The lawsuit challenges a 1991 ban on media coverage of fallen soldiers' coffins flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware before being returned to their hometowns around the country. Former network television correspondent Ralph Begleiter, together with the National Security Archive, had filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain photos and moving recordings of all coffins passing through Dover since October 2001.
Earlier this year, Russ Kick, an Arizona resident, started a firestorm of controversy after he posted on his website The Memory Hole hundreds of such photos obtained from the Pentagon through a FOIA request. The photos ran on the front pages of major newspapers the next day and prompted a national discussion about what the public should know about the human cost of war.
The Pentagon claims the ban protects the privacy rights of the fallen soldiers and their families, although they have made exceptions to the ban in several instances. None of the photos released to Mr. Kick, which the Pentagon called a mistake, gave away the identities of the soldiers. Instead, they were pictures of coffins draped in the American flag, some inside the shimmering stark holds of military aircraft. The photographs demonstrate the care with which the military handles the remains of the fallen soldiers. For some, the pictures honor the price paid by those individuals. For others, they show the true cost of war and should be public. And for a few, the photos document a side of war they would rather keep hidden from the public.