{"id":14765,"date":"2014-12-25T14:04:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-25T19:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/?page_id=14765"},"modified":"2023-12-07T10:07:23","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T15:07:23","slug":"images-of-war-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/images-of-war-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Images of War Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<table width=\"521\">\n<tbody>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"513\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/2001906044.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"376\" border=\"1\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td align=\"right\" width=\"513\">TAMI SILICIO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"513\">Flag-draped coffins are shown inside a cargo plane April 7 at Kuwait International Airport, in a photograph published Sunday. The photographer said she hoped the image would help families understand the care with which fallen soldiers are returned home.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Images of war dead a sensitive subject<br \/>\nFull story: <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2001909526_coffinside22m.html\">http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2001909526_coffinside22m.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By Ray Rivera<br \/>\nSeattle Times staff reporter<\/p>\n<p>The image was of row upon row of flag-draped coffins being loaded onto an Air Force cargo plane in Kuwait.<br \/>\nThey were American war dead, killed in a bloody month of fighting in Iraq. David Perlmutter, a professor at<br \/>\nLouisiana State University, showed it to his class and asked: Would\u00a0 you have published it, as The Seattle Times did on Sunday?<\/p>\n<p>Of the hundred or so in the class, most said no. But when asked to explain, Perlmutter said, they said<br \/>\nthat while &#8220;they didn&#8217;t want to see the pictures, they said it&#8217;s probably good we know that it&#8217;s happening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Americans have long struggled with the morality of showing images of war dead, especially fellow Americans.<\/p>\n<p>Tami Silicio, a civilian contract worker, was fired yesterday for taking the\u00a0 picture of coffins being loaded in<br \/>\nKuwait and allowing The Times to publish it.<\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of military caskets returning from war since 1991,<br \/>\nciting concern for the privacy of grieving families and friends of the dead soldiers. The Bush administration<br \/>\nissued a stern reminder of that policy in March 2003, shortly before the war in Iraq began.<\/p>\n<p>Critics complain that the prohibition is an attempt by the administration to diminish the impact of the loss of American lives.<\/p>\n<p>But whether the ban is a political tactic or is out of sincere concern for the families, the issue is more complex,<br \/>\nsaid Perlmutter, the author of two books on war photography and a professor of mass communication.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The image of dead Americans, especially the dead American soldier, is probably the most powerful image of war<br \/>\nfor Americans,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s the one that immediately strikes us in the gut, because we hate to see it but we<br \/>\nrecognize we may need to see it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The poet Oliver Wendell Holmes captured this ambivalence in 1863 after viewing some of the first images of<br \/>\nbattlefield casualties being buried during the Civil War.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations,&#8221; he wrote. Once they did, he said,<br \/>\n&#8220;Many, having seen it and dreamed of its horrors, would lock it up in some secret drawer &#8230;\u00a0 as we would have<br \/>\nburied the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Military censors instituted a virtual blackout of such photos in World War I. That ban continued until nearly the<br \/>\nend of World War II.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The assumption was the public didn&#8217;t want to see it, and that it would undermine the war effort,&#8221; Perlmutter said.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Normandy invasion was a success, but how would we have felt at the time if we had seen the pictures of all<br \/>\nthese dead American soldiers on the beaches?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Images of war dead proliferated in Vietnam, and throughout the 1980s, the government regularly allowed the media<br \/>\nto take pictures of coffins returning from Lebanon, Grenada and Panama to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware,<br \/>\nthe primary arrival point for returning American soldiers killed overseas.