9 officers cited for mishandling Tillman's death

SEE ENTIRE SFGate.com ARTICLE AT:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/24/TILLMAN.TMP










9 officers cited for mishandling Tillman's death
Delayed reports of friendly fire focus of internal Pentagon probe
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A Pentagon investigation has found that nine officers, including as many as four generals, were at fault for the bungled aftermath of the friendly-fire killing of former football star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman in 2004, according to news reports Friday evening.

Unnamed Pentagon officials confirmed that an 18-month investigation had found a range of missteps and inappropriate conduct after Tillman, a 27-year-old San Jose native, was killed by his fellow soldiers in a chaotic firefight in eastern Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, reports by Associated Press, CBS and NBC said.

The officials found to be at fault were not named in the reports. The Associated Press said the investigation will blame officers of the rank of colonel and up but will not make charges or suggest punishments. One defense official told the AP the inquiry determined that there was no orchestrated cover-up.

Pentagon officials did not return calls and e-mails from The Chronicle, and Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, did not respond to a request for comment.

The case has been highly controversial because after Tillman's death, the military waited five weeks before telling his family or the public that friendly fire was suspected.

That period coincided with the Abu Ghraib scandal and high U.S. casualties in Iraq. The Army said Tillman had been killed by the Taliban, and President Bush lauded him as "an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror."

Tillman, a graduate of Leland High School in San Jose, gave up a three-year, $3.6 million contract offer as a safety for the Arizona Cardinals to join the Rangers in April 2002 along with his brother Kevin. Saying he wanted to help defend his country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pat Tillman was sent to fight in Iraq -- in a war that he told his fellow soldiers he opposed.

The brothers were later sent to Afghanistan, where Pat Tillman was hit in a wild flurry of shooting by fellow soldiers as he scaled a hill toward suspected Taliban guerrillas.

Who knew what and when -- and whether top officials ordered a cover-up to help use the dead soldier as a public-relations prop in the Bush administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are questions that have been asked by the Tillman family and members of Congress.

According to the Associated Press, one Pentagon official who requested anonymity said late Friday that the investigation showed that senior military leaders "may not have had all the facts or worked hard enough to get the facts of what happened on that day in April 2004."

However, a Chronicle review of the nearly 2,000 pages of documents in the case found that high-ranking Pentagon officials knew quickly that friendly fire was suspected in Tillman's death.

The commander of Tillman's 75th Ranger Regiment, Col. James Nixon, was informed the following day, April 23, about the suspicion of friendly fire.

The chief of U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, received this information April 29, as did top Pentagon officials in Washington, the documents showed.

Since then, no high-ranking officers have been punished. Four soldiers received minor sanctions ranging from written reprimands to expulsion from the Rangers. One soldier's pay was cut, and he was effectively forced to quit the Army.

The inquiry by the Office of the Inspector General, the internal investigative arm of the Pentagon, was initiated in August 2005 because of complaints from Congress and a storm of national publicity in the case.

The investigation's findings are scheduled to be revealed Monday in an unusual series of simultaneous releases -- congressional and media briefings in Washington at the same time the Tillman family is given the information in San Jose.

The leaking of partial results Friday evening to a few news organizations suggests a time-worn, bipartisan Washington practice in which government officials disclose unfavorable developments on Friday evenings -- an especially slow period of the weekly news cycle -- in an attempt to minimize their impact.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/24/TILLMAN.TMP

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle