Pat Tillman was the NFL football player who joined the Army Rangers and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Even though the truth was known within days, his family wasn't told until five weeks later (apparently to use his death for positive PR and to protect “the careers of the senior officers involved”). Afterwards, from 2004 – 2011, there was a bi-partisan whitewash of those officers responsible for the cover-up of Tillman's friendly fire death by the Department of Defense,.
two Presidential Administrations & Congress.
Prologue: March 23, 2017
On March 21, 2017, I received an email from Pete Blaber thanking me “for all the work you have done on the Tillman investigation” [see 2006 – 2014 “The Feral Firefighter” blog; if interested, begin with “Something to Die For”]. He asked for my help in getting “the transcripts of the interviews conducted by BG Jones with the members of serial 2.” I knew about Blaber from previously reading his first book “The Men, The Mission, and Me” (and Sean Naylor's book “Not a Good Day to Die”).
A week later, I replied and suggested he contact Pat's mother “to get access to Mary’s copy of Jone’s 15-6 report (with the redacted names filled in).” I forwarded Blaber's email to her and told her “he was an iconoclast with a sense of integrity,” who “enjoyed a reputation as an officer who protected his men by displaying unswerving loyalty down the chain of command,” and that I thought he “might provide more clarity about Pat’s fratricide.” A few days later, Mary replied, “I will email Mr. 'Blaber' at the address you gave me.” On April 8th, she emailed: “I just received a text from Mr. Blaber.” On April 16th, I replied that I was “glad to hear you had a good meeting” and admitted “I was trying to be a bit of a matchmaker!”
Afterwards, six years passed until we next spoke in April 2023, when Mary mentioned that Blaber's book would soon be published.
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“Common Sense Leadership Matters – Toxic Leadership Destroys”
Pete Blaber wrote his book to provide “a real-world case study of what happened to Pat Tillman and his Ranger platoon in Afghanistan.” When they first talked, Mary Tillman told him “she still didn't know what actually happened to her son during the firefight that killed him. Specifically, she didn't know whether Pat was killed by accident or on purpose. She had been lied to so many time by the people involved that she didn't know who or what to believe.” Blaber decided to answer Mary's question and find out “What really happened, and what can we … learn from it.”
In Chapter 1, “Walking in the Woods Under a Healthy Leadership Climate,” Blaber tells the story of how, as a young LT with the 2nd Ranger BN in the late '80s, he learned what common sense leadership is during a long, cold, rainy, night-time “dronefest” at Fort Lewis. He explains what a healthy leadership climate looks like, and how to use common sense leadership to “create a healthy and thriving leadership climate.”
In Part II, “What Happened to Pat Tillman & his Platoon in Afghanistan,” Blaber explains how the Tillman fratricide was “a cautionary example of what can happen to an organization and its people when common sense leadership is absent and toxic leadership fills the void.”
In April 2003, while in Iraq, several NCOs told Blaber about the “senseless” toxic leadership climate in the 2nd Ranger BN. When he told the Ranger Regiment CO about his concerns, Nixon basically told him to “get lost.” Fourteen years later, in 2017, Blaber discovered that, while in Iraq in 2003, he had unknowingly crossed paths with Tillman and that the same toxic Ranger chain of command in Iraq was “also in place in Afghanistan at the time of Pat's death in April 2004.”
“How a Toxic Leadership Climate Leads the Platoon into Chaos”
In Chapter 6, Blaber describes how Pat Tillman's death “didn't just happen due to the fog of war … it emerged over time from the sum total of senseless choices made by the [2nd Ranger BN senior] chain of command and the toxic leadership climate.” The BN S-3 Major Hodne ordered Pat's platoon to drag a disabled humvee through mountainous terrain. Then, despite the strong objections of the Platoon leader, Hodne ordered the PL to split his platoon to get “boots on the ground by dusk” for no reason other to check off a box.
“The Firefight”
In Chapter 8, Blaber presents a “detailed chronology, reconstruction, and case study of what happened” based on “over 3,500 pages of statements, findings, videos, and maps” (much of this same information was previously used by Stan Goff, Mike Fish, Mary Tillman, and Jon Krakauer to write their own accounts). In addition, Blaber conducted “over one hundred interviews with 26 members of the 2nd RGR BN”, including soldiers whom had never been previously interviewed.
