Gates orders review of ban on photos of military coffins

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a review Tuesday of a Pentagon policy banning media from taking pictures of flag-draped coffins of military dead, signaling he was open to overturning the policy to better honor fallen soldiers.

The ban that was put in place in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush. However, exceptions to the policy were made, allowing the media to photograph coffins in some cases, until the administration of President George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shortly after President Obama took office, Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey called on the White House to let news photographers attend ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and other military facilities when military remains are returned to the United States. Obama told reporters Monday he was reviewing the ban.

Lautenberg said the George W. Bush administration "effectively censored images of flag-draped caskets from appearing in media coverage."

Gates told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday that he initially asked for the ban to be reviewed a year ago, and was advised then that family members might feel uncomfortable with opening the ceremonies to media for privacy reasons or pressure to attend them despite financial costs.

"I think that looking at it again makes all kinds of sense," Gates said on Tuesday. The news came as a salve for Tami Silicio, an Everett woman who was working as a military contractor when she took the first published photo of fallen U.S. soldiers' coffins in 2004.

Silicio's photo, published in The Seattle Times, fueled a political firestorm over whether the U.S. was manipulating public opinion or protecting family privacy by blacking out images of the Iraqi War dead.

It was a debate Silicio said she neither welcomed nor intended when she initially shared the photo with family and friends.

"It was a passionate picture that they turned political," she said on Tuesday. "They should be honored coming home. They should be addressed. What parent doesn't want their child honored when they come home?"

Allowing coffins to be photographed more widely, she said, would put the focus back on the soldiers.

Ralph Begleiter, a professor at the University of Delaware and a former world affairs correspondent for CNN, unsuccessfully sued to force the government to release pictures of flag-draped coffins returning home. He said taxpayers should see the cost of war.

The fallen troops "died for all of us — they died for the nation, they died for the cause," Begleiter said in a January interview.

Seattle Times staff reporter Susan Kelleher contributed to this report