Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

by Jon Krakauer

The president neglected to mention that three months earlier, as part of the investigation launched by Congress to finally and definitively “get to the bottom of it,” Representative Waxman had sent a letter to the White House formally requesting “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President, including the Communications Office and Office of Speechwriting … that relate to Corporal Tillman,” and sent a similar request to the Department of Defense. The recipients responded by sending Waxman more than thirty thousand pages of material, most of which were nothing more than press clippings about Tillman. E-mails, memos, and other documents that might have shed light on the cover-up were conspicuously withheld. As Emmet T. Flood, special counsel to the president, explained, “We have not produced certain documents responsive to the Committee’s request because they implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.” Despite praising Tillman’s patriotism and courage at every opportunity, the White House in fact used every means at its disposal to obstruct the congressional investigation into Tillman’s death and its aftermath.