Executive Privlage to conceal the truth about Pat Tillman's Death

Panel Demands Records on Tillman's Death
House Committee Accuses Administration of Withholding Key Documents on Tillman Death

You can just see President Bush asking Vice President Cheney what he should do about this Tillman problem. Cheney smiles and rubs his hands together :" Just say no. Executive privilege.

President Bush:: Heh, Heh, good idea Dick.

And is just what they have done.

Withholding key documents -Why?

Two influential lawmakers investigating how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death and how those details were disclosed accused the White House and Pentagon on Friday of withholding key documents and renewed their demand for the material.

The White House and Defense Department have turned over nearly 10,000 pages of papers mostly press clippings but the White House cited "executive branch confidentiality interests" in refusing to provide other documents.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va., the committee's top-ranking Republican, said Friday the documents were inadequate. They insisted that the Defense Department turn over the additional material by July 25 and asked that the White House do likewise.

Killed April 22, 2004, by friendly (?) fire in Afghanistan.


Tillman, a San Jose native, turned down a lucrative contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to join the Army following the Sept. 11 attacks. He was killed April 22, 2004, by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

Public Lied to at first

Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed he was killed by enemy fire.

Tillman's family and others have said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. The committee said Friday it had scheduled a second hearing on Tillman's death for Aug. 1, this time to probe what senior Pentagon officials knew and when.

Rumsfeld and Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among those the committee invited Friday to appear.

The White House has turned over nearly 1,100 pages of documents and the Defense Department nearly 8,500 pages since the committee requested information from them in April, part of an inquiry into why Tillman's family and the public were misled.

"The document production from the White House sheds virtually no light on these matters," Waxman and Davis wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding, part of a renewed request for additional papers.

because they implicate executive branch

The committee made public a letter last month in which Fielding said the White House was holding back certain papers "because they implicate executive branch confidentiality interests." He added the White House had blacked out portions of "purely internal e-mails between White House personnel."

The White House's argument for withholding some papers is the same one it used last month as it rejected congressional subpoenas for documents in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Executive "confidentiality" is a lesser claim than "executive privilege" more a polite way of declining than a firm refusal and thus still leaves room for negotiation, congressional staffers involved in the matter said.

Fielding added the White House had blacked out portions of "purely internal e-mails between White House personnel."

Waxman and Davis fired back that "these are not appropriate reasons for withholding the documents from the committee." And they charged that the White House had simply held other papers back.

In particular, they expressed doubt that the two documents they'd received on communications between the White House and Pentagon on Tillman's death were the only ones of their kind. One was simply a packet of newspaper clippings.

"Corporal Tillman's death was a major national story," they wrote. "It is not plausible that there were no communications between the Defense Department and the White House about Corporal Tillman's death."

"The committee was fully aware that certain documents were withheld as our letter to them made clear last month along with our offer to discuss possible accommodation that meets the committee's interests while respecting separation of powers principles," Blair Jones, a White House spokesman, said Friday evening. "We continue to offer an opportunity for the committee to move forward in a spirit of accommodation, rather than conflict."

Waxman and Davis complained to Defense Secretary Robert Gates of a "failure to provide a complete production to the committee." For instance, the committee received no documentation on how Rumsfeld learned of Tillman's death.

They said the Pentagon had not produced any papers from, among others, the offices of Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command.

A week after Tillman died, a top general sent a memo to Abizaid warning that it was "highly possible" that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. The memo made clear that the information should be conveyed to the president. The White House said there is no indication that Bush received the warning.

Two days later, the president mentioned Tillman in a speech to the White House correspondents dinner, but he made no reference to how Tillman had died.

A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Separately, Waxman asked the Republican National Committee for copies of e-mail communications that involved Tillman and White House officials. That request was an outgrowth of the oversight committee's finding last month that 88 White House officials had e-mail accounts with the RNC, and that the administration may have committed extensive violations of a law requiring that certain records be preserved.

Chairman Waxman responds

Today Chairman Waxman and Ranking Minority Member Davis sent a letter to the White House objecting to the withholding of documents related to the death of U.S. Army Corporal Patrick Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. As a result of deficient responses from both the White House and Defense Department, the Committee also announced an August 1 hearing to examine what senior Defense Department officials knew about Corporal Tillman’s death.

Following the Committee’s April 24, 2007, hearing on the Tillman fratricide, the Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President” relating to Corporal Tillman’s death. The White House Counsel’s office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests” and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings. The response of the Defense Department to the Committee’s inquiry was also deficient.

