Photos of War Dead Released by Pentagon
By John Hendren The Los Angeles Times
Friday 29 April 2005

Often, little context is provided and the faces of soldiers carrying coffins are blacked out.

Washington - Reversing a policy under fire, the Pentagon released photographs Thursday of flag-draped caskets bearing American soldiers killed in combat.

The pictures, taken by military photographers, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Ralph J. Begleiter, a University of Delaware professor and former CNN correspondent, who sought all photos of the caskets of soldiers who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001.

The release reversed a policy that critics said had allowed Pentagon managers to conceal the reality of hundreds of coffins arriving home in U.S. military cargo planes.

The Defense Department made the photos public with few dates or locations and little context, making it unclear whether the individuals in any of the hundreds of pictures died in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. The faces of soldiers accompanying the coffins were blacked out.
"Each individual picture is looked at for Privacy Act and security reasons," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Hicks , a Pentagon spokesman. "Individual judgments were made to black out some faces and identifiable information to protect privacy."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-photos29apr29,1,3240336.story