The battle between a grieving family and the U.S. military justice system
is on display in thousands of pages of documents strewn across Mary Tillman’s
dining room table in suburban San Jose.

As she pores through testimony from three previous Army investigations into
the killing of her son, former football star Pat Tillman, by his fellow Army
Rangers last year in Afghanistan, she hopes that a new inquiry launched in
August by the Pentagon’s inspector general finally will answer the family’s
questions:

Were witnesses allowed to change their testimony on key details, as alleged
by one investigator? Why did internal documents on the case, such as the
initial casualty report, include false information? When did top Pentagon
officials know that Tillman’s death was caused by friendly fire, and why did
they delay for five weeks before informing his family?

“There have been so many discrepancies so far that it’s hard to know what
to believe,” Mary Tillman said. “There are too many murky details.” The files
the family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly
every page containing blacked-out sections; most names have been deleted.
(Names for this story were provided by sources close to the investigation.) At
least one volume was withheld altogether from the
family, and even an Army press release given to the media has deletions. On her
copies, Mary Tillman has added competing marks and scrawls — countless
color-coded tabs and angry notes such as “Contradiction!” “Wrong!” and “????”

A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of testimony, as well as
interviews with Pat Tillman’s family members and soldiers who served with him,
found contradictions, inaccuracies and what appears to be the military’s
attempt at self-protection.

For example, the documents contain testimony of the first investigating
officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in
their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers committed “gross
negligence” could be
softened.

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely
independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet
was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a
tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books
on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a
favorite author.

Unlike Cindy Sheehan — who has protested against President Bush because of
the death of her son Casey in combat in Baghdad — Mary Tillman, 49, who teaches
in a San Jose public junior high school, and her
ex-husband, Patrick Tillman, 50, a San Jose lawyer, have avoided association
with the anti-war movement. Their main public allies are Sen. John McCain,
RAriz., and Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who have lobbied on their behalf. Yet
the case has high stakes because of Pat Tillman’s status as an
all-American hero.

A football star at Leland High School in San Jose and at Arizona State
University, Tillman was chosen Pac-10 defensive player of the year in 1997 and
selected by the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft the following spring.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Arizona State and graduated
summa cum laude in 3 1/2 years with a 3.84 grade point average. Ever the
student, Tillman not only memorized the playbook by the time he reported for
the Cardinals’ rookie camp but pointed out errors in it. He then worked on a
master’s degree in history while playing professional football.

His 224 tackles in a single season (2000) are a team record, and because of
team loyalty he rejected a five year, $9 million offer from the St. Louis Rams
for a
one-year, $512,000 contract to stay with Arizona the next year.

Moved in part by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Tillman decided to
give up his career, saying he wanted to fight al Qaeda and help find Osama bin
Laden. He spurned the Cardinals’ offer of a three year, $3.6 million contract
extension and joined the Army in June 2002 along with his brother Kevin, who
was playing minor-league baseball for the Cleveland Indians organization.

Pat Tillman’s enlistment grabbed the attention of the nation — and the
highest levels of the Bush administration. A personal letter from Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, thanking him for serving his country, now resides in a
storage box, put away by Pat’s widow, Marie.

Instead of going to Afghanistan, as the brothers expected, their Ranger
battalion was sent to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March
2003. The Tillmans saw combat several times on their way to Baghdad. In early
2004, they finally were assigned to
Afghanistan.

Although the Rangers are an elite combat group, the investigative documents
reveal that the conduct of the Tillmans’ detachment — A Company, 2nd Battalion,
75th Ranger Regiment — appeared to be anything but expert as it advanced
through a remote canyon
in eastern Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, on a mission to search for Taliban
and al Qaeda fighters in a village called Manah.

According to the files, when one of the humvees became disabled, thus
stalling the mission, commanding officers split Tillman’s platoon in two so one
half could move on and the other could arrange transport for the disabled
vehicle. Platoon leader Lt. David
Uthlaut protested the move as dangerous, but he was overruled. The first group
was ordered out in the late afternoon, with Pat Tillman in the forward unit.
Kevin’s unit followed 15 to 20 minutes later, hauling the humvee on an
Afghan-owned flatbed truck. Both groups temporarily lost radio and visual
contact with each other in the deep canyon, and the second group came under
attack from suspected Taliban fighters on the surrounding ridges.

Pat Tillman, according to testimony, climbed a hill with another soldier
and an Afghan militiaman, intending to attack the enemy. He offered to remove
his 28-pound body armor so he could move more quickly, but was ordered not to.
Meanwhile, the lead vehicle in the platoon’s second group arrived near
Tillman’s position about 65 meters away and mistook the group as enemy. The
Afghan stood and fired above the second group at the suspected enemy on the
opposite ridge. Although the driver of the second group’s lead vehicle,
according to his testimony, recognized Tillman’s group as “friendlies” and
tried to
signal others in his vehicle not to shoot, they directed fire toward the Afghan
and began shooting wildly, without first identifying their target, and also
shot at a village on the ridgeline.

The Afghan was killed. According to testimony, Tillman, who along with
others on the hill waved his arms and yelled “cease fire,” set off a smoke
grenade to identify his group as fellow soldiers. There was a momentary lull
in the firing, and he and the soldier
next to him, thinking themselves safe, relaxed, stood up and started talking.
But the shooting resumed. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel and in his
body armor with numerous bullets.

The soldier next to him testified: “I could hear the pain in his voice as
he called out, ‘Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat f—ing Tillman, dammit.” He
said this over and over until he stopped,” having been hit by three bullets in
the forehead, killing him.

The soldier continued, “I then looked over at my side to see a river of
blood coming down from where he was … I saw his head was gone.” Two other
Rangers elsewhere on the mountainside were injured by shrapnel.

Kevin was unaware that his brother had been killed until nearly an hour
later when he asked if anyone had seen Pat and a fellow soldier told him.

