Valuetainment - September 11, 2025


“Looked Like a Coward” - Osama Bin Laden’s Death & The FINAL Shot w⧸ SEAL Team Six's Robert O’Neill


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

235.24927

Word Count

4,011

Sentence Count

311

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

15


Summary

In this episode of SEALs Unfiltered, former Navy SEALs Chief Master Chief Chief Warrant Officer (Ret.) John Kelly talks about his time in the elite United States Navy SEAL Teams Six and SEAL Team Six, and the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So you're there, you're walking in, you've said this before,
00:00:04.020 you've said he looked like a coward when you took him out, right?
00:00:06.760 I think you said he was a coward, he acted like a coward.
00:00:09.540 It reminds me of the speech President Trump gave after, who was it, al-Baghdadi.
00:00:14.040 Yes.
00:00:14.560 He died like a dog.
00:00:15.540 Died like a dog.
00:00:16.060 Like a nice little dog.
00:00:17.200 But he was crying, he was doing this, he died like a coward, you know,
00:00:20.660 and he kept going and going and going, right?
00:00:22.600 With this whole, the video that many of us have seen hundreds of times,
00:00:26.460 it's almost comical when they do it, right?
00:00:29.240 Yeah, when they do it side by side.
00:00:30.300 Yeah, when they do it, and they say, this is how Obama announced the person died
00:00:32.840 and this is how Trump, Trump in 48 minutes, Obama went like eight minutes
00:00:35.680 or whatever it was, and he moves on, right?
00:00:37.880 For you, when you're there, I've heard the stories many different times.
00:00:43.360 I've watched, you know, the podcast that you've done.
00:00:46.140 How much training did you guys do going up into this
00:00:49.440 where the preparation of going in was role-played so many times?
00:00:53.980 Or because you don't know if the guy's moving that many times,
00:00:57.320 it's a lot of audibles.
00:00:58.920 You have to call last minute.
00:01:00.300 It's more audibles reading off of each other.
00:01:03.100 Like when I get asked, how did you guys clear a compound that big?
00:01:06.980 Because we mastered the basics.
00:01:08.180 If you get really good at the easy stuff, you're going to be fine.
00:01:10.440 There's no need to talk yourself into an ass-kicking.
00:01:12.900 So when I get asked that question, how'd you do it?
00:01:14.660 I'm like, well, the guy in front of me went left, I went right,
00:01:16.720 and we just did that over and over.
00:01:18.480 So we were, just because of the combat,
00:01:20.360 when we first started going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq,
00:01:22.560 we just changed our tactics.
00:01:24.020 Because basically before 9-11, there was fighting, you know,
00:01:28.320 Grenada and Panama and a little bit in Desert Storm,
00:01:31.220 but we were using Vietnam tactics.
00:01:32.820 Once we started getting shot at by real people in mountains and deserts,
00:01:35.260 you've got to change everything up.
00:01:36.220 But when we were told this team, who'd been probably 400 combat missions each,
00:01:41.040 but we'd all been working together at least for 10 years each,
00:01:44.240 when they said, when the commanding officer of SEAL Team 6 had us in a room
00:01:47.380 and finally said, the reason you guys are here is because this is as close
00:01:51.840 as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden, the common answer was,
00:01:55.400 cool, can we go right now?
00:01:56.760 Because we didn't need to train for it.
00:01:58.220 Like we're ready to go.
00:01:59.340 We know what we're doing.
00:02:01.040 Obviously the pilots are going to need to know the routes,
00:02:02.860 or they're going to design the routes.
00:02:03.900 They need to know where we're going, what the mountains are.
00:02:05.320 But yeah, we were completely ready for it, and it wasn't –
00:02:07.960 we trained on the outside.
00:02:10.300 They had constructed a compound that looked like the outside
00:02:12.660 so we could get used to seeing what the exterior looked like.
00:02:16.360 But the second anyone tried to say, well, here's what the inside –
00:02:19.260 don't tell me what you think it looks like because it won't.
