Opinion

Inside story of Cairo, the dog that helped catch Osama bin Laden

When Navy SEAL Will Chesney first met a military working dog named Cairo, he didn’t know this canine would be The One: a fearless warrior with a soft side, an attack dog who would know the difference between a baby and a bad guy, the lone non-human US soldier to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011.

Nope. Back on that fateful day in 2008, after Chesney decided to become a dog handler, he took his first instruction seriously — these dogs weren’t like pets. They were lethal weapons.

Despite that warning, handlers are dog people, and they know how profound this bond is. As Chesney writes in “No Ordinary Dog,” his new memoir of life and military service with this storied veteran (co-authored with Joe Layden), “Cairo was not my first choice. Might as well be honest about that.”





In fact, it was a dog named Bronco that Chesney wanted. Bronco was friendly; Cairo was standoffish. Bronco sometimes wanted to play; Cairo was all about work. Yet after two weeks of training, even as Chesney realized that Cairo was the exceptional dog, he was still resistant.

“You’re getting Cairo,” a program director told him. “He’s the right dog for you.”

Chesney shrugged.

“Okay, cool.”

Off they went to a seven-week training camp in California, where they bonded hard and fast. “By the second night, we were sharing a bed,” Chesney writes, “though I do recall pushing him off in the middle of the night for being such an aggressive snuggler and blanket hog.”

He was every bit as important to the mission as anyone else.





Cairo learned how to attack a target, to bite and release on command, to skydive, to sniff out weapons and improvised explosive devices, to move quickly and quietly through unforgiving terrain, building up protective calluses on his paws.

“I couldn’t wait to see him in action,” Chesney writes.

They were deployed to Afghanistan in June 2009. Chesney was most concerned with how Cairo would recognize a target — a true threat that needed to be eliminated — and ignore human shields, almost always women and children.

“A lot of the time, you yell at people to come out [of a house],” Chesney tells The Post, “and the men and women will leave their infants inside — maybe hoping that we hurt or kill the babies, so they can use that against us.”





The first time Chesney saw Cairo attack was under similar circumstances. They were on a nighttime raid to clear out a house, but unbeknownst to every human soldier, an infant lay bundled inside, alone, hidden in a pile of clothes and blankets.

“You can’t see that much with night vision [goggles],” Chesney says. He watched as Cairo sniffed this inert pile, then calmly walked into another room and pounced on a male target, biting down so savagely he nearly severed the arm.

Cairo, for all his training, had not been taught to differentiate between babies and adults. “I don’t quite know how to explain the fact that he didn’t harm the child,” Chesney writes, “except to say that Cairo was indeed a special dog. He knew right from wrong, good from bad.”





Not long after, on the night of June 30, 2009, the SEALs engaged in combat with heavily-armed insurgents who fled into a tree-lined ridge. Cairo, from a great distance, picked up their scent.

Chesney unhooked his leash and sent him off.

The canine easily cleared a four-foot high stone wall and disappeared into the trees. Shots were fired. Panicked, Chesney called for Cairo to come back.

Nothing.

Chesney moved toward the trees, toward the gunfire.

“Cairo! Come on, buddy!”

Chesney braced himself. Then, about 100 feet away, he saw a small figure emerge. Chesney shouted now, loud enough to be heard over the gunshots.

“Cairo!”

The dog lurched toward Chesney, then collapsed. Chesney ran to him.

Cairo had been shot in the chest and front leg. He was bleeding out, struggling to breathe, his eyes closing. The call went over the radio.

“FWIA!” — friendly wounded in action. There was no distinction between human and canine. Cairo was a SEAL.

A combat medic rushed over to help. Chesney watched as the medic pushed piles and piles of gauze into the hole as blood kept gushing.

In came the medevac. Cairo was loaded on to the copter, followed by Chesney. Once they reached base, a team of doctors and nurses — not veterinarians, combat surgeons — performed emergency surgery on Cairo.

