US Navy Seal: Killing Bin Laden 'not the highlight of my career'
This week, Matt Bissonnette will undergo surgery to remove remnants ofthe most famous gunfight of this century from his body. Fragments of rounds fired as he and fellow US Navy Seals raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in northern Pakistan in May 2011 are embedded near a nerve in his right shoulder, and his fingers have started to go numb.
Yet he doubts he will be taking home any shrapnel as a souvenir. “And I don’t keep tabs on how many people I’ve killed, or any of that kind of stuff,” he says breezily.
Bissonnette spent 14 years in the elite military force before bowing out after the mission in Abbottabad, which snared the prize quarry that eluded the US for almost a decade after al-Qaida’s epochal attacks on New York and Washington. It was an extraordinary conclusion to the career he dreamed of as a boy in rural Alaska, snowmobiling to school and surrounded by moose.
Today, however, he claims it was no big deal. The Bin Laden raid, which he celebrated with a takeaway and an early night, “is absolutely not the one highlight of my career”. The Seals “were just a bunch of normal guys” who were “driven to succeed and refused to fail”, but ultimately “nothing special”. It was not like Hollywood: “I don’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
There is a reason for all the modesty. Two years after Bissonnette became the first veteran of the raid to break cover with No Easy Day, a gripping bestseller published under the name Mark Owen, and just as he releases a second book, there is a new show in town.
Robert O’Neill, a former teammate, is all over the news telling his own version. And while Bissonnette says he stuck to a gentleman’s agreement – kept even when they were asked by the US president Barack Obama – not to disclose who actually killed Bin Laden, O’Neill is unabashedly boasting that he fired a fatal shot through the terrorist chief’s forehead. Such claims of individual heroism are taboo among the secretive Seals, who sign non-disclosure agreements.
Bissonnette has already been attacked by ex-colleagues who are furious he may cash in on their work. He claims that his old boss replied to a post-publication text message saying he’d “love to talk” by instructing him to delete his number, and erecting a mock gravestone for him in the boss’s office. It was, Bissonnette says, intended to warn colleagues that if they blab about missions, like he has, “We’re going to bury you, too.” Chiefs recently wrote to all Seals reminding them of their ethos: “I do not advertise the nature of my work, or seek recognition for my actions.”
Now, despite having written in his book about Bin Laden “twitching and convulsing” as he and a comrade “fired several rounds”, Bissonnette apparently can’t bear the thought of being considered self-aggrandising as well as loose-lipped. “It kills me being associated with this other guy,” he says.
When Bissonnette is asked if O’Neill is telling the truth, he says, after a five-second silence: “I think there are some major inconsistencies, and information is lacking in the story.” He sighs. “I think there are some inconsistencies,” he repeats. “Some large ones.” He still declines to say who actually killed Bin Laden, or confirm that O’Neill was the other shooter. O’Neill says that Bissonette did strike Bin Laden.
Bissonnette returns again and again to a comforting distinction in his own mind between him doing things the “right way” – a phrase he repeats 14 times in an hour – and O’Neill’s showboating. He means using a pseudonym (despite the inevitable leaking of his real name) “not showing my face” (except for throughout an hour-long, primetime TV special); and pledging to donate proceeds from his first book to charities working for Seals and their families.
This third pledge is now also imperilled, adding to Bissonnette’s stress. The US government responded to his decision not to submit No Easy Day for censorship by threatening to sue him for the profits and opening a criminal inquiry. His lawyer said in a recent court filing that he may forgo as much as $8m in royalties and future earnings. “It’s tough to take,” he says of being pursued by the government he served. “I’ve never looked at this as me getting rich, never looked at this as me putting money in my pocket.” He claims to be “in a hole” after hefty tax bills and legal fees.
He accuses the Obama administration of aggressively going after him because “it was an election year when the book came out” in 2012, and his story threatened to spoil a carefully managed PR campaign on the raid. CIA officials helped the makers of Zero Dark Thirty, the Hollywood version, while Obama and senior officials gave interviews to Mark Bowden, the author of The Finish, a rival book on the mission. While Bissonnette was lambasted for going public, the defence secretaries he served published candid memoirs since leaving office. Obama is expected to do the same after 2016. He accuses them of “hypocrisy”, adding: “That’s what politics is all about. It disgusts … it makes me sad.”
Bissonnette won’t say whether Obama, a Democrat criticised by some Seals for taking too much credit for Bin Laden’s killing, deserved his re-election. However, public records show that he registered to vote as a Republican in the swing state of North Carolina on 6 November 2012 – election day.
With Obama sending US forces back to Iraq, and Afghanistan in a mess, Bissonnette, who did 13 deployments, emits another deep sigh when asked if his country lost those wars, as one top general said this month. “I think it’s hard nowadays to define a win,” he says. “Or a loss.”
He suffers from nightmares and flashbacks to what he went through, and has sought help to deal with them. “I think it’s good for anybody to talk,” he says. The near-catastrophic crash-landing of the helicopter they rode into Bin Laden’s yard replays in his mind. “That was my first and only crash,” he says. “I was pretty convinced we were all dead.” Neck and back injuries sustained in the crash forced him into surgery. After he struggled with America’s notoriously sclerotic Veterans Affairs health system, a surgeon who read his story carried out the procedure for free.
While the US government chases his cash, jihadists seeking to avenge Bin Laden’s death pursue Bissonnette online. Information about him and relatives is posted on websites calling for his assassination. He makes no public appearances and our interview has to be conducted over the telephone for security reasons, according to his publicists. Yet he claims the threats don’t bother him. “I faced really, really bad guys on all of my deployments,” he says. “I got along just fine.”
Bissonnette turns 39 next month. He refuses to discuss his personal life, but public records suggest he has been married for several years. Since exiting the “speeding train” of his military career, he has “had to get used to the concept of weekends” and relaxation. He is enjoying going to sports fixtures, making it to friends’ weddings and seeing concerts. With a 14-year hole in his knowledge of pop culture, his tastes are outmoded. “I saw ZZ Top,” he says. “It turned out I remembered all their songs.”
On Monday, he releases his second book, No Hero. It traces his progression from a teenager buying his first assault rifle from a school teacher to elite military man. Anxious as ever to claim public-spirited motives, Bissonnette says this one is an inspirational piece for the new generation of American boys with dreams of “joining and serving their country”.
The sequel, which lacks the stunning tale of Abbottabad, drags in places. But anecdotes about “hell week”, in which Seals must go through gruelling tasks on four hours’ sleep, and coming close to passing out on underwater swims, are suitably ludicrous. And as it progresses through some of Bissonnette’s edgier deployments in the unbearable chill of snow-covered Afghanistan and the jihadist hideouts of Iraq, the writing – assisted by the journalist Kevin Maurer – recaptures the zing of a decent thriller.
After being stung first time around, Bissonnette handed this transcript to the US defence department, which responded by redacting sections – including one on a 2007 mission in Tora Bora following a supposed sighting of Bin Laden. Rather than excise the copy, Bissonnette cleverly leaves the blacked-out sentences in place, possibly creating more intrigue than would actually have been satisfied by the words underneath.
It is unclear what he will do next. He appears genuinely conflicted about his decision to step halfway into the limelight. After publicising the book, “I’ve got to get through this government stuff and then drop off the grid for a while,” he says. “Then you’ll probably never hear from me again. Compare that to some other people. I’ll let other people take all the attention.”
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