CNN BREAKING NEWS: PENTAGON LIFTS BAN ON PICTURES OF FLAG DRAPED COFFINS

Story Highlights
NEW: Mother of dead soldier says, "I wanted the nation to grieve with me"
NEW: Vietnam vet asks "What is the greater good?" of anonymous casket
Defense Secretary Robert Gates to announce decision at 2 p.m.
Gates ordered review after President Obama requested info on longstanding ban

From Barbara StarrCNN Pentagon Correspondent
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/pentagon.media.war.dead/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon will lift its longtime ban on media coverage of the flag-draped coffins of war victims arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, according to a senior U.S. defense official with direct knowledge of the decision.

The coverage must be approved by the victims' families, however.

Advocates of opening the base to coverage say the unmarked coffins make it impossible to identify specific remains.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is to announce the change at a news conference at 2 p.m. ET, the senior official said. He ordered a review after President Obama asked for more information on the long-standing policy.

Though the Defense Department won't confirm it, it is widely accepted that the ban began after the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, which deposed dictator Manuel Noriega.

After a news conference held by President George H.W. Bush, his press secretary made a humorous comment, causing the president and reporters to laugh.

At the same time, viewers were watching coffins of the first casualties from the invasion being unloaded at Dover.

The following year, when the Persian Gulf War began, the Pentagon banned media coverage of war dead being returned to the base.

One of the family members who favors lifting the ban is Karen Meredith of San Francisco, California, who wrote Obama urging him to order the change.

Lt. Ken Ballard left for Iraq on Mother's Day in 2003. He came home in a casket on Memorial Day 2004.

"I wanted the nation to grieve with me, and if we don't see those images we don't know that these young men and women are dying," she told CNN.

"And to me its an honor to have an honor guard at Dover when they're bringing these men and women back through the mortuary. But we've never been able to see those pictures of the honor being given."

Others say the honor should remain private.

"When they come off the plane, these are anonymous caskets. What is the greater good of that," asked Vince Rangel, who was an Army Ranger captain in Vietnam.

"I would rather take that attention and give it everything it deserves at the gravesite in the communities where you can get all that information, so people can understand these people as human beings. Not just as a flag-draped casket that comes out of a plane."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said about two weeks ago that a good deal of input needed to be collected from a number of sources, including Pentagon offices representing family interests, the Defense Department's public affairs office and the various service branches.