Rob O’Neill: Reflecting On 9/11, The Mission To Kill Usama bin Laden & Afghanistan, 20 Years Later
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Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and I got to tell you, this is a special week, a special time in the history of the United States of America as we're coming up on the anniversary of one of the most horrific days in our nation, 9-11. It's hard to believe, but it's been 20 years. For those of you that are old enough, you probably remember exactly where you were and what happened.

I just happened to be at home with my family. My brother was here in town. And when that first plane struck the building, it was horrific and confusing. But when that second plane hit the towers, it was obvious that our nation was under attack. And as we watched that unfold and

It's just an amazingly emotional time. I remember looking at all those firefighters and first responders and policemen and just the horror of what was happening on 9-11. Our kids at the time, my wife Julie and I, the kids were pretty young, pretty small, and didn't know what to do. But we put together these little macaroni necklaces and little notes to the firefighters to just say thank you and

just tried to figure out an address that we could send to some fire department, you know, that we, it was so far away, um, and say prayers and remember those people. And here we are 20 years later. And, um, a lot's happened since then. And, um,

then we have what's happening in Afghanistan or not happening, however you want to look at it. And that too is horrific. One of the worst things that ever happened to our nation. And so rather than do kind of the traditional, what we've done in this podcast, I'm honored and thrilled to get Rob O'Neill. Rob O'Neill is the person who served in our military and

who was part of a SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden. He was credited with taking the shot. Clearly, it was a team effort in order to put that together. Everybody from the intelligence communities to the training to the execution of it. But at the end of the day, you had to have somebody with a gun who was highly trained and put in a perfect position to actually pull the trigger.

And he did that. And Rob O'Neill, there's a book called The Operator that is his, it's just an absolutely fascinating book. So I want to just talk to him about

What happened on 9-11, the training that it took to get him into that position, you know, what that mission was actually like. And then at the end, we called him back for actually a second interview. We'll do part two as a continuation in this podcast and get his candid thoughts about what he's seen playing out in Afghanistan right now. So with that, let's dial up Rob O'Neill. Hey, this is Rob O'Neill.

Rob, hey, Jason Chaffetz, so glad to catch you. I really do appreciate it. That is very cool of you to do this with me. I do appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's good to talk with you. Yeah, you know, I've had the pleasure and honor to get to know you, and we'll say this, I'm sure, several times, but thank you, thank you for your service. You know, we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. I mean, that's just hard to believe, right?

But I tell you what, you and your team and the training that you went through to get there and take care of business and take out Osama bin Laden, the country couldn't be more proud of you and your team and what you did right at the get-go. I just want to say thank you. That's awesome. I appreciate that. It was an honor to be asked to be a part of what I consider the greatest team in history. And just everybody there was so experienced. It took such a long time to get there.

You've got to figure it's nine months starting off with the most intense, hardest military training in the world called basic underwater demolition SEAL training. And then there's years and years of training in the SEAL teams. And then another really hard training.

difficult, psychological selection course to get into SEAL Team 6 and then just to get experienced at that team because they picked the most experienced guys who were available for that mission. So, you know, I couldn't have been more honored to watch those brave men that night. It was just incredible. So the biggest honor in my life.

Well, look, you have a book called The Operator. And like, I've read several books that are kind of in this somewhat genre. But I tell you, this is this is absolutely my favorite. And if you haven't read The Operator, I mean, more than half the book, I think seems like it's just the training to get to the point where you can actually go out and do missions and

What'd you do? Something like 400 plus missions in your career there? Yeah, I did. That was 400 combat missions after 9-11. And I went in in 1996.

So it was a long, long career, a lot of training, very few missions until after 9-11, but a lot of training to get there. Yeah, we've been all over the world, you know, maybe 80 countries. The book The Operator is I'm not calling myself the operator. It's it's about the life of the operator and the operators is anyone, you know, anyone, not even necessarily in the military. It's someone who gets up and does it.

And one of my favorite sayings is, wherever you are, be there. And so it's anyone doing what they do the right way, you're the operator. And it's proof that a portly white guy who can't swim from the mountains of Montana can become a Navy SEAL. It doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from. You're capable of doing anything you want. You've got to keep your mind in it. Yeah, that's an interesting way of describing yourself back in high school. And one of my favorite sayings in the book is – and it was such a simple line, but it stuck with me as much as anything in the book. It said –

If you want to do more push-ups, do more push-ups. That's one of our sayings. KISS, K-I-S-S, keep it simple, stupid. We got to a point in combat where we were trying to...

figure out different ways because there's there's getting indoors in combat it gets very complex with the angles ups and downs and you know hallways and door whatever and you'd never want to shoot your guy obviously so we're trying to figure out um how do we do this if we're if if the one train's moving this way another train you know big lines of guys and we'd

coming on each other. You know, do you knock on the door? Do you denounce yourself? And we came up with the best rule. Okay, here's the new rule. Don't shoot someone who looks like you. Meaning if he's got a helmet and night vision on, he's probably not Al Qaeda. So don't shoot him. Keep it simple. Yeah.

Yeah, those are good rules to live by. Do more push-ups if you want to do more push-ups, and don't shoot one of our guys. Good words to live by. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's true. No matter what line of business or work or family or whatever it might be, it's kind of taking care of those things. All right, let's go back. I mean, you write about this in the book, but let's go back to –

Pre-Port Lee, Rob O'Neill, like when you were a little kid. Because Montana, you know what, living out west, I grew up California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah. I mean, out west living is a lot different than a lot of people recognize out in the East Coast. Big, wide open spaces and appreciation of nature. But go back and kind of describe your childhood because Montana living is a little different than maybe Connecticut.

Oh, yeah, it is. A lot of outdoor activities, just because it's available to the point where people sort of take it

for granted what they have there. You know, I remember having a relative come up from Oklahoma. He's my, he's my cousin and his mom would say, go outside and look at the mountains. I'm like, why do you sit down and look at the mountains? They're just there. But you know, you don't realize what you have. So a lot of fly fishing on the rivers. I was born near the three forks, the Madison, the Gallatin and the, it was, I'm going to get,

some crap for that, but they turn it into the Missouri river and it turns into the Mississippi. So fly fishing there, a lot of elk hunting, deer hunting, both kinds that we have white tail and muleys. And then, uh, you know, we've hunted sheep and, you know, just stuff that, um, a lot of outdoors. Great, great time. I lived in a small town, but I was sort of in a bubble. I thought Butte, Montana was the center of,

of the universe. It's the Jefferson, who's the third river, by the way. Sorry. All right. So that's actually where I learned to fly fish. My Uncle Joe, I came up to West Yellowstone, up by Quake Lake there on the Madison. Oh, yeah. And he just told me, he said, hey, bring some boots when you come up. And so I was coming up from Arizona, had jeans. I was like 14, 15 years old, something like that. And the moment I got there, he took these boots and we cut out some

shag carpet and just glued them to the bottom those were our waders that's how we did it that's awesome yeah we get what were those what were those lessons that you what do you think you learned as a kid you know going out hunting with your dad you know exploring the outdoors like what gets in your core that maybe other kids and other atmospheres in an inner city that they miss out on

One thing that I noticed hunting was obviously you have to climb a lot of mountains if you want to get serious with bull elk in the Rocky Mountains. I think it was short-term goals, meaning I don't need to get to the top of the mountain. I need to get to the next tree. And once you get to that tree, it's okay, there's my next goal. And that's the way we did it. You know, I learned little steps will get you the big picture. You can't – even when I got to –

Seal training, I don't mean to jump too far ahead, but one of the lessons was this course is not impossible. People graduate, so don't think about the impossibility. And it's a lot to think. Don't think about trying to get from now to graduation to eight months away. Here's how you're going to get through this course because I'm never going to ask you to do anything impossible. Wake up in the morning on time, make your bed the right way, and brush your teeth.

That's three victories you just started the day with. Make it to the 5 a.m. workout on time. And as we're beating you, don't concentrate on the pain. Think about your next goal in life, which is making it to breakfast. After breakfast, your next goal is lunch. After lunch, make it to dinner. And after dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside that perfectly made bed. And because you took the time in the morning to make your bed the right way, regardless of how bad it is.

today was tomorrow's a clean slate and tomorrow's a fresh start. And when you feel like quitting, which you will do not quit right now, that's a motion quit tomorrow. And if you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything in life. So I learned that climb in the hills, you know, I just need to get to that tree. Interesting. Now you had some jobs growing up, right? I mean, you delivered an awful lot of pizzas. I did. Well, my first job was probably to this day. My favorite job was working at McDonald's. I love that.

But then I started delivering pizzas at a place called the Voo Villa, which is on Park Street, Butte, Montana. That was a blast because it's a bunch of high school kids. Everything from the dude ringing up the register to the guy cooking the pizza to the dudes delivering it. So all over Butte, Montana, we delivered pizza. And then I joined the Navy. And as I was waiting to go to the Navy, I worked in a mine in Butte, Montana. Well, I wasn't a miner. I was the 18-year-old kid who could shovel stuff.

back onto the conveyor belts and the haunted tunnels. Right. I mean, I went in, when I was in Congress, they let me go into a mine here in Utah. We were like a mile and a half under the earth. And then they turned out the lights to explain what outer darkness looks like. And it really is dark. Yeah.

Yeah, that'll probably make you a believer. Yeah, no kidding. That's interesting that you thought McDonald's was one of your best jobs. I mean, you're like the fourth person I've had on a podcast who's one of their first jobs is McDonald's. What'd you love about McDonald's?

Well, I mean, okay, I think I started at 15 years old. And so this is in 1988 or seven, I don't know, something like that. I should do the math, but I'm not doing it. No, I was in the 90s. But I'm going from not making any money to working with other basically teenagers getting your first experience and doing stuff and then getting a check. I remember my first check I ever got in my life because of a Van Halen album. It was 5150.

And, you know, being a freshman in high school, getting 50 bucks and the taxes that I didn't know about yet were already taken out. It's like, this is incredible. Yeah, making and serving those fries. Okay, so you get into the Navy, but look, not everybody does that. You get on that, you describe in the book, getting on that plane, and then you get some advice from another guy who's actually going to serve as well. And, you know, you're leaving your family. It's not as if you had been a world traveler before that. And suddenly you are just...

fish out of water. Yeah. And, and I think that that's something the military teaches everybody that it doesn't matter again, where you're from. Everyone, everyone has their first day. If you're the CEO of a company or you're the guy that went in Lod's bedroom, everyone had their first day somewhere and they were nervous.

