Army to make sure everyone at Arlington buried in right place
Published: June 30, 2010
The Army will make sure that all 330,000 people buried at Arlington National Cemetery are in the correct place, but officials could not say how long that process might take.
Earlier this month, an Army Inspector General’s Office report found that at least 211 graves at the cemetery were unmarked or misidentified.
“There could in fact be more,” said Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, Army Inspector General, at June 10 news conference.
Army Secretary John McHugh told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Army will look into the records of everyone buried at Arlington, but first the cemetery’s paper record system needs to be computerized.
Between 2003 and 2004, the cemetery paid a contractor to digitize its records but they “were not delivered in a standardized format and were not stored as part of a database,” making them unusable, the Army Inspector General’s report found. Other contracts to computerize the cemetery’s records also ended in failure.
Army officials are looking into whether there was any contracting malfeasance at the cemetery and passing their findings to the Criminal Investigation Command, McHugh said on Wednesday.
Due to a switchover to a new comment system, this comment board is now closed.
