Robert O’Neil Speech Navy SEAL who Killed Bin Laden

I think thanks for having me good to be here thank you thank you very much all right how about major etiquette he gets the people fired up or what that's a great dude really good friend of mine I get a chance to a travel with him quite a bit this is I'm really happy he brought me out here and I want to thank FAI for bringing me out here to Orlando this is quite a place this uh-huh am I the only one who's been lost in that eight room that's it's pretty funny yeah so anyway um what I want to do today I wanted to come down here not to tell the bin Laden story because it's kind of out there already people know what happened I just wrote a book that came out called the operator I think we have a bunch of them here I think I'm signing something later and the stories in there if you want to know more about it you can read that book spoiler alert bin Laden dies at the end of it so he had that coming but what I wanted to talk about is like missions before that how we were successful as a high-performing team and believe it or not how it applies to normal life there's parallels to success everywhere we were able to take that mission that the bin Laden mission was like number 420 for me and for most guys on my team that's why I chapter 23 in the book because it happened at the end but we were able to do it because of what we learned before that and that's those are the rules I want to apply you wouldn't think that stuff you learn in combat would be similar to normal life unless you're married then it's like kind of the same thing but one of the reasons we were successful were people skills we were good to each other we showed respect and make sure everyone knew they were part of something I had bosses that would say please and thank you for normal work not all the time but just to let you know you're part of the team when morale is high a team will work harder and nobody wants to work for a jerk so people skills were important we're another part of our successes we learned the difference between over planning and being prepared the too often people want to sit around and plan and plan and nobody leaves until we have the perfect plan but it only exists the perfect plan exists only in the planning room once you leave Murphy shows up and everything seems to change it's like life is that thing that happens around you while you're planning for something else and 95% of this stuff you worry about never happens anyway a prime example I just said I wasn't going to talk about it but we were a week and a half into planning that big mission we had some of the best minds planning the mission to kill bin Laden and we rehearsed the perfect plan over and over and over every day with real helicopters on a real training site 14 hours a day and then afterwards we talked about it around a table with and with the replica and one night the boss said alright guys what's the worst thing that could happen and the youngest guy in the room said well hey the helicopter could crash in the front yard there's like what I mean can we talk about that for 20 seconds and that happened but we were able to take a potentially catastrophic event and turn it into something great because of our preparation another reason we were successful is we learned how to take emotion out of the decision-making process that your initial reaction is the wrong reaction and it's important to take a second even if a second saw you have to make an informed decision and I get asked how to apply that and believe me it's difficult but I try to apply it every day I I I'll give you an example I I fly every day I came in last night I fly again today which means I'd get to deal with the TSA every day so when I'm in a position especially like after a cocktail or two and I want to shove one of those portly guys right through the x-ray machine myself I'll just ask myself I what's the problem now what's the emotion I am associating to that problem you know that's enough time to make an informed decision I would you know I would say to people even in combat don't react do respond and the fourth thing that was common is no matter what we never quit people would be so close to a goal 95 percent of the way there and have a bad day and then throw their hands you know or a series of bad days that's it I quit I'm done you know you were not having a bad life you're having a bad day take a wrap off time heals everything it'll get better we learn about this at the school every Navy SEAL goes through called basic underwater demolition SEAL training or buds this is the school that is in the movies in the books the most difficult military training in the world is the hardest military training in the world but it's not hard to understand it's not like a bunch of equations and algorithms it's an outdoor concrete slab smaller than this room where you get tortured that's it that's the school a thousand push-ups a day a thousand sit-ups a day a thousand flutter kicks a day we have these boats full of ice water on all four corners just to let you know that even though we're in Southern California I can keep you as cold as I want for as long as I want there's pull-up bars you can see hundreds of pull-ups a day outside there's miles and miles of soft sand and salt water a few ropes to climb it was even a mile from where we would do this kind of stuff to the galley so we're running six miles a day just to eat on top of the additional 14 miles a day sometimes carrying boats on our heads carrying heavy logs what's unique about this course though is they make it very very easy to quit they really encourage quitting it's so hard that I remember going through it I must have had a past I have no future I'm just gonna be in hell that's all there's nothing to look forward to but the funny thing is I can make it all stop right now and just quit I can I can keep doing this nonsense or I can quit and they'll have a warm shower a nice bed and 12 hours of sleep for me or I can keep doing this all I need to do is go over there and wring that thing and it's over up so they always want more Navy SEALs and the government's answer to anything is just throw more stuff at it so they put more people in this course no matter what 85 percent don't make it through it's it's a system that just works the reason the system works is because of the instructors every answer you notice two people skills every instructor there is a Navy SEAL they've all been through this training so they have traits common people that go through this training have similar one one trait that a lot of special operators have especially SEALs is a sense of humor because it gets so bad at some points if you can't laugh at yourself you're gonna lose your mind so seals are actually pretty funny that's and that's good advice for life don't be afraid to enjoy yourself every single day because think about this none of us are getting out of this alive ten out of ten people die right so it's a dry sense of humor or we learn it the first day because we had about 220 sailors that were going through the course we'd seen the movies but we didn't know what to do what do you do with this course so they sat us in the classroom kind of like this and they brought a seal on a stage an instructor to tell us what to expect for the next eight months of our miserable lives and he came walking in looking like a seal camouflage pants blaust into boots a tight blue t-shirt says UDT seal instructor tattoos down to his knuckles the guy's ripped now he is a Navy SEAL so he's obviously ridiculously good-looking and he had a ball cap pulled down over his eyes so we could barely see him and we're looking at him like you're looking at me except we are absolutely terrified no idea what he's about to say if he kind of relished that so we stood there in silence and finally said looking good today gents not you me I know what you're thinking I look a little tired it's because I am I was up all night I had to get my wife out of jail she was arrested for shoplifting earlier that afternoon we were leaving the mall together and she had her arm around me security thought she was trying to steal an anatomy chart so we're sitting there not sure how to respond when just thinking what is this psychopath talking about right uh he was he was bored he was early and he knew we were terrified so he's he was having fun to amuse himself at our expense but then he got