3-24-25 Ken Broo with Robert O'Neil

is improving and that's the way we like it. It's amazing to think back, but it will be in twenty twenty six, twenty five years since the greatest attack on this country when a band of thugs, a very small band of thugs, pulled off what we now referred to as nine to eleven and close to three thousand people lost their lives on that day, nine eleven, two thousand

and one. It took almost ten years to hunt down and bring to justice the man who was the mastermind behind the nine to eleven attacks, and that of course, was Osama bin Laden.

to welcome in Rob O'Neill. Rob, how are you on this glorious deck.

we just sing out of nowhere. When Morale was in the dumping it was too hot, we just started saying the bangle. I know to this day still, but I think it's my daughters.

we just got better at keeping it simple. We stopped complicating everything. And if like someone asked me before, how do you clear a compound as big as the Loddens? And I just said, well, if the guy in front of me goes left, I go right. And then we just do that over and over and over, and we I mean, we just mentioned football, what like there are certain times in life where it doesn't matter how you got here, You're just here. And that happened at the

bin Lodden Rad when a helicopter crashed. But when I talked to football teams, I tell them, guys, it doesn't matter why it's second and fifteen, it just is. Stop arguing about it. What we have in common is time is ticking. What are you going to do about it? Do it now? So it's just a simplicity. Don't don't talk yourself into a butt kick, and don't over complicate life. It'll get hard enough on his own. Just master the basics.

be on the finest team I think ever assembled. But we were ready for it at that point, when I mean when they told us the first time they told us what it was, they said, the reason you guys are here is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And there was no cheering. You know, we're professionals. We all just said, cool, we're going now, we're.

inexperienced pilot would have tried to power it up. That would have rolled and killed everybody. But the pilot, in the blink of it, I decided if he turned it and put the tail on the wall, he could pin the nose of the helicopter in the dirt and it might save everyone's life, which it did. But that pilot is a hero. Oh and he just decided it to put it down on the ground and then that it

is what it isn't. The guys immediately got out and started fighting, and like I said, I didn't even know it crashed itself because they put us off on the wrong spot because our pilot realized if they can't however, we can't. However, I was supposed to go to the rooftop of Binlam's house with my team, but he just put us off outside the twenty foot walls and we had to figure out a way to get in. But again we were just very experienced at what we can do,

and we we did figure it out eventually. But even the sniper that we dropped off on my helicopter, his job was to run around the entire compound with the dog outside the walls, and he got to the point where the tail the helicopter with the pilot pin and he could see it on the X here. He came over the radio and said, guys inside beyond alert. There death definitely ready for us. They have a training mockup

of our super secret helicopter in their front yard. And there was a pause and the ground force commander came over the radio and goes, no, jackass, that's ours. We crashed and the sniper did a good thing. And he literally came over the radio and said, yeah, that makes a lot more sense than what I was just saying, Harry hung.

our side because this is ridiculous. But they were just really, really, really good helicopters. But again, because the Pakistani intelligence was hiding bid Laden there, he must have assumed it was just Pakistani forces coming to get him or bring him out and put him somewhere else, because I mean, they put up a little bit of a fight and I'd be amazed there were no bombs in every room to blow us all up, and there wasn't a bigger Like people ask me, why wasn't there more al Kaina fighters there?

I'm like, well, I don't know. I Mean, all I can tell you is we didn't call ahead and say we were coming out, but they weren't ready. I mean, not that would have matter, because we crushed these guys, but but they you know, they had a little bit of defense. But we, you know, we were very prepared, very professional. We all, I mean every guy on that mission had at least four hundred real war missions under their belt, so it was a I mean, we sent

in the right guys. Don't get me wrong. I didn't want twenty more fighters there, but we handled the ones we ran into, and it was we turned something potentially catastrophic into something great just because of our preparation to get they're not our perfect plan, which the perfect plan didn't last for three seconds, which is normal in life, you know.

likelihood that you're not coming back from that mission. So it really didn't matter, I guess to you whether it was going after Osama bin Laden or a regular Tuesday when you're out on patrol, there's a good chance that you weren't coming back.

