San Francisco Chronicle April 24, 2007
Cover-up alleged in Tillman's death
Officials claimed White House was kept in dark about friendly-fire killing
By Robert Collier
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Under a barrage of questioning, the Pentagon's chief internal investigator admitted today that his recent high-profile probe into the friendly-fire death of football star Pat Tillman did not check top officials' claims that they had been initially unaware of the true nature of Tillman's killing.
Acting Inspector General Thomas Gimble admitted he had not independently verified statements by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, the army's top commander in Afghanistan, that they had not received until weeks later an urgently despatched message the San Jose native was killed by fellow Army Rangers, rather than by the Taliban, as military officials were publicly claiming at the time.
Meanwhile, the last person to see Tillman alive told a congressional committee that a coverup began almost immediately after Tillman's death.
"Our squad leader told me basically, don't tell anyone anything at that time," said Spc. Bryan O'Neal.
The testimony came during a four-and-a-half-hour hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, is investigating whether there were deliberate attempts to mislead the public about both Tillman's April 22, 2004, death, and the circumstances surrounding the saga of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a 21-year-old Army supply clerk who was rescued after she was captured by Saddam Hussein's defending fighters in April 2003.
The military's initial account of that incident and its claims of Lynch's heroism were subsequently shown to be false.
"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 lies," Lynch told committee members.
On the question of who was told what, and when in the Tillman case, the Waxman repeatedly challenged Gimble and other military officials about an urgent "P4" message sent by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, chief of the military's special operations, to three other generals, including Gen. Abizaid.
"We think the P4 stopped with the three generals," Gimble said, adding that his team did not seek sworn testimony from Rumsfeld but instead sent him a letter with questions and received a response Dec. 16, 2006.
"We went to the secretary of defense, and we got a negative response back."
Waxman responded: "How is that believable that three generals would not send this up the chain of command?"
"I can't explain why," Gimble said.
McChrystal's cable is central to the Tillman controversy because his message had explicitly political connotations - it urged Abizaid to warn the White House to remove any reference to the manner of death from an expected speech by President Bush on May 1 to the White House Correspondents Association.
Bush's speech, as it was finally delivered, was "very carefully worded" to avoid mention of how Tillman died, Waxman noted.
"We don't know what the secretary of defense knew, we don't know what the White House knew," Waxman said. "What we do know is these were not a series of accidents, these stories. They were calculatedly put out for a public relations purpose. ... Even now there seems to be a cover-up."
The committee also heard from Tillman's mother, Mary, and brother, Kevin, whose statements were by turns measured, emotional and angry.
Kevin Tillman accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in its accounts of his brother's death.
"Our family will never be satisfied. We'll never have Pat back," Mary Tillman told the committee. "Something really awful happened. It's your job to find out what happened to him"
In earlier testimony, Spc. O'Neal said, he was specifically ordered to not mention the friendly fire to Kevin Tillman, who was in the same Ranger unit but had been several hundred yards away during the shooting. "I was ordered not to tell him by battalion commander Lt. Col. (Jeffrey) Bailey. He said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place.' (Bailey) let it known that I would get in trouble if I told him."
Anotherissue to emerge in the hearing was the possibility that the firefight that killed Tillman might be recorded on video.
Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, asked Gimble about testimony in earlier Pentagon investigations that a Predator spy drone had been overflying the Afghan site at the time when Tillman was killed.
At least two soldiers had testified that they heard the unmistakable sound of a Predator overhead, and an Aug. 1, 2006, report by the Army's Criminal Investigations Division mentioned "the Predator footage which was taken during the Tillman incident."
Gimble responded that his investigators had asked the CIA and Army Special Operations but were told that no video had been found of any such Predator coverage.
This issue could be significant because the Predator drones take high-quality video footage and record all nearby radio traffic -- evidence that could be useful in determining any possible cover-up maneuvering or other misconduct.
"It's TV, it's full-motion video," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military think tank in Alexandria, Va., referring to Predator coverage.
Yet Pike cautioned that any Pentagon claims that the footage has been lost should not be discounted automatically.
"These Predators have logged just an enormous number hours and acquired an enormous inventory of imagery ... most of which is of no value whatsoever," Pike said. "I could easily imagine that their system for archiving this is not very well developed. ... The overwhelming bulk of it, probably nobody's ever looked at again."
© Copyright 2007, Hearst Communications Inc.
