From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

This week, President Obama twice made good on his promise of greater transparency in the price of war.

On Thursday morning, he introduced a $3.5 trillion budget that offered a stricter accounting

of the dollars devoted to the fighting on two fronts. For too long, our budget has not told the

whole truth about how precious tax dollars are spent. Large sums have been left off the books,

including the true cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Later Thursday afternoon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held a press conference at the Pentagon

to announce another shift in policy, also aimed at publicizing the cost, not in treasure, but in blood.

First, I would like to make an announcement regarding the department's policy toward media coverage of the

return of our fallen heroes at Dover Air Force Base. As you know, the President asked me to review

this policy. I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified

transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected

on an individual basis by the families of the fallen.

Salon.com's national correspondent Mark Benjamin has repeatedly covered the issue of the media

and the returning fallen. He joins us once again. Mark, welcome back.

Thank you for having me, Bob.

Under the second President Bush, the policy prohibiting media coverage of the returning coffins was very strictly enforced.

But the policy actually originated well before George W. Bush. Tell me about its origins.

That's correct. The original policy was actually written in 1991 by someone everyone's heard of, Dick Cheney, who at that time was Secretary of Defense.

He put that policy in place under the first Bush administration just on the eve of the first Gulf War to prevent photographs of those caskets. And it's never been

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