[Mb-civic] Pat Tillman

[Mha Atma Khalsa]

Here is a long but very interesting article about the
coverup of the events of former football star Pat
Tillman's death in Afghanistan....

FAMILY DEMANDS THE TRUTH
New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat
Tillman's death
- Robert Collier, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, September 25, 2005


The battle between a grieving family and the U.S.
military justice system
is on display in thousands of pages of documents
strewn across Mary
Tillman's dining room table in suburban San Jose.

As she pores through testimony from three previous
Army investigations
into the killing of her son, former football star Pat
Tillman, by his
fellow Army Rangers last year in Afghanistan, she
hopes that a new inquiry
launched in August by the Pentagon's inspector general
finally will answer
the family's questions:

Were witnesses allowed to change their testimony on
key details, as
alleged by one investigator? Why did internal
documents on the case, such
as the initial casualty report, include false
information? When did top
Pentagon officials know that Tillman's death was
caused by friendly fire,
and why did they delay for five weeks before informing
his family?

"There have been so many discrepancies so far that
it's hard to know what
to believe," Mary Tillman said. "There are too many
murky details." The
files the family received from the Army in March are
heavily censored,
with nearly every page containing blacked-out
sections; most names have
been deleted. (Names for this story were provided by
sources close to the
investigation.) At least one volume was withheld
altogether from the
family, and even an Army press release given to the
media has deletions.
On her copies, Mary Tillman has added competing marks
and scrawls -
countless color-coded tabs and angry notes such as
"Contradiction!"
"Wrong!" and "????"

A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of
testimony, as well as
interviews with Pat Tillman's family members and
soldiers who served with
him, found contradictions, inaccuracies and what
appears to be the
military's attempt at self-protection.

For example, the documents contain testimony of the
first investigating
officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses
to change key
details in their sworn statements so his finding that
certain soldiers
committed "gross negligence" could be softened.

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely
known - a fiercely
independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in
service to his
country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed
the war in Iraq,
where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader
whose interests
ranged from history books on World War II and Winston
Churchill to works
of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author.

Unlike Cindy Sheehan - who has protested against
President Bush because of
the death of her son Casey in combat in Baghdad - Mary
Tillman, 49, who
teaches in a San Jose public junior high school, and
her ex-husband,
Patrick Tillman, 50, a San Jose lawyer, have avoided
association with the
anti-war movement. Their main public allies are Sen.
John McCain, RAriz.,
and Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who have lobbied on
their behalf. Yet the
case has high stakes because of Pat Tillman's status
as an all-American
hero.

A football star at Leland High School in San Jose and
at Arizona State
University, Tillman was chosen Pac-10 defensive player
of the year in 1997
and selected by the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft
the following
spring.

He earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from
Arizona State and
graduated summa cum laude in 3 1/2 years with a 3.84
grade point average.
Ever the student, Tillman not only memorized the
playbook by the time he
reported for the Cardinals' rookie camp but pointed
out errors in it. He
then worked on a master's degree in history while
playing professional
football.

His 224 tackles in a single season (2000) are a team
record, and because
of team loyalty he rejected a five year, $9 million
offer from the St.
Louis Rams for a one-year, $512,000 contract to stay
with Arizona the next
year.

Moved in part by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, Tillman decided to
give up his career, saying he wanted to fight al Qaeda
and help find Osama
bin Laden. He spurned the Cardinals' offer of a three
year, $3.6 million
contract extension and joined the Army in June 2002
along with his brother
Kevin, who was playing minor-league baseball for the
Cleveland Indians
organization.

Pat Tillman's enlistment grabbed the attention of the
nation - and the
highest levels of the Bush administration. A personal
letter from
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, thanking him for
serving his
country, now resides in a storage box, put away by
Pat's widow, Marie.

Instead of going to Afghanistan, as the brothers
expected, their Ranger
battalion was sent to participate in the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in
March 2003. The Tillmans saw combat several times on
their way to Baghdad.
In early 2004, they finally were assigned to
Afghanistan.

Although the Rangers are an elite combat group, the
investigative
documents reveal that the conduct of the Tillmans'
detachment - A Company,
2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment - appeared to be
anything but expert
as it advanced through a remote canyon in eastern
Afghanistan on April 22,
2004, on a mission to search for Taliban and al Qaeda
fighters in a
village called Manah.

