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Among the 38 occupants inside the Chinook were some of the most highly trained and battle-seasoned fighters in the U.S. military, including 15 commandos from the Navys SEAL Team 6,the unit that three months earlier had killed Osama bin Laden. But over time, they became more disturbing, including one that suggested the Taliban had been tipped off by someone inside the Afghan government as revenge for bin Ladens killing. But why? Hes also sent more than his fair share of curious retweets, often of the accounts of conspiracy theorists and those associated with QAnon and other outlandish conspiracy frameworks. While the goggles are better than nothing, they turn everything green, distort depth perception and limit peripheral vision. They knew. But Tahir and a group of his fighters escaped. "A NATO helicopter crashed last night in Wardak province," Karzai said in the statement. The families of some of the 17 SEAL Team 6 commandos who were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan during a helicopter flight to help Army Rangers pinned down by Taliban gunmen accused the Obama administration of deliberately endangering their loved ones for political ends. Stephen M. Mills, 35, of Fort Worth, Tex., was reportedly the leader of the Navy SEAL team killed in the Chinook helicopter attack on Aug. 6. What the men on the Chinook didn't know was that cloaked by darkness, two fighters had emerged from the small village of Hasan Khel, on the south side of the valley. But it's just as plausible that the Taliban got lucky. The Chinook helicopter was carrying a quick-reaction force to provide back-up to the troops on the ground in the eastern Afghan province of Wardak, a U.S. official said. He pushed hard on the cyclic stick to tilt the helicopter forward. Enterprise writer at The Dallas Morning News. Family members are hoping Freedom Watch, a watchdog legal group led by Larry Klayman, can force new disclosures using the power of the FOIA process. The immediate reaction force (IRF) was assembled hastily for insertion into Tangi Valley to help Army Rangers capture fleeing Taliban. How SEAL Team 6 . Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, BroadStreet Review and Splice Today. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. They then repeated and emphasized a few related questions: How could this happen? For the last two years, hes been an attorney with the law firm Jackson Walker. He finished his contract with the Army shortly afterward, and that September enrolled in Southern Methodist Universitys Dedman School of Law. Three months after bin Ladens death, members of the SEAL Team 6 force -- though apparently not the same ones who carried out the bin Laden raid -- were on board the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, along with its Army National Guard aircrew, several support personnel and seven Afghan commandos. Extortion 17's pilots and crew ranked among the very best military helicopter pilots in the world (Carter had amassed more than 4,000 hours of cockpit time), and the helicopter, a CH-47D, the fastest and one of the most powerful and nimble in the U.S. military, had been maintained to the highest standards. But the CH-47D has neither a flight nor voice recorder, only an engine performance data. As they made their approach, there was a line of thunderstorms nearby. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Theyre going after [enemy fighters] in very hostile environments, who know the terrain very well, who know the battlescape very well, Darack said. Extortion 17, however, would never reach that landing zone. An official report was released in October 2011 but family members say it did little to fill in the details and left more questions than answers. And to this day, people are still debating what really happened. But why? A CH-47D Chinook helicopter (the same model as Extortion 17) speeds through the Sierra Nevada Mountains at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, near Bridgeport, California, during mountain warfare training exercises. When the shock subsided, questions arose and persisted. For now, let's assume the Chinook was shot down, and by a rocket. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. The US Navy's elite SEAL Team 6 reportedly recovered two bodies and a flight recorder from the site where a US Air Force E-11A aircraft crashed in Afghanistan on Monday. Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. A CH-47D Chinook helicopter lands at a small landing zone at Firebase Blessing, in eastern Afghanistans restive Kunar Province at the start of a combat operation. Youve got [Apaches] flying around, so theres a lot of noise going on and, basically, this entire valley knows that theres something happening in this area. It had been loaded well within its limits. It's unclear how far away the helicopter was from the initial firefight when it went down and unclear how the troops in the firefight got to the crash location, the official said. Composed primarily of members of the 75th Ranger Regiment, which falls under the authority of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, the team sought to capture or kill a powerful insurgent leader, Qari Tahir, known to coalition forces by his designation "Lefty Grove." Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. The last worst one-day U.S. casuality record in Afghanistan was on June 28, 2005 when 16 U.S. soldiers were killed in Kunar province after a helicopter was shot down by Taliban insurgents. One of the engines flew off, and the other caught fire. On his right wrist, he wears a bracelet with the names of the five crew members of Extortion 17. Special Forces are expected to keep the pressure on the Taliban, working closely with Afghan forces to maintain control as U.S and Coalition troops depart. Get everything off your social media. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. ", Tags: Navy SEALs, Navy, Afghanistan, Allen West, Michele Bachmann. There are no survivors. Navy SEAL Team Six, the heroic unit that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011, is in grave danger due to the reckless actions of the Obama administration. Onboard were 17 members of SEAL Team 6; five naval special warfare operators, including one to intercept communications and another to handle Bart the war dog; five Army flight crewmen, including a National Guard and an Army Reserve pilot; and three Air Force personnel. Each shouldered a rocket propelled grenade launcher, aimed at the dim silhouette of the approaching helicopter then fired. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. 4:10 p.m. - A backup helicopter scoops up remaining team members and leaves the area. There were guys in a tower. On this night, Aug. 6, 2011, something went terribly wrong. SEAL TEAM SIX - Extortion 17 EXPOSED theunitedwest 15.8K subscribers Subscribe 4.7K 394K views Streamed 9 years ago AUGUST 6, 2015 - Today, on the fourth anniversary of the shoot down of. We had guys who had flown in Desert Storm, guys who had just come off active duty, Lee said. The first grenade missed Extortion 17. Its like taking a paper towel roll, cutting it in half and strapping it to your eye, Lee said. Strange. Mr. Klayman said the NSA has agreed to provide some information. It's a scary thought. The second RPG round had connected with one of Extortion 17's aft rotor blades, severing more than 10 feet of it when it exploded. The helicopter was shot down by insurgents. Still, SEAL Team Sixs bold raid to take down bin Laden was an extraordinary operation that most experts regard as a resounding success. Add in the fact that more sophisticated foreign intelligence agents are on the ground, with signals intelligence assets and deep pockets, and you have a recipe for a plot. My life is in danger. The chopper's manifest. And thats fine; thats what you signed up for, Lee said. The Associated Press is reporting that a rocket attack took down the Chinook (probably a MH-47) , quoting an unnamed source in Washington D.C., but this has yet to be confirmed officially. With David Boreanaz, Max Thieriot, Jessica Par, Neil Brown Jr.. Market data provided by Factset. Things like Benghazi and the NSA. On a moonless night, an Army helicopter carrying 17 members of the elite Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama Bin Laden, is shot down in Afghanistan. The guy was incredibly skilled.. In all 38 troops died after the helicopter was shot down by what a review determined to be a Taliban RPG over Wardak Province, Afghanistan, on Aug. 6, 2011. Due to the sheer magnitude of loss of life, combined with recent news of SEAL Team Six's successful raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, global media outlets lionized the tragedy. "We simply didn't know those guys with those RPGs were there," he said. The Taliban, of course, has taken credit, saying it shot down the helo during a special forces raid on a home. Not all will end as well as bin Laden's takedown, as PM noted in July. They fail to mention it was Saudis who orchestrated 9/11, yet he elected to go after Iraq and Afghanistan. The second shot hit the rear tail rotor assembly. The navigator on the AC-130 gunship said there was simply too much gun and engine noise to think that the Chinook could make an undetected entrance. The military's public contradictions raise more questions than answers. For many families of 9/11 victims, bin Ladens death symbolized justice and retribution. One helicopter crashes, but there are no injuries. A man reads the front page of a newspaper featuring the news that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was shot dead deep inside Pakistan in a night-time helicopter raid by US covert forces, ending a decade-long manhunt for the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. Chance, however, a component of war intimately understood by war fighters, can never be completely mitigated. The pilots ranked among the most proficient in this type of flying and the Department of Defense. One of the best crews in my company. The hearing as it took place was meant to honor the heroes of Extortion 17 instead of to answer our questions, Mr. More than 20 Navy Seals died in the helicopter crash that killed 31 in Afghanistan yesterday. All of us know that going into it.". A silhouette of a. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. But special forces don't get such a cushion: Because they can react more quickly, they undertake more dangerous missions; their risk tolerance is much, much higher. As they started their descent, Lee heard a loud popping noise. The Chinook smashed into the ground, the force ripping off his goggles. It has now been four years since Extortion 17 was shot down, said Doug Hamburger, whose Army air crew son, Patrick, was one of the 30 Americans killed. Nearby, there were two enemy fighters with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. In the immediate wake of the tragedy, the military initiated two investigations. Three of the . Almost 10 years after 9/11, here's what led to the death of Osama bin Laden. International reactions to bin Ladens death ranged from favorable to mixed. JSOC ground forces and those who flew them knew and trusted each other. "In releasing their identity, they put a target on their backs," said Doug Hamburger, whose son, Army Staff Sgt. The Chinook was descending on a noisy battlefield where Apache helicopters and a C-130 gunship had been buzzing overhead for three hours, alerting Taliban fighters. