American Sniper: History vs. Hollywood

How many people did sniper Chris Kyle kill?

In researching the American Sniper true story, we learned that by the Pentagon's count, U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle had at least 160 confirmed kills during four tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 (TIME.com). This is the same number that is stated in the American Sniper movie. By his own count and the accounts of his Navy SEAL teammates, the number was likely closer to 255 (Daily Mail Online). Kyle's number well-surpassed the previous American record of 109, which was set by Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III, who served in Vietnam (Military Channel).

What exactly is a "confirmed kill"?

Movies and video games have helped to create a mystique and fascination around the notion of "confirmed kills." Some people will tell you that only a sniper's spotter can confirm a kill. Others will tell you that it has to be verified up close. The real Chris Kyle explained confirmed kills during a TIME Magazine video interview, "While you're on your sniper rifle, you take a shot and the guy goes down, and you have to have witnesses verify that he is dead." The witness does not have to be the spotter, nor does the kill have to be verified up close, though both do often occur.

Kyle's American Sniper co-author, Jim DeFelice, says that Kyle routinely reported his kills to his direct commanders "because they had to know what was going on," and Kyle also "personally kept track" (NBC News). "Every time we'd come back we'd have to fill out an assessment of what happened throughout the day," Kyle told TIME Magazine, "the time, the place, the caliber used, the distance he was, what exactly he was doin', where he was standin', what he was wearin'. It's all in the detail."

Wayne V. Hall, a spokesman for the U.S. Army, said that the Army "does not keep any official, or unofficial for that matter, record of confirmed kills." Ken McGraw, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, says that they treat such totals as "unofficial." He adds, "If anything, we shy away from reporting numbers like that. It's so difficult to prove. And what does it mean?" -NBC News

In essence, there is no such thing as a soldier being "awarded" a confirmed kill, at least in any official capacity. It is mainly their word along with the word of the witness(es), and what they have reported to their commanders.

Was Chris Kyle really a rodeo rider before joining the Navy SEALs?

Yes. According to Chris Kyle's memoir American Sniper, he started riding bulls and horses in high school in Texas and entered some small local rodeos, eventually traveling from city to city. He even earned the attention of "buckle bunnies," rodeo's version of groupies. He continued riding after he started college at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, but he had to quit at the end of his freshman year after a bronco flipped over on him in a chute, dragging him and kicking him unconscious. He found himself on a life-flight helicopter and ended up with pins in his wrists, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a bruised kidney and lung.

How old was Chris Kyle when he enlisted?

In the movie, Kyle (Bradley Cooper) says he's 30 when he enlists, but the American Sniper true story reveals that the real Chris Kyle reported to the Navy for basic training in February 1999 when he was 24-years-old. -American Sniper book

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Did the 1998 bombings of American embassies motivate Chris Kyle to enlist?

No. The movie shows Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) applying to join the Navy SEALs after seeing TV coverage of the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Though he did officially enlist in the months following these attacks, they had nothing to do with his decision. Prior to enlisting, he had been working as a ranch hand. "Studying and classes were not my thing," wrote Kyle in his autobiography. "With my rodeo career ended, I decided that I would quit college, stop ranching, and go back to my original plan: join the military and become a soldier." Kyle originally applied for the Navy SEALs in 1996 but was turned down due to the pins in his arm from the rodeo accident. Then, in the winter of 1997-1998, a Navy recruiter called and said that they wanted him in the SEALs program, pins and all.

Which SEAL team was Chris Kyle a member of?

Chris Kyle was a member of SEAL Team 3. The general public is currently most familiar with SEAL Team 6, who killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. "Originally, you had SEAL Team 1 and SEAL Team 2, and then they formed up this special unit that was called SEAL Team 6," explained Chris Kyle during a 2012 interview with Conan O'Brien. "Since then, so many guys have been coming in, we've been building up the forces, that they started filling in the rest of the numbers. And to go from one of the other SEAL teams to 6, you basically have to go through another boot camp, try out, and go there."

Did Chris Kyle really meet his wife Taya at a bar?

Yes. The couple met in April 2001 at a San Diego bar named Maloney's. Taya describes Chris as a sensitive man who "was always very aware of my feelings. ...he seemed to pick up on how I was feeling, sometimes before I did." -American Sniper book

Did Chris Kyle really shoot a boy who was concealing a grenade?

No. In the movie, Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) shoots a boy and his mother who are approaching a U.S. Marine convoy concealing an RKG-3 Russian Anti-Tank Grenade. In the book, a woman does come out of a small house with her child, but she approaches the convoy by herself as she conceals something beneath her clothes. She sets a Chinese grenade, not a Russian RKG. Kyle hesitates shooting the woman but does take the shot. The grenade drops and he fires again as it's exploding. It was "the only time I killed anyone other than a male combatant," writes Kyle. In the book, he indicates that this is his first kill in Iraq.