Tillman’s death came at a sensitive time for the Bush administration — just
a week before the Army’s abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq became public
and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon immediately announced that Tillman had
died heroically
in combat with the enemy, and President Bush hailed him as “an inspiration on
and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the
war on terror.”

His killing was widely reported by the media, including conservative
commentators such as Ann Coulter, who called him “an American original —
virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.” His May 3,
2004, memorial in San Jose drew 3,500 people and was nationally televised.

Not until five weeks later, as Tillman’s battalion was returning home, did
officials inform the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by
his fellow soldiers.

According to testimony, the first investigation was initiated less than 24
hours after Tillman’s death by an officer in the same Ranger battalion. His
report, delivered
May 4, 2004, determined that soldiers involved in the incident had committed
“gross negligence” and should be appropriately disciplined. The officer became
a key witness in the subsequent investigation. For reasons that are not clear,
the officer’s investigation
was taken over by a higher ranking commander. That officer’s findings,
delivered the next month, called for less severe discipline.

The parents, protesting that many questions were left unanswered, found a
sympathetic ear in McCain, who Mary Tillman later said was greatly admired by
her son. Tillman was well known in Arizona because of his success there as a
college and pro football player.
McCain began to press the Pentagon on the family’s behalf, and a third probe
finally was authorized. Its report was delivered in January.

The military is saying little publicly about the Tillman case. Most Army
personnel who were involved in the Tillman incident or the investigations
declined to comment publicly when contacted by The Chronicle. The inspector
general’s press office also declined to
comment, saying only that the new probe is openended.

Over the coming weeks, Pentagon investigators are scheduled to carry out
new interviews with many of the soldiers, officers and others involved in the
incident. As they carry out their reassessment, potentially controversial
points include:

— Conflicting testimony. In his Nov. 14, 2004, interrogation, the first
investigator expressed frustration with “watching some of these guys getting
off, what I thought … was a lesser of a punishment than what they should’ve
received. And I will tell you, over
a period of time … the stories have changed. They have changed to, I think,
help some individuals.”

The investigator testified that after he submitted his report on May 3,
higher-ranking officers permitted soldiers to change key details of their
testimony in order to prevent any individual from being singled out for
punishment.

“They had the entire chain of command (inaudible) that were involved, the
[deleted], all sticking up for [deleted] … And the reason the [deleted] called
me in … because the [deleted] … changed their story in how things occurred and
the timing and the distance
in an attempt to stick up for their counterpart, implied, insinuated that the
report wasn’t as accurate as I submitted it …” the first investigator
testified.

In another section of his testimony, he said witnesses changed details
regarding “the distance, the time, the location and the positioning” in
Tillman’s killing.

Another disputed detail was whether the soldiers were firing while speeding
down the canyon or whether they stopped, got out and continued shooting. In
testimony in the third investigation, the soldiers said they did not stop.
However, the medical examiner’s
report said Tillman was killed by three bullets closely spaced in his forehead
— a pattern that would have been unlikely if the shooter were moving fast.
Spc. Russell Baer, a soldier pinned down by gunfire on the hillside near
Tillman, said in an interview with
The Chronicle that at least two soldiers had gotten out of the humvee to fire
uphill. One other soldier confirmed this account to a Tillman family member.

One soldier dismissed by the Rangers for his actions in the incident
submitted a statement in the third investigation that suggests the probe was
incomplete: “The investigation does not truly set to rest the events of the
evening of 22 April 2004.
There is critical information not included or misinterpreted in it that could
shed some light on who is really at fault for this,” he wrote.

— Commanders’ accountability. According to the documents and interviews,
Capt. William Saunders, to whom platoon leader Uthlaut had protested splitting
his troops, was allowed to change his testimony over a crucial detail — whether
he had reported Uthlaut’s
dissent to a higher ranking commander. In initial questioning, Saunders said he
had done so, but when that apparently was contradicted by that commander’s
testimony, Saunders was threatened with perjury charges. He was given immunity
and allowed to change his prior testimony.

The regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bailey, was promoted to colonel
two months after the incident, and Saunders, who a source said received a
reprimand, later was given authority to determine the punishment of those below
him. He gave administrative
reprimands to six soldiers, including Uthlaut, who had been seriously wounded
in the face by shrapnel in the incident. Uthlaut — who was first captain of his
senior class at West Point, the academy’s highest honor — was dismissed from
the Rangers and re-entered
the regular Army.

“It seems grossly inappropriate that Saunders would determine punishment
for the others when he shares responsibility for the debacle,” Mary Tillman
said.

Baer told The Chronicle that commanding officers were to blame for the
friendly fire because they split the platoon and ordered it to leave a secure
location in favor of a region known as a Taliban stronghold.

“It was dumb to send us out during daylight,” said Baer, who was honorably
discharged from the Rangers earlier this year and lives in the East Bay.

“It’s a well-known military doctrine that privates first learn going
through basic training — if you are in enemy territory and you are stopped for
a prolonged period of time, the best thing to do is to wait until nightfall.
Why they thought that moving us
out in broad daylight from our position, dragging a busted humvee slowly
through a known hotspot after we had been stranded there all day was a good
idea will forever elude me. Who made that decision? Bailey? Saunders? That’s
what I want to know.”

— Inaccurate information. While the military code gives clear guidance for
informing family members upon a soldier’s death when cases are suspected of
being a result of friendly fire, that procedure was not followed in the Tillman
case. After Tillman’s
death, the Army gave conflicting and incorrect descriptions of the events.

On April 22, the family was told that Tillman was hit with enemy fire
getting out of
a vehicle and died an hour later at a field hospital.

