Speaker 1: All right, seven hundred WYLWT welcome back. It is one
Speaker 1: O seven here in the Greater Cincinnati area, counting down
Speaker 1: to a number of things this week, not the least
Speaker 1: of which opening Day Thursday at Great American Ballpark. Weather
Speaker 1: is improving and that's the way we like it. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to think back, but it will be in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, twenty five years since the greatest attack on
Speaker 1: this country when a band of thugs, a very small
Speaker 1: band of thugs, pulled off what we now referred to
Speaker 1: as nine to eleven and close to three thousand people
Speaker 1: lost their lives on that day, nine eleven, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. It took almost ten years to hunt down
Speaker 1: and bring to justice the man who was the mastermind
Speaker 1: behind the nine to eleven attacks, and that of course,
Speaker 1: was Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 2: And it took.
Speaker 1: The most elite fighting force that's out there, the most
Speaker 1: specially trained fighting force that is out there, to bring
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden to his death and to his justice.
Speaker 1: And it is an honor to welcome into seven hundred
Speaker 1: WYLW the man who was senior Chief Special Warfare Operator,
Speaker 1: a Navy Sealed Team six leader, highly decorated, he was
Speaker 1: with Sealed Team two, Sealed Team four, and eight years
Speaker 1: with the legendary Seal Team six. It is an honor
Speaker 1: to welcome in Rob O'Neill. Rob, how are you on
Speaker 1: this glorious deck.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon, Thanks for having me. I'm having a great day.
Speaker 3: It's Monday, but it's a good one.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh no, fine, great, yea. The first question is
Speaker 1: an innocuous one. Have you ever been to Cincinnati? Oh?
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah. It's the best chili in the world.
Speaker 3: And here's a little story for it too. Two guys
Speaker 3: that went on the bin Lotenraate with me were from Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: Before the bin Lotenraight, we were in Iraq with no TV,
Speaker 3: no air conditioning. We're just there. I actually learned every
Speaker 3: word to the Cincinnati Bengals fights on the Bengal Garrause
Speaker 3: we'd sit there in one hundred degree heat. Then I
Speaker 3: wanted to teach me because that was so uplifting. So
Speaker 3: we just sing out of nowhere. When Morale was in
Speaker 3: the dumping it was too hot, we just started saying
Speaker 3: the bangle. I know to this day still, but I
Speaker 3: think it's my daughters.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: You were so it took almost ten years to get
Speaker 1: Ben Laden. He got May second, two thousand and eleven
Speaker 1: is one it happened. I've read enough to know and
Speaker 1: understand enough to know that the training for that mission
Speaker 1: began long before May of twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: How far in.
Speaker 1: Advance did you Seal Team six be begin training for
Speaker 1: that mission?
Speaker 3: It was about two weeks before we we was confirmed
Speaker 3: that we were going to go after Bin Laden, But
Speaker 3: we'd actually been preparing for it before because we've been
Speaker 3: immediately to war after nine to eleven, and just we'll
Speaker 3: we learned in combat in Afghanistan first, then Iraq, then
Speaker 3: all over you know, to include Yemen and Somalia, the
Speaker 3: Indian Ocean. We just got really good at what we
Speaker 3: were doing. We got really good at fighting the enemy
Speaker 3: and how to exploit it. And what that means is
Speaker 3: we just got better at keeping it simple. We stopped
Speaker 3: complicating everything. And if like someone asked me before, how
Speaker 3: do you clear a compound as big as the Loddens?
Speaker 3: And I just said, well, if the guy in front
Speaker 3: of me goes left, I go right. And then we
Speaker 3: just do that over and over and over, and we
Speaker 3: I mean, we just mentioned football, what like there are
Speaker 3: certain times in life where it doesn't matter how you
Speaker 3: got here, You're just here. And that happened at the
Speaker 3: bin Lodden Rad when a helicopter crashed. But when I
Speaker 3: talked to football teams, I tell them, guys, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter why it's second and fifteen, it just is. Stop
Speaker 3: arguing about it. What we have in common is time
Speaker 3: is ticking. What are you going to do about it?
Speaker 3: Do it now? So it's just a simplicity. Don't don't
Speaker 3: talk yourself into a butt kick, and don't over complicate life.
