Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins

By Dana Milbank

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55816-2003Oct20.html-

October 21, 2003

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have
worried that their military actions would lose support
once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers
arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a
simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination
of such images by banning news coverage and photography
of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive
arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There
will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of,
deceased military personnel returning to or departing
from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to
include interim stops," the Defense Department said,
referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy
actually dates from about November 2000 — the last days
of the Clinton administration — but it apparently went
unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning
from the Afghanistan war appeared on television
broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year.
Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military’s
largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years,
others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the
spokeswoman said. This year, "we’ve really tried to
enforce it."

President Bush’s opponents say he is trying to keep the
spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This
administration manipulates information and takes great
care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far,"
said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary
joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for
returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a
political decision because this hurts them politically
— I’m outraged."

Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of
anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire
military followed a victory over a civil liberties court
challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all
bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family
members and deciding which troops should get which types
of ceremonies.

One official said only individual graveside services,
open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give
"the full context" of a soldier’s sacrifice. "To do it
at several stops along the way doesn’t tell the full
story and isn’t representative," the official said.

A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any
memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action
during his presidency as his predecessors had done,
although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and
has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and
Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on
public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being
carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In
1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use
military force is based in part on whether it will pass
"the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.

Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the
Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate
later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada,
Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere,
the military often invited in cameras for elaborate
ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air
Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere — sometimes
with the president attending.

President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops
killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue
mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in
many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp
Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among
several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in
1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines
killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in
Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the
USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

During President George H.W. Bush’s term, there were
ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in
Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War,
the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage
of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a
year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks
showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with
caskets arriving.

But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and
elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton
administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to
allow filming of Clinton’s visit to welcome the 33
caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H.
Brown’s plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to
see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist
bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public
distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after
the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The photos of coffins continued for the first two years
of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and
other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word
came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt
Dover’s policy of making the arrival ceremonies off
limits.

"Whenever we go into a conflict, there’s a certain
amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt.
Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It’s a
consistent policy across the board. Where it used to
apply only to Dover, they’ve now made it very clear it
applies to everyone."