Returning home after such a tour of duty is traditionally a time for the continuing development of Team members’ careers—professional development at the SEAL schools for snipers, JTAC/comms, and breachers. Everybody else was going, but not Jon, Matt, and Sam. They were not allowed to progress through this critical phase of their education, where careers were made and men were raised up to be the best they could possibly be.
Those schools represented a SEAL’s gateway to the future. And they were denied to the three accused men. All of the SEAL platoons were trying to help them, writing letters of recommendation their behalf. The commander who ran Troop 3, under which stands both Echo and Foxtrot Platoons, did everything in his considerable power to place Matt, Jon, and Sam in the correct educational strata.
But their status was already being controlled at a two-star level, way above the authority of any SEAL commander, and the result was predictable. Every application was turned down, even though Jon was already slotted to attend sniper school. There were no proper duties for the accused men, nothing until the charges against them were either proven or cast asunder.
But deep inside the Navy legal offices there was already serious consternation about the cases, especially bringing Al-Isawi to the United States to face the men he had so spectacularly accused of beating him.
Every defendant has a right to confront his accuser in a court of law, and the military court is no exception. No one with a lick of sense would believe anything Al-Isawi said, and the Justice Department had compounded the issue by granting all terrorists appearing in a US court of law the same rights as a US citizen.
That meant Al-Isawi, if faced with withering cross-examination by attorneys like Neal Puckett and Greg McCormack, would be entitled to identical protection as any American. His own lawyers would be swift to step in: “With respect, may I remind your honor that Mr. Al-Isawi is not on trial here? And he has the right of refusal to answer that question.”
None of the Navy JAGs looked forward to that, whichever side of the fence they occupied. And the senior command was quickly discovering that Al-Isawi would serve everyone better if he stayed in Iraq, especially for Matt’s trial. Neal Puckett would plainly make short work of the unmarked, unharmed Iraqi who claimed he’d received the mother and father of a beating from a big, bad, mean Navy SEAL. After all, the judge might throw it out, right then and there.
Week in and week out, the demands for full discovery came in from the defense lawyers, who so far had received access to nothing. Rumors of this deadlock continued to circulate through the Norfolk Base and the nearby Navy SEAL headquarters. Literally hundreds of personnel were fully aware of the situation, and most of them were not only angry, but they were also aware of the apparent dangers to everyone on active SEAL combat missions.
If it could happen to guys like Matt, Jon, and Sam, it sure as hell could happen to anyone else. And the three Team 10 guys had been forced to hire expensive lawyers—top US advocates who could go into a court-martial and fight for their clients. It did not escape Virginia Beach SEALs’ attention that in these early years of the twenty-first century all Special Forces might soon need lawyers, at least they would if they were expected to fight an enemy.
It was merely a matter of time before this seething naval tragedy kicked its way out of the military strongholds of southeastern Virginia and into the public print and airwaves.
It finally happened around noon on Tuesday, November 24, 2009. Fox News broke the story nationwide, a tad opportunistically, beneath the headline:
NAVY SEALS FACE ASSAULT CHARGES FOR
CAPTURING MOST WANTED TERRORIST
This was nearly true. But plainly inaccurate. The assault charge against Matthew McCabe was not for capturing the Butcher of Fallujah; it was for allegedly giving him a whack in the stomach several hours after he was brought into SEAL custody.
Still, FoxNews was operating on a leak, and leaks have their own brand of frustration: wonderful information but not enough of it. They are sufficient for a news organization to run with the story but insufficient to lay out, chapter and verse, what actually was happening.
What do we do? Run with scant detail? Or make a few things up, fill in the gaps as best we can, and then stand behind the confidentiality of our source who, plainly, in time-honored journalistic traditions, can never be revealed.
That mind-set was not unique to Fox, which deserves massive credit for getting ahold of the story before anyone else, instantly jumping onto the correct side of the argument, and leading the way for everyone else to follow in their wake.
What Fox did was, as Sherlock Holmes would have concurred, elementary. All of their journalistic instincts told them that the US Navy was a gigantic force to set itself against three guys—hardworking, brave, and loyal patriots. These men were Navy SEALs, America’s elite commandoes. So as far as Fox could see, they stood alone against a new foe whose resources were practically limitless.
But not any more they didn’t. FoxNews came up with a story with a slant crafted to touch the heart and soul of every American. They wrote it with immeasurable skill. Just the names touched a thousand heartstrings—Matt, Jon, and Sam, proper American boys from Ohio, Virginia, and Chicago: every father’s beloved son, every family’s quiet hero.
Fox laid it right out. The three SEALs had secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004, “and now three of them are facing criminal charges.”
After just one paragraph the battle lines between the media and the US Navy were drawn. FoxNews understood the American public would never put up with this. And once they’d established Al-Isawi’s dishonesty, right at the top of the broadcast, they unleashed the cavalry: “Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandoes, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.”
They listed the charges against Matt, Jon, and Sam and then interviewed Neal Puckett, who stated, “The SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a punch in the gut.”