Speaker 3: It'll get hard enough on his own. Just master the basics.
Speaker 1: So you're basically a young man when all this is
Speaker 1: going on, you're in your early twenties.
Speaker 3: Correct, well that when I was in my early thirties,
Speaker 3: cause I was. It took I mean, you know, if
Speaker 3: people talk about getting into bin Laden's room and shooting
Speaker 3: him and all that stuff, it's not like I was
Speaker 3: flown there out of high school. Like it took me
Speaker 3: personally fifteen and a half years to get to that
Speaker 3: spot of training and sweat and blood and selection courses
Speaker 3: all the stuff and getting with the final and I'll
Speaker 3: be an honored to be pick on the pick to
Speaker 3: be on the finest team I think ever assembled. But
Speaker 3: we were ready for it at that point, when I
Speaker 3: mean when they told us the first time they told
Speaker 3: us what it was, they said, the reason you guys
Speaker 3: are here is as close as we've ever been to
Speaker 3: Osama bin Laden. And there was no cheering. You know,
Speaker 3: we're professionals. We all just said, cool, we're going now, we're.
Speaker 1: Ready, Yeah, and okay, so help me through it. Because
Speaker 1: there were two black Hawk helicopters, one of which, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, clipped I think one of the compound walls
Speaker 1: and kind of went down sideways.
Speaker 2: Were you on that chopper or the other one?
Speaker 3: No, I was on the other one, and I didn't
Speaker 3: even know it crashed until I got into bin Laden's house.
Speaker 3: And what had actually happened was it was a little
Speaker 3: bit warmer than we anticipated, a few degrees celsius. And
Speaker 3: the walls were different to the mud walls we were
Speaker 3: training on chain link fences, so there was a weird
Speaker 3: updraft and you'd have to ask a pilot because I'm
Speaker 3: not smart enough to be a pilot. But the pilot
Speaker 3: decided he couldn't hug and if he said a more
Speaker 3: inexperienced pilot would have tried to power it up. That
Speaker 3: would have rolled and killed everybody. But the pilot, in
Speaker 3: the blink of it, I decided if he turned it
Speaker 3: and put the tail on the wall, he could pin
Speaker 3: the nose of the helicopter in the dirt and it
Speaker 3: might save everyone's life, which it did. But that pilot
Speaker 3: is a hero. Oh and he just decided it to
Speaker 3: put it down on the ground and then that it
Speaker 3: is what it isn't. The guys immediately got out and
Speaker 3: started fighting, and like I said, I didn't even know
Speaker 3: it crashed itself because they put us off on the
Speaker 3: wrong spot because our pilot realized if they can't however,
Speaker 3: we can't. However, I was supposed to go to the
Speaker 3: rooftop of Binlam's house with my team, but he just
Speaker 3: put us off outside the twenty foot walls and we
Speaker 3: had to figure out a way to get in. But
Speaker 3: again we were just very experienced at what we can do,
Speaker 3: and we we did figure it out eventually. But even
Speaker 3: the sniper that we dropped off on my helicopter, his
Speaker 3: job was to run around the entire compound with the
Speaker 3: dog outside the walls, and he got to the point
Speaker 3: where the tail the helicopter with the pilot pin and
Speaker 3: he could see it on the X here. He came
Speaker 3: over the radio and said, guys inside beyond alert. There
Speaker 3: death definitely ready for us. They have a training mockup
Speaker 3: of our super secret helicopter in their front yard. And
Speaker 3: there was a pause and the ground force commander came
Speaker 3: over the radio and goes, no, jackass, that's ours. We
Speaker 3: crashed and the sniper did a good thing. And he
Speaker 3: literally came over the radio and said, yeah, that makes
Speaker 3: a lot more sense than what I was just saying,
Speaker 3: Harry hung.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't what I don't under My next
Speaker 1: trip on a black Hawk will be my first. Don't
Speaker 1: those things make noise? How big was this compound? If
Speaker 1: this isn't Pakistan, right, so how big is this compound?
Speaker 1: And why wouldn't you inside them?
Speaker 3: Well, they probably hurt them. They were a little quieter.
Speaker 3: They these were The President of the United States didn't
Speaker 3: know about these helicopters until a few months prior to this.
