through ten, with seal team six being the most elite of the elite. So there's no seal team nine, for some reason. Or at least the Navy's never acknowledged the existence of one. What the seals do often seems to be described in the negative. The Navy seals are unconventional forces. They engage in irregular warfare. They are built to be autonomous, have a small footprint, and make things happen that other forces can't. They call it direct action. This operation has been in the planning stages for more than eight months. If you're familiar with any of their work, it is probably their greatest hits, like killing Osama bin Laden in 2011. The whole helicopter is carried about 25 Navy seals into the compound. Inside bin Laden and his men engaged in a firefight. bin Laden was killed by a shot. Or in 2009, when seal snipers, a save day container ship captain being held hostage by Somali pirates. Cargo ship captain Richard Phillips is safe and unhurt tonight after US Navy seal snipers from the deck of a warship. Three pirates, three bullets to the head, and Tom Hanks playing Captain Phillips in the movie version taboo. 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. Covert action. We get just the outlines, the bare minimum. But even that, last year the Department of Defense reported that US special operations are active in 141 countries. A whole world of warfare were left to just guess at. So my granddad was Navy, my dad was Navy, and then I wanted to be Navy, but I would do like the best. This is Kevin. He served on seal team four. So I did three deployments with the seal teams and I did like 10 or 15 more with the other government agencies. So other government agencies. Yeah. Should we just leave it at that? Yeah, we got to do that. Yeah, the Department of Education. Yeah, yeah. Kevin began his seal training at age 17. You need special dispensation to join up so young, but he was ready. Says he always was. I just kind of like always felt that that was my purpose. You know, like to be a warrior and to kind of protect people and just fuck up bad guys. That's what I wanted to do. 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. You know what I mean? So. There's got to be a barrier between the good people and the bad people. I think that's what the fighters are. If you're between the good people and the bad people, what are you? I feel like you're a little bit good. You're a little bit bad. Trying to get a group that calls themselves the quiet professionals to not be quiet is no easy task. We talked to over 50 current and former seals and other special operators for this project. with the SEAL team 2. - Team 5. - SEAL team 1. - Team 10. - And SEAL team 7. For SEALs not directly involved in this case, we're gonna use first names only, and sometimes pseudonyms to protect their anonymity. We began talking to SEALs to understand the story of Alphapatoon from Team 7, and Chief Gallagher, in that freeze frame. But it became clear pretty quickly that the story of what happened in Alphapatoon is the story of the SEALs writ large. Now working on the edges, the gray areas, between a little bit good and a little bit bad, can be perilous. Setting up a situation in which you may find yourself on the wrong side of that line. Or, after the fact, realizing that the line may never have been there at all. It's become a tradition at the teens, at the end of deployment to take all that GoPro footage from the SEAL shot, and cut it together in a platoon video. Like a video yearbook, just for them. This is the video Alphapatoon made at the end of their mission to Mosul. And this is a soundtrack they chose, God help us off. A couple of things to glean from this video. The guys in the platoon, they gave each other nicknames, like Stinky Steve, and the Firestarter. Also, they are very big on mooning the camera, which I am ashamed to say makes me laugh every time. 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. To actually see it, treating wounda Iraqis with a calm hand and rescuing each other from sticky situations, acts of real valor and heroism. They experienced something truly amazing together. 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. Tolbert, anyone need any help with anything today? Friends, washing my back? Tolbert, we're gonna need all afternoon to get that in. This goes on for months, poop jokes galore, and the word "fag" kicked back and forth like a hackie sack. But noticeably not on the thread, they're chief Eddie Gallagher. And all those dumb jokes, be lie the nervousness that creeps in about the uncomfortable topic that these seals keep coming back to you. Tolbert, I know some of you all just got back and don't wanna hear this, but I guess Eddie is out for blood. We need to talk to someone ASAP, Aarrington, what have you heard and who have you heard it from? A smaller group of them, seven seals, breaks off into a separate thread that they call the sewing circle, as a goof. That's what Gallagher used to call them for being gossipy. And it's here where they hash out how they are going to do what it is they are about to do. Tolbert, seriously, I think Monday this has to happen. Delay, I agree. Aarrington, in. They're about to take a massive risk. Gallagher was seen as a hero. He's up for medals, and Mosul was considered a huge success. And some of these guys are trying to land a spot now on Seal Team Six, the best of the best. Being labeled snitches would be like taking a lighter to all of it. Miller, and what do we do when Master Chief says, get the fuck out of my office? Aarrington, we'll go to the next person. They know that the blowback is