Neal proceeded, ingenuously, to add fuel to the FoxNews fire, adding, “I do not know how they are going to bring this detainee to the United States and give us our constitutional right to confrontation in the courtroom. ... We have terrorists getting their constitutional rights in New York City, but I suspect they’re going to deny these SEALs their right to confrontation in a military courtroom in Virginia.”
Again, this was the image of the unstoppable power of the Pentagon—utilizing the law, crushing the SEALs’ rights, and indulging in unfair bullying in the most ruthless possible way. Against their own, no less. Puckett had spread his arms wide, a study in bewilderment and fair play. And this very neatly covered up that hickory-tough seam that runs through the heart of every trial lawyer.
FoxNews was well on top of the situation. Unlike the defense lawyers, they had somehow obtained the official handwritten statement of one of the SEALs, made only three hours after Al-Isawi was captured and was still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia prior to his removal to Baghdad.
The SEAL had confirmed his actions: shower, breakfast, and a quick look at the detainee. “I gave him a glance over and then left,” he had written. “I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee, and he appeared in good health.”
FoxNews did not know at the time precisely how many similar accounts there would eventually be. And they switched their attack to the Army, connecting to Special Operations, US Central Command, where Lieutenant Colonel Holly Silkman confirmed that the three SEALs had been charged and courts-martial had been scheduled for January.
Central Command would not discuss the detainee, but that was not essential. FoxNews quickly found out precisely who he was and compelled a naval legal source to confirm that the military had been “tracking the guy for some time.”
They described the Fallujah “atrocity”—“ambush,” “burne
d bodies,” “dragged through the streets,” hanging of the bodies on the bridge, all by “Al-Isawi, the ringleader.”
They finished with a flourish, reminding the world of the military’s nerve-wracked attitude to the words “detainee abuse.”
At which point the cat was well and truly out of the bag. Newsrooms, both print and broadcast, all over the country were now on the case. Generally speaking they could hardly wait to highlight the US Navy’s “outrageous” conduct in going after their own heroes for possibly taking a swing at a detainee of such obvious evil as Al-Isawi.
And in the very week when all of this was happening—interviews, opinions, experts, solutions, media advice, counteradvice, and counter-counteradvice, the Pentagon continued to move ahead with its prosecution. On December 7 the three SEALs were formally arraigned in a military court in Norfolk.
By some mysterious force the public had found out about the arraignment and somehow gathered outside the gates to the Norfolk Base, hoping, along with the massed ranks of the media, to meet Matt when he emerged. And there Matt found his father, Marty, talking to Donna Zovko, the mother of one of the slain Blackwater contractors. She had driven from Cleveland, Ohio, to stand with the other supporters in the crowd, many of whom were carrying banners.
One of them, a Navy veteran from Virginia Beach, was Richard Berndt, who had been there since 6 A.M. with a sign that read, YOU FOUGHT FOR US—NOW WE FIGHT FOR YOU.
“I just feel I owe these guys everything I can give them,” said Richard. “They just need our support.”
Matt himself, immaculate in his uniform, looked astonished at the size of the crowd, some of whom wanted to know whether he and his two teammates had really whacked the terrorist.
And he replied without flinching: “No. The answer’s no, point blank.” And then his father introduced him to Donna, and the SEAL told her: “I can’t begin to imagine the pain you have endured for so long. I only hope that the capture of this guy brings a bit of closure.”
He stayed for a few minutes, but by then the media were growing restless, firing questions from all angles, and no SEAL wishes to hang around them for long. He just thanked everyone, climbed into a vehicle, and returned to base.
Twenty years ago the media uproar would have been all there was. Not so in the ninth year of the twenty-first century. This was the time of the personalized electronic superhighway, Facebook. And more mysterious forces in highly unlikely quarters were gathering, especially to express the fury of the US public at this apparent betrayal of everyone’s heroes, the gallant and unimpeachable SEALs.
Perhaps the eye of this gathering storm was in a leafy suburb of Scottsdale, Arizona, way down in the southwestern Salt River Valley. There, Graham Ware, a thirty-year-old computer technologist and former East Scottsdale High shortstop, was so incensed by the apparent injustice that he charged to his Facebook account and let fly with a hard-hitting blog.
It should be recorded that Graham was a potential Special Forces man himself. Inflamed by the cruel audacity of 9/11, he had made instant moves to sign on for either US Army Special Forces or the Marines. He was young, fit, and highly athletic, as useful on the basketball court as he was on the baseball field. And in the moments following the Twin Towers collapse he had resolved to answer the call of his country.
“In my mind,” he says, “the bugle had sounded. Who did these people think they were? The only thing I wanted in all the world was to enlist, get trained, and get after them. I just wanted to help, any way I could.”
But his family stepped in. Graham had a younger sister and brother, and no one was pretending that armed service on behalf of the United States in the mountains of Afghanistan was anything but highly dangerous. “Hell, I was young,” he says. “And that’s where I was headed.”
But family pressures increased. “They didn’t mean it, but in the end I guess it was guilt they were laying on me. What if I should die, and all that? They didn’t realize I was indestructible, at least I thought so, the way the young always do.
