The first thing Robert O'Neill knew about a plan to capture Osama bin Laden was a cover story that seemed implausible. It was early 2011, and a daring raid involving SEAL Team Six, of which he was a member, was being planned. It was 'not a drill,' but details were scarce.
'They had some weird story about communication cables or something,' O'Neill said. 'It was a bad story. And then they said, We found a thing, and it's in a house, in a bowl, in this mountain range. You're gonna go get it, and bring it back, and show it to us. That's how it started.'
We asked, well, what's the thing? They said, well, we can't tell you. OK...what mountain range? Can't tell you. OK... what country? Can't tell you. How do we get in there? Can't tell you. We asked how much air support, and they said, none. It didn't make a lot of sense.
After being told to go home for one day and be with their families, they worked it out for themselves - it must be Bin Laden.
Then, they were taken to a secret location in North Carolina where the commanding officer of SEAL Team Six appeared with a woman codenamed 'Maya,' the CIA analyst who tracked Bin Laden, later portrayed by Jessica Chastain in the movie Zero Dark Thirty.
Osama bin Laden, the world's most-wanted terrorist, was killed in the daring Operation Neptune Spear raid by US Navy SEALs 15 years ago. Fifteen years after the mission, O'Neill remembers it vividly.
'I'll never forget it,' he told the Daily Mail. 'She said, 'The reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden.'' It was an honor they picked us. The initial reaction was 'Cool, just gonna go right now? We're good.''
It wasn't certain, but intelligence pointed to Bin Laden being inside a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. SEAL Team Six flew west to another secret base and trained for the mission, becoming familiar with stealth Black Hawk helicopters so secret that even President Barack Obama didn't know about them. This was the start of Operation Neptune Spear.
'All of these variables added up to this being a one-way mission,' O'Neill, then 35, said. 'So it was time to get your wills right, make sure your life insurance is squared away.'
Late on May 1, 23 members of SEAL Team Six, along with one interpreter and a Belgian Malinois sniffer dog named Cairo, set out from a US base at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on two stealth Black Hawks. They were 'Dash 1' and 'Dash 2,' and O'Neill was on the latter, sitting in a trifold hunting chair.
'There was a real human element to it. This was a one-way mission. Off to my left on the floor was Cairo, our Belgian Malinois. Cairo was the best dog. One guy fell asleep right next to me, headphones on sleeping.'
About 10 minutes out, as he looked through the window, a quote from President George W. Bush's 9/11 address came to mind: 'Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom itself will be defended.'
O'Neill said: 'I thought what an honor, wow, this is the team, we're gonna kill him. I was just taking mental notes, just realizing that this is it, so whatever the afterlife is, bring these memories with you.'
On approach, the tail of Dash One hit a perimeter wall and snapped off as it tried to land inside Bin Laden's compound. Dash 2 landed outside, and from there, they moved to breach an entrance at the northeast corner of the compound. But it was a fake door; when they blew it up, there was a wall behind it. The fake door suggested they were in the right place.
They then headed to the carport, where the team from the crashed helicopter let them in. At a guest house, one of his friends had just shot two people: Bin Laden's courier and his wife. 'I got to the house right as my buddy had just engaged them,' he said.
Then they moved to the main house. Maya had told them there would be a stairwell somewhere, and that meant up. One of his friends was working through a breaching problem at the door. O'Neill recalled their training in San Diego in the 90s, where they practiced explosive breaching on Thursdays after drinks at Hot Tuna on Wednesdays.
Maya had also warned they would encounter Bin Laden's son Khalid, who would be armed and serve as his father's last line of defense. 'She said 'If you can ace him, you get a shot at the big guy.' She referred to Bin Laden as the big guy,' said O'Neill.
Khalid was behind a railing on the stairwell, and the point man whispered his name until his head popped up. 'He got blasted, and then we went around him,' said O'Neill.
On the second floor, some team members searched rooms while O'Neill followed the point man to the third floor. There was a curtain, and the point man saw two figures who could be suicide bombers, so he jumped on them. Later asked why, he responded, 'I never want the guy behind me to die.' O'Neill said that man deserves the Medal of Honor.
That left O'Neill face-to-face with Bin Laden, about three feet away, with the terror leader's hands on his wife Amal's shoulders. 'I was surprised at how skinny he was,' O'Neill said. 'If I had to describe him in my mind's eye right now, 15 years later, it would be that he seemed confused, and that's got to be just because we're very, very quiet.'
Knowing suicide bombers might be coming, Bin Laden had less than a second to convince O'Neill not to kill him, and he did not. 'It seemed like he might be maneuvering. So I shot him twice, and shot him again.'
Bin Laden was hit near the left eye, and part of his skull was blown off. With the terror leader down, O'Neill moved a two-year-old boy in the room to the bed. Others then entered and saw the scene.
O'Neill recalled: 'One of the guys saw me and said 'Are you good?' I said, 'What do we do now?' And he said, 'Now we find the computers.''
His initial thought was relief: 'Holy s*** we should live, I can see my kids again. Let's get our s*** together, be professional now, chop, chop, lets go. I was finding so much (computer) stuff, though, it was hard to walk away from.'
The intelligence haul included five computers, 10 hard drives, 100 thumb drives, DVDs, mobile phones, and paper documents. O'Neill and the point man carried Bin Laden downstairs in a body bag and were lifted out on a Chinook support helicopter.
Eighty-five minutes later, the pilot announced they were clear of Pakistani airspace. 'Gentlemen, for the first time in your life, you're going to be happy to hear this,' he said. 'Welcome to Afghanistan.'
