[ 2014-11-06 ]

Robert O’Neill

Navy Seal who shot Bin Laden revealed
The identity of the US navy Seal who killed Osama
bin Laden has been revealed, breaking the code of
silence that shrouds the crack special forces
unit.

The man who shot the al-Qaeda leader is Robert
O’Neill, 38, a veteran who served for 16 years
and was one of America’s most highly decorated
servicemen. He plans to make a controversial
television appearance on the Fox News Channel next
week.

His identity was revealed by sofrep.com, a
military news website. Last night his father
confirmed his name.

Mr O’Neill claims that he killed bin Laden with
three shots to the forehead during the night raid
in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011.

Mr O’Neill feels that he has been treated
shoddily since he quit the navy, four years short
of the normal 20 years’ service.

He revealed anonymously in a magazine article last
year that the Seals had offered to get him a job
delivering beer in Michigan, menial work that he
compared to witness protection for Mafia
informers.

His decision to go further and reveal his identity
in a special interview with Fox News next week
called The Man Who Killed Bin Laden was prompted
by losing his full entitlement to military
benefits, including pension and healthcare because
of leaving early.

Mr O’Neill is said to have been decorated 52
times, reaching the rank of senior chief petty
officer. His decorations include two Silver Stars,
the US military’s third highest honour.

His exploits have featured in three separate
Hollywood films. His father says that Mr O’Neill
was the first US commando to land on the Maersk
Alabama when the container ship was hijacked by
Somali pirates in 2009. The incident was
dramatised in the Hollywood film Captain
Phillips.

He was also one of the team sent to save Marcus
Luttrell, a Seal who was the only survivor of a
failed mission to capture a Taleban leader in
Afghanistan in 2005. Luttrell’s story was made
into the film Lone Survivor.

The killing of bin Laden was dramatised as Kathryn
Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated action thriller Zero
Dark Thirty.

Since leaving the navy, O’Neill has become a
motivational speaker.

Last year Mr O’Neill gave an anonymous interview
to Esquire magazine, describing how he joined the
military “on a whim” at 19 after being jilted
by a girlfriend. He wanted to be a sniper and was
surprised that the US navy gave him that option.
“That’s the reason al-Qaeda has been
decimated,” he said, “because she broke my
f***ing heart.”

When President Obama announced the death of bin
Laden, he emphasised the clandestine nature of the
Seals’ code. “The American people do not see
their work, nor know their names,” he said.
“But tonight they feel the satisfaction of their
work.”

One justification of the code of silence is to
mitigate the risk of retaliation against Seals and
their families, but Mr O’Neill’s father seemed
unperturbed. “People are asking if we are
worried that Isis will come and get us because Rob
is going public. I say I’ll paint a big target
on my front door and say come and get us,” Tom
O’Neill, told MailOnline.

Mr O’Neill’s decision to go public has angered
his former unit, and he has been criticised in a
letter circulated on online military forums,
contrasting him with those who live as “quiet
professionals”.

Force Master Chief Michael Magaraci and commander
Rear Admiral Brian Losey wrote: “We do not abide
wilful or selfish disregard for our core values in
return for public notoriety and financial gain,
which only diminishes otherwise honourable
service, courage and sacrifice.”

But the letter has in its turn sparked an angry
reaction from other former SEALs, questioning why
Magaraci and Losey chose to wash the unit’s
dirty linen in public by going to the media with a
public condemnation, rather than contacting past
and present SEALs with a private warning about
privacy.

Mr O’Neill’s father said: “He is not allowed
to talk, yet they are using this big bullhorn to
shut him up.

“I support him in everything he is doing. What
are you supposed to do when you come out of the
military after such service - become a greeter at
Walmart?”

O’Neill is the second member of the 23-strong
Seal unit that raided Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 to
identify himself. In 2012 Matthew Bisonette wrote
a book called No Easy Day which described the
raid.

On Sunday, Mr Bisonette told CBS News that he had
faced so much hostility from the Pentagon and
fellow Seals over his first book: “I would go
back overseas and deal with fighting Isis face to
face rather than deal with the last two years
again.”

He is nonetheless about to release a sequel,
critical of the version of events portrayed in
Zero Dark Thirty.

Source - The Times(UK)

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