The Bastards Who Killed Pat Tillman

story today. It is the story of Pat Tillman. Now, I grew up in a very conservative family, and from the time I was eleven or twelve, I lived in you know, deep in the heart of Texas. My parents love George W. Bush, who had been the governor before he was the president. They were big proponents of the Iraq War. My childhood memories of Pat Tillman are sort of fawning segments on Fox News about how he'd turned down a multimillion dollar NFL contract to serve his country.

I remember hearing that he'd been killed in Afghanistan bravely charging up a hill. That that's at least how I remember it as a kid in my head. Um. Now, I think across all forms of conservative media that I was aware of at the time, the portrayal of Pat was the same. He was an all American hero, the perfect symbol of the sacrifice their brave soldiers make for freedom.

I remember hearing about Pat Tillman a lot, and then suddenly people stopped talking about him at all, At least people in the right wing media bubble that I had been inhabited stopped talking about him. Now. My guest today is Joe Kasabian. He's a co host of the Alliance Led by Donkeys podcast, which is a military history podcast. I recommend uh and Joe. You are an actual veteran yourself, and you served in Afghanistan as well. Is that correct? Yes? I did. I did two tours of duty in Afghanistan,

and I regret both of them. Yeah. Um, so tell me about I know, I think cost is where Tillman was stationed when he died. Like, where does that relate to sort of where you were in country? I was a little bit further north than where I was. I spent well, my first first store I was in the northeast and a little bit north of Kabul, outside of Bogram, and then my second one I was in Kandahar, So

that definitely further north than Kanadahar. But gotcha in a country that that like fracts this and everything that that kind of resistance and fighting that you deal with his night and day. Really that's interesting. I don't know all that much, or I didn't when I got into this, know all that much about what had actually happened to

Pat Tillman. I didn't know much about Pat Tillman. Like I said, he was sort of this, uh, kind of like movie poster looking guy like he if you've seen the pictures of it, you've probably seen the one of him in a uniform where he's got this almost unbelievably white neck and he looks like a g I Joe. Yeah, he looks he looks like what every recruiter wants to put on a poster, Like, he looks like an action star. Yeah, he's like the platonic ideal of the American soldier. Like

you couldn't have cast him better. Yeah, he's like he looks like his face is like carved out a granite. Yeah,

I know, what when were you over? There was a two thousand nine or so my first tour of two thousand and eight, two thousand nine on my second was Susan eleven to twelve, So you were there about four or five years after Pat, right, Yeah, right right, and his his mythos so so I mean it's definitely not a ranger like he was, but you know, his mythosis so incredibly steeped in everything that I didn't know anything about Pat tillman Um when I joined the army, but

then you see his face everywhere and especially nowadays, and so how was it. Can you talk a little bit about that, about how he was sort of talked about and viewed when you were in the military and when you were in Afghanistan, like and when he comes up, like, how was he portrayed? Oh man um? Like he should have had the Medal of Honor. You know, he gave up his giant football contract, which I didn't know much about.

It wasn't a football fan at the time, um, and it gave up everything and to go make you know, shitty specialist paycheck and go fight in Afghanistan. And I mean this is years after everybody knew what really happened when he died, and everybody just kind of glossed over

that fact. Yeah. I think it's interesting you say that because I suspect a lot of people still don't really know much about the actual Pat Tillman, because I realized when I started researching this that I didn't know much about the actual Pat tone because I had kind of assumed that he was that living human embodiment of like patriotism, that he was sort of portrayed as as a young man and or portrayed as when I was like a kid watching stuff about him and coming across some pictures

of him when he was younger. His like really twisted that a little bit, because like, we've got a couple of pictures will have him up on the site, one of him just like shirtless and flip flops, taking groceries on a or on a bicycle and looking like a beach bum. And another of him with like, I mean, I gotta say, like a really dumb haircut, but like long hippie looking hair, Like he's still this gigantic, very

muscular man. But you get a really different sort of picture of him looking at those Yeah, he had like this longer flowing, almost mullet like hair all the way when he like you see the it's even part of like the statue they have him, and I think it's Arizona, Yeah,

where you know he's he's like throwing his golden locks back. Yeah, which is a better look for him than sort of the aaved head because he looks like he looks like he belongs in the Gears of War video game, and a lot of the pictures you'll see when he's over in Afghanistan because he's just all shaved headed and covered in you know, body armor and and ammunition and stuff.

And anyway, it was interesting to me to learn as I read more about him that the kind of long haired, hippie looking kid was probably more give you a better depiction of like his actual personality than the pictures of him in his uniform. Yeah, And that's one of the things so that I have a couple of sources for

this book. One of them is the crack Our book Where Men Win Glory, which is a pretty good book, although it talks about a lot of high school football, So you've gotta be really ready to read about high school football if you're gonna get into this story that

will be popular in Texas then Yeah. And there's a there's a number of articles too on on the Intercept on Sports Illustrated that all talked about Pat Tillman, and they all paint a picture of a guy who's not what I expected going into this, who was really sensitive, who was constantly reading a book, always had a book in his hand, read you know, the Koran and the Bill, but was not himself religious and in fact identified as

an atheist. He wasn't the guy you'd think. And one of the things I learned about him is that he had a brief at least set of email exchanges with Noam Chomsky and was planning on meeting with Chomsky when he got out of the Army Rangers because he was interested in Chomsky's philosophy and anti war views and wanted to talk with him, which is again not what I expected when I started reading about sort of the platonic

ideal of a meathead soldier. Yeah, and I think that has a lot to do with um, that's what the current narrative kind of wants us to think about soldiers, and especially people like Pat Tillman. Is like, they don't want you to look at his life because then he's humanized and he's not that statue out front or the

poster that's shared through Facebook. So yeah, we're gonna be talking about a bit about his life today and then we're gonna be talking about sort of what was done after his death, um, because that's really where the bastardry enters into in this story. But I want to get through some stuff about Pat's life. First. He grew up

in the Bay Area. He was an affluent kid. The only black mark on his record as a young man was a fight he got into outside of a pizza restaurant that seemed to be like a case of mistaken identity. He thought some guys were going after one of his friends, and he wound up just really beating the hell out of one of these guys, um and doing like thirty days and juvenile attention and a bunch of community service for it. He had to pay a bunch of money. But then he graduated high school and he went off

to Phoenix to play for Arizona State University. Obviously, he was really good at football, good enough that after he got out of Arizona State, he was picked for the NFL. After he graduated, he was I think the last pick of the year. So his salary was low by NFL standards, which is still like a hundred and fifty eight grand a year. Um, it was like a decent little signing bonus, but after his first year he got offers to leave

Arizona and get more money. But he was the kind of guy who was really loyal to his coach and loyal to his team, so he wound up staying at the league minimum for most of his career, which you know raises every year. So he was making like five hundred grand a year after a while. But his his motivation in football wasn't just financially. Seemed to have a strong sense of loyalty and really want to Uh, I don't know, you just seemed to be the kind of

guy like a challenge himself. There's all these stories about him jumping off of high things into in the lakes and taking a lot of really physical risks, so that seems to have been this guy is like one of his north Stars as a young man, which makes a lot of sense considering what happened later. Yeah, he's he seems like the person that the Rangers would be looking

for us for sure. Yeah yeah, now, um, one of the things I learned about Pat is that as an adult, he was an outspoken gay rights advocate, and he was seems like the kind of dude who if he were still in the NFL, would probably have supported Colin Kaepernick

and taking a knee. He was a pretty woke sounding guy, like there's a lot of his journals and diary passages that are quoted and where men win glory, and he in general seems like a pretty progressive and not like reflexively patriotic dude, which is why it was kind of frustrating on September seven, ten when President Donald Trump retweeted a post from the Twitter names user is j Maga forty five. Um, so, yeah, you know what you're getting into here, and I've sent a picture over to you.

