Who Killed Pat Tillman?

By Michael Shapiro, Metroactive. Posted June 13, 2007.

"Cease fire. Friendlies! I am Pat fucking Tillman, dammit," shouted former pro football player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman as a hail of bullets pierced the darkening Afghani sky. "CEASE FIRE! FRIENDLIES! I AM PAT FUCKING TILLMAN! I AM PAT FUCKING TILLMAN!"

On patrol in eastern Afghanistan at dusk on April 22, 2004, Tillman and his men hit the dirt, trying to escape swarms of artillery fire coming from the valley below. Tillman reached into his pocket and detonated a smoke bomb, a signal to his comrades that they were shooting at U.S. troops, known in military parlance as "friendlies." The firing stopped.

After a moment, Tillman, relieved and assuming he'd been recognized, stood up. Another barrage of bullets rocketed across the dusty canyon. Three of those bullets shattered Tillman's skull, ending his life. An Afghani soldier allied with U.S. forces was also killed and two other soldiers were injured.

Tillman, lauded by military and government leaders for giving up a multi - million - dollar pro football contract, was America's best known soldier. A San Jose native, Tillman grew up in the Almaden neighborhood and was a stand - out football player at Leland High School. He became the Pac - 10 defensive player of the year at Arizona State University and then went pro with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals.

Even before his death, Tillman was considered a model of self - sacrifice, integrity and decency, not just for his commitment to his country, but for his intellect, forthrightness, and enthusiasm. Which makes what the U.S. military told Tillman's family about Pat's death that much more appalling.

Tillman's brother, Kevin Tillman, was part of the same 75th Ranger Regiment that Pat served, but the soldiers in his unit didn't tell him how his brother died. Rangers were ordered not to say a word about the actual circumstances of his death.

"Immediately after Pat's death, our family was told that he was shot in the head by the enemy in a fierce firefight outside a narrow canyon," Kevin Tillman told the House Oversight Committee during a hearing April 24 entitled "Misleading Information from the Battlefield."

Reading from the Silver Star citation, which was referred to in an April 30 internal Pentagon email as the "Tillman SS gameplan" Kevin Tillman provided an abridged version of what the military told his family and the nation about his brother's death: "Above the din of battle, Corporal Tillman was heard issuing fire commands to take the fight to an enemy on the dominating high ground. Always leading from the front, Corporal Tillman aggressively maneuvered his team against the enemy position on a steep slope. As a result of Corporal Tillman's effort and heroic action, ... the platoon was able to maneuver through the ambush position ... without suffering a single casualty," Kevin Tillman stated at the hearing.

"This story inspired countless Americans, as intended," but "there was one small problem with the narrative," Tillman told the Congressional Oversight panel. "It was utter fiction."

A construction of lies

Kevin Tillman doesn't believe the errors were "missteps" as stated in the Army Investigator General's report, which was released in late March and is the most recent of several official inquiries into the shooting and its aftermath. The probes, all done by military investigators, have looked into the circumstances of Tillman's death as well as the false statements about it.

"A terrible tragedy that might have further undermined support for the war in Iraq," Kevin Tillman said, "was transformed into an inspirational message that served instead to support the ... wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Norman Solomon, author of the book War Made Easy, agrees. "This was a perfect storm of idolatry from the Pentagon standpoint: a football hero sacrificing himself for patriotic reasons -- it was central casting as far as the Rumsfeld gang was concerned," he said. "The mythology was so wonderful that the facts were inconvenient and unnecessary."

What's astonishing is not just the lengths the Army went to create a fictional account, which included changing the testimony of soldiers who witnessed the friendly fire shooting and the destruction of evidence such as the burning of Tillman's blood - stained uniform. It's that this was not an isolated incident but rather part of a pattern of deception.

In recent months, several other families have pressed the military for details about their loved ones' deaths, uncovering similar fabrications. These revelations, coming to light only after soldiers' relatives demanded details about their family members' final hours, may represent a fraction of the military's effort to conceal friendly fire or accidental deaths and injuries on Middle Eastern battlefields.

At the April 24 Congressional Oversight hearing, Jessica Lynch, portrayed in spring 2003 as the "little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting," testified that the story the military told about her was a blatant lie. Lynch never fired a shot when her caravan was ambushed. After being severely wounded she was kept alive by Iraqi doctors and nurses.

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Michael Shapiro’s stories, which range from investigative reporting to travel topics, have appeared in the Washington Post, National Geographic Traveler and the North Bay Bohemian. He is the author of A Sense of Place. For more about Shapiro and his work, see www.michaelshapiro.net.

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