Mike Fish
The piece that stands out aired April 2014 on the 10th anniversary of Pat Tillman’s death. It was a reporting/story-telling team effort on the part of Willie Weinbaum, John Barr and myself. Willie and I had done an exhaustive ESPN.com and OTL investigative piece eight years earlier into the friendly fire death of Tillman, the former Arizona State and Arizona Cardinals safety, and the subsequent cover-up or spinning of facts by the Army. The most recent piece – for the first time – brought together one of the Rangers who had fired upon Tillman’s position as well as the young Ranger positioned a few feet from Tillman during the friendly fire incident. It proved a remarkably emotional story of two men who hadn’t spoken in a decade, who had been on opposite ends of the fire, each reflecting on the turmoil and pain they had since endured, and the guilt they unknowingly shared – one knowing that he fired at his own men and may have hit Pat Tillman, the other of having survived when his friend didn’t. The two spoke after the show and took steps toward reconciliation.
