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THE RETIRED NAVY Seal who says he shot al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the forehead publicly identified himself Thursday amid a debate among special operations brethren about whether they should break silence about their secret missions.
Robert O’Neill, 38, told The Washington Post in an interview that he fired the two shots that killed bin Laden. He first recounted the story in February 2013 to Esquire magazine, which identified him only as “the shooter.” One current and one former Seal confirmed that O’Neill was long known to have fired the shots that killed the leader of the international terror group responsible for the 11 September attacks.
O’Neill told the Post that shots also were fired by two other Seal team members, including Matt Bissonnette, who described the raid somewhat differently in his book, “No Easy Day.” His lawyer said Bissonnette is under federal criminal investigation over whether he disclosed classified information in the book, which he did not vet with the military. In the Esquire piece, O’Neill makes no mention of Bissonnette shooting bin Laden.
O’Neill discussed his role in the raid during a private meeting with relatives of victims of the 9/11 attack on New York’s World Trade Center before the recent opening of the National 11 September Memorial Museum. He donated the shirt he was wearing in the operation, which is now on display there.
O’Neill is scheduled to be featured in lengthy segments next week on Fox News. He told the Post he decided to go public because he feared his identity was going to be leaked by others. Indeed, his name was published Monday by SOFREP, a website operated by former special operations troopers.
The actions of both O’Neill and Bissonnette have drawn scorn from some of their colleagues.
In an October letter, Rear Adm. Brian Losey, who commands the Naval Special Warfare Group wrote:
“At Naval Special Warfare’s core is the Seal ethos. A critical tenant of our ethos is ‘I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.’”The letter added, “We do not abide willful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety or financial gain.”
Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, attended the 9/11 museum ceremony. She said O’Neill, whose name was not divulged at the event, offered the families clarity on conflicting information they had received about the raid.
She said she didn’t have an opinion about whether Seals should disclose information about their deeds. “Whatever that (Seals’) ethos is, is between the SealLS,” she said. “The 9/11 families are the beneficiaries of any rules he might have broken or whatever lines he might have crossed.”
“He went through the mission in really in great detail. All that information was very helpful to me because this is a figure in a terror organisation that has loomed large in our lives,” she said, adding that she listened to him so intently that the 9/11 commemorative coin she was clasping tightly in her hand left a bruise.
Rick Woolard, a former Seal team commander who previously urged his comrades to avoid discussing recent operations, said, active-duty Seals are “pretty much very disappointed and I’d have to say angry with guys who have used their deeds and those of their companions for personal gain.”
“No Easy Day” was published in 2012 under the pseudonym Mark Owen. Bissonnette recounted on “60 Minutes” that he sent a text to the commander of Seal Team Six after its publication. He said that the commander replied, “Delete me.”
At the same time, Woolard said, there is frustration among some special operations soldiers that senior government officials have left office and written memoirs revealing and profiting from actions involving troops who are sworn to secrecy. However, one active-duty Seal officer, who declined to be quoted by name because he had no permission to speak publicly, said some Seals had grown accustomed to some of their members seeking to profit from their connections to the elite group, upon retirement.
Senior Pentagon and CIA officials cooperated extensively with the makers of “Zero Dark Thirty,” a film that depicted both the CIA’s yearslong hunt for bin Laden and the Seals raid that killed him in Pakistan.
In the Esquire piece, O’Neill said he was one of two Seals who went up to the third floor of the building where bin Laden was hiding. The first man fired two shots at bin Laden as he peeked out of the bedroom, but O’Neill says those shots missed. The man then tackled two women in the hallway outside of bin Laden’s bedroom.
O’Neill went into the bedroom, he recounts. “There was bin Laden standing there. He had his hands on a woman’s shoulders, pushing her ahead, not exactly toward me but by me, in the direction of the hallway commotion. It was his youngest wife, Amal.”
O’Neill added: “In that second, I shot him two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again. Bap! Same place. … He was dead.”
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The things people get compo for and then there’s this! Just give them the money and let them have a bit of comfort fgs
@Patricia Ellis Dunne: Yes, these women do deserve compensation. Last week a survivor of clerical abuse was hospitalized after going on hunger strike in protest at the trauma inflicted on survivors by Caranua, the state redress authority. When are FF-FG going to start to treat these people as decently as they claim to treat them when they’re giving speeches in the Dail?
Wouldn’t be like the State to do something like that at all now would it!? Sometimes I really really dislike this country.
@Arnold Alley: I can’t disagree with that, I really meant Official Ireland to be honest
How thoroughly Christian of them.
And the church’s marketing team has just pulled off ‘Red Wednesday’ where cathedrals around the world are lit up in red in aid of “justice and victims of suffering”. Practice what ye preach ye hollow, defunct crowd of hypocrites.
Rants McCrank:The decisions to deny redress was done by the organs of our State in our name ,we are all responsible.
@Brian O Reilly: no we are not all responsible. I did not abuse or ill treat anyone and I don’t see why me and my children, through borrowed money for compensation, should have to pay. Your decision and opinion to centralize the liability for all wrongdoing to all citizens is a dream for the legal profession.
@Ranty McCrank: Its a pity the fathers can’t be found and the pensions/estates used to fund this. Remember when lovely auld Johnny dies and leaves the house to Mary & Paddy but unknown to them Jimmy is being denied a share.
@lavbeer: Presumably he would have a will leaving it to who he wants.
So 27 people would get on average a € 82,000 payout,which = 2.214 m
Around 2 million Irish people are paying taxes
That means it will cost me about €1
I’m livid at that loss..How will I cope!!
@Francis Mc Carthy: That’s for this incident alone and 27 people. They are all adding up and increasing in payment amount. If the 1 in 4 stat for abuse is true then 1.25 million people could claim for “redress”. That is €102 billion. Indeed how will we cope. We truly are a failed state with no true leadership. All divided and fighting for scraps.
So who will be Who’s redressing them? Dumped in the taxpayer again? Decisions like this to garner votes from lobby groups may please those members but the working people remember the politicians that are making innocent workers financially liable for the grave misconduct of others.
Why can’t the state sue the Vatican. To get the compensation money back? The way it is. it’s the taxpayer paying the compo!
The DJE is an appallingly bad and oppressive Government Department. It is a law unto itself.
Kudos to the Ombudsman for standing up to Fine Gael on this one.
Stop the prevarication and cough up the dough.
That’s what happens when you combine corruption, nepotism, cronyism, ineptitude and a blatant lack of any kind of morals or dignity!
Shameless crooks running the Banana Republic of Ireland but people care more about the soccer team getting hammered by the Danes!
Its kind of hilarious these days the way women come out with these #metoo stories about how a man grab their arse or tits and the whole world cries for them while the mans career is ruined. meanwhile people have been screaming from the roof tops for decades about the abuse the catholic church carried out in this country and there’s hardly a word about it and 0 justice
@Alfred Pennyworth:
Just do not forget that many a woman’s life was ruined because the fathers of their children abandoned them and that is why they ended up in these awful Laundries. It is the State that is now denying these women the compensation that they deserve to get without delay so they can at least feel that their suffering will be recognized. But no the State could not wait to give the Banks who ruined the country Shedloads of money but they make the women beg for the crumbs .
Flannagan reminds me of Noonan when he dragged dying people into court in the attempt to save the state money and cover up a deadly mess in the blood transfusion scandal.
@Donal Desmond: this happened long before Flanagan became Minister. Get a grip. It’s a review of an administrative scheme.
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