Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a five-part series.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — The mission brief was meticulously detailed. Each objective, as well as every hospital and police precinct along the route, was plotted by satellite imagery. Body armor was optional. The mission commander would directly confront any threat. And should he become incapacitated, the instructions for escalating force were clear: shout, shove, shoot.

This was not Mosul, or Wanat. This was Kansas City’s urban core, where Fred Galvin owns, operates and maintains 13 automated cash machines. It is rife with gang-related violence, he explained. From 2000 until 2014, the annual murder rate here made it one of the nation’s 10 deadliest cities. Galvin spent more than half his life in the Marine Corps, much of that time leading small stealthy units in violent flashpoints abroad. A 45-year-old retired major, he now leverages his specialized military training as a lone-wolf entrepreneur filling a void in a poverty-stricken pocket of America’s heartland.

Galvin’s Arrowhead Capital is a fast-growing and surprisingly lucrative line of work, but if things hadn’t taken a devastating turn, had he not been betrayed by the institution he loved, he’d likely still be in the Marine Corps. But when he hung up his uniform in 2014, Galvin found it impossible to get a job, he said. Google his name. The search results underscore why.

Galvin was commander of Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot in March 2007, when he became a central figure in one of the most publicized — and ultimately flawed — war-crimes cases since the Vietnam War. More than a year later, after a three-week military tribunal called a court of inquiry, Galvin and six of his Marines were cleared of all wrongdoing related to allegations they indiscriminately killed innocent Afghans when a suicide car bomber targeted their convoy. But long before they appeared in court, Fox Company’s Marines were publicly condemned by several senior military officers, sold out by those responsible for upholding the unassailable American ideal that anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty.

Widespread media coverage depicted them as out-of-control cowboys. The public scrutiny was embarrassing. The prospect of going to prison was terrifying. And their 10-month legal battle was relentlessly stressful. One enlisted Marine, a Mexican national, was convinced his mother would be deported. Others recalled their superiors telling them “it doesn’t look good for you boys.”

Collectively, the fallout left them physically sick, psychologically broken and deeply embittered toward the leaders they blame for causing and perpetuating their anguish and shame, including men who’ve earned generals’ stars. For some like Galvin, there have been lasting professional setbacks, too.

But the betrayal from within, that shattered their trust in the institution. It defied the core values instilled in these men from the moment they joined the Corps: honor, courage, commitment. “This still haunts us,” one of those Marines explained, “because no one has publicly acknowledged we did the right thing that day. We did our jobs — and we were crucified for it.”

Galvin has been on a mission to restore honor for Fox Company, one that consumes him even when some suggest he should move on with a new life. But he’s not wired that way. He believes he owes it to his men to secure the full and public vindication they’ve never had.

Officially, the Marine Corps concluded in May 2008 that Fox Company’s Marines “acted appropriately” on the battlefield, that their use of force was justified as they encountered and escaped a complex ambush in the minutes following the suicide strike. No criminal charges were filed in connection those events. Afterwards, the case quietly disappeared from the spotlight.

To Galvin and others associated with this affair, “the statement we ‘acted appropriately’ is weak and leaves far too much to the imagination,” he said. “It’s easily interpreted as ‘we got away with murder.’ … Even today, I have friends call me regularly saying this guy or that guy smeared our names, behind our backs.”

“American service members must never be treated this way, especially not by our own government’s attorneys who, when the facts clearly proved we were innocent, argued … to send us to jail.” Galvin said. “What happened to us … can’t be seen as a success. The Marine Corps slogan of ‘Mission first and Marines always’ is indicative of how we served. And we respectfully request the record be set straight by a clear statement from the Corps … [saying] ‘these Marines did not kill any Afghan civilians.’ This will allow [us] to be reconciled inside the Corps and for the healing process to begin.”

Marine Corps leadership has remained quiet on the matter.

Fox Company was the first-ever operational unit deployed into combat from MARSOC, the Marine Corps’ component within U.S. Special Operations Command. To this day there are aspects of this fateful experience, including key courtroom testimony, that remain classified.

The court of inquiry was overseen by a panel of three senior Marine Corps officers, whose findings are outlined in a newly declassified report. It lays bare precisely how, in many ways, Fox Company’s Marines were doomed from Day One, the victims of poor guidance and woefully insufficient support from their higher headquarters; and how in Afghanistan a tenuous situation became truly turbulent, culminating with their being ejected from the war zone, subjected to investigation, trial by public opinion and eventual adjudication.

Additional insights emerged through interviews with Fox Company Marines and others close to their case, many of whom agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity as some still hold sensitive jobs within the Defense Department and elsewhere in the federal government. Others cited lingering fears of violent retaliation by enemies affiliated with those they encountered on the battlefield eight years ago.

As the months and years ticked by following their formal exoneration, the MARSOC 7, as they became known, found an unlikely advocate in Steve Morgan, one of those three officers who oversaw the court proceedings. A lieutenant colonel at the time, Morgan retired from the military in July 2008. He remains troubled by the flawed investigation, which was carried out by an Air Force colonel and endorsed by an Army general; by the shoddy staff work overseen by two Army officers in theater, which he believes precipitated Fox Company’s ouster; by the overzealous attempt to put Galvin and his men in prison; and finally by what he considers the unconscionable disloyalty to those sent into harm’s way.

Morgan said he began his service on the court of inquiry ready to nail fellow Marines if they had committed war crimes. But he quickly was convinced that Fox Company had done nothing wrong and was being unfairly targeted. Like Galvin, he continues to pursue justice for Fox Company though his days in the Marine Corps are over.

In mid-2009, he wrote to the Defense Department Inspector General. Months prior, the IG’s office completed an investigation clearing Army Maj. Gen. Frank Kearney, who bounced Fox Company from Afghanistan, of misconduct claims made by another of the Marines’ allies, Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina. The court of inquiry concluded that Kearney potentially influenced the Air Force colonel who recommended the Marines be charged with negligent homicide.

Why, Morgan asked the IG, were the court’s findings not considered in its investigation? The court’s report, he said to the IG, “is in direct contradiction with several areas of your report.” It required involvement from his own congressman, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, before the IG addressed Morgan’s questions, many of which the IG dismissed as irrelevant to its investigation into the general’s conduct.

Kearney, who retired as a three-star general, told Military Times that even though the inspector general concluded he acted reasonably and within his authority, the unwelcome scrutiny “ruined my career.” He did not wish to interviewed for this report.

The court’s officers deemed it appropriate that Galvin was relieved of command and given an adverse performance appraisal. But “I have come to believe that conclusion was a mistake,” Morgan told the records review board in his letter.

“Should he have been relieved of command? Yeah, because that’s the code. It’s an accountability issue,” he said during an interview with Military Times. “But once all the mud cleared from the stream and you had drinking water again, [his superiors] should’ve gone back and added an addendum to Fred’s fitness report. They didn’t make the effort to look out for Fred and his Marines and be as objective as they could.”

Morgan can become emotional while discussing Fox Company’s experience. He and Galvin are alike in this regard and a few others. Both saw fierce combat during their careers, notably for Morgan during a 2004 tour in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, where the unit he commanded was involved in an ambush that claimed the life of one of his troops and left 14 others wounded.

At the time he was appointed to the court of inquiry, Morgan was working at Marine Corps Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, as the deputy chief of staff for intelligence. In a handwritten questionnaire used by senior leaders to evaluate his candidacy, he noted that between two combat tours, the other occurring in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he encountered enemy fire 25 times and received two Bronze Stars for his combat valor, one during each campaign, plus a third for meritorious service in Afghanistan. Galvin received a Bronze Star for his battlefield valor in Iraq in 2005.

At each man’s center exists a moral imperative to lead by example, a product of genetics and their respective upbringings as much as their military education and training. As officers, Morgan said, they are obligated to do right by those they lead and always to differentiate right from wrong. But in this case, Morgan said, too many officers let politics and personal ambitions cloud their responsibility to find the truth.

“Why am I still invested in this?” he said. “It is my duty. … Part of the soul of being a Marine is you trust all your officers. And what has happened here is a lot of officers, figuratively speaking, kicked to the ground and stomped on a bunch of enlisted men’s heads. Fred’s kids are hurting.

“The wounds go deep. … It’s an injury to the soul.”

Marine Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, seen here in 1999, endured endured circumstances similar to those experienced by Fox Company’s Marines after he and three other Marine officers faced criminal charges in the tragic death of 20 skiers in the Italian Alps.

