SEAL Charged With War Crimes, City Hall Archives, Top Weekend Events

April 19, 2019 at 11:32 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:55 Speaker 1: 01:39 Speaker 2: 01:42 Speaker 3: 02:34 Speaker 1: 02:57 Speaker 2: 03:03 Speaker 1: 03:28 Speaker 2: 03:37 Speaker 1: 04:23 Speaker 2: 04:33 Speaker 1: 04:55 Speaker 2: 05:03 Speaker 3: 05:06 Speaker 2: 05:26 Speaker 1: 06:25 Speaker 2: 06:31 Speaker 1: 06:36 Speaker 4: 06:46 Speaker 1: 06:49 Speaker 4: 07:10 Speaker 5: 07:11 Speaker 5: 07:20 Speaker 6: 08:08 Speaker 5: 08:13 Speaker 6: 08:24 Speaker 5: 08:32 Speaker 6: 08:38 Speaker 5: 08:48 Speaker 6: 10:00 Speaker 5: 10:08 Speaker 6: 10:24 Speaker 5: 10:30 Speaker 6: 10:51 Speaker 5: 11:00 Speaker 1: 11:09 Speaker 7: 11:54 Speaker 7: 13:16 Speaker 6: 14:23 Speaker 8: 14:44 Speaker 9: 14:52 Speaker 7: 14:54 Speaker 9: 14:59 Speaker 7: 15:03 Speaker 7: 16:00 Speaker 9: 16:58 Speaker 7: 17:16 New details on a navy seal accused of war crimes awaiting trial. And a look at San Diego's archives. I'm jade Hindman. This is KPBS mid day edition, right? It's Friday, April 19th. A navy seal charged with war crimes will stay behind bars while awaiting trial. Chief Eddie Gallagher was taken into custody last year and charged with a series of war crimes, including killing a teenager who was an alleged isis fighter in his custody. KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh has been covering the story and joins us with details. Steve, welcome. Hi Jen. We mentioned he's accused of war crimes. Remind us about the specific accusations against Gallagher. So let me tell you a little bit about Gallagher. This is a seal that was right at the end of his career. He had deployed eight times, most of them combat deployments. He was in Syria in 2017. And what he's accused of is in 2017 while he was in Syria that there was a, uh, an isis fighter that was brought to him, uh, possibly unconscious, and that he's accused of killing the him with his knife. He's also accused of killing a women and a and an old man with his sniper rifle. And then bragging about it. We know from some of the documents that have been leaked that he texted photo of himself with the body of the, of the Isis fighter. Two other seals in this command. And yesterday you were in court at Gallagher's hearing what happened, what's happened is he was taken into custody in September 11th of last year and he had been in the brig at Miramar and then on March 30th, uh, president Trump tweeted, uh, that uh, he wanted Gallagher move to some sort of less restrictive confinement. Uh, after we saw a Congressman Duncan Hunter and a couple of others, I'm urging the president to take action in this. He had been moved then to the naval hospital here in San Diego where he was still in a heavily restricted, he was able to only be in this one barracks area confined to two floors there. They, what they were trying to do is get those restrictions lessons either if out of the naval hospital or to lessen those restrictions so he could see family during wider hours so he could go to the mess hall on his own, things like that. So this is, uh, his defense counsel, a Timothy Palpatory. I think that there was no reason for him to be in the brig in the first place. Yeah, he does it. He is not a risk of flight. He's not about this investigation for months before he was arrested. He didn't run away. He didn't do anything to any witnesses. You know, all this stuff that they're talking about with witness intimidation. It's all a big nothing. If his defense attorney is, he's not a flight risk. Why was he confined and putting the brig in the first place he was putting in jail in, in the first place because he had been accused of making threats against other seals within his command. And these are in fact the seals that ultimately turned him in in this case. Also the judge, and we've, this came up yesterday in court, can't audit magically overruled the seals. Who were the ones who decided to put him in the, the medical center rather than release him entirely after Trump's tweet. Yeah. And you mentioned that the judge in the case said he doesn't have the authority to overrule the seal command. How has military criminal court different from civilian criminal, yeah, port. It's actually different in a lot of really kind of interesting ways. There's something called a convening authority. In this case it's the, uh, the rear admiral in charge of Navy region southwest. She's the person who decides who goes to court, who it goes to actual court Marshall. She also has the power to make rulings in various parts of this case. So it's not all up to the judge, which is what we found out yesterday. Now he can do certain things like he can offer good time. So what he ended up ruling yesterday was that Gallagher's confinement was basically tantamount to him remaining in the Brig. It was just the same as remaining in the Brig. So for every day he remains confined the way he is right now. He will get one day off of his sentence, assuming he's convicted and I, I've got to circle back and ask if there are some issues here at play. You Say Gallagher was deployed multiple times, right? Yes. Where they back to back deployments. Like many seals at this point, in many special operators in general, the pace of deployment is really quite high. In fact, special operations command has tried to do a lot to try to bring down the level of deployments. Some people are deploying every six months, so six months here and then six months back out in the field. And many people have said that's now really become unsustainable. President Trump and San Diego Republican congressman Duncan Hunter have weighed in on Gallagher's case. Why do you think it's drawn so much attention? Well, actually his attorney talked a little bit about that himself. Uh, certainly, uh, this case gets more attention because he is a navy seal and he