SEAL Team 6 and a Man Left for

Dead: A Grainy Picture of Valor

An airman with the unit is being considered for the Medal
of Honor after new video analysis suggested that he
fought alone bravely in a 2002 battle on an Afghan peak.
By SEAN D. NAYLOR and CHRISTOPHER DREWAUG. 27, 2016
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Britt Slabinski could hear the bullets ricochet off the rocks in the darkness. It
was the first firefight for his six-man reconnaissance unit from SEAL Team 6,
and it was outnumbered, outgunned and taking casualties on an Afghan
mountaintop.
A half-dozen feet or so to his right, John Chapman, an Air Force technical
sergeant acting as the units radioman, lay wounded in the snow. Mr. Slabinski,
a senior chief petty officer, could see through his night-vision goggles an aiming
laser from Sergeant Chapmans rifle rising and falling with his breathing, a sign
he was alive.
Then another of the Americans was struck in a furious exchange of grenades and
machine-gun fire, and the chief realized that his team had to get off the peak
immediately.
He looked back over at Sergeant Chapman. The laser was no longer moving,
Chief Slabinski recalls, though he was not close enough to check the airmans
pulse. Chased by bullets that hit a second SEAL in the leg, the chief said, he
crawled on top of the sergeant but could not detect any response, so he slid
down the mountain face with the other men. When they reached temporary
cover, one asked: Wheres John? Wheres Chappy? Chief Slabinski responded,
Hes dead.
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Photo

Tech Sgt. John Chapman in an undated photo.

Now, more than 14 years after that brutal fight, in which seven Americans
ultimately died, the Air Force says that Chief Slabinski was wrong and that
Sergeant Chapman not only was alive, but also fought on alone for more than an
hour after the SEALs had retreated. The Air Force secretary is pushing for a
Medal of Honor, the militarys highest award, after new technology used in an
examination of videos from aircraft flying overhead helped officials conclude
that the sergeant had killed two fighters with Al Qaeda one in hand-to-hand
combat before dying in an attempt to protect arriving reinforcements.
The new account of Sergeant Chapmans last act reopens old wounds for SEAL
Team 6, the elite Navy unit that would later kill Osama bin Laden. The findings
could rekindle tensions between Team 6 and other Special Operations

organizations that lost men in the March 4, 2002, mission, which they felt the
SEALs had planned and executed poorly, according to current and former
military officials.
Like some other military units, Team 6 accepts as an article of faith that its
members never leave a fallen comrade behind. While that can be difficult to
fulfill, it is a creed as old as warfare itself, a pact with those facing great peril.
Abandoning a wounded man to fight and die by himself, however inadvertent,
officers say, would be devastating.
These things happen in combat, but itd be awful, said Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell,
a retired Delta Force commander who was involved in the broader operation
that included the mountaintop episode. Itd be terrible to find that out.
By JOHN WOO and SEAN D. NAYLOR 2:14

Forced Landing and Furious Battle

Video
Forced Landing and Furious Battle
A Predator drone recorded Army Rangers and members of Al Qaeda fighting on an Afghan
mountaintop 14 years ago. The Air Force believes Sgt. John Chapman was killed around
this time.
By JOHN WOO and SEAN D. NAYLOR on Publish DateAugust 27, 2016. .

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He cautioned anyone who had not been there against second-guessing. Its easy
to say, Well, Id never leave someone behind, he said. Its a lot harder when
youre getting your ass shot off.
He added, If anybody thought Chapman was alive, we would have been trying
to move heaven and earth to get him out of there.
Chief Slabinski, who is now 46 and retired, acknowledged that he might have
made a mistake under intense fire in thinking that Sergeant Chapman was dead.
Still haunted by what happened on the mountain, he replayed the events there
to explain his decisions that day.
Im trying to direct what everybodys got going on, trying to see whats going on
with John; Im already 95 percent certain in my mind that hes been killed, he
said in an interview. Thats why I was like, O.K., weve got to move.
Photo

