A new report says a 15-year-veteran of the Navy SEALs named Rob O’Neill is the man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden.
O’Neill identified himself to The Washington Post as the man who shot bin Laden, and the Post said it verified his story with two other members of Navy SEAL Team 6.
{mosads}O’Neill, 38, who has left the SEALs, is due to give a full account of his role in the 2011 bin Laden raid next week in a two-part documentary on the Fox News Channel titled “The Man Who Killed Usama bin Laden.”
The web site SOFREP, which is run by former SEALs, disclosed O’Neill’s identity earlier this week in protest of O’Neill’s plans to go public with his identity in a pair of interviews.
O’Neill said he decided to go public after a private meeting with the relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attack on New York’s World Trade Center, following the opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum, where he talked about his actions during the raid.
“The families told me it helped bring them some closure,” he told the newspaper.
But his decision has angered other Navy SEALs, as evidenced by SOFREP’s actions.
ONeill acknowledged in the interview that other shots were fired at bin Laden by at least two other members of the Navy SEAL team, including Matt Bissonnette, who authored a book on the raid.
O’Neill previously talked about his experience in a 2013 Esquire magazine article that described how he found himself following behind the point man as they entered bin Laden’s bedroom.
He claimed the first SEAL fired a shot at the terror leader and missed. O’Neil then rolled into the room and recognized bin Laden.
“In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead,” he told the magazine. “Bap! Bap! The second time, as he is going down. He crumbled to the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again.”
Fox has been promoting a two-hour documentary that was to reveal O’Neill’s identify, and the Pentagon has expressed concerns about what details might be discussed.
“I think we have a concern generally when any of our members in uniform reveal classified information in the public, in whatever way that is, a book, a memoir or a movie, an op-ed piece,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said during a press briefing. “That’s always a concern for us.”
A Department of Defense spokeswoman said that everyone who took part in the 2011 operation to kill bin Laden was bound by a nondisclosure agreement to not discuss classified material.
She added that the military had not confirmed that the person appearing in the Fox News documentary was in fact the SEAL who killed bin Laden.
Bissonnette, whose firsthand account of the deadly raid is titled “No Easy Day,” is reportedly under criminal investigation.