You Just Killed Osama Bin Laden

In his latest book, The Operator, former U.S. Navy SEAL ROBERT O’NEILL shares many incredible stories covering his formidable 400-mission career. None are more compelling than the night he f ired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden during the raid at his Abbottabad compound on May 1, 2011. In this edited extract, O’Neill tells us how eliminating the world’s most wanted terrorist all went down…

I didn’t think the dead man looked like bin Laden, but I couldn’t linger. We still had an entire house to clear. We entered through the front door of the main building. A few of my guys were already ahead of us and were making their way down the hallway, clearing the rooms as they did. Some guys stayed back to search the two bodies.

It was standard tactics and we were all experts. The floor was a long hallway with rooms off to the sides and a barricaded door on the far end. In a spot like this, you clear the rooms, in order, and spend the least possible amount of time in the hallway. Bad guys will “spray and pray” down hallways. Even though Allah isn’t always around to guide their bullets, they do get lucky sometimes.