A retired Navy SEAL acquitted of nearly all charges in a high-profile war crimes case brought on by testimony from his platoon mates released a video identifying some of those same men, calling them cowards and hinting that more information is coming.
Former Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher posted the 3-minute video on both his Facebook and Instagram channels Monday.
Gallagher, 40, was acquitted of murder and nearly all related charges in a court martial trial last year. The charges were lodged and prosecution depended heavily on statements made against Gallagher by platoon mates who deployed with him to Iraq to fight ISIS in 2017.
RELATED
His fellow SEALs told Naval Criminal Investigative Services following the deployment that Gallagher had shot a young girl while on sniper duty, fired at civilians on other occasions and stabbed a wounded ISIS fighter then posed with the corpse for a photograph.
Gallagher was convicted on charges related to posing with the corpse and reduced in rating. But President Donald Trump reinstated his rating late last year.
The video uses footage from those NCIS interviews and highlights the faces of SEALs in the interviews and in a unit deployment photo, giving the name, rank and current position of six SEALs and the NCIS lead investigator.
Gallagher provides audio commentary over some of the video footage, saying that even though he was acquitted of the charges, “there are those to this day who do not accept that fact.”
He then says that he will share more details about the deployment and ends his video with the hashtag #THETRUTHISCOMING.
In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, one of Gallagher’s attorneys, Tim Parlatore, did not specify what his client’s future project will be or when it will release but did disclose that it will include more footage from the NCIS interviews and the 2017 deployment.
“What’s coming is the truth,” Parlatore told the newspaper.
Two other SEALs who also deployed with Gallagher but did not testify in his trial told the San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday speaking out against the retired Chief’s identifying currently serving SEAL Team members.
“Attempting to call attention to (those SEALs’) status in the way it’s been done does not serve the mission or the interests of the Navy,” former Petty Officer 1st Class David Shaw told the newspaper. “To attempt to out (their) status raises questions about the decision to do so.”
In a statement to the paper, Naval Special Warfare Command spokeswoman Capt. Tamara Lawrence said that, as a practice, the Navy does not identify active-duty SEALs.
“We don’t identify them by name, or by any other manner, due to the nature of their work, for the protection of their teammates and their families, and to protect on-going and future missions,” Lawrence told the newspaper.
Parlatore said that information in the video about the SEALs was already known.
“There’s nothing in that video that’s not already public,” he told the newspaper.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
