In "Alpha", a Times reporter detailed the SEAL culture that promoted Eddie Gallagher’s rise and gave him a trial (and acquittal) in a war crime case that led to polarization. ) Has a new understanding of the incident.

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Throughout the controversial trial of Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL captain was accused of killing a prisoner in Iraq in 2017, and the navy prosecutor never mentioned that he was actually accused of murder. The name of the fighter of the Islamic State. He is just a "child" or "victim", sometimes a "garbage bag"-not even "John Doe". In "Alpha: The Battle of the Souls of Eddie Gallagher and the SEALs," New York Times reporter David Phillips named and wrote a chapter about captives, a 17-year-old father who desperately stopped him Run away to join ISIS. The boy's name was Moataz, and his father didn't know that he was dead until he saw his son's photo in the media reports on the trial.

This is one of the many revelations of Mr. Phillips in the book. He reported the trial and acquittal of Chief Gallagher for the New York Times. His detailed new reports on these events and the reasons for these events are based on Dozens of interviews, thousands of text messages, and thousands of pages of court records, service records, and confidential military documents. Inspired by the "New York Times" report on the case, a documentary "The Line" on Apple TV will premiere on November 19.

(In May 2020, Eddie Gallagher filed a lawsuit accusing the Navy of illegally leaking information to Mr. Phillips and accusing him of defamatory articles. Last month, a judge dismissed most Claims against Mr. Phillips.)

This book depicts photos of Chief Gallagher, which contradicts the image of his defenders in court and some conservative media. In "Alpha", members of the SEAL platoon deployed in Mosul feared that their leader would become "disconnected"-abusing opioids and other drugs, stealing, and putting their lives at risk. This way he can conduct more battlefield operations without any tactical gains. Whether in Iraq or after they broke their silence and reported him, platoon members were worried that he might kill one of them.

In the excerpt edited below, while they were in Mosul, they were also worried that he would kill civilians indiscriminately. The narrative is based on the author’s report in The Times, naval investigators’ interviews and investigation files, photographs, naval service records, text between Eddie Gallagher and several SEALs, and the SEAL assault The team’s court testimony and their interview with the author. — Grace Maluf

Dylan Dier scanned the medieval labyrinth of ancient Mosul through the black-rimmed eyes of the telescope. The senior sniper hid in a pile of rubble across the Tigris River, about 750 meters away. When he searched in alleys and street corners, he could feel his heart beating under his body armor, his brows tightened, because he knew Eddie was also hunting, he must try to get the first shot.

That was June 2017, four months after deployment. Eddie has given up returning to the roof of the pink house, and instead settled in a new place called the Tower by the Alpha SEALs. The site is two buildings on the east bank of the Tigris River, facing the green waters of old Mosul. Around the tower stands the ruins of the carnival venue, which is still full of rides and a weedy park where locals used to vacation. The tower has high ceilings and curved staircases, designed to host luxurious celebrations. But the war left the park with waist-high weeds, scattered unexploded shells, and the towers were nothing more than gray concrete bones that were blown up.

At the bottom of the tower, a modern six-lane concrete bridge once crossed the river, but it and all other bridges across the Tigris River have been destroyed. The center was shattered in half by a large-scale air raid, as if cut by a powerful karate. The debris fell into the water, leaving two jagged tree stumps protruding from the river.

The Battle of Mosul has entered its final desperate weeks. Block by block, the Iraqi army pushed the Islamic State to a corner of the old city, backed by the river. Alpha has set up on the other side of the river to shoot the enemy behind. The platoon spends day after day there, harassing the Islamic State from the rear, while the Iraqi army launches attacks from the front.

Old Mosul showed a bunch of civilians and enemy targets to the SEALs. They passed by in the street. Dill looked through a telescope, trying to find the details that distinguished the two. When a woman walks out of the house, he can see the faded floral print on her headscarf. The colors are too bright, unlike ISIS clothes. He found that a man in an old bowling shirt had been driving his car engine intermittently for several days, but still did not get it to work. Just a local, he decided. He rarely saw real soldiers venture out with guns.

They are too smart. But he was looking for people who seemed out of place: those who crossed the road for a besieged city with nowhere to go. In his sight, he could see the sweat on their faces and the dashing look on their faces. Some walked, clutching a child's arm tightly, and clenching the little arm with their fingers, which seemed to be using a local boy as a shield. This is a confusing and complicated entanglement, but a sniper observes long enough to sort out clues and find the target.

Unfortunately, Dill soon learned that his leader had no interest in taking the time to determine who was who. The first morning the sniper arrived at the tower, the leader climbed the curved staircase to the top floor of the north building, and set up a tripod and a small folding chair in the middle of a room where the walls were blown up.

He started shooting round after round almost immediately. Prosperity. Prosperity. Prosperity. Dill climbed up to his own rifle, checked the captain's angle, and tried to aim his scope so that he could see what Eddie was shooting. He found a sandbar by the river, where there was a narrow alley leading to the water. About fifty people gathered in the water to wash. Dill saw the crowd spread out amidst the gunfire and rushed back into the city. Dille's angle did not give him a full view of the surface of the riverbank, so he was not sure if Eddie had hit anyone, but there was one thing he had no doubt about: these people were not legitimate targets.

A few days later, in the same place, Dill saw three women walking along a path through deep reeds. He heard Eddie start shooting and saw the woman turn around and disappear into the reeds. Are they injured or killed? Diel can't be sure, but he is increasingly certain that his leader is shooting at anyone he sees, civilian or soldier, man or woman.

