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Arlington National Cemetery is under fire for mishandling thousands of soldiers' graves.
The national disgrace at Arlington National Cemetery is getting worse. As many as 6,600 graves at the revered burial site for distinguished military members have been affected by mix-ups, a Senate subcommittee said Thursday. Senators pressed the former head of Arlington National Cemetery for answers, but got excuses instead. John Metzler told the Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee his employees' reliance on paper records is the source of most of the errors. "Personally, it is very painful for me that our team at Arlington did not perform all aspects of its mission to the high standard required," he told the panel. Metzler claimed mistakes were quickly fixed and that he was shocked by the Army inspector general's report that forced his resignation last month. "The notion that you would come in here and didn't know about it until a month ago is offensive," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the committee's chairwoman, said. "You did know about it, and you did nothing." The lack of answers irritated Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who quit his questioning in frustration. "I'd have a lot of fun with you in a deposition because I don't think we're getting straight talk here," Brown told Metzler. Metzler's deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, was not much better than his boss in the accountability department. "It was always conceptual that anything done by hand for 40-plus years, that there would have to be some errors somewhere," he said. Higginbotham left the hearing early, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to answer the senators' questions.
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