motivationally said okay I know you guys have read the books and seen the movies but this is not impossible look at me I'm proof you can make it through this course I will never ask you to do anything impossible but I will make you do something very hard followed immediately by something very hard followed by something even harder day after day after day for eight straight months and that sounds like a lot to get from now to eight months from now but don't think about it that way that is not how you achieve a long-term goal wake up in the morning on time and make your bed the right way then brush your teeth little victories make it to 5:00 a.m. PT on time get through that and make it to breakfast after breakfast concentrate on getting to lunch after lunch make it to dinner after dinner do everything you need to do to get back in that bed no matter how bad your day was you get a fresh start tomorrow because your bed was made right and when you feel like quitting which you will don't quit right now quit tomorrow if you can keep doing that in that time because I'll never ask you to do anything impossible all you need to do to get from now to graduation day is not do one thing no matter what never quit you'll be fine now saying never quit and never quitting are two different things so I need to tell you a story we would do tests every single day at Budds pass or fail for time or completion not the hard hard test but not hard to understand there was the 50-meter underwater swim on a breath hold if I get my pictures up please where you jump in the pool feet first go underwater do a front flip without coming up for air you cannot kick off the side and then swim half the distance of a football field without breathing simple past the 5.5 nautical mile ocean swim against the current which is like 7.2 miles past we had a test where they would tie our hands behind our backs on our feet together and throw us in the pool for 45 minutes at a time doing different drills sinking by exhaling your air floating which is difficult tied up swimming hundreds of meters they would throw things in masks spins you pick them up with your teeth and show it to them but basically this test is introducing you what it's like to not be able to breathe but they're teaching you through negative reinforcement that panicking is not going to help so stay calm and if you can stay calm in this situation you can stay calm a lot of places we actually called this drown proofing and I found it relaxing that was an hour a day where nobody could yell at me but the one I want to talk about is underwater knot-tying they tied a rope the width of an Olympic sized pool a foot off the bottom so 14 feet down there's a rope on the surface there's this an instructor and a student and the student has an 18 inch rope of his own so you're in the Navy so you know how to tie a lot of knots that the test is go tie out a series of knots with this rope around that rope so the instructor will say oh go okay go tie a bowline knot okay so you hold your breath and swim down there you can put me back up now to you swim to the bottom tie a bowline knot and you back off and you know this that's a signal from dad he'll come down and look at the knot look at you look at the nun for some reason the first one is always wrong so he'll go back up for air and you untie the knot extend it retie the exact same knot it's been about a minute he comes back down and checks it okay that's good so you untie the bowline knot you go back up you get one breath of air enough time for him to tell you about not number two so who'd be like okay go tie a square knot so you go do the same thing over again so another minute you get done with that come up one breath of air not number three will be a right angle knot and maybe you know anyway the test is simple tie five knots in a row you pass them now they give you a certain amount of attempts at each test but a friend of mine named John was on his last attempt you know he if he doesn't do all five right now they're gonna kick him out today he'll never be a seal lifelong dream that's lot of pressure so on his fifth not attempt he drowned so the instructor swam down to get him you know he he's not he not trying to kill the guy he just wants him to think he wants to kill him so he grabbed John he swam up to the side and threw him over and jumped out and started yelling across the pool for the medic the corpsman who's a long way away and he's grabbing his stuff and running this way and the instructor realizes that's you know too much time so he straddled John and started immediately with the sternum er up trying to get him to cough it up and he started CPR and we could actually hear him saying to John you'll come back to the light so John was out for a minute and a half finally spit up all the water out of his lungs and the first words out of his mouth work did I pass so the instructor kind of sat back on him and he's getting his color back too cuz you know he gets to keep his job he goes yeah man you passed and John goes thank God I finally got the fifth nine and the instructor said well no you didn't look I'm in a good mood right now so I'm gonna let you in on a secret I don't care how many knots you know how to tie that is not part of the curriculum to become a Navy SEAL my job simply is to see how far you'll push yourself you just killed yourself you passed the goddamn test good job that is the never quit attitude it worked for John it worked for myself and about 33 guys graduated from buds class to 0-8 we were assigned to SEAL Teams and the way the SEAL Teams work out it's just groups of SEALs divided by numbers and those numbers like that odd numbers are in California in San Diego SEAL Teams one three five and seven and the even number teams are in Virginia two four eight and ten I was assigned to SEAL team two so we drove out east stopped by Fort Benning Georgia to work with the Army airborne we learned how to jump out of planes went up to Virginia and then around the country did 13 weeks of SEAL tactical training finer tune tactics better stuff learning how to be a seal after that it was about six months of a probationary period through full of tests and drills and after a long oral board if they liked us we received the insignia for Naval Special Warfare that's right it so we became Navy SEALs they put us in a group sixteen guys called a platoon that group worked every single day around the clock for a year every single day until was ready to send us overseas for deployment so my first deployment was as a seal two years after I enlisted pre 9/11 so not a lot going on there would be a thing here and there a job in Kosovo or you know Liberia or Bosnia but generally we're training with our allies and their Special Forces so a lot of time in the UK with the special boat service the SBS the Norwegian Jaeger German comm swimmers things like that but we're working four or five days a week and we have the weekends off and we're 23 years old so we're doing what young guys do if we're going to the pub's Oktoberfest seeing the sights basically a working vacation which is great it all stopped and it all changed on Tuesday September 11 2001 obviously we know what happened and I felt like everybody here I want to go fight I've been trained to fight I would get there eventually with my conventional team but I also knew about another team there's one more team in Virginia on a base by itself better training areas more opportunity older more experienced seals work there we would actually see those seals out in town and refer to them as the boys across the street they've become known today as SEAL Team 6 or Naval Special Warfare Development Group whatever they called it the best SEALs went there they're gonna go fight I wanted to fight so I went across the street now the process to get here is not well-known it's essentially you need to get approved by your SEAL team to represent them in a three-week screening process that so the three-week screening process starts with a really hard physical test like a triathlon and then you get into a lot of evaluations peer evaluations top-down evaluations oral boards you know about your tactics put your finances your home life how much you drink your credit card debt checking your ribbons to make sure they're in order you're not lying a lot of stuff with the with the psychiatrist because they want to see what you're doing in your head part of