Army Sacks 2 for National Cemetery's Burial Blunders

WASHINGTON (June 10) --The Army is enlisting a pair of former senators to oversee Arlington National Cemetery after a scathing review of America's "sacred ground" revealed more than 200 bodies had been misplaced or misidentified amid "dysfunctional management" by its two top administrators.

The Army inspector general found that while cemetery staff conducted between 27 and 30 funerals a day "with dedication and to a high professional standard," they were hampered by "dysfunctional management, the lack of established policy and procedures and an overall unhealthy organizational climate," Secretary of the Army John McHugh said today at a Pentagon news conference. "That ends today."

McHugh named a temporary caretaker, Patrick Hallinan, to oversee the resting place of President John F. Kennedy and the nation's war heroes, where more than 4 million visitors come each year.

He announced a series of management changes, including a new Army National Cemeteries Advisory Commission to regularly review policies and procedures and provide guidance at the hallowed grounds.

The panel will be led by former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and Max Cleland, a former senator from Georgia. Dole, a wounded World War II veteran, co-chaired the 2007 panel that investigated mismanagement and substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, is a former head of the Department of Veterans Affairs and currently serves as secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which oversees American burial grounds in foreign countries.

The report was prompted by a yearlong investigation by Salon.com that uncovered forgotten graves, missing bodies, falsely marked burial plots and what it called "a core systemic failure in the cemetery's management."

The Army now officially agrees. It sent Superintendent John Metzler Jr. a letter of reprimand and ordered him to report to a newly created executive director of Army cemeteries until his previously, and prematurely, announced retirement July 2.

The cemetery's deputy superintendent, who was not named in the report but has been identified by Salon as Thurman Higginbotham, was placed on administrative leave pending a disciplinary review. He faces a criminal investigation related to charges that he hacked into the e-mail of a whistle-blower on his staff.

In an interview last month with AOL News, which profiled the embattled superintendent, Metzler said of the Salon accusations: "About a fourth is somewhat factual, and the rest isn't even close." He added, "Sure, mistakes get made. ... Does anyone run a perfect organization?"

The Army report, along with a separate investigation begun by McHugh's predecessor and also released today, portrayed an operation far from perfect. It noted poor employee morale as far back as 1992, a year after Metzler took over the job once held by his father. Much of the ill will was attributed to friction between Metzler and Higginbotham. That long-standing rift carried on for years, poisoning employee morale and leading to organizational dysfunction in part due to Metzler's "lack of management skill," the report said.

The report cited inadequate procedures to prevent burial mix-ups, including a lack of automation and the cemetery leaders' "reactive approach to addressing problems only as they arose."

Investigators concluded that Metzler "failed to properly execute his oversight responsibilities" in running Arlington.

Higginbotham, whose name is redacted in the report, also got slammed for failing to ensure that grave sites were appropriately marked.

While only five burial mistakes were reported by Salon, the Army found "systemic failures" that contributed to 211 graves having "issues of accountability."

Among them: mistakes in identification, missing remains, mislabeled headstones, poor record keeping and improper marking or mishandling of cremated remains. Two of the affected graves are in Section 60, where the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.

"There could be more," Army Inspector General R. Steven Whitcomb told reporters.

Said McHugh, "There's simply no excuses."

The Army has established a call center for family members who have concerns about the burial discrepancies at Arlington National Cemetery. The phone number is (703) 607-8199.

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