And that's okay because it's natural, but you get used to it. I remember when I took, you know, I flew from Butte, Montana into Chicago eventually, and then we went to Great Lakes, Illinois. When I stepped off that bus and saw the instructors yelling at everybody, I remember thinking, this is the worst mistake I've ever made in my life because I totally stepped out of my comfort zone.

But you get used to stuff. But yeah, I tell you what, it was scary the first couple of days. But what was the mentality there? They're like, OK, you know, right. I mean, just got to watch a movie or two or read a book or a pamphlet. You're going to understand that they're going to be guys in your grill yelling, screaming at you as loud and I mean, as aggressively as this. And yet some people, I mean, they're surprised by it, right?

I mean, people think they made a bad decision because it's one thing to watch Full Metal Jacket for two hours. It's another thing to realize you just basically ended your life. Again, once you get into the routine, at first it is shock value. And this is Navy boot camp. This isn't Marine Corps boot camp, which is the most intense one. But it's just a complete shock value. But once you start to realize...

you know, someone from Butte, Montana, just cause he's from Butte doesn't mean someone from Chicago is better. You kind of, it's a realization of a, it's, it's, you know, getting into the mix of the country and it's, it turns into be awesome. The only thing I didn't like was the lack of sleep, but that was it. I mean, we, it wasn't Navy bootcamp is not like the movies because we don't really work out much. We put gravy on everything and we learned how to fold underwear. Okay. That's good. Good word. Yeah.

But Rob, you were so successful. You know, I just kind of reflect back on that book where, hey, only the top 1%, only the top 1%, only the top 1% is going to succeed. And yet you did. What do you think the difference is between what you were doing and a lot of

people who quite frankly were incredible athletes and people who really, you'd probably look at them at the beginning and say, oh, that guy's going to make it. And then he doesn't. What's the difference? That's actually the truth. And there is something there, but we can't figure it out because it seemed to me,

that the biggest, loudest guy is the first one to quit. And then because of an inferiority complex, someone that thought that dude was better, but he quit means I'm not good enough. So I need to quit. It's total mindset that you can convince your body to do anything through your mind

You'd be surprised. But once your mind goes, your body's just going to follow. No one ever said, yeah, I was going to fail, but my body pulled me through it. I mean, maybe a sprinter, but that's about it. But the mindset being everything that, like I said, one meal at a time. But I might fail something, but I'm not quitting no matter how bad it gets. And it's completely in your mind. And you can't keep it a positive attitude and trying to avoid the negativity. I just learned it early on. I don't know why I had it. Maybe because I had so many people tell me I couldn't make it.

That could have been competition against someone else.

So you're a guy like, you know, hey, really? You can't do that? Okay, I'm going to show you. Yeah, I will. I will stand here as long as I can stand here longer than you can stand here. That's true. I heard a story from a SEAL eventually when I got into the SEAL team. She played football at Navy. And I guess they were in a game up fight. They were up at halftime. And the coach was like, we are beating Notre Dame at halftime. We've got to last 30 minutes. I can eat dirt for 30 minutes. Yeah.

Did they lose that game? I think they actually won it. I hope so. It's true. It's true. You know, you say that, and I remember football coaches kind of saying, guys, we've got 15 minutes left. Just 15 minutes. I don't care how much it hurts. Just keep going for 15 minutes. We've got one quarter. Let's make it happen. That's good. Mindset.

But like I said, once your mind goes, it's just, you can see, you can see when someone's going to quit. You can tell. And there's no talking them out of it. So don't even try. You know, that's just it. It's, you know, I had friends say we had a,

Part of SEAL training called Hell Week, where you're actually awake for five and a half days with no sleep. And I had advice for going. Don't make any friends before Hell Week because they won't be there on Friday. I think one of my favorite stories was when they had you watch Shark Week for like two hours straight and then said, all right, fellas, time to get on the bus. We're getting in the water.

That is exactly what they do. So we get to train on San Clemente Island, which is right off the coast of California. And in between San Clemente Island and San Catalina is a great white shark breeding ground. And I mean, if you don't know anything about sharks, you're not in danger. But Jaws messed it up for everybody. So a kid from Montana who's only been in the ocean for the past few months, they sent us out to San Clemente Island and they're...

So SEAL training is in San Diego, on Coronado, right by the Hotel Del Coronado. And it's some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. And we're still getting tortured there in front of guests at the hotel. But the thing at Santa Maria Island is it's just us out there and nobody can hear you scream.

And it's 40 straight days. But the first thing to do, you get there at night, you know, it's on a great white breeding ground. You don't even unload your bag. You just set them down, walk into the classroom. They play about an hour of highlights of shark week. And then we did what's called a shark appreciation swim. So that's where you swim out. There's a half mile buoy right in this bay where we know there's sharks. So you swim out there and you swim back. And most of the,

in SEAL training, like a competition. This one, we're like, you know, strength in numbers. Everyone trying to be in this big blob of SEALs, wannabe students swimming out to the middle of the ocean. Well, and they call you SEALs. And having watched Shark Week, they actually like SEALs. But there's never been a shark attack, right? Or nobody's died by getting bit by a shark?

There's never been a shark attack. And that says something about great white sharks. They migrate up and down from Guadalupe in Mexico up to Oregon and maybe Washington. And that's where we swim all the time since 1962. No one's ever been touched. And that says something about a great white shark. We're not on the menu. And I really believe if you get bitten by a shark, you did something to screw up.

That is interesting. That is interesting. But how did you transform yourself? I mean, from Montana, you weren't exactly out swimming laps saying, hey, come on, you know, it's July. Let's get in the water and go swim a mile. I knew how to survive in the water, but I didn't know any strokes at all. I didn't know any technique whatsoever. And I just...

It's one of those things where, you know, you have a, I was fortunate to have a swim buddy, which means someone, well, everyone has a swim buddy, but mine was a really good swimmer. So I just kind of had to stay with him and it's a side stroke. So all you pretty much all you have to do is, is fin. So it's just, you know, stroke.

hip flexors, strong ankles and kick and, you know, swim a mile that way, swim a mile this way. Um, and it's just, I thought that was going to be the reason I didn't make it through. I'd failed too many swims. They kicked me out, but I happened to pass each one by, um, a minute or two. There's three phases. And the first swim is, I don't know, they'll say, we'll say 80 minutes. And then the next phase is 75 and then it's 70. So the times are decreasing as the more you swim. So, but yeah, I was, you know, fortunate just mindset one swim at a time. That's interesting. Yeah.

And so you get to the point where you actually, you're graduating. You know at this point, hey, look, I've made it. And then talk to me a little bit about how difficult it is. And it's difficult with families because these missions that you're going on, it's not like you can write back or call up your dad and say,

And I know how close you are to your dad. It's hard to not talk about what you're doing and then yet be gone for such long periods of time. If you kind of had to average it out or maybe take the longest time that you were away, say, hey, I got to go and I'll be back when I'm back. What does that picture look like?

We were lucky enough to only have to go like one of those famous we're going now type missions a couple of times. Generally, they were we would have like scheduled deployments and from overseas we would do missions based out of where we were. But when we're doing like, let's say the height of the war for me at SEAL Team 6, we were doing four months in combat, four months training for combat, four months something else, four months in combat. And when you're in combat, that's eight months, you know,

You're gone. And then when you're home, it's not like you're just home to your training. So you're traveling to Arizona to skydive. You're going to Florida to scuba dive, all this stuff. And then you're going overseas again. So it was, you know, 300 plus days, 330 days a year away from home, away from my kids. And it's just you kind of get used to it. It just sucks. But, you know, you have to do it.

Um, it's, it's tough on the families. Yeah. I don't think there's enough appreciation from the public about not just the ones that are out there serving, but it's their families they leave behind. And I tell this story a lot about how I met these Marines when I was in Congress, I was in Afghanistan. I pulled them aside and, uh, you know, said, guys, just tell me what's really going on. And when they finally loosened up, the guy kind of lost it a little bit and kind of broke down, you know, got tears in his eyes because he,

you know, he couldn't find somebody to help mow the lawn there at his house. And his wife was really struggling when he was gone. And he worried more about that than anything else. And it,

It just made me realize and recognize how real that those deployments are. Whether we're in war or you're in training, you're still away. And that's hard on American families. It is too. And think about the people who don't have a platform. I'm able to talk about veterans issues, special operations, stuff like that. But think about the Marines and the soldiers that

Went on a 15 month deployment and they're walking through minefields every day, you know, just thinking about their families back home. The sailors out there, sailors on ships work their butts off in the hot machine room. You know, the machinist mates or the quartermasters up there guiding the ship to the people. God bless them working the chow hall because that's a nonstop operation. They're away from their families, too, for long, long periods of time.

And then when they get home, I know part of what you're involved with is this foundation that helps retrain, if you will, these warriors and get them back into the business community so they can go on and have lasting careers that are satisfying. But a lot of you, I would guess people like you, they have a hard time 'cause they miss the adrenaline rush. They miss the importance of what they're doing. - It is, they do.

But the biggest problem they have is they don't realize how good they are at stuff that that a lot of people, a lot of employers really want to hire veterans, especially special operators. Because one CEO said to me, I'd much rather get Green Beret, who I can teach this job, you know, who has combat experience, knows how to work with a team than some dude from a university who just got his gender studies degree.

That's what they said to me. Well, I mean, you have somebody who can overcome any obstacle. It is not going to take no for an answer. I mean, that's just bred into them. I would think that we would do more to...

to hire those types of people. And even the people that just, you know, they're working in maintenance, they're working in food services. I mean, all of the logistics that take care of things, these people know how to get things done because if they don't, it is not a, so we say a nice situation. So yeah, veterans. Yeah. I started my foundation is called special operators transition foundation.

And that's available at my website, robertjoneal.com. But if you just Google that. But yeah, what a lot of these veterans, they don't realize that they have the communication skills, effective communication, work as a team, manage stress really, really well. And the biggest thing that veterans do so well, they know how to solve a problem. Because we mentioned a few minutes ago, the first day somewhere where you're just scared to death at boot camp, you need to learn to ask questions when you don't understand.