00:02:21.720 Don't tell me how many men, women, and children are there.
00:02:25.040 Tell me how many people you've seen, and I will figure it out when I get there.
00:02:28.360 It's like if you keep telling me when we go in the front of his house,
00:02:31.620 there's immediately going to be a left-hand turn,
00:02:34.060 that's probably not the case.
00:02:34.980 It'll be a right-hand turn.
00:02:35.760 I don't want to – I don't want to get into a situation.
00:02:37.380 You're saying this right here?
00:02:38.720 Yeah, yeah.
00:02:39.500 So we wanted to know that, and that worked out well
00:02:41.280 because we were supposed to drop part of my team off outside on the north end,
00:02:45.800 and then we were going to the rooftop.
00:02:47.380 But because of the complications with the weather, with the updraft,
00:02:50.700 our pilot just put us off with the snipers again,
00:02:53.140 and we knew from training off to our left is a double door.
00:02:55.340 We'll just go through there and start the war from here.
00:02:57.840 But if – I don't want you to tell – don't assume anything.
00:03:02.260 My tactics are good.
00:03:03.060 My team is great, and we'll figure it out when we get there.
00:03:06.000 But we trained a lot, and that was more to show the powers that be,
00:03:10.020 this is what we offer because there were different kinds of bombing campaigns.
00:03:13.620 There was a thing called the hammer throw where we've seen a pacer.
00:03:16.060 We can throw one bomb at him and hit him, but that's never going to work
00:03:18.640 because bombs and grenades aren't like Hollywood where one blows up
00:03:22.020 and the whole house comes down and 50 people fly into the ditch.
00:03:24.400 It's like you're going to miss.
00:03:25.120 He's going to run.
00:03:26.420 And even President Obama was so cool.
00:03:28.260 He said, I was never 100% convinced bin Laden was there,
00:03:32.200 but after seeing you, I knew you could show up, find out, and come back.
00:03:35.720 He told you that.
00:03:36.360 He didn't tell me personally.
00:03:37.300 He told us in a room before Campbell, Kentucky, after the raid.
00:03:41.380 And that was just cool that he had that faith,
00:03:44.100 just go find out and come back safely.
00:03:45.820 How many people were in that Fort Campbell meeting?
00:03:48.320 Well, they had the 23 shooters, the air crews, most of the cabinet.
00:03:53.940 Hillary Clinton did not show up.
00:03:55.040 This is post.
00:03:55.900 Yeah, this is after the raid, like a week later.
00:03:58.080 A week later, you're all in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
00:03:59.760 Yeah, it was kind of awkward because a lot of these dudes to this day
00:04:02.280 will never talk, you'll never hear from them.
00:04:03.520 They want to live on a farm and whatever.
00:04:05.620 And then even that night, we're there, and it says SEAL Team 6 kills Osama bin Laden.
00:04:09.700 A lot of guys are uncomfortable.
00:04:10.760 And then all of a sudden, we're doing these dog and pony shows,
00:04:12.820 going everywhere to meet politicians and admirals and generals.
00:04:16.100 And we had an award ceremony in Florida in front of a bunch of people,
00:04:19.980 and guys are kind of like, this isn't good.
00:04:22.920 Yeah, so it was – and then we met President Obama at Fort Campbell
00:04:25.900 after a unit from the Army just got back, probably the 101st up in Campbell.
00:04:29.200 And he met with them, talked to them, and secretively he could come to a room
00:04:33.440 where we were, and that's when he told us that, which is kind of –
00:04:35.980 I mean, he made some good calls that were – they weren't political at all.
00:04:40.520 And it wasn't left or right because, like, Secretary Gates is Republican,
00:04:44.120 obviously more Democrats than Republicans, but they made a decision based on what is
00:04:49.500 the right thing to do.
00:04:50.400 And it was before an election.
00:04:51.760 And even though Zero Dark Thirty was fast, it was after the election.
00:04:54.960 And if we screwed that up like President Carter did in Desert One,
00:04:58.820 you're not getting elected.
