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Mary Tillman, Mother of Slain Army Ranger and former NFL Star Pat Tillman, on Her Four-Year Quest to Expose the Military Cover-Up of Her Son’s Death by Members of His Own Unit

Pat Tillman left behind a lucrative NFL contract to enlist in the military after 9/11. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed while serving in Afghanistan. He died, the military said, while charging up a hill toward the enemy to protect his fellow Army Rangers. But that wasn’t the real story. Tillman was killed by his own men. What’s more, the military knew that within hours but waited five weeks before admitting it. Four years and several probes later, Pat Tillman’s family, led by his mother Mary, are still searching for answers about what really happened. Mary Tillman has just published a book based on her review of uncensored government documents and her four-year effort to cut through misleading official accounts of how her son died. It’s called Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman. [includes rush transcript]


AMY GOODMAN: He was perhaps the most famous American soldier of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat Tillman was an NFL star who left behind a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the military after 9/11. His decision made headlines across the country and prompted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to send him a congratulatory note. On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed while serving in Afghanistan. He was twenty-seven years old.

Two weeks later, just before a nationally televised memorial service, the Pentagon awarded him the Silver Star. He died, the military said, while charging up a hill toward the enemy to protect his fellow Army Rangers. But that wasn’t the real story. Tillman was killed by his own men. What’s more, the military knew that within hours but waited five weeks before admitting it.

Four years later and after seven investigations, several inquiries and two congressional hearings, Pat Tillman’s family, led by his mother Mary, are still searching for answers about what really happened. Lawmakers granted Mary Tillman access to uncensored versions of some documents that were not available to journalists. She has just published a book based on her review of those documents and her four-year effort to cut through misleading official accounts of how her son died. It’s called Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman.

I spoke with Mary Tillman this week about the life and death of her son. I began by asking her how she first heard that Pat had been killed.

MARY TILLMAN: I first learned from my daughter-in-law. She told me that Pat had been killed. And, of course, we heard from the casualty report that he had been shot in the head getting out of a vehicle, he died an hour later in a field hospital. And then, when we had his memorial service, the Army gave a Navy Seal friend of Pat and Kevin’s a narrative to read that said that he was running up a ridgeline in an attempt to help a convoy of troops get through an ambush zone, and he was killed by the enemy.

But then, four weeks later, when Kevin, his brother, who was also in the same platoon but was not present when his brother was killed, he had gone back to Fort Lewis. He was taken aside by his first sergeant, and he was told that Pat was killed by friendly fire. I was told, however, by an Arizona Republic reporter, who called me assuming I knew already. And so, it was rather shocking to learn the news.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did the reporter tell you?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, he just said that the Army had indicated that Pat was killed by friendly fire, and what did I think? And I basically just sort of said, “I have nothing to say,” and I hung up.

And then, of course, the next day, my son, my daughter-in-law, my other son, the family gathered, and a battalion commander came to our house, and he explained what happened in Pat’s situation, that he was killed by soldiers in a vehicle that had come out of the ambush zone, and that the—he said the visibility was quite good, but he said that Pat and the AMF soldier that was also killed alongside Pat—he said that they were about 150 to 250 meters away. He said that the soldier in the vehicle actually got out of the vehicle. He shot the AMF soldier in the chest six to eight times. And when he did that, the other soldiers in the vehicle opened up on the ridgeline.

Pat and other—and the young soldier next to him and all the other friendlies on the ridgeline waved and yelled “Cease fire!” and tried to get their attention to get them to stop. Pat and the young soldier that was with him were kind of crouching between two rocks that were about thigh-high, and there was shrapnel flying everywhere. And they were trying to, you know, wave their arms to say “Cease fire!” The regular ceasefire signal would not have been able to be seen while they’re crouching behind rocks, so everyone’s waving their hands. The soldiers continued to shoot, so Pat threw a smoke grenade, thinking that by throwing that the soldiers would recognize there had to be friendlies in the area.

At that point, the firing did stop. And so, Pat and the young soldier stood up. The other soldiers on the ridgeline relaxed. And Pat walked—started to walk around the rock, and all of a sudden they opened up again. We think that Pat was then hit in the chest. We know he was hit in the chest, but we think it was at this point that he was hit in his body armor. It would have knocked him to the ground, to his knees. And at that point, he was hit by a three-round burst and killed.

The soldiers in the vehicle then drove down the ridgeline, continuing to shoot. They ended up shooting at structures that were at the side of the road, and they wounded their platoon leader and the radio operator. In fact, we were told that they were shooting so wildly and out of control that they nearly shot the vehicle behind them that was coming out of a canyon.

