Gates OKs war dead photos, with conditions, at base

WASHINGTON -- News media organizations will be allowed to photograph the homecomings of America's war dead under a new Pentagon policy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday during a Department of Defense briefing.

Gates has overturned — with conditions — the controversial ban on media photographs of America's war dead at a Delaware military base.

Gates said news organizations can photograph the flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base if the families of the fallen troops agree. The Defense secretary said he reached the decision after President Obama asked him to review the 18-year-old policy that forbade such photographs.

Gates said decisions about such coverage "should be made by those most directly affected."

Obama supports Gates' decision, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. The new policy is similar to one in place at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. That policy defers to families of the war dead for photo permission.

The ban was put in place in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.

Dover houses the military's largest mortuary, and images from the base of caskets carrying American soldiers became one of the familiar television images during the Vietnam War. The bodies are prepared at Dover for return to the families. The phrase "Dover test" referred to a litmus for the public's tolerance for the visual realities of war.

Two Democratic senators — Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and John Kerry of Massachusetts — had called on Obama to allow news photographers to attend ceremonies at the air base and other military facilities when remains are returned to the USA. Remains are transferred from Dover to the hometowns of the troops' families.

Lautenberg said every flag-draped coffin at Dover represents a family that will be forever separated from a loved one. "We should honor, not hide, flag-draped coffins," the senator said. "They are a symbol of the respect, honor and dignity that our fallen heroes deserve."

Kerry called Gates' decision courageous and respectful. "This is one way our grateful nation keeps faith with those in uniform, and the new policy is appropriately sensitive to the families who prefer to close an arrival to the media," the senator said in a statement.