Two will have it up on the site. But it's a picture of Pat Tillman looking like a g I Joe, and it just says NFL player Pat Tilman joined US Army in two thousand two. He was killed in action

two thousand four. He fought for letter four our country, slash freedom, hashtag, stand for our Anthem, hashtag boycott NFL, and Donald Trump, the President, retweeted that, um yeah, And then there there was outcry from people who knew Pat because they don't think he would have supported this idea, and in fact, his wife, I mean didn't Pat Tillman's sister come out and say something about like, please shut

the funk up about my brother or something along those lines. Yeah, and his wife has been very vocally anti Trump and been very vocal about the fact that Pat Tillman had no desire to die for the kind of rhetoric that Trump has has supported. So she, like pretty much everyone knew him and was close to him, has been a real big critic of the current administration, which is why it's so gross when they kind of you can see them trying to co opt his legacy even now, which

is sort of the pattern with Pat Tillman. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he was the all American fucking hero. I mean, that's they you can tell they truly support the troops by dragging them out the grave for whatever political points they need to make that leak. Yeah, it seemed like for a little while during the Obama years, we'd stopped hearing that done to him, but it does seem to be coming back since he's you know, tied to the NFL, and that's one of the big cultural issues right now,

which is frustrating. Yeah, it's kind of absurd that the two are even connected. Yeah, you know, Pat obviously joined the army after nine eleven and because of nine eleven, but it wasn't something he did immediately. It was a decision he deliberated on for quite a while after the

towers fell. One driving factor in it was that he felt his job in the NFL was now empty in the wake of the attacks, and one interview at the time, he said, quote, it's hard because we play foot ball, you know, it is so unimportant compared to everything that's taken place, which is a fair statement when you realize that you're playing football and the forever war is just kicked off. Sure. Yeah, and especially at the time those wars.

I grant, I was in middle school, but you know, those wars seemed like the right thing to do, So I could hardly blame him for thinking that. Yeah, he was like responding to this big attack and his his whole desire was to go over and fight in Afghanistan, And it seemed like it was more a desire that other people not be fighting in his place in Afghanistan.

And this is something I think a lot of people on the left have trouble understanding, is like, coming from a military family, that kind of pressure to like, well, Okay, now there's something going on. This is what my family does, and it's my responsibility to get in there and like do my part. Yeah. Absolutely. Um A lot of people don't like get the kind of pressure that comes down on people who are raised in military families to following

somebody's footsteps. It's kind of like, unless you become a doctor or you know, and sent a longer lasting light ball or some ship, you're still a failure because you can go and list or get a commission or whatever. Yeah, And I think that's sort of how Pat felt about it, Like if he didn't do this now, and I think he was thinking, you know, we would be out of Afghanistan in a couple of years, which is not to assumption,

but I think that was his assumption. And I think he just didn't want other people to be at risk in him not to be, which, in my opinion, that's an admirable way to feel about something like that. I don't fault him a bit for that. Um. I kind of felt the same way Grant as a couple of years later. But you know, why not. You know, he's he was an incredibly healthy individual and could do pretty much anything in the arm and would ever want him

to do so. I could see why he wanted to go down that route, and in none of our minds and we ever think almost two decades later, we'd be sitting here and there's still be people in Afghanistan. Yeah, that one snuck up on everybody, didn't it. Yeah, those those quagmire as a really sneak up on you. So at the time, Patent wrote in his journal sort of about his headspace when he was making the final decision to join the army. He noted that quote, my life

at this point is relatively easy. It is my belief that I could continue to play football for the next seven or eight years and create a very comfortable lifestyle for not only Mary but myself, but be afforded the luxury of helping out family and friends. Shouldn't need ever arise. The coaches and players I work with treat me well, and the environment has become familiar and pleasing. My job is challenging, enjoyable, and strokes my vanity enough to fool

me into thinking it's important. However, these last few years, especially after reefs and events, I've come to appreciate how shallow and insignificant my role is I'm no longer satisfied with the path I've been following. It's no longer important. So yeah, Pat joined the army with the eventual goal of becoming an Army ranger. Now you mentioned earlier, this guy was clearly physically qualified to do everything the Army could.

Last Um, he hated boot camp. He thought it was boring, and he was, you know, he was in his like mid twenties at this point, so he it was like going. I imagine, and if you're six and you go to boot camp, it's like being put around a bunch of high school seniors. Again, like it it's frustrating, and that seems to be his act. Could not imagine doing that.

I would have lost my fucking mind. Yeah, because like the whole I mean, it seems to me that a whole big part of the training is to get people who are literally high schoolers ready to do something serious. So you're you, you have to deal with people who are frustrating. Yeah, I mean I joined I was seventeen. I mean, grant, that's not the most intelligent thing I've ever done. But I was in training with people who are in their forties and they were so sick of

my ship within like two weeks. Yeah, and he was also like, it's really I'm glad that he was a journal er because now we have sort of through his own mind how he looked at a lot of this stuff, and again his his perspective on things really surprised me. One of the notes he wrote during boot camp was one thing I find myself despising this is the sight

of all these uns in the hands of children. Of course, we all understand the necessity of defense, it doesn't diminish the fact that a young man I would not trust with my canteen is walking about armed. It speaks so much to my experience as well. Yeah, you see a lot of people doing very dumb things with with firearms in the military, which is not something that's ever sort of replicated in our fictional depictions of it. But it is a bunch of eighteen year olds being handed machine

guns for the first time. Absolutely. I was seventeen year old and I was in a tank. I mean there's I was not legally allowed to rent a car, but I could fire ay millimeter cannon at whatever. You know, It's the whole practice is it's not well thought out. Yeah, when you when you sort of apply outside world standards to the military, a lot of things make a lot less sense when you're just like looking at like you are nineteen years old. What are you doing with that?

Like who gave you get? Yeah, there's there's no way that. I mean, granted, I understand that drill sergeant start around, and they're for the most part, all the ones I have ever worked with, even when I got out of basic training and end of running into them later down

the line, they all were good soldiers. But I mean, I've heard so many horror stories of people like they're at the grenade range just dropping the grenade instead of like after they pull the pen, they just drop it from nerves and ship have to be like pushed to safety.

Oh man, wait, no, that's possibly there. So if you pull the pin out, there is actually like a safety you can engage, not really like you there's like a little safety switch like a piece of metal that you pull off, and then you pull the pen and the spoon goes flying. You can hold on to like the spoon itself, but sometimes they'll cock their arm back to throw it. Spoon will come off, arming the grenade, and then they'll just drop it. I've never done it myself,

but I have seen have done oh man. Uh see. Yeah, so Pat found it frustrating. You know. He it took a while before he felt like more comfortable with the people he was around, which I think did happen once he went to ranger school, you know, than people were a little bit older and had been through a little more ship. But you know, he was already a guy who had, you know, quite a lot of discipline. So I think he was frustrated at the early stages of

his boot camp experience. Now, he did enlist with his younger brother, Kevin, who was with him the entire time he served, so that was kind of his like social circle in the army. He had his brother, he had a couple of friends, um, but it was a rough period of time for him. He didn't like the drill instructors. He didn't like the way that they yelled a him.

He didn't like being treated like he was, you know, and I think some of that may have been getting a little bit of an ego from being an NFL star, But he just he found it a frustrating experience. Yeah, I could see that not meshing. Well, I mean, he went from being most effectively the top of the world. I mean, what's what's more popular in America than like an NFL star flowing golden law box and chiveled good luck to being yelled at and called a piece of

ship by a drill sergeant. Yeah, and it does seem like he got a lot of extra pushups from people who had been in just a little bit longer than him, and we're like, well, this is my chance to like order around the famous NFL guy, Which I get. Why you would you know, why you would jump at that? Oh yeah, I may or may not have done the same thing. Uh. Now. The Bush administration obviously made a huge deal about Pat Tillman's enlistment, as did the army.