Britt Slabinski, a senior chief petty officer, concluded that Sergeant Chapman had been
killed. New technology applied to video taken at the time of the battle has suggested that
the fallen airman survived and continued the fight after the SEAL unit had withdrawn.
While saying the sergeant should be recognized for his valor if the Air Force
narrative was correct, Chief Slabinski still expressed skepticism that the new
evidence gleaned from software that can isolate pixel representations of
people and help track their movements was reliable. SEAL Team 6 supports
the proposed award, military officials said, but is not taking a position on
whether Sergeant Chapman was alive when the SEALs retreated.
If approved by the president, the award will be the first of the more than 3,500
Medals of Honor given since the Civil War to rely not on eyewitness accounts
but primarily on technology.
The events surrounding the ill-fated mission have long been controversial,
partly because Chief Slabinski has said previously that higher-level officers
denied his request to delay it 24 hours to reduce the risks. In the interview, he
said he feared that critics in the Special Operations community would blame
him while glossing over decisions by the higher officers that contributed to the
deaths.
Theyre going to say: Yep, its all your fault. You left him up there, behind,
alive, he said.
Continue reading the main story

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RECENT COMMENTS
realist

56 minutes ago
War is a hideous thing. Awarding him medals won't bring Chapman back, but if
higher honors represent greater benefits to his family, then by...

Sridhar Chilimuri

57 minutes ago
This man, Chapman, is no ordinary human being. When you look at the photo
there is gentleness to how he holds the child. Yet the gentleness...

Ciara

57 minutes ago
This man has indeed earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. We've waited
too long to honor him.

SEE ALL COMMENTS

WRITE A COMMENT

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Paktia Province

Arma Mountains
To Gardez

Shah-i-Kot Valley
Takur Ghar
Approx. 10,400 feet

AFGHANISTAN

Takur Ghar
3 Miles

By Joe Burgess, The New York Times

A Retreat Under Fire
Chief Slabinskis team was ordered to establish an observation post on top of the
mountain, Takur Ghar, during Operation Anaconda, an effort to encircle and
destroy Qaeda forces in the Shah-i-Kot Valley in easternAfghanistan, about 25
miles from Pakistan. The battle occurred less than three months after bin Laden
had escaped at Tora Bora, and American commanders still hoped to capture or
kill senior Qaeda leaders.
Chief Slabinskis plan was to land by helicopter near the base of the 10,000-foot
mountain around midnight and climb up stealthily, but a series of delays
involving aircraft left no time to do that before dawn. Under pressure from
superiors, he said, he reluctantly flew to the peak at about 3 a.m.
Continue reading the main story
Unbeknown to the SEALs, Qaeda forces were already there, and they hit the
helicopter with heavy fire. One of Chief Slabinskis men, Petty Officer First Class
Neil C. Roberts, fell out about 10 feet above the ground, and the pilot could not
retrieve him before the stricken aircraft crash-landed a few miles away.
Shortly before 5 a.m., the five remaining SEALs and Sergeant Chapman
returned to the top later called Roberts Ridge on another helicopter to try
to rescue Petty Officer Roberts. They did not know that enemy fighters had
already killed and tried to decapitate him.
The Americans were again met by a withering barrage. Rushing through thighdeep snow, Sergeant Chapman charged ahead of Chief Slabinski, and they killed
two fighters in a bunker a hole dug in the ground under a tree before the
airman was wounded.
Photo

