Rob O'Neill: The Navy SEAL Who Shot Osama Bin Laden

Robert O’Neill was born and raised in Butte, Montana, and lived there for nineteen years until he joined the Navy in 1996. Deploying as a SEAL more than a dozen times, O’Neill participated in more than four hundred combat missions across four different theaters of war. During his remarkable career, he was decorated more than fifty-two times. Among the honors he received were two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor. Robert O’Neill helped cofound Your Grateful Nation, an organization committed to transitioning Special Operations veterans into their next successful career.  You can find him at robertjoneill.com.

NAVY SEAL HERO ROBERT O’NEILL RECOUNTS HIS EXTRAORDINARY SEAL MISSIONS, INCLUDING THE MAY 2011 BIN LADEN RAID IN NEW MEMOIR THE OPERATOR FIRING THE SHOTS THAT KILLED OSAMA BIN LADEN AND MY YEARS AS A SEAL TEAM WARRIOR

Growing up in Butte, Montana, Robert O’Neill lived the life of many American teens. He was a standout high school basketball player who liked to hunt. He was a good runner, but he didn’t know how to swim. After high school, he attended a local college, but joined the Navy on a whim to fight distant battles and perhaps return to the local pub “with a few war stories to impress the regulars.” Robert O’Neill would have “a few war stories” for them indeed.  On April 25, Scribner will proudly publish former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill’s memoir The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior (Scribner, $28.00/hardcover; on-sale: April 25, 2017) which will relate these stories and much more.  An intimate and absorbing journey into the hearts, minds, and experiences of America’s most elite fighting unit, The Operator dramatically recounts O’Neill’s remarkable 400-mission career, from the extreme SEAL training he endured through the perilous missions in which he participated, including the rescues of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates and extracting “Lone Survivor” SEAL Marcus Luttrell from behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. Riveting in the new glimpses it offers into a decade of intense Special Forces missions, The Operator vividly places readers alongside O’Neill as he enters mazelike buildings under the cloak of night, encounters predators attacking from false walls, and makes swift, life-saving decisions. Yet, all of the years of training and missions in the world’s most dangerous regions were a prelude to the May 2011 secret U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound, in which O’Neill fired the three shots that dispatched the world’s most wanted terrorist. In pulse-pounding, minute-by-minute detail, The Operator recounts O’Neill’s painstaking training for the bin Laden mission, what he and his fellow SEALs experienced in the wee hours that night, and what happened when O’Neill came face to face with the man who had claimed thousands of American lives.  By the end of his extraordinary career, Robert O’Neill would be decorated more than fifty-two times for his service with the SEALs. The Operator recounts his historic contributions to America’s war on terror and what it was like to fight among America’s most elite combat warriors.