The former Navy SEAL who claims he killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden says he and his fellow team members doubted they would return from the raid alive.
In the first installment of a two-part documentary airing on the Fox News Channel, Robert O’Neill, a former member of SEAL Team 6, said that as the elite unit trained for the mission they began to assume “we’re going to die.”
“The more we trained on it, the more we realized … this is going to be a one-way mission,” according to O’Neill, 38, who claims he was the second man through the door into bin Laden’s bedroom.
“We’re going to go and we’re not going to come back. We’re going to die when the house blows up. We’re going to die when he blows up. Or we are going to be there too long and we’ll get arrested by the Pakistanis and we’re going to spend the rest of our short lives in Pakistan prison.”
He added that the team members thought the cost was worth it because “we’re going to die eventually” and that the terror leader likely would have died with them.
O’Neil told The Washington Post last week that he fired the shot to the forehead that killed bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks on the United States.
The web site SOFREP, which is managed by former SEALs, revealed O’Neill’s identity last week to protest his plans to go public with his identity in Fox News interviews.
O’Neill told the news channel that “if it was light enough” in bin Laden’s bedroom, “I was definitely the last person he saw.”
He said that initially the shooting “wasn’t real” and thought about it as “another guy in a house we shot.”
However, the reality eventually “sunk in,” according to O’Neill, adding he’s thought about the deadly moment “every day for a number of years.”
“I’m still trying to figure out if it’s the best thing I’ve ever done or the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
It would be a positive because “we accomplished our mission and I was a part of it.” But, he said. I” don’t know what’s going to happen and it’s something I have to live with everyday.”
Fox has been promoting a two-hour documentary that originally touted to reveal O’Neill’s identity. The Pentagon has voiced concerns about what details might be discussed and could take legal action against the former service member.
“I’m not going to speculate about actions we may or may not take,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters on Friday.
He refused to confirm if O’Neill was part of the raid, or even a SEAL.
“We don’t talk about classified information or sensitive information. So there’s no way that I’m going to answer specific questions about the raid that ended up killing Osama bin Laden,” Kirby said.
“What matters is he’s dead. He’s gone, and I think that’s enough,” he added.
A Department of Defense spokeswoman previously said that anyone who took part in the 2011 operation to kill bin Laden was bound by a nondisclosure agreement to not discuss classified material.
The second installment of the Fox News documentary will air Wednesday night at 10pm.