WHO DOUBLE-CROSSED THE SEALS?

WHO DOUBLE-CROSSED THE SEALS?

Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Inside the RIng
June 3, 2015

Best-selling author and former Navy judge advocate Don Brown is out with a new book that investigates the shoot-down of Extortion 17, the worst wartime loss of life in the history of Navy special operations warfare.

The book, “Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six,” is an exhaustive look at a tragedy for which the military’s official version defies logic for some of the sailors’ survivors.

The No. 1 gnawing question: How did an Afghan Taliban fighter, armed with a grenade launcher, just happen to be stationed near the Chinook helicopter’s landing zone — a spot never before used to insert troops. His rocket-propelled grenade shot clipped a rotor blade, sending the non-special-operations helicopter into a violent spin and deadly crash.

The sequence of events led some family members of those killed to believe that the ambush was an inside job — that someone in the Afghan chain of command sent word to Taliban fighters that a reinforcement of SEALS was on the way to aid Army Rangers and that the aircraft was planning to land at that specified spot
.
After all, on the night of Aug. 6, 2011, the Chinook was transporting the same elite unit that killed Osama bin Laden three months earlier, a group that no doubt had a target on its back from al Qaeda and its supporters.

Then there is the mystery of the Afghan soldiers on board the helicopter with the 30 Americans who perished — a U.S. Army crew, the SEALs and special warfare technicians, including a military dog handler.

The seven Afghans listed on the manifest turned out not to be the ones who died on the chopper. Their identities were not disclosed in the official censored military report.

“Were they trying to hide the politically embarrassing fact that this flight was, or could have been, compromised by Taliban infiltrators determined to help sabotage it from the inside, or to communicate with Taliban forces on the ground about the chopper’s approach to coordinate the timing of a point-blank shot?” Mr. Brown writes.

“Something went terribly wrong inside that helicopter, and whatever went wrong was most likely beyond the pilots’ control,” he says. “It’s as if the unidentified Afghan infiltrators were the big pink elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.”

Mr. Brown still practices law in North Carolina. He is best known for two best-selling novels, “Treason” and “Malacca Conspiracy.”
For his new book, the author turns mathematician. Using official investigative documents, he concludes that the shooter was just, at most, 178 feet from the chopper when he fired, not the 720 feet as cited by the chief investigator.

“What would be the chances that Extortion 17 would just happen to fly within 75 yards of a Taliban insurgent waiting with an RPG, unless the Taliban insurgent knew in advance exactly where Extortion 17 was going to land?” Mr. Brown asks. Then, answering his own question, he writes, “About as likely as finding a needle in a haystack.”

There is more than math in “Call Sign Extortion 17.” A full reading may well convince readers that those men were betrayed on the night of Aug. 6.

• Staff writer Rowan Scarborough contributed to this column. Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter via @BillGertz.

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