Speaker 1: H Hello everybody. I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Now today we're actually talking about a
Speaker 1: pretty good guy, but we're talking about all of the
Speaker 1: terrible people who sort of surrounded his death and uh
Speaker 1: kind of made it their own. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: story today. It is the story of Pat Tillman. Now,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a very conservative family, and from
Speaker 1: the time I was eleven or twelve, I lived in
Speaker 1: you know, deep in the heart of Texas. My parents
Speaker 1: love George W. Bush, who had been the governor before
Speaker 1: he was the president. They were big proponents of the
Speaker 1: Iraq War. My childhood memories of Pat Tillman are sort
Speaker 1: of fawning segments on Fox News about how he'd turned
Speaker 1: down a multimillion dollar NFL contract to serve his country.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing that he'd been killed in Afghanistan bravely
Speaker 1: charging up a hill. That that's at least how I
Speaker 1: remember it as a kid in my head. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I think across all forms of conservative media that I
Speaker 1: was aware of at the time, the portrayal of Pat
Speaker 1: was the same. He was an all American hero, the
Speaker 1: perfect symbol of the sacrifice their brave soldiers make for freedom.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about Pat Tillman a lot, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly people stopped talking about him at all, At least
Speaker 1: people in the right wing media bubble that I had
Speaker 1: been inhabited stopped talking about him. Now. My guest today
Speaker 1: is Joe Kasabian. He's a co host of the Alliance
Speaker 1: Led by Donkeys podcast, which is a military history podcast.
Speaker 1: I recommend uh and Joe. You are an actual veteran yourself,
Speaker 1: and you served in Afghanistan as well. Is that correct? Yes?
Speaker 1: I did. I did two tours of duty in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and I regret both of them. Yeah. Um, so tell
Speaker 1: me about I know, I think cost is where Tillman
Speaker 1: was stationed when he died. Like, where does that relate
Speaker 1: to sort of where you were in country? I was
Speaker 1: a little bit further north than where I was. I
Speaker 1: spent well, my first first store I was in the
Speaker 1: northeast and a little bit north of Kabul, outside of Bogram,
Speaker 1: and then my second one I was in Kandahar, So
Speaker 1: that definitely further north than Kanadahar. But gotcha in a
Speaker 1: country that that like fracts this and everything that that
Speaker 1: kind of resistance and fighting that you deal with his
Speaker 1: night and day. Really that's interesting. I don't know all
Speaker 1: that much, or I didn't when I got into this,
Speaker 1: know all that much about what had actually happened to
Speaker 1: Pat Tillman. I didn't know much about Pat Tillman. Like
Speaker 1: I said, he was sort of this, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: like movie poster looking guy like he if you've seen
Speaker 1: the pictures of it, you've probably seen the one of
Speaker 1: him in a uniform where he's got this almost unbelievably
Speaker 1: white neck and he looks like a g I Joe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he looks he looks like what every recruiter wants to
Speaker 1: put on a poster, Like, he looks like an action star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like the platonic ideal of the American soldier. Like
Speaker 1: you couldn't have cast him better. Yeah, he's like he
Speaker 1: looks like his face is like carved out a granite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, what when were you over? There was a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine or so my first tour of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, two thousand nine on my second was
Speaker 1: Susan eleven to twelve, So you were there about four
Speaker 1: or five years after Pat, right, Yeah, right right, and
Speaker 1: his his mythos so so I mean it's definitely not
Speaker 1: a ranger like he was, but you know, his mythosis
Speaker 1: so incredibly steeped in everything that I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about Pat tillman Um when I joined the army, but
Speaker 1: then you see his face everywhere and especially nowadays, and
Speaker 1: so how was it. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that, about how he was sort of talked about
Speaker 1: and viewed when you were in the military and when
Speaker 1: you were in Afghanistan, like and when he comes up, like,
Speaker 1: how was he portrayed? Oh man um? Like he should
Speaker 1: have had the Medal of Honor. You know, he gave
Speaker 1: up his giant football contract, which I didn't know much about.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a football fan at the time, um, and
Speaker 1: it gave up everything and to go make you know,
Speaker 1: shitty specialist paycheck and go fight in Afghanistan. And I
Speaker 1: mean this is years after everybody knew what really happened
Speaker 1: when he died, and everybody just kind of glossed over
Speaker 1: that fact. Yeah. I think it's interesting you say that
Speaker 1: because I suspect a lot of people still don't really
Speaker 1: know much about the actual Pat Tillman, because I realized
Speaker 1: when I started researching this that I didn't know much
Speaker 1: about the actual Pat tone because I had kind of
Speaker 1: assumed that he was that living human embodiment of like patriotism,
Speaker 1: that he was sort of portrayed as as a young
Speaker 1: man and or portrayed as when I was like a
Speaker 1: kid watching stuff about him and coming across some pictures
Speaker 1: of him when he was younger. His like really twisted
Speaker 1: that a little bit, because like, we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures will have him up on the site, one
Speaker 1: of him just like shirtless and flip flops, taking groceries
Speaker 1: on a or on a bicycle and looking like a
Speaker 1: beach bum. And another of him with like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like a really dumb haircut, but like
Speaker 1: long hippie looking hair, Like he's still this gigantic, very
Speaker 1: muscular man. But you get a really different sort of
Speaker 1: picture of him looking at those Yeah, he had like
Speaker 1: this longer flowing, almost mullet like hair all the way
Speaker 1: when he like you see the it's even part of
Speaker 1: like the statue they have him, and I think it's Arizona, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you know he's he's like throwing his golden locks back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a better look for him than sort of
Speaker 1: the aaved head because he looks like he looks like
Speaker 1: he belongs in the Gears of War video game, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the pictures you'll see when he's over
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan because he's just all shaved headed and covered
Speaker 1: in you know, body armor and and ammunition and stuff.
Speaker 1: And anyway, it was interesting to me to learn as
Speaker 1: I read more about him that the kind of long haired,
Speaker 1: hippie looking kid was probably more give you a better
Speaker 1: depiction of like his actual personality than the pictures of
Speaker 1: him in his uniform. Yeah, And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things so that I have a couple of sources for
Speaker 1: this book. One of them is the crack Our book
Speaker 1: Where Men Win Glory, which is a pretty good book,
Speaker 1: although it talks about a lot of high school football,
Speaker 1: So you've gotta be really ready to read about high
Speaker 1: school football if you're gonna get into this story that
Speaker 1: will be popular in Texas then Yeah. And there's a
Speaker 1: there's a number of articles too on on the Intercept
Speaker 1: on Sports Illustrated that all talked about Pat Tillman, and
Speaker 1: they all paint a picture of a guy who's not
Speaker 1: what I expected going into this, who was really sensitive,
Speaker 1: who was constantly reading a book, always had a book
Speaker 1: in his hand, read you know, the Koran and the Bill,
Speaker 1: but was not himself religious and in fact identified as
Speaker 1: an atheist. He wasn't the guy you'd think. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I learned about him is that he
Speaker 1: had a brief at least set of email exchanges with
Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky and was planning on meeting with Chomsky when
Speaker 1: he got out of the Army Rangers because he was
Speaker 1: interested in Chomsky's philosophy and anti war views and wanted
Speaker 1: to talk with him, which is again not what I
Speaker 1: expected when I started reading about sort of the platonic
Speaker 1: ideal of a meathead soldier. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with um, that's what the
Speaker 1: current narrative kind of wants us to think about soldiers,
Speaker 1: and especially people like Pat Tillman. Is like, they don't
Speaker 1: want you to look at his life because then he's
Speaker 1: humanized and he's not that statue out front or the
Speaker 1: poster that's shared through Facebook. So yeah, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about a bit about his life today and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about sort of what was done
Speaker 1: after his death, um, because that's really where the bastardry
Speaker 1: enters into in this story. But I want to get
Speaker 1: through some stuff about Pat's life. First. He grew up
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. He was an affluent kid. The
Speaker 1: only black mark on his record as a young man
Speaker 1: was a fight he got into outside of a pizza
Speaker 1: restaurant that seemed to be like a case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1: He thought some guys were going after one of his friends,
Speaker 1: and he wound up just really beating the hell out
Speaker 1: of one of these guys, um and doing like thirty
Speaker 1: days and juvenile attention and a bunch of community service
Speaker 1: for it. He had to pay a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: But then he graduated high school and he went off
Speaker 1: to Phoenix to play for Arizona State University. Obviously, he
Speaker 1: was really good at football, good enough that after he
Speaker 1: got out of Arizona State, he was picked for the NFL.
Speaker 1: After he graduated, he was I think the last pick
Speaker 1: of the year. So his salary was low by NFL standards,
Speaker 1: which is still like a hundred and fifty eight grand
Speaker 1: a year. Um, it was like a decent little signing bonus,
Speaker 1: but after his first year he got offers to leave
Speaker 1: Arizona and get more money. But he was the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who was really loyal to his coach and
Speaker 1: loyal to his team, so he wound up staying at
Speaker 1: the league minimum for most of his career, which you
Speaker 1: know raises every year. So he was making like five
Speaker 1: hundred grand a year after a while. But his his
Speaker 1: motivation in football wasn't just financially. Seemed to have a
Speaker 1: strong sense of loyalty and really want to Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you just seemed to be the kind of
Speaker 1: guy like a challenge himself. There's all these stories about
Speaker 1: him jumping off of high things into in the lakes
Speaker 1: and taking a lot of really physical risks, so that
Speaker 1: seems to have been this guy is like one of
Speaker 1: his north Stars as a young man, which makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense considering what happened later. Yeah, he's he
Speaker 1: seems like the person that the Rangers would be looking
Speaker 1: for us for sure. Yeah yeah, now, um, one of
Speaker 1: the things I learned about Pat is that as an adult,
Speaker 1: he was an outspoken gay rights advocate, and he was
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of dude who if he were
Speaker 1: still in the NFL, would probably have supported Colin Kaepernick
Speaker 1: and taking a knee. He was a pretty woke sounding guy,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of his journals and diary passages
Speaker 1: that are quoted and where men win glory, and he
Speaker 1: in general seems like a pretty progressive and not like
Speaker 1: reflexively patriotic dude, which is why it was kind of
Speaker 1: frustrating on September seven, ten when President Donald Trump retweeted
Speaker 1: a post from the Twitter names user is j Maga
Speaker 1: forty five. Um, so, yeah, you know what you're getting
Speaker 1: into here, and I've sent a picture over to you.
