Honor and Betrayal : The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the "Butcher of Fallujah"-and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured (9780306823091) (22 page)

That unseen bond between Navy SEALs is unbreakable, and the resident SEALs at Ar-Ramadi made it very clear that they did not approve of what was happening to the Echo Platoon three, and someone had better start proving something real quickly or else a lot of very smart and very tough men would want to know why.

On Sunday, September 6, Matt was ordered to report to Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), where Special Agent John Stamp was waiting. He videoed Matt and took fingerprints and a new statement based on the two previous ones.

Then the agent read Matt his rights and told him he was being accused of the assault of a detainee. This was all recorded, and Matt, still fully cooperative and somewhat in disbelief at what was happening to him, took the pen and signed it.

There was now no doubt in his mind: Westinson had concocted this whole bizarre story and, for some reason, was sticking to it. And Matt was within a whisker of being charged with a military crime that would surely end his career as a Navy SEAL. If found guilty, he might be incarcerated in prison.

Jon and Sam were also called into the NCIS. They were not accused like Matt was, but the agent wanted new statements, and Jon was very unhappy with this procedure and asked for stuff to be crossed out. He told them he had never said those things. He told them he would not sign anything until it was accurate, and they eventually acceded to his wishes.

He recalls that they kept telling him he need not worry about these minor details. They didn't matter, they said. Big Jon, however, disagreed strenuously. He said they did matter, at one point even telling them he'd never heard of legal people saying details did not matter.

One detail, which escaped no one, came when they were separated and then asked independently whether they were prepared to take a polygraph test, one that would demand them to answer, categorically, whether Matt had punched the prisoner and whether the other two had seen him do so.

Matt replied, “Absolutely. But only if Westinson takes one.”

A little later Jon agreed, telling them: “Of course I'll take it. Any time you like.”

Sam also responded, “No problem. I'll do it right here.”

They were, even by the standards of Camp Ramadi, scarcely the responses of guilty men. And for the record, Westinson was never required to take the polygraph.

The polygraph (lie detector) team would be arriving in a few days, and all three SEALs signed a paper confirming they agreed to undergo the test.

Back in their room they also agreed that this could really get out of hand. Sam said it was plain that these superior officers did not believe them. Westinson had made an insane accusation, and the senior naval authorities believed him. They did not believe the SEALs, collectively or singly, and this was why they were about to wheel in a polygraph machine.

Matt later guessed it was entirely possible that Westinson had made his wild remarks to deflect attention from his own eccentric behavior that night—deserting his post and mislaying the medical forms.

Looking back, Jon, trying to think of a reason why Westinson said what he said, thought that maybe “he just blurted it out, saying Matt had whacked this nitwit jihadist and then found it impossible to retract because that would make him a grade-one liar. He just kept on saying it—probably in the end believing it.”

At 2100 they were summoned to Master Chief Lampard's office and informed they were being detailed to “busywork” under his command. And they all knew what this meant: three-hour watches twice a day, cleaning up the cafeteria at the special operations task force headquarters (SOTF-HQ). SEALs call it bitchwork. It represents the most heinous of punishments, bad for any military personnel but some kind of living death for Navy SEALs, each of whom cost millions of dollars to train.

Jon managed to prevent himself from shouting out: “Busywork! You bastard. You must be joking. I'm a US Navy SEAL. ... I'm one of the most trusted combat warriors in the US armed forces—and I haven't done one wrong thing. You cannot do this to me.”

The problem was that Master Chief Lampard could, and did. As far as Matt, Jon, and Sam were concerned, this was the day hell froze over, as they were separated from their brothers, the final humiliation—three SEAL petty officers just back from a major direct action mission, about to be presented with buckets and mops and ordered to wipe tables. They would have to pick up food from the galley and bring it back to Lampard and his staff.

And running through Matt's mind was one thought:
If we'd had lawyers, this could never have happened
.

The trouble was that the SEALs were so certain of their innocence, so trusting of the US Navy and their SEAL commanders that they never dreamed they could possibly need lawyers. They had always co-operated. “We were guilty of
nothing,”
said Matt. “And we never even suggested we needed lawyers, as any guilty person might. We never did.”

The inescapable truth was that they had already been found guilty of something. After all, they were already being punished in what they believed was the most severe way. “That master chief had told us we were innocent until proven guilty,” added Matt. “Yeah, right. They hadn't yet hanged us, but they sure as hell had hung us out to dry.

“And they can repeat that ‘innocent til proven guilty' refrain for a thousand years, but it did not apply to us. We had already been judged guilty and punished. Jesus, they were punishing us all day, half the night, and every day. And doing it in the harshest possible way. They were systematically trying to break us, I think, to get some kind of confession.”

The naval authorities had time to give that a great deal of thought that morning, because shortly before 0922, a massive one thousand-pound bomb detonated on the other side of the Euphrates River, which ran right past the outer wall of the camp.

It was a suicide car bomb, pure C-4 explosive, and the thunderous blast shuddered the entire camp, shook every building. The ground trembled, and the waters of the Euphrates rippled. That bomb had blown at an Iraqi police checkpoint, killed seven policemen, wounded fifteen others, and sent a giant mushroom cloud right over the base.
“You couldn't see anything but dust,” said Jon. “Sam was four hundred yards away. All we could hear was heavy machine gunfire, but we had no idea who was firing at who. Our bunks were shaking from the impact, we had no heavy weapons, and the base was under attack.”

Jon and Matt charged out of bed, raced across the base to the SOTF-HQ, and came hurtling through the door to find everyone terrified, huddled together—mostly support guys, plus Westinson.

They could hear people whimpering, “Help us,” and they knew that front door could be cannon-blasted in any second and a group of armed tribesmen would bust in with machine guns or another bomb. Outside there was continuous gunfire.