Photo Credit: RANDY DAVEY/REUTERS

Like Galvin and his Marines, Schweitzer and his colleagues experienced a rush to judgment. In the case of Fox Company, a military investigator favored the accounts of Afghan witnesses over those provided by the Marines. In Schweitzer’s case, the military investigation into their incident relied heavily on eyewitness statements gathered by Italian police, not experts in understanding what causes aviation mishaps. Fox Company’s Marines were called “cowboys.” The men of EASY01 were accused of “hotdogging” and having a “taste for risk.”

“When incidents like ours happen,” said Schweitzer, who’s now 47, “they take on a life of their own regardless of the facts. We had to wait until the trial to prove most of those witness statements were wrong and inaccurate.”

He was cleared of the most serious charges, including negligent homicide, but pleaded guilty to destroying a cockpit video that showed him smiling several minutes before the accident. Schweitzer avoided jail time but was dismissed from the servicefollowing his trial in 1999.

In 2007 he was diagnosed with chronic post traumatic stress, marked by panic attacks, depression, a “lost sense of self” and professional setbacks, he wrote last year for the website Second Line Defense. Since then he has delivered regular lectures at the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1989, addressing his experience with thousands of future Navy and Marine Corps officers studying the principles of ethical leadership. Moral injury, he says, is “the undefined moment when what was is no longer.”

“You struggle with the question: Am I a Marine? They don’t want me to be a Marine. Am I killer? Who am I?” Schweitzer said. “That’s a question Fred and his men will be asking for another 20 years maybe — until they come to terms with and understand where they are now.”

Through his experience, Schweitzer believes “survivors heal survivors.” He and Galvin have connected, Schweitzer said. “I wanted him to know ‘Hey, someone’s here who understands.’ The important thing is to put your story in context and re-find yourself. Get beyond the tactical, raw details. You can’t go backyards. Go forward. Tell the story, it’ll set you free. And use the power of survival to understand your strengths.”

Galvin went home to eastern Kansas. His military career was over. For the full year leading up to his retirement, he applied for job after job after job, domestically and abroad, tailoring his application each time. “The fact of the matter: Nobody was interested in hiring me, whatsoever,” he said.

For the other Fox Company members who’ve gotten out — most barely in their 30s — it’s been a mixed bag. Some caught on with defense contractors or the so-called “three-letter” government agencies that still have a stake in the war on terrorism. Others took a severe hit financially while fighting to stay out of prison. Three of the four men who were married are now divorced, including Galvin. “There was complete uncertainty,” he said. “It looked like a jail sentence was pending — and that doesn’t make anyone’s marriage any easier. It was like putting people in a pressure cooker. Things were bound to explode.”

Some have battled substance abuse and lasting trauma stemming from the dark memories of what they experienced during war. “I did multiple tours,” said one of Fox Company’s Marines, “and I deal with a bit from each one.” During his first combat deployment after being reassigned from Fox Company, “I thought ‘This is the one that’s going to take me down,'” he said, recalling how he felt anxious yet gun-shy, scared to fire his weapon for fear that doing so would lead to trouble all over again.

One man said that to this day he is afraid even to walk into Wal-Mart. “I’m worried,” he said, “that one of these extremists will find me and harm my family.”

For those who’ve stayed in the Marine Corps and within MARSOC specifically, there’s still a stigma. Fox Company’s legacy is largely regarded as a blotch on what’s become a very successful addition to the military’s special forces portfolio. Some of the unit’s Marines who’ve moved up the ranks use the experience for educational purposes, forever mindful that, right or wrong, there is much to be learned from what happened.

Their critics agree with that much. The lesson of Fox Company, as they see it: Don’t be like these guys. Multiple Marines interviewed for this series pointed out what they regard as a pattern of unprofessionalism. Despite that the court of inquiry recommended no further punitive action be taken against Galvin, the Marine Corps referred him to a board of inquiry, an administrative hearing much like a trial that can result in an officer’s involuntary separation from the service. The proceeding never happened, though. His attorneys successfully lobbied to make it go away, saying the court of inquiry proved there were no facts supporting any misconduct on Galvin’s part.

Galvin checked out of MARSOC and returned to the reconnaissance community where he’d served for several years prior. In 2011, while advising a reconnaissance battalion commander in Afghanistan, he landed in trouble again. After a heated dispute with his commanding officer over how to safely provide fire support to Marines pinned down in an ambush, Galvin received another poor performance evaluation. “I sent letters to all eighty eight members of the House and Senate armed services committees along with a sworn statement and a polygraph,” Galvin said. “On Christmas Day, a month after I contacted Congress, I got a gift-wrapped package from a three-star general saying I have to go to another board of inquiry.”

This time there was a hearing to separate him from the service. The prosecuting attorneys brought up everything from Galvin’s time with Fox Company, which by that point was five years in the past. He prevailed once more and in fact was assigned command of one of the Marine Corps’ FAST companies, small anti-terror security units tasked with protecting Navy nuclear assets and reinforcing threatened American embassies and other government facilities abroad. In one of his last big moments as a commanding officer, a platoon of his Marines deployed into Libya after the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi that that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Back in Kansas City, it’s a bitter subzero day in early January. Galvin circulates throughout the inner city, stopping at several of his outdoor ATMs, anchored by a system he designed that makes them extremely difficult to steal.

Galvin and his security team roll up well armed and at all hours to help “mitigate risk.” They restock the machines with $20 bills, 10s, 5s and 1s. Galvin inspects his security equipment and polishes their ATMs’ exteriors. His customers want to feel safe when they drive up or walk up to make withdrawals, he explains.

The Kansas City police, he says, is a “strong ally.” He’s worked closely with them over the past year to better understand crime trends. Just weeks prior, in a neighborhood near two of Galvin’s cash machines, a gunman standing on the sidewalk opened fire on a public bus as it drove by, pumping multiple rounds into the cabin and wounding a teenage girl inside. The incident was captured by the bus’ surveillance cameras.

Galvin had considered putting a machine at this location upon launching Arrowhead Capital. ” It is a good area,” he says, “because although there is one bank, they do not have an ATM at all because of the risk. In the business community they term that as a barrier which prohibits a lot of investors from entering the market.”

Along the route, Galvin talks at length about his military training and the applicable skills in his new line of work. He uses terms like “counter-reconnaissance” when surveying for anomalies that could indicate a threat is imminent, and “key terrain analysis” to describe how he identifies desirable locations for new ATMs.

One such lot has special meaning. It’s the site of a future Conoco gas station and convenience store. The property was once owned by Galvin’s grandfather, his Opa, a German immigrant who came to America with very little and built a life for his family, first as a butcher and later as the owner of a bar and grill here in what’s become Kansas City’s urban core. Relating the story proves difficult. There’s pain associated with it.

The battle-hardened Marine swipes away his tears and apologizes. There’s a long drawn breath of the winter air, and then it’s time to move out.

“In my heart,” Galvin said later, “I want to move on. If I can just get my life back.”

He believes central to that, for him and his men, is a formal statement of vindication from the Marine Corps for Fox Company’s actions in Afghanistan on March 4, 2007. That’s been his quest ever since. Next year, MARSOC celebrates its 10th anniversary. How the story of its first unit sent to combat will be told remains to be seen.

Andrew deGrandpre is Military Times’ digital news director.
Email:

adegrandpre@militarytimes.com
Twitter: @adegrandpre

Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series.

The attack still replays in high definition: The van approaches, then makes a hard, tire-shrieking turn into the convoy. It’s loaded with enough fuel and firepower to kill everyone in at least one of the Marines’ six humvees. Those closest figure they are goners.

The turret gunner, Sgt. Josh Henderson, was partially exposed when a roar of fire and smoke swallowed him and the four others inside. In that instant some thought about their families, and how the military would inform them their kids had died on a highway in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Armed insurgents watched from both sides of the road, poised to finish the job — or die trying.

The Marines had never seen such a massive fireball. “Oh my God,” the patrol commander thought. “All of my men are dead.” From his vantage point directly behind the targeted humvee, the second in their procession, this was a perfectly reasonable assumption. If any Americans had died that day, March 4, 2007, it’s likely no one would have questioned what happened next.

