BillCosby

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “bribe people”? You give them money?

PETER BORIS: We give them a generator or school supplies or maybe cash. I wasn’t part of that. I was a foot soldier, so I don’t know the details. But as far as I could tell, that’s how it worked. And then we’d handcuff all the males. We’d have one of the people that we had take us there to identify who was good and who was bad, and then we’d take the people who were identified as bad on the trucks back to the firebase. And you never saw them again.

AMY GOODMAN: How could you trust them? How did you know who the people were who were pointing the finger at others?

PETER BORIS: That wasn’t my job, and I have no idea. And that was always a question I had, but that was up to the—up to the intelligence people, the platoon leaders and—

AMY GOODMAN: And did you change your mind about whether Pat’s family should be told the truth?

PETER BORIS: Yeah. Since then, I’ve decided usually the truth is the best in most every situation, so…

AMY GOODMAN: How did his death affect your unit? How did it affect you—

PETER BORIS: Sure. It was a—

AMY GOODMAN: —in the long term?

PETER BORIS: It was a pretty big blow, especially initially. I saw a lot of guys get really angry and start to feel a lot more hatred for just local people. Me, personally—I don’t know—I dealt with it fine. It was pretty amazing that he would die, out of everyone, because we heard about him in basic training, like some NFL player giving up a $5 million contract. We couldn’t believe it. And then he ended up in my unit.

AMY GOODMAN: When you said they got mad at local Afghans, didn’t everyone know that he was killed by what you call friendly fire?

PETER BORIS: No, this was initially. We had just gotten out there, and we hadn’t heard anything about what had happened. We patrolled around the area. We saw the blood and the shells, but we didn’t know the details of it. And then we went out up the valley more and started searching the villages. So we had no idea what happened. I didn’t find out ’til days later. And even most of the guys in the platoon didn’t know it was friendly fire for a while.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Boris was in the same unit as Pat Tillman. Mary Tillman is with us, Pat Tillman’s mother. Your response to Peter talking about first believing you shouldn’t know, sort of protecting you, but then changing his mind?

MARY TILLMAN: Yeah, I mean, a lot of soldiers actually had said that, that the—and I’ve had grown men and women say, “Well, wouldn’t you just rather think of him as dying by the enemy?” I frankly don’t think it’s dishonorable to be killed by friendly fire. I mean, I’d say quite a few soldiers are killed by friendly fire. I don’t think it’s dishonorable. They’re honorable because they’re there and they died. Is it honorable—is it dishonorable to die if you’re hit by a car? I mean, I don’t understand that rationale.

But the other problem with lying for the benefit of making a glorious story is when the evidence points to a different direction, and then that becomes very disturbing for a family. It’s always best to tell the truth. And I do know that some of the soldiers were aware that it was, you know, a fratricide, and some of them were not aware of it. And it took several days before, you know, a lot of the soldiers that were in Afghanistan in that area to found out.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the memo you uncovered from Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, I didn’t really uncover it. Actually, somebody sent that memo anonymously to an Associated Press reporter. And I had this memo emailed to me by a person who works at Senator Barbara Boxer’s office.

And what is so amazing about this memo is the memo was used by the media to point out basically—or, I don’t know if it was used by the media. I shouldn’t say that. Someone pointed out to the media, I suppose, that this memo was a means of exonerating Stanley McChrystal for having any kind of, you know, culpability in any kind of cover-up, because on April 29th he sent this P4 memo—it’s a personal memo—to General Abizaid, General Kensinger and General Brown, indicating that Pat was indeed killed by friendly fire or at least suspected friendly fire, although he’s playing with language there, because they did know that it—they suspected it within twenty-four hours, but by April 29th they knew. But he’s saying that they should tell the President and the Secretary of the Army, because they were going to be making speeches at the President—at the correspondents’ dinner that weekend and that they didn’t want him or the Secretary of the Army to make any embarrassing statements about Pat’s actions “if” the circumstances of Pat’s death were to become public, not “when” the circumstances become public, but “if,” which suggests that they had no intention of telling us the truth unless they had to.

He also has in there an example of how they can word the narrative in the Silver Star and get away with it, in the sense that Pat was killed by friendly fire, not the enemy. And, of course, the Silver Star narrative is supposed to be rather specific about a soldier’s actions. And so, he’s actually giving them an example of language they can use to falsify the Silver Star.

