Pattern of Deception Persists in Tillman's Death
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted June 14, 2005.
The specter that the military's shameful treatment of Pat Tillman, his family and the American public does raise is what the White House knew as it played the Tillman story for maximum political benefit.
On Saturday, Mary Tillman went to a graduation party, corrected essays written by her junior high school students and got the house ready for a visit from her mother. Life goes on, even though the "friendly fire" death in Afghanistan of her famous football-playing son never fully leaves her thoughts.
And how could it? Although Pat Tillman, 27, was shot to death on a mountain pass in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, his family has been tortured ever since by a pattern of official deception over how he died -- killed by U.S. Army machine-gun fire -- and why the family was kept in the dark.
That deception has continued with the latest and allegedly definitive government statement. Last week, the Army unconvincingly claimed that the suppression of field reports that Tillman was killed by friendly fire did not amount to an official cover-up but was merely the result of confusing regulations that should be changed -- "an administrative error," in the words of Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the head of Army public affairs.
Mary Tillman, however, begs to differ with this convenient conclusion to the investigation. When I met with her on Sunday near the Northern California suburb where she raised her three sons, she was measured but firm in rejecting the Army's report and latest statements.
"As far as our family is concerned, the case of Pat's death is not closed, as the Army suggests," she told me. "It concerns us that the documents we received state that Gen. [John P.] Abizaid knew on April 28 that Pat was absolutely killed by fratricide. Why were we not told prior to Pat's memorial service, which was nationally televised on May 3? We weren't told until five weeks later, and only because the troops that were with Pat came home from Afghanistan and the story was unfolding."
The documents that Mary Tillman is referring to are gathered in a six-volume record of the military's investigation, which were recently made available to the family but not to the media or public. Although heavily redacted, including one wholly censored volume, the files I have read make unmistakably clear that the true cause of Tillman's death was known in the field shortly after he was killed and reported as fratricide up through the military command. Yet those facts were systematically kept from the family -- including Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger, Kevin Tillman, who was serving in the same unit in Afghanistan -- while a markedly inaccurate story played itself out in the world's media.
The publicly unreleased files also present major contradictions of fact and logic as to how this
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