Although there was ample testimony that Tillman died immediately, an Army
report — dated April 22, 2004, from the field hospital in Salerno, Afghanistan,
where his body was taken — suggested otherwise. While it stated that he had no
blood pressure or pulse
“on arrival,” it stated that cardio pulmonary resuscitation had been conducted
and that
he was transferred to the intensive care unit for further CPR.

On April 23, all top Ranger commanders were told of the suspected
fratricide. That same day, an Army press release said he was killed “when his
patrol vehicle came under attack.”

On April 29, four days before Tillman’s memorial, Gen. John Abizaid, chief
of U.S. Central Command, and other top commanders were told of the fratricide.
It is not known if Abizaid reported the news to Washington. Mary Tillman
believes that with her son’s
high profile, and the fact that Rumsfeld sent him a personal letter, the word
quickly reached the defense secretary. “If Pat was on Rumsfeld’s radar, it’s
pretty likely that
he would have been informed right away after he was killed,” she said. White
House, Pentagon and Army spokesmen all said they had no information on when
Bush or Rumsfeld
were informed.

On April 30, the Army awarded Tillman a Silver Star medal for bravery,
saying that “through the firing Tillman’s voice was heard issuing fire commands
to take the fight to the enemy on the dominating high ground.”

On May 2, the acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee was told of the
fratricide.

On May 7, the Army’s official casualty report stated incorrectly that
Tillman was killed by “enemy forces” and “died in a medical treatment
facility.”

On May 28, the Army finally admitted to Tillman’s family that he had been
killed by friendly fire.

“The administration clearly was using this case for its own political
reasons,” said the father, Patrick Tillman. “This cover-up started within
minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something
that (lower-ranking) people in the field do,” he said.

The files show that many of the soldiers questioned in the inquiry said it
was common knowledge that the incident involved friendly fire.

A soldier who on April 23 burned Tillman’s bullet riddled body armor —
which would have been evidence in a friendly-fire investigation — testified
that he did so because there was no doubt it was friendly fire that killed
Tillman. Two days later, Tillman’s uniform and vest also were burned because
they were soaked in blood and considered a biohazard. Tillman’s uniform also
was burned.

The officer who led the first investigation testified that when he was
given responsibility for the probe the morning after Tillman’s death, he was
informed that the cause was “potential fratricide.’’

After they received the friendly-fire notification May 28, the Tillmans
began a
public campaign seeking more information. But it was only when the Tillmans
began angrily accusing the Pentagon of a coverup, in June 2005, that the Army
apologized for the
delay, issuing a statement blaming “procedural misjudgments and mistakes.”

— Legal liability. In testimony on Nov. 14, the officer who conducted the
first investigation said that he thought some Rangers could have been charged
with “criminal intent,” and that some Rangers committed “gross negligence.” The
legal difference between the two terms is roughly similar to the distinction
between murder and involuntary manslaughter.

The Tillmans demand that all avenues of inquiry remain open.

“I want to know what kind of criminal intent there was,” Mary Tillman said.
“There’s so much in the reports that is (deleted) that it’s hard to tell what
we’re not seeing.”

In Congress, pressure is building for a full public disclosure of what
happened. “I
am committed to continuing my work with the Tillman family to ensure that their
concerns are being addressed,” said Rep. Honda. He added that he expects the
investigation
to do the following: “1) provide all factual evidence about the events of April
22, 2004;
2) identify the command decisions that contributed to Pat Tillman’s death; 3)
explain why the Army took so long to reveal fratricide as the cause of Pat
Tillman’s death; and 4) offer all necessary recommendations for improved
procedures relating to such incidents.”

Patrick Tillman drily called the new Army probe “the latest, greatest
investigation.” He added, “In Washington, I don’t think any of them want it
investigated. They
(politicians and Army officials) just don’t want to see it ended with them,
landing on their desk so they get blamed for the cover-up.” The January 2005
investigation concluded that there was no coverup.

Throughout the controversy, the Tillman family has been reluctant to cause
a media stir. Mary noted that Pat shunned publicity, refusing all public
comment when he enlisted and asking the Army to reject all media requests for
interviews while he was in service.
Pat’s widow, Marie, and his brother Kevin have not become publicly involved in
the case, and they declined to comment for this article.

Yet other Tillman family members are less reluctant to show Tillman’s
unique character, which was more complex than the public image of a gung-ho
patriotic warrior.
He started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the
battlefield, writing
in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.) Mary
Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky,
the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting
prevented by his death. She said
that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept.
11
attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”

Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan,
told one anecdote that took place during the March 2003 invasion as the Rangers
moved up through southern Iraq.

“I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city
in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an
old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were
talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said,
‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat
urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen.
John Kerry.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Stephen White — a Navy SEAL who served with Pat
and Kevin for four months in Iraq and was the only military member to speak at
Tillman’s memorial — said Pat “wasn’t very fired up about being in Iraq” and
instead wanted to go fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said both Pat and Kevin
(who has a degree in philosophy) “were amazingly well-read individuals … very
firm in some of their beliefs, their political
and religious or not so religious beliefs.”

Baer recalled that Tillman encouraged him in his ambitions as an amateur
poet. “I would read him my poems, and we would talk about them,” Baer said. “He
helped me grow as an individual.”

Tillman subscribed to the Economist magazine, and a fellow soldier said
Tillman
created a makeshift base library of classic novels so his platoon mates would
have literature to read in their down time. He even brought gourmet coffee to
brew for his platoon in the field in Afghanistan.

Baer said Tillman was popular among his fellow soldiers and had no enemies.
“The guys who killed Pat were his biggest fans,” he said. “They were really
wrecked afterward.” He called Tillman “this amazing positive force who really
brought our whole platoon together.

He had this great energy. Everybody loved him.” His former comrades and
family recall Tillman as a born leader yet remarkably humble. White, the Navy
SEAL, recalls one day
when “some 19-year-old Ranger came and ordered him to cut an acre of grass.

