Dave Philipps

The U.S. military is replacing the aging and little-loved Humvee, the all-purpose military truck that bumped and slogged and sweltered through decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the fact that it offered nowhere to put a drink was just one of the many shortcomings, large and small, that came to irritate, and even endanger, the troops who spent long deployments in its cramped confines.

Now the Pentagon is rolling out the Humvee’s successor, a 340-horsepower beast called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV. And as a recent test ride at an Army training base made clear, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the Humvee.

The new truck, which began arriving at military bases in the spring, is faster, smarter and safer. It is powerful enough to bound through rough terrain, despite carrying armor so thick that the truck has to automatically level itself when parked, so that troops can swing open its 400-pound steel doors.

And unlike the stripped-down Humvee, the JLTV — which is far costlier than the latest Lamborghini Huracan — comes with a few conveniences, including a backup camera, phone-charging plugs, and not just one cup holder, but two.

“That may seem like a small thing, but not if you’re on a 10-hour convoy in the desert,” said Staff Sgt. Kelsi Anderson as she put the new truck through its paces.

Anderson, an Army veteran of the war in Iraq, trains soldiers in how to drive the JLTV. Speeding through an off-road course in the rolling terrain of Fort McCoy, the truck’s sophisticated suspension devoured each bump and rut while her caramel Frappuccino, sitting in its holder on the dash, barely swayed.

Whether the new truck will actually be a better match than the Humvee for the conflicts of the future is a matter of debate. Some warfare experts see questionable value in simply adding more armor and horsepower.

“This truck was built to solve problems from the last war — which, by the way, is still going on — but future wars will be different,” said Matthew Schmidt, who teaches national security at the University of New Haven and has taught at the Army War College.

“A heavily armored vehicle is an asset if the villagers are angry at you,” Schmidt said, “but in any real conflict against a foe like Russia or China, all armor will quickly be destroyed. In those wars, the advantage will go to speed and deception.”

Even so, if the next 50 years look anything like the last 50, with U.S. troops more often called upon to fight smoldering insurgencies than conventional armies, the JLTV’s thick armor is likely to save lives.

The truck will also be a far more comfortable ride for the men and women who do the fighting. It has seats designed to fit the bulky body armor and backpacks that soldiers now wear, and unlike the underpowered Humvee, it has air conditioning that actually worked in the sticky heat of a late-summer morning at Fort McCoy.

Anderson barreled down a winding trail, punching the JLTV’s bullet-resistant tires through deep, sandy ruts and dancing over rocks at speeds that would have rattled a Humvee to pieces.

“This thing is a monster,” she said as tree branches flew by, slapping the truck’s thick sides. “It wants to be driven off road. It loves it. The faster, the more aggressive you are, the smoother it is.”

The truck also comes packed with technology, including electronics that can communicate with fighter jets, drones and other military assets around the globe. In place of a sun visor mounted above the thick blast-resistant windshield, the JLTV has a fold-down night-vision driving system.

Just as important for Anderson, the seats can be adjusted to suit her 5-foot-3 frame. That new feature is crucial for the Army, which has a growing proportion of women in its ranks and plans to buy about 49,000 JLTVs over the next decade.

Eager to show a visitor what the truck can do, Anderson pulled to a stop at a broad creek cutting through the woods, and pushed a button marked “fording mode.”

The JLTV hitched itself up on its shock absorbers until it had 30 inches of ground clearance, and could easily splash through the creek. The air conditioning and much of the electrical system were automatically shut off to protect them from the water, and the truck limited its speed to 10 mph until Anderson switched modes again on the far bank, and the truck lowered to a more stable height.

“This truck is smart; it won’t let anyone damage it,” she said.

When the truck detects mechanical problems, it can limit its speed or shut itself down if necessary. To avoid any HAL 9000 moments when digital safeguards like those might accidentally endanger the crew, the JLTV also has a combat override switch that the driver can use to take all control away from the computer.

“All the soldiers who drive it, they love it,” Anderson said. “It’s fun, its powerful, and it’s safe.”

Soldiers generally agree that it’s long past time to replace the Humvee, which was conceived in the 1970s as a roomier, more powerful replacement for the World War II-vintage jeep. Just like the jeep, it was a light troop and equipment mover with no armor, meant mainly for use behind the front lines.

The Humvee was a welcome upgrade when it debuted in 1985, and the distinctive-looking turtle-backed truck even became a breakout star in the celebratory atmosphere that followed the brief blitz of the first Gulf War in 1991.

A civilian version — the Hummer H1 — soon hit the streets, and despite reviews calling it underpowered and noisy, it gained a cult following that included Arnold Schwarzenegger and other celebrities. “They’re like the American spirit,” one Hummer owner told The New York Times in 1994.

