- The parents of a former American football star killed
by friendly fire in Afghanistan yesterday accused the Pentagon of propagating
a false account of his death to stir up patriotic fervour back home.
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- Pat Tillman became a national icon last year when it
was reported that the sports superstar who had turned down a multi-million-dollar
contract to join the army after the terrorist attacks of September 2001
had been killed by enemy fire.
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- The account of his death on a barren hillside in Afghanistan
was like a heroic, boys' comic story. He was said to have been charging
up a hill to attack Islamist diehards, bellowing orders to fellow Rangers,
when he was mown down in an ambush.
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- But as with another stirring tale of valour at war -
that of Private Jessica Lynch, whose capture in the invasion of Iraq was
fantastically embroidered by the authorities - the truth was much more
prosaic. Tillman was shot dead by Rangers in his own platoon who mistook
him for the enemy. Army investigators deemed it an act of "gross negligence".
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- His parents, who learned the truth weeks after a nationally
televised memorial service, broke their silence yesterday, accusing the
Pentagon of telling "outright lies" to his family and the nation.
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- "All the people in positions of authority went out
of their way to script this," his father, Patrick Tillman, a lawyer
from San Jose, told the Washington Post. They "interfered with the
investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control
it, and they realised that their recruiting efforts were going to hell
in a hand-basket if the truth about his death got out.''
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- Tillman's decision to drop his celebrity life in the
Arizona Cardinals American football team to join up with his brother was
a coup for the army's image and recruitment. But his death - coming as
support for the Pentagon's post-September 11 record was falling along with
enlistment levels - would have been a public relations disaster.
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- Soldiers at the scene knew instantly that Tillman was
killed by American bullets as he sheltered behind a boulder. Gen John Abizaid,
the American overall commander in the region, knew within days. But Tillman's
fellow Rangers were told not to talk about it "to prevent rumours".
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- His mother, Mary, yesterday told the newspaper that the
Bush administration capitalised on the false account to counter the Abu
Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal then unfolding. "I think there's a lot
more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their
tails.
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- "If this is what happens when someone high-profile
dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
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