The next date in the battle with the White House : July 25, 2007

In response to the deficiencies in the White House and Defense Department productions, Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Davis today sent letters to White House Counsel Fred Fielding and Defense Secretary Robert Gates requesting complete document production by July 25, 2007.

Oh, and how about copies of emails wrongly controlled by the Republican National Committee?

Chairman Waxman also wrote the Republican National Committee to request communications about Corporal Tillman’s death by White House officials using e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC.

In addition, the Oversight Committee announced that a hearing will be held on Wednesday, August 1, 2007, to investigate what senior officials at the Defense Department knew about Corporal Tillman’s death.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Other notes about Pat Tillman


Katie Couric's Notebook: Pat Tillman



Pat's brother gives evidence under oath of how they lied when his brother died.







When Bruce Snyder, Pat Tillman’s football coach at Arizona State University, told Pat he planned to redshirt him as a freshman—extending his eligibility for a year but also necessitating an additional year in college—Tillman said, "You can do whatever you want with me, Coach, but in four years, I’m gone. I’ve got things to do with my life."

And Tillman wasn’t kidding. Through sheer drive and determination, he turned an overachieving college career into a long shot at NFL stardom, becoming a late-round pick by the hometown Cardinals in the 1998 draft. Not only did the rookie make it through his first training camp, he eventually earned a starting role and, over time, became one of the league’s top players at his position.

But Tillman’s will to succeed was not confined to the football field. Deeply affected by the horrific events of September 11, 2001, he turned down a $3.6 million contract offer from the Cardinals, quit the NFL and, with his brother Kevin, enlisted in the army for a nation at war. Not just any army unit, either, but the hardcore, hard-as-nails Rangers, training for dangerous special-ops combat that would eventually put him in harm’s way in the sands of Iraq and, later, in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan.

Real heroes never think of themselves as heroes. They see themselves as ordinary people performing acts any other right-minded person would do if in their shoes. Save the baby from the burning house. Jump into the foxhole and sprawl across the bodies of your buddies, shielding them from the grenade’s flying shrapnel. Bust down the cockpit door of your hijacked jetliner and dive the plane into the ground before it can crash into the U.S. Capitol. True heroes are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

Pat Tillman was just such an American hero, killed in action on April 22, 2004. I’ve Got Things to Do with My Life is the inspirational story of this exceptionally heroic life of victory and valor.

The Rise and Fall of Chalabi: Bush's Mr. Wrong - Newsweek: World News - MSNBC.com

 

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Chalabi is an expert manipulator who knows how to work the press as well as congressmen, lobbyists and think-tankers. He began coming up with Iraqi defectors who told reporters stories of Saddam's allying with terrorists and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. After lurid stories appeared in the press (and softened up bureaucratic skepticism in the government), Chalabi would pass on the defectors to American intelligence agencies. Thus, in December 2001, Chalabi produced a defector who told The New York Times that he had seen biological- and nuclear-weapons labs hidden around Baghdad, including one underneath a hospital. The defector later became a source for the Defense Intelligence Agency. To Vanity Fair, Chalabi peddled another defector, a supposed former general in the Iraqi secret police, who told of terrorists-in-training practicing to hijack passenger aircraft at a secret base near Baghdad. (The defector, Abu Zeinab, was dismissed by the CIA as a "bullsh----er," according to an intelligence source; newly coached by the INC, he went back to the CIA and was again rejected.)
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When American spooks proved resistant, Chalabi cozied up to their counterparts in foreign intelligence services. To the Germans, Chalabi provided a source code named "Curveball" (appropriately, as it turned out), who told of Saddam's building mobile bioweapons labs. Another defector sent to the DIA by Chalabi supported Curveball's tale. DIA labeled this defector a "fabricator" and attached a warning notice to his report, but the notice was so highly restricted that other intelligence officials never saw it. Both defectors' reports—apparently pure fiction—worked their way into official pronouncements and became part of the Bush administration's building case for war. Months later, when Colin Powell was feeling burned for having dramatically presented "facts" to the United Nations Security Council that turned out to be shaky at best, the secretary of State privately, but bitterly, blamed Chalabi.