Speaker 3: These were super secret. These were self. Man, this is
Speaker 3: stuff they tell me I shouldn't talk about, But again
Speaker 3: I don't know much about it. The technology I know
Speaker 3: they were a little quieter and the radar couldn't see them,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, training with them, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm glad the Aliens who and vented these are on
Speaker 3: our side because this is ridiculous. But they were just really, really,
Speaker 3: really good helicopters. But again, because the Pakistani intelligence was
Speaker 3: hiding bid Laden there, he must have assumed it was
Speaker 3: just Pakistani forces coming to get him or bring him
Speaker 3: out and put him somewhere else, because I mean, they
Speaker 3: put up a little bit of a fight and I'd
Speaker 3: be amazed there were no bombs in every room to
Speaker 3: blow us all up, and there wasn't a bigger Like
Speaker 3: people ask me, why wasn't there more al Kaina fighters there?
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I don't know. I Mean, all I
Speaker 3: can tell you is we didn't call ahead and say
Speaker 3: we were coming out, but they weren't ready. I mean,
Speaker 3: not that would have matter, because we crushed these guys,
Speaker 3: but but they you know, they had a little bit
Speaker 3: of defense. But we, you know, we were very prepared,
Speaker 3: very professional. We all, I mean every guy on that
Speaker 3: mission had at least four hundred real war missions under
Speaker 3: their belt, so it was a I mean, we sent
Speaker 3: in the right guys. Don't get me wrong. I didn't
Speaker 3: want twenty more fighters there, but we handled the ones
Speaker 3: we ran into, and it was we turned something potentially
Speaker 3: catastrophic into something great just because of our preparation to
Speaker 3: get they're not our perfect plan, which the perfect plan
Speaker 3: didn't last for three seconds, which is normal in life,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean, and you mentioned the combat missions.
Speaker 1: You were a veteran of of hundreds of combat missions. Yeah, decorated,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, leading into the two Silver stars, four
Speaker 1: Bronze Stars, various Navy and Marine Corps accommodation medals, and
Speaker 1: so I mean you were highly decorated. But as you know,
Speaker 1: well know, you go into any mission, there is the
Speaker 1: likelihood that you're not coming back from that mission. So
Speaker 1: it really didn't matter, I guess to you whether it
Speaker 1: was going after Osama bin Laden or a regular Tuesday
Speaker 1: when you're out on patrol, there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: you weren't coming back.
Speaker 2: How did you handle that uncertainty?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the thing is, too is a bullet
Speaker 3: only needs to be right once, and if you get hit,
Speaker 3: it could end everything that's important, to everything that you
Speaker 3: think matters. You can end if you gets shot, it
Speaker 3: could just be over. And this one in particular, you know,
Speaker 3: we had a ninety minute flight in on helicopters that
Speaker 3: we didn't know if they worked, and we could get
Speaker 3: shot down, and this house should blow up and there's
Speaker 3: going to be a gunfight. We're not going to have
Speaker 3: enough fuel. This could go a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: It's a one way mission. We accepted that, but we
Speaker 3: talked about it. So you know, if I had a
Speaker 3: guy even say don't before he went, he said, don't
Speaker 3: take this the wrong way, because I'm going one hundred
Speaker 3: percent going. I just need to say it out loud.
Speaker 3: If we know we're going to die tonight, why are
Speaker 3: we going? Which is fair? And we had that conversation
Speaker 3: and we decided we're not going for the fame. We're
Speaker 3: obviously not getting the reward, but we're going after Bin
Speaker 3: Laden tonight for the first Americans that were forced to
Speaker 3: fight out KaiA toe to Toda to the death, and
Speaker 3: those are the passengers on United flight ninety three. You know,
Speaker 3: we're going after Bin Laden tonight for the single mom
Speaker 3: who dropped your kids off at elementary school on a
Speaker 3: beautiful Tuesday morning and then an hour later she jumped
Speaker 3: to her death out of a skyscraper because that's a
Speaker 3: better alternative right now than whatever's going on inside, and
Speaker 3: then we'll never know. You know, she was never supposed
Speaker 3: to do that. Those passengers weren't supposed to fight. We
Speaker 3: are supposed to fight, and that is why we're going.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you get inside the compound and you make
Speaker 1: your way to the compound, tell me about getting inside
Speaker 1: the actual building where ben Laden is. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure the door wasn't open, and they had a butler
Speaker 1: that said, yes, he's upstairs.