In his autobiography, Chris Kyle does scope a child at one point. The moment is also depicted in the movie. The combatants had sent the child down the street to retrieve an RPG (in the movie, a nearby boy simply wanders over and picks up the RPG). "I had a clear view in my scope," writes Kyle, "but I didn't fire. I wasn't going to kill a kid, innocent or not. I'd have to wait until the savage who put him up to it showed himself on the street."

Is the movie's al Qaeda operative nicknamed "The Butcher" based on a real person?

Not directly, but he was likely at least in part inspired by Iraqi Shia warlord and executioner of the Sunnis, Abu Deraa. A death squad leader in and around Baghdad, Deraa was known to use a power drill to torture and kill his victims. In the movie, Chris Kyle and his teammates were assigned to take down a terrorist known as "The Butcher," portrayed by actor Mido Hamada. The movie shows The Butcher character imploring Abu Deraa's torturous use of power drills. -International Business Times

Did Chris Kyle really have two children?

Yes. Through our investigation into the American Sniper true story, we confirmed that, like in the movie, Chris and his wife Taya had two children, a boy and a girl, Colton and McKenna, who are a year-and-a-half apart in age (Colton is older).

Did Chris Kyle really have a younger brother who was also in the military?

Yes. Chris's younger brother Jeff was a Marine. He is four years younger than Chris and enlisted a little before 9/11. Like in the movie, he too served in Iraq. In the book, Chris describes going to a house where there were supposedly U.S. prisoners. They couldn't find any but noticed the dirt of the basement floor had been disturbed. After they started digging, they began to uncover the bodies of slain U.S. servicemen. Each time Chris saw a Marine uniform, he feared it would be his brother Jeff. Unlike the movie, the book does not mention Chris's brother cursing the war on a tarmac in Iraq.

Did Taya Kyle ever consider leaving her husband Chris?

Yes. While Chris was partaking in four combat tours, his wife Taya was struggling to raise their two children on her own. At the same time, she lived with constant worry that Chris would not come back alive. When he did come home on leave to visit, he was often anxious and withdrawn. Soon, the war had taken a toll on their relationship, and at one point, Taya contemplated leaving him. "Every single person suffers; every marriage has some major battles," Taya told the LA Times. "Life pulls you in different directions. But if you try and you're lucky, you can find your way back to each other." During her emotional 2013 speech at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, Taya Kyle talked about her husband's difficult decision to leave the Navy SEALs to save their marriage.

Did Ryan "Biggles" Job only survive for a short while after being blinded by a bullet?

No. In the movie, Ryan "Biggles" Job (Jake McDorman) is blinded by Syrian sniper Mustafa. He survives for a short period of time and proposes to his girlfriend while in the hospital. Kyle visits him shortly before leaving for his fourth tour and learns of Ryan's death just after he arrives back in Iraq.

In real life, Ryan was blinded in battle in 2006 when an enemy sniper's bullet struck his rifle, sending pieces of the shattered weapon through his face. He survived much longer than he does in the movie. He was discharged from the military, got married, attended college, got a job, climbed Mount Rainier and Mount Hood, etc. He died in 2009 from complications after going back for more facial reconstructive surgery while his wife was pregnant with their first child. -SeattleTimes.com

Is the enemy sniper Mustafa based on a real person?

Yes, but he holds far less significance in the book, at least in relation to Chris Kyle. In the movie, Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) engages in a film-long pursuit of an enemy Syrian sniper named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), whom the American soldiers refer to as "Kaiser F—in' Söze." In Kyle's autobiography, the enemy Iraqi sniper Mustafa is only mentioned in passing in a single paragraph. He is described as "an Olympics marksman who was using his skills against Americans and Iraqi police and soldiers."

Did Chris really kill the enemy sniper Mustafa?

No. In reality, Chris Kyle never actually encountered the enemy Iraqi sniper Mustafa, who he believes was killed by other U.S. snipers. Chris does make a 2,100-yard shot in the book, but it was to take out a random combatant on a rooftop who was about to fire an RPG at an Army convoy. "It was my longest confirmed kill in Iraq," writes Chris, "even longer than that shot in Fallujah."

Did the insurgents really put a bounty on Chris Kyle's head?

Yes, the insurgents put a $20,000 bounty on the heads of all snipers, not just Chris Kyle. The bounties did fluctuate and Kyle has stated that they went up to around $80,000. The movie raises the bounty on Kyle's head to a fictional $180,000. During an interview with Conan O'Brien, the real Chris Kyle makes the same joke about the bounty that Bradley Cooper's character makes in the movie, "Well, don't tell my wife. She might take that number right now."