In the NFL, he became the poster child for the entire War on Terror, heroic young man who tossed aside wealth and privilege to fight a righteous war. But Pat did not want to be a poster boy or a recruiting tool. One of the first things he stated when he made the decision to enlist is that he was going to refuse all interviews after enlisting, which he did. He didn't talk to any press while he was in

the army. This actually wound up being a good thing for the Bush administration because if he talked to the press, he might have accidentally revealed what he thought about the impending Iraq war. Oh yeah, I can't have that. No, no, no, no. His first tour of duty was a rap and he was really furious that he was sent to Iraq and not Afghanistan. Sports Illustrated interviewed Russell Bear, who was a ranger that was a Pet's friend during both of his

deployments and spent a lot of time with him. And here's how Bear portrayed to them Tillman's attitude towards the invasion of Iraq while he was actually in Iraq. So this is like one of the first nights when they're in country during the invasion. That night, as Pat watched another orange and white flash bang shutter in the distant town, he shook his head and said, this war is so fucking illegal. Rust for the first time realized how wobbly a tight rope Pat was walking between his integrity and

his duty. Even later in their three and a half month deployment in Iraq, as it began to appear that they had been sent on a NUX and biochemical weapons wild goose Chase Russ never heard Pat go further than this is all bullshit, which I don't think is an uncommon statement to hear out of a soldier's mouth, but probably not one that would have been pretty common. But it's definitely not something they want someone like Pat Tillman saying publicly no, and in his diary he was more

explicit with his condemnation of war. Quote. My hope is that the decisions are being made with the same good faith that Kevin and I aim to display. I hope this war is about more than money, oil and power. I doubt that it is. If anything were to happen to Kevin, I would never forgive myself. If anything happens to Kevin and my fears of our intent in this country proved true, I will never forgive this world. So Pat Tillman is not the guy he looks like on

the outside. But we've got to go to some ads right now sell some products and stuff. So we're going to break for that, and then we get back. We're going to talk about Pat's involvement in the rescue of Jessica Lynch. If you remember that from seventeen years ago, and we're back. We're talking about Pat Tillman. He's just been sent to Iraq for a three and a half month tour, which is like a weird ranger thing. They only do really short tours, which ay um, sounds pretty

sweet compared to being there for eleven months. Kind of like a double edged sword. They'll have them do really short tours, but do a lot of them. Oh yeah, yeah, so like a normal truth like myself, a do year on, year off, sometimes less than a year off. But I know, I mean there was that uh Special Forces sergeant who died that that long ago, I believe in Afghanistan or Iraq, I can't remember because I'm awful. And he had over a dozen tours who died in a tour, right that

was Afghanistan, I think, Okay, yeah, thirteen tours. Yeah, that's crazy. So during his first tour, Pat was one of the rangers who was assigned to the bloodless rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. Now, if you've forgotten, Jessica Lynch was a private first class. She was nineteen years old when she was captured after eleven of her comrades were killed in a disastrous firefight. The Washington Post published an article on the whole ordeal back in two thousand three, titled she

was Fighting to the death. Here's how it described your capture. Private first Class Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Armies five or seven or its maintenance company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition. US officials said, yesterday. Yeah. The article went on to claim that Lynch, who was a supply clerk, continued to fire at Iraqis even after she had been shot multiple times

and was eventually stabbed until she lost consciousness. The story notes that she did not want to be taken alive. None of this is true. That was just a bunch of lives. No. Jessica Lynch was injured in a car crash. Her convoy was attacked, which caused the crash. But the real cause of everything seems to have been that this convoy mistook where they were and accidentally drove into a town that was occupied by the Iraqi Army. Yeah they

got lost, Yeah, they got lost. It was a giant clusterfuck Obviously, I don't think Lynch did anything wrong, but she got into a horrible car crash and her gun jammed and she lost consciousness from her terrible injuries, and and it kind of does a disservice because there was another soldier that was captured with her, know whatever hears about her, No, no, And she was the first Native

American woman to die serving in the United States military. Right, I think so will correct me, but yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, it was like, yeah, when Jessica Lynch was rescued, there were multiple other U S soldiers had been captured in iraq Um, but there was no like, there was no good media angle for any of them, so we never heard about any of those rescues or

any of those cases. But Jessica Lynch was like a young nineteen year old woman, Like this was one of the first wars where a lot of women had been near the front line. So it was just like this immediate pr thing that the Bush administration just sort of creamed into. Um, the war needed a fast hero, yeah, it needed a really fast hero, and they thought they had this story of like this young woman who had like fought until her she was out of Ammo and

stabbed repeatedly. And there were even grosser stories at the time about like suspecting that she had been sexually assaulted by the Iraqis who captured her, which is not at all true. Uh And in fact, several of the she was taken to an Iraqi hospital Saddam Hussein Hospital, because of course that's what the hospital was named. Um, but they like they took really good care of names, Todam

Hussein Hospital. That gets really confusing. There's the Saddam Hussein Hospital and the Saddam Hussein like daycare center and yeah, you know Saddam Hussein Romance Library. Um. But yeah, she was taken to this hospital and like several Iraqi doctors and nurses donated blood to actually give her transfusions and stuff like. She was treated very well after being captured by the civilians who she wound up in the care of.

But none of that, none of that made for a good story, like, oh, hey, our enemies are people too, and they take care of a wounded person. Would not be Yeah, I mean, the situation probably would have been different if she was captured by like, but she wasn't she. I think she was captured by the Republican Guard of all units, so they're like the best soldiers she could

have been captured by. Yeah, and they pretty much were immediately out of the picture, Like they dropped her off at the hospital and then they got the funk away from that hospital because they knew the Americans were going to come. Um yuckers. Yeah, so it was, it was, it was. The whole rescue operation was a pr opportunity. They got several different ranger units and a bunch of different like special forces units, like it was, they had

a bunch of gun ships. Like it was a way larger operation than you would ever call in for like a single pow in the middle of an invasion. Like maybe now, like you know, when uh, I forget the name of the guy who was at Bergdal who like this post in Afghanistan, there was a big search for him. But that was because this was a weird disruption to a war that had hit like a pretty stable pattern. This is like the middle of the invasion, So it's weird that they devote this many forces to like rescuing

a single private from an undefended hospital. Um. And yeah, normally you would just be written off. It's it's kind of cold. But unless you're a pilot or I don't know, someone that knows something, probably probably shouldn't be giving to the enemy like some kind of Special Forces soldier. You're going to be written off. Yeah, especially when like the country hasn't fallen yet, you know, Saddam is still in

charge theoretically of part of the country. Um. Pat seemed to know at the time that it was a kind of bullshit. Uh, he wrote in his diary quote, the mission will be a pow rescue a woman named Jessica Lynch. As awful as I feel for the fear she must face, and admire the courage I'm sure she is showing. I do believe this to be a big public relations stunt.

Do not mistake me. I wish everyone in trouble to be rescued, But sending in this many folks for a single low raking soldier screams of media blitz, which it was. The operation was actually delayed by like a day so that a camera crew could follow along and film it. Um And I didn't know they had Special Forces camera crews. But they have Special Forces camera crews. Yeah, they're are combat camera guys. We had them pop up from time to time. When I was there, there well the l

element for the most part, but they're all right. Yeah, I I can empathize with being out of your element. It does feel weird to have a camera when everybody else has a rifle. I can't imagine, that's for sure. I I mean, there wasn't any enemy in the hospital, was there. No, No, no, no, no, no. They they had left quite a while before that happened. Some doors got kicked in. I think there were some shots near people's heads to sort of keep them down or whatever,

but there was no actual fight that happened. It was a bloodless rescue. Wow, the alien good zalis an entire hospital. Well yeah, yeah, I mean they really did funk up that hospital. But you're not gonna not funk up the hospital, Like, what are you doing with all these fancy fucking up equipment if you're not going to fuck some stuff up. I mean, also, that's a pretty big violation of the

Geneva Convention targeting a hospital like that. But you know, whatever were the US, it doesn't really apply to us, right, Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the Geneva Convention says. If somebody's being held there or whatever. I really I I haven't read it recently, although it certainly has been taking a little bit of a pounding in Syria right now. It seems like a lot of people get away with bombing really in hospitals and like mosques, uh any religious

building things like that. You can target them if you're taking fire from them, like if the enemy is using them to uh to actually like a defensive position, you're good to go. But as far as the pow thing, nah, that doesn't really fly unless you have someone that can

really work into gray. Well, speaking of people who can work in the gray, the whole rescue was staged by a guy named Jim Wilkinson, who was on paper the director for strategic Communications for General Tommy Frank's, but in reality was George W. Bush's best pr man before and he's he seems to be the guy who was like, at the camera crew here, we need to have these different units here because these are like the units they're gonna look best going in on this mission that we

want to be able to like report on. He staged managed this whole thing, and before the Iraq War, he had worked with candidate Bush in the two thousand election He's the guy responsible for spreading the myth that al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, so that's his other claim to fame. Wilkinson also put together the famous trip Bush took to Ground Zero right after the nine eleven attacks. He was the kind of guy you would

call to put shine on stink. According to the book Where Men Find Glory quote, Wilkinson was the President's man on the ground at US Central Command headquarters in Qatar, controlling and carefully shaping information about the war disseminated by the international press. In this capacity, he adroitly stage managed both the rescue of Jessica Lynch and the subsequent media

coverage of her ordeal. It was Wilkinson who arranged to give the Washington Post exclusive access to classified intelligence that was the basis for the now discredited she was fighting to the death story that ran on the front page of the newspaper. So Wilkinson basically co opted the Washington Post to help write propaganda, which is neat. Thankfully that doesn't happen anymore. No, this is the last time it ever happened to any journalist. Yeah, yeah, thank god. Also,

