Kevin was told of the fratricide by the Alpha Company first sergeant on Monday, May 24. So why did Bailey wait until the night of the twenty-eighth to notify the Tillman parents? The timing is baffling until one learns that the decision by Bailey and Nixon to preemptively let the cat out of the bag caught the Pentagon and the White House by surprise, and generated no small amount of consternation at those institutions. Rumsfeld’s office wanted time to come up with a plan for containing the damage before the news was released to the media. Toward that end, it was decided that there would be no
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