But after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Humvees proved to be an easy target for roadside bomb attacks, which skyrocketed during the first year of the war. Shredded, blackened carcasses of the trucks became a common sight on Iraqi highways.

Troops in Iraq scrambled to add extra protection however they could, including welding on pieces of junked steel. And the soldiers who generations before had loved the jeep began to loathe the Humvee.

“We were sending soldiers out with no armor — heck, there weren’t even doors — and guys were putting sandbags on the floor for protection,” said Col. Charles Kidd, who was an operations officer in Iraq in 2003 and is now chief of staff of the 84th Training Command at Fort McCoy. “I was in a soft-skin Humvee at a checkpoint when I got hit. The truck was completely destroyed. It was one of the worst days of my life.”

He patted the cold steel side of one of his unit’s new JLTVs and smiled. “This is a game changer for our soldiers,” he said.

The military responded to the roadside bomb threat by building thousands of “up-armored” Humvees fitted with up to 3,000 pounds of hardened steel, but the extra weight made the trucks slow and prone to breakdowns. And insurgents reacted with more sophisticated and deadlier explosives to pierce the stronger trucks.

The military eventually replaced many Humvees with heavy-duty vehicles called MRAPs, designed specifically to withstand roadside bombs. But they were slow, top-heavy and had limited capability off-road.

Enter the JLTV, a concept approved by planners in 2006 but just now reaching military bases. The Army says it offers the protection of an MRAP with off-road performance approaching that of a Baja racer.

“It’s a blast to drive — you hit the skinny pedal on this thing, you’re going somewhere,” said Sgt. 1st Class William Almquist, who oversees JLTV maintenance at Fort McCoy.

In fact, some in the Pentagon worry that driving it may be too much fun, and that troops will be tempted to turn deployments into the Dakar Rally. Not without reason, perhaps: At Fort Stewart in Georgia, someone managed to roll one of the trucks within three days of the troops there receiving it.

The Army says there have been no more incidents since then. “You know, we rolled a lot of jeeps and Humvees too,” Almquist said.

If a soldier does decide to go Evel Knievel, he added, the JLTV’s onboard computer will record and report it — and the daredevil will probably be looking at long stints of weekend duty.

This article originally appeared in

Here Comes the Smooth Ride to Replace the Military's Hated Humvee

FORT McCOY, Wis. — The war zone of tomorrow may be a dystopian hellscape of crippling cyber strikes, autonomous death rays and swarms of killer bots. But whatever America’s future conflicts might bring, this much is certain: There will finally be cup holders.

Officials did not release any details. But a senior Navy official with knowledge of the matter said the Navy is investigating reports that the unit, Foxtrot Platoon of SEAL Team 7, held a Fourth of July party where some members consumed alcohol against regulations, and that a senior enlisted member of the platoon had raped a female service member attached to the platoon.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about a continuing investigation.

Jeremiah Sullivan, a civilian attorney representing one of the SEALs in the platoon, confirmed that there was an investigation into reports of sexual assault and unauthorized drinking.

When commanders began investigating the allegations, the entire platoon invoked their right to remain silent, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. At that point, the official said, commanders decided to send the whole platoon home, including the lieutenant in command.

The commander of U.S. special operations troops in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill of the Air Force, ordered the extremely rare removal of the platoon — the only group of SEALs in Iraq — “due to a perceived deterioration of good order and discipline within the team during nonoperational periods,” according to a statement from Special Operations Command.

“There were allegations of wrongdoing, and the commander initiated an investigation, which is still ongoing,” said Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command. “After the investigation began, the commander lost confidence in the platoon’s ability to accomplish the mission and ordered the platoon’s redeployment.”

The Navy ordered the SEALs to take drug tests, according to a Navy SEAL officer who has been briefed on the matter. The results of those tests are not yet known, the officer said.

Foxtrot Platoon — including 19 SEALs and four support troops — was in Kuwait on Thursday, en route to Seal Team 7’s base at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. The unit was not immediately replaced in Iraq, increasing the burdens on other U.S. troops there, but the Navy said in a statement that “the loss of confidence in this case outweighed potential operational risk” from their absence.

Enlisted Navy SEALs at Coronado said that while individuals are occasionally removed from missions for misconduct, they could not recall another instance of an entire SEAL platoon being sent home. Last year, a Green Beret detachment from the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group was withdrawn from Afghanistan after members of the unit were implicated in the abuse of an Afghan prisoner.

The withdrawal of Foxtrot Platoon is the latest in a series of black eyes for the SEAL teams, which have been hit repeatedly over the last year by reports of drug use, misconduct and violence.

