http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2957059

WASHINGTON -- Ex-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other former Pentagon brass denied a cover-up and rejected personal blame Wednesday in the public deceptions that followed Army Ranger Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in 2004.

During four hours of questioning by a House committee, Rumsfeld and former generals expressed regret at the Pentagon's five-week delay in telling the truth about how Tillman died. He was cut down by bullets fired by his fellow soldiers, not in a firefight with the enemy as the military initially claimed.

Yet none of the witnesses, among the very highest-ranking military officers at the time, said they could or should have done anything differently to prevent the mistakes that kept the truth from Tillman's family and the public.

Several of the officials could barely recall how they themselves came to learn the circumstances of Tillman's death, which attracted worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I don't recall when I was told and I don't recall who told me," said Rumsfeld, who was making his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since President Bush replaced him with Robert Gates late last year. He was greeted by protesters denouncing him as a "war criminal," but he ignored them.

"I know that I would not engage in a cover-up. I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me. I know that the gentlemen sitting next to me are men of enormous integrity and would not participate in something like that," Rumsfeld said, adding he didn't recall discussing the Tillman matter with the White House until the fratricide became public knowledge.

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