Did Chris Kyle really use a satellite phone in the midst of battle to call his wife to tell her he is done with war?

No. In the movie, Bradley Cooper's character uses a satellite phone to call his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) and tell her that he is done with war and is coming home. Exploring the American Sniper true story brings to light the fact that in real life, he never made such a call, nor just prior did he kill Mustafa with a near impossible sniper shot from over a mile away (he never encountered the enemy sniper Mustafa).

In real life, Chris Kyle did use the sat phone to call home during lulls in battles or while he was perched in a position on watch. On at least two occasions (once with his wife and once with his father), fighting broke out while he was on the phone. On one occasion while talking to his wife Taya, insurgents attacked the building his team was in. He abruptly put down the sat phone without ending the call. His wife heard most of the firefight, curse words and all. The battery on the phone ran out, and he didn't end up calling her back for two or three days, not realizing he hadn't ended the communication. She was an emotional wreck.

A similar moment is depicted in the movie when the convoy is attacked and Chris (Bradley Cooper) drops the phone while his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) is on the other end. She listens frantically as the ensuing battle unfolds. Unlike the movie, she wasn't revealing the sex of the baby during the real-life call.

Why did Chris Kyle leave the Navy SEALs?

Chris Kyle left the Navy SEALs in 2009 in order to save his marriage and to spend more time with his two children, who he had spent very little time with during his years at war. Unlike the movie, he didn't leave the SEALs because the war had become too much for him to bear. As he states in his autobiography, the divorce rate among Navy SEALs is over 90 percent. "When I first got out, I had a lot of resentment," Kyle said. "I felt like she knew who I was when she met me. She knew I was a warrior. That was all I'd ever wanted to do." Taya Kyle talked about her husband's difficult decision during her NRA speech. For a time, Chris started drinking a lot and he let himself go physically. He then made a decision to get his mind right, as he called it. His wife Taya says that he was always on the floor playing with his kids and had wasted no time in making up for the years he had lost with them. He had also come to find his purpose outside of the Navy SEALs, to not just be a good father and husband, but to help other veterans cope with PTSD and to assist them in finding their own purpose in life after combat. -D Magazine

"I loved what I did. I still do," Chris wrote in his autobiography. "If circumstances were different--if my family didn't need me--I'd be back in a heartbeat. I'm not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL."

What are the details surrounding Chris Kyle's death?

In a moment not shown in the film, Chris Kyle, 38, and friend Chad Littlefield, 36, were shot to death at a Texas gun range. Chris had been involved in helping soldiers deal with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) after they returned from active duty. On February 2nd, 2013, they took fellow Iraq War veteran Eddie Ray Routh, 25, with them to a rifle range in Glen Rose, Texas as part of a therapeutic outing. Routh (pictured below) had been dealing with PTSD and was having difficulty adjusting to postwar life. After shooting both Kyle and Littlefield, he fled in Kyle's Ford F-350 truck. -LA Times

What does Chris Kyle's widow think of the movie?

"It was like watching Chris in many, many ways," says Taya Kyle of the film. "I walked away in awe. The spirit and the heart, Bradley captured all of that. ... Chris's life was inspiring, and I think that the movie is one more way for him to serve" (American Sniper Featurette). "...whether you see Sienna or you see me up on the screen, it doesn't really matter. If people get the hardships, that's enough. If there's one other person who is married to a first-responder and sees the film and feels a little less alone, I'll be happy" (LA Times).

Prior to filming, Taya lent actor Bradley Cooper stacks of photos and emails that she had exchanged with her late husband during his four combat tours. -LA Times

Was Chris Kyle ever injured in combat?

Yes. He survived three gunshot wounds, two helicopter crashes, six IED attacks and numerous surgeries. -D Magazine

Does Chris Kyle hold the world record for the most sniper kills?

No. Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä shot 542 Soviet soldiers during the Russian invasion of Finland in World War II. -Daily Mail Online

Did Chris Kyle really become known as "the Legend"?

Yes. He says that the guys nicknamed him "the Legend" when he was in Fallujah, around the time of the beach ball incident. Armed insurgents who couldn't swim were trying to cross a river, each of them holding a large beach ball. It was Kyle's job to make sure they didn't make it across. Instead of shooting the insurgents, he shot the beach balls and they drowned (the Marines put some of them out of their misery).

This was also around the time he made an extremely long shot (though not his longest) at approximately 1,600 yards (just under a mile), which he believes might have also contributed to his new nickname. Prior to "the Legend," Kyle had been called "Tex" by his fellow Navy SEALs. According to his memoir, the insurgents had their own nickname for him, al-Shaitan Ramadi—"the Devil of Ramadi." -American Sniper book

What military commendations did Chris Kyle receive?

