[PatrickHenry]

Now Tillman's death is being investigated as a crime: http://sportsillustrated.netscape.cn...=20060305NY107

Tillman's mother, Mary, told the Washington Post Saturday that the criminal investigation should have been launched at the onset. ``The military has had every opportunity to do the right thing and they haven't,'' she said. ``They knew all along that something was seriously wrong and they just wanted to cover it up.'' His father, Patrick Tillman Sr., told the Post that he questioned whether another investigation would provide anymore answers. ``I think it's another step,'' he said. ``But if you send investigators to reinvestigate an investigation that was falsified in the first place, what do you think you're going to get?'' Two initial fact-finding investigations were conducted at the unit level right after Tillman's death. He was a member of the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. A third investigation was conducted by U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and a concurrent investigation was done by the Army's Safety Center. Tillman, 27, died on April 22, 2004, when he was struck by gunfire during a firefight along a canyon road near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Army said at the time that the barrage of bullets came from enemy fire. A report by the Army later found that troops with Tillman knew at the time that friendly fire had killed the football star. Officers destroyed critical evidence and concealed the truth from Tillman's brother, also an Army Ranger, who was nearby, the report found. More than three weeks after a memorial service in San Jose, Calif., the Army announced on May 29, 2004, that friendly fire rather than an enemy encounter caused Tillman's death. However, even at the time of the memorial, top Army officials were aware that the investigation showed the death had been caused by an act of ``gross negligence,'' the report said.