General Stanley McChrystal Continues to Elude Accountability for Covering Up the Fratricide of Pat Tillman
By: Jon Krakauer
Tags: Pat Tillman, Fratricide, Afghanistan, Scandal

General Stanley McChrystal Continues to Elude Accountability for Covering Up the Fratricide of Pat Tillman Jon Krakauer Sep 5·13 min read

In 2009, when President Barack Obama nominated Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal was summoned to the U.S. Senate to be grilled by the Armed Services Committee. Although he was regarded as an innovative and uncommonly effective leader, McChrystal was expected to face tough questions about two incidents that had occurred on his watch as head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC): the torture of detainees in 2003 at the secret facility in Iraq known as Camp Nama, and his prominent role in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan a year later. During the hearing, as it turned out, no Senator challenged McChrystal’s testimony or probed very deeply into either of these matters, and the Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination.

Following his appointment (which made him a four-star general), McChrystal was the subject of numerous profiles in the news media, most of them adulatory. In an October 5 Newsweek article, Evan Thomas referred to the general as a “Zen warrior… with a disarming, low-key style, free of the bombast and sense of entitlement that can come with four stars…. He has great political skills; he couldn’t have risen to his current position without them. But he definitely does not see himself as the sort of military man who would compromise his principles to do the politically convenient thing.”

A close examination of the Tillman scandal, however, reveals that immediately after Tillman’s death, McChrystal knowingly submitted a package of fraudulent documents to the Secretary of the Army in order to conceal the fact that Tillman was killed by friendly fire — a revelation that would have been damaging to the Bush administration during the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.

Pat (left) and Kevin Tillman in 2003. Photo credit Donald Lee/The Weinstein Co.

Tillman, an Army Ranger, was accidentally gunned down by fellow Rangers on the evening of April 22, 2004. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bailey, the commander of the Second Ranger Battalion, visited the site of the calamity the following morning and then called his boss, Colonel James Nixon, to notify him that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire. “There was no doubt about it,” Bailey emphasized.

Before the day was out, Nixon notified the highest ranking generals in his chain of command — General John Abizaid, Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger Jr., and McChrystal — that Tillman’s death was a fratricide. According to Army regulations, this information should have been immediately shared with the Tillman family. Instead, the Army embarked on a lengthy, elaborate campaign to conceal the truth and persuade both the family and the public that Tillman was killed by enemy fire. Soldiers were ordered to lie about the cause of death. His uniform, body armor, and other key pieces of forensic evidence were burned.