In his four combat tours in Iraq, Chris Kyle was awarded two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valor, among other commendation and achievement medals. -D Magazine

The controversy surrounding Chris Kyle mainly stems from three separate claims that he made, none of which are in the movie. Each has been described below:

Chris said that he shot looters during Hurricane Katrina from the roof of the Superdome:

This story became widely known after it appeared in the June 2013 issue of The New Yorker as part of a profile of Chris Kyle. Apparently, Kyle told the story to some Navy SEAL buddies as they were hanging out drinking in his San Diego hotel room one night in early 2012. A few of them in turn relayed the story to the writer of The New Yorker article. Kyle had told them that in 2005, he and another sniper went to New Orleans during Katrina and picked off thirty looters from the top of the Superdome. When the article's writer, Nicholas Schmidle, contacted the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, to confirm the story, he was told, "To the best of anyone's knowledge at SOCOM, there were no West Coast SEALs deployed to Katrina." Schmidle then contacted one of Kyle's officers. The SEAL replied, "I never heard that story," adding that it "defies the imagination." -The New Yorker

While on The Opie & Anthony Show to promote his 2012 memoir American Sniper, Kyle said that in 2006, he and Jesse Ventura, who he refers to only as "Scruff Face" in his book, got into a bar fight at McP's Irish Pub & Grill in Coronado, California. The incident apparently occurred after Ventura began talking loudly about his opposition to the war in Iraq. Relatives of fallen SEAL Michael Monsoor, who deliberately fell on his own grenade, were in town for his wake and had gathered at the bar. Kyle said that when he asked Ventura to keep his opinions to himself, Ventura told him that the SEALs "deserve to lose a few" guys. Kyle claimed to have then punched Ventura and the former WWF wrestler went down. Kyle then repeated the story during an interview on The O'Reilly Factor.

Jesse Ventura, himself a Vietnam-era veteran of the Underwater Demolition Teams (a precursor to the SEALs), filed defamation charges and the case went to court. Ventura, who denied that the altercation ever took place, did not drop the case following Kyle's 2013 death, causing outrage among Kyle's supporters. In July 2014, the jury ruled in favor of Ventura, who won $1.845 million in damages against Taya Kyle (as executor of the estate of Chris Kyle). -National Review Online

"You pursue a lawsuit for the truth. ... Taya Kyle had all of her attorney fees paid by [the book publisher's] insurance. I did not," Ventura said on CBS This Morning. "I incurred two-and-a-half years of lawyer fees that I have to pay to clear my name, and she had insurance paying everything for her. It was me against an insurance company."

Taya Kyle told Fox News of the $1.845 million verdict, "I think insurance is responsible for $500,000 because of the way the law is written." The book's publisher, HarperCollins, has since removed the passage alluding to Ventura from the book.

In an April 2013 story in D Magazine, Kyle claimed that two men approached him at a gas station on a cold January morning in 2010. The men demanded his keys and wallet. With his hands in the air, he said he quickly studied the men to see which one looked most confident with a gun. Kyle told them he needed to reach into his customized black Ford F350 to get the keys. According to Kyle, he instead grabbed a pistol that was under his winter coat and fired two shots under his left arm, striking man number one twice in the chest. He turned and put two bullet holes in the second man's chest also, killing them both.

Kyle told D Magazine that he waited for the police to arrive. According to Kyle, the officers ran his driver's license and instead of the normal information coming up (name, address, birth date), a phone number for the Department of Defense came up. The police made the call, reviewed the surveillance footage, and Kyle was let go.

The problem with his story is that no surveillance footage was ever made public and the officers who were supposedly there never came forward to back up the story. "I talked to every single law enforcement out there, all the Texas rangers," said journalist Michael J. Mooney, who wrote a book on Chris Kyle, "and there's no evidence whatsoever." Journalists at the The Fort Worth Star-Telegram said that they "checked with the medical examiner's office, which reported no such deaths in Cleburne in January 2009" (The Washington Post). Kyle's account, which could not be confirmed, was then given more credence when fellow Navy SEAL and friend Marcus Luttrell mentioned it in his 2012 book Service: A Navy SEAL at War. Luttrell's own story became the subject of the 2014 movie Lone Survivor, which we also researched.

Gather more intel on the American Sniper true story by watching the videos below. Listen to Chris Kyle discuss the Jesse Ventura controversy. Watch his wife Taya Kyle talk about her late husband's life and death during an NRA speech. Lastly, check out Chris's appearance on Conan.

• Official Website of Navy SEAL Kevin "Dauber" Lacz
• Meet 3 More Modern-Day U.S. Soldiers Who Deserve Biopics
• American Sniper Official Movie Website at Warner Bros.