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| Also listed in: Americans Against Escalation in Iraq | Interfaith Peace Coalition |
Categories: Honest and Ethical Government, National Security, Media Accountability
(CBS) Pat Tillman was a heroic face of the war on terror - an NFL star who left behind a $3.6 million contract and his new wife to fight for his country after the attacks of Sept. 11. When he died in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, the Army told his family he'd been killed by enemy fire after courageously charging up a hill to protect his fellow Army Rangers.
But as Katie Couric reports, that story didn't hold up. He had really been killed by friendly fire, shot accidentally by his fellow soldiers.
For the past four years, his family, led by his mother Mary, has been searching for answers about what really happened, beginning the day she heard the news from Pat Tillman's wife Marie.
Crooks ad Liars points out:
One part that stands out is when Couric asks Pete Geren, the new Secretary of the Army, about eyewitness statements that had been altered to falsely show that Tillman had been engaged with the enemy at the time of his death. He replied, “Well, that’s one of the questions that we will never completely answer.” That’s a telling statement because the Bush administration has exerted executive privilege over “certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting” because they claim they would “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.” Last August, when pressed directly about it, President Bush avoided making any promise to ever come clean about what really happened.
Watch it:
