McChrystal & Pelosi - What does torture say about us; and what does what we say about torture say about us?

May 14, 2009

a ramble

Yesterday, I was loading salvaged warehouse shelf uprights onto a truck at Cary Towne Center, a mall in Cary, North Carolina. Across the road in the parking lot, I scanned the bumper stickers on a silver Toyota RAV4 L, license plate XZF-7063 (North Carolina). A Ranger Tab. A Combat Infantryman's Badge (CIB). Military parachutist wings.

This told me that the owner of the car was a male in the Army infantry, that he was in a theater of combat as an infantryman, that he had successfully completed the Airborne Course in Fort Benning, Georgia, and another sticker I later discovered on the front window indicated that he had served with the 82nd Airborne Division, an airborne infantry division based in Fort Bragg, NC.

Below the 201-file, I see a smaller, white sticker with a whole phrase. I walk over to the car to read it.

"You never forget your first KILL."

Like that, with the word "kill" in all-cap.

Finally, down near the Toyota icon on the hatchback, I see a fish with JESUS printed inside it.

That same morning, my project manager asked me if I had ever heard of General Stanley McChrystal. I had, I told him -- in conjunction with the investigation into the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman in 2004... why did he ask? Because, Joel (my boss) told me, he's being nominated to be the overall commander for Afghanistan.

So I had been mulling over this thing, and then I had talked on the phone with "Dannie" Tillman, Pat Tillman's mom, who was incensed that this guy had been caught red-handed in the cover-up of thee circumstances of her son's death, and then on top of it all I see this array of macho military-cultural bumper stickers alongside the name of Jesus (a gender-subversive pacifist), and about a million alarm bells went off at once.

One can't be sure where to start in unpacking what people need to know about this guy -- Stanley McChrystal, the military-culture that is refracted in his personhood, and the peculiar institutional ecology of that military.

I don't know Stanley McChrystal. I came in the Army a couple of years before him. We are both named Stanley. We were both in Special Operations. He was an officer; I was enlisted. We both served in A Company 2nd Ranger Battalion, in 75th Ranger Regiment, in 7th Special Forces, and he commanded the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) of which was in a constituent unit once. Nonetheless, neither of us ever served in these units at the same time. A Company 2nd Ranger Battalion was also Pat Tillman's company when he was killed in April 2004. So I don't know Stanley McChrystal, and all I can say about him specifically is based on stuff that I've read. But I can say some things that don't require detailed knowledge of McChrystal's whereabouts and activities at any given time. Because I am familiar with the ways that military culture is reflected in the individuals who are part of that culture.

We'll get to McChrystal in a moment. The Killer's Toyota, the call from Dannie, the whole McChrystal thing... these all made me feel restless. The real kicker is that Obama will probably support this guy; and this at the same time that Obama just placed himself between the ACLU and a bunch of torture photographs from places just like the ones that McChrystal developed and commanded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This evening, as I'm driving home from work, I hear on the radio that Nancy Pelosi has been forced to respond to questions about what she knew subsequent to briefings in 2002 about "enhanced interrogations." From today's story by Paul Kane in the Washington Post:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today accused the CIA of "misleading" her on the use of harsh interrogation techniques in the fall of 2002, acknowledging for the first time publicly she knew alleged terrorist detainees were subjected to waterboarding more than six years ago.

Pelosi called for the CIA to release detailed portions of her own September 2002 briefing about interrogation techniques, saying that at that time she was told the CIA was not waterboarding detainees. After weeks of sticking to prior statements that she then was never "briefed" about waterboarding's use, Pelosi today said her top security adviser was part of a briefing in February 2003 in which he learned interrogators were waterboarding terrorists.

