Today, Explained - "Keep our honor clean"

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

President Trump is reportedly considering issuing a series of pardons for alleged war crimes in time for Memorial Day. Some see parallels to Nixon’s handling of the My Lai massacre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's show features a few graphic descriptions of war crimes. Here's a moment if you need it. Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and if reports are to be believed, the President of the United States is making some very unusual plans to commemorate the holiday this year. This all broke over the weekend when the New York Times reported that multiple sources within the administration basically have seen paperwork that was going to the White House that would be used to consider and potentially sign pardons for at least four cases of war crimes that are currently on the slate, but there may have been more. Adam Weinstein wrote about these military pardons for the new republic.

They want to be able to make an announcement of the pardons in time for the Memorial Day holiday next Monday. Memorial Day, of course, is, you know, a very solemn holiday that's supposed to honor America's war dead. And it seems that the administration thinks that that would be an appropriate time to announce pardons of accused and convicted war criminals. What do we know so far about who he's considering pardoning? So you have a Navy SEAL, Chief Edward Gallagher, who is accused of a series of war crimes, including several murders in connection with his deployment

with the Navy SEALs in Mosul fighting ISIS in Iraq in 2017. You have Matthew Goldstein, a Green Beret officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, where he is reported to have killed an Afghan accused of being a bomb maker. You have Nicholas Slatton, who is not a service person. He's a veteran, but he was actually convicted of murder in connection with his work for Blackwater, the private security company. And you also have a group of Marines who were disciplined for urinating on the corpses of

Afghans that they had just killed in battle in 2012. So those are the four major cases that are apparently being looked at by the Trump administration for pardons or commutations. Okay, so let's start with Edward Gallagher, this Navy SEAL. What's his story? Chief Gallagher was one of the leading enlisted SEALs in charge of this platoon of SEALs in 2017 in Mosul. And he's accused of, when he was in a sniper position, for example, shooting an elderly man in the back, shooting a girl who was walking with a group of other girls by a river. He was reported by some of his co-workers to have seen this as a religious charge against infidels and that he bragged about killing three people a day. And the most serious charge against him probably has to do with a teenage boy who was in his care.

This boy was brought into the base because he was taken out of a reported ISIS safe house that was raided. He was seriously, grievously injured, and so the SEALs began to give him aid on the base. Chief Gallagher, who's trained as a hospital corpsman, was one of those people who was giving that aid. But at a certain point, several witnesses say he actually stabbed that patient in the neck repeatedly until he died and took pictures of it. And at one point even staged his reenlistment ceremony with his lieutenant over the body. And he also has alleged prosecutorial misconduct, not without warrant. So that's a really complicated case, but he's accused of a great deal of pretty bad things.

What was the process of sort of bringing him to account on these charges? There was actually a confrontation between Chief Gallagher and a bunch of the SEAL platoon mates who worked with him. And they said that they were not good with some of the things that he had done and that they were sort of challenging him on what he took to be his area of expertise. They ultimately started reporting some of his misdeeds to the upper chain of command where it sort of stalled out within the special warfare, within the SEAL command. Ultimately, however, enough of his teammates and enough other people sort of reported it to NCIS and they did launch the investigation. So this is one of those rare cases where you have a number of active serving special operations sailors who are accusing one of their own of some very serious crimes. How has Gallagher handled these allegations since returning home? Well, the main thing is that a lot of his supporters, including his spouse, have all gotten out to Fox News.

My husband was actually accused by malcontents in his platoon that he had done an alleged act on a dying ISIS fighter. They've not just been asking for justice in his case because they do believe that he's being railroaded and that there's a lot of hanky stuff going on in his case. But they were making direct appeals to President Trump through Fox News programs to say, pardon this guy. And he's not even been tried yet. His court-martial begins next week. I would love to see the president take a good hard look at the systemic failure in all four branches of the military in these absolutely corrupt decisions that are being made from the top down, we see cowardice, careerism, we see corruption that's rampant, and people are covering their own you-know-whats. So that's one of the pardons the president wants to issue.

Let's move on to the second, Matthew Goldstein. What's his story? So Matthew Goldstein's a pretty decorated Green Beret officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. And he actually received a Silver Star, one of the military's highest honors for valor. In 2011, he's out of the Army and he was interviewing for a job with the Central Intelligence Agency. And it came out that he was involved in the killing of an Afghan who had been accused by a tribal elder of being a terrorist bomb maker. The army went ahead and investigated after they found out about the CIA interview. And ultimately, at that time, Goldstein just lost his silver star, but there were no charges. Fast forward to five years later, Goldstein was on Fox News Channel talking about his service with Brett Baer. And

Baer asked him, did you kill the Taliban bomb maker? Yes. And at that point, even though he was out, the army started to do a deeper investigation. He's now charged with murder in connection with that case. And that's interesting because, so the Gallagher and the Goldstein cases are two cases where pardons are being considered for two men who haven't been convicted of anything yet. And do we have any idea how President Trump came to know his story? So Goldstein's case is one that has also been in the attention of the conservative-leaning media like Fox News Channel. It's a story gripping the nation. A man going from military hero to enemy of the state. And he specifically was actually on Fox and Friends in February.

