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The Crimes of
SEAL Team 6
By Matthew Cole
Officially
known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group,
SEAL Team 6 is today the most celebrated of the U.S.
military’s special mission units. But hidden behind the
heroic narratives is a darker, more troubling story of
“revenge ops,” unjustified killings, mutilations, and
other atrocities — a pattern of criminal violence that
emerged soon after the Afghan war began and was
tolerated and covered up by the command’s leadership.
1
- The Wedding Party Massacre
On the afternoon of March 6,
2002, Lt. Cmdr. Vic Hyder and more than two dozen
operators from SEAL Team 6 boarded two Chinook
helicopters en route to eastern Afghanistan hoping that
within hours, they would kill or capture Osama bin
Laden.
Earlier that
evening, general officers from the Joint Special
Operations Command had scrambled the SEALs after
watching a Predator drone video feed of a man they
suspected was bin Laden set off in a convoy of three or
four vehicles in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where al Qaeda
forces had fortified themselves. Although the video had
revealed no weapons, and the generals had only tenuous
intelligence that the convoy was al Qaeda — just
suspicions based on the color of the man’s flowing white
garb and the deference others showed him — they were
nervous that bin Laden might get away again, as he had a
few months earlier after the bombing of the Tora Bora
mountains in December 2001. This was a crucial moment:
Kill bin Laden now and the war could be over after only
six months. The vehicles were headed east toward the
Pakistani border, as if they were trying to escape. The
mission was code-named Objective Bull.
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