And like, if you don't under one of my favorite answers is because no one wants to raise their hand in a classroom. Cause I don't want to be that guy. I'll raise my hand and say, I didn't understand that. And they'll say, what didn't you understand? I'm like all of it. I didn't understand one word of what you just said to me, but they'll show up. Yeah.

But they'll show up, ask questions, and then let's just figure it out. Nobody wants to play the victim here. Let's figure out a solution. And usually the simplest solution is the best option with the realization that once you plan something, it's not going to go that way either. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Rob O'Neill right after this.

from the Fox News Podcast Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Let's talk a little bit about when this podcast airs, 9-11 will be recognizing what happened on 9-11. Where were you, Rob, when those planes hit those towers and the Pentagon and

And that plane went down over Pennsylvania with those heroic effort of those passengers who got on that plane in the morning and had no idea what they were going to have to deal with. What were you doing and what was the impact on you personally? I was at SEAL Team 2.

And SEAL team, every SEAL team has what we, before 9-11, had what we called an area of operation. SEAL team two happened to be Europe, North Africa. And the biggest mission in the SEAL teams at the time was Kosovo.

And it wasn't even like we were doing combat. We were doing more observation for peacekeeping because there was obviously, you know, Kosovo, Bosnia, there was a lot of stuff there in the 90s. But that's what we were doing. And we thought we were, you know, hot stuff. So we flew back from that deployment to Stuttgart, Germany, where we have a special warfare unit for deployed guys overseas. We were simply retweaking our gear in case we go to Kosovo again. And I was in the operations center typing e-mails saying,

watching the news and uh i heard behind me on tv that a plane had just hit uh one of the towers in new york and we're all looking at it there's a couple seals in the room we're looking at it and they're saying yeah it's a small plane uh hit the tower and we're like that's a big tower and that's a huge hole that you know that was um that was something else and we're watching it you know obviously till just after nine o'clock and the uh the other plane hit the south tower

and we all knew instantly we're at war and it wasn't it wasn't um 15 seconds maybe in that operation center in Germany that someone said the name Osama bin Laden I'm like this is Al Qaeda we are at war now and that's it we knew we knew everything changed we're done in Europe we're all either going to Sudan or Afghanistan and we're gonna now we need to beat these guys but you knew you knew it was bin Laden

We knew it was al-Qaeda for sure, and then we knew the head of al-Qaeda was Osama bin Laden. And he declared a fatwa on the United States in the early 90s. Nobody paid attention to it, not even after the USS Cole. But yeah, we knew it was bin Laden. It's just a question of where is he? So your life's changing. Tell us about, were things just sped up? I mean, was it just a flurry? I mean, what was, obviously, it caught America off guard and...

there was a flurry of activity. Everybody wanted to take out the threat and to have some retribution for what was happening. But how did your life change? What was going on with you? Well, like I said, everything changed and nobody knew who was going where. So we're getting ready to go to combat. That deployment I was on was going to end in a month. So we went, you know, we're going to go back to the United States. But are we now? Are we just going to go right into Africa? We didn't know. And it's just everything spun up. They ended up sending us back

And then we're going through training again for the trip overseas. Guys that went overseas and actually started fighting Al Qaeda came back and completely changed our tactics. Like, OK, everything we've been doing for the past 20 years is wrong. Here's how we do it now, because real bullets are flying at guys and people are dying. So, I mean, everything completely changed at first, just the unknown.

But then, you know, once we started realizing the mission, it got better. And especially when I got to SEAL Team 6, I was just working with some of the best guys in the world. I learned from the best. I learned stuff by watching dudes and thinking, man, that guy's cool. I want to be cool. What do you think you did better than probably most? Tell us about that. You write about that in the book.

I never thought I was better than anyone. What made our place unique is we got to go to work every day with people who were better than us and just learning from each other. You know what I did is I just didn't, I never stopped making myself available. I didn't take breaks, like, you know, nothing against taking breaks from combat, but I was always there and right place, right time. My wife calls me the luckiest unlucky man in the world.

I can trip over something, but I'll land at a million dollars. Well, I mean, that's what's fascinating about the operator, the book, because you talk not, you know, Captain Phillips, but you also talk about that incredible firefight that you got into where you're right there on the border and all hell breaks loose because...

I mean, it's just an absolute amazing thing. And your backpack's over there. And so you got to sprint over there and you make it like that's just unbelievable that you could go all the way back to get your backpack and then come all the way back. I didn't have a choice. What had happened again, like I was saying, I have something now that I learned the hard way, like this mission is the only time the perfect plan exists is in the planning room.

Once you go out there, anything can change. But I had a perfect plan with my very small team of Americans, two other SEALs and two Army SF guys and a couple Afghanis. And we were going to go, we were going to insert and then walk to the top of the mountain right on the border of Pakistan. So this is in Konar province. These are serious mountains. And our plan was we want them to see us and shoot at us. And if they do, we can pursue them in because we know they're hiding there. That's the plan. And maybe it'll be seven guys. Well, it turned into a few hundred.

And we're just like, we need to leave now because the sun's up. It's noon. We don't have cover of darkness. We're running down the hill before they see us. But they caught us and we ended up, long story short, in this huge bad ambush. They're on top of us and we're in this valley almost.

And I had heard from guys older than me, never heard of anyone doing it, that if you need to run, you can take off your backpack. We wore our gear in a certain type of way. But the first thing you can throw off is your backpack. And that's normally your least important stuff. So like if you have a sleeping bag, it's in there, foot powder, extra socks, whatever. You can just ditch that stuff. So I had to ditch it to run to my radio guy across this field.

in order to tell him where I wanted the first bombs to drop. He's carrying the radio. And I went over to him, I kind of pointed everything out, and he said, well, that's fine, but we don't have any air support. And it took a long time for some reason to get these close air support jets over us. And by the time he got one, they were so close to us, they being al-Qaeda and Taliban, that the scariest part is not getting shot at and hearing stuff zip past your head. It's hearing them yell at you.

Like we can legitimately hear Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. And if you got dudes saying God is greater in Arabic, you are fighting some serious dudes. So anyway, long story again, he finally got a jet and said, I got a jet, but the batteries are dead in my radio.

And I'm not a big believer in micromanaging, but I thought now is the time to do so. And I said, change the batteries. And that seems simple. Good advice. I can't. I think he said, I can't. I don't have the spares. Remember, you have them. You're carrying them. And now they're in my backpack that I dropped 100 meters away. So I had to, you know, something along the lines of don't tell my mom I did this. Had to run across the field, grab the batteries, run back and

He put him in, and then we finally got in touch with the pilot. And the pilot, here's how cool, I can't say enough good about pilots, but he was so cool. There's a lot going on when we need to call in close air support, and we've been under fire for a little over an hour. So the pilot knew that we were under duress, and so he needed to calm us down. Because like I said, mindset is everything. The first thing the pilot said was, just talk to me like I'm a man.

And my response to him was, I see why women find you attractive. But that was enough to calm us down. And we ended up bombing those guys. They did run back into, um,

into Pakistan, but we were able to bomb them inside of Pakistan based on proper rules of engagement. So it turned into what we call an international incident. And even leaving, I was all happy. We didn't know we were going to live. The helicopters eventually got us. They pulled us out. And I'm going through my mental checklist. I'm like, wow, we just bombed Pakistan. I'm in charge. That's an international incident. I am probably going to hear about this. Might be called in. Yeah.

Yeah, we heard about it. There was an investigation. Well, you know, that's part of the process you need to go through. But it also prevents more attacks from happening. And there is supposed to be a border there. Yeah, that's true. I mean, and I was fortunate, too, because a lot of these investigations, as you know, when you start working at higher levels of the deep states, they might do something to send you to Leavenworth for murder. And they didn't. They were good.

but because we had footage of it, but whenever I hear the word investigation, I'm like, what, not only did what I do wrong, but what am I about to be caught having done? Well, I mean, this is but one of a whole lot of stories that show up in the operator that are just absolutely fascinating stories.

Going back to 9-11, which is one of, if not the most horrific event to happen here on our homeland. I mean, you're seeing it from Stuttgart. You recognize you're a patriot, love the country. You recognize the world has changed and we're under attack. But when did it really get sort of personal for Rob O'Neill? Like when did it really touch your heart and say, you know, like when did it become just personal for you?

It became personal within seconds of the attack, watching people jump out of the towers. Right. Because what is going on inside that makes it that the better option?

So that made it personal. And then and I'll get into this when we get into the bin Laden raid. Finding out about the the first Americans to fight al Qaeda were the passengers on Flight 93 that crashed into Shanksville, Pennsylvania, because they they had known now our nation's under attack. And we you know, we're on a one way mission now. We need to stop this plane. And what hit me most about Flight 93 is that they voted. That's America.

They voted to fight and they fought and they saved the Capitol.

Yeah, you know, I hadn't actually thought about it like that. But, you know, to hear them huddled back there and then to say, what are we going to do and not do? And then let's roll. I mean, I can... Yeah, let's roll. And even think about the outside the box thinking, okay, we think they have bombs. We know they have knives. What can we do? Like they've boiled water. That's a weapon. You have weapons around you. That's so cool. I mean, it's...

obviously the most scary out-of-body experience I'm sure they had, but boy, they did it. And it's incredible. And so that's when it became very personal. These are, these are real people with real families really fighting a real enemy. Yeah. And it looked, they, they woke up in the morning, they're getting on an airplane inspired by ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things when they had no idea that they were going to be put in that situation. And then they deal with it and they, you know, the, the consequence was dire to say the least that,

They lost their lives, but they saved countless others. And that, it really is inspirational to me. It's sad at the same time.

And I do hope we as a nation, we never, ever forget that. I hope so, too. And I mean, I have a positive attitude about it because, as you know, the country is not the Beltway and Manhattan and Hollywood. The country is in between there. And most Americans will do that. Like, Americans will help each other. Americans will run into a fire. Americans will, you know.

They'll do that for each other. Most Americans are great. The loudest voices get the most ratings, but I think Babe Ruth said something we need to remember. The loudest voices come from the cheapest seats. Something like that. The loudest boos come from the cheapest seats. I get excitable. I screw it up sometimes. No, no. I got to have to quote that. You're right. That is a great quote. So tell us about the fighting's been going on. The intelligence has been trying to be put into place.