going to be severe. But in spring of 2018, seven months after they returned from Mosul, they do it anyway. All right, so today's a 23rd of May. What's about 1735? I'm here with. Here's my ID. So you know, I am a D, especially with NCIS, from Joe Warpinski. These are recordings of the initial interviews they gave to NCIS, an attorney-white interrogation room. The kind where nothing pleasant ever happens. What this might be about, what you guess, I would probably guess chief A. Officer Gallagher. Correct. And despite being some of the toughest men on the planet, their resolve seems shaky. This could really fuck up. Like, it could be skewed and make like everybody look like a bunch of rats. Well aware of the shitstorm, an official investigation into a fellow seal would unleash. I'm nervous, you know? Because I just don't know the thing about this stuff. And there's a lot of stake. 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. I mean, everybody was talking about like, oh, you have Chief Gallagher? Like he's great. He's a physical stud. You know, he's a good performer. He's a music-resive. I love to, like he's my mentor. He's a legend. Great leader. Great reputation. Everyone knows him. A guy you can fall back on. And he made an awesome thing of like, really, really solid stand-up guys that were really, really good at their jobs. Definitely a family man. And it was really the us guys. And it was pretty well respected before deployment. And then I noticed a change kind of right as we got in country. Once in Mosul, that's when many of them say that they watched Gallagher become a different person. They started like distancing themselves from the Platoon. He spent a lot of time in this room playing watching movies and playing video games after we get back from ops. What type of performer's issues? I mean, just a severe decline of professionalism. He was going around to really guys stuff while we were gone. And he'd go ruffle through to take stuff out of care packages and stuff. He was just very aggressive, unpredictable. It was just easier for me to steer clear. I didn't need to talk to him. I was going to talk to him. 100% his priority was to just get up and snipe. This is SO1 Corey Scott, SO stands for Special Operator. SO1 Scott describes Gallagher as becoming interested in pretty much one thing above all else, racking up kills. It kind of turned into the Platoon being at his personal like Snacker Escort to get in from place to place so he could try to get the sniper out. And you'd make comments that he was like OK with killing women and kids, things like that. Perfectly OK with killing anybody. Kind of that was smooth. He was sitting on his snacker rifle all day long. Just like, psh, taking shots. This is SO1 Delay, also a sniper. In fact, it was unusual for a chief to be on a sniper rifle at all, so much so that he hadn't been issued one. He would use other seals' weapons to snipe with. Delay accuses Gallagher of scratching his itch to kill with tactics that were dangerous and irresponsible. Just a case study for what not to do. For example, returning over and over to the same sniper position, making them all easy targets for ISIS. We would constantly go to him to be like, hey, this is a bad idea to go back to the same building. And he said, we're going back. Well, then a SPG-9, so it hits that sniper high. And it's like, OK, let's don't go back. Well, we're going to go back. I spoke to someone in special operations who referred to combat as the controlled management of violence. But the platoon chief, these seals, described to NCIS, is one that seems to be losing that control. You know, we're trying to kill bad guys. It's easy to kill people. It's not hard at all. S.O.2 villain away about what's the most junior in the platoon. But he didn't have that discipline. And I don't think he should have been in the back of the sniper rifle. Just anyone that he would see out, he would try to engage him. Are you talking about civilians as well? So yes. That's that definitely did. As they interview more and more seals from the platoon, investigators begin to home in on one day in particular. That day in May 2017, when word came over the radio, that the Iraqi partner force had captured an ISIS fighter. S.O.1 Delay. You know, that was like holy shit. You know, we're going to see an ISIS team like in the face. Legitimately excited to see an ISIS guy up close, rather than through the scope of his sniper rifle. You know, I was curious. I wanted to look into guys this close. I'm sure you know what he was. But Delay says Gallagher heard that same news and chimed in. And he came over the radio and said, "No one touch him. He's all mine." That is when the Iraqis rolled into the compound with the wounded fighter draped over the hood of the Humvee. They brought the guy in. And he didn't look like he was doing very well. Can you describe like how old this person appeared to be? 13, 14. And you know, this guy was, you know, he was railed in. I'm a skinny guy. I mean, he was skinny. And they were really throwing water on his face, you know, trying to kind of provide them a little bit. I think it was a trap moment. Lead petty officer Miller. This is actually Eddie's number two in the platoon. I was walking behind the Humvee and around it. And, uh, I look over and I was there. And that brings us back to our freeze frame. That last image before it cuts off. S.O. once got a medic in the platoon, says he saw what happened next. It was unconscious kid. I can see a white wound, you know, like a chest tube in. And I think they did a crick while I was there. Okay. Crick, that's