There was no running gunfight. And the SEALs did not have a kill order. Richard Miniter on the new book detailing the night al Qaeda’s chief died—and the headaches it could cause Obama. 
 
 Osama bin Laden did not hear the SEALs’ stealthy helicopter until it hovered over the roof of his three-story home and the chopper’s spinning blades smashed his plastic patio chairs against his bedroom window. 
 
 In less than 10 seconds, the SEALs had jumped onto the roof, crawled across the rain-stained tiles, and descended onto bin Laden’s patio. The bearded terror leader sleepily opened his bedroom door and then, spotting two armed men with night-vision gear coming down the hall toward him, quickly slammed it. 
 
 They were right behind him. 
 
 As the SEALs forced open the bedroom door, they heard bin Laden’s youngest wife screaming in Arabic while raising a blanket to block their view. Behind the rising blanket, they saw bin Laden scrambling for an AKSU machine pistol. 
 
 As she tried to shield him, bin Laden shoved his wife into the line of fire. It was the last thing he did. 
 
 The first round went into the mattress behind bin Laden. The other three rounds found their mark as the two SEALs fired as one. 
 
 Bin Laden’s pistol now hangs on the wall of SEAL Team Six’s Virginia base, beside the photos of comrades killed in action. 
 
 These are the kinds of inside details that emerge from Chuck Pfarrer’s new book SEAL Target Geronimo. 
 
 Pfarrer certainly had access. A SEAL Team Six assault-element commander in the 1980s, he is known inside the intelligence community for his well-regarded first book, Warrior Soul, and inside Hollywood for writing and producing movies including Navy SEALs, Hard Target, and Virus. He clearly had detailed conversations with senior officers in the SEALs’ chain of command (especially Adm. William McRaven and then–SEAL Team Six commander Scott Kerr) and understands the vocabulary and the culture very well. 
 
 But some details in his book could complicate the 2012 presidential race. Pfarrer reports that the White House overruled the Navy plan to have two F-18 Hornets provide air support for SEALs helicopters, which would have been easily shot down if found by Pakistan’s Air Force. Also scrubbed were the latest-generation stealth helicopters, known as “ghost hawks.” The SEALs would have to make do with the older Stealth Hawks, which had mechanical problems. Ultimately, one crash-landed due to faulty electronics and had to be demolished on the site. Each of these decisions—to deny fighter support and to use older helicopters—may have been sound. Putting fighters in Pakistani airspace or allowing the Pakistanis to see the latest technology might have complicated relations between America and its Janus-faced ally, Pakistan. Republicans may have been reluctant to attack the president over an achievement that even Dick Cheney applauded. Still, Pfarrer's findings could fuel critics of the president who think he was quick to take personal credit and play politics with the SEALs' successful mission. 
 
 Obama may also have trouble explaining why he publicly announced bin Laden’s death just hours after it occurred. The SEALs captured 12 garbage bags worth of notebooks, hard drives, satellite phones, and other digital devices. The data could have been used to launch surprise raids on all the senior members of the al Qaeda network, while the leaders turned on each other and wondered who the traitor was. For the SEALs and other special operators I’ve spoken with, that was the natural next move. Al Qaeda could have been rolled up in six months. Pfarrer captures the SEALs’ resentment of the president, whom they see as publicity-seeking. He ignores the White House’s concerns: the nation had waited almost 10 years for bin Laden to be brought to justice, and that news might have leaked. 
 
 Pfarrer also does his best to poke the CIA in the eye. He points out that the agency insisted on having one of its officers in on the raid. While we are repeatedly told that the CIA man had little experience “fast-roping” down for helicopters and doesn’t have the training that the SEALs do (who does?), only in an aside are we informed that he was the only one who could speak Arabic and other local languages. He was the only man who could interview the prisoners or quiet the women and children in the compound. Also, the CIA’s role in locating bin Laden is dismissed in a throwaway paragraph. That’s unfair. The CIA took a few clues from the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and located bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Then the agency persuaded a colonel in Pakistan’s feared intelligence agency, the ISI, to provide key documents, including the plans for bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound. CIA officers rented apartments and surveilled the bin Laden compound for months, until they could persuade their superiors to deploy satellites. And so on. The CIA’s role in the operation remains an exciting, but untold, story. 
 
 SEAL Target Geronimo explodes a number of media myths about the raid to kill bin Laden. 
 
 It was not a “kill mission” from the start. The SEALs had no explicit orders to kill the archterrorist and would have captured him if possible. 
 
 There was no “45-minute” running gun battle. The SEAL team fired only 12 bullets, and the whole operation lasted only 38 minutes. ||||| Chuck Pfarrer, a former commander of US Navy SEAL Team Six, whose members carried out the assault, claims bin Laden was shot dead almost instantly rather than killed in a 45-minute firefight. 
 
