CBS - TILLMAN DEATH DIVIDES MILITARY, MEDIA

A report that the Army has agreed to open a new investigation into the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2002 has touched off new charges that the military has been manipulating information about the Middle East conflict in order to stir up patriotic fervor at home. In an interview with the CBS blog Public Eye, Dan Goure, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, remarked, "The relationship [between the military and the news media] has really gone to hell. There is a strongly held perception in the military -- particularly the Army -- that the media is doing the enemy's work. You guys are seen as the Jane Fondas of the Iraq war. And so the military['s] attitude is, 'Why should we level with you, because you're going to screw us.'" In the case of Tillman, the Army first announced that he had died a hero as he was cut down by Taliban fire during an operation in Afghanistan. But months later, after Tillman's family prodded the Pentagon for further information about his death, the Army announced that he had been the victim of "friendly fire." At the same time, reporters soon began noticing discrepancies in the military's accounts of the tragedy, and some press accounts questioned whether the military may have consciously fabricated the original story about his death. In an interview with liberal commentator Robert Sheer, Tillman's mother said Wednesday, "The administration used Pat. ... They tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him." In a separate interview with today's Arizona Republic, she added, "Pat has a right and we have the right to know the truth. If they are lying about Pat, then they are lying about other soldiers." CBS News's national security correspondent David Martin commented Wednesday that he now generally assumes that the people he interviews in the military about the war are "telling the truth -- they're just not telling me the whole truth. If you think they're lying all the time, you're never going to get a piece done."

09/03/2006