According to the files, when one of the humvees became
disabled, thus
stalling the mission, commanding officers split
Tillman's platoon in two
so one half could move on and the other could arrange
transport for the
disabled vehicle. Platoon leader Lt. David Uthlaut
protested the move as
dangerous, but he was overruled. The first group was
ordered out in the
late afternoon, with Pat Tillman in the forward unit.
Kevin's unit
followed 15 to 20 minutes later, hauling the humvee on
an Afghan-owned
flatbed truck. Both groups temporarily lost radio and
visual contact with
each other in the deep canyon, and the second group
came under attack from
suspected Taliban fighters on the surrounding ridges.

Pat Tillman, according to testimony, climbed a hill
with another soldier
and an Afghan militiaman, intending to attack the
enemy. He offered to
remove his 28-pound body armor so he could move more
quickly, but was
ordered not to. Meanwhile, the lead vehicle in the
platoon's second group
arrived near Tillman's position about 65 meters away
and mistook the group
as enemy. The Afghan stood and fired above the second
group at the
suspected enemy on the opposite ridge. Although the
driver of the second
group's lead vehicle, according to his testimony,
recognized Tillman's
group as "friendlies" and tried to signal others in
his vehicle not to
shoot, they directed fire toward the Afghan and began
shooting wildly,
without first identifying their target, and also shot
at a village on the
ridgeline.

The Afghan was killed. According to testimony,
Tillman, who along with
others on the hill waved his arms and yelled "cease
fire," set off a smoke
grenade to identify his group as fellow soldiers.
There was a momentary
lull in the firing, and he and the soldier next to
him, thinking
themselves safe, relaxed, stood up and started
talking. But the shooting
resumed. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel
and in his body armor
with numerous bullets.

The soldier next to him testified: "I could hear the
pain in his voice as
he called out, 'Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat f-ing
Tillman, dammit."
He said this over and over until he stopped," having
been hit by three
bullets in the forehead, killing him.

The soldier continued, "I then looked over at my side
to see a river of
blood coming down from where he was . I saw his head
was gone." Two other
Rangers elsewhere on the mountainside were injured by
shrapnel.

Kevin was unaware that his brother had been killed
until nearly an hour
later when he asked if anyone had seen Pat and a
fellow soldier told him.

Tillman's death came at a sensitive time for the Bush
administration -
just a week before the Army's abuse of prisoners at
Abu Ghraib in Iraq
became public and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon
immediately
announced that Tillman had died heroically in combat
with the enemy, and
President Bush hailed him as "an inspiration on and
off the football
field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in
the war on terror."

His killing was widely reported by the media,
including conservative
commentators such as Ann Coulter, who called him "an
American original -
virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American
male can be." His May
3, 2004, memorial in San Jose drew 3,500 people and
was nationally
televised.

Not until five weeks later, as Tillman's battalion was
returning home, did
officials inform the public and the Tillman family
that he had been killed
by his fellow soldiers.

According to testimony, the first investigation was
initiated less than 24
hours after Tillman's death by an officer in the same
Ranger battalion.
His report, delivered May 4, 2004, determined that
soldiers involved in
the incident had committed "gross negligence" and
should be appropriately
disciplined. The officer became a key witness in the
subsequent
investigation. For reasons that are not clear, the
officer's investigation
was taken over by a higher ranking commander. That
officer's findings,
delivered the next month, called for less severe
discipline.

The parents, protesting that many questions were left
unanswered, found a
sympathetic ear in McCain, who Mary Tillman later said
was greatly admired
by her son. Tillman was well known in Arizona because
of his success there
as a college and pro football player. McCain began to
press the Pentagon
on the family's behalf, and a third probe finally was
authorized. Its
report was delivered in January.

The military is saying little publicly about the
Tillman case. Most Army
personnel who were involved in the Tillman incident or
the investigations
declined to comment publicly when contacted by The
Chronicle. The
inspector general's press office also declined to
comment, saying only
that the new probe is openended.