 Claiming to have interviewed several men involved in the raid, Pfarrer also contradicted the official account of how the SEAL team landed and how one of their Black Hawk helicopters crashed. 
 
 "The SEALs entered the building after being deposited on the roof by the lead helicopter, not from the ground," Pfarrer said in a statement about the book. 
 
 "Only minutes after bin Laden was dead did the lead helicopter, heading for a landing spot, lose altitude and sink, tail-first, into the large walled enclosure east of the main house." Pfarrer explains that if the SEALs had been forced to climb stairs to reach bin Laden, as has been officially claimed, he would have had enough warning to arm and effectively defend himself. 
 
 "Bin Laden was dead within 90 seconds of the beginning of the raid, not after an extended firefight," Pfrarrer said. "Four suppressed rounds were fired". 
 
 Pfarrer adds that Amal bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief's youngest wife, was wounded in the calf during the second round of fire, as she was shoved her in the way of the shooters. This chimes more with an account that was originally stated by US officials in the immediate aftermath of the attack, before later being withdrawn. 
 
 Pfarrer describes his book as an "explosive story of unparallelled valour, clockwork military precision, and deadly accuracy". But it was dismissed as "plain wrong" by US officials. 
 
 The book also argues that bin Laden's long-time deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, may have been ultimately responsible for leading the US to his boss because he repeatedly sent a courier, whose cover he must have known had already been blown, in and out of the compound. 
 
 A trusted Kuwaiti courier, Abu Ahmad, is believed to have been followed by US officials for several months before the raid after his name emerged in interrogations of other al-Qaeda suspects and he was tracked down to Abbottabad. 
 
 The book, which is due to be released later this month, is said to have been delayed for several weeks while being cleared by government officials. 
 
 Its British edition is being revised due to concerns that individuals named may sue the author for libel. ||||| In 15 years of dangerous missions — from midnight raids on al-Qaeda safe houses in Iraq to battling Somali pirates from the deck of a heaving Navy ship on the high seas — there had never been one so shadowed by dread. As Robert James O’Neill contemplated his jump from a helicopter into Osama bin Laden’s private garden, he was positive it would be his last. 
 
 “I didn’t think I would survive,” the former Navy SEAL said. 
 
 O’Neill, one of dozens of U.S. special operators to storm bin Laden’s hideout on May 2, 2011, said he mentally prepared himself to face death from heavily armed gunmen or from the elaborate booby traps that would surely line the approaches to the al-Qaeda leader’s inner sanctum. What he never expected was that he would secure a place in history that night, as the man who fired the bullet that ended bin Laden’s life. 
 
 O’Neill confirmed to The Washington Post that he was the unnamed SEAL who was first to tumble through the doorway of bin Laden’s bedroom that night, taking aim at the terrorist leader as he stood in darkness behind his youngest wife. In an account later confirmed by two other SEALs, the Montana native described firing the round that hit bin Laden squarely in the forehead, killing him instantly. 
 
 More than three years after the events, O’Neill agreed to publicly discuss his role for the first time, describing in unprecedented detail the mission to capture or kill the man behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. 
 
 His decision to talk came nearly two years after another team member, Matt Bissonnette, published a controversial account of the raid in the book titled, “No Easy Day.” It also follows what O’Neill has described as an agonizing personal struggle, as he weighed concerns over privacy and safety against a desire to have a least some control over a story that appeared likely to break, with or without his consent. 
 
 Over the past year, awareness of O’Neill’s role as “the shooter” had spread through the military community and onto Capitol Hill, where a number of members of Congress knew the story and had congratulated O’Neill personally, he said. Journalists were becoming aware of his name as well. 
 
 In the end, just a week before scheduled interviews on Fox News and The Post, O’Neill’s identity was leaked by some of his former peers. SOFREP, a Web site run by former special-forces operatives, posted an article that complained of O’Neill’s decision to tell his story on Fox News and decided to reveal his name preemptively. 
 
 The SOFREP item was subsequently picked up by the British tabloid, the Daily Mail, which reported on Wednesday that O’Neill’s father had confirmed his identity as the shooter in a telephone interview. 
 
 SOFREP published an Oct. 31 letter — apparently triggered by O’Neill’s impending TV interview — in which the commander and master chief of the Navy Special Warfare Command emphasized that a “critical” tenet of their profession is to “not advertise the nature of my work nor seek recognition for my action.” 
 
 “We do not abide willful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety or financial gain,” the letter said. 
 
 O’Neill, in two meetings with The Post, said he had anticipated the criticism. He said his decision to go public was confirmed after a private encounter over the summer with relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on New York’s World Trade Center. 
 
 In May 2011, President Obama announced that U.S. forces had killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. (WhiteHouse.gov via YouTube) 
 
 O’Neill, who works as a motivational speaker, had been invited to address a gathering of 9/11 family members at the National September 11 Memorial Museum shortly before its official opening. During what he described as a highly emotional exchange, O’Neill decided spontaneously to talk about how bin Laden died. 
 
