← In The Dark
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- [00:01]
Madeline Barron
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [00:16]
Parker Yesko
Potential savings will vary.
- [00:18]
Madeline Barron
Not available in all states. This episode is presented by W. Hotels from Shanghai to New York. I love hotels that feel like a living, breathing part of a city and makes me feel like I'm expensive. Experiencing that place in an authentic, holistic way. Are you recording?
- [00:40]
Parker Yesko
Yes, I am.
- [00:42]
Madeline Barron
All right, let's do it. Hey, in the dark, listeners. It's Madeline Barron and Parker Yesko. Hey, guys, we're back in your feed today because there's been some recent news that feels really relevant to a lot of the things that we reported on in season three. It has to do with one of the appointments that that incoming President Donald Trump has recently announced. And this appointment got the attention of our entire team because it could make it even harder for war criminals in the United States to be held accountable. If you've listened to season three, you know that our reporting found how hard it is already for people accused of war crimes to be punished in any kind of meaningful way. And it is most likely about to get a lot harder. We're talking specifically here about the man Trump has decided he wants to nominate for Secretary of Defense. This is a man Parker and I are both very familiar with. We're talking, of course, about Pete Hegseth. The reason we're so familiar with Pete Hegseth is because Hegseth has been one of the most outspoken defenders of Americans accused of war crimes in the entire country.
- [01:44]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. And we've been talking a lot on our team about what his hypothetical confirmation could mean for convicted war criminals and American service members accused of war crimes in the future. And at a certain point, we thought we should stop talking about it just between us and talk about it with you guys, too.
- [02:02]
Madeline Barron
Right. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and what their views on American war crimes prosecutions are, and then what it might mean for the future. All right, Parker, let's get into it. Let's start with Pete Hegseth. He's Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense. And this is a person that, Parker, I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about over the past four years.
- [02:24]
Parker Yesko
Yeah, I mean, Pete Hegseth is an interesting pick. He has no experience working in government other than being a veteran. He's 44. He was until last week, the weekend co host of Fox and Friends. He's from Minnesota. He went to Princeton. He worked as an analyst at Bear Stearns, and he joined the Minnesota National Guard. And as an officer, he deployed to Iraq and to Afghanistan and to Guantanamo Bay. And then there are the more attention grabbing aspects of his biography.
- [02:54]
Madeline Barron
Yeah, I mean, there's so much we can talk about with Hegseth, like if we really get into it, that of course has nothing to do with war crimes. I think one of the first things that for a long time at least comes to mind when you think of Pete Hegseth is this moment that went viral in 2015 where I was actually watching this again the other day. He was literally throwing an ax live on television on Fox.
- [03:16]
Parker Yesko
Fox and Friends co host Pete Hegseth aiming for accuracy and missing.
- [03:21]
Madeline Barron
And the reason this went viral is because he threw the ax kind of too high and too far.
- [03:27]
Parker Yesko
What you didn't see on air is what the axe hit, or should we say who? Drumroll, please.
- [03:33]
Madeline Barron
And he hit a West Point drummer who was like drumming in the background, like mid drum. Ouch. And it became this viral moment. So I think a lot of people's first Pete Hegseth moment was this really out of nowhere, out of context, like, silly video. Not silly to the guy who was getting hit by the ax. Video of someone getting hit. So there's that.
- [03:56]
Parker Yesko
Maybe not silly to Hegseth either. I think the guy sued him in the end.
- [03:59]
Madeline Barron
That is true.
- [04:00]
Parker Yesko
There's also the controversial tattoos that Hegseth has. As a member of the Army National Guard. He was actually pulled from a deployment to Washington D.C. for Biden's inauguration because one of his fellow guardsmen reported that he had a tattoo that said Deus Vault, which the guardsmen said was a white supremacist tattoo and a sign of extremism and that it perhaps made Hegseth an insider threat. Hegseth has denied that his tattoos have extremist meaning.
- [04:34]
Madeline Barron
Yeah. And then Hegseth said he resigned from the Guard after that. Sort of done with the military. Um, you know, all of this is interesting because, you know, if this is a man who the military doesn't trust to provide security for an incoming president's inauguration, and yet Trump is saying that he can literally run the entire Defense Department. That's something certainly worth paying attention to. There's also statements that Hygseth has made that have gotten a lot of attention about how women shouldn't serve Roles in combat. And then, of course, there's the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room in California back in 2017. This is a claim that I should say he denies. And it's worth noting that he was never charged with any crime, though he does acknowledge that he paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money. So there are all of those issues about Hegseth, but what we really wanted to focus on right now are Hegseth's views on war crimes and people accused of war crimes, because Hegseth is someone who has directly put himself in the middle of these cases. He has lobbied Trump in Trump's first term on behalf of several men who are accused of egregious war crimes, some of them convicted of those crimes. He's encouraged Trump to dismiss the charges against them, to let them go free, to prevent basically any accountability for some of these crimes committed by American service members. And he has used his position as a co host on Fox to really popularize the causes of these men accused of war crimes.