Speaker 1: Two will have it up on the site. But it's
Speaker 1: a picture of Pat Tillman looking like a g I Joe,
Speaker 1: and it just says NFL player Pat Tilman joined US
Speaker 1: Army in two thousand two. He was killed in action
Speaker 1: two thousand four. He fought for letter four our country,
Speaker 1: slash freedom, hashtag, stand for our Anthem, hashtag boycott NFL,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump, the President, retweeted that, um yeah, And
Speaker 1: then there there was outcry from people who knew Pat
Speaker 1: because they don't think he would have supported this idea,
Speaker 1: and in fact, his wife, I mean didn't Pat Tillman's
Speaker 1: sister come out and say something about like, please shut
Speaker 1: the funk up about my brother or something along those lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his wife has been very vocally anti Trump and
Speaker 1: been very vocal about the fact that Pat Tillman had
Speaker 1: no desire to die for the kind of rhetoric that
Speaker 1: Trump has has supported. So she, like pretty much everyone
Speaker 1: knew him and was close to him, has been a
Speaker 1: real big critic of the current administration, which is why
Speaker 1: it's so gross when they kind of you can see
Speaker 1: them trying to co opt his legacy even now, which
Speaker 1: is sort of the pattern with Pat Tillman. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was the all American fucking hero. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's they you can tell they truly support the troops
Speaker 1: by dragging them out the grave for whatever political points
Speaker 1: they need to make that leak. Yeah, it seemed like
Speaker 1: for a little while during the Obama years, we'd stopped
Speaker 1: hearing that done to him, but it does seem to
Speaker 1: be coming back since he's you know, tied to the NFL,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the big cultural issues right now,
Speaker 1: which is frustrating. Yeah, it's kind of absurd that the
Speaker 1: two are even connected. Yeah, you know, Pat obviously joined
Speaker 1: the army after nine eleven and because of nine eleven,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't something he did immediately. It was a
Speaker 1: decision he deliberated on for quite a while after the
Speaker 1: towers fell. One driving factor in it was that he
Speaker 1: felt his job in the NFL was now empty in
Speaker 1: the wake of the attacks, and one interview at the time,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, it's hard because we play foot ball,
Speaker 1: you know, it is so unimportant compared to everything that's
Speaker 1: taken place, which is a fair statement when you realize
Speaker 1: that you're playing football and the forever war is just
Speaker 1: kicked off. Sure. Yeah, and especially at the time those wars.
Speaker 1: I grant, I was in middle school, but you know,
Speaker 1: those wars seemed like the right thing to do, So
Speaker 1: I could hardly blame him for thinking that. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was like responding to this big attack and his his
Speaker 1: whole desire was to go over and fight in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: And it seemed like it was more a desire that
Speaker 1: other people not be fighting in his place in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: And this is something I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the left have trouble understanding, is like, coming from
Speaker 1: a military family, that kind of pressure to like, well, Okay,
Speaker 1: now there's something going on. This is what my family does,
Speaker 1: and it's my responsibility to get in there and like
Speaker 1: do my part. Yeah. Absolutely. Um A lot of people
Speaker 1: don't like get the kind of pressure that comes down
Speaker 1: on people who are raised in military families to following
Speaker 1: somebody's footsteps. It's kind of like, unless you become a
Speaker 1: doctor or you know, and sent a longer lasting light
Speaker 1: ball or some ship, you're still a failure because you
Speaker 1: can go and list or get a commission or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's sort of how Pat felt about it,
Speaker 1: Like if he didn't do this now, and I think
Speaker 1: he was thinking, you know, we would be out of
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in a couple of years, which is not to assumption,
Speaker 1: but I think that was his assumption. And I think
Speaker 1: he just didn't want other people to be at risk
Speaker 1: in him not to be, which, in my opinion, that's
Speaker 1: an admirable way to feel about something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't fault him a bit for that. Um. I kind
Speaker 1: of felt the same way Grant as a couple of
Speaker 1: years later. But you know, why not. You know, he's
Speaker 1: he was an incredibly healthy individual and could do pretty
Speaker 1: much anything in the arm and would ever want him
Speaker 1: to do so. I could see why he wanted to
Speaker 1: go down that route, and in none of our minds
Speaker 1: and we ever think almost two decades later, we'd be
Speaker 1: sitting here and there's still be people in Afghanistan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one snuck up on everybody, didn't it. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: those quagmire as a really sneak up on you. So
Speaker 1: at the time, Patent wrote in his journal sort of
Speaker 1: about his headspace when he was making the final decision
Speaker 1: to join the army. He noted that quote, my life
Speaker 1: at this point is relatively easy. It is my belief
Speaker 1: that I could continue to play football for the next
Speaker 1: seven or eight years and create a very comfortable lifestyle
Speaker 1: for not only Mary but myself, but be afforded the
Speaker 1: luxury of helping out family and friends. Shouldn't need ever arise.
Speaker 1: The coaches and players I work with treat me well,
Speaker 1: and the environment has become familiar and pleasing. My job
Speaker 1: is challenging, enjoyable, and strokes my vanity enough to fool
Speaker 1: me into thinking it's important. However, these last few years,
Speaker 1: especially after reefs and events, I've come to appreciate how
Speaker 1: shallow and insignificant my role is I'm no longer satisfied
Speaker 1: with the path I've been following. It's no longer important.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Pat joined the army with the eventual goal
Speaker 1: of becoming an Army ranger. Now you mentioned earlier, this
Speaker 1: guy was clearly physically qualified to do everything the Army could.
Speaker 1: Last Um, he hated boot camp. He thought it was boring,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, he was in his like
Speaker 1: mid twenties at this point, so he it was like going.
Speaker 1: I imagine, and if you're six and you go to
Speaker 1: boot camp, it's like being put around a bunch of
Speaker 1: high school seniors. Again, like it it's frustrating, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be his act. Could not imagine doing that.
Speaker 1: I would have lost my fucking mind. Yeah, because like
Speaker 1: the whole I mean, it seems to me that a
Speaker 1: whole big part of the training is to get people
Speaker 1: who are literally high schoolers ready to do something serious.
Speaker 1: So you're you, you have to deal with people who
Speaker 1: are frustrating. Yeah, I mean I joined I was seventeen.
Speaker 1: I mean, grant, that's not the most intelligent thing I've
Speaker 1: ever done. But I was in training with people who
Speaker 1: are in their forties and they were so sick of
Speaker 1: my ship within like two weeks. Yeah, and he was
Speaker 1: also like, it's really I'm glad that he was a
Speaker 1: journal er because now we have sort of through his
Speaker 1: own mind how he looked at a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and again his his perspective on things really surprised me.
Speaker 1: One of the notes he wrote during boot camp was
Speaker 1: one thing I find myself despising this is the sight
Speaker 1: of all these uns in the hands of children. Of course,
Speaker 1: we all understand the necessity of defense, it doesn't diminish
Speaker 1: the fact that a young man I would not trust
Speaker 1: with my canteen is walking about armed. It speaks so
Speaker 1: much to my experience as well. Yeah, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of people doing very dumb things with with firearms
Speaker 1: in the military, which is not something that's ever sort
Speaker 1: of replicated in our fictional depictions of it. But it
Speaker 1: is a bunch of eighteen year olds being handed machine
Speaker 1: guns for the first time. Absolutely. I was seventeen year
Speaker 1: old and I was in a tank. I mean there's
Speaker 1: I was not legally allowed to rent a car, but
Speaker 1: I could fire ay millimeter cannon at whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: It's the whole practice is it's not well thought out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you when you sort of apply outside world standards
Speaker 1: to the military, a lot of things make a lot
Speaker 1: less sense when you're just like looking at like you
Speaker 1: are nineteen years old. What are you doing with that?
Speaker 1: Like who gave you get? Yeah, there's there's no way that.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, I understand that drill sergeant start around,
Speaker 1: and they're for the most part, all the ones I
Speaker 1: have ever worked with, even when I got out of
Speaker 1: basic training and end of running into them later down
Speaker 1: the line, they all were good soldiers. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard so many horror stories of people like they're
Speaker 1: at the grenade range just dropping the grenade instead of
Speaker 1: like after they pull the pen, they just drop it
Speaker 1: from nerves and ship have to be like pushed to safety.
Speaker 1: Oh man, wait, no, that's possibly there. So if you
Speaker 1: pull the pin out, there is actually like a safety
Speaker 1: you can engage, not really like you there's like a
Speaker 1: little safety switch like a piece of metal that you
Speaker 1: pull off, and then you pull the pen and the
Speaker 1: spoon goes flying. You can hold on to like the
Speaker 1: spoon itself, but sometimes they'll cock their arm back to
Speaker 1: throw it. Spoon will come off, arming the grenade, and
Speaker 1: then they'll just drop it. I've never done it myself,
Speaker 1: but I have seen have done oh man. Uh see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Pat found it frustrating. You know. He it took
Speaker 1: a while before he felt like more comfortable with the
Speaker 1: people he was around, which I think did happen once
Speaker 1: he went to ranger school, you know, than people were
Speaker 1: a little bit older and had been through a little
Speaker 1: more ship. But you know, he was already a guy
Speaker 1: who had, you know, quite a lot of discipline. So
Speaker 1: I think he was frustrated at the early stages of
Speaker 1: his boot camp experience. Now, he did enlist with his
Speaker 1: younger brother, Kevin, who was with him the entire time
Speaker 1: he served, so that was kind of his like social
Speaker 1: circle in the army. He had his brother, he had
Speaker 1: a couple of friends, um, but it was a rough
Speaker 1: period of time for him. He didn't like the drill instructors.
Speaker 1: He didn't like the way that they yelled a him.
Speaker 1: He didn't like being treated like he was, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think some of that may have been getting
Speaker 1: a little bit of an ego from being an NFL star,
Speaker 1: But he just he found it a frustrating experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that not meshing. Well, I mean, he
Speaker 1: went from being most effectively the top of the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's what's more popular in America than like
Speaker 1: an NFL star flowing golden law box and chiveled good
Speaker 1: luck to being yelled at and called a piece of
Speaker 1: ship by a drill sergeant. Yeah, and it does seem
Speaker 1: like he got a lot of extra pushups from people
Speaker 1: who had been in just a little bit longer than him,
Speaker 1: and we're like, well, this is my chance to like
Speaker 1: order around the famous NFL guy, Which I get. Why
Speaker 1: you would you know, why you would jump at that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I may or may not have done the
Speaker 1: same thing. Uh. Now. The Bush administration obviously made a
Speaker 1: huge deal about Pat Tillman's enlistment, as did the army.
Speaker 1: In the NFL, he became the poster child for the
Speaker 1: entire War on Terror, heroic young man who tossed aside
Speaker 1: wealth and privilege to fight a righteous war. But Pat
Speaker 1: did not want to be a poster boy or a
Speaker 1: recruiting tool. One of the first things he stated when
Speaker 1: he made the decision to enlist is that he was
Speaker 1: going to refuse all interviews after enlisting, which he did.
