SAN FRANCISCO – Within hours of Pat Tillman’s death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman’s uniform.
New investigative documents describe how the military sealed off information about Tillman’s death from all but a small ring of soldiers. Officers quietly passed their suspicion of friendly fire up the chain to the highest ranks of the military, but the truth did not reach Tillman’s family for five weeks.
The clampdown, and the misinformation issued by the military, lie at the heart of a burgeoning congressional investigation.
“We want to find out how this happened,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House oversight committee, which has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. “Was it the result of incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy?”
It is also a central issue as the Army weighs punishments against nine officers, including four generals, faulted in the latest Pentagon report on the case of the NFL star-turned-soldier. Military officials said those recommendations could come in the next several weeks.
It is well known by now that the circumstances of Tillman’s April 22, 2004, death were kept from his family and the American public; the Army maintained he was cut down by enemy bullets in an ambush, even though many soldiers knew he was mistakenly killed by his own comrades.
The truth was quickly becoming evident to a small group of soldiers with direct access to the evidence.
Two sergeants who examined Tillman’s vest noticed the bullet holes appeared to be from 5.56-caliber bullets – signature American ammunition. An awful realization dawned on the sergeants, whose names, like those of others who testified in the investigation, were deleted from the recently released testimony.
“At this time was when I had realized Tillman may have been killed by friendly fire,” one of them said.
The other sergeant, who was higher-ranking, told him to “keep quiet and let the investigators do their job,” the subordinate sergeant testified. He was not to go “informing unit members that Spc. Tillman was killed by friendly fire.”
One soldier carried a particularly heavy burden of secrecy.
Ranger Spc. Russell Baer had witnessed Rangers shooting at Rangers. Afterward, he was directed to travel from Afghanistan to the United States with his friend Kevin Tillman. But he was ordered not to tell Pat Tillman’s brother and fellow Ranger that friendly fire was the likely cause of the former football player’s death.
He kept the secret, fearing he did not know the whole story. But in a personal protest, Baer later went AWOL and was demoted as punishment.
“I lost respect for the people in charge of me,” Baer testified in an earlier Tillman investigation. He had gleaned “part of the puzzle” of Tillman’s death, but lamented that “I couldn’t tell them about it.”
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