Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL credited with killing Usama bin Laden, had just returned from a 40-day deployment to Kosovo when the world changed forever.The former Navy SEAL told Fox News Digital in an interview ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that he was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, on Sept.11, 2001, preparing equipment and catching up on emails when every television channel switched to breaking news."At first, there was a hole in the North Tower," O’Neill recalled.
"No one even knew what the North Tower of the World Trade Center was that day."O’Neill and his fellow service members initially wondered whether a small plane had accidentally crashed into the building.But after the second plane struck the South Tower shortly after 9 a.m.
Eastern time, they immediately understood the significance of what they were watching.AMERICA’S HEARTLAND COMES FACE-TO-FACE WITH 9/11 HISTORY AS 25TH ANNIVERSARY NEARSFormer Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill told Fox News Digital he and fellow service members knew Sept.11 would change their lives forever.
(Fox News Digital ; Porter Gifford/Corbis via Getty Images)"I’m in an operations center with intel analysts and Navy SEALs, and we all collectively knew that our lives just changed," O’Neill said.The names of Usama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were soon mentioned in the room."We’re on a deployment to Germany, we’re probably going to Sudan.We don’t know where," he said.
"The name Usama bin Laden was said in that room, al-Qaeda.And we just knew our lives were going to change."O’Neill eventually re-enlisted in the Navy in the aftermath of the attacks and went on to serve with SEAL Team Six, the elite special operations unit that ultimately carried out the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he did not know he would play a role in hunting down the mastermind of the attacks."I knew, for me, the Navy was never going to be a career," O’Neill said.
"I joined because I thought...