The Line (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

1
Most people have no concept
of what warfare looks like.
Most people have no idea that sometimes
you have to starve your enemy.
Sometimes it's good that they get sick.
Sometimes it's good
that they don't have medical supplies.
It's gonna look unfamiliar
to somebody who's seeing it
that hasn't experienced it.
Every Navy SEAL should hope to go to war.
And that's a double-edged sword.
You need to be able
to turn that on and turn it off.
Get ready.
I think we're pulling up there. Aren't we?
This whole story of us, you know,
helping to eliminate ISIS
from their stronghold in Iraq,
it's kind of overshadowed.
What actually happened out there
and how things ended,
after everything we've gone through
together as a platoon,
it was a tough pill to swallow.
All right, what do we got?
It's like fuckin' sniper central.
Yep.
We're there to kill bad guys.
That's, like, what we train for.
But some guys just wanna go do it
for the wrong reasons.
Are you special warfare operator
Edward R. Gallagher,
the accused in this case?
Yes, sir.
We turn now to the Navy SEAL on trial
for murder and war crimes.
Navy SEAL Chief Edward Gallagher.
He's accused of killing
a wounded ISIS captive.
Also faces two attempted murder charges
in the shooting of two civilians in…
Gallagher, who denies all charges,
was turned in by members of his own unit.
It's a very rare occurrence that SEALs
are going against one of their own.
It was completely against our nature
and our training,
but we had to stop Eddie
from doing this on another deployment.
We were never taught that
our leadership was gonna be
the ones committing war crimes.
This has never happened
in the history of the Navy SEALs.
We knew that it was gonna get really ugly.
But we had no idea that
this was gonna become a public spectacle.
Gallagher's legal team
saying it wasn't murder. It was mutiny.
I'm innocent. I love you.
They had this whole kangaroo court
with this justice system of their own.
No evidence. No proof.
I was not gonna sit back
and just let them railroad us.
Long live the real brotherhood
and free Eddie!
A stunning twist at the trial
of a decorated Navy SEAL.
Corey Scott changed his story
in a bombshell moment
at Gallagher's trial.
I didn't see any of that
coming out of Corey Scott.
His testimony
completely upended everything.
I'm a United States Navy SEAL.
I'm trained for war,
not this little courtroom fiasco.
This is a clash of two cultures:
One that wants brotherhood and silence,
and one that wants accountability.
The idea that we're going to
drop our moral standards to fight a war,
we're well beyond that time.
These people that say
we should just let the dogs off the chain,
you know, we're different than that.
We hold ourselves to a higher standard
because we can.
We're not Boy Scouts. We're not saints.
We do a dirty job.
I'm willing to do bad things to bad people
in order to protect the people at home.
You fight monsters like that for so long,
you start taking on
some of those characteristics as well
to get the job done.
You gotta become a monster
to kill a monster.
We're here to train and go to war.
I was like, "Hell yeah. Let's do this."
These men were my family, my brothers.
This bond of warfighters.
You could just tell
that something was off.
There was this undercurrent
in this platoon.
How do you sleep at night
knowing what you did?
I just saw it as good versus evil.
It's that simple.
Have a seat there, if you don't mind.
Yep.
All of our interviews get recorded,
but that won't go into a case file.
So this-- It's not like they could
look at this recording of the interview
-or anything like that.
-Okay.
This is something
we're obviously taking very serious
'cause this is a huge issue.
Dille: Mm-hmm.
I'm gonna identify myself.
Special Agent Joseph Warpinski.
I work for NCIS.
-NCIS is kind of like the FBI of the Navy.
-Uh-huh.
We are just
completely independent fact finders.
We don't work for one side or the other
for any sort of issue.
Our entire job
is to figure out what happened.
Which team are you assigned to right now?
Dille: Team 7.
You know,
there's a group of people in the teams
that is obviously against what I've done,
as far as coming forward.
The labels are, you know,
"snitch," "coward,"
"pussy," all those things.
Warpinski:
I can tell you that you obviously--
I mean, you seem a little nervous.
And like, it's--
The people we've talked to
regarding this case,
it seems to be the general consensus.
Like, this is a big deal.
I'm not gonna try to downplay this
and tell you it's not.
The Special Operations community,
it's very tight-knit,
and there's some people that think
you should've handled it differently
and not air out the dirty laundry,
I guess.
So choosing to show your face
can be very controversial.
Arrington: So like, if there were
to be a trial,
are we all gonna be, like,
witnesses in a trial?