<\/p>\n<p>But in 1991, as the United States embarked on its first major war since Vietnam, the policy shifted. In January of<br \/>\nthat year, the administration of the first President Bush began prohibiting media outlets from taking pictures of coffins<br \/>\nbeing unloaded at Dover. It instituted a total ban in November of that year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was an attempt to not have another Vietnam in the sense that the administration was not going to allow the media<br \/>\nto sell the war, one way or the other,&#8221; said John Louis Lucaites, a communications and culture professor at<br \/>\nIndiana University who teaches a class called &#8220;Visualizing War.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 1996, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., upheld the ban after media outlets and some other organizations<br \/>\nsued to have it lifted. Citing the need to reduce the hardship and protect the privacy of grieving families, the court held that<br \/>\nthe ban did not violate First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press.<\/p>\n<p>The National Military Family Association, one of the largest military-advocacy groups, supports the policy. &#8220;The families that<br \/>\nwe&#8217;ve heard from are more interested in their privacy and would hope that people would be sensitive to them in their time of loss,&#8221;<br \/>\nsaid Kathy Moakler, deputy director of government relations for the organization.<\/p>\n<p>Moakler, who has two children in the military, said The Times was right to tell Silicio&#8217;s story and to describe the respectful<br \/>\nprocess by which the dead are transported home.<\/p>\n<p>But the photograph, she said, was an invasion of privacy for families who might be wondering if their dead loved one was in that array of coffins.<\/p>\n<p>But even among military families, such feelings are not universal.<\/p>\n<p>Marianne Brown, the stepmother of an Army reservist serving in Baghdad, said Silicio&#8217;s photograph was long overdue.<br \/>\nThe Michigan resident belongs to a group of military families who support the publication of photographs of coffins.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to show that, because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re paying for&#8221; in Iraq, said Brown, a 52-year-old artist living in South Haven,<br \/>\nMich. &#8220;Let&#8217;s show the truth &amp;#151; the death of our kids. Otherwise it&#8217;s just statistics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Veteran Bill Egan of Flagler Beach, Fla., praised Silicio&#8217;s photo. He was a military photographer aboard the USS Missouri in<br \/>\nthe 1980s as it escorted oil tankers through the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I see nothing wrong with showing coffins, especially flag-draped coffins, because it&#8217;s a reminder of what these people have<br \/>\ngiven up,&#8221; said Egan, 63.<\/p>\n<p>Lucaites of Indiana University said the image had a powerful, mechanistic quality. &#8220;It almost makes it appear as if these<br \/>\ncoffins are on a conveyer belt, going off into infinity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And if you&#8217;re the current administration, he said, &#8220;this is not an image you want visualized.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Staff reporter Jonathan Martin contributed to this report. Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or rayrivera@seattletimes.com<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<div><a title=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\" src=\"http:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/photo.1843.jpg\" alt=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\" width=\"184\" height=\"259\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<div align=\"right\">\n<p align=\"left\">United States Air Force<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Photos of War Dead Released<br \/>\nA Web site that opposed the Pentagon&#8217;s ban<br \/>\non images of dead soldiers&#8217; homecomings at military<br \/>\nbases released hundreds of photographs of coffins. \u00a0<a title=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/23\/national\/23PHOT.html\"><br \/>\nGo to\u00a0 New York Times Article<br \/>\n<\/a>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<div>&#8216;Seattle Times&#8217; Regrets Silico&#8217;s Firing, Doesn&#8217;t Regret Coffin Photo<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>By Charles Geraci<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Published: April 22, 2004 (EditorandPublisher.com)<br clear=\"none\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">NEW YORK The firing of military contractor Tami Silicio, whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers<br \/>\nkilled in Iraq was published Sunday by The Seattle Times, was met with negative reaction from the newspaper. Still,<br \/>\nthe Times stands by its decision to run the controversial image &#8212; and claims that Silicio knew the risks.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>&#8220;I&#8217;m happy the picture is out, but it broke my heart when I find out she lost her job,&#8221; said Barry Fitzsimmons, the paper&#8217;s photo editor.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Times is very sad that Tami [was fired].