Like I’m sure many of you are, I’m getting very disturbed by the stories about Pat Tillman that I’ve seen on the news and the Internet this week. Over the last week, we’ve learned that medical examiners feel that Tillman was killed from a mere 10 yards away, contradicting the official story that he was killed by friendly fire from about 90 yards away.

About the only thing we know for sure about Pat Tillman’s death is that we were not told the truth. Without making a personal indictment of anyone, it is clear that there has been a cover-up, and Pat’s family was lied to. After doctors examined Tillman’s body, they asked for an investigation and were denied. The doctors believed that the official report on Tillman’s death did not match the evidence they saw. From the Associated Press:

“Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told
investigators.

The doctors – whose names were blacked out – said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.”

Another disturbing piece of information has to do with the lies told to the family after Tillman’s death. After being told that Tillman died protecting his unit from enemy fire, it was long after he was layed to rest that his family was told that Pat died from friendly fire. The new documents said that “Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.”

The report also said that “no evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene – no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.” This also does not match up with the story we were all told when Tillman died.

Among other things that are not right in this story, Tillman’s personal diary was destroyed after his death, rather than be returned to his family. Tillman’s uniform and equipment were also destroyed. The White House is refusing to give Congress documents relating to Tillman’s death, claiming “Executive Branch confidentiality interests.” An Army Ranger with Tillman was ordered to not tell the Tillman family the truth.

There will be another Congressional hearing this week about Tillman’s death. I will continue to give the benefit of the doubt on this until we are told with absolute certainty that it was anything other than friendly fire. For all of the people on the Internet claiming that Tillman was murdered, I say wait until we get all of the information before we make a very, very heavy claim like that. I do not want to make this about politics, I don’t want that on this site, but Pat’s family deserves to know the truth, and we deserve to know if we were lied to.

On a personal level, I lived in Phoenix for the last decade,and had the opportunity to know and talk with Pat Tillman several times. I watched him play for Arizona State when I was taking classes there, and later covered the Arizona Cardinals as a reporter when Tillman played for them. I was at the Cardinals training facility in Tempe, AZ on the day he died. I still remember waking up to a phone ringing off the hook on the day he died, and spending the day in a city in mourning. I cannot imagine what his family has been through in the last three years.

It’s bad enough to have found out that Pat’s family was lied to initially following his death. The theories now that Pat may have been murdered disturb me beyond words. As I said earlier, I am not indicting any specific people, but if these theories end up being even partly true, all I can ask is that those responsible for Pat’s death, the initial lie to his family, and the ensuing cover-up, pay very dearly for what they’ve done.

UPDATES:

- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied any cover-up and said the White House would have had no part of anything like that.

- The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Gen. Richard Myers, said he found out about the friendly-fire incident not long after Tillman’s death, but that it wasn’t his job to inform the White House or the Tillman family, and said that the Army is to blame.

- Philip Kensinger, a “retired three-star general who led Army special operations forces after the Sept. 11 attacks”, has been the man to take most of the blame for what transpired after Tillman’s death. Kensinger was censured by the Army and may have his rank reduced.

**More Updates as the hearings progress…

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