Warpinski: You potentially could be.
Arrington: Yeah, 'cause what I was
thinking is this could really fuck up…
Like, I don't know
how this could all come out,
but it could be skewed and make, like,
everybody look like a bunch of rats.
Things just escalated
out of everyone's control.
It didn't cross our mind
that this was gonna be a scandal.
Warpinski: It was a Law of Armed Conflict
violation that's been reported,
and so that's what we're looking into.
Vriens: Trying to keep my opinions
and my feelings out of it
and just give you the facts.
Look-- I mean, you gotta--
Warpinski: Your opinions matter
because you have experience.
-You were there. I mean, so--
-Yeah. Okay.
Those things are actually relevant.
And, like, I appreciate the fact
that you're not trying to just sway this
one way or another, but--
Vriens: Yeah.
I never wanted to do this.
If it was up to me,
I wouldn't be here at all.
But we were… Kinda had our hand forced.
You know, the only reason I'm here
is to set the record straight.
Warpinski:
It's one individual in particular.
Any idea who we're talking about?
-Miller: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
-Okay.
Warpinski: What I want to do is, I want
you to go through, tell me a story.
I'm gonna need you to start
from the very beginning.
I grew up in the foothills of Colorado.
I remember playing
in the woods a lot with my brothers.
Growing up, I wanted to be
a professional basketball player.
So that was my thing for a while.
I was 19 years old
when I decided to be a SEAL.
You know, I think people are
kind of in awe of the training.
And that sets the precedence for it.
If you don't make it, guess what happens?
Then, you know, obviously,
the history of the SEALs
and operations that they've been on
and done,
they make it seem
like something really hard to achieve.
And I wanted to jump in the crucible
and see if I could cut it.
When you first start the training pipeline
to become a SEAL,
everything is focused
on physical training,
getting ready for the drownproofing,
the water stuff.
Me and a close buddy
would sneak into the pool at night
and do drownproofing training.
Had a couple, you know,
shallow-water blackouts
with just me and him there.
I spent two years preparing
and getting ready for BUD/S.
BUD/S is
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.
Very physical.
Long days, extremely stressful evolutions.
Growing up, I was a bigger kid.
I put on some weight before
I really grew up, so I got picked on.
I always wished there was some big kid
who would stick up for me.
And then one day I woke up,
looked in the mirror, and I was like,
"Well, I think I am that big kid,
that straightedge.
And it's time to start
laying the hammer down."
I liked to fight. I liked aggression.
I liked to stand up for the little guy.
Hearing about the SEAL teams, I was like,
"It'd be great to be in a community
where everyone is made up
of those kinds of people."
The people who make it through
SEAL training
have to want it bad enough to die for it.
BUD/S is designed to push the human body
further than it's capable of going.
As the body starts to shut down,
you're gonna look for every excuse
in the world to stop this process.
The body is saying,
"I'm dying. Quit. Let me live."
And you have to mentally say,
"No, I will not quit."
One of my first instructors in BUD/S
was Eddie Gallagher.
Eddie had a reputation
for being aggressive.
He maintained a high level of fitness
and was able to push guys.
Eddie Gallagher
was my first phase instructor.
He was a really fast runner,
kind of a no BS dude.
The first time I saw Eddie
was first phase of BUD/S.
And he carried himself
like a really hard-charging dude,
and extremely fit.
He was a beast,
an absolute physical beast,
and I wanted to be like that.
Eddie didn't do much talking.
He would just show up
and beat the shit out of everybody
and leave, for the most part.
Mutual suffering in BUD/S
is a really strong bonding agent.
And, you know, that carries with you
all the way through the teams.
We started with around 300.
There was five of us
that made it straight through.
When you actually get assigned a team,
you're like,
"Awesome.
This is where my career's gonna start.
These are the guys I'm gonna serve with."
I was really excited to go to SEAL Team 7.
And I heard that Eddie Gallagher
was gonna be our chief.
He had a good reputation.
He was well respected
by master chiefs, everyone.
He got SEAL of the year,
multiple bronze stars.
A Boy Scout is, you know,
someone who has, like, a good uniform,
a good haircut and follows all the rules.
A pirate is someone
who is a little bit sloppier, messier,
but is still a very effective fighter.
Eddie was definitely a pirate.
All we heard about was
he had combat experience.
He was a good leader.
We were stoked, you know?
We were pumped.
We'd all heard
the mythos of Eddie Gallagher.
Warpinski:
Just have a seat down at the last chair.