also has probably the best advocates that anybody could ever ask for in his family. His brother and his wife have worked tirelessly to bring this case out into the American consciousness. I think a couple of the reasons are, there've been a lot of leaks in this case. In fact, this came up in court yesterday, the defense council, I was complaining about the number of leaks though I think some of those leaks also came from possibly some of Gallagher, his own supporters. So there's a lot of juicy details on this. The fact that we know that there are several, a seals that are scheduled to testify against him though those people in his command. But the biggest issue really is that this is the first of six cases involving seals and war crimes to come up in San Diego alone this year. There are also a couple of cases involving seals on the east coast as well. So there's a lot of attention. Normally the special forces community is incredibly quiet. They don't say very much at all. And right now we have this, uh, I would say a massive window into the inner workings of special forces. And a lot of people are concerned, a lot of seals who normally would not go public and talk, are starting to talk now at his trial date is set to may 28 if he's convicted. What kind of sentence is he facing? Well, if he's convicted of the most serious crime and to Gallagher faces life in prison. I've been speaking with KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh. Steve, thanks for joining us. Thanks Jane. Yeah, our current cultural moment seems to embrace minimalism. If something doesn't spark joy, you should just throw it away. But then there are the archives KPBS reporter Claire Traeger. Sir brings us to the city of San Diego's archives where they store endless stacks of papers all the way back to the 1850s going down, take a ride down the elevators at two oh two C street, San Diego City Hall, and you'll end up in the basement. You'll end up in a magical place filled with boxes and boxes of city council resolutions, records of property ownership, old cemetery maps and ordinances from the 18 hundreds back when Mexico owned San Diego. This is the city of San Diego's archives. We have a lot of cool stuff down here that the public had never laid eyes on. Sheila Beale is the deputy director of archives and records management for the city and she kicks off our archives tour a lot of these precious historical, fragile books and materials just by doormat. In 2013, Liz Malin, the city clerk got $50,000 in funding for the archiving program by reminding people what the city had basically in its basement that was forgotten about. That's when the light went on for me and I was like, people can't care about something unless they know it exists. Now. She preserves and stores historic documents and also makes the archives accessible to the public. About half of her budget goes to paying a parttime archivist, Jerry Hanfield. How civilizations have had record keeping. The only difference in those days is that record keepers were among the highest paid officials. Handfield and other members of the city clerk staff walked us through what the city archives have. This is, these are, uh, coordinates is from the time when Mexico governed San Diego, the new country of Mexico. He also shows a census books from the 18 hundreds cemetery records including Chinese and May, sonic burial grounds and books to recording property ownership all written out by hand. Some of these are stored in the cold vault. A special refrigerated room kept at 68 degrees paper stored at 68 degrees last twice as long as when it's stored at 72 degrees is the best place to be in the basement. You can't hide him here but I'll stay too long. The trees, Percy who works for the city clerk's office shows us around the vault is filled with stacks of boxes in each of those are filled with endless pieces of paper and there are leather bound books that look like they belong on the set of game of Thrones filled with handwritten council resolutions. A lot of the earliest records from the city are in here cause we have a lot of the old books, documents resolutions, a ordinance. In fact, they have 306,964 for council resolutions and that only goes up to 2017 another part of the job is storing the documents that are essential to city government. Every government has records, dictators have records, kings have records, but in a democracy we want to make them accessible. That means the city clerk's office works with every council office and every city department to let them know what records need to be stored and for how long. And yes, they keep paper copies of everything says Liz Mayland, the city clerk. I am the official record keeper for the city and I've, I'm tasked with keeping things forever and ever. Amen. So they have multiple cold vaults in different locations downtown where they store records that and a site underground in the salt mines in Kansas. Yes. Really at the end of our tour, the city archivist, Jerry Hanfield, points out a quote from the city council minutes back in 1850 they designated an iron safe be appropriated to the clerk for the safekeeping of the city archive. Today, the storage is a little bigger than one iron safe, but the idea is basically the same. Clear. Traeger Sir KPBS news. If you know of more archives, we should visit in future stories. Email us@investigationsatkpbs.org this is KPBS mid day edition. I'm jade Hindman too modern, but very different comedy greats are in San Diego. Ali Wong and Mark Marin on today's weekend preview. We'll learn a bit about each comedian plus the musical cats is back with new staging and costumes. KPBS arts calendar editor, Nina Garren joins me with your weekend preview. Hi Nina. Hello. So Ali Wong is in San Diego this weekend. Remind us who she is. She's a comedian from the bay area. She got very popular doing standup around Los