Rupert Cornwell: Secrets and lies - how war heroes returned to haunt Pentagon

Truth, it is famously said, is the first casualty of war. And thus it has been for two of the most celebrated official heroes of America's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One was Pat Tillman, the pro-football star who gave up the NFL's riches to serve, and ultimately die for, his country. The other was a young woman from West Virginia whose capture and rescue in the early days of the Iraq conflict inspired the TV drama-documentary Saving Jessica Lynch. Now, however, the two stories have returned to haunt the Pentagon. Both stand revealed as propaganda operations in which the truth was deliberately distorted to inspire a country and allay public doubts about the righteousness of the cause. For the US military they have become a colossal embarrassment; for gleeful Democrats they are another stick with which to beat an already battered administration.

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On Tuesday, the two cases converged in a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by the California congressman Henry Waxman, an especially harsh tormentor of the Bush White House since the Democrats recaptured Congress last November. Mr Waxman promises to follow both affairs wherever they lead ­ in the Tillman case, he hints, perhaps to a cover-up involving Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary, in person.

Of the two, the Jessica Lynch saga contains the lesser danger for the administration. She was taken prisoner by Saddam Hussein's troops, and freed from hospital within the space of barely a week in March and April 2003. By the end of that year the initial version of her capture and release, featuring her as a latter-day Annie Oakley who went down all guns firing, and her liberators as all-American supermen, had been demolished as a feel-good PR special dreamt up by the Pentagon.

In fact, she was rendered unconscious by the crash of her vehicle. As for her release, it was a splendid opportunity to showcase military derring-do, in the shape of a dramatic (and conveniently filmed) assault against what in fact was an unresisting hospital.

From early on, Ms Lynch complained that she felt she had been used. This week she made her feelings crystal clear again, to Mr Waxman's committee.

"The story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting is not true," she said. "The bottom line is, the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."

When NBC ran its film in November 2003, she noted later, such were the inaccuracies she could not bear to watch it through to the end.

But her case, to all intents and purposes, is closed. Not so that of Corporal (posthumously promoted to Sergeant) Tillman. His story was the stuff of a military recruiter's dreams. An established star with the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League, he turned down a $3.6m (£1.8m) contract in 2002 to enlist in the elite Army Rangers, to hunt down those responsible for the 9/11 attacks six months earlier.

He was handsome, personable, and just 27 years old when he was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in April 2004. This fact was known to members of his unit, but was instantly suppressed. It took more than a month for his family to be notified of what had happened, by which time the US Army had concocted the story of how he died under enemy fire ­ and also concocted a citation for a Silver Star, the military's third highest award for valour in combat.

Since then matters have grown steadily more convoluted, despite two investigations and a report from the Pentagon's inspector general that identified nine officers who might be disciplined over the affair. One of them, Lt General Philip Kensinger, head of Army special operations in 2004, refused to testify to the committee on Tuesday, invoking his right to avoid self-incrimination.

But the new information that did emerge was damaging enough. An Army Ranger who was with Sgt Tillman when he died told how he realised at once that friendly fire was to blame, and wanted to tell Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother, who was serving in the same unit. But he was ordered not to by his battalion commander, with an implicit warning that he "would get in trouble" if he disobeyed. Kevin's testimony was even more bitter. He accused the military of "deliberate and calculated lies" designed to transform his brother's tragic death into "an inspirational message" ­ carefully timed to divert attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal which erupted only days later, and mounting US casualties in Iraq.

Mr Waxman now wants to resolve the question left unanswered by the Pentagon reports, of how high the cover-up extended. As Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, noted, her son's decision to give up a lucrative NFL career attracted so much attention that Mr Rumsfeld in 2002 sent him a personal letter of thanks. It was inconceivable the latter was not informed when he died, Ms Tillman argues.

Thus, too, the ominous words of Mr Waxman, redolent of countless Washington scandals past. "We don't know what the secretary of defence knew, and we don't know what the White House knew. These are questions this committee seeks answers to." In other words, Mr Rumsfeld's thus far quiet retirement may be rudely interrupted, by a personal appearance before Mr Waxman and his fellow searchers for truth.

THE JESSICA LYNCH STORY

The fiction
Lynch, then a 19-year-old army private, resisted heroically when her supply unit was ambushed near Nasiriyah on 23 March 2003, four days into the invasion. Badly injured, she was taken to an Iraqi hospital where she was allegedly mistreated. After a tip-off, American special forces stormed the hospital on 1 April, rescuing her and recovering the bodies of eight US soldiers. The night raid, which was filmed, was said to have met with fierce resistance.

The facts
During the ambush, Lynch was knocked unconscious as her vehicle crashed. She woke up in the Iraqi hospital with broken bones but no recollection of the incident, and certainly never fired her weapon. She seems to have been well treated. As for the rescue raid, Iraqi doctors said they were herded at gunpoint and treated like insurgents. Medical equipment was smashed. All Iraqi soldiers had left the hospital the previous day, and there was no resistance.

THE PAT TILLMAN STORY

The fiction
Tillman, a corporal in the elite Army Rangers, was killed on 22 April 2004, when his unit was attacked in an ambush near the village of Sperah in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border. He was said to have been killed by enemy fire in the incident, in which an Afghan militia soldier was killed, and two other Rangers injured. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for valour, on the basis of a falsified citation. George Bush called him a "national inspiration".

The facts
Tillman's unit was split into two groups as it moved through a canyon on a search mission for al-Qa'ida and Taliban fighters. Tillman was assigned to the advance unit, but it was the second, trailing unit that came under attack. Tillman tried to chase off the attackers. He was killed in chaotic firing by the second unit - even though the driver of its lead vehicle later testified he recognised Tillman as a "friendly" and tried to signal to his colleagues to cease fire.