Exclusive: Navy to hold senior officers responsible in SEAL trainee's death

A SEAL captain who commanded the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command and the doctor who headed BUD/s medical will face boards of inquiry in the 2022 death of trainee Kyle Mullen.

Updated

The Navy has decided to take the unprecedented step of holding a Navy SEAL captain and a Navy doctor who oversaw SEAL training and medical care responsible for the 2022 death of a trainee. For now, however, the two men will not face criminal charges.

Capt. Bradley Geary, former commander of the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command, said he was notified last week that the Navy will convene a panel of three admirals who will decide the fate of his 25-year military career. In a private email I obtained, Geary blasted Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro for the decision, calling him “unfit to lead.”

Dr. Erik Ramey, a Navy commander who headed the medical department at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training in Coronado, California, will also face a separate hearing before senior officers.

The Navy accused Geary and Ramey of dereliction of duty for negligently failing to provide medical support and negligent command supervision, resulting in “death and grievous bodily harm.” Kyle Mullen, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, died in February 2022, shortly after successfully completing Hell Week. In addition to Mullen, six of his classmates landed in the hospital after an unusually severe Hell Week.

The cases against the two men will be heard in administrative hearings, known as boards of inquiry. Boards of inquiry are the military equivalent of employment hearings. Potential consequences include separation from the service with an other than honorable discharge and loss of all benefits, but no criminal penalties.

That sort of outcome is what Regina Mullen, Kyle’s mother, has sought for Geary in her years-long campaign to see someone held accountable for her son’s death.

“It’s not finished yet,” she told me Thursday. “Let’s see if he gets away with it.”

Regina Mullen blamed Geary for her son’s death and said many trainees were badly injured under his leadership, but she also recognized that Geary was a father of four and did not want to see him jailed. She said Dr. Ramey should be criminally prosecuted and lose his license to practice medicine.

Ramey’s attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan, says the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery concluded in their investigation that his client met the standard of care. “The United States Navy is dropping their standards to meet recruiting goals. No physician will want to work at SEAL training," Sullivan told me.

“The Navy always finds someone to throw under the bus,” said Brian Ferguson, who represented several of Mullen’s BUD/S instructors as a pro bono civilian attorney. “Shivving the doc they stuck with an understaffed and underfunded clinic is classic blame-shifting.”

Jason Wareham, Geary’s defense attorney, said Secretary Del Toro was scapegoating his client. “This action is being taken, not because it is warranted, but to obfuscate from what appears to be the SECNAV’s willingness to knowingly misrepresent to the American people the nature of Seaman Mullen’s regrettable passing,” Wareham said. Wareham said his request that Del Toro disqualify himself from the case has gone unanswered for months.

Previously, Wareham told me that he would raise the issue of whether steroid use contributed to Mullen’s death if his client faced a legal proceeding. The day after Mullen’s death, agents with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service searched his car and found vials of human growth hormone and testosterone. On his iPhone, agents discovered text messages with Mullen discussing a bad batch of performance-enhancing drugs and complaining of pain in his rear end at an injection site.

The attorney also said he’s weighing whether to demand an open hearing for Geary’s board of inquiry “so that the American people have the full knowledge of the Navy’s actions in this case.”

In an email that was not intended for public distribution, Geary, a decorated SEAL and Naval Academy graduate, rebuked Del Toro. “Please forgive my frustration when I say this secretary is unfit to lead,” Geary wrote. “This is an abortion of justice and disgusting.” He also said the Navy denied his request to retire.  “Every day we are forced to remain in uniform is opportunity lost in the private sector, and continued emotional and cognitive abuse,” the SEAL captain said. “It is impossible to describe the mental strain of seeing these hypocrites act with impunity … and still be forced to call them ‘Sir.’”

The decision to convene boards of inquiry followed a sweeping Navy investigation released last year that found that a “near-perfect storm” of missteps led to the Mullen’s death. “This investigation revealed what is correctly described as an individual and community tragedy and found failures across multiple systems that led to a number of candidates being at a high risk of serious injury,” the report found.

The report singled out the BUD/S medical department as “poorly organized, poorly integrated, and poorly led” and blasted the care provided after Hell Week as “wholly inadequate.” Five former trainees told me for an article published in Rolling Stone that the BUD/S medical staff showed negligence that bordered on recklessness by sending hurt and sick young men back to training with what they learned later were broken bones, torn cartilage, or an inability to swallow food, and other ailments.

Following the release of that report, Naval Special Warfare Command notified Geary, Ramey, and another SEAL officer that the three men should face non-judicial punishment (NJP), known as an admiral’s mast.  Both Geary and Ramey refused NJP. SEAL Capt. Brian Drechsler, the former commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Center, accepted NJP and retired on June 1. (Drechsler was recently named head of operations at a planned Navy SEAL museum in San Diego.)

An early internal investigation by Naval Special Warfare determined that “Other contributing factors [in Mullen’s death] include the use of prohibited performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs)...” The then vice chief of naval operations, Adm. William Lescher, sent the report back to be redone. The revised report left out any mention of PEDs.

The report released in May 2023 by the Naval Education and Training Command was the third investigation into Kyle’s death, and it appeared to put the matter to rest. “Mullen’s death was not caused by PEDs,” Navy Rear Admiral Peter Gavin, head of the command, wrote.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Capt. Brad Geary’s comments about Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro were made in a private email that was not intended for public distribution.