Let's combine that quote with another one:

0 292234Z APRIL 04 FM TASK FORCE

TO RUCAACC/USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL//CDR//INFO RUCQAS/USSOCOM PP MACDILL AFB//FL//CDR// RUEPVBT/TASK FORCE

BT [REDACTION] PERSONAL FOR CDR USCENTCOM CDR USSOCOM CDR USASOC

DELIVER DURING NORMAL DUTY HOURS [REDACTION] DO NOT TRANSMIT VIA OPINTEL BROADCAST OPER/OEF// MSGID/GENAMIN/TASK FORCE

//

SUBJ/P-4 COCERNING INFORMATION ON CORPORAL TILLMAN'S DEATH//

RMKS/SIR, IN THE AFTERMATH OF CORPORAL TILLMAN'S UNTIMELY YET HEROIC DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN ON 22 APRIL 04, IT IS ANTICIPATED HIGHLY POSSIBLE THAT CORPORAL TILLMAN WAS KILLED BY FRIENDLY FIRE. THIS POTENTIAL FINDING IS EXACERBATED BY THE UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT POTUS AND THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY MIGHTIN CLUDE COMMENTS ABOUT CORPORAL TILLMAN'S HEROISM AND HIS APPROVED SILVER STAR MEDAL IN SPEECHES CURRENTLY BEING PREPARED, NOT INFORMING THE SPECIFICS SURROUNDING HIS DEATH. THE POTENTIAL THAT HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN KILLED BY FRIENDLY FIRE IN NO WAY DETRACTS FROM HISD WINTESSED HEROISM OR THE RECOMMENDED PEROSNAL DECORATION FOR VALOR IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY. CORPORAL TILLMAN WAS KILLED IN A COMPLICATED BATTLESPACE GEOMETRY INVOLVING TWO SEPARATE RANGER VEHICLE SERIALS TRAVERSING THROUGH SEVERE TERRAIN ALONG A WINDING 500-600 FOOT DEFILE IN WHICH FRIENDLY FORCES WERE FIRED UPON BY MULTIPLE ENEMY POSITIONS. CORPORAL TILLMAN DISEMBARKED FROM HIS VEHICLE, AND IN SUPPORT OF HIS FELLOW RANGERS AND DEMONSTRATING GREAT CONCERN FOR THEIR WELFARE OVER CARE FOR HIS OWN PERSONAL SAFETY ENTERED THE ENEMY KILL ZONE INTO WHICH BOTH IMPACTED. I FELT THAT IT WAS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU RECEIVED THIS INFORMAITON AS SOON AS WE DETECTED IT IN ORDER TO PRECLUDE ANY UNKNOWING STATEMENTS BY OUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS WHICH MIGHT CAUSE PUBLIC EMBARRASSMENT IF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF CORPORAL TILLMAN'S DEATH BECOME PUBLIC.//

DECL/DERI:DRV FROM [REDACTION] /INST-[REDACTION]-//BT

CLASSIFIED BY: [REDACTION]

REASON [REDACTION] DECLASSIFY ON: [REDACTION]

CLASSIFICATION: [REDACTINO]

CAVEATS: [REDACTION] TERMS: [REDACTION]

That was a P-4 ("personal for") Memo from General McChrystal passing along to POTUS (President of the United States) that the phony-baloney story about the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death [1] [2] [3] could not hold up. The memo was sent less than a week after Pat was killed; and when you read it carefully -- if you can understand this bastardized legal-military-publcity-speak -- it says not only that the author had been involved in the concealment of the circumstances, that he had himself participated in the fraud as one of the approving-signatories for a Silver Star award with demonstrably false statements about the incident.

McChrystal surely knew Rumsfeld personally; and according to one Rumsfeld biographer, Rummy's greatest talent was getting away with shit. Not getting caught was an art form for Rumsfeld. Working for a guy like that, you have to stay on your toes, because someone will get sacrificed when someone who gets away with shit all the time suddenly doesn't.

The Tillman case came into public consciousness alongside the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib. Rummy was busy those days, so the guys on the scene had to handle a few things themselves.

If I had been McChrystal, I'd have known by April 29th 2004 (the day of this memo) that an entire battalion of Rangers were due to rotate back to the States in four weeks. I'd have also known -- as a matter of some urgency -- that virtually every member of 2nd Ranger Battalion knew that Pat Tillman was killed by fratricide. Hundreds of Rangers were about to return to Tacoma, Washington, where they would talk to each other, to their families and friends, and to people in the bars where Rangers drink to "blow off steam."

