SAN JOSE, Calif.- Pat Tillman's family firmly rejected the Defense Department's findings Monday in the former NFL star's friendly-fire death, calling for congressional investigations into what they see as broad malfeasance and coverup.

"The truth is not what we received today," Tillman's parents and other family members said in a prepared statement.

Although the military has conducted five investigations, the Tillmans said all had failed to uncover the truth. "Now we ask the assistance of Congress and the press," they said.

The Tillmans spoke out a few hours after receiving a briefing from special agents and others involved in the probes completed recently. Among the family members present at the briefing here was Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother, who was several minutes behind his brother in a convoy when the former defensive back was killed in 2004. Kevin Tillman, an Army Ranger like his brother, did not witness the shooting.

The Defense Department announced Monday that nine high-ranking Army officers, including four generals, made critical errors in reporting the friendly fire death. Criminal violations may have been committed by officers who provided misleading information as the military investigated the killing, the department's acting inspector general said.

But the military declined to press charges against the fellow Rangers who opened fire on Tillman, embracing those soldiers' defense that it was a terrible mistake in the fog of war.

"The characterization of criminal negligence, professional misconduct, battlefield incompetence, concealment and destruction of evidence, deliberate deception, and conspiracy to deceive are not 'missteps,' the Tillmans said. "These actions are malfeasance."

"This attempt to impose closure by slapping the wrists of a few officers and enlisted men is yet another bureaucratic entrenchment," they said.

A central issue in the case is why it took the Army so long to tell the Tillmans how Pat Tillman had died. For five weeks, the family was told he had been killed in a conventional ambush.

The Tillman family has pressed for years to learn the role played by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the family said Monday that investigators had said Monday that Rumsfeld didn't know their son had died by friendly fire for nearly a month.

"We base our beliefs on the relentless pattern of the Bush administration of deception, evasion, and spin in the conduct of the entire dual-occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan," the statement said.

"We remain convinced that the priority of the Pentagon was to prevent the public knowing that Pat was killed by the military's highest priority shock infantry unit," they said. "And that he was killed by a combination of shoddy leadership and clear violations of the Rules of Engagement, as well as violations of the Law of Land Warfare."