Speaker 1: He didn't talk to any press while he was in
Speaker 1: the army. This actually wound up being a good thing
Speaker 1: for the Bush administration because if he talked to the press,
Speaker 1: he might have accidentally revealed what he thought about the
Speaker 1: impending Iraq war. Oh yeah, I can't have that. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: His first tour of duty was a rap and he
Speaker 1: was really furious that he was sent to Iraq and
Speaker 1: not Afghanistan. Sports Illustrated interviewed Russell Bear, who was a
Speaker 1: ranger that was a Pet's friend during both of his
Speaker 1: deployments and spent a lot of time with him. And
Speaker 1: here's how Bear portrayed to them Tillman's attitude towards the
Speaker 1: invasion of Iraq while he was actually in Iraq. So
Speaker 1: this is like one of the first nights when they're
Speaker 1: in country during the invasion. That night, as Pat watched
Speaker 1: another orange and white flash bang shutter in the distant town,
Speaker 1: he shook his head and said, this war is so
Speaker 1: fucking illegal. Rust for the first time realized how wobbly
Speaker 1: a tight rope Pat was walking between his integrity and
Speaker 1: his duty. Even later in their three and a half
Speaker 1: month deployment in Iraq, as it began to appear that
Speaker 1: they had been sent on a NUX and biochemical weapons
Speaker 1: wild goose Chase Russ never heard Pat go further than
Speaker 1: this is all bullshit, which I don't think is an
Speaker 1: uncommon statement to hear out of a soldier's mouth, but
Speaker 1: probably not one that would have been pretty common. But
Speaker 1: it's definitely not something they want someone like Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: saying publicly no, and in his diary he was more
Speaker 1: explicit with his condemnation of war. Quote. My hope is
Speaker 1: that the decisions are being made with the same good
Speaker 1: faith that Kevin and I aim to display. I hope
Speaker 1: this war is about more than money, oil and power.
Speaker 1: I doubt that it is. If anything were to happen
Speaker 1: to Kevin, I would never forgive myself. If anything happens
Speaker 1: to Kevin and my fears of our intent in this
Speaker 1: country proved true, I will never forgive this world. So
Speaker 1: Pat Tillman is not the guy he looks like on
Speaker 1: the outside. But we've got to go to some ads
Speaker 1: right now sell some products and stuff. So we're going
Speaker 1: to break for that, and then we get back. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Pat's involvement in the rescue of
Speaker 1: Jessica Lynch. If you remember that from seventeen years ago,
Speaker 1: and we're back. We're talking about Pat Tillman. He's just
Speaker 1: been sent to Iraq for a three and a half
Speaker 1: month tour, which is like a weird ranger thing. They
Speaker 1: only do really short tours, which ay um, sounds pretty
Speaker 1: sweet compared to being there for eleven months. Kind of
Speaker 1: like a double edged sword. They'll have them do really
Speaker 1: short tours, but do a lot of them. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so like a normal truth like myself, a do year on,
Speaker 1: year off, sometimes less than a year off. But I know,
Speaker 1: I mean there was that uh Special Forces sergeant who
Speaker 1: died that that long ago, I believe in Afghanistan or Iraq,
Speaker 1: I can't remember because I'm awful. And he had over
Speaker 1: a dozen tours who died in a tour, right that
Speaker 1: was Afghanistan, I think, Okay, yeah, thirteen tours. Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: So during his first tour, Pat was one of the
Speaker 1: rangers who was assigned to the bloodless rescue of Private
Speaker 1: Jessica Lynch. Now, if you've forgotten, Jessica Lynch was a
Speaker 1: private first class. She was nineteen years old when she
Speaker 1: was captured after eleven of her comrades were killed in
Speaker 1: a disastrous firefight. The Washington Post published an article on
Speaker 1: the whole ordeal back in two thousand three, titled she
Speaker 1: was Fighting to the death. Here's how it described your capture.
Speaker 1: Private first Class Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital,
Speaker 1: fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces
Speaker 1: ambushed the Armies five or seven or its maintenance company,
Speaker 1: firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition. US
Speaker 1: officials said, yesterday. Yeah. The article went on to claim
Speaker 1: that Lynch, who was a supply clerk, continued to fire
Speaker 1: at Iraqis even after she had been shot multiple times
Speaker 1: and was eventually stabbed until she lost consciousness. The story
Speaker 1: notes that she did not want to be taken alive.
Speaker 1: None of this is true. That was just a bunch
Speaker 1: of lives. No. Jessica Lynch was injured in a car crash.
Speaker 1: Her convoy was attacked, which caused the crash. But the
Speaker 1: real cause of everything seems to have been that this
Speaker 1: convoy mistook where they were and accidentally drove into a
Speaker 1: town that was occupied by the Iraqi Army. Yeah they
Speaker 1: got lost, Yeah, they got lost. It was a giant
Speaker 1: clusterfuck Obviously, I don't think Lynch did anything wrong, but
Speaker 1: she got into a horrible car crash and her gun
Speaker 1: jammed and she lost consciousness from her terrible injuries, and
Speaker 1: and it kind of does a disservice because there was
Speaker 1: another soldier that was captured with her, know whatever hears
Speaker 1: about her, No, no, And she was the first Native
Speaker 1: American woman to die serving in the United States military. Right,
Speaker 1: I think so will correct me, but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, it was like, yeah, when Jessica Lynch
Speaker 1: was rescued, there were multiple other U S soldiers had
Speaker 1: been captured in iraq Um, but there was no like,
Speaker 1: there was no good media angle for any of them,
Speaker 1: so we never heard about any of those rescues or
Speaker 1: any of those cases. But Jessica Lynch was like a
Speaker 1: young nineteen year old woman, Like this was one of
Speaker 1: the first wars where a lot of women had been
Speaker 1: near the front line. So it was just like this
Speaker 1: immediate pr thing that the Bush administration just sort of
Speaker 1: creamed into. Um, the war needed a fast hero, yeah,
Speaker 1: it needed a really fast hero, and they thought they
Speaker 1: had this story of like this young woman who had
Speaker 1: like fought until her she was out of Ammo and
Speaker 1: stabbed repeatedly. And there were even grosser stories at the
Speaker 1: time about like suspecting that she had been sexually assaulted
Speaker 1: by the Iraqis who captured her, which is not at
Speaker 1: all true. Uh And in fact, several of the she
Speaker 1: was taken to an Iraqi hospital Saddam Hussein Hospital, because
Speaker 1: of course that's what the hospital was named. Um, but
Speaker 1: they like they took really good care of names, Todam
Speaker 1: Hussein Hospital. That gets really confusing. There's the Saddam Hussein
Speaker 1: Hospital and the Saddam Hussein like daycare center and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know Saddam Hussein Romance Library. Um. But yeah, she
Speaker 1: was taken to this hospital and like several Iraqi doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses donated blood to actually give her transfusions and
Speaker 1: stuff like. She was treated very well after being captured
Speaker 1: by the civilians who she wound up in the care of.
Speaker 1: But none of that, none of that made for a
Speaker 1: good story, like, oh, hey, our enemies are people too,
Speaker 1: and they take care of a wounded person. Would not
Speaker 1: be Yeah, I mean, the situation probably would have been
Speaker 1: different if she was captured by like, but she wasn't she.
Speaker 1: I think she was captured by the Republican Guard of
Speaker 1: all units, so they're like the best soldiers she could
Speaker 1: have been captured by. Yeah, and they pretty much were
Speaker 1: immediately out of the picture, Like they dropped her off
Speaker 1: at the hospital and then they got the funk away
Speaker 1: from that hospital because they knew the Americans were going
Speaker 1: to come. Um yuckers. Yeah, so it was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. The whole rescue operation was a pr opportunity.
Speaker 1: They got several different ranger units and a bunch of
Speaker 1: different like special forces units, like it was, they had
Speaker 1: a bunch of gun ships. Like it was a way
Speaker 1: larger operation than you would ever call in for like
Speaker 1: a single pow in the middle of an invasion. Like
Speaker 1: maybe now, like you know, when uh, I forget the
Speaker 1: name of the guy who was at Bergdal who like
Speaker 1: this post in Afghanistan, there was a big search for him.
Speaker 1: But that was because this was a weird disruption to
Speaker 1: a war that had hit like a pretty stable pattern.
Speaker 1: This is like the middle of the invasion, So it's
Speaker 1: weird that they devote this many forces to like rescuing
Speaker 1: a single private from an undefended hospital. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: normally you would just be written off. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of cold. But unless you're a pilot or I don't know,
Speaker 1: someone that knows something, probably probably shouldn't be giving to
Speaker 1: the enemy like some kind of Special Forces soldier. You're
Speaker 1: going to be written off. Yeah, especially when like the
Speaker 1: country hasn't fallen yet, you know, Saddam is still in
Speaker 1: charge theoretically of part of the country. Um. Pat seemed
Speaker 1: to know at the time that it was a kind
Speaker 1: of bullshit. Uh, he wrote in his diary quote, the
Speaker 1: mission will be a pow rescue a woman named Jessica Lynch.
Speaker 1: As awful as I feel for the fear she must face,
Speaker 1: and admire the courage I'm sure she is showing. I
Speaker 1: do believe this to be a big public relations stunt.
Speaker 1: Do not mistake me. I wish everyone in trouble to
Speaker 1: be rescued, But sending in this many folks for a
Speaker 1: single low raking soldier screams of media blitz, which it was.
Speaker 1: The operation was actually delayed by like a day so
Speaker 1: that a camera crew could follow along and film it.
Speaker 1: Um And I didn't know they had Special Forces camera crews.
Speaker 1: But they have Special Forces camera crews. Yeah, they're are
Speaker 1: combat camera guys. We had them pop up from time
Speaker 1: to time. When I was there, there well the l
Speaker 1: element for the most part, but they're all right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I can empathize with being out of your element.
Speaker 1: It does feel weird to have a camera when everybody
Speaker 1: else has a rifle. I can't imagine, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I I mean, there wasn't any enemy in the hospital,
Speaker 1: was there. No, No, no, no, no, no. They they
Speaker 1: had left quite a while before that happened. Some doors
Speaker 1: got kicked in. I think there were some shots near
Speaker 1: people's heads to sort of keep them down or whatever,
Speaker 1: but there was no actual fight that happened. It was
Speaker 1: a bloodless rescue. Wow, the alien good zalis an entire hospital.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, I mean they really did funk up
Speaker 1: that hospital. But you're not gonna not funk up the hospital, Like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing with all these fancy fucking up
Speaker 1: equipment if you're not going to fuck some stuff up.
Speaker 1: I mean, also, that's a pretty big violation of the
Speaker 1: Geneva Convention targeting a hospital like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: whatever were the US, it doesn't really apply to us, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the Geneva Convention says.
Speaker 1: If somebody's being held there or whatever. I really I
Speaker 1: I haven't read it recently, although it certainly has been
Speaker 1: taking a little bit of a pounding in Syria right now.