Two SEALs and two Marines were charged in the death of a Green Beret who was strangled in 2017 during a hazing incident while the commandos were on a secret deployment in Mali in West Africa. One of the SEALs pleaded guilty and was sentenced in May.

Earlier this week, Navy Times reported that cocaine use was widespread among members of SEAL Team 10, based in Virginia, and that SEALs in the team considered the Navy’s drug testing efforts “a joke.”

Accounts of broad drug use among senior enlisted SEALs emerged in the court-martial of Special Operator 1st Class Edward Gallagher. He was acquitted earlier this month of charges that he had shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a wounded captive to death while leading a platoon in Iraq in 2017, but he was convicted of posing for photographs with the teenage captive’s corpse.

During the trial, SEALs from his platoon testified that they had constructed a rooftop bar at their safe house in Iraq, and that officers in charge of enforcing regulations drank there with enlisted men, and even took turns acting as disc jockeys.

Bradley Strawser, who teaches ethics in war at the Naval Postgraduate School, said the reports of rogue behavior in the SEALs are partly a product of nearly 20 years of constant special-operations warfare.

“This kind of slide in the ethical culture, standards, ethos and expectations we have been seeing across the service now for several years is yet another cost of this kind of endless war-fighting,” he said. “Our military desperately needs time to circle the wagons, go deep in working out some of the systemic problems, and effectively right the ship. But it’s very hard to do that when we are literally at never-ending war.”

Military regulations forbid the consumption of alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan, two predominantly Muslim countries. But its presence among U.S. troops serving there is hardly rare, and in many units, including the SEAL teams, leaders sometimes turn a blind eye to moderate use.

But this year, in response to repeated reports of misconduct, the commander of Navy Special Warfare, Rear Adm. Collin Green, took steps to clean up SEAL culture with a focus on accountability, character, and what he called “ethical compliance.”

When Green heard of the allegations about Foxtrot Platoon, he pushed for the unit to be withdrawn from Iraq, according to two Navy officials with knowledge of the event.

A spokeswoman for the SEALs, Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, said that in general top commanders are increasingly focused on enforcing discipline.

“Naval Special Warfare insists on a culture where ethical adherence is equally important to tactical proficiency,” she said in a statement. “Good order and discipline is critical to the mission. We’re actively reinforcing, with the entire force, basic leadership, readiness, responsibility and ethical principles that must form the foundation of special operations.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/navy-seal-platoon-withdrawn-iraq.html" id="abe97da5-057b-3662-abb8-6593a8c04028">The New York Times</a>.

An entire platoon of Navy SEAL commandos was abruptly removed from Iraq this week after commanders heard reports of serious misconduct and a breakdown of discipline in the elite unit.

Platoon of Navy SEALs Is Sent Home From Iraq After Reports of Misconduct

Foxtrot Platoon — including 19 SEALs and three support troops — was in Kuwait on Thursday, en route to Seal Team 7’s base at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. The unit was not immediately replaced in Iraq, increasing the burdens on other U.S. troops there, but the Navy said in a statement that “the loss of confidence in this case outweighed potential operational risk” from their absence.

A Navy SEAL Platoon Is Pulled From Iraq Over Misconduct Reports

Duncan, a Republican who has represented a conservative and heavily military district near San Diego since 2009, sent out a mailer this month attacking his opponent and some of his colleagues as radicals and terrorist sympathizers. On the envelope was the official U.S. Marine Corps emblem. This week, the California congressman got a letter from the Marine Corps telling him he did not have permission to use the symbol and should stop immediately.

The Marines said the Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem was a registered trademark, along with the phrase “No better friend, no worse enemy,” which also appeared on the campaign materials.

“We thereby request your campaign immediately remove the emblem and the phrase from its mailers,” said the letter, which was first disclosed by NBC News.

The letter suggested that Hunter use an approved “Marine Veteran” emblem instead.

The mailer showed photos of Ammar Campa-Najjar, the Democrat who is running against Hunter in 2020, and two Democratic congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, next to a boldface message: “These three radical Democrats want you to forget their anti-Semitism or family-terrorist ties!”

Hunter has repeatedly called attention to the fact that Campa-Najjar, who was born in California to Mexican and Palestinian parents, had a Palestinian grandfather who was assassinated by Israel in 1973 in retribution for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Campa-Najjar was born after his grandfather was killed and has condemned his actions.

Campa-Najjar responded to the latest mailer on Twitter, calling the accusations on the mailer hateful lies. “Hunter’s campaign has illegally used the Marine Corps emblem and phrase for years,” he said, “but these mailers were so dishonorable and discrediting that they drew the attention of the United States Marine Corps.”

He also noted that the mailer spelled Israel incorrectly.

Hunter’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesman told NBC that as soon as the campaign was aware of the problem, “The campaign immediately complied and is taking all appropriate measures to ensure this matter is addressed appropriately and thoroughly.”

