Officials did not release any details. But a senior Navy official with knowledge of the matter said the Navy is investigating reports that the unit, Foxtrot Platoon of SEAL Team 7, held a Fourth of July party where some members consumed alcohol against regulations, and that a senior enlisted member of the platoon had raped a female service member attached to the platoon.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about a continuing investigation.
Jeremiah Sullivan, a civilian attorney representing one of the SEALs in the platoon, confirmed that there was an investigation into reports of sexual assault and unauthorized drinking.
When commanders began investigating the allegations, the entire platoon invoked their right to remain silent, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. At that point, the official said, commanders decided to send the whole platoon home, including the lieutenant in command.
The commander of U.S. special operations troops in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Eric Hill of the Air Force, ordered the extremely rare removal of the platoon — the only group of SEALs in Iraq — “due to a perceived deterioration of good order and discipline within the team during nonoperational periods,” according to a statement from Special Operations Command.
“There were allegations of wrongdoing, and the commander initiated an investigation, which is still ongoing,” said Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command. “After the investigation began, the commander lost confidence in the platoon’s ability to accomplish the mission and ordered the platoon’s redeployment.”
The Navy ordered the SEALs to take drug tests, according to a Navy SEAL officer who has been briefed on the matter. The results of those tests are not yet known, the officer said.
Foxtrot Platoon — including 19 SEALs and three support troops — was in Kuwait on Thursday, en route to Seal Team 7’s base at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. The unit was not immediately replaced in Iraq, increasing the burdens on other U.S. troops there, but the Navy said in a statement that “the loss of confidence in this case outweighed potential operational risk” from their absence.
Enlisted Navy SEALs at Coronado said that while individuals are occasionally removed from missions for misconduct, they could not recall another instance of an entire SEAL platoon being sent home. Last year, a Green Beret detachment from the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group was withdrawn from Afghanistan after members of the unit were implicated in the abuse of an Afghan prisoner.
The withdrawal of Foxtrot Platoon is the latest in a series of black eyes for the SEAL teams, which have been hit repeatedly over the last year by reports of drug use, misconduct and violence.
Two SEALs and two Marines were charged in the death of a Green Beret who was strangled in 2017 during a hazing incident while the commandos were on a secret deployment in Mali in West Africa. One of the SEALs pleaded guilty and was sentenced in May.
Earlier this week, Navy Times reported that cocaine use was widespread among members of SEAL Team 10, based in Virginia, and that SEALs in the team considered the Navy’s drug testing efforts “a joke.”
Accounts of broad drug use among senior enlisted SEALs emerged in the court-martial of Special Operator 1st Class Edward Gallagher. He was acquitted earlier this month of charges that he had shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a wounded captive to death while leading a platoon in Iraq in 2017, but he was convicted of posing for photographs with the teenage captive’s corpse.
During the trial, SEALs from his platoon testified that they had constructed a rooftop bar at their safe house in Iraq, and that officers in charge of enforcing regulations drank there with enlisted men, and even took turns acting as disc jockeys.
Bradley Strawser, who teaches ethics in war at the Naval Postgraduate School, said the reports of rogue behavior in the SEALs are partly a product of nearly 20 years of constant special-operations warfare.
“This kind of slide in the ethical culture, standards, ethos and expectations we have been seeing across the service now for several years is yet another cost of this kind of endless war-fighting,” he said. “Our military desperately needs time to circle the wagons, go deep in working out some of the systemic problems, and effectively right the ship. But it’s very hard to do that when we are literally at never-ending war.”
Military regulations forbid the consumption of alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan, two predominantly Muslim countries. But its presence among U.S. troops serving there is hardly rare, and in many units, including the SEAL teams, leaders sometimes turn a blind eye to moderate use.
But this year, in response to repeated reports of misconduct, the commander of Navy Special Warfare, Rear Adm. Collin Green, took steps to clean up SEAL culture with a focus on accountability, character, and what he called “ethical compliance.”
When Green heard of the allegations about Foxtrot Platoon, he pushed for the unit to be withdrawn from Iraq, according to two Navy officials with knowledge of the event.
A spokeswoman for the SEALs, Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, said that in general top commanders are increasingly focused on enforcing discipline.
“Naval Special Warfare insists on a culture where ethical adherence is equally important to tactical proficiency,” she said in a statement. “Good order and discipline is critical to the mission. We’re actively reinforcing, with the entire force, basic leadership, readiness, responsibility and ethical principles that must form the foundation of special operations.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.