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot of people get away with
Speaker 1: bombing really in hospitals and like mosques, uh any religious
Speaker 1: building things like that. You can target them if you're
Speaker 1: taking fire from them, like if the enemy is using
Speaker 1: them to uh to actually like a defensive position, you're
Speaker 1: good to go. But as far as the pow thing, nah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really fly unless you have someone that can
Speaker 1: really work into gray. Well, speaking of people who can
Speaker 1: work in the gray, the whole rescue was staged by
Speaker 1: a guy named Jim Wilkinson, who was on paper the
Speaker 1: director for strategic Communications for General Tommy Frank's, but in
Speaker 1: reality was George W. Bush's best pr man before and
Speaker 1: he's he seems to be the guy who was like,
Speaker 1: at the camera crew here, we need to have these
Speaker 1: different units here because these are like the units they're
Speaker 1: gonna look best going in on this mission that we
Speaker 1: want to be able to like report on. He staged
Speaker 1: managed this whole thing, and before the Iraq War, he
Speaker 1: had worked with candidate Bush in the two thousand election
Speaker 1: He's the guy responsible for spreading the myth that al
Speaker 1: Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, so that's his
Speaker 1: other claim to fame. Wilkinson also put together the famous
Speaker 1: trip Bush took to Ground Zero right after the nine
Speaker 1: eleven attacks. He was the kind of guy you would
Speaker 1: call to put shine on stink. According to the book
Speaker 1: Where Men Find Glory quote, Wilkinson was the President's man
Speaker 1: on the ground at US Central Command headquarters in Qatar,
Speaker 1: controlling and carefully shaping information about the war disseminated by
Speaker 1: the international press. In this capacity, he adroitly stage managed
Speaker 1: both the rescue of Jessica Lynch and the subsequent media
Speaker 1: coverage of her ordeal. It was Wilkinson who arranged to
Speaker 1: give the Washington Post exclusive access to classified intelligence that
Speaker 1: was the basis for the now discredited she was fighting
Speaker 1: to the death story that ran on the front page
Speaker 1: of the newspaper. So Wilkinson basically co opted the Washington
Speaker 1: Post to help write propaganda, which is neat. Thankfully that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen anymore. No, this is the last time it
Speaker 1: ever happened to any journalist. Yeah, yeah, thank god. Also,
Speaker 1: I mispronounced cutter. I was hoping no one would notice,
Speaker 1: but my conscious caught up with me. So the two
Speaker 1: people in Cutter who are listening to this, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I pronounced your country's name wrong. There's probably less of
Speaker 1: you demographic. Man. Well you know it's a critical demographic
Speaker 1: because they're all rich oil shakes. So like you know,
Speaker 1: you get all you sell a lot of T shirts
Speaker 1: to that crew, is what I'm saying. I think you're
Speaker 1: now bands from the World Cup. Preemptively your ship caned.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well I don't think soccer is a real sport.
Speaker 1: So there goes my Australian listeners. Everybody in Europe, most
Speaker 1: of the Middle East, Spain just dropping like flies. And
Speaker 1: this is the episode they listened to because we're the
Speaker 1: bastards this time. Oh yeah, no, no, I but I've
Speaker 1: been firm about my anti soccer stance and Sophie is
Speaker 1: here staring at me. But it's not a real sport.
Speaker 1: There are two real sports and neither of them are soccer.
Speaker 1: And that's all we're gonna get into about sports today.
Speaker 1: I just want to know what the two are. Well,
Speaker 1: that's another episode today. We're talking about Pat Tillman, who
Speaker 1: played a fake sport called football and then became an
Speaker 1: army ranger. Now Pat was aware of all the pageantry
Speaker 1: that had been injected into the Jessica Lynch rescue. He
Speaker 1: knew it was all there to distract from a war
Speaker 1: that so far had failed to deliver up any of
Speaker 1: the w M D S American voters expected. Looking at
Speaker 1: all this, he couldn't help but think about what the
Speaker 1: Bush administration would do if something happened to him. Jade Lane,
Speaker 1: a arranger who served with Tillman, recalled this. When we
Speaker 1: were in Baghdad, our cots were next to each other.
Speaker 1: Pat and I used to talk at night a lot
Speaker 1: before we rack out. I don't know how the conversation
Speaker 1: got brought up, but one night he said he was
Speaker 1: afraid if something were to happen to him Bushes people
Speaker 1: would like make a big deal out of his death
Speaker 1: and parade him through the streets. And those were his
Speaker 1: exact words. I don't want them to parade me through
Speaker 1: the streets. It just burned into my brain him saying that,
Speaker 1: which is pretty heartbreaking, because I think we all do
Speaker 1: know what comes next, which is exactly that. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not gonna like that statue much. No, Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a football thing. I guess that's okay. He likes
Speaker 1: he's he's football pat in the in the statue. But
Speaker 1: we all know why the statue is there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is a fair point. Um. The Lynch Rescue, though,
Speaker 1: generated more than six hundred news stories, as well as
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book that became a New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: Jessica got her own made for TV movie released during
Speaker 1: Sweets Week, which I don't think is a thing anymore,
Speaker 1: but definitely was. Then the Rambo portrayal of her whole
Speaker 1: ordeal got a huge amount of time in the sun
Speaker 1: before anyone realized that it was all a lie. I
Speaker 1: don't know if the Internet would have busted that lie faster,
Speaker 1: you know, if this had happened more recently, or if
Speaker 1: it would have made it even harder to dispel. But
Speaker 1: people bought into the Jessica Lynch story for a long time.
Speaker 1: I know I did when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: paying attention to all the Iraq news. Now yeah I
Speaker 1: did too, Oh yeah, because it was just this, like
Speaker 1: it sounded like it was the story of this like
Speaker 1: almost mad max story of this convoy getting ambushed and
Speaker 1: she's like ramming people in her car and shooting a
Speaker 1: machine gun. It's it sounded cool. Yeah, it turns out
Speaker 1: it was just to garden variety tragedy which nobody wants
Speaker 1: to hear about that and a made for TV movie.
Speaker 1: You know, we want something now that's uh, that's more
Speaker 1: of a comedy of airs and makes everybody just feel
Speaker 1: sad inside. Yeah, although I do want to be clear,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence I've ever heard that Lynch herself did
Speaker 1: anything wrong. She was just a private in a vehicle
Speaker 1: and a terrible thing happened. Uh right, you can't blame
Speaker 1: a private. I don't know if she was a driver
Speaker 1: or or not, because I know she was like her
Speaker 1: a job, was a truck driver, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if if she was actually driving the vehicles. Like, it's
Speaker 1: not her fault she took the wrong turn. Private stuff control,
Speaker 1: That just that her fault. She didn't man some Alamo
Speaker 1: type defense private self control that either. You just happened
Speaker 1: to be a colleg in a machine that got fucked up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And she has been pretty outspoken about wanting to correct
Speaker 1: the records since and we'll be we'll be getting to that. Uh,
Speaker 1: in a little bit here. But yeah, So now, in
Speaker 1: the book Where Men Find Glory, crack Our alleges that
Speaker 1: all of the hoop law around lynches, capture and rescue
Speaker 1: was mainly intended by the Bush administration to distract the
Speaker 1: American public from a major funk up a killing of
Speaker 1: seventeen U S Marines by friendly fire of I think
Speaker 1: it was a pair of aton Ward hogs um And
Speaker 1: this had happened like four days into the invasion. So yeah,
Speaker 1: having this story of like, you know, there's this woman
Speaker 1: warrior being rescued and Pat Tillman, the poster boy of
Speaker 1: the Army, is here, and it's like this great and well,
Speaker 1: let's all pay attention to that and ignore the fact
Speaker 1: that we bombed our own guys, which you know, not
Speaker 1: a dumb strategy if you're the Army or the Bush administration.
Speaker 1: And it clearly worked. So yeah, Pat did his three
Speaker 1: and a half months in Iraq. When he got home,
Speaker 1: he had officially completed a combat tour. This meant he
Speaker 1: could have qualified for a special dispensation to end his
Speaker 1: term of service early. In return to the NFL. Both
Speaker 1: the NFL and the Army would have been totally down
Speaker 1: for that because I think Pat was a lot more
Speaker 1: valuable to the army as a recruiting tool than as
Speaker 1: a single ranger. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: I think that's what everyone but Pat would have preferred.
Speaker 1: But Pat was not willing to take any special treatment,
Speaker 1: and so in April of two thousand and four, he
Speaker 1: deployed to Afghanistan with his brother Kevin and the rest
Speaker 1: of his ranger unit. Now, a few days into their tour,
Speaker 1: his unit was doing one of those missions that I
Speaker 1: gather are pretty common in Afghanistan, where they're basically driving
Speaker 1: around in the mountains for a few days, searching villages
Speaker 1: for weapons caches and looking for taliban. Um. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much your existence. Yeah. I always make I
Speaker 1: always make jokes that, like, you know, our grandfathers were
Speaker 1: we're going to storm the beaches and take these pill
Speaker 1: boxes or you know, take these hedgerows and we're just
Speaker 1: let's drive around in circles until some rando tries to
Speaker 1: fucking murderer. It does seem to be a step back
Speaker 1: strategically from storming beaches and taking cities. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: the dumbest ship on Earth. And I mean, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: it was much different in two elses before than when
Speaker 1: I was there several years later. But you know, you
Speaker 1: just drive round Wayne didn't get blown up or someone
Speaker 1: take a shot at you, and you hope you survive
Speaker 1: so you can try to kill them back. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that it does seem every description I've read about the
Speaker 1: mission he was on, it does just seem like they
Speaker 1: were driving around waiting for someone to start trouble with him. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so that's the job these guys are doing. Um, they're
Speaker 1: out in in the middle of no it looks if
Speaker 1: you've ever been deep into like the California Desert, the
Speaker 1: California Desert seems to look a lot like Afghanistan, which
Speaker 1: I think is why they do a lot of training
Speaker 1: there for it. Yet the other the national training centers
Speaker 1: in the middle of Colorado. Oh cool. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like they're in this like dry high desert area
Speaker 1: searching villages and one of their humvees gets sucked up
Speaker 1: the axles, I think, break on it and they can't
Speaker 1: use it anymore. Um. I think normally today they would
Speaker 1: send in something like a chinook to pick it up.
Speaker 1: But all of these spare air assets were in Iraq
Speaker 1: because the invasion was still really fresh, so they didn't
Speaker 1: have any spare like chinooks that they could send to
Speaker 1: pick this thing up. So there were a couple of
Speaker 1: different things they could have done Tilman's platoon leader, First
Speaker 1: Lieutenant David Lot, wanted to take the gun off and
Speaker 1: just blow up the humpy, but his commanding officer back
Speaker 1: at base wasn't willing to let him do that because
Speaker 1: it would look bad and be essentially seen as as
Speaker 1: this guy wasting money. So eventually a Lot and his
Speaker 1: men found a local truck driver who agreed to tow
Speaker 1: the humby, but that created another problem. The platoons still
Speaker 1: had more villages to clear on its list, and if
Speaker 1: they didn't search all of the villages they've been arbitrarily assigned,
Speaker 1: they'd make their lieutenant colonel look bad and slow up.
Speaker 1: Like the whole time plan that everybody was working on.
Speaker 1: How you can't make lieutenant colonel look bad? I think
Speaker 1: of the outcome? No no, no no, So this guy
Speaker 1: like yeah, and that's like the apparently there They spent
Speaker 1: quite a lot of time with this lieutenant being like, look,
Speaker 1: it's a really dumb idea to like split the platoon
Speaker 1: in half. Why don't we just all take this thing
Speaker 1: back and then we can head out, And he's really
Speaker 1: adamant about like, no, there's a time frame. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to have done these villages by this time, Like, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna let this slow us down. And it should
Speaker 1: probably be noted that the lieutenant colonel is definitely not
Speaker 1: there with them, no no, no, no, no no. He
Speaker 1: is on the phone with him, probably upping hot coffee.
Speaker 1: So the the only option that they had after the
Speaker 1: lieutenant colonel's orders was to split the platoon. Half of
Speaker 1: it would go back with the broken humvy and the
Speaker 1: other half would continue on its mission to search a
Speaker 1: tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Specialist Jade Lane recalled,
Speaker 1: nobody on the ground thought it was a good idea
Speaker 1: to split the platoon. The pl didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: but in the army, you obey orders. If somebody with
Speaker 1: a higher rank tells you to do something, you do it.