Blaber had to spend a LOT of time to “compare, contrast, and cross-reference to create a coherent narrative that makes sense of what happened.” Back in 2008, I read/skimmed through the four investigations. However, my focus was not on the firefight, but on those officers responsible for the cover-up of the friendly fire. Over the past week, I've re-read previous accounts and a few 15-6 interview transcripts. I believe the broad strokes of Blaber's narrative are generally correct. But, I'm not convinced his conclusions are correct on several details about the firefight. However, Blaber doesn't pretend to “claim flawless exactitude” and I think ALL previous accounts have incorrect details.
One weakness of the friendly fire narrative is that it sometimes includes direct witness quotes that, in my opinion, contain both accurate and inaccurate facts mixed together (or quotes placed out of context). During my own investigation into the 1955 Emmett Till killing, I found it's often difficult to figure out “The Truth” when investigators & witnesses lie or slant the truth, or are truthful (but mistaken, stressed, or confused).
So, besides relying on witnesses, I've found looking at “the ground truth” helps to figure out what was physically possible. Blaber's book includes photos & maps of the firefight scene (also a video & more photos on his website) that help the reader make sense of what happened. For example, the Ranger private next to Tillman told Blaber, “I had a lot of bitterness … because I could not reconcile how they could not have seen us … When I saw the pictures, it reinforced what they were saying from the beginning. I wish they would have let us see those pictures a long time ago; it would have helped with closure” (Google Map was also quite useful: 33.18104376255974, 69.52384778911922).
“To Survive Follow the Delphic Maxim 'Know Thyself'”
Blaber explains several factors that made “identification of friend or foe an ongoing challenge ...” including “tunnel vision” … “location assumptions” …“low light conditions, camouflage, temporary hearing loss, and stress” … “the Rangers in the lead Humvee … kept shooting because their stressed-out, cortically-inhibited brains couldn't make sense of what was going on around them.” During my eight years ('83 – '91) as a LRRP Ranger (Co “F” 425th Inf. MI ARNG) and my following thirty year firefighter career, I've been in stressful situations that impaired my brain functioning when things got very dicey.
In Chapter 7, “Five Facts About Emotional Stress and How to Counter It,” Blaber explains “three time-tested … techniques that anyone can use in survival situation to instantly engage their neocortex and vanquish anger, fear, and panic: Breathe deep and count. ... Say what you're thinking and feeling out loud … focusing our senses on the sights, sounds and physical sensations going on around us in the here and now.” Then, “our neocortex engages, our senses, sharpen, and we can make better decisions.”
That's exactly what an experienced Fire officer does when making a on-scene radio report. The best officers talk “in a cool, calm and collected manner” such that you can't tell by the tone of their voice they've arrived at a working structure fire.
Another factor that diminished “the platoon's overall ability to adapt to … chaos” was the order to split into two Serials. Stan Goff wrote that “the 'organic' structure of the platoon … [was] broken up” and “task organized” around weapons systems … leaving squad leaders and even team leaders in charge of people with whom they hadn’t normally worked.”*1 For example, the Lead Humvee Machine Gunner said, “... he wasn't our regular squad leader. … we never conducted vehicle live-fire training together, so he probably didn't know what machine gun teams were supposed to do in a moving firefight or what commands he was supposed to use to control us.”
New Information About Tillman Firefight & Key Decisions:
Blaber's interviews uncovered “information about the actual firefight that was not captured in any of the four official investigations.” For example, he learned that Serial 1 narrowly avoided a head-on collision with the Ranger BN Recon Platoon, it appears the CFT was not monitoring the BN blue force trackers (like air traffic controllers not watching their radar screens), and that soldiers in the second humvee coming out of the canyon dismounted and “took shots” at the spur (I believe this might explain some otherwise puzzling witness statements).
In addition, a CFT staff officer confirmed that “the operations officer [Hodne] stood up … slapped his hands on the desk, and told the company commander, “Tell your platoon to split.” Hodne said otherwise under oath during the Army investigations.
And, just a few days after the firefight [NLT Apr 25th], a senior staff officer was “talking with the [JSOC] commander [Gen. McChrystal]” when his boss the CENTCOM commander [Gen. Abizaid] called. McChrystal told him “Sir, you need to know that we killed him; it was fratricide, and we need to get in front of the message.” Yet, during Abizaid's 2007 Congressional testimony, he claimed he wasn't informed of “potential fratricide” until he received McChrystal's P4 message “sometime in May”. When McChrystal was later asked, "What about Pat Tillman?" McChrystal replied, “Friendly fire happens … As soon as we found out, that’s what we said” (March 26, 2012 Widener University). In reality, Pat's family was told 5 weeks later.
