When they brought William "Ryan" Owens home, the Navy SEAL was carried from a C-17 military plane in a flag-draped casket, onto the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base, as President Donald Trump, his daughter, Ivanka, and Owens’ family paid their respects.
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It was a private transfer, as the family had requested. No media and no bystanders, except for some military dignitaries.
Owens’ father, Bill, had learned only a short time before the ceremony that Trump was coming. Owens was sitting with his wife, Marie, and other family members in the solemn, living room-like space where the loved ones of the fallen assemble before they are taken to the flight line.
"I’m sorry, I don’t want to see him,” Owens recalled telling the chaplain who informed him that Trump was on his way from Washington. "I told them I don’t want to meet the president."
It had been little more than 24 hours since six officers in dress uniform knocked on the door to Owens’ home in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It was not yet daylight when he answered the door, already knowing in the pit of his stomach what they had come to tell him.
Now, Owens cringed at the thought of having to shake the hand of the president who approved the raid in Yemen that claimed his son’s life — an operation that he and others are now calling into question.
"I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him," Owens said Friday, speaking out for the first time in an interview with the Miami Herald.
Owens, also a military veteran, was troubled by Trump’s harsh treatment of a Gold Star family during his presidential campaign. Now Owens was a Gold Star parent, and he said he had deep reservations about the way the decision was made to launch what would be his son’s last mission.
Ryan and as many as 29 civilians were killed Jan. 28 in the anti-terrorism mission in Yemen. What was intended as a lightning raid to grab cellphones, laptops and other information about terrorists turned into a nearly hour-long firefight in which "everything went wrong," according to U.S. military officials who spoke to the New York Times.
Bill Owens said he was assured that his son, who was shot, was killed early in the fight. It was the first military counter-terrorist operation approved by the new president, who signed the go-ahead Jan. 26 — six days into his term.
"Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why? For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”
In a statement from the White House Saturday, spokesman Michael C. Short called Ryan Owens "an American hero who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of his country."
On Sunday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC’s This Week she thinks the president would support an investigation.
"I can’t imagine what this father is going through," she said. "His son is a true American hero, and we should forever be in his son’s debt."
Bill Owens and his wife sat in another room as the president paid his respects to other family members. He declined to say what family members were at the ceremony.
Trump administration officials have called the mission a success, saying they had seized important intelligence information. They have also criticized detractors of the raid, saying those who question its success dishonor Ryan Owens’ memory.
His father, however, believes just the opposite.
"Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation," said the elder Owens, pointing to Trump’s sharp words directed at the mission’s critics, including Sen. John McCain.
"I want an investigation. … The government owes my son an investigation," he said.
Next week, Ryan Owens would have turned 37. At the time of his death, he had already spent half his life in the Navy, much of that with the elite SEAL Team 6 — chasing terrorist leaders across deserts and mountains around the world. The team, formally known as DEVGRU, had taken part in some of the most high-profile operations in military history, including the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
At the time of the 2001 9/11 attacks, Owens was in SEAL training, arguably the most physically grueling and mentally grinding regimens in the military. The team, tasked with tracking terrorists and mythologized in books and movies, had once been dubbed a "global manhunting machine" by the Times.
Despite the lore surrounding the SEALS’ exploits, almost everything about them is kept secret, even their names. Bill Owens knows very little about the actions that his son participated in, but takes pride in the dozens of awards he earned during his 12 deployments. Among them: the Silver Star, Navy and Marine Corps Medal, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
Ryan served under three U.S. presidents, and met former President Barack Obama, his father said. At his home on Friday, Bill Owens pulled out piles of photographs: Ryan as a toddler, clad in a brown military jumpsuit on his father’s lap; Ryan with his two older brothers playing army as kids; Ryan’s wedding picture; Ryan with his children and Ryan clad in military gear with a handful of his SEAL teammates. There’s one of Ryan sitting on the floor in the White House playing with Obama’s dogs.
Ryan joined the Navy after high school, following in his brothers’ footsteps. His brother, John, 42, was also a SEAL, and his oldest brother, Michael, 44, a Hollywood police officer, was also in the Navy for a time.
They in turn were inspired by their father: Bill Owens served four years in the Navy, then joined the Army Reserves in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Ryan was born in downstate Peoria. While in the Reserves, Bill worked for Caterpillar tractor company, until he was laid off during the recession in the 1980s. Shortly thereafter, he saw a notice in a military magazine for new recruits for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, and he successfully applied.
Owens and his then-wife, Ryan’s mother Patricia, moved with Ryan to South Florida. His elder sons remained with Owens’ first wife in Illinois.
Despite the distance between them, the half-brothers were very close, Owens said. They played sports and spent many summers and holidays together. Ryan and his brothers became interested in the military at a very young age. And Ryan dreamed of becoming a SEAL.
"He was always happy," Bill Owens said of Ryan. "Every picture you see he has a smile on his face. He just had a real positive attitude."
He was also driven. Ryan was so determined "to be the best" his father said, that when he failed the dive phase of SEAL training, he went out and hired a private instructor to get more training on his off time, and was initially certified as a civilian.
"He went out on his own and became more proficient. That’s the kind of dedication and determination that he had," his father said.
