Air Force dumped more remains in landfill than acknowledged
Records show the Air Force dumped the ashes of partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill - far more than the military has previously acknowledged, according to The Washington Post.
The Air Force did not report the landfill dumping to families of the deceased troops, according to the Post, and the service has no intention of alerting families now that the information has become public.
Landfill disposals were not authorized under military regulations, and were not disclosed to senior Pentagon officials who conducted a review of cremation policies in 2008, the article states.
Determining how many remains went to the landfill would require searching through the records of more than 6,300 troops whose remains have passed through the mortuary since 2001, according to the article.
A separate federal investigation last month, prompted by whistleblower complaints, uncovered “gross mismanagement” at the Dover mortuary and documented how body parts recovered from bomb blasts stacked up in the morgue’s coolers for months or years before they were identified and disposed of, the article said.
Read the whole story at The Washington Post.