Speaker 1: So a flat split the platoon. Now, the mountains being
Speaker 1: what they are and technology being where it wasn't two
Speaker 1: thousand four, the two groups couldn't really communicate very well,
Speaker 1: so Tillman's group didn't realize when the second group with
Speaker 1: the broken hum vy and the tow truck doubled back
Speaker 1: behind them. Um. And this was apparently because when they
Speaker 1: first tried to get back to the base, they realized
Speaker 1: they're oute they wanted to take was two treasures for
Speaker 1: the tow truck. So the driver was like, well, if
Speaker 1: we just go through where they're heading right now and
Speaker 1: drive ahead of your other buddies, there's another road that
Speaker 1: we can use to get back into town. So while
Speaker 1: this second group towing the humvy is like pulling up
Speaker 1: behind Tillman's unit, they ambushed by some Taliban guys with
Speaker 1: mortars and I think just like a K forty seven.
Speaker 1: It's really debatable how much fire the unit was under
Speaker 1: at this point. But somebody starts shooting and then all
Speaker 1: of the rangers start shooting, and what happened next is
Speaker 1: just a total clusterfuck. So the valley where this ambush
Speaker 1: happened is like one of those it seems like a
Speaker 1: classic Afghan kind of mountain feature where it's like I
Speaker 1: sent the picture along in that dock I sent you,
Speaker 1: but it's like steep walls raising up on either side
Speaker 1: and really narrow. It's like a perfect place to ambush somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially the only way to get through is
Speaker 1: like tightly curled switchbacks. I mean, I've been on that
Speaker 1: ambush before and it sucks. And i mean, like you're
Speaker 1: talking about what its hard to communicate. That's two dollaran
Speaker 1: for technology, and that's also just Afghanistan. Those valleys make
Speaker 1: it almost impossible for our modern radio systems to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So everybody's really confused and half of them are getting shot.
Speaker 1: And Tilman is with the group that's not getting shot.
Speaker 1: But he he realizes what's happened. He sees that his
Speaker 1: comrades and unit that his brothers with is under fire.
Speaker 1: So he and a couple of other guys run towards
Speaker 1: the rangers that are under fire to try and and
Speaker 1: they like kind of get up on top of this
Speaker 1: ridge line to try and lay in suppression fire on
Speaker 1: the dudes who are shooting at their friends. Um So,
Speaker 1: Tillman and two other soldiers, a ranger and an Afghan
Speaker 1: National Army guy scale this ridge line and start providing
Speaker 1: suppression fire when a topless, doorless humvy filled with heavily
Speaker 1: armed and panic rangers rolls towards them. Now this unit
Speaker 1: was run by a sergeant named Greg Baker. He was
Speaker 1: a guyota reputation for being a very good soldier, but
Speaker 1: it seems like he he either made an error or
Speaker 1: freaked out. So Baker is rolling forward on this jeep
Speaker 1: with like three other guys in it, and they're all
Speaker 1: just kind of shooting at the hilltops around them, and
Speaker 1: Baker sees the Afghan National Army soldier who's standing next
Speaker 1: to Pat Tilman, and he sees he says, he sees
Speaker 1: his beard and his face and realizes that he's Afghan
Speaker 1: and just shoots him dead right on the spot, not
Speaker 1: noticing that he's wearing like the uniform of the a
Speaker 1: n A. So Baker kills this guy, and then all
Speaker 1: of the other rangers in his car start pouring fire
Speaker 1: into Pat Tillman and Tillman's buddy. So we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about what happens next. But that's sort of how everything
Speaker 1: goes to ship, right, Yeah. I mean I wish I
Speaker 1: could say that isn't like on brand for soldiers everywhere
Speaker 1: just to blindly shoot where everybody else is. But I
Speaker 1: could see this happening tomorrow, and that's exactly the justification
Speaker 1: everybody else in the car gives is they see their
Speaker 1: squad leaders shooting in one direction and so they just
Speaker 1: start firing. Yeah, it doesn't end well, but speaking of things,
Speaker 1: that doing well adds and we're back. Uh, so we've
Speaker 1: just gotten into Yeah, Tillman and his guys are up
Speaker 1: on this ridge. Greg Baker, sergeant in a humpy with
Speaker 1: three other guys, has just fired and killed the Afghan
Speaker 1: National Army guy next to them, And now all of
Speaker 1: the rangers in this humby start pouring fire into the
Speaker 1: position where Pat Tillman is standing with you know, his
Speaker 1: buddy and a guy named O'Neil, one of them in
Speaker 1: shooting at them with Stephen Ashpole, a fifty caliber machine gunner.
Speaker 1: When asked why he and the other rangers in the
Speaker 1: jeep hadn't waited to ide their targets before shooting, he said,
Speaker 1: you are drilled into as a private shoot where your
Speaker 1: team leader shoots. We came around a curve. Sergeant Baker
Speaker 1: then called fire, and I transitioned my weapon and saw
Speaker 1: some quick shapes and fired where Sergeant Baker and the
Speaker 1: other guys are firing. So that's exactly what happens. Um
Speaker 1: the other guy O'Neill manages to survive, but Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: is shot three times in the head by a fellow
Speaker 1: army ranger with a saw squad automatic weapon. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he was he was killed immediately three times.
Speaker 1: That that's yeah, this isn't sound really shitty. That's shocking
Speaker 1: he was able to make that shot. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it does sound like they were all really good shots
Speaker 1: in that humpy Yeah, they're they're simultaneously incredibly inepted where
Speaker 1: they were shooting, but incredibly accurate. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: at least that's half of where they're supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's somewhere between two and of American war casualties
Speaker 1: come from friendly fire, which is such a broad range
Speaker 1: that it's almost a useless statistic because it means it's
Speaker 1: either almost nobody or a quarter of American war casualties.
Speaker 1: UM imagine that studying literally any other topic. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's weird how bad the data on it is. And
Speaker 1: I tried to find better information. I was not able to.
Speaker 1: I found one article in two Doesn't Tend that said
Speaker 1: that at that point, at least seven U S soldiers
Speaker 1: had been killed in thirty four wounded in Iraq and
Speaker 1: friendly fire incidents since the invasion, but that didn't count
Speaker 1: like a dozen or so British soldiers who had been
Speaker 1: killed by US friendly fire at that point. It seems
Speaker 1: in general like the Army does not do a good
Speaker 1: job of reporting friendly fire casualties, and that wouldn't do
Speaker 1: a good job of reporting anything that makes them look bad. No,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what happened with Pat Tillman. There was
Speaker 1: no doubt at the time that he had been killed
Speaker 1: by members of his own unit, that it was fratricide,
Speaker 1: but an investigation was ordered by the Army, which was standard,
Speaker 1: but they used the investigation as an excuse to not
Speaker 1: say anything about the fact that Pat had been shot
Speaker 1: by his own buddies. So a bunch of ship like
Speaker 1: this is really aware the bastardry starts to pile up
Speaker 1: because um, for one thing, Lieutenant Colonel Hodney, who was
Speaker 1: the guy who had ordered a lot to split his
Speaker 1: platoons that they wouldn't you know, get off of the
Speaker 1: time frame. The guy he put in charge of the
Speaker 1: investigation was only a captain, which is according to like
Speaker 1: military the regulations that they were doing the investigation under
Speaker 1: Article fifteen Dash six. Um, the investigation was supposed to
Speaker 1: be conducted by someone with a higher rank than anyone
Speaker 1: he might have to investigate. So since the lieutenant colonel
Speaker 1: put a captain in charge of it, that meant basically
Speaker 1: no one in command could be investigated as having had
Speaker 1: a role in Tilman's death from the start. So it
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I should have at least been a colonel. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It should have been somebody who could have looked into
Speaker 1: what Hodney had been doing and looked at, well, did
Speaker 1: the shitty orders they were getting contribute to this soldier dying?
Speaker 1: Which seems like a definite yes. Um. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: of those men most involved in hiding what happened to
Speaker 1: Pat Tillman was a general named Stanley McCrystal. Uh now
Speaker 1: at that point, uh huh yeah, um. At that point
Speaker 1: he was the Joint Special Operations Command Commander Jay Sak.
Speaker 1: McCrystal ordered the facts of Tillman's death to be concealed.
Speaker 1: The justification at the time is that it would have
Speaker 1: been irresponsible to say anything until the investigation was concluded. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here is a quote from the book Where Men Find
Speaker 1: Glory According to a federal statute and several Army regulations,
Speaker 1: Mary Tillman, as next of kin, was supposed to be
Speaker 1: notified that an investigation was underway, even if friendly fire
Speaker 1: was only suspected, and be kept informed as additional information
Speaker 1: about the cause of death becomes known. Instead, McCrystal and
Speaker 1: the soldiers under their command went to extraordinary lengths to
Speaker 1: prevent the Tillman family from learning the truth about how
Speaker 1: Pat died. So they're not they're not telling Pat's wife
Speaker 1: when they're supposed to tell her that there's an investigation
Speaker 1: to the nature of his death. They've ordered all of
Speaker 1: the members of Pat's unit to keep quiet about what's happened,
Speaker 1: which means that the guys who killed Pat weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to and or the guys who knew what had happened
Speaker 1: and how Pat had died weren't allowed to tell Pat's brother, Kevin,
Speaker 1: what had happened, even though he was in the same unit.
Speaker 1: So there's this like really ghastly situation where Kevin's like
Speaker 1: going to the gym and working out with the guys
Speaker 1: who shot his brother to death and like doesn't know it,
Speaker 1: which is just super gross. That's I didn't know this part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually had no idea that his brother was in
Speaker 1: the army, but yeah, that's just fucking ghoulish. Yeah. Steven Elliott,
Speaker 1: one of the rangers who was in the jeep you
Speaker 1: know that Pat got killed by their fusillade, said he
Speaker 1: and others were ordered quote not to discuss the incident
Speaker 1: with folks outside the unit, and that it was mainly
Speaker 1: because it was still under investigation. He says, I was
Speaker 1: operating on a certain level of naivete. I believe senior
Speaker 1: leaders were trying to protect the family, and I know
Speaker 1: and I had no idea they were being deceived at
Speaker 1: any point, but they were. Kevin was flown back with
Speaker 1: Pat's casket from Afghanistan, and the one thing he asked
Speaker 1: of the men he left behind was if they would
Speaker 1: please find Pat's journal and send it back to him.
Speaker 1: We've already read a couple of excerpts. Pat was a
Speaker 1: really dedicated diarist, you know, uh, and it was important
Speaker 1: for Kevin to read his brother's last few words. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Army burned Pat's journal, They burned all of his
Speaker 1: clothing and body armor, and they sent his body back
Speaker 1: naked in the casket. This was not normal procedure. They
Speaker 1: burned it. Yeah, they burned all of his clothing, they
Speaker 1: burned his journal, everything that was on his body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's not procedure at all. No, No, what
Speaker 1: they did was completely illegal and not at all normal.