- [06:05]
Pete Hegseth
First of all, I can't stand that headline, accused of war crimes. These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment's notice. They're not war criminals. They're warriors who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.
- [06:22]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. During Trump's first term, Hegseth covered alleged war criminals quite extensively. He would invite them onto his show. He, in private, reportedly nudged Trump to pardon several of them in public from the couch at Fox and Friends. He seemed to talk directly to Trump when he covered the cases of these men and said, you know, these men are being persecuted and they are war heroes.
- [06:48]
Pete Hegseth
This president recognizes the injustice of. You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy, then they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn't like, and then we put him in jail or we throw the book at them. And in Clint Lorenz's case, I mean.
- [07:01]
Madeline Barron
Here'S a guy who is on Fox and Friends every weekend as a co host. He knows Trump is watching. He knows millions of other people are watching, too. And he's using that platform as a way to bring on people who've been convicted or charged with war crimes and give them what I think anybody would describe as a pretty sympathetic platform to talk about their case and talk about why they think they've been wronged.
- [07:24]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. And in particular, he's championed a handful of cases. These cases are very familiar to us because we spent the past four years constructing an enormous database of alleged war crimes committed by American service members since 9 11. And these cases are all in our database.
- [07:42]
Madeline Barron
We're going to take a quick break here, but we'll be right back.
- [07:47]
David Remnick
Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm proud to share the news that three films from the New Yorker documentary series have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. And they are incident, seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. And they all immerse you in the finest cinematic journalism, exploring themes of justice, identity, and the bonds that shape us. These extraordinary films, which were created by established filmmakers as well as emerging artists, will inform, challenge, and move you. I encourage you to watch them along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films@newyorker.com video.
- [08:27]
Madeline Barron
So let's talk about these guys that Hegseth has really focused on.
- [08:31]
Parker Yesko
Well, first there's Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher. There's a Green Beret named Matthew Goldstein, and There's an army lieutenant, Clint Lawrence, who at the time was serving a 19 year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for murder. These were all people who Hegseth advocated should be pardoned.
- [08:49]
Madeline Barron
And these crimes that these men are accused of and in some cases convicted of are really serious. And I think that sometimes when we follow, you know, we hear about these cases in the news in the context of Hagseth. They're given the crimes themselves, are given a passing mention, it'll be something like, you know, Goldstein, comma, charged with, and then just a couple of words. And I do think it's important for people to really understand what these men, who the future Secretary of Defense potentially was advocating for, you know, these people that he was supporting what they were actually accused of and charged with. So let's get into what these people were actually doing during their time in the military that got them in trouble.
- [09:32]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. So who are these guys? So Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher was charged with murder and attempted murder. In May 2017. Gallagher allegedly stabbed a teenage captive whose name was Khalid Jamal Abdullah. Now, Abdullah had been fighting with isis, but at the time he died, he was detained by Navy seals. He was in custody and he was seriously injured. And Gallagher's own platoon mates who witnessed the incident reported it up the chain of command. They ended up telling investigators about other alleged war crimes that Gallagher had committed. They said he'd shot two civilians, an old man and a young girl. In separate incidents, the New York Times got this incredible video footage of members of Gallagher's own SEAL team clearly completely disturbed by what they'd witnessed. When they were overseas with him, telling naval investigators that Gallagher was, quote, freaking evil and, quote, perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving. Hegseth called Gallagher a war hero. He featured him and some ex special operations guys in a long Veterans Day TV special that they filmed in an empty restaurant. They all sat around a table drinking red wine.
- [10:45]
Pete Hegseth
Welcome to Modern Warriors, a Veterans Day special. I'm your host, Pete Hegse. Sitting with me are the best of the best our country has to offer. Four accomplished special operators and patriots who put their life on the line to defend our great country.
- [11:00]
Parker Yesko
Pete Hagseth also had Matthew Goldstein on the show. Goldstein was charged with premeditated murder for allegedly killing a detainee. The incident came to light after Goldstein interviewed at the CIA for a job during a polygraph exam. As part of that interview, he admitted, according to investigative records, that he and other members of his unit had interrogated a man who they suspected of being a Taliban bomb maker. But they took him home because they didn't have enough evidence against him to hold him. And instead of releasing him, they killed him. And then they buried him. And then later that night, they went and dug him up and burned his body. What Goldstein allegedly admitted to is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. It's a war crime. But Hegseth, in segments about Goldstein, described it as if it was like everyday business.
