Army Public Affairs is the guilty party here...
Posted on 04/24/2007 11:30:12 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
WASHINGTON - An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when he died by friendly fire said Tuesday he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman's family. ADVERTISEMENT
"I was ordered not to tell them," U.S. Army Specialist Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
He said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw Tillman's platoon.
Pat Tillman's brother Kevin was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened, but didn't see it. O'Neal said Bailey told him specifically not to tell Kevin Tillman that the death was friendly fire rather than heroic engagement with the enemy.
"He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place knowing that his brother's dead,'" O'Neal said. He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told.
Kevin Tillman was not in the hearing room when Bailey spoke.
In earlier testimony, Kevin Tillman accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying Pat Tillman'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, contending that the military's misstatements amounted to "fraud."
"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," Tillman said.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), 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.
"The government violated its most basic responsibility," said Waxman.
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, 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."
Lawmakers 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.
"How high up did this go?" asked Waxman.
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. The family was not told what really happened until May 29, 2004, a delay the Army blamed on procedural mistakes.
In questioning what the White House knew, Rep. Elijah Cummings (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., cited a memo written by a top general seven days after Tillman's death warning it was "highly possible" the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire and making clear his warning should be conveyed to the president. President Bush made no reference to the way Tillman died in a speech delivered two days after the memo was written.
A White House spokesman has said there's no indication Bush received the warning in the memo written April 29, 2004 by then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command.
"It's a little disingenuous to think the administration didn't know," Kevin Tillman told the committee. "That's kind of what we hoped you guys would get involved with and take a look," he said.
Mary Tillman told the committee that family members were "absolutely appalled" upon realizing the extent to which they were misled.
"We've all been betrayed ... We never thought they would use him the way they did," she said.
The Tillman family has made similar accusations against the administration and the military before, but has generally shied away from news media attention. The family had never previously appeared together and summarized their criticism and questions in such a public, comprehensive way.
"We shouldn't be allowed to have smoke screens thrown in our face," Mary Tillman said. "You're diminishing their true heroism to write these glorious tales. It's really a disservice to the nation."
"Our family will never be satisfied. We'll never have Pat back," she said. "Something really awful happened. It's your job to find out what happened to him. That's really important."
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.
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Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this report from San Francisco.
I’m wondering how many American soldiers since the Revolutionary War have died due to “friendly fire”? How would things have been different during WWII had those incidents been reported as such right after each death? While I can understand the family’s anger, I don’t see how any of this helps deal with the fact that this nation is at war with an enemy that began that war against us, not the other way around. And, I get the sense that the Tillman family is now being used by the liberals in this country in their war against the Bush Administration.
Not to mention the fact that disease exposure and starvation claimed a lot more than the battles themselves.
War sucks, that's why we honor those who endure it for the rest of us.
True, all too true. Would that it were (J. Kerry's words) that we could have no war at all, ever. Alas, evil exists in the world and must be fought at every turn. May God Bless those willing to walk into the crucible of war.
She also said she had no evidence to back up this claim, but she had read a book about Rumsfeld and she just knows what kind of guy he is...right!
You are a commander in hostile territory and soldier is accidentally killed by friendly fire. That soldier's hot-tempered brother is a convoy behind the dead soldier's.
Do you want to take the risk of telling a soldier who is already under incredible stress and strain that Billy over there just killed his big brother by mistake?
Does that sound like a scenario that will assist unit cohesion? Would it be better if the brother was informed right away and he snapped and killed another soldier or two?
Thisincident didn't happen on a daytrip to the mall.
The fact there isn’t a single piece of ‘new information’ is the best indicator this was designed strictly for the partisan witch hunts that have begun.
Excellent point.
Kevin is proving that he is not able to control himself under pressure.
No telling what he might have done.
See Post #6.
Years?
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. The family was not told what really happened until May 29, 2004, a delay the Army blamed on procedural mistakes.
Sounds more like 37 days, rather than years.
I'm sorry for their loss.
I'm sorry for our country's loss.
It is most likely that the officer used poor judgment in an effort to temporarily spare Pat's brother from hearing that it was his fellow soldiers that accidentally shot Pat.
However, it is still true that Pat let his group of Rangers against enemy forces that were attacking his group, and that he died as a result of that engagement. They had just come under fire, and the other soldiers thought that he was one of those attackers rather than a fellow American.
His actions were no less brave because he died as a result of friendly fire.
His brother should have been told the truth right away, instead of 5 weeks later.
However, I find it hard to believe that the officer that chose to keep that information from him thought it could be kept form him long term.
Dozens of soldiers knew what had happened right away. Such secrets spread quickly.
It was likely what the officer thought was a little white lie to help ease the initial shock for Pat's brother that spiraled quickly out of control.
This is unfortunate, and it was the wrong thing for that officer to do. However, the only reason that this has remained in the public eye for so long is that there are those who want to use this issue to demoralize our troops and to attack the administration.
An illegal order?
He was ordered by his superior not to divulge information - an order that his superior had every legal right to give and which he had every legal obligation to comply with.
An illegal order is an order in which a superior instructs a subordinate to violate the laws of war.
I am unaware of any provision in the UCMJ or the Geneva Convention which makes it compulsory for a officer to immediately report the circumstances of a soldier's death to his family.
The Army, as a matter of policy, traditionally waits until a uniformed service member can contact the family in person.
If not telling the family immediately is illegal, the Army has been routinely breaking the law for centuries.
Army Public Affairs is the guilty party here...
I agree - but when stuff like this happens and different versions are circulated, the Army has a responsibility to confirm precisely what happened and that can take time.
What LCol Bailey was protecting was the integrity of an on-going investigation. What he doesn't want is 1 eyewitness giving his personal account before the investigators have finished their work. Eyewitnesses don't always get the details right & a partial story given out too early could prove problematic. This eyewitness account would probably have been accurate in general, but you can't know that before the fact.
Now, assume that LCol Bailey is in fact running a coverup. The 'investigation' comes out & it insists that Tillman died as the initial reports said he did. Every man in Tillman's squad knows the Truth. Somebody will tell Tillman's family. Col. Bailey surely knows this. THAT is why this is not a coverup -- it would never 'stick'.
‘Friendly fire’ has been the reason for a number of deaths otherwise reported. It is bad enough that a loved one is killed, let alone by his own troops by mistake. It is the same issue when the family wants to know, “Did he suffer?” Get real, what are you going to say....the truth when it serves no purpose other than to take the loss into the realm of agony?
This is not as black and white as dillitantes such as Waxman like to paint it.
God rest Tillman’s soul and may his family find some peace.
***...they did not deserve to have to wait as long as they did to find out the truth.***
We are at war! They did not have to know the truth ever. How did it serve them to know that their son was shot accidentally? It only makes their pain worse. They have been led by the cowardly leftists to the point of making an issue out of it.
There was a scene in a TV movie some years ago in which the father of a murdered girl had to go to the morgue to i.d. her. The morgue attendant gratuitously lifted the sheet to allow her father to see the horrible gashes in her stomach. The father turned to the attendant, and DECKED him. Rightly so.
It’s only okay to alter or embellish the details behind a casualty when it involves John Kerry.
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