2 Years After Soldier's Death, Family's Battle Is With Army By MONICA DAVEY and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 21, 2006
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Patrick K. Tillman stood outside his law office here, staring intently at a yellow house across the street, just over 70 yards away. That, he recalled, is how far away his eldest son, Pat, who gave up a successful N.F.L. career to become an Army Ranger, was standing from his fellow Rangers when they shot him dead in Afghanistan almost two years ago.
"All I asked for is what happened to my son, and it has been lie after lie after lie," said Patrick K. Tillman, paging through an Army report on Cpl. Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan.
"I could hit that house with a rock," Mr. Tillman said. "You can see every last detail on that place, everything, and you're telling me they couldn't see Pat?"<snip>
He has drafted long, sometimes raw, letters to military leaders, demanding answers about the shooting.
And he has studied — and challenged — Army PowerPoint presentations meant to explain how his son, who had called out his own name and waved his arms, wound up dead anyway, shot three times in the head by his own unit, which said it had mistaken him for the enemy. No one wants answers more than the Tillmans. But by now, they said, they have lost patience and faith that any Army entity, even the Criminal Investigation Command, can be trusted to find the truth.
"I am sitting here on my own, going over and over and over this for two years," Ms. Tillman, 50, said in a telephone interview.
"The whole thing is such a debacle. I am beyond tears. It's killing me." Like her former husband, she has spent days reading the files, researching the episode, calling members of Congress, even trying to contact some of the soldiers involved. She criticized the military, as well as the news media, for failing to get to the bottom of what occurred, leaving her family, in essence, to figure it out themselves.
All of it, her former husband said, has even left him suspicious of the military's central finding in their son's case so far: that the killing was a terrible but unintentional accident. "There is so much nonstandard conduct, both before and after Pat was killed, that you have to start to wonder," Mr. Tillman said. "How much effort would you put into hiding an accident?
Why do you need to hide an accident?"<snip>
After the shooting, the Rangers destroyed evidence that would be considered critical in any criminal case, the records show. They burned Corporal Tillman's uniform and his body armor. Months later, the Rangers involved said they did not intend to destroy evidence. "It was a hygiene issue," one soldier wrote. "They were starting to stink." Another soldier involved offered a slightly different take, saying "the uniform and equipment had blood on them and it would stir emotion" that needed to be suppressed until the Rangers finished their work overseas.
"How could they do that?" Mr. Tillman said. "That makes no sense." The family still wants to know, he said, what became of Corporal Tillman's diary. It was never returned to the family, he said.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/politics/21tillman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5094&en=afa52cbd1ddda78b&hp&ex=1142917200&partner=homepage Jesus Christ. Three shots to the head. I believe Pat Tillman was killed because he was speaking out against the war and against Bush. Why else would they destroy his armor and even his diary for Christ's sake. Even the family suspects their son's death was not accidental. I hope to God someone is punished for this.
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