Jose can you see by the dawns early light what so proudly we hail at the twilights last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight. Or the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. And the rockets red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. The starspangled banner yet wave. All the land of the free and the home of the brave. [applause]. Please be seated. Thank you for the west covina high school. I would like to recognize some special guests that are with us this evening. Please welcome to members of the board of directors nation. The Orange County supervisor. [applause]. Jean hernandez,. [applause] and our most important resource that is the envy of the other 12 president ial libraries, those that are here tonight who represents 150 volunteers, thank you. The Nixon Foundation is largely supported by its members. They support Educational Programs to engage in civic discourse and learning, membership support special engagements like this evenings event. The impact of this support allows the foundation to continue to continue its important work, allows president nixons core vision, lasting structure of a more just society, to expand other parts of the country in the world and make differences in peoples lives. If youre not already a member i encourage you to join us this evening, where you entered this evening part of the extended nixon family. President nixon was a navy man, he was exempt from the draft in world war zero mac, he never backed down and enlisted voluntarily in the u. S. Navy. He served honorably in the South Pacific command airport air transport command eventually becoming its officer in charge and guadalcanal. He was honorably discharged in 1946, didnt retire until 20 years later in 1996 during which time he served as us congressman, us senator and Vice President of the united states. As president , Richard Nixons commitment to the us military was unwavering. He face the reality of young men being shipped off by the thousands to fight in the jungles of vietnam. Facing that challenge, Richard Nixon focused on negotiating an end to american involvement in vietnam and brought our soldiers home. He negotiated the release of deputies from the hellish prisons of North Vietnam and welcome them home in 1973. He ended the draft and instituted todays all volunteer military. Todays secretary of defense, jim matus recently visited the Nixon Library and from this very podium said an enemy on 9 11 thought he could scare us by hurting us. The maniacs who murdered 3000 innocent citizens of our country and 70 other countries that day of all been taught a hard lesson by the all volunteer military that president nixon was confident could protect our country. That is why the foundation is so honored today to have Robert Oneill as our guest. It is my pleasure to introduce the evenings speaker. Robert oneill is a highly decorated Navy Seal Combat veteran and the man who killed Osama Bin Laden. [applause] while wearing the equipment displayed here, equipment which is on display for the first time, he fired the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden during the raid on his compound in pakistan on may 2, 2011. He participated in hundreds of topsecret Missions Including the rescue of captain Richard Phillips in 2009. And let the harrowing retrieval of Marcus Littrell in summer of 2005. [applause] following his Honorable Discharge from the navy in 2012 he cofounded your grateful nation, a nonprofit that helps the military elite special operations veterans transition into their next successful careers. We are joined this evening on stage by rob clapper who served in the army for two decades and was deployed all over the world, he received the general Douglas MacarthurLeadership Award for outstanding leadership throughout his army career and honor that distinguished him for more than 35,000 officers. Rob will be joined on stage tonight with gunnar, his lovable black lab service dog. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and welcome two patriots and gunnar, to the Richard Nixon president ial library. [applause] i was born free i was born free i was born free thank you. That is awesome. There we go. The army guy needed a navy guy to do it. I am going to give you a break. They introduced us to a song by senator kid rock. May be. [applause] what a crowd. You look really good. A different wardrobe. Im not going to say anything because we are in the president ial library. Great to see so many wonderful friendly faces. Those that are friendlier welcome to stand in the back. Great to have you with us. We will jump in. You have been patient in waiting. The one question everybody wants to know is how the guy from montana end up in the navy much less having a career like you . Interesting question. Im a big believer that life is what happens around you while you are making a plan. 95 of the stuff you worry about never happens anyway. I joined the navy because of a girl. The first sentence in my book the operator firing the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden and my years as a Seal Team Warrior is about that was i had my heart broken by a girl in montana. I was never going to join the military. I decided i needed to get out of town. I had friends two years older than me who wanted to be marines. When they graduated high school they joined the marine corps in paris islands, that is awesome. The uniforms are incredible. When i decided to leave town i want to join the marine corps. It is better to be lucky than to be good, the recruiter was not in the office. The navy guy was. I looked over there and the reason i went into the navy was my two marine friends told me i something didnt know, and many of you may not know, the marine corps is part of the department of the navy. Just the mens department. I went in there to ask him where are the marines . If anyone will know where he is this guy will, why do you want the marines . I want to be a sniper and the best snipers