Military access

The officer overseeing legal affairs for the United States Coast Guard has agreed to post all Coast Guard court martial dockets online in early 2009.

The Defense Department refused a Stars and Stripes request to cover the election as it unfolded Tuesday -- primarily for a "color" piece on military bases around the world, the government-sponsored newspaper said.

An Army historian today told a government declassification group that the Army is not enforcing its record-keeping policies and that it is not receiving adequate records from military units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Records are just not kept," Dr. Richard Davis of the U.S. Army Center of Military History told the Public Interest Declassification Board at its third open meeting of the year. "As of October 2005, not one Army unit returned one record."

In the face of criticism, the Army has for the first time formally outlined a policy outlining media access to military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, giving clear but limited control to mourning families while reserving the final word for cemetery officials. 

A special U.S. Army committee has drafted a proposal that would allow reporters covering military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery to listen in using a microphone, according to a Voice of America report.