And Pat just did it, he cut that grass, he didn’t complain. He could have
taken millions of dollars playing football, but instead he was just taking
orders like that.”

Mary Tillman says that’s how Pat would have wanted to be remembered, as an
individual, not as a stock figure or political prop. But she also believes “Pat

was a real hero, not what they used him as.”

For the moment, all that
is left are the memories and the thick binders spread across Mary Tillman’s
dining room table in San Jose. As she waits for the Pentagon investigators to
finish their new probe, she wonders whether they will ask the hard questions.
Like other family members, “I just want accountability,” she said. “I want
answers.”

---

‘IT’S HARD TO KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE’

That’s the lament of Mary Tillman, above, a teacher of special education
in a San
Jose public school. She has long pressed the Army to reopen its investigation
into
the friendly-fire killing of her son, Pat Tillman, in a canyon in Afghanistan
on April 22, . The persistence of Mary Tillman and her former husband, Patrick
Tillman, was rewarded when the Pentagon’s inspector general opened a new
inquiry in August, the fourth such probe. Mary Tillman says she hopes questions
created by discrepancies in past testimony will finally be answered.

---

STORY CHANGES OVER TIME

An officer in Pat Tillman’s Ranger battalion who directed the first
investigation into the soldier’s death served as a witness on Nov. 14, 2004, in
the third investigation, which was led by Brig. Gen. Gary Jones. The first
investigator complained that the officers in charge of the second invest-

igation had allowed Rangers involved in the shooting to change their
testimony.

THREAT OF PERJURY CHARGES

An excerpt from a March 3, 2005, memorandum by

Brig. Gen. Gary Jones describes how Capt. William Saunders, the commander
of Pat Tillman’s Ranger company, was threatened with perjury charges. Jones’
memo said Saunders made false claims that he had informed his superiors that
platoon commander Lt. David Uthlaut had protested orders given to him leading
up to the incident. Despite this threat, Saunders was allowed to change his
testimony and was granted immunity.

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.

FAMILY DEMANDS THE TRUTH / New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat Tillman’s death

Powered by ScribeFire.

FORT LEWIS, Washington:

 

Twenty soldiers deployed to
Iraq from the army base here were killed in May, a monthly high. That
same month, the base announced a change in how it would honor its dead:
instead of units holding services as casualties occurred, they would be
held collectively once a month.

The anger and hurt were immediate. Soldiers’ families and veterans
protested the change as cold and logistics-driven. Critics online said
the military was trying to repress bad news about deaths. By mid-June,
the base had put the plan on hold, and its commander, Lieutenant
General Charles Jacoby, was expected to decide this week whether to go
through with it.

“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do,
wait until the end of the month?” asked Toni Shanyfelt, who said her
husband was serving one of multiple tours in Iraq. “I don’t know if
it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”

Military historians and scholars say the proposal and its fallout
highlight the tender questions facing the armed forces as casualties in
Iraq and Afghanistan mount, and some soldiers and their families come
to expect more from military bases than in past conflicts.

In Vietnam and Korea, the historians say, many bases were places for
training soldiers and shipping them out, rarely to see them return,
with memorial services uncommon. Now, in the age of the all-volunteer
force, the base has become the center of community. The army and other
branches have fostered the idea that military service is as much about
education, job training and belonging to a community as national
defense.

“It wasn’t considered the army’s business in any of the other wars
to conduct these services,” said Alan Archambault, director of the Fort
Lewis Military Museum, which is supported by the army. “It was the
home- towns of the soldiers that died that had these. Now I think the
army bases are trying to be the hometowns.”

Army officials said the idea to hold monthly services reflected a
need to find balance between honoring the dead and the practical
reality that the services take time to plan, including things like
coordinating rifle salutes and arranging receptions for family members
who attend.

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with
the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will
preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,”
Brigadier General William Troy, who was the interim commander at Fort
Lewis at the time, wrote in an e-mail message announcing the policy in
May.

The army also emphasizes that the ceremonies held on bases are in
addition to those held by the soldier’s unit overseas as well as
private family services, which usually include a military honor guard.
Those services would not be affected if Fort Lewis moved to a monthly
schedule.

Fort Lewis, the third-largest army base in the nation, has about
10,000 of its 28,000 soldiers deployed overseas, the majority of them
in Stryker brigades trained specially for urban combat. Several other
major bases, including Fort Hood in Texas, the largest, already hold
services monthly. Some hold them even less frequently.

“There is no armywide policy to have any memorial services,” a
spokeswoman for the army, Major Cheryl Phillips, said in an e-mail
message. “Commanders make the call. Several installations have
conducted services for each individual soldier and now have begun to
roll them into a quarterly service because, alas, the casualty numbers
are rising.”

At many bases, local elected officials attend the services. At Fort
Hood, whose 1st Cavalry Division has 19,000 soldiers overseas, many of
these officials are veterans with ties to the base or the army.

“It really is important that we keep it scheduled and that these
people all have it on their calendars,” said a spokeswoman for Fort
Hood, Diane Battaglia.

Battaglia said the monthly services helped bring families together, a point also made by Troy at Fort Lewis.

“I see this as a way of sharing the heavy burdens our spouses and
rear detachments bear, while giving our fallen warriors the respect
they deserve,” Troy wrote in the e-mail message. “It will also give the
families of the fallen the opportunity to bond with one another, as
they see others who share their grief.”

Battaglia said the Fort Hood soldiers received individual eulogies
at the monthly services. “It has worked phenomenally well,” she said.

At Fort Lewis, however, tension has been evident; changing a ritual,
especially as the death toll is rising, strikes some as disrespectful.

“By reducing it to once a month, I think they’re taking away from
us,” said Staff Sergeant Jason Angelle. “Soldiers deserve individual
honors.”