Bill Owens’ marriage to Ryan’s mother ended soon after they moved to South Florida, and Patricia, who also became a Fort Lauderdale police officer, eventually moved with Ryan and her new husband back to Peoria. She died in 2013.
Ryan spent summers and holidays with his father and brothers in Fort Lauderdale and played catcher during the school year for the Illinois Valley Central High School baseball team, the Grey Ghosts.
Standing 6-4, and weighing about 225 pounds, Ryan loved the physical part of the job and serving his country, even though it took him away from his family much of the year.
"I always kept hoping that we would eventually make up for lost time, but that’s not going to happen," his father said.
Ryan’s military career wasn’t always filled with the adrenaline of hostage rescue missions and midnight raids. In between, there were endless hours of training and planning.
There was also the heartache of losing his military brothers. Ryan was tasked in 2011 with escorting the bodies of 17 of his fellow SEALS home following a CH-47 helicopter crash in Afghanistan, his father said.
"He came back from Afghanistan and had to go to their funerals. It’s unnerving to go through something like that. It was one of the worst days in SEAL history as far as casualties go. He didn’t talk about it," his father said. "A lot of them, they don’t talk about it, even with their parents."
Owens and his SEAL commandos set out in the dark of night. Planning for the Yemen raid began last year during the Obama administration, but the execution was tabled because it was decided it would be better to launch the operation on a moonless night, which wouldn’t occur until after President Trump took office Jan. 20.
According to a timeline provided by the White House, then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn briefed the president about the operation Jan. 25 over a dinner that included Vice President Mike Pence, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and top security aides. It was not held in the Situation Room, as had been a practice under previous administrations.
President Trump signed the memo authorizing the action the next day, Jan. 26.
"This was a very, very well thought-out and executed effort," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Feb. 2 as questions first arose about the mission. He stressed that it had been thoroughly vetted and planned on Obama’s watch.
Colin Kahl, a national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, however, tweeted his contention that Spicer was mistaken.
"Obama made no decisions on this before leaving office, believing it represented escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen," he wrote on Twitter.
At the time of the firefight, Trump was not in the Situation Room, where he would have been directly involved in monitoring developments. Spicer said he kept in touch with his national security staffers, who were directly plugged in. White House officials also pointed out that, in general, counter-terrorism operations are routine and presidents are not in the Situation Room for every mission.
U.S. forces, targeting a suspected al-Qaida compound, immediately faced armed militants, a sign that their cover had been blown. The Washington Post reported that militants, some of them women, fired from the rooftops. Three other commandos were injured when an MV-22 Osprey, sent in to evacuate the troops, crash-landed. It was later destroyed by a U.S. airstrike to prevent it from falling into militant hands.
Some reports have said as many as 23 civilians, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed.
Afterward, McCain characterized the mission as a failure, and Trump responded with a series of tweets defending the Yemen action, and criticizing McCain. The rancor further escalated when Spicer later stated that McCain — or anyone — who "undermines the success of that raid owes an apology and a disservice to life of Chief Owens."
There is no SEAL mission that is without risk, said Don Mann, a 21-year veteran Navy SEAL, now retired. Mann, the author of "Inside SEAL Team Six: My Life and Missions with America’s Elite Warriors," said that if the assault team knew ahead of time that it had been compromised, the SEAL commanders on the ground had the ability to abort the raid at any time.
Some reports said that they did know, and went forward anyway.
"The SEALS, unlike other forces, make their decision on the ground and that decision — in this case — cost a life, which is very very tragic, but that’s war," Mann said.
"These people are good human beings. It weighs heavily on them. Seeing one person die, especially a teammate or friend, is beyond comprehension."
He said it’s natural that Owens’ loved ones would have questions about what happened, but they shouldn’t be swayed by the politics surrounding the tragedy.
"Nobody knows the truth of what happened except the person on the ground. When politicians get it, they warp it far from the truth," he said.
Powerful hands
There were so many SEALS at Ryan’s service at Arlington National Cemetery that his father’s arm got tired from shaking so many muscled hands. At the end, before his coffin was lowered, each of the SEALS removed their badges from their uniforms and pounded them one by one into the casket. When it over, the casket was covered in gold eagle tridents.
Bill Owens doesn’t want to talk about Ryan’s wife or his three young children. There are other things that he believes should remain private. He spoke out, he says, at the risk of offending some of his family and friends.
"I’d like some answers about all the things that happened in the timeline that led up to it. I know what the timeline is, and it bothers me a lot," said Owens, who acknowledges he didn’t vote for Donald Trump.
One aspect of the chain of events that nags at him is the fact that the president signed the order suspending the entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on Jan. 27 — the day before the mission.
Owens wonders whether that affected friendly forces in Yemen who were assisting with the raid.
"It just doesn’t make any sense to do something to antagonize an ally when you’re going to conduct a mission in that country," he said. "Did we alienate some of the people working with them, translators or support people. Maybe they decided to release information to jeopardize the mission."
These are only some of the many questions that Owens believes should be thoroughly examined, including the possibility that the decision to move forward with the mission was motivated by politics.
"I think these are valid questions. I don’t want anybody to think I have an agenda, because I don’t. I just want the truth."
McClatchy reporters Vera Bergengruen and Anita Kumar contributed from Washington.
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