“This would be a one-way mission. You’re not afraid you’re gonna die, but you’re prepared for death,” Robert O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed 9/11 mastermind and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said 15 years after the incredible May 2, 2011 mission.
O’Neill remembered saying goodbye to his three-year-old daughter, who was making plans for his return, when he believed he was never coming back. He also recalled deciding to save a bullet for himself so he wouldn’t go to Pakistani prison. SEAL Team Six’s members talked to each other about why they were accepting what seemed almost like a suicide mission. “We weren’t going for the fame or the reward. We were going after bin Laden for the first Americans who were forced to fight al Qaeda, to the death, toe to toe, on a Tuesday morning: the passengers on Flight 93,” O’Neill told the New York Post.
Robert O’Neill, the Navy Seal who killed bin Laden 15 years ago in Abbottabad, Pakistan, recalls the mission and the 9/11 motivation.
— wyntre (@Wyntre999) May 2, 2026
NYPost pic.twitter.com/PKPFxRKmuP
O’Neill gave a detailed account of the lead-up to the operation, as well as the actual elimination of the terrorist mastermind, but I want to focus on the primary victory, when the SEAL took out bin Laden with three bullets to the face.
“I remember looking up over a 20-foot wall, seeing the top of bin Laden’s house. I remember thinking calmly, ‘Well, I guess we start the war from here,’” O’Neill said. He described how the SEAL team made its way into the compound and eliminated Osama’s adult son Khalid. “We got to the second floor. Everyone split off to clear rooms. A SEAL is pointing to the last set of stairs. On top of the stairs is a curtain where the door should be,” O’Neill described the movement in bin Laden’s secret compound in Pakistan. “I went up with him as the number two man. He saw people moving behind the curtain. We thought they were suicide bombers. I look down at my shoes and I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I’m going to blow up now, I’m going to see what that feels like, and I’m tired of thinking about it. Let’s go.’”
But O’Neill didn’t blow up. Behind the curtain were bin Laden’s wives — and the terrorist mass murderer himself, only a few feet away. “I recognized him immediately,” O’Neill said. “I was impressed with how skinny he was. His beard was sort of gray. His hands were on his wife Amal’s shoulders. I took it as a threat; he could blow himself up.”
SEAL Team Six members receive training to shoot a target twice in the head immediately. O’Neill did one better than that: “I shot him twice and shot him again with my H&K 416. He crumpled on the foot of his bed. I just shot bin Laden — like what the f–k? Everything I had ever known, everything I planned, just changed drastically.”
For Our VIPs: Who Believes Trump Staged Assassination Attempts? Iranian Jihadis and U.S. Dems
O’Neill heroically shielded Amal with his own body as his fellow Americans came in, as he thought to himself how sorry he was that Osama’s two-year-old son was there to see the shooting. O’Neill told the Post’s David Spector:
Our rules are, if you kill it you own it. I have to clean his face, hold his head together and take a picture. One of my guys asks, “Hey, are you good bro?” I said, “Yes, what do we do now?” He said go find the computers.
“You just killed Osama bin Laden, your life is about to f–king change, now get back to work,” he told me.
That snaps me out of it.
We didn’t blow up. We might make it home…I ran into [fellow SEAL and the team’s dog handler] Will Chesney. I told him, “I think I just shot that f–ker in the face.” We hear on the radio “For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.” Geronimo was the code word to signify bin Laden had been killed. We high-fived.
The team finished its work in the compound, still processing the fact that this might not be a suicide mission after all. The SEALs got into their helicopter. “Now we gotta live for 90 minutes. If I make it that long, I get to see my kids again,” O’Neill thought to himself.
He counted down the minutes until the pilot’s voice on the radio said, “All right gentleman, for the first time in your lives, you’re going to be happy to hear this: Welcome to Afghanistan.” O’Neill and his fellow Navy SEALs — all American heroes — had not only eliminated bin Laden, but every single one of them was going home.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media's conservative reporting on the woke left and historic anniversaries? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member