- [11:49]
Pete Hegseth
If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well. Then I did as well. What do you think you do in war? Put me in jail, then put us all in jail. That's how we feel about cases. Like Eddie Gallagher. Same with.
- [12:00]
Madeline Barron
Finally, there's the third person that Hegseth has really advocated for. Is this Lieutenant Clint Lorance.
- [12:09]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. So Clint Lorance was a platoon leader in Afghanistan, and he was convicted of two counts of murder. Lorenz had told his platoon, we one morning that anyone they saw on motorcycles should be deemed hostile and shot upon sight. And the members of his platoon heard this. They knew that this was totally outside of the rules of engagement. I think they probably didn't take the order very seriously. But when they went out on patrol later that day, they saw a motorcycle going by. It had three men on it. And Lorance ordered them to shoot the men. One of his soldiers shot towards the men, didn't hit him. They stopped. They got off the motorcycle. And then Lorenz again said, shoot them. These unarmed men just standing in the road next to the motorcycle. And one of Lorenz's men followed the order and shot and killed two of the men in the Road. And Lorenz's soldiers were so disturbed by this. Many of them reported him up the chain of command. Many of them have been really vocal in media about how distressing it was to be led by Loranz, who they said had also done other things like shot at civilians, threatened civilians. And Loranz actually, you know, in no small part because of his platoon mates or his platoon members, you know, reporting what they'd seen, was convicted and sentenced.
- [13:31]
Madeline Barron
Yeah, I mean, all three of these men the military believed had committed war crimes. And a lot of the evidence against them were members of the military, like you say, coming forward. And so, you know, it was lawyers, it was commanders, it was people in their own unit thinking that they'd done something that was indefensible and, you know.
- [13:54]
Parker Yesko
And criminal.
- [13:54]
Madeline Barron
And criminal. Exactly.
- [13:55]
Parker Yesko
Clearly criminal.
- [13:56]
Madeline Barron
Yeah. And, you know, so what Hegseth was doing, Hegseth was saying, these men should have no accountability. These men should not serve a day in prison.
- [14:04]
Parker Yesko
These men, these men are heroes.
- [14:06]
Madeline Barron
Exactly.
- [14:07]
Pete Hegseth
We train these guys, they're the best of the best. We want to unleash them, to go kill them. And then if they make one tiny mistake in the split of battle or something goes wrong, then a lawyer in the Pentagon, based on some rules that were written in an air conditioned offices, is going to Monday morning quarterback them and say, you know What? That deserves 20 or 25 or 30 years to life. I mean, basically, if someone views the killing as politically incorrect or not absolutely textbook, then they go away. We're talking about war fighters who deserve real justice.
- [14:35]
Parker Yesko
They're heroes. They did exactly what we sent them to do. We shouldn't constrain them. They're fierce fighters and you know, we should honor them. They're being persecuted.
- [14:46]
Madeline Barron
And maybe not surprisingly, Hegseth has also made a number of statements that seem to even call into question the idea that there should be any laws of war at all or any rules of engagement. I mean, he's written about dropping nuclear bombs on Japan in World War II. And he said, talking about the Americans, quote, they won. Who cares about the question of, you know, whether or not that was a war crime. He's also said at another point, our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms 80 years ago.
- [15:18]
Parker Yesko
And he seems to be referring to the Geneva Conventions there. He asked, written 80 years ago, should we even follow them? These, of course, are the, the laws, the international laws from post World War II that were meant to ensure that like the atrocities of the world wars weren't repeated.
- [15:34]
Madeline Barron
Right. And you know, it's no small thing to make it a crime to kill a civilian. It's very different to have that be legal. And so he's calling that whole idea into question, like war is war and what happens happens. And this is part of this larger belief system. And he really believes more broadly that the military has been taken over by the left and that this decision to prosecute a handful of service members for war crimes is an example of this broader leftist takeover. His overall argument is basically that the left has made the military. It's too soft, too unfocused, too weak, not masculine, too feminine. You know, too focused on what he describes as woke politics, too focused on diversity, too focused on name your buzzword, too.
- [16:21]
Parker Yesko
Too focused on how absurd it is to accuse the military of being overly woke. It's an institution that almost no one would say that of.
- [16:30]
Madeline Barron
But then again, this is a thing that has gotten a lot of traction on the right. This idea that even the military has been infiltrated in this way that they cannot even spare the military. Our last defense.