inserting a tube in the throat to create an airway. They were, they kind of had everything under control. So I was kind of at the patient's head while they were working with them. So I was kind of there monitoring the patient. And that is when he says the situation turned. And then also I maybe just start stabbing the dude. To put his same thing when he did this, you pull that and that, it started stabbing. One time, multiple times, it was probably two or three times. Was it like just a stabbing or was it like a stabbing and like turning it? It was just like a stab about right here, just in a few times. So you're pointing to like the basing neck or the chest. Yeah, so the neck, like going down into the neck, while I was right on the left side of the dead. Remember the guys right side? Is there any possible way that what he was doing to be interpreted as for medical purposes to help this guy? No. Stabbing that ISIS fighter a few hours earlier in combat, it would have been on the level. Killing ISIS was the reason they were there. But the minute he became a prisoner, he was off limits. It's not just breaking a navy rule or a federal law. It's something that pretty much the entire world got together with the Geneva conventions and agreed was wrong. I was kind of shocked at first, kind of looked around like, who else is seeing this? Lead petty officer Miller says he was seeing it. I see any laying over on with the knife. So do you have this knife? If he were to say that somebody else stabbed him and he was, you just saw him pulling out the knife. Is that possible? No, my son was the knife in the neck. That's what I found out. And there's nothing I could do at this point. So I left that scene and just tried to catch my breath and I tried to think about what I just saw. And I remember sticking like, man, if he knows it, I know this. And so once got again, and then I kind of stayed at the dude's head and then like for a few minutes until he died. After the prisoner had died, the platoon has stopped down for a while, waiting to return to base. And that is when some of the seals begin taking photos with a body, trophy photos, including one of Gallagher holding his knife in one hand and propping up the head of the corpse with the other. Then group shots. It was like, hey, we're taking a group picture, getting this fucking picture. S-O-1 delay. And, you know, at first I was just kind of acting like I didn't hear it. It was like, dude, come on, get in the fucking picture. And I was like, fuck no, I'm not getting that picture. So I stood in the back and. S-O-1 Miller again. I just felt like I didn't have a choice there. Miller was one of seven alpha-butune seals in that picture. The body of the young ISIS fighter propped up in the middle. And after that, I was like, we can't do it like we need to go. We need to get, we need to meet. This is just turning into something that's just, like, for me. Put it. (Music) This morning, a decorated Navy SEAL facing court martial later today for the murder of an ISIS fighter in Iraq. He has been charged with four counts of violating military law, including premeditated murder. (Applause) Feared by supporters who called a may hero, but accused by the military of being a war criminal. Fourteen months after giving these statements to investigators, eight seals from alpha-butune would testify in court about what they say they saw. An Eddie Gallagher would be labeled a war criminal, or a war hero, depending on what channel he watched. But the story would also be tossed onto an already considerable pile of Navy SEAL scandals over the last few years. (Music) In 2017, three seals are charged with war crimes for beating prisoners in Afghanistan. In 2018, two seals are charged with the murder of a green beret while on deployment in Mali. That same year, multiple team-ten 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. And even that Captain Phillips rescue on that container ship, three pirates, three bullets to the head in 2009, five years later, on that same ship, two former seals turn private security or found dead, both from a heroin overdose. All these disparate events, but just to look at them as crimes or scandal or even just bad behavior, I think it's missing the point. I'm a fucking lion. I'm hunting wolves. Remember Dan? I'm looking for that motherfucker and I'm daring to come down the seal. Dan was also on Team 7, but a decade earlier, before Gallagher, before the sewing circle. Dan's career as a team guy straddles a critical point, before 9/11 and then after. When what I think is fair to call a sickness began. So the seal teams as an organization and for many of the seals just as humans, in their own bodies and minds. Because of what they're asked to do, in the name of protecting the ship. I had come in the teams to do all these missions and didn't do shit. Dan earned his seal trident in 1995. A time when the Cold War was just one and the relative peace was bad news for a seal looking for action. So I deployed the first two times to the Middle East on what's called an Argaalpha. An Argaalpha is absolutely suck. You put a seal buttoon on a ship and it floats for six months to the Middle East and it does circles. With the seals at the ready to run missions at a moment's notice. So basically the team just floats around and waits. I did two missions and one like semi undercover which is the lamest stupidest thing in the world. He's bored silly. So Dan begins working toward a degree in finance and in 2001 he starts to transition out of the teams. And then 9/11. It's like I'm laying a bed of my wife and so I turned the TV on and right as I turned it on I saw the second plane hit the tower. And we kind of laid there for a little while longer and my wife said you're not getting out are you I'm like I'm not getting out. The American people understand that this is a different kind of war. This is a different type of war. There will be a conventional component to the conflict but much of what takes place will never make it onto the TV screens. 