If I had been Stanley McChrystal then, I'd have seen some hand writing on the wall; and I'd have constructed the most carefully worded memo I could to cover my own ass.

That's what you can read above, in that memo. And hey, Rumsfeld is gone; and McChrystal is on the rise.

Canny dude.

This is not the story I have to tell right now, but it's an important preface. Dannie herself has written a fine book on her own dogged investigations of the Department of Defense, and of her direct encounter with executive power. Boots on the Ground by Dusk, by Mary Tillman (with Narda Zacchino). Time to get that one out and read up before the Senate meets to give their blessing to Stanley McChrystal as the new dominant Militia Chief of Afghanistan.

I said "executive power," not Bush. Be clear.

Obama is cautious and fearful of being torpedoed by the military-paramilitary-clandestine services network. That's tactical. And that caution will cost him dearly.

But he's also Chief Executive.

Executives are loathe to surrender even a scrap of accumulated executive power.

Bush took the country into a debacle Iraq.

Obama has his sights on Pakistan -- nuclear Cambodia, for Vietnam-analogy fans -- and the nomination of McChrystal means that Special Operations will run the show (as they did in the early phases of Vietnam).

A simple truth that "leaders" never seem to get. Our actions have tremendous influences; and most of those influences are beyond our control. Instead they just keep on with their insane, grandiose, and lethal meddling.

New Rule: Strive to limit your influence to your actual capacity to control.

We all have a notion of the geostrategic influences. But this public discussion of torture has become so surreal (en-fucking-hanced! interrogation techniques! Sheesh!), and here is this man McChrystal who ran torture camps in Iraq (Did I forget to mention that earlier?) who is about to prepare the military infiltration from Afghanistan into Pakistan... nuclear South Asia. (Bad idea, O! Bad bad bad idea.)

That's what Stanley McChrystal is being hired for if the Senate confirms. It will; and the cowardice inhering in the institution of Congress will be on full display... just as it was when Nanci Pelosi et al were banging the war drums out of abject fear for their careers.

And this man -- McChrystal -- represents a culture. The gunfighter culture of Special Operations.

There's a great deal more than gunfighting to that culture -- the culture of Special Operations embedded within the larger culture of the Army. Gunfighting is the practical skill that "operators" learn in direct actions Special Ops units. There were times during my stint with Delta when each one of us in my unit were -- on average -- firing a thousand rounds of ammunition in a day, and not on full automatic spraying down a range, but reaching for precision and speed at close range and from afar. Fighting with guns is a skill constellation, a form of practical mastery.

Cultures also include language, non-lingusitic signs, interpersonal norms, music, ideas, and so on. Practical training is just one aspect of culture; but it's an important one.

If I had trained as intensely to be a carpenter, and if I had become good at it, I would think about carpentering all the time, I would see carpenter's solutions to a lot of things, and I would carry that skill confidently around with me into my own future. In tough times, even if I had a nice cushy desk job for a few years, I could fall back on being a carpenter.

Same thing is true for a gunfighter. There are thousands of these men out there now, who received a very expensive and well-drilled education in gunfighting. When times get tough, they will fall back on what they know.

Now along with gunfighting, these special operators can also acquire other skills. I was a Special Forces medic for a while. I knew how to suture lacerations, pull teeth, deliver babies, count blood cells under a microscope, splint fractured femurs, get rid of belly-worms, and so on. If the stars had aligned at the right time, I might have become a nurse; and the gunfighting would no longer be needed. Other guys learn to operate radios and build antennae, handle explosives, do construction, or identify, operate, and repair small arms.

But we never quit rehearsing -- even when we want to -- how to kill with guns.

Gunfighting requires training the mind to compartmentalize, to focus on everyone as potential adversaries, to quickly check the hands of potential adversaries for lethal weapons, and to refelxively respond to the presence of weapons by rapidly shooting two rounds into the chest of the identified adversary, followed by one shot to the head if necessary... then immediately return to observing one's sector.

This kind of extreme, detached instrumentality is part of the psycho-cultural commons in Special Operations; and that's how McChrystal can -- and must -- be read. He can and will objectify-to-kill individuals and groups of human beings... on command. His brain is compartmentalized.

