NYT : Panel Queries Rumsfeld on Tillman Battle Death

Panel Queries Rumsfeld on Tillman Battle Death

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER | August 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — With Donald H. Rumsfeld seated at the witness table, the chairman of a House committee investigating the bungled aftermath of the friendly fire death of Cpl. Pat Tillman told a packed Capitol Hill hearing room Wednesday that the time had come for some answers. What did Mr. Rumsfeld and other top Defense Department officials know about Corporal Tillman’s accidental killing by American forces, he asked, and when did they know it?

Three and a half hours, a few four-color charts and a couple of lost tempers later, the chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, solemnly admitted that he had gotten almost nowhere.

“You’ve all admitted that the system failed; none of you feel personally responsible,” Mr. Waxman said, addressing Mr. Rumsfeld, who resigned as defense secretary last fall, as well as one currently serving general and two retired ones who also testified under oath Wednesday. “Somebody should be responsible.”

The hearing, held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was Mr. Rumsfeld’s first return to Capitol Hill since President Bush asked him to resign after the Democratic victories in midterm elections. And although the bitter exchanges between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Democrats who now control Congress focused on the case involving Corporal Tillman, they exposed veins of anger over what the Democrats regard as a lack of accountability for broad missteps in Iraq.

Still, for most of the hearing, Mr. Rumsfeld, who sometimes sounded frailer and more gravel-voiced than he did while leading the Pentagon for nearly six years, offered few specific facts and recollections. He interjected only one exasperated “Oh, goodness!” despite numerous verbal provocations from committee members and stuck to his prepared answers and upbraided Democratic committee members when he felt they had their facts wrong.

“I don’t recall precisely how I learned that he was killed,” Mr. Rumsfeld said of Corporal Tillman early in the hearing. “It could have been internally; it could have been through the press.” He said he was also unsure when he learned the death was most likely from American fire, he added, although it was probably around May 20, 2004, about three weeks after the three generals seated beside him at Wednesday’s hearing had learned of it.

Testifying not in their familiar uniforms rich with medals but in ordinary business suits, two retired generals, Richard B. Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and John P. Abizaid, the former commander of the American forces in the Middle East, each acknowledged that the Tillman matter was a “screw-up,” but not their fault.

General Abizaid said he received a classified message on April 29, 2004, saying Corporal Tillman, a professional football player who quit after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to become an Army Ranger, may have been killed by American fire in April 2004, and not in combat, as the Army had publicly stated.

General Myers said he could not recall how or when he learned of it, and even if he could, he said, “I don’t think there’s any regulation that would require me to do anything, actually.”

General Myers also said that if he knew that Army officials had suspected friendly fire — or what the military calls a “blue on blue” attack — in Corporal Tillman’s death, he would have informed Mr. Rumsfeld, his boss at the time, but added, “I cannot recall whether or not I did that.”

Several Democrats used the hearing to engage Mr. Rumsfeld in unrelated but longstanding grievances, including the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Pentagon’s policy of banning news media coverage of flag-draped military coffins returning from overseas.

At one point, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat who is running for president, averred that Mr. Rumsfeld had “covered up” the Tillman matter as well as prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

“That’s just false,” Mr. Rumsfeld interjected. “You have nothing to base that on. You have not a scrap of evidence or a piece of paper or a witness that would attest to that. I have not been involved in any cover-up whatsoever.”

Stewing quietly throughout the hearing, and eventually lashing out at a lawmaker who approached to offer condolences, were several members of Corporal Tillman’s family, including his brother Kevin and his father, Pat Tillman Sr. The family has been assertive in calling attention to the Army’s mishandling of Corporal Tillman’s death, and has been critical of Republican members of Congress who have sought to minimize the significance of the case.

Near the end of the hearing, Pat Tillman Sr. told Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, in a low but furious voice, “Get away from me.”

The only active duty witness at the hearing was Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the former commander of the United States Special Operations Command. Each of the four witnesses said he was either not the proper person, did not know enough or was not in the proper position to correct the public record on the Tillman killing or alert the Tillman family to the suspicions of friendly fire.

The Army told Corporal Tillman’s parents that he had been killed by fellow troops almost five weeks after his death, long after his nationally televised memorial service and posthumous Silver Star award.

“It’s very difficult to come to grips with how we screwed this thing up,” General Abizaid said, “but we screwed this thing up.”

Raw Story : White House, Pentagon cite executive privilege to hold up documents on friendly fire victim Tillman

White House, Pentagon cite executive privilege to hold up documents on friendly fire victim Tillman

Michael Roston | July 13, 2007

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed on Friday afternoon that the White House and Pentagon were holding up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the friendly fire death of former professional football player and Army Corporal Patrick Tillman.