AMY GOODMAN: And at this point, how have you pieced all of this together? Certainly, the men in his unit knew what had happened at that moment, didn’t they?

MARY TILLMAN: Yes, many of the soldiers did. The ones on the ridgeline were pretty clear that—actually, the soldier next to him and one of—several of the soldiers behind him knew he was killed by the soldiers in this vehicle. The rest of the ones on the ridgeline suspected it, but, you know, some of the soldiers were not—did not know.

Kevin did not know. He was fifteen minutes behind his brother when this happened. And so, he was told that he was killed by the enemy also. But, of course, at that moment when he first arrived on the scene, it wouldn’t have served anyone’s best interest to tell Kevin right away. But the fact is, they never told him until, you know, four weeks later, when in fact they all knew.

And of course, in this scenario, they did say, like I said, that Pat and the MF were 150 to 250 meters away, but in fact they were probably thirty to forty—thirty-five to forty meters away. We were told that the MF was shot when he was standing, in that original story, but three weeks—

AMY GOODMAN: This is the Afghan soldier?

MARY TILLMAN: The Afghan soldier, who was a friendly. He worked alongside these troops for two weeks. We were told that he was standing when he was shot. However, when we got to Fort Lewis for the official briefing, they said that “Oh, no, he was in a prone position.” In other words, they were trying to make it appear as though the soldiers in the vehicle could not have identified him as a friendly, because he was wearing an American uniform. But the problem was, he was shot in the chest. So how do you shoot a man six to eight times in the chest if he’s in a prone position?

AMY GOODMAN: So, who do you think is responsible for this cover-up?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, I—you know, the Army has told us that it was a three-star general, a General Philip Kensinger, that was responsible for not telling the family, for covering up. But I talked to retired General Wesley Clark, and he said, after looking at the documents, he said that there is no way that this started at the three-star level. In fact, he went on Keith Olbermann last summer, and he said that this cover-up started at a much higher level than a three-star level.

I think that it most likely started with the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He had written Pat a letter when he enlisted, thanking him for enlisting, so Pat was in his radar. We were also kind of shocked to discover in August at the second congressional hearing that Rumsfeld sent a snowflake memo—I guess he opposes email, so he tends to write things and drop them off on people’s desks. And this memo was to the then-Deputy Secretary of the Army, Peter Geren, who is now the Secretary of the Army. And this memo basically said, you know, that Pat’s a very special person and that they should keep an eye on him.

So it’s ludicrous to think that the generals in the chain of command who, through the documents we know, learned of Pat fratricide within twenty-four to forty-eight hours—it’s ludicrous to think that they didn’t tell the Secretary of Defense, because Rumsfeld would have—heads would have rolled if they didn’t tell Rumsfeld. I mean, this was the month the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. In fact, it was the same week Pat died. Fallujah was in chaos. President’s approval rating was very dismal. And, of course, this was the worst month in the war to that point in Iraq in terms of casualties. So, for them not to tell him that Pat was killed by friendly fire, that just wouldn’t have happened, in my mind, because he was—he’s known to be a micromanager. He’s also known to want hands-on with the military, especially the Special Operations and the Black Ops.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Donald Rumsfeld, in his first testimony after he was no longer Defense Secretary but brought in by the House to address this issue, the death of your son, responded, “I know I would not engage in a cover-up. I know no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me. I know the gentlemen sitting next to me are men of enormous integrity and would not participate in something like that," he said.

MARY TILLMAN: Right. Well, I think he was being very disingenuous. I didn’t believe him then. I still don’t believe him.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think they didn’t tell the truth? Why do you think Rumsfeld lied?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, because once you tell a lie, it’s very hard to say you lied. And I think that the lie is planted, and they’re not going to say otherwise. But I think that Pat’s death was used by the administration, by the military, to deflect, you know, Abu Ghraib, to deflect Fallujah, to deflect all these things. They saw an opportunity to use him.

In fact, there is a General Yellen, in his testimony to General Jones, who was the third investigative officer—or, pardon me, yeah, the third general, actually, or the third officer to investigate Pat’s death—he asked General Yellen, “What was the tone, basically, of the chain of command once they learned that Pat’s death was of fratricide?” And of course, you know, they did know within twenty-four to forty-eight hours that it was at least a suspected fratricide. He said, “Well, it’s like we were given a steak dinner, but they handed it to us in a garbage can cover. You got it, you work it.” In other words, Pat’s death, to them, was a positive thing, because they could use him to promote patriotic feeling for the war. But he was killed by friendly fire, so they were going to have to spin the story.