Major Matt Goldstein and his wife, Julie Goldstein, thank you both for being here. It is an honor to sit with you, to spend time with you. I've been following this case. I can't imagine how difficult it has been for you and your family. So we're grateful for you to be here this morning. Thank you. Arguing that he's being railroaded for a legitimate military ambush tactic. I conducted an ambush. And those routine combat actions are now being characterized as murder. He was being interviewed by Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, who in his previous life was a

Republican operative. And it has recently come to light through Daily Beast reporting over the weekend that Hegseth has actually been privately lobbying President Trump one-on-one for these specific pardons. And the third pardon we know of is Nicholas Slatton. What's he accused of? Nicholas Slatton, who is a military veteran, was actually charged and convicted in connection with actions that he took when he was a private security contractor for the notorious firm Blackwater. It was one of the worst killings of innocent civilians by U.S. contractors in Iraq and a huge blow to America's efforts to stabilize the country. September 16th, 2007, security personnel working for the company then called Blackwater opened fire at Baghdad's Nisour Square, killing more than a dozen. And this was a case that was huge, if you remember, when it came up, because it sort of

blew up all of the United States intentions in Iraq and forced them to do a lot of handholding with their allies to guarantee that their outsourced military operations, going to private companies like Blackwater, would have some form of accountability when they would do things to Iraqi civilians. So Slatin was actually convicted twice of murder. The first one was overturned on appeal, but he was successfully retried. So I'm not sure that there is a natural constituency that's saying, you know what, let's exonerate this Blackwater machine gunner. Nevertheless, it's on the table with the rest.

And the last of these pardons that we know of is this really awful story about a group of Marines. What exactly is the story there? In 2012, a viral video surfaced on YouTube of what appeared to show four Marines in Afghanistan basically dropping trousers and urinating on the corpses of Afghan men that they had reportedly just killed in a firefight. Deplorable, disgusting. Some of the words used to describe this video of Marines urinating on dead Taliban in Afghanistan. Outreach in Washington. Anyone, anyone found to have participated or known about it, having engaged in such conduct, must be held fully accountable. And so that one became sort of a cause celeb for both the left

and the right. And a lot of people on the right came out to defend these Marines. And Duncan Hunter, a representative from California, who's actually himself currently under indictment for embezzling campaign funds, he's a former Marine who came out and said that these Marines are sons of America and they should not be criminally prosecuted. Don't pay me and train me to go kill bad people for our people in this country, meaning for the American people, and then come home and be punished because you made me into a person that kills bad people. Once the Marines did an investigation, they got two Marines who have been reduced and ranked at a special court-martial, and I think those are the ones

that would probably see some benefit from a Trump pardon here. And one of the things that I have heard from several military sources, Marines that I know, is it's really hard to square some of this with the Marine Corps hymn, which says, first to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean. Bill Nye the Science Guy, you probably know him as that science guy who's always wearing a bow tie. I actually interviewed him once and asked him, Bill Nye, how many bow ties do you have? The number he dropped was like upwards of 400, and that was like three years ago. So who knows how many he has now. Another thing he has now is a podcast.

It's called Science Rules. On Science Rules, Bill Nye takes calls from listeners and answers all their weird, embarrassing, funny, and occasionally more serious questions. Some examples include, how will we prevent another Flint River crisis? Or how do we go about putting colonies on Mars? Or should we stop eating cheeseburgers to combat climate change?

The show is co-hosted by Corey S. Powell, a science writer, editor, and Bill's trusty friend. There's also field experts and special celebrity guests. The first episode of Science Rules is out now, so you can check it out right after you finish listening to this episode of Today Explained. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Adam, President Trump made a military pardon earlier this month, and now some people are saying he was just testing the waters for all of these ones he wants to make now.

When was the last time we saw a U.S. president intervene in a case of violent war crime? To my knowledge, the last one before President Trump was President Nixon and Lieutenant William Calley. In one of the most shameful chapters in American military history, 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children, and old men were massacred over a four-hour period by U.S. troops at a hamlet called My Lai in central Vietnam. In the middle of some of the worst fighting in the Vietnam War in 1968, Lieutenant Calley's army unit was in this hamlet and essentially destroyed the village. And they rounded up everyone, and they were shooting and killing primarily women and children en masse. Reports that women were beaten and raped before they were murdered and lots of reports of bodily mutilation. Ultimately, something like 26 soldiers were charged in connection with the atrocities that happened in My Lai after it was exposed by the U.S. media. Although the My Lai massacre took place March 16th, 68, it wasn't until November 12th, 69,

that the world found out about it. That's when investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch broke the story about the massacre and its cover-up. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the expose. And it should be noted that there wasn't necessarily, outside of the anti-war movement, a lot of anti-army fervor or a lot of clamoring for people to be prosecuted in connection with My Lai, even after Hirsch was reporting on it. And the kids did then what they did then. The young soldiers toked it up, and the senior enlisted men and the officers drank it up,

