Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Pat Tillman Death and Conspiracy - Lt. Gen. Kensinger

In a recent report, Lt Gen. Kensinger recently released a statement indicating that he will be defending himself before "the board" of review that will decide whether he will lose rank and how much:

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - The retired general being considered for demotion after the friendly fire death of former pro football player Pat Tillman wants to defend himself before an Army board, his lawyer said.
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Retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. was censured for "a failure of leadership" and accused of lying to investigators, and an Army board set to meet in the coming weeks will determine if he should be demoted. Kensinger, a three-star general, was in charge of the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg when Tillman was killed three years ago.


Kensinger refused to testify before congress for a very good reason: anything he said would be under oath and could be used against him at any military proceedings.

In regards to whether Kensinger lied to investigators, I have not reviewed all of his testimony, but I did review his last statement here

Beyond the alleged "false official statements", Kensinger made two other serious mistakes. First, he admitted that, due to a previous incident, he decided to re-interpret Army regulations more stringently and in direct contradiction to standard operating procedures, to withhold even the information that an investigation was underway. The second issue, by his actions, he did damage the image of the army.

I suspect though that his defense is going to be that others were aware of the investigation and that the national news was still announcing Tillman's death as due to enemy fire. He is going to try to convince the board that this knowledge and Centcom's and DoD's continuing silence was implicit approval for his actions.

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