Matt later guessed it was entirely possible that Westinson had made his wild remarks to deflect attention from his own eccentric behavior that night—deserting his post and mislaying the medical forms.
Looking back, Jon, trying to think of a reason why Westinson said what he said, thought that maybe “he just blurted it out, saying Matt had whacked this nitwit jihadist and then found it impossible to retract because that would make him a grade-one liar. He just kept on saying it—probably in the end believing it.”
At 2100 they were summoned to Master Chief Lampard’s office and informed they were being detailed to “busywork” under his command. And they all knew what this meant: three-hour watches twice a day, cleaning up the cafeteria at the special operations task force headquarters (SOTF-HQ). SEALs call it bitchwork. It represents the most heinous of punishments, bad for any military personnel but some kind of living death for Navy SEALs, each of whom cost millions of dollars to train.
Jon managed to prevent himself from shouting out: “Busywork! You bastard. You must be joking. I’m a US Navy SEAL. ... I’m one of the most trusted combat warriors in the US armed forces—and I haven’t done one wrong thing. You cannot do this to me.”
The problem was that Master Chief Lampard could, and did. As far as Matt, Jon, and Sam were concerned, this was the day hell froze over, as they were separated from their brothers, the final humiliation—three SEAL petty officers just back from a major direct action mission, about to be presented with buckets and mops and ordered to wipe tables. They would have to pick up food from the galley and bring it back to Lampard and his staff.
And running through Matt’s mind was one thought: If we’d had lawyers, this could never have happened.
The trouble was that the SEALs were so certain of their innocence, so trusting of the US Navy and their SEAL commanders that they never dreamed they could possibly need lawyers. They had always co-operated. “We were guilty of nothing,” said Matt. “And we never even suggested we needed lawyers, as any guilty person might. We never did.”
The inescapable truth was that they had already been found guilty of something. After all, they were already being punished in what they believed was the most severe way. “That master chief had told us we were innocent until proven guilty,” added Matt. “Yeah, right. They hadn’t yet hanged us, but they sure as hell had hung us out to dry.
“And they can repeat that ‘innocent til proven guilty’ refrain for a thousand years, but it did not apply to us. We had already been judged guilty and punished. Jesus, they were punishing us all day, half the night, and every day. And doing it in the harshest possible way. They were systematically trying to break us, I think, to get some kind of confession.”
The naval authorities had time to give that a great deal of thought that morning, because shortly before 0922, a massive one thousand-pound bomb detonated on the other side of the Euphrates River, which ran right past the outer wall of the camp.
It was a suicide car bomb, pure C-4 explosive, and the thunderous blast shuddered the entire camp, shook every building. The ground trembled, and the waters of the Euphrates rippled. That bomb had blown at an Iraqi police checkpoint, killed seven policemen, wounded fifteen others, and sent a giant mushroom cloud right over the base. “You couldn’t see anything but dust,” said Jon. “Sam was four hundred yards away. All we could hear was heavy machine gunfire, but we had no idea who was firing at who. Our bunks were shaking from the impact, we had no heavy weapons, and the base was under attack.”
Jon and Matt charged out of bed, raced across the base to the SOTF-HQ, and came hurtling through the door to find everyone terrified, huddled together—mostly support guys, plus Westinson.
They could hear people whimpering, “Help us,” and they knew that front door could be cannon-blasted in any second and a group of armed tribesmen would bust in with machine guns or another bomb. Outside there was continuous gunfire.
Right then Sam came running through the door, demanding his rifle and armor. “And Matt reacted like a true SEAL,” said Jon. “I remember he said, Tell these people to get out of our fucking way, and let’s get to the roof.’”
At which point he yelled at the top of lungs: “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, GIVE US BACK OUR GEAR—RIGHT NOW! THIS BASE IS UNDER ATTACK! WE GOTTA GET TO THE ROOF!”
