Father of Commando Killed in Yemen Refused to Meet Trump

WASHINGTON — The father of the
commando killed in a Special
Operations raid in Yemen last month
said in an interview published this
weekend that he had refused to meet
with President Trump on the day his
son’s body was returned home, and
criticized the White House over the
mission, saying, “Don’t hide behind
my son’s death to prevent an
investigation.”
“The government owes my son an
investigation,” the father, William
Owens, told The Miami Herald,
referring to Chief Petty Officer
William Owens, 36, a member of the
Navy’s SEAL Team 6.
The death of Chief Owens on Jan. 29,
in the first Special Operations raid
approved by Mr. Trump, came after a
chain of miscues and misjudgments
that plunged the elite commandos into
a ferocious 50-minute firefight with
Qaeda militants in a mountainous
village in central Yemen. Three other
Americans were wounded, and a $75
million aircraft was deliberately
destroyed.
In a risky mission where almost
everything that could go wrong did,
the Pentagon has acknowledged that
several civilians, including some
children, were also killed. The dead
included, by the account of relatives
interviewed by human rights groups
in Yemen, the 8-year-old daughter of
Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born
Qaeda leader who was killed in a
targeted drone strike in 2011.
The mission’s casualties have raised
doubts about the months of detailed
planning that went into the operation,
initially during the Obama
administration, and whether the right
questions were raised before its
approval, which took place over a
dinner Mr. Trump held with top
advisers five days after taking office.
Senior Trump administration officials
said that the Defense Department had
conducted a legal review of the
mission and that a Pentagon lawyer
had signed off on it.
But the comments by Mr. Owens, his
first public remarks since his son’s
death, cast a new spotlight on whether
the mission’s risks — to the American
commandos and to Yemeni civilians —
had been considered fully enough by
Mr. Trump and his top aides.
On Feb. 1, Mr. Trump flew to Dover
Air Force Base in Delaware to be
present as the body of Chief Owens,
who was known as Ryan, was
returned to the United States. His
death was the first in the military on
the new commander in chief’s watch.
“I’m sorry; I don’t want to see him,”
Mr. Owens recalled telling a chaplain
who had informed him that Mr.
Trump was on his way from
Washington. “I told them I don’t want
to meet the president.”
“I told them I didn’t want to make a
scene about it, but my conscience
wouldn’t let me talk to him,” Mr.
Owens said in the interview, which
The Herald said took place on Friday
at Mr. Owens’s home in Lauderdale-
by-the Sea, Fla.
“Why at this time did there have to be
this stupid mission when it wasn’t
even barely a week into his
administration? Why?” said Mr.
Owens, who told The Herald that he
had not voted for Mr. Trump. “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?”
The operation was the first known
American-led ground mission in
Yemen since December 2014, when
members of SEAL Team 6 stormed a
village in southern Yemen in an effort
to free an American photojournalist
held hostage by Al Qaeda . That raid
ended with the kidnappers killing the
journalist and a South African held
with him.
Mr. Owens told the newspaper that he
was a veteran himself, having served
four years in the Navy before joining
the Army Reserve in Illinois. Chief
Owens’s two half brothers also served
in the Navy, one as a member of the
SEALs, according to The Herald.
A woman who twice answered the
phone at the Owens residence on
Sunday and identified herself as Mr.
Owens’s wife said he would not be
making any statements beyond what
he told The Herald.
Shortly after the raid, Trump
administration officials called the
mission a success, saying that
criticisms like those from Senator John
McCain of Arizona, the chairman of
the Armed Services Committee, who
called the mission a failure,
dishonored Chief Owens’s memory.
“I know that the mission has a lot of
different critics, but it did yield a
substantial amount of very important
intel and resources that helped save
American lives and other lives,” Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White
House press secretary, said on ABC’s
“This Week” on Sunday.
Pentagon officials, however, have
declined to provide any specific
examples of how the information on
the cellphones, laptop computers and
other materials recovered at the site
would help track down terrorists.
Officials have said it could take weeks
or longer to fully analyze the
materials.
When asked if Mr. Trump would
support an investigation into the
circumstances surrounding Chief
Owens’s death, Ms. Sanders said she
had not spoken directly to the
president about it but added, “I would
imagine that he would be supportive
of that.”
Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for
the military’s Central Command in
Tampa, Fla., which oversees
operations in the Middle East,
confirmed in an email on Sunday that
the military was conducting an
inquiry, as happens anytime there is
an American casualty.
“We take this very seriously, and we
appreciate the deep desire to find out
all we can about the tragic death of
Ryan Owens during an operation
against terrorists,” Colonel Thomas
said.
After initially denying that there had
been any civilian casualties, Pentagon
officials quickly backtracked after
reports from the Yemeni authorities
began trickling in and grisly
photographs of children purportedly
killed in the attack appeared on social
media sites affiliated with Al Qaeda’s
affiliate there.
The Central Command has
acknowledged the likelihood that
civilians were killed in the crossfire,
but Colonel Thomas offered no new
information on the status of the
military’s investigation into the
allegations.