But when the smoke started to settle and Henderson re-emerged behind his M240G medium machine gun, the sound of incoming small-arms fire set off a series of events that would metastasize into a war crimes investigation and the unprecedented decision by an American general to evict the Marines’ entire 120-man unit from Afghanistan. They’d been on the ground for barely one month.

As detailed in this series’ first two installments, the attack and subsequent ambush involved 30 members of what was then the Marine Corps’ brand-new commando force, MARSOC, which conducts high-speed, low-key missions at the direction of U.S. Special Operations Command. They were assigned to Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot, the first MARSOC unit ever deployed into combat. And over the next year their lives would become a living hell as military investigators zeroed in on seven of these men, and prosecutors built a case to put them in prison for the alleged deaths of nearly two dozen innocent Afghans.

Eventually they were cleared of wrongdoing during the ambush. No one went to prison. The Marine Corps convened a rare court of inquiry to fully examine why Fox Company’s deployment was brought to such a quick and inglorious end. That court would determine that while the unit’s leaders exhibited poor judgment in the days after the attack, the Marines responded correctly to the ambush and ultimately became victims of their higher headquarters’ indifference, incompetence and impatience.

The court’s proceedings, overseen by a panel of three senior Marine Corps officers, spanned three weeks in January 2008. Its findings are outlined in a newly declassified 98-page report provided to Military Times — along with nearly 2,000 pages of supplemental materials — by Fox Company’s commander on that deployment, Maj. Fred Galvin, who retired from the service in 2014. Additional insights were gleaned through interviews with Fox Company Marines and others familiar with their case, many of whom agreed to share their stories on the condition of anonymity as some still hold sensitive jobs within the Defense Department and elsewhere in the federal government. Others cited lingering fears of violent retaliation by enemies affiliated with those they encountered on the battlefield eight years ago.

Fox Company had a call sign, “Violent,” derived from the Marine Corps’ doctrine on warfighting. “The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent and irreconcilable wills,” the manual states. It references the term more than two dozen times, Galvin noted. To Galvin, that encapsulated what Fox Company would need to understand and embrace about its mission in Afghanistan. “War is very active,” he said. “It’s not clean or precise. The enemy can hurt you. It needed to be understood by our men that this is what we were going to do. It’s not a lovely thing when you’re fighting another human being who’s trying to kill you.”

Galvin’s superiors disapproved of the name and told him to change it. “Break stuff and kill things, sure, that’s the Marine Corps’ mantra. But special forces is different,” said a senior MARSOC officer critical of Galvin’s selection to the lead the command’s first combat unit. Special operations forces, he said, are expected to be quiet professionals. “Fred gets his shot and comes up with ‘Task Force Violent’? What message does that send to our partners and counterparts in whose area we have to operate?”

Maj. Gen. Christopher Haas was a colonel in 2007 when he led the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. Friction between his staff and Fox Company precipitated the Marines’ eventual ouster from the war zone.

For Fox Company, those areas were overseen by Army Col. Christopher Haas, commander of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force for Afghanistan, and Army Col. John Nicholson, commander of Task Force Spartan. Haas directed all special forces activity in theater. Nicholson owned the “battle space” surrounding Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, where Task Force Violent would operate. Both men are generals now.

Haas and his staff with the CJSOTF (pronounced “see-juh-so-tiff”) had operational control of Fox Company, meaning they approved Galvin’s missions. But the Marines couldn’t go anywhere without coordination with Nicholson’s team, which had “veto power” over any proposed activity in its area of responsibility. This arrangement proved problematic for everyone, and a major reason for the confusion and frustration that preempted Fox Company’s eviction from Afghanistan, the court of inquiry determined. It was further hampered by Fox Company’s liaison to the CJSOTF, Marine Maj. Scott Ukeiley, whose alleged failures and communication deficiencies contributed significantly to Fox Company’s rotten relationship with Haas and Nicholson, the court’s report shows.

Fox Company arrived in early February 2007, transiting through Bagram Airfield where the CJSOTF was headquartered. There was immediate friction between the two staffs, the court’s report notes. Haas and his team were nearing the end of their deployment and intently focused on providing a smooth transition for their replacements. Compounding this, senior leaders within Special Operations Command made a late decision to employ Fox Company in Afghanistan — so late, in fact, that when the destination was finally announced, the unit and its equipment were already loaded on the Navy ships bringing them overseas. As a result, the court concluded, Haas and his staff “did not fully understand its capabilities and limitations and therefore did not understand how to properly employ” Fox Company.

Haas, now a two-star general serving as director of force management and development at SOCOM headquarters in Florida, agreed to address questions via email and through a spokesman. The CJSOTF had no information about Fox Company’s force structure or core capabilities before the Marines arrived, he said. The Marines’ mission was “to fill a critical gap in southern Nangarhar Province for Task Force Spartan by replacing the French special operations task force” that had moved out several weeks prior.

Haas said he and his staff gave Galvin and his leadership team a detailed briefing explaining the missions they’d be assigned while in Afghanistan. In order of priority they were: reconnaissance, counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense (i.e. training Afghan security forces), and direct-action special-reconnaissance operations — that is, the pursuit of high-value enemy operatives. Through his spokesman, Haas said they were together at Bagram about one week. Galvin says the CJSOTF staff made clear that his Marines were to conduct “aggressive combat operations.”

THE BATTLE SPACE: Fox Company arrived in Bagram, Afghanistan, in February 2007 and soon shipped out to Jalalabad Airfield in Nangarhar province.

Fox Company departed Bagram for Jalalabad Airfield where they would establish Camp Raider, a namesake intended to honor the first-ever Marine commandos who are revered for their fearlessness during some of World War II’s most grisly engagements in the Pacific. When they arrived, however, the place was a dump. Electricity was spotty at best, the court’s report says. There were no sleeping quarters. The Marines would have to identify, vet, train and contract a group of local Afghans to serve as security guards. They even had to hunt down someone to collect their trash. And when one of the unit’s medics inspected the camp’s water supply, he found their well was contaminated with fecal matter — a parting gift from the French, Galvin surmised.

By far, Fox Company’s most dire and problematic shortcoming was its lack of internal logistical support. Despite Galvin’s detailed and persistent requests stretching back nearly a year, MARSOC headquarters failed to provide the necessary personnel, rendering the unit completely dependent on the CJSOTF for food, ammunition, replacement parts for their humvees and weapons — absolutely everything. The CJSOTF was “accommodating,” the court’s report says, but ultimately unprepared to provide the wholesale sustainment the Marines required.

Through his spokesman, Haas said that his staff inspected the facilities at Camp Raider and determined what repairs were required. “They also drew Fox Company’s up-armored vehicles and crew-served weapons, and prepositioned them at the Jalalabad Airfield,” he said. ”… CJSOTF-A provided cooks who opened and operated Fox Company’s mess hall. They also provided a forklift driver and a vehicle mechanic.”

Galvin says Fox Company all but begged Haas’ staff for food and other vital supplies — and that their requests were ignored. Haas, through his spokesman, disputed that claim. Fox Company, he said, was treated “like every other CJSOTF subordinate unit.”

“I respectfully disagree,” said Derik Erickson, the Army logistics officer who was detailed to Afghanistan from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when officials realized Fox Company arrived in the war zone with no internal support. “I can’t speak for every single unit the CJSOTF supported. Maybe others were treated like shit, too, but I doubt it because most of them were Army [special forces] units. Fox Company was a redheaded stepchild.”

Yes, there was bottled water and MREs, short for “meals ready to eat,” the flavorless pre-packaged and preservative-laden rations troops consume when they’re far removed from a robust supply chain. But after more than five years of war in Afghanistan, Jalalabad Airfield, with its proximity to the Tora Bora mountains, was a well-established, well-supplied launch pad for the American government’s multidimensional campaign to unearth intelligence about bin Laden’s whereabouts. It was, Erickson said, a “mature theater.” The Navy SEALs who were based there didn’t have to eat that crap. Why did the Marines?

