posted on August 1, 2007 12:21:43 AM new
Retired General Censured in Tillman Case
Updated 1:41 AM ET August 1, 2007
By RICHARD LARDNER and ERICA WERNER
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army censured a retired three-star general Tuesday for a "perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.
Army Secretary Pete Geren asked a military review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who led Army special operation forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, should also have his rank reduced.
In a stinging rebuke, Geren said Kensinger "failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control" when the Army Ranger and former pro football star was killed in 2004.
Geren said that while Kensinger was "guilty of deception" in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding Tillman's death _ at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire.
"He let his soldiers down," Geren said at Pentagon news conference. "General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground."
Geren said he has directed a review panel of four-star generals to decide whether Kensinger, a three-star, should have his rank reduced. If Kensinger is demoted to major general, his monthly retirement pay of $9,400 would be cut by about $900, according to Army officials.
"Had he performed his job properly, had he performed his duty, we wouldn't be standing here today," Geren said.
Kensinger, who retired in February 2006, received a letter of censure from Geren that said he "subverted the trust" that had been placed in him and "caused lasting damage to the reputation and credibility of the U.S. Army."
Geren said he considered recommending a court-martial for Kensinger but ruled it out.
Kensinger, whose line of authority included the Army Rangers, also failed to properly notify the Tillman family a fratricide investigation had begun shortly after he was killed, did not initiate a required safety investigation.
Kensinger's lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, said in an e-mail message to The Associated Press on Tuesday night that his client "had no reason to lie" and had told investigators "everything he knows" about the case. In May, in a rebuttal letter to the general who reviewed the matter, Kensinger firmly rejected all accusations that he had lied.
Gittins also dismissed accusations that Kensinger should have told the Tillman family about the possibility of friendly fire, saying the retired general "was not the release authority for the information." That "release authority," Gittins said, was Gen. John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command.
Kensinger, a 1970 West Point graduate, was the top officer at Army Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C., from August 2002 through December 2005.
Geren's actions fail to end a three-year controversy that has damaged the ground service's image. Even as the Army's top civilian was telling reporters he did not know exactly when he'd receive a recommendation from the review board on Kensinger's rank, members of Congress were already judging whether the Army had gone far enough.
Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Mike Honda, both Democrats from Tillman's home state of California, said there still too many unanswered questions.
"We still don't know the full story about the way the Pentagon and this administration managed this tragedy," Boxer said in a statement. "In my view, the Army should reconsider today's announcement and instead move forward with harsher penalties."
In a separate statement, Honda called Geren's actions "necessary and long overdue" but added "they do nothing to lift the appearance of cover-up that continues to envelop the Pat Tillman story."
On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding a hearing meant to help the panel determine who in the Pentagon knew what _ and when.
Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to testify, said committee spokeswoman Karen Lightfoot. The panel issued a subpoena Monday night for testimony from Kensinger, according to Lightfoot, who said the subpoena is in the hands of U.S. marshals who were trying to deliver it in advance of Wednesday's hearing.
Gittins said Kensinger was away on business travel. In his testimony in December, Kensinger said he is a consultant for four firms.
Kensinger "declined the committee invitation to testify two weeks ago, so it was no surprise to the committee that he had no intent to participate in a hearing that is all about show and no substance," Gittins said without elaboration.
The punishment of Kensinger stands in contrast to the light touch given other senior officers who were involved in a litany of mistakes that came after members of Tillman's units accidentally killed him in the early evening hours of April 22, 2004.
Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who oversees the military's most sensitive counterterrorism operations, received no punishment. McChrystal has been cited for passing on misleading information that led to a Silver Star award to Tillman.
Brig. Gen. James Nixon, Tillman's former regimental commander, was issued a "memorandum of concern" for his "well-intentioned but fundamentally incorrect decision" to keep information about Tillman's death limited to just his staff.
Nixon is now a top official at U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla.
Geren said that investigations have conclusively shown that accidental fire from U.S. troops was responsible for the death in Afghanistan of Tillman, who had walked away from a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to become an Army Ranger.
