Reply #4: Stan Goff has reviewed everything and disagrees. [View All]

[Bushwick Bill]

Stan,
Just wondering if this new information from the AP:
is part of what you already know.

I’m not at all interested in promoting any “conspiracy theories”, I’m just wondering if this new information moves Tillman’s cause of death due to “friendly fire” closer to a possibility of a deliberate fragging.

STAN: Not unless it occurred in front of at least eight people, all who had great respect for him, and who conspired to cover this up together. Two of the top gunshot specialists in forensic pathology in the nation agree with me that this was likely a squad automatic weapon (same caliber as an M-4). The army dummied up the distances, then drew them down to 85 meters to support a “fog of war” thesis (as opposed to the actual serial violations of the ROE that did occur… more likely at around 40 meters. The three shots that killed Pat were actually two tight, and one flyer, all head shots and each instantly fatal on its own account. Now think in slow motion. Let me begin with the terminal ballistics one never sees in films and on tv. Destruction of the connectionn between the brain stem and the rest of the body caused a body to fall… straight down. No, people do not fly through the air like the stunt-people in Hollywood. Straight down. This happens instantly. The new theory proposed by some so-called expert, says that this tight shot-group (less than 4 inches) could only have been fired by someone shooting on semi-automatic (one shot at a time, even if in rapid succession). A fully-automatic weapon, like the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) that is presumed (by me and two of the top forensics experts in the country) to be the lethal weapon, according to this theory, cannot fire this shot group because automatic weapons can not be controlled for this tight a shot-group. This premise is the basis of the presumed distance (10 meters) and mode of fire (semi-auto)/weapon (M-4) in the ne AP-propogated theory. Two problems: (1) the theory about auto fire is wrong, and (2) Pat was shot in the face three times, while facing downhill, and standing on a steep incline dropping to his front. (2) first. For this to have been an M-4 fiing on semi, the shooter would have had to fire, reaquire, fire, reaquire, and fire again, before Pat fell to the ground (straight down, on a steep forward inclining piece of terrain, with a large stone in front of him to prevent him tumbling down the hill). Even a very good rapid-fire shooter could not have place all three shots together quickly enough to fire the second and third shots before Pat fell away from the sight alignment. The only 5.56 mm weapon that could have placed those shots that quickly in the same place was the SAW… cyclic rate of auto-fire: 850 rounds per minute (14 rounds per second, ergo, three rounds in 2/10 of a second). Physics and pysiology matter; now add on the statistical probability that a bunch of enlisted people wopuld willingly participate as accessories after the fact in a cold-blooded murder (that just happened to coincide with an unplanned (but ineffectual) ambush)… and we begin to appreciate how unlikely this scenario is. Now for number (1). I’ll happily go to the range with anyone who cares to set it up today (which can be arranged with anyone who has been trained with the SAW), and demosntrate that these tight groups very well can be fired from a Saw, when they are part of a con tinuous firing cycle that allows the gunner to first walk the fire onto a target, then tighten down on the weapon as he orients on the impact signature (The rock in front of Pat was covered with bullet strikes.). There are family members who will not easily dismiss this because they are not experts on these things, and because the government has lied and covered up again and again and again on this case. I don’t fault them; and in fact I have great affection for them. The depth of their sense of betrayal would make anyone think the worst, and want someone to prove otherwise. More than this, I am not willing to say because I am still under a confidentiality agreement. Let me say this, though. If this case becomes about a conspiracy to murder, the focus is taken off the likely suspects for the real cover-up and crime, and the ones who all these sacrifices of Geneals have been designed to protect… Donald Rumsfeld, Lawrence DeRita, and probably George W. Bush. They are all loving this right now.

STAN: The big news is that Rumsfeld will invoke executive privilege to avoid testifying about when he learned about the fratricide. On the conspiracy, I respect Dr. Zimbardo immensely, and the Stanford Experiment remains extremely relevant; but I have reviewed thousands of pages of testimony on the incident, and know the family quite well. Infantry platoons don’t commit political assassinations, and Pat’s killing was not planned by anyone. This is my absolute and categorical opinion. I have written a series about Pat’s death for the now-defunct From the Wilderness Publications, called “The Tillman Files,” and my basic prosecutorial hypotheses remain unchanged. I have since learned many more details and had names corrected from previously redacted documents; but long-story-short, no conspiracy. More than that I can’t say now, because I have signed a confidentiality aggreement that limits my discussion of this case.
http://stangoff.com/?p=522#comment-82779

Read Stan's series on the case here.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.shtml#tillman