In Afghanistan, during the United States’ longest war, special operators like the Green Berets shouldered a disproportionate share of the fighting. At home, they were held up as heroes for their highly publicized exploits. But behind the glory, there was a dark side the public did not see: a culture of rule-breaking that led to war crimes and, eventually, a vigilante ethos openly embraced by leaders at home.
This troubling history has been shrouded by the Army’s intense secrecy around its operators. In the past four years, I interviewed two dozen current and former members of Army Special Operations, including some who were willing to publicly accuse the organization of misconduct. The Times filed lawsuits that yielded thousands of pages of previously unpublished investigations, detainee files and other military records. To track down and interview scores of local witnesses, I made multiple trips to Afghanistan, where I have been reporting since 2008.
A spokeswoman for Army Special Operations, Lt. Col. Allie Scott, defended the organization. “We have fully investigated and adjudicated the cases you cover,” she wrote. “We are confident our actions stand up to the strictest scrutiny.”
Until now, it hasn’t been possible to reckon with many of these events because they were kept secret. Doing so helps us to understand not only the toll of the war on the U.S’s elite forces but also our current political moment, as the Trump administration loosens restraints on the military, orders lethal military strikes on alleged Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean and deploys troops to American cities.
Here are five takeaways from the four-part magazine investigation.
The Special Forces’ culture of rule-breaking emerged from the pressures of an unconventional war.
Deployed on isolated firebases in violent enemy territory in Afghanistan, some Green Berets developed practices that skirted or even broke Army regulations, ones that were often tolerated by commanders for the sake of the mission. But rule-breaking could escalate into more serious crimes. The operators I spoke to told me they had employed Afghan guards and translators for offensive firepower and used local forces to hold detainees. Some soldiers carried “drop guns” that they could plant on bodies.
A number of Green Berets were convicted in corruption-related cases. Others were accused of extrajudicial killings. Many of them came from the Third Special Forces Group, which had a lead role in the mission in Afghanistan.
Special Operations commanders overlooked evidence of what might have been one of the worst war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
After a team of Green Berets and their secret Afghan proxy force were accused in 2012 of killing nine detainees in Nerkh, a farming district in Wardak Province, Special Operations commanders carried out three investigations — and cleared the unit.
But after local protests, the Special Forces were pushed to leave Nerkh, and human remains identified as the missing nine were found outside their base. The Army opened a criminal investigation that lasted for nearly a decade. Until now, its results have never been revealed.
To understand what really happened in Nerkh, I traveled there and spoke to scores of local witnesses and former detainees. I also interviewed two Afghans who worked for the Green Berets, Zikria and Kazem, who admitted to having abused and killed detainees and said Americans had been involved as well.
Through a lawsuit, I also obtained files from the military’s three initial investigations, which show that commanders ignored clear evidence of misconduct by the team. A retired Green Beret brigadier general I spoke to agreed.
The Army’s aggressive prosecution of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn reveals how it could pursue Green Berets, if it chose to.
At a job interview with the C.I.A., Maj. Mathew Golsteyn admitted to killing a bombmaking suspect in Afghanistan in 2010. Golsteyn — who told me he had done the right thing for his men and his mission — was kicked out of the Special Forces. When he went public, the Army pushed to court-martial him for murder.
I obtained previously unreported files from the Golsteyn investigation that show how Army commanders pressured former members of his team into confessing their role in dismembering and burning the body of the bombmaking suspect. The Army’s actions stand in stark contrast to the Nerkh case, in which the bodies of nine detainees were found outside a former U.S. base. The case file I obtained showed that investigators amassed substantial evidence of misconduct, but the case was quietly closed by the Army without charges in 2022. Members of the Nerkh team were decorated and promoted.
Golsteyn told me he believed that his true crime was breaking the Green Berets’ code of silence.
This wartime culture of lawlessness has reverberated in a wave of domestic crimes committed by soldiers with Army Special Operations.
In recent years, Army Special Operations has been plagued by murders, drug-trafficking, fraud and sex crimes committed by its soldiers. Many of these were committed around Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters to both Army Special Operations and the Third Special Forces Group.
To understand the scale of the problem, I collected news and police reports of incidents around Special Forces bases and obtained the personnel records of the soldiers involved, as well as vital records and court documents. The picture was one of serious crime at all levels, from young operators to senior leaders.
The problem of crime has led to questions in Congress, where military leaders promised accountability. Yet Special Forces commanders whose soldiers were involved in misconduct have been repeatedly promoted.
The operators’ vigilante ethos has been embraced by leaders like Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, rose to prominence in part through his vociferous defense of Golsteyn and other service members accused of war crimes. “They’re not war criminals; they’re warriors,” he said in 2019, shortly before Golsteyn and others received a pardon from President Trump.
In the current administration, Trump and Hegseth have pushed to loosen legal restraints on the armed forces, both abroad and in the United States, and to expand the role of the military at home. They have purged the military’s top lawyers, deployed active-duty troops to patrol American streets and authorized lethal strikes on those they designate as “narco-terrorists,” summary killings that experts say violate international law.
The article reveals that the vision of unbridled power held by the Trump administration has its roots in the lawlessness of the United States’ wars overseas.
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