As an officer in the Army, he is part of the cannibal-culture of commissioned upward mobility. He'll not only seek out opportunities for slaughter as rungs in the ladder to success, he'll write memos that are the professional equivalent of shark repellent while his peers are being eaten.

Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger -- former Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander -- got the symbolic punishment for the Pat Tillman cover-up-- a threat to reduce his rank before he retired which was quietly allowed to fade into no action at all. Kensinger survived. He's a consultant for the government now. But there is a credible rumor that his lawyer will oppose the nomination of Stanley McChrystal to head the Afghanistan theater of the US energy war.

Gunfighter. Shark-swimmer. Torture camp commander.

What cover-ups, like the Tillman case, and running torture camps have in common is that they are both manifestations of a culture of impunity -- "exemption from punishment or loss."

McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the US military and media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by special operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.

The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, "No Blood, No Foul," meaning if you don't make them bleed, you can't be charged with the crimes you are committing.

Impunity. McChrystal represents a culture of impunity.

Pelosi does, too. Be honest.

I keep coming back to that idea that culture, personhood, and nature are all reciprocally influenced. What kinds of persons will emerge from a culture of impunity, a culture of gunfighting, a culture of the most extreme kind of probative masculinity? (The big picture of Zarqawi, dead, that hung behind the Pentagon briefers after McChrystal's unit directed the airstrike that killed him, was a hunting trophy... male proof of conquest.)

Here's where I get to the evolution of Special Ops culture, and of military culture generally, and the bumper stickers on the car at a Cary mall suggesting a weaponized Jesus.

The reports of abuses inside Camp Nama were said to have outraged even seasoned CIA, FBI and DIA investigators accustomed to dealing with non-cooperative and hostile detainees, and to have provoked a culture clash between agencies and groups involved with the facility. By early 2004, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Under-Secretary for Defense Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a subordinate, DIA head Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct [an order for public consumption in the wake of serial scandals, since Cambone was himself am early torture advocate].

By June 25, 2004, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Cambone, in which he described a series of complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a DIA interrogator said he witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical help. The DIA officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor confiscated them, the memo said. The memo provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior by TF 6-26."

According to the NYT article, General Boykin had earlier said (on March 17) through a spokesman that he told Mr. Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force. The article does not provide further detail on Boykin's response to the investigation after Cambone's and Jacoby's intervention in June, 2004. [from Wikipedia]

Boykin. Readers may not remember this guy, but when he was Deputy Commander of Delta, I was assigned there, where we we occasionally hectored into attending one of "Jerry" Boykin's "prayer breakfasts." Boykin is a weaponized Jesus advocate, a dispensationalist zealot who considers himself one of God's martial instruments in advance of the Rapture.

Now here is a strange and disturbing twist in the evolution of Special Ops culture. When I was there, some years back now, we were mostly reprobates -- hyper-profane macho drunks a lot of us -- with no time for religion. Over time, reports are indicating, the End Times Weaponized Jesus religion has gained a lot of ground in Special Operations and in the military generally. So now we are growing a culture wihtin the military that doesn't obey rules (impunity), that kills to prove masculinity, and that fuels bloodlust with a crackpot philosophy that tells them killing Arabs, et al, is a deliverance of God's justice.

If you believe that cultures mix, and sometimes badly, wait until we see the fruition of this hybrid of gunfighter practice with rapturite ideology.

Obama's support for McChrystal will be matched by Pelosi's support for McChrystal, and they will be mixed up in all this, seeking non-accountability as relentlessly as any Rumsfeld or McChrystal.

Stanley McChrystal is mixed up in all this, and not necessarily as a proselytizer. He's just mixed up in it, because this tendency in the military and his personal career happen to correspond in time and space. What both of them are is killers. They have made professional careers out of killing, and their units were not the little Special Forces A-Detachments with their peculiar linguists and trainers. These guys -- Boykin, McChrystal -- worked in "direct action" units. Rangers. Delta. JSOC. Direct action is another euphemism. It means destroying something, someone, someones.

Now it seems we are training a generation of people to torture; and I wonder if the crazy ideas are leading people to torture others, or if torturing others is the perverted origin of the penchant for male death-cult thinking.

