"On Second Thought" For Thursday, May 2, 2019

Over his 19-year career with the Navy SEALs, Special Operations
Chief Edward "Eddie" Gallagher earned high honors for valor and
leadership as a medic, sniper and explosives expert. But less than
a year after Gallagher returned from his eighth deployment –
fighting the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq – he drew a different
kind of attention from the Navy: he was charged with war crimes ,
among them premeditated murder. Gallagher's case goes to trial in
May. He and his family have denied all charges. When New York Times
national correspondent Dave Philipps began reporting on Gallagher's
case, he thought he might learn that Gallagher had suffered some
kind of psychotic break as the result of numerous combat
deployments over the course of nearly two decades. But what
Philipps has found, through interviews and hundreds of pages of
internal military documents , defied expectations. Joining on the
line from Colorado Springs, Colorado, Philipps told On Second
Thought that Gallagher's case reveals