Summary
A report conducted by Army Brig. General Gary M. Jones found documents that show officers made erroneous reports about the friendly-fire death of former NFL player and Army ranger Cpl. Pat Tilman. The documents also reported destruction of critical evidence, as well as the details of Tilman's death being hidden from his brother, another Army ranger who was close to the scene of the accident, but did not witness it.
Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said informing families of combat-related death is always hard, and there is a emphasis on giving compassionate and accurate information to the families of the victim. Boyce said this was true of the Tilman shooting.
Original source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050405Y.shtml
Details
The first Army investigator who looked into the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan last year found within days that he was killed by his fellow Rangers in an act of "gross negligence," but Army officials decided not to inform Tillman's family or the public until weeks after a nationally televised memorial service.
A new Army report on the death shows that top Army officials, including the theater commander, Gen.
Soldiers on the scene said they were immediately sure Tillman was killed by a barrage of American bullets as he took shelter behind a large boulder during a twilight firefight along a narrow canyon road near the Pakistani border, according to nearly 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and investigative reports obtained by The Washington Post.
The documents also show that officers made erroneous initial reports that Tillman was killed by enemy fire, destroyed critical evidence and initially concealed the truth from Tillman's brother, also an Army Ranger, who was near the attack on April 22, 2004, but did not witness it.
Jones concluded that there was no official reluctance to report the truth but that "nothing has contributed more to an atmosphere of suspicion by the family than the failure to tell the family that Cpl.
Commanders did not think hostile forces were in Manah, the report said, but an order to hurry up and get troops on the ground there before dusk was passed on because "we were trying to get them back and save them for the next part of the fight," an unnamed officer said in redacted documents.
An investigation was immediately launched, and several documents show that the local chain of command was largely convinced it was fratricide from the beginning.
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Saturday, May 21, 2005
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