"[T]he Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking 'all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President' relating to Corporal Tillman's death," noted a press release from the Committee.

But the White House has apparently again invoked its executive privilege to hold up the documents sought by Waxman and Ranking Minority member Tom Davis (R-VA).

"The White House Counsel's office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that 'implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests' and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings," the Committe noted. "The response of the Defense Department to the Committee's inquiry was also deficient."

In their letter to Fielding, Waxman and Davis doubted that the two documents were the limits of White House-Pentagon communication over Tillman's death.

"It is difficult to believe that these are the only communications that White House officials had with the Department of Defense between April 22,2004, the day Corporal Tillman died, and May 29, 2004, the day the Bush Administration publicly announced that Corporal Tillman's death was a result of fratricide," they wrote.

They also explained what they believed was at stake in this probe.

"These questions have implications for the credibility of the information coming from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and raise significant policy issues about how to prevent the future dissemination of untrue information," Waxman and Davis wrote to Fielding. "They also have a profound personal impact on the Tillman family. It is for these reasons that the Committee requested documents from the White House."

The Committee said that it expected a response to the Friday letter by July 25. Waxman also scheduled an additional hearing on the announcement of Tillman's death for Aug. 1.

Full information can be found at the Committee's website.

WaPo : Panel Vows to Pursue Tillman Case

Panel Vows to Pursue Tillman Case

By Josh White | Washington Post Staff Writer | April 25, 2007

Members of a congressional oversight panel vowed yesterday to investigate whether the White House and top Pentagon officials played a role in deceiving the public about the 2004 "friendly fire" death of a former NFL player, Cpl. Pat Tillman, and argued that five investigations have failed to answer critical questions about the case.

During a dramatic hearing on Capitol Hill, Tillman's brother, Kevin, spoke publicly for the first time about the shooting and how members of the Army Ranger unit they both were with kept him in the dark about how Pat died on an eastern Afghanistan hillside. Kevin Tillman spoke about the "deliberate and calculated lies" the military told his family and the public, and how he believes military officials "hijacked" Pat's legacy by transforming his tragic death into "an inspirational message."

"The least this country can do for him in return is to uncover who was responsible for his death, who lied and covered it up, and who instigated those lies and benefited from them; then ensure that justice is meted out to the culpable," Kevin Tillman said, adding: "Anything less than the truth is a betrayal of those values that all soldiers who have fought for this nation have sought to uphold."

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing came three years after Pat Tillman was gunned down on April 22, 2004, by members of his own unit while on a bungled mission near the Pakistani border. It marked the first time the full Tillman family had gathered in public to decry the problems that have plagued the case. Mary Tillman, who has called for high-level investigations since 2004, continued to accuse the government of "using" her son's death to divert attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and high casualties in the Iraq war.

Investigators found that the military destroyed evidence such as Tillman's clothes, manipulated the story by saying he was engaged with the enemy when he died and drew up a misleading Silver Star citation. Tillman's death gained worldwide attention in part because he gave up a lucrative pro football contract to enlist in the Army. The committee also heard testimony yesterday from Jessica Lynch, a former soldier whose ordeal in Iraq in 2003 was inaccurately portrayed in the media as a heroic fight against insurgents, when in fact Lynch never fired a shot.

"The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies," Lynch said.

Kevin Tillman -- who was in the convoy with his brother the day he died but was too far away to see what had happened -- testified that he was whisked from the area shortly after Pat's death and was sent home with his body in an attempt to keep him from the truth. Spec. Bryan O'Neal, who was with Tillman when other U.S. soldiers began firing on them, testified yesterday that he was ordered not to speak to the Tillman family or to mention that it was a friendly-fire case, with the implication that he would get in trouble if he did.

"I was 100 percent positive it was friendly fire," O'Neal said. He said he reported the incident that day.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, said the government violates its most basic duty when it fails to tell soldiers and their families the truth. He said he is awaiting the Army's top-level review of how to assign responsibility for the lies about Tillman's death but said he will continue investigating.

"We still don't know how far up this went," Waxman said. "We don't know what the secretary of defense knew. We don't know what the White House knew. These are questions the committee seeks answers to."

Acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, whose recent report blamed several senior officers for misinforming the public about Tillman's death, said his probe did not look into senior administration officials, and that Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote in a letter on his last day as defense secretary that he did not know about the friendly-fire aspect of the case until shortly before the family learned of it in late May.

Republican lawmakers also criticized the military. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.) called the military's actions "a disservice to the memory of Corporal Tillman, to his family, his unit and this nation."