Powell also faults the neocons in the Bush administration who swallowed Chalabi's phony stories and pushed them into speeches by the president and vice president. With his clever sense for bureaucratic gamesmanship, Chalabi fed the neocons' hunger for raw intelligence. If the CIA and other spy services weren't going to come up with the goods on Saddam, then Chalabi would. He found a receptive audience in the office of the vice president and at the Pentagon. I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the veep's chief of staff, and Wolfowitz were eagerly looking for links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. With his media friends, Chalabi hyped a story, often cited by the neocons, about a secret meeting in Prague between Muhammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence officer. (After months of investigation, the CIA and FBI determined that the meeting had never taken place.)


Much of Chalabi's dubious intelligence was funneled to the DIA through top Pentagon civilians. Under Secretary Feith himself signed a long and detailed summary of the intelligence linking Saddam to terrorists and WMD. The Feith memo, stamped secret, submitted to Congress and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine last summer, reads like a conspiracy theorist's greatest hits. Interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK, Feith was a little defensive about his relationship with Chalabi. "The press stories would have him as my brother. I met him a few times. He was very smart, very articulate," Feith said. Feith allowed he has always been drawn to the stories of exiles who come back to save their countries. But he rejected the idea that he had been Chalabi's tool or dupe.

Over at the State Department and CIA, career bureaucrats viewed Chalabi with a jaundiced eye. State Department auditors found that Chalabi had not always kept the most meticulous records of the funds flowing into the Iraqi National Congress. Diplomats suspected Chalabi was using taxpayers' money to fund his own war-propaganda campaign, which was barred by law. In the summer of 2002, the State Department moved to cut off Chalabi's funding, but he was rescued by his friends at the Pentagon. That fall the Defense Department began picking up the check using secret intelligence funds. All told, Chalabi's INC has been paid about $33 million by State and some $6 million by the DIA. (Not all of Chalabi's intelligence operation was dodgy; last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told Congress that some of the information turned over by the INC had saved the lives of American soldiers.)

With his eye on Saddam's soon-to-be-empty throne, Chalabi took an active interest in planning for postwar Iraq. In retrospect, his involvement was unfortunate. At best, it contributed to government paralysis and fed a standoff between the ever-feuding State and Defense departments. Chalabi's closest ally, Richard Perle, vigorously denied to NEWSWEEK that the neocons wanted to "install" Chalabi as the new head of Iraq. "No one installed by the United States could survive," said Perle. But the neocons did want to help train and equip Iraqi exiles loyal to Chalabi who could be airlifted into Iraq and take over as a security force (or as Chalabi's private army, depending on your point of view).

The State Department stood against this plan. A team of diplomats and Arab experts worked up a 15-volume Future of Iraq project that Defense Department officials dismissed as overly academic and "nonoperational." At Feith's office in the Pentagon, charged with postwar reconstruction, the Future of Iraq documents were consigned to the dustbin. When various Iraqi-exile groups met outside London in the fall of 2002 to try to compromise on a post-Saddam government, the outcome was the mild anarchy of dueling press conferences to announce vague and uncertain plans.

Doomed by bureaucratic infighting and a notable lack of enthusiasm among the community of potential freedom fighters, the plan to build an Iraqi-exile force fizzled. Something like 100 Iraqi men showed up to be trained as soldiers at a camp in Hungary. Nonetheless, Chalabi and his INC entourage were airlifted into southern Iraq by the Pentagon shortly after the American invasion in April 2003.

As soon as Saddam's statue was toppled, Chalabi moved into Baghdad to become, in effect, the new nation's first warlord. He set up office in the Baghdad Hunting Club, a comfortable, vaguely colonial-sounding establishment in a posh neighborhood, and then moved his operation into an edifice with outlandish pagoda-style turrets and vast corridors, known as "the Chinese House." Through associates, he took over the old Finance Ministry and later his clan set up one-stop shopping for foreign companies that wanted to do business in the new Iraq.

Chalabi was not universally endorsed in the upper echelons of the Bush administration. True, when President Bush went to the United Nations last September to proclaim a free Iraq, the man sitting in Iraq's seat at the General Assembly was Ahmad Chalabi. But when Chalabi was first flown into Iraq by the Defense Department, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice was visibly startled when reporters gave her the news that Chalabi was on the ground and had rounded up a 700-man local army. Even Rumsfeld was less than a totally committed Chalabi partisan. "Why do people keep saying that Chalabi is my candidate?" Rumsfeld would wonder aloud at meetings of the Defense Advisory Board, according to Perle, who was a member. But a quick and sure Chalabi takeover offered Rumsfeld the one thing above all he wanted: a fast way to get American troops out of Iraq. No fan of "nation-building," Rumsfeld wanted a new Iraqi government that could take over and run the place.