You're E-7 SOC, is that correct?
Eddie: Yeah. E-8 now, but…
Warpinski: Congratulations.
When did that come up?
-Eddie: Last week.
-Warpinski: Oh, shit.
Date of birth is--
-What is it?
-Eddie: 5/29/79.
Warpinski: Place of birth?
Eddie: I was born in Patterson,
and then I grew up in the military.
So I lived in Asia most of my life.
I was a misfit growing up.
My dad was in the army,
so I was used to moving around
and adapting.
So, yeah, I didn't feel like
I belong to this certain group of people.
I was kicked out of high school
couple times for fighting.
And I got my ass kicked plenty of times,
you know.
I think probably more times
than I won growing up.
I had to go to the hospital a couple times
from getting beat pretty bad.
It ranged from, you know, a black eye
to, yeah,
having my whole face just destroyed.
I just always had the attitude,
"You may beat me up,
but you're gonna know that you fought me."
You know,
"I'll leave a mark on you somehow."
And I remember after high school,
I was hanging out with my friends.
And we had all taken mushrooms,
and sort of an epiphany happened.
I remember just looking
around the room at these guys,
but I was like, "I can't end up like this.
I gotta get outta here."
You're born. You go to school.
And then one day
things begin to get interesting.
A Navy commercial came on,
and I was like,
"Yep, that's what I wanna do."
I grew up watching Rambo, Platoon,
Schwarzenegger, Stallone.
In my mind,
I was like, "I wanna be a warrior."
I got up and walked outta there
at 4:00 in the morning,
drove to the nearest recruiting office
and waited outside until it opened.
I was pretty much a recruiter's wet dream.
I was like, "I wanna be a SEAL."
And I was told,
from the recruiter to everybody else,
you know, like,
"That's the hardest thing. Are you sure?
You know,
it's almost, like, unachievable."
And that just made me
wanna do it even more.
I've done eight deployments.
Africa, Spain, Italy,
Kosovo, Liberia, UAE,
obviously Iraq
and Afghanistan multiple times.
The first time killing,
I don't know, I mean,
I don't remember, like,
feeling anything really.
I mean, I was excited, like,
"Okay, I got-- You know, I got one." But…
Yeah, I had no problem with it.
Applying those skills and actually
being able to take out bad guys, like--
I mean, that is probably
one of the greatest feelings ever.
By the time 2017 deployment came around,
I wasn't bothered by death.
It didn't elicit a response.
It was just, like, this is what it is.
In the beginning, Eddie was a mentor
and a personal friend, you know.
When he needed me to feed his dogs
because he was out of town, I did.
When he needed them walked, I walked them.
Once we got together as a platoon,
Eddie invited me to a Bible study
at his house.
What he was putting out was good stuff.
I left that Bible study, like,
"Man, this is gonna be awesome."
During the pre-deployment training,
we set the standard high.
Showed up early, ready to train.
If there was work that needed to be done,
we stayed late.
Not to brag here, but it was the A-squad.
You know, there's always rankings
of what platoon did best,
and we were the top platoon.
Everyone was keyed in.
We would even train on days off.
A lot of guys had been together
for three straight deployments.
It was a pretty close group of dudes,
good chemistry, the history.
We crushed our pre-deployment
training exercises.
What is Craig doing?
See? Eddie's doing it right.
So we knew we'd get
the most important mission set.
Having Eddie in your corner
for picking where you get to go
is priceless.
I mean, he gets what he wants,
and we got the number one choice.
Everyone wanted Mosul, Iraq.
It was the dream deployment,
the place to be
if you're a special operator,
the center of the universe as far as
the fight against Islamic terrorism.
Mosul was the declared ISIS capital
by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
ISIS was being beat back,
and this was their last stand.
That was the place to go.
The northern city of Mosul
has been a symbol of ISIS strength,
a place they've held
for more than two years now.
For the people of Mosul,
it's been two years of terror.
There are some 1.5 million civilians
trapped in Mosul.
This is going to be
the biggest military endeavor for Iraq
since the US invasion in 2003.
This battle for Mosul
will determine the future of ISIS.
I am talking about prime time
largest MOUT urban battle
since the Battle of Fallujah
against one of the most horrific enemies
ever to walk the face of this earth.
They were the modern-day Nazis.
They were killing little children,
executing entire towns and communities.
At the time, you had ISIS cells
popping up across the world
with different groups
committing an allegiance to them.
You don't go through BUD/S and spend
all this time away from your family
to deploy to Guam, you know?