Sue Rothwell, who runs a diner popular among soldiers that is just
outside the main gate, said she had long opposed the war in Iraq but
had recently made a public point of honoring those who serve in it.

Several weeks ago she started putting the last names of soldiers who
had died on the reader board outside the restaurant, called Galloping
Gertie’s, under the heading, “The numbers have names.”

Rothwell said she opposed monthly services. “Individuals gave their
lives,” she said. “But if you have services just once a month, the
other 29 days you don’t have to think about it. Well, isn’t that
convenient.”

For now, at least, those who die are eulogized as hometown heroes, either individually or by division.

“We owe them the highest gratitude a nation can give,” Lieutenant
Colonel John Pettit, a chaplain, said at a memorial service this month
for two soldiers. Sergeant Joel Dahl and Corporal Victor Garcia were
killed by small arms fire in Iraq.

Powered by ScribeFire.

From Sheffield’s goshdarngood blog about NYC’s historic relativity and so much more:

Moondance Diner: It’s Gone

The
Moondance Diner—Soho landmark, employer of Jonathan Larson and
Spiderman’s girlfriend, last free-standing diner in
Manhattan—finally closed on July 1, following months of press
coverage about its imminent demise.

Condo builders, rejoice! You have triumphed again.

According
to Metro, the structure won’t be scrapped but shipped to a museum in
the Keystone State. So we can visit it. But it doesn’t sound like you
could get cheese fries in a museum diner.

Manager Billy Genat
said something fascinatingly peculiar: “You can see the sun through
these windows now, but you won’t be able to see the sun anymore
when the condos come. It will look like the triangle of the devil.”

Triangle of the Devil. Right now it’s called Avenue of the Americas. Think City Hall will approve a street name change?

Lost City

Moondance Diner: It’s Gone

The Moondance Diner—Soho landmark, employer of Jonathan Larson and Spiderman’s girlfriend, last free-standing diner in Manhattan—finally closed on July 1, following months of press coverage about its imminent demise.

Condo builders, rejoice! You have triumphed again.

According to Metro, the structure won’t be scrapped but shipped to a museum in the Keystone State. So we can visit it. But it doesn’t sound like you could get cheese fries in a museum diner.

Manager Billy Genat said something fascinatingly peculiar: “You can see the sun through these windows now, but you won’t be able to see the sun anymore when the condos come. It will look like the triangle of the devil.”

Triangle of the Devil. Right now it’s called Avenue of the Americas. Think City Hall will approve a street name change?

Powered by ScribeFire.

How the last presidential election awoke me from an unsound sleep
by Jeanne Norris Weinberg
July 22, 2006

Or … One average citizen’s account of her unsettling experience
video-taping on Election Day 2004, attending the public hearings
afterward and then serving as an Official Witness for the Ohio Vote
Recount.

In 2004, like most of my friends, I was asleep at the wheel,
even with questions still lingering following the 2000 election. As an
active mother, advocate and writer, I felt entitled to this lethargy.
It’s all too much was my hidden mantra. If I hadn’t been asked to take
my outdated family video camera to the polls on Election Day, I might
still be able relieve myself of the burden of being awake and aware.
But from that day forward, things changed. In late 2004, I added
Voter’s Rights activism to my list of duties. Nobody in my life saw it
coming, least of all me.

Linda Byrket, a filmmaker and the organizer for
video-documenting voter issues on the day of our last presidential
election, had nabbed me three days before the election, while I was
waiting in line for a showing of the film, Unprecedented, at the Drexel
Theatre. She assured me that my ineptness with a video camera wouldn’t
get in the way of making a video record of voters and their stories.

I took film footage at precincts in Franklin County, Ohio,
and it changed me, forever. Following that, I also attended two public
hearings about election abnormalities and following that, I volunteered
to become an official Witness for the Ohio Vote Recount.

On Election Day, 2004, I pulled out the camera, dusted it
off, and showed up to precincts where voters were having problems. My
job, and that of others who volunteered at the last minute for this
project, was simply to document voter issues, complaints, and testimony
of injustices. It was assumed there might be problems with Republican
challengers. I would have taped happy voters, as well, but in my
precincts, they were few and far between.

In the afternoon and evening, I went to precincts near the
Ohio State Universtiy campus and to three predominantly
African-American neighborhoods. In each of these polling places, there
were not enough voting booths for the number of voters. What is going
on?….was a constant question.

At 6pm, filming at a precinct in a small library, I followed
a line of more than 200 people out of the doors, down a path and into
the woods, in the dark, in the pouring rain. One woman yelled to me:
“Get a picture of me. I’m voting! My vote counts!” My footage includes
drenched people without umbrellas, smiling and giving me the thumbs-up
sign.

Taking a break from the rain, I had a quick dinner at the
simple, little church that was the headquarters for Election
Protection, a coalition for the protection of our vote. There, I met
people from Washington, New York and Michigan. Busloads of
bright-spirited students from Howard University in Washington, DC got
up at 4am to “protect the right to vote.”

A young man came back to the church after his shift with what
he called a victory story. He stood in front of the crowd to tell us
that a man returned to vote after having been in line for 2 hours in
the morning and leaving before voting in order to get to work. After
coming back and waiting 3 more hours in the late afternoon he was about
to leave in irritation again without having voted when these students
found him. They talked him into going back and taking his place in line
again. They brought him food. This time he got his vote cast. “One more
vote!” this kid shouted to the group as he told his story. There was
camaraderie here, real spirit! We were all in this together to try to
make a difference, make a change.

Taping people’s stories was the fun part of my job, but the
truth about their devastating experiences, sometimes serving as
roadblocks that kept them from casting their vote, started to unhinge
me. To this day, visions of chaos at the polls and the glistening,
hope-filled faces of people standing in long lines, in the rain, swim
through my mind, haunting me.