The nucleus of Nicholson’s Task Force Spartan, also headquartered at Jalalabad Airfield, comprised the 3rd Brigade of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. Compared to the CJSOTF’s support apparatus in Bagram, these guys had robust infrastructure. Because support from Bagram was not readily forthcoming, the crafty logistician struck deals with the 10th Mountain Division however and whenever he could. But when the CJSOTF’s support battalion learned he was bypassing protocol, “you’d have thought I committed a mortal sin,” Erickson said. “I got angry phone calls asking ‘what the ‘F’ are you doing?’” Then they sent some food supplies to the Marines — a bulk shipment of mostly flour and oil. “It’s like they cleaned out a back room and threw it in a truck so they’d shut up,” Erickson added. “I looked at it and said: ‘What am I supposed to do with this? We don’t have any cooks for God’s sake.‘”

Erickson remembers seeing the Marines’ convoy arrive back at the base after the ambush March 4. Henderson, the turret gunner whose life was nearly extinguished by the suicide bomb blast, was hit in the arm by flying debris. The wound was minor, but his uniform was a torn, bloody mess. Erickson contacted the CJSOTF’s supply staff to requisition a new one. Sorry, they said. Talk to MARSOC. So he phoned MARSOC headquarters at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Staff there told him that he’d need to speak with the CJSOTF.

Eventually, Erickson got through to a sympathetic gunnery sergeant who agreed to take Erickson’s credit card number, drive over to the base exchange store, purchase Henderson’s replacement uniform and ship it to Jalalabad.

The effort proved moot: Fox Company was kicked out of Afghanistan before the replacement uniform arrived. No one wanted to help these guys, Erickson said. “Here’s me and this gunny, doing it the wrong way to get this kid his uniform because we couldn’t do it the right way,” he said, laughing slightly at the incredulity of it all. “The Army let these guys down, and so did the Marine Corps.”

A BLESSING AND A CURSE

The convoy pushed out around 6 a.m. for an approved three-phase mission expected to last several hours. Each humvee held five men and at least one crew-served weapon. The Marines were members of Fox Company’s direct action special reconnaissance platoon, and most were experienced combat veterans culled from the Marine Corps’ elite 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company, which was deactivated as MARSOC was brought online.

It was slightly overcast. The late-winter air was damp and crisp. Visibility was fine. Driving east along Highway 1, they passed through a handful of small villages, including Bati Kot, where the final phase of their mission called for a meeting with tribal elders intended to help the Marines draw a bead on enemy activity in the area. Men, women and children were out, mixing with vendors. Routine, the Marines would recall, uneventful.

They continued east toward the Pakistan border and Forward Operating Base Torkham, an important U.S. outpost at the foot of the Tora Bora mountains. Much of the American military’s food, fuel and other supplies were trucked into Afghanistan via the border crossing. Recognizing its strategic importance, the Taliban launched regular attacks there. The region also served as a way station for suicide bombers and other extremists. The mountains harbored all manner of troublemakers and enemy intelligence.

Plans called for a brief meeting with the Army’s 66th Military Police Company. Galvin sought permission to stage a quick reaction force at FOB Torkham that could be called upon should a fight break out during future reconnaissance patrols up in the mountains. From there, they’d scope out prospective insertion points along the base of the mountains before heading back to Bati Kot.

Upon rolling into the village, the Marines observed a much different scene. Military-age men lined both sides of the road. They appeared “unfriendly and quiet,” Galvin recalled. Riding in the last of the six humvees, he said aloud that he believed an attack was imminent. Those words were hardly out of his mouth when the bomber struck.

The van’s driver, strapped with explosives that would ignite the additional fuel he was carrying, wedged his vehicle between the first two humvees and set off the massive fireball, bringing the entire convoy to a halt. From about 50 yards away, just south of the highway, insurgents opened fire from inside a blue Toyota Prado that was quickly approaching, Marines told investigators later. They fired back using “controlled bursts.” More small-arms fire came in from the north side of the road, and then again from the south. The Marines fired back again and again. It was a complex ambush.

Galvin and the platoon commander, Capt. Vince Noble, alerted Fox Company’s operations center at Jalalabad and higher headquarters at Bagram that they’d encountered a “SVBIED,” a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. At Bagram, a watch officer in the CJSOTF’s operations center announced the attack and asked who was involved, according to the court’s report. Ukeiley, as Fox Company’s liaison to the CJSOTF, should have engaged. Instead, when the announcement was made, he made no attempt to confirm whether Fox Company was the unit under attack, the court’s report says. “Maj. Ukeiley went to the break room,” it states.

In Jalalabad, a Marine in Fox Company’s operations center received messages from Galvin and the patrol commander. “VBIED, SAF,” or small arms fire, Galvin’s read. “RETURNED FIRE BROKE CONTACT NO CASUALTY REPORT NO VISIBLE BDA,” or battle damage assessment. CONTACT FROM ENEMY WAS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE ROAD.” The Marine forwarded the message to Ukeiley via secure email but received no response, he testified. He then tried calling Ukeiley on a secure line but received no answer. He finally reached Ukeiley via unsecure cell phone. “Ukeiley,” the court report says, “was still in the break room.”

Once back at his desk, Ukeiley responded to the email, copying several officers within the CJSOTF headquarters — but not the commander Haas, according to the court’s report. Haas told the court that he was frustrated with Fox Company for not being more timely in communicating to him what was unfolding out on Highway 1.

Citing Ukeiley’s “actions and inactions” that day, the court recommended he be charged with dereliction of duty. One of the panel’s three officers, Lt. Col. Steve Morgan, further advocated that Ukeiley be formally shunned by the Marine Corps. Neither happened. The Marine general who reviewed the court’s recommendations, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, disagreed with these specific findings. Ukeiley declined Military Times’ interview request but provided the following statement about his characterization in the court’s report. “I was aware of the COI’s report upon its release in 2008, strongly disagreed with the panel’s portrayal as to my performance, and presented my rebuttal through official correspondence and my chain of command.” He retired from the Marine Corps in 2013.

When it was clear none of the humvees was disabled, the patrol commander decided to abort the mission’s final phase and return to base. Marines in the third and fourth humvees would testify that they saw AK47s on the ground as they rolled past the Toyota Prado. Marines in the last humvee told investigators and the court that they took fire from the vicinity of the Prado as they drove past it.

The ride back to Jalalabad was tense. As the Marines hustled to get free of the danger, they hurled rocks and fired disabling shots at a few oncoming cars, a common warzone practice meant to keep the convoy moving and avoid being pinned in and attacked. Warning shots were fired to disperse a crowd and clear a path for the humvees — all in accordance with protocol, the court determined.

During Fox Company’s predeployment period, the Marines’ spent hours upon hours focusing on precision marksmanship and discriminating shooting scenarios using both personal and crew-served weapons, Galvin said. That included a six-week close-quarters battle course. Their training was centered on decision-making and safety, and throughout the 11-month predeployment period, Marines were on a range at least twice a week, said one of Fox Company’s more senior enlisted Marines. That pace only intensified once the deployment was underway. “Your skills diminish if not,” he added.

Like Galvin, he remains insulted by the suggestion, made by a military investigator, that his Marines were frightened by the suicide attack, lost their cool in its aftermath and fired haphazardly at anything moving. No way, he said. These men were experienced in combat, thoroughly trained and highly disciplined. “I didn’t have a bunch of cowboys,” he added, “because I wouldn’t tolerate it.” Indeed, the officers presiding over the court of inquiry would conclude that the Marines’ actions March 4 were “appropriate and in accordance with the law and established procedures.” Fox Company’s command climate, they said “properly enforced the discriminate and proportional use of force.”

To the guys on the ground, however, such procedures caused tremendous anxiety. In Iraq, the Marines were equipped with nonlethal weapons, such as horns, flares and flashbangs, capable of disorienting and diverting potential threats without causing serious bodily harm. In Afghanistan, they shined flashlights at oncoming cars, waved their arms and threw rocks “because that’s the only thing we had,” said one member of the March 4 patrol. With Fox Company’s logistical shortfalls, there were no nonlethal weapons to be had, he said. Rock throwing was an escalation of force measure passed down from other special forces elements within the CJSOTF.

Afghan journalists arrived at the attack site instantly, followed by soldiers from the Army’s 66th Military Police Company who were instructed to cordon off the area and treat it like a crime scene. Initial media reports suggested the Marines, possibly intoxicated, left their vehicles and intimidated the media and other onlookers. That was false. A soldier with the 66th MPs did confront two journalists who’d breached the cordon, grabbing their cameras and erasing their contents, according to an investigation ordered by Nicholson, the battle-space commander, in response to Afghan complaints of aggressive treatment by American personnel.