- [16:44]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. You and I have both been reading Hegseth's book, which he published this year, the War on Warriors, and it is full of some incredible quotes that, that I think really get you into his mind about what he means by a leftist takeover of the military.
- [16:59]
Madeline Barron
Yeah, we've pulled up a couple quotes that we think are pretty representative, so let's just read a few of them. So at one point he says that he wants what he calls a quote, frontal assault on the military to recapture it from the left.
- [17:13]
Parker Yesko
He says we need to clean house of woke generals.
- [17:17]
Madeline Barron
He says, quote, so called diversity is not our strength. It is our weakness.
- [17:22]
Parker Yesko
Our troops, our fighters, not gender studies freshmen.
- [17:26]
Madeline Barron
While America may run on Duncan, our military runs on masculinity. Properly channeled, it's not toxic at all. It's necessary. Just because the rest of our culture has gone soft and effeminate and apologetic doesn't mean our military can afford to.
- [17:41]
Parker Yesko
America is still full of young, strong alpha males who love their country and want to defend their family. But those young males see a military that doesn't want to recruit them. So you get what the hard left really wants. Soft men and a weak military neutered at home and neutered abroad.
- [17:59]
Madeline Barron
Yeah, I mean, I think that that really does give you a sense of how his views on war crimes are part of this much larger philosophy. And it remains to be seen, like, what this actually would look like. I mean, what does it look like to take this worldview and put it at the top, the Defense Department, I mean, that's like my question, like, what is this? What does this mean? It's like one thing to be on Fox and Friends as the weekend co host saying this stuff or writing a book about it. It's a whole different thing to be in charge of more than a million active duty service members with this philosophy.
- [18:35]
Parker Yesko
I think at the very least, it means that he would have the Commander in Chief's ear all the time, and he sort of already did in his role as a guy on tv. But now it would be his job and it would be Trump's job to listen.
- [18:49]
Madeline Barron
Exactly, I should say. We did reach out to Hegseth for comment, but we haven't heard back. And we also reached out to the Trump transition team, but we haven't gotten a comment from them. All right, we're going to take a quick break here, but we'll be right back.
- [19:05]
David Remnick
Hi, this is David Remnick and I'm pleased to share the news that I'm Not a Robot. A live action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films@newyorker.com video.
- [19:36]
Madeline Barron
There is, of course, a lot of news that's happening very quickly around the incoming Trump administration and the whole transition. And it's unclear if Pete Hegseth is really going to end up Secretary of Defense. You know, he would need to either be confirmed by the Senate or there's been some suggestion that Trump could use a recess appointment to get him in without Senate confirmation. And the other thing we should say is that all of this is changing rapidly, it seems, with almost every passing hour. At this point, even as we were recording this episode, we got the news that Trump's pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, had just dropped out. So we're not sure if Hegseth will make it through. But regardless of whether Hegseth does or not, Trump is the next president. Trump is going to be the commander in chief. And Trump himself has, of course, been incredibly clear about how he views war crimes and Americans accused of them.
- [20:24]
Pete Hegseth
Some of these soldiers are people that have fought hard, long. You know, we teach them how to.
- [20:31]
David Remnick
Be great fighters, and then when they.
- [20:33]
Pete Hegseth
Fight, sometimes they get really treated Very unfairly.
- [20:37]
Madeline Barron
Yeah.
- [20:37]
Parker Yesko
I mean, basically everything we've talked about with Hegseth is the same worldview that Trump shares. Trump, when Hegseth was advocating on behalf of Gallagher and Goldstein and these service members being charged with war crimes, Trump was tweeting ethegseth about them. Trump tweeted in 2019, we train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill.
- [20:59]
Madeline Barron
Right. And he's also like Hegseth, he's called into question, should we even have Geneva Conventions? Are they even a good idea? Like, in 2016, Trump was at a town hall, and he said, quote, the problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight. We can't waterboard, but they can chop off heads. And then he said, I think we've got to make some changes, some adjustments.
- [21:24]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. I mean, in Trump's first term, he intervened in several war crimes cases. He pardoned Goldstein. He pardoned Clint Lorance. He pardoned another army officer who we haven't talked about here, a guy named Michael Behenna. Behenna had been convicted of taking a detainee who he was supposed to release to a remote location and shooting him dead. And then the man's body was burned with an incendiary grenade. And then Trump intervened in Gallagher's case. He got Gallagher released from the brig while he waited for trial. He reversed a demotion that Gallagher was sentenced to. He tweeted congratulations at Gallagher after he was acquitted of murder.