Right then Sam came running through the door, demanding his rifle and armor. “And Matt reacted like a true SEAL,” said Jon. “I remember he said, Tell these people to get out of our fucking way, and let's get to the roof.'”

At which point he yelled at the top of lungs:
“FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, GIVE US BACK OUR GEAR—RIGHT NOW! THIS BASE IS UNDER ATTACK! WE GOTTA GET TO THE ROOF!”

Someone went to the TOC's armory and pulled out the equipment the three SEALs needed. And the Echo Platoon men pulled on their body armor, loaded their rifles, and headed for the ladder that led to the roof. Someone yelled, “Can you save us?” and Matt yelled back, a tad ungraciously: “We're gonna try—somehow—to protect you fucking pussies.”

No one joined them. Everyone in that TOC building, including a lot of military guys, were just cowering. People were under desks. And Jon, Sam, and Matt, ramming new magazines into the breach of their rifles, pounded up that ladder and onto the roof, not knowing whether to expect an RPG or just sustained gunfire from across the river.

Whatever it was, that enemy would quickly know it was now in a very serious fight. Three armed SEALs are enough trouble for any al-Qaeda force. They reached the edge and spent a few minutes scanning the far river bank. And now they took up their defensive positions, leaning into the parapet, with rifles aimed at the river's edge where police and ambulances were arriving.

“We never opened fire,” said Jon. “Because they were not yet crossing the river to attack us with ground troops. But we were ready for 'em, and if any of them chanced their luck, those bastards were dead men. We'd have shot anyone who as much as raised a rifle at the walls of our base.”

Finally Commander Hamilton came up to the roof and asked for a situation report (SITREP), which Sam provided. He assured the CO there was no possibility of any force advancing against them. Not without getting killed. They said they were happy with their defensive position. It was classic Navy SEAL, the highest ground, with a clear attacking zone.

Matt recalls the commander remained taciturn. “He left, and we stayed up there for an hour,” recalls Jon. “And when the far bank of the Euphrates was finally quiet and the uproar had died down, we climbed back down the ladder, where some people did in fact thank us. Many of them had believed they might die. That huge blast shook the entire camp and a lot of people with it.”

What happened then? Had the SEALs' action been sufficiently brave and loyal to be issued with a total reprieve, with any and all pending charges against them dropped? Not quite. They were told to hand in their body armor and weapons and to continue as before.

So they went down to the Marine chow hall and collected lunch for the people they'd just rushed to defend. And then cleaned up after them.

And the psychological attacks on them continued. That same day, quite late in the evening, Master Chief Lampard hauled them into a conference room, a bleak little place with bleacher seating, and delivered an almost laughable lecture.

It was about honor and integrity in the Navy. Jon recalled that the chief told them he had personally been investigated several times and that if they just told the truth, it would all work out.

Jon recalled that the chief then told them what they already had figured out: he had made up his mind and knew who the guilty party was.

He was staring straight at them. “And you could see the pure malice in his face,” said Matt. “I felt like saying, ‘Oh, thank you, God, Master
Chief God, who knowest all—but in our case knowest nothing, vicious, smug bastard.'”

At the conclusion of his sermon Master Chief Lampard added that no matter what happened to them—loss of rank or getting discharged from the US military—at least they're “still Americans.”

Oh, thank you Master Chief God, for not turning me into a Pakistani or a Moroccan
, thought Matt, who only rarely lost his sardonic sense of humor. And now Mr. Lampard had taken him to the limit.

At 10
A.M.
on Wednesday, September 9, the master chief stopped Jon and asked him what he knew about the case. The big breacher replied, “Sam has told us the investigation was complete and that we were being sent back to the States, and the entire issue would be dealt with on home soil.”

Jon says Lampard shook his head and smiled, then told him that the Iraqis wanted answers and were demanding justice—right here in Iraq.

“You mean a trial in an Iraqi court?” said Jon quietly. “Me and Sam and Matt?”

“Very possibly.”

“But, if it goes against us, not an Iraqi jail, right?”

“It's a possibility.”

That scared Jon worse than he had ever been scared in his life. “An Iraqi courtroom, an Iraqi judge?” he recalled thinking. “For me, who'd played a major role in the kidnapping and incarceration of this Sunni hero and al-Qaeda commander?”

Standing there, face to face with the hard-faced, stocky master chief, Jon found himself shuddering, almost certainly with fear. “He'd just mentioned what could be a death sentence for me,” he says. “Can you imagine? An American Special Forces operator getting justice in Iraq? And then being thrown into a Baghdad correctional institution? My life would not have been worth two bucks.”

Looking back Jon now believes the master chief was just trying to scare him. “And he sure as hell managed that,” he says. “To this day I'm not sure whether Lampard was merely a sadist or whether he would just have done anything in this world to get us to admit to something, anything.

“He plainly wanted Matt to sign something saying he had knocked the living hell out of Al-Isawi. He also wanted Sam and me to admit we had stood by and watched this. And then confirm the pair of us had told a pack of lies to cover up what Matt had done and what we had witnessed.

“Like Westinson, Lampard had jumped very quickly onto the wrong side of this one, and I thought at that little encounter, he'll get his false, untrue confessions over our dead bodies. Screw him.”

That was probably the day the game changed. And the first evidence it had really changed came at noon on Saturday, September 12. Jon and Sam were ordered to report separately to NCIS, where their rights were read to them. The officer said that Jon was being charged with two articles that contravened the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

He was then told to sign his formal acceptance of these charges, one of which was dereliction of duty, the other that he had made a false official statement. “It was,” he recalls, “the most shocking, untrue allegation which had ever been made against me by anyone, anywhere, or any time. And that includes when I flunked out of the University of East Carolina and was widely regarded at the time as a total deadbeat.”