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Click to View The battle between a grieving family and the US military justice system is on display in thousands of pages of documents strewn across Mary Til lmans dining room table in suburban San Jose. As she pores through testimony from three previous Army investigations in to the killing of her son, former football star Pat Tillman, by his fell ow Army Rangers last year in Afghanistan, she hopes that a new inquiry l aunched in August by the Pentagons inspector general finally will answer the familys questions: Were witnesses allowed to change their testimony on key details, as alleg ed by one investigator? Why did internal documents on the case, such as the initial casualty report, include false information? When did top Pen tagon officials know that Tillmans death was caused by friendly fire, an d why did they delay for five weeks before informing his family? There have been so many discrepancies so far that its hard to know what t o believe, Mary Tillman said. The file s the family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly every page containing blacked-out sections; On he r copies, Mary Tillman has added competing marks and scrawls countless c olor-coded tabs and angry notes such as Contradiction! A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of testimony, as well as inte rviews with Pat Tillmans family members and soldiers who served with him , found contradictions, inaccuracies and what appears to be the military s attempt at self-protection. For example, the documents contain testimony of the first investigating o fficer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key deta ils in their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers commi tted gross negligence could be softened. Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known a fiercely in dependent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his countr y yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged f rom history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of left ist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author. Unlike Cindy Sheehan who has protested against President Bush because of the death of her son Casey in combat in Baghdad Mary Tillman, 49, who te aches in a San Jose public junior high school, and her ex-husband, Patri ck Tillman, 50, a San Jose lawyer, have avoided association with the ant i-war movement. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who have lobbied on their behalf. Yet th e case has high stakes because of Pat Tillmans status as an all-American hero. A football star at Leland High School in San Jose and at Arizona State Un iversity, Tillman was chosen Pac-10 defensive player of the year in 1997 and selected by the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft the following sp ring. He earned a bachelors degree in marketing from Arizona State and graduate d summa cum laude in 3 1/2 years with a 384 grade point average. Ever t he student, Tillman not only memorized the playbook by the time he repor ted for the Cardinals rookie camp but pointed out errors in it. He then worked on a masters degree in history while playing professional footbal l His 224 tackles in a single season (2000) are a team record, and because of team loyalty he rejected a five year, $9 million offer from the St. L ouis Rams for a one-year, $512,000 contract to stay with Arizona the nex t year. Pat Tillmans enlistment grabbed the attention of the nation and the highe st levels of the Bush administration. A personal letter from Secretary o f Defense Donald Rumsfeld, thanking him for serving his country, now res ides in a storage box, put away by Pats widow, Marie. Instead of going to Afghanistan, as the brothers expected, their Ranger b attalion was sent to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq in Mar ch 2003. The Tillmans saw combat several times on their way to Baghdad. In early 2004, they finally were assigned to Afghanistan. Although the Rangers are an elite combat group, the investigative documen ts reveal that the conduct of the Tillmans detachment A Company, 2nd Bat talion, 75th Ranger Regiment appeared to be anything but expert as it ad vanced through a remote canyon in eastern Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, on a mission to search for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in a village c alled Manah. According to the files, when one of the humvees became disabled, thus sta lling the mission, commanding officers split Tillmans platoon in two so one half could move on and the other could arrange transport for the dis abled vehicle. David Uthlaut protested the move as da ngerous, but he was overruled. The first group was ordered out in the la te afternoon, with Pat Tillman in the forward unit. Kevins unit followed 15 to 20 minutes later, hauling the humvee on an Afghan-owned flatbed t ruck. Both groups temporarily lost radio and visual contact with each ot her in the deep canyon, and the second group came under attack from susp ected Taliban fighters on the surrounding ridges. Pat Tillman, according to testimony, climbed a hill with another soldier and an Afghan militiaman, intending to attack the enemy. He offered to r emove his 28-pound body armor so he could move more quickly, but was ord ered not to. Meanwhile, the lead vehicle in the platoons second group ar rived near Tillmans position about 65 meters away and mistook the group as enemy. The Afghan stood and fired above the second group at the suspe cted enemy on the opposite ridge. Although the driver of the second grou ps lead vehicle, according to his testimony, recognized Tillmans group a s friendlies and tried to signal others in his vehicle not to shoot, the y directed fire toward the Afghan and began shooting wildly, without fir st identifying their target, and also shot at a village on the ridgeline . According to testimony, Tillman, who along with ot hers on the hill waved his arms and yelled cease fire, set off a smoke g renade to identify his group as fellow soldiers. There was a momentary l ull in the firing, and he and the soldier next to him, thinking themselv es safe, relaxed, stood up and started talking. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel and in his body armor with numerous bullets. The soldier next to him testified: I could hear the pain in his voice as he called out, Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat fing Tillman, dammit. He said this over and over until he stopped, having been hit by three bull ets in the forehead, killing him. The soldier continued, I then looked over at my side to see a river of bl ood coming down from where he was I saw his head was gone. Two other Ran gers elsewhere on the mountainside were injured by shrapnel. Kevin was unaware that his brother had been killed until nearly an hour l ater when he asked if anyone had seen Pat and a fellow soldier told him. Tillmans death came at a sensitive time for the Bush administration just a week before the Armys abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq became public and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon immediately announced th at Tillman had died heroically in combat with the enemy, and President B ush hailed him as an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. His killing was widely reported by the media, including conservative comm entators such as Ann Coulter, who called him an American original virtuo us, pure and masculine like only an American male can be. His May 3, 200 4, memorial in San Jose drew 3,500 people and was nationally televised. Not until five weeks later, as Tillmans battalion was returning home, did officials inform the public and the Tillman family that he had been kil led by his fellow soldiers. According to testimony, the first investigation was initiated less than 2 4 hours after Tillmans death by an officer in the same Ranger battalion. His report, delivered May 4, 2004, determined that soldiers involved in the incident had committed gross negligence and should be appropriately disciplined. The officer became a key witness in the subsequent investi gation. For reasons that are not clear, the officers investigation was t aken ...
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