Over the coming weeks, Pentagon investigators are
scheduled to carry out
new interviews with many of the soldiers, officers and
others involved in
the incident. As they carry out their reassessment,
potentially
controversial points include:

-- Conflicting testimony. In his Nov. 14, 2004,
interrogation, the first
investigator expressed frustration with "watching some
of these guys
getting off, what I thought . was a lesser of a
punishment than what they
should've received. And I will tell you, over a period
of time . the
stories have changed. They have changed to, I think,
help some
individuals."

The investigator testified that after he submitted his
report on May 3,
higher-ranking officers permitted soldiers to change
key details of their
testimony in order to prevent any individual from
being singled out for
punishment.

"They had the entire chain of command (inaudible) that
were involved, the
[deleted], all sticking up for [deleted] . And the
reason the [deleted]
called me in . because the [deleted] . changed their
story in how things
occurred and the timing and the distance in an attempt
to stick up for
their counterpart, implied, insinuated that the report
wasn't as accurate
as I submitted it ." the first investigator testified.

In another section of his testimony, he said witnesses
changed details
regarding "the distance, the time, the location and
the positioning" in
Tillman's killing.

Another disputed detail was whether the soldiers were
firing while
speeding down the canyon or whether they stopped, got
out and continued
shooting. In testimony in the third investigation, the
soldiers said they
did not stop. However, the medical examiner's report
said Tillman was
killed by three bullets closely spaced in his forehead
- a pattern that
would have been unlikely if the shooter were moving
fast. Spc. Russell
Baer, a soldier pinned down by gunfire on the hillside
near Tillman, said
in an interview with The Chronicle that at least two
soldiers had gotten
out of the humvee to fire uphill. One other soldier
confirmed this account
to a Tillman family member.

One soldier dismissed by the Rangers for his actions
in the incident
submitted a statement in the third investigation that
suggests the probe
was incomplete: "The investigation does not truly set
to rest the events
of the evening of 22 April 2004. There is critical
information not
included or misinterpreted in it that could shed some
light on who is
really at fault for this," he wrote.

-- Commanders' accountability. According to the
documents and interviews,
Capt. William Saunders, to whom platoon leader Uthlaut
had protested
splitting his troops, was allowed to change his
testimony over a crucial
detail - whether he had reported Uthlaut's dissent to
a higher ranking
commander. In initial questioning, Saunders said he
had done so, but when
that apparently was contradicted by that commander's
testimony, Saunders
was threatened with perjury charges. He was given
immunity and allowed to
change his prior testimony.

The regiment's commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bailey, was
promoted to colonel
two months after the incident, and Saunders, who a
source said received a
reprimand, later was given authority to determine the
punishment of those
below him. He gave administrative reprimands to six
soldiers, including
Uthlaut, who had been seriously wounded in the face by
shrapnel in the
incident. Uthlaut - who was first captain of his
senior class at West
Point, the academy's highest honor - was dismissed
from the Rangers and
re-entered the regular Army.

"It seems grossly inappropriate that Saunders would
determine punishment
for the others when he shares responsibility for the
debacle," Mary
Tillman said.

Baer told The Chronicle that commanding officers were
to blame for the
friendly fire because they split the platoon and
ordered it to leave a
secure location in favor of a region known as a
Taliban stronghold.

"It was dumb to send us out during daylight," said
Baer, who was honorably
discharged from the Rangers earlier this year and
lives in the East Bay.

"It's a well-known military doctrine that privates
first learn going
through basic training - if you are in enemy territory
and you are stopped
for a prolonged period of time, the best thing to do
is to wait until
nightfall. Why they thought that moving us out in
broad daylight from our
position, dragging a busted humvee slowly through a
known hotspot after we
had been stranded there all day was a good idea will
forever elude me. Who
made that decision? Bailey? Saunders? That's what I
want to know."

-- Inaccurate information. While the military code
gives clear guidance
for informing family members upon a soldier's death
when cases are
suspected of being a result of friendly fire, that
procedure was not
followed in the Tillman case. After Tillman's death,
the Army gave
conflicting and incorrect descriptions of the events.

On April 22, the family was told that Tillman was hit
with enemy fire
getting out of a vehicle and died an hour later at a
field hospital.