You go to participate in the big show
and experience combat
and have a lasting effect.
American soldiers moved in here
just about three days ago
to help the Iraqi partners
as they advance on Mosul.
Eddie's platoon was rock-solid,
some really, really,
really good operators.
And I was like, "We're about to kick off
the best deployment of our lives."
It was like, "This is gonna be sweet."
It's everything that you've dedicated
the last X amount of years
of your life to.
We were going to the Super Bowl.
-Dille: Right. Day 1, heading into Mosul.
-Is it on?
-Yeah.
-Nice.
Dille: Master Craig.
We got Tom. Javi. Javi on the gun.
-Javi on the gun.
-See if we can do some work.
The first day that we pulled into Mosul,
you know, the city was just on fire.
You're driving down the street,
there's just bodies all over the place.
There's just a line of civilians.
And it looked like
a football game just got out.
They would, like,
carry their elderly on carts.
One instance, a lady came up to our camp
with, you know, a baby that was just limp.
Had a shrapnel wound in its leg.
And she just pulled down her face-covering
and talked to the interpreter,
and, like, looked at us and say,
"Hey, can you please help?"
It was crazy to see them fleeing.
I thought, "We're essentially
going into the hornet's nest here."
Later.
This was definitely a lot more intense
than what I'd seen before
through my whole career.
So, this one over here
is an ISIS office building.
ISIS had, sort of, set up there
and barricaded that place for three years
and getting ready for what was happening,
which was us trying to take it back.
And ISIS newspapers?
"Those who refuse Islam have blood."
"There's nothing for them
except the sword."
I guess that's what sells, huh?
You really don't know
until you go there and see it firsthand,
just what kind of pure evil
that they're capable of.
This is where we're gonna live tonight.
-Eddie, are you in here?
-Yeah, I'm right here, man.
It wasn't easy living.
There's 20 of us
stuffed into a 500-square-foot house,
living on top of each other.
-Good thing we hadn't moved.
-Where did that come from?
We had to clean up first
because when ISIS goes through a house,
they don't use the toilet,
and there's feces everywhere.
Human poop, dog poop,
chicken poop, rat poop,
moldy bread and food.
It was disgusting.
I mean,
we cleaned up the place with our hands.
-Can you do me a favor?
-Yeah.
Why don't you-- You got it? Good.
I shared a room with a lot of guys.
Think there were 11 or 12 of us
in a very small space.
It was tight living.
It was the Sardine Can,
is what we came to call it.
No running water.
We didn't have heat or AC.
Got dust and flies a little bit.
Got the full setup.
But that was home.
It was man camp. It was great.
-What's up, V?
-What's up, D?
-Making a little Cribs video.
-Villanueva: Cribs?
-Yeah.
-Yo, man, let me show you. Come over here.
Here we got Dragon. We got Corey.
He's sleeping.
Over here in the backyard,
we got our M-ATVs lined up right here.
That's Shu over there.
That's my boy Stoney-T.
Yo, Stoney! Stones!
Say, "Hi."
Yeah, that's my boy right there.
Main boy over there, killing it.
-Up here is the roof. This way.
-Oh, yeah.
The roof's kinda my spot too.
Get up there. That's your show.
The platoon is almost a second family.
I mean,
you're gone the majority of the year.
As tight as they come.
You're seeing them
more than you see your own wife.
You get to know each other extremely well.
I mean, you know what
you want other guys not to eat.
If they're eating something,
you're gonna tell them to get out
of the room because they're gonna stink.
You know who snores.
There are guys
from all different walks of life.
And you're living in a barracks
together or whatever,
being with each other all the time.
So you see different personalities.
You have people from-- who are dirt poor
to people who maybe were raised
with a silver spoon in their mouth
but still wanted to serve their country.
And everybody sorta comes together
and gets thrown in the same pot.
Perfect.
We gotta put this up
so we can start dropping bombs.
That didn't go well.
No pressure.
Was that my fault?
Watching it go down right there.
Dylan Dille, he is an absolute wizard
when you're talking about ballistics
and rifles.
Dille:
I think I'm just gonna lay down there.
That little murder hole.
It goes back to his hunting background,
where he grew up in Colorado
hunting big game.
Dylan is a sniper,
and he was always in the top shot.
He has a couple nicknames.
De-de was one of them.
-Okay.
-De-de.
He hates that nickname.
Vriens: Oh, Craig.
We made it to the SC.
Craig Miller comes from
a strong law enforcement background.
His dad was in the SEAL teams.