But the military somehow kind of presented this to the press in a manner that left them to believe that this was exonerating Stanley McChrystal. He’s trying to be a good guy. He’s trying to tell the President, you know, that—and other officers that Pat was killed by friendly fire, but they all suspected it already.

AMY GOODMAN: The exact quote at the end of his memo to the higher-ups, the memo that he was concerned President Bush and the Secretary of the Army might mention his heroic death in upcoming speeches, Pat’s death, says, “I felt it was essential you receive this information as soon as we detected it, in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country’s leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public.”

MARY TILLMAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You have other emails.

MARY TILLMAN: I have other emails. I have some emails that, you know, the speechwriters and different people were sending back and forth. One of the emails refers to Pat’s Silver Star. The subject in the email says, you know, “Tillman Silver Star game plan,” or something to that effect. And it’s like, if you’re giving a soldier a Silver Star, why do you need a game plan for it? You know, that was very, very suspicious to us.

And, of course, Rumsfeld’s speechwriter and the President’s speechwriter had sent emails to the military wanting to get specific information, of course, about the way Pat died, and that was on April 28th. And so, it’s interesting that, you know, Stanley McChrystal sent his email on April 29th in order to make sure that, you know, everything was—you know, that they didn’t make any errors in talking about it. But I do think that they already knew Pat’s death was suspected fratricide. This email was simply to let them know, yes, indeed, it was a fratricide, because the statements we have from these high-ranking generals indicate they knew within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

And in fact, when we were at the congressional hearing in August, one of Representative Waxman’s attorneys called me the night before the hearing, and he was very encouraged, because when he interviewed General Myers, who worked with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, he asked him if the Pentagon was aware of Pat’s death being a friendly fire, and he suggested basically that everyone was aware of what happened. But when he got on the panel at the congressional hearing and his former boss was sitting next to him, he denied saying that.


AMY GOODMAN: We’ll return to my conversation with Mary Tillman in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger killed in Afghanistan four years ago. I asked Mary to talk about the soldiers with Pat, whose written accounts of what happened were changed.

MARY TILLMAN: Private Bryan O’Neal and also a Sergeant Matt Weeks, both of them were actually told to type out a narrative of what they—you know, what they know happened to Pat or what they—you know, their version of what happened to Pat, because they were the two closest soldiers to him at the time. And they did. They wrote down what happened. And then, it turns out, someone went in and changed their statements and changed their narratives, so when they wrote the Silver Star, it appeared as though Pat were killed by the enemy. And this all came out at the congressional hearing.

AMY GOODMAN: So both of them knew from the beginning. Both Matt Weeks and Bryan O’Neal knew that he was killed by fratricide?

MARY TILLMAN: Exactly. Yes, they did.

AMY GOODMAN: Who changed their testimony?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, they’ve never been able to trace that. No one knows, and no one is trying very hard to find out.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about that day, April 22nd, 2004, and the orders that a lieutenant received. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing his name right: David Uthlaut.

MARY TILLMAN: Uthlaut.

AMY GOODMAN: Uthlaut. Explain what happened on that day, why your son Pat was where he was in Afghanistan.

MARY TILLMAN: Well, to the best of my understanding of it, you know, the military was supposed to, on the orders of the Secretary of Defense, be—you know, he had a matrix. And basically, these missions, they were supposed to go into these villages and detect insurgents and try to weed them out.

In this case, the platoon had been stranded in a town called Magarah, or a village of Magarah, for about six hours because of a broken Humvee. And the commanders that were in the tactical operations center were getting frustrated, because it was holding up the mission to have this Humvee detaining these troops. Uthlaut and some of the other officers involved in the platoon wanted to get rid of the Humvee or leave it behind, but they weren’t able to do that. They were told they had to take it somewhere to get it repaired. Uthlaut wanted to have maybe it airlifted out, but they didn’t have the right type of helicopter that could airlift this Humvee out at the time, so they were told to drag it to the Khost highway, which was, you know, quite a few miles north of where they were.

