Navy orders investigation into intense SEAL training after elite athlete died

Top Navy officials have ordered an independent investigation into the intense selection course for its SEALS after a sailor’s death revealed a history of physical abuse, poor medical oversight and the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Outgoing vice chief of naval operations Adm. William K Lescher ordered the investigation in a letter from August 31. 

It was promptly given to a rear admiral from outside the SEALS, the New York Times reports, signaling that Navy officials had given it the highest priority and wanted an independent investigation into the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs course — or BUD/S for short. 

Lescher asked investigators to focus on safety measures, the qualifications of instructors and medical personnel, as well as its drug testing policy as sailors complain the course has only become more grueling since a SEAL Team Six commander was put in charge with staff punching and kicking the recruits.

He also asked what, if anything, had changed since February, when 24-year-old former college footballer Kyle Mullen died just hours after completing the course’s Hell Week, which takes place during the fourth week of part of Phase 1.

It is a grueling ‘five-and-a-half days of cold, wet, brutally difficult operational training on fewer than four hours of sleep,’ the Navy says, and candidates ‘run more than 200 miles and do physical training for more than 20 hours per day.’

Lescher has now given investigators just 30 days to report their findings, with a Navy spokesman telling the Times: ‘The Navy remains committed to transparency and ensuring the final reports are thorough, accurate, impartial, and that confidence and credibility are maintained throughout the entire process.’

Mullen was taken to Sharp Coronado Hospital in California on February 4 after displaying ‘symptoms’ following his completion of the brutal training.

He ultimately died of bacterial pneumonia, which drowned him in his own bodily fluids.

But a follow-up investigation found he and 40 of his classmates had tested positive for steroid use, as sailors tell the Times that the rampant steroid use is condoned by the instructors — who warn them not to get caught.

Mullen’s mother, Regina, has since criticized the Navy’s hesitation to provide her son with help as he was coughing up blood during training.

‘They killed him,’ Regina , who is a registered nurse, told the Times. ‘They say it’s training, but it’s torture. 

‘And then they didn’t even give them the proper medical care. They treat these guys worse than they are allowed to treat prisoners of war.’ 

She explained that her son, who played football for both Yale and Monmouth University, never touched steroids during his athletic career, but that all changed in the face of the harsh ‘hell week’ course.

She said it all began in late 2021 when her son was recovering from swimming-induced pulmonary edema (SIPE), a potentially life-threatening illness common among people training in frigid waters. 

Having failed his first attempt at completing the training course and recovering with other candidates who were coughing up blood, Regina said her son learned that many of them were taking steroids to help them complete course. 

She said Mullen then crafted a plan to buy a used car to store steroids to help him pass his next attempt at the course at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, near San Diego, California, in February. 

‘I told him not to do it,’ she told the Times. ‘But he ended up getting the car and sharing it with a bunch of guys.’ 

Although Mullen appeared to fair better at the training course after using the steroids, his mother said he was already spitting up blood and struggling to breathe by the second week. 

‘I said, ‘Go to the hospital right away,” Regina said. ‘He said, ‘No, ma, if you want to go to the hospital, they will make you quit first. Besides, it’s just SIPE.” 

Still, the Times reports, the Naval Special Warfare Command — which had been investigating Mullen’s death — placed the blame on the sailor rather than on the failures of the program.

BUD/S has long-been criticized over its grueling nature, where candidates often suffer concussions, broken bones, infections and near drownings.

Over the course of the training, SEAL candidates endure weeks of carrying heavy logs, inflatable boats, lengthy sessions of sit-ups and pull-ups in the frigid surf and ‘drown-proofing’ exercises in which sailors’ hands are bound underwater as they have to fight to survive.

SEALs say they need the unforgiving course to find the rare individuals who can perform some of the most difficult missions.

But the course has only become more difficult over the past few years, sailors told the Times, after former SEAL Team Six commander Capt. Bradley Geary, was put in charge and made his buddies the instructors with little oversight.

He also removed a number of senior civilian advisers whose job it had been to watch over training, guide young instructors and step in if they saw unnecessary abuse or alarming medical problems, the Times reports.

Since then, the average passing rate has plunged to half of what it had been previously — with some classes seeing only 7 percent of its sailors passing.

At least five sailors who were BUD/S students in 2021 and 2022 told the Times how instructors had hit, kicked or otherwise abused students, devising new ways to get them to quit.

They said that the proctor, whose job it is to be an ally and mentor to the students, would use his nightly mentoring sessions to inflict more punishment, having students run for miles in the dark and plunge repeatedly into the frigid ocean.

Students were then only allowed about two to three hours of sleep, they said, prompting their immune systems to break down with diarrhea, vomiting and pneumonia common amongst the trainee. 

But any student who was injured were called weaklings and quitters, they said, and were often punished for seeking help as the medical staff stood by silently.

For one man, that meant that when he went to his instructors one morning with a painfully swollen leg he believed was broken and asked to see medical staff, the instructors ordered him to wait two hours in the Pacific surf while the rest of his class was ordered to chant his name and encourage him to quit.

The medical personnel stood by for an hour, he said, before they pulled him from the water with hypothermia.

He then ended up in a local hospital, where he had to have surgery to remove a flesh-eating bacteria.

A former SEAL whose son was taking the course said he saw his son two weeks into the BUD/S training severely swollen with multiple abrasions.

He brought his son to a civilian doctor to get help without attracting the attention of the instructors, but his son still dropped out one week later from exhaustion and his injuries.

The ex-SEAL told the Times how when he qualified back in the 1990s, BUD/S was hard, but the focus was on learning teamwork and mental acuity.

What his son experienced, he said, was more akin to the novel The Lord of the Flies. 

Four recent candidates also told the Times how sailors had been using drugs to get through the course, and when instructors briefed their class on drug use, the emphasis was on not getting caught.

Navy officials told the Time that changes have been made in response to the complaints, including allowing students more sleep and dialing back the hardest parts of the course.

The Navy spokesman, though, added that while many of the instructors had been moved from BUD/S training since Mullen’s death, none of them have received any punishment.