&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Fitzsimmons was the first at the paper to view the picture, which was sent to him by Silicio&#8217;s friend Amy Katz.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>&#8220;I knew immediately that it was something spectacular, but at the same time, I had great concern for Tami,&#8221; Fitzsimmons said.<br \/>\n&#8220;She was fearful of losing her job but she felt she would come out OK.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>In several e-mails and telephone conversations, Fitzsimmons told Silicio that publishing the photograph &#8212; which depicts more<br \/>\nthan 20 coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers loaded on a cargo plane at Kuwait International Airport &#8212; could bring repercussions.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>But Silicio insisted that the Times run the photo to show the tremendous respect given to the soldiers&#8217; remains as they were<br \/>\nloaded onto the plane for the trip home.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Despite Silicio&#8217;s firing, the Times doesn&#8217;t regret publishing the picture. &#8220;It is certainly unfortunate that she got fired but she was<br \/>\nfully aware of that possibility beforehand,&#8221; Managing Editor David Boardman told E&amp;P.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Katz is not sorry, either. &#8220;I absolutely have no regrets,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The support I&#8217;ve received from the media and the public has<br \/>\nbeen overwhelming.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio, fired her and her husband, David Landry, on Wednesday. The company<br \/>\ncited a violation of government and company regulations in its decision.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Katz asserted that &#8220;Tami&#8217;s husband had nothing to do with this. In fact, he was pessimistic about the photo being published,&#8221; she said.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>&#8220;I think this is horrible and I feel terrible for her and what she&#8217;s going through,&#8221; Katz said. But she added, &#8220;I also feel elated.<br \/>\nHundreds of people have said this was the right thing to do.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>A former employee of Halliburton, Katz served as a contractor in Kosovo. &#8220;On a certain level, I understand the firing,&#8221; she said.<br \/>\n&#8220;I know firsthand the kind of pressure the Department of Defense puts on the contractors.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Kelly McBride, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, said, &#8220;This photo serves a journalistic purpose in causing<br \/>\nthe public to question the occupation of Iraq. The harm this photo causes is not to the families of those killed in Iraq but to the administration.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>The Bush administration has claimed that the Pentagon ban on coffin photos defers to the sensitivity of the soldiers&#8217; families.<br \/>\nMcBride questions the harm done to families in this instance. &#8220;It&#8217;s impossible to identify who is in those coffins from the information<br \/>\nin the photograph,&#8221; McBride said.<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>She believes the Times acted ethically in its handling of the photo and of Silicio. &#8220;Whenever a person is risking substantial harm to be<br \/>\na source, the paper has a responsibility to ensure that person is fully informed of the risks,&#8221; McBride said. &#8220;Since The Seattle Times<br \/>\ndid this, they acted well within the bounds of ethical decision-making.&#8221;<br clear=\"none\" \/><br clear=\"none\" \/>Silicio and her husband will be returning to the United States in a little over a week. There will be a press conference shortly after their arrival.<br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<div>\n<h1>Site&#8217;s persistence paid off<\/h1>\n<p>THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\n<p>April 24, 2004<\/p>\n<p>DOVER, Del. &#8211; Photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation&#8217;s largest military mortuary first appeared on a Web site,<br \/>\nwww.thememoryhole.org.<\/p>\n<p>The photographs from Dover Air Force Base, home to the mortuary, were released last week to First Amendment activist Russ Kick,<br \/>\nwho had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to receive the images.<\/p>\n<p>Air Force officials initially denied the request but decided to release the photos after Kick appealed their decision.<\/p>\n<p>After Kick posted more than 350 photographs on his Web site, the Defense Department barred further release of the photographs to media outlets.<\/p>\n<p>According to his Web site, Kick, who has not returned phone calls or e-mails from The Associated Press, requested all Dover photos from Feb. 1, 2003, to the present.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t distinguishing between what he wanted,&#8221; said Col. Jon Anderson, a spokesman for the Dover base. &#8220;He just wanted everything.