Hundreds gathered at Tannery Row in Buford on Saturday to see former U.S. Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill, the killer of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, preside over a charity poker tournament. In an exclusive InsiderAdvantage interview before the event, O’Neill said after his team stormed bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout and when he rushed up a staircase to a bedroom “there was instant recognition.” He said bin Laden “wasn’t surrendering and I thought he was wearing a suicide vest.” So the highly-decorated commando immediately shot him twice in the head at close-range.
O’Neill, who joined the Navy in 1996 and underwent airborne training at Fort Benning, says reaction after he went public with his story “is positive– especially from families who lost loved ones on 9/11” when our nation was attacked by bin Laden’s Islamic terrorists. “It helps bring some closure.” (A complete O’Neill interview will appear in a future issue of one or both of our publications, James magazine and The Southern Political Report.)
Proceeds from the Buford benefit go to a non-profit he co-founded, Your Grateful Nation, which helps U.S. Special Forces veterans find work and assists their families.
“We are able to offer veterans to companies… people who know how to lead, know how to be led, know how to solve problems and make decisions.” O’Neill said he served “16 and a half years but I knew I wasn’t going to get any (military) benefits. You need to do 20 years to retire to get benefits.” So he says the new Your Grateful Nation foundation tries to make up for that by getting veterans different types of employment right after they leave military service, especially before 20 years. For more information check out yourgratefulnation.org
During the wide-ranging interview, the former SEAL told how President Barack Obama chose the specific time for the recommended weekend operation for which the SEAL team had a week to prepare. “The president picked Sunday (May 1, 2011) as the date because Saturday night was the Washington correspondents’ dinner and it would have been conspicuous to the media if the president and most of his Cabinet were missing.” O’Neill noted during the dinner that (comedian) “Seth Meyers was roasting the president for not finding bin Laden. Yet the president knew during that dinner that he had already given the order to capture or kill bin Laden within the next 24 hours.”
O’Neill praised the CIA for “finding the location” of the mass murderer and also the president “for taking the advice of the CIA, his cabinet and the military” to give the green light for the operation.
“I was not sure I would get out alive,” O’Neill said. Eighty-five minutes after his helicopter flew away from bin Laden’s Pakistan compound with the body, he recalls the pilot’s triumphant words over the intercom: “Welcome to Afghanistan.” He knew then his team was finally safe.