Someone went to the TOC’s armory and pulled out the equipment the three SEALs needed. And the Echo Platoon men pulled on their body armor, loaded their rifles, and headed for the ladder that led to the roof. Someone yelled, “Can you save us?” and Matt yelled back, a tad ungraciously: “We’re gonna try—somehow—to protect you fucking pussies.”
No one joined them. Everyone in that TOC building, including a lot of military guys, were just cowering. People were under desks. And Jon, Sam, and Matt, ramming new magazines into the breach of their rifles, pounded up that ladder and onto the roof, not knowing whether to expect an RPG or just sustained gunfire from across the river.
Whatever it was, that enemy would quickly know it was now in a very serious fight. Three armed SEALs are enough trouble for any al-Qaeda force. They reached the edge and spent a few minutes scanning the far river bank. And now they took up their defensive positions, leaning into the parapet, with rifles aimed at the river’s edge where police and ambulances were arriving.
“We never opened fire,” said Jon. “Because they were not yet crossing the river to attack us with ground troops. But we were ready for ’em, and if any of them chanced their luck, those bastards were dead men. We’d have shot anyone who as much as raised a rifle at the walls of our base.”
Finally Commander Hamilton came up to the roof and asked for a situation report (SITREP), which Sam provided. He assured the CO there was no possibility of any force advancing against them. Not without getting killed. They said they were happy with their defensive position. It was classic Navy SEAL, the highest ground, with a clear attacking zone.
Matt recalls the commander remained taciturn. “He left, and we stayed up there for an hour,” recalls Jon. “And when the far bank of the Euphrates was finally quiet and the uproar had died down, we climbed back down the ladder, where some people did in fact thank us. Many of them had believed they might die. That huge blast shook the entire camp and a lot of people with it.”
What happened then? Had the SEALs’ action been sufficiently brave and loyal to be issued with a total reprieve, with any and all pending charges against them dropped? Not quite. They were told to hand in their body armor and weapons and to continue as before.
So they went down to the Marine chow hall and collected lunch for the people they’d just rushed to defend. And then cleaned up after them.
And the psychological attacks on them continued. That same day, quite late in the evening, Master Chief Lampard hauled them into a conference room, a bleak little place with bleacher seating, and delivered an almost laughable lecture.
It was about honor and integrity in the Navy. Jon recalled that the chief told them he had personally been investigated several times and that if they just told the truth, it would all work out.
Jon recalled that the chief then told them what they already had figured out: he had made up his mind and knew who the guilty party was.
He was staring straight at them. “And you could see the pure malice in his face,” said Matt. “I felt like saying, ‘Oh, thank you, God, Master Chief God, who knowest all—but in our case knowest nothing, vicious, smug bastard.’”
At the conclusion of his sermon Master Chief Lampard added that no matter what happened to them—loss of rank or getting discharged from the US military—at least they’re “still Americans.”
Oh, thank you Master Chief God, for not turning me into a Pakistani or a Moroccan, thought Matt, who only rarely lost his sardonic sense of humor. And now Mr. Lampard had taken him to the limit.
At 10 A.M. on Wednesday, September 9, the master chief stopped Jon and asked him what he knew about the case. The big breacher replied, “Sam has told us t
he investigation was complete and that we were being sent back to the States, and the entire issue would be dealt with on home soil.”
Jon says Lampard shook his head and smiled, then told him that the Iraqis wanted answers and were demanding justice—right here in Iraq.
“You mean a trial in an Iraqi court?” said Jon quietly. “Me and Sam and Matt?”
“Very possibly.”
“But, if it goes against us, not an Iraqi jail, right?”
“It’s a possibility.”
That scared Jon worse than he had ever been scared in his life. “An Iraqi courtroom, an Iraqi judge?” he recalled thinking. “For me, who’d played a major role in the kidnapping and incarceration of this Sunni hero and al-Qaeda commander?”
Standing there, face to face with the hard-faced, stocky master chief, Jon found himself shuddering, almost certainly with fear. “He’d just mentioned what could be a death sentence for me,” he says. “Can you imagine? An American Special Forces operator getting justice in Iraq? And then being thrown into a Baghdad correctional institution? My life would not have been worth two bucks.”