The emblem issue is perhaps not the biggest of problems for Hunter, who is facing 60 federal charges including campaign finance violations, falsifying records, wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors say the congressman and his wife improperly spent more than $250,000 in campaign funds on lavish trips, shopping sprees, private school tuition and airfare for their pet rabbit.

Hunter has pleaded not guilty and denies all charges. His wife recently pleaded guilty. Despite the swirling corruption accusations, the congressman won re-election last year.

Hunter served as an active-duty Marine Corps officer from 2002 to 2005, deploying to Iraq twice. He then joined the Marine Corps Reserve and deployed to Afghanistan. He is still in the reserve, where he holds the rank of major.

The Marine Corps said it was not uncommon to encounter politicians using the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, commonly referred to as the EGA, and officials routinely send letters telling them to stop.

“We encourage such individuals to be proud of their service,” the Marine Corps said in a statement. “But the use of the EGA or other indicia, where it could appear that the Marine Corps endorses or sponsors a particular candidate, is inappropriate.”

The U.S. military has registered hundreds of trademarks in recent years. The Marine Corps alone has more than 175. Entrepreneurs who want to use phrases like “Semper Fi,” “tip of the spear” or “Pain is weakness leaving the body” are required to secure a licensing agreement.

The military has fought for the past decade over improper use of its intellectual property, targeting everything from small businesses to unlicensed logos on thong underwear.

The appearance of partisanship is a chief concern. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke got a cease-and-desist letter in 2012 when mailers critical of President Barack Obama sent by a political action committee he was running featured the logos of all four service branches.

“We can’t appear to endorse them,” Jessica O’Haver, director of the Marine Corps Trademark Licensing Office, said at the time. “We don’t currently license nonprofits and charities, especially if they’re promoting a political cause.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/duncan-hunter-marines-emblem.html" id="4062643d-87c2-35cb-ad93-dcd84345cb5f">The New York Times</a>.

Rep. Duncan Hunter wore the U.S. Marine Corps’ iconic Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem on his uniform for years when he deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan. But that evidently did not give him license to put it on his campaign materials more than a decade later.

Marine Corps Tells Duncan Hunter to Stop Using Emblem on Political Mailers

The department’s annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military estimated there were 20,500 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in the 2018 fiscal year, based on a survey of men and women across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. That was an increase of 38% from the previous survey in 2016.

The grim data provide considerable ammunition for critics in Congress and veterans’ groups who have pressed repeatedly to change the way the military prosecutes sexual assault crimes. They want authority over such cases shifted away from military commanders and into the hands of an independent prosecutor’s office.

“These aren’t just numbers, these are people’s lives,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who has pushed to remove the authority from commanders.

The issue took on added political visibility in March when Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said publicly that she had been raped by a superior officer and had suffered numerous sexual assaults while serving in the Air Force. She has opposed shifting authority over sexual assault cases away from commanders.

The survey found that while assaults on men in the military remained flat, assaults on women recorded their biggest increase in years.

Women now make up only about 20% of the military, but are the targets of 63% of assaults, the survey found, with the youngest and lowest-ranking women most at risk.

Overall, 1 out of every 16 military women reported being groped, raped or otherwise sexually assaulted within the past year.

“To put it bluntly, we are not performing to the standards and expectations we have for ourselves or for each other,” Patrick M. Shanahan, the acting secretary of defense, said in a message to senior military leaders this week. “This is unacceptable. We cannot shrink from facing the challenge head on.”

The secretary proposed a list of actions, including better tracking and training, and a new program to identify repeat offenders even if their victims do not want to come forward.

The figures come from a survey of about 100,000 active-duty troops, which the department has conducted every two years since 2006. The latest results are not the worst — assault rates were higher in both the 2006 and 2012 surveys. But the Pentagon has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into prevention efforts, education programs and resources for victims in recent years. It now has legions of sexual assault specialists and victims’ advocates, and the Army has even developed a hologram of an assault victim to help with training.

Still, the report noted that the latest data suggests current strategies are not enough.

“We’ve thrown about $200 million at this problem for eight to 10 years, and this report suggests it’s not working,” said Speier. Along with Senate Democrats, she has repeatedly introduced legislation that would create an independent prosecutor, but, she said, the military has always lobbied against eroding commanders’ authority, and the bills have languished.

“Now people that have opposed the legislation are starting to come around,” Speier said. “People are starting to see we need to do more.”

Opponents, including many in Congress, argue that military commanders are in the best position to understand individual cases, and that bringing in an outside prosecutor could tie their hands.

