Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six | Matthew Cole (throwback ep)
The Team House
dee takos
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 160 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Navy SEALs are, for most Americans, the ultimate heroes. Their 2011 killing of Osama Bin Laden was celebrated as a victory in the War on Terror. Former SEALs rake in thousands of dollars as leadership consultants for American corporations. And young men who want to join the military dream of serving in their elite ranks.
But as recent revelations have shown, the SEALs have lost their bearings. In Code Over Country, investigative journalist Matthew A. Cole tells the story of the most celebrated SEAL unit, SEAL Team 6, revealing the dark, troubling pattern of war crimes and deep moral rot hidden behind the heroic narratives. From their origins during the World War II and their first test during the Vietnam War, the SEALs were trained to be specialized killers with short missions. But as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan turned into the endless War on Terror, their carefully-managed violence spiraled out of control. Drawing on years of reporting, Cole follows SEAL Team 6's history, the high-level decisions that unleashed their violence, and the coverups that prevented their crimes from coming to light. Code Over Country is a much-needed reckoning with the unchecked power of the military -- and the harms enacted by and upon soldiers in our name.
Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Over-Country-Tragedy-Corruption/dp/1568589050
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01:04 Defining "Code Over Country" (Code of Silence)
15:32 Origins of SEAL "Pirate Culture"
31:01 The "Warrior Class" and Accountability Failure
1:00:15 Commander Howard and Hatchet Desecration
1:56:06 Melgar Murder: Immediate Cover-up Focus
2:02:01 Reasons for OBL Mission Selection
2:04:09 Importance of ROE and the "Gray Shoot" Standard
2:20:51 Dropping CQD Training and Ethical Screening
2:27:38 Slabinski Award Signaling "The Cover-up Wins"
2:29:02 The Core Problem: Lack of Internal Accountability
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The weather. Tomorrow, expect a... Biting cold front. Mmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise, slowly but surely, reaching their peak in the afternoon. |
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| 0:28.6 | Sun Express, non-stop sunshine. |
| 0:37.1 | The Team House, with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. |
| 0:46.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to the Team House, episode 136. |
| 0:48.6 | I'm Jack Murphy here with my co-host, David Park. |
| 0:52.0 | Tonight we have Matthew Cole on the show. |
| 0:55.0 | He is a investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country. This is a book about SEAL Team 6 in the War on Terror and a lot of things |
| 1:01.0 | that have happened. Essentially, this is a book I think really about subculture, subculture and |
| 1:06.5 | special operations and where it comes off the rails. And we're going to really take a deep dive on this subject and on Matthew's book tonight. |
| 1:16.8 | Just a little heads up. We are going to talk about some graphic content here tonight. War crimes, sexual assault. |
| 1:24.2 | Like there's some pretty grisly stuff in here. Just a heads up. Some of you are sensitive to |
| 1:28.0 | that kind of stuff. Is that a trigger warning? That's a trigger warning, man, because people are |
| 1:31.8 | going to be big triggered in the live chat today. So you know it's coming. So, Matthew, if you could |
| 1:39.4 | just start off telling us a little bit about yourself and kind of what was your entryway into journalism and then |
| 1:45.5 | eventually covering a really specific type of journalism. You know, we've had some people on here, |
| 1:53.4 | Sean Naylor and Jessica Donati and David Phillips, like there's, but there's not many of us, right? |
| 1:58.9 | You can count them on, you know, two hands, two and a half hands, people who cover special operations and J-Soc. |
| 2:07.0 | What was kind of your path into journalism and then winding up in a very specific field? |
| 2:11.9 | First, I'm really grateful for you guys having me on. |
| 2:14.3 | I'm really glad that you give me an opportunity to talk about the book. |
... |
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