I mispronounced cutter. I was hoping no one would notice, but my conscious caught up with me. So the two people in Cutter who are listening to this, I'm sorry I pronounced your country's name wrong. There's probably less of you demographic. Man. Well you know it's a critical demographic because they're all rich oil shakes. So like you know, you get all you sell a lot of T shirts to that crew, is what I'm saying. I think you're now bands from the World Cup. Preemptively your ship caned.

Oh yeah, well I don't think soccer is a real sport. So there goes my Australian listeners. Everybody in Europe, most of the Middle East, Spain just dropping like flies. And this is the episode they listened to because we're the bastards this time. Oh yeah, no, no, I but I've been firm about my anti soccer stance and Sophie is here staring at me. But it's not a real sport. There are two real sports and neither of them are soccer. And that's all we're gonna get into about sports today.

I just want to know what the two are. Well, that's another episode today. We're talking about Pat Tillman, who played a fake sport called football and then became an army ranger. Now Pat was aware of all the pageantry that had been injected into the Jessica Lynch rescue. He knew it was all there to distract from a war that so far had failed to deliver up any of the w M D S American voters expected. Looking at all this, he couldn't help but think about what the

Bush administration would do if something happened to him. Jade Lane, a arranger who served with Tillman, recalled this. When we were in Baghdad, our cots were next to each other. Pat and I used to talk at night a lot before we rack out. I don't know how the conversation got brought up, but one night he said he was afraid if something were to happen to him Bushes people would like make a big deal out of his death and parade him through the streets. And those were his

exact words. I don't want them to parade me through the streets. It just burned into my brain him saying that, which is pretty heartbreaking, because I think we all do know what comes next, which is exactly that. Yeah, he's not gonna like that statue much. No, Well, I mean, that's a football thing. I guess that's okay. He likes he's he's football pat in the in the statue. But we all know why the statue is there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

that is a fair point. Um. The Lynch Rescue, though, generated more than six hundred news stories, as well as a nonfiction book that became a New York Times bestseller. Jessica got her own made for TV movie released during Sweets Week, which I don't think is a thing anymore, but definitely was. Then the Rambo portrayal of her whole ordeal got a huge amount of time in the sun

before anyone realized that it was all a lie. I don't know if the Internet would have busted that lie faster, you know, if this had happened more recently, or if it would have made it even harder to dispel. But people bought into the Jessica Lynch story for a long time. I know I did when I was a little kid

paying attention to all the Iraq news. Now yeah I did too, Oh yeah, because it was just this, like it sounded like it was the story of this like almost mad max story of this convoy getting ambushed and she's like ramming people in her car and shooting a machine gun. It's it sounded cool. Yeah, it turns out it was just to garden variety tragedy which nobody wants to hear about that and a made for TV movie.

You know, we want something now that's uh, that's more of a comedy of airs and makes everybody just feel sad inside. Yeah, although I do want to be clear, there's no evidence I've ever heard that Lynch herself did anything wrong. She was just a private in a vehicle and a terrible thing happened. Uh right, you can't blame a private. I don't know if she was a driver or or not, because I know she was like her a job, was a truck driver, but I don't know

if if she was actually driving the vehicles. Like, it's not her fault she took the wrong turn. Private stuff control, That just that her fault. She didn't man some Alamo type defense private self control that either. You just happened to be a colleg in a machine that got fucked up. Yeah, And she has been pretty outspoken about wanting to correct the records since and we'll be we'll be getting to that. Uh,

in a little bit here. But yeah, So now, in the book Where Men Find Glory, crack Our alleges that all of the hoop law around lynches, capture and rescue was mainly intended by the Bush administration to distract the American public from a major funk up a killing of seventeen U S Marines by friendly fire of I think it was a pair of aton Ward hogs um And

this had happened like four days into the invasion. So yeah, having this story of like, you know, there's this woman warrior being rescued and Pat Tillman, the poster boy of the Army, is here, and it's like this great and well, let's all pay attention to that and ignore the fact that we bombed our own guys, which you know, not a dumb strategy if you're the Army or the Bush administration. And it clearly worked. So yeah, Pat did his three and a half months in Iraq. When he got home,

he had officially completed a combat tour. This meant he could have qualified for a special dispensation to end his term of service early. In return to the NFL. Both the NFL and the Army would have been totally down for that because I think Pat was a lot more valuable to the army as a recruiting tool than as a single ranger. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's I think that's what everyone but Pat would have preferred.

But Pat was not willing to take any special treatment, and so in April of two thousand and four, he deployed to Afghanistan with his brother Kevin and the rest of his ranger unit. Now, a few days into their tour, his unit was doing one of those missions that I gather are pretty common in Afghanistan, where they're basically driving around in the mountains for a few days, searching villages for weapons caches and looking for taliban. Um. Oh yeah,

that's pretty much your existence. Yeah. I always make I always make jokes that, like, you know, our grandfathers were we're going to storm the beaches and take these pill boxes or you know, take these hedgerows and we're just let's drive around in circles until some rando tries to fucking murderer. It does seem to be a step back strategically from storming beaches and taking cities. Yeah, it's it's

the dumbest ship on Earth. And I mean, I'm sure, it was much different in two elses before than when I was there several years later. But you know, you just drive round Wayne didn't get blown up or someone take a shot at you, and you hope you survive so you can try to kill them back. Yeah, and that it does seem every description I've read about the mission he was on, it does just seem like they were driving around waiting for someone to start trouble with him. Yeah. So,

so that's the job these guys are doing. Um, they're out in in the middle of no it looks if you've ever been deep into like the California Desert, the California Desert seems to look a lot like Afghanistan, which I think is why they do a lot of training there for it. Yet the other the national training centers

in the middle of Colorado. Oh cool. Um. So yeah, it's like they're in this like dry high desert area searching villages and one of their humvees gets sucked up the axles, I think, break on it and they can't use it anymore. Um. I think normally today they would send in something like a chinook to pick it up. But all of these spare air assets were in Iraq because the invasion was still really fresh, so they didn't have any spare like chinooks that they could send to

pick this thing up. So there were a couple of different things they could have done Tilman's platoon leader, First Lieutenant David Lot, wanted to take the gun off and just blow up the humpy, but his commanding officer back at base wasn't willing to let him do that because it would look bad and be essentially seen as as this guy wasting money. So eventually a Lot and his men found a local truck driver who agreed to tow

the humby, but that created another problem. The platoons still had more villages to clear on its list, and if they didn't search all of the villages they've been arbitrarily assigned, they'd make their lieutenant colonel look bad and slow up. Like the whole time plan that everybody was working on. How you can't make lieutenant colonel look bad? I think

of the outcome? No no, no no, So this guy like yeah, and that's like the apparently there They spent quite a lot of time with this lieutenant being like, look, it's a really dumb idea to like split the platoon in half. Why don't we just all take this thing back and then we can head out, And he's really adamant about like, no, there's a time frame. You're supposed to have done these villages by this time, Like, we're

not gonna let this slow us down. And it should probably be noted that the lieutenant colonel is definitely not there with them, no no, no, no, no no. He is on the phone with him, probably upping hot coffee. So the the only option that they had after the lieutenant colonel's orders was to split the platoon. Half of it would go back with the broken humvy and the other half would continue on its mission to search a

tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Specialist Jade Lane recalled, nobody on the ground thought it was a good idea to split the platoon. The pl didn't want to do it, but in the army, you obey orders. If somebody with a higher rank tells you to do something, you do it.