Back at Jalalabad, as Galvin compiled after-action reports for higher headquarters, the story was spreading throughout the mainstream media that their Marines were suspected of killing noncombatants. Haas informed him there would be an investigation. The next day, on March 5, Galvin wrote an email to three men he considered mentors, veterans with ties to the Marine Raider and Force Reconnaissance communities. He sought to assuage any concerns that he and his men had acted dishonorably in Bati Kot, telling them: “As you well know, one thing has never, nor will ever change about our enemy. They will exploit deception and information operations as best possible.”

“The media is probably mentioning several versions of the story,” Galvin’s email continued, relaying loose details about the ambush and how the Marines fought back. “We have one version and it’s the truth from our men and myself who were there. … Our men did an amazing job, none sustained more than a scratch and we killed several people who were trying to kill us. The investigation will prove exactly that. … Let the Raiders and Force Reconnaissance Marines and Corpsmen know that we will never let them down.”

The email, which Galvin provided to Military Times, quickly circulated within MARSOC, eventually finding its way to Lt. Col. Paul Montanus, the commander of 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion and Galvin’s immediate superior. Montanus sent it to MARSOC’s public affairs officer and the second in command, who forwarded it to Maj. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, MARSOC’s top officer.

Hejlik was livid. Fourteen people, including Galvin and Montanus, were copied on his reply. The general felt that Galvin had violated operational security (“OpSec”) by referencing the unit’s tactics and procedures (“TPs”) and its Blue Force Tracker (“BFT”), visualization software that enables troops to see the location of friendly and enemy forces on the battlefield. “We have an ongoing investigation and we send this out to the world? What the hell happened to OpSec?” he wrote. “We are providing information to the enemy on how successful his TPs were and oh by the way we let him know POSITIVELY about BFT. I NEVER want to see this kind of bullshit again — ever! LtCol Montanus you get ahold of Maj Galvin and I want his email recalled — now! … IF any of you have any doubts on how pissed off I am about this then you need to come and see me.”

Hejlik, who retired as a three-star general in 2012, did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment. Montanus, now a colonel who teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, declined to be interviewed but provided Military Times with a written statement saying “everyone in MARSOC and the Marine Corps wanted, and did everything they could, for Fox Company to be completely and utterly successful.”

The senior MARSOC officer who criticized Galvin’s decision to name the unit Task Force Violent characterized Galvin’s email from Afghanistan as immature, saying that “under no circumstances could Fred perceive his actions would be incorrect.”

“What would prompt a guy to send out a note?” he said. “What part of our training, in terms of operational security, warrants writing your own tell-all?”

Galvin sees it differently. His command’s reaction to the email illustrates an eagerness to “destroy us,” he said. Did no one feel a responsibility to help prove that Fox Company’s Marines performed as trained and according to the rules of engagement? Nothing in his email to those three men was classified national security, Galvin insisted. The term Blue Force Tracker, sensitive military equipment to be sure, was easily searchable on the Internet even in 2007. Besides, Galvin said, if he had compromised operational security, then why was his email forwarded again and again on the Marine Corps’ unsecure network?

“There were no issues with that email when it was reviewed by the court of inquiry,” he said. “It states the same testimony that I and the other Marines have consistently stated from the time we returned from the patrol.”

The three senior officers overseeing the court proceedings concluded that between five and seven people were killed and another 24 to 28 were wounded as a result of the suicide attack, subsequent vehicle accidents and small-arms fire. More than a year later, after Helland approved the court’s recommendation to clear Fox Company of wrongdoing, the men on that patrol were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for their actions that day.

Henderson also received a Purple Heart for the wound he sustained in the bomb blast. He was the only Marine hurt that day. A blessing, and yet a curse. “If the ambush had gone the enemy’s way, God knows what would have happened,” said one of the men on the patrol. ”… When we got back to Jalalabad, I overheard an Army officer say he couldn’t believe such an ambush happened because no Marines came back in body bags.”

“That’s one thing I’ll take to my grave.”

A SUDDEN, UNCEREMONIOUS END

U.S. commanders in the region were in damage-control mode. At the request of Nangarhar’s governor, they agreed to freeze movement for two days along Highway 1 near the attack site. Additionally, Haas ordered Fox Company to stay out of Jalalabad, and all Marines who’d been on the March 4 patrol were benched, “except in exigent circumstances,” until further notice.

Galvin and Noble grew frustrated. The company’s intelligence arm had a good lead on three potential suicide bombers, but the CJSOTF would not approve the mission. “Criminal,” Galvin emailed Noble on March 8, according to the court’s report. “That we know where these guys are and they want to wait for them to blow us up before they get the point.”

Noble sent a heated, flippant response. “Maybe we should get drunk and go on patrol,” he wrote, a reference to the erroneous allegations, made by Afghan villagers, stemming from the March 4 incident. Though proven false, at the time those claims were taken quite seriously by the Marines’ commanders. ”… Our guys are expendable,” Noble’s email continued. “At least if we get blown up again, that’s one less suicide bomber for Nangarhar.”

Neither knew it, but Fox Company’s deployment was about to come to a sudden, unceremonious end.

Noble drafted plans for a reconnaissance mission, scheduled for the night of March 9, the exact nature of which remains sensitive, Galvin said. After the March 4 ambush and the Marines’ counterattack, Fox Company recognized a hostile enemy response was imminent, Galvin said. The enemy was planning to siege Camp Raider.

Noble knew that Fox Company was barred from operating in Jalalabad, so he “masked” the operation by falsely indicating in his request that the mission would take place south of Jalalabad, according to the court’s report. The CJSOTF approved the mission, as staff there understood it. But “the true intent,” the report says, ”… was to operate only in and around Jalalabad.”

Two additional movements were planned: recovery of an enemy weapons cache and recovery of a five-ton truck that had become disabled. A pre-mission briefing was held outlining via PowerPoint the true objective in Jalalabad. Galvin, who was not present for the briefing, did not participate in the operation, though he had secured approval for select members of the March 4 patrol to do so. When Nicholson’s staff inquired with Fox Company about the mission, an officer in the Marines’ operations center sent them the PowerPoint.

The mission commenced, but soon Nicholson’s team contacted Haas’ team with a flurry of questions. Haas tracked down Galvin, who then went to Fox Company’s operations center only to find the display showing Noble’s intended route. “No, what the f—?!” he said. Haas wanted the operation recalled. Galvin immediately complied. It was too late, though.

Marines tasked with recovering the weapons were involved in a humvee rollover. An Afghan man suffered a minor leg injury as a result. The Marines set up a perimeter. When a vehicle approached, the Marines employed two “escalation of force measures,” including a single gunshot to disable it. The car’s windshield shattered, injuring an occupant. No evidence emerged to suggest this was an unjustified use of force, but it was not immediately reported.

The situation only deteriorated from there. The Marines out to recover the 5-ton truck encountered muddy terrain. Both vehicles rolled over on their sides when the brakes seized on the vehicle being towed. One member of the unit suffered a slight injury. “It was a long night,” Galvin said. “We were still dealing with this past when the sun came up, until about 10 in morning.”

When everyone made it back to base, Noble was hot. Initially, he instructed the Marines to lie about what happened should there be an investigation, the court’s report says. One of the unit’s senior enlisted Marines pulled him aside and said that would be inappropriate. Noble realized he was wrong and told the Marine to make certain everyone told the truth, the court’s report says.

“We submitted three missions for execution as soon as the travel ban was lifted,” Galvin said. “These were all approved by our higher headquarters as being appropriate. These missions were also sent to and received by our adjacent units. Every man in Fox Company gave their utmost on March 9 to prevent a determined enemy from attacking us. Did we have fumbles? Yes. But Raiders are ingrained to take the fight to the enemy, which was our focus. Every Marine and corpsman returned alive that night, and the imminent threat stopped until after we were expelled from Afghanistan.”

The court recommended that Noble face charges for providing false information to Galvin about the March 9 operation, for disobeying Haas’ order to stay out of Jalalabad and then asking his Marines to lie about the mission’s true location. Noble declined to discuss the matter with Military Times. The court, however, would say that “given his superior combat record and the mitigating action taken by him to correct his mistakes,” any disciplinary action should be handled administratively. That’s precisely what happened. Noble has two combat valor awards and a Purple Heart, which he received after suffering a near-fatal gunshot wound during the Iraq War’s notorious campaign in Fallujah. He and Galvin remain close friends.