But all of a sudden you get a call or a back then or pagers, right? And yeah, we, we were still using go down. Remind me how that went down where you got called into this to be part of this team and this mission. We use pagers all the time. And for everything from, you know, get into work now type stuff. We use pagers on the captain Phillips rate when they called us in Virginia beach, we use those. The captain Phillips was one this and this there's more to this cool story than

than people think about. Because again, I always mentioned that there's never a perfect plan, but you need to be prepared. It's like, you know, have that bolt bag. The one you talked about, you brought to Benghazi, like you got the bag with you in case I got to run type stuff. Be prepared, have the water in your garage, all that good stuff. But we got the call. It was Good Friday, April 10th, which is my birthday in 2009. And I was at my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool.

And she was four and I was getting her treats for Easter to bring them back. I had a pink plate in my hand covered with smiley face cookies. And as I'm handing it to her, I got a message. And that's when I learned that Captain Richard Phillips had been taken by Somali pirates and they called my team to get him now.

From a preschool classroom in Virginia Beach on my birthday and a long weekend, we, meaning the entire team, 15 hours and 46 minutes later, we're in the Indian Ocean with a full headcount. And then we rescued Richard Phillips on Easter. That's how quick it was. If you're not familiar with the mission, there was a Navy destroyer towing that fully engulfed lifeboat.

And we put snipers on the rear of that boat just to watch them, make sure nothing unsafe happened as the team was preparing to rescue. But as we were preparing to rescue, something unsafe happened and the snipers took the shots, killed three pirates at the same time and rescued Richard Phillips. But what people don't realize, if you put the...

humanization of it. Those three snipers were in their own beds in Virginia four days before their shots on a long weekend. And SEAL Team 6 had never done this mission. Over 25 years, it had never been done. So you can imagine their mindset. We have a long weekend. We've never done this. I don't need to have my gun sighted in for the most difficult shot I'll ever take in my life. I can do that on Tuesday. But they didn't. And the guns were ready and they shot. That was the biggest mission at the time in the history of the SEAL Team 6.

Wow, that was amazing. You're recounting all the jumps that you've had in your life and, you know, out of airplanes. And that was amazing to me, the coordination and the difficulty of...

having to lead that, that was amazing. I was because that's the first time. I mean, we trained on it a lot. And so I was the lead jumper, which means first guy out. And then I try to get the entire stack together, meaning a long line of canopies, parachutes. But we'd only done it in training. So there were safety boats everywhere.

uh, all over us. As we jumped, pulled the canopy, looked down, you'll see safety boats and then you can find your target out here. There was no safety boats. There was really no target. I had to find the boats that we just pushed out and it was difficult to look down at the ocean and find it, but you know, we made it happen. And the good news is I had about a hundred guys with me who were capable of finding them too. So that's a lot of, um, you know, backfill, but yeah, we found them. We landed on the boats. We took those boats to a big Navy ship and

We came up with plans. We just, everyone come up with a plan and we'll decide on the best. And as we were planning, the snipers took the opportunity to shoot. Well, no, there's a whole lot of talent that goes behind that. I, you know, when I was in Congress, people always complained about all the military, this and military that, you know what, we got to have the biggest, baddest,

on the face of the planet. So when we go out and spend the money and do the training and do all that, that is always money well spent because then all of a sudden you got to use it and you better be out in front and better have the best people with the best talent, the best equipment. When you need them, it's just the whole thing. What about a gun? I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. And especially at this point in time, we really need to be concerned about larger militaries, and I mean China,

Because as you know, they're over there trying to make now that we ditched Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, they're trying to make a route trains and pavement to the sea right there so they can have access to Europe right there for trade. And then they're trying to buy land right now in West Africa so they can have a naval fleet in the Atlantic. That's scary. And we're back here in our Navy trying to decide who gets to use which bathroom. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. That's the truth though. All right. We could do a whole nother podcast on just that topic and China and everything else. All right, let's go back to, so getting the call for, you know, on your birthday daughter, the whole bit, I mean, that really is kind of almost straight out of the movies, but this mission to go out and take out Osama bin Laden with the intelligence that was coming in, it wasn't always for sure, but it,

You had somebody there who we all relied on, and she was convinced that this was actually the right target, the right place, that he was there, you know, without giving away any secret or classified stuff. How did you get that person?

And how quickly did you have to spin that up and put that together? That was a call. They did a really good job. That was the one mission that like the stuff you see in the movies was accurate. The stuff, the way you think, how productive the CIA and the government in the White House can be. They actually were. No one knew about this. You know, none of us.

so we were all on training trips like i mentioned we'll go to war we'll come back and train i was on a training trip in miami with my team there was other guys out in arizona or and and nevada you know rock climbing all that stuff and the senior guys got called back to virginia and this was way out of the ordinary we're supposed to be on training trips and they pulled us in a room and said just 28 of us total and um

The way that it was presented was we found a thing and this thing is in a house and this house is in a bowl in between these mountains in a country. And you guys are going to go to this house. You're going to get this thing and bring it back and show it to us. And so we asked, you know, what's the thing? Well, we can't tell you. OK, where's the bowl? Can't tell you what country. Can't tell you how are we getting there? Can't tell you. And that started off like that. And we, you know, we assumed that.

because the arab spring had just started in north africa in tunisia and then spilled over into egypt and libya we assumed they found qaddafi and they wanted us to go get them so we're going to fly off a flat top on some ospreys they didn't want to whatever that's what we're assuming but what caught our eye our ears was they said we were not bringing any air force with us and so our air force special operators are para rescue men who are basically field surgeons and then

And then the communicators, the CCT guys. But we're not bringing them because they're trying to save weight. Something's weird because we need our communicators. So we're all fixing our gear for this and blah, blah, blah. On a Friday, they said, go home, be with your kids, and then come back Sunday. We're going to drive you somewhere and we're going to read you in. And we did that. But as we're thinking about

They're mentioning who's going to be at the read-in, and it didn't make sense. One thing they said was the Pakistan-Afghanistan desk from one of the three-letter agencies. And we're thinking, if they're going to be there, this can't be Libya. So then it started to click, and as we're driving to this place, my boss was next to me, and I said, I think they found Osama bin Laden. He said, that's exactly what I was thinking. And we got to that room. They locked the doors, and the commanding officer came in and said, gentlemen,

The reason you're here is because this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And it's real. And, you know, there was no high fiving. We're just like, OK, cool. Are we going now? And they said, no, we're going to tell you about it. And that's where we met her, the woman who founded a lot. And she's real. And she told us about it. She was the first one I heard say about a bad. And I've never heard that word before. It's in Pakistan. This is a serious mission. And so we know what we're doing.

They did want us to train up, but you know, we would train hour after hour, all morning, all afternoon, all evening. And then we'd get back to the house and we would look at a model and talk about it over and over and over. And every night we finished training, she would say, Osama bin Laden is in the third floor of this house right now. I don't understand why we're not going to get him. And she just knew. The movie depiction was, I mean, how is she different than the movie depiction? Yeah.

I mean, she's not a redhead, but she's that cool, and she's that sharp, and she'll get right to the point. She'll tell you why. The word awesome doesn't describe her. Well, she helped change the world in a better way for her tenacity and her smarts and everything else, and her –

obviously willing to stand up and say, this is right folks. And I recognize that I have, I don't have the seniority that you all have, but I know what I'm talking about and this is right. Yeah. Yeah. She knew it. She knew it. Um,

To the day we left, I ran into her. We were on our way to get on the bus to take us to the helicopter to fly to the boss's house. I ran into her. I was in my gear, and she's out there pacing. And this is after weeks of training that she's seen it, so we knew her pretty well. I said, why are you nervous? She looked at me and goes, are you kidding me? Why aren't you nervous? I said, well, you know, I do this every night. I get in a helicopter. We fly somewhere. We do some stuff. We fly home. And I looked at her and I said, however, this one's on a global scale, and you need to be right. So you can be nervous. I'll see you in a few hours. So...

We're up. This is a one way mission. This is. Yeah. We mentioned we mentioned the kids. You know, the hardest part of going to combat is kissing your kids goodbye. The realization this could be it.

That's the hardest part. And this one, we knew we were going to die. And I had my one where there's one daughter in particular. I remember writing a note to she was seven at the time. But I wrote I didn't write a letter to the seven year old. I wrote it to the 27 year old. You know, read it when you're 27. I'm really sorry. I missed your wedding. I know you're beautiful. Thanks for taking care of your sister. You know, what we did was noble. Things like that. Tears hitting the page. And the reason we knew it was a one way mission was because.

We're going over the border into Pakistan. It's not a third world country. They have air defense. We don't know if our technology works so we can get shot down at any moment. Then when we get there, there will be a gunfight as soon as we get there. Then when we get inside, if anybody is going to blow himself up and kill his whole family and us as we're in the building, it's him. Or we're going to run out of fuel and either die fighting the Pakistanis or die shortly after if we surrender in a prison.

We were so convinced we weren't coming home. One of the guys...

on the mission said, just I got to say it out loud, even I'm going 100%. I just got to say it out loud. If we know we're going to die, why are we going? And which is fair. And again, the reason we're going is not for ourselves and we're not going for fame. We're going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday. And then 45 minutes later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that's the better alternative. She was never supposed to be in the fight. We're supposed to be in the fight. And that's why we're going.

What was, again, you got to be careful with classified information, but ultimately what was different in the mission than you really anticipated? The difference was the access that we had to stuff that wasn't approved for a better word. Like they...

