Robert O'Neill was born and raised in Butte, Montana, and lived there for nineteen years until he joined the Navy in 1996. Deploying as a SEAL more than a dozen times, O'Neill participated in more than four-hundred combat missions across four different theaters of war. During his remarkable career, he was decorated more than fifty-two times. Among the honors he received were two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Navy/Marine Corps Commendation with Valor.
O'Neill helped cofound Your Grateful Nation, an organization committed to transitioning Special Operations veterans into their next successful career. You can find him at RobertJONeill.com.
"A jaw-dropping, fast-paced account."
--New York Post
"Enlightening about military special forces, especially the SEAL
component . . . A fast-paced account quite likely to engender
strong reactions among readers concerned with the U.S. military's
roles in foreign conflicts."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Harrowing . . . In frank and vivid detail and blunt and plain
language, Mr. O'Neill describes some of the 400 counterterrorism
operations and close quarter combat he experienced in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere through his career as a SEAL . . . An
interesting and insightful book about some of the most historic
moments in modern American military history."
--Washington Times
"Impossible to put down . . . What O'Neill has written is unique,
surprising, a kind of counternarrative, and certainly the other
half of the story of one of the world's most famous military
operations . . . In the larger sense, this book is about how to be
alive--how to be human while in the very same moment dealing with
death, destruction, combat."
--Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm's Way
and Horse Soldiers
"O'Neill absorbingly relates the 2011 attack on bin Laden's
Pakistan compound . . . [Other] fascinating stories include his
role in the successful 2009 mission to free Capt. Richard Phillips
from Somali pirates, and those of too many fellow SEALs who were
killed in battle. Fans of battlefield narratives, such as Michael
Golembesky's Level Zero Heroes, will relish this gripping
perspective on 21st-century warfare."
--Library Journal
"A riveting, unvarnished and wholly unforgettable portrait of
America's most storied commandos at war."
--Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, winner of
the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
"Intensely moving and awe-inspiring, The Operator captures as few
other books have the essence of being a frogman: utterly
unimaginable fatigue followed by intense exhilaration followed by a
weary emptiness--and then back for more. As this book shows, SEALs
regularly travel to an emotional place that few men will ever
visit. O'Neill wrote himself into American history with the three
shots he fired into Osama bin Laden, but if you think that
operation was intense wait till you read about the ones that
preceded it. There is a saying, 'Great battles are only given to
great warriors.' Rob was repeatedly given great battles, and he
represented accordingly."
--Marcus Luttrell, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Lone
Survivor and Service
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