So a flat split the platoon. Now, the mountains being what they are and technology being where it wasn't two thousand four, the two groups couldn't really communicate very well, so Tillman's group didn't realize when the second group with the broken hum vy and the tow truck doubled back behind them. Um. And this was apparently because when they first tried to get back to the base, they realized they're oute they wanted to take was two treasures for

the tow truck. So the driver was like, well, if we just go through where they're heading right now and drive ahead of your other buddies, there's another road that we can use to get back into town. So while this second group towing the humvy is like pulling up behind Tillman's unit, they ambushed by some Taliban guys with mortars and I think just like a K forty seven. It's really debatable how much fire the unit was under

at this point. But somebody starts shooting and then all of the rangers start shooting, and what happened next is just a total clusterfuck. So the valley where this ambush happened is like one of those it seems like a classic Afghan kind of mountain feature where it's like I sent the picture along in that dock I sent you, but it's like steep walls raising up on either side and really narrow. It's like a perfect place to ambush somebody. Yeah, I mean, especially the only way to get through is

like tightly curled switchbacks. I mean, I've been on that ambush before and it sucks. And i mean, like you're talking about what its hard to communicate. That's two dollaran for technology, and that's also just Afghanistan. Those valleys make it almost impossible for our modern radio systems to work. Yeah, So everybody's really confused and half of them are getting shot. And Tilman is with the group that's not getting shot.

But he he realizes what's happened. He sees that his comrades and unit that his brothers with is under fire. So he and a couple of other guys run towards the rangers that are under fire to try and and they like kind of get up on top of this ridge line to try and lay in suppression fire on

the dudes who are shooting at their friends. Um So, Tillman and two other soldiers, a ranger and an Afghan National Army guy scale this ridge line and start providing suppression fire when a topless, doorless humvy filled with heavily armed and panic rangers rolls towards them. Now this unit was run by a sergeant named Greg Baker. He was a guyota reputation for being a very good soldier, but it seems like he he either made an error or

freaked out. So Baker is rolling forward on this jeep with like three other guys in it, and they're all just kind of shooting at the hilltops around them, and Baker sees the Afghan National Army soldier who's standing next to Pat Tilman, and he sees he says, he sees his beard and his face and realizes that he's Afghan and just shoots him dead right on the spot, not noticing that he's wearing like the uniform of the a n A. So Baker kills this guy, and then all

of the other rangers in his car start pouring fire into Pat Tillman and Tillman's buddy. So we're gonna talk about what happens next. But that's sort of how everything goes to ship, right, Yeah. I mean I wish I could say that isn't like on brand for soldiers everywhere

just to blindly shoot where everybody else is. But I could see this happening tomorrow, and that's exactly the justification everybody else in the car gives is they see their squad leaders shooting in one direction and so they just start firing. Yeah, it doesn't end well, but speaking of things, that doing well adds and we're back. Uh, so we've just gotten into Yeah, Tillman and his guys are up

on this ridge. Greg Baker, sergeant in a humpy with three other guys, has just fired and killed the Afghan National Army guy next to them, And now all of the rangers in this humby start pouring fire into the position where Pat Tillman is standing with you know, his buddy and a guy named O'Neil, one of them in shooting at them with Stephen Ashpole, a fifty caliber machine gunner.

When asked why he and the other rangers in the jeep hadn't waited to ide their targets before shooting, he said, you are drilled into as a private shoot where your team leader shoots. We came around a curve. Sergeant Baker then called fire, and I transitioned my weapon and saw some quick shapes and fired where Sergeant Baker and the other guys are firing. So that's exactly what happens. Um the other guy O'Neill manages to survive, but Pat Tillman is shot three times in the head by a fellow

army ranger with a saw squad automatic weapon. And yeah, I mean he was he was killed immediately three times. That that's yeah, this isn't sound really shitty. That's shocking he was able to make that shot. Yeah, I mean it does sound like they were all really good shots in that humpy Yeah, they're they're simultaneously incredibly inepted where they were shooting, but incredibly accurate. I mean, you know,

at least that's half of where they're supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, it's it's somewhere between two and of American war casualties come from friendly fire, which is such a broad range that it's almost a useless statistic because it means it's either almost nobody or a quarter of American war casualties. UM imagine that studying literally any other topic. Yeah, it's it's weird how bad the data on it is. And I tried to find better information. I was not able to.

I found one article in two Doesn't Tend that said that at that point, at least seven U S soldiers had been killed in thirty four wounded in Iraq and friendly fire incidents since the invasion, but that didn't count like a dozen or so British soldiers who had been killed by US friendly fire at that point. It seems in general like the Army does not do a good job of reporting friendly fire casualties, and that wouldn't do a good job of reporting anything that makes them look bad. No,

and that's exactly what happened with Pat Tillman. There was no doubt at the time that he had been killed by members of his own unit, that it was fratricide, but an investigation was ordered by the Army, which was standard, but they used the investigation as an excuse to not say anything about the fact that Pat had been shot

by his own buddies. So a bunch of ship like this is really aware the bastardry starts to pile up because um, for one thing, Lieutenant Colonel Hodney, who was the guy who had ordered a lot to split his platoons that they wouldn't you know, get off of the time frame. The guy he put in charge of the investigation was only a captain, which is according to like military the regulations that they were doing the investigation under

Article fifteen Dash six. Um, the investigation was supposed to be conducted by someone with a higher rank than anyone he might have to investigate. So since the lieutenant colonel put a captain in charge of it, that meant basically no one in command could be investigated as having had a role in Tilman's death from the start. So it was like, yeah, I should have at least been a colonel. Yeah, exactly.

It should have been somebody who could have looked into what Hodney had been doing and looked at, well, did the shitty orders they were getting contribute to this soldier dying? Which seems like a definite yes. Um. Yeah. So one of those men most involved in hiding what happened to Pat Tillman was a general named Stanley McCrystal. Uh now at that point, uh huh yeah, um. At that point he was the Joint Special Operations Command Commander Jay Sak.

McCrystal ordered the facts of Tillman's death to be concealed. The justification at the time is that it would have been irresponsible to say anything until the investigation was concluded. Uh. Here is a quote from the book Where Men Find Glory According to a federal statute and several Army regulations, Mary Tillman, as next of kin, was supposed to be notified that an investigation was underway, even if friendly fire was only suspected, and be kept informed as additional information

about the cause of death becomes known. Instead, McCrystal and the soldiers under their command went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Tillman family from learning the truth about how Pat died. So they're not they're not telling Pat's wife when they're supposed to tell her that there's an investigation

to the nature of his death. They've ordered all of the members of Pat's unit to keep quiet about what's happened, which means that the guys who killed Pat weren't allowed to and or the guys who knew what had happened and how Pat had died weren't allowed to tell Pat's brother, Kevin, what had happened, even though he was in the same unit.

So there's this like really ghastly situation where Kevin's like going to the gym and working out with the guys who shot his brother to death and like doesn't know it, which is just super gross. That's I didn't know this part. Yeah, I actually had no idea that his brother was in

the army, but yeah, that's just fucking ghoulish. Yeah. Steven Elliott, one of the rangers who was in the jeep you know that Pat got killed by their fusillade, said he and others were ordered quote not to discuss the incident with folks outside the unit, and that it was mainly because it was still under investigation. He says, I was operating on a certain level of naivete. I believe senior leaders were trying to protect the family, and I know and I had no idea they were being deceived at

any point, but they were. Kevin was flown back with Pat's casket from Afghanistan, and the one thing he asked of the men he left behind was if they would please find Pat's journal and send it back to him. We've already read a couple of excerpts. Pat was a really dedicated diarist, you know, uh, and it was important for Kevin to read his brother's last few words. Of course, the Army burned Pat's journal, They burned all of his clothing and body armor, and they sent his body back

naked in the casket. This was not normal procedure. They burned it. Yeah, they burned all of his clothing, they burned his journal, everything that was on his body. Yeah, that's yeah, that's not procedure at all. No, No, what they did was completely illegal and not at all normal. The sergeant who burnt the stuff was told it was for quote security purposes, but there was never any real

good explanation given. So this is one of the first like things that happened that's like clearly like this is not just somebody trying to delay the truth getting out. This is like a cover up. Now. Yeah, yeah, I mean it should be noted like even if you're wounded or killed, they don't even burn like your bloody clothing,

they send it back. Yeah. So that's it's really weird that they would do this and really just shows like a lack of concern for you know, like the one thing this kid asks as he's being sent back with his dead brother is like, find his journal. And I don't even think that message gets to the guy who's burning you know, Pat's clothes, and you know, the sergeant who's in charge of burning that ship should have known

something was going on. They're like, hey, I've never done this before, but weird that this is the only time this has happened. Yeah, it's weird that these desert pattern camouflage to contain secrets that I'm not aware of. Um so stupid. Yeah, fratricide is a type of homicide. So General McCrystal and his men were obligated to inform c i D off what was suspective. They didn't do this and said they sent in an army lawyer, Major Charles kirch Meyer to basically muddy the waters enough that c