Anything that someone was in the smart part of a basement somewhere and tinkering with something, we had access to it if we wanted to bring it. A funny story we have was this. I mentioned earlier we're not bringing certain people just because of weight. I didn't carry a pistol. Ounces equal pounds is

And this guy came in with this thing, this box that weighed 50 pounds. He said, this is a box and it jams everything. It jams every kind of communications, all electronics, it jams, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, and the radius is 300 yards. And one of my buddies said, okay,

Have you ever tested it in a helicopter? And he said, no, because I have a better idea. It says it weighs so much. Can you design something? Uh, the only way is 40 pounds and the radius is this room and it jams really bad ideas. There you go. Well, there's that. Yeah. That's funny. Um,

You thought bin Laden was going to blow himself up, but he didn't. And you thought there'd be more of a firefight with resistance, but it didn't seem like there was. I mean, that just goes to show you he's being protected by the Pakistanis. That's just what they're doing. And they have, you know, that part of the world, they have reason to do that. Like if they hide bin Laden, then Al Qaeda won't attack them or whatever. And it wasn't, you know, all the military that knew, but it was their intelligence services. So I think that he knew if he kept a low signature,

and did the kind of, you know, they had really good operational security. He could hide there for a while and then they'll just move him again. So he just, he wasn't expecting it. And so when that helicopter crashes,

I mean, what's the mindset there? I mean, you're trained to just stay focused on the mission, but things had to be running through your head. Like this is not going the way we had planned it to go. We, we talked about that for maybe 30 seconds out of the two weeks we trained because someone said, what's the worst thing that could happen? And one of the guys goes, helicopter could crash in the front yard. And we all kind of looked at him like, why, why would you say that? You can totally jinxing us. Um,

But he said, let's talk about that. And so we did. I was in the other one. I didn't even know the helicopter crashed. I had no idea. Because my helicopter was the second one coming in, and we were going to drop some snipers and a dog and an interpreter on the north side outside of it and put my team on top of the helicopter.

the building bin Laden was in, the three-story building. But as we did that, our helicopter was going up and the pilot realized the other one couldn't hover, so he can't either. So he just dropped us off outside as if to shoo us out. I remember putting a foot on the ground thinking, well, I guess we start the war from here. Something happened. I don't know what. I didn't know the helicopter crashed. We tried to blow up one of the double doors off to our left because we knew we can get in the yard. It opened like a tin can, but there's a brick wall behind it.

And like one of the guys said, failed breach, this is bad. And I was thinking, no, this is good. That's a fake door. Nobody does that. Then we told the other crew that we're going to blow up the main door, which is like a carport to drive cars in and out. And someone just said, no, don't blow it up. We'll just open it. And the door opened and the thumb came out that I recognized. I didn't know they crashed at this point, but a good rule for life is it doesn't matter how we got to this point. We're just here. We'll talk about it later.

So I went in the house not realizing that they crashed into someone inside the household. So the pilot saved everyone's lives on that helicopter. He crash landed it, realizing if he could pin it against the wall, it wouldn't roll. But if he tried to power up, it would. And he made that decision in the blink of an eye and saved everyone's lives and saved the mission.

Wow. The pilots do not get enough credit, I tell you. No. What they do and how they do it at night, in the dark, wind. I mean, in a mission like this, those guys are absolutely amazing. They are. They're the best. We were fortunate to have the best pilots in the world on that mission. And not just in our two, but in the ones behind us, too. They had the best pilots that our U.S. Army has. And they're just they are the best pilots you can imagine. Well, you know, the other thing.

Thing that I was amazed. And again, look, I know nothing compared to what you you've been through and seen and know. But I got to tell you that the way dogs operate and for our local law enforcement, for, you know, bombs. But talk to me a little bit about what canines offer and what they did that night.

We brought Cairo with us. That was his name. He was a Belgian Malinois and the best dog we had. This dog had been with us for a long time. He actually got shot in the chest on a mission and lived and then recuperated. Then he ended up on the Bin Laden mission. But what they do is they're really good at finding stuff and using their noses. They, you know, their noses are better than some of the equipment we have anywhere looking for bombs or anything. You know, they got, they got COVID dogs now. So Cairo's job was to do a sweep around the, um,

around the perimeter, make sure no one escaped through a tunnel. And if they did, obviously the dogs, you can, they can give chase and they can run and grab them. So we brought Kyra with us for that reason there, but I've been in combat before where dogs, um,

have opened doors I couldn't see, and then went in and cleared them. And, you know, whenever a dog dies in combat, which unfortunately happens a lot, they probably save four or five soldiers' lives. These dogs are invaluable. There's even a memorial where I used to work at SEAL Team 6 for the fallen troops, but in front of it to the right is a dog memorial, and that's where the dog would normally be, up and to the right. Yeah, we've got to continue to invest in that technology. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

All of a sudden you're there. You finally do breach. You're inside. Can you walk us, walk us through this? I know you've recounted this, but Rob, I thought you did that. Yeah. Explain to us what went down.

Well, I was because they put us outside. The other helicopter had gotten their guys out and they're in they're in the fight, different buildings. And they're already ahead of me. It's the first four of the Lund's house. And so I came in the front door, which led to a hallway. And there's already Navy SEALs up ahead of me, clearing rooms and working, breaching problems. And I kind of backed into a room and I'm like shining my invisible light. But I can see it looking for bombs, like hanging from the.

ceiling, just, you know, if they're going to blow the house up, that's what they're going to do it. But then I would watch my guys work and they knew the house would blow up. And I just remember being proud of these guys. Like we could die at any moment and we might, but

But look at them. No one's afraid. No one's stopping. Everyone is working the way we work. Slow is smooth. Then smooth is fast. Do you want to be fast? Slow down type stuff. And they're just working the problems. So we're in a hallway. But the woman that found Bin Laden said, I don't know where it is, but you will find a stairwell. And obviously it goes up. And in between the first and second floor, you will run into Khalid Bin Laden.

who is the 20-year-old son. And she said, if you can get him, you will get a shot at the big guy. So I was able to make it to that stairwell. There was about seven guys in front of me. Khalid was there. And he jumped behind a banister. I remember being behind it, looking up the stairs and thinking, okay, there are two grown men with assault rifles separated by 10 inches in a banister who want to kill each other. I got to see how this goes down. And the point man just really –

He mind wrestled him like he said something to make him come out and look and ask what. And then he shot because the guy was armed well within the rules of engagement. And again, just being proud like that. I mean, you know, in a gruesome way, I thought that was really cool. But we get up the stairs. We're on the second floor. And then the guys in front of me all separated to the left and right to clear everything.

the rooms on the hallways and the second floor. And now the only guy in front of me is the guy looking up the stairs and he's called the point man. I turned it. So the number one man, I turned into the number two man. His job is to look forward. My job is to keep a hand on his shoulder and look backwards. So I can tell him through a squeeze on his shoulder when we have enough guys. And that's just effective communication without talking, but he's looking up the stairs and,

And instead of at the top of the stairs, instead of a door, there's a curtain and there's we can see some backlight people moving. And the point man assumed those are the suicide bombers and they're getting ready. But we can beat them if we go now. We've got to go right now. So I had a hand on his shoulder. He didn't know it was me. He obviously knew it was one of his guys, but he started telling me, we got to go. We got to go. And I remember it wasn't bravery for me. It was more of, OK, OK.

we're going to blow up now. And I'm just tired of thinking about it. Let's get it over with. And I squeezed him and two of us went up the stairs and he moved the curtain and he kind of tackled these people he thought were bombers, which says a lot about his character because he's willing to absorb the blast of the guy behind him, which is me can get the shot. So he went this way straight. So that meant I turned right to cover his back. And then I'm staring at Osama bin Laden. He's three feet away, standing there with his hands on

his wife on all shoulders and sort of maneuvering her, um,

He wasn't surrendering. And he's a high, high threat. He's got to have a suicide vest. I remember thinking he's taller than I thought. He's skinnier. His beard is gray, but that's his nose. That's him. I've seen that face. He's a threat. I need to treat him as a suicide bomb. And that's when I shot him in the face twice and shot him again on the ground. And it was over so quick that I moved his wife right next to me. And you can sort of just feel who a threat is and not. And she's not. So I pushed her back.

I killed the man at the foot of his bed, then I pushed her on the bed to sit down because I know other Navy SEALs are coming in, which they did. I did see, now standing there too, was his two-year-old son. And as a father, I remember thinking, this kid's got nothing to do with this. It sucks that he's here. And I picked him up and then I put him down and then it sort of started to sink in.

And I'm thinking, is that the best thing I've ever done or the worst thing I've ever done? I'm sort of standing there processing this. One of my friends came up to me. He's in the room now. And he said, are you good? And I said, I don't know. What are we supposed to do now? And he smiled. He's looking at me. He goes, now we find the computers. We find the intelligence. We do this every night, hundreds of times. And I said, yeah, you're right. That's what we do. I'm back. Oh, my God. And he said, yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden. Your life just changed. Now let's get to work.

So talk about that extraction, because that is the treasure trove of intelligence that can take down the whole network. But you're on the clock. We are. And we wanted the entire time to be there, 34 minutes on the ground and leave. But obviously, we had to blow up a helicopter. There's so much intelligence in there. We're trying to carry as much as we can. And we need to call another helicopter to come get us, which it did. So we got him about 47 minutes. He's outside this big Chinook.

There's other Navy SEALs on the Chinook, which I think is awesome when you think about on the Bin Laden raid, SEAL Team 6 rescued SEAL Team 6, which is just cool. And they don't get enough credit either. But we got on that. We put Bin Laden's body on our original helicopter and had the first team go with him. We got on the Chinook and then we left.

And there was even a guy outside tweeting and you can still see his tweets about I can't believe Pakistan is doing an exercise this late on a Sunday or something like that. And I saw this guy tweeting and I remember thinking in a war zone, if someone's outside of the target with a phone in their face, you can shoot them because they might be blowing up a car bomb. But this guy, we're not in a combat zone. This guy's tweeting. And I remember thinking they have no idea that we're here.

So, you know, we got in the Chinook and then we left. And we had accepted death on this mission, but we just killed Osama bin Laden. And now if we can live 90 minutes, if we can fly for 90 minutes and cross the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, 90 minutes and we get 50 more years, I get to see my kids again. We can make it, but we still could get shot down.

But me worrying about the missile is not going to stop the missile. And that's advice for life. If there's something going on that your worry is not going to help, stop wasting the energy. Just put that bag of bricks down. So I just started my watch and we're flying to the border. And I'm just, you know, trying to think, trying to be calm. And you look down, it's like, all right, it's been 10 minutes.

