In these pages, O’Neill describes his idyllic childhood in Butte, Montana; his impulsive decision to join the SEALs; the arduous evaluation and training process; and the even tougher gauntlet he had to run to join the SEALs’ most elite unit. After officially becoming a SEAL, O’Neill would spend more than a decade in the most intense counterterror effort in US history. For extended periods, not a night passed without him and his small team recording multiple enemy kills—and though he was lucky enough to survive, several of the SEALs he’d trained with and fought beside never made it home.

The Operator describes the nonstop action of O’Neill’s deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, evokes the black humor of years-long combat, brings to vivid life the lethal efficiency of the military’s Tier One units, and reveals firsthand details of the most celebrated terrorist takedown in history.

“Gripping…this story is impossible to put down…What O’Neill has written is unique, surprising, a kind of counternarrative.” —Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers

“O’Neill wrote himself into American history with the three shots he fired into Osama bin Laden…intensely moving and awe-inspiring.” —Marcus Luttrell, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Lone Survivor and Service