- [22:01]
Madeline Barron
And at every turn that he's doing these things, what he's saying is, I disagree. Trump is saying, I disagree with the military. I disagree with your decision to. To charge this person. I disagree with the service members who sat on a jury and convicted this person. I disagree with that decision. And it gets to this larger issue of Trump's. I mean, I guess we could say complicated relationship with the military. Like, on the one hand, Trump clearly loves the pageantry of the military. He loves military parades. He loves the idea of tough talking generals. He, you know, often thinks in cinematic ways. He talks about this, you know, this person straight out of central casting. He has this idea of a warrior, like a violent fighter that he clearly admires. And so all of that, he's very into praising the military for those types of things. On the other hand, he has criticized the military and gone so far in those criticisms that I think it's safe to say that they go far beyond what, at least in our lifetimes we've seen any president or major party presidential candidate do. I mean, there's all kinds of things that Trump has said that are sort of third rails, like criticizing four star generals or criticizing people that everyone, whether you like these people or not, agrees are war heroes. Like what Trump said about John McCain.
- [23:18]
Parker Yesko
Yeah. I mean, he called John McCain. He said, John McCain is not a war hero. He said, because he was captured. He said, I like people who weren't captured.
- [23:26]
Madeline Barron
And then you got what John Kelly said. Kelly, of course, was Trump's chief of staff for some time. And he has claimed that Trump has talked to him about men who were injured in combat, American service members are held as POWs, and that Trump called them, quote, losers and suckers. Trump denies this. And then you wrap in all of Trump's other talk very similar to what we were talking about with Hegseth, talking about woke generals, the need to clean house. He's floated the idea of what he's calling a warrior board. This would be something that's made up of retired military officials who could basically recommend which generals should be purged for bad leadership. This is like the way the woke generals will be eradicated from the military. He's talked about how he believes that dei, diversity, equity, and inclusion has infiltrated the military in a way that has been destructive. He basically takes all of his larger cultural grievances that he might have about any institution and says, like, yes, I'm applying these also to the military, the.
- [24:25]
Parker Yesko
Biggest institution of all.
- [24:27]
Madeline Barron
Right. And so when we think about Trump's actions on war crimes, this is how we're trying to. We're thinking about all of these things, and we're trying to think about what is he actually going to do as commander in chief. I mean, I think we've seen with this first administration that it is a fool's errand to try to predict on a policy level what is actually going to happen in a Trump administration. I think that's fair to say, but I do think that there are certain things that we're going to be watching for. I think we could say that, yeah.
- [24:57]
Parker Yesko
I mean, first off, will he pardon more convicted war criminals or people charged with war crimes?
- [25:02]
Madeline Barron
Right. Or will he push for, on a broader level, changes to the laws of war, changes to the rules of engagement, or even intervene in the military justice system to try to tweak things, procedurally or otherwise, to make it easier for people that are accused of war crimes to defend themselves?
- [25:19]
Parker Yesko
And if he does those things, you know, how will people in the military react? The military is not a monolith. We know there are folks in the military that have disagreed with many of Trump's decisions already. What will they think of what comes next?
- [25:33]
Madeline Barron
And, of course, the question of whether people in the military will resist any of this. I mean, we saw that in Trump's first term that there were people who've now written bestselling books about it, who were inside the government, at least according to them, trying to stop some of what Trump wanted to do. So it wasn't the case that Trump just got to do everything that he wanted to, much to Trump's frustration. And, of course, with Trump, there's always this question of if this is all just on some level, bluster or just talk that ignites the passions of the base. That is hard to predict. It's hard to predict, really, in any presidency, because regardless of what a president comes in saying that they want to do or believes that they want to do, a lot of times presidencies aren't dictated by those agenda items that you come in with. They're dictated by what happens in world events, national events. I mean, think about, like, Biden with the war in Gaza. That is absolutely, absolutely not. I'm assuming how he came into his administration thinking he would be spending more than a year of his time.
- [26:37]
Parker Yesko
Yeah, we just. We don't know what will happen during Trump's presidency, but we will definitely be watching.
- [26:45]
Madeline Barron
Absolutely. All right, Parker, well, thanks for talking to me about all this.
- [26:50]
Parker Yesko
Thanks for having me. We'll see what happens next.
- [26:55]
Madeline Barron
And as always, if you have story tips or ideas for what we should cover next, you can email them to us@inthedarknewyorker.com and if you're interested more in what Parker and I are talking about with this database we've been referring to of possible war crimes that we created for the New Yorker, you can find that database@newyorker.com Season 3.
- [27:20]
Parker Yesko
From PRX.