Speaker 2: How do you get us to that part?
Speaker 3: I saw a funny a funny meme that had a
Speaker 3: thing from Midlin's ring camera that said, oh, someone's here,
Speaker 3: brb some kids. They know. My first team from the
Speaker 3: crash helicopter had already gotten in. There had already been
Speaker 3: a gunfight. One of my guys had shot two Terrors
Speaker 3: through the Exterrior windows before he was in, and they
Speaker 3: must have kicked the door, hit it with a sledgeham
Speaker 3: or something, but it was already open and they were
Speaker 3: already clearing it by the time I got in. So
Speaker 3: I was on the first floor watching my guys, and
Speaker 3: I kind of just went into a side room. That's
Speaker 3: where one of the other dudes told me their helicopter crashed,
Speaker 3: and I was just impressed that, because I'm looking for
Speaker 3: bombs now this place should blow up. He's gonna martyr everyone.
Speaker 3: But I was looking at my guys who were working
Speaker 3: ahead of me, because I'm in the position I have
Speaker 3: the best seat on the most important, modern and most
Speaker 3: important mission modern history. So I'm watching my guys and
Speaker 3: I was just proud of them because they know damn
Speaker 3: well they can blow up at any moment, but that's
Speaker 3: not stopping them. They're not afraid, and they're not speeding up.
Speaker 3: They're they're using our tactics. And the way the best
Speaker 3: way to describe our tactics are slow as smooth and
Speaker 3: smooth as fast. So if you want to be fast,
Speaker 3: slow down, you know. And I'm watching him do it.
Speaker 3: And the woman who found bin Laden, the CIA agent
Speaker 3: who was depicted in zero Doart thirty, said that I
Speaker 3: don't know what it looks like inside, but there will
Speaker 3: be stairwells, and the first one you will run into
Speaker 3: Khalid bin Laden, and that's his twenty year old son.
Speaker 3: He will be armed, and she said so here's how
Speaker 3: cool she was. He said, if you can ace him,
Speaker 3: you get a shot at the big guy. That was cool,
Speaker 3: and we ran into him. The guys in front of
Speaker 3: me took carry him, so we went up to the
Speaker 3: second floor. He's dead on the stairs, and then I
Speaker 3: was about eight guys back in line. Everyone except the
Speaker 3: first guy started going left and right to clear the unknowns,
Speaker 3: the different rooms, stuff like that. So it's down to
Speaker 3: two of us going from the second floor to the
Speaker 3: third floor, and that's where we know bin Laden is.
Speaker 3: So there's one guy in front of me and he's
Speaker 3: pointing his gun up the stairs and these stairs lead
Speaker 3: to a curtain like a door, but it was just
Speaker 3: a curtain, and he could see people moving back and forth.
Speaker 3: So it's down to me. My job is to control
Speaker 3: his shoulder so that when we have and look for
Speaker 3: other guys that we're going to bring. His job is
Speaker 3: to look forward so he doesn't need to look at me.
Speaker 3: But once I squeeze, it's time to go. And he
Speaker 3: just started saying, hey, we gotta go, we gotta get up,
Speaker 3: we gotta go. Come on now, because he's thinking those
Speaker 3: are suicide bombers. But we can beat him. If we
Speaker 3: go right now, we can't hesitate. And I remember looking
Speaker 3: at him and literally he was brave. I wasn't. I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 3: but line's up there and I'm gonna blow up, but
Speaker 3: I'm just tired of thinking about it. It wasn't bravery
Speaker 3: at all. It's like, let's just go. So I squeezed
Speaker 3: him and he went up, and he went to that
Speaker 3: curtain and he moved it and he sort of tackled
Speaker 3: these two people that he assumed were suicide bombers, like
Speaker 3: he didn't know he thought they were. So he jumped
Speaker 3: on a grenade that didn't go off, which how he
Speaker 3: doesn't have a medal of honor is beyond me. But
Speaker 3: because he went left, I went right because of our tactics.
