Congressmen Question Pace Of Arlington Cemetery Grave Probe

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress on Friday questioned why nobody has been prosecuted as part of a criminal investigation of mismanagement at Arlington National Cemetery, nearly three years after reports of problems that included misidentified graves first surfaced in the press.

"We are years into this and to my knowledge not a single person has been punished in any way" for one of the worst scandals in the nearly 150-year history of the cemetery, said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., at Friday's hearing.

Following published reports in 2009 of misidentified graves and a scathing Army audit in 2010, the cemetery's two top officials, Superintendent John Metzler and deputy Thurman Higginbotham, were forced out. The new management team, under Executive Director Kathryn Condon and Superintendent Patrick Hallinan, is in the midst of a painstaking, grave-by-grave review of the nearly 260,000 sites and markers to ensure that the dead are properly accounted for.

Thus far, the review has turned up no further problems of misidentified graves. But it has identified potentially thousands of relatively minor problems, like misspelled names or spouses who were not properly recognized on grave stones because of historical peculiarities in how the cemetery accounted for people over its long history.

The Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Peter Vangjel, said the Army's Criminal Investigations Division has completed its probe of the mismanagement at Arlington, and said a decision now rests with the Department of Justice on whether anyone should be prosecuted.

A spokesman for CID, though, said Friday evening that the agency's investigation remains "open and ongoing."

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has jurisdiction over Arlington, declined to comment Friday. It is not uncommon for federal grand jury investigations to take multiple years.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., called the lack of any prosecution thus far "difficult to believe and unacceptable."

"All of us feel like a significant amount of time has passed where these investigations should have reached their conclusions," he said.

A call to Higginbotham's home went unanswered. Metzler referred calls to his attorney, who declined comment.

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Comments

[grf67]

01:40 PM on 02/04/2012

It is time for Congressmen and women to do the jobs for which they were elected and that would be funding the government. They should be asking why so few members of Congress have been prosecuted for insider trading or fraud and stop wasting taxpayer time and money trying to pander to their bases.

[CemOps]

11:37 PM on 02/03/2012

Again, I'm reading another account of how Metzler and Higginbothom were "forced out" or otherwise removed from their jobs. Someone please print the rest of the story. Both are retired with full pay and benefits. They weren't even suspended without pay during the investigation. That should really be the story here, not a bunch of sound bytes and blah blah moments within a federal bureaucracy that is incapable of policing itself.
The story about Arlington or the VA Cemeteries, or the Dover Morgue will not go away because the American people realize we do not operate on a level playing field with our federal government. Private sector folks have been fined, levied, and sentenced to prison in record breaking time when put up against this never ending investigation. It appears if the investigation can just outlast the media coverage, it will all just quietly go away.
Sorry if this offends some folks in the Beltway, but that's only fair. We were offended when we offered pro bono assistance with up to 4 top cemetery experts and were lied to about policy. We are offended every time one of our politicians or even our president talk about transparency or volunteerism, and the only ones who aren't are those within the machine doing the talking.
I made this statement on the Washington Post article. How about you folks stop talking and actually do something. www.cemops.com