Trump is even eroding the Navy Seals!
The Navy Wants to Push Out Problem SEALs. But Trump May Get in the Way.
A push to strengthen discipline in the SEAL teams has been stymied by one sailor’s support in the White House.
By Dave Philipps
Oct. 18, 2019, 5:00 a.m. ET
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Chief Gallagher was acquitted of murder charges this summer, but evidence that he had engaged in a range of other misconduct, including theft and drug use, had come to light during the investigation. Admiral Green and other Navy leaders were planning to demote him and force him out of the SEALs — sending a message that such conduct had no place in one of the country’s premier fighting forces.
None of that has happened, though, because one of Chief Gallagher’s most vocal supporters happens to be the commander in chief. President Trump has repeatedly intervened, and has posted so many expressions of support for the SEAL on Twitter that the Navy now sees Chief Gallagher as untouchable, according to three Navy officials familiar with the case. Any talk of punishment has been shelved, not only for the chief, but for two other SEALs who had been facing possible discipline in the case, these officials said.
Mr. Trump helped Chief Gallagher get released from confinement before his trial, and personally congratulated him on Twitter when he was acquitted.
“People want to hold these guys accountable,” said one Navy officer who was involved in the punishment deliberations. “But they are afraid that if you do anything, minutes later there will be a tweet from the White House, and the officer in charge will get axed.”
The officer, like others interviewed for this article, asked that his name not be used because he feared retaliation.
The president has previously made it clear that he believes the country should tread carefully when calling American troops to account for acts of war. Only last week, he announced on Twitter that the White House was reviewing the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, a former Army Special Forces soldier charged with murder in the death of a Taliban bomb maker in Afghanistan. “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Mr. Trump wrote.
The issue in Chief Gallagher’s case became apparent to Admiral Green’s team in August, when the chief’s lawyers — including one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Marc Mukasey, who joined the defense team two months before the June court-martial — had tried and failed to persuade Navy commanders to suspend any punishment. Soon after that, the president brought up the Gallagher case at a meeting with the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations, according to a senior Navy official.
White House officials strongly denied that the Gallagher case was discussed. But hours after the meeting, the Chief of Naval Operations announced that he would personally take over the Gallagher case from another admiral, who had indicated that she planned to punish the chief.
The Navy had also planned to discipline two other SEALs who had come under investigation in the Gallagher case: Lt. Jacob Portier, who was charged with not reporting Chief Gallagher’s actions in Iraq; and Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a platoon medic whose testimony at the chief’s trial prompted the Navy to open a perjury investigation. But on the same day as the White House meeting, the charges against Lieutenant Portier were dropped and the investigation of Special Operator Scott was ended.
The intervention from Washington left Navy leaders with a dilemma: Not punishing Chief Gallagher and the others would undermine efforts to restore discipline in the ranks, but punishing them only to be publicly reversed might make things even worse.
“All that’s off the table now,” said a Navy Special Warfare officer who was briefed on the most recent deliberations of Admiral Green’s team about the matter. Navy commanders grew concerned that if they took away from Chief Gallagher the Trident pin that signifies membership in the SEALs, only to see the president give it back again, the officer said, “it sends a message that the commanders aren’t in control.”
While taking no action against Chief Gallagher, the Navy recently fired two senior leaders of the team on which Chief Gallagher serves, SEAL Team 7, which has had other recent incidents of misconduct. The command cited a “loss of confidence that resulted from leadership failures.”
The two leaders, Cmdr. Edward Mason and Master Chief Hugh Spangler — both decorated career SEALs with unblemished records who took command of the team after Chief Gallagher had been arrested — filed a complaint with the Navy’s inspector general over their firing. They said that they had become “expendable scapegoats” in the admiral’s fight against an anti-authoritarian “Gallagher effect” that was threatening to spread through the force.
With his new, protected status, Chief Gallagher appears to be trolling Navy leadership.
A few days after the demoted leaders filed their complaint, an Instagram account belonging to Chief Gallagher and his wife started selling T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “The Gallagher Effect.”
Another recent Instagram post from the account referred to Admiral Green and another top Navy leader as “a bunch of morons.”
And in a photo posted on social media by a former member of his platoon, Chief Gallagher is seen gripping a hunting knife similar to the one Navy prosecutors said he used to kill a captive fighter from ISIS, which is also known by its Arabic name, Daesh. The post, which was “liked” by Chief Gallagher’s account, included the hashtags #WeDon’tHaveAnEthicsProblem and #NoOneCriesOverSpilledDaesh.
http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/us/edward-gallagher-navy-seal.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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