enough fuel. This could go a number of different ways. It's a one way mission. We accepted that, but we talked about it. So you know, if I had a guy even say don't before he went, he said, don't take this the wrong way, because I'm going one hundred percent going. I just need to say it out loud. If we know we're going to die tonight, why are we going? Which is fair? And we had that conversation

and we decided we're not going for the fame. We're obviously not getting the reward, but we're going after Bin Laden tonight for the first Americans that were forced to fight out KaiA toe to Toda to the death, and

those are the passengers on United flight ninety three. You know, we're going after Bin Laden tonight for the single mom who dropped your kids off at elementary school on a beautiful Tuesday morning and then an hour later she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that's a better alternative right now than whatever's going on inside, and then we'll never know. You know, she was never supposed

to do that. Those passengers weren't supposed to fight. We are supposed to fight, and that is why we're going.

already clearing it by the time I got in. So I was on the first floor watching my guys, and I kind of just went into a side room. That's where one of the other dudes told me their helicopter crashed, and I was just impressed that, because I'm looking for bombs now this place should blow up. He's gonna martyr everyone. But I was looking at my guys who were working ahead of me, because I'm in the position I have the best seat on the most important, modern and most

important mission modern history. So I'm watching my guys and I was just proud of them because they know damn well they can blow up at any moment, but that's not stopping them. They're not afraid, and they're not speeding up. They're they're using our tactics. And the way the best way to describe our tactics are slow as smooth and smooth as fast. So if you want to be fast, slow down, you know. And I'm watching him do it.

And the woman who found bin Laden, the CIA agent who was depicted in zero Doart thirty, said that I don't know what it looks like inside, but there will be stairwells, and the first one you will run into Khalid bin Laden, and that's his twenty year old son. He will be armed, and she said so here's how cool she was. He said, if you can ace him, you get a shot at the big guy. That was cool, and we ran into him. The guys in front of me took carry him, so we went up to the

second floor. He's dead on the stairs, and then I was about eight guys back in line. Everyone except the first guy started going left and right to clear the unknowns, the different rooms, stuff like that. So it's down to two of us going from the second floor to the third floor, and that's where we know bin Laden is.

So there's one guy in front of me and he's pointing his gun up the stairs and these stairs lead to a curtain like a door, but it was just a curtain, and he could see people moving back and forth. So it's down to me. My job is to control his shoulder so that when we have and look for other guys that we're going to bring. His job is to look forward so he doesn't need to look at me. But once I squeeze, it's time to go. And he just started saying, hey, we gotta go, we gotta get up,

we gotta go. Come on now, because he's thinking those are suicide bombers. But we can beat him. If we go right now, we can't hesitate. And I remember looking at him and literally he was brave. I wasn't. I'm thinking, okay, but line's up there and I'm gonna blow up, but I'm just tired of thinking about it. It wasn't bravery

at all. It's like, let's just go. So I squeezed him and he went up, and he went to that curtain and he moved it and he sort of tackled these two people that he assumed were suicide bombers, like he didn't know he thought they were. So he jumped on a grenade that didn't go off, which how he doesn't have a medal of honor is beyond me. But because he went left, I went right because of our tactics.

And right in front of me, three feet away, standing on two feet was the Sawma Bin Lunn and his wife Lamal was in front of her him and he had his arms on her shoulders, and I remember thinking, I was I didn't think he would be as skinny as he was. He was taller than I saw it, and his beard was sort of gray. But that's his nose, that's him. He's not surrendering. I've seen that picture a thousand times. He's a suicide bomber. I got to take him out, and the way you deal with the suicide

bombers to shoot him in the face. So I did twice at about three feet away, and then he fell down. I shot him one more time, and then because his wife is in front of me and we're the good guys, now it's time to move her out of the way because other seals will be coming in. I don't want it to be a crossfire. And that's when I looked down and saw his two year old son. And this

is the humanity of stuff like this. I'm a father and I'm looking at his two year old son, and my first thought was, this kid has nothing to do with this. He should not have seen this. So I'm moving them out of the way, and I tune around. I can hear bin Laden exhaling. I can. I mean, it's an ugly side. I can see what it looks like. I gets shot in the head three times at close range, and I'm kind of looking at him, and one of my friends comes up to me. He kind of gets

controlling me and says, hey, are you good? And I said I am, But what do we do now. And he laughed and he said, now we find the computers. Bro, we do this every night, hundreds of times.