Miller: When he says "fire," you're gonna
let go and drop your hand down.
We called him the Sheriff.
Craig holds himself and others
to a high standard.
I think we're looking pretty good.
And he kept people in line.
Some things
you gotta earn around here, right?
This right here is one of them.
Ivan was a new guy.
Everyone just called him V.
-Probably feels good, actually.
-Yeah.
Villanueva is just a energetic,
happy, good-natured,
overall positive kinda guy.
Definitely experienced some adversity
in his childhood.
He grew a lot
during that workup and deployment.
Tell me what's going on right here.
Tell me what's going on.
Scott:
We've got a big old winged drone ant
getting ripped to shreds
by four other smaller ants.
Corey Scott's a medic.
He became a good friend.
We called him the Ghost
because he was usually
the last guy to show up
and the first guy to leave.
He was there, but he wasn't, you know?
Corey is a pretty private guy,
and he's not a big talker.
Oftentimes he was kinda distracted,
I think,
with, like, outside business stuff.
But he was a decent medic
and a solid operator.
That was the grid
that we put in fucking ATAK.
Are you…
Gio comes from the Marines.
He was assigned to us.
He showed up thinking that he knew
how to do stuff better than us.
Gio: How long have we been trying
to shoot on these things?
Gio is a little bit of a character.
He wouldn't shut up.
He'd just talk about how cool he is
and insert himself in conversations
he shouldn't be in.
I talk about Navy SEAL egos,
and I also have a massive ego.
So, it's just very funny.
I think I may have butted heads with them.
Giorgio would be up there with us
and, like, I can be pretty composed.
But there's also a line that you cross
where it's like, "All right. That's it."
You know. We're gonna go at it,
or I'm gonna do something about this.
Eddie went to Craig and said,
"Hey, Craig, I handled it.
I whupped Gio's ass out behind the house."
I took the correction,
and then I worked my way into the platoon,
like an adult.
There's always squabbling in a family.
You're with someone 18 hours a day,
eventually, you know--
you can't stand each other
for a little while.
Thank Jesus.
Jesus!
A lot of these guys, I just didn't
have anything in common with them.
They were a lot younger. I think I was,
you know, ten years older than…
most of them.
I really didn't hang out with any of them,
except for Jake Portier,
the officer-in-charge.
Hey, the intent is to not--
We're not gonna wait there
with three guys going back and forth.
Clean up his quarters.
Go and hit them with those…
I knew him pretty good. We were buddies.
I was his instructor at BUD/S,
and he was also on my previous deployment.
But the rest of the guys,
I had no relationship with
or didn't know them.
That sort of tends to happen.
You're the chief of a platoon,
you get used to walking in a room
when the guys are in there,
and the talking stops,
and everyone just sorta looks at you.
Throughout the deployment,
there was countless hours spent
for Eddie Gallagher story time.
You know, stories of him
beating up superiors
or all the people he's killed.
Basically, all the badass stuff he's done.
He always liked to brag.
He said something about--
He was talking about his kill count.
He's like, "Yeah, I'd been out on 80 ops,
killed an average of three people a day.
You do the math."
It would've made him
the number one sniper of all time
if that number was true.
Like, it's fucking laughable.
I mean, maybe we're a tough crowd,
but it's pretty hard to, like,
impress us with a story
about how many people you've killed.
I was kinda like, "Man, that's weird."
But being a bullshitter
doesn't mean that you're a bad chief.
It doesn't mean
that you are a bad operator.
I was on my third deployment,
and so I got
some better living arrangements.
I got to have my own room to share
with Craig, Dalton, and Joe.
We lived in a little girl's room.
She had her pictures up on the wall
and dresses in her closet.
You could tell what happened
was that ISIS was coming,
and the family essentially grabbed
whatever would fit in a suitcase
and just left.
I remember looking at her clothes
thinking she probably didn't have much
to begin with.
You know, it was just--
It was a really somber thing
to think that a child that's that small
is navigating the same landscape of war
at such a young age.
It just humanized the whole thing.
You really could see
that these people were innocent,
and that they were incredibly oppressed
and under siege.
I realized that what makes it worth it
is that there's a million people
in the grip of ISIS,
and we could go liberate them.
The American forces
that have been deployed to Iraq,
their mission is to advise
and assist our partners on the ground.
This will be an Iraqi-led offensive,
with Iraqi troops,
with American troops in a supporting role.
The Pentagon refuses to say
if US troops will enter the city.