Now it's been 20 minutes. Okay. It's been 30 minutes. Now we've been flying for 40 minutes, then 50 minutes and it starts to sink in. We got to get to 90 minutes. And it's like watching that no hitter at the top of top of the seventh, you know, Fenway or whatever. It's like, I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been 60 minutes and now it's been 70 minutes. Now it's been 80 minutes and we got to get to 90. And it's,

My speech and my thinking starts to get faster and faster. Love sports analogies because the whole team thing, it reminds me of when Team USA hockey beat the Russians in Lake Placid. And if you watch the replay, you can hear 10, 9, 8. We're nervous. We can still speed this up. 5, 4. And then the pilot came over the radio at about 85 minutes. And again, pilots are so cool. Very calmly said,

all right gentlemen for the first time in your lives you're going to be happy to hear this welcome to afghanistan and it's just like it hits it's like wow we get it we got it those uh 80 90 minutes in the air was it was it just calm do you have to be quiet yeah i mean we're in a we're in a schnook it's loud it's a it's a flying school bus that sounds like a some kind of an animal so it's i mean but there's no point you can't you can't really talk you kind of look at each other and

You know, everyone trying to be cooler than the next. Like, I'm not staring at my watch. But, you know, it's like when you're working out. I'm not going to count it, but, you know, five minutes has gone by. So we're just all sitting there. And there's dudes – like, there was a dude sitting next to me on the squadron that rescued us, and he's from Manhattan. His name's Rob also. And, you know, he asked me – this is, again, one of those moments where it sort of sinks in. He goes – you know, being from lower Manhattan, he said, who got them? And I said, I did. And he said, on behalf of my family, thank you.

And it's sort of like, wow. He just said, thank you. This is huge. And, and, uh, just be calm. And even if you're not like, this is good advice for leaders. Um, even if you're not calm, no one can tell. So just act calm. Cause if you, if you portray calm, it's contagious, but if you panic, that's also contagious. But there had to be a bit of a celebration that you all got back and you got, and you got your man. Well, when we got there, we, uh,

We put the body down in Jalalabad. We're not down. It's like we flew it to a hangar in Jalalabad to show it to Admiral McRaven, who was there to show it to the woman from the agency that was there. And there was yeah, I mean, there was celebration right there. And that was short lived. And we had to fly them up the Bagram Airfield where everything was set up with the law enforcement guys who were going to do the actual

the DNA tests and whatnot. And then we were having breakfast to kind of look at it. You know, we're getting post it's post-operation stuff. We've done operations and the gravity of,

hasn't quite sunk in like we know we got the line and he was laying right there he's here he is i remember eating a sandwich i'm standing at his feet and they're doing the dna test and we actually had fox news on on this huge flat screen tv and president obama walked down that red carpet and said tonight i can report to the american people into the world the united states conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden the leader of al-qaeda and i heard

President Obama say Osama bin Laden. I looked down at Osama bin Laden and just thought, how in the world did I get here from Butte, Montana? And you're eating a tuna fish sandwich.

No, no. I was eating. They brought in sausage, egg, and cheese, and we took off the top, so we made an extra thick sausage, egg, and cheese with the hot sauce. Well, you deserve it. Well, thank you. What an incredible moment. So it takes a while to get back. It's not like you can get on an airplane and suddenly you're home and you can sit at your desk.

Oh, did you get home pretty quick? Yeah. When we, um, they were finished with the body and we handed them over to the army who flew them out to a Navy ship to bury him at sea. And then we went over to the Seabees, uh, the Navy, uh, construction battalions place because they had showers we could use. And they had a, um, they had, uh,

That's the oven and the internet. So we went over there to shower. We checked, you know, it was all over the news. The seal team six plastered everywhere, which is really weird for us. But when we were done with it, like an hour there, it's a piece. So we went back over, uh, we got on a C 17 and then, um, flew right back to the States refueled once in the once or twice in the air and landed Virginia beach. So it was 24 hours. We're back home. And there was even, um, um, obviously our parents and family and everything knew what happened. Um,

And I'd always mess with my mom, uh, even in high school, for some reason, I would always say, if you don't need to worry about me, I'm here to do something special. Uh, and going to call my mom, you don't need to worry. I'm here to do something special. And I called her when we got home. I said, okay, mom, you can start worrying about me because that special thing I'm supposed to do. I'm pretty sure it just happened. Now you, you gave to the, uh, the memorial there, some of the stuff that you were wearing and, and, um,

Tell me about meeting some of those families who lost loved ones. I was offered the opportunity to donate something to the 9-11 Memorial Museum, which was an honor. So I donated the shirt that I wore into Bin Laden's room with the American flag patch on it anonymously because I didn't... It's not like, hey, look at me. It was this shirt was present when Bin Laden was killed. That's all I wanted because of the chronology of the way the museum works. And if you haven't seen it, you must see. But...

I didn't know as I donated it that they walked me into a conference room and there was maybe 30 people, all of whom had lost loved ones on 9-11 in the towers and at the Pentagon and Flight 93. And they kind of put me on stage and said, tell them what happened. And the first time I'd ever publicly told the story was there. It was just a response from people who lost loved ones, you know,

They kept saying it was helping with the healing process. There will never be closure, but putting a face with a name helps with the healing, which we need. And there was a guy there with his grandson. And the grandson's father, obviously the grandfather's son, had died in 9-11. And he was telling me a story. He said, my grandson always asked, why did God do this? And I said, God didn't do this. The devil did this. And you, sir, killed the devil. And just to hear something that powerful.

That's what made me decide to try to get my story approved by the Department of Defense, which I did to help. If I can help these 30, I can help thousands of people with the healing process. And I've assumed risk before, and it's worth it. Well, what you did and that whole team and the analysts and all the logistics and everything that has to come together,

Rob, you made us proud. And I hope every one of those people that were involved, engaged in that operation, that they know how much America loves them and cares for them. And, you know, and I really hope they do. And I don't know how to convey that other than I hope all Americans do that. Yeah, it's I have a friend, Dakota Meyer, who's a Medal of Honor recipient. And one of his best sayings is I never want another.

9-11, but I'd love another 9-12. And that's just the way America came together. We're seeing the American flag as a beacon of freedom. And most people, like I said, are like that. I just and they just, you know, they don't get hurt very much.

but America's out there. The patriotism is out there. And then, and the, the coalition, you know, our Western partners, just because, just because most of our government suck doesn't mean the people do. Yeah. What else from last question here about nine 11, what do you find? Most people don't know about that. Like, what do you want them to know? You know, there's a whole younger generation that,

wasn't watching TV that morning, wasn't even born. Well, it's the, you know, everyone love everyone, global civilization that they're being taught, which is awesome. I believe me, I'd rather have peace than war, but people need to realize it doesn't matter. Again, there are people out there that want to kill us, not based on our skin color or our gender. It is based on the fact that we don't believe what they believe and they want to kill us and they will try again. The realization that, you know,

This country is great, but it's also a huge target. It's the best, greatest country in the world. It's a target. And as an American, you could be targeted. So just the awareness that we are the good guys, but someone wants to hurt us.

Yeah, there's a great inscription there at the World War II Memorial. And it always struck me because it's a reminder. And I don't I should memorize the quote because I like it so much. But it basically says we came, we fought, we conquered, but we didn't take. We didn't go and acquire more land. We didn't we didn't do what some of these other countries are doing right now today.

But the world is a better place and we are the world's superpower. But sometimes, quite frankly, we don't act like it. And I don't think we need to apologize to anybody. Well, we are. We're the big tough guy that doesn't realize he's tough and we think we need everyone's approval. And we don't. But we do that because we do lead strength through peace. If we wanted to take stuff, we could take it easily now. I mean, yeah.

Talk about energy independence. We wanted everything. We could grab it, but we don't. And it's just, again, it's being separated by two oceans and having the protection that we do and all the handouts that we have is we're very, very complacent because everyone just deserves stuff. And it's a hard truth to learn. And people are going to, unfortunately, I hope not, but they're going to have to learn it again. Yeah.

What can the average person do? You know, the person who's living in Dubuque, Iowa or pick anywhere in the country, they live in Littleton, Colorado. What can they do? They see somebody in a military outfit or, you know, what can they do?

And again, a lot of guys in the military don't want to be thanked for their service. I mean, even to the point where, look, I was serving. It's my honor type stuff. But just little things like a handshake or if they're drinking a beer, buy them a beer. If they're drinking a Coke, buy them a Coke or whatever. But yeah, let them know they're appreciated. And they do. I mean, military is great. And again, too, with all the...

social experimentation in the military. Most men and women in the military don't care. It's the media who hypes it up. People just want people to pass the standards and be one team, one fight, which we are. Just give them a thanks and get them a meal or something if you see them traveling.

Well, Rob, I can't thank you enough for your service and what you've gone through. And I'm glad you wrote it down about the operator because I got to tell you, if you want to get an inspiring book with amazing stories in it,

I can't encourage enough of you all at home to read The Operator. I think it would just be absolutely fascinating. And, you know, for your service, we're going to bypass the normal 12 rapid questions because it just doesn't feel right. You've earned a lifetime pass from the questions, so...

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us and for everything that you've done. I need to plug this too, because this has been really popular with people is that robertjoneal.com. I will personalize and sign anything within reason in the book. And there are some funny requests. I had a, I had a dude buy one for his buddy's birthday that said something like Kyle, you keep selling mattresses the way I killed terrorists or something like that.

You know, I did this. I actually did it as my brother, Alex. He wanted one. I told him how great it was. And so I signed up. You signed it and sent it to him. He said, I think I just signed one for your brother. And...

There aren't a whole lot of Chaffetz's out there. So yeah, if you want a personalized one, it really is. And I was glad to know that you really did it. It wasn't some intern somewhere, but it was really you because you pinged me right after. Was that your brother? Yeah, no, I'm really signing them. I put them in the envelope myself, either me or my wife. Yeah, no, that was great. So

Rob, thank you again for joining us and thank you for your service to this country. And can't thank you enough. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me anytime. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Rob O'Neill right after this. So the first part of the conversation we had with Rob O'Neill, we had before just everything broke loose in Afghanistan. So

We knew Rob was going to be more than busy going into the 20th anniversary of 9-11 and is kind enough to join us again so that we have a complete picture of what's going on here. But top line, Rob, I mean, a lot of people sacrificed their lives and fought to get rid of the terrorist threat to the United States of America. When you look at what's going on in Afghanistan now, give me your perspective.

Well, this is an example of what happens when subordinates are not truthful with their superiors. What we see a lot from certain ranks in the military all the way up into Congress is subordinates will lie to their bosses because they don't want to upset them, and they eventually want to get promoted too. And then up at the general officer level too, you know, you show me a four-star general, and I'll show you someone who's surrounded by at least 12 yes-men.