00:05:00.440 And so this was not a political choice.
00:05:02.820 Yeah.
00:05:03.200 I mean, listen, the movie is a little too fast to think about how quickly you produce something.
00:05:08.460 Movies take three years, three or five years to make.
00:05:10.500 In 18, 19 months, you have it ready to go, and you got clearance from CIA,
00:05:15.180 from everybody, use some of those, you know, stories.
00:05:18.060 Who knows what was done?
00:05:19.720 I never thought of that either.
00:05:21.140 I mean, do they have stuff in place?
00:05:22.340 They're ready to already – have they recorded it?
00:05:24.200 Well, apparently they'll say it was rewritten, and they had to change the ending,
00:05:28.080 and they were already working on it, and they bumped it up as their number one priority
00:05:31.860 of a movie to make.
00:05:32.660 Who knows?
00:05:33.160 It's just – it's a lot of things that makes you question.
00:05:35.360 But walk me through, you know, when you go in the room and you finally see him, okay,
00:05:41.180 was there an initial shock?
00:05:42.800 Like, oh, shit, we actually found him?
00:05:44.360 Was there like boom, boom, boom, boom?
00:05:45.480 No, it was –
00:05:46.480 Like super fast.
00:05:47.260 It started below the last set of stairs.
00:05:49.900 The woman that found bin Laden was 100% right on every single person in there,
00:05:53.280 even though no one at the agency believed her, which is crazy.
00:05:56.340 But we're at the last set.
00:05:57.500 The guy in front of me –
00:05:58.140 Who was the woman with CIA?
00:05:59.340 Yeah.
00:05:59.960 The one the movie was based on.
00:06:00.920 They called her Maya in the movie.
00:06:02.560 In real life, her name is not Maya.
00:06:03.900 Yeah, I promised I would never describe her or say what her name is,
00:06:06.820 but she was that cool, like that good.
00:06:09.420 Why was she that good?
00:06:10.840 I don't know.
00:06:12.040 The best part of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain nailed it.
00:06:15.520 When she sat down to lunch with the director, Leon Panetta,
00:06:19.100 played by James Gandolfini, and he said,
00:06:21.080 what else do you do for us?
00:06:22.140 And she said, nothing.
00:06:23.280 I do this.
00:06:24.780 That was just cool.
00:06:25.760 That kind of describes what she was like.
00:06:27.400 She was there –
00:06:28.200 Did you ever meet her?
00:06:29.280 Oh, yeah.
00:06:29.760 She was the first person that we met when they told us it was bin Laden.
00:06:33.360 What was her personality like?
00:06:35.200 Serious.
00:06:35.980 I didn't want you guys anyway.
00:06:37.600 I wanted to bomb this.
00:06:38.360 I know he's there 100%.
00:06:39.260 We'd get done training on that site for 12 hours.
00:06:42.820 Then we'd go back to our rooms,
00:06:44.560 and we'd all stand around a two-scale model that someone had built of bin Laden's house.
00:06:48.460 We would talk about the perfect plan.
00:06:50.220 We'd discuss contingencies.
00:06:51.560 And every night, she would say something similar to,
00:06:53.400 okay, guys, right now Osama bin Laden is on the third floor of this house.
00:06:56.680 Don't understand why we're not going?
00:06:58.220 Have a good night.
00:06:58.820 See you tomorrow.
00:06:59.400 No shit.
00:06:59.860 Yeah, she knew it.
00:07:00.820 And it was the whole –
00:07:01.860 Who told her?
00:07:02.600 What gave her that kind of confidence?
00:07:03.860 Her team?
00:07:04.760 Or was she a one-man show?
00:07:06.400 Was she like a –
00:07:07.180 No, it was a team.
00:07:08.000 It was actually a team mostly of women.
00:07:10.780 And they were working everything from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, from the States.
00:07:14.480 I ran a – I was running the outstations in Afghanistan.
00:07:18.560 So we had all these stations on the border to run sources.