that for me was actually kind of funny it took part of the psychological evaluation took me a day and a half to finish it was a five thousand question multiple choice tests with the answers being one through five all based on behavior so it's like one would be never I never feel that way you know 2/3 is seldom five as always I always feel like that so and the questions make no sense and they're in no order but some PhD came up with a system I'll give you an example it's like question one do you love roses yes always everyone loves roses too do you want to decapitate kittens like what wow that that escalated rather quickly didn't it I don't know [ __ ] sell them so anyways a lot of that we actually finished the test and I asked my psychiatrist what was the point of this test and she said oh we're not trying to figure out if you're crazy we're trying to figure out which flavor you are for for placement so you finished that there's another really hard physical test triathlon type thing and in that three weeks they're deciding if they like you if they do they invite you to a nine-month selection course so basic seal training is eight months long this one is nine months long so it's longer than buds I thought it was harder but it's different because now it's not a group of sailors who want to become Navy SEALs these are experienced Navy SEALs who want to get to the next level so everybody there has the never quit attitude they will die before they can't tie the knot so in order to select we had to come up with drills to find people who can not just think but who can make decisions now rapidly in a high-stress environment so as best we could we came up with drills to simulate the stress of combat and we put it in a training environment so because it's training it's all controlled and it's not war it's all self induced stress but we're looking for the person who can realize in life all stress is self induced stress it's what you do to yourself it's in your mind stress is a choice stress is a bag of bricks you know you can wake up in the morning it's land right there you can pick stress up as soon as you wake up throw it over your shoulder and let it ruin your day carrying around ruin everyone else's day around you but anytime with stress you can put it down and forget about it and you should because it's doing you absolutely no good and it's in your mind you know it's just like guilt it's like in combat bravery is not the absence of fear it doesn't mean you're not afraid it's the ability to recognize fear acknowledge fair push it aside and do it anyway actively participate in saving your own life you know don't be the person when an active shooter comes in frozen in the corner being a victim while you wait for someone better to come rescue you you know what are you gonna do about it the analogy that I've come up to put stress in perspective too is whether you taking effective fire on a mountaintop in Afghanistan or you're the woman letting a jet on an aircraft carrier at night and hot in high seas or did the person making a latte at a coffee shop at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday and there's a line around the corner but those three have in common is they only feel the amount of stress they allow themselves to feel and that nobody has ever accomplished anything positive by panicking you know people ask me all the time weren't you afraid of some of these missions yeah so what it's okay to be afraid it's natural because fear is healthy fear makes you think more clearly thinking about the last time you watched a scary movie by yourself and you could hear everything right um I'm 41 years old I was a Navy SEAL for 17 years and there are times I will be in my apartment by myself watching something scary and like the icemaker clacks off and I'm like Satan because it's okay to be afraid but panic is contagious you know and it will get us all killed I'll give you a prime example I love using airports as analogies because I'm gonna see it again today think about the last time you're boarding an aircraft and someone from Zone three have the nerve to try to board with zone one what does everybody do get your [ __ ] Helen you know and we're all just whatever and people panic and then we take off 20 minutes late you know what happens when everyone does what they're supposed to we take off early because you know what else is contagious as a leader calm regardless of what you're thinking you portray calm and your people who become so the first group of tests we came up with we're all based on skydiving so we have students doing drills in the air after they leave an aircraft and start plummeting towards the Earth which for some weird reason can add stress to a person's day but this isn't a daytime jump when the the Sun is out and you can see everything picture a cargo aircraft flying this way and there's a ramp down in the back and there's 37 guys facing that way and it's so dark you can't see anything but you can feel it because the air is thin it's very cold out there you know you're at altitude and then one after another you follow each other into that abyss one thousand two thousand look thousand pull thousand and as you pull your ripcord your canopy comes off you're back in two sets of risers what you want to do grab the rear set of risers assist it with the opening and turn yourself to the right everything that we did as seals we have rules of one of our rules is on a combat jump when you depart the aircraft the targets that way the reason it's that way is because these parachutes are not round they don't fall straight down they're elliptical like a wing they're gonna go forward at 20 miles an hour in no wind so the reason the targets that way is we know that if we bump each other going the same direction talk about terrifying that's fear right there but we're smart enough to know it's safe now if we bump each other going the opposite directions it's catastrophic because you hit the body the body at that speed you die on impact if you hit each other's lines or your canopy you're gonna wrap up in a big messy ball of silk and rope both plummeting together thinking about how painful that was to get most of my hand cut off and then we both get to die in about 43 seconds when we smack into the mountain so this is all simulated stress the first thing you want to do after you get out heading is pull down your night vision because now you want to you know see a little bit if you're dying to know what night vision is like and you don't just do do this today after happy hour I get about three pops in you and then go get to toilet paper rolls and pretend they're green it's like your periphery goes to [ __ ] it doesn't matter anyway cuz it's all blurry so so then we're trying to get in line with each other ten feet back in ten feet up so you've got jumper jumper jumper jumper jumper that's called a stack that stack is going to a spot ten miles away that none of us has seen before except on a map and the low guys got the fun job or the hard job depending on your personality he's called the lead jumper he gets to get everyone behind him make a positive identification on the drop zone and immediately with what limited resources he has do what's called a glide ratio can we make it so a glide ratio is going to be a altitude distance speed heading bearing course do that math can we make it if we can't find a new one with as few obstacles as possible to include cliffs houses powerlines god forbid barbed wire animals all kinds of that madness make sure we can get there do a nice safe pattern into it because you don't want to bump each other going the opposite directions on the bottom end either you wrap it 300 feet you might as well wrap to 30,000 and just to enjoyed the ride down also when he's doing all this he needs to see what the wind is doing on the ground yeah you know the when we depart the aircraft the winds always at our backs but as we descend it will shift so while he's doing all this stuff he's also looking for indicators of any kind smoke trees Birds his own feet which one am I being pushed so he's got a lot of stuff going on I was a lead jumper for about six years and I'd always joke hey can I get a like a bass drum on my back in a harmonica necklace and I don't have enough going on up here because you want to find the maximum amount of I'm gonna need to my slide show up for this wind on the ground so you can land into