Coming home that soggy night, thinking of my two sons, aged
17 and 19, twisted my insides. They are the next generation of voter
and this had been the second election they would witness where fairness
or even civility didn’t seem to matter anymore. Common decency was
exchanged for political advantage by our Secretary of State, Kenneth
Blackwell. My own confidence in our system was slipping, so how would I
be able to insure that my sons cherish their own vote someday? It made
me think.

Once home, and after disturbing realities that my husband and
I had witnessed that day, we were not ready for the final vote tally
that gave George W. Bush the presidency. At midnight, heading up to
bed, we felt sure that, by morning, John Kerry would be investigating
the serious questions still lingering in Ohio— long lines, machine
errors, the lack of enough machines in Democratic districts and
provisional ballot inequities— since this was, after all, the swing
state. I could not fathom conceding with even a hint of
disenfranchisement after the Florida debacle in 2000. We had yet to
find out whether our growing concern about local voter
disenfranchisement was an anomaly or part of something bigger? Who
knew?

In my mind and the minds of many, Kerry’s concession speech
was premature, at the very least. We were stunned by his seeming lack
of curiosity. Were we just sore losers, wanting our man to win, or was
there more to this story? Why did this feel different than a mere
defeat? How could we get the answers we needed?

Multitudes of people in Ohio were outraged that the press had
invaded our state for months, prior to Election day, following the
candidates and yet ignored the voters, themselves, once Mr. Kerry
conceded. In the end, we were left to stand up for the very institution
of fair voting itself, our basic rights, rather than just for our
candidate.

Irate political leaders stood up and demanded investigation
and truth. They demanded a recount, which was complicated because
Kerry, himself, with money in his budget for a recount, had not
requested it. Citizens persisted anyhow. Meetings and public hearings
were held to give a voice to disenfranchised voters. Bob Fitrakis,
Harvey Wasserman, Cliff Arnebeck, CASE Ohio, Black Box voters and many,
many other people stepped up the pressure on anybody who would listen.
They were spirited and tough. The Green Party painstakingly put all the
pieces in place to eventually get that recount done. They conducted
themselves like true statesmen, wanting what was best for all of us.

Linda
Byrket’s documentary, Video The Vote, provided actual footage of many
of the problems. It is a now powerful record of the rain, the lines,
the attorneys, people in tears and other general chaos. My own shots
were included. Was I at the right place at the right time to see the
long lines, etc. or was it the wrong place at the wrong time? Either
way, this voter is unhappy about what she witnessed. I do not concede
my vote. My life as a US citizen will never be the same.

Because of that film and after attending the hearings, I
volunteered to be an official witness of the Election 2004 Recount. I
have no special skills in either politics or vote recounts but in an
effort to get to the truth behind serious doubts regarding our free and
fair election, extra hands were needed and I resolved to make a small
difference by merely participating in the election vote recount. I had
a very different Christmas season that year and it had a lot to do with
the odd coincidence of my living in Columbus, the capital city of Ohio
where the swing vote happened.

My assignment was in Ashland County, Ohio, about halfway
between Columbus and Cleveland. Because of obstructionist delays by
Ohio’s Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who is also the Co-chair of
the Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio, we weren’t able to get a recount done
before the electoral vote was cast, but the recount proceeded anyway.

Many people were needed on a moment’s notice in the midst of
already crowded holiday time. To be frank, I wasn’t at all ready for
such a job, and I knew it. Yet, the goal was to have each county’s
recount witnessed. I was told to watch the process and that anything I
observed would be valuable information.

I resolved to do my best, overcoming basic hesitations. I
didn’t have enough time to study the Ohio Recount Law so that I would
know all the right questions to ask and I didn’t really want to
confront officious personalities should I spot an error in the count.
Yet, I couldn’t seem to get over seeing those long lines and then
hearing hours of sworn testimony …as in, under oath to God and
country… at public meetings about peoples electronic vote
inexplicably switching from Gore to Bush and other frighteningly
unacceptable irregularities on election day.

What I did want to do was bake a few cookies before my son
got home from college on Christmas break. I wanted to rest from three
trips out of town, for work, in the last two weeks. I wanted, at least,
to put the Christmas tree upright in its stand. In Franklin County,
though, we’d just seen too much to be able to sip our eggnog in peace
without this last effort. After the recount was done, it might be
possible to put our feet up with a small amount of honor.

Ours is the county, located in the capital of the
swing-state, yet it is also the place where the real story about
problems in our election never got told. News teams were conspicuously
absent from all those public hearings. Secretary of State, Ken
Blackwell, is on record as saying: ” There were no problems in Ohio,
whatsoever, beyond the usual election gaffes that happen in any
election.” This quote was circulated among the media, yet voters who
lost their right to vote were not quoted. Disenfranchisement is a
soft-sounding word, yet it is a horrific reality. What it means is
that, by underhanded means, people were denied the right to vote.

I don’t blame people in the other 49 states for not getting
what we, in Ohio, mean when we say Voter Fraud or Disenfranchisement.
How could they know any better without some serious research? Yet, as I
heard a Nebraska Democrat speak on a national news show to Ohio
citizens: “Get over it. Our candidate lost. Don’t be sore losers.” I
wanted to respond…… “May God help you if this group chooses your
state to be the next swing state because they’ve researched your
subtle, sometimes outdated state election laws, found all the right
gray areas, studied densities of population, gerrymandered your
districts, and put one of their own in charge of the “free and fair”
elections in your state.”

After a small confidence speech to myself, I pulled myself
together, put on some warm boots and found my way to the Board of
Elections in Ashland County. This recount would now be used to collect
the data necessary to take the next step in understanding what went
wrong. Exit poll confusion, something that all election specialists
look at in every other election around the world, were said by this
administration to actually, in this case, not really mean that much.