Speaker 1: The sergeant who burnt the stuff was told it was
Speaker 1: for quote security purposes, but there was never any real
Speaker 1: good explanation given. So this is one of the first
Speaker 1: like things that happened that's like clearly like this is
Speaker 1: not just somebody trying to delay the truth getting out.
Speaker 1: This is like a cover up. Now. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it should be noted like even if you're wounded
Speaker 1: or killed, they don't even burn like your bloody clothing,
Speaker 1: they send it back. Yeah. So that's it's really weird
Speaker 1: that they would do this and really just shows like
Speaker 1: a lack of concern for you know, like the one
Speaker 1: thing this kid asks as he's being sent back with
Speaker 1: his dead brother is like, find his journal. And I
Speaker 1: don't even think that message gets to the guy who's
Speaker 1: burning you know, Pat's clothes, and you know, the sergeant
Speaker 1: who's in charge of burning that ship should have known
Speaker 1: something was going on. They're like, hey, I've never done
Speaker 1: this before, but weird that this is the only time
Speaker 1: this has happened. Yeah, it's weird that these desert pattern
Speaker 1: camouflage to contain secrets that I'm not aware of. Um
Speaker 1: so stupid. Yeah, fratricide is a type of homicide. So
Speaker 1: General McCrystal and his men were obligated to inform c
Speaker 1: i D off what was suspective. They didn't do this
Speaker 1: and said they sent in an army lawyer, Major Charles
Speaker 1: kirch Meyer to basically muddy the waters enough that c
Speaker 1: I D would decide they weren't needed. Kirch Meyer was
Speaker 1: thanked for bea email by Crystal's legal advisor for quote
Speaker 1: keeping the c i D at bay. So those are
Speaker 1: the guys that you watch in your favorite old people
Speaker 1: shows about army detectives. So it's like the army equivalent
Speaker 1: of n c I S. Right, Yeah, that's the exact
Speaker 1: same thing. They They normally investigate any fifteen six investigation,
Speaker 1: like not necessarily a real investigation, but like a cursory glance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so basically Mcrystal sends this guy Kirchmeyer in to
Speaker 1: try and smooth over even that, so that they're really
Speaker 1: not looking at this case at all at first, and
Speaker 1: like I think they know at some point it's going
Speaker 1: to get investigated, but they're just trying to slow things down. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think it will become clear why in a
Speaker 1: little bit so the army hid the fact that Pat
Speaker 1: had died from friendly fire from his family for more
Speaker 1: than a month. This seems to be because the Bush
Speaker 1: administration wanted to ring every drop of good pr out
Speaker 1: of Tillman that they possibly could. So here's how krak
Speaker 1: Our describes what followed and like. The day after Tillman
Speaker 1: died in the Bush White House, approximately two emails discussing
Speaker 1: the situation were transmitted to receive by White House officials,
Speaker 1: including staffers from Bush's reelection campaign, who suggested to the
Speaker 1: president that it would be advantageous for him to respond
Speaker 1: to Tillman's death as quickly as possible. Genie Mammo, Bush's
Speaker 1: director of media affairs, sent an email to Lawrence de Rita,
Speaker 1: Rumsfeld's press secretary, asking for details about the tragedy so
Speaker 1: she could use them in a White House press release.
Speaker 1: By eleven forty a m. A statement about Tilman had
Speaker 1: been drafted and forwarded to Press Secretary Scott McCullen and
Speaker 1: Communications Director Dan Bartlett, who immediately approved the statement on
Speaker 1: behalf of President Bush and then disseminated it to the public,
Speaker 1: even though doing so violated the Military Family Peace of
Speaker 1: Mind Act. So, basically, according to a policy President George W.
Speaker 1: Bush had signed into law five months earlier, you were
Speaker 1: supposed to give families of war casualties twenty four hours
Speaker 1: to grieve in private before making a public announcement about
Speaker 1: their family member's death. So George W. Bush and his
Speaker 1: administration skirted the rule that they had put in place
Speaker 1: because Pat Tillman was so famous that they wanted to
Speaker 1: get out ahead of the story and release a statement early.
Speaker 1: They wanted to get out ahead of his parents morning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well you really, you really gotta you gotta pre empt
Speaker 1: that ship otherwise it's just gonna it's gonna look bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, nip all that crying right in the bud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's all gross. The guy who rushed out
Speaker 1: the statement, or who the White House pinned the blame
Speaker 1: on for rushing out the statement illegally and early, said
Speaker 1: that he had done it because the story quote made
Speaker 1: the American people feel good about our country and our military,
Speaker 1: because again, at that point, the story was this war
Speaker 1: hero had charged up a hill to save his comrades
Speaker 1: and been you know, tragically killed in action being heroic,
Speaker 1: rather than shot dead by his own men in a
Speaker 1: in a terrible accident. So yeah, that's gross. It's really gross.
Speaker 1: That's like snidely whiplash level of villainy. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what comes next is even grosser because Stanley McCrystal puts
Speaker 1: Pat Tilman up for a Silver Star um and in
Speaker 1: the Silver Star Report they basically word it vaguely enough
Speaker 1: that it's evident to anybody reading it who doesn't know
Speaker 1: what really happened, that it would seem like Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: was killed like heroically trying to save you know, his buddies.
Speaker 1: But it's also written carefully enough that, like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: leave out the chance that he was killed by friendly fire.
Speaker 1: They don't state exactly who killed him. They just sort
Speaker 1: of leave it up to you to decide as the reader. Oh,
Speaker 1: they must be saying the Taliban killed him, but like
Speaker 1: they don't quite go and say it not normal at all. No, No,
Speaker 1: mccrystals knows that what he's doing is illegal and sketchy
Speaker 1: as hell, but he also doesn't want to look bad
Speaker 1: and figures that if they give this guy a medal,
Speaker 1: his family won't ask any questions about what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew me Crystal is a fucking asshole,
Speaker 1: but this is a whole new level. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: really his like piata of being a douche bag um
Speaker 1: is like right here, it's it's pretty remarkable. So Tillman's
Speaker 1: death was good news for the Bush administration and for
Speaker 1: the Defense Department. The global warrant terror had started to
Speaker 1: look like a quagmire by that point, and Tillman's story
Speaker 1: was seen as having the potential to distract people. According
Speaker 1: to a two thousand seventeen Intercept article on the matter,
Speaker 1: Brigadier General Howard Yellen would later tell investigators that the
Speaker 1: view among the chain of command was that Tillman's death
Speaker 1: was like a steak dinner, albeit delivered on a garbage
Speaker 1: can cover, which is again a really gross way to
Speaker 1: talk about a man who just died. I mean, where
Speaker 1: the fund do they find people who talk about recently
Speaker 1: killed people like in this manner? Go on, I do
Speaker 1: want to be in that conversation when you're like talking
Speaker 1: about a man who's died under your command and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's like a steak dinner on a garbage can, and
Speaker 1: like how does everyone else in the room not be
Speaker 1: like what are you talking about? I want to be
Speaker 1: in a room full of people that are so inherently
Speaker 1: terrible that when somebody gets killed, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: be by the enemy or or by their own guys like, wait,
Speaker 1: how can we make this work for us? What's the spin? Yeah,
Speaker 1: supply side tragedy. Yeah, it's gross. I like that term. Also.
Speaker 1: Um So, Pat Tillman's memorial ceremony was hosted at the
Speaker 1: sand hoose A Rose Garden, which is very big venue,
Speaker 1: and the memorial ceremony was a huge event, lots of
Speaker 1: lots of cameras, lots of photo opportunities between famous people.
Speaker 1: John McCain was there, He gave a little speech. Um.
Speaker 1: A Navy seal who was a friend with Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: gave a speech at his memorial service based on lies.
Speaker 1: So the the Army lied to a Navy seal who
Speaker 1: was Pat Tillman's buddy about how he had died so
Speaker 1: that he could give a speech full of lies at
Speaker 1: this televised memorial service about how Pat Tilman had died.
Speaker 1: So it's just like this rivoros of grossness that keeps
Speaker 1: getting grosser and grosser and grosser. The further down we get,
Speaker 1: um like a layer of onions, except every new layer
Speaker 1: is also ship yeah yeah, yeah, And one of the
Speaker 1: layers in this ship onion is John McCain. He gave
Speaker 1: a speech at Pat Tillman's moral service and did not
Speaker 1: know at the time that Pat had been killed by
Speaker 1: friendly fire. He was angry when he found that at too,
Speaker 1: but afterwards he was shaking hands with the family after
Speaker 1: the service, and when he was talking with Pat's brother, Richard,
Speaker 1: his other brother, he noted that he he thought Pat
Speaker 1: was in a better place. And this really piste off
Speaker 1: Richard because Richard, like Pat, and like the rest of
Speaker 1: his family, was an atheist. So there was alcohol at
Speaker 1: this gathering um, and it was obviously an emotionally charged time.
Speaker 1: So when it was Richard's turn to yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: Richard gets up and looks at John McCain and says,
Speaker 1: Pat's a fucking champion and always will be. Just make
Speaker 1: no mistake, he'd want me to say this he's not
Speaker 1: with God. He's fucking dead. He's not religious, so thanks
Speaker 1: for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead. Later, Richard wound
Speaker 1: up on the Bill Maher show and explained why he'd
Speaker 1: reacted that way quote, I found it offensive. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't go to church and say this is bullshit.
Speaker 1: So don't come to my brother's service and tell me
Speaker 1: he's with God. He's simply not with fucking God. Now,
Speaker 1: if you just have that bit of info, it maybe
Speaker 1: sounds like Richard's overreacting a little bit because he's, you know,
Speaker 1: he just lost his brother. There's a lot of reason
Speaker 1: that Richard and his family have to be pissed about
Speaker 1: religion being shoehorned into Pat tillman postmortem, because that's exactly
Speaker 1: what some asshole in the army did right after Pat died.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, there was a tiff between Kevin Tilman
Speaker 1: and Lieutenant Colonel named Ralph Kasarlitch or Coslar Rich Jesus,
Speaker 1: that's a weird last name. Anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read a quote from Where Men Find Glory about this
Speaker 1: little sort of debate that was sparked after Pat's death.
Speaker 1: Shortly before the second range of Italian sent Pat's remains
Speaker 1: home from Afghanistan. He coslar Rich was arranging a repatriation
Speaker 1: ceremony when a sergeant approached him and said, hey, sir,
Speaker 1: Kevin Tilman doesn't want a chaplain involved in his repatriation ceremony.
Speaker 1: When koslar Rich, an evangelical Christian, asked why, the sergeant replied, well,
Speaker 1: evidently he and his brother are atheists, that's the way
Speaker 1: they were raised, to which coslar Rich angrily declaimed, well,
Speaker 1: you can tell Specialist Tillman that the ceremony ain't about him.
Speaker 1: It is about everybody in the Joint Task Force bidding
Speaker 1: farewell to his brother. So there will be a chaplain
Speaker 1: and there will be prayers. So they may have been
Speaker 1: a little bit piste off about that. Yeah, yeah, cosl
Speaker 1: Rich is a real piece of ship. Uh And we'll
Speaker 1: be hearing from him just a little bit more and
Speaker 1: the rest of this story, so of course. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: fifteen six investigation into Pat Tillman's death was delivered exactly
Speaker 1: one day after his memorial service, which is fun timing.
