Robert O'Neill Gives Details of Killing of Osama bin Laden
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Good evening, I'm John Berman in for Anderson. Tonight, the two window washers rescued above New York City speak out. And we give you look at just how risky their job is. They are some of the bravest workers on the planet. Plus, a feline fugitive that advantage to alluded huge search outside Paris. Now, the suspect has been downsized from a tiger, but an estimated 175 pounds, that's what they are saying. It is definitely a big cat. But whose cat? We begin, though, with the man who is taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden. And in doing so, has enraged many of his former Navy SEAL brothers, not to mention top military brass. Many are calling Robert O'Neill a traitor for breaking the code of silence that SEALs hold so sacred. What is more, his version of how the raid went down is disputed by some of his comrades in SEAL Team Six. Tonight, Robert O'Neill has a response the intense backlash that his claim has triggered. The 2011 raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad Pakistan was more than a sensitive mission. It was really the Mount Everest of commando operations. A team of 25 SEALs breached outer walls of the compound and fought their way inside the three-story building. Bin Laden and his family lived on the top two floors. That is where team six was headed. Today. Robert O'Neill sat down with CNN's Jake Tapper and told him his version of what happened.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: In the brief moment you had with him, did you get a sense of him at all? Was it like this is the world's most evil man or was it, this is a coward, this is just another guy? What did it feel like?</s>O'NEILL: The sense was recognition. First of all, an ID of him, and then he's a threat. And then I had to shoot him. And it wasn't the first time I had done that on a target. This wasn't the first target I have been on. And at this point, it was a target. I recognized the threat. I recognized the individual we were after, which was Osama bin Laden and I engaged.</s>TAPPER: A sniper friend of mine wants to ask you, what did it feel like?</s>O'NEILL: At that minute, it was just, it felt like that was the initial threat I had to take care of. And then there were more threats. Threats are just potential unknowns. There were two more -- there was a woman and a child. I wanted to put them in a place they weren't in danger. So they went under the bed. And then there were other spots that need to be cleared. It wasn't until the room was cleared and more SEALs were in the room and it kind of hit me that this felt like -- I had a moment of pause. And I talked to a friend of mine who was in the room and he came up to me, and he put his hand on my shoulder. And I said hey, what do we do now? And he kind of smiled and he goes now we go find the computers. And I said OK, I'm back. That was quite a thing that just happened.</s>BERMAN: Fascinating. Jake Tapper joins me now along with former Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen who was, by the way, one of the few journalists who have ever interviewed Osama bin Laden. He also went into that compound after bin Laden was killed. Jake, I want to start with you. This was a terrific interview. I was struck by the fact that O'Neill says he thought he was going to die on his way there and really through much of the mission. And I was also struck by, when you asked him what it felt like to actually kill him. And he really just said it was part of the job.</s>TAPPER: Yes.</s>BERMAN: I'm wondering what struck you?</s>TAPPER: Well, it is so interesting. As you point out, that he thought they had a 90 percent chance of not coming back. And that was his thought as he was on the Blackhawk headed to Abbottabad in Pakistan. Ninety percent chance the Pakistani military was going to shoot them down, 90 percent chance that the compound would be hard wired. And that the idea that before he went into that room, he was stealing himself for bin Laden to be there and covered with explosives. And he went in thinking this is how I'm going to die, but it's OK, because bin Laden is going to die, too. And that is when he went in. And then it turned out bin Laden did not have explosives on and he shot him. That, I thought that was very telling. And said a lot about the willingness of our troops, of our service members to do things that they know may very likely result in their death or mutilation.</s>BERMAN: Peter, there have been a lot of questions raised about O'Neill's account. If it's true, if it really went down the way he said went down, you are one of the very few people who have been in that room where bin Laden was killed. Does his version of events square with what you saw?</s>PETER BERGEN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: It's not consistent with what I saw. You know, I was there in daylight. I wasn't there with a big fire fight going on with. You know, there was no electricity that night, there is no moon. People with night vision goggles. You know, and I'm not a forensic investigator. From what I saw is very consistent with what he said. That said, there's another very distinct account, which is not his account, which is account of other people on the team, either that I have spoken to or spoken to others. And at the end of the day, I don't think anybody is lying. I think that these are -- it was a very confusing situation. And even when there's a car accident, often people have very different accounts of what happened. This is the world's most wanted man. There have been three fire fights, I mean, a helicopter down. And the whole event that we are talking about probably took about ten seconds from first seeing bin Laden to him being killed. So, you know, at the end of the day, we are never going to settle who actually killed bin Laden. We have Robert O'Neill's account. He's very clear. I spoke to him yesterday in detail about it. That it was his shot that killed bin Laden. But there -- others on the team who say something different.</s>BERMAN: Jonathan, you have been on missions. Does this sound like any of the missions you have been on? Was this ordinary in the sense of how it was performed or extraordinary?</s>JONATHAN GILLIAM, FORMER NAVY SEAL: Well, I mean, just from the nature of this mission and the amount these guys practiced this mission, there was nothing overwhelmingly big about this particular mission, maybe the fact it was going into Pakistan. Definitely the fact of the high value of the target. And the way and secrecy it was practiced over and over again. But the actual mission itself, I'm sure Robert O'Neill is probably done hundreds of those missions, you know. That's the type of missions SEALs do.</s>BERMAN: We are going to talk about whether it's right or wrong for him to come forward because of the code, those that exists among the SEALs. But I want to ask you specifically about the idea that he's talking about the mission in some detail. Not necessarily to Jake, but he has been out there talking, giving some details about how he did his job. Does that concern you?</s>GILLIAM: Well, it concerns me in a couple of ways. One, from just a legal standpoint. You know, when you look at national security, anything that is classified, whether be classified secret to top secret and on to the other classifications. These are things that will injure the nation if these secrets are given. They can injure the nation. And so, it is alarming that some of these things are out there because it can put troops in harm's way. When you tell how long it takes to get from, you know, one base on target, they know how long they have to actually carry something out or maybe there's a base, for instance, in a certain location they flew from and they flew to that certain people didn't know about before. Some people may. But when you say it's 90 minutes in the air in this direction, they now know that or the fact they are looking at certain things when on target. He said multiple times that, you know, they were arranged in this way, so they knew there was a high value target there. There may be some enemies that -- parts of enemy that don't know that.</s>BERMAN: Jonathan, Jake, Peter, stick around for a moment. We are going to play more of Jake's interview ahead. Robert O'Neill talks about the controversy surrounding the fact that he came forward. He credits the discussion with 9/11 families. Plus, the window washers rescued from that broken scaffold dangling above lower Manhattan. Now sharing their story how they kept their cool, 68 stories up in the air.