I D would decide they weren't needed. Kirch Meyer was thanked for bea email by Crystal's legal advisor for quote keeping the c i D at bay. So those are the guys that you watch in your favorite old people shows about army detectives. So it's like the army equivalent of n c I S. Right, Yeah, that's the exact same thing. They They normally investigate any fifteen six investigation,

like not necessarily a real investigation, but like a cursory glance. Yeah, and so basically Mcrystal sends this guy Kirchmeyer in to try and smooth over even that, so that they're really not looking at this case at all at first, and like I think they know at some point it's going to get investigated, but they're just trying to slow things down. Um, And I think it will become clear why in a little bit so the army hid the fact that Pat had died from friendly fire from his family for more

than a month. This seems to be because the Bush administration wanted to ring every drop of good pr out of Tillman that they possibly could. So here's how krak Our describes what followed and like. The day after Tillman died in the Bush White House, approximately two emails discussing the situation were transmitted to receive by White House officials, including staffers from Bush's reelection campaign, who suggested to the president that it would be advantageous for him to respond

to Tillman's death as quickly as possible. Genie Mammo, Bush's director of media affairs, sent an email to Lawrence de Rita, Rumsfeld's press secretary, asking for details about the tragedy so she could use them in a White House press release.

By eleven forty a m. A statement about Tilman had been drafted and forwarded to Press Secretary Scott McCullen and Communications Director Dan Bartlett, who immediately approved the statement on behalf of President Bush and then disseminated it to the public, even though doing so violated the Military Family Peace of

Mind Act. So, basically, according to a policy President George W. Bush had signed into law five months earlier, you were supposed to give families of war casualties twenty four hours to grieve in private before making a public announcement about their family member's death. So George W. Bush and his administration skirted the rule that they had put in place because Pat Tillman was so famous that they wanted to get out ahead of the story and release a statement early.

They wanted to get out ahead of his parents morning. Yeah. Well you really, you really gotta you gotta pre empt that ship otherwise it's just gonna it's gonna look bad. Yeah yeah, nip all that crying right in the bud. Yeah,

and it's it's all gross. The guy who rushed out the statement, or who the White House pinned the blame on for rushing out the statement illegally and early, said that he had done it because the story quote made the American people feel good about our country and our military, because again, at that point, the story was this war hero had charged up a hill to save his comrades and been you know, tragically killed in action being heroic, rather than shot dead by his own men in a

in a terrible accident. So yeah, that's gross. It's really gross. That's like snidely whiplash level of villainy. Yeah. Yeah, and what comes next is even grosser because Stanley McCrystal puts Pat Tilman up for a Silver Star um and in the Silver Star Report they basically word it vaguely enough that it's evident to anybody reading it who doesn't know what really happened, that it would seem like Pat Tillman was killed like heroically trying to save you know, his buddies.

But it's also written carefully enough that, like, it doesn't leave out the chance that he was killed by friendly fire. They don't state exactly who killed him. They just sort of leave it up to you to decide as the reader. Oh, they must be saying the Taliban killed him, but like they don't quite go and say it not normal at all. No, No, mccrystals knows that what he's doing is illegal and sketchy as hell, but he also doesn't want to look bad and figures that if they give this guy a medal,

his family won't ask any questions about what happened. Yeah, I mean, I knew me Crystal is a fucking asshole, but this is a whole new level. Yeah, this is really his like piata of being a douche bag um is like right here, it's it's pretty remarkable. So Tillman's death was good news for the Bush administration and for the Defense Department. The global warrant terror had started to look like a quagmire by that point, and Tillman's story

was seen as having the potential to distract people. According to a two thousand seventeen Intercept article on the matter, Brigadier General Howard Yellen would later tell investigators that the view among the chain of command was that Tillman's death was like a steak dinner, albeit delivered on a garbage can cover, which is again a really gross way to talk about a man who just died. I mean, where the fund do they find people who talk about recently

killed people like in this manner? Go on, I do want to be in that conversation when you're like talking about a man who's died under your command and you're like, well, it's like a steak dinner on a garbage can, and like how does everyone else in the room not be like what are you talking about? I want to be in a room full of people that are so inherently terrible that when somebody gets killed, you know, whether it be by the enemy or or by their own guys like, wait,

how can we make this work for us? What's the spin? Yeah, supply side tragedy. Yeah, it's gross. I like that term. Also. Um So, Pat Tillman's memorial ceremony was hosted at the sand hoose A Rose Garden, which is very big venue, and the memorial ceremony was a huge event, lots of lots of cameras, lots of photo opportunities between famous people. John McCain was there, He gave a little speech. Um. A Navy seal who was a friend with Pat Tillman gave a speech at his memorial service based on lies.

So the the Army lied to a Navy seal who was Pat Tillman's buddy about how he had died so that he could give a speech full of lies at this televised memorial service about how Pat Tilman had died. So it's just like this rivoros of grossness that keeps getting grosser and grosser and grosser. The further down we get, um like a layer of onions, except every new layer is also ship yeah yeah, yeah, And one of the

layers in this ship onion is John McCain. He gave a speech at Pat Tillman's moral service and did not know at the time that Pat had been killed by friendly fire. He was angry when he found that at too, but afterwards he was shaking hands with the family after the service, and when he was talking with Pat's brother, Richard, his other brother, he noted that he he thought Pat was in a better place. And this really piste off Richard because Richard, like Pat, and like the rest of

his family, was an atheist. So there was alcohol at this gathering um, and it was obviously an emotionally charged time. So when it was Richard's turn to yeah yeah, so Richard gets up and looks at John McCain and says, Pat's a fucking champion and always will be. Just make no mistake, he'd want me to say this he's not with God. He's fucking dead. He's not religious, so thanks for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead. Later, Richard wound up on the Bill Maher show and explained why he'd

reacted that way quote, I found it offensive. It's like, I don't go to church and say this is bullshit. So don't come to my brother's service and tell me he's with God. He's simply not with fucking God. Now, if you just have that bit of info, it maybe sounds like Richard's overreacting a little bit because he's, you know,

he just lost his brother. There's a lot of reason that Richard and his family have to be pissed about religion being shoehorned into Pat tillman postmortem, because that's exactly what some asshole in the army did right after Pat died. So yeah, yeah, there was a tiff between Kevin Tilman and Lieutenant Colonel named Ralph Kasarlitch or Coslar Rich Jesus,

that's a weird last name. Anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote from Where Men Find Glory about this little sort of debate that was sparked after Pat's death. Shortly before the second range of Italian sent Pat's remains home from Afghanistan. He coslar Rich was arranging a repatriation ceremony when a sergeant approached him and said, hey, sir, Kevin Tilman doesn't want a chaplain involved in his repatriation ceremony.

When koslar Rich, an evangelical Christian, asked why, the sergeant replied, well, evidently he and his brother are atheists, that's the way they were raised, to which coslar Rich angrily declaimed, well, you can tell Specialist Tillman that the ceremony ain't about him. It is about everybody in the Joint Task Force bidding farewell to his brother. So there will be a chaplain and there will be prayers. So they may have been a little bit piste off about that. Yeah, yeah, cosl

Rich is a real piece of ship. Uh And we'll be hearing from him just a little bit more and the rest of this story, so of course. Yeah. The fifteen six investigation into Pat Tillman's death was delivered exactly one day after his memorial service, which is fun timing. It noted that quote leadership played a critical role and greatly contributed to the fratricide incident that killed SPC. Pat Tillman.

