The Death of Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman
It’s often suggested to me that I do a Skeptoid episode about Pat Tillman. I’m still on the fence.
For anyone who has lived under a rock for the past five years, Pat Tillman was a young professional football player who gave up a large contract to go to war after 9/11. A star linebacker from Arizona State University, he eagerly joined the Arizona Cardinals in the 1998 draft. At the completion of the season during which 9/11 struck, Tillman was offered $3.6 million over 3 years to stay on, more than double his previous salary. He turned down the offer, and along with his brother Kevin, a promising baseball player, felt a higher calling. They enlisted and joined the Army Rangers.
It was not the first time he put other things ahead of money. At one point he had turned down a $9 million offer from the St. Louis Rams, for no reason other than personal loyalty to the Cardinals.
Tillman was an unlikely war hero. He was critical of the war. He was non-religious. He supported Democratic candidates. He had read the Koran (and the Bible and the Book of Mormon and anything else he could get his hands on). In many ways, he was the opposite of what you’d expect to find, if you knew only what the headlines told about him.
And then it all went to hell in April 2004 when it was reported that he had been killed in action in Afghanistan. It was a glorious death; leading his comrades up the hill without regard to personal safety, in the face of superior enemy forces. But, as you’ve probably heard, that was not the end of the story. Rumblings about whitewashing and coverups began surfacing in the news. First it was said that he had not, in fact, been charging up the hill to defend his comrades. Then it was found that he had been killed by friendly fire during the battle. Next, it was said that there hadn’t even been any enemies around, that it was Americans fighting Americans during a moment of confusion. And finally, it was suggested that he had simply been murdered, three rounds to the head. At last report, the investigation continues and the public still doesn’t know exactly what happened to Tillman.
Equal abundances of outrage and mock outrage flooded the news. How dare they taint his memory with false stories. How dare the Pentagon give anything but the truth to his family. How dare they ignore the facts and pervert this shining young patriot’s tragedy for PR purposes.
All perfectly valid criticisms, that are easy to make from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy. They’re even easier if you’re conscientious.
Did I want to start considering the other side? Are there reasons that a well-meaning person might decide the whitewash for the greater good? Can it be justified? Is that really where I want to go?
Did I want to look at the evidence of the actual event? MP5s can be switched into triple-tap mode, where three bullets are fired virtually at the same instant, and all strike the target within inches of each other. This mode is commonly used in combat. Did I want to suggest that three shots to the head doesn’t necessarily mean a Godfather style execution?
I find the whole topic extremely distasteful. The only reason I still talk about it is that one element, Tillman himself, remains marvelously inspirational, and in my mind, is not “tainted” in the slightest by things that other people said and did after his death. You see, a battlefield is a dangerous place. You can get killed in battle. You can die in a car crash. You can catch a disease. You can lose a limb. A lot of people are going to dislike you just for being there, and you’re in grave personal danger all the time, even when you least expect it. It takes courage to step out onto a battlefield, courage that I don’t think I’ve got. It takes profound caring to give up a sum of money that means you probably won’t have to ever work in your lifetime, also pretty hard for me. And it takes a special kind of something that I don’t even understand to leave your family at home while you go and put yourself into that situation.
I don’t think I want to be part of any Pat Tillman controversy that other people want to have. I’m not sure I’ll even give a crap if and when they finally do announce the facts of what really happened. I hope and assume that if anyone did anything wrong they’ll be appropriately punished, but I’m not interested in those people. It’s easy for me to brush these issues off because I think it’s really unlikely that there’s some Giant Evil Conspiracy at work that needs to be uncovered. Probably it’s just some people who had good intentions but made bad decisions, and that happens every day and will continue to happen every day. I don’t mean to trivialize what Tillman’s family must have gone through as a result of the whitewash and coverup; but sometimes relatively small errors in judgement can have enormous consequences, and that’s just an unfortunate fact that can’t be helped.
So if I were to do an episode about Pat Tillman, I’m just not sure where I’d go with it. I’d probably just encourage people to focus on what’s good, instead of magnifying what was bad. I certainly don’t see myself taking sides, trying to prove that he was or wasn’t murdered, or that the coverup was or wasn’t an evil conspiracy. I’d probably just suggest that you think of Tillman’s example and give him a mental high-five for being a rocking kind of guy. You don’t have to agree with his decision to go to war to be inspired by his example of self sacrifice.
I’ve heard a few rumblings about a Pat Tillman murder cover-up, but its usually from the usual suspects like the infowars and Alex Jones crowd. There seem to be some inconsistencies, but hardly the massive conspiracy that the tinfoil hat crowd puffs it up into.
I’ve met Pat Tillman. He was a true class act.
I live in the Phoenix area and watched him play, both at Arizona State and with the Cardinals. I also do a lot of fundraising for the American Diabetes Association.
One of my annual fundraisers is a raffle of items donated by Arizona sports teams. In 2000, I asked the Cardinals for an item to raffle, and they sent me one of Tillman’s game jerseys. I then sent Tillman a letter and told him that the team had donated one of his jerseys for a fundraiser to raise money for diabetes research, and asked if he’d be willing to sign it. I told him that I’d be willing to send it to him and pay the postage for him to send it back to me.