&#8221;Copyright \u00a9 2004, <a title=\"http:\/\/www.nynewsday.com\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nynewsday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Newsday, Inc.<\/p>\n<p><\/a>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.news.aol.com\/aolnews_photos\/0a\/05\/20040423001909990001\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<div>Coffins arrive at Dover Air Force Base. An Air Force<br \/>\ncommand recently released a group of such photos;<br \/>\nthe Pentagon said the release was a mistake.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>Bush Says Privacy Must Be Respected<\/div>\n<div id=\"grayText\">By RANDALL CHASE, AP<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>DOVER, Del. (April 23) &#8211; President Bush considers the release of photographs of flag-draped military coffins<br \/>\na reminder of the fallen troops&#8217; sacrifice, but believes family privacy should be respected, the White House said Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Pentagon officials said the photos, issued last week and posted on an Internet site, should not have been made<br \/>\npublic under a policy prohibiting media coverage of human remains. Some activists argue that the photos, released last week,<br \/>\nunderscore the war&#8217;s human cost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr noshade=\"noshade\" size=\"3\" \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/lifestyle\/la-et-smith26apr26,1,6226203.story?coll=la-home-style\">http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/lifestyle\/la-et-smith26apr26,1,6226203.story?coll=la-home-style<\/a><\/p>\n<h1>&#8216;Coffins&#8217; and now chaos<\/h1>\n<h2>Unlikely provocateur Russ Kick ignites controversy with photos of U.S. military dead.<\/h2>\n<p>By Lynn Smith<br \/>\nTimes Staff Writer<\/p>\n<p>April 26, 2004<\/p>\n<p>TUCSON \u2014 Until Wednesday, Russ Kick had to live with rejection. The author of quirky books like &#8220;50 Things You&#8217;re Not<br \/>\nSupposed to Know&#8221; and proprietor of the Memory Hole website said government agencies have rejected many, if not most,<br \/>\nof his 200 Freedom of Information Act requests over the years.<\/p>\n<p>But when he finally won an appeal, it was big \u2014 prompting massive media coverage and setting off a debate on the use of<br \/>\nemotionally charged images in wartime.<\/p>\n<p>It began when Kick opened his mail last week and found a letter from the U.S. Air Force granting his request for all photographs<br \/>\ntaken after February 2003 of caskets containing the remains of U.S. military personnel at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.<\/p>\n<p>Included was a CD-ROM of 361 photos not just of flag-draped coffins, but also of uniformed pallbearers or fellow soldiers in<br \/>\ncamouflage bowing their heads, caring for the remains of fallen comrades.<\/p>\n<p>That night, Kick uploaded the photos on his website with the title &#8220;Photos of Military Coffins (Casualties From Iraq) at Dover<br \/>\nAir Force Base&#8221; and went to bed.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday morning, Kick awoke to an explosion of ringing phones. A new media player had been born.<\/p>\n<p>The photos had appeared in the nation&#8217;s major newspapers and were on heavy rotation on CNN. Heavy Internet traffic had overwhelmed<br \/>\nand disabled his website. (Kick said there were 4.2 million hits on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thememoryhole.org\/\">www.thememoryhole.org<\/a> on Friday and nearly 5 million on Saturday.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;CBS had called and wanted to send a camera out to interview me for the evening news with Dan Rather. While the camera crew was<br \/>\nsetting up, ABC called saying, &#8216;We want to fly you out to New York for &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; tomorrow morning, so you have to<br \/>\nleave in a couple of hours.&#8217; While that was going on, more calls were coming in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Forty-eight hours later, Kick looked dazed back home in Tucson, in the dim ground-floor apartment he shares with &#8220;permanent fianc\u00e9e&#8221;<br \/>\nAnne Brooks, a crisis counselor, and two loyal rescue cats. Boxes of unpacked files covered the floor.<\/p>\n<p>An unlikely provocateur, Kick, 34, is friendly, somber and slow-spoken, with shoulder-length hair and substantial spectacles. He usually spends<br \/>\nhis waking hours reading newspapers and websites, scouting for potential FOIA request subjects. Brooks calls him an &#8220;absent-minded professor&#8221;<br \/>\nwho can tell you every detail about suppressed FBI reports but can&#8217;t find the electric bill. She serves as his agent and publicist because if left to<br \/>\nhimself, he would stay home in front of his computer 24 hours a day, she said. &#8220;He could spend a whole week in the house,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Kick&#8217;s unlikely success marks the rise of a new and significant third player in the news game, said Jay Rosen, chairman of the journalism<br \/>\ndepartment at New York University. &#8220;Before, you had two players: the government\/military who could control photos and access to the base,<br \/>\nand the press, which is trying to get pictures and access. Now, you have a third interest you could call the Web. It&#8217;s not just another medium<br \/>\nand way to distribute stuff and reach people. But other actors come into play who might have some of the same goals as the press, but aren&#8217;t the press.