Call Sign Extortion 17 by Don Brown Page A

chopper right before they took off.
    â€œI guess it wasn’t a big deal, right? Because that was all that was said about it and it was then just passed over,” Mr. Vaughn asked the men, referring to the J3 officer’s testimony.
    A moment passed. Admiral McRaven sat still and said absolutely nothing. But then, when it became obvious that McRaven was not going to answer, the sergeant major spoke up.
    â€œIt was a very big deal, Mr. Vaughn,” the sergeant major said. “That should never have happened. In fact, all of the Afghan families who had previously been notified of their loved ones’ death had to be re-­notified that they were, in fact, alive. What actually happened was, at the last minute, the commander wanted to swap out those listed for the seven Afghanis who were actually on the chopper.”
    Again, even after the sergeant major spoke up, Admiral McRaven still did not address the subject.
    Bear in mind that at the time of this conversation, the Colt investigation had been out for sixteen months, and the Executive Summary had been issued, wrapped in a tidy conclusion that the military had done nothing wrong, and conveniently omitting any reference to this “very big deal.”
    Bear in mind also the earlier observation that mid-­level officers and senior enlisted generally aren’t interested in B.S. rules of engagement or official cover-­ups, and they especially aren’t interested in protecting a cover-­up if a cover-­up is intended to minimize responsibility for lossof life. The whitewash was on, and the pink elephant, thanks now to the sergeant major who had the guts to speak up, had barged onto the scene.
    After the men left, Mr. Vaughn became more bothered about all this, his stomach more twisted than ever.
    Cover-­ups lead to more questions, and the first question in Mr. Vaughn’s mind was “what commander authorized the swap-­out?” Was the sergeant major talking about an American commander? Or was he talking about an Afghan commander who may have authorized the swap-­out?
    With the question nagging him and sticking in his gut, Mr. Vaughn picked up the phone and called an Army lieutenant colonel at Special Operations Command who had been involved in the investigation.
    Mr. Vaughn posed the question to the colonel.
    â€œCan you tell me who that commander was [who authorized the swap-­out of the Afghans]?”
    The lieutenant colonel hesitated momentarily then spoke with a quiet, but clearly perplexed tone, “Mr. Vaughn, we [the crash investigative team] weren’t told about that [the last-­minute swap, which left the manifest incorrect].”
    Mr. Vaughn also recounts this conversation in his book Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17 as Told by a Navy SEAL’s Father.
    In other words, as a follow-­up to the J3’s testimony, then the sergeant major’s revelation, we now have a lieutenant colonel, a member of the team investigating the crash, saying that members of the investigating team were not even informed about this unauthorized infiltration by the Afghans.
    Why was information concerning the infiltration by these unauthorized Afghans withheld from the investigating team? Who is trying to hide what?
    The issue of the seven unidentified Afghans was whitewashed in at least four instances: It was ignored in the 1,250-page Colt Report, the Executive Summary of that report, and in General Mattis’s memorandum approving the report, and information was even kept from members of Colt’s investigating team.
    The issue also was not addressed in a ninety-­minute congressional subcommittee hearing held on February 27, 2014, discussed in moredetail later, a fifth lost opportunity. All this raises more questions pointing to a cover-­up. Why, for example, would General Mattis not give Brigadier General Colt the full authority, not restricted by self-­incrimination issues of potential