The price of SEAL fame
What the arrest of the operator who claimed he shot bin Laden tells us
You may have heard about the recent arrest of Robert O’Neill, a former member of SEAL Team Six who claimed he killed Osama bin Laden.
O’Neill, a 47-year-old, red-headed Montana native, was jailed on August 23 in Frisco, Texas on charges of assault causing bodily injury and public intoxication, both misdemeanors.
SEALs getting into bar fights isn’t exactly front-page news, but O’Neill assaulted a hotel security guard who was trying to help the visibly intoxicated SEAL get to his room.
According to a police report obtained by The Dallas Morning News, O’Neill is accused of calling the hotel security officer a racial slur and then striking him in the chest. (O’Neill denied using racist language but not the assault or drunkenness.)
This isn’t the first time O’Neill has been in the news. He made headlines when Delta Air Lines banned him in 2020 after he tweeted a maskless selfie on a flight during the Coronavirus pandemic. In a now-deleted tweet, O’Neill wrote, “Thank God it wasn’t @Delta flying us in when we killed bin Laden… we weren’t wearing masks…”
In 2016, he was arrested on a misdemeanor DUI in Montana when police found him asleep behind the wheel of a running car. (O’Neill blamed a prescription sleep aid and the charge was later dropped.)
O’Neill’s drinking reportedly was a problem during his time in the Navy SEALs. He publicly declared while drunk in several Virginia bars that he was the man who shot bin Laden, according to journalist Matthew Cole’s book, Code Over Country. When word of this reached commanders back at SEAL Team Six, Cole relates, O’Neill was relieved of his position as team leader. He left the Navy in 2012, a year after the bin Laden raid.
Even so, the fact remains that O’Neill is one of the most famous SEALs ever. A famous SEAL is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. SEALs are supposed to be “quiet professionals” who work in the shadows. O’Neill, by contrast, has been publicizing and profiting off his role in bin Laden’s death for a decade. He saw, not without reason, that bin Laden’s death represented the opportunity of a lifetime.
Since 2013, O’Neill has been telling his version of Operational Neptune Spear, the operation that resulted in bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As he wrote in his best-selling book, The Operator:
I turned to the right and looked through a door into an adjoining room. Osama bin Laden stood near the entrance at the foot of the bed, taller and thinner than I’d expected, his beard shorter and hair whiter. But it was the guy whose face I’d seen ten thousand, a hundred thousand times. He had a woman in front of him, his hands on her shoulders. In less than a second, I aimed above the woman’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger twice. Bin Laden’s head split open, and he dropped. I put another bullet in his head. Insurance.
O’Neill’s account differed from that of another SEAL, Matt Bissonnette, who claimed that he fired shots into bin Laden’s dying body in his book No Easy Day. Bissonnette earned $6.8 million in book royalties and speaking fees, which he was later required to forfeit because his book had not been cleared by the Defense Department prior to publication. (O’Neill’s book was cleared by the Pentagon.)
The spate of books prompted SEAL leadership to write a letter in 2014 to the Naval Special Warfare community. The top SEAL, Admiral Brian Losey, and the top enlisted SEAL, Mike Magaraci, reminded their former teammates of the SEAL Ethos. "A critical tenet of our Ethos is ‘I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions,’” Losey and Magaraci wrote. “Our Ethos is a life-long commitment and obligation, both in and out of the Service. Violators of our Ethos are neither Teammates in good standing nor Teammates who represent Naval Special Warfare.”
Put simply: There were 23 SEALs on the 2011 mission that resulted in bin Laden’s death. Credit goes to all of them.
What’s more, the person who shot the terrorist leader was the point man on the raid. Three SEALs and a special operations official told journalist Matthew Cole that the point man shot the terrorist leader in the chest. (The SEALs had been specifically asked to avoid shooting the terrorist leader in the face.) When bin Laden’s daughters started to scream, the point man pushed them into a corner of the hallway. It was at that point that O’Neill walked up and shot bin Laden in the head as the terrorist leader lay on the ground bleeding out from his chest wound.
The silence of the point man stands in sharp contrast to O’Neill and Bissonnette. The point man has never been identified. Whoever he is, he apparently believes there are more important things than fame and money.
At the same time, the point man’s quiet professionalism, while admirable, has made O’Neill’s book possible. O’Neill knows the point man will never publicly challenge his accounts.
So O’Neill gives speeches for $75,000 a pop. He has his own clothing line, RJO Apparel and his own podcast. He posts pictures of himself with celebrities. Heck, he is a celebrity.
But his recent arrest tells me that being a SEAL celebrity has come at a price. Honor and the respect of your teammates aren’t found in the bottom of a liquor bottle. They can’t be bought. They have to be earned.
Robert O’Neill had earned the respect of his colleagues when he was chosen to take part in the biggest mission in SEAL history. But then he chose fame instead.