Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

by Jon Krakauer

Najibullah declared, “We have a common task—Afghanistan, the U.S.A., and the civilized world—to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism. If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.”

The bomb had been assembled, delivered, and detonated by a Kuwaiti named Ramzi Yousef, under the supervision of his uncle Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who would later be identified as “the principal architect” of the attack against the same buildings on September 11, 2001. Yousef had learned the art of making bombs from a manual written by the CIA for the mujahideen to use in their struggle against the Soviets. He was given the CIA instruction booklet while attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Khost, Afghanistan, in 1991 or 1992.

War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. — CHRIS HEDGES, “A CULTURE OF ATROCITY”

One thing I find myself despising is the sight of all these guns in the hands of children. Of course we all understand the necessity of defense…. It doesn’t dismiss the fact that a young man I would not trust with my canteen is walking about armed….

During his stint in the Army, Pat had no trouble establishing meaningful friendships with individuals who didn’t share his opinions about politics or religion—which was fortunate, because this described many of the people he encountered while in uniform.

The unstated reason for the latter was that the war in Afghanistan was the Bush administration’s neglected stepchild. When it came to allocating resources, Iraq had been given a much higher priority by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, resulting in a severe and chronic shortage of helicopters throughout Afghanistan. Due to an insufficient number of operational Chinooks and crews to fly them, a minimum of four days’ advance notice was required to airlift a vehicle.

In other words, the sense of urgency attached to the mission came from little more than a bureaucratic fixation on meeting arbitrary deadlines so missions could be checked off a list and tallied as “accomplished.”

According to a federal statute and several Army regulations, Marie Tillman, as next of kin, was supposed to be notified that an investigation was under way, even if friendly fire was only suspected, and “be kept informed as additional information about the cause of death becomes known.” Instead, McChrystal, Nixon, and the soldiers under their command went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Tillman family from learning the truth about how Pat died.

Kirchmaier, who served as the Rangers’ regimental judge advocate in Afghanistan, was intimately involved in Captain Scott’s 15–6 investigation and knew that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. As an Army lawyer, Kirchmaier must have also known that providing false information to a CID agent is a serious criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment and/or dishonorable discharge. Kirchmaier nevertheless instructed Captain Scott not to disclose anything to the CID or Dr. Mallak, and when questioned by the CID agent himself, Kirchmaier prevaricated. Deftly concealing the radioactive truth, he revealed absolutely nothing about the fratricide. As a direct consequence of Kirchmaier’s deceitful conduct, the CID concluded there was no reason to delve further into the circumstances of Tillman’s death, and declined to go forward with its investigation.* Shortly thereafter, Kirchmaier received an e-mail from McChrystal’s legal advisor, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Allen, in which Allen congratulated Kirchmaier for “keeping the CID at bay.”

A new CID investigation would be launched in late 2005 in conjunction with an investigation conducted by the inspector general of the Pentagon. †When asked in 2006, under oath, if they had ordered soldiers to conceal from Mallak or the CID that Tillman’s death was being investigated as a fratricide, McChrystal and Kirchmaier repeatedly invoked such phrases as, “not that I can recall,” “I don’t remember,” “not that I remember,” “not to recollection,” and “that’s definitely not my recollection.” Nixon admitted he gave to his men “general guidance” that “I didn’t want any external communications,” but he insisted, “I don’t remember the specific guidance…. As it related to external communications or specifics of guys talking between each other, I don’t know that I put anything specific out on that.”

Afterward, Baer was furious that the Army had forced him to lie to Pat’s family and friends. “I had just handed the parents the flags,” he said. “I saw the look on their faces. A few days earlier the guys I worked with had killed Pat and another guy, injured two more, and shot at me, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”

The available evidence indicates that McChrystal and his subordinates in the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment engaged in a coordinated effort to deliberately mislead the family, and high-ranking officials at the White House and the Pentagon abetted the deception. As Bailey’s testimony underscores, the only reason the Army finally decided to come clean was that Kevin was about to learn the truth on his own.

Friday afternoon, in advance of the briefing, Dannie Tillman got home from work to find a message on her machine from Billy House, a reporter at the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix newspaper, asking her to call him. When she phoned him back, House asked what she thought of the news he’d just received from an Army source that Pat’s death may have been from friendly fire. Having been told repeatedly that Pat had been shot by the Taliban, Dannie slammed the phone down, stunned. The news had been leaked to the press before she had been notified.

Jessica Lynch, Kevin Tillman, Dannie Tillman, Bryan O’Neal, and Steve White testified at the hearing. Lynch recalled how her family’s home “was under siege by the media, all repeating the story of the little girl from West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true…. The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes. They don’t need to be told elaborate lies…. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.”

The one bit of truth that did survive these manipulations is that Pat was, and still is, a great man….

The Oxford Companion to American Military History estimates that between 2 percent and 25 percent of the casualties in America’s wars are attributable to friendly fire.