And they also wanted, however, boots on the ground in Manah by dusk. So Uthlaut suggested that the platoon travel as one unit and take the Humvee and drop it off, and then they would all travel as one unit to the city of Manah. But the officers at the top insisted that they actually split the platoon, have one part of the platoon deliver the Humvee, and then they would meet up with the other portion of the platoon later to then go into Manah. And they told him that they had to have boots on the ground in Manah by dark or before dark. And Uthlaut protested this also, because ordinarily they were trying to avoid traveling in the daylight hours, because it was so dangerous. Another soldier, a soldier Jay Blessing, had been killed by an IED in the month of November 2003, and so they sort of established a protocol that they wouldn’t be moving during daylight hours.

So on two levels, he was protesting this mission. He didn’t want to split the troops, and he didn’t want to move them during daylight hours. And you have to keep in mind that Lieutenant Uthlaut was a first captain of his class at West Point, which is essentially he’s the valedictorian of his class. He was a very intelligent young man, and he was protesting vehemently these orders. And I’ve heard that ordinarily it’s the soldier on the ground, the officer on the ground that has the last word, and the fact that the officers at the tactical operations center paid no attention to his protest is very disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: Mary Tillman, why did Pat join the military? Why did he become a Ranger? Tell us a little about your son.

MARY TILLMAN: Well, you have to understand, my son was twenty-five when he enlisted. He was a married man. I don’t know all his reasons for doing what he did. I mean, you know, he’s his own person. I do know that 9/11 greatly affected him and his brother, as it did most of us. It was quite disturbing to him, and he felt that his football career was very superfluous at this point. And he knew that other young people were enlisting, and he felt he should, you know, serve his country. Beyond those reasons, I can’t really speak to that. I don’t speak for him.

AMY GOODMAN: You describe in the book when Kevin called you to tell you that he and Pat were enlisting.

MARY TILLMAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: What was your conversation? Had you talked before about this possibility?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, Kevin had talked about enlisting at various points, even before the September 11th attacks, but just casually. Like a lot of young men, you know, he was curious about the military and serving. And so, we had had that conversation. And of course there’s lots of military in my family, so they were used to talking about the military. They’re both history buffs. So, you know, it really wasn’t that shocking that they would enlist, but I was just—and I was proud of them for wanting to serve their country.

What bothered me most is the—you know, the leadership at the helm at this time. I didn’t have great trust in the Bush administration, even at that point. And that concerned me, and I talked to them about that. And of course, they didn’t disagree with me. But they also said you cannot choose your leaders when you’re—you know, at that point, you’re stuck with the leaders you have when you’re in a national crisis. And they could only hope that our leaders would make appropriate choices in a time like this.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Mary Tillman, Pat Tillman’s mother. Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger, was killed April 22nd, 2004 in Afghanistan. Mary, how many investigations have taken place, and who has conducted them? Who has been found responsible at least until this point?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, there’s been two—actually three military—well, OK, initially there were three military investigations. Then there was an investigation by the Inspector General’s office, and they deemed that there should have been a criminal investigation, which should have taken place right after Pat died. But they really didn’t start it ’til almost two years after his death. So then the criminal investigation was conducted. After that, after the hearing and everything, there was an investigation done by the Army again to look into the officers who were culpable in possibly not doing their job correctly. And then, I believe, the Secretary of the Army conducted another investigation, because I said that I didn’t believe a lot of my questions were answered. So he did another investigation looking into those questions, which I still don’t have satisfactory answers for. So there have been a number of investigations.

And there is just—the bottom line is, no one has been held accountable for anything. There have been people that have had some slaps on the wrist for doing certain things, but—and some people have just been scapegoated.

AMY GOODMAN: General Philip Kensinger was reprimanded. What happened to him? And what do you believe is his role?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, I think that the General was probably culpable in this, but I don’t think he’s the ultimate bad guy that, you know, the military would like us to believe. I think he has been a definite scapegoat. I’ve been told just recently that there has been no closure yet in terms of the reprimand or the so-called punishment that he’s supposed to receive. I heard that he was going to be docked a rank or something or stripped of one of his stars, which would also have an effect on his retirement or something like that. But I just don’t think that he is the one that’s ultimately responsible for this cover-up. And, you know, as I said, retired General Wesley Clark also said that this cover-up goes much higher than the three-star level.

AMY GOODMAN: As you wrote this book, Mary, Boots on the Ground by Dusk, your tribute to Pat Tillman, did anything surprise you? You had done so much research leading up to this, but in actually piecing this together?