The practice in question here, finally, is torture.

That's where Boykin and McChrystal collaborated in Iraq. A torture camp.

That's what has Pelosi on the spot now, too. Or the CIA. Or both.

Torture.

What does torture say about us; and what does what we say about torture say about us?

• Nancy Pelosi

SPECIAL REPORT. McChrystal's Kabul. Like Baghdad, a magnet for psychopathic killers and spies

SPECIAL REPORT. McChrystal's Kabul. Like Baghdad, a magnet for psychopathic killers and spies

In assuming command of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal will have immense control over a Western military and contractor presence in the country that has turned the Afghan capital of Kabul into a "Baghdad East," a place where psychopathic assassins, Chinese prostitute spies, and opium smugglers run rampant.

And in a departure from past strategy in the war-torn country, the Obama administration is launching an "information war" in Afghanistan that will paint the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai as a beacon of democracy and stamp out any news or other information that could be seen as harmful to the U.S. war effort against Afghan insurgents who are opposed to the foreign military presence in their country.

According to WMR's intelligence sources, China now maintains one of the largest intelligence operations in Afghanistan. Entering Afghanistan with low-paid Chinese construction workers who are contracted to Western companies to work on public works projects and the Asian Development Bank-funded Trans-Afghanistan natural gas pipeline that will bring natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India are young Chinese women who work as intelligence agents in a number of Chinese restaurants in the Afghan capital. Many also double as prostitutes and they gather intelligence for the Chinese Ministry of State Security (Guoanbu). Some of the Chinese construction workers who are also MSS agents have been discovered smuggling weapons to the Taliban.

The woman are trained in China on intelligence-gathering techniques. In addition, they are sodomized in China to prepare them for high-ranking sex clients in the Afghan government and police force. The Chinese prostitute agents have also targeted foreign embassy staffs, non-governmental organization (NGO) officials, United Nations officials, and European and American civilian contractors to glean intelligence for their bosses in Beijing.

One British national, believed to be a British intelligence agent, is under contract from the Chinese government to operate their restaurants in Kabul. He has hired a team of British and American security contractors, including a number of alcoholic and trigger-happy military veterans from north England, to make sure the Chinese prostitute agents do not stray from their assigned duties. The Chinese women are desperately poor and do not receive any money from their clients. The money ends up first in the hands of the British and American "security pimps" and ultimately, most of it goes to the MSS, quietly laundered through banks in Dubai. The Chinese operation and the money laundering is also well-known to United Arab Emirates intelligence officials who are aware that the MI-6 and MSS are jointly involved in espionage prostitution in Kabul.

The Chinese prostitute agents are only given food, a small room, clothes, and cosmetics. Women who decide to leave the employment of the restaurants often simply "disappear" with a cover story in Kabul that they returned to China. There are suspicions among those who have tried to help the women that they are killed by the local Kabul mafia, which is made up of Afghan police and foreign civilian contractors. One young Chinese woman who worked at the Shanghai restaurant in Kabul turned up missing after she took a job at the British army base at Camp Sutra on Jalalabad Road in Kabul. The British embassy refused to get involved in tracking down the woman on behalf of her distraught family in Shanghai.

WMR has also learned that the British and American security team that works for the MSS operates with the approval of the British embassy in Kabul. One of the liaison officers between the Chinese restaurant security force and MI-6 was recently transferred from the embassy in Kabul to the British embassy in Jakarta.

Kabul, with its rump president and government and its corrupt police force, is the city for which McChrystal, who has come under political fire for his role in torturing detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq, will take over security responsibilities. Clearly, McChrystal, who has been granted extraordinary independence by the Obama administration to carry out his duties, will only make matters worse in the crime- and espionage-plagued Afghan capital.

McChrystal tried to warn Bush administration about sensitive details in the Pat Tillman killing in Afghanistan but he was ignored.

Obama chops Afghanistan commander. Gen. David McKiernan replaced by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for commander of Joint Special Operations Command. McChrystal tried to warn Bush administration about sensitive details in the Pat Tillman killing in Afghanistan but he was ignored.

