A strange coincidence and a Pentagon slip-up have resulted in an unexpected breach of a Bush administration ban on photographs of the flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq. American casualties have been reported almost daily, but photographs of the returning coffins were off-limits until last week. Then suddenly television news programs and many newspapers began showing such pictures and about 300 of them are easily obtainable on the Internet.

The first break in a Pentagon ban on the publication of such pictures came when an American contract Defense Department employee in Iraq photographed military coffins on a plane and sold them to the Seattle Times. She and her husband, a co-worker in Iraq, were fired. The next day, Russ Kick, operator of an anti-secrecy Web site in Tucson, Ariz., put the mass of pictures on the Internet and invited newspapers to publish them. It was widely reported that they could be found at www.thememoryhole.org.

Newspaper and television photographers are prohibited from making pictures of the coffins in Iraq or upon their arrival at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. But unbeknown to news organizations, military photographers have been making such pictures throughout the war as part of a historical record. Mr. Kick somehow learned of the existence of the Pentagon pictures and made a Freedom of Information Act request for them in behalf of his Memory Hole Web site. He was turned down at first, but succeeded on appeal, and the Pentagon sent him the pictures on a CD.

The Pentagon says the release of the pictures was a mistake, and the White House says President Bush agrees. His press secretary, Scott McClellan, said: “The president believes that we should always honor and show respect for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedoms.”

But the president also must be acutely aware that the photographs would be a poignant reminder of the mounting casualty toll in a war that he has made a primary issue in his re-election campaign.

Mr. Bush has approved of “embedding” journalists with military units to cover the war. Their coverage includes both the heroism and the horrors of the conflict. According to The New York Times, a Times/CBS News poll in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States, while 27 percent said the public should not be allowed to see those ceremonies.

So a bit of government news management now has been temporarily breached, although the Pentagon says no more pictures will be released. The question remains as to why it took private citizens to force into the open this sad but dignified view of the return of the war dead. And the question arises as to why shouldn’t nongovernment news photographers be permitted to cover this aspect of the war along with the rest of it.