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. 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. And I'm like this is what I've been waiting for we're going to go fucking jack some dudes up you know. Dan joins team seven which still has that new team smell. It's one of two teams created after 9/11. This first deployment with the team is to Baghdad in 2003. Their specialty kill capture missions and your job was basically man hunting. Yeah, yeah, that was I mean we didn't go there for anything else right. So that was our focus capture them to get into capture them to get into so we captured about hundreds upon hundreds of people. How did that work you were doing night raids correct. They keep vampire hours they wake at one in the afternoon they work out they prep their vehicles and their equipment and as soon as dinner was over we'd have our PLO. PLO that's platoon leaders orders. And so PLO's were the big mission brief is we go through the whole entire mission brief of who's the here's the guy here's what we're looking for this is what he's wearing. Technology gave the seal teams unheard of amounts of intel to pull this off. They would often know not just the guy's name and face but his outfit that day the layout of his house who would be home. It's less like war and more like a SWAT team and sometimes a hit job. The platoon is ready for action just after midnight. In the movies you'll see guys like you know play music and shit that's not the way it was for us. It was no nothing like it was no like okay here's what we're gonna do guys we just sit out there we now we just smoke scars and bullshit. There was no speeches. As soon as you leave the gates, it's game on. - Game on, man. You guys aren't talking to each other like you're-- - You don't talk at all. There's no talking. The only talking going on is a navigator. Okay, we got a right turn coming up. Hey, we got a left turn coming up 'cause you had everything so dialed in. As soon as my feet hit the ground, we'd get in formation and it was just, you know, you don't run. You're basically at a nice fast walk and get to where we're doing, put the breach on the door and that was the last thing I would say is, I'd grab my point man's head, put his the ground, turning steel and charge and then it's on. - Turning steel, that's what you say before igniting a charge, Dan was trained as a breacher. Dan's role felt important and necessary and he couldn't get enough. - Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? - No. - Or if you're going race car driving and you are driving hard and you're driving at 171.80, that feeling of oh fuck, that's the only two feelings that I can ever give people of what it is to be in a steel convoy at night going to hit a turn. It's, you just see these fucking lasers going everywhere, right? And it isn't, you don't have a feeling of like, oh man, I hope we don't get shot at. You have a feeling like, hey mother fucker, I dare you to shoot at me. You know, we're not here to win. We're here to fucking absolutely decimate you. That's the feeling and you just crave it man. It becomes, it's just a drug. - But the ethics of it, they are debatable. Rounding up people in their homes for what would often end up being extra judicial killing, it's a gray area. But an award where the gray areas had already gotten extremely crowded with CIA black sites and enhanced interrogation and imaginary WMDs. Dan's next deployment is to Mosul, but not 2017. This is our first time in Mosul in 2004. - And Mosul was 10 times what Baghdad was. We were, you know, we were doing eight missions a night and Mosul was crazy. - Two years, five years, 10 years, the seals keep going, but mostly in secret. As far as the public is concerned, it's barely happening at all. Like we were so busy, we would have to take a day off. Like literally we're trying to take today off just to fucking decompress. That's how busy we were, right? - This is uncharted territory. No one quite knows what the impact is going to be. A fighting this kind of up close from personal warfare for this long. You become a CEO and you know you like to fight. Were you prepared for the killing part? - In your brain you think you're prepared. In your brain you talk about I'm gonna kill motherfuckers. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Until the first time you kill somebody. And then people congratulate you and you smile and you go yeah, that yeah, fuck yeah. And you go on your room and you cry. The first time you kill somebody, it is shocking. It is terrible. It changes your life completely. It's something that I think about a lot now because the first man that I killed was an innocent man. - When and where is this? This is an Iraq. - This is Iraq 2003. - It was another kill capture mission. When Dan flew open the door of a house where their target was hiding. And inside they found him killed by Dan's breech blast. But they also found that man's 14 year old son standing in the middle of the room and staring right at Dan. Dan would find out the next day that their intelligence was bad. It was the wrong house altogether. - And the guy died and that's the image I remember is that 14 year old boy is I just