Speaker 3: And right in front of me, three feet away, standing
Speaker 3: on two feet was the Sawma Bin Lunn and his
Speaker 3: wife Lamal was in front of her him and he
Speaker 3: had his arms on her shoulders, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 3: I was I didn't think he would be as skinny
Speaker 3: as he was. He was taller than I saw it,
Speaker 3: and his beard was sort of gray. But that's his nose,
Speaker 3: that's him. He's not surrendering. I've seen that picture a
Speaker 3: thousand times. He's a suicide bomber. I got to take
Speaker 3: him out, and the way you deal with the suicide
Speaker 3: bombers to shoot him in the face. So I did
Speaker 3: twice at about three feet away, and then he fell down.
Speaker 3: I shot him one more time, and then because his
Speaker 3: wife is in front of me and we're the good guys,
Speaker 3: now it's time to move her out of the way
Speaker 3: because other seals will be coming in. I don't want
Speaker 3: it to be a crossfire. And that's when I looked
Speaker 3: down and saw his two year old son. And this
Speaker 3: is the humanity of stuff like this. I'm a father
Speaker 3: and I'm looking at his two year old son, and
Speaker 3: my first thought was, this kid has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with this. He should not have seen this. So I'm
Speaker 3: moving them out of the way, and I tune around.
Speaker 3: I can hear bin Laden exhaling. I can. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's an ugly side. I can see what it looks like.
Speaker 3: I gets shot in the head three times at close range,
Speaker 3: and I'm kind of looking at him, and one of
Speaker 3: my friends comes up to me. He kind of gets
Speaker 3: controlling me and says, hey, are you good? And I
Speaker 3: said I am, But what do we do now. And
Speaker 3: he laughed and he said, now we find the computers. Bro,
Speaker 3: we do this every night, hundreds of times.
Speaker 2: You've done this.
Speaker 3: Come on And I said, you're right, I'm back. Oh
Speaker 3: my god. And his words to me were, yeah, you
Speaker 3: just killed Osama bin Laden and your life just changed.
Speaker 3: Now get to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so at that point, you get the body out.
Speaker 1: They don't want him to become a martyr, they don't
Speaker 1: want to leave him behind. You got to get the
Speaker 1: body out. You got to throw the body on the
Speaker 1: helicopter and get back to base or I guess to
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier, right, because that's where it was a
Speaker 1: thing at sea.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, we had to call another helicopter in because
Speaker 3: we have to blow the one that crash up. So
Speaker 3: we have to call and and no one realizes this too,
Speaker 3: is that that's more Army pilots, another Army helicopter, and
Speaker 3: more Navy heels. So the heroes on that mission, the
Speaker 3: Army and Seal Team six actually rescued Seal Team six
Speaker 3: on the bin Laden raid. No one ever talks about that.
Speaker 3: I'm amazed. But so that's the one we got to
Speaker 3: get out on. So we turned the body to our
Speaker 3: The first team that crash gave them our initial helicopter.
Speaker 3: This one came in to get us. And then we're leaving.
Speaker 3: And this is the coolest part of the mission because
Speaker 3: we just we got his body. Now we're leiaeving. The
Speaker 3: Pakistani's no, we're here, and they're definitely going to try
Speaker 3: to shoot us down with a jet that we sold them,
Speaker 3: and a jet against the helicopter is a bad fight.
Speaker 3: But if we can live for ninety minutes, we get
Speaker 3: fifty years. I get to see my kids again. But
Speaker 3: worrying about a missile shooting me down is It're gonna
Speaker 3: stop it, So I'm not gonna worry about it. So
Speaker 3: I just started my Stopwatch and I'm waiting for ninety minutes.
Speaker 3: If I get ninety minutes across that border, across the
Speaker 3: border into Afghanistan, we live. And I look down at
Speaker 3: my watch, It's like I spent ten minutes. I spent
Speaker 3: twenty minutes. The sniper sitting next to me is the
Speaker 3: guy who rescued Richard Phillips from Smallly Pirates. Like, this
Speaker 3: is how small this team is. I looked thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: Now it's been forty fifty minutes. Now it's been fifty minutes.
