Robert O’Neill, a former Navy SEAL who claims to have fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden, says he doubted whether he himself would come home alive. He told Fox News that he and others involved with the 2011 raid increasingly believed as they trained that “this is going to be a one-way mission.”
He said that they thought: “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’re going to be there too long, we get arrested by the Pakistanis, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives in a Pakistan prison.”
O’Neill has told The Washington Post that he killed bin Laden with a shot to the forehead during the raid, in Pakistan on May 2, 2011. He has also said that at least two other SEALs fired shots. Another SEAL has given a different account of the raid, and two officers from the Naval Special Warfare Command have issued a stern warning to SEAL team members about seeking fame. O’Neill will appear on TODAY on Friday.