Looking back Jon now believes the master chief was just trying to scare him. “And he sure as hell managed that,” he says. “To this day I’m not sure whether Lampard was merely a sadist or whether he would just have done anything in this world to get us to admit to something, anything.
“He plainly wanted Matt to sign something saying he had knocked the living hell out of Al-Isawi. He also wanted Sam and me to admit we had stood by and watched this. And then confirm the pair of us had told a pack of lies to cover up what Matt had done and what we had witnessed.
“Like Westinson, Lampard had jumped very quickly onto the wrong side of this one, and I thought at that little encounter, he’ll get his false, untrue confessions over our dead bodies. Screw him.”
That was probably the day the game changed. And the first evidence it had really changed came at noon on Saturday, September 12. Jon and Sam were ordered to report separately to NCIS, where their rights were read to them. The officer said that Jon was being charged with two articles that contravened the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
He was then told to sign his formal acceptance of these charges, one of which was dereliction of duty, the other that he had made a false official statement. “It was,” he recalls, “the most shocking, untrue allegation which had ever been made against me by anyone, anywhere, or any time. And that includes when I flunked out of the University of East Carolina and was widely regarded at the time as a total deadbeat.”
Sam was also asked to sign an acceptance form confirming the charges of dereliction of duty, false official statement, and impeding an investigation.
“How about that!” said Jon, “Sam! The senior petty officer on the base, who had just seen us safely through such a dangerous mission and then went at 0500 to check Westinson was okay, as he knew he was having one or two problems and might need help. Dereliction of duty! I thought then, as I think now, the Navy’s system of justice has actually gone off its rocker.”
Jon flatly refused to sign anything until he had a lawyer, and this took the NCIS by surprise. He was out of there in under two minutes.
Matt also said he was signing nothing until he had a lawyer. And then he noticed that the papers in front of him confirmed that the US Navy was about to throw the book at him. He was being charged with assaulting the detainee, dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, and failing to safeguard a detainee.
With the lawyer issue apparently hanging in the balance, all three of them stood by for a few days. And their requests for legal assistance were not yet acted on. But then on Friday, September 18, Jon received a truly encouraging piece of news.
One of his fellow SEALs found him, and informed the Echo breacher that Special Agent Stamp, who had taken the statements and conducted the biggest part of the investigation, had filed a report that stated there was insufficient evidence for any further proceedings. The SEAL was a member of Foxtrot Platoon and had seen the report himself.
For a while this was enough to sustain the three SEALs, and their hopes for exoneration were high. But they still had no attorney, not one between the three of them, and they were still prepared to cooperate in any way they could, despite the charges now leveled at them. In a way none of them believed there could possibly be this much unfairness in all the world, never mind in a SEAL base.
And perhaps in confirmation of the Navy’s very weak case against them, their brother SEALs across the way in Foxtrot Platoon reported an incident that the high command had become totally exasperated with the dogged refusal of the Team 10 personnel to admit anything nor to condemn anyone else.
In what seemed to be a fit of pique, they arrested everyone who had been on Objective Amber, including the OIC, Lieutenant Jimmy, and sent them all to Ar-Ramadi, each man with a charge sheet accusing him of conspiracy. As a legal tactic to make one of these men crack, it was on the crude side. And it backfired badly when it was discovered that one of the SEALs had a high-ranking Washington lawyer for a father who took a poor view of the treatment his son and all of his son’s friends were receiving.
According to Foxtrot Platoon, this lawyer placed the entire law firm on high alert to defend the boys at a moment’s notice. The Navy was informed of this, and the charges were dropped en masse within twenty-four hours. Except for those against Matt, Jon, and Sam. Those charges stayed in place.
Furthermore, the naval authorities appeared to have decided to put more pressure on all three of them. That same Friday night, at 0130 in the morning, Matt, Jon, and Sam were called into the command office, where Commander Hamilton’s deputy, an acting CO, sat in the big chair.
