Ombudsman: Agendas collide at Arlington National Cemetery

Something happened among the hallowed graves at Arlington National Cemetery on April 22 that could serve as a Rorschach test for people’s feelings about the Iraq war, government bureaucracy, the right to privacy, and the media.

What happened was the burial of a war hero, Lt. Col. William G. (Billy) Hall, a Marine killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq on March 29.  It seems that Hall’s family was asked, as all families are in these circumstances, whether the media could be present. They said yes.

Reporters and cameramen were indeed present, but were only allowed to observe the pre-burial procession. They were held far away from the graveside service and the family, so far away that they could not hear the chaplain’s words or take close-up photographs.

Dana Milbank, a popular and clever journalist from the Washington Post, was indignant. In a column headlined “What the Family Would Let you See, the Pentagon Obstructs,” he said it seemed the Pentagon didn’t even want people to know that the officer was being laid to rest. “It had the feel of a throwback to Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, when the military cracked down on photographs of flag-draped caskets returning home from the war,“  Milbank wrote.  He reported that even the public affairs director at Arlington, Gina Gray, sought to have the media moved closer but was overruled.

In a subsequent blog discussion hosted by Milbank, and in another by a washingtonpost.com blogger, Doug Feaver, readers let loose with some biting opinions. There were plenty of denunciations of what one reader called “this illegal war.” Americans were “being sent to their deaths…by a cowardly president,” said another. One reader blasted any effort to keep the press at bay: “It’s despicable to expect someone to sacrifice his life and then demand that the public cannot see the funeral or read a decently reported story about it.”

But the press came in for a licking, too. “You guys just don’t get it,” a reader wrote. “You’ve managed to twist everything military into something bad…so you are no longer welcome….People don’t trust you anymore.” Another reader told Milbank, “You are ghoul,” for wanting to press closely to the interment.

I wondered, just what’s going on here? Half a dozen layers down from the top of the Army bureaucracy, I found the man in the know:  Thurman Higginbotham, deputy superintendent of the cemetery.  He made no apologies for keeping the press at a distance. “We ask the family first,” he told me, “and less than 50 per cent want them (the media)…When they do come, we try to keep them out of view.” That means about 30 yards back from the burial itself, he said. (Milbank said reporters were kept 50 yards back; for perspective, the distance of a really hard-to-make field goal compared to an easy one.)

This week, at a meeting of reporters and officials to discuss cemetery rules, Higginbotham said, “’Invited’ doesn’t mean you attend the funeral. It means you can cover it from a distance that is a respectable distance, and not be obtrusive to the mourners.”

The upshot of that meeting, reported by Stars and Stripes, was a pledge by the Army to confer with members of the media to come up with new ground rules for coverage of Arlington Cemetery funerals. What they will be is anybody’s guess. Milbank had what seemed like a reasonable solution – a pool arrangement whereby a single press representative would be close to the event, and report back to others.

That seemed like a good deal to Gray, who, incidentally, rejected “absolutely” Milbank’s insinuation that the “de facto ban” on media at the cemetery “fits neatly with an effort by the administration to sanitize the war in Iraq.” Gray, a courageous PAO if ever there was one, called that “sheer speculation,” and chalked up the entire issue to bureaucratic zeal.

I asked Higginbotham about the possibility of a pool: “No,” he said firmly, “That would be violating the family.”

Finally, I wanted to know what Lt. Col. Hall’s family felt about how the service unfolded. I reached his sister, Delores Perry, in Seattle. She said she was speaking also for the Marine’s widow, Xiomara, at Camp Pendleton. “It was beautiful,” Perry said. “It wasn’t about the media….Mrs. Hall was satisfied. She did not want the media so close that they would disrupt the service….We needed time for ourselves. It wasn’t for show.”

As to having only a pool reporter at the site, Perry said that would be acceptable, so long as it was not an overly obvious presence.  The fact that the Hall burial has given rise to some kind of accommodation among the cemetery authorities, the media, and grieving families means “my brother, even from the grave, is making things better” for these events,  she said.

Got a question or suggestion for the ombudsman on what appears, or should appear, in Stars and Stripes? Send an e-mail to ombudsman@stripes.osd.mil, or phone 202-761-0945 in the States.