The Army initially suggested that Tillman, 27, had been killed in a firefight with enemy militia forces. The Army then arranged a ceremony to award Tillman a Silver Star for bravery.
Five weeks after his death, the Army notified the Tillman family that Tillman died from rounds fired in error by U.S. troops.
Geren cited "multiple actions on the part of multiple soldiers" in compounding the confusion that surrounded the death.
But there "was never any effort to mislead or hide" or keep embarrassing information from the public, Geren said.
He said Tillman deserved the Silver Star, the military's third- highest award for valor in combat, despite the circumstances surrounding his death.
He could understand how the Tillman family and other Americans might reach the conclusion that there was a cover-up, Geren said.
"The facts just don't support this conclusion," he said. "There was no cover-up."
But he said, "We have made mistakes over and over and over, an incredible number of mistakes in handling this. We have destroyed our credibility in their eyes as well as in the eyes of others."
Tillman's family has insisted there was a cover-up that went as high as Rumsfeld. Geren was asked whether there was any indication Rumsfeld was aware that Tillman's death was by friendly fire before that information was made public.
"I have no knowledge of any evidence to that end," Geren replied.
Aside from his decision to censure Kensinger, Geren said that he was accepting recommendations by Gen. William Wallace, who the Army secretary tasked to review a March report by the Pentagon inspector general into Tillman's death.
Based on Wallace's findings, Nixon and three other officers received a memorandum of concern. The others are:
_Retired Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, who led one of the early Army investigations. Jones was criticized for incorrectly characterizing Tillman's actions in describing why he should be awarded a Silver Star.
_Brig. Gen. Gina Farrisee, director of military personnel management at the Pentagon, for failing to ensure that the concerns of a medical examiner were properly resolved.
_Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, Tillman's battalion commander, for his handling of the punishment against the rangers involved in the shooting of Tillman.
Three other officers also received punishments but because they were below the rank of general officer, the Army did not release their names.
___
Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this report from San Francisco.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Ya, it's not a cover-up just
"perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" ,
""guilty of deception" in misleading investigators,",
""also failed to properly notify the Tillman family a fratricide investigation had begun shortly after he was killed, did not initiate a required safety investigation."",
"""We still don't know the full story about the way the Pentagon and this administration managed this tragedy," ,
""litany of mistakes that came after members of Tillman's units accidentally killed him """
posted on August 2, 2007 12:27:21 AM new
Rumsfeld Denies Cover-Up in Tillman Case
Updated 11:52 PM ET August 1, 2007
By ERICA WERNER
WASHINGTON (AP) - Ex-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other former Pentagon brass denied a cover-up and rejected personal blame Wednesday in the public deceptions that followed Army Ranger Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in 2004.
During four hours of questioning by a House committee, Rumsfeld and former generals expressed regret at the Pentagon's five-week delay in telling the truth about how Tillman died. He was cut down by bullets fired by his fellow soldiers, not in a firefight with the enemy as the military initially claimed.
Yet none of the witnesses, among the very highest-ranking military officers at the time, said they could or should have done anything differently to prevent the mistakes that kept the truth from Tillman's family and the public.
Several of the officials could barely recall how they themselves came to learn the circumstances of Tillman's death, which attracted worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I don't recall when I was told and I don't recall who told me," said Rumsfeld, who was making his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since President Bush replaced him with Robert Gates late last year. He was greeted by protesters denouncing him as a "war criminal," but he ignored them.
"I know that I would not engage in a cover-up. I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me. I know that the gentlemen sitting next to me are men of enormous integrity and would not participate in something like that," Rumsfeld said, adding he didn't recall discussing the Tillman matter with the White House until the fratricide became public knowledge.
Retired Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he learned of the likelihood of friendly fire toward the end of April 2004 _ not long after Tillman's death on April 22 _ but that it wasn't his responsibility to inform the White House or the Tillman family. Doing so would have been a breach of protocol, said Myers. He blamed the Army.
"This is the responsibility of the United States Army, not of the office of the chairman, so I regret that the Army did not do their duty here and follow their own policy," said Myers, a retired Air Force general.