Speaker 1: It noted that quote leadership played a critical role and
Speaker 1: greatly contributed to the fratricide incident that killed SPC. Pat Tillman.
Speaker 1: It noted that the rangers in the g who had
Speaker 1: killed Tillman quote never received effective enemy fire throughout the
Speaker 1: entire enemy contact, and as officially, Tillman's cause of death
Speaker 1: was the result of gross negligence. Now, this result was
Speaker 1: a real problem for the army because they had already
Speaker 1: awarded Tillman a Silver Star for courage in the face
Speaker 1: of enemy fire, and while he had shown courage, the
Speaker 1: fire had not come from any enemies. This was also
Speaker 1: a problem for General Stanley McCrystal because now everyone knew
Speaker 1: that he had lied about how Pat had died. So
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to mitigate the damage
Speaker 1: from this bad pr so he scheduled the public disclosure
Speaker 1: of all of this, of the information about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the gross negligence behind Pat's death. He scheduled the actual
Speaker 1: drop of that to the press for Saturday May twenty nine,
Speaker 1: which means he dropped it the Saturday before Memorial Day.
Speaker 1: So basically, the report that finally officially let everyone know
Speaker 1: Pat had died from friendly fire was released at the
Speaker 1: start of a three day weekend, Assuming that all of
Speaker 1: the journalists would be too drunk to write anything about it.
Speaker 1: There was a formally the case they do like some
Speaker 1: kind of weekend dump to try to Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's just general press wisdom. If you've got shitty news,
Speaker 1: you try to put it out where no one's going
Speaker 1: to know. You would just hope that the military would
Speaker 1: be above that when releasing information about the death of
Speaker 1: a human being. But I mean, who knows. You know,
Speaker 1: history says otherwise, History says otherwise. So there was a
Speaker 1: press conference and a Ranger spokesman did announce Pat's death,
Speaker 1: you know, by friendly fire, openly, but he took no questions.
Speaker 1: And after the press conference, Pentagon officials emailed each other
Speaker 1: congratulations on limiting the damn it of the results of
Speaker 1: the fifteen six Way to Go guy, we did it.
Speaker 1: We covered up the death of one of our own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: An Army colonel noted in an email that quote the
Speaker 1: story will run hot today and diminish over the weekend.
Speaker 1: A sitcom public affairs officer said that a recent terrorist
Speaker 1: attack that had happened in Saudi Arabia would also help
Speaker 1: to dilute the story of how Pat had really died,
Speaker 1: So that was good. It was really worked out for
Speaker 1: the army um attack. Yeah. Yeah, And you would think
Speaker 1: at this point that after all that Army funk ups
Speaker 1: had cost the Tillman family, the least that the Army
Speaker 1: could do was not funk up delivering the news of
Speaker 1: how he had been killed to the family. What are
Speaker 1: the odds that they would make the same basic mistake
Speaker 1: twice and let the press know before letting, say, Pat
Speaker 1: Tillman's own mother know crucial detail about how her son
Speaker 1: had died, which is exactly what's happened. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she found out that her son had died by friendly
Speaker 1: fire when a reporter called her asking for a comment.
Speaker 1: Army just didn't get to her in time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it really had to you know, get in front of
Speaker 1: that story. And by the story, I mean his morning
Speaker 1: parents again. Yeah. One of the things that's really impressive
Speaker 1: about this is that it really took everything misfiring at
Speaker 1: once that could have misfired to really make this as
Speaker 1: offensive a co option of a human being's legacy is possible. Like,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's most remarkable about this.
Speaker 1: I think misfire is not the right term, because all
Speaker 1: of these steps were completely on purpose. Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: You right, the only accident was his actual death. Everything
Speaker 1: after that, everything else is just people being actively fucking
Speaker 1: terrible to one another. Yeah, you're right, it's weird. I
Speaker 1: even like, I don't know, it's that like sort of
Speaker 1: attitude towards the military that I grew up with, where like,
Speaker 1: even when I know how fucked up a story like
Speaker 1: this is, I keep trying to find ways that it's
Speaker 1: not quite as bad, and like, no, it's really bad.
Speaker 1: Like if I hadn't spent almost a decade in the army,
Speaker 1: I would assume that they had the best intention and
Speaker 1: the just kind of sucked it up along the way.
Speaker 1: But I've kind of learned that they are just assholes.
Speaker 1: For for the most part, it's not obviously not everyday people,
Speaker 1: but when you get further and further up, it's like
Speaker 1: being in a room full of politicians, good things don't happen.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as like you go into a
Speaker 1: Walmart or whatever and you talk to a person who
Speaker 1: works there and you can make a human connection and
Speaker 1: like talk to a human being, But like the people
Speaker 1: up at corporate like it's just once your job is
Speaker 1: so abstract from the human beings that your job is about.
Speaker 1: You do ship like this because it makes sense. You're
Speaker 1: not like co opting a human beings. Yeah, exactly, there's
Speaker 1: a way to rationalize it. And this thing got rationalized,
Speaker 1: all to Helen back. Um. So, the first several investigations
Speaker 1: into Pat Tillman's death were very sloppy and incomplete. The
Speaker 1: third investigation was conducted by that guy Kaslo Rich who
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. Um. It was apparently very very
Speaker 1: sloppy and did not answer a lot of important questions
Speaker 1: like why did you burn my son's armor and clothing
Speaker 1: and stuff? But you know, why are you burning the
Speaker 1: evidence of an investigation? Why was the evidence lit on fire?
Speaker 1: But it did lead to some discipline. Seven rangers were
Speaker 1: disciplined for their part in Pat's death, most of them
Speaker 1: lost rancor were kicked back into the regular army. That's
Speaker 1: what happened to the saw gunner who killed Pat. But
Speaker 1: none of these investigations did much to help explain why
Speaker 1: four highly trained rangers and machine gun to comrade from
Speaker 1: twenty feet away. More troubling to the Tillman family, nothing
Speaker 1: yet released explained at all why Pat had been shipped
Speaker 1: home nude, his notebook and clothing burned. Why they hadn't
Speaker 1: been told that he died from friendly fire until a
Speaker 1: month later? Uh? And why he had been nominated for
Speaker 1: a Silver Star, presumably as a method of like covering
Speaker 1: up what had happened. None of this was explained, so
Speaker 1: eventually the Defense Departments Inspector General agreed to carry out
Speaker 1: a fourth investigation. According to Sports Illustrated Quote, the Army
Speaker 1: finally admitted it had violated its own regulations by waiting
Speaker 1: more than a month to inform the Tillmans that their
Speaker 1: son had diet as a result of suspected friendly fire,
Speaker 1: but only out of a desire to wait until it
Speaker 1: had gathered all the facts. As for the burning of
Speaker 1: the uniform and body armor that might have shown bullet evidence,
Speaker 1: the Army counter that it was done only because the
Speaker 1: bloodied gear was considered a potential bio hazard and hygiene
Speaker 1: issue that they might stir emotion, and because officers in
Speaker 1: the field had already determined that fratricide was a foregone conclusion,
Speaker 1: which is about as bullshit and answer as you can
Speaker 1: get for that. Um yeah, I mean they knew its
Speaker 1: fratricide within an hour, I'm willing when they went over
Speaker 1: there and found his dead body next to the guy
Speaker 1: that was alive and said, hey, you shot him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just gross. Um. And it took four investigations for
Speaker 1: the family to start to get an idea of how
Speaker 1: gross it was. And there's this guy, caused the Rich as,
Speaker 1: I he's not a huge part of this, but I
Speaker 1: want to keep drilling back on him because he's a
Speaker 1: real piece of shit. Because the general who conducted that
Speaker 1: fourth investigation actually questioned Cousler Rich about his shitty investigation,
Speaker 1: and during it he whined that the Timan family wouldn't
Speaker 1: stop asking questions about how their son had died because
Speaker 1: they were atheists, and he thought that, like, that's why
Speaker 1: they just they're just angry that they don't have any
Speaker 1: peace and so they're they're taking it out on the army.
Speaker 1: And not only did he say that angry that they're
Speaker 1: asking questions about how their son died because their godless seasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically what's what's exactly what happened. And he
Speaker 1: went on ESPN in two thousand six and continued to
Speaker 1: say this ship like so in an in an ESPN interview,
Speaker 1: This lieutenant colonel is like talking smack about the family
Speaker 1: of a dead soldier for wanting to know how their
Speaker 1: son had died. He said, Yeah, Well, if you were
Speaker 1: an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die,
Speaker 1: what is there to go to? Nothing? You're worm dirt.
Speaker 1: So for their son to die for nothing and now
Speaker 1: he is no more, that's pretty hard to get your
Speaker 1: head around that, you know. So, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine
Speaker 1: that would be pretty tough. Well, it's harder with guys
Speaker 1: like you, Kasler Rich. Yeah, it is harder for you know,
Speaker 1: any human garbage people like him like him to empathize
Speaker 1: with other people. Yeah, it's it's yeah. So Pat's mother,
Speaker 1: Mary is the real hero in all of this. She
Speaker 1: spent the next four years of her life investigating Pat's
Speaker 1: death and the cover up behind it. Uh Mary felt
Speaker 1: that the Bush administration had used her son as a
Speaker 1: recruiting tool when he was alive and a patriotic distraction
Speaker 1: once he died. She told Sports Illustrated, they attached themselves
Speaker 1: to his virtue and then threw him under the bus.
Speaker 1: They had no regard for him as a person. He'd
Speaker 1: hate to be used for a lie. I don't care
Speaker 1: if they put a bullet through my head in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night. I'm not stopping. So Mary kept
Speaker 1: up the pressure, gradually forcing the military to conduct three
Speaker 1: additional investigations for a total of seven. His death became
Speaker 1: about more than just one incident a friendly fire. It
Speaker 1: was tied to a pattern of behavior among Bush administration
Speaker 1: officials and army officials, a pattern of self serving deception,
Speaker 1: using the real tragedies experienced by individual soldiers in order
Speaker 1: to deflect criticism from the disastrous war that embarked on.
Speaker 1: This culminated in a series of congressional investigation starting in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Rumsfeldt took the stand during these investigations,
Speaker 1: and when he was asked when he'd learned how Toman
Speaker 1: died at Rumsfeld said, I don't recall when I was told,
Speaker 1: and I don't recall who told me. I know that
Speaker 1: I would not engage in a cover up, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because Rumsfeld had taken the time to write Pat
Speaker 1: Tilman a personal letter when he had enlisted, and the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense had kept regular tabs on Pat's career.
Speaker 1: Pat's mother, Mary, believes that heads would have rolled if Rumsfeld,
Speaker 1: a notorious micromanager, hadn't been in the loop about Pat's death,
Speaker 1: which seems likely, especially since his office was involved in
Speaker 1: all these email conversations about how to spend his life
Speaker 1: and his death. When he spoke to Congress, Pat's brother, Kevin,
Speaker 1: was notably less polite. He said, quote, the fact that
Speaker 1: the Army, in what appears to be others attempted to
Speaker 1: hijack his virtue and his legacy is simply horrific. The
Speaker 1: least this country can do for him in return is
Speaker 1: to uncover who is responsible for his death, who lied,
Speaker 1: and who covered it up, and who had instigated those
Speaker 1: lies and benefited from them, then ensure that justice is
Speaker 1: meeted out to the culpable. So Mary did eventually get
Speaker 1: something approaching the truth about what had happened to her son.
