Arlington National Cemetery mismanagement controversy

More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, including veterans, their dependents, other casualties of war, two American presidents, famous sports legends, and various other dignitaries.

According to The Washington Post in July 2008, over the past several years the cemetery has gradually imposed increasing restrictions on media coverage of funerals.

[11] After protesting the new restrictions on media representatives, Gina Gray, the cemetery's new public affairs director, was demoted and then fired on June 27, 2008, after only three months in the job.

The investigation reportedly had found that when the email was accessed from a cemetery office computer, only two employees, Higginbotham and a contractor, were present in the building.

"[1] In another case, laborers digging in what they thought was an empty grave discovered a coffin already there, and in another four burial urns had been unearthed and dumped in a landfill.

[20] McHugh also announced the creation of a new post, the Executive Director of the Army National Cemeteries Program, to implement the recommendations of the inspector general's report.

[19] Metzler was ordered to report directly to the new Executive Director, and a United States Department of Veterans Affairs staff person assigned to assist him.

[19] Patrick K. Hallinan, Director of the Office of Field Programs for the Department of Veterans Affairs, was named the Acting Superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, effective upon Metzler's retirement.

[2] Since the close of its investigation, the US Army has operated a call center to answer questions or concerns from family members of internees at the cemetery.

According to The Washington Post, the subcommittee had found that the cemetery paid $5 million in government funds to contractors over 10 years for work on the system that was not completed and with which little progress was made.

[31] On December 16, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, previously approved by the U.S. Senate, requiring the Army to provide Congress with an accounting of all 320,000 graves at the cemetery.

[32] On 31 January 2011, the Northern Virginia Technology Council released the report of its three-month investigation into record keeping at the cemetery.

The report concluded that, "Antiquated paper record-keeping and lack of oversight led to the mishandling of dozens of remains at the nation's most important military burial ground" and recommended that "the cemetery must digitize its records, improve its scheduling system and establish a rigorous chain of custody for remains as they move from funeral homes to burial.

Although the plot booking system was suspended in 1962, The Washington Post reported in March 2011 that it had unofficially continued under cemetery superintendents Raymond J. Costanzo and John C. Metzler, Jr. until 2010.

"[34] In June 2011, 69 boxes of copied burial records which contained names, dates of birth, and social security numbers of deceased interred at Arlington were discovered in a private storage facility in northern Virginia.

Army officials stated that the storage unit was rented by an employee of a contract company the cemetery had hired to digitize its burial records.

[36] In a status report given in September 2011, the US Army stated that progress was being made in reconciling burial records and in modernizing the cemetery's administration.

The double-checks revealed that records regarding 64,230 (about one-quarter) of the cemetery's 259,978 burial sites contained "discrepancies" that required additional investigation.

[40] Arlington National Cemetery officials said in the report that they believed these problems were minor, such as typos in names or dates of death, and that another six months would be needed before these discrepancies could be resolved.

[40] On January 24, 2012, cemetery officials announced that their ongoing attempt to document all the graves and burials at Arlington have led them to significantly revise the number of dead interred there.

Army inspector general Lt. Gen. Peter Vangjel told McCaskill at the hearing that his office would continue to closely monitor Arlington's spending and financial controls.

[43] A Government Accountability Office report released the same day[44] found that Arlington officials had made "major improvements" to strategic planning, technology infrastructure, and workforce management.

The Corps discovered that, for roughly the past 20 years, ANC managers conducted maintenance and repair only when systems were on the verge of "catastrophic failure".

[46] This included the first installment of an estimated $35 million to locate and remove abandoned utilities, maintain and upgrade existing ones, and build a geographic information system database.

Some of the funds were intended to begin planning for the cemetery's expansion onto the Navy Annex site and for implementation of the Millennium Project (which will convert a substantial portion of woodland into burial space).

[48] The Army requested an additional $25 million for fiscal 2014 (which begins July 1, 2013) for infrastructure improvements at Arlington National Cemetery.

The report lauded a program at Arlington, implemented by new director Patrick Hallinan, which used geospatial technology to track cemetery operations.

In response to the report, Senator Mark Warner stated, "Condon and her team deserve a lot of credit for implementing reforms to fix the problems at Arlington and begin restoring our trust.