The top of Takur Ghar after the battle between Special Operations forces and fighters with
Al Qaeda in March 2002. A dead Qaeda fighter is in the rear right of the
frame. CreditUnited States Department of Defense
Under fire, the SEALs retreated about 15 minutes later. Chief Slabinskis plan,
he said, was to take cover and let a circling Air Force gunship hammer the
Qaeda fighters before trying again to seize the peak and recover Sergeant
Chapmans body.
But grenades and mortar fire drove the SEALs farther down the mountain,
making it impossible to return. Three Army Rangers, an Army helicopter
crewman and another Air Force commando were killed later that morning after
arriving as reinforcements.
Almost as soon as the guns fell silent, the accusations started to fly. Some
Ranger, Army Special Operations aviation and Air Force special tactics
personnel blamed the SEALs for their losses.
Soon after, the military opened an investigation to determine what had gone
wrong. The chief investigator, Lt. Col. Andrew Milani of the Army, wrote later
that that an Air Force gunship had failed to detect the militants on the
mountaintop and the SEALs had violated a basic tenet of reconnaissance by
landing directly on their observation post instead of hiking up to it.

Colonel Milani also looked into footage captured by a Predator drone about 50
minutes after the SEALs had left the mountaintop. The grainy images showed
someone in the bunker defending himself against two attackers and killing one
with a rifle shot, prompting the question: Who was that?
Colonel Milanis investigation remains classified, but an unclassified paper that
he wrote in 2003 offered two possible explanations: The Qaeda fighters had
become confused and were firing at one another, or Sergeant Chapman, still
alive, had resumed fighting. The colonel did not reach a conclusion, based on
the evidence he had. But the suggestion that members of one of the militarys
most elite Special Operations units might have, even unintentionally, left
someone from another service to fight and die alone added to the tensions.
Sergeant Chapman, a father of two daughters, in 2003 was posthumously
awarded an Air Force Cross, a recognition of valor second only to the Medal of
Honor, for his initial charge atop the mountain. The citation noted that Chief
Slabinski, who received a Navy Cross for his actions in the firefight, had credited
the airman unequivocally with saving the lives of the entire rescue team.
Sergeant Chapman had enlisted in the Air Force as a computer technician, but
soon found that he was not suited to a sedentary lifestyle. A former high school
diving and soccer star from Windsor Locks, Conn., he transferred into the elite
ranks of the Air Force Special Operations Command as a combat controller, a
job that involved calling in airstrikes and handling radio communications for
SEAL Team 6 and other secretive units.
By the time he had joined Chief Slabinskis team in October 2001, he had spent
more than a decade in Special Operations and, at 36, was expressing doubts
about his ability to keep up, Chief Slabinski said. The chief told him that he had
nothing to worry about.
New View of a Battle
Photo

The Ranger helicopter that was shot down as it landed on the peak, with according to the
Air Force Sergeant Chapman trying to provide covering fire. CreditUnited States
Department of Defense
Sergeant Chapman was considered for the Medal of Honor when the secretary of
the Air Force, Deborah Lee James, directed the services Special Operations
Command to review the seven Air Force Crosses awarded since the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks for possible upgrades. She recently recommended the award to the
defense secretary, whose approval is required before it goes to the White House.
Pentagon policy forbids military officials to talk about potential Medals of
Honor, but several officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, said
that even the sergeants initial bravery had stood out.
Chief Slabinski said he wondered whether the Air Force was motivated as much
by hopes of receiving its first Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War as by a
desire to fully understand what transpired on the mountain. (Since the Sept. 11
attacks, 12 Army soldiers, three Marines and three SEALs have received the
medal for gallantry in Iraq or Afghanistan.)
A briefing prepared by Air Force special operations officials dismisses as not
viable Colonel Milanis suggestion that the gunfight caught on video by the
C.I.A. Predator might have involved militants fighting one another, according to
people who have received it. That the airman was alive and fighting is fully
supported by the evidence, the briefing slides state.
The use of the imagery-enhancement technology to scrutinize the Predator
video was central to the findings, particularly when combined with footage,

