Carl Higbie

Early life

Higbie was born on April 23, 1983 in New York city, and grew up in Southwestern Connecticut. He attended Greenwich High School before going to college, where he dropped out to join the military as troops were being deployed to Iraq.

Military service

Higbie enlisted in the United States Navy and became a SEAL in 2003, ultimately reaching the rank of Petty Officer First Class (E-6 grade) with a rating of Special Warfare Operator, First Class. He was twice deployed to Iraq to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom, once each under Presidents Bush and Obama.

Higbie is the author of Enemies, Foreign & Domestic: A SEAL's Story. He has appeared on Fox News and CNN.

After Higbie self-published his book Battle on the Home Front: A Navy SEAL's Mission to Save the American Dream in 2012, his security clearance was downgraded from "top secret". He signed out of the SEALs before the end of his term of duty with an honorable discharge. Some two months later the Navy downgraded his discharge to "general". A second book, Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: A SEAL's Story, was published by Post Hill Press in 2016.

In 2009, as a member of SEAL Team 10, Higbie participated in the operation to capture Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi, also known as the "Butcher of Fallujah." al-Isawi earned the nickname when he masterminded the 2004 Fallujah ambush in which four private contractors working as security guards for Blackwater USA were killed and their bodies mutilated and hung on display from a bridge over the Euphrates river. Images of the brutality were released by the insurgents, drawing attention to issues around private contractors and prompting Operation Vigilant Resolve, which evolved into the first Battle of Fallujah.

During the raid on al-Isawi's suspected location, Special Warfare Operator, Second Class Matthew McCabe located and confronted a man matching al-Isawi's description, who was reaching for a gun. Following orders to, if possible, capture al-Isawi (who was viewed as a valuable source for intelligence information), McCabe risked his life in subduing and capturing al-Isawi. Higbie later described McCabe as the true hero of the operation. Once incarcerated, al-Isawi claimed to have been subjected to abuse, offering blood on his lip and shirt as proof. Despite it being known that the al-Qaeda Handbook instructs captured operatives to immediately claim to have been mistreated, members of the SEAL team were interrogated and encouraged to confess to misdeeds and accept administrative punishment. Refusing to agree, McCabe, Jonathan Keefe, and Julio Huertas ultimately faced courts-martial on charges including assault (McCabe only), making false official statements, and dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee. McCabe's court-martial heard evidence suggesting the blood on al-Isawi's lip was from him deliberately biting a mouth ulcer. Higbie offered character evidence, and all three men were acquitted. Patrick Robinson has written a book about the capture of al-Isawi and subsequent events, titled Honor and Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the "Butcher of Fallujah"—and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured.

Candidate for Congress

In 2014, Higbie announced that he was running to be the Republican Party candidate to challenge Democrat Jim Himes in Connecticut's 4th congressional district, declaring himself to not be "bound by the same conformist rules that most Republicans are bound by." The other Republican candidates were former State Senator Dan Debicella and State Representative John Shaban. Higbie described himself as a social conservative with "moral oppositions to abortions and same-sex marriage, but my legislative position is live and let live," and stated that he would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On economic issues, Higbie supports "a balanced budget amendment and an across-the-board personal income tax rate of 10 percent, with a maximum annual deduction of $50,000," and he favors eliminating corporate taxes to attract overseas businesses. Higbie had difficulty with fund raising during his candidacy, and sought to force a primary election if he were not endorsed as the candidate. Debicella won the nomination with support from 195 of the 210 delegates, and contested the election against Himes, who won with 53.7% of the vote.

Great America PAC

Higbie is a spokesman for Great America PAC, an independent-expenditure only political action committee (Super PAC) which advocates for Donald Trump. In this capacity, he has acted as a Trump surrogate, appearing on Fox News and CNN amongst others. Higbie has discussed a variety of topics including the war in Iraq, the composition of the Trump transition team, the controversy relating to Khizr Khan's appearance at the DNC convention, the proposal for a register of Muslims, and the National Policy Institute conference.

Iraq

In a CNN interview with retired-Major General Paul Eaton and Chris Cuomo, Higbie was critical of the use of air power and drone strikes by the Obama administration and argued in support of Trump's promise to address problems in Iraq with "boots on the ground." He was also critical of Eaton, who was the U.S. Army Chief of Infantry and then the Commanding General of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team in Iraq (2003–2004), stating that the leadership "[Eaton's] articulated here today is not conducive to winning a war."

Trump transition team

During the transition following the 2016 Presidential election, Higbie defended Steve Bannon (formerly of Breitbart.com) from accusations of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racism. Of Bannon's appointment as chief strategist to President-elect Trump, Higbie declared: "Steve Bannon has exceled in every single role he has held dating back to his service in the US Navy. I cannot imagine a better person to be advising an already successful businessman taking on the biggest business in the world, the US Government."

Register of Muslims

On the same day as defending Bannon, in an interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Higbie cited the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the associated Supreme Court decision in Korematsu v. United States as providing legal justification for Trump's campaign promise of a register for Muslims. Higbie repeated his comments on CNN to Erin Burnett the following day. Kansas Secretary of State and Trump-adviser on immigration Kris Kobach has reportedly proposed the register as the first priority in a suite of proposals for the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the extreme vetting of immigrants. Kelly replied that Higbie "knows better" than to make such suggestions as they scare people. Kelly met Higbie's further assertion that he was only noting "there was precedent for it" with the declaration: "You can't be citing Japanese internment camps for anything the President-elect is going to do." Trump's transition team later issued a statement to the Huffington Post that denied that Trump supported a Muslim registry, though he did make comments supporting such an idea in 2015.

George Takei, who was detained in one of the World War II internment camps, described Higbie's comments as "dangerous" and went on to say that "[r]egistration of any group of people, and certainly registration of Muslims, is a prelude to internment." Higbie's comments attracted media criticism, and Representative Judy Chu (D–CA), the first Chinese American woman elected to the U.S. Congress, declared that "[a]ny proposal to force American Muslims to register with the federal government, and to use Japanese imprisonment during World War II as precedent, is abhorrent and has no place in our society. These ideas are based on tactics of fear, division, and hate that we must condemn." Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein addressed Higbie's suggestion that Korematsu could be used to support a Muslim register, describing the case as having "joined Dred Scott as an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry" even though it has never been overturned. Harvard University's Noah Feldman concurred, declaring that "Korematsu's uniquely bad legal status means it's not precedent even though it hasn't been overturned."

National Policy Institute conference

At its conference in Washington, DC, in November 2016, the white nationalist National Policy Institute celebrated Trump's victory as "the first step towards identity politics in the United States," and the audience responded to the end of Richard Spencer's speech – "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" – by standing and making the Nazi salute. Higbie participated in a CNN panel discussion with Angela Rye to discuss the conference, and described the attendees as "morons" and "idiots" who do not represent the Republican Party as a whole. The discussion became a slanging match with Rye calling the Republicans as the "party of oppression" and describing Higbie's knowledge of history was "ass backwards" for his describing the Republicans as "the party of Martin Luther King." Higbie, in turn, described Rye's comments about reparations for slavery as "the most ridiculous, un-American statement I've ever heard." Host John Berman brought the discussion back to topic, getting confirmation that both condemned the use of Nazi salutes at the alt-right conference and that both saw that the conference had been racist and anti-Semitic.

List of books