So they they they mislead them to tell them something is better than it is. So it's not it's not I mean, they're making bad decisions based on false information. So what happened here is someone told someone that told someone that told the president that if we leave right now, we've been training this army for 20 years. There are twice the size of the Taliban and they will hold the line. They just assume they could do that and have a 20 year anniversary of 9-11. But people on the ground say.

knew that most of the Afghans wouldn't stand and fight. They're there for an easy paycheck to have easy air support. They don't have to fight in the first place. And I mean, and then people still argue with me that now, but I mean, the proof is right here. If you have someone that you've been training for 20 years to fight, you have our weapons and you're twice the size of the enemy and you lose in 10 days, someone wasn't fighting. And that's just the truth. And then coupled with the fact that, I mean, I've been saying since 2005, you know,

We don't need a bigger footprint in Afghanistan. We probably need fewer troops because we we did what we wanted. We kicked Al Qaeda out. We need cross-border capability. But for the love of God, never give up Bagram Airfields. And no one believed us. And they made that horrible decision. I don't know who decided. I'm amazed someone hasn't been fired yet for taking the military and the State Department and the CIA out of Afghanistan before the civilians.

Yeah. And maybe nobody's been fired because they did exactly what the president and the vice president wanted to have done. They said, you know, my concern is that Biden and Harris actually came in and said, well, this is the number of troops rather than, hey, here's the objective. Now, how many troops do you need in order to get it done?

Yeah, I mean, that's true. But if I'm if I'm, you know, on the on the Joint Chiefs or a general in some position, if I if I recommend that we take the troops out first, I should be fired. If I recommend we don't take the troops out and they do something other than that, I would resign because being on the ground in combat, so many different places, the men and women with whom I served when we made a mistake this horrendous.

we were either fired or we died we were killed and it's that simple and these people they have no shame uh to the point of leaving leaving the so many vehicles and weapons and aircraft there knowing that they're going to get a high paying contracting job and well we just need to make more stuff there's another government contract it's the whole uh military industrial complex that that uh

All these decisions are made based on personal wealth, personal power and reelection. And these are people in the beltway that have no experience on the ground. And a lot of them just won't listen to people below them. And this is what happened. And I'm convinced based on this ineptitude that this is probably the single worst decision in the history of the U.S. military.

That's quite a statement because, I mean, this story has not fully unfolded. We have people with American passports behind enemy lines. The president promised that he'd stay in order to get there, get them out and have not. So let's kind of break down some of that stuff you talked about. I've been to both the Kabul airport and Bagram Air Force Base. Now, don't get me wrong. A member of Congress kind of blows in and out, but you count it by the number of hours.

compared to people who go and serve a year plus. But this Bagram Air Force Base is about 25 miles north of the Kabul airport. So they have a fundamental decision. They have options. That's not too far away. Kabul is in a much more difficult situation because the road narrows. It's like a funnel point.

In fact, the guys that were traveling with me and again, when I was a member of Congress, you've got guys like Rob O'Neill to help protect you. And they said, this is the most dangerous part of your trip because that road narrows his little two lane road that you have to go through and that you really can't secure that road along the way.

But somebody made this decision to get rid of a fully fortified Bagram Air Force Base that included locking up of a lot of prisoners, people who wanted to go out and have death and destruction to the United States. And we let all those people go as well.

Yeah, we did that. And I mean, there's so much more to Bagram than just protecting Kabul. Bagram is a launching pad for deterrence as far as Iran, China, Russia, everything over there. And we just gave it away. And Bagram was not, you know, anyone who put up their right hand and served the country, I've got the respect for. But Bagram was not a very difficult combat deployment. We actually used to refer to Bagram as the self-licking ice cream cone. It could support itself.

You literally, you can defend yourself. You've got perimeter security. There's so much offset space you can defend it. We've got the best pilots in the world, the best jets, bombers, mechanics, four airstrips. We've got a primetime

hospital we got a prison and great birthing there's even green bean coffee fast food and karaoke night so when these when these um convoys full of taliban al-qaeda isis q or isis k whatever flavor the day is whatever we're calling the same group of warlords we can bomb them and have the pilots back in time for burgers and it's it's not it's not that bad you know you fly from ramsan airbase all of a sudden you're you're in afghanistan that but okay so that's uh

Yeah, it gets mortared, rocketed once in a while, and that sucks, and people have been killed doing that. But it's not like you're walking through minefields like the Marines did in Nangarhar. This is a prime example of someone who has no foreign policy experience other than taking an Amtrak from D.C. up to Delaware.

And he's getting bad advice from people. So you're not going to you're not going to win many wars, weren't suits and not being within a couple thousand miles of the place. And just whoever decided to get rid of Bagram seriously should should be done. Shouldn't work for anyone ever again. Like my wife, who has no military experience, asked me the question, why did we give the enemy a timeline and why did we give up that airfield?

Yeah. You know, why can't our generals? Well, and you know what? Congress has a role. They're the ones that appropriate these things. They're the ones that go out and provide the funding for these types of things. It's also interesting now, and this will have to play out a little bit, but the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, what's called to the cigar, right?

has done 52 quarterly reports over the years. We always had, when I was chairman of the oversight committee, we always had him come in and give a briefing

Few members even paid attention. The public didn't get a whole lot of... I mean, there's some videos out there of these hearings, but not many people engaged in them. But back in 2018, they foreshadowed all this was going to happen, that we were spending far too much money. We were engaging people who are essentially illiterate. Now, they didn't use the word illiterate, but that's my word, having spent, again, hours on the ground there in Afghanistan.

You had people that we expected to take over the role of the United States military who had never held a pencil before. They can't count.

They've never, you know, they were doing this exercise with this British commander trying to write down the license plates of cars that had gone by. And they're like, we don't know the alphabet. We don't know numbers. And the British commander is just rolling his eyes like, these are the people that are going to take over? And then to hear the president say, hey, you know what? Nobody foreshadowed the idea that these people wouldn't fight and that they couldn't do anything. It's always been that way, folks. It was that way for 20 years. Yeah.

They won't use the word illiterate because they don't want to offend people the same way they don't want to. When I was a shooter, they don't want us killing people, except in a nice way. I mean, and a lot of you've never been to Afghanistan. People will think you're lying to them. But when I say illiterate, I'm not talking about they can't even write. They don't know what time is and they don't know how old they are.

And I'm not making this up. And then they would force us. We'd call them shooter statements. When we'd get engaged in gunfights, if we killed a terrorist, we needed to get two shooter statements from our Afghan partners. So they're supposed to make a statement and then just to justify our existence, why we did murder. And so we're supposed to believe they wrote these shooter statements. They couldn't even sign their name. They would write an X.

Like this is I'm not I wish I was making this up. Yeah. I mean, you get that. And there's a lot behind the scenes, too, as far as the Taliban bribing them, China paying people off to throw their guns down because China's got interest in there. But, you know, when we talk about people going there to visit and I know I've known you for a while, Jason, I know you do it the right way. We need to try to show up without telling people, because like everything from the V.A. to Afghanistan, when there's a congressional delegation going, they give them a few weeks notice and every time.

Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines cleaning the place, spit-shining everything, memorizing their statements. Here's the questions we're going to ask. No, show up on a Wednesday morning without telling anyone, and then ask an E-5 what's going on. Then you'll get the truth. They don't do it that way. Again...

You're right. That was my favorite thing. I would go, and then I'd just start walking a different direction. I'm like, I don't want the canned guy who's been practicing and had to fill out a report about what he's going to say in advance of meeting this member of Congress. I'd go and pull two guys off, and I'd push those handlers aside and say, sorry, I'm going to talk to these guys, and I don't even want you to know who they are because I want them to just give me a candid answer. And they were always –

You know, I would say, tell me what, I don't know what I don't know. So tell me what I need to know. And, and then you'd hear these horrific stories. Like we had a contractor who,

They were telling me about a contracting group was paid to put in a 10 foot by 10 foot slab on this forward operating base. That same contractor was paid to install it. And a contractor was the same contractor got the contract to destroy it. And he literally went, put in the cement next day, came back, took it out, got paid both times. It was ridiculous.

This is, I mean, this is, that's the truth too. With a lot of the contracts, a lot of, yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't want to get way off there, but yeah, just talk to someone who's really doing it and expect, I mean, even, even with, you got a Marine commanding officer,

from a training base that was relieved of duty for just asking for someone to take responsibility. And then they fired him. I mean, that's what happened. The chain of command, the way that we did it at Teal King 6, and granted, we're a tier one unit, but we would do evaluations on a horizontal level. And if the boss wasn't doing

a good enough job, we would suggest to them, hey, we need to change this, change this. You know, are you worn out? Or we asked too much of you? And they would do the same to us. And I actually, some of the best officers will do my, so I don't want to, you know, officers to think I'm bad enough on all of them. I've worked with some amazing officers. But I had, we were doing something one time and I had one of my bosses with me and I said, well, we got to do this, but you are in charge, sir. And he said, he said, oh, make no mistake. I'm not in charge. I'm just responsible.

Good point. I like the way you said that. That's funny. Yeah, that's a good leader right there. Yeah, well, he understands what's the reality here.

All right, let's talk. I'm mystified. Like, I'm beside myself. I look at all this hardware, the billions of dollars of hardware from helicopters and tanks and transport vehicles and guns. And, I mean, you name it, we were supplying it. And now that the Taliban has taken it over, they're putting it in our face doing, you know, just mocking us. What is the rationale behind?

Like, why don't we just go in there and bomb the hell out of it and just destroy it? I don't know why we didn't scuttle it when we left. That's an awesome question. I don't have an answer to it. The same question is, OK, we have all of the Taliban leadership in the presidential palace right now. Why aren't we bombing it? I don't know. I mean, we shouldn't have left it there. But again, it's just such a hasty retreat. Yeah.

people just leaving stuff behind. And I think it probably got to the point of it. It was so bad with the military leaving. I'm convinced with, with, with all that, you know, all the machines that take retina scans and, and, and fingerprints, I'm convinced that people were turning those over to the Taliban just to get through checkpoints so they can get out. It was just way too hasty, you know, too big of a footprint to leave that early. Plus we've just forgotten, like, we don't need to do anything. I don't need to give you a timeline. And you know,

Well, we used to be the only superpower in the world, but we can go anywhere we want. And the rest of the world is lucky because we are so good, so big, so strong. We're the only people that invades places and then built it up for them. We can take over everything if we wanted to. But, I mean, it's a great thing, but it's also a detriment is we're the good guys, and we act like good guys. Yeah, there's actually, if you go to the World War II outdoor, in the mall there in Washington, D.C.,

The memorial there at the base of one of the flagpoles there. There's this great saying about how we come and we conquer, but we don't take. And that's what's been absolutely amazing about the United States of America and what we've done along the way.

