Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden opens up to Esquire
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The Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden in the 2011 raid in Abbottabad broke his silence in an article published in Esquire today, titled “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden … Is Screwed.”
Reporter Phil Bronstein, of the Center for Investigative Reporting, kept the man’s identity anonymous, but calls him The Shooter throughout the article, which focuses on his life post-Osama.
The Navy SEAL has now been left with no job, no insurance and a growing fear for his family.
His wife and kids have been taught home defense, and are considering changing the name on bills to hers.
The Shooter left the Navy last September, retiring after 16 years. He was four years short of transitional health insurance and a pension.
He’s had little luck with the job search. The last job help he received from the Navy was for him to become a beer-trick driver in Milwaukee, under an assumed identity and he and his family would have to give up all contact with their former lives.
Here are a few excerpts from the Esquire article:
About the raid: “ON the third floor, there were two chicks yelling at us and the point man was yelling at them and he said to me, “Hey, we need to get moving. These bitches is getting truculent.” I remember saying to myself, Truculent? Really? Love that word.
About the actual assassination of Osama Bin Laden: “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. Holy shit. Everybody wanted him dead, but nobody wanted to say, Hey, you’re going to kill this guy. It was just sort of understood that’s what we wanted to do.”
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