White House "Stonewalling" on Tillman Documents

Tuesday 17 July 2007

The White House has refused to turn over documents in connection with the US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation into the death of Corporal Pat Tillman, citing executive privilege. However, an examination of the documents released by the Department of Defense (DOD) shows the White House selectively withheld documents which did not fall within their executive privilege claim, and the White House may have ignored a warning from a top military official in order to propagate the fictional story of Tillman's demise.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been examining the cover-up of the death of Corporal Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinal football star. On April 22, 2004 while on patrol in Afghanistan, Tillman was shot in the head by an American soldier. Public statements by the military claimed Tillman was killed by Taliban fighters in combat. This patently false explanation was not corrected for over a month and was only revealed as false after the official story began to collapse. According to investigations conducted on behalf of members of the Tillman family, military officials tried to cover up the fratricide by falsifying evidence, altering statements made by soldiers who witnessed the event and by posthumously awarding Tillman the Silver Star for valor.

According to the chairman and ranking member of the Oversight Committee, their investigation includes a central question: "What [did] the White House and the leadership of the Department of Defense know about Corporal Tillman's death and when [did] they know it?"

A joint letter from Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ranking Member Tom Davis (R-Va.) accuses the White House of illegitimately withholding documents critical to the investigation and ignoring warnings from a top military official.

The letter states, "There is compelling evidence that responsive documents were not produced to the Committee by the White House," pointing to a known email exchange between the DOD and the White House on April 28, 2007. No explanation for withholding this document was given by the administration.

According to the Waxman and Davis letter, the withheld email was from a White House speech writer who was preparing a speech President Bush ultimately delivered to the annual White House correspondence dinner on May 1, 2004. The email was a request for additional information about Tillman after news of his death had been reported.

This request seems to have been answered by what the investigators describe as a "high-level military memo warning that the president should be informed that Corporal Tillman was killed by friendly fire." The memo written by Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Task Force for Afghanistan, explained Tillman was killed by US forces, and was an attempt to "preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public."

Despite the warnings from the general, Bush's correspondence dinner speech included the fabricated story of Tillman's heroic death. Speaking on behalf of his family in front of the Oversight Committee nearly three years after the speech, Pat Tillman's brother, Kevin, said, "We believe this narrative was intended ... to deceive the American Public."

The investigation has been stymied by what members of Congress have called "stonewalling" by the Bush administration. Lawyers for the Bush administration have asserted the release of White House documents to investigators in not constitutional because the documents "implicate executive branch confidentiality interests," according to Special Counsel to the President Emmet Flood.

A spokesperson for Representative Mike Honda (D-Calif.) called the Bush administration's refusal to cooperate with the investigation "appalling stonewalling," stating this situation is "a microcosm of the Bush administration's lack of concern for the rule of law." He added that the administration's ideology, with regard to the Congressional power of investigation, "is not consistent with our system of government." Honda has been a leading advocate for a full investigation into the Tillman case.

This claim of "executive privilege" has been used recently to prevent former Bush administration officials from testifying before Congress and to prevent the Republican National Convention from releasing hundreds of thousands of emails that were sent and received by White House officials using their unofficial political email addresses.

The Oversight Committee has scheduled a hearing titled "The Tillman Fratricide: What the Leadership of the Defense Department Knew" for August 1. They have invited six current and former military officials to testify including Lieutenant General McChrystal and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Matt Renner is a reporter for Truthout.

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