Who Killed Osama bin Laden? Two Former Navy SEALs Give Vastly Different Accounts

Yahoo

07-03-2025

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For more than a decade, Osama bin Laden evaded capture as one of the FBI's Most Wanted fugitives. Finally, on May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama watched tensely as U.S. Special Forces carried out a perilous mission to end bin Laden's reign of terror.
The daring operation that killed bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who orchestrated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is examined in the upcoming Netflix documentary American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden. Streaming on Monday, March 10, the three-part series features new interviews with U.S. government figures who helped pursue bin Laden.
While the heroism of Navy SEAL Team Six is understandably lauded, the bold ambush was the result of years of sleuthing for crucial intelligence and months of meticulous planning. Still, there was a measurable chance the mission could go wrong—with dangerous consequences.
Less than a month after the September 11, 2001, attacks, then-U.S. President George W. Bush announced military strikes against 'al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.' One of the primary targets was the Saudi Arabia-born bin Laden, who had formed the al Qaeda militant group by 1993 and used it to carry out multiple terrorist acts. These included the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed nearly 300 people.
In December 2001, U.S. forces and their allies—believing bin Laden to be there—launched an attack on Tora Bora, a cave complex near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Accounts of his possible whereabouts differed, so bin Laden ultimately wasn't caught and went into hiding. He wasn't seen again until 2004, when he publicly declared responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
Bin Laden evaded capture through August 2010, when U.S. intelligence linked him to a heavily secured compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. According to former CIA director Leon Panetta, images showed figures resembling bin Laden and members of his family present there. However, the CIA was never able to confirm their identities.
'But when you put all these pieces together—the security precautions, the nature of the compound, some of the additional information that we had gotten...I think it was that information that required that we had an obligation to act,' Panetta told PBS News Hour.
In March 2011, then-President Obama and Panetta began consulting with Admiral William McRaven about potential military operations to capture or kill bin Laden. While alternative methods, such as a drone missile strike, were discussed but dismissed over fears of collateral damage, it was ultimately determined U.S. Special Forces could complete a raid of the compound and confront bin Laden directly.
The official name for the mission was Operation Neptune Spear, a reference to the U.S. Special Warfare insignia featuring a trident.
As the former president explained in a retrospective for The Obama Foundation, there was still plenty of uncertainty surrounding the raid. The United States risked not only diplomatic strain with Pakistan—a key U.S. ally in its effort to combat al Qaeda—but also international humiliation if bin Laden wasn't actually at the compound.
Ultimately, bin Laden's elusiveness sealed the decision to go forward, as Obama and his team believed it could be years before the next chance to capture him. 'After the discussions with the principals, it was clear to me that this was going to be our best chance,' Obama told CNN.
The day prior to the raid, Obama called McRaven to wish him success on the mission and offer gratitude to members of his team. 'When you are commander in chief, and you make a decision about a particular mission like that, it was one of those rare opportunities where I had a chance to say—not after the fact, not in retrospect, not when folks are coming home, but before they go—that we don't take this for granted,' Obama said.
With the mission confirmed, Obama gathered then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other members of his security team in the Situation Room of the White House. McRaven was stationed in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and provided live updates.
According to Panetta, the president couldn't see what was happening in real time once the raid was underway. 'Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information,' he explained.
Helicopters transported SEAL Team Six members into Abbottabad. Within 40 minutes of their arrival, the team had neutralized all resistance, completed a search of the compound, and begun transport of bin Laden's body back to Afghanistan, according to the American Academy of Achievement.
Once bin Laden's death was confirmed in the early hours of May 2, 2011, using the code word 'Geronimo,' Obama delivered a live address from the White House. 'Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and dignity,' Obama said.
The mission had succeeded, but an unlikely controversy soon emerged, pitting two SEAL team members against each other.
While Neptune Spear resulted in a clear-cut success, uncertainty still remains around who actually fired the shot that killed bin Laden.
In September 2012, former SEAL Matt Bissonnette published the memoir No Easy Day under the pen name Mark Owen. In the book, Bissonnette, who left active duty soon after the mission, gives his own account of the operation—writing that he was the second person to reach bin Laden's bedroom. He claimed that after a teammate fired on bin Laden first, he delivered additional shots that helped kill him.
However, the following year, Robert O'Neill identified himself as the anonymous 'Shooter' profiled in the March 2013 issue of Esquire. According to the magazine, multiple sources corroborated that O'Neill was the 'number two' behind the raid's point man and the last to confront bin Laden while he was alive. Additional team members then fired on bin Laden after he was already dead.
'A foot and a half in front of me was Osama bin Laden. And I shot him twice, and then once more. And it didn't really sink in,' O'Neill later recounted.
The U.S. government hasn't confirmed either account, though mission leader McRaven described O'Neill in an October 2020 interview with CNN as 'the SEAL that, in fact, shot bin Laden.'
Meanwhile, Bissonnette's failure to submit his book to the Pentagon for a security review landed him in court. In August 2016, he agreed to pay the United States all past and future proceeds from No Easy Day—at the time around $6.7 million—as part of a settlement for breaching 'his fiduciary duties' with the government.
According to his Instagram page, Bissonnette served as an executive producer (credited as Mark Owen) for six seasons of the CBS drama SEAL Team starring David Boreanaz and Max Thieriot. Bissonnette's website currently promotes his third book called No Easy Way: A Navy SEAL's Journey of Faith, a memoir releasing in late 2025, pending a Department of Defense review.
Without an official classified account, the full truth of who killed bin Laden may never be known. O'Neill does appear in the trailer for American Manhunt, so the docuseries is likely to share his side of the story.
All three episodes of American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden will stream on Netflix starting March 10.
Previous editions of the docuseries have examined the arrest and trial of O.J. Simpson and the hunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
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