ABC News deletes stolen article from Marine Captain who lost people in Kabul blast

ABC News published an “op-ed” that was originally a Facebook post by Marine Captain Geoff Ball. It was done without his consent and ABC ended up deleting the article.

This whole situation caught attention on social media because Captain Ball contacted the editor-in-chief of the Task and Purpose military media outlet.

The time between Paul Szoldra’s original tweet and ABC taking it down happened within an hour. A cached version of the article and a tweet advertising the article by ABC, suggests that it was first published sometime Monday morning.

In the piece we can see that ABC published the personal testimony of someone on the ground in Afghanistan. A member of the military who lost nine marines serving under him.

"Nine of my Marines and a sailor gave their lives so that others may live, and almost 20 other members of the company were wounded by their side. Until that moment, I did not believe I could ever be more proud of their efforts by how they handled the surging crowds and chaos all week, but they proved me wrong."

It’s after this paragraph that the Marine Captain describes the immediate aftermath of the ISIS blast. He described how proud he was of Ghost Company.

Further confirmation on social media shows us both Geoff Ball’s original Facebook post, as well as his position on the ground these past few weeks in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“A friend and recent colleague of mine, Capt Geoff Ball, currently has the enormous task of leading the unit that took the brunt of the blast in Afghanistan last week.”

This comes on the same day that US officials formally declared the withdrawal from Afghanistan complete, with hundreds of Americans left behind.