But you know what? When we leave tens of millions or billions of dollars worth of equipment there, it doesn't mean you have to actually... I mean, we ought to just send out a memo and say, hey, folks, you know those helicopters? That stuff's ours. We didn't leave it for you. And if you got it, guess what? We're going to go over the horizon, and we're going to bomb the hell out of it. You might want to get out of the way. Yeah, well, I mean, we should have done that, no doubt about it. We had the capability to destroy it when we were there. And you don't want to... Because that's not... I mean...

It's not like the Taliban is going to take it. They can sell this now to the Iranians. They can sell it to the Chinese. I mean, prime example, there was a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter flying around, I think, Canada the other day with a guy hanging from it. And it's a different story whether or not they hung the guy or it was just a Taliban fighter trying to hang a flag. I've heard different stories. But the point is the helicopter was flying it and there was no way the Taliban learned how to fly it in five days. So that means it's either a U.S.-trained Afghan or it's a Chinese or Iranian pilot in there.

So they're going to be able to use the stuff that we didn't destroy. I don't know. I wish I had the answer. You know, I don't envy everyone making decisions now, but I know how I would have done it, and it certainly would have been leaving it behind with the keys and running with the air conditioning on. Let's switch gears a second, Rob, because there are a lot of people who served, and I think they're questioning whether or not their effort, their sacrifice...

The toll that it took on them personally and on their family, whether it was worth it, whether the country is grateful or was it all for nothing that 20 years later going into 9-11 is the Taliban or the are the terrorists stronger than they were 20 years ago? What do you what do you say to those men and women who served along the way?

How should they look? I would say, well, the way they need to look at it, it all comes down to it from to the micro, not the macro, is that when you're going through the door, going into that field, you're fighting for the man or the woman next to you. And everyone that I know on the ground, every branch of service did an amazing job and they're fighting for each other.

and they should not think that anything they did was in vain. And I know a lot of people that are having a tough time with this. My advice to them is to make sure you call somebody. Even if you're having a good day, give someone a call because they might be having a bad day. And you may need to put the bottle down. Don't self-medicate because, you know, I've been there. It's not a good place. It doesn't help at all. But also the realization –

And this goes for all of our allies. And there are most soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines I've worked with from every country have been great. It's the politicians themselves.

that for whom they're working that are bad. The policies are bad. The people on the ground are great and they, they, they shouldn't question what they were doing. Bad decisions were made and it's just, it's hard to polish a turd like this, but everyone I've met on the ground is a great job. Yeah. You know, I heard Peter Schweitzer say, and I think it's the right way to look at it, that we are so proud of the boots. It's the suits that let us down. And there is a difference between the boots and the suits. And I,

you know, there is a reason why we didn't take another major terrorist attack like we did on 9-11. And it's because of a lot of good men and women. And you take out a lot of those threats,

are people that are organizing to terrorize the United States of America or somewhere else, or Americans in general, you don't always get to tell people about it. You don't always get to be able to say, hey, you know what? We just thwarted this event. And I hope every mechanic, every person who's working in food service, every person who is an actual shooter and going through doors, the whole spectrum, I hope they all understand

recognize that there are millions of Americans that are so grateful for their service. Oh, there really are, too. The majority of Americans are great, too. I still get a trot a lot, and I talk to people face-to-face. I even ran into people on the street today when I was working out, and they were saying the same exact thing. Just let everyone know that we're really, really proud of them. But getting to people that are making bad decisions, I had a sour taste in my mouth, and this was on September 12th.

2001, a day after, and President Bush and that administration decided they were going to call it Operation Infinite Justice. And they changed it that day to Operation Enduring Freedom because it was offensive to some people. It's like, are you kidding me right now? The towers are smoking, and we were offending people with our words. This is going to end badly. That's interesting. I never heard that story. Well,

What runs through your mind is the guy who took the shot to take out and kill Osama bin Laden. What do you think of when President Biden, when he talks about how we killed Osama bin Laden?

Yeah, I mean, you know, President, I don't doubt that President Biden wanted Bin Laden dead. I really, I'm not that partisan. He did say he didn't think we should go in and get him. And that was probably just based on stuff that's happened before with Boss Haas's rescues, a political decision. And President Obama over, you know, overrode him because he

it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter about getting reelected. This is the right thing to do. But I mean, President Biden just will jump on any happy bandwagon he can to try to look good. Because, I mean, if you recall, and a lot of people say this, Senator Biden

was uh was around when when uh saigon fell and then vice president biden was around when we abandoned benghazi and now president biden had the worst choice and you know decision in in as far as i'm concerned military history so i mean he could say we this or we that but he really hasn't made a lot of great foreign policy decisions and you know his his whopping 50 years in office yeah i think this will be his legacy and kamala harris is quite frankly you know it's interesting she takes the

the credit and an interview with a Dana bash there at CNN saying, yeah, I was the last person in the room on Afghanistan and making those decisions months ago. But I noticed when they tried to take a victory lap and say, Hey, we did things the best we could. We couldn't have foreshadowed anything else.

she wasn't standing by his side. And there's probably a reason why that she's just a political monster and really has no military background whatsoever. No, not at all. I mean, and it says a lot about these leaders when they can give a, not even give a speech. When something happens, they had their press secretaries come out. President Biden,

you know, retreats, a 20 year war won't take one question, but we can talk to Jen Psaki. You know, they send Admiral Kirby out. They send other people. You don't hear from the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of President very often. And when you do, it's like President Biden, all he does is read his book report to himself and just get angrier and angrier at the invisible man he's arguing with.

Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation about the lack of openness, transparency. Personally, I thought they should have been giving awards to Donald Trump. You may not like what he was saying, but you know what? You could ask him any question almost any day and he would stand there and answer it and give you a perspective and a justification. And that's the kind of openness and transparency I think we want. And it's so funny to me. All these people argue, oh, we got to go back to the traditions.

of what, having some flunky right press release? That's the way you want to get what's going on? Yeah. It was so wrong. Last question, Rob. You've been so generous with your time. And again, we can't thank you enough for you and so many people like you that served and the sacrifice and whatnot. It's a big weighty question. I know we're just kind of a top line here, but now what do we do? I mean, the president's made this decision. We have pulled out of Afghanistan. Now what do we do?

Well, you mentioned earlier, Jason, about the people who are behind the scenes that prevent attacks. We're kind of relying on them. They're there. They've been there. And they're everything monitoring social media and, you know, just message traffic and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, people can say what they want about certain levels of law enforcement, FBI, stuff like that. But there are people out there looking out for us and a lot of really, really good people. It's just my favorite quote. I don't know if I said this before.

was that the uh the loudest boos come from the cheapest seats so we have great men and women out there looking out for us and and we have i mean america is is real there's really really great people out there and the majority of people are great we're we're just we're mean to each other on twitter and when we're in traffic that's about it people are generally good they look out for each other i'm very optimistic i just uh it's you know it's we're taking a lot of steps backwards with uh

what's going on because I mean it's not just Afghanistan the problem that comes when now when China decides to take Taiwan no one's going to depend on us to help we started the summit for it right now so I hope we everything from the the nonsense we're teaching our children as far as indoctrinating them in school to some of the stuff spewed from from Hollywood and between the like I said the Beltway in New York um

I think reality is starting to come around, too. And, you know, just, you know, I just hope the people's voices are heard. Because right I mean, right now we need we need great leaders in Congress. We need a lot of veterans in the government. But we also need the faith in our in our the way that we elect people, because right now no one really believes a lot of this was real.

Well, I think he hit it on the head and on so many fronts, right? And at the end of the day, the United States of America is still the greatest country on the face of the planet. There's a spirit in America that I don't think will ever be overtaken ever. But we better be smart about the threats that are true and real around the world. We better not be these snowflakes.

who just assume that everything's going to be just fine, that we don't have to worry about that. Because I think the decision in Afghanistan and whatnot has repercussions that will radiate out into everywhere from Libya to Iran to, you're right, Russia and China and our NATO allies who felt abandoned as well. And the more I think about it, the more I look at it, I think you're probably right. That was probably the single worst decision

decision in the history of our nation. And I think that's the way Joe Biden and his administration have

Susan Rice's and the Kamala Harris's of the world will be remembered. But I guess for today, and as we go into the celebration of the people who fought for the country, I hope they feel celebrated and buoyed up and supported and loved and cared for. And I hope we take time to not just pause for a moment or two, but always remember the

you know, what happened on 9-11 and that we have to be vigilant. And so hats off. And I can't thank you and all those who have served. I can't thank you enough. Well, I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. It's always great talking with you.

Rob O'Neill, thanks for joining us on Jason in the House podcast. Appreciate it. Again, there are amazing people who step up, amazing Americans with unbelievable stories, ordinary Americans who step up and do extraordinary things. And I can't thank Rob O'Neill. Everybody who was on that SEAL team, all the intelligence that went on to take out Osama bin Laden,

And I can't thank enough for all those people, literally hundreds of thousands of people who served in Afghanistan, went over there, sacrificed to take out the terrorist threat.

And for those that lived through and remember, maybe lost a loved one on 9-11 and everything that followed from then, it's such an important part of my life and our life as Americans in the history of this nation. So thanks again to Rob O'Neill. Thanks for listening to the Jason in the House podcast.

I hope you can rate this, subscribe to it, and you can go over to foxnewspodcast.com for some others, foxnewspodcast.com for some other really good podcasts.

And I hope we get a chance to listen to some of our other interviews. You know, the one we did with Brian Mast, I think, was really, really compelling. Michael Walsh, who served also. Look through the list of who we've interviewed. Congressman Chris Stewart. People who've served in our military and did extraordinary things. And I thank you again for listening to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz.

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