literally on the ride to osama bin laden s house, you have ice in your veins. chris: you thought about the speech that came into my head, 90 minute flight, about 80 minutes in freedom itself was attacked this morning. freedom will be defended. that again it sunk in, i am on this mission, we re going to kill this guy. chris: o neill felt a rush of patriotism. you could see the target, osama bin laden is in that house it is almost surreal right now to think that, he is in there, we re going to get him. we were tracking the helicopters. realized they were over the compound, i everyone understood this was the critical moment, once they
support of the senior military leader. chris: president biden ordered seals to stage in afghanistan, to be in place if he decided to go ahead. obama considered his options, the appreciate operator discuss their likely fate, oneal nicknames his team the martyrs brigade. don t get me wrong, we are going after osama bin laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off to elementary school, and hours later she jumped to her death from a skyscraper, but that was better alternative to what was happening inside, that we ll never know.
remember saying i guess we start the war from here. chris: o neill followed first assault time. gunfight, and explosions, they killed two terrorists, i walked it was so fast. chris: they were inside of the house, main house, and you don t know what is going on. how tough was that? the longest 20 minutes of my life, i think when the team entered main house itself, that there suddenly came silence. you are on the stairway from second to third floor, a point man in front of you. going up the stairs it was straight a curtain. i think it was like a green curtain like a rug someone hung. the sales figured there were suicide bombers. i thought this is what it is like to blow up.
tell you. where it the bowl, can t tell you. how are we getting there. we can t tell you, what is our air support, none. that is how it started. there were guards at the door. the cia debriefer or briefer comes out, first thing he passes out nondisclosure statements. did it get your attention. it did, we had done it before, it was more intense. this is a high profile mission. chris: they soon found out how high profile. this is the closest we ve been to osama bin laden. laden. mission was nowhere near approved, o neal and fellow seals had to show washington not a repeat of the disaster mission during the iran hostage crisis. once the briefing was
that information to the white house situation room. the technology that we have you could really detail into an operation around the world. and i don t do well with washington s controlling rudder orders on ships, my main goal was to keep everyone s hands off with the exception of the president. chris: mcraven estimated it would take 3 1/2 round trip, assuming nothing went wrong, in these operations, something always goes wrong.