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Interview with alleged Osama bin Laden shooter gives intimate account of famous raid
Story also paints a bleak picture of the life of Navy SEAL Team 6 commando after leaving the elite unit.
osama_bin_laden_raid.jpg
The raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the subject of blockbuster film Zero Dark Thirty (pictured here), is recounted by the commando who says he fired the fatal shot in interviews with the Center for Investigative Reporting, published Monday by Esquire magazine.
The retired Navy SEAL Team 6 commando who says he fatally shot Osama bin Laden is reportedly broke, without health care or security, and struggling to survive a civilian’s life that is hardly the hero’s welcome U.S. President Barack Obama said the “best of the best” deserved.
Exclusive Center for Investigative Reporting interviews with the sniper, identified only as “the Shooter,” provide one of the most intimate accounts yet of the May 2011 raid that has already been immortalized in books, a big-budget Hollywood movie, documentaries and hundreds of articles.
“In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the navy at 19, after a girl broke his heart,” journalist Phil Bronstein wrote in the piece published by Esquire Magazine on Monday.
The Shooter told the navy recruiter he wanted to be a sniper and “signed up on a whim.”
“That’s the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated,” he joked to Bronstein, “because she broke my (expletive) heart.”
It’s a gripping account of those last seconds of Bin Laden’s life as seen through a navy nightscope by the sniper Bronstein describes as “thick, like a power lifter, with an audacious set of tattoos.”
He gives credit to his teammates who carried out the mission, including Matt Bissonnette, who claimed in his book No Easy Day (written under the name Mark Owen) that he hit bin Laden in the chest first. But adds: “I don’t think he hit him. He thinks he might have.”
Either way, the Shooter says he was the one to deliver the fatal blow: “(Bin Laden) looked confused. And way taller than I was expecting . . . He’s got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he’s famous for. And he’s moving forward.
“In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! . . . And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I’ve ever done, or the worst thing I’ve ever done? This is real and that’s him.”
Aside from a lengthy account of the mission, the 15,000-word piece paints a bleak picture of the Shooter’s life after leaving the navy. Because he retired four years early, burned out after 16 years with the elite unit, he doesn’t get a pension. Even if he had stayed for the full 20 years, his pension would have been half his base pay, the article notes. That’s $2,197 a month, the same as a member of the navy choir.
Then there’s the emotional difficulty of being reintegrated into civilian life — a psychological struggle from belonging to a secretive unit that acts as a family, to going back to your family, cut off from your unit. Getting a job is difficult when your resumé is blank.
“It’s a simple truth,” writes Bronstein, “that those who have been most exposed to harrowing danger for the longest time during our recent wars now find themselves adrift in civilian life, trying desperately to adjust, often scrambling just to make ends meet.”
The story generated much buzz Monday and a Stars and Stripes story later claimed the commando was actually entitled to five years of free health care.
Story also paints a bleak picture of the life of Navy SEAL Team 6 commando after leaving the elite unit.
osama_bin_laden_raid.jpg
The raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the subject of blockbuster film Zero Dark Thirty (pictured here), is recounted by the commando who says he fired the fatal shot in interviews with the Center for Investigative Reporting, published Monday by Esquire magazine.
The retired Navy SEAL Team 6 commando who says he fatally shot Osama bin Laden is reportedly broke, without health care or security, and struggling to survive a civilian’s life that is hardly the hero’s welcome U.S. President Barack Obama said the “best of the best” deserved.
Exclusive Center for Investigative Reporting interviews with the sniper, identified only as “the Shooter,” provide one of the most intimate accounts yet of the May 2011 raid that has already been immortalized in books, a big-budget Hollywood movie, documentaries and hundreds of articles.
“In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the navy at 19, after a girl broke his heart,” journalist Phil Bronstein wrote in the piece published by Esquire Magazine on Monday.
The Shooter told the navy recruiter he wanted to be a sniper and “signed up on a whim.”
“That’s the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated,” he joked to Bronstein, “because she broke my (expletive) heart.”
It’s a gripping account of those last seconds of Bin Laden’s life as seen through a navy nightscope by the sniper Bronstein describes as “thick, like a power lifter, with an audacious set of tattoos.”
He gives credit to his teammates who carried out the mission, including Matt Bissonnette, who claimed in his book No Easy Day (written under the name Mark Owen) that he hit bin Laden in the chest first. But adds: “I don’t think he hit him. He thinks he might have.”
Either way, the Shooter says he was the one to deliver the fatal blow: “(Bin Laden) looked confused. And way taller than I was expecting . . . He’s got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he’s famous for. And he’s moving forward.
“In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! . . . And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I’ve ever done, or the worst thing I’ve ever done? This is real and that’s him.”
Aside from a lengthy account of the mission, the 15,000-word piece paints a bleak picture of the Shooter’s life after leaving the navy. Because he retired four years early, burned out after 16 years with the elite unit, he doesn’t get a pension. Even if he had stayed for the full 20 years, his pension would have been half his base pay, the article notes. That’s $2,197 a month, the same as a member of the navy choir.
Then there’s the emotional difficulty of being reintegrated into civilian life — a psychological struggle from belonging to a secretive unit that acts as a family, to going back to your family, cut off from your unit. Getting a job is difficult when your resumé is blank.
“It’s a simple truth,” writes Bronstein, “that those who have been most exposed to harrowing danger for the longest time during our recent wars now find themselves adrift in civilian life, trying desperately to adjust, often scrambling just to make ends meet.”
The story generated much buzz Monday and a Stars and Stripes story later claimed the commando was actually entitled to five years of free health care.
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