Three days later, he called me. Not a representative, not an agent. He said that he’d be thrilled to sign the jersey, but that it would be silly to mail it back and forth. Why don’t we just meet somewhere for lunch and take care of it?
So Pat Tillman and I met for lunch at a local family-owned dive that serves the best (and hottest) Mexican food you’ve ever dreamed of. He signed the jersey and was thoroughly interested in the volunteer work that I did for the ADA. He was open, honest, down-to-earth. And he was clearly driven by the idea of service to the community.
So, Brian, thank you for this post. I agree completely that Tillman should be remembered and honored on his own merits. He was, indeed, a rocking kind of guy.
Isn’t this what starts conspiracy theories?
The belief that someone is too important to die in a way that is not inherently a heroic death. Friendly fire is generally not heroic. We want a larger than life person to be so much larger than life, that something as simple as bad luck could not bring about their death.
How could JFK have been killed by a single gunman, who wasn’t even a really good shot?
How could a bunch of foreigners get on 4 American planes and kill thousands of people?
The moon landing would have been so complicated, that it had to be faked. Although the coordination of a JFK plot would probably require more coordination than actually putting a man on the moon, and if we have all of that space technology from Area 51, why would putting a man on the moon be a problem? ;-)
If we can’t give an answer for every specific question that can be dreamed up, that is seen as proof of a conspiracy. Actually claiming to know that much about anything would be more likely to suggest some kind of fraud. Reality has gaps that we will never fill in. Conspiracy theorists cannot accept that these unanswered questions do not indicate evil forces at work.
Then there are those, who need to have the outcome reinforce their view of the war. If the war is wrong, he must have been murdered to cover up something. If the war is right, he cannot have had a death that lacked meaning.
I am glad that the conspiracy theorists have not started to concoct similar explanations for the death of Dr. John Pryor. A similarly remarkable man. He was killed by a mortar round Christmas morning 2008 in Iraq. Both of them are people who could have made a difference in many more lives, but have died the kind of deaths that seem unworthy of them. If they had been killed by drunk drivers, they would not be lessened by these deaths, but the world would still be worse off for their absence. Would a random tragic death by drunk driver inspire a conspiracy theory? It wouldn’t be the first time. Their deaths are not what we should pay attention to, but their lives. They both set excellent examples for the rest of us.
Everybody has to have a conspiracy….I just don’t get why. Thank you for the poignant article and….comments.
Were they carrying MP5s though? Whenever I watch the war in the news, I always see Americans carrying M16/M4s. Has Pat Tillman had an autopsy and was it released publicly?
“For anyone who has lived under a rock for the past five years”
Or just – perhaps – in another country. (Or perhaps you’re thinking of the earth itself as a big rock with America on top.)
Danny, of course Pat Tillman had an autopsy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08102007.html
“Two of the best gunshot wound pathologists in the country, at Dannie Tillman’s request, accompanied me to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland earlier this year [2007] to examine the autopsy findings and autopsy photographs for Pat Tillman. Both agreed that the trajectories, exit wounds, and proximity of rounds are most consistent with a burst fired from the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, like the one fired from around 40 meters away by Specialist Trevor Alders outside Manah on April 22, 2004.”
The saddest part of this is that the “fog of war’ that confusion that happens during a fire fight is we may never know what really happened.
The upsetting thing to me is this young man and so many others, Americans, Canadians, British have been killed or injured while trying to make a difference in the world , not in their own country’s but in a place that is nowhere like their homes.
I would like to send a few of these truthers over there so the could get a douse of reality
I have the highest respect for the military , and the greatest synphtys for the families that have lost someone.
Theas others arent worth my contempt
What controversy? An investigation showed that Tillman died by accidental friendly fire during a firefight with enemy forces, and that this was covered up after the battle. Some officers paid a price for the coverup. This is the first I’ve heard of the execution or “blue-on-blue” theories. Typical conspiracy crap. Don’t waste your time.
The story from Sports Illustrated tells Tillman’s story:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/magazine/09/05/tillman0911/
I’ve been listening for quite some time. This is your best episode yet.
Dave
Pretty good how you used moral confusion and hero-worship as the rationale for abandoning your apparently skeptical view of the world. Isn’t that what those silly religious people do?
I encourage you not to do an investigation. You’ve already said all that needs to be said: “…a battlefield is a dangerous place. You can get killed in battle. You can die in a car crash. You can catch a disease. You can lose a limb. A lot of people are going to dislike you just for being there, and you’re in grave personal danger all the time, even when you least expect it.”
As soon as one volunteers for the armed forces, they know what they are getting into and are far more courageous than most people.
A very sad event. I can’t imagine how the soldier who pulled the trigger must feel in the wake of all this. He has my sympathy.
Sorry, I’m confused. I thought this was a skeptical blog. You know, the community that believes that getting to the truth is what’s important, even if the truth is inconvenient?
I guess I was wrong.
FWIW, there has been mountains of reporting on this. There really is no controversy, and nothing that has been uncovered tarnishes Pat Tillman’s legacy in any way — at least to my mind.
ESPN has done particularly good work here.