it slow down and stop because like I said we're going 20 miles an hour and no wind if he screws that up and we have a fifteen mile an hour wind at our backs we could have saved the airforce a lot of money and a lot of time if instead of borrowing their airplane we rented a minivan and then drove through the desert at 3 in the morning at 35 miles an hour and then just open the door and jump right into a cactus so that is the first three weeks and in that time we'll do 65 to 85 of those jump sometimes as high as 35 25,000 feet will lose a few guys out of the course not because they quit but because they got hurt very easy to get hurt doing that or because they violate too many rules in a row and they prove they're unsafe they're trying out for a hostage rescue team the job is way too precise if you're unsafe we will just fire you the remainder of the course the next eight months is all based loosely on one set of tactics and that's close quarters battle or CQB and CQB is the SWAT team style entrance you'll see in action movies or whatever when the good guys come through a door and try to secure the hostages and eliminate the threats you can put me up on the screen and soon the reason that we use CQB in so many different environments is because when you enter a room there are definite steps distances movements and angles on every single thing that you're doing and it differs for the guys all behind them based on protecting each other's backs so for training will answer with four guys at a time at first into what's called a kill house or a shoot house and a shoot house is simply it looks like a hotel it's laid out just like a hotel but unlike a hotel the walls are ballistic because we're shooting live ammo and up in the rafters on catwalks are 20 SEAL Team six instructors so a minimum of five sets of eyes are on each guy as they enter and what those guys are doing is when that those first few people come through the door and make a mistake which they will they're not going to stop the training to correct a mistake they're just gonna start adding pressure by shining a flashlight on them or yelling their name or calling them stupid what are you thinking because they want to see what kind of a person he is are you the type of person who comes into a situation makes a mistake acknowledges it forgets about it it's not gonna help me right now I have a job to do we can talk about that later or are you the type of person who comes into a situation and makes a mistake and then you just can't stop thinking about that mistake and you dwell on that mistake and then over here you make an even bigger mistake and that's where they get you even if you don't make a mistake they are gonna start yelling at you and adding pressure about a mistake you both know you didn't make to see how you handle making a mistake you didn't make total mind game they're trying to get in your head they want to see how you I get talking about CQB and his tactics for weeks at a time but to give you an idea of what's going on I'm gonna walk you through what number one man is thinking as he enters so now keep in mind this will be one guy through one door on one wall in one room thinking about how many rooms are in a hotel how many hallways and angles and stairs and it would be going ten times faster then I'm about to explain it so just imagine the door right here and I would be the number one man pointing my gun at the door and there's a two man a three man a four man right behind me again and what we call a stack or a train but the one man is thinking in order every single time is every single time there's no rules I see your door I don't see hinges door opens then click to fire check that door doors on left wait for the signal and the signal is gonna be a squeeze on the leg of the shoulder from number two letting number one know you have enough guys it's time to answer one man doesn't need to waste time by turning around and Counting for himself plus if he just did that he dropped security on the door and that's a safety violation you're fired so once he gets the squeeze its open the door outside foot comes in clear - recorder inside foot comes the foreign stuff the walls that start my initial sweep we're gonna 6 feet off the door I see your target is a threat engage engage finish my primary sweep foot it nobody's real secondary per the corner middle don't stay clear now the reason that can be stressful is if you're the two man behind the one man and like you have your hand on the shoulder and you're having a bad day personally and you don't want to screw up what's about to happen because you just want to get through the training so you try to choreograph what you think should happen even though you should never do that because nothing ever works the way it's supposed to okay he's the one man I'm the - man so he's going to go that way so I'm gonna go this way so this will be my outside foot we have enough guys go and all of a sudden he goes this way now you just went with the wrong foot you're all messed up you're tripping over yourself you're mad at him they're yelling at you so you speed up and then you shoot the wrong target you are fired congratulations you're never coming back even if you don't make a mistake like I said earlier I was that one man before you know did the whole thing came in the room over here blah blah blah some of them could've said clear everything stopped they stopped the training so all twenty guys could yell at me they're like O'Neal how could you do it you're supposed to be six feet from the door you're way too far in the room you over penetrated why and they try to bait you into that don't buy that argument I'm an idiot you know deflate it it's like when your wife says we need to talk just start a fire in the kitchen it's easier to deal with so anyway you're too far in the room you're so take a step half an inch to the right so I'm like all right that's where we want you get outside right so you're outside you're wearing all your stuff it's body armor gun helmet and it's 105 degrees in Mississippi in May now they're beating you up you're dragging the tire all over the place and climbing these ropes and caving ladders you do that for about 20 minutes you're exhausted they put you right back in the front you're doing it again why they want to see how you handle it you know you didn't screw up but we just punished you for it can you get over it so anyway this training is nine months long 50% of the Navy SEALs who try out do not make it so that's very humbling to think half of the guys who've made it through the world's most difficult military training fail this military training but the ones who do become part of what's called a Tier one unit now you're part of the team that will take on the nation's most daring missions this is where you go from being a seal to being non-existent and you take your family with you and you stay as long as you like and there's no social media there's a fake email names and addresses so you talk to your kids when you go to war now you're at a place where you can no longer be taught tactics you need to invent tactics what is your opponent doing and how do we adjust you know do we need to change our rules if we do we change them by committee then we always follow them stay fluid you know don't rest on your laurels make sure your people are prepared before you take him to war when you finish this selection course I just talked about you need you will be prepared for I know guys finished his selection course four days later their first mission was to jump into Somalia and winds and rescue Jessica Buchanan from Somali pirates which they did they were ready because they were prepared because you know we're believers and teaching people how to do their jobs and let them do it micromanagement is counterproductive it will waste time and slow you down I always ask people are you teaching your people how to do their jobs or are you trying to do their job for them our guys didn't need to be told what to do because they're prepared preparation comes from training communication repetition training communication repetition we would we would train hour after hour day after day fine-tuning our tactics you know adjusting everything that we're doing but most importantly making sure we were effectively communicating with the team because we really believed if our people knew what they were doing and why they were doing it they