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.