Nicholson, who viewed the March 4 incident as a serious setback to his efforts win the locals’ trust, was exasperated. He emailed a complaint to his superiors, Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez and Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel. “Most disturbing,” he wrote, “is the deception regarding their real intent once they rolled out of the gate. I regard this as an integrity violation.” The message is summarized in the court of inquiry’s report. “In fact,” it continues, “I relieved a commander for an integrity violation of this nature. He will be out of the Army after his [non-judicial] punishment from you sir. The unit and this commander have broken the trust that must exist between units and commanders operating together on the battlefield. I therefore request that we redeploy this unit ASAP.”

Early the next morning, Ukeiley emailed Galvin outlining what he perceived were Fox Company’s failures. Among other things, it suggested the Marines weren’t team players; that they communicated poorly; that Galvin had failed to effectively lead his unit; that, on the whole, the Marines had not worked within their designated counterinsurgency assignment. Unbeknownst to Galvin, Ukeiley provided several copies of this email to some senior officers, and one made its way to Army Maj. Gen. Frank Kearney, the commanding general of Special Operations Command Central, SOCOM’s delegate to U.S. Central Command.

Hejlik, MARSOC’s commanding general, reached out to Kearney saying by email that he was “at the 95 percent mark” of firing Galvin as Fox Company’s commander. “It’s your call on redeploying the unit,” he said, “but ask for your consideration — I know this is a very good company.” Kearney told Hejlik that the leadership in theater had lost confidence in Fox Company, the court report says.

Ukeiley’s email, the court determined, proved the catalyst for Kearney’s decision to evict Fox Company from Afghanistan. Haas and other leaders read it as fact whereas many of the failures Ukeiley outlined “were in reality his own and those of the CJSOTF-A staff” in Bagram, the court report says. Had Ukeiley taken the time to read the request outlining the March 9 mission, he could have answered the questions Haas and Nicholson posed about Fox Company’s planned activity that night in and around Jalalabad, the court report says. Those in charge could have canceled the mission before the Marines departed.

Nicholson, similarly, was hasty in asking Rodriguez and Votel to redeploy Fox Company, the report says. He never read the March 9 mission request that Fox Company’s operations center provided to his staff. If he had, he could have disapproved it, said Morgan, one of the three Marine officers who oversaw the court proceedings. Before he appeared as a witness during the court of inquiry, Nicholson was unaware the Marines were actually authorized for their March 4 mission through Bati Kot, Morgan said.

Nicholson is now a three-star general overseeing NATO Land Command in Turkey. His testimony during the court of inquiry remains classified, as do several others made by senior leaders at that time. As such, an Army spokesperson said, it would be inappropriate for the general to comment for this story.

An excerpt from the court of inquiry’s findings.

On March 11, 2007, Haas, the CJSOFT commander, sent Kearney a summary of Fox Company’s perceived failures along with a PowerPoint titled “MSOC Challenges.” It was developed from Ukeiley’s email to Galvin and with his assistance. In his message to the general, Haas recommended Fox Company be sent home. Kearney issued the order later that day.

“Factually, the events of 04 March 07 and 09 March 07 are unrelated,” the court concluded. “However, [higher headquarters] were unable to distinguish between the two events.” Linking them led to diminished trust and confidence in Fox Company’s ability to operate in Afghanistan.

Members of MARSOC’s leadership team arrived in theater days later. Montanus, Galvin’s commanding officer, relieved him of command. Galvin addressed his men one last time, saying only that his commanding officer had lost trust and confidence in him. The military’s investigation was underway. Galvin, who saw storm clouds forming, was headed home to find lawyers for him and for his men.

Andrew deGrandpre is Military Times’ digital news director. On Twitter: @adegrandpre

Editor’s note: This is the second in a five-part series.

Here’s one of the Marine Corps’ all-time ugliest secrets: Ten years ago, amid the endeavor to meet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s demand for a new commando force, the service’s senior leaders were so opposed to the idea that they quietly lobbied for it to fail.

That resistance, coupled with a surprising lack of direction provided by higher authority, would critically hamper the first MARSOC unit sent into combat — and good Marines paid dearly as a consequence.

As detailed in the first installment of this series, “Task Force Violent: The unforgiven,” MARSOC is the Marine Corps component of U.S. Special Operations Command tasked with discreetly executing difficult and highly sensitive missions in some of the world’s most dangerous places. It was little more than a concept in December 2005 when Maj. Fred Galvin was chosen to command MARSOC’s first combat unit, Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot. And in March 2007, their deployment to Afghanistan was cut short after Galvin’s Marines were accused of indiscriminately killing innocent Afghans and the entire unit was ordered out of the war zone.

They were exonerated, eventually, after the Marine Corps convened a rare court of inquiry lasting three weeks to examine the allegations and more fully understand what led to Fox Company’s failure. The three senior officers overseeing those proceedings determined that Galvin and his men acted appropriately when, in the frantic minutes following a suicide attack on their convoy, they used measured and justified force while responding to an ensuing enemy ambush. A three-star Marine general ultimately agreed with that conclusion, and the highly publicized case soon disappeared from the headlines — though it still haunts many of these men to this day.

What has emerged only now is a troubling picture of the institutional dysfunction and adversity that thwarted these Marines from the outset. Neither the Defense Department nor SOCOM offered the Marine Corps much guidance as it endeavored to get MARSOC off the ground, according to a recently declassified report detailing the court of inquiry’s findings. Galvin provided that document to Military Times along with approximately 1,500 pages of newly available courtroom testimony. The report and testimony make clear that Fox Company’s Marines were sent to war without the overarching direction and ground-level logistical assistance they would need to sustain themselves in theater and prove effective on the battlefield.

This dynamic was a major impediment for MARSOC and Fox Company, the report concludes. Politics internal to the Marine Corps made matters worse. And as the court’s three officers would conclude, the conditions were overwhelmingly such that MARSOC’s first commandos never stood a chance in Afghanistan. Task Force Violent was destined to fail.

Everything started with Rumsfeld, who was determined the Marine Corps would establish a special forces component even though the service’s leaders thought that doing so was a misguided waste of everyone’s time. The prevailing logic inside the Corps was — and is — that Marines are inherently special, members of a force whose very mission and history was providing unique and diverse capabilities within the U.S. military’s broader portfolio.

Rumsfeld got his way, of course. MARSOC was activated Feb. 24, 2006, expanding the capabilities provided by Navy SEALS, Army Green Berets and other elite units. This was his logic: U.S. commandos offered the agility and precision needed to pick apart the complex terror networks taking root in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, and the specialized training to help fledgling foreign militaries enhance their own capabilities.

America’s long-term strategy would need to be surgical and stealthy, Rumsfeld foresaw. It would require more manpower, the latest weaponry and cutting edge technology, and greater commitments from all services — especially the Marine Corps, which had avoided full-scale involvement since the advent of Special Operations Command in the late 1980s.

“I believed then, as I believe now, that special forces would have a growing role in U.S. national security affairs,” Rumsfeld told Military Times. “The addition of the Marine Corps to that activity was one element of a broader approach. Exactly how they fit in, I assumed would evolve. I wasn’t in a position to look at that from a micro standpoint. But from a macro standpoint, the Marines had significant capabilities, and it seemed to me that they would find a niche.

”Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary from 1975 to 1977 and again from 2001 to 2006, acknowledges there was resistance to his initiative. His top military advisers at the Pentagon offered a range of input, he said. Some were for it, others against it. The Marine Corps’ brain trust, he noted, felt strongly that the service “didn’t need to be diluted” with a special forces component.

“I decided that on balance it made sense to go forward with MARSOC, he said. “And in retrospect, I’m not uncomfortable with that decision.

”The individual components that compose SOCOM viewed MARSOC as one more mouth to feed, another organization that would compete for funding and missions. Within the Marine Corps, though, Rumsfeld’s directive was heresy and those in charge undermined progress. Senior leaders nitpicked the construction of MARSOC’s North Carolina compound and initially sought to deny its commandos the monthly cash stipend all special forces rate. Those matters would be remedied but not without a substantial fight that robbed MARSOC’s planners of valuable time and resources they could have used to focus on bigger issues.

“The service early on didn’t believe in the idea of MARSOC and threw up any roadblock it could to slow it down,” said a source familiar with efforts to stand up the command who, like many interviewed for this series, asked not to be identified. “The naysayers lashed out at everything imaginable.”