Chesney did not leave Cairo’s side for a moment. He later learned that Cairo had struggled to make it to Chesney’s sightline; wounded and bleeding heavily, unable to clear that tall stone wall, Cairo had to walk his way around it.

That first night, Chesney laid on the chilly tile floor in Cairo’s room, his arm gently slung across the dog’s back, unable to sleep, worried that Cairo would pass away and not hear Chesney say how much he loved him.

The next morning, Cairo gave Chesney a lick, and Chesney knew: This dog was going to make it.

“Hey buddy,” Chesney said. “Welcome back.”

March 2011. Cairo was now six years old, about to be retired. Chesney, hard as it was, began to distance himself. Then he got the order: “Pack your gear. Something’s come up.”

They were going after Osama bin Laden.

Cairo was off the retirement track and, with the team, sent to North Carolina to train at a full-scale replica of Bin Laden’s compound. Every SEAL was told to get his affairs in order.

Chesney was more worried about Cairo than himself. The chances that the compound wasn’t trip-wired with bombs were remote. Cairo could very well be first fatality of what was now called Operation Neptune Spear.

On May 2, 2011, Chesney sat on the floor of a Black Hawk helicopter, Cairo — wearing a Kevlar vest and night vision goggles — between his legs, headed with 11 other Navy SEALs toward Abbottabad. Another Black Hawk flew in tandem until it peeled off and crash-landed inside the compound.

The copter Chesney was in landed perfectly. He and Cairo jumped out, and Chesney unleashed Cairo to search the perimeter for bombs and escape tunnels as SEALs invaded. After two laps, Cairo and Chesney entered the main house.

Together they cleared the first two floors quickly and were climbing to the third when another SEAL passed them on his way down.

“I don’t think they need the dog,” he told Chesney. “It’s over.”

It wasn’t, really. Bin Laden was dead, but the downed Black Hawk had woken up the neighborhood. Cairo kept the crowd outside at bay while the SEALs grabbed what intel they could — documents, computers, videotapes and photos — then blew up the downed Black Hawk and extricated themselves from the site.

Thirty-six hours later, the SEALs were back in the US, meeting with President Obama. Until that moment, Obama hadn’t known that Cairo existed.

He was floored.

“I want to meet this dog,” he said.

Every SEAL got a Silver Star for the bin Laden raid except Cairo.

“It was a disappointment to me,” Chesney tells The Post. “He was every bit as important to the mission as anyone else. He risked just as much.”

This story has a happy ending and a sad one.

Cairo became so famous there was talk he might never be able to leave base again. Chesney, meanwhile, was redeployed. He was still a dog handler, but without Cairo nothing was okay. He began exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: anxiety, depression, migraines, heavy drinking. His short-term memory was shot. He suddenly had an explosive temper.

He was prescribed drugs. A lot of them. Nothing worked. He was 28 years old, and only one therapy helped.

Visiting Cairo.

“I felt like he needed me,” Chesney writes, “and I sure needed him.”

Two years later, in fall 2013, Chesney heard that Cairo was going to be retired. He also heard at least two other guys wanted to adopt him.

Chesney was so terrified he began planning ways to kidnap Cairo. He bought a used motorcycle with a sidecar — for Cairo. He dreamed of nights on the couch, watching movies and eating steak together.

It took nearly a year, stagnant bureaucracy and reams of paperwork, for Chesney to get the call: Cairo was his.

But this happy reunion wouldn’t last long. Just a few months in, Cairo, old and battle-scarred and tired, deteriorated rapidly. On April 2, 2015, Cairo was put down. Chesney wept as he held Cairo’s paw.

To this day, Chesney has the bloodstained harness Cairo was wearing the night he got shot — the same harness he wore on the bin Laden raid. He had Cairo cremated, and keeps his ashes in a canister with Cairo’s pawprint on it. Those ashes have a special place in Chesney’s home. He has another canister for the screws and metal plate inserted in Cairo after he was wounded in action.

It still bothers Chesney that Cairo was never awarded a medal. “He’s such a big part of history.”

That said, “He’s getting a book. It’s better than a Silver Star.”





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