Speaker 3: Got to get to ninety seventy minutes. Then I start thinking,
Speaker 3: you just mentioned baseball. I started thinking about a baseball game,
Speaker 3: top of the seventh watching a no hitter, like I
Speaker 3: don't want to jinx this, I don't want to say anything.
Speaker 3: But it's been eighty minutes. Got to get to ninety. Then.
Speaker 3: I love sports analogies because it doesn't matter how you
Speaker 3: got some even a pro golfer, you had a team
Speaker 3: with you, right, So I love sports analogies. I started
Speaker 3: thinking about the greatest sporting event in American history in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty Lake Placid, when Team USA Hockey was playing
Speaker 3: the greatest hockey team ever played, assembled the Russians, the
Speaker 3: professional Russian team we've never lost since the fifties or
Speaker 3: something like that. And you have this group of college
Speaker 3: kids have no business being on the ice, but now
Speaker 3: they're winning. And it's three to four in the third period.
Speaker 3: You hear the crowd ten nine, still nervous, you know,
Speaker 3: six five, And then the pilot came over the radio.
Speaker 3: This is going through my head. Then the pilot comes
Speaker 3: over the radio at eighty five minutes into a ninety
Speaker 3: minute flight, and he said, very calmly, all right, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: for the first time in your lives, you're gonna be
Speaker 3: happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, wow yep.
Speaker 3: So we fly him down, We bring him to Jalalabad
Speaker 3: to show Admiral mccraven, who was running the mission, greatest
Speaker 3: officer I've ever worked for. And then we showed it
Speaker 3: to the showed the body to the woman who found him,
Speaker 3: and she was she that was the only thing she
Speaker 3: did in life was find him. That's it. She gave
Speaker 3: up her life, no husband, no kids, seven days a
Speaker 3: week for years to find him. And we walked her
Speaker 3: over to his body, and I thought it would have
Speaker 3: been cool enough. This could have ended it. I pointed
Speaker 3: to his body and I said to her, is that
Speaker 3: your guy? And she looked at for second, patted me
Speaker 3: on the back. He goes, well, I guess I'm out
Speaker 3: of an expletive job, and she just left. That was
Speaker 3: so cool. And then we flew him up to Bagram.
Speaker 3: We had we had to show the agency it was here.
Speaker 3: And then a professional photographer and a professional scientist doing
Speaker 3: DNA confirmed and I'm standing above, I'm standing at the
Speaker 3: fet of bin Lad. He's laying right here. I hear
Speaker 3: President Obama. He's on TV. We're watching this. I'm eating
Speaker 3: a breakfast sandwich, and he says, tonight I can report
Speaker 3: to the American people into the world the United States
Speaker 3: conducted an operation to kill Osama bin Laan, the leader
Speaker 3: of al Qaeda. I hear the President say Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 3: I look at Osama bin Laden eating a breakfast sandwich,
Speaker 3: and I thought, how in the world did I get
Speaker 3: here from Butte Montana. And then we turned him over
Speaker 3: to the army. They flew him out to the carrier.
Speaker 3: I didn't see him get dumped in the water. That's
Speaker 3: the story we got. And we literally flew from there
Speaker 3: to Virginia Beach and we were home sixteen hours later.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Rob O'Neill. Robert O'Neill is our guest. His
Speaker 1: book is a New or Times bestseller, The Operator Firing
Speaker 1: the Shots that killed Oselma Bin Laden and My years
Speaker 1: as a Navy Seal Team Warrior. Your life is a
Speaker 1: man changed, as you mentioned immediately after you put three
Speaker 1: into ben Laden.
Speaker 2: You're a marked man.
Speaker 1: Obviously, there are people that want to see you personally dead.
Speaker 2: Because of that.