The American public at that time--
We've been at war for how long in Iraq?
They just wanna see Iraqis
handling their own problems.
And we're just there to advise and assist.
He says our army,
they are taking this way.
They can't reach this point,
this position.
So he says we need your support.
The mission was called AAA.
Advise, Assist and Accompany.
We got paired up
with the Iraqi partner force.
Yeah. It's fucking horseshit.
Like, what's going on here?
Like, what's the deal?
The first couple weeks
were pretty frustrating.
The rules were implemented on us
that we were not allowed
to the front lines.
We had to stay at least 800 meters back.
And this is coming from leadership.
But then ISIS would just
fly drones over ahead,
get our location
and just start dropping mortars on us.
Craig.
-Yeah?
-What's up?
-Is that ours?
-It's not.
Enemy drone flying over our position.
Yeah, yeah. I th--
I'm almost certain it was that.
And we would either sit there
and suck up mortars all day or go home.
Fucking stupid.
When you start a deployment,
you have this exuberance.
We're gonna fly around in helicopters
in the middle of the night
and shoot dudes in the face.
But with AAA, Advise, Assist, Accompany,
you're sitting--
you're just idling in trucks and you're
tossing, you know, a little UAV, and…
you're not there doing
what you're supposed to be doing.
Dille: Decided today would be a good day
to go to the carnival.
Miss the crowds.
Go on a Monday.
No.
Wednesday.
There were long stretches of boredom,
you know?
Everyone just wanted to do their job.
You put a junkyard dog
into a slaughterhouse
with a bunch of meat hanging,
they're gonna wanna chew.
That's what we wanted to do.
This was supposed to be, like,
the rock star deployment.
And I'm just like, no.
Get your shit.
We're leaving in eight minutes.
The Iraqis, they were like,
"Why aren't you guys coming up with us?"
They would be like, "Well,
you guys are being a bunch of pussies."
And they were losing guys every day.
If they started taking fire,
they would just be at a standstill.
The entire city was booby-trapped
with VBIEDs,
Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device.
ISIS was packing these things,
thousands of pounds of explosives.
And when one of these guys went off,
you felt it in your chest,
even if you were blocks away.
We would literally watch,
like, dozens of Iraqis die,
like, every day.
Just like, poof.
Like, oh, it was like, "There's no longer
any people in this huge square--
100-, 200-square-meter area."
It's, like, gone.
If you didn't hear at least
ten of those a day, it was a slow day.
And these things would
tear down buildings.
These would turn people into pink mist.
It was clear that a hands-off approach
wasn't gonna work.
What was told to us is like,
"This is not your fight.
This is not worth dying for."
Which is-- I didn't believe in
that mindset whatsoever.
Where's that sniper ID thing?
The nature of most team guys,
we wanna be a part of the fight.
So it was natural, at least from a chief
that's more aggressive, such as Eddie--
"All right.
We're gonna bend this rule a little bit
so we can get closer
and better affect the battle-space."
It looks like we might have to…
So, that's when myself and my OIC,
Jake Portier,
came up with a plan to--
to actually become more offensive.
Eddie:
All right. Hey, we got everybody here?
-Yep.
-Yeah?
We weren't, like, breaking rules.
We were--
I would call it more pushing the envelope.
One of the things
that was said very early on
was that we're gonna follow the rules
until we can figure out
how to work around 'em.
They are shooting at us.
On one of our morning roundups,
Eddie said, "Look, we're gonna stir up
the hornet's nest."
He intended to go to a place
that was not allowed.
Eddie: All right,
we're gonna bump down the road some.
Guys were like,
"Oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. Check."
We were like, "Fuck yeah."
We were in support of moving up
beyond the line of advance.
Like, I don't give a fuck.
We're here for a war.
We know that there's danger.
That's what we had to do
to be a part of the fight.
-Are we all going?
-Not yet.
Hey, you can come with us.
-Yeah.
-All right. Ready?
-All right.
-Yep. Go.
As soon as we started implementing
these new tactics,
we started seeing huge results.
We were able to draw ISIS
out into the open a lot more
by picking fights with them.
They're coming. They're coming.
Go, go, go, go!
The partner force was
really feeding off of that,
and, like, starting to clear.
Because I think they felt more comfortable
that we were up there,
sticking our necks out a little bit
for them.
Eddie: Fuck yeah.
-Hey, Gio.
-Yeah?
Did they shoot a rocket at us,
or did they shoot mortars?
-Gio: That was a mortar.
-That was a mortar.