in the world are in the marines, look no further, we have snipers right here in the navy. You need to be a seal first, no big deal. He glossed over that. I am a 19yearold kid from montana who didnt know how to swim. Not a lot of swimming going on, called at that highaltitude. Kind of naive, this guy is a professional recruiter. Why is he going to lie to me . I signed up that day and we watched the recruiting video after we signed the paperwork. Im a pickle here, i dont know how to swim. Then i started thinking i found out about seal training, probably wont make it through but it is an adventure. I probably wont make it through seal training and then i will have sea stories when i come back, went to the navy and learn 95 of the all volunteer military is there because of a girl. I went to seal training and proved just because that day, not knowing how to swim and joining the navy in 17 years later in Osama Bin Ladens bedroom, just prove that it doesnt matter where you are from or what you look like you can do anything you want as long as you avoid negativity, stay positive as work hard. And run away from a girl. A lot of things, look at our 45th president. He beat hillary. It is funny. [applause] i thought i wouldnt gets political. That went out the door. You touched on it. You didnt know how to swim. That might be something you need to do for seal training. That was an interesting one. I didnt know how to swim but figured how hard can it be . I went into the pool, played college basketball, i didnt know any technique, standing at the edge of the pool, 25 m down and 25 m back, and meters engaging a workout. Everything was working out until i entered the water. So i got back to where i could touch my toes, did two lengths, not even 50 yards and im exhausted and a buddy of mine, one of the few guys that did swim went on to swim in notre dame came up to me, mike driscoll, he said it is great to see you but i have never seen you in the pool before. I just joined the navy today and i am going to be a seal. He said not like that you are not. He taught me the breast stroke and side stroke. I signed up for the delayed entry program, to swim. And i went to the navy. You made it through boot camp, got to southern california. Talk about your first couple experiences. Every seal goes through training, underwater demolition seal training, the hardest training in the world. 85 of people dont make it. It is and a lot of books and movies, essentially a beat down for eight months. It gets so hard, i remember being there. I know i have a past, i came from somewhere, i dont have a future, i am just going to be in hell and that is it. That is when we learn how to compartmentalize everything, not how do i get from now to graduation, this is good advice for life, how do i get this longterm goal done, it is like wake up in the morning on time and make your bed the right way, brush your teeth, little victories, make it to 5 am work out on time and make it to breakfast, think about getting to lunch and after lunch get to dinner, do what you need to do to get back in a perfectly made bed regardless how bad your day was, get a fresh start tomorrow. I had an instructor tell me when you feel like quitting, which you will, and i did every day, dont quit now, just quit tomorrow. Little victories and all of a sudden 5 days before graduation i was thinking now what am i supposed to do . Little victories, never a longterm goal. Seal training 1000 pushups a day, thousands set ups today, there was a spot we would get tortured and it was a mile from there to the chow hall so every day we are running 6 miles just to eat and that is not even working out. That is additional 14 miles a day. Really tough course. One of the traits that is common, it is so bad. What horrible decisions, why didnt she dump me, why am i here . It comes with a sense of humor, dont be afraid to enjoy yourself every single day. Smile because about this, none of us are getting out of this alive. I dont believe in statistics the 10 out of 10 people die. So enjoy yourself. Talk about sense of humor, clearly army guys have a better one but they have a lot of time to think about jokes while we are doing a mission. [laughter] we wont talk about who pull you off the mountain side. You talk about sense of humor, why dont you share one or two stories, you first got introduced to a sense of humor. First time i realized there was a sense of humor aspect was 220 of us started, navy sailors that wanted to be sealed and we read the books and we had seen the movie but we didnt know what seal training was. What do we do every day . Status in a room, brought a seal instructor it in to explain to us what we are going to do. By the way, sense of humor is common. We learned the first day this instructor came in how walking on a stage, looking at him like you are looking at me except we are terrified, this guy is superman, he can kill us if he wants to. He is the first seal we ever met and he looks like a seal. Shined boots, blue tshirt, he is ripped, tattoos down to his knuckles. He is a navy seal so of course he is ridiculously goodlooking. We are staring at him and he relished the silence. He finally broke it by saying looking good today, jim. Not you, me. I know what you are thinking, i look a little tired, it is because i am. I have been up all night, had to get my wife out of jail. She was arrested for shoplifting earlier that afternoon, we were leaving the mall together, had her arm around me. Security thought she was trying to steal an anatomy chart. We are sitting there like what is this psychopath talking about . We later realized he was messing with. He was early, he was bored, he thought he would have fun at our expense. He might decapitate you. Have to get used to a dry sense of humor. On the Osama Bin Laden mission i was in a helicopter that didnt crash, which is a good thing. When we got and we didnt know the other one crashed. When we got inside the house, the guys in my helicopter didnt know