March 26, 2007 (SAN JOSE, Calif)
Corporal Tillman's Silver Star will not be taken away, even though it was his own platoon of Army Rangers who opened up firing on him for the award. His fellow solders who knew the truth were told to keep their mouths shut !
Tillman died in Afghanistan's Paktia province, along the Pakistan border, after his platoon was ordered to split into two groups and one of the units began firing. Tillman and an Afghan with him were killed. A specialist at the time of his death, Tillman was posthumously promoted to corporal.
His death drew worldwide attention in part because he had turned down a multimillion-dollar contract to play defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals in order to join the Army Rangers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Dozens of soldiers -- those immediately around Tillman at the scene of the shooting, his immediate superiors and high-ranking officers at a command post nearby -- knew within minutes or hours that his death was by his own troops' weapons.
Even so, the Army persisted in telling Tillman's family he was killed in a conventional ambush, including at his nationally televised memorial service 11 days later. It was five weeks before his family was told the truth, a delay the Army has blamed on procedural mistakes.
