Pentagon to review photo ban

WASHINGTON -- With unauthorized pictures of flag-draped coffins fueling an emotional political debate, Pentagon officials have agreed to review the policy barring photography when soldiers' remains are returned home, and the White House yesterday did not rule out the possibility that the ban will be revised.

"The policy is being reviewed to see if it needs to be more specific," said Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force spokeswoman yesterday.

Days earlier, the Air Force released hundreds of official pictures to a website operator who requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. The Pentagon quickly ordered the Air Force not to release any more photos. As the stark images circulated around the world, Democrats pounced on the Bush administration for upholding the media ban, saying the secrecy was driven by politics.

Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, stopped just short of accusing President Bush of trying to hide the mounting death toll in Iraq. "I think truth is on the line in this election," Kerry said at a campaign event in Washington, D.C., yesterday.

Aides to Bush said yesterday that he was shown the images and found them to be an important "reminder of the sacrifice" made by US troops. Nevertheless, White House officials repeated their support for the ban, which they say respects the privacy of the soldiers' families.

But yesterday it appeared they would not rule out dropping or changing it if political pressure mounts. Asked directly whether Bush's message is that the ban will be maintained, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, "The message is that the sensitivities and the privacy of the families of the fallen must be the first priority."

Earlier this week, a military contractor in Kuwait fired an employee for taking a photo of a coffin shipment -- a picture that ran in last Sunday's Seattle Times. The controversy escalated Thursday when more than 350 Air Force photographs of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware -- where the military's main stateside mortuary is located -- were posted on the Internet, after activist Russ Kick obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request for his website, thememoryhole.org.

Kick made his request to the Dover base's public affairs office, which originally denied it in keeping with the ban. Upon appeal, however, the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois approved the photos' release. (Adding confusion to the controversy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced yesterday that many of the photos, depicting flag-draped coffins being removed from aircraft, were not of war casualties but images released in February 2003 of the caskets containing the remains of the space shuttle Columbia's crew.)

"Based on their review and case law they decided those photos were in fact releasable," Cassidy the Air Force spokeswoman, said yesterday.

The same day, however, the Pentagon ordered the Air Force not to release any additional photos in keeping with the policy, adopted under President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, of prohibiting access to the return of the remains to Dover and Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Officials said the policy is now under review to determine whether the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, makes the policy -- which has already been held up in court once, on the basis of privacy -- illegal. In the earlier case, media organizations contested the policy on First Amendment grounds, but lost.

"FOIA is the law of the land," John Molino, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family programs, told reporters late Thursday. "If for some reason we find that the policy is inconsistent with the FOIA, we'll look at whether or not the policy needs to be changed."

The policy has often been described as an effort by the military to avoid the "Dover Test," Pentagon parlance for the wartime tipping point -- how many military deaths the public will be able to tolerate before the support for military operations begins to wane.

But Pentagon officials stressed that the policy is not intended to block media coverage of military operations, but rather to respect servicemen's and servicewomen's privacy. They say many military families have asked the Pentagon not to allow the scenes at Dover to be accessible to the public. Some, however, have permitted media coverage of the funerals.

"Quite frankly, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified," Molino said.

Democrats have made clear they won't shy away from using the controversy surrounding the photographs -- and the rising body count -- as political weapons.

"President Bush and [adviser] Karl Rove want to make sure you don't see the horrific toll the war in Iraq is taking on our brave fighting men and women," said a statement by the liberal political action committee Democrats for America's Future. "That's why they are doing everything they can to keep the media away from coffins of the returning war dead."

At a rally in Dover last month, war protesters criticized Bush for continuing the policy.

"We need to stop hiding the deaths of our young; we need to be open about their deaths," Jane Bright of West Hills, Calif., whose 24-year-old son, Evan Ashcraft, was killed in combat in July, told the Associated Press.

The National Military Family Association Inc., however, has taken the opposite view, which it repeated yesterday. "NMFA is concerned with the privacy of families of the departed service members and feels that sensitivity to the grief of surviving families should be paramount," the group said in a statement. "We further believe that how much the press is able to intrude at this very difficult time should be at the discretion of the individual family."

That is essentially the president's position, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said yesterday. "The president has seen the photos, and his reaction is what he said at the news conference last week, which is that it's a reminder of the sacrifice that our men and women are providing in Iraq and around the world to protect Americans and to deliver freedom for others," Duffy said. "And it's a testament to their service. And it's a stark reminder of why we must win."

Long before the ban was put in place, images of body bags and coffins helped cement opposition to the Vietnam War, a sentiment Kerry invoked yesterday. "We see the haunting images again of war, soldiers unloading flag-draped coffins," he said. "We see images of them being saluted on their final journey to their resting place."

Some exceptions have been made to the policy. President Clinton allowed the return of Americans killed in the bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to be filmed in 1998, as well as that of the 17 sailors killed in the Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000.