The toxic culture that stems from undisciplined but influential leader of a military special forces unit can result in ongoing offenses and violence among the troops serving with and under him, an exclusive report from the Associated Press details.
Dubbed by some the “Gallagher Effect”–after Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher who was court-martialed for posing with a corpse of enemy combatant, but who had been accused by members of his unit of murdering a prisoner and shooting at unarmed civilians–the impact of such reckless leadership affects the way soldiers in a unit relate to civilians, colleagues and members of their own unit.
In his unit, a group within SEAL Team Seven, Gallagher fostered a hierarchy that put the group above the Team, and the Team above the Navy, making the members feel their loyalty was to the unit, not to the nation.
The AP report details an alleged rape of a soldier at a remote air base in Iraq at a Fourth of July celebration in 2019, just days after Gallagher had been acquitted by a court martial of the most serious charges.
The victim, a enlisted member of the military, had been attacked by a SEAL Team Seven member, had been bruised and bitten by her attacker, but she ultimately did not report the attack for fear of retribution even though she sought treatment from the unit’s corpsman. While the Navy investigated the incident, the victim refused to participate.
The rape occurred during a party at which alcohol was being served–a major violation for deployed troops, but particularly egregious in a forward combat area. The party, which followed a plethora of sexual harassment and abuse of female members of the unit, were condoned by unit leaders.
Navy SEAL Capt. Todd Perry, the commander of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Iraq in 2019, blamed the “Gallagher Effect.”
“It only took one bad platoon chief to influence the entire platoon,” Perry said in an interview with an Army investigator in to July 4th incident, “just as Gallagher was able to do with the dishonorable members of his platoon.”
While one female intelligence analyst sent detailed notes to a US Congressman about the incident, it still took days to secure the crime scene and even longer to start an official investigation–during which time the victim was transferred off site. She continued to receive text messages from the platoon commander, Special Warfare Operator Chief Nicholas Olson, who pressured and threatened her to drop the case. (Olson himself was under investigation for another alleged attack.)
The “old boy network” hit a wall, when the report reached the desk of the Navy’s top SEAL, Rear Adm. Collin Green, who fired the commander of SEAL Team 7 and reassigned others. He also stripped Olsen of his Trident pin, expelling him from the SEALS.
Those disciplined say Green took his actions in retribution for Gallagher’s acquitted–and then pardon by President Trump–on the charges he faced. However, Green, however, is taking a “back to basics” approach to leadership, starting from the ground up to build back unit discipline and principles.