2007-04-20 17:30:00 PDT WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congress will open its first inquiry into the death of former football star Pat Tillman with a hearing next week to probe why the Pentagon spun a tale of his death by "enemy forces" in Afghanistan, even though Army officials knew almost immediately he was killed by friendly fire.

The Defense Department turned over four boxes of uncensored documents to Congress Friday -- a victory for Tillman's family who have complained that the heavily redacted Army reports on his death have made it difficult to find out who was responsible for the false story.

But even the redacted records from three Army investigations and an inspector general's report provide clues that Congress will use to determine whether a cover-up took place, including:

-- deliberate destruction of evidence;

-- testimony from soldiers who claim they were told to keep quiet about key details of Tillman's death;

-- false or distorted information in casualty reports, the field hospital report and press releases about Tillman's death;

-- a grossly inaccurate depiction of Tillman's battlefield actions in his citation for the Silver Star award, including fabrications in eye witness statements;

-- evidence that Army officials discussed a public relations strategy on how to handle his death;

-- allowing a nationally televised memorial to proceed with false information.

Lawmakers will hear testimony Tuesday from Tillman's family, who believe the San Jose native's death was first covered up to save the Army from a scandal and then glorified to stir patriotism at a time that support for the Iraq war was flagging.

"We just want to find out what really happened," said his mother, Mary Tillman, who will be a key witness. "We don't want any more cover-ups. People need to be held accountable."

The hearing also will focus on the rescue of Army Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq in April 2003. The Pentagon leaked false details of Lynch fighting back fiercely against her captors when she never fired a shot. Critics claimed the administration hyped her rescue -- televising the covert raid by commandos -- to boost public morale at a time the U.S. invasion of Iraq appeared bogged down. Lynch later complained, "They used me to symbolize all this stuff. It's wrong."

Lynch will testify along with Tillman's brother Kevin, who served in the same Army Ranger unit in Afghanistan, but did not witness his death or know of the fratricide for more than a month. Lawmakers will also hear from Department of Defense Inspector General Thomas Gimble, who investigated Tillman's case and recommended that 9 top officers be disciplined for violating Army rules and misleading the public.

"What is striking to me is that the two highest profile soldier cases for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq both were characterized by false stories," said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, who requested the hearing.

"What we're trying to find out is, was this the result of incompetence, miscommunications or a deliberate strategy? In both cases, (the military) used the people involved in a way that put the war in a favorable light as a result of their heroics."

A key focus of Congress' probe will be to determine what role high level officials in the Pentagon or the White House played in releasing the false information to the public.

Lawmakers plan to seize on a high-priority memo sent five days after Tillman's death to Gen. John Abizaid, then chief of U.S. Central Command, warning that the former NFL safety had likely been killed by friendly fire -- not by the Taliban, as the Army had claimed publicly.

In the memo, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal urged Abizaid to contact "POTUS" -- the president of the United States -- "in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment."

Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, said the memo suggests that several top administration officials knew a false story was being spread to Tillman's family and the public, but did nothing to set the record straight.

"The question is how high does it go? When did they know it and who knew it?" Honda said. "Hopefully Congress will bring that out. I think, along with the Tillmans and Patrick's widow, we and they all deserve the unvarnished truth."

Tillman made headlines across the country when he turned down a $3.6 million contract from the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army in May 2002, joining with his brother, who had been a minor league baseball player in the Cleveland Indians organization. Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote Pat Tillman a personal letter thanking him for enlisting.

Tillman's celebrity made his death even more shocking. His unit was on patrol through a canyon in southeastern Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, looking for Taliban insurgents, when one of the Humvees broke down. Against the wishes of their lieutenant the unit was split into two groups -- Serial One and Serial Two. Pat Tillman was in the first group and Kevin Tillman was in the last vehicle of the second, which was transporting the disabled Humvee.

