In a bitter testimony before a congressional panel, US Army Ranger Pat Tillman's brother accused the Pentagon of concocting "deliberate and calculated lies" about his brother's death as part of a public-relations campaign to boost the morale of Americans during war, according to media reports today.

"It was utter fiction," Kevin Tillman, himself a former Army Ranger, told a House committee investigating military propaganda in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Pat's death at the hands of his comrades is a terrible tragedy, but the fact that the army, and what appears to be others, attempted to hijack his virtue and his legacy is simply horrific."

The 27-year-old NFL star Tillman made headlines refusing a 3.6-million-dollar U.S. football contract in 2001 to enlist, and got killed April 22, 2004, in a gun battle with enemy fighters near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

After he was killed, Tillman was awarded the Silver Star for valour amid official accounts that he sacrificed himself to save his unit from Afghan insurgents.

While U.S. commanders learned within days that Tillman was killed by another U.S. soldier, they waited five weeks to inform his family while the mistaken story of his gallant death became the stuff of media legend.

U.S. Army Specialist Bryan O'Neal, the last soldier to see Tillman alive, testified Tuesday a commanding officer had ordered him to keep quiet about what happened. "I was ordered not to tell him."

The Pentagon's inspector general last month recommended disciplinary action against nine officers for botching reports on Tillman's death, but said there was no evidence of a coverup.

Family members contended senior Pentagon officials seized on Tillman's death, and fabricated details of how it occurred, to combat negative publicity from Iraq about the growing insurgency and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Kevin Tillman also scoffed at how military authorities could rule Pat Tillman's death an accident when the soldier who shot him admitted pulling the trigger despite seeing his target wave his hands. "These are intentional falsehoods that meet the legal definition for fraud ... These are deliberate acts of deceit," said Kevin Tillman.