but they all got up at 3 or 4 in the morning, jumped on choppers, and went to kill and be killed. Do we know if United States soldiers tried to stop the massacre or is that we do have, for example, this one helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who was at the village while this was happening. He saw what was happening, and he actually intervened with his helicopter to save a group of civilian Vietnamese. And he ordered his crew to fire on American soldiers if it was necessary to stop the slaughter. We weren't part of the unit. We were there to protect them flying overhead from anywhere from three to ten feet in the air. And what we saw

just wasn't right. And we handled it the only way we could figure a way to handle it. And ultimately, Thompson did fly a couple of Vietnamese civilians out on his helicopter, including a nine-year-old that sat in his crew chief's lap as they flew away from My Lai. In the aftermath, however, it was Thompson's helicopter crew that was immediately ostracized for not backing up the soldiers on the ground. And a lot of the popular sentiment initially surrounding the My Lai incident was that, you know, Calley shouldn't be second-guessed and that Thompson was the real traitor here. My name is William Calley.

I'm a soldier of this land. I've tried to do my duty and to gain the upper hand. Lieutenant Calley was treated like a hero by a large number of Americans. As we go marching on. I've seen my buddies ambushed on the left and on the right. And their youthful bodies riddled by the bullets of the night. Where all the rules are broken and the only law is might, as we go marching on. Were there any ballads written about Hugh Thompson?

Not to my knowledge. So how is Calley eventually prosecuted? He was one of something like 26 soldiers who were ultimately brought up on charges. And this is one of the interesting things that his supporters brought up. He was the only one convicted and he was sentenced to life in prison on the basis of the evidence that the army had assembled and, frankly, on the strength of the investigative reporting that had caused scrutiny on the case in the first place. Is it this swell of popular support that leads Nixon to intervene?

I think that that was a very big part of the calculus. Kelly was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in leading the soldiers. And that was in 1971. Almost immediately, President Nixon comes out and doesn't commute the sentence, but he sort of issues an edict that allows Callie to be in house arrest to sort of downgrade the punishment. You know, on the same day that Callie's conviction in connection with My Lai was announced, the New York Times reports on page one under the headline, Decision by Nixon on Callie Hailed. Protests over conviction continue across nation. So there was definitely a popular upswelling of support for this man and a desire to see him not as a goat or as a violator of honor, but as a hero. How does that action by Nixon compare to what President Trump's currently considering?

If you bracket out for a second, the enormity and the gravity and kind of the horribleness of what we speak of when we speak about the My Lai Massacre, and you simply look at the legal procedure there, you could make a pretty decent argument that that is a little bit more conventional in terms of presidential pardons than the ones that Trump is considering right now. Just in terms of one individual who's being punished for this large crime and 25 other individuals who were investigated really didn't see any consequences out of that as a result. How does this play with vets? I know you're a vet and you've spoken with others in your reporting. Well, the military and the veterans community are not monoliths, and there's lots of space for fractious disagreements in there. That having said, I have not spoken to

any veterans outside of Twitter who don't see this as a serious potential problem for them and for their service and its status. And, you know, the things that you hear repeatedly and that have been said publicly by a lot of leading veterans and military officers is this is not right. It stains everybody, including people who were not involved in these cases. And it makes our work harder as we go overseas to do other things. Also, if you're looking for how do veterans respond to this, one of the things I always want to do is look to their major veteran service organizations, you know, the real big veteran groups like VFW and the American Legion.

There's enough, I think, dissension and disagreement among veterans that you're going to see those groups that speak for them, I think, be very hesitant to really say anything about these cases because they know that it's so divisive among their memberships. You know, you mentioned earlier this California congressman, Duncan Hunter, saying that, you know, these are sons of America. They shouldn't be treated this way. Is there some sort of code or sense that, you know, we shouldn't be prosecuting our service men and women for mistakes they make abroad in war? You know, it sort of fits into an overarching narrative that has particularly emanated from

conservatives, but also from an apolitical standpoint has been pretty popular in the military since after the Vietnam War, which is the sense of, okay, we keep losing these wars. Why are we losing them? And a lot of the response from the military community or conservatives is because we're not being allowed to fight a war the way a war is meant to be fought, that wars have no rules. And that's the sense that sort of motivates, well, of course, we didn't win in Afghanistan yet, and we have to keep doing this. Of course, we didn't win in Afghanistan yet and we have to keep doing this. Of course we didn't win in Iraq and we have to go back because there were too many lily-livered people trying to do the hearts and minds thing and not enough people who are willing to commit themselves to killing the enemy wherever the enemy is. How do you define that enemy? How do you distinguish

between that enemy and the civilians? That narrative sort of says, well, as soon as you ask those questions, you're moving too slow to win the war. That is the viewpoint that is sort of vindicated if President Trump actually goes through with these pardons. Adam Weinstein is a consulting editor for The New Republic. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Thank you.