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As many as 6,600 Arlington graves mixed up
Former Arlington National Cemetery Deputy Superintendent Thurman Higginbotham confers
By Anne Flaherty
WASHINGTON – Estimates of the number of graves potentially affected by mix-ups at Arlington National Cemetery grew to as many as 6,600 on Thursday, as the cemetery’s former superintendent blamed his staff and a lack of resources for the scandal that forced his ouster.
John Metzler, who ran the famous military burial ground for 19 years, said he accepts “full responsibility” for the problems.
But he also rebutted some of findings of Army investigators. And he suggested cemetery employees were to blame for mix-ups because the system used to track grave sites relied mostly on a complicated paper trail vulnerable to error.
“Personally it is very painful for me that our team at Arlington did not perform all aspects of its mission to the high standard required,” he told a Senate panel. He was subpoenaed to testify.
Metzler and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, were forced to retire after Army investigators found that as many as 211 graves were unmarked or misidentified.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, chairwoman of an oversight panel on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee, said Thursday that her investigation has revealed far higher estimates of the number of graves affected. McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, said she believes that between 4,900 and 6,600 graves may be unmarked or mislabeled on cemetery maps. And she blamed Metzler.
He provided an often confusing defense, saying that internal working maps used by cemetery employees were mislabeled but that those discrepancies wouldn’t necessarily affect operations.
He also said any problems that popped up over the years were quickly fixed and suggested he was surprised by the findings of the Army’s Inspector General.
His testimony angered lawmakers.
“The notion that you would come in here and didn’t know about it until a month ago is offensive. You did know about it, and you did nothing,” McCaskill said.
A visibly frustrated Sen. Scott Brown abruptly ended his questioning.
“I’d have a lot of fun with you in a deposition because I don’t think we’re getting straight talk here,” said Brown, R-Mass.
Higginbotham testified in general about his tenure at the cemetery but left the hearing early after asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to respond to many of the lawmakers’ more pointed questions.
When asked whether he was aware of problems at the cemetery, Higginbotham said: “It was always conceptual that anything done by hand for 40-plus years that there would have to be some errors somewhere.”
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Posted by Yanira Farray on Jul 29 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Living, Of Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Ok , It is good this story is coming out, however the complete
story is a bit more than reported, no I don’t know all the details.
Going back about three years ago a Veteran observed something
at the Arlington National Cemetery.
After the funeral service and as the attendees of the funeral
were leaving and out of direct view of the burial site,
the cemetery employees began the process of lowering the casket into
the burial chamber. However instead of lowering the casket
in an appropriate manner , the casket was simply dropped in
free fall to crash at the bottom of the burial chamber.
The Veteran continued to observe from a distance, just out of
immediate view of the cemetery employees , he observed a number
of instances of how the casket as soon as it was positioned
over the top of the burial chamber was simply released
to free fall and crash at the bottom every single time.
( S.O.P. )
The Veteran did complain to the “management” of
Arlington National Cemetery with no results.
The Veteran made a promise to expose this.
So there are thousands of caskets at
Arlington National Cemetery that were just dropped
to crash at the bottom of the burial chamber ????
Good point Rick. I wonder how many caskets are reused after the bodies are dumped out in the bottom of the holes — if at all, of course?
T.G.