killed your fucking dad. And that's that late on my shoulders for a long time, right? It was the only nightmares I ever had. I actually had two nightmares from the war that was one of them. And my wife always asked me where you're dreamin' of nothin'. I just, I was very callous and cold about it. And I drank. Anytime it did come up I would just drink. And I never talked about it. I didn't talk about it till November 8th of 2018 for the first time. - He held on to it for 15 years. - When I was in therapy, in the circle I sat there and I first time ever I said this is what I hate about myself. - And it's the first time you talked about it. - Yeah. It was just like opening a fucking can of mountain dude it was shaken up and it just came out. And I just, I just was tired of not, I don't know. I don't know. - How many people do you know that that died in the war? - 27. - 27. - 27 is a terrible number. But it's not the only death statistic that Dan has had to watch creep up. You know it's 27 in the war and then probably another 20 plus outside of war and growing, which is why I worked so hard to get guys to therapy. - When Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. - Now one of my proudest possessions is the flag that the Seal Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. - The Navy Seals came out of the shadows of war to become full-fledged heroes, hoisted up on shoulders as the answer to how war is fought in the 21st century. But the very next year at the height of that fame, 23 American special operators committed suicide. This is active duty operators, not veterans. It's twice the rate of other military and three times greater than the population at large. And no one is quite sure why. Seals died a very young age. A lot of guys are dying in their 40s and 50s. We went to those funerals and I swear I would never go to a funeral ever again. - Why? You make a crack. (laughing) (snoring) I just miss them so much. Yeah, I just miss them. You know? They're my bros. You know, and, fuck man, we did some, we did some fucking, just amazing stuff together. So that's why I don't wanna go to those funerals because I choose to think of them as they're still here. - Over the next six episodes, we are going to try to understand what happened to Alpha Batoon, into their chief Eddie Gallagher, after that freeze frame, kneeling over that ISIS fighter. But for what it's worth in that moment, he was on his eighth deployment. He had been fighting for 15 years. Gallagher would ultimately face seven charges, including for the murder of that prisoner and the attempted murder of unarmed civilians. But a lot of people get it wrong. Eddie Gallagher wasn't pardoned by Donald Trump. That's false. Gallagher went to trial. And the verdict was, and the order it was read, not guilty, not guilty, guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. And on the way to that verdict, and honest to God, honest to God courtroom confession, that magically both saved Eddie Gallagher and implicated him further at the same time. Not to mention public comments after the trial from Gallagher himself, where it feels like he is just daring us to believe that one or two of those not guilty's got it wrong. And then there's this. Three weeks after that verdict, the head of Naval Special Warfare Admiral Green, he sent out a memo. It's about the decline of good order and discipline and ethics breaches within the seals. The memo is short and to the point. And in the whole thing, there's only one sentence that has been written in bold and underscored for effect. Just four words saying simply, we have a problem. Next time on the line. My name is Eddie Gallagher, Buds Class 252, team seven alpha platoon. And what was your role in the platoon chief? So there's this moment, there's this moment that's captured on Helmet Cam. Yeah. And it's before everything in question happens, right? And you're leaning over this body of, it seems like a very young Isis soldier. Yeah. Surrounded by seals, surrounded by ERD, like there's a lot going on. Someone reaches up and turns the camera off. Yeah. And then everybody just wants to know everything in question is what happens next? Exactly. So what happens next? The line isn't. The Napa Original Podcast, produced by Jigsaw Productions. Our producer is Lizzie Jacobs. Investigative producer Diane Hodson, Jody Avergan is our editor. Maria Louise Tucker and David Iverson are our associate producers. Emily Van Blarcom is our production assistant. And Natsumi Ajisaka did our fact checking. Rick Kwan is our engineer and our original music is from Mark Orton and John Hancock, with additional music from Jeff Baxter and Eric Phillips. The line is executive produced and written by me, Dan Tabersky. For Jigsaw Productions, executive producers are Brad E. Bear, Stacey Offman, Richard Perillo, Joey Mera and Alex Gibney. The supervising producer is Whitney Johnson. Our consulting producers are Annie Allen and Jeff Simblist. The team also includes Andrew Haffner, Jay Lewis and Eric Mitten. Our interns are Olivia Butler, Zara Khan, Sarah Feynman and Lily Levy Epstein. Legal services provided by J. Ward Brown and Ballard Spar. Thanks to the folks at Final Final V2, listen and follow on Apple Podcasts. And a special thank you to the special operators who shared their stories for this project. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please know that there's help. If you're in the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is open 24 hours a day, at 1-800-273-8255. For information in other countries, please search for your local crisis line. [BLANK_AUDIO]