Bin Laden raidFormer Navy SEALs member under NCIS investigation for allegedly revealing secrets

Former U.S. Navy SEALs Chief Special Warfare Operator Robert O’Neill, who claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden in the Navy SEAs raid, is under criminal investigation for possibly sharing classified information. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) spokesman Ed Buice did not discuss when or how O’Neil disclosed the classified information, but he did confirm to the Navy Times that NCIS received an allegation and has launched an investigation on the matter.

“The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is in receipt of an allegation that Mr. O’Neill may have revealed classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information. In response, NCIS has initiated an investigation to determine the merit of the allegations.”

If the allegations prove to be true, the Navy could recall O’Neil and court-martial him.

In November 2014 O’Neil took part in an interview on Fox News, in which he shared detailsof the bin Laden raid. He spoke about the landing at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the room-to-room searches before soldiers found bin Laden in a bedroom.

Retired Capt. Dick Couch cautions that O’Neil may not have revealed classified information in his interview. “Surprisingly, very little of what SEALs do is in fact classified, as far as their tactics,” he said. “They execute basic infantry tactics.” Couch has published dozens of Pentagon-approved fiction and nonfiction books about Navy special warfare since he left active duty in 1972 and the Navy reserves in 1997. “So what they did, how they did it, kicking the door in here, all that type of thing — I think it was inappropriate, but whether it violated any classification or not… I would guess that at the very least he signed a nondisclosure agreement,” Couch said.

Former Chief Special Warfare Operator Matt Bissonnette, who took part in the bin Laden raid and who,under the pseudonym Mark Owen penned the book No Easy Day about the raid without Pentagon clearance, has agreed, as part of a negotiated settlement, to forfeit to the U.S. government at least $4.5 million of the money he received from the book.

Even if the NCIS concluded that O’Neill did not release any classified information, a code of silence has still been violated, said Couch. Current and former special operators trust that their fellow soldiers will maintain the SEALs’ “quiet professional” creed.

“There are still people out there serving, these young men coming into the teams, working very hard to prepare themselves to do their job, and who are wanting to put their gun in the fight and are looking for that one good mission to go on,” he said. A lack of trust in the SEALs to keep mission details private could keep SEALs teams from big opportunities. “If somewhere down the road, some joint special operations commander is going to say, ‘Well, I’ve got a really important mission coming up here, and I can put my SEAL element or I can send my Army Special Forces element, or I can send my Marine special operators,’” Couch said. “‘Do I really want to read about this in the papers two or three years from now, or some guy writing a book, going to Esquire magazine? Do I want to hear about it on Fox News?’”

That commander is likely to send Marines or Army Special Forces, rather than risk another SEAL tell-all, Couch said.