to support gallagher and oppose the system are not going to be swayed by this at all. and those who were in the camp of in spencer s camp and against gallagher are not going to change either. what i do worry about, when i saw the videos this morning and read the new york times article, what i do worry about is the fact that it s not going to help. admiral green as he tries to get his arms around the s.e.a.l. community and institute better discipline and higher standards of conduct, the gallagher case is the most acute of what we ve been seeing recently. but you might remember that the s.e.a.l.s have had other incidents on the battlefield. they had to send a whole platoon home because of intoxication while on combat deployment. there are a lot of things in the s.e.a.l. community they re trying to grapple with. we ought not to be too judgmental in terms of the community. this is special operators in particular across the services have been deployed time and time and time again to com
institute better discipline in the s.e.a.l. community. probably one of the things that strikes people about this is that navy s.e.a.l.s are traditionally so quiet about their missions. they do it all in the shadows. these men spoke out because they were so concerned about gallagher s actions. how significant is that? yeah, it is significant. they are a quiet bunch, and they tend to be more insular. they look after one another. but you can see in the text messages that the new york times released that they were very concerned about just telling the truth. there was no prior coordination of what they were going to say. they just admonished one another to tell the truth. that was extraordinary. and again, i think but for the fact that another s.e.a.l. admitted to the murder, this testimony, these interviews probably would have had a much greater effect on the jury. let s talk about how gallagher s responding to all of this. in a statement through his lawyer, he responded to the n
and yet his honor pin has been resto restored. these interviews were done by naval criminal investigators in the pretrial time frame. so this was used as evidence going against him at his trial. you might remember, rye arngs that another s.e.a.l. admitted to the murders so that led to his acquittal. what this underscores for me, this story and these videos, one, how confusing and complicated his case was, which also augered for the president not to involve himself the way he did. and, two, it points exactly to the kinds of issues that rear admiral collin green, the commander of this special warfare community, is trying to grapple with in terms of standards of conduct. ethical behavior on the battlefield, in his force in the s.e.a.l. community. gallagher s case, that s not going to do anything to help admiral green move past this, apply lessons learned and try to
to seeing the videos was surprise and disgust that they would make up blatant lies about me. but i quickly realized that they were scared that the truth would come out of how cowardly they acted on deployment. i feel sorry for them that they thought it necessary to smear my name, but they never realized what the consequences of their lies would be. you know, president trump himself, john, has been a staunch defender of eddie gallagher. did trump s blind faith in gallagher before all the evidence was presented perhaps hurt this judicial process at all? i think it was really misguided and imprudent for the president to involve himself. he was involved in this case when gallagher was in pretrial confinement. got him out of pretrial confinement. you can argue whether that was the right thing for the navy to do with him or not, but the president was involved all the way through this case. i just don t think that s a wise use of his time as commander in chief and not really good for the ju
gallagher as a man who seemed to care primarily about racking up kills. here s an example of what else is included in the videos. i heard more rumors and stuff like that of eddie targeting civilians. i saw eddie take a shot at probably a 12-year-old kid. the guy got crazier and crazier. he was perfectly okay with killing anybody. gallagher faced several war crimes charged in a military court. in july, though, he was acquitted of murdering an isis prisoner in iraq, but he was convicted of taking a photo with the fighter s corpse and then demoted. president trump, of course, has been heavily involved in gallagher s case since the beginning. last month he stepped in again and restored gallagher s rank. i m joined by retired rear admiral john kirby to talk more about this. of course, john former press secretary at the pentagon and cnn military and diplomatic analyst. john, the men that were working under gallagher according to this report called him toxic, evil. even a psychopath