WASHINGTON – Under strict Pentagon policies the families of servicemen killed during the war with Iraq are to be informed of the deaths through the Pentagon’s formal Casualty Assistance Calls process, in which a senior military officer and chaplain inform relatives in a face-to-face visit. Military officials take extensive measures to prevent families from hearing this news first from the media.

The Pentagon has imposed rules for journalists “embedded” with troops to protect the identities of soldiers who are killed or injured in the line of duty for 72 hours or upon verification of next-of-kin, whichever is first. The rules state that public notice of a local soldier’s death is to come from his or her immediate family, not from the media or the Pentagon.

However, members of Congress can often use their connections to get detailed information on behalf of their constituents quickly, according to congressional staffers.

“Congress isn’t always the first to know, but when we find out we can usually get more information,” said Dave Lackey, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Lackey said for example that when a Bangor-area Navy flier was lost on a training mission in the Mediterranean Sea last year, “we learned about it initially from the family or the press, but he was still missing at the time. Olympia was able to get information about the case and at least to talk with the family and let them know we were doing all we could.”

Lackey also recalled the case of Evander Andrews from Solon, who was among the first killed while deployed in the Afghanistan incursion in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks in the United States. Andrews died in a forklift accident in a military supply depot in Qatar on the Persian Gulf.

“Again, we were able to cut through the chaff on this,” Lackey said.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon considered battlefield cremations of any U.S. troops who might be killed by biological agents in a war with Iraq, but defense officials decided last week instead to ship such bodies home for burial.

“There are no plans for cremation, or incineration, or deep-pit burial, or anything of that sort,” Assistant Defense Secretary William Winkenwerder told reporters at the Pentagon last week. “It is our policy that all such service members would be transported back to the United States.”