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Seal Who Shot Bin Laden Without Healthcare Pension, In an interview with Esquire Magazine, the man who killed Osama bin Laden speaks out--and he's feeling abandoned by the country that claims to be grateful. We still don't know his name, but his actions as part of SEAL Team Six in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 will go down as some of the most important moments in American warfare in at least the last decade.
But "the Shooter"--the Navy SEAL who fired three bullets into the forehead of the most wanted man in the world--feels he's been abandoned by the country he served.
Detailing his story for the first time in an interview with Phil Bronstein for Esquire, the man who killed Osama bin Laden says he's been screwed by a system of veterans affairs that has left him without health insurance or a pension.
Bronstein, the executive chair of the Center for Investigative Reporting, spent a year on his 15,000 word piece in which the Shooter describes the famous raid that killed bin Laden and what life has been like since he left the military.
The Shooter left the military 36 months before the end of his 20-year commitment, suffering from bodily wear and worried his family could face retaliation for what he did while carrying a gun for the United States military. Thanks to his early departure, he lost both his health insurance and his pension, and he's been waiting for months for his Veterans Affairs hearing for his disability benefits. Titled “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden…Is Screwed,” the story describes the SEAL’s ambivalence after the pulse-pounding moment in May 2011 when he broke into a dark room in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and put two bullets in his forehead. Killing bin Laden made the SEAL a high-level target for al Qaeda and other organizations seeking retribution.
He told Bronstein the Navy offered him a form of witness protection in which he would have to break ties with his extended family and move to another state. The SEAL currently has no special security, according to Bronstein. He has trained his wife to put their children in a bathtub in the house that has a reinforcing wall in front of it in case of an attack. He has taught her how to fire a shotgun at intruders, by sitting on the bed and bracing her arm against the wall.
But "the Shooter"--the Navy SEAL who fired three bullets into the forehead of the most wanted man in the world--feels he's been abandoned by the country he served.
Detailing his story for the first time in an interview with Phil Bronstein for Esquire, the man who killed Osama bin Laden says he's been screwed by a system of veterans affairs that has left him without health insurance or a pension.
Bronstein, the executive chair of the Center for Investigative Reporting, spent a year on his 15,000 word piece in which the Shooter describes the famous raid that killed bin Laden and what life has been like since he left the military.
The Shooter left the military 36 months before the end of his 20-year commitment, suffering from bodily wear and worried his family could face retaliation for what he did while carrying a gun for the United States military. Thanks to his early departure, he lost both his health insurance and his pension, and he's been waiting for months for his Veterans Affairs hearing for his disability benefits. Titled “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden…Is Screwed,” the story describes the SEAL’s ambivalence after the pulse-pounding moment in May 2011 when he broke into a dark room in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and put two bullets in his forehead. Killing bin Laden made the SEAL a high-level target for al Qaeda and other organizations seeking retribution.
He told Bronstein the Navy offered him a form of witness protection in which he would have to break ties with his extended family and move to another state. The SEAL currently has no special security, according to Bronstein. He has trained his wife to put their children in a bathtub in the house that has a reinforcing wall in front of it in case of an attack. He has taught her how to fire a shotgun at intruders, by sitting on the bed and bracing her arm against the wall.
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