“The Aftermath” – “Never Shall I Fail My Comrades”:
Blaber wrote, “The purpose of the pages that follow is not to judge, adjudicate or assign blame. The purpose is to learn from what happened … and prevent similar situations like this one from ever happening again.” However, I don't mind naming, blaming, and trying to shame hypocritical Generals & Politicians! From 2008 to 2014, in“The Feral Firefighter” blog, I wrote about 20 long PDF posts (free to download off Scribd) that documented “The [Untold] Tillman Story” about the bi-partisan (Bush & Obama administrations, Department of Defense, & both house of Congress) whitewash of those officers responsible for the cover-up of Pat's friendly-fire death.
In Chapter 9, “The Aftermath,” Blaber wrote that “there were some differences of opinion with regards to the disciplining of the Rangers in the lead Humvee; however, there was unanimous agreement that the platoon leader was scapegoated in order to protect the chain of command above him.” In contrast, “The Operations officer/S-3 [Major Hodne] … became a 3-star general.” BN CO Bailey, COL Nixon, and BG McChrystal “who were ultimately responsible for all decisions made leading up to the firefight as well as the adjudication of the four investigations conducted afterwards were all promoted [to 2-star, 1-star, and 4-star].”
I guess the Ranger Creed doesn't really matter to hypocritical Generals and their field-grade bootlickers! (see pp. 196-197 of “Something to Die For” and pp. 24, 188-201 of “Never Shall I Fail My Comrades” at “The Feral Firefighter” blog).
Conclusion: “Blame the Chain”
Blaber concluded that the four investigations and his own interviews revealed that “Pat Tillman's death was the result of a tragic friendly fire accident” that “emerged over time from the sum total of senseless choices made by the chain of command and the toxic leadership choices those choices created.” … “Blaming the platoon for what happened is like blaming someone for falling down after their legs were chained together. Blame the chain. The senseless orders, directives and lack of support by the chain [of command] ...” “the common enemy of friendly fire and toxic leadership is common sense. Common Sense Leadership Matters. Toxic Leadership Destroys.”
Finally, Blaber makes eight recommendations to “prevent similar situations like this one from ever happening again.” His 5th Recommendation is to change the way we think about toxic leaders and that the “military must make eradicating toxic leaderhip from its ranks a tangible priority...” But, this is is easier said than done! As Blaber noted, the “fact that the toxic leader is almost always a key contributor to the suffering subordinate's end-of-year rating/review makes speaking up about their toxicity a potentially career ending goal.” Why would toxic senior officers want to change the promotional system that has benefited them? (I read books back in the 1970's about reforming the promotional system, and later ones by Anthony Herbert & David Hackworth).
Perhaps the best chance of implementing a “healthy leadership climate” is from the bottom-up? Over my 30 years firefighter career, we endured several toxic Fire Chiefs, but most firehouse crews displayed the patterns of a healthy leadership climate (pp. 36-37) with little tolerance for nonsense (and tried to work around nonsensical edicts from above).
Overall, I highly recommend reading Pete Blaber's new book“Common Sense Leadership Matters” (as well as Blabers' previous two books, which also offer valuable leadership lessons). If you want to learn more about the Tillman story, I'd suggest reading Mary Tillman's “Boots on the Ground by Dusk,” Jon Krakauer's “Where Men Win Glory” (updated edition; flawed bio but decent narrative of friendly fire and aftermath), “The Feral Firefighter” blog post “Something to Die For” (about "The [Untold] Tillman Story"), and/or watching the documentary “The Tillman Story.”
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Epilogue: July 01, 2023
Six years ago (March 31 2017), I replied to Pete Blaber's email and asked “that you do right by the Tillman family in your re-examination of his death and in … your forthcoming book.” I wrote that Pat's mother “has voiced nagging doubts about foul play (I think she still can’t comprehend that the brass covered up his fratricide just to avoid bad press and cover their ***). ... I think [your book is] worth pursuing if it might provide more clarity to Mary about the nature of Pat’s death and perhaps give her more piece of mind.”
With his new book, I think Pete Blaber has done right by the the Tillman family. I'm hopeful that his investigation might at least persuade Mary Tillman that her son's death was due to a “friendly fire accident.” In addition, I hope his book provides her with a greater understanding of what actually happened that day and the factors that made friend or foe ID difficult that day. Thanks, Pete, for putting in the work to investigate and write this book.
Note: I plan to write more about the findings from this book later.
*1: Stan Goff quote from his 2006“The Tillman Files” #4, personal copy; I couldn't find it on the Internet; others in series at https://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/index.html#tillman Also, Goff posted three 2007 “Counterpunch” Tillman articles. Goff was the military consultant (2nd RGR BN, Delta, SF) for the Tillman family and appeared in “The Tillman Story” DVD.
