Navy Commander Capt. Brad Geary, Removed from Command: Board of Inquiry Over Death of Kyle Mullen

Navy Commander Capt. Brad Geary, Removed from Command: Board of Inquiry Over Death of Kyle MullenPhoto by2nd Life Media US Navy

Another officer that was removed from command faces more serious questions and consequences. The death of Navy SEAL candidate Kyle Mullen, a fit 24-year-old who died at the tail end of the grueling SEAL BUD/s selection program in February 2022, became national news as his family sought to understand what had happened.

After a rare, outside investigation of the incident found that Capt. Brad Geary, along with other members of the command, were negligent in their leadership responsibilities and that medical care for recruits was lacking, he was removed from command and now, more than a year later, is facing a board of inquiry that has the power to boot him from the Navy, his lawyer said last week.

Unlike most naval officers who find themselves facing the military justice system – including two others connected to this incident – Geary is not staying quiet, reports instead, he has begun to make the argument that Mullen died from drug use and that top Navy officials are trying to make him a scapegoat.

A native Floridian, Captain Geary graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2000 with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics. He graduated from SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) with class 234.

Throughoutacareer inNavalSpecialWarfare, Captain Geary has completed numerous deployments throughout Europe, South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia while serving in various leadershiproles at SEAL

Delivery Vehicle Team TWO, SEAL Team FOUR Naval Special Warfare Tactical Developmentand Evaluation Squadron THREE, and during his first Command tour at SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team ONE.

In addition to his operational tours , he also served as the Executive Officer of Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command, served three years at the Joint Interagency Task Force National Capital Region, and most recently served as the Operations Officer for Naval Special Warfare Group THREE in Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Commands he served with have earned the NavyMeritorious Unit Commendation, the Navy Unit Commendation, the Joint Meritorious UnitAward and two Navy Presidential Unit Citations. In short, he has had the privilege of serving with exceptional teammates . Captain Geary also earned a Master of Art Degree in Defense Analysis with a focus on Unconventional Warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School in 2006 per his bio.

Military.com reached out to the Navy on these allegations, but the service declined to comment, citing ongoing administrative processes.

Geary also offered a variety of justifications and arguments in favor of the SEALs and the BUD/s training process that largely revolved around the idea that the arduous, if not brutal, process has a method to the madness that bears dividends on the battlefield.

"We have refined the idea of what it means to be a warfighter and we've been very, very successful," Geary said, before noting that the SEALs have made mistakes and "we're not perfect."

Although Mullen's autopsy was never publicly released, Navy reports found that he died of acute pneumonia shortly after completing the first, most challenging portion of SEAL training known as "Hell Week" on Feb. 4, 2022.

After Mullen's death, investigators also found a stash of performance-enhancing drugs in his car, including testosterone and human growth hormone, and text messages on his phone that included a conversation in which he discussed using a bad vial of drugs that left swelling at an injection site according to reports in Military.com

However, that same investigation failed to definitively conclude that Mullen used the drugs, noting that neither his blood nor urine were able to be tested.

Regina Mullen, Kyle Mullen's mother and a registered nurse, didn't disagree with the idea that her son flirted with the notion of taking PEDs: In an interview with Military.com, she said he told her in several phone calls about feeling pressure to take them, but she doesn't believe that they had anything to do with her son's death.

"You don't get bacterial pneumonia from PEDs," she said in a phone call last week.

She also noted that pneumonia is treatable and that three other Navy SEAL candidates who were training with her son also caught the infection but survived.

Geary argued that top Navy leaders who oversee the SEALs have "a gap in their understanding of us and how we've evolved over the last 25 years -- necessarily evolved -- and they haven't," adding that that lack of knowledge contributed to the investigation's conclusions.

One of Geary's key claims that diverges from the public understanding of Mullen's death is that "one of the early investigations" found that not only were drugs "absolutely a contributing cause in his death … that was backed up by five of six subject matter expert doctors, who all said the same thing as well."

"That's when the Navy changed that report. … The new report no longer addressed drugs as a causing factor, just ignored them," Geary claimed. Military.com was unable to verify those claims.

News of the boards was first reported by journalist Seth Hettena on Substack.

Geary blasted the Navy's investigation in a wide-ranging six-hour interview on the Shawn Ryan podcast. He said the service hasn't told the whole truth about what happened to Mullen.

"I'm risking a lot," Geary told Ryan when asked about speaking out. "It’s important and it’s been suppressed and that’s been an injustice — not just for the Mullen family (but) for my cadre who were vilified, for medical professionals who were vilified and for me personally and my family."

A Navy spokesperson confirmed the officers were notified of the boards but declined to comment further or respond to Geary's comments on the podcast.