get out on. So we turned the body to our The first team that crash gave them our initial helicopter. This one came in to get us. And then we're leaving. And this is the coolest part of the mission because we just we got his body. Now we're leiaeving. The Pakistani's no, we're here, and they're definitely going to try to shoot us down with a jet that we sold them, and a jet against the helicopter is a bad fight. But if we can live for ninety minutes, we get

fifty years. I get to see my kids again. But worrying about a missile shooting me down is It're gonna stop it, So I'm not gonna worry about it. So I just started my Stopwatch and I'm waiting for ninety minutes. If I get ninety minutes across that border, across the border into Afghanistan, we live. And I look down at my watch, It's like I spent ten minutes. I spent twenty minutes. The sniper sitting next to me is the guy who rescued Richard Phillips from Smallly Pirates. Like, this

is how small this team is. I looked thirty minutes. Now it's been forty fifty minutes. Now it's been fifty minutes. Got to get to ninety seventy minutes. Then I start thinking, you just mentioned baseball. I started thinking about a baseball game, top of the seventh watching a no hitter, like I don't want to jinx this, I don't want to say anything. But it's been eighty minutes. Got to get to ninety. Then.

I love sports analogies because it doesn't matter how you got some even a pro golfer, you had a team with you, right, So I love sports analogies. I started thinking about the greatest sporting event in American history in nineteen eighty Lake Placid, when Team USA Hockey was playing the greatest hockey team ever played, assembled the Russians, the professional Russian team we've never lost since the fifties or

something like that. And you have this group of college kids have no business being on the ice, but now they're winning. And it's three to four in the third period. You hear the crowd ten nine, still nervous, you know, six five, And then the pilot came over the radio. This is going through my head. Then the pilot comes over the radio at eighty five minutes into a ninety minute flight, and he said, very calmly, all right, gentlemen, for the first time in your lives, you're gonna be

happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan.

been cool enough. This could have ended it. I pointed to his body and I said to her, is that your guy? And she looked at for second, patted me on the back. He goes, well, I guess I'm out of an expletive job, and she just left. That was so cool. And then we flew him up to Bagram. We had we had to show the agency it was here. And then a professional photographer and a professional scientist doing DNA confirmed and I'm standing above, I'm standing at the

fet of bin Lad. He's laying right here. I hear President Obama. He's on TV. We're watching this. I'm eating a breakfast sandwich, and he says, tonight I can report to the American people into the world the United States conducted an operation to kill Osama bin Laan, the leader of al Qaeda. I hear the President say Osama bin Laden. I look at Osama bin Laden eating a breakfast sandwich, and I thought, how in the world did I get here from Butte Montana. And then we turned him over

to the army. They flew him out to the carrier. I didn't see him get dumped in the water. That's the story we got. And we literally flew from there to Virginia Beach and we were home sixteen hours later.

be right once. But yeah, I'm a target, but so is every other American and it would be a lot easier if they can get weapons into this country, which they have, by the way, over an open border for the past four years. Day would much rather go to Times Square and kill a bunch of people that just try to find me because I'm a hard target. But a lot of people out there have their head in the sand and don't realize that just because you're not at war with someone doesn't mean they're not at war

with you. So I mean, yeah, I mean, but I see, I was forced at a young age to get completely immersed in what I call reality, and there's not a lot of that going on, especially in this country with the political landscape. So I mean, I live my life but on that too though, you know a lot of political fighting that's only on the internet when you get outside, even in other countries. Because my favorite saying is it's a large planet, but it's a small world. Believe it

or not. Most people are actually really good. Most people just want to including in combat zones. They just want to get on with their lives and raise their kids like the rest of us. So I mean, you know, don't get complacent, but there are threats. But for the majority of my life that most you know, people are just great. If you're angry at social media, put your phone down and go outside and talk to people. Go to a deli, get a sandwich, go get some chile at highlight.

And my book The Operator, it'saw on my website and I sign a lot for people because we have fun with it. Like I don't use an auto pen, then I don't use platelests. I take whatever you want signed in the book is there's an inscription part and I have put what people want. It's just fun because people like it's just awesome. It's not always a military theme or motivation. I got one the other day. It's my favorite.

Some dude bought my book for his buddy as a birthday present, and he had me signed Dear Jeff, you kill it selling mattresses like I killed the Loud. We have fun with so we have fun with that.