Introduction: The Ice Man
The true story of CIA torture and the Navy SEAL platoon that took the blame
This is the first of several installments of The Ice Man, my book about the Navy SEAL platoon in Iraq that took the blame for a CIA homicide. The book is available only to paid subscribers. I will continue to post additional content for non-paying subscribers.
I first heard the name Manadel al-Jamadi in 2004. I was working for The Associated Press, the huge international news service. The AP's San Diego bureau was a small news outfit stuffed into an office in the building that housed the city's newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune. With a staff of three writers and one photographer, our job was to cover the seventh-biggest city in America.
Part of that job meant we covered the military. The San Diego area was home to the biggest concentration of military personnel on the West Coast. To the north was the sprawling Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, the headquarters of the First Marine Division, which had fought at Guadalcanal in World War II. San Diego was the principal homeport of the US Pacific Fleet. Further south was the submarine base at Point Loma, where nuclear submarines slipped in and out on missions that no one could discuss. And on the tony coastal island of Coronado, California, was the headquarters of Naval Special Warfare Command, better known as the Navy SEALs.
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