‘THE MARSOC ANIMAL’

MARSOC’s foundation was the service’s Force Reconnaissance companies, a nimble force highly trained to conduct missions behind enemy lines. These Marines have long filled a limited special operations role for Marine commanders, and in 2003, when the service activated Marine Special Operations Command Detachment 1 as a proof of concept, Force Recon provided the operators. Det. 1, as it was known, made a successful deployment to Iraq in 2004 and was then disbanded as plans took shape for MARSOC.

By December 2005, Galvin, an infantry officer by training, had been a Force Recon platoon commander for a combined six years between two separate units. He was qualified as a terminal air controller, authorized to direct combat airstrikes from the ground. He’d also served as an instructor at Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron 1, the Corps’ equivalent to the Navy’s fabled Top Gun. Few others possessed the rank and experience required to lead a special operations company.

Another name discussed was Maj. Doug Zembiec. A decorated Marine whose exploits in Iraq earned him the nickname The Lion of Fallujah, Zembiec had other aspirations. He was working for the Marine Corps’ Special Operations Training Group in 2005 before being chosen for an assignment with the CIA’s Special Activities Division, a revelation recently brought to light by the Washington Post. Tragically Zembiec was gunned down in Baghdad while leading a small troop of Iraqi forces in May 2007. Four years later, MARSOC established a leadership award in his honor.

Headquartered at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, MARSOC would stand up with two battalions, one there on the East Coast and another out West at Camp Pendleton in southern California. Fox Company would be first out of the gate, its nucleus comprising personnel from Lejeune’s 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company.

The task of filling MARSOC’s key leadership billets fell to Col. Peter Petronzio, who oversaw the command’s early organization and operations. Petronzio, who previously commanded 2nd Force, reached out to his friend Lt. Col. George Smith, then the commanding officer of 1st Force at Camp Pendleton, seeking recommendations for a company commander. When Galvin’s selection was announced, Smith, who would later serve as a character witness for Galvin during the court of inquiry, emailed Petronzio praising the decision.

“Serving as a Force platoon commander for four deployments is unheard of, and I’d argue that he’s in that small handful of officers who are truly [subject matter experts] in this community,” wrote Smith, now a one-star general overseeing the Marine Corps’ effort to study the integration of women into ground combat jobs. Galvin, who earlier in 2005 earned a Bronze Star for battlefield valor while leading Smith’s “hammer platoon” in Iraq, was preparing 1st Force for another combat deployment when he received orders to MARSOC. Smith noted this in his email to Petronzio, calling Galvin a “gifted trainer,” someone who “sees opportunities where others see obstacles.” Smith described Galvin’s training curriculum as “aggressive, realistic and safe.”

“He is a tireless worker and extremely detailed-oriented,” Smith continued. At 36, Galvin was “mature beyond his years,” a trait Smith attributed to two data points on Galvin’s resume: time served both in the enlisted ranks and out in the private sector. Galvin, who deployed to the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s with a tank company, later served in a light armored reconnaissance unit. He attained the rank of sergeant before transitioning to the Marine Corps Reserve, completing his college education, and spending two years as a stockbroker and financial adviser with Chatfield Dean and Smith Barney.

Although his girlfriend at the time objected, Galvin talked a lot about seeking an officer’s commission. He’d grown restless on the outside. And by 1995, he was a new second lieutenant, single, and back on active duty.

“Most important in this email,” Smith concluded, “is my strong belief that he is exactly the type of experienced leader required to command one of the initial Marine Special Ops Companies.

”This exchange between Smith and Petronzio, which Galvin provided to Military Times, is noteworthy for another reason. In signing off, Smith wished Petronzio well in the year ahead and “best of luck as you continue to wrestle with the MARSOC animal.” Petronzio’s reply offers an unvarnished glimpse into the challenges he faced both in finding leaders who possessed the right mix of character and acumen, and from the senior leaders who micromanaged the process with little regard for flexibility and common sense.

“It pains me every day to not mention your name here,” Petronzio wrote back to Smith, “but I will stay true to my word and keep quiet. We just need more smart aggressive guys, and it surprises me but the pool is not nearly as deep as I thought it was. I remember Fred and am very excited to get him on board. … Take care brother, and have a good new year. You would not believe the stupidity I face every day here.

”MARSOC struggled to recruit and retain talent. Apart from very sizable signing bonuses offered to those who passed its demanding selection process, there was little long-term career incentive for Marines to join and stay with the new command because the service promotes personnel based on demonstrated proficiency and accomplishment within their primary job specialties. The Army and Navy figured this out years prior with the advent of their special operations forces. And while leaders in MARSOC pushed the Marine Corps to follow suit and establish a legitimate career path for its commandos, the institution pushed back — fixated on the belief that it was of greater value to the service if everyone who spent time in MARSOC would eventually cycle back to the fleet. Indeed, it would take nearly a decade before a formal job specialty was created for MARSOC’s officers and enlisted Marines.

“We’re Marines. Our greatest strength is that we’re monolithic as an institution,” said the source familiar with efforts to develop MARSOC. “And our greatest weakness is that we’re monolithic as an institution.

”Smith did not wish to speak with Military Times about his email exchange with Petronzio. A Marine spokeswoman at the Pentagon said the general was reluctant to explore opportunities at MARSOC because he was eager to return to the service’s infantry community once his assignment at 1st Force Reconnaissance Company came to an end in 2006. He did precisely that and has had a succession of prominent assignments ever since.

Petronzio, who retired in 2011, also declined to be interviewed. He said only that he has no regrets about selecting Galvin as Fox Company’s commander and that he would do so again without hesitation.

GIVEN COMMAND, BUT NOT A MISION

To function effectively, earn others’ respect and be regarded as a valued member of SOCOM, MARSOC would have to play nice with others. Galvin understood this from his Force Recon experience. Smith, in his email to Petronzio, highlighted the major’s appreciation and aptitude for partnering with other elite units.

Galvin also recognized the enormity of his responsibility as commander of MARSOC’s first operational unit. Though he didn’t yet know where Fox Company would deploy, he had been entrusted with the lives of 120 men and intended to ensure they were trained and outfitted to accomplish their mission and come home safely. Moreover, he knew that their success — or failure — would shape opinions about MARSOC well beyond the Marine Corps.

He checked out of Camp Pendleton and drove East, making four stops meant to build rapport with MARSOC’s potential partners, understand what vehicles and specialized equipment SOCOM had available, and to lay groundwork for some of the training he’d envisioned for Fox Company. First, he hit the Joint Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas. Then it was on to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, headquarters for the Army’s 5th Special Forces Group and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Next, Hurlburt Field in Florida, home to Air Force Special Operations Command and the Joint Ground Liaison Office, which facilitates intensive, lifelike training scenarios for commando units. Finally, Galvin went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, meeting with leaders at Army Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command, the shadowy organization that in 2011 dispatched SEAL Team Six to to kill Osama bin Laden.

He arrived at Camp Lejeune on Feb. 10, 2006. Five days later, after an interview with MARSOC’s top officer, Maj. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, Galvin’s assignment was official. But something was off, he recalled of their discussion. Hejlik, a prior-enlisted sergeant like Galvin, stressed to his new commander that he was forbidden from ever leveraging the general’s name and rank while preparing Fox Company for prime time. Were there any questions, Hejlik asked next. Yes, Galvin said. He had three:

1. What is Fox Company’s mission? Would the Marines focus on reconnaissance, the quiet art of information gathering? Would they be used as a raid force, to capture or kill enemy operatives? Or would Fox Company be charged with training foreign forces?

2. To whom will Fox Company report? Galvin wanted to know who would own his unit once they were deployed. He hoped to meet with these leaders so he could understand their objectives and hear their guidance for shaping Fox Company’s training, which was scheduled to last 11 months.

3. Where will Fox Company deploy? This was crucial, Galvin said. To structure the unit properly, select the right vehicles and equipment, and provide his men with the proper training, he’d need to know where they were going, what the environment was like and what threats they could face. Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa all were possibilities, and each presented unique challenges.

Hejlik never responded, Galvin said. MARSOC directed him to focus Fox Company’s training on preparing for direct action and special reconnaissance missions, and he complied. A source within MARSOC at the time acknowledged the challenges Galvin encountered internally but said that such ambiguity can be common for commanders throughout the Marine Corps. “Uncertainty comes with the territory,” the source said. “It’s the nature of our business — and not the good nature of our business. No one had that information and was withholding it from him. They just didn’t know.