August 1-2, 2007 -- SPECIAL REPORT -- The Tillman killing: Fratricide or homicide?

Three former high ranking Pentagon officials and one active duty general testified under oath on August 1 before Rep. Henry Waxman's Government Oversight and Government Committee on the April 22, 2004 death in Afghanistan of NFL star-turned-US Army Ranger Pat Tillman. All four witnesses, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, defaulted to the commonly-used and overly-lawyered phrases by Bush administration officials testifying before Congress: "I don't recall" and "I have no recollection of that."

What was witnessed on August 1 concerning the Pentagon's failure to inform the Tillman family and the public about the facts concerning the death of Tillman was an exercise in obfuscation and rampant amnesia by individuals who at one time ran the U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even ranking Republican member Tom Davis used the dreaded "conspiracy" word to describe the Pentagon's handling of the Tillman case. Davis said, "There are no good answers to the necessarily tough questions raised about how the facts of this friendly-fire incident were handled, by whom and when. Testimony from our previous hearing, and the results of six separate Army investigations, all show the tragic truth can only fall somewhere between screw-up and cover-up, between rampant incompetence and elaborate conspiracy. And once you're descending that continuum, it almost doesn't matter whether the failure to follow Army regulations about updated casualty reports and prompt family notification was inadvertent, negligent or intentional."

The facts brought forward in today's hearing strongly suggest that the Tillman matter was handled by a cover-up that was intentional.

Rumsfeld testified he does not remember when he learned that the Tillman death was a possible fratricide. Rumsfeld's memory certainly seems to be foggy, at best. Rumsfeld said he recalled that he first learned about the fratricide angle on or about May 20, 2004, from his civilian assistant Robert Rangel who had been informed about it by Rumsfeld's military assistant, Army Colonel Steve Bucci, who had heard about the Tillman fratricide in Iraq, from where Bucci had just returned. It is important to note that Tillman was killed in Afghanistan but details of the Tillman killing were known by some U.S. military personnel in Iraq before Rumsfeld claimed he knew about it. Democratic Rep. Diane Watson of California pointed out that Rumsfeld had often repeated "I don't recall" during his testimony.

The Tillman family was not notified about the fratricide until May 26, 2004.

Rumsfeld also said that he did not recall informing the White House, known for its micro-managing of almost every facet of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, including the Abu Ghraib and Jessica Lynch cover-ups, about the Tillman fratricide. More amazingly, Rumsfeld testified that he first learned of Tillman's death in the press in April 2004.

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers said he regretted that the Army "did not do its duty" in the Tillman case and revealed that the Army did not follow its own regulations. However, Myers claimed that he was not in the chain of command for the Tillman matter since it was an Army issue and he served in a joint command activity answerable to the Defense Secretary and National Security Council. Myers said he did not recall talking to the White House about the Tillman matter, although he conceded that public affairs channels may have circulated information about the fratricide between the Pentagon and White House. Brown also said he did not inform the White House about Tillman.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, the former commanding general of the US Army's Special Forces Command, was formally censured yesterday by Army Secretary Pete Geren for his "failure of leadership" in the Tillman investigation. Kensinger appears to be the White House's and Republicans' scape goat for the Tillman matter. Kensinger refused to accept a subpoena to testify before the House committee today and his current whereabouts, according to Committee Chairman Waxman, are unknown. Waxman said that U.S. Marshals were unsuccessful in locating Kensinger or serving the subpoena. An independent panel is considering whether to recommend that Kensinger be busted from three stars to two stars as punishment. The star removal was strongly supported by California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, someone whose record includes car theft.

There was much discussion of an April 29, 2004, "P-FOR" or "Personal For" message sent by then-Major General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the Joint Special Operations Command and Afghan Task Force, to Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command General Bryan "Doug" Brown, General Kensinger, and Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. John Abizaid, both headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Abizaid was an "action" addressee on the P-FOR and Kensinger and Brown were "Info" addressees, similar to a cc: addressee. The Tillman P-FOR, a high priority, sensitive, and rare message sent to the commanders and which was not for general distribution, stated that there was a strong likelihood of fratricide in the Tillman death. Rumsfeld testified that he did not recall seeing the P-FOR.