from an AC-130 gunship, that had not been available to Colonel Milani. As the
drone circled more than 6,500 feet above the peak, trees and other objects
impeded its view, and it had trouble staying locked on to the men in the fight.
The imagery technology, still being refined in an Air Force lab, enabled the
service to assign each person in the blurry videos a pixel signature based on
his size, his clothing and the weapons he carried, people who have been briefed
said. By identifying Sergeant Chapman shortly after he stepped out of the
helicopter with the SEALs, the briefing slides say, its imagery analysts could
follow him around the mountaintop, picking him up even when trees or other
obstacles partly obscured him.
Outside experts familiar with the technology said having video footage from the
gunship as well as from the Predator drone would have provided the analysts
with more tracking angles and clarity.
Thats two different eyes, and they could fuse that together, said David J.
Kriegman, a computer science professor at the University of California, San
Diego, who has done research in this area.
Based on the analysis, the Air Force believes that Sergeant Chapman was
unconscious when Chief Slabinski thought he was dead. The sergeant regained
consciousness and began engaging enemy fighters in three directions, the slides
suggest.
Photo

Sergeant Chapman holding a young girl in a tent in Afghanistan during a blizzard in the
winter of 2002, not long before he died.
The analysis suggests that Sergeant Chapman crawled into the bunker within 13
minutes of the SEALs departure, or at about 5:25 a.m. Then, at 6:00, shortly
after a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the bunker, he fatally shot a fighter
rushing toward him, according to the briefing.
A few minutes later, another militant crawled to the bunkers edge, where, at
6:11, the airman killed him in hand-to-hand combat.
As a Chinook helicopter carrying Ranger reinforcements approached, the Air
Force contends, the sergeant rose up in the bunker for a better angle to provide
covering fire. He faced machine-gun fire as he tried to relieve the pressure on
the Rangers, whose helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
It was only then, with rescue tantalizingly close, that two machine-gun bullets
struck the right side of his chest, killing him almost instantly. The Air Force says
his death was not captured on video.
Presented with the Air Force analysis, Colonel Milani submitted an addendum
to his paper. With some of the original uncertainty removed, I can state that the
probability now lies more in favor of Chapman surviving the original assault,
he wrote.
The Air Forces case includes a new analysis of Sergeant Chapmans autopsy that
found that bruising on his forehead could have happened only if he had been
alive, making the hypothesis that he had been briefly knocked out more
plausible.
His body, which was recovered later that day, had nine bullet wounds, five
below his waist and four above. The sequence of the injuries is not known. But
the two fatal rounds entered at what would have been an impossible angle had
he been killed where the SEALs said he had fallen, according to people familiar
with the Air Force briefing.
Lingering Questions
A team led by the Air Forces 24th Special Operations Wing commander, Col.
Matthew Davidson, briefed Chief Slabinski on the findings late last year. I
didnt see anything new, the chief said. It was just presented differently.
Photo

A bunker on Takur Ghar. New evidence suggests that Sergeant Chapman fought on for
more than an hour after his presumed death from this bunker or another close by, killing
two Qaeda fighters before dying.
Colonel Davidson said the Air Force could see Sergeant Chapman moving in
and around the bunker where he and Chief Slabinski had killed the two enemy
fighters, the chief said.
But because the bunker was under a tree that largely obscured it, this was not
clear to Chief Slabinski watching the video.
Youve got these little flashes, he said. Heres a sliver of the pixel here, and
then it kind of goes away, and theres another sliver of it, and heres some
muzzle flash stuff.
Chief Slabinski said Sergeant Chapmans assault rifle had been equipped with a
suppressor to mask its muzzle flash, but the video showed the man in the
bunker firing a weapon with an unsuppressed muzzle flash.
The chief also questioned why the man shooting in the video appeared to fire on
full automatic, rather than with the single aimed shots that the sergeant would
have been trained to use.
At times, Chief Slabinski said, he feels as if he had never left Takur Ghar. He still
has visions in which he sees fighters on the mountain moving in slow motion,
and hears the sound of grenades and gunfire. He has trouble sleeping, and says
he has received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress after a dozen years of war.
182

COMMENTS
What stays with him the most is that morning he led his team into battle to try
to save one man, only to be told later that he had left another fighting for his life.
Is it within Johns character to go on and do this? Without a question, the
chief said. If John did this stuff, I want him to get recognized.