COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
Tillman's Brother Blasts Military
Associated Press
April 24, 2007
WASHINGTON
- Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of "intentional
falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in
portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of
heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more
importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a House Government
Reform and Oversight Committee hearing. "Pat's death was clearly the
result of fratricide," he said.
"Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet
another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the
truth needed to be suppressed," said Tillman, who was in a convoy
behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but
didn't see it.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., accused the
government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Pat
Tillman's death and the 2003 rescue of Jessica Lynch, perhaps the most
famous victims of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Lynch, then an Army private, was badly injured when her convoy was
ambushed in Iraq. She was subsequently rescued by American troops from
an Iraqi hospital but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story
of heroism on her part.
Still hampered by her injuries, Lynch walked slowly to the witness table and took a seat alongside Tillman's family members.
"The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining
their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate
tales," Lynch said.
Kevin Tillman said his family has sought for years to get at the truth
about Pat Tillman's death, and have now concluded that they were "being
actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a
narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served."
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., questioned how high up the chain of
command the information about Tillman's friendly fire death went, and
whether anyone in the White House knew before Tillman's family.
Pat Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, said she believed former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must have known. "The fact that he would have
died by friendly fire and no one told Rumsfeld is ludicrous," she said.
Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades
were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing
Tillman's group had just emerged from a canyon where they had been
fired upon. They saw Tillman and mistakenly fired on him.
Though dozens of soldiers knew quickly that Tillman had been killed by
his fellow troops, the Army said initially that he was killed by enemy
gunfire when he led his team to help another group of ambushed
soldiers. It was five weeks before his family was told the truth, a
delay the Army has blamed on procedural mistakes.
Pat Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, told the committee family members
were "absolutely appalled" upon realizing the extent to which they were
misled.
Last month the military concluded in a pair of reports that nine
high-ranking Army officers, including four generals, made critical
errors in reporting Tillman's death but that there was no criminal
wrongdoing in his shooting.
Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away
from a huge contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the
Army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mary Tillman said she found it "horrific" that investigators found no violations of rules of engagement.
Waxman contended that the federal government invented "sensational
details and stories" about the Tillman's death and Lynch's rescue.
"The government violated its most basic responsibility," said Waxman.
Lawmakers also planned to press the Pentagon with questions still
hovering over Tillman's shooting, including whether a Predator drone
was flying overhead when Tillman was killed and whether it videotaped
the incident. The military says no such videotape exists.
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