Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 103

on political books
sponded by seeking to intimidate witnesses.
Among other things, he gave the
names of his accusers to an old SEAL
buddy, who responded in a text message,
" some day we will just kill them. "
This book brims with such striking quotations,
mainly because Philipps was
able to read a trove of some 6,000 texts
written by Gallagher and 2,300 others
sent by members of his platoon.
The
investigation
proceeded.
It
turned out that Gallagher had a past:
He had never trained as a sniper and
indeed wasn't a very good shot. On
an earlier deployment to Afghanistan,
he had dropped in on an Army Special
Forces unit and began firing at Afghans.
When he shot an unarmed man
walking in a field, Army soldiers who
witnessed the incident reported him
to their commander. But the Navy decided
not to delve further into this
particular crime.
When they finally decided to prosecute
him for his other crimes, including
killing the teenage prisoner, Gallagher
found fast outside backing. The
Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth
conducted a campaign on the soldier's
behalf. He featured Andrea Gallagher,
Eddie's wife, in television interviews.
She alleged that her husband
was an innocent and noble victim of
an ungrateful government. " These are
atrocities being committed against our
military service members, my family,
my husband, " she claimed. She asserted
that people who had never been
in the fight were judging her husband,
when in fact his accusers were members
of her husband's own team, who
believed he had recklessly endangered
them while undercutting the war effort
by alienating Iraqis. Benefiting
from Fox's backing, Andrea Gallagher
was able to raise roughly $500,000 for
her husband's legal defense fund.
More importantly, Hegseth's efforts
attracted the attention of Donald
Trump and his sons. The president
called Richard Spencer, the Navy secretary,
to chew him out over the service's
handling of Gallagher-and
then told Spencer to call Hegseth, the
Fox News contributor.
Even as it acted, the Navy continued
to stumble. Irked by leaks,
it sought
to find out who was releasing information
by having the lead prosecutor
send an email with a tracking device
to defense attorneys. That ill-advised
stunt got the lawyer kicked off the case
by the judge. He was then replaced by
a junior Navy officer who had never
tried a murder before. The Navy's lawyers
also gave blanket immunity to a
member of the SEAL team who then
proceeded to testify, under that de facto
pardon, that he had killed Gallagher's
prisoner himself.
The SEAL culture of placing loyalty
before integrity even seeped into
the jury room. Philipps reports that
one of the jurors previously had visited
Gallagher's house five times for Bible
study, and had told comrades that
he had donated $1,000
to Gallagher's defense
fund. But when asked
in the courtroom about
his connections to Gallagher,
the
juror
responded
that they barely
knew one another.
Gallagher's lead lawvaded
Iraq on false premises. We made
torture of prisoners American policy.
And we let sadists like Gallagher loose
on the world.
But much of the American public
doesn't want to know or understand
that we inflicted such harm. How
many Americans can tell you the number
of foreigners we have killed in our
response to September 11? Very few
know or seem to care. Those hijackings
were a remarkable moment in American
history, spurring widespread unity
and an outpouring of patriotic support.
But in the following two decades,
we devolved into harsh divisions and
fierce political infighting, thanks in
part to the escalating lies that began
in the wake of the attacks. It makes
me think of something a Middle Easterner
said after the 2001 hijackings:
yer in the trial was Timothy
Parlatore, who had
represented New York
mafiosi and later represented
Fox's Hegseth,
whose second wife divorced
him after he impregnated
a Fox News
producer. Parlatore chewed up the
prosecution's witnesses. The case fell
apart, and Gallagher was found guilty
on only one minor count. He went free.
Trump congratulated Gallagher and
his wife, tweeting, " Glad I could help! "
When the remorseful Navy chain of
command sought to strip Gallagher of
his SEAL emblem, Trump fired Spencer,
the Navy secretary.
Unfortunately, Eddie Gallagher's
story may be emblematic of the post9/11
era. Our leaders panicked after
the attacks of that day, and the American
people followed them. We invaded
Afghanistan-I
think correctly-but
then mishandled the war. Then we inEddie
Gallagher was a
one-man wrecking crew for
ethical behavior. He murdered
a teenage captive by plunging
a knife into the helpless
prisoner's neck. He entertained
himself by repeatedly firing
his sniper rifle at people
who clearly were civilians.
" You Americans think you are going to
change my region, but I think we will
wind up changing you. "
With both of those wars now almost
behind us, it's time for the military
to take stock of everything that went
wrong. That should include making
Alpha-one of the most important
books to come out of the Iraq War
(as I wrote in a blurb for it)-
required reading in every service academy.
Thomas
E. Ricks is the author of several
books about the American military, including
Fiasco, Making the Corps, and The
Generals.
Washington Monthly
103
Washington Monthly - September/October 2021

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