would work harder they would be faster more efficient and communicate at the highest levels and what we learned about effective communication is the less we talked the better we were because we got rid of the noise the nonsense I'll give you an example think about the email you just got with 19 people on the CC lining and all it says is FYI see below fYI some jackass okay see below it's like where is the message this is all noise just because you're talking just because you need to be heard does not mean you're communicating we actually learned if we were silent we were faster more efficient and communicating at the highest levels and we we brought this to war with us we wouldn't talk on these targets but the bin Laden raid is a prime example you know something crashes if something blows up a few shots are fired when that third of a second of chaos is over you could put me up on the screen again sorry with a third of a second if chaos is over now there's 23 guys with guns coming through your house I've had a lot of time to think about this too it's been six years since that raid and I've thought that that had to be really scary for al-qaeda right like second and third floor something's here to get me and I can't see it and I can't hear it and then it's over before they know it we were a part of mission they're part of the stuff that we did there were four major motion pictures made for the stuff that we were doing and I got to share this with you too I'm horrible to watch action movies with it's always the same thing in the movies right the helicopter lands the Americans get out something blows up and out of nowhere comes that big white guy with the crew cut go go go go go it's like wow thanks bro cuz we weren't gonna go Wow are you yelling at me because I let you kind of scared me we had a guy do this on a house in Afghanistan one time most of you probably not been to Afghanistan correct okay so I need to explain to you what a house in Afghanistan looks like okay so bear with me picture part crossword puzzle and part II walk village from starwars imagine you're going to Fred Flintstone's house okay so there are these these walls with rooms inside with some furniture but no ceiling so it's all open starlight but next to that is a two-story structure with no windows and you're getting up to the second floor of that two-story structure and the door to get in is this big and then you just squeeze yourself in that room and then you get in and now you're absolutely terrified because you're face to face with a full-grown male camel and so you're staring at him he's looking at you and you're thinking well how did he get through the well he did and so they must have built a big why would they build a room around a camel they know like Oh cuz I'm in Afghanistan it [ __ ] sucks over here and then this is all surrounded by walls so so that's what it looks like now I'm in front of one of these buildings that one of my guys is off to the left-hand side and he's not quite in place yet but he starts taking fire and he didn't get scared but he was a newer guy and you get adrenaline the first few times someone shoots an ak-47 at you because they're very very loud so he came over his push-to-talk which is what it sounds like uni push it and talk and he just started talking hey I got a thing we can do this and he's shooting at me my god there's an entry blah blah blah blah blah other guys hear that and then they start talking because that's tough breeds yeah yeah okay it's fine no big deal we'll go to this side here put a mousehole charger now everyone's got a plan everyone's talking but no one's communicating so finally I came over mind and said all right everybody calm down take a deep breath it's a push to talk not a push to think I need you to think push talk so the point I was making though is not don't talk to people it's just we found out important to effectively communicate and what we learn about effective communication here's the first key when you're done saying what you're saying stop saying it I love quotes and I don't know who to thank for this one but one of my favorites is never pass up the opportunity to shut up so we claim to be prepared for anything at any time and we had a chance to prove it in April of 2009 piracy became really popular off the coast of East Africa the Somali pirates were grabbing these ships and the crew in the crate not hurting anybody but keeping the hostages until someone paid the ransom which they always did so what do you think is gonna happen you know services rendered money's changing hands lucrative I remember being aware of it but thinking what does it have to do with me I am in Virginia Beach it's actually Good Friday my birthday April 10th and I met my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool and what we're doing is we thought it would be cute to put the kids in the middle of the room and get them Easter treats so they're sitting there there's a buffet set up and it's a bunch of Marine Corps and Navy parents I've got a pink plate in my hand I remember this and I'm walking through we're gonna serve them so I'm covering the plate with like cookies and it's Easter so smiley face cupcakes and like [ __ ] the four year olds eat and I'm putting on this plate and I'm walking back over to and I get a message and look down and what happened is a guy by the name of Katherine Richard Phillips had just been taken by Somali pirates and they're calling my team to go get him right now so I had a look my daughter in the eyes and give her a kiss and turn around and go to war from a preschool classroom on my birthday which is really kind of weird when you think about it and that's the hardest part of combat right there it's not getting shot at it's not having stuff blow up next to you that's easy it's kissing your kid goodbye looking them in the eyes we both know where this could be the last time we ever see each other this could be it and there's a huge dip between kissing your kid goodnight and kissing your kid goodbye she will turn 13 soon and in her lifetime I've kissed her goodbye 11 times we don't do that anymore we're very fortunate the hardest one though this poor girl was involved with everything she was one when we rescued the lone survivor marcus luttrell she was 4 when we went after Phillips but let me jump forward a little bit I jump around sorry when she was 7 that was the hardest goodbye that's when that's when we went after Osama bin Laden and we knew we weren't coming home from that mission we were gonna die we're gonna get shot down on the way in we're gonna run out of fuel and just be in Pakistan and live our short short miserable lives in a Pakistani prison the house is gonna blow up if anyone's gonna blow himself up it's been Laden we're not coming back this is it so I actually the guy that ended up in the point man position taking me up the stairs of bin Laden's bedroom he he pulled me aside before we left and he said don't take this the wrong way I'm going but if we know we're gonna die why are we going which is just legit he wanted to say it out loud and I said that's that's a good point we are not going for fame and we are not going for bravado we are going for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday morning and then 45 minutes later she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that was a better alternative than burning alive because it's 2,500 degrees inside and her last gesture of human decency was to hold her skirt down so nobody could see her underwear as she committed suicide and she didn't want to do any of that she wasn't supposed to be in the fight we're supposed to fight that's why we're going so before we left home we I had a write we wrote I wrote a letter to everybody but my daughter was seven I wrote a letter to the 27 year old I'm really sorry I missed your wedding I know you're a beautiful thanks for taking care of your sister you know noble cause tears hitting the page not fun and then we had a little bit of time left so I went to the mall and I don't know I don't know what you buy a four year old girl and a seven year old girl for daddy's never coming home but I bought them presents and I'm walking out of the mall and I wasn't scared I was very focused and I ended up at a one of those little sunglass hut kiosk type things and I don't know why I walked over and I looked down and there's a pair of prada sunglasses on sale on sale