00:07:20.400 In early of 2011, my 12th deployment, at an agency base, I think the targeting team for bin Laden was there,
00:07:28.380 and I didn't even know they were there.
00:07:29.880 We were at a point there – like, I would do battlefield interrogations on al-Qaeda guys on target.
00:07:34.160 And in between, like, who were the men in the house?
00:07:36.160 What are their names?
00:07:36.680 What are they doing?
00:07:37.140 Blah, blah, blah.
00:07:37.480 I would just sneak in.
00:07:38.740 Where's Osama bin Laden?
00:07:39.720 And we would both laugh at each other, both of them, me and a terrorist.
00:07:42.420 Because, like, no one knows.
00:07:44.260 He's gone.
00:07:44.800 And the agency women are right there, and they know it.
00:07:47.980 They're just not saying anything.
00:07:48.840 Like, it was almost to the point where the problem with a lot of these, like, SEAL Team 6 and the agency
00:07:54.440 is that they make too many movies about us making us look cool.
00:07:57.660 We're not that cool.
00:07:58.480 Well, this team was that cool, the agency team.
00:08:00.640 They were that cool.
00:08:01.500 So when we met her, she just – every night she would say stuff like that.
00:08:05.280 She wanted to kill them.
00:08:06.180 Because if we hit them with the Air Force's plan, like 22 JDAMs, Joint Direct Action Munitions, 2,000-pound bombs,
00:08:12.800 no one's ever going to find out.
00:08:15.120 She was like, we don't need the DNA.
00:08:16.600 I'm telling you who's there.
00:08:17.480 We can kill them.
00:08:17.960 And so she got to the point where the very first day after she was introduced,
00:08:23.280 she had a PowerPoint brief explaining to us how she and the team found them.
00:08:28.900 And it got to the point where, like, look, we just believe you.
00:08:31.480 I don't need to hear this anymore.
00:08:33.240 He's there.
00:08:33.880 And so we were – I was 100% sure.
00:08:37.540 So at the end, going up the last set of stairs with one guy in front of me, it wasn't a bravery thing on my part.
00:08:42.940 Because the guy in front of me had taken a shot before I got there.
00:08:46.080 And I got there as a two-man.
00:08:47.400 How many seconds before you heard a shot you got up there?
00:08:50.580 Oh, seconds.
00:08:51.580 Because when we went up the –
00:08:52.780 Boom, boom, boom, you go up.
00:08:54.120 Well, no, he took the shots before –
00:08:56.220 I know.
00:08:56.440 What I'm saying is he takes the shot.
00:08:58.620 You're automatically – why is he shooting?
00:09:00.280 Let me go to where he's at.
00:09:01.200 Well, the guys behind him – I was about eight back, seven back.
00:09:04.520 They started clearing the second floor.
00:09:05.940 His job is the number one man is pointing up.
00:09:07.760 So he shot before I got to him.
00:09:08.860 Why did he shoot?
00:09:09.540 What did he shoot at?
00:09:10.160 He saw some faces behind a curtain at the top of the stairs.
00:09:13.080 He saw something –
00:09:14.000 And you were instructed, if you see it, take the shot.
00:09:15.780 Well, I mean, if you see Bin Laden, we're going to shoot.
00:09:17.920 Unless he came out of the shower hands up, like, naked.
00:09:20.640 We're going to kill him.
00:09:21.220 He's a suicide bomber.
00:09:21.900 He's got to be.
00:09:22.920 So I got to him, and my job is to –
00:09:25.600 I want more because Bin Laden's up there.
00:09:27.460 And I want two more dudes.
00:09:28.340 I want four dudes.
00:09:29.300 I'll take two.
00:09:30.240 And I'm ready to squeeze.
00:09:31.060 And he just started saying to me –
00:09:32.880 didn't know it was me.
00:09:33.580 He knows it was one of his guys.
00:09:34.360 Like, we got to get up there.
00:09:36.160 Not talking so much, but there's movements because those are the suicide bombers.
00:09:40.240 We can beat them.