Jimmy
Carter, our former president, who has become an election specialist,
working through the Carter Center, did not oversee our election because
his suggestions after 2000, asked for by the administration in a “show”
of good faith, were not taken seriously. Prior to the 2004 election, he
said that it “is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased
electoral practices in any nation. It is especially objectionable among
us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting global examples for
pure democracy. With reforms unlikely at this stage of the election,
perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on
the suspicious practices in Florida.”

We now have placed this intense scrutiny on the suspicious
activity in Ohio. Though we couldn’t do it before the electoral vote to
actually make a difference to the outcome, we can now, at the very
least, gain deeper insight into discrepancies.

In a recount, each candidate is entitled to send its own
representative to oversee the process. I represented Cobb for the Green
Party, another woman represented Badnarik, an Independent, and there
were representatives from the Democrats and Republicans who showed up
promptly for the 9am start. Also present were equal numbers of
Republicans and Democrats from their Board of Elections and the staff
from Ashland County who actually handled the ballots and fed them
through the tabulation machine. Ms. Madhu Sing, a field representative
for Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell was sent as an extra observer
to this particular county.

A presidential election recount is a dread moment for any
Board of Elections, a real bother and something that makes them
vulnerable to outside eyes and possible criticism. As we all gathered
for the day to begin, people were polite, yet tension hovered in the
air, shown by tight smiles, crossed arms and serious attitudes.

The first question asked was about how they would take a
random sampling of their precincts and the answer was that they had
already figured out which precincts represented a typical random
sampling. Since typical and random are opposing terms, this was not a
random sample.

My report is posted on-line with the Green Party at
http://www.votecobb.org, so here I’ll just tell you of a few of my experiences
and observations. I witnessed the Opti-Scan system of voting in Ashland
County, which is similar to taking a multiple choice test where you
fill in the correct circle with a number 2 pencil. Counting these
ballots is done on a tabulation machine, scanning for areas marked by
pencil. Erasures are a problem, since some pencil lead always remains
embedded in the paper.

I learned what is meant by an overvote. It means that the
intention of the voter isn’t clear from whatever marks they put on
their ballot. In a recount, the task is to try to make sure that
ballots have not been thrown out without extra attention given to
trying to ascertain the true intention of said voter. Marking an
opti-scan ballot in pen rather than pencil, even if everything is
filled in correctly, throws your vote out. All overvotes are
re-examined in a recount.

The witness, me, spends a lot of time pointing at, but not
touching certain ballots that appear to be clear as to the intention of
the voter. Our chairs were on wheels, which meant we were like racecars
that gun their engines at the appropriate moment and take off. But in
our case we would lurch forward a few feet, to notice if, indeed, the
offending ballot was credibly wrong, only to back up again a few
minutes later and watch some more. Touching the cast ballots is
absolutely forbidden.

The method of storing the cast ballots after the election,
until they are destroyed, has strict rules. They must be under lock and
key at all times. I observed the cubicles along the side of the room
from which the staff was getting each precinct’s cast ballots. Stacked
on top of the cubicles were snacks, mugs and cleaning products. I also
scanned the rest of the room, about the size of a two-person office, or
maybe three or four work cubicles, not huge.

There was a table with a vinyl tablecloth, used for the
recount. I also noticed a coat rack, fridge and microwave in the room.
Since this looked a whole lot like a lunchroom, I asked if storing them
in here was following the rule of being kept under lock and key. I was
told that the door to the room had a lock on it, was kept locked when
not in use and that the outer door to all the offices had a lock on it,
as well.

“How many people are in and out of here each day,” I asked?
“Just us, and we are all trustworthy,” I was told. This is not a
satisfying answer. What about cleaning crew, electricians, visiting
family?

Recounts are about collecting objective data,
but people come with personalities. I believe my quiet demeanor was a
little bit of a problem for Ms. Singh. Not being very chatty, I sat in
my office chair-on-wheels, paying attention, taking notes and puzzling
over the presence of this field representative of the Secretary of
State. She intermittently asked me where I would be witnessing the next
day. I always said that I didn’t know yet. She interested me and I
began to understand her role better towards the end of the day.

Our assigned schedule changed at lunch, which broke a half an
hour early, after some whispering in the hall, between Ms. Singh and
members of the board. These meetings in the hall went on, from time to
time, all day, out of the range of the official witnesses to the
recount. When we returned from our lunch recess, the recount continued
with no clue as to why we had adjourned early and not come back early
as well. Why the extra time? Secrets intrigue me.

We began to notice that the overvotes written in ink were now
being put aside in a separate box from everything else. By the end of
the day, about 4pm, we were told that during lunch, Ms. Sing had spoken
to the Secretary of State and received permission to put the votes
written in ink back into the count. This recovered a few votes for each
party. She told us that our Democrat fellow observer had quietly asked
her if these votes might be considered as being clear as to intent of
the voter, so she spoke about this at lunchtime, by phone, with Mr.
Blackwell. She repeated, over and over: “Now you can see that he is a
truly fair overseer of the election.”

I asked another question. “Did you also ask for a judgement
about the overvotes where both a circle was filled in and the same name
was written at the bottom?” These far outnumbered the ink overvotes.
This was ignored. I was reminded that the role of the witness is to
oversee the recount, not to impede it in any way. So I said clearly, in
front of everyone: “I’d like to state, for the record, that I’d like
the Secretary of State to consider those as well.” Nothing more was
said. In a future recount, I would have someone make a note of the
number of overvotes in this category since they were vastly more
significant in number. I still wonder why it was all so secret, the
question, the phone call and the pulling aside of the ink votes. I
wonder why my clear question did not even receive a response.