for two hundred and forty dollars and I'm looking at him I'm like I'm a chief in the Navy I'm in East seven I cannot afford these but I'm gonna be dead next week in American Express camp so I bought these things and I'm wearing them around town like just cooler than ever or whatever then I started thinking nothing ever works out the way it's supposed to in the unlikely event that we lived through the night in bin Laden's house and need to steal a car which we know how to do and drive to the embassies which are in Islamabad like two hours away the Sun will be up I'm gonna need sunglasses I carried a pair of prada sunglasses in my pocket the night I went into bin Laden's bedroom right I wasn't thinking about it at the time because I assure you I had a lot of [ __ ] going on over here but when we got back were like cleaning up I'm from a mission we're supposed to live if we're getting ready to shower and I reached it I'm like you got to be kidding me then I start thinking I'm not gonna be in the Navy forever and I'm gonna need a job on the outside so maybe I'll get into marketing this could work picture a billboard with a Navy SEAL on it like short sleeve tattoos a gun and sunglasses and all it says is if you only have one day left to live you might as well we're product all right so haven't heard a word from Prada anyway so that so she was seven then so back to the four year old in her classroom so I kissed her and I turn around and go to work now I this is for captain Phillips so I have a set amount of time to get to work and I'm ahead of schedule and believe it or not there's a 7-eleven outside of the base where SEAL Team six is so I stopped at the 7-eleven with a plan I'm gonna get as much cash as I can out of the APM a log of Copenhagen and a carton of cigarettes the reason I'm gonna do this is we're gonna be jumping near Africa today we might not end up where we want if I land in a semi permissive environment I might be able to buy my way to safety with the cash I might be able to barter with locals with the tobacco I might just end up on an East African beach on my birthday with cash and tobacco that's fine I'm in line to get my stuff and there's a guy in front of me one guy and he's not in a hurry I'm in a hurry this guy's not I think he just finished the night shift or something not a care in the world and I can see over his shoulders one of the things we'll just put this up for a second one of the things he's buying is a USA Today and the headline on the newspaper is about the mission we're trying to go do so very patriotically and you can put me back up there very patriotically he slammed it down and kind of announced of the entire store man I sure wish someone would do something about this so feeling the irony just sinking in I I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around I go buddy you pay for that [ __ ] and we will do something about it right now and now he's staring at me and I'm like I'm not even kidding like the national security time time plane is squarely on your broad shoulders and you you could see it kind of he realized where he was and I got I was able to get to work on time please put my thing back up there all my guys got to work on time it's 15 hours and 46 minutes after I got the message in my daughter's preschool classroom there were four pirates so we kind of stacked the deck you're gonna see my favorite part of the junker you're gonna see a tandem pair which would be two people connected to each other one parachute they'll be next all right look at the guy in front this is the first skydive in his life the reason that was his first skydive is because he was not a seal he was a communicator and his job was a set of radios on the aircraft so that we could talk to Washington and the long flight over but there's never a perfect plan and we're thinking you know what we might need a better communication when we get down there so I will handle this awkward conversation hey bro wake up huge change of plans guess who's skydiving he got all nervous it was adorable yeah he's he was funny I hooked him up to the guy hooked him up to is one of my best friends the best guy ever we have named Mike and I'm hooking the guy up I'm doing the checks and all this stuff and I'm just trying I'm trying to talk him into a good time it's like this is gonna be awesome your first jump it's nice that the waters so warm it's gonna be the guy wants nothing to do with this he's absolutely terrified you know so anyways I was a lead jumper too on the captain Phillips rescue so I'm on the ramp getting ready to jump and I look back one last time for this kid to try to give him like one final love with me on this and I'm getting nothing he's just staring ahead all of a sudden my buddy Mike's head comes from around and goes at that and so so this dude this dude who looks as best he can he's trying to look at Mike and then I totally need each other's intimate space like this weird reverse Papoose type situation and the last thing I hear Mike is a funny guy I say to him before I leave the aircraft well don't look at me bro I don't know what half this [ __ ] does anyway they had the jump so he stayed afraid um he stayed afraid the entire time it didn't last long we were able to rescue Richard Phillips on a day and a half later on Easter Sunday with some shots of our amazing snipers and we were able to do that because we were prepared you know contrary what Hollywood would have you believe we did not jump in there to kill those guys we jumped in there to get the hostage so we put snipers down watch them make sure nothing unsafe happens as we plan and prepare to execute the rest of the rescue as we're preparing for the rescue something very unsafe happened and they shot you got to figure these snipers four days prior were in their own beds in Virginia Beach their guns didn't need to be sited in for the most difficult shots of their lives but their guns were cited it for the most difficult shots of their lives because they were prepared the way we stayed prepared as a hostage rescue team every operator we had our own locker that looks like a cage and in these cages or shelves and on the shelves or big bags full of gear and the gear inside is designed to assist you in a certain environment so that bag will be labeled as such water jump land jump high altitude diving desert jungle counter-terror then you've got a laminated inventory what's inside and you've got a dry erase marker the reason you keep it that way the bag might be sitting there for a number of years and you want to train with something out of it fine open the bag take that gear out mark it off with the dry erase marker you know it's not in there train with it as soon as you're done training with it clean the gear clean it now because you take care of your gear your gear takes care of you do everything like you do anything put it back in zip it up wipe it off bags ready SEAL team 6 was designed to rescue American hostages at sea that's what it was made for believe it or not it had never been done over 25 years never done so you can imagine it's Friday your birthday hey we've never done this I'm gonna skip work today and drink beer I will take care of my gear on Monday you know we didn't do that because that's a shortcut you don't take shortcuts and it saves a man's life we have I mentioned that a lot of our rules are written in blood here's another one of our rules complacency kills you know what causes complacency success too much success and people have a tendency to say the worst thing they could say when they're running a team well this is the way we've always done it that's resting on your laurels see what your opponent's doing it's stay fluid you know like I said earlier if you need to change the rules change and make sure everyone follows them you wouldn't think complacency and success are conversely related here's another good one a great learning tool is failure because we all fail it's a question of whether or not we admit it you're gonna fall but get up it's all right we all feel that when you fail look yourself in the mirror and own it why did I fail what can I do what can I teach my team and how do we hopefully avoid this here's a good story about failure I mentioned that we were sneaking into houses and Iraq in 2007 were sneaking up on a house and as we're walking out you know because it's easier to land over here walk in pick the locks less