The function that I perform
is proximity-based.
Where I fit in is
I provide signals intelligence.
Gio: That should be our street
if you keep on flying that way.
When Eddie's doing
this ISIS draw-out mission,
he's exposing guys to me.
And I'm getting the information
that I need
to drop bombs on their head.
-Dude, they're all three of them.
-All three of them are fucking running.
They're running to the house
on the fucking other side of the road.
Should I hit the same spot?
Hey, go right fucking 40 meters.
-Three, two, one…
-Drop here.
My job is very much so an art form
and not just a science.
And Eddie was helping me
paint a fucking beautiful picture.
I wanted my pound of flesh, you know?
I was like, "We're gonna pound 'em.
And we're gonna pound them
till we need to stop."
We were going out every day,
but it was worth it
because we were actually
seeing the fruits of our labor,
you know happen right in front of us.
Ground down to its bones,
Mosul is so quiet,
spectral where once it bustled.
You ask yourself, "Where are its people?
Where have ISIS taken them?"
The answer is here.
Trapped in the warren of the Old City,
the densely populated final holdout,
hell could await.
The battle to liberate Mosul
has reached a critical phase tonight.
After months of fighting, Iraqi troops,
backed by the US,
have taken all but a few neighborhoods.
The fighting is so close and so intense,
and the Old City is so claustrophobic,
it's impossible to describe accurately
quite how difficult the fighting is there.
Until now, Iraqi forces have relied on
US air strikes, artillery
and heavy weapons,
but that won't work
in these narrow alleyways.
As we progress, it became much more dense,
and the whole character of it changed.
Everyone understood the level of risk
inherent to that
as we progressed through
and got closer and closer to,
you know, the last stronghold.
Midway through deployment,
we shifted to push from a new direction.
Pinch ISIS off.
The pivotal moment came
when we changed the angle
and we set up on ISIS's flank.
So they had all their attention to
our partner force,
and we were able to blast them
from the side.
Once we changed the angle,
we were actually able to see
down alleyways where they were moving.
So we were able to just totally
turn the tide of the engagement.
Rocket out.
-Yeah!
-Hell yeah!
Dille: Watch out. I want to get
in the scope. See if I can see anything.
Well, if anyone was in that building,
they gone.
We went across the river
to these two towers.
And turns out this position
was overlooking ISIS's rest spot
where they would go up to get water
and hang out,
'cause you had the Tigris River
right there.
Dille:
Those are the loopholes right there?
All right.
Ready?
So, being a sniper in an urban playground
like that was a target-rich environment.
-Up there's pretty good for you.
-Dille: That's where I'm gonna set up.
Now you could see everything
from guys running back and forth
with guns and in body armor,
to, like, a family playing--
like, splashing in the river,
very close to each other.
There's a lot of city out there
we can see.
Yeah.
Dylan came back, and he's like,
"Dude, it was a turkey shoot.
It was awesome."
Oh, hell yeah.
It was a huge swing.
That was the first time
that everything worked,
and it all came together.
Goddamn.
You got into a rhythm where it felt like,
you know, "I'm a professional now."
-Fun. Fuck yeah.
-Goddamn.
I was like,
"This is what being a SEAL is about."
Direct hit.
We never let them rest.
We were relentless.
Yeah, yeah! Fuck yeah! We got 'em.
Our platoon killed a crap-ton of dudes.
Our kill count was astounding.
We were watching, almost on a daily basis,
ISIS get pushed out of that city.
It was everything you could want
out of a dream deployment.
That moment when you pull the trigger
and you destroy somebody that was,
you know, either harming an innocent life
or out to destroy America.
That's why I joined. That's my purpose.
The clearance of Mosul,
there was platoons in Iraq
that were just chomping at the bit
to displace us and get in on the action.
It was everything you could hope for.
This was the sexiest thing to be doing.
Baby!
I enjoyed the adrenaline rush.
Load me up, baby!
Be almost dying one day,
to getting chills the next day.
Yeah!
I remember once thinking to myself, like,
"I need to be very careful
because I'm starting to enjoy this
too much.
I'm getting to the point
where killing is so a nothing, almost."
You see death on such a huge scale
that the lines become a little bit blurry.
-What's up?
-Where's the dead body at?
Right there.
Huh.
I didn't see him.
Think he's an ISIS dude
or just a civilian?
Who even knows anymore?
How we're raised in the SEAL teams,
there's a underlying culture where it's,
like, you know, you gotta get your kill.
That's what success is.
