Gates Orders Review of Policy on Soldiers’ Coffins

Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested on Tuesday that he was open to allowing the media to photograph the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers as their bodies and remains are returned to the United States.

"If the needs of the families can be met and the privacy concerns can be addressed, the more honor we can accord these fallen heroes, the better," Mr. Gates told reporters.

He said he was ordering a review of the military policy that bars photographers from taking pictures of the return of the coffins, most of which are coming from Iraq and Afghanistan and go through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. He also set a "short deadline" for a decision. The military has said the policy is meant to protect the privacy of the families of the dead soldiers and maintain dignity. But skeptics, who include some families as well as opponents of the war in Iraq, say that the bodies in the returning coffins are not publicly identified, so privacy is not an issue, and that barring photographers is a political maneuver meant to sanitize the war.

The policy was put into place in 1991 during the first Gulf war and was renewed by the Bush administration as recently as a year ago when, Mr. Gates said, he raised the possibility of changing it. He said he was told -- he did not say by whom -- that allowing photographers would put undue pressure on families to go to Dover themselves and that in some cases that would be a hardship.

"I think that looking at it again makes all kinds of sense," Mr. Gates said Tuesday, adding that he was "pretty open to whatever the results of this review may be."

His comments followed those of President Obama, who said at his news conference Monday night that "we are in the process of reviewing those policies in conversations with the Department of Defense."

Mr. Obama did not indicate whether he favored a change in the policy, saying, "I don’t want to give you an answer now before I’ve evaluated that review and understand all the implications involved."

But his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., spoke out against the policy when he was a senator representing Delaware, saying in 2004 that it was shameful for dead soldiers to be "snuck back into the country under the cover of night."

A White House official said Tuesday that Mr. Obama had ordered some of his top foreign policy aides to review the matter and that they would look at past practices and possibly meet with families of fallen soldiers to solicit their views. The review appears to be a priority for Mr. Obama. Mr. Gates’s review, which he said he ordered Tuesday, appears to be a separate undertaking.

Some groups representing families say loved ones should be able to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to allow photographers.

John Ellsworth, who is president of Military Families United and whose son, Justin, was 20 when he was killed in Iraq in 2004, said in an interview Tuesday that some families strongly oppose allowing photographers while others want them.

"We have a whole wide range of feelings," Mr. Ellsworth said. "We feel it should be left up to the families, and it sounded to me like Secretary Gates was in that same line of thinking."

The issues, he said, are "how we can best assist the families without hindering the media, and if the media would be willing to accept when the families said no."

He said that some families had been contacted by Obama administration officials recently but that he did not know any details of the interaction. "They are interested in obtaining our feedback, and we’re very pleased that he is reaching out to us," he said.

When his son was killed, Mr. Ellsworth did not have the option of allowing photographers to be present, and he said that if he had, he is not sure what he would have done. But in retrospect, he said, he wishes the media had recorded the moment.

"Looking back, I would have wanted to see the reverence and the honor given to him by the receiving military," Mr. Ellsworth said. "I would have loved to have had that captured and be able to hold it."

An effort in Congress to overturn the current ban has had little support, but Representative Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, said Tuesday that he would renew his push for legislation to allow the media access when coffins come home.

Mr. Jones voted for the use of force in Iraq and helped lead the effort to rename French fries in the House cafeteria as "freedom fries." But he came to regret his vote after he attended the funeral of a local Marine, and he began writing letters to people who had lost a loved one in the war. He said today that by now he has written more than 8,000 letters.

"If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind," Mr. Jones said of the war. "People don’t think about it unless they have a visual."
NYT

The true price of freedom, and to think some people will just give theirs away.