A separate report in January showed that the number of sexual assaults at the nation’s service academies had risen by 50% since 2016, suggesting that the problem is just as widespread among the military’s future leaders as it is in the current ranks. It was also in line with high rates reported at civilian colleges and universities.

The military-wide survey data released this week indicates that alcohol use remains a stubborn contributing factor, and was involved in 62% of assaults on women.

Assaults increased across all branches, but the Marine Corps, which has proportionally more young, low-ranking troops and far fewer women than the other services, reported by far the highest rates. One in 10 surveyed women in the Marines reported being assaulted, twice the rate of either the Army or the Air Force.

“Sexual assault erodes the trust and cohesion within the Marine Corps team, degrades our lethality and readiness, and is incompatible with our core values of honor, courage and commitment,” the Marine Corps said in a statement. “In the end, this is an issue of trust — trust that fellow Marines will look after each other.”

The survey found that the rate of assaults on men in the military was much lower than on women. Overall, about 1 in 100 surveyed men said they had been assaulted in the past year, with the highest incidence reported in the Navy.

While the survey found that troops were experiencing more assaults, they were somewhat less likely than before to report them. The reporting rate, a barometer for the troops’ confidence that the military will punish assaulters and protect victims — fell to 30% in fiscal 2018 from 32% in 2016.

That’s still much better than the estimated 7% reporting rate in 2006, according to the new report. But Don Christensen, a retired Air Force judge and chief prosecutor, said a large majority of victims do not trust the system.

“It shows the old ways aren’t working, and it’s getting worse, not better,” said Christensen, who is now president of Protect Our Defenders, a group that advocates for military victims of sexual assault.

Victims are often reluctant to come forward, he said, because “they are afraid the case won’t be handled well, and they are afraid they will be retaliated against.”

He noted that, according to the latest figures, there were about 6,000 unrestricted reports of sexual assault in the military in the latest year. But at a briefing Thursday, he said, Defense Department officials said that only about 300 cases had been prosecuted.

The Pentagon’s report notes that the military took “disciplinary action” of some kind in 65% of cases in 2018, a slight increase from 2017. But nearly all of that punishment was meted out by commanders at their discretion outside the court system, Christensen noted, and could be as minor as a stern admonishment.

“Commanders are basically being asked to practice law without a license,” he said. “It’s complicated, it takes up a lot of their time. It’s time to give this over to professionals.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/military-sexual-assault.html" id="7bfa4ac4-081e-372c-a082-f2529be0bab6">The New York Times</a>.

Pentagon Survey Finds a Surge in Sexual Assaults in the Ranks

Sexual assault in the U.S. military surged in the past two years, driven almost entirely by a 50% increase in assaults on women in uniform, according to a survey released Thursday by the Defense Department.

Navy SEAL commandos from Team 7’s Alpha Platoon said they had seen their highly decorated platoon chief commit shocking acts in Iraq. And they had spoken up, repeatedly. But their frustration grew as months passed and they saw no sign of official action.

Tired of being brushed off, seven members of the platoon called a private meeting with their troop commander in March 2018 at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. According to a confidential Navy criminal investigation report obtained by The New York Times, they gave him the bloody details and asked for a formal investigation.

But instead of launching an investigation that day, the troop commander and his senior enlisted aide — bothlongtime comrades of the accused platoon leader, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher — warned the seven platoon members that speaking out could cost them and others their careers, according to the report.

The clear message, one of the seven told investigators, was “Stop talking about it.”

The platoon members eventually forced the referral of their concerns to authorities outside the SEALs, and Gallagher now faces a court-martial, with his trial set to begin May 28.

But the account of the March 2018 meeting and myriad other details in the 439-page report paint a disturbing picture of a subculture within the SEALs that prized aggression, even when it crossed the line, and that protected wrongdoers.

According to the investigation report, the troop commander, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Breisch, said in the meeting that while the SEALs were free to report the killings, the Navy might not look kindly on rank-and-file team members making allegations against a chief.

The enlisted aide, Master Chief Petty Officer Brian Alazzawi, warned them that the “frag radius” — the area damaged by an explosion — from a war-crime investigation of Gallagher could be wide enough to take down a lot of other SEALs as well, the report said.

As Gallagher’s men were sounding an alarm about killings in Iraq, his superiors were lavishing praise on him. An evaluation quoted in the investigation report called Gallagher the best chief of the 12 in the team, and said, “This is the man I want leading SEALs in combat.”

A few days after the March 2018 meeting, the chief was awarded a Bronze Star for valor under fire in Iraq.

A month later, the seven platoon members finally succeeded in spurring their commanders to formally report the killings of the three Iraqis to the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, by threatening to go directly to top Navy brass and to the media.

Gallagher was arrested in September on more than a dozen charges, including premeditated murder and attempted murder. If convicted, he could face life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denies all the charges.