After Ms. Singh’s announcement, it was assumed that we had
come to the end and we were given the results of the recount. The
recount added a total of 64 votes back into the vote count for this
county, about 40 for Bush, 20 for Kerry and some others. I asked, for
the third time to see the polling books, which is the right of the
witness, under the law. I had asked by phone if I could come in the day
before or early that morning to view the polling books and was told no,
so this was the only time left. It stretched people’s good graces,
though, and I was yelled at by a member of their Board of Elections. I
was told that I wouldn’t know what to do with the information. “That’s
OK,” I said. “This is what I’m supposed to do,” which required another
meeting in the hall.

With suppressed anger, workers brought out the books, precinct
by precinct. My fellow witness for Badnarik and I, in an effort to
speed things up, began recording our notes, each taking different
precincts, of the numbers of ballots sent, votes cast, spoiled votes
and provisional ballots. At this point, the same unsettled woman
expressed great rage toward me. “This is ridiculous! You don’t know
what you’re doing and were not even prepared for this! You are wasting
everyone’s time and just scribbling in your notebook!”

Realizing that it was imperative now that I speak with
equilibrium in order to get on with things, I stood up slowly, spoke
the name of the precinct just recorded and rattled off each number
accurately. Then I said: “I know this is a pain in the ass and I have
no desire to make it any more difficult than is necessary, but this is
my job and I intend to do it. I can either come back tomorrow or go on
as quickly as I can this afternoon until I’ve recorded what I need.”
This was met with silence, but it eased a bit of the tension. It was
clear that no one wanted to come back the next day, so my partner and I
proceeded.

About an hour later, we were finally done. With my coat on
and clutching my notebook, I was first in line as we filed out, past
the board of election, etc., to go home, yet I made it my business to
shake each person’s hand and to thank them. People rose as I approached
them. One Democrat on the board told me he knew I was only doing the
job I had come to do. Ms Singh remained seated.

On the whole, I liked the people in this county. They reminded
me of my own neighbors and family, with broad mid-western faces and a
desire for the system to work. We rely on the wheels of justice to turn
in the direction of truth.

What strikes me now as still important is that three of Jimmy
Carter’s main points about election reform continue to remain big
problems in Ohio.

1.We allow our Secretary of State, with strong party responsibilities

to oversee the election.

2.We do not have a single voting procedure with a paper trail,

which, in the case of electronic voting, would be a ballot printout.

3.We have not outlawed the practices that led to long lines at the polls.

The best proof available for voter disenfranchisement in Ohio,
in the eyes of the law, has to do with those long lines that are in
practically every clip of Linda Byrket’s film, VIDEO THE VOTE. Its
footage covers precincts all over the city of Columbus, Ohio, where
there was incredible confusion within the polls. It shows people
standing under umbrellas or dripping wet, wearing garbage bags for
protection from the rain. I participated in that film and it stuns me
to this day how that one fateful action has spawned my re-engagement
with the political future of our country. It was difficult, at first,
to be on the front lines of a new battle that seemed to just fall into
my lap, but I now feel blessed to know that average citizens really can
make a difference. At the end of the film are three words: Let’s fix
this. I’m now on that path.

John Conyers, Democratic congressman from Michigan, led a
committee to ascertain What Went Wrong in Ohio. His report to Congress,
now part of the Congressional Record, has also been published as a book
with the same name. The film is part of that record as well.

Mid-terms are now upon us. The drumbeat has begun. Even for a
middle-aged person, like me, with another life beyond politics, staying
awake now, is necessary. My actions do count. I cannot just sit back
for any election anymore. This is my country, my president, and my
vote.

The Free Press

Technorati Tags: Vote, 2008, Presidential Elections, Election Fraud, Diebold, Bev Harris, Bush, Cheney, Kerry, Ohio, ballot, Polls,

Powered by ScribeFire.

By Paul J. Gough

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Dan
Patrick, one half of the duo that helped bring “SportsCenter” to its
snarky fame in the 1990s, will leave ESPN next month.

Patrick
announced his departure on his ESPN Radio show Monday from San
Francisco, where he was covering the lead-up to Tuesday night’s Major
League Baseball All-Star Game. Patrick’s last radio show will air
August 17. It wasn’t immediately clear when his last appearance on TV
will be.

Patrick, 51, was a “SportsCenter” anchor from 1989 to
2006, when ESPN’s signature show became synonymous with sports TV.
Patrick and co-anchor Keith Olbermann rocketed to fame as the face of
ESPN and served as models for the short-lived ABC series “Sports Night.”

“(I) would like to go out on my own. I have not been a free agent. I’ve
spent 18 years here. It’s been home, but I thought I was taking it for
granted,” Patrick told radio listeners Monday.

He said that the decision was his and he had been asked to reconsider last week.

“If there was any animosity, I would not be doing any radio shows after
this,” Patrick said. He added later on: “There’s no bad blood.”

Patrick didn’t announce any post-ESPN plans, other than that he would
like to return to the radio at some point. “TV-wise, not sure,” he said.

Patrick’s last week on the radio will feature his greatest hits. He
started the radio show in 1999 from ESPN’s Bristol, Conn.,
headquarters. He also served as studio host of “NBA Countdown” on ABC
for the broadcast network’s NBA games, including the finals. He was a
sports anchor/reporter for CNN between 1983 and 1989 and won a Sports
Emmy in 1998 as studio host.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

ESPN’s Patrick announces departure

Powered by ScribeFire.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS ROLLS ANN COULTER – SMOKES HER IN A FATTY

ELIZABETH EDWARDS ROLLS ANN COULTER – SMOKES HER IN A FATTY

TRUTHSQUAD:: DAVID SHUSTER KILLS THE GOP TALKING POINTS ON LIBBY

DAVID SHUSTER KILLS THE GOP TALKING POINTS ON LIBBY

OLBERMANN: NO HISTORY NEEDED TO KNOW HE’S A TRUE PATRIOT

OLBERMANN: NO HISTORY NEEDED TO KNOW HE’S A TRUE PATRIOT