Officers To Be Blamed For Tillman Coverup

[thedrifter]

Officers To Be Blamed For Tillman Coverup
CBS: Pentagon To Point Finger At 9 Officers In Fallout From NFL Star's Friendly Fire Death

CBS/AP) It's been nearly four years since Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire. CBS News has learned that investigations by the Pentagon's inspector general will blame nine officers — including four generals — for failing to follow regulations and using poor judgment in a series of missteps that kept the truth of how he died from his family for more than a month, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports.

The official version was that the former NFL star had died in a fire fight with the enemy. It was only after a nationally televised memorial service was held for Tillman that his wife and parents were told he had been mistakenly shot by one of his own men.

Until now, only low-ranking soldiers who were part of Tillman's Army Ranger unit have been disciplined in the events surrounding his death. It will now be up to the Army to decide what, if any, disciplinary action to take against these nine officers.

According to a defense official, it does not appear that the IG investigation, the fifth inquiry into Tillman's death, found any indication of an orchestrated cover-up. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it appears that senior military leaders may not have had all the facts or worked hard enough to get the facts of what happened on that day in April 2004.

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 caused by friendly fire. The IG investigation has focused on how high up the chain of command that knowledge went.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Marines accused of shooting and killing civilians after a suicide bombing in Afghanistan are under U.S. investigation, and their entire unit has been ordered to leave the country early, officials said Friday.

Army Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III, head of Special Operations Command Central, responsible for special operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, ordered the unit of about 120 Marines out of Afghanistan and initiated an investigation into the March 4 incident, said Lt. Col. Lou Leto, spokesman at Kearney's command headquarters.

A spokesman for the Marine unit, Maj. Cliff Gilmore, said it is in the process of leaving Afghanistan but he declined to provide details on the timing and new location, citing a need to preserve security.

In the March 4 incident in Nangahar province, an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines that U.S. officials said also came under fire from gunmen. As many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the convoy made an escape. Injured Afghans said the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away.

U.S. military officials said militant gunmen shot at Marines and may have caused some of the civilian casualties.

Hundreds of Afghan men held an anti-U.S. demonstration afterward and President Hamid Karzai condemned the incident.

Leto, the spokesman at Special Operations Command Central headquarters in Tampa, Fla., said the Marines, after being ambushed, responded in a way that created "perceptions (that) have really damaged the relationship between the local population and this unit."

"The relationship you have with the local population while conducting counterinsurgency operations is very important, and because the perceptions damaged that, it probably degraded the (Marine) unit's ability to fulfill those kinds of missions," Leto added. "So the general felt it was best to move them out of that area."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Report Faults Officers in Tillman Case

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 24, 2007; A04

The Defense Department's inspector general has concluded that as many as nine officers are responsible for mistakes and irregularities during the investigation into the "friendly fire" death of former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004, problems that led to major delays and errors in explaining the facts to his family and the public, defense officials said yesterday.

The report is scheduled for public release on Monday, when Tillman's family also expects to receive a briefing in California. Members of Tillman's immediate family have been fighting for nearly three years to learn the truth about the case, amid a series of investigations into why his death was initially reported as occurring during a heroic attack on enemy fighters when instead the soldiers in his unit knew immediately that he died when they mistakenly shot him in a dusty canyon pass.

Officials yesterday declined to discuss specifics of the report but said the inspector general identified a range of problems, including minor errors in procedure up to allegations of officers making deliberately misleading statements about the case. One defense official said the report includes generals among the officers identified as having made errors in judgment. CBS News and the Associated Press reported last night that as many as four generals are blamed.

"The inspector general determined the Army needs to go back and review the actions that were taken by nine individuals," said a defense official who spoke anonymously because the report has not yet been released. "The Army could have done this better, starting from when there first began to be an indication that it was a friendly-fire situation."

Earlier investigations found significant problems with the way the Army handled the aftermath of Tillman's death, such as soldiers destroying his uniform and body armor and officers providing the family a fictitious story about the incident until after Tillman's nationally televised funeral in May 2004.

Tillman, a popular player with the Arizona Cardinals, gave up a major pro contract to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks kindled his desire to serve his country. Tillman's family has long maintained that the Army fabricated a heroic story of the former football player being gunned down while storming a hill in order to foster a patriotic response from the country.

The Army requested the independent review in June 2005 amid other probes into Tillman's death. The Tillman episode and other friendly-fire cases handled with similar missteps -- with families learning the truth only after pressing the Army following incorrect initial reports -- prompted the Army to rework its casualty-notification and death-investigation procedures. Army officials vowed to continue trying to improve.

"The Army plans to take appropriate actions after receiving the Inspector General's report," Army officials said in a statement yesterday. "The Army has not yet officially received the report from the Department of Defense Inspector General."