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mmflint | August 18, 2010
MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show w/ CHRISTOPHER HAYES - 18 August 2010: Hayes interviews Amir Bar-Lev, director of 'The Pat Tillmann Story.'
HAYES: "Pat Tillman's death on a battlefield in Afghanistan became an emblem of this country's response - both personal and militarily - to the Sept. 11 attacks. Tillman was a pro-football star who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract to join the Army Rangers and became, arguably, America's most famous soldier. April 2004, Cpl. Tillman died during a second tour in Afghanistan, killed by friendly fire, though the military covered up that fact, opting instead to fabricate a story of a heroic death while fighting the enemy.
The broad outlines of Pat Tillmann's story may be familiar, but a new documentary, 'The Tillman Story,' provides fascinating new details about his life and death. Joining us now is Amir Bar-Lev, the director of 'The Tillman Story,' opening this week in New York and Los Angeles...
I guess I wonder, first of all, what people DON'T know about this story. I mean, I think the broad outlines of it are kind of familiar because it got a lot of press, but then kind of receded. What were you surprised, by working on this, what do you think people don't know about this story?"
AMIR BAR-LEV: "I was surprised at how far of the mark people's perception of this story is to begin with. I mean, I think there's a sense that this is a story that is over, that this is something that we look back on about the Bush administration. In fact, this is a story that continues to this day. Nobody's ever really been called to account for their actions. And even yesterday, there was a new chapter in the story - where the military issued a press statement with a further lie. They said we are deeply apologetic to Tillman family for 'mistakes' made. And this word mistake is itself part of this conspiracy. There was never a mistake. A mistake would be if I knocked over my water here. This was a deliberate attempt to cover up the facts for which nobody has ever taken credit."
HAYES: "I mean, one of the things that becomes clear in the film is that the preposterous story that was told about his death, really, was so far from what actually happened was that it couldn't be a mistake; it had to be fabricated. How high up does that go?"
BAR-LEV: "Well, it looks like it went all the way to the White House, but what happened is they made an error. They underestimated Pat's mother...
- snip -
She painstakingly, over a year's time, un-redacted these documents, and what's in there, I think, is going to shock people when they see it. I mean, there's no question as to whether or not this was a mistake. There's documents in there that say things like 'the Tillman game-plan,' at the highest levels, there's emails from the White House talking about how they're going to manage the story to deceive the public."
HAYES: "The Tillman story was one of a few stories from that time - there was Pvt. Lynch and her rescue that was portrayed in these kind of crazy cartoonish ways. I wonder what kind of perspective you gained about that time in American history when there was this really intense sort of jingoistic fervor that gripped the country, and this real kind of collective deserve for mythos that Pat Tillman became sort of wrapped up in. What did you learn about that period?"
BAR-LEV: "Well, you know, I don't know that that period is over. I mean, I think it says a lot about our culture, and I think it's too easy to point the finger only at the Bush administration. You mentioned Jessica Lynch - Pat Tillman was involved in that operation, and from the wings, he said 'this is a movie, they're basically constructing a movie.' And the sad tragedy of it all is, we didn't get - there's some shocking footage from the Jessica Lynch operation in our film that people have never seen. We didn't get handed that footage in some garage by 'some deep throat' in a paper bag. We got it from the mainstream press. The reason folks haven't seen it is because the mainstream press chose to omit that, chose to leave it on the editing room floor, so they could construct this idea of a female Rambo fro m the mountains of West Virginia. This mythos works because this, we want to see our movies played out in the news. I think it's a story about the government, it's also a story about the press, it's also a Hollywood story."
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