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. And we really feel that this put our guys in an unnecessary risk, Hamburger said. And Justice unilaterally set a new deadline for the release and then ignored it, Mr. Klayman said. The Rangers were not in need of rescue. At that time, this marked deadliest moment in the war in Afghanistan. Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six is a 2015 non-fiction expose, written by best-selling author and former U.S. Navy JAG Officer Don Brown, about the 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan of a United States Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Per factcheck.org, while Obama and his advisers were deliberating over which mission to authorize for attacking Bin Ladens compound, Biden advised the president to wait for further confirmation that bin Laden was actually in the compound in Pakistan before acting. Biden was not, as implied, altogether opposed to killing Bin Laden. At 2:38 a.m. on August 6, 2011, a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, entered the western opening of Afghanistan's restive Tangi Valley, flying alone. Conspiracy theories started almost immediately. File: A US Army CH-47D Chinook helicopter in flight. During an attempted reinforcement effort during Operation Red Wings on June 28, 2005, high on the slopes of a mountain called Sawtalo Sar in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar Province, a lucky shot took down an Army Special Operations Chinook, call sign "Turbine 33." The military's public contradictions raise more questions than answers.On a moonless night, an Army helicopter carrying 17 members of the elite Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama Bin Laden, is shot down in Afghanistan. The ensuing crash killed all 16 on board, eight Army special operations aviators, and eight Navy SEALs. WASHINGTON The families of Navy SEAL Team 6 members killed in a disastrous August 2011 helicopter crash in Afghanistan blamed the government for the tragedy, during an emotional press conference in Washington Thursday. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more Fox News politics content. He would not have hesitated to fly with any of them. After the crash, the forces that were involved in the firefight "broke contact" with the enemy so they could go provide perimeter security for the crash site, the official said. . The had Seal team 6 killed is a likely reference to whats known as the Extortion 17 incident, the August 2011 tragedy in which a Chinookmilitary helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing 38 people, 25 of them Navy Seals, in the deadliest day for the U.S. in the entire Afghanistan war. File: A US Army CH-47D Chinook helicopter in flight. the seal team 6 crash is just tying up loose ends for their crimes. After Vice President Joe Biden revealed that SEAL Team 6 carried out the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Strange said the members of his son's team gave startling indications to their families they were about to meet their demise. The event was organized by Freedom Watch, a conservative advocacy group, at the National Press Club. The crash took the lives of 17 SEALs and five special warfare development group operators, making it the worst one-day loss in the history of U.S. naval special operations. All rights reserved. The reality is, every time a helicopter lifts off the ground in a war zone, it might get shot down, Darack said. Special forces routinely use helicopters in raids on homes in Afghanistan. That June, the U.S. military launched Operation Hammer Down to drive out insurgents entrenched in remote strongholds of eastern Afghanistan. The worst of the wounded was one of Lees crew members, who suffered what was later diagnosed as a severe traumatic brain injury. Lee is 36 now, a civil attorney in Dallas, a world away from Afghanistan. An official investigation found no evidence of a pre-planned ambush, though it did suggest that other helicopter activity in the area could have tipped off Taliban fighters that more helicopters could be approaching, according to the report. He taught helicopter pilots how to fly in high altitudes at an aviation training site in Colorado. Soon after US Navy Cryptologist Michael Strange and the elite SEAL Team 6 capture and kill Bin Laden, they are deployed to Afghanistan, where their Chinook is shot down. Located in a remote and dangerous province in eastern Afghanistan, the base was the target of near-constant rocket attacks from Taliban insurgents. The conspiracy has a number of moving parts, all of which have surfaced before, but none of which have any truth to them. So, to do an infil on the X or Y, you know, having that element of surprise in the beginning of an operation is good, but by the time weve been there for three hours, and the partys up, bringing in another aircraft like that, you know, may not be the most tactically sound decision.. The families of some of the 17 SEAL Team 6 commandos who were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan during a helicopter flight to help Army Rangers pinned down by Taliban gunmen accused the. This misinformation persists in part because those unfamiliar with the battlefield aren't taking into account a fundamental part of war: chance. The Pentagons witness stuck to a theme that no mistakes were made that night, though the investigative file contained testimony from a number of witnesses saying the mission was riddled with missteps. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces raided an al-Qaeda compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed the worlds most wanted terrorist: Osama bin Laden. The entire operation, which lasted only 40 minutes from start to finish, was the culmination of years of calculated planning and training. Lee earned his wings at Fort Rucker, Ala., then deployed to Pakistan, where he did humanitarian missions, learning to fly into and out of mountainous terrain. That night, nearly 10 years after the U.S. had gone to war in Afghanistan, Lee believed they were the best team for this dangerous mission. The terrorist leader was not only a major player within al-Qaeda but also a figurehead that attracted supporters and recruits from around the world. Were pleading with the judge to do something, and hes just sitting on it., In one of his motions, Mr. Klayman stated: As this Court must be aware, this is not an ordinary Freedom of Information Act case, it involves obtaining records concerning the deaths of Navy SEAL Team 6 and other special operations forces on a mission with the call sign Extortion 17. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! So the whole team went in one Chinook helicopter -- Extortion 17. The family members, speaking at the National Press Club, tried to reopen the book on the crash, in which 30 Americans were killed, most of them belonging to the same unit as those who carried out the raid on Usama bin Laden earlier that year. August 6, 2011 / 6:08 PM / CBS Boston KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A military helicopter was shot down in eastern Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special operation troops, most of them from the. The alleged hit on SEAL Team 6 is a reference to the downing of a Chinook transport helicopter by insurgents a few months after the bin Laden raid. Saturday's deaths bring the total number of coalition troops killed in Afghanistan to 334 this year, according to the Associated Press. The Graveyard of Empires: Directed by David Boreanaz. But what if it was a more advanced missile? Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalersthe Marine Corps' Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion, Navy SEAL's Savior Claims 'Lone Survivor' Got It Wrong. But some say the official report, which contained no direct criticism of decision-makers that day, did not delve deeply enough. President Trump has been known, over the years, to tweet some bizarre things. Chinooks are American forces' preferred helicopters in Afghanistan because they are powerful enough fly over mountains while carrying a full complement of troops. He grew up in Tyler, went to Texas A&M, joined the Corps of Cadets and stared in shock at the news thattwo planes slammed into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Aug. 6, 2011— -- A helicopter was shot down today by Afghan insurgents as it was rushing to aid troops in a firefight, killing 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALs, most of whom belonged to Team 6, the unit whose members were involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said. Afghan President Karzai's office released a statement on the incident. Somebody tipped them off. The families of these deceased heroes have been stonewalled by the Obama Department of Defense and the Obama National Security Agency in disrespect over their sons unexplained tragic deaths. A silhouette of a flight engineer manning an M240 machine gun on the ramp of a CH-47D Chinook in eastern Afghanistan. This time, they might simply have run out of luck and encountered an RPG-armed enemy who was in the right place at the right time. Is Russias Only Aircraft Carrier Cursed? But the CH-47D has neither a flight nor voice recorder, only an engine performance data recorder for maintenance. It was a hard landing, but it would have been worse if they had landed tail first. The two Apaches, Gun 1 and Gun 2, on scene were never emphatically told to move near the landing zone to scan for threats. The mission continues, uninterrupted.3:39 p.m. Osama bin Laden is located on the third floor of the compound and is shot in the head, above the left eye.Sometime during the operation, three other men (including one of bin Ladens sons) and a woman in the compound are also killed.3:53 p.m. President Obama receives preliminary word that bin Laden is identified and dead.3:55 p.m. SEAL team members move bin Ladens body to the first floor of the compound and place it in a body bag.3:39 p.m.-4:10 p.m. The team locates and retrieves multiple items from the compound for intelligence investigation.4:05 p.m. The first helicopter exits the compound.4:08 p.m. The team destroys the chopper that crashed.4:10 p.m. A backup helicopter scoops up remaining team members and leaves the area.5:53 p.m. The choppers with SEAL team members return to Afghanistan.7:01 p.m. President Obama receives further intelligence information that the body killed in the raid is likely that of bin Laden.11:35 p.m. President Obama addresses the nation about the raid.12:59 a.m. Osama bin Ladens body is buried at sea within 24 hours to comply with Islamic law. On board were 22 Navy SEALs, rushing to support troops in firefight. In fact, the conflict was heating up. The Taliban silenced him.