The chief’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said the Navy investigation report, which was first reported by Navy Times, does not offer an accurate account of what happened in Iraq. He said that hundreds of additional pages of evidence, sealed by the court, included interviews with platoon members who said the chief never murdered anyone.

Gallagher, through Parlatore, declined to be interviewed for this article.

The Navy has charged Gallagher’s immediate superior, Lt. Jacob Portier, with failing to report the chief’s possibly criminal actions and with destroying evidence. Portier has pleaded not guilty. Through his lawyer, he, too, declined to be interviewed.

Gallagher learned of the March 2018 meeting soon after it happened, the report indicates, and he began working to turn other SEALs against the accusers.

“I just got word these guys went crying to the wrong person,” Gallagher wrote to a fellow chief in one of hundreds of text messages included in the report. To another, he wrote: “The only thing we can do as good team guys is pass the word on those traitors. They are not brothers at all.”

Gallagher, who is 39 and goes by the nickname Blade, is known as a standout even among the elite SEALs. Over the course of five deployments with the SEALs, he was repeatedly recognized for valor and coolheaded leadership under fire. He is qualified as a medic, a sniper and an explosives expert, and has been an instructor at BUDS, the force’s grueling training program. To hundreds of sailors he trained, he was a battle-tested veteran who fed them war stories while pushing them through punishing workouts in the surf.

Investigators’ interviews with more than a dozen members of Alpha Platoon, included in the Navy’s criminal investigation report, as well as other interviews with SEALs, offer a more troubling portrait of the chief.

Two SEAL snipers told investigators that one day, from his sniper nest, Gallagher shot a girl in a flower-print hijab who was walking with other girls on the riverbank. One of those snipers said he watched through his scope as she dropped, clutching her stomach, and the other girls dragged her away.

Another day, two other snipers said, the chief shot an unarmed man in a white robe with a wispy white beard. They said the man fell, a red blotch spreading on his back.

Before the 2017 deployment, Gallagher ordered a hatchet and a hunting knife, both handmade by a SEAL veteran named Andrew Arrabito with whom he had served, text messages show. Hatchets have become an unofficial SEAL symbol, and some operators carry and use them on deployments. Gallagher told Arrabito in a text message shortly after arriving in Iraq, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

On the morning of May 4, 2017, Iraqi troops brought in an Islamic State fighter who had been wounded in the leg in battle, SEALs told investigators, and Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of “he’s mine.” The SEALs estimated that the captive was about 15 years old. A video clip shows the youth struggling to speak, but SEAL medics told investigators that his wounds had not appeared life-threatening.

A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with his hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said.

Among the text messages included in the investigation report are some between Gallagher and another SEAL chief, David Swarts, who is being prosecuted for the beating of detainees in a separate case dating from 2012.

Gallagher told Swarts about his looming investigation and said he felt he could not trust anyone any more. When Swarts responded that he never thought SEALs would report one another, Gallagher replied, “Me either, those days are gone.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us/navy-seals-crimes-of-war.html" id="97a4dc78-c586-34f4-aeb9-7cea79e7c749">The New York Times</a>.

Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes

Stabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death. Picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost. Indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire.

According to the investigation report, the troop commander, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Breisch, said in the meeting that while the SEALs were free to report the killings, the Navy might not look kindly on rank-and-file team members making allegations against a chief. Their careers could be sidetracked, he said, and their elite status revoked; referring to the eagle-and-trident badges worn by SEALs, he said the Navy “will pull your birds.”

Navy SEALs are regarded as the most elite commando force in the U.S. military. But that reputation has been blotted repeatedly in recent years by investigations of illegal beatings, killings and theft, and reports of drug use in the ranks. In January, the top commander of the SEALs, Rear Adm. Collin Green, ordered a 90-day review of the force’s culture and training; the results have not yet been made public.

At the same time, some conservatives have rallied to Gallagher’s defense, raising money and pressing publicly for his release.

The investigation report indicates that a number of other high-ranking SEALs also knew of the allegations against the chief, and did not report them. But no one else has been charged in the case.

Citing his texts, the Navy kept the chief in the brig to await trial, saying it believed he had been trying to intimidate witnesses and undermine the investigation. He denies that accusation as well.

The chief’s wife, Andrea Gallagher, and his brother, Sean Gallagher, have appeared repeatedly on Fox News and other news outlets, calling the chief a hero and demanding his release. They say the allegations against Edward Gallagher were concocted by disgruntled subordinates who could not meet his demanding standards and wanted to get rid of him.

A website soliciting donations for his defense says it has raised $375,000, and a prominent veterans’ apparel maker is selling “Free Eddie” T shirts.

