How a Super Bowl whitewash of Tillman cover-up was a helpful reminder

On Super Bowl Sunday, over 113 million people tuned in live to watch the Philadelphia Eagles face off against the Kansas City Chiefs on the gridiron. When the third most watched television event of all time ended, those millions took to social media to complain about the anticlimactic holding penalty that concluded the game.

But others went to social media to object to the opening of the Super Bowl — the invocation of the late Pat Tillman.

Before kickoff, the National Football League aired a short video eulogizing Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals safety who left his burgeoning sports career to join the U.S. Army Rangers following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“[He] ultimately lost his life in the line of duty,” narrates actor Kevin Costner, before shifting the focus of the video to the Pat Tillman Foundation scholars who participated in the opening coin toss.

For viewers who knew the full story of Pat Tillman, this was a grievous whitewashing.

First deployed to Iraq during the first days of the invasion, Tillman was then sent to Afghanistan where on April 22, 2004 he was tragically killed in a friendly-fire incident. But that’s not what the U.S. military told the public (or his family).

Within days, it became apparent this was a case of accidental fratricide. But, concerned about a public relations backlash following the inadvertent death of such a high-profile recruit, the chain of command manufactured a narrative where Pat Tillman was killed heroically in battle. They forged witness testimony, attempted to pass off a fake autopsy report, and even awarded Tillman a posthumous Silver Star for his “gallantry” against “enemy fire.” His uniform, body armor, and diary were destroyed contrary to all regulations.

The cover-up went at least as high as Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger, then-Chief of the Army Special Operations Command. There’s open debate about when U.S. Central Command head John Abizaid learned the truth and what responsibility he shared.

For Pat’s family, it was over a month after his media-engrossed funeral services when they learned the truth. As father Patrick Tillman Sr. told The Washington Post in May 2005: “After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this. They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.”

Men more concerned with saving face for a failing war than common decency sullied Pat Tillman’s legacy, and contorted a narrative around him he never asked for. By all accounts, Pat was kind, humble, intelligent, courageous, and well-intentioned. According to his brother and other members of his unit, Pat had conflicting feelings about the utility of the Global War on Terror, and referred to the invasion of Iraq as illegal.

Materially, the NFL’s video tribute is correct; Pat Tillman was killed in the line of duty, and deserves as much respect as if he had died on the battlefield. Accidents, equipment malfunctions, negligence, and yes, even friendly fire, are risks a soldier incurs when they sign up.

But what instinctually offended viewers on Sunday was how a truncated version of Tillman’s death feeds a false narrative about what he was doing there and how our government operates. 

We’re a month away from the 20-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq that Pat Tillman played an unhappy part in. This war occurred because the White House conceived of a preemptive attack justified around fabricated intelligence that violated both domestic and international law.

Ironically, it can be easy to be cynical about such a grand conspiracy; hand-wave it away as something too complex to bother yourself with.

It’s more difficult to do that to Pat Tillman. The military lied to a family about their dead son. That is deception concentrated on a human-scale that everyone can understand.

In that way, Pat Tillman’s memory becomes a snapshot of the entire Global War on Terror — something containing genuine courage and sacrifice from our men and women in uniform, but wrapped in doubt about the motivations and deceitful conduct of the officials who lead them into these endless wars.