San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
State of the Navy SEALS
In ‘Alpha,’ Pulitzer-winning journalist David Philipps examines military culture through the saga of Eddie Gallagher
To hear David Philipps tell it, he didn’t want to write a book about Eddie Gallagher. He had, after all, spent over a year covering the former Navy SEAL, from the initial accusations of war crimes against him, to the media frenzy surrounding his court martial trial and, finally, his acquittal and pardon from thenpresident Donald Trump.
In fact, Philipps just wanted to get back to doing his job working as a military reporter for The New York Times. But in the end, he says there was almost no way he couldn’t write “Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALS.”
“It was so bizarre and ultimately became a story that was bigger than (Gallagher) or the victim or anyone else,” Philipps says from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. “It was a story very much about our nation. A story where I decided that I pretty much had no choice but to write it.”
In fact, “Alpha” — out this week from Crown Publishing Group — not only covers all aspects of Gallagher’s trial, but provides the reader a succinct yet thorough overview of Gallagher’s life and the culture of the Navy Sea, Air and Land Teams (SEALS).
“I think that people will assume that it’s a military or a war book, but it’s really more of a noir,” Philipps says. “There’s a murder in it, just like in a classic noir, but it turns out that the murder isn’t the real mystery. The real mystery, the real crime, is trying to discover things about this murder and maybe even solve it, and then realizing all the dark twists and corruption that are built into the system that would police these things.”
Even those not immediately familiar with the Edward “Eddie” Gallagher trial will find “Alpha” to be an excellent read from a seasoned reporter who covered the entire saga. To summarize: In 2017, then-special Operations Chief Gallagher led his Alpha SEAL platoon into Mosul, Iraq, in hopes of driving Islamic State fighters out of the city. On the surface, the mission was a success, but later, several of Gallagher’s men accused the decorated leader of war crimes, including stabbing a young prisoner while he was already in custody. He was also alleged to have fired lethal shots at unarmed civilians.
In 2019, Gallagher, who was still on active duty, faced a court-martial on 10 charges, including premeditated murder. After a highly publicized trial and a bungled prosecution, where one witness allegedly perjured himself on the stand and claimed to have killed the prisoner himself, Gallagher was acquitted on all but one charge (posing for a picture with the corpse of the ISIS fighter). Trump, who was vocal in his support of Gallagher throughout the trial, later granted him clemency.
“The interesting thing about the acquittal and Eddie getting off on almost every charge is that, all of a sudden, there were a number of silent professionals — men who would never talk to anyone and certainly not The New York Times — who now felt like they had to,” recalls Philipps, who also gained access to tens of thousands of emails and texts from SEALS involved in the Gallagher incident.
Still, readers will be disappointed if they pick up “Alpha” thinking it’s going to simply read as a blistering account of Gallagher. Rather, it paints a very tragic tale, almost Shakespearean, of a man who revered the SEALS, fought his way up through the ranks and, some would argue, had a tragic downfall. And while Gallagher or his family did not participate in the writing of the book aside from their initial, pre-trial interviews with Philipps, the author says the story is much bigger than one man.
“I realized this is a different story. What makes this interesting is not that it’s a whodunit about Eddie Gallagher. It’s a whodunit about the culture,” Philipps says. “How did the culture of the SEALS evolve to make a guy like this want to do it, and then make it so difficult to actually try and bring him to justice for it?”
Philipps certainly has plenty of experience with military culture. He grew up in Colorado Springs, a small city, albeit one that Philipps describes as “similar to San Diego in that it’s full of military or retired military.” Given the city’s vicinity to Fort Carson, Philipps says his formative years were spent in the shadow of the military, which came in handy when he eventually became a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette around the same time the Iraq War began.
“What was helpful to me is that, of course, I began to do my fair share of stories about the military, because it’s the biggest employer in the community, but what was helpful to me was that I knew the Army from the perspective that they were normal people with homes and families. I knew them as my neighbors.”
This perspective came in handy when he began penning a series of stories for the Gazette on how the military was treating the soldiers who were actually doing the fighting or those returning from combat. His focus, he says, has always been on the “uniformed Joe,” rather than “stories about strategy and who’s winning.” He ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for these stories and was offered a position at The New York Times around the same time.
Philipps’ critical eye and attention to the personal is evident throughout “Alpha,” where no one person is blamed and no one organization is spared. Even before Philipps was sent to cover the Gallagher trial at San Diego Naval Base, he says he began to speculate whether Gallagher may have become “unglued” after multiple combat deployments. Philipps had seen firsthand and reported on soldiers who returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so he knew the signs.
“I thought maybe that was the case and that would be an interesting story as well, even more interesting actually, because then it’s the whole system who’s at fault, not just Eddie Gallagher,” Philipps says. “But when I talked to his family, which is where I started my reporting, his wife (Andrea Gallagher) said no, that’s not the story. That Eddie doesn’t have PTSD or TBI (traumatic brain injury), the story is that his guys are lying. I was dumbfounded by that. Is that possible? Maybe, but it seems so bizarre.”
Philipps is also highly critical of how the media covered the trial and how it directly influenced Trump to intervene. Before the Gallagher trial, Philipps says there was always a “widely acknowledged truce” that, despite the president being the commanderin-chief, they would not insert themselves into day-to-day operations. Philipps says Trump’s outspoken support of Gallagher and eventual intervention “freaked out senior military officials,” and argues it likely wouldn’t have happened if media outlets like Fox News had covered the story more objectively.
“I thought it was really important to show in the book how the rules have changed,” Philipps says. “I think that military leaders watched what Eddie Gallagher’s family was doing and thought it was crazy — going on Fox News all the time and saying stuff that had no basis in fact. But in a way, it was genius.”
Genius as it may have been, Philipps argues that Gallagher’s acquittal, the media’s coverage and Trump’s intervening could have done lasting, perhaps permanent, damage to the organization.
And while “Alpha” has been optioned for a limited series by Working Title Production and Will Staples (“Without Remorse, “The Right Stuff ”), and Gallagher recently released his own book in June (“The Man in the Arena”), Philipps says another lasting tragedy of the whole saga is how the public now perceives the SEALS.
“It wasn’t that long ago where if you asked someone what they thought of the SEALS, I think unequivocally they would have thought it was a very positive organization,” Philipps says. “Real professionals. And now I think that’s a lot less clear. I think that Eddie Gallagher is now one of the few SEALS people can name, and even if they have strong opinions either way, both of them are pretty problematic for the organization.”