Spurred by the Gallagher family, 40 Republican members of Congress signed a letter in March calling for the Navy to free the chief pending trial, and soon after, President Donald Trump said on Twitter that he would be moved to “less restrictive confinement.” Gallagher was released from the brig and is now restricted to the Navy Medical Center in San Diego, according to a Navy spokeswoman.

Andrea Gallagher did not respond to requests for comment.

Edward Gallagher, who is 39 and goes by the nickname Blade, is known as a standout even among the elite SEALs. Over the course of five deployments with the SEALs, he was repeatedly recognized for valor and coolheaded leadership under fire. He is qualified as a medic, a sniper and an explosives expert, and has been an instructor at BUDS, the force’s grueling training program. To hundreds of sailors he trained, he was a battle-tested veteran who fed them war stories while pushing them through punishing workouts in the surf.

When Gallagher took over leadership of the platoon in 2015, SEALs said, he already had a reputation as a “pirate” — an operator more interested in fighting terrorists than in adhering to the rules and making rank.

A number of platoon members told investigators that at first they were excited to be led by a battle-hardened “legend,” but their opinion quickly shifted after they were deployed to Iraq in February 2017 to help retake Mosul from Islamic State fighters.

The SEALs in the platoon did not respond to requests for interviews for this article. Their names and those of others who have not been identified publicly in court have been withheld from this article at the request of the Navy, because of the covert nature of their work.

A spokeswoman for Naval Special Warfare, Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, said that while they are commandos, SEALs are still expected to follow the same laws as all other troops, adding, “It’s called special operations, not different operations.”

The investigation report said several members of the platoon told investigators that Gallagher showed little regard for the safety of team members or the lives of civilians. Their mission was to advise Iraqi forces and provide assistance with snipers and drones, but they said the chief wanted instead to clear houses and start firefights.

He would order them to take what seemed to be needless risks, and to fire rockets at houses for no apparent reason, they said. He routinely parked an armored truck on a Tigris River bridge and emptied the truck’s heavy machine gun into neighborhoods on the other side with no discernible targets, according to one senior SEAL.

Gallagher’s job was to plan and oversee missions for the platoon, but platoon members said he spent much of his time in a hidden perch with a sniper rifle, firing three or four times as often as other platoon snipers. They said he boasted about the number of people he had killed, including women.

Photos from the deployment that were stored on a hard drive seized by the Navy show the chief aiming sniper rifles and rocket launchers from rooftops in the city.

Iraqi officers who were at the scene told Navy investigators that they did not see the captive die, but disputed the stabbing account, saying it seemed out of character for the chief.

Minutes after the death, Gallagher and his commanding officer, Portier, gathered some nearby SEALs for a re-enlistment ceremony, snapping photos of the platoon standing over the body.

In recent years, photos of re-enlistment ceremonies in unusual circumstances — while scuba diving or skydiving, for instance — have gone viral on social media. The chief’s variation would have reinforced his image as a hard-charging pirate, one SEAL said.

A week later, records show, Gallagher texted a picture of the dead captive to a fellow SEAL in California, saying, “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”

But his platoon did not see it as a good story, according to the investigation report: The SEALs called a platoon meeting and discussed how to keep the chief away from anyone he could harm.

When senior platoon members confronted Gallagher about the captive’s death, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it, they do a lot worse to us.”

The SEALs told investigators they reported the killing to Portier that night and at other times during the deployment, but the lieutenant took no action. They said the lieutenant had trained under Gallagher at BUDS and “idolized” him.

Members of the platoon hoped the chief would be reprimanded when they returned home from Iraq in August 2017, according to the report. It didn’t happen. The report said they spoke repeatedly to the lieutenant’s superior, Breisch, and to Alazzawi and another Team 7 master chief, but were told to “decompress” and “let it go.”

Breisch and Alazzawi disputed that account. They told investigators that they had no knowledge of the alleged war crimes until the March 2018 meeting, and that they had encouraged anyone in the platoon who had witnessed anything criminal to report it to Navy investigators.

The Navy declined to make Breisch or Alazzawi available for interviews, citing the continuing investigation.

Each member of the SEAL team had a duty to report wrongdoing as soon as possible, said Lawrence Brennan, a retired Navy captain and military lawyer who now teaches law at Fordham University. But he added, “The willingness of an institution to turn a blind eye is common.”

“It’s especially true in warfare communities,” he said. “And in the SEALs, you don’t just keep it in the family, you keep it in the immediate family.”

Gallagher had been accused of serious misconduct before. According to the investigation report, Army Special Forces troops serving with him in Afghanistan in 2010 reported that, as a sniper, he had shot through an Afghan girl to hit the man who was carrying her, killing them both. Breisch told investigators in 2018 that the 2010 report had been investigated and no wrongdoing had been found.