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Robert S. Lichter, co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, said of Kick: &#8220;He pried loose information that probably nobody<br \/>\nelse could. He was probably too na\u00efve to know that he would get turned down, so he got through. A Washington correspondent for a<br \/>\nmajor newspaper would know it would be a waste of time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kick is against the war, and realizes his publishing of the photos could be taken as a political act. However, he said he was more<br \/>\nmotivated by his passion to bring to light hidden images.<\/p>\n<p>Photographs of returning war dead have been a sensitive issue since Vietnam, when, it is widely believed, they helped turn public opinion against the war.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Felling, media director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, believes the timing of the photos, in conjunction with the death<br \/>\nof former NFL football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan last week, could mark a shift in public opinion about the war.<\/p>\n<p>Others, including his colleague Lichter, aren&#8217;t so sure. &#8220;Politicians don&#8217;t give people enough credit,&#8221; Lichter said. &#8220;They&#8217;re afraid that the emotions<br \/>\nof a picture will scare people out of their reasoned opinions. Usually, it isn&#8217;t so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While Kick has run into strangers calling him a hero, not everyone was happy. The Pentagon called the release a mistake and renewed its ban<br \/>\non releasing such images to the media, saying they violate the privacy of troops&#8217; families. Then NASA protested that several dozen of the images<br \/>\nwere actually Space Shuttle Columbia victims, not Iraqi war dead after all.<\/p>\n<p>That mistake placed Kick in the middle of one of the stickiest problems associated with e-media \u2014 the potential for the virus-like spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>At one point while he was trying to obtain the photos, Kick said, he had an e-mail exchange with the Air Force&#8217;s Air Mobility Command asking if<br \/>\nhe also wanted photos of the astronauts&#8217; caskets. &#8220;I said don&#8217;t worry about the astronauts. Just the soldiers killed overseas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In its cover letter, he said, the Air Force didn&#8217;t mention anything about the astronauts, or if any of the caskets came from Afghanistan. &#8220;There was<br \/>\nno context. When the CD showed up, I was so overwhelmed and surprised, I didn&#8217;t even think about the first 73 that are actually the astronauts,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wish I had realized that at first.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He offered on his site to send high-resolution versions of the photos to news agencies wanting to reproduce them. He said he gave photos<br \/>\nonly to CBS and Newsweek.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The rest just pulled them off the Web and ran those,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>A number of media organizations have run corrections or clarifications. Kick is also sensitive about his credibility, and by Sunday had<br \/>\nposted an update on the site stating 73 of the photos were of the Columbia astronauts and the remaining 288 were of the war dead.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The overall thrust of it is still correct,&#8221; he said. &#8220;These are photographs of military caskets coming into Dover. You were not allowed to<br \/>\nsee them by orders of the Pentagon. And now here they are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kick said he is motivated by a passionate and eclectic interest in archiving endangered information that goes far beyond the political to lost<br \/>\nlanguages, mistreated whales or finalists&#8217; designs for the new $20 bill. &#8220;I do get angry when it&#8217;s obvious somebody is lying to us, or keeping<br \/>\nsomething from us. I take it personally,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>A psychology major at Tennessee Tech, Kick started out with small unnoticed books like &#8220;Psychotropedia: A Guide to Publications on the<br \/>\nPeriphery&#8221; and &#8220;Hot Off the Net: Erotica and Other Sex Writings From the Internet.