00:09:41.260 We got to go now.
00:09:42.640 And for me, it wasn't bravery.
00:09:44.480 It was like, I want to get this over with.
00:09:46.500 I'm fucking tired of thinking about this.
00:09:48.240 And I squeezed him, and we went through the stairs.
00:09:49.840 And he ended up tackling two people that he thought were suicide bombers,
00:09:54.420 which to me is amazing.
00:09:55.400 Do you see?
00:09:55.840 The guy in front of me.
00:09:57.140 So he jumped on –
00:09:59.620 I mean, this is Medal of Honor shit right here.
00:10:02.120 Because I know we're going to blow up in the room.
00:10:03.620 He jumps on people he assumes we're putting on vests.
00:10:05.660 Wow.
00:10:05.840 And because – again, left, right.
00:10:07.120 He went this way.
00:10:07.620 I turn here.
00:10:08.220 Here's Bin Laden standing there.
00:10:09.220 And he's holding – he's holding his wife up.
00:10:13.100 She was wounded.
00:10:14.280 And I saw him, and I was like, he's taller than I thought.
00:10:18.600 He's skinnier.
00:10:19.060 His beard's white.
00:10:19.900 That's his nose.
00:10:20.500 He's not surrendering.
00:10:21.200 And all you need to do for – to set off a suicide vest that you're wearing
00:10:25.480 is have the leads right here and just touch them.
00:10:27.760 So you can do the whole, yeah, I surrender.
00:10:29.360 Boom.
00:10:29.840 And it's fast.
00:10:30.560 I've seen suicide bombers.
00:10:32.160 And they're very fast, very permanent, and scary, and loud,
00:10:36.100 and I'm not dealing with that.
00:10:36.820 Like, when I went up there, I was like, let's get it over with.
00:10:38.340 I see him.
00:10:38.680 I blast him.
00:10:39.380 Shoot him again because, again, not like the movies.
00:10:42.240 Shooting someone in the chest, they have a will to live,
00:10:43.900 and they might survive.
00:10:44.780 With a suicide bomber, especially as a sniper, you aim for the mouth,
00:10:47.780 aim for the forehead.
00:10:48.420 You've got to cut him down.
00:10:49.360 And that's just what I did with him.
00:10:50.400 And then moved the wife out of the way, and Bin Laden's at the bottom of the bed, too.
00:10:55.640 And even with, you know, I'm kind of going off the story here.
00:11:00.760 I love to talk about the humanity of people everywhere.
00:11:05.160 Most people in a combat zone are not combatants.
00:11:09.180 At this moment, after I shot Bin Laden and moved his wife,
00:11:11.440 I looked down, and his two-year-old son, Hussein, was there.
00:11:13.840 And I'm a father.
00:11:15.160 And I remember my first thought in Bin Laden's house was,
00:11:18.080 this poor kid has nothing to do with this.
00:11:20.660 You know, it's almost like, what is going on here?
00:11:22.280 Then I move them, and I turn around.
00:11:24.920 I'm going to go back and get the pictures,
00:11:26.200 but I sort of hesitate just for a second,
00:11:28.100 because we're going to die, but shit.
00:11:30.160 And one of my guys, the other COs,
00:11:31.720 I was the only guy in his room for a couple of seconds.
00:11:35.380 Other guys were coming in, and one of my guys stopped me,
00:11:37.580 and he goes, hey, you good?
00:11:38.320 And I said, what do we do now?
00:11:40.980 And he said, now we find the computers.
00:11:42.340 We do this every night, man, hundreds of times.
00:11:43.880 I said, you're right.
00:11:44.480 Holy shit.
00:11:45.020 And he goes, yeah, you just killed Osama Bin Laden.
00:11:47.020 Your life just changed.
00:11:47.740 Get to work.
00:11:49.640 Is he the commander?
00:11:51.480 No.
00:11:51.760 Were you reporting to him?
00:11:52.920 No, no, no.
00:11:53.600 He was another dude coming in the room.