“And in the end they won. I never signed on. Then I kinda sat back and nursed my regrets for the next eight years, detesting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, always wondering what would have happened if I’d ridden rough-shod over the wishes of my parents and gone to war anyway. Guess I might have got shot. Like a lot of other guys.”
But the plight of Matt, Jon, and Sam ignited within Graham Ware a flame of the purest fire. And there was an immediate response to his Facebook blog. An atmosphere of universal outrage swiftly began to take root. Graham persuaded his local buddy Jason Watts to join him. And with thousands of bloggers jumping on the bandwagon, demanding exoneration for Matt, Jon, and Sam, a new and hugely popular website came into being.
Graham created a dazzling design and named it SupporttheSEALs.org, launching the site in the first week of December. The response was sensational, as the American public rose up in anger at how the three heroes from Echo Platoon, Team 10 had been treated. “At one point,” he said, “we were receiving ten thousand pledges of support a week! Not just in spirit but in promises of donations to help with their legal expenses.”
Matt himself was on the line to Graham, thanking him with a gratitude so profound that the Scottsdale IT expert admitted, “Suddenly I knew I was not meant to join the armed forces. I was born to do this venture. Not only to line up publicly with the three guys but to set an example, to stand out in front, demonstrate my belief in their innocence. Right here I could really help. And the Internet was my parade ground. I knew it like the SEAL instructors knew the Grinder in Coronado. Hooyah, Graham!”
In the coming weeks more than 280,000 people visited the website Graham Ware and Jason Watts had launched. SupporttheSEALs became a rallying point for more than a quarter of a million Americans, all demanding justice for the SEALs—to have the charges against them cast aside, to use whatever vestiges of common sense the military had left to put right this atrocious wrong against the three American elite commandoes.
Graham’s skill at operating cyberspace was an enormous factor in the website’s success. He had search engines colliding with each other in the stampede to find the place where help for the SEALs actually meant something.
Most people who hit the buttons looking for information on the court-martialed SEALs found themselves reading Graham’s words and being guided to where financial contributions would be channeled directly to Matt, Jon, and Sam.
Inevitably it attracted several big hitters, wealthy men who would stand behind those anticipated legal bills on behalf of the three accused warriors. One of them, a wealthy hedge fund financier from Chicago with a heart the size of Wrigley Field, contributed tens of thousands of dollars, the maximum permitted under US tax laws for a gift, and fed the money through to the SEALs’ families.
“When he contacted me by phone,” recalls Matt, “I just stood there, unable even to blurt out my thanks. I just knew that God was in his heaven and that we had a chance. We’d never asked for exoneration, but we wanted the opportunity to stand up in court with proper help and advice and prove our accusers were totally and utterly wrong. When I took that phone call somehow I knew we’d got that chance.”
It was now impossible to miss the avalanche of support building up in cyberspace. Graham and Jason were improving their website every day, and big dollars were pouring in, not necessarily in large bills and credit card donations but sometimes just five- and ten-dollar contributions from ordinary Americans, often people who could barely afford it. But always from people who just could not comprehend why the US Navy had turned their hand against three of its own outstanding people.
And this was indeed a mystery. Because those first couple of weeks in December were bordering on the momentous in terms of the critical path to court-martial and humiliation for one side or the other—the SEALs or the military. The stakes were so high that the Pentagon generals must have had to rethink what precisely they were getting themselves into.
Because it was not just me
mbers of the public who were furious at the prospect of these courts-martial. There was also sound and fury in very high places, not least of all in the great hall of the Capitol building, where the US House of Representative sits solemnly (mostly) beneath the Capitol’s two thousand-ton cast-iron dome.
And among the many eminent members who sit in this chamber, there was the Republican Duncan D. Hunter of California’s 52nd congressional district, son of the Republican Congressman Duncan L. Hunter, who retired after fourteen terms. Congressman Hunter won his father’s seat with 72 percent of the vote.
But even more important than his rich Republican traditions, Congressman Hunter was a former captain in the US Marine Corps. He was one of only seven members of Congress who had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and he was the first combat veteran of either conflict to serve in Congress.
Captain Hunter was on active duty in Battery A, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, fighting in Operation Vigilant Resolve when US forces laid siege to the city of Fallujah just four days after Ahmad Hashim Abd Al-Isawi swung the burned bodies from the bridge. Duncan knew of this fiendish action firsthand.
Captain Hunter had commanded his men in those rubble-strewn streets, heard the bombs and blasts as well as the cries and whispers of terribly wounded men. He’d hit back at the insurgents and come through the firefights. And he understood the enemy’s fanatical intrinsic evil.
When he first heard that the very SEALs who had finally captured the Butcher were facing courts-martial, he could scarcely believe it. He could not recall ever being so disappointed and angry at the military in which he still served as a part-time captain in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Duncan Hunter was as much a patriot as the men who now faced disgrace. With similar emotions to those of the outraged Graham Ware three hundred miles away in Scottsdale, Arizona, the now thirty-three-year-old California congressman had charged out of his office on the day after 9/11 and joined the Marines.
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 21