Although there was ample testimony that Tillman died
immediately, an Army
report - dated April 22, 2004, from the field hospital
in Salerno,
Afghanistan, where his body was taken - suggested
otherwise. While it
stated that he had no blood pressure or pulse "on
arrival," it stated that
cardio pulmonary resuscitation had been conducted and
that he was
transferred to the intensive care unit for further
CPR.

On April 23, all top Ranger commanders were told of
the suspected
fratricide. That same day, an Army press release said
he was killed "when
his patrol vehicle came under attack."

On April 29, four days before Tillman's memorial, Gen.
John Abizaid, chief
of U.S. Central Command, and other top commanders were
told of the
fratricide. It is not known if Abizaid reported the
news to Washington.
Mary Tillman believes that with her son's high
profile, and the fact that
Rumsfeld sent him a personal letter, the word quickly
reached the defense
secretary. "If Pat was on Rumsfeld's radar, it's
pretty likely that he
would have been informed right away after he was
killed," she said. White
House, Pentagon and Army spokesmen all said they had
no information on
when Bush or Rumsfeld were informed.

On April 30, the Army awarded Tillman a Silver Star
medal for bravery,
saying that "through the firing Tillman's voice was
heard issuing fire
commands to take the fight to the enemy on the
dominating high ground."

On May 2, the acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee was
told of the
fratricide.

On May 7, the Army's official casualty report stated
incorrectly that
Tillman was killed by "enemy forces" and "died in a
medical treatment
facility."

On May 28, the Army finally admitted to Tillman's
family that he had been
killed by friendly fire.

"The administration clearly was using this case for
its own political
reasons," said the father, Patrick Tillman. "This
cover-up started within
minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels.
This is not
something that (lower-ranking) people in the field
do," he said.

The files show that many of the soldiers questioned in
the inquiry said it
was common knowledge that the incident involved
friendly fire.

A soldier who on April 23 burned Tillman's bullet
riddled body armor -
which would have been evidence in a friendly-fire
investigation -
testified that he did so because there was no doubt it
was friendly fire
that killed Tillman. Two days later, Tillman's uniform
and vest also were
burned because they were soaked in blood and
considered a biohazard.
Tillman's uniform also was burned.

The officer who led the first investigation testified
that when he was
given responsibility for the probe the morning after
Tillman's death, he
was informed that the cause was "potential
fratricide.''

After they received the friendly-fire notification May
28, the Tillmans
began a public campaign seeking more information. But
it was only when the
Tillmans began angrily accusing the Pentagon of a
coverup, in June 2005,
that the Army apologized for the delay, issuing a
statement blaming
"procedural misjudgments and mistakes."

-- Legal liability. In testimony on Nov. 14, the
officer who conducted the
first investigation said that he thought some Rangers
could have been
charged with "criminal intent," and that some Rangers
committed "gross
negligence." The legal difference between the two
terms is roughly similar
to the distinction between murder and involuntary
manslaughter.

The Tillmans demand that all avenues of inquiry remain
open.

"I want to know what kind of criminal intent there
was," Mary Tillman
said. "There's so much in the reports that is
(deleted) that it's hard to
tell what we're not seeing."

In Congress, pressure is building for a full public
disclosure of what
happened. "I am committed to continuing my work with
the Tillman family to
ensure that their concerns are being addressed," said
Rep. Honda. He added
that he expects the investigation to do the following:
"1) provide all
factual evidence about the events of April 22, 2004;
2) identify the
command decisions that contributed to Pat Tillman's
death; 3) explain why
the Army took so long to reveal fratricide as the
cause of Pat Tillman's
death; and 4) offer all necessary recommendations for
improved procedures
relating to such incidents."

Patrick Tillman drily called the new Army probe "the
latest, greatest
investigation." He added, "In Washington, I don't
think any of them want
it investigated. They (politicians and Army officials)
just don't want to
see it ended with them, landing on their desk so they
get blamed for the
cover-up." The January 2005 investigation concluded
that there was no
coverup.

Throughout the controversy, the Tillman family has
been reluctant to cause
a media stir. Mary noted that Pat shunned publicity,
refusing all public
comment when he enlisted and asking the Army to reject
all media requests
for interviews while he was in service. Pat's widow,
Marie, and his
brother Kevin have not become publicly involved in the
case, and they
declined to comment for this article.