Speaker 1: So tell me about your life today, precautions you have
Speaker 1: to take or are you the kind of guy that says, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to live my life. I did what
Speaker 1: I needed to do and I'm not going to let
Speaker 1: anybody bother me.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, precautions should be there and everybody should
Speaker 3: be prepared for anything. And that's just have my role
Speaker 3: right now. I mean, I don't discuss the security I
Speaker 3: have in place. I have a lot in place. I
Speaker 3: know how to handle myself, so I'm not you know,
Speaker 3: I can take care of myself and my family, So
Speaker 3: I'm It's one of those things you don't want to
Speaker 3: get complacent just because these people don't only need to
Speaker 3: be right once. But yeah, I'm a target, but so
Speaker 3: is every other American and it would be a lot
Speaker 3: easier if they can get weapons into this country, which
Speaker 3: they have, by the way, over an open border for
Speaker 3: the past four years. Day would much rather go to
Speaker 3: Times Square and kill a bunch of people that just
Speaker 3: try to find me because I'm a hard target. But
Speaker 3: a lot of people out there have their head in
Speaker 3: the sand and don't realize that just because you're not
Speaker 3: at war with someone doesn't mean they're not at war
Speaker 3: with you. So I mean, yeah, I mean, but I see,
Speaker 3: I was forced at a young age to get completely
Speaker 3: immersed in what I call reality, and there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of that going on, especially in this country with
Speaker 3: the political landscape. So I mean, I live my life
Speaker 3: but on that too though, you know a lot of
Speaker 3: political fighting that's only on the internet when you get outside,
Speaker 3: even in other countries. Because my favorite saying is it's
Speaker 3: a large planet, but it's a small world. Believe it
Speaker 3: or not. Most people are actually really good. Most people
Speaker 3: just want to including in combat zones. They just want
Speaker 3: to get on with their lives and raise their kids
Speaker 3: like the rest of us. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: don't get complacent, but there are threats. But for the
Speaker 3: majority of my life that most you know, people are
Speaker 3: just great. If you're angry at social media, put your
Speaker 3: phone down and go outside and talk to people. Go
Speaker 3: to a deli, get a sandwich, go get some chile
Speaker 3: at highlight.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. People live your life. Understand that. You know,
Speaker 1: you could either live your life in fear or you
Speaker 1: can live your life the way we were meant to
Speaker 1: live our lives. But that doesn't mean, you have to
Speaker 1: be stupid about it when you live it, I think.
Speaker 1: Is what you're saying. You're forty eight years old. Forty
Speaker 1: eight years old now, right, what are you doing now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Besides talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, this is the best part of my life right now,
Speaker 3: we're having a bless Yeah. I host a podcast to
Speaker 3: the same name, called The Operator, and I just I'm
Speaker 3: not calling myself an operator. I'm giving you my description
Speaker 3: of my life is an operator, and I want to
Speaker 3: hear your life is an operator and being an operator.
Speaker 3: If you're doing anything to help your family, or your community,
Speaker 3: or your church or your schools, you're an operator. So
Speaker 3: I like to hear from people. So I do that.
Speaker 3: And my book The Operator, it'saw on my website and
Speaker 3: I sign a lot for people because we have fun
Speaker 3: with it. Like I don't use an auto pen, then
Speaker 3: I don't use platelests. I take whatever you want signed
Speaker 3: in the book is there's an inscription part and I
Speaker 3: have put what people want. It's just fun because people
Speaker 3: like it's just awesome. It's not always a military theme
Speaker 3: or motivation. I got one the other day. It's my favorite.
Speaker 3: Some dude bought my book for his buddy as a
Speaker 3: birthday present, and he had me signed Dear Jeff, you
Speaker 3: kill it selling mattresses like I killed the Loud. We
Speaker 3: have fun with so we have fun with that.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Hey, Rob O'Neil, this has been a trip man. I
Speaker 1: would tell you, but we can do anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I believe me.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna hang out to your number and and
Speaker 1: next time I'll play the Bengals theme song for you,
Speaker 1: just to uh, you know, just to get your back
Speaker 1: in the mood for everything.
Speaker 2: How about that?
Speaker 3: Oh, I can you played? You played the Bengal Girl
Speaker 3: anytime you have to fire up yet? I love that song,
Speaker 3: Rob O'Neil, about about time for a Super Bowl win.
Speaker 3: I'm just hey, tell.
Speaker 1: You you're telling us, you're telling us stay well and
Speaker 1: uh we'll we'll visit down the road.
Speaker 3: Thank you outstand. Thanks for having me have a gret day.
Speaker 2: You bet.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you've done in life. That's what
Speaker 1: he's done. One twenty nine News Radio seven hundred w
Speaker 1: WELW