A former Navy SEAL accused of war crimes by his colleagues denounced videos on Friday depicting their confessions painting him as “evil” and out of control.
The New York Times published video segments of Naval Criminal Investigative Service interviews with Special Operators 1st Class Craig Miller, Joshua Vriens, and Corey Scott on Friday, wherein they alleged Gallagher shot at civilians and killed an injured ISIS fighter. Gallagher and his lawyer, Tim Parlatore, told the Washington Examiner the videos have been taken out of context and are an attempt to relitigate Gallagher’s case in the court of public opinion.
“My first reaction 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,” Gallagher said in a statement. “I felt sorry for them that they thought it necessary to smear my name, but they never realized what the consequences of their lies would be.”
The interviews, recorded in 2018, led to the Navy charging Gallagher with war crimes. He was acquitted at trial in July of all but one of the charges, taking a picture with the corpse of a teenage ISIS fighter he was accused of murdering.
“As upset as I was, the videos also gave me confidence because I knew that their lies would never hold up under real questioning and the jury would see through it,” Gallagher said. “Their lies and NCIS’s refusal to ask hard questions or corroborate their stories strengthened my resolve to go to trial and clear my name.”
Gallagher said he did not see the videos until after he had been charged and claimed one of his accusers came to visit him to “apologize for what they did but that they had to stick with the fake stories or be charged with making false statements.”
[Previous coverage: Duncan Hunter says Navy SEAL accused of war crimes should be given a ‘break’]
Gallagher’s accusers painted him as a bloodthirsty warrior who was out of control in Iraq in 2017.
“The guy is freaking evil,” Miller told the investigators.
Vriens described Gallagher as “toxic,” while Scott said, “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.”
Three of Gallagher’s teammates recalled him conducting a reenlistment ceremony over the corpse of the fighter.
“I was listening to it, and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Miller said.
Parlatore did not deny the authenticity of the videos but told the Washington Examiner they didn’t tell the whole story.
“They cherry-picked small sentences over many, many hours of interviews and presented them without the context of the cross-examination that they faced later on,” Parlatore said.
There may be a political element to the attention, given President Trump’s involvement in the case, Parlatore said. Trump intervened in March to free Gallagher from the Navy brig before his trial and prevented the Navy from pulling his SEAL Trident in November, a chain of events that led to the firing of former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer.
“Attention from the White House is kind of a double-edged sword in the world,” Parlatore said.
Gallagher’s team expects more scrutiny in the future, which Parlatore said will require his client to continue to tell his side of the story.