Angeles. She has a big southern California fan base. She was kind of a known for a long time, but she was always doing shows like best week ever on VH one or Chelsea lately and now she is actually so popular. It's one of the hottest tickets in town and she's performing a total of seven shows and I think they're all sold out. So tell me, why is she so popular? You know, she's the kind of comic that's just been working so hard to get a following, starting small and getting bigger and bigger. And then what really put her in the spotlight where these two Netflix specials, Ali Long Baby Cobra and hard knock wife and she talks about marriage, motherhood, growing up, Asian. She just kind of like tells it how it really is. Like I can just trap a dude and make no more effort. I don't want to wear a thong underwear anymore. I want to be free to not wear thong underwear. I just want to wear little boys underwear because that's what fits. I don't know what that pocket in the front is for. That's just where I put my keys when I run. And uh, she's moving from stand up into other areas too. I understand. She's working on a show with Tiffany Haddish. Yeah. So she's actually a writer on fresh off the boat. She's an actress on ABC's American housewife, and now she's doing an animated show by the creator of bojack horseman called Tuka and Birdie. This is the one with Tiffany Haddish. I was about two birds who are Sassy best friends, think kind of broad city, but animated Ali Wong performs tonight through Sunday at the Balbo with theater and on Monday night at the civic theater. Switching gears now to mark Marin. Mark is another popular comedian performing this weekend. Uh, can you describe his comedy? Yeah. Mark Marin has a whole other energy from Allie won, like Ali Wong is very confident and sure of herself. And Mark Marin is kind of agitated and angst-ridden. Um, he has been doing standup for more than 30 years, so that's kind of his act. He knows exactly what he's doing on stage and most people know about Mark Mayer and from his popular interview podcast. WTF. Let's listen to a clip of Mark Marin. This is him with Conan O'brien talking about social media. It's that his work, you know, I have to put myself out there in the world. How are we all on Facebook and Twitter? Are you on? You on both? Yeah. How was that? Why we're grownups? Are we not grownups? Are we seven year old emotionally? I mean, how did you ever have that moment where you're sitting there on Facebook and you're updating your status and you realize, oh my God, every status updates should just say with somebody, please acknowledge me. Yeah, you just wait it out. Yeah. A bad idea. Mine would be or just if everyone, I'm still alive. Well, you know, just send that out to people every now and I just sat there waiting. Then all of a sudden sec, Yay. I win. Mark is also expanding his comedy into TV and film. Where else could people know him from? Mark Marin had a scripted TV show on IFC called a Marin and he is also on the Netflix TV show called glow where he plays Sam, Sylvia and he's going into movies. He's going to be in the joker origin story coming up in the next year. Interesting. I understand. You already saw his performance last night. How was it? It was great. He, like I said, it is a little bleak. He talks about global warming and vaccinations and politics. So you really have to be prepared for a political night and maybe a little depression, but it is awesome. And I loved it. And Mark Marin performs tonight and Saturday at the American comedy company. Finally cats. The iconic musical is back in San Diego. Is this the same tour that's been going around since the 1980s it is and it isn't. It's been updated. It has new costumes and it has choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler. He did the choreography for Hamilton and in the heights. It's based on a book of poems by ts Eliot called the old possums book of practical cats. It's kind of these cat poems turned into a story about gelical cats trying to be reborn. And the show is basically each cat telling you a little bit about themselves. So why has this show endured for so long? What makes it popular? Sometimes when I see this show, I have no idea what's going on. And it's just so bizarre and I think that's kind of an appeal. But also it is such a great show for dancing. The dancers are amazing. They're really athletes. Let's listen to a song from the Broadway revival. This is the opening number gelical songs. [inaudible] rose commission, the spoon [inaudible] you know, cancer is the kind of show that people love or hate. You saw it earlier this week, one side of the battle. Are you on? I used to not like it, but I think, I think it helps to go in prepared and know that it's based on these poems. And if you do go in knowing a little backstory, then you might end up liking it and you didn't. You also started a new online feature inspired by cats. Uh, tell us a bit more about it. Yeah. The first time I saw cat other I said I was not prepared. I was just put in the theater and I didn't know that the cats, we're never going to stop singing and I didn't know what was going on. And I hated musicals for a long time after that. So I thought this time it's coming to town, I want to prepare people. So I wrote a family friendly review. The kind of breaks down the plot, the runtime, what kids might like, what they might not like, and you can find that on our site. kpbs.org very nice. Cats continues at the civic theater through Sunday. For more weekend events, be sure to check out k pbs.org/. Arts I've been speaking with Nina and KPBS arts editor. Nina, thanks for joining us. Thanks. Have a good weekend.

By KPBS Public Media

Ways To Subscribe

A U.S. Navy Seal charged with war crimes will not be released before his trial. Also, a look at the archives below San Diego City Hall and this weekend’s top art events.