Jul 14, 2008 3:15 pm US/Pacific
Fuzzy Memories Stymied Tillman Death Probe
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
A "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials prevented congressional investigators from determining who was responsible for misinformation spread after the friendly fire death of U.S. Army Ranger and San Jose native Pat Tillman, a U.S. House committee said Monday.
After more than a year of investigating, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said it could not get to the bottom of who was responsible for the misleading information the Tillman family and the public received after the battlefield death of the one-time NFL player.
Although military investigators determined within days that Tillman was killed by his own troops following an enemy ambush, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire.
In April 2007, committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman said his goal was to discern the genesis of the misinformation. "Was it the result of incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy?" he said.
The panel acknowledged Monday it had fallen short of this goal, but released a 48-page report containing new information on the feverish internal White House response to Tillman's death in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, as well as an analysis of other widely misreported cases, including that of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
The day after Tillman's death, White House officials generated a flurry of nearly 200 e-mails on the matter, the committee found. Politics seemed to fuel the administration's interest: Several of the e-mails came from the staff of President Bush's re-election campaign, urging Bush to respond publicly.
The White House "rushed" to release a public statement of condolence at about noon on April 23.
But in doing so, the White House violated a military policy enacted into law by Bush himself in 2003, the committee found. The Military Family Peace of Mind Act bars the announcement of a casualty until 24 hours after a family is notified.
The Defense Department, adhering to the policy, had not yet publicly confirmed Tillman's death when the White House released Bush's statement of condolence.
Realizing this belatedly, White House spokewoman Claire Buchan warned her colleagues in an e-mail: "alert do not use Tillman statement." But news services were already running the White House statement.
The White House also failed to determine whether information about Tillman's death was classified, the committee found. Tillman's Ranger unit was routinely involved in sensitive operations along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Then-White House communications director Dan Bartlett told the committee he had approved release of the president's statement because of intense news media interest. The story of Tillman "made the American people feel good about our country ... and our military," Bartlett told the committee. But he acknowledged the statement might "set a precedent."
Another frenzy of White House activity took place, well out of public view, in the days leading up to a Bush speech on Tillman to the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner, the committee found.
While Bush and other presidents have often delivered humorous remarks to the gathering, Bush had "got singed pretty bad" the previous year for making what some critics perceived as inappropriate joking remarks during wartime, Bartlett said. So the White House made a deliberate decision to "pay tribute to the troops," and made Tillman's death the week before the centerpiece, he said.
Speechwriters and fact-checkers expended hundreds of words in e-mail memos trying to confirm that Tillman and his brother Kevin had joined the Army because of the attacks of Sept. 11, but could not do so, because the brothers had rarely or never spoken publicly about it.
Nevertheless, Bush's remarks to the correspondents' association contained what one White House official admitted was a "speculative" statement by Bush: "Friends say that this young man saw the images of September the 11th, and seeing that evil, he felt called to defend America."
In contrast to the heavy paper trail documenting the White House's activities in the days just after Tillman's death, the committee received no documents from the White House about friendly fire. The committee interviewed several top White House officials about the case, but "not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response," it said.
"The pervasive lack of recollection and absence of specific information makes it impossible for the committee to assign responsibility for the misinformation in Corporal Tillman's and Private Lynch's cases," the committee concluded.
White House spokesman Trey Bohn said Monday that officials there cooperated extensively with the committee during its investigation.
"The report contains no evidence that the White House said anything incorrect or misleading regarding the death of Corporal Tillman," Bohn said. "Our thoughts and prayers remain with the Tillman family."
As for Lynch, who was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq in 2003 and was later rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital, the committee also examined how the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part.
The authors of the new report carefully avoided assigning blame or intent in either the Tillman or Lynch cases. But, they concluded: "In both cases, affirmative acts created new facts that were significantly different than what the soldiers in the field knew to be true. And in both cases, the fictional accounts proved to be compelling public narratives at difficult times in the war."
The committee also looked into the case of Army Spc. Jesse Buryj of Canton, Ohio. It took nine months for his family to learn that his death in Iraq in May 2004 was not the result of an accidental vehicle crash as they were first told. He was killed by fire from U.S. or Polish soldiers in Karbala after a dump truck hurtled through a checkpoint and crashed into the armored vehicle in which he was riding.
Buryj's parents accepted an invitation to meet Bush at a July 2004 campaign rally. They told investigators they had pressed Bush to help them find answers about their son's death, and said Bush agreed to help.
"A few months later, a Bush-Cheney campaign official contacted the family," the congressional investigators found. "Rather than offer assistance, the official asked Specialist Buryj's mother to appear in a campaign commercial for the president. Mrs. Buryj refused."
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