00:11:55.180 So I'm assuming most guys got into the room eventually.
00:11:57.880 So this was one of the guys from my team.
00:12:00.920 Obviously, I'm not going to say who.
00:12:02.580 But he's a SEAL Team 6.
00:12:03.580 Yeah, yeah.
00:12:03.860 These were all, at this point, these are all SEAL Team 6 guys.
00:12:05.840 Out of everybody that went in, you guys are all SEAL Team 6?
00:12:08.520 Yeah.
00:12:09.180 Okay.
00:12:09.540 That's the 89-90, or how many people total was that?
00:12:13.760 On the mission, 23.
00:12:15.420 23.
00:12:16.300 And then there's another.
00:12:17.240 Well, we had one guy that wasn't, and I still don't know who he was,
00:12:19.840 but he spoke fluent Urdu without an accent, which I think is just badass.
00:12:24.160 There's some dude that he can carry a gun.
00:12:25.980 He's really good.
00:12:26.500 He's a shooter.
00:12:27.080 He speaks Urdu.
00:12:27.840 He's an American.
00:12:28.380 It's like, I want to know who this dude is because that's, like,
00:12:30.380 there's a guy that, it shouldn't be talking about the guys that killed Bin Laden.
00:12:32.860 That was easy.
00:12:33.620 Go shoot a guy.
00:12:34.260 Who's this dude?
00:12:35.480 That's awesome.
00:12:36.840 So you kill him.
00:12:38.600 The wife is not dead yet.
00:12:40.440 No.
00:12:40.680 She didn't die.
00:12:41.320 She didn't die.
00:12:42.120 The son is how old then?
00:12:44.140 He was two.
00:12:44.940 I think Khalid on the stairs was 19 or 20.
00:12:48.000 Khalid on the stairs were 19 or 20.
00:12:50.240 The son is two.
00:12:51.420 That son today is 16 years old.
00:12:53.620 Do you have any nightmares of thinking about that kid coming after you?
00:12:56.180 I don't have nightmares about him.
00:12:58.720 I honestly, and again, this is me being an optimist,
00:13:01.800 I hope he has learned, like, this is not the way to go.
00:13:05.400 I mean, and again, like, I'm not looking for it.
00:13:07.960 And, you know, if they come looking for me,
00:13:09.940 the next guy I kill will be in my own house.
00:13:11.400 I don't want it to come to that.
00:13:13.020 But I know how to deal with him.
00:13:14.640 And it just, it is what it is.
00:13:15.940 I mean, because I'd heard, again, rumors.
00:13:18.000 I'd heard that Bin Laden was even talking to his kids
00:13:20.520 about don't get into this line of work.
00:13:22.220 I've heard Noor Bin Laden, I think it was his cousin,
00:13:24.900 who said something similar to,
00:13:27.100 well, if you line up 10 members of any family,
00:13:28.800 there's going to be an asshole.
00:13:29.720 He was ours.
00:13:30.700 So I don't know.
00:13:31.500 I mean, I don't want a Bin Laden showing up in New York,
00:13:34.120 but it is what it is.
00:13:35.760 What is the kid's name?
00:13:36.880 The two-year-old at the time?
00:13:38.140 I think it's Hussein.
00:13:39.700 Hussein Bin Laden.
00:13:40.820 I believe so.
00:13:41.880 So Hussein Bin Laden, can you pull him up?
00:13:43.940 Hussein Bin Laden, he is born in 2008, which makes sense.
00:13:51.220 Wife.
00:13:52.000 So Hussein Bin Laden, can you go on his account,
00:13:54.140 on his profile?
00:13:55.660 If we go to him, what did the FBI say about him?
00:13:59.300 FBI said nothing.
00:14:00.000 It's just Osama Bin Laden.
00:14:01.720 Family background, Hussein Bin Laden was famous.
00:14:03.380 He said no one has the elder brother of Osama Bin Laden.
00:14:05.000 No, that's a different one.
00:14:06.120 That's a different one.
00:14:07.100 We're talking about the one that was there.