it crashed, helicopter crash, what helicopter crashed . I thought other guys got shot down, our helicopter crashed. You walked right past it. I am trying to calculate this in my head and one of the snipers was running around the entire compound to make sure there was no out, going to the famous place, the tale of the helicopter, he didnt know it crashed. As we had the conversation he said be on alert, they are ready for us. They have a training mockup of our helicopter. In the front yard. The most Important Mission since normandy and you hear the Ground Force Commander go no, you jackass, it is ours, we crashed. You had this awkward pause and he said that makes sense. [laughter] we stayed funny the whole time. Obviously seal training is relatively long. Lots of ups and downs but what is the one story related to that . What is the one story about we would test every single day, make sure you stick around, pass or fail, keep it is hard to understand, not like an algorithm. One of the tests is simple to understand, 50 m underwater swim. Jump in the pool, dont pick it up from half a distance from the football field. 5. 5 nautical miles. They would tie our hands behind our backs and throw it in a deep end of the pool for 45 minutes at a time, exhaling the air out of your lungs, float for 5 minutes, swim hundreds of meters, and introducing what it is like to breathe but panic will not help. It was underwater tie a rope a foot off the bottom, 14 feet down, on the surface there will be a student and instructor, and 18 rindge rope and we are in the navy so we know how to tie a bunch of not so the test is tying a series of knots with his robe around that rope. The instructor will stay on the surface, breathing and watching. You back off, stay down, he comes down slowly. You act like you havent seen it before, it isnt always wrong, he will go up for air and it is straight enough and we tie the same knots, a minute and 15 seconds. One breath of air. It is not number 2. Do the whole thing again. Another minute and 50 seconds. The test is simple, try five not in a row. A friend of mine named john, they will you try a certain amount of time. There will never be a navy seal, lifelong dream, that is a lot of pressure. On his fifth not he drowned. The instructor came down, swam him up and threw him over the side, rolled him over, the other side of the pool gathering stuff, running around, too much time, doing a stern robe and started cpr and we could hear him yelling come back to the light. The instructors that back, and color back in his he didnt kill him. I am in a great mood right now, let you in on a little secret, dont care how many knots you know how to tie, not part of the curriculum to become a navy seal, we will see how far you can push yourself. You just did that. What was your first assignment . They are divided by numbers so odd numbers are 1357, even number, 624810. We did more training, a year of training pre9 11. So fast forward, 9 11 happens. What is going through your head . You had a major career change. We were all affected, some more than others. I was deployed overseas and we saw it happen when the second plane hit south tower, we knew it was al qaeda. The whole thing was life happened around you, my plan after i found out what a seal was to be in the navy four years, go to montana, i met the guys, didnt want to leave them. I was young when 9 11 happened. My country trained me to fight, i need to fight and found out another seal team, we knew it changed from going to the uk, to the german norwegian we are going to afghanistan, iraq, fighting the global war on terror. Everything changed, from october process to jalalabad. You had interesting career. One of the main Operational Missions you were part of was the rescue of captain richard feldman. Take us through that. For Richard Phillips we were in Virginia Beach. It was good friday in 2009. I was at my daughters easter tea party. We set up a buffet line, a school where marine corps parent and army parents going through this buffet line to get cookies and stuff. As i was walking to my daughter i got a message, and we will get him now so went to say goodbye. I mentioned that was part of combat. Getting shot at is easy, looking your kids in the eye and realizing it is the last time you will see each other is hard. There is a difference between kissing your kid good night and kissing your kids goodbye so i kissed her goodbye and turned around and went to work. A funny part of the story, a set amount of time to get there and rescue anyone, a certain amount of time, a set amount of time, we had never done it in 25 years. I was ahead of schedule and theres a 711 outside the base where i worked and i stopped there to get as much cash as i can out of the atm and the reason im doing this is we are jumping near the east coast of africa, we might not end up where we once. If we land in this environment i might find my way to safety with cash or to barter with tobacco. Might end up on an east african beach. And the guy in front of me, one guy in no hurry, he finished the night shift doing whatever not a care, one thing, usa today, the headline, the Richard Phillips thing, the mission we are trying to do, signed it down, slam it down, announce the entire store. Right behind him, recognizing the irony. We are going to do something about this. I am not even kidding, National Security timeline. He moved out of the way and i got to work on time and 15 hours we were later in the indian ocean and rescued Mister Phillips a day and a half later. If you think, the movie wasnt accurate. Good movie but wasnt accurate. I was going to ask how accurate is the movie . Depends who is asking. Right here 70 accurate. Happy hour i was talking to a lady, 100 accurate. The sniper, that wasnt the mission, we were going to rescue the hostage. Four days prior, their guns didnt need to be cited, the most difficult shots. They were prepared. A long weekend, Easter Sunday we hadnt done it in 25 years. They could