A woman who sought to restore media coverage of military funerals at Arlington Cemetery says her efforts got her fired. According to 30-year-old Gina Gray, shortly after starting her new job as the public affairs director, she observed cemetery officials imposing new limits on media coverage of funerals for Iraq war dead–even after some families had granted permission for the coverage.

Just 10 days on the job, she was handling media coverage for the burial of a Marine colonel who had been killed in Iraq when she noticed that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery’s deputy superintendent, had moved the media area 50 yards away from the service, obstructing the photographs and making the service inaudible. The Washington Sketch column on April 24 noted that Gray pushed for more access to the service but was “apparently shot down by other cemetery officials.”

[Defense Secretary Robert] Gates had his staff inquire with the cemetery about the article and was told that “the policy had not in any way changed,” Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said yesterday. [Pete] Geren, the Army secretary, added that “the policy has not changed, and I understand the practice hasn’t, either.”

That, however, is false. Through at least 2005–during [Donald] Rumsfeld’s tenure, no less–reporters were placed in a location where they could hear the prayers and the eulogies and film the handing of the folded flag to the next of kin. The coverage of the ceremonies–in the nearly two-thirds of cases where families permitted it–provided moving reminders to a distracted nation that there was a war going on. But the access gradually eroded, and Gray arrived to discover that it was gone.

Gray, who maintains that the restrictions are wrong and not based on Army regulations, says the Army demoted her six weeks after The Washington Post first reported on her efforts and ultimately fired her June 27. An internal review of her firing is now underway. “Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I’m sure I’d still be there,” Gray said. “It’s about doing the right thing.”

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