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The former Navy SEAL who claims he killed Osama bin Laden Tuesday night. Fox News broadcast the first of a two-part series based on interviews with Robert O鈥橬eill, a key member of the SEAL team that assaulted the Al Qaeda leader鈥檚 Pakistani hideout in 2011.

Is Mr. O鈥橬eill backing off his insistence that he was the person who fired the actual fatal shots? Nope. That does not appear to be the case, though the editing of the Fox News team left him a little wiggle room.

At the top of the show, reporter Peter Doocy asked him directly what it was like to kill Bin Laden.

鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 real. It was another guy in the house that we shot. It didn鈥檛 sink in. It didn鈥檛 sink in for a while,鈥� said O鈥橬eill.

O鈥橬eill鈥檚 claim of responsibility here has roiled the secretive world of US special operations forces. Others who took part in the raid have given slightly different accounts of the event, with shots coming from as many as three SEALs. O鈥橬eill was the second man charging the room where Bin Laden was hiding, and others say the first man may have killed the Al Qaeda mastermind before leaping at two women in case they carried explosives.

O鈥橬eill has reacted to this criticism with a kind of shrug. In a broadcast on CNN鈥檚 Anderson Cooper 360掳 over the weekend, he said, 鈥淭he most important thing that I鈥檝e learned in the last two years is to me it doesn鈥檛 matter anymore if I am 鈥楾he Shooter.鈥� The team got him.鈥�

It鈥檚 possible the former SEAL has more to say about this aspect of the raid. The Fox piece revealed a bit about the actual encounter with Bin Laden at the beginning of the show, then moved back in time and covered his early life, training, and other SEAL exploits. It ended just as SEAL Team Six boarded the helicopters that would carry them to the Bin Laden raid.

And really, does this matter? In terms of the dramatic impact of last night鈥檚 broadcast, it certainly doesn鈥檛. There was enough interesting detail about the life of a SEAL and O鈥橬eill鈥檚 personal experience that whether or not he actually pulled the fateful trigger seems almost beside the point.

O鈥橬eill said that the more the SEALS trained for the Bin Laden mission the more they came to believe that it would be one-way. They would not come back. Either Bin Laden would trigger a suicide explosive belt, or the house would be booby-trapped and explode.

But either way, Bin Laden would not survive, either.

鈥淚t was worth it,鈥� O鈥橬eill remembers thinking.

He wrote letters to his children to be opened only upon his demise, telling him he loved them. (He shredded them when he returned safe.) Just before he boarded the helicopter, he called his father, and told him goodbye and thanks for everything. His father sat for 17 minutes in a Walmart parking lot after hanging up, emotionally distraught.

Fox is set to show the second part of the interview this evening. Presumably it will cover more details of the actual operation.

Should the former Navy SEAL have gone public at all? That鈥檚 a larger issue. O鈥橬eill鈥檚 not the first SEAL on the raid to try and profit from his presence. Colleague Matt Bissonnette wrote a book, 鈥淣o Easy Day,鈥� under a pseudonym. Higher-ups such as former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have published memoirs that include their reminiscences of the Bin Laden operation.

Pentagon officials cooperated with the producers of 鈥淶ero Dark Thirty鈥�, the Hollywood thriller about the raid released in 2012.

Still, SEALs are , writes veteran Time military correspondent Mark Thompson. They sign non-disclosure agreements. Selflessness is supposed to be part of the special operations ethos.

And they are only the tip of the spear. Hundreds of other personnel, from intelligence analysts to military technicians, work behind the scenes to support SEAL exploits.

鈥淚f fame, and the fortune it can bring, become part of the allure of signing up with US Special Operations Command, the men and women who actually make those missions possible are going to sour on their private sacrifice,鈥� writes Mr. Thompson. 鈥淭he net result will be a less-capable force.鈥