MARY TILLMAN: Not to the point that I started writing it. I don’t think anything was terribly shocking. And I think that most of it I pretty much had settled in my mind when I started writing it, although, of course, I was in the middle of writing it during the congressional hearings, so the fact that—you know, that the oversight committee, the congressional oversight committee, deemed there was a cover-up was very validating, and we were very encouraged by that. But unfortunately, as I’ve said, you know, through the whole interview, there has been no real closure, no real accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: What exactly do you want to happen right now?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, I would like someone to be held accountable. I’d like for them to discover and try to discover who was involved with this cover-up. It’s a horrible thing that they did. And I think that if people don’t see that, it’s very sad, because it means that we have been numbed to all the lies and deceptions that we’ve been faced with during these last eight years.

The government used a young man’s death for propaganda. They did that with Jessica Lynch, as well. It’s a pattern of behavior they have. Jessica Lynch could have died, because they wanted to videotape her rescue. There’s nothing that can be more horrific than that. And that also came out in our congressional hearing, because there was a dual purpose, to check her situation and Pat’s. And so I—

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a clip of Jessica Lynch testifying. This was just last year in the House.

JESSICA LYNCH: At my parents’ home in Wirt County, West Virginia, it was under siege by media, all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true. I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspire our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good. However, I’m still confused as to why they chose to lie and try to make me a legend, when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were legendary: people like Lori Piestewa and First Sergeant Dowdy, who picked up fellow soldiers in harm’s way, or people like Patrick Miller or Sergeant Donald Walters, who actually did fight until the very end.

The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, they did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jessica Lynch. Mary Tillman, your response to what she had to say, and what you think are the parallels between what happened to Jessica Lynch and what happened to your son?

MARY TILLMAN: I believe that she made it very clear that, you know, the soldiers are heroes in their own right. And there are heroes out there, and you don’t have to fabricate heroes. I thought that was a very, you know, remarkable statement, and so true. And, you know, she also indicated that she had these horrific injuries, and of course the Iraqis did the best to take care of her, to her mind, and they tried to return her to the US, and they wouldn’t take her. And it turns out, what was uncovered in the hearing is that they wanted to have this dramatic rescue videoed. So at the point they could have saved—you know, gone in to rescue her, the military held off for twenty-four hours to get a video crew in there. And what’s very ironic is that Pat and Kevin were also involved in this rescue. They, of course, believed that it was a legitimate rescue and that they were in great danger. But it turns out that it was more or less staged.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

MARY TILLMAN: Well, it was planned that they were going to go in. There was really no harm. The soldiers were under the impression that the Republican Guard was going to be at the airport. I mean, they really did fear for the situation. But as it turned out, the Republican Guard had already taken off. It was not as dangerous a situation as they were led to believe. And of course, in the hearing, they determined that this rescue was held off for twenty-four hours so a video crew could get in and take pictures of the rescue.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re saying that Kevin and Pat were a part of that rescue?

MARY TILLMAN: They were part of the rescue, in the sense that, as Rangers, they kind of held the perimeter of the Baghdad airport. They were part of that. They didn’t go in and actually take her out, no.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they write back to you, or has Kevin talked to you about what he feels in that situation?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, I don’t speak to what Kevin knows. That’s—I will not divulge that. And he was not supposed to divulge that. They were not supposed talk about that at the time to us. We learned some things later, but I won’t speak to what Kevin told me.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Mary Tillman, the role of the media?

MARY TILLMAN: Well, the media has been obviously helpful. I mean, a lot of this information—most of this information could never get out without the help of the media. But I also feel like the media has been very frustrating to us at times. But, you know, ultimately, you know, it’s been helpful. But I think that the media has not been aggressive enough with this administration. I think that they need—especially the television media. The print media at times can be fairly hard on them, but I think the television media, especially the press corps, you know, the presidential press corps—I mean, I think they go way too easy on this administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Has then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, has President Bush attempted to meet with you?

MARY TILLMAN: No, never.

AMY GOODMAN: Your son was perhaps the most famous soldier to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.

MARY TILLMAN: That’s right. And of course, as I mentioned, Rumsfeld did send Pat a letter thanking him for enlisting, but we never did hear from him after Pat was killed.

AMY GOODMAN: Mary Tillman’s book is called Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman. She and her family are still seeking the truth about Pat’s death.

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