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?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/us/politics/father-of-commando-killed-in-yemen-refused-to-meet-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0