 “The families told me it helped bring them some closure,” O’Neill said. 
 
 The meeting was facilitated by a member of the New York congressional delegation who asked O’Neill if he would donate his uniform to the museum’s collection. 
 
 “He insisted on doing this anonymously to honor his unit, however the incredible interest in this story made this difficult,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). “I represent thousands of individuals whose lives were forever scarred by the tragedy of Sept. 11, and Mr. O’Neill’s private words to the families who lost loved ones brought a remarkable comfort to them.” 
 
 Maloney praised O’Neill as “a great American hero and a fine, articulate gentleman who has been very careful to always praise his team for the success of this mission.” 
 
 O’Neill’s involvement in the 2011 bin Laden raid capped a career that had already been extraordinary, by any measure. Tall and athletic with boyish features and reddish-blond hair, O’Neill became a SEAL in 1996 at age 20, and was eventually promoted to elite SEAL Team Six. 
 
 He eventually received 24 honors and commendations, many of them earned for multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the leader of missions to capture or kill suspected al-Qaeda-allied insurgents. 
 
 Between tours, his team was pressed into service for rescue missions in far-flung corners of the world. O’Neill was among the SEALs who assisted in the 2009 rescue of merchant marine Capt. Richard Phillips from pirates off the coast of Somalia, an operation depicted in the 2013 movie “Captain Phillips.” 
 
 O’Neill’s experiences during the bin Laden raid were first described last year to journalist Phil Bronstein for a February 2013 Esquire magazine article that, by agreement, referred to him only as “the shooter.” In the piece, he described advancing through bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with five other SEALs, eventually reaching the third floor, where bin Laden lived with his wives. 
 
 As other team members peeled off to search different rooms, O’Neill found himself in the No. 2 position, behind the point man, for the final assault on bin Laden’s bedroom. When bin Laden briefly appeared at the door, the SEAL at the front of the line fired a shot that apparently missed. 
 
 “I rolled past him into the room, just inside the doorway,” O’Neill recalled. “There was bin Laden, standing there. He had his hands on a woman’s shoulders pushing her ahead.” 
 
 Though the room was dark, O’Neill could clearly see bin Laden’s features through his night-vision scope. 
 
 “He looked confused,” O’Neill was quoted in the Esquire magazine as saying. “He was way taller than I was expecting. He had a cap on and didn’t appear to be hit.” 
 
 Bin Laden was “standing and moving,” thrusting one of his wives in front of him as if to use her as a shield. 
 
 “In that second I shot him, two times in the forehead,” he said. “Bap! Bap! The second time, as he is going down. He crumbled to the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again.” 
 
 O’Neill told The Post that it was clear bin Laden had died instantly, his skull split by the first bullet. 
 
 “I watched him take his last breaths,” he said. 
 
 He dismissed any talk of heroism, describing his actions as “muscle memory,” the result of continuous, repetitive training, including countless rehearsals of the Abbottabad raid using full-scale models. He described the “heroic” actions of other SEALs, including those of the point man, who tackled two women in the bedroom to create the diversion that allowed O’Neill to get off his shots. 
 
 O’Neill said the SEALs had little time to contemplate the magnitude of the evening’s events. After taking photographs and squeezing bin Laden’s frame into a body bag, they scrambled to collect computer drives and other obvious sources of intelligence. 
 
 Then they moved bin Laden’s wives and children away from the house before boarding their helicopter for a sprint across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, just ahead of approaching Pakistani fighter planes. 
 
 Hours later, O’Neill was back at an American military base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, eating a breakfast sandwich while bin Laden’s body lay in an adjacent room. Just then, President Obama appeared on a television screen. 
 
 “The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children,” Obama said. 
 
 O’Neill said he glanced up at the screen and then at bin Laden’s body bag. 
 
 And then finished his sandwich.
– Osama bin Laden didn’t die after a 45-minute gunfight, according to a new book—he died 90 seconds into the raid, according to SEAL Target Geronimo. The new book is by former SEAL Team Six leader Chuck Pfarrer, who says he interviewed the team that killed bin Laden. The book says SEALs landed on the roof, not the ground floor, bursting right into Osama’s bed chamber, according to advance looks from the Daily Beast and Telegraph. Only 12 bullets were fired in the entire raid. But team members confirm there was no kill order, and that they would have captured bin Laden if possible. Perhaps more damaging for the Obama administration is the assertion that the SEALs resent the president for announcing bin Laden’s death so quickly. If he hadn’t, they believe they could have used intelligence from the raid to launch surprise attacks on al-Qaeda leaders—potentially rolling up the organization in six months. US officials, however, have dismissed the book as “plain wrong.”