#294 Pete Blaber - Part 2: Delta Force Commander on Pablo Escobar, Takur Ghar, and Pat Tillman

**Shawn Ryan** (0:07)
Pete, I don't know how much more of this shit I can take for one day, man.

**Pete Blaber** (0:11)
Yeah.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:12)
But it's important work we're doing, so let's press on.

**Pete Blaber** (0:16)
Okay. So, you know, I guess we'll kind of do a segue because we're in Afghanistan in 2002 Just two years, not even two years, about a year and a half later, eight kilometers to the east of Takur Ghar is where Pat Tillman and his platoon are doing, searching for weapons caches.
The... how I got involved in this was... was kind of two-fold or two-pronged. First in 2017, Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, found an intermediary that contacted me and she sent me an email and it said, I read your book. I know you were in Afghanistan and you were a ranger. If you have time to talk, I'd love to talk to you. And so I called her immediately on the phone and she said, you know, she told me her story. She said, it's been 13 years and I still don't know how, whether my son was killed on purpose or whether it was an accident. I have a massive 3,500 pages of videos, reports, testimonials. If you have time, would you mind taking a look? And I was said, told her, hey, I'll be up there, you know, tomorrow. I drove about 400 miles, I think. They lived up around San Jose. I drove up, met her at her place of work. She came out at lunchtime. She gave me this big bin of documents. And I took the documents home. And, you know, I was smoked because I did a round trip in 24 hours. And I just opened one binder and I started reading. And, you know, the next day I found myself, like, dribble coming out of my mouth, collapsed into the binder I had already highlighted, tabbed. Because what I was discovering was, you know, just shit that every page I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. And so she...

**Shawn Ryan** (2:47)
There's speculation that he was killed. He was murdered?

**Pete Blaber** (2:51)
Well, she didn't know. And she didn't know because she, the Army lied to her. Um, you know, it took them 35 days from the time Pat died. It took the Army 35 days to tell the family to include the brother who was in the platoon.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:06)
35 fucking days?

**Pete Blaber** (3:07)
That Pat was killed by friendly fire. And so when she found out, excuse me, that Pat, it took 35 days to tell that. The original story which was embedded and told via the Silver Star narrative was he was shot while charging uphill to counter an ambush. That's what his Silver Star read. So, you know, once her quote was something the effect of, you know, if you're telling, if that's the way he really died, why would you make up such a massive lie to cover it up? And, you know, that's what happens too is, you know, once you're lied to, lied once, then lied twice and still know no truth, you don't believe anything, you're told. And I think that's the mode that her, the rest of the family was in, and quite frankly, a lot of people who looked at it and still look at it.

**Shawn Ryan** (4:07)
This is why the entire US government and every fucking institution inside of it is in the position that it's in right fucking now.

**Pete Blaber** (4:14)
Yeah, you're right. The credibility, lack of consistency, lack of telling the truth. And, you know, in this case, there was no reason for it except the same old thing, pride, careerism, covering up, you know, something that was very embarrassing. But, you know, I went into it with eyes wide open. I told her, hey, I'd be happy to take a look. But I just want to tell you right now, because I didn't believe he was murdered right off the bat. And so, I just said, I just want to be frank with you. I'm going to tell you exactly what I think after I read this, and it may not be what you want to hear. And she said, I'm fine with that. I just want to hear what you think and how, what we can do to prevent it from happening again. So, you know, I was super busy at the time. I just opened a new business. I was trying to finish my second book, which is Complex Book, The Common Sense Way. But, you know, I did what anyone would do when a gold star mom asks him for help. And that's, you got it. I'm in. And I started working on it, working on, you know, basically the research for that. I did not initially think I was going to write it into a book. I just decided that at some point a few months in, because I realized the same thing. The only way to get the truth out is to put it in on paper so people can read it and memorialize it. So, you know, I started right away. The first thing I did was talk to some old Rangers who, not old, but Rangers I knew when I was in the regiment. And I served in 2nd Ranger Battalion twice. I told you I was a lieutenant. I went back once from the unit for 18 months to be the S3 of 275 So, I went back as a major for 18 months.