Putting Her Foot Down and Getting the Boot

by: Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, Thursday July 10, 2008

Former Arlington Public Affairs Director Gina Gray speaks out about military's attempts to block media coverage of Arlington Cemetery funerals. (Photo: Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post)

The ghost of Rummy is proving difficult to exorcise.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to sweep out the symbols of his predecessor's capricious reign, firing acolytes of Donald Rumsfeld and bringing glasnost to the Pentagon.

But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead.

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead - even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

"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," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last night, said he couldn't comment on Gray's firing. But he said the overall policy at Arlington is correct. "It appears to me that we've struck the right balance, consistent with the wishes of the family," the secretary said.

Gray, in tank top, jeans, Ray-Bans over her Army cap and flip-flops revealing pink toenails, struck an unlikely figure for a whistle-blower yesterday as she provided documents detailing her ill-fated and tumultuous few months at Arlington. She worked for eight years in the Army as a public affairs specialist in Germany, Italy and Iraq, then returned to Iraq as an army contractor doing media operations. While working with the 173rd Airborne in Iraq in 2003, her convoy was ambushed and, she says, she still has some hearing loss from the explosion. The 30-year-old Arizonan was hired to work at Arlington in April.

Continued . . .