Brownlee's order came after Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., carrying a list of questions sent to him from Tillman's mother, Mary, met with Army officers and Brownlee on Oct. 5. Brownlee and Army officers met again with McCain on Nov. 14, the day McCain's office obtained a letter formally stating the Army had opened another investigation.

The new probe was officially opened at Brownlee's order on Nov. 3, an Army spokeswoman said.

Among the questions Mary wanted answered: Why did it take the Pentagon five weeks to acknowledge that Pat was not killed by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters on April 22 but by a section of his own Army Rangers platoon?

In fact, it was The Arizona Republic, not the Army, that first informed Pat Tillman's parents on May 28 that the Army's investigation had concluded their son likely was killed by friendly fire, a finding withheld from them and the public until after memorials and commemorations for Tillman.

Carol Darby, a spokeswoman with the Army's Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., confirmed Monday that official findings of the investigation had been completed and turned over to Central Command as early as May 17.

But it was not until May 29 and after The Republic already had contacted Mary and Patrick Tillman and published a news story that their son likely was killed by friendly fire, that officials of the Special Operations Command publicly confirmed that was true.

Even then, the Army provided few specifics of Pat Tillman's death and implied he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he died, a claim that also is in dispute now with a new newspaper account that there may be no evidence insurgents ever opened fire on the Rangers.

"I hope the outcome of this new investigation will finally provide a full and accurate account of the events surrounding this terrible tragedy and address the concerns of his family," McCain said Monday.

"It's an entirely new investigation," said Army Sgt. Kyle Cosner, another spokesman with Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. "It's important to distinguish between the old investigation and what is a new group of individuals conducting a new investigation."

Neither of Tillman's parents could be reached Monday for comment.



Tillman's brother-in-law, Alex Garwood, executive director of the Pat Tillman Foundation, said, "We understand the interest, but we consider this a personal matter with the family, and the foundation does not have a comment."

A spokeswoman in McCain's office said that the senator was given a time frame of "a couple of weeks" for the new investigation to be complete but that the holiday schedule makes the exact date of completion unclear.

Darby also could not give a specific time frame for completion.

Army officials insisted that no one involved in the previous investigation conducted by U.S. Central Command out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa is involved.

Although this new probe initially was prompted by questions raised by the Tillman family, reports on Sunday and Monday in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have raised more questions about what happened the night of April 22 when Tillman was killed and about the Pentagon's handling of its investigations afterward.

In a two-part report Sunday and Monday, the Post recalled how the Army's April 30 public news release purportedly giving details of Tillman's death in southeastern Afghanistan made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time investigators already had taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death.

That news release, in which the Army announced Tillman was posthumously receiving the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions, focused on how he led a team of Rangers up a hill to knock out enemy fire that had pinned down another section of his platoon.

But the Post story described internal Army documents as also detailing a series of botched communications, a misguided order to divide the platoon over the objection of its leader, an explosion believed to be the beginning of an enemy attack, and undisciplined firing by Rangers that led to the fratricide of not just Tillman but also an Afghan militiaman.

On Monday, the Times added more fuel to the notion the Pentagon was involved in a deliberate misinformation campaign.

The newspaper reported that even with the amended version of what happened to Tillman, which was released May 29, few other specifics of Tillman's death were given and the Army continued to imply he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he died.

But even that version, the Times reported, is contradicted by Afghan police and militia commanders, along with local residents there. They say the Army Rangers simply overreacted to an explosion, either a land mine or roadside bomb, and fired wildly at Tillman and other Rangers.

The Times reported that those officials say there is no evidence insurgents opened fire in the remote canyon where Tillman was raked by gunfire from a section of his own Ranger platoon.

Army officials on Monday declined to publicly release the documents and interviews that provided the basis of its initial investigative findings.

No soldiers faced judicial action as a result of Tillman's death, but several were disciplined, Darby said.





Reach the reporter at billy.house@arizonarepublic.com or 1-(202)-906-8136