Serial One had just exited the canyon when the second serial came under enemy fire from the canyon rim above. Tillman and other soldiers in his unit climbed up the hill to get closer to the enemy. By now, Serial Two was coming out of the canyon. An allied Afghan soldier in Tillman's squad fired his weapon at the opposing ridgeline, across the canyon well above the Serial Two vehicles. Mistaking the Afghan for the enemy, a Ranger shot him dead and others in his vehicle also began shooting wildly.

"Cease fire! Friendlies!" shouted Tillman and others, including members of Serial Two, several soldiers later testified, including several in Serial Two who said they identified the friendlies. Soldiers on the hill were waving their arms to signal cease fire and Tillman set off a smoke grenade to signal they were friendlies. A lull in the shooting led him to believe they had been recognized and Tillman and another soldier stood up; the firing resumed and Tillman was struck in head by three bullets.

It was shortly after his death, according to evidence in Army reports, that efforts to suppress the real story began.

Within hours, Ranger officers had sent headquarters an initial casualty report that stated that Tillman died by direct or indirect fire from "enemy forces." The casualty report was later edited but never corrected, even as word of friendly fire spread through the Army, the inspector general reported.

The night of Tillman's death, Ranger Bryan O'Neal, who was with him during the shooting, told his first sergeant that he suspected friendly fire. The next day, his suspicions were reported up the chain of command, including the commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, Col. James Nixon. An investigation was ordered.

But Army officials didn't want the news to get out. A Ranger in the 2nd Platoon who was at the operations command at Bagram Air Force Base, told investigators that after the first reports of Tillman's death came over the military radio, all the phones and Internet service were cut off to "to prevent anyone from talking about the incident."

One soldier testified that on the night of Tillman's death, he was ordered to burn Tillman's uniform and armor-plated vest "to prevent security violations, leaks and rumors." Three days later, according to another soldier's testimony, a sergeant ordered him to "destroy Pat Tillman's equipment" which included a vest ripped with bullets that the soldier told his sergeant appeared to be American.

"He said they know and to keep quiet and let the investigators do their job," the soldier testified, adding that it was then that he realized Tillman had been killed by friendly fire. Army rules require that evidence in suspected friendly fire incidents be preserved until released by a medical examiner. The military later justified the destruction of evidence to investigators, claiming the blood-soaked items were a biohazard.

Both the military's medical examiner and coroner in Delaware were not told of fratricide suspicions when Tillman's body was brought there for autopsy. They nonetheless determined that cause of death could not be enemy fire and they asked Army criminal investigators to look into it. According to the inspector general, three officers were complicit in keeping the fratricide information from the examiners, "thereby impeding completion" of the final autopsy report. It was finally signed July 22, 2004.

Tillman's family has also raised questions about the accuracy of a field hospital report from Camp Salerno, where he was taken after the shooting. The field hospital doctor's report said CPR was performed and Tillman was moved to the intensive care unit for more CPR. But the claim is questionable because soldiers and medics saw that the bullets had blown out the back Tillman's head, indicating he died at the scene and long before the nearly two hours it took to get to the hospital. The doctor later refused to answer Army investigators' questions about the treatment unless he had a lawyer present.

The family was told the night of Tillman's death that he'd been shot getting out of a vehicle -- which was false -- and that he died an hour later at the hospital.

The first official notice of Tillman's death to the public was released April 23, the day after he died, by the Pentagon's media department in Virginia. The press release stated that Tillman was killed in Afghanistan "when his patrol vehicle came under attack," suggesting his death was at the hands of the enemy.

At the same time, Tillman's superiors began scrambling to draft a Silver Star recommendation that glorified his actions on the battlefield. But the narrative, which officers began writing the night of his death, paints a grossly inaccurate account of what occurred on the battlefield.

"Above the din of battle, Cpl. Tillman was heard issuing fire commands to take the fight to the enemy," the narrative reads. But it leaves out the fact that Tillman was yelling, at several points, at fellow Rangers to stop firing in his direction. The narrative also stated that by Tillman's actions, his unit was "able to maneuver through the ambush to positions of relative safety without suffering a single casualty" -- which glosses over the reality that two soldiers were killed and two were wounded by their own platoon.