"I think it would have been absolutely irresponsible of me to interfere with Army procedures, frankly," he said.
It wasn't until May 29, 2004, that the Pentagon disclosed the conclusion that Tillman's death was by friendly fire. Officials have called it a well-meaning but misguided plan of waiting until the end of their investigation to release the results.
Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, his brother Kevin and other family members watched silently from the back row of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing room. They've long maintained that Rumsfeld and others must have known more, sooner than they've acknowledged, and have alleged a cover-up leading to the White House.
Mary Tillman occasionally shook her head at Rumsfeld's testimony, but after the hearing the family left without commenting.
At the White House, presidential spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration stands by Rumsfeld's statement that there was no cover-up.
"I'm certainly not going to contradict Secretary Rumsfeld," Snow said.
"It is deeply regrettable that this sort of thing happened, and you try to make sure that it doesn't happen at anytime," he added.
Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., aired his frustration at the repeated denials of responsibility from Rumsfeld, Myers, retired Gen. John P. Abizaid, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and retired Gen. Bryan Douglas Brown, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command.
"You've all admitted that the system failed. The public should have known, the family should have known earlier," Waxman said as the hearing ended. "None of you feel you personally were responsible, but the system itself didn't work."
"'The system didn't work, errors were made' _ that's too passive. Somebody should be responsible," Waxman said.
After the hearing the activists who'd confronted Rumsfeld on the way in renewed their chants, shouting, "Donald Rumsfeld, you're a war criminal!" Again, Rumsfeld didn't acknowledge them.
Rumsfeld was mostly measured in his testimony. On occasion there were flashes of the cocky, combative Rumsfeld known to the public from Pentagon briefings.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, demanded to know whether there was a White House and Defense Department strategy to manage press portrayals of the war and other events.
"Well, if there was, it wasn't very good," Rumsfeld remarked.
"Well, you know, maybe it was very good," Kucinich objected loudly. "Because you actually covered up the Tillman case for a while, you covered up the Jessica Lynch case, you covered up Abu Ghraib, so something was working for you. Was there a strategy to do it, Mr. Rumsfeld?"
"Congressman, the implication that 'you covered up' _ that's just false, you have nothing to base that on, you have not a scrap of evidence or a piece of paper or a witness that would attest to that," Rumsfeld replied hotly. "I have not been involved in any cover-up whatsoever."
Abizaid came closest to taking partial responsibility, blaming unspecified problems at his Tampa, Fla., office for the fact that an April 29, 2004, memo by Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warning of the possibility of friendly fire in Tillman's death did not reach him for 10 to 20 days.
"From that a lot of other bad things may have flowed," Abizaid said.
"It's very difficult to come to grips with how we screwed this thing up, but we screwed this thing up," Abizaid said.
McChrystal's memo made clear that his warning should be conveyed to the president, but President Bush made no reference to the reality of how Tillman died in a speech delivered two days after the memo was written. None of the witnesses who testified Wednesday was in a position to stop that from happening, they said.
The congressional inquiry came a day after the Army, in the seventh investigation of the Tillman affair, laid most of the blame for the response to Tillman's death on Philip Kensinger, a retired three-star general who led Army special operations forces after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Army censured Kensinger for "a failure of leadership" and accused him of lying to investigators and failing to properly notify the Tillman family. A review panel of four-star generals will decide whether Kensinger should have his rank reduced.
Waxman's committee issued a subpoena for Kensinger's testimony, but Kensinger wasn't home when U.S. marshals tried three times to serve it, and his attorney wouldn't accept it, said committee spokeswoman Karen Lightfoot. Kensinger's attorney, Charles W. Gittins, told The Associated Press that Kensinger was on business travel and had declined to "participate in a hearing that is all about show and no substance."
___
Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this report from San Francisco.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on August 2, 2007 08:22:01 AM new
It's strange that these men in power suffer from extreme memory loss - it's scary that they've had any control in things at all with a condition like that.
Of course the blame is always passed down the ladder when investigations reveal more of the truth.
