Tillman’s last acts misconstrued

WASHINGTON — The last minutes of Pat Tillman’s life were a horror of misdirected machine-gun fire and signals to firing colleagues that were misunderstood as hostile acts, according to an account published Sunday of the death of the former NFL player.

It took the Army a month to change the record to show that Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who gave up a $3.6 million contract to become an Army Ranger, was killed last April not by Afghan guerrillas but by his Ranger colleagues.

Even then, the statement by Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., head of the Army’s Special Operations Command, gave few specifics of the corporal’s death and implied he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he “probably died as a result of friendly fire.”

The Washington Post, in the first article of a two-part series, published what it described as the first full telling of how and why Tillman died. The newspaper said it had access to “dozens of witness statements, e-mails, investigation findings, logbooks, maps and photographs.”

Tillman was based at Fort Lewis, Wash., part of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

A series of mishaps and missteps began the chain of events that resulted in Tillman’s death in eastern Afghanistan, the newspaper said.