As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the story of Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan has gone from being tragic to suspicious to scandalous. To quickly recap, Tillman, a former NFL star who retired from football to become an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 and his death was quickly seized upon for public relations purposes.
The initial Army reports were that Tillman was killed by enemy gunfire when he led his team to help another group of ambushed soldiers. In March, the official version of what happened began to unravel and a cover-up emerged.
Yesterday, the story took an even more tragic turn.
Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.
The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman’s comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman’s death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.
The information, obtained by the AP through a FOIA request, paints a painful picture that is almost too painful to believe — and raises the specter that Tillman might have been murdered by a U.S. colleague.
– In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
– Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.
– The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman’s death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn’t recall details of his actions.
– No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.
We’ve known for quite a while that the Pentagon lied about Tillman’s death, attributing it to enemy fire before finally conceding that he’d been gunned down by fellow Rangers. But the notion that the shooting may have been intentional never seemed possible. Until now.
Questions, obviously, remain, not only about the circumstances, but also over how high up in the Bush administration the deception reached. For example, just a week after Tillman’s death, a top general who knew the official story was bogus wrote a memo arguing that President Bush might embarrass himself if he used the incident for p.r. purposes.
So, what did the White House know about the cover-up? As Hilzoy noted, the White House is refusing to cooperate with an investigation, citing — you guessed it — executive privilege.
The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”
Congress is preparing for another hearing next week. Stay tuned.