Appearing on television disguised and with his voice altered, the author of a on the Osama bin Laden raid says in a 60 Minutes segment airing Sunday night that his squadron was told that capturing the terrorist leader was the goal of the Pakistan mission.
“He looked way younger than I thought he would be,” said Mark Owen, a pseudonym, whose real name has been reported as Matt Bissonnette.
A child identified the Al Qaeda leader, said the sailor trained in Coronado.
The segments are posted in three parts on the CBS News site.
According to a transcript of the show:
Owen received a Silver Star for valor and a Purple Heart for a wound suffered in the raid. But, despite all that, Owen told us, in his only interview, that "No Easy Day" is not about him. He says it's a tribute to the hundreds of Americans who gathered intelligence, planned and trained in the 10-year pursuit of the world's most wanted man. SEAL Team 6, he told us, just took care of the last 40 minutes.
Owen likened the raid, which included a helicopter crash, to a basketball game.
“I think what SEALs are good at what I consider pickup basketball,” Owen said. “We all know how to play the game. You ... you hear the saying ... you shoot, move, and communicate? So we all know how to shoot. We all know how to move efficiently and tactically. And we can communicate clearly. So when something goes sideways, we’re able to play the pickup basketball and just kind of read off each other.”
He told correspondent Scott Pelley that his first meal back home in America came in a visit to Taco Bell for “two tacos and a bean burrito.”