”Fox Company’s Marines were boarding the Navy ships that would transport them overseas when the word finally came down from SOCOM that Fox Company was going to Afghanistan. It would be another 10 days before they learned their primary focus would be to train the Afghan military — not direct action and special reconnaissance as everyone in MARSOC envisioned. The late notification set off a mad scramble to train for the new mission and familiarize the Marines with rules of engagement and cultural customs specific to Afghanistan. They soaked up what they could over the next three weeks.

Hejlik, who retired in 2012 as a three-star general, did not respond to requests seeking comment. He was contacted separately by Military Times and via the Marine Corps Senior Leadership Management Branch in Quantico, Virginia. In December 2007, three weeks before legal proceedings convened at Camp Lejeune, he provided a signed statement to the court of inquiry responding to more than two dozen questions about Fox Company’s predeployment experience and subsequent challenges in theater.

The unit’s training, Hejlik said, was developed by Galvin with input from his chain of command and MARSOC headquarters. It was based on a “draft mission guidance letter from SOCOM,” he said. When asked if SOCOM had a role in creating, observing or evaluating Fox Company’s training, Hejlik responded no. And then the subject of Afghanistan came up.

“There were many challenges faced by Fox Company as a result of the decision to send them to Afghanistan vice Iraq,” Hejlik wrote. “The company was unable to focus their training on the specific theater in which they were going to operate. … Additionally, the company had very little experience in Afghanistan operations, as most were [Iraq war] veterans. While there are differences in the operating environments, both geographically and philosophically, MSOC F would have faced similar challenges integrating with [other SOCOM elements] given that they were a new unit with unknown capabilities.”

The court of inquiry would fault SOCOM for the ambiguity surrounding Fox Company’s intended employment. But Galvin believes his command could have and should have done more to demand answers to the three questions he asked a year prior. In that regard, he said, “MARSOC set us up for failure.”

THE BREAKING POINT

Galvin’s unit also lacked internal logistical support, a shortcoming that would create tremendous frustration for the Marines and their commanders in Afghanistan. (Much more on that in Part 3 of this series.) For its deployment, Fox Company was to integrate with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, one of the Corps’ seven rapid-response forces that travel aboard Navy amphibious warships. But the MEU (pronounced “mew”) would be little more than a floating chauffeur. It would support Fox Company only until it detached and began reporting to Special Operations Command. Once that happened, MARSOC headquarters believed that SOCOM’s infrastructure in theater would see to the Marines’ needs.

Galvin foresaw this problem months prior. Soon after their training commenced in March 2006, the Marines spent four weeks in Nevada’s high desert focusing on patrolling, raids and coordinating air support. Galvin and his leadership team were happy with what they saw, but the experience highlighted their manning gap. Who would maintain their vehicles and radios once they were on their own? Who’d address administrative needs, and ensure they’d have food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies?

They designed four personnel packages and sent the request up their chain of command at MARSOC.

1) The heavy package: With 19 support personnel, Fox Company could sustain 24/7 mission capability.

2) The medium package: With 16 support personnel, the unit could sustain missions lasting up to four days.

3) The light package: With 13 support personnel, Fox Company could sustain missions lasting two days.

4) The bare minimum: This plan called for six support personnel. Anything less, and Fox Company would be unable to sustain itself in theater without outside help, they said.

These models were based on the unit leaders’ prior deployment experience with Force Recon companies. Galvin asked that the support personnel come from within MARSOC or from the MEU. The request went nowhere, he said.

“We needed to have the appropriate manpower to succeed, whether it’s somebody to do administration and make sure Marines’ pay and evaluations are properly recorded and submitted, so they can get promoted and paid and awarded, all the way down to ensuring the radios would be properly maintained and repaired,” Galvin said. “Same thing with the vehicles. Same thing with food. At that point, I’d been in the Marines approximately 19 years, and I well understood, just like other leaders in the Marines and throughout history, that logistics … set the conditions for success.”

Within the command, Galvin was privately criticized for his relentless pursuit of more men and high-end combat gear. MARSOC headquarters did request support personnel from the Marine Corps’ delegate to U.S. Central Command, the four-star organization that oversees all American military activity in the Middle East, according to the court of inquiry’s report. “This support was not forthcoming,” it states. “Therefore MARSOC concluded MSOC F would have to gain its support from its operational chain of command once in theater.”

Fox Company did have a boat mechanic, whom Galvin was allowed to swap for a vehicle maintainer only once it was learned that the unit’s destination would be a landlocked country, he said. One Marine — “a young lance corporal who did a phenomenal job,” Galvin noted — to keep 45 vehicles functioning. A Force Recon element the size of Fox Company would typically take 12 mechanics to the war zone, he said.

Galvin contacted the staff of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan. Headquartered at Bagram Airfield, the CJSOTF — troops pronounce it “see-juh-so-tiff” — oversaw all American commandos in theater. Galvin forwarded his request for one of the four support packages he’d sought from MARSOC. He’d already tried, unsuccessfully, to shake loose a few men from the Marine expeditionary unit to which Fox Company was attached while at sea. He would later ask the same of a fellow Marine officer on the ground in the Horn of Africa, the Marines’ final staging area before being flown into the war zone. Again and again, the answer was no, he said.

When Galvin’s chain of command at MARSOC found out he was freelancing, they were fried, he said. He received scolding emails warning him that he was out of line. But what was he supposed to do? Zero hour had arrived. Fox Company still didn’t have everything Galvin believed his Marines required, and he felt duty bound to exhaust all means in seeking to obtain the extra bodies. Once again, his chain of command had a responsibility to do more, Galvin said.

The source within MARSOC at the time understands why Galvin was upset. “Logistical support is like crack,” he said. “You always want more of it, and it’s hard when you can’t get it.”

Col. Paul Montanus was the commanding officer of 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, Fox Company’s parent command. “Everyone in MARSOC and the Marine Corps wanted, and did everything they could, for Fox Company to be completely and utterly successful,” he said.

Photo Credit: Cpl. Dengrier Baez/Marine Corps

Galvin’s immediate superior at MARSOC, Lt. Col. Paul Montanus, declined to be interviewed for this report. At the time he was commander of 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, Fox Company’s parent command. Now a colonel overseeing the humanities and social sciences division at the U.S. Naval Academy, he offered a written statement instead. The court of inquiry’s report represents the “definitive work on Fox Company,” he said, “and their conclusions speak clearly and completely on their position on the matter.”

“I can state this categorically,” Montanus’ statement continues, “everyone in MARSOC and the Marine Corps wanted, and did everything they could, for Fox Company to be completely and utterly successful. It was an incredible disappointment to everyone in MARSOC to have Fox’s deployment end the way it did. I sincerely believe that any other representation is a disservice to the great men and women of MARSOC (including the Marines and sailors of Fox Company) who worked tirelessly to see Fox succeed, and who supported them upon their return to Camp Lejeune.”

In January 2007, once SOCOM and Marine Corps headquarters approved Galvin’s request for the minimum of six support personnel, MARSOC told Galvin he could have five, he said. The process dragged out for two months after that. An Army logistics officer was detailed to Fox Company immediately from Fort Bragg. The five Marines arrived in Afghanistan a few days after Fox Company was ordered to cease operations and leave the war zone.

Those presiding over the court of inquiry would say that no single event led to Fox Company’s failure. It was, they agreed, a “confluence of different events” that led to the Marines’ expulsion from the war zone. In their report, the three officers called on SOCOM to develop clear training standards for all of the military’s special forces units. They also directed the Marine Corps to provide deploying MARSOC units with enough support personnel to sustain themselves independently, pending a detailed review of the command’s overall staffing and organization.

Looking back, Galvin and the others say a lack of clear guidance and support on the front end of their deployment precipitated much of the trouble the the unit encountered in the war zone — and that any commander worth a damn knows even the most resourceful team cannot prevail without proper backup. The lack of logistics would be absolutely crippling to Marines in theater and their superiors knew it, Galvin said, pointing to a phrase coined by the Marine Corps’ 27th commandant, Gen. Robert Barrow. “Amateurs talk about tactics,” the late commandant said, “but professionals study logistics.”

“How do you prevent someone from doing anything?” Galvin said shaking his head incredulously. “Cut off their logistics.”

Andrew deGrandpre is Military Times’ digital news director. On Twitter: @adegrandpre