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Coffin Photo Controversy
by William Bunch
Posted on Fri, Apr. 23, 2004
bunchw@phillynews.com
THEY ARE the pictures the Pentagon didn't want you to see.
For the past few days, a photo of the flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq has bounded around the Internet and sparked a national debate on whether the American public should see them.
And the brouhaha cost two contractors working in the Middle East their jobs.
To further muddle the debate, some 361 pictures showing coffins at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base were released yesterday under a Freedom of Information request - initially denied by the Air Force but granted on appeal.
Those photos were initially posted on
thememoryhole.org and featured elsewhere on the Internet.
The Pentagon's tight lid on coffin photos - as well as any personal information or photos of Iraq casualties - has stirred a controversy that has grown with the body count.
Last Sunday, the first photo of an airplane filled with flag-covered caskets of 20 of the the war dead was printed in the
Seattle Times. It was taken - without permission - by Tami Silicio, a 50-year-old Washington state woman who worked for a contractor at the Kuwait airport.
Silicio allowed the
newspaper to print the picture, not so much to make a political statement, she said, but to show the respectful manner in which the war dead are treated.
Nevertheless, Silicio was fired yesterday by Maytag Aircraft, the contractor she worked for. So was her husband, who also worked for the company in Kuwait. Company officials said they were "good workers" but that U.S. military officials had raised "very specific concerns" about what had happened.
Just as the war was starting in March 2003, the Pentagon announced that "there will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] air base or Dover base, to include interim stops." However, there's some confusion over what the earlier policies were. Officials at Dover said media photos have for the most part been barred there since 1991.
The Pentagon cited privacy concerns, but some political observers say the Bush administration also fears public support for the war might erode with too much coverage of casualties.
"Americans have always felt that war was unreal," said Susan Moeller, University of Maryland journalism assistant professor, who has written about war and photojournalism.
However, U.S. policy has been inconsistent. Pictures of American war dead were censored in World War II until 1943, when President Franklin Roosevelt found that reversing the policy actually built public support for the war. But in Vietnam, yearbook-style photos of American soldiers who died seemed to have the opposite effect.
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