[Media-watch] Pentagon ban on pictures of dead troops is broken

[Julie-ann Davies]

The images are still online at the memory hole:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/

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Pentagon ban on pictures of dead troops is broken
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/national/23PHOT.html

New York Times

Bill Carter
April 23, 2004

The Pentagon's ban on making images of dead soldiers' homecomings at
military bases public was briefly relaxed yesterday, as hundreds of
photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on
the Internet by a Web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.
The Web site, the Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), had filed a Freedom
of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins
arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most
of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility
Command's decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations
quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department
photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for
the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded
onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired
after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor,
Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband,
David Landry, had "violated Department of Defense and company policies."

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush
administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to
showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They
have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq,
and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military
families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy,
said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself
was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to
light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his
request.

"We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken," said Bill
Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.

John Banner, the executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight," said, "We
did not file a F.O.I.A. request ourselves, because this was the first we had
known that the military was shooting these pictures."

The Pentagon has cited a policy, used during the first Persian Gulf war, as
its reason for preventing news organizations from showing images of coffins
arriving in the United States. That policy was not consistently followed,
however, and President Bill Clinton took part in numerous ceremonies
honoring dead servicemen. In March 2003, the Pentagon issued a directive it
said was established in November 2000, saying, "There will no be arrival
ceremonies of, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning
to or departing from" air bases.

While critics have charged that the administration is seeking to keep
unwelcome images of the war's human cost away from the American public, the
Pentagon has said that only individual services at a gravesite give proper
context to the sacrifices of soldiers and their relatives.

"The president believes that we should always honor and show respect for
those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedoms," Scott
McClellan, the White House press secretary, said last night.

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of
Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military
honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are
returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should
not be.

Mr. Kick, who operates his Web site from Tucson, describes himself as "an
information archaeologist." He did not respond to phone calls to his home
last night. But on his Web site, he said he had filed a request for "all pho
tographs showing caskets containing the remains of U.S. military personnel
at Dover A.F.B."

After an initial rejection, Mr. Kick said, he appealed on several grounds
"and to my amazement the ruling was reversed." The request was granted by
the Air Mobility Command, and the pictures of coffins on planes and at
funeral services for slain servicemen were made available to him.

The Pentagon said the pictures had been taken for historical purposes. Lt.
Col. Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force spokeswoman, said at a briefing
yesterday that the release had violated the Pentagon's rules and that no
further copies of the pictures would be distributed.

But news organizations widely took the pictures from the Web site last
night, as they became one of the biggest news developments of the day. Two
networks, ABC and NBC, made the availability of the pictures, along with the
firing of Ms. Silicio, the lead item on their newscasts. Numerous newspapers
said they planned to use one or more of the photographs on their front pages
today, as The Times did.

Among the national television news organizations, only the Fox News Channel
had no plans to use any of the photos or explore the issue of why they had
been barred from use in the news media, a channel spokesman said.

Steve Capus, the executive producer of "NBC Nightly News," said he had
already considered the firing of Ms. Silicio a major news development and
had sent a correspondent to Seattle on Wednesday night. Then the new
pictures turned up on Mr. Kick's Web site. He called the pictures "not in
the least gory" but "poignant and responsible" and argued that using them
was "a proper part of the national dialogue." "It would seem that the only
reason somebody would come out against the use of these pictures is that
they are worried about the political fallout," Mr. Capus said.

Jim Murphy, the executive producer of the "CBS Evening News," said: "I don't
necessarily blame the military for trying to manage information in an
information age. I just think when you are overzealous in trying to manage
it, it serves no good to themselves or to the public."


Jim Rutenberg in Washington and Mindy Sink in Denver contributed reporting
for this article.