Speaker 1: It took like seven investigations and two congressional inquiries, but
Speaker 1: she got more or less most of the information she
Speaker 1: was looking for. The investigation revealed that one day before
Speaker 1: the Secretary of the Army had certified Pat silver star,
Speaker 1: General McCrystal had learned from Rumpsfeld's office that President Bush
Speaker 1: planned to talk about Pat Tillman at the White House
Speaker 1: Correspondence Association dinner. Crystal was scared that the President would
Speaker 1: say something about Pratt's bravery under enemy fire because he
Speaker 1: knew that the truth would eventually come out and make
Speaker 1: the President look like a liar, So he sent a
Speaker 1: memo to sent Com Commander General John Abizad, who sent
Speaker 1: the memo onward to the White House. Which means, of
Speaker 1: course that Rumsfeld and Bush and everybody else from pretty
Speaker 1: much the beginning knew that this was a friendly fire
Speaker 1: issue because Bush changed the line in his speech to
Speaker 1: leave out enemy fire. So yeah, it's gross. It's a
Speaker 1: gross story. It's gross all the way down. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: the second I heard you say, Rumsfeld and says that
Speaker 1: he didn't know. You know, Rumsfeld is widely known for
Speaker 1: being a trustworthy guy, so you know, I was gonna
Speaker 1: give him the benefit of the doubt. Um, But I honestly,
Speaker 1: up until now, I had no idea that Bush personally
Speaker 1: was involved. Oh yeah, I mean, we don't know what
Speaker 1: he himself did, but we know that his speech writers
Speaker 1: changed a speech he was supposed to give as a
Speaker 1: result of this. I mean, I guess he probably would
Speaker 1: have asked something about the famous guy who he had
Speaker 1: been planning to talk about why the line was suddenly different. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe not. Maybe he wasn't that curious a guy, but
Speaker 1: it seems really yeah, I mean, I don't know, Tillman
Speaker 1: was pretty famous. It seems pretty clear that at least
Speaker 1: Rumpsfeld knew what was going on, and Stanley McCrystal sure
Speaker 1: as hell knew what was happening. In July two eight,
Speaker 1: the Congressional Oversight Committee investigating Tillman's death issued its report.
Speaker 1: It noted that while the White House had been intensely
Speaker 1: interested in the first reports of Tillman's death after it
Speaker 1: became clear he died a friendly fire quote, the White
Speaker 1: House could not produce a single email or document relating
Speaker 1: to any discussion about Corporal Tillman's death by friendly fire.
Speaker 1: The intense interest that initially characterized the White Houses and
Speaker 1: Defense departments reaction to Corporal Tillman's death was followed by
Speaker 1: a stunning lack of curiosity about emerging reports of fratricide
Speaker 1: and an incomprehensible carelessness in incompetence in handling the sensitive information.
Speaker 1: So in the end, there was a tiny bit of
Speaker 1: justice done. The hammer wound up falling on a general
Speaker 1: named kin Singer, who had been part of the cover up,
Speaker 1: but not really a major part. Crack Hour suggests that
Speaker 1: this was because kin Singer was already retired at the
Speaker 1: time of the investigation. No one involved though that much more. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you picked the retired guy and you yell at him,
Speaker 1: and then it's fine, it's fine. And uh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to assume all these lieutenant colonels they didn't even get
Speaker 1: a letter of reprimand or anything. No, No, I think
Speaker 1: most of them were full bird colonels within a year
Speaker 1: or so of this all going down. Ah, yes, of
Speaker 1: course yea. And mccrystal's career definitely didn't get hurt by
Speaker 1: this at all because I end up being under his
Speaker 1: command Afghanistan. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He wound up
Speaker 1: being in charge of the entire war effort in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for a little bit, and then he stopped being in
Speaker 1: charge of the war in Afghanistan when a Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: reporter was there for both of those things. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what was that like when the fucking story came out
Speaker 1: that he was talking smack about Barack Obama I thought, personally,
Speaker 1: I thought it was hilarious. Yeah, not not that he
Speaker 1: was shipped talking the president as a as you know,
Speaker 1: a field grade officer, but how much he must have
Speaker 1: thought of himself to think he could get away with that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was basically attacking the entire civilian leadership back
Speaker 1: in Washington in front of a reporter for Rolling Stone, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like he was trying to do a MacArthur in Korea.
Speaker 1: But like Obama slapped his dick and fired him, and
Speaker 1: his leadership of the war in general is fucking terrible.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of glad to see him go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's he's about as close as we get in
Speaker 1: this story to an individual who got some sort of justice.
Speaker 1: So that's good. Nobody winds up looking good about this.
Speaker 1: Like even like John McCain, when he found out that
Speaker 1: the death had come from friendly fire, briefly took an
Speaker 1: interest in like trying to figure out what had actually happened.
Speaker 1: But Mary Tillman says that he kind of stopped talking
Speaker 1: to him after he ran for president in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: because you know, that would have been bad for his
Speaker 1: presidential runs. So like the the story of Pat Tillman,
Speaker 1: from beginning to end, is a story of like a
Speaker 1: nice guy trying to do the right thing and a
Speaker 1: bunch of people trying to co opt his legacy in
Speaker 1: whatever way they can and then running away as soon
Speaker 1: as you know any threat to their own careers is posed.
Speaker 1: It's just like so much grossness and cowardice in this
Speaker 1: little story. I had no idea. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the thing that pissed me off the most about
Speaker 1: the whole thing when he became a poster boy recently. Again, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to continue to see that if
Speaker 1: the NFL continues to be at like the center of
Speaker 1: a big cultural issue in this country. Is like people
Speaker 1: bringing up Pat Tillman. So the next time you see that,
Speaker 1: remember Pat Tillman wasn't a big fan of the Army,
Speaker 1: hated George Bush, thought the War on Terror was mostly bullshit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a gross story. But the next time
Speaker 1: you see someone you know trying to bring Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: up a sort of an argument against why football players
Speaker 1: shouldn't kneel whenever the hell they want to, um, just
Speaker 1: slap him in the face. But with this podcast and
Speaker 1: not your hand because yeah, it's it's kind of disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's not even just the NFL, it's like literally anything,
Speaker 1: Like Kaepernick hasn't been in the NFL in years, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he still gets trotted out because apparently soldiers have
Speaker 1: a monopoly and what sacrifices. Yeah, and you can't possibly
Speaker 1: sacrifice if you're not dead, Yeah, and you can't. Like
Speaker 1: it's this. I think the thing that frustrates me most
Speaker 1: about the Tilman story is just like the lack of
Speaker 1: respect of like, Okay, this guy had his own beliefs
Speaker 1: and own reasons for doing things, and like we can't
Speaker 1: even let him be remembered the way he would want
Speaker 1: to be remembered or for the things he actually believed.
Speaker 1: We're going to turn him into a political prop whenever
Speaker 1: we need a political prop, because everybody remembers his name
Speaker 1: and his g I Joe phase. It's it's frustrating, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we talk more about Pat Tilman, and obviously now
Speaker 1: we're guilty of that because we're talking about Pat Tillman. Um,
Speaker 1: we talk more about Kaepernick kneeling for a fucking magical
Speaker 1: song that makes the freedom come. But like, we talk
Speaker 1: more about this ship than we do like the fact
Speaker 1: that we're still fighting the war in Afghanistan. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: had this conversation more than is seventeen years too long
Speaker 1: to be at war? Which maybe maybe find out more
Speaker 1: next year when we have our first child younger than
Speaker 1: the war he's fighting in, which that's going to be
Speaker 1: an exciting moment for this whole country. List now, because
Speaker 1: I mean you can list at seventeen with your parents signature.
Speaker 1: I did. Well, if you're seventeen right now, go and
Speaker 1: list and get yourself to Afghanistan and uh send me
Speaker 1: a message when you are officially in a war that
Speaker 1: you're younger then and we'll I think all those guys
Speaker 1: who who wanted to deploy so that and and fight
Speaker 1: the enemy away from home so his kids didn't have
Speaker 1: to fight them really feels like an asshole. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that Onion article like young man like marches
Speaker 1: same pass that his like dad marched in two thousand
Speaker 1: six or something like yeah, oh man, Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: follow the army's social media accounts? Oh no, no, not
Speaker 1: since they posted those gross pictures of the eight in
Speaker 1: Wardog firing a bunch of stuff, and we're like they
Speaker 1: recently accidentally onion themselves, like they posted this picture of
Speaker 1: like father and son in Afghanistan like it was a
Speaker 1: good thing. Oh no, that's really strategy. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: also like it's such a bad idea to let that
Speaker 1: happen because it's just a bad story waiting to happen,
Speaker 1: like what happened with Kevin and Pat where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys are brothers, will let him serve in the
Speaker 1: same unit, and it's like, well, that's not going to
Speaker 1: go well. Well, the whole keeping a country at war
Speaker 1: for it almost two decades, I mean, it's doing irreferable
Speaker 1: damage to our society as well, and our attitude towards
Speaker 1: like it's perfect, Like nobody's processing like maybe we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in a war that is generational. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a conversation you would think we'd start having at
Speaker 1: some point, um, but I don't think we are going
Speaker 1: to because yeah, if we have the conversation, we hate
Speaker 1: the troops. And if we have the conversation, then like
Speaker 1: what else are we going to spend that money on healthcare?
Speaker 1: Of course not? Yeah, no, no, have you tried picking
Speaker 1: yourself up by your bootstraps? There alright, Joe, that's all
Speaker 1: I got for us for today. You want to plug
Speaker 1: some plug doubles, Yeah, if you want to hear about
Speaker 1: a significantly less fucked up tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called The Hooligans of Kandahar, and
Speaker 1: it's available wherever you get your books. On my podcast
Speaker 1: lines Lent by Donkeys podcast or we talk about things
Speaker 1: kind of like this and try to get some humor
Speaker 1: out of the the fucked up aspects of military history.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I right, okay. You can find us on the internet
Speaker 1: at behind the Bastards dot com or we'll have all
Speaker 1: the sources and images for this episode. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and uh Instagram at at Bastards pod
Speaker 1: and you can find shirts that we make that you
Speaker 1: can wear on ONTI public Behind the Bastards buy our shirts.
Speaker 1: We don't give Joe any money. If you buy a shirt,
Speaker 1: you can buy Joe's book and then a couple of shirts,
Speaker 1: and you can dress the book up in a shirt
Speaker 1: and you can have a good old fashioned shirt book.
Speaker 1: Just don't burn the shirt, yeah, don't burn don't burn
Speaker 1: the shirts unless it's well, I mean, you can burn
Speaker 1: your own shirts. Unless it's evidence, we should probably get
Speaker 1: rid of it. Yeah, yes, always get rid of evidence.
Speaker 1: That's been our motto here from the start. Joe, thank
Speaker 1: you for being on today. It was green great talking
Speaker 1: to you and yeah, that's it for us today. I
Speaker 1: love about h