In 2014, the report says, Gallagher was detained at a traffic stop, where he allegedly tried to run over a Navy police officer; he was released to his commander, and there is no record of punishment in the report. Soon after, he was promoted to chief.

When Gallagher took over leadership of the platoon in 2015, SEALs said, he already had a reputation as a “pirate” — an operator more interested in fighting terrorists than in adhering to the rules and making rank. Photographs of him from that period show that he had red stripes on the arm of his dress uniform, denoting someone who had been formally punished for misconduct.

The department issued a memorandum late Tuesday ordering the military to adopt the policy, which will take effect April 12. Under the new rules, troops and recruits can identify as transgender, but must use the uniforms, pronouns, and sleeping and bathroom facilities for their biological sex. They will not be allowed to serve if they have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a disorder in which a person’s gender identity does not match their physical gender at birth.

The policy exempts transgender troops who have already transitioned or have begun the medical process. Anyone who defies the regulations in the future would be forced out of uniform.

Pentagon officials were at pains Wednesday to insist that the new rules — which already face a number of legal challenges — do not exclude people based on gender identity.

“This is not a ban,” a high-ranking defense department official told reporters repeatedly during a background briefing given on the condition that he not be named. Transgender people can still serve, he said, “so long as they adhere to the standards of their biological sex.”

Department officials say the new policy ensures equal treatment for all troops. Opponents say it is an attempt to sneak a discriminatory policy past court challenges on constitutional grounds.

“It’s baloney — of course it’s a ban,” said Shannon Minter, a lawyer representing transgender service members who have challenged the policy in federal court.

But the Pentagon says that most serving troops won’t be affected. A 2016 survey found that about 9,000 troops identified as transgender, but as of last month, only about 1,000 had begun the formal transitioning process.

The official at the briefing said the policy simply added gender dysphoria, which he called “a serious mental condition,” to the long list of pre-existing conditions, from asthma to heel spurs, that would disqualify someone from serving.

Transgender people have been allowed to serve openly and transition in the military since a longtime ban was lifted in 2016. The new policy allows the military to grant waivers to transgender recruits, though the experiences of current recruits suggests that waivers may be difficult to get.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/transgender-troops-ban.html" id="3c7e1de1-c93b-39c4-aa0c-e63ea831906f">The New York Times</a>.

The Defense Department, after months of litigation and controversy over the issue, is establishing a new policy for transgender troops: They can enlist and serve, but only if they stick to their biological sex. No transitioning allowed.

Rule Lets Transgender Troops in Military, on One Condition

The arrest of a Coast Guard lieutenant whom federal prosecutors accused last week of stockpiling weapons and planning to start a race war raised the question of whether the military, for all its efforts to fight discrimination, has a continuing problem with white supremacists in the ranks.

Here is a look at the issue and how the military has addressed it:

A Persistent Problem

Watchdog groups that monitor domestic extremist activity were quick to cite the allegations against the Coast Guard officer, Lt. Christopher Hasson, as a fresh cause for concern, one of a number in recent years involving people with military backgrounds. They have warned that the armed forces can be a training and recruiting ground for hate groups.

“If you look at the list of domestic terrorism attacks, you will find a lot of veterans,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The trouble, Beirich said, is that the Pentagon does not see white nationalists in the ranks as a major issue. “We’ve had a hard time convincing the military of the seriousness of this problem,” she said.

The Defense Department did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but its posture has generally been that the number of troops involved in extremist activity is tiny, that there are strict regulations against discrimination and extremist activity, and that military commanders are empowered to discipline and discharge troops who break them.

The department told Congress in a 2018 letter that, out of 1.3 million serving members of the military, only 18 had been disciplined or discharged for extremist activity over the past five years.

Experts say, though, that because extremists generally try to keep their activities in the shadows, the official discipline figures probably understate the scale of the problem.

In and Out of the Service

In a number of cases, white supremacists have served in the military and then turned to deadly violence afterward. Examples include Wade Page, who opened fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012, and Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. More recently, a half-dozen current and former service members were linked in 2017 to the Atomwaffen Division, a violent white supremacist group.

Saying that the military radicalized these men would be wrong, Beirich said. “The military is one of the most diverse, multicultural places you can go get a job,” she said. “If anything, it de-radicalizes people.”

Even so, an FBI report in 2008 found that right-wing extremists with military experience were a persistent problem in civilian life. And since then, a number of participants in violent protests mounted by so-called alt-right groups have been active-duty troops or veterans.

The U.S. military is one of the most ethnically diverse and integrated institutions in the nation, and has long promoted racial equality. Yet in a string of cases in recent years, Americans bent on racist extremism have been current or former members of the armed forces.

Dave Philipps

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