The Silver Star citation was edited twice over three days and the language was softened. The silver star publicity campaign was referred to in an April 30 e-mail as the "CPL Tillman SS gameplan. The Army blacked out the e-mail addresses, so it's not clear who sent or received it.

But even though officers knew friendly fire was suspected, they never corrected the impression left by the narrative. The inspector general later concluded the Silver Star citation was inaccurate and misleading, including two eyewitness statements that contained some truth but also fabrications. The statements were purported signed by those eye witnesss, but they testified that they did not sign the statements.

"(The citation) implied Cpl. Tillman died by enemy fire," Gimble wrote in his report. "This failure materially contributed to the Tillman family distrust of Army representations concerning the death of Cpl. Tillman."

The family believes the Pentagon wanted to keep the misleading account of Tillman's battlefield heroics alive through his nationally televised memorial service in San Jose May 3, 2004. Navy SEAL Steve White, a friend, said in the eulogy that Tillman died "taking the fight to the enemy" -- words fed to him an hour before the ceremony by an Army official that White later regretted, he said.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, chief of the Army Special Operations Command, which oversees the Rangers, attended the service, but never told the family the Army suspected fratricide.

Tillman's death came at a vulnerable time for the Pentagon and the Bush administration. The scandal over the abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison was just breaking. American casualties in Iraq by April 22 already had set a new monthly record, and U.S. forces were embroiled in a nasty street-by-street fight in Fallujah. An announcement of Tillman's death by his own unit would have presented another public relations disaster.

"I just feel like this story was created, this narrative was created to stir patriotism," said Mary Tillman.

Tillman's mother isn't the only one to suspect it. Army Rangers interviewed by investigators acknowledged the disclosure of the true story would have been devastating for the 75th regiment and the Army.

"I mean, it's horrible that Pat was dead. Absolutely horrible. But it hurts even more to know that it was one of our own guys that did it," one Ranger said. "We just, we didn't want to get anything, you know, bad said about the regiment or anything like that. That was my guess to what the whole thing was about. We didn't want the world finding out what actually happened."

Despite three separate Army investigations and the inspector general's report criticizing the Army's actions, no high-ranking officers have been punished. Four soldiers were given minor sanctions ranging from written reprimands to expulsion from the Rangers, and one soldier was forced out of the Army when his military pay was cut.

An Army spokesman acknowledged the Army made mistakes in handling Tillman's death, especially failing to tell the family earlier that friendly fire was suspected, as required by Army rules.

"That didn't happen in this case," Pentagon spokesman Paul Boyce said Friday. "I apologize on behalf of the United States Army - and the 1.1 million people in it."

The irony is that Tillman did act heroically the day he died -- but not by fighting the enemy, as the Army claimed. O'Neal, the 18-year-old soldier who was of the only eyewitnesses, told how Tillman saved his life when their own unit began firing at them.

"I was watching them as they were shooting at me," O'Neal later told investigators. "... I was noticing that most of their fire seemed to be directed towards me. And he moved out from behind his cover to throw some smoke. ... All I remember was him telling me, 'Hey, don't worry, I've got something that can help us.' And he popped a smoke (grenade), I guess, and that's when he got shot."

Tillman Timeline

April 1998: Tillman, a Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year at Arizona State, is drafted in the seventh round by the Arizona Cardinals.

May 2002: Tillman and his brother, Kevin, enlist in the Army, motivated in part by the Sept. 11 attacks.

March 2003: The Tillman brothers, serving in the same Army unit, deploy to Iraq.

April 2004: The Tillmans' Ranger unit deploys from Ft. Lewis, Wa., to Afghanistan.

April 22: On a mission, the platoon is divided into two teams, with Pat in Serial 1 and Kevin five minutes behind in Serial 2. Serial 2 is ambushed. Pat Tillman and others climb a hill to provide cover for Serial 2. Serial 2 arrives; soldiers in the first vehicle mistake Tillman's squad for the enemy and open fire. Tillman waves his arms and yells, "Cease fire! Friendlies!" to no avail. He sets off a smoke grenade. He and an Afghan soldier are killed. His brother Kevin, in the last vehicle in Serial 2, arrives on the scene minutes later, and about a half hour later he is told Pat was killed -- he presumes by the enemy.