00:14:08.160 Okay, and let me ask, at the time when this happened
00:14:12.380 and you took out Bin Laden, is he the first 10 people
00:14:17.180 you've killed in New York?
00:14:17.800 No, no, no.
00:14:18.360 Or you've been there many times?
00:14:19.460 Oh, yeah, a lot.
00:14:20.520 He wasn't the last guy I killed with that gun.
00:14:22.820 He wasn't the last guy?
00:14:23.680 I did another deployment because we did the Bin Laden raid
00:14:27.180 on May 1st, May 2nd, 2011, and we went through an emotional
00:14:31.080 rollercoaster with, hey, we did it, then our names are,
00:14:33.160 not our names, but the SEAL Team 6 is out.
00:14:35.560 But it's a high because we chopped the head off the snake,
00:14:39.300 and then in August, Extortion 17 was shot down.
00:14:42.280 We lost 30 guys, 30 Americans.
00:14:45.860 What was that all about?
00:14:46.540 That's a very weird story.
00:14:47.660 Right, and that's where the conspiracies come in.
00:14:49.760 Because people don't, it was months apart, and they say,
00:14:52.720 well, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had SEAL Team 6 killed
00:14:55.100 to shut them up, which is ridiculous.
00:14:56.580 But if you don't mind kind of going through this,
00:14:58.540 because it was the single biggest event of the most, you know,
00:15:06.680 people getting killed, not Tier 1, you know,
00:15:10.940 soldiers getting killed on an operation,
00:15:12.500 and it was the shots fired came down from who?
00:15:17.260 The bad guys?
00:15:18.380 The resultant killed 38 people and a military working dog on board,
00:15:23.920 including 17 U.S. Navy SEAL, two U.S. Air Force para-rescue,
00:15:29.760 and you had a couple combat patrol.
00:15:31.580 I mean, this was huge.
00:15:33.260 This was huge.
00:15:34.080 Well, I talked to some of the guys involved.
00:15:36.960 Actually, we backfilled them at Ford Operating Base Shank,
00:15:40.420 where they took off from, and there was a conversation between,
00:15:44.720 I want to say Jonas Kelsall, who was a commanding officer,
00:15:46.720 and Lou Langlis, who was the master chief,
00:15:49.480 because they're going in on a quick reaction force, which is dangerous,
00:15:52.820 and they knew where they were going in the Tangi Valley,
00:15:55.140 and they normally have two helicopters,
00:15:56.780 but they said something along the lines of,
00:15:59.080 the second one's definitely going to get shot down.
00:16:00.740 The first one might not, so they put everybody on one helicopter.
00:16:03.700 And it had nothing to do with the Bin Laden raid,
00:16:05.260 but people want to, just because it was SEAL Team 6,
00:16:07.880 everyone from the Bin Laden raid is still alive.
00:16:09.800 But we lost the best guys we had on Extortion 17.
00:16:13.640 We look at those dudes, that's a, I mean, not quite a thousand years,
00:16:16.360 but hundreds of years of combat experience, you can't get back.
00:16:19.620 So anyway, I did go back-to-back with them with a different squadron,
00:16:23.280 and I finished up in Afghanistan in 2012.
00:16:26.180 Hey, what is up?
00:16:26.940 This is Robert J. O'Neill, former SEAL Team 6 operators.
00:16:30.240 I was fortunate to be on some of the most high-profile missions
00:16:32.660 in our very long War on Terror.
00:16:35.060 But I am now on Menecht, and you can connect with me there,
00:16:39.220 and we can literally talk about anything.
00:16:41.280 You can text, we can do video calls, I can give you messages.
00:16:45.100 And, you know, go to Menecht, find me.
00:16:47.340 Literally nothing is off-limits.
00:16:48.900 Any crazy questions you have that you may or may not want the answers to,
00:16:52.400 I am more than happy to do it.
00:16:53.420 So find me on Menecht.
00:16:54.380 Again, this is Robert J. O'Neill.
00:16:56.480 See you there.
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