Media

Charles’s son, Michael Strange, was a top cryptologist and SEAL Team 6 member on the Osama Bin Laden raid in 2011. Three months later on August 6, 2011, Michael was killed in Afghanistan along with 30 other Americans on call sign Extortion 17. Charles has been seeking the truth about Michael’s death for nearly a decade and has gone to Congress, the Pentagon, and The White House. Simultaneously he leads other Gold Star Families to finding peace. 

This is his story.

“Dad, you’ll never believe what’s happening in this country…” 

– PO1 Michael J. Strange CTR1, June 4, 2011

On August 6, 2011 – three months after members of Navy SEAL Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden – Taliban forces took down a United States helicopter, call sign Extortion 17. The attack killed the Air National Guard crew, seven unidentified members of the Afghan military, and 17 members of Navy SEAL Team Six – warrior brothers from the same team that had killed Osama Bin Laden just 90 days prior. Were the seven Afghan soldiers aboard that helicopter really undercover Taliban who either maneuvered the chopper within easy range of being shot down or sabotaged it from within? Were the SEALs sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and deliberately flown into a known Taliban hot zone? Don Brown, a former US Navy JAG officer stationed at the Pentagon and a former special assistant United States attorney, re-creates the wartime action, tells the life stories of the elite warriors our nation lost on that day and tears apart the official military explanation of the incident contained in the infamous Colt Report, which reveals either gross incompetence or a massive cover-up.

Before BENGHAZI, There was EXTORTION 17…. August 06, 2011, 2:20 a.m.—Operation Lefty Grove is underway, a highly dangerous mission to take out another high-level Taliban operative, three months after the death of Osama Bin Laden. In the dark of night, twenty-five US Special Ops Forces and a five-man flight crew on board Extortion 17, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Seven unidentified Afghan Commandos are allowed to join them. Ground forces have already been engaged in a three-hour exhaustive battle. Extortion 17’s specially trained warriors drop into the Hot Landing Zone to help their fellow warriors. But there’s a problem: the standard chopper escorts have all been directed elsewhere. Mission directions are unclear. Worse, pre-assault fire to cover the Chinook transporting our brave fighting men is not ordered. On that fateful night, Extortion 17 would never touch down. Taliban fighters fired three rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in rapid succession. The first RPG shot below the Chinook, but the second made contact in what the military would later describe as a “one-in-a-million shot.” The shot struck a rotor blade on the aft (rear) pylon, shearing off ten and a half feet of the blade. The third shot flew above the falling chopper. Within a matter of seconds, the chopper begins to spin violently out of control and then drops vertically into a dry creek bed and is engulfed in a large fireball. There are no survivors. The thirty brave Americans lost that night were more than just warriors. They were husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Billy Vaughn’s son, Aaron Carson Vaughn, was one of them. Over the next few months as unsettling information on the tragic incident is released to the families, Billy Vaughn becomes increasingly disturbed. Billy discovers that US military forces are not being led to win battles, but have been sent on a fool’s errand to “win the hearts and minds” of other nations. He is told that the US Rules of Engagement have prevented our brave defenders from defending themselves. Adding insult to injury, Billy learned that a Muslim Imam was invited by our own US military leaders to “pray” over his son’s dead body. As US war heroes lay in their caskets before their last flight home, the Imam damned America’s fallen warriors as “infidels” who would burn in hell. As US military leaders observed the ceremony at Bagram Air Base, the Imam boasted over the deaths of US heroes with words such as, “The companions of heaven [Muslims] are the winners.” Betrayed is a heart rending account in America’s history, an engaging story of faith, patriotism, honor, duty and loss. Betrayed is not just the biography of an American military family, it is a crucial, true-life narrative that every American must read and understand about their government and the danger America’s military strategy currently poses to all families. Betrayed is a book Billy Vaughn wishes he didn’t have to write. But his son is gone and there are still unanswered questions. He needs to know if finding the truth may prevent another father from standing in his shoes.