Tillman's mom: Congressional hearings on son's death needed
San Jose Mercury News
By Julia Prodis Sulek and Frank Davies
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/27/2007 07:59:13 PM PDT

Rep. Mike Honda on Tuesday requested congressional hearings into the "friendly fire" death of Army Ranger Patrick Tillman, a move that Tillman's mother in San Jose says is the "only way we're going to find out what happened."

Two Pentagon investigations released Monday, which concluded that Tillman's death was an accident and that no orchestrated cover-up took place, were supposed to end the speculation about Tillman's death and how it was investigated and reported. But instead, they have "raised more questions than they answer," said Honda, a San Jose Democrat.

The Tillman family fired such questions at the two lead investigators who came to downtown San Jose and met with them at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Monday afternoon.

It was a meeting that "degenerated very badly," Mary Tillman said.

The meeting began civilly enough, she said, when the family - including Tillman's mother and father, his widow, Marie, and his younger brother, Kevin - agreed they would not interject until the investigators completed their presentation.

"It became obvious that they were giving a one-sided account," she said, focusing on the statements of the soldiers doing the shooting in the Afghanistan canyon instead of the soldiers on the ridgeline near where her son was killed.

"What about the other point of view?" she said she asked them. "They just stared at us."

Tempers flared.

"They told us that we were being very abusive to them," she said. "I said, 'You've lied to us for three years and that is a form of abuse."'

"We got very angry," she said.

She hopes congressional hearings, where witnesses would be subpoenaed to testify under oath, will get to the truth.

Patrick Tillman, who was raised in the historic canyon of South San Jose called New Almaden and graduated as a football star from Leland High School, became a symbol of patriotism when he turned down a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army Rangers with his brother in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote him a personal letter thanking him for his enlistment.

When Tillman was killed in 2004, the family was told he died a hero in a gunbattle with the enemy. It wasn't until more than a month later, after his memorial service at San Jose's Municipal Rose Garden, that the family was told he was killed accidentally by his own men in the "fog of war."

Three earlier investigations were conducted, but the reports from the final two released Monday were supposed to put lingering questions to rest.

One found that the shooting death of Tillman during a patrol was accidental. The other report criticized nine officers, including four generals, for "critical errors" in early reports and investigations - including withholding information about how Tillman died for weeks after the incident.

A four-star Army general, William Wallace, will decide on any disciplinary action for the officers who handled the case.

The family, however, called the latest reports "shamefully unacceptable" and part of a "systematic cover-up" to glorify the war and make Tillman a "recruitment poster."

Mary Tillman says she hopes congressional hearings will not only shine a light on her own son's death, but open up other cases of fratricide.

"Every time the administration lies to a parent of a fallen soldier, they're not just lying to the parent, they're lying to the whole American public," she said.

"The lie to us was a way of deceiving the American public," she said, "and Pat was very honest. He believed in the truth."

Honda asked Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to hold hearings on the case. The Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a spokesman for the committee said it would consider Honda's request.

A central question that the Army did not address Monday was why so many officers misled or gave false information to the family - and to investigators. The report was most critical of Lt. Gen. Phillip Kensinger, who commanded Army Special Operations, for providing "misleading testimony" to investigators, which could be an offense for making "false official statements."

The report by the Defense Department's inspector general, Thomas Gimble, offered some clues to how officers viewed the high-profile Tillman case. One general, Stanley McChrystal, alerted top brass that Tillman's death could be by friendly fire so the Army secretary and President Bush would not say something embarrassing. But officers did not tell the family about friendly fire for weeks.

Army investigators noted that Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, in one of the earlier investigations, brought in a staff judge advocate to help because he "was not going to bend to any type of influence or pressure that might be brought to bear on him."

But the report does not explain who might wield influence or pressure or how.

A former military prosecutor in the Army, Jack Einwechter, said the report shows that Army officers were "aware of the context and intense media attention" the Tillman case was getting.

Einwechter, who was the Army's liaison to Congress during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and the Tillman case in 2004, said the "insular, arrogant nature of the Army Rangers" may explain why so many officers ignored procedures on how to investigate and report a friendly fire incident.

"They are the world's greatest infantry, but sometimes they think they are above regulations and can take care of their own," Einwechter said. "Their moral courage was tested in dealing with this case, and they failed that test."

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at jsulek@mercurynews.com or (408)278-3409.

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