38-year-old Robert James O'Neill, a former Navy SEAL who is now a motivational speaker, claims to be the man who shot Osama bin Laden dead. However, he isn't the only one making the same claim.
Last week, the ex-Navy SEAL came out in an interview with the Washington Post, saying he slipped into bin Laden's bedroom in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan and shot him twice in the face as the terrorist leader stood behind his youngest wife serving as a shield. O'Neill, who was serving his last and 15th year for the Navy's prestigious SEAL Team Six, first came out with his account of the 2011 assault on bin Laden's compound on Esquire in 2013. However, journalist Phil Bronstein identified O'Neill simply as The Shooter at O'Neill's request.
"He's got a gun within reach. He's a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won't have a chance to clack (blow) himself off," The Shooter told Bronstein at that time. "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. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath."
O'Neill's account comes two years after Matt Bissonnette, another former Navy SEAL who was part of the 23-man team deployed to kill bin Laden, published his own story of what happened during the wee hours of the morning of May 2, 2011 in a widely successful but controversial book "No Easy Day" under the pseudonym Mark Owens. Bissonnette's identity was leaked prior to the book's launch, and he is currently being investigated for allegedly revealing SEAL Team Six's secret operations.
O'Neill and Bissonnette's accounts were similar on many aspects, but they differed on one major point. O'Neill says he and an unidentified SEAL, known as the "point man," were the only two SEALs left to climb up the stairs to bin Laden's third-floor bedroom. The others were down in the second floor to make sure they were clear. Bin Laden reportedly poked his head out of his bedroom door, during which time the "point man" fired. He missed, O'Neill says, and jumped into the room and grabbed at bin Laden's two wives to absorb any explosions in case they were wearing suicide vests.
"It was the most heroic thing I've ever seen," The Shooter told Esquire. "I rolled past him into the room, just inside the doorway. 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."
However, Bissonnette calls O'Neill's story "complete BS" and says it was the point man, and not O'Neill, who fired the shot that felled bin Laden. In his book, Bissonnette says the point man shot the world's most wanted terrorist in the head before he and another SEAL, presumably O'Neill, entered the room and fired "insurance" shots to make sure bin Laden was dead.
"In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing," Bissonnette wrote in his book. "Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds."
The operator for SEAL Team Six confirms Bissonnette's story, according to CNN's Peter Bergen. The operator also tells Bergen that it was impossible for O'Neill to have seen bin Laden's guns because the weapons that were found after the shooting were situated on a shelf placed above the entrance to the room.
Neither O'Neill nor Bissonnette's account could be confirmed independently, as it is unlikely that Navy SEAL officers will come out to corroborate their stories. The Navy SEAL command has already expressed its displeasure over both men's disclosures, saying their actions are a violation of the SEAL ethos, which places importance in the notion of being "quiet professionals."
In an open letter addressed to former and present SEALs obtained by SOFREP, SEAL commander Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey and senior enlisted SEAL Michael L. Magaraci said the SEAL command will "actively seek judicial consequence" for all SEALs who disclose classified information and put their fellow SEALs and their families in danger.
"A critical tenant of our Ethos is 'I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions,'" the letter reads. "Violators of our Ethos are neither Teammates in good standing, nor Teammates who represent Naval Special Warfare."
Even so, O'Neill, in an interview with freelance journalist Alex Quade and aired over CNN's AC360, said information about the bin Laden mission was no longer classified once high-level officials in Capitol Hill started talking about them in public. During one of his stints as a motivational speaker, where he was asked to speak in front of families of victims of the Sept. 11 bombings of the World Trade Center, O'Neill spontaneously decided to speak about the bin Laden mission.
"One thing I tell them is all right, Osama bin Laden died like a p****," O'Neill said. "That's all I'm telling you. Just so you know."
O'Neill, in his interview, it didn't matter whether people believed his story or not.
"The most important thing that I've learned in the last two years is to me it doesn't matter anymore if I am The Shooter. The team got him," O'Neill said. "Regardless of the negativity that comes with it, I don't give a f***."