Army tells Tillman's family he was killed by enemy fire getting out of his vehicle and died an hour later at an Army field hospital -- even though Tillman was shot far from his vehicle and died instantly.

Pfc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side during the shooting, tells his sergeant Tillman was shot by fellow soldiers. Initial casualty report indicates cause as enemy fire.

Tillman's uniform and bullet-protective vest are burned, despite Army policy that requires that evidence in a suspected friendly fire incident be preserved for investigation and then can only be destroyed by direction of the medical examiner.

April 23: Top Ranger commanders are told that fratricide is suspected, but the Pentagon issues a misleading press release saying he was killed "when his patrol vehicle came under attack." The White House issues a statement calling him an "inspiration on and off the football field." Work begins to award Tillman service medals.

April 25: Tillman's equipment, including his Molle vest, containing holes caused by American ammunition, is destroyed.

April 27: Tillman's body arrives at Dover, Del., Air Force Base for autopsy. Based on the caliber of ammunition, medical examiner and coroner believe Tillman was likely killed by friendly fire, not the enemy. Autopsy report is not signed until July 22.

A Silver Star recommendation is submitted, which falsely states Tillman was killed during a firefight with the enemy. The citation is edited twice more, but the Army's inspector general later concludes it misled the public and "implied Cpl. Tillman died by enemy fire."

April 28: A White House speechwriter requests information on Tillman for a speech President Bush will deliver a few days later at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

April 29: Gen. Stanley McChrystal sends a high-priority cable to Gen. John Abizaid, then chief of U.S. Central Command, telling him Tillman's death was likely friendly fire and urging him to inform the president of that "to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment." The cable was copied to and read by Gen. Philip Kensinger.

April 30: Army announces Tillman will get the Silver Star. He also receives a Purple Heart and is posthumously promoted from specialist to corporal.

May 1: Bush, at the White House correspondents' dinner, says that Tillman's death "brought home the sorrow that comes with every loss and reminds us of the character of the men and women who serve on our behalf."

May 2: Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee is told Tillman's death was fratricide.

May 3: Tillman's memorial service in San Jose is televised nationwide. Navy SEAL Steve White, a friend, says in a eulogy that Tillman died "taking the fight to the enemy." He later regrets the words, which he says were fed to him an hour before the ceremony by an Army official. Gen. Kensinger attends but does not inform the family of the fratricide.

May 4: The first investigation of Tillman's death by Capt. Richard Scott finds that members of Tillman's unit committed "gross negligence" and calls for further investigation to see if there was criminal intent. The findings, turned over to Col. James Nixon, are not made public, and the report is not officially filed.

May 7: The Army's official casualty report states incorrectly that Tillman was killed by "enemy forces" and "died in a medical treatment facility."

May 8: A regimental investigation by Col. Ralph Kauzlarich is ordered by Col. Nixon.

May 16: The Kauzlarich investigation is completed. Capt. Scott later testifies soldiers were allowed to change their testimony.

May 29: Army admits publicly that Tillman was "probably" killed by friendly fire -- five weeks after his death.

Nov 3: Army launches a third investigation, by Gen. Gary Jones, prompted by the family's complaint to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The probe finds that Army officials suspected early on Tillman's death was fratricide, but waited to avoid giving the family an inaccurate or incomplete picture. Tillman's mother calls it "a whitewash."

June 2005: Army apologizes for the delay in telling family the true cause of death, blames procedural problems.

Aug 9, 2005: Department of Defense inspector general launches an inquiry.

March 4, 2006: Inspector general tells Army to begin a criminal investigation.

March 26, 2007: Army inspector general finds the earlier investigations "contributed to inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and perceptions of concealment" and recommends that nine top officers be disciplined, but does not call for criminal charges. Tillman's family calls the findings "shamefully unacceptable" and urges tougher sanctions.

SOURCE: Chronicle staff report, based on information from the U.S. Army and media reports.