collateral damage' quieter we're walking up to a house after a high-value individual and hbi and as we're coming up people start moving inside the house so they know something's out there so we're not gonna leave because he is high-value we're just gonna escalate now we are gonna put a bomb on the door now we are gonna go in hard so I had to call up my breacher and a breacher is a it's with a B not a P preacher big difference a breacher gets you in places so he brought a bomb up a seven foot charge of C six I'm sure you've heard of c4 is to C six you can imagine it looks like a big fruit roll-up same color and everything and it's sticky and what you do with it is just stick it on a door and you slide it down it sticks and you back the way it should be captain you walk over here push the magic button the door opens big boom he is gonna be doing this with both hands so he slings his weapon which needs he needs security which will be me so I'm walking up to the door with him the door opens this way so we know the hinges are over here he's gonna put it on the hinge side I'm gonna hold the crack of the door to watch his back as we're doing this my boss came up not to micromanage this is one of the best seals I've ever worked with he comes walking up to observe and he put his elbow right on the door bill B [Music] and you can see he didn't want to move it because the eventual bum now the breacher is right about here when that happened and he can't yell at him because that's his bust who say he just goes now being fiscally conservative and not wanting to waste the taxpayers money he just starts rolling it back up like I guess we don't need that anymore now I'm right here and I don't want to be here and this is a very very dangerous place now because what the terrorists do they shoot at doors and unlike Hollywood bullets go through a lot of different things I don't want to be one of them I'm trying to think how we're gonna get out of this the door opens it's the damn terrorists we're looking for so he and I share a very awkward moment and oh yeah right so I grabbed him and we threw him down and we cut them and I have my my knee and the small is back and look at my Boston but well [ __ ] let's just do that every night ZV the point is everybody fails and and I'm not making this up what do we learn from that not making this up there there aren't doorbells in Afghanistan but there are in Iraq so that's what we learned another one thing too as I started to conclude another thing that we mentioned at the beginning is it's important to separate emotions from the decisions that you make especially in combat again we learned this you know even though emotions are great they make us who we are thinking about the last time you reacted it felt bad I mean I that's pretty much every day like I mentioned a story about this I'm not going to get into the technology of how we did it but we would our intelligence people would find someone and we'll just say they were turned on he's on so one day in Baghdad same deployment a guy turned on out in town right around noon he was high-value - so we're gonna dry it you know he's the squeeze worth the juice possibly he is we're gonna drive through as we're driving up to the house he turned off and we knew which house it was so we um we cleared the house he wasn't there but he turned on again down the street so we got out ran to that it turned off but we took that house down he's not in there then he did it again and he did it again you can see a pattern of what he's doing here and we're getting upset there's one over the course of a few hours were all mad were hot and thirsty but we really want to get him now and he turned on and stayed on across a bridge in a house across the bridge we're driving up to it like there it is we got him now as we're going up my boss is like nope turn around and I'm like yes you're right we're going on so we're leaving one of our rules is you don't drive across the bridge especially the day time because this is an IEP maker improvised explosive device maker probably rigged it's gonna blow up that's a rule relieving everyone in the vehicle was so mad at us calling us every name in the book you're just weak you're weak he's right there we can get him he's like we're going home we're following our girls they hated us about a week later we're in the gym I saw the guys they did everyone I said time heals everything and I went up and said hey guys the the guy we went after last week that was in the house over the bridge and we said and what was his name again and they'll go oh man I don't know it's like right hey what are your kids names right what's important it's a rule don't let emotions take it we wouldn't have blown up who knows but we get to see our kids so that's the point we were making so we we did these missions all the time and like I mentioned with mission success I'm kind of gonna wrap it up here we were able to complete a lot of these missions because we were prepared to fight we talked about preparation we made great decisions under fire as best we could without you know getting all emotional we all trust each other based on that preparation and no matter how bad it got we never quit we always actively participated here's a story about SEAL training I need to share with you one of my favorite quotes that instructor I mentioned before he gave me some great great advice right before we went through hell week hell hell week is the hardest part of SEAL training hell week is when they wake you up on Sunday and you do Navy SEAL training the miserable stuff around the clock until Friday so it's a full week nothing but training cold and wet the entire time you don't sleep at all if you do sleep I'll show you a picture it's because like on Thursday you want to race and they let you sit down for 45 seconds so that's hella weeks hella we get so bad that by Wednesday every part of your body that's touching cloth because the salt water the sand starts to bleed so you're a bloody sloppy mess is not fun my instructor that he came to me and gave me it was great advice for getting through hell week but it turned out to be great advice for life he said you're about to go to war for the first time and the enemy's all your doubts all your fears and everyone you know back home that told you you weren't good enough to do this keep your head down keep moving forward no matter what and never quit and you'll be just fine keep moving forward like I mentioned before I'm 41 years old I had a long navy career but I'm excited because my life starts right now I'm as old as I've ever been but I'm also as young as I'll ever be I'll show you a picture of my last mission I ever did it's in Afghanistan it's about 20 below zero this is ten months after the bin Laden raid over my shoulder you can see some guys standing up that's my team the guys I talk about you can sort of see a vehicle parked in the snow what you cannot see in this picture laying around the snow are five insurgents the reason those insurgents are laying there is because they were on a suicide mission they found out where there were some Americans in a remote village they were gonna go there and murder everyone they could so we're talking someone's someone's daughter someone's father not good people so through our intelligence we found out what their plan was so we interdicted the vehicle on its way there and their suicide mission was successful I mean not the way they plan but anyway I'm able to come here today because I never quit this nation has proven before and will again through bold operations it will never quit it will do everything to protect its people and preserve freedom I have a tattoo on my left arm I got it right before I depart of the Navy again I love quote that's my favorite quote when President Bush addressed the world on 9/11 he said freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended now I know a lot of people out there defending all of us and I assure you they're out there right now they're wearing that flag and they're never gonna quit for you so do them a favor do yourself a favor the next time you're at work and you're just stressed out and nothing's going around at your home and the sky is falling it around you take that deep breath we talked about and think of them and put your head down keep moving forward no matter what never quit and you'll be fine thank you for your time I appreciate it oh thank you

Channel: RedEat Binge

Views: 1,072,207

Rating: 4.8058748 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: AlhZxlPzaBw

Length: 59min 22sec (3562 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fortefw]

Fuck this dude. Of the two people that came forward with books shortly after the raid, one kept their identity concealed and the other used the raid to launch himself into celebrity status. For complete bullshit reasons the community ostracized the former and idolized the latter, though in the last couple years they seem to have flip flopped.

[u/tunersharkbitten]

The man who "CLAIMS" that he killed bin ladin...

he is so full of shit i am surprised his nose isnt leaking fecal matter.

TRUE SEALs are silent professionals.

this guy is a glory seeker and is very well known for being a shitbag drunk

[u/bishopazrael]

This guy is a drunk.

[u/Sullyville]

Hmm. I thought this sort of thing was frowned upon. Times change I guess.

[u/Million-Suns]

The problem is that several SEALs reported that they're actually the killer, so we'll never know the truth.

Personally, even retired, I think it's idiotic they reveal their identity. You might be a former Six Team Seal, but if one organized mob kidnaps you to extract past sensitive intel, no amount of SERE training will save you.

Or some guy whose family member was killed by a SEAL years ago, might come and get revenge.

They aren't invincible. The American Sniper whom I forgot the name got shot in the back by a mentally ill person...