AMY GOODMAN: Mary Tillman is Pat Tillman’s mother. Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger, he was an NFL star, killed April 22nd, 2004 in Afghanistan. Mary Tillman’s book is called Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman. We’ll come back to this conversation in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to my interview with Mary Tillman, the mother of the NFL star turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman, killed in Afghanistan April 22nd, 2004, by members of his own unit. The Army had initially claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire while leading troops into battle. The story was widely reported in the media before the military was forced to acknowledge the false claim.

Last year, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened a hearing to look into the Pentagon’s role in the case. Pat Tillman’s brother Kevin was among those who testified. Kevin was an Army Ranger, as well, in Pat’s unit in Afghanistan when his brother was killed. This is some of Kevin’s testimony before Congress.

KEVIN TILLMAN: April 2004 was turning into the deadliest month to date in the war in Iraq. The dual rebellions in Najaf and Fallujah handed the US forces their first tactical defeat, as American commanders essentially surrendered Fallujah to members of Iraq resistance. And the administration was forced to accede to Ayatollah Sistani’s demand for January elections in exchange for assistance in extricating US forces from its battle with the Mahdi militia. A call-up of 20,000 additional troops was ordered, and another 20,000 troops had their tours of duty extended. In the midst of this, the White House learned that Christian Parenti, Seymour Hersh and other journalists were about to reveal a shocking scandal involving massive and systemic detainee abuse in a facility known as Abu Ghraib.

Then, on April 22nd, 2004, my brother Pat was killed in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan. 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. Revealing that Pat’s death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with political disasters and a brutal truth that the American public would undoubtedly find unacceptable, so the facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed.

Crucial evidence was destroyed, including Pat’s uniform, equipment and notebook. The autopsy was not done in accordance to regulation, and the field hospital report was falsified. An initial investigation, completed eight to ten days before testimony could be changed or manipulated and which hit disturbingly close to the mark, disappeared into thin air and was conveniently replaced by another investigation with more palatable findings. This freshly manufactured narrative was then distributed to the American public, and we believe the strategy had the intended effect. It shifted the focus from the grotesque torture at Abu Ghraib and a downward spiral of an illegal act of aggression to a great American who died a hero’s death.

Over a month after Pat’s death, when it became clear that it would no longer be possible to pull off this deception, a few of the facts were parceled out to the public and to our family. General Kensinger was ordered to tell the American public May 29th, five weeks later, that Pat died of fratricide, but with a calculated and nefarious twist. He stated, quote, “There was no one specific finding of fault,” end-quote, and that he, quote, “probably died of fratricide,” end-quote. But there was specific fault, and there was nothing probable about the facts that led to Pat’s death.

The most despicable part of what General Kensinger told the American public was when he said, quote, “The results of this investigation in no way diminish the bravery and sacrifice displayed by Corporal Tillman,” end-quote. This is an egregious attempt to manipulate the public into thinking that anyone who would question this 180-degree flip in the narrative would be casting doubt on Pat’s bravery and sacrifice. Such questioning says nothing about Pat’s bravery and sacrifice, any more than the narrative for Jessica diminishes her bravery and sacrifice. It does, however, say a lot about the powers who perpetrated this.

After the truth of Pat’s death was partially revealed, Pat was no longer of use as a sales asset and became strictly the Army’s problem. They were now left with the task of briefing our family and answering our questions. With any luck, our family would sink quietly into our grief, and the whole unsavory episode would be swept under the rug.

However, they miscalculated our family’s reaction. Through the amazing strength and perseverance of my mother, the most amazing woman on earth, our family has managed to have multiple investigations conducted. However, while each investigation gathered more information, the mountain of evidence was never used to arrive at an honest or even sensible conclusion.

The most recent investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Criminal Investigative Division of the Army concluded that the killing of Pat was, quote, “an accident.” The handling of the situation after the firefight were described as a compilation of, quote, “missteps, inaccuracies, and errors in judgment which created the perception of concealment.”

The soldier who shot Pat admitted in a sworn statement that just before he delivered the fatal burst from about thirty-five meters away, that he saw his target waving hands, but he decided to pull the trigger anyway. Such an act is not an accident. It’s a clear violation of the rules of engagement.

Writing up a field hospital report stating that Pat was, quote, “transferred to intensive care unit for continued CPR,” after most of his head had been taken off by multiple .556 rounds, is not misleading. Stating that a giant rectangle bruise covering his chest that sits exactly where the armor plate that protects you from bullets is being, quote, “consistent with paddle marks” is not misleading. These are deliberate and calculated lies.