It noted that the rangers in the g who had killed Tillman quote never received effective enemy fire throughout the entire enemy contact, and as officially, Tillman's cause of death was the result of gross negligence. Now, this result was a real problem for the army because they had already awarded Tillman a Silver Star for courage in the face of enemy fire, and while he had shown courage, the

fire had not come from any enemies. This was also a problem for General Stanley McCrystal because now everyone knew that he had lied about how Pat had died. So Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to mitigate the damage from this bad pr so he scheduled the public disclosure of all of this, of the information about, like, you know,

the gross negligence behind Pat's death. He scheduled the actual drop of that to the press for Saturday May twenty nine, which means he dropped it the Saturday before Memorial Day. So basically, the report that finally officially let everyone know Pat had died from friendly fire was released at the start of a three day weekend, Assuming that all of the journalists would be too drunk to write anything about it.

There was a formally the case they do like some kind of weekend dump to try to Yeah, I mean, that's that's just general press wisdom. If you've got shitty news, you try to put it out where no one's going to know. You would just hope that the military would be above that when releasing information about the death of a human being. But I mean, who knows. You know,

history says otherwise, History says otherwise. So there was a press conference and a Ranger spokesman did announce Pat's death, you know, by friendly fire, openly, but he took no questions. And after the press conference, Pentagon officials emailed each other congratulations on limiting the damn it of the results of the fifteen six Way to Go guy, we did it. We covered up the death of one of our own. Yeah.

An Army colonel noted in an email that quote the story will run hot today and diminish over the weekend. A sitcom public affairs officer said that a recent terrorist attack that had happened in Saudi Arabia would also help to dilute the story of how Pat had really died, So that was good. It was really worked out for

the army um attack. Yeah. Yeah, And you would think at this point that after all that Army funk ups had cost the Tillman family, the least that the Army could do was not funk up delivering the news of how he had been killed to the family. What are the odds that they would make the same basic mistake twice and let the press know before letting, say, Pat Tillman's own mother know crucial detail about how her son

had died, which is exactly what's happened. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, she found out that her son had died by friendly fire when a reporter called her asking for a comment. Army just didn't get to her in time. So yeah, it really had to you know, get in front of that story. And by the story, I mean his morning parents again. Yeah. One of the things that's really impressive about this is that it really took everything misfiring at once that could have misfired to really make this as

offensive a co option of a human being's legacy is possible. Like, that's one of the things that's most remarkable about this. I think misfire is not the right term, because all of these steps were completely on purpose. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You right, the only accident was his actual death. Everything after that, everything else is just people being actively fucking

terrible to one another. Yeah, you're right, it's weird. I even like, I don't know, it's that like sort of attitude towards the military that I grew up with, where like, even when I know how fucked up a story like this is, I keep trying to find ways that it's not quite as bad, and like, no, it's really bad. Like if I hadn't spent almost a decade in the army, I would assume that they had the best intention and the just kind of sucked it up along the way.

But I've kind of learned that they are just assholes. For for the most part, it's not obviously not everyday people, but when you get further and further up, it's like being in a room full of politicians, good things don't happen.

It's the same thing as like you go into a Walmart or whatever and you talk to a person who works there and you can make a human connection and like talk to a human being, But like the people up at corporate like it's just once your job is so abstract from the human beings that your job is about. You do ship like this because it makes sense. You're not like co opting a human beings. Yeah, exactly, there's a way to rationalize it. And this thing got rationalized,

all to Helen back. Um. So, the first several investigations into Pat Tillman's death were very sloppy and incomplete. The third investigation was conducted by that guy Kaslo Rich who we talked about earlier. Um. It was apparently very very sloppy and did not answer a lot of important questions like why did you burn my son's armor and clothing and stuff? But you know, why are you burning the evidence of an investigation? Why was the evidence lit on fire?

But it did lead to some discipline. Seven rangers were disciplined for their part in Pat's death, most of them lost rancor were kicked back into the regular army. That's what happened to the saw gunner who killed Pat. But none of these investigations did much to help explain why four highly trained rangers and machine gun to comrade from twenty feet away. More troubling to the Tillman family, nothing yet released explained at all why Pat had been shipped

home nude, his notebook and clothing burned. Why they hadn't been told that he died from friendly fire until a month later? Uh? And why he had been nominated for a Silver Star, presumably as a method of like covering up what had happened. None of this was explained, so eventually the Defense Departments Inspector General agreed to carry out

a fourth investigation. According to Sports Illustrated Quote, the Army finally admitted it had violated its own regulations by waiting more than a month to inform the Tillmans that their son had diet as a result of suspected friendly fire, but only out of a desire to wait until it

had gathered all the facts. As for the burning of the uniform and body armor that might have shown bullet evidence, the Army counter that it was done only because the bloodied gear was considered a potential bio hazard and hygiene issue that they might stir emotion, and because officers in the field had already determined that fratricide was a foregone conclusion, which is about as bullshit and answer as you can

get for that. Um yeah, I mean they knew its fratricide within an hour, I'm willing when they went over there and found his dead body next to the guy that was alive and said, hey, you shot him. Yeah, it's just gross. Um. And it took four investigations for the family to start to get an idea of how gross it was. And there's this guy, caused the Rich as, I he's not a huge part of this, but I want to keep drilling back on him because he's a

real piece of shit. Because the general who conducted that fourth investigation actually questioned Cousler Rich about his shitty investigation, and during it he whined that the Timan family wouldn't stop asking questions about how their son had died because they were atheists, and he thought that, like, that's why they just they're just angry that they don't have any peace and so they're they're taking it out on the army. And not only did he say that angry that they're

asking questions about how their son died because their godless seasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's basically what's what's exactly what happened. And he went on ESPN in two thousand six and continued to say this ship like so in an in an ESPN interview, This lieutenant colonel is like talking smack about the family of a dead soldier for wanting to know how their son had died. He said, Yeah, Well, if you were an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die,

what is there to go to? Nothing? You're worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing and now he is no more, that's pretty hard to get your head around that, you know. So, I don't know. I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that would be pretty tough. Well, it's harder with guys like you, Kasler Rich. Yeah, it is harder for you know, any human garbage people like him like him to empathize with other people. Yeah, it's it's yeah. So Pat's mother,

Mary is the real hero in all of this. She spent the next four years of her life investigating Pat's death and the cover up behind it. Uh Mary felt that the Bush administration had used her son as a recruiting tool when he was alive and a patriotic distraction once he died. She told Sports Illustrated, they attached themselves to his virtue and then threw him under the bus. They had no regard for him as a person. He'd

hate to be used for a lie. I don't care if they put a bullet through my head in the middle of the night. I'm not stopping. So Mary kept up the pressure, gradually forcing the military to conduct three additional investigations for a total of seven. His death became

about more than just one incident a friendly fire. It was tied to a pattern of behavior among Bush administration officials and army officials, a pattern of self serving deception, using the real tragedies experienced by individual soldiers in order to deflect criticism from the disastrous war that embarked on. This culminated in a series of congressional investigation starting in

two thousand seven. Rumsfeldt took the stand during these investigations, and when he was asked when he'd learned how Toman died at Rumsfeld said, I don't recall when I was told, and I don't recall who told me. I know that I would not engage in a cover up, which is interesting because Rumsfeld had taken the time to write Pat Tilman a personal letter when he had enlisted, and the Secretary of Defense had kept regular tabs on Pat's career.

Pat's mother, Mary, believes that heads would have rolled if Rumsfeld, a notorious micromanager, hadn't been in the loop about Pat's death, which seems likely, especially since his office was involved in all these email conversations about how to spend his life and his death. When he spoke to Congress, Pat's brother, Kevin, was notably less polite. He said, quote, the fact that the Army, in what appears to be others attempted to

hijack his virtue and his legacy is simply horrific. The least this country can do for him in return is to uncover who is responsible for his death, who lied, and who covered it up, and who had instigated those lies and benefited from them, then ensure that justice is meeted out to the culpable. So Mary did eventually get something approaching the truth about what had happened to her son.