Yet other Tillman family members are less reluctant to
show Tillman's
unique character, which was more complex than the
public image of a
gung-ho patriotic warrior. He started keeping a
journal at 16 and
continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in
it regularly. (His
journal was lost immediately after his death.) Mary
Tillman said a friend
of Pat's even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky,
the antiwar author,
to take place after his return from Afghanistan - a
meeting prevented by
his death. She said that although he supported the
Afghan war, believing
it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, "Pat was very
critical of the whole
Iraq war."

Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in
Iraq and
Afghanistan, told one anecdote that took place during
the March 2003
invasion as the Rangers moved up through southern
Iraq.

"I can see it like a movie screen," Baer said. "We
were outside of (a city
in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on
the town. We were at
an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren't in the
fight right then. We
were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so
f- illegal.' And we
all said, 'Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was
against Bush."

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be
identified, said Pat
urged him to vote for Bush's Democratic opponent in
the 2004 election,
Sen. John Kerry.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Stephen White - a Navy SEAL
who served with Pat
and Kevin for four months in Iraq and was the only
military member to
speak at Tillman's memorial - said Pat "wasn't very
fired up about being
in Iraq" and instead wanted to go fight al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. He said
both Pat and Kevin (who has a degree in philosophy)
"were amazingly
well-read individuals . very firm in some of their
beliefs, their
political and religious or not so religious beliefs."

Baer recalled that Tillman encouraged him in his
ambitions as an amateur
poet. "I would read him my poems, and we would talk
about them," Baer
said. "He helped me grow as an individual."

Tillman subscribed to the Economist magazine, and a
fellow soldier said
Tillman created a makeshift base library of classic
novels so his platoon
mates would have literature to read in their down
time. He even brought
gourmet coffee to brew for his platoon in the field in
Afghanistan.

Baer said Tillman was popular among his fellow
soldiers and had no
enemies. "The guys who killed Pat were his biggest
fans," he said. "They
were really wrecked afterward." He called Tillman
"this amazing positive
force who really brought our whole platoon together.

He had this great energy. Everybody loved him." His
former comrades and
family recall Tillman as a born leader yet remarkably
humble. White, the
Navy SEAL, recalls one day when "some 19-year-old
Ranger came and ordered
him to cut an acre of grass.

And Pat just did it, he cut that grass, he didn't
complain. He could have
taken millions of dollars playing football, but
instead he was just taking
orders like that."

Mary Tillman says that's how Pat would have wanted to
be remembered, as an
individual, not as a stock figure or political prop.
But she also believes
"Pat was a real hero, not what they used him as."

For the moment, all that is left are the memories and
the thick binders
spread across Mary Tillman's dining room table in San
Jose. As she waits
for the Pentagon investigators to finish their new
probe, she wonders
whether they will ask the hard questions. Like other
family members, "I
just want accountability," she said. "I want answers."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

'IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE'

That's the lament of Mary Tillman, above, a teacher of
special education
in a San Jose public school. She has long pressed the
Army to reopen its
investigation into the friendly-fire killing of her
son, Pat Tillman, in a
canyon in Afghanistan on April 22, . The persistence
of Mary Tillman and
her former husband, Patrick Tillman, was rewarded when
the Pentagon's
inspector general opened a new inquiry in August, the
fourth such probe.
Mary Tillman says she hopes questions created by
discrepancies in past
testimony will finally be answered.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

STORY CHANGES OVER TIME
An officer in Pat Tillman's Ranger battalion who
directed the first
investigation into the soldier's death served as a
witness on Nov. 14,
2004, in the third investigation, which was led by
Brig. Gen. Gary Jones.
The first investigator complained that the officers in
charge of the
second invest-

igation had allowed Rangers involved in the shooting
to change their
testimony.

THREAT OF PERJURY CHARGES
An excerpt from a March 3, 2005, memorandum by

Brig. Gen. Gary Jones describes how Capt. William
Saunders, the commander
of Pat Tillman's Ranger company, was threatened with
perjury charges.
Jones' memo said Saunders made false claims that he
had informed his
superiors that platoon commander Lt. David Uthlaut had
protested orders
given to him leading up to the incident. Despite this
threat, Saunders was
allowed to change his testimony and was granted
immunity.

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier at sfchronicle.com.

Page A - 1
URL:
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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle




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