Trump makes trip for return of SEAL’s remains
Soldier was killed in botched compound raid in Yemen
DOVER, Del. — President Donald Trump made an unannounced trip Wednesday to witness the return of the remains of a Navy SEAL killed in a botched raid in Yemen, the first known casualty of an operation Trump ordered, as he confronted the most fraught duty of the office while partaking in one of its most solemn rituals.
At Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Trump joined the family of Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens, 36, who died during a raid on a compound used by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist group’s Yemenbased offshoot.
The operation began as a mission to gather computers and electronic devices believed to contain information about the organization, and possibly about plots in the works. But it devolved unexpectedly into a firefight that also killed more than a dozen women and children.
Among those reportedly killed was the 8-year old daughter of Anwar alAwlaki, the American-born al-Qaida leader who was based in Yemen and killed in a 2011 drone strike. AlAwlaki has been cited as the inspiration for several major attacks in the West, including the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings.
The ritual in Dover, called a dignified transfer, was kept private at the request of Owens’ family. Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., were on the grounds for more than two hours.
The remains of service members killed in action are brought to the Delaware base in flag-draped cases, then carried by a six-person team to a vehicle to be taken to a mortuary on the base. According to the Air Force, the dignified transfer is conducted for every service member who dies in a theater of operation.
Media coverage of the transfers were banned in 1991 during the Gulf War, in response to an episode two years earlier in which a television network showed split-screen images of a jovial President George H. W. Bush and the coffins of U.S. personnel killed in Panama.
The policy was lifted by the Pentagon during the Obama administration after a review, and families were given the option to allow media coverage. Since then, Dover has facilitated 1,978 dignified transfers; families attended 83 percent of them. More than half of families — 55 percent — allowed coverage, according to Christin Michaud, chief of public affairs for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations.
President Barack Obama traveled to Dover twice to witness such transfers, first in October 2009. He returned in 2011 to witness the remains of 30 service members killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan being brought back to the U.S.
In a speech in December, Obama said the visits to Dover made real the potential costs of decisions he made to send troops into conflict.
The Pentagon typically relies on drone strikes against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, but U.S. commanders believed they had identified militant headquarters in the village of Yaklaa in Yemen’s Bayda province and wanted to send in troops to gather valuable information about the group’s operations.
U.S. intelligence agencies consider the group one of al-Qaida’s most dangerous offshoots because of its repeated attempts to attack Western targets.