It took like seven investigations and two congressional inquiries, but she got more or less most of the information she was looking for. The investigation revealed that one day before the Secretary of the Army had certified Pat silver star, General McCrystal had learned from Rumpsfeld's office that President Bush planned to talk about Pat Tillman at the White House

Correspondence Association dinner. Crystal was scared that the President would say something about Pratt's bravery under enemy fire because he knew that the truth would eventually come out and make the President look like a liar, So he sent a memo to sent Com Commander General John Abizad, who sent

the memo onward to the White House. Which means, of course that Rumsfeld and Bush and everybody else from pretty much the beginning knew that this was a friendly fire issue because Bush changed the line in his speech to leave out enemy fire. So yeah, it's gross. It's a gross story. It's gross all the way down. Like, you know, the second I heard you say, Rumsfeld and says that he didn't know. You know, Rumsfeld is widely known for being a trustworthy guy, so you know, I was gonna

give him the benefit of the doubt. Um, But I honestly, up until now, I had no idea that Bush personally was involved. Oh yeah, I mean, we don't know what he himself did, but we know that his speech writers changed a speech he was supposed to give as a result of this. I mean, I guess he probably would have asked something about the famous guy who he had been planning to talk about why the line was suddenly different. Um,

maybe not. Maybe he wasn't that curious a guy, but it seems really yeah, I mean, I don't know, Tillman was pretty famous. It seems pretty clear that at least Rumpsfeld knew what was going on, and Stanley McCrystal sure as hell knew what was happening. In July two eight, the Congressional Oversight Committee investigating Tillman's death issued its report.

It noted that while the White House had been intensely interested in the first reports of Tillman's death after it became clear he died a friendly fire quote, the White House could not produce a single email or document relating to any discussion about Corporal Tillman's death by friendly fire.

The intense interest that initially characterized the White Houses and Defense departments reaction to Corporal Tillman's death was followed by a stunning lack of curiosity about emerging reports of fratricide and an incomprehensible carelessness in incompetence in handling the sensitive information. So in the end, there was a tiny bit of justice done. The hammer wound up falling on a general named kin Singer, who had been part of the cover up,

but not really a major part. Crack Hour suggests that this was because kin Singer was already retired at the time of the investigation. No one involved though that much more. Yeah, yeah, you picked the retired guy and you yell at him, and then it's fine, it's fine. And uh, I'm going to assume all these lieutenant colonels they didn't even get a letter of reprimand or anything. No, No, I think most of them were full bird colonels within a year or so of this all going down. Ah, yes, of

course yea. And mccrystal's career definitely didn't get hurt by this at all because I end up being under his command Afghanistan. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He wound up being in charge of the entire war effort in Afghanistan for a little bit, and then he stopped being in charge of the war in Afghanistan when a Rolling Stone reporter was there for both of those things. Oh yeah, what was that like when the fucking story came out that he was talking smack about Barack Obama I thought, personally,

I thought it was hilarious. Yeah, not not that he was shipped talking the president as a as you know, a field grade officer, but how much he must have thought of himself to think he could get away with that, Yeah, because he was basically attacking the entire civilian leadership back in Washington in front of a reporter for Rolling Stone, Like, yeah, it's like he was trying to do a MacArthur in Korea.

But like Obama slapped his dick and fired him, and his leadership of the war in general is fucking terrible. So I was kind of glad to see him go. Yeah. So he's he's about as close as we get in this story to an individual who got some sort of justice. So that's good. Nobody winds up looking good about this. Like even like John McCain, when he found out that the death had come from friendly fire, briefly took an interest in like trying to figure out what had actually happened.

But Mary Tillman says that he kind of stopped talking to him after he ran for president in two thousand eight, because you know, that would have been bad for his presidential runs. So like the the story of Pat Tillman, from beginning to end, is a story of like a nice guy trying to do the right thing and a bunch of people trying to co opt his legacy in whatever way they can and then running away as soon as you know any threat to their own careers is posed.

It's just like so much grossness and cowardice in this little story. I had no idea. I think that's one of the thing that pissed me off the most about the whole thing when he became a poster boy recently. Again, yeah, I think we're going to continue to see that if the NFL continues to be at like the center of a big cultural issue in this country. Is like people

bringing up Pat Tillman. So the next time you see that, remember Pat Tillman wasn't a big fan of the Army, hated George Bush, thought the War on Terror was mostly bullshit. So yeah, it's a gross story. But the next time you see someone you know trying to bring Pat Tillman up a sort of an argument against why football players shouldn't kneel whenever the hell they want to, um, just slap him in the face. But with this podcast and not your hand because yeah, it's it's kind of disgusting.

It's not even just the NFL, it's like literally anything, Like Kaepernick hasn't been in the NFL in years, Yeah, and he still gets trotted out because apparently soldiers have a monopoly and what sacrifices. Yeah, and you can't possibly sacrifice if you're not dead, Yeah, and you can't. Like

it's this. I think the thing that frustrates me most about the Tilman story is just like the lack of respect of like, Okay, this guy had his own beliefs and own reasons for doing things, and like we can't even let him be remembered the way he would want to be remembered or for the things he actually believed. We're going to turn him into a political prop whenever we need a political prop, because everybody remembers his name

and his g I Joe phase. It's it's frustrating, Yeah, it's we talk more about Pat Tilman, and obviously now we're guilty of that because we're talking about Pat Tillman. Um, we talk more about Kaepernick kneeling for a fucking magical song that makes the freedom come. But like, we talk more about this ship than we do like the fact that we're still fighting the war in Afghanistan. Yeah, we've had this conversation more than is seventeen years too long

to be at war? Which maybe maybe find out more next year when we have our first child younger than the war he's fighting in, which that's going to be an exciting moment for this whole country. List now, because I mean you can list at seventeen with your parents signature.

I did. Well, if you're seventeen right now, go and list and get yourself to Afghanistan and uh send me a message when you are officially in a war that you're younger then and we'll I think all those guys who who wanted to deploy so that and and fight the enemy away from home so his kids didn't have

to fight them really feels like an asshole. Now. Yeah, that was that Onion article like young man like marches same pass that his like dad marched in two thousand six or something like yeah, oh man, Yeah, do you follow the army's social media accounts? Oh no, no, not since they posted those gross pictures of the eight in Wardog firing a bunch of stuff, and we're like they recently accidentally onion themselves, like they posted this picture of like father and son in Afghanistan like it was a

good thing. Oh no, that's really strategy. Well, and it's also like it's such a bad idea to let that happen because it's just a bad story waiting to happen, like what happened with Kevin and Pat where it's just like, yeah, these guys are brothers, will let him serve in the same unit, and it's like, well, that's not going to

go well. Well, the whole keeping a country at war for it almost two decades, I mean, it's doing irreferable damage to our society as well, and our attitude towards like it's perfect, Like nobody's processing like maybe we shouldn't be in a war that is generational. Yeah, I mean that's a conversation you would think we'd start having at some point, um, but I don't think we are going to because yeah, if we have the conversation, we hate

the troops. And if we have the conversation, then like what else are we going to spend that money on healthcare? Of course not? Yeah, no, no, have you tried picking yourself up by your bootstraps? There alright, Joe, that's all I got for us for today. You want to plug some plug doubles, Yeah, if you want to hear about a significantly less fucked up tour of duty in Afghanistan. I wrote a book called The Hooligans of Kandahar, and

it's available wherever you get your books. On my podcast lines Lent by Donkeys podcast or we talk about things kind of like this and try to get some humor out of the the fucked up aspects of military history. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay. You can find us on the internet at behind the Bastards dot com or we'll have all

the sources and images for this episode. You can find us on Twitter and uh Instagram at at Bastards pod and you can find shirts that we make that you can wear on ONTI public Behind the Bastards buy our shirts. We don't give Joe any money. If you buy a shirt, you can buy Joe's book and then a couple of shirts, and you can dress the book up in a shirt and you can have a good old fashioned shirt book.

Just don't burn the shirt, yeah, don't burn don't burn the shirts unless it's well, I mean, you can burn your own shirts. Unless it's evidence, we should probably get rid of it. Yeah, yes, always get rid of evidence. That's been our motto here from the start. Joe, thank you for being on today. It was green great talking to you and yeah, that's it for us today. I love about h