Navy SEAL thought 'we're going to die' at bin Laden raid

A former Navy SEAL who contends he killed Osama bin Laden says he and other team members did not believe they would survive the raid on the terrorist's compound.

In an interview aired Tuesday night on Fox News, Robert O'Neill, a former member of SEAL Team 6, says that as the team trained, they concluded "we're going to die'' or be captured.

"The more we trained on it, the more we realized…this is going to be a one-way mission," O'Neill said.

"We're going to go and we're not going to come back. We're going to die when the house blows up. We're going to die when he blows up. Or we are going to be there too long and we'll get arrested by the Pakistanis and we're going to spend the rest of our short lives in Pakistan prison."

O'Neill said officers told the team only bits of information about the raid beforehand, including "a few names that didn't make sense.''

But he said team members figured out who the target was before they were told: "A few of us were talking a couple days later about this person, this person why would they be there. … It's bin Laden. … They found him. … We're going to go get him."

O'Neill has claimed that he fired the shot to the forehead that killed bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks on the United States.

Despite their assessment of the risk, O'Neill said he and fellow team members were eager for the mission to take out bin Laden.

"This is a good way to go, and it's worth it because we're we're going to kill him,'' he said.

"We really wanted to do this,'' he said. "We wanted it. Bad. This is why we're here. We're at war because of this guy, and now we're going to go get him.''

Fox News was airing a two-part program with the interview, airing at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday and Wednesday, called "The man who killed Osama bin Laden.''

U.S. special operations leaders have been critical of O'Neill for making public comments about the raid and have asserted his remarks are an unseemly quest for attention that is damaging to the special forces program.

"They're terribly frustrated," Dick Couch, a Vietnam-era Navy SEAL, told USA TODAY last week, referring to special operations leaders. "It just makes us look like buffoons."

O'Neill's disclosures come nearly two years after Matt Bissonnette, another former SEAL Team 6 member, published details about the raid under a pen name in No Easy Day. Bissonnette didn't submit the book for review prior to publication.

As a result of the publicity, leaders of the Naval Special Warfare Command issued a rare plea to remember the code they pledged to live by in the face of the revelations. A critical component of the SEAL ethos is to keep quiet.

"We will not abide willful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain, which only diminishes otherwise honorable service, courage and sacrifice," said the letter signed by Rear Adm. Brian Losey and Force Master Chief Michael Magaraci on Oct. 31.

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