They stood rigidly to attention and were told, “Your actions have given the Naval Special Warfare Community a black eye and stained the reputation of the SEAL Teams which have gone before. You have ruined SEAL Team 10’s deployment.” He also told them they would be flying on to Al-Asad to meet up with the commander and the master chief. From there they would proceed to Qatar to meet with the general and receive a letter of caution.
This at least settled one issue: they were definitely considered guilty—no ifs, ands or buts. “We were not quite sure who had found us guilty,” says Jon. “But someone had, and there seemed no further doubt in their minds. Jeez, you could just tell how upset they were—this new guy and, presumably, his boss, Commander Hamilton, hated us.”
By this time there was a fusillade of paperwork flying around, and just about every one of several hundred sheets was headed “US Naval Criminal Investigation Service.” And the word “Criminal” leapt off that page every time these three decorated SEALs were shown anything.
That word was so upsetting to Jon that he was afraid even to tell his parents. But he did take time to read up on that basic bedrock of all US, British, and Roman Law that deals with the presumption of innocence.
Because this presumption of guilt was so worrying for the SEALs. “Whichever way you looked at it,” said Jon, “they were treating us as if we’d been found guilty already. We had not even walked up the steps of the courtroom, never mind been found guilty of anything. And they’d seen fit to strip us of damn near everything, including our regular SEAL Team gear and possessions not to mention our freedom and, worse yet, our pride and honor.
“It was pretty darned awful for Matt, who had never raised a finger against the prisoner. But for me it was almost worse. All I’d done was say I never saw him or anyone else strike anyone. And now I was being told that was dereliction of duty or conspiracy or God knows what else.
“I mean what is it with those guys? What do they want from me? Am I supposed to make up some lie that I’d seen Matt or Sam wallop this Al-Isawi? I know it sounds crazy, but by now this was getting kind of sinister.”
The first leg of their journey to Qatar, up to Al-Asad, went particularly badly. Jon, Matt, and Sam were ordered to report to Commander Hamilton, who, they could i
mmediately detect, was seriously angry with them.
He broke the stunning news that the master-at-arms, Brian Westinson, had gone missing. At first the implication was that the three men plainly knew where he was. Then, according to Jon, it became obvious that the commander and the ever-present Master Chief Lampard believed they had kidnapped him, like a couple of Mafia dons dealing with a key witness in a mass-murder trial.
Commander Hamilton flatly accused Jon, Matt, and Sam of knowing where the vanished Brian was. And Lampard talked to them as though they might have murdered him, making it clear he believed nothing any of them said. And of course the SEALs denied it, stating that none of them had the slightest idea what had happened to Westinson.
Unhappily for the master chief, Brian eventually turned up, having been a mile away in protective custody at his own request under the auspices of NCIS, who apparently forgot to inform the CO of this preventive action.
Outside Commander Hamilton’s office, Lampard, for whom this had not been his finest hour, covered his rage with insults. He pulled all three of them aside and told them they were unacceptably scruffy—his phrase was, precisely: “all fucked up.” He told them to get ironed, pressed, and sharpened up, even though he knew they had been unable to get new clothes.
He yelled at them relentlessly for several minutes, knowing, of course, that they could not answer him back. Then he confirmed his real feelings, informing them formally that “You guys are a disgrace!” And, he said, he was writing to the senior master chief on SEAL Team 10, to tell him: “Thanks for disappointing me one more time.”
Said Jon later, rather sardonically: “All things considered, he was possibly the most unpleasant man I ever met.”
Certainly, Master Chief Lampard, working directly for Commander Hamilton, was one of the driving forces in this potential legal battle as it steadily forged its way forward, moving to higher and higher authority. And now Matt, Jon, and Sam were informed they were on a three-day standby, right here on this remote but enormous desert airbase, waiting for Major General Charles T. Cleveland’s private C-17 Boeing, which would take them to Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Honor and Betrayal : The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the Butcher of Fallujah -and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured (9780306823091) Page 16