&#8221; But now he earns a living as the bestselling author for the<br \/>\nslick and independent Disinformation Company, writing small novelty books and editing oversized anthologies of counterculture pieces by<br \/>\nbetter-known authors, such as &#8220;You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 2002, he started his &#8220;labor of love,&#8221; a moderately successful noncommercial website called the Memory Hole after an incinerator in<br \/>\nGeorge Orwell&#8217;s &#8220;1984&#8221; that destroys information the government finds embarrassing. He gets donations and sometimes hard-to-get reports<br \/>\nfrom visitors to his website.<\/p>\n<p>Last October, the New York Times wrote a Page One story about his success in restoring blacked-out portions of a Justice Department<br \/>\nreport (he used Adobe Acrobat) on its failures in diversity hiring. The report was downloaded from the Memory Hole 340,000 times.<\/p>\n<p>Kick said he decided to ask for the casket photos last fall after he read a Washington Post story that the Pentagon had clamped<br \/>\ndown on a military-wide policy not to allow media coverage of deceased military personnel returning to the base at Dover, the largest<br \/>\nmortuary operated by the Department of Defense. Kick read something into the story that others apparently did not see.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was pretty sure because of that directive that said &#8216;don&#8217;t show them,&#8217; well, there must be pictures to show\u2026. I thought, &#8216;What have<br \/>\nI got to lose?&#8217; A stamp. I&#8217;ve made many requests before that didn&#8217;t go anywhere, so I&#8217;ll just send these in and see what happens.&#8221;<br clear=\"all\" \/>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<div>U.S. Military Affirms TV Cover Ban on Iraq Coffins<\/div>\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"548\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\">\n<tbody>\n<tr valign=\"center\">\n<td width=\"296\">\n<div>Mon Apr 26,11:52 AM ET<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<td align=\"right\" nowrap=\"nowrap\" width=\"240\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>By Erik Kirschbaum<\/p>\n<p>BERLIN (Reuters) &#8211; A ban on media access to coffins of killed American soldiers as they are transferred to U.S.-bound aircraft at an<br \/>\nairbase in Germany will stay in place despite calls to relax the rules, officials said Monday.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. military officials at Ramstein, a major air base used as a transfer point, said the Department of Defense\u00a0 re-affirmed a ban on<br \/>\ntelevision crews and photographers from filming flag- draped coffins, although coverage of the wounded is permitted.<\/p>\n<p>The issue erupted when photographs of coffins appeared in the media after the Air Force released more than 300 pictures in response<br \/>\nto a Freedom of Information request. More than 700 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, including more than 100 this month.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry\u00a0 accused President Bush Sunday of trying to hide the consequences of the war by restricting<br \/>\ncoffin pictures. But the White House said it protects the privacy of soldiers&#8217; families.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The policy was re-affirmed at the weekend and it says we don&#8217;t allow it (pictures of coffins) so we don&#8217;t,&#8221; said Major Mike Young, public<br \/>\naffairs chief for the 435th air base wing in Ramstein, about half-way between Iraq and the Dover air base.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There has been heightened media interest and we do get requests,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The policy states we do it out of respect to the families.<br \/>\nThere have been some instances where we did (allow access), but we&#8217;re not going to do it again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The ban was set up in 1991 but later relaxed, officials said. They dismiss criticism it represents censorship.<\/p>\n<p>Camera crews did film honor guard ceremonies and transfers of American-flag covered coffins onto planes headed for Dover after the attack<br \/>\non the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and also during the war in Afghanistan\u00a0 Young and other U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n<p>But rules were again strictly enforced just before the Iraq war began. Young said all 700 Americans killed in Iraq had passed through Ramstein,<br \/>\nbut no coffins had been filmed.<\/p>\n<p>Journalists in Germany trying to obtain access to the flag-draped coffins said they&#8217;d been repeatedly told &#8220;No.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They should let us cover coffins the same way they let us cover injured soldiers coming through,&#8221; said Christel Kucharz, a field producer for<br \/>\nABC news based in Germany. &#8220;If nothing else, to pay respects and bring it home to viewers in the states.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TAMI SILICIO Flag-draped coffins are shown inside a cargo plane&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-images-of-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36582,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14765\/revisions\/36582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}