At the same time, you need to be able
to turn that on and off.
You need to be the guy
that can go into the liquor store
and beat up the guy
robbing the liquor store with a gun,
subdue him, wait for police to arrive,
then come out and w--
walk the little old lady
across the street.
That's what's expected of us.
That's what our training prepares us for.
I would rather be aggressive
than nonaggressive.
Aggressiveness wins wars.
You've got these guys who are saying,
"This is too much"
or, "We shouldn't be doing this."
And then you'll-- Then you have me,
like, "Let's go do this.
Let's get the job done no matter what."
Every other day or so,
we just go a little bit farther.
Little by little,
we were clearing the city.
Till one day it was done.
Mission accomplished.
Nearly 48 hours
of celebration on Iraq's streets
since we heard that Iraqi prime minister,
Haider al-Abadi,
was coming here to announce
the liberation of Mosul.
Saying ISIS were consigned
to the dustbin of history--
Celebrating the biggest victory
inflicted on Islamic State
since it rampaged through northern Iraq
three years ago.
After Iraq's military
drove IS out of its stronghold, Mosul,
it's taken nearly nine months
of urban warfare
to dislodge the jihadists.
There is nothing really to say
when hell is behind you
and just dust before you.
When we got there,
between 10,000 to 15,000 ISIS fighters
is what my estimate is,
throughout all of Mosul.
And then by the time we left,
I'm sure it was down to maybe 300.
Our organization
knocked it out of the park.
We did the best deployment
in the history of the SEALs.
It was our time to shine.
Our campaign to fight ISIS in Mosul,
I truly believe will be written down
as a groundwork
on how to fight in an Advise, Assist,
and Accompany battle.
You know,
the sun is supposed to set there.
That's where that deployment story
is supposed to end.
We had finished up in Iraq,
and we were ready to go home.
My wife, Andrea, was just worn out.
I could tell she was, like, at her wit's--
as most wives are
by the end of a deployment.
Sort of, like, "Get home."
Eddie got back from deployment
in September 2017.
As a spouse, you are
gearing up for them to get back
from anywhere from a six to seven,
eight-plus-month deployment.
And reintegrating into the family is,
like, a huge part of the life cycle
in the SEAL teams.
Eddie and I met
when we were 16, 17 years old.
We got married right before
his first deployment with SEAL Team 7.
And that's really where the experience
of being enmeshed in this whole
"SEAL wives and team guys" began.
After he got back,
Eddie had just been voted
the number one platoon chief,
and he had taken that SEAL team
to the highest-ranking platoon.
He cleared Mosul
in half the time they'd anticipated.
It was just a huge step
in the trajectory of his career.
But that's when everything
started to change.
I sensed a lot of animosity
between the wives.
These are people
that my daughter babysat for them,
and all of a sudden, cold shoulder.
And I was like, "Okay, this is weird."
Josh Vriens,
he lived four houses down from me,
and we'd see his wife, you know,
walk around the neighborhood,
or we'd be walking and--
and she gave Andrea some attitude.
Andrea came back,
and she was sorta like, "What's going on?"
These little rumors started to come up.
Some peers of Eddie overheard
some of the guys from Eddie's platoon
coming back on the flights,
and they were just talking
major, major shit on Eddie.
And so his peers are like,
"Dude, what's up with your platoon?
Like, your platoon is,
like, pissed at you."
Everybody that knew me was like,
"What is going on here?"
Like, being-- "We're being told
he's some kind of psychopath."
I just heard, like, "Dude, these guys
are talking a lot of shit about you,
and they're saying that you are dangerous
and you did some unethical stuff
on deployment."
We were not aware
of how much the undercurrent
would pick up and become a freaking storm.
Warpinski: Eddie, your name came up in a
case that we're working.
Do you have an idea what this is about?
Eddie: I don't really.
I just heard rumors.
Warpinski:
There were some implications with
SEAL Team 7, Platoon Alpha,
during the deployment about…
It was a Law of Armed Conflict
violation that's been reported,
and so that's what we're looking into.
These thousand-foot views of morality
are very easy in a boardroom.
It's very easy to talk about
in an office space,
and it's much different
when you're asking a man
to become an animal for his country.
Vriens: We did a lot of good stuff
on that deployment.
But this is, like,
horrible stuff was happening.
Dille: That is not how we do business.
That is… completely fucked up.
Miller: I was just thinking,
"This is the most disgraceful day
I've ever seen in my life."
Little did I know that
that wasn't the end of combat,
that the real conflict was just starting.