The Canadian military has demanded a US podcaster delete his interview with the former Special Forces operator, who was part of the team that killed the longest-ever sniper, claiming it revealed classified information.
Shawn Ryan, a podcaster and retired Navy SEAL, last week published his interview with Dallas Alexander, a former commando with Canada’s elite Joint Task Force 2, who came forward to reveal he was the spotter of a sniper team that set the world record shot. in 2017, which killed an ISIS fighter in Mosul.
In a letter on Feb. 10, a legal adviser to Canada’s Special Operations Forces Command demanded that Ryan remove the podcast, which contained a video clip of the recorded recording, claiming it contained classified information.
Ryan said he decided to temporarily remove the interview to review it for anything that could endanger personnel or ongoing operations — but accused Canada of trying to censor Alexander for criticizing CAF vaccine mandates.
“I believe this is their attempt to silence Dallas by explaining that he left command for refusing the covid vaccine,” Ryan wrote in a statement. Twitter message. “However, it was ultimately my decision to pull the video.”
Dallas Alexander, a former commando with Canada’s elite JTF 2, was part of the team that killed the world’s longest recorded sniper, a 3.5 kilometer shot that killed an ISIS militant in Mosul
Shawn Ryan, a podcaster and retired Navy SEAL, published his interview with Alexander last week, but the Canadian government demanded he remove it
“I believe this is their attempt to silence Dallas by explaining that he has left the warrant for refusing the covid vaccine,” Ryan wrote in a Twitter post.
Alexander, in one video statement on Instagram, the Canadian request also mentioned censorship, saying, “In all aspects of censorship, the common theme is, ‘this is dangerous information for someone, that’s why we need to censor it.'”
“We’ve seen that a lot in recent years,” he added.
The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com Thursday afternoon.
The podcast episode in question featured a short, grainy clip of the world record sniper shot, which a member of Alexander’s JTF 2 sniper unit shot in May 2017 with a McMillan TAC-50 rifle.
The bullet traveled a distance of 3.5 kilometers, hurtling through the air for nearly 10 seconds, before striking and killing an Islamic State terrorist as he exited a building to enter a vehicle.
It is the longest recorded sniper kill in history, and the Canadian government revealed at the time that it disrupted an imminent attack on Iraqi security forces.
The identity of the record-breaking sniper remains unknown, but Alexander recently came forward to speak about his experience in the military and revealed that he was part of the sniper team that took the record shot.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Alexander said he was the spotter for the sniper team and noted that he never personally took credit for taking the shot.
In the legal claim posted online by Ryan, the Canadian military alleged that the podcast episode contained information “harmful to Canadian national security, national defense and international relations.”
In the now-deleted episode, Alexander (left) spoke about his decision to leave military service over his objection to COVID-19 vaccine mandates
In the legal claim posted online by Ryan, the Canadian military alleged that the podcast episode contained information “harmful to Canadian national security.”
The letter further claimed that videos and photos shared by Alexander were actually “the sole intellectual property of His Majesty the King in Law of Canada,” referring to Britain’s King Charles.
“It’s an unusual request,” Ryan’s lawyer, Timothy C. Parlatore, told DailyMail.com. “It’s not something I would normally expect from the US military, because in the US the constitutional principles are very clear.”
Parlatore said his client’s right to publish the interview and footage from the battlefield was firmly protected by the freedom of speech and freedom of the press guaranteed in the US Constitution.
“There’s a certain sense of irony when they say ‘this belongs to His Majesty the King’ when we wrote the constitution because we didn’t like being under a king, with all due respect to Charles,” he said .
The lawyer said Ryan voluntarily worked with Canadian officials to find out exactly what in the podcast they considered sensitive in order to put the episode back online.
“I try to do what’s best for everyone,” Ryan explained in a video statement on his YouTube channel. “If there’s sensitive information in that episode, I’m not the guy to endanger any of the operators within that unit, or anything that could endanger that unit as a whole.”
“We will continue to push back hard and give the Canadian unit time to review the ‘secret’ information in the episode,” Ryan wrote in a tweet.
“If they can’t produce what information needs to be quickly redacted, the episode will go live again unedited, as I have no legal obligation to abide by Canadian law,” he added.
Alexander called the Canadian request “censorship” and suggested it was in retaliation for his criticism of vaccine mandates
Ryan’s lawyer, Timothy C. Parlatore, responded in a letter to the Canadian military
In the now-deleted episode, Alexander spoke about his decision to leave military service due to his objection to COVID-19 vaccine mandates — comments he says prompted Canada’s demand to remove the episode.
In October, after Alexander had already left the army to pursue a music career, Canada ended its long-standing universal vaccination requirement for military personnel.
The change came after Canada’s defense ministry said about 300 military personnel had been forced to leave for refusing to be vaccinated, while another 100 had left voluntarily over the issue.
Ryan said in a tweet, “I want to be perfectly clear, I am not an ANTI VAX person. I believe in freedom of choice and freedom of expression.’
