Retired Marine officer says Mattis betrayed his own Marines in Afghanistan in 2007

Retired Gen. and former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, talks about his book tour at Little Hall on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Sept. 25, 2019.

A retired US Marine officer has published a scathing damnation of retired Marine General and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, whom he claimed betrayed his fellow Marines “for the sake of politics and getting to slap on another star.”

In his new book, A Few Bad Men, retired Marine Major Fred Galvin had little good to say about Mattis, citing an incident that took place in Afghanistan back in 2007.

“I led the First Marine Special Operations Task Force,” Galvin said in an article. “We landed in Afghanistan on February 12, 2007. Before long the First was involved in a complex ambush near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, on March 4, 2007. We were attacked by a suicide car-bomb, waves of Taliban fighters on both sides of the road, a sniper, and a mob that placed an obstacle to trap us in an ambush kill box. We successfully counterattacked, killed the Taliban terrorists, avoided civilian casualties, and returned to base within 20 minutes, where we learned of the Taliban’s swift information operations campaign that was already underway, accusing us of mass-murdering Afghan civilians. The Taliban’s version of events went out within 20 minutes through the BBC followed by countless others. Ultimately, the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, condemned our actions and the Army generals kicked us out of Afghanistan within five days. Crushing the Taliban in battle morphed into a PR victory for the extremists in the media and a weakening of the allied forces in-country. Due process went right out the window.”

“Ironically, Mattis was assigned as the convening authority by the commandant of the Marine Corps in August 2007, to be responsible for the investigation and a Court of Inquiry into our March 4 battle. Mattis received the results of my polygraph test and the sworn testimony of all the Marines involved in the firefight, confirming that on that morning no Marines said they killed any civilians or saw any civilians killed,” he added.

According to Zero Hedge, Galvin claims that “Mattis placed a ‘protective order’(a.k.a. gag order) prohibiting the two Marine officers who he named as co-defendants from making any statements to the press or face punishment. Our attorneys would face disbarment. The already unlevel playing field was tilted hard against the Marines who had won a battlefield victory under fire.”

Two of the Marines -who were of Hispanic ethnicity- were allegedly threatened with deportation to Mexico unless they signed statements claiming that Marines had acted haphazardly during the engagement.

“Mattis turned the prosecution over to his successor in the fall of 2007 as he received his promotion with a fourth star,” Galvin wrote. “The following year, the trial acquitted all of us. No thanks to Mad Dog Mattis. He got his star. A few bad prosecutors under his watch cost the Marines a few good men, and diminished America’s position in Afghanistan at a time when that war might still have been won.”

Galvin went on to point out that Mattis joined several corporate boards after retiring, including Theranos and military contractor General Dynamics.

The former company was caught up in a defrauding scandal involving a blood analysis device, and resulted in the company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, being convicted earlier this year in California.

In 2012, Holmes reportedly contacted Mattis and other officials about getting the DoD on board.

“How do we overcome this new obstacle?” she wrote. “I have tried to get this device tested in theater asap, legally and ethically. This appears to be relatively straight-forward yet we’re a year into this and not yet deployed.”

For Galvin, the incident is just one of many where Mattis was involved.

“Holmes’ device never worked,” he wrote. “She is now a convicted fraudster. Was Mattis her gullible mark or a greedy participant?”

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