However, the P-FOR from McChrystal said that it was important to let the Defense Secretary and President know about the possibility of fratricide before they made an incorrect and potentially embarrassing statements concerning the death. Abizaid testified that he told Myers that it was "important to let the leadership know" about the P-FOR. Abizaid said he was referring to Rumsfeld and Bush. Abizaid testified that he did not inform the White House about the details of Tillman's death.

The P-FOR was sent four days before the memorial service for Tillman at which the public was told Tillman died as the result of "enemy fire."

Abizaid testified that on April 28, 2004, the day before the P-FOR was sent by McChrystal, Tillman's platoon leader told him that Tillman was killed by enemy fire. However, on the evening of April 22, Tillman's team member Private First Class Bryan O'Neal, reported that he suspected fratricide in Tillman's death. That statement appears in the Army 15-6 report required for all hostile combat deaths. However, someone, whose identity is yet unknown, re-wrote O'Neal's statement to reflect that "Corporal Tillman was killed by the enemy."

However, O'Neal's original statement had been altered to suggest Tillman's death was from enemy fire. O'Neal testified earlier about the alteration before Waxman's committee.

Even after the McChrystal P-FOR was sent to Abizaid and Brown, the Army announced that Tillman would be awarded the Silver Star at his memorial service in May 3, 2004. The Silver Star citation for Tillman said the honor was awarded for "gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States." In answer to a question from Democratic Rep. William "Lacy" Clay from Missouri, Rumsfeld said he did not know who awarded the Silver Star because the Secretary of Defense does not involve himself in that process. Rumsfeld and Myers said the decision was solely that of the Army. Brown and Abizaid also said they did not know who awarded Tillman the Silver Star. Clay informed the witnesses and the committee that the Silver Star for Tillman was awarded by the President of the United States.

Waxman suggested the White House was interested in spinning the Tillman death because it wanted to shift public opinion away from April revelations about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to something it could hype: the heroic death of a brave and well known American soldier at the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Waxman then asked the most famous question in Washington when it comes to scandals: "What did the White House know and when?" Waxman thought it odd that during the time of Tillman's death from what was thought to have been enemy fire, 97 White House officials sent and received hundreds of emails regarding Tillman. Waxman said that weeks later, after friendly fire was admitted, there were no emails from the White House concerning Tillman.

However, both Waxman and Davis agreed that further evidence about the Tillman death may be gleaned from personal email accounts from the field in Afghanistan. Today, the committee requested the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command and the Pentagon's Inspector General to inform the committee if "subjects and witnesses were asked about the use of personal email accounts to communicate about the Tillman matter, whether such communications were obtained and reviewed . . . and, if not whether [CID and the IG] intend to secure and review them now."

Waxman and Davis wrote to the two Defense activities that the committee had "received information from a former Department of Defense official that information from the field was often transmitted to DoD officials through personal email accounts."

Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich asked Rumsfeld if he ever coordinated press strategy with the White House concerning the war and specifically mentioned the contractor, the Rendon Group, which has been at the forefront of drafting and distributing pro-war propaganda on behalf of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld denied he discussed press strategy on the Tillman case with the White House but conceded that Rendon and other contractors had Pentagon contracts to develop press strategies. Kucinich maintained that the Pentagon had outsourced the management of the news to contractors like the Rendon Group and that it was Defense Department strategy to cover-up incidents like the Tillman, Abu Ghraib, and Jessica Lynch cases. Rumsfeld said there was no evidence of a cover-up in any of the cases mentioned by Kucinich.

However, a White House-to-Pentagon email released by the committee strongly suggests that there was a willful attempt to cover-up the Tillman fratricide in order to maximize positive spin. An email sent from White House staffer Jeanie S. Mamo to the Pentagon's Public Affairs chief Larry DiRita on April 23, 2004, a day after Tillman's death and after PFC O'Neal's report that fratricide was likely involved. Also, by April 23, suspected fratricide was also known by Tillman's other Alpha Company Rangers, including 1SG Fuller, CSM Birch, Maj. Scott, Col. Nixon, Maj. Hodne, LTC Bailey, and CPT Saunders.