Dier realized that his mission in Mosul had to change. He came to the tower to kill the Islamic State. Instead, he will have to stop Eddie from killing civilians. Before Eddie found them, he would scare people away by firing warning shots. One morning, a few days after Alpha started his business in the tower, he instinctively thought of this strategy. Eddie settled in a bathroom, and from the north tower you could see the beautiful city. Both Dill and Dalton Talbot (his friend and sniper companion) wanted to stay away from Eddie as much as possible, so they settled down in the South Tower that day.

That morning, Dill saw a man and a boy walking down a road leading to the river. Before they entered Eddie's field of vision, they could see them about half a block away from Deere. Dill focused his attention on this pair of partners. He noticed that the man did not grab the boy's arm. Instead, the boy led the man away, gently pulling his sleeve. One small detail says it all: They are family members, and they are almost certainly not enemy fighters.

Dill must do something to get Eddie to shoot. Knowing that he only had a few seconds, he aimed at a place a few meters away in front of the two of them, and was there for a while, hoping that the bullet would hit the dirt on the road and scare them away. He pulled the trigger. He saw the flying dust and watched the two hurried back along the way they came. Take a breath while running.

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That night, Dill told Talbot what he had done. He was almost ashamed to admit it. He knew that warning shots was a quiet form of rebellion against Eddie and might even help ISIS, but he felt he had no choice. To his surprise, Tolbert smiled and said that he had been doing the same thing. They agreed to continue to do so to buy time. When their Chief Non-commissioned Officer Craig Miller left, he told them that he had reported Eddie to Commander Lieutenant Jack Portier. Lieutenant Portier vowed to take care of the matter and was working on solving the problem. . Both snipers hope they can limit the damage before Eddie is removed.

Uncover the truth. For months, the New York Times has pieced together details of the 2019 Baghz air strike in Syria, which was one of the largest civilian casualties in the war against Islamic State. The following are the main findings of the survey:

The US military launched this attack. The Secret Special Operations Force 9th Task Force responsible for ground operations in Syria called for the attack. When an F-15E attack plane hit Bagoz with a 500-pound bomb, the strike began. Five minutes later, the F-15E dropped two 2,000-pound bombs.

The death toll is underestimated. The US Central Command recently admitted that 80 people, including civilians, were killed in an air strike. Although the death toll was almost immediate for military officials, the regulations for investigating potential crimes were not complied with.

The report was delayed, sanitized and sorted. The Independent Inspector General of the Ministry of National Defense initiated an investigation, but the report containing the findings was put on hold and there was no mention of the strike.

The coalition forces led by the United States levelled the explosion site with bulldozers. The civilian observer who came to the strike area the next day described the discovery of piles of the bodies of women and children. In the days after the explosion, the coalition forces occupied the site, but it was quickly levelled by bulldozers.

This is a high-pressure surgery. The warning shot must be close enough to scare away the target, but not too close to accidentally kill. The sniper must read subtle clues to decide who should be warned and who should not be warned. But because Eddie shares most of the same range of fire with other snipers, they usually only have a few seconds to spot a person, make a decision, and line up before Eddie has a chance to fire.

This is the opposite of the job of a sniper. Dill and Talbot had a little understanding of what the real job was like before Eddie's continuous shooting allowed them to start a new mission. One morning, when Dille was scanning the street life to find his target, he found a man in saffron and a golden robe walking hurriedly on a side street among the dusty locals. He has a long, thick beard, but no beard and plump cheeks, which shows that he has not shared the hunger of the besieged city. "Check this guy," Dill yelled to Talbot, who was hiding behind rubble a dozen feet away.

"Talk to me," Tolbert said. When Dill verbally guided him in the hopscotch of known landmarks, he traced his range along the outline of the city until he reached the right street: the green mosque, then the grassy bank, and the small street to the north.

"It looks like the otaku is doing a little too well," Tolbert said. They looked at him. He walked quickly on the road and turned across an alley. He looked around secretly, then climbed into a mouse hole pecked on a house wall. Dill placed his sight in front of the house. This seems normal. There are no soldiers on the roof, and no young people wandering outside. Two snipers waited and watched. They saw a family member coming in and out through the front door. The man in the robe is not one of them.

"It's definitely something dark," Tolbert said.

The SEAL rules of engagement do not require the target to be armed. If snipers see someone they reasonably believe is helping ISIS in any way, they can shoot. But both of them are very careful, knowing that every bad shot will provoke the locals to oppose them and build support for the enemy.

Tolbert and Dille have been training their telescopes on the house, thinking that the man in the saffron robe will eventually show up. Finally, they saw him crawl out of the hole. Snipers instinctively slide their fingers to the trigger. Unless he is ISIS, no one will crawl out of such a mouse hole instead of using the front door. When the man squeezed out of the mouse hole, Dill pointed him at the sight. Talbert is too. Just as Talbot pulled the trigger and exhaled and fired, Dill fired. Dill will remember that shot later as an example of what his work should be: calm. calculate. After consideration. Makes sense. He won't like such a person anymore.

Eddie's shot forced the team to change. Now snipers have to race to prevent people from being murdered. Every day when Dill was lying behind his rifle, he looked at the street looking for the next person, his heart pounding, he knew he only had a few seconds to decide whether to save or end his life.

Karma is still the driving force of the platoon, but it has been reversed. Dill did not cause cosmic rewards to the wicked, but tried to protect the world from one person. too tired. The nervousness of being forced to open fire at people and making them run away in fear without accidentally killing them made him sweat. Hunting hour after hour, knowing the pressure of life on his hands makes him nervous. At the end of the day, he staggered down the winding stairs with trembling hands, exhausted physically and mentally. He didn't know how long he could hold on.

This article is adapted from "Alpha: The Battle of the Souls of Eddie Gallagher and the Navy SEALs" by David Phillips, Crown published in August 2021.