‘They Were Lying’

When Army Cpl. Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, the story of the former NFL star who walked away from his pro career to sacrifice his life for his country became a legend. Tillman, who played for the Arizona Cardinals, and his younger brother Kevin, a minor league baseball player, enlisted in the Army after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and joined the elite Rangers. The Tillman brothers were serving in the same platoon in Afghanistan the day Pat was killed during what was reported to be an ambush near the Afghan-Pakistan border. At first the Army reported that Tillman, the highest-profile soldier to die in the war, had been killed while leading the charge against enemy fighters. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star, one of the nation's highest combat awards. Within weeks, though, the Army reported that Tillman had in fact been killed by friendly fire, the result of a disastrous decision to split his unit into two convoys so that one could tow a disabled Humvee through a treacherous canyon road before dark and the other could proceed to its mission in a village suspected of harboring Taliban fighters. The convoys became separated and one was ambushed, causing soldiers to start firing. Tillman was shot through the head by fellow rangers as he tried to approach their position to help.

Since his death, Tillman's family in San Jose, Calif., led by Kevin and his mother Mary, have accused the Pentagon of covering up the facts after spending years piecing together the events that led to Tillman's death and the delay in reporting the friendly fire. A series of Army investigations revealed that top officers, including a three-star general, misled Tillman's family and the public about the circumstances of Tillman's killing. During a congressional hearing last August, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied a cover-up but said that he felt "terrible" that accurate reporting about Tillman's death "was handled in a way that was unsatisfactory and that caused a great deal of heartache for the Tillman family."

This week Mary Tillman publishes her story, "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman." She spoke to NEWSWEEK's Karen Breslau in San Francisco. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What remain the biggest unanswered questions for you in Pat's death?
Mary Tillman: I want to know who was the one responsible for the cover-up, because I believe that it went much higher up than a three-star general not telling us. I think the administration had something to do with the cover-up … One of the reasons I believe [that] is [because] Rumsfeld wrote a letter to Pat after he enlisted. This was a brief letter thanking him for enlisting, for leaving the NFL and serving his country. But Pat was on his radar, obviously.  The other thing was that Rumsfeld sent a memo to the then-deputy secretary of the army, now Secretary of the Army Pete Geren, indicating that Pat was a very special young man. The language Rumsfeld used was that Pat was "world class" and that they should keep an eye on him. I'm not sure what that meant, but writing something like that, writing a letter to Pat, obviously he's going to be concerned when he's killed. He's going to want to know what happened.

One memo you got hold of came from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Army's special forces, warning top officials that it was likely that Pat was killed as a result of friendly fire and that he was concerned that President Bush and the secretary of the army might mention his heroic death in upcoming speeches. It ends this way: "I felt it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public."
There were three e-mails that we have seen where Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and various speechwriters are trying to get information about Pat's death, exactly what happened. And it's interesting that within a day that memo is sent to top generals—[Gen. John] Abizaid was the highest general at the time—to notify the president and the secretary of the army to be aware that Pat was killed by friendly fire so they don't say anything unseemly or inappropriate at the White House Correspondents' dinner that took place that weekend.

Your family wasn't notified for more than a month that Pat was killed by friendly fire?
My son Kevin, who served in Pat's platoon, was notified before we were. Kevin was going to come home and tell the family on Memorial Day weekend, a month after Pat's death, and the Arizona Republic somehow got wind of this, and they called the house. And then when I called [the reporter] back, he asked what I thought about the latest news, and I said, "I don't know what you're talking about," and then he told me. A reporter told me my son was killed by friendly fire.