"I lost my job and they let my husband go as well," Tami Silicio, who loaded U.S. military cargo at Kuwait International Airport for a U.S. company, told Reuters in an e-mail response to questions.
The Pentagon (news - web sites) tightly restricts publication of photographs of coffins with the remains of U.S. troops and has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the first stop for the bodies of troops being sent home.
John Molino, a deputy undersecretary of defense who oversees the policy, told reporters the Pentagon was not involved in the decision to fire Silicio, but refused to say whether she should be rehired.
Molino said the policy, in effect since 1991, was crafted with input from families to protect the privacy and dignity of the deceased. Critics have said the rules were aimed at sanitizing the war for the public.
But the Air Force said that, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, it released to a Web site (http://www.thememoryhole.org) on April 14 more than 300 photographs showing the remains of U.S. service members returning home.
Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force spokeswoman, said the request to make the photographs public initially was denied by Dover Air Force Base, then was granted by the Air Force Air Mobility Command. But Cassidy said the Pentagon had decided the release violated its own rules and had decided no further copies of the pictures will be made public.
The Seattle Times printed Silicio's photograph last weekend and again on Thursday. The picture shows soldiers tending to 20 coffins completely covered with American flags on April 7 inside a military cargo plane at the Kuwait airport.
Silicio, who was raised in the Seattle area, was not paid by the newspaper for the picture, which a friend in the United States, Amy Katz, passed on to the newspaper. Katz said she had since found an agent to sell the photograph.
Silicio's former employer, Colorado-based Maytag Aircraft Corp., a subsidiary of Mercury Air Group Inc., said the couple was dismissed for violating U.S. government and company regulations.
"Maytag deeply regrets these actions and fully concurs with the Pentagon's policy of respecting the remains of our brave men and women who have fallen in service to our country," said Maytag President William Silva.
Molino said his office had no part in Silicio's dismissal.
"I indicated that I didn't think it would be appropriate for the Pentagon to take any sanctions against her," he said.
Asked whether the policy was intended to keep Americans in the dark about the fact that the bodies of U.S. troops are returning regularly from Iraq, Molino said, "I don't see that as our motivation."
"To be very frank with you, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified," he said.
Katz said Silicio, whose own son died from an illness, took the picture to show the "respectful death ritual" for slain soldiers and not to make money or become famous. Other contractors and soldiers had taken similar pictures, she said.
"Tami Silicio was only pledging allegiance to our flag and to our heroes laying beneath it," Katz said.
Since the start of the war in March 2003, more than 700 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, with more than 100 killed this month, the Pentagon said.
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