Writing a Silver Star award before a single eyewitness account is taken is not a misstep. Falsifying soldier witness statements for a Silver Star is not a misstep. These are intentional falsehoods that meet the legal definition for fraud. Delivering false information at a nationally televised memorial service is not an error in judgment. Discarding an investigation that does not fit a preordained conclusion is not an error in judgment. These are deliberate acts of deceit.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pat Tillman’s younger brother, Kevin Tillman, in the same unit in the Rangers in Afghanistan, testifying, though, on April 24th, 2007. So, Mary Tillman, your son says crucial evidence was destroyed, including Pat’s uniform, equipment and notebook; the autopsy not done according to regulation; the field hospital report was falsified. Go through each of these allegations.

MARY TILLMAN: Well, Pat’s uniform was destroyed. His equipment was destroyed. And of course, there is a protocol that the military has that the uniforms and equipment of fallen soldiers, especially soldiers killed by fratricide, suicide or suspected execution, need to go back to the medical examiner. I mean, they prefer to have all of the uniforms from any fallen soldier, but because Pat was a suspected fratricide, definitely his things should have gone back with him. And we were told that his body—or, pardon me, that his equipment and uniform was a biohazard. I mean, that’s why they destroyed his things. But Pat’s body would have been considered a biohazard, and yet his body was very well preserved when it got bad to Rockville, Maryland. In fact, the medical examiner said in his testimony that Pat’s body was well preserved. If his uniform had been left on him, it would have also been well preserved. And I think that it’s because his uniform had evidence of American rounds that they destroyed it.

We also were suspicious of the autopsy, because initially when we got it, it read like it wasn’t even Pat. He was documented to being two inches taller than he was. The autopsy said that he was wearing a gold wedding band, when in fact his wedding band was platinum, which would have appeared more silver. He had some identifying scars on his body and various things that were not identified in the autopsy. So we became suspicious of that.

Then I came upon a portion of the autopsy that said that there was a—there were marks on his chest that looked consistent with an attempt to defibrillate him. And that didn’t make sense to us, because basically the autopsy said Pat virtually had no brain when he—after he was killed. So it didn’t make sense that someone would try to save him. And, of course, Kevin already knew that the medic who got to Pat first made no attempt to save him initially. And if that—that would be the time that someone might in a panic try to save someone. But Pat had been bagged as KIA, and he had been dead for about two hours before he got to the field hospital. So it didn’t seem like anyone would have attempted to defibrillate him.

So when I talked to the medical examiner and the coroner, they said that simply that is what it looked like, but they weren’t sure. They said I should probably ask for the field hospital documents. So it took six months to get the field hospital documents. Once we got those, it was kind of surprising, because there was no mention of defibrillation, but they said that he—that CPR was performed on him, that he was transferred to ICU for continued CPR. And that made us even more perplexed and outraged, because, as I said, here is a soldier who had been dead for two hours, he had no brain, and yet they’re saying they performed CPR on him and transferred him to ICU for continued CPR. So all of these things, you know, were very upsetting to us, and we had to keep looking into it further.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you a member of the unit who I met in Santa Barbara, California. His name is Peter Boris [phon.], and I asked him about what happened to Pat and what happened with the cover-up.

PETER BORIS: My name is Peter Boris. I was with 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. And the day Pat was killed, I was with his platoon earlier in the day, and then our platoon drove back to the firebase. This is on the eastern border of Afghanistan. We made it back to the base about sundown. And we got—heard over the radio that Pat’s platoon had gotten ambushed and that one of the brothers had been killed. So we jumped back in our trucks and drove out there, but we didn’t get there ’til dawn. It was that far, so… And then we started—we replaced their platoon and started searching for the people who did the ambush.

AMY GOODMAN: And when did you figure out that it was—

PETER BORIS: Friendly fire?

AMY GOODMAN: Friendly fire, exactly.

PETER BORIS: I found out a few days later that it was friendly fire. Once we got—once we finished arresting a bunch of people and came back to the firebase, I found out through one of my buddies. And at the time, actually, I was all for keeping it a secret, which is interesting. I was thinking about how I would want my parents to think that I was killed by, you know, the enemy, rather than wasted by your own friends. So I was like, yeah, I wouldn’t tell the parents, either. It’s more honorable that way.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened to the Afghans who you arrested?

PETER BORIS: I don’t know. We go into a—well, first of all, we’d go into a village, find out—we’d bribe people to tell us where the terrorists were and then go into their village at night, kick in their door, arrest all the men and ignore the women and children.

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