Mamo's email to DiRita says that Larry Yeager, a "terrific" reporter for Sports Illustrated, needed to talk to someone at the Pentagon regarding Tillman. Yeager's email was also forwarded to DiRita. It requested Mamo to help him on what would be an "awesome piece" in Sports Illustrated. The Mamo email strongly suggests a close relationship between Yeager and the Bush White House. It states Yeager "had a one-on-one interview with President Bush and knows Gov. Bush [Florida Governor Jeb Bush] as well." Mamo also states that Yeager wrote a story about Qusay and Uday Hussein and "their torture of Olympic athletes" and "has since been back to Iraq to write a follow-up on the reorganization of the Olympic team." As if to signal to DiRita that Yeager was a trusted embedded journalist, she adds, "Don gets it." The Defense Department even redacted from the disclosed email Yeager's phone numbers at the Manhattan offices of Sports Illustrated, which is owned by AOL Time Warner.

One person who apparently was not as "in" as the Sports Illustrated reporter was General Bantz Craddock, Rumsfeld's senior military assistant. On July 27, 2007, Craddock, who as Commander of US Southern Command in Miami, oversees the operations at Guantanamo Bay, told the Waxman committee about being kept out of the loop by DiRita and Rumsfeld's other close advisers: "I will also tell you there could have been discussions and meetings that I would not have been privy to because occasionally that happens. The fact of the matter is -- and I'll just tell you that DiRita and I occasionally got into a bit of a dither over the fact that I felt that he was not informing me of military issues or that he felt I was usurping his authority to deal with political issues."

Craddock gave a picture of Rumsfeld and his civilian advisers keeping senior military officers out of the loop, something that has been confirmed to this journalist by other senior officers who served in the Pentagon under Rumsfeld. Craddock told that committee that Rumsfeld's office never contacted him for details about the Tillman killing.

The picture that is being developed from the Waxman hearings is that the death of Pat Tillman was advertised as an enemy combat death in order to create favorable spin for the White House and Pentagon and help both organizations recover from Abu Ghraib. Tillman's memorial service, Silver Star award, and Sports Illustrated "awesome" article were all part of a carefully designed spin, likely involving the Rendon Group and other professional contract spinmeisters, as suggested by Kucinich.

If the White House and Pentagon were able to cover up the details of the aftermath of Tillman's death, what could they have been prepared to do after they were informed that the star recruit was keeping a diary and was prepared to speak out against the Iraq war after his enlistment?

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Additional details:

At least 30 people knew about the Tillman fratricide before Donald Rumsfeld said he was informed about it. General Bantz Craddock, Rumsfeld's chief military assistant, told the House Committee on July 27, 2007, that he heard about the Tillman fratricide from his next door neighbor in Fort Myer, General Jim Lovelace. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland said Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, said Rumsfeld's contention that he did not know about Tillman until much later was "not credible."

Cummings asked Rumsfeld if he believed there was a cover-up. Rumsfeld responded that "no one in the White House suugested there be a cover-up." Richard Myers said the White House, Joint Chiefs of Staff or Office of the Secretary of Defense were not involved in a cover-up. John Abizaid and Doug Brown also denied a cover-up.

Abizaid said he did not receive the P-FOR until May 6, 2004, although it was sent on April 29. On April 23, Abizaid said he was phoned by McChrystal and was told that Tillman had been killed. Abizaid said the P-FOR was sent to Tampa, CENTCOM's headquarters, but was not re-transmitted to Abizaid in the Middle East until May 6. Abizaid said he then called Myers and told him that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire.

Myers testified that he did not remember Abizaid's phone call and said he never saw the P-FOR. Myers also said that when he was informed of the incident he "was not sure" that fratricide was "common knowledge." Myers also said he could not recall whether he informed Rumsfeld of the fratricide.

Rumsfeld said that although he remembered drafting a letter to the Tillman family, he could not recall when he learned of Tillman's death. Although President Bush was to refer to the Tillman death in a May 1, 2004 speech, Rumsfeld said he could not recall discussing Tillman with the White House.