[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 6, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1159-H1160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TOMB OF THE UNKNOWNS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Stivers) for 5 minutes.
Mr. STIVERS. Madam Speaker, I've served for 26 years in the Ohio Army
National Guard and had the pleasure of serving with many brave men and
women over the years, including a tour of duty in Operation Iraqi
Freedom. As a member of the armed services as well as a Member of
Congress, I was shocked and horrified last year by reports of the Dover
Air Force Base mortuary sending veterans' remains to the Prince George
landfill.
The Washington Post reported on December 7, 2011, that they uncovered
``976 fragments from 274 servicemembers that were cremated, incinerated
and taken to the landfill between 2004 and 2008.'' This is an outrage.
It disrespects our men and women in uniform, and it can't be allowed to
stand.
The first step to fixing this is creating a proper memorial for those
who have served our country so well and given their last measure of
devotion. I'm working on legislation to create a Tomb of the Unknowns
at Arlington National Cemetery for every conflict moving forward. This
plan will be paid for by taking money from the Air Force, because
that's where the poor decisions were made. I plan to introduce this
legislation very soon.
To those who have given their final measure of devotion in service to
our country, they deserve a final resting place worthy of their
dedication, commitment, and devotion, and we need to give that to them.
God bless the United States of America.
[From the Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2011]
Air Force Dumped Ashes of More Troops' Remains in Va. Landfill Than
Acknowledged
(By Craig Whitlock and Mary Pat Flaherty)
The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at
least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more
than the military had acknowledged, before halting the
secretive practice three years ago, records show.
The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had
authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a
dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said.
There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now.
The Air Force had maintained that it could not estimate how
many troops might have had their remains sent to a landfill.
The practice was revealed last month by The Washington Post,
which was able to document a single case of a soldier whose
partial remains were sent to the King George County landfill
in Virginia. The new data, for the first time, show the scope
of what has become an embarrassing episode for vaunted Dover
Air Base, the main port of entry for America's war dead.
The landfill disposals were never formally authorized under
military policies or regulations. They also were not
disclosed to senior Pentagon officials who conducted a high-
level review of cremation policies at the Dover mortuary in
2008, records show.
Air Force and Pentagon officials said last month that
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.
``It would require a massive effort and time to recall
records and research individually,'' Jo Ann Rooney, the
Pentagon's acting undersecretary for personnel, wrote in a
Nov. 22 letter to Rep. Rush D. Holt (D N.J.).
Holt, who has pressed the Pentagon for answers on behalf of
a constituent whose husband was killed in Iraq, accused the
Air Force and Defense Department of hiding the truth.
``What the hell?'' Holt said in a phone interview. ``We
spent millions, tens of millions, to find any trace of
soldiers killed, and they're concerned about a 'massive'
effort to go back and pull out the files and find out how
many soldiers were disrespected this way?'' He added: ``They
just don't want to ask questions or look very hard.''
Senior Air Force leaders said there was no intent to
deceive. ``Absolutely not,'' said Lt. Gen. Darrell D. Jones,
the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for personnel.
This week, after The Post pressed for information contained
in the Dover mortuary's electronic database, the Air Force
produced a tally based on those records. It showed that 976
fragments from 274 military personnel were cremated,
incinerated and taken to the landfill between 2004 and 2008.
An additional group of 1,762 unidentified remains were
collected from the battlefield and disposed of in the same
manner, the Air Force said. Those fragments could not undergo
DNA testing because they had been badly burned or damaged in
explosions. The total number of incinerated fragments dumped
in the landfill exceeded 2,700.
A separate federal investigation of the mortuary last
month, prompted by whistleblower complaints, uncovered
``gross mismanagement'' 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 problems also transpired at a time when the mortuary
was shielded from public scrutiny. News coverage of the
return of fallen troops to Dover was banned by President
George H.W. Bush in 1991 before the first Persian Gulf War.
The ban remained until April 2009, when the Obama
administration lifted it.
The Air Force said it first cremated the remains and then
included those ashes in larger loads of mortuary medical
waste that were burned in an incinerator and taken to a
landfill. Incinerating medical waste is a common disposal
practice but including cremated human ashes is not, according
to funeral home directors, regulators and waste haulers.
Air Force officials said they do not know when the landfill
disposals began. They said their first record of it is Feb.
23, 2004. The mortuary database became operational in late
2003.
The Air Force said mortuary leaders decided to end the
practice in May 2008 because ``there was a better way to do
it,'' Jones said. The military now cremates unclaimed and
unidentified body parts and buries the ashes at sea.
Jones said the Air Force did not need to inform relatives
of troops whose remains ended up in the landfill because they
had signed forms stipulating that they did not wish to be
notified if additional remains were identified. The forms
authorized the military to make ``appropriate disposition''
of those subsequent remains.
Asked if the landfill was a dignified final resting place,
Jones said: ``The way we're doing it today is much better.''
Gari-Lynn Smith, the widow of an Army sergeant killed in
Iraq, said she received an e-mail in July from Trevor Dean,
the mortuary director, saying that incinerated remains had
been taken to landfills at least since he began working at
Dover in 1996. Dean is one of the officials facing discipline
for his role in the reported mismanagement at the mortuary.
Smith's husband, Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith, a member of
a bomb-disposal unit, was killed on July 17, 2006. In 2007,
she began asking the military what happened to some of his
remains that were identified after his funeral.
After four years of letters, phone calls and records
requests, she received a letter from the mortuary in April
stating that the military cremated and incinerated those
partial remains and disposed of them in the King George
landfill.
``I hope this information brings some comfort to you during
your time of loss,'' read the letter, signed by Dean.
Smith was infuriated. ``They have known that they were
doing something disgusting, and they were doing everything
they could to keep it from us,'' she said in a phone
interview.
In May 2008, then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered
a detailed review of policies at Dover after an Army officer
complained that the mortuary had cremated a fallen comrade at
a nearby funeral home that also cremated pets in a separate
chamber.
The review team ordered changes, emphasizing the need to
ensure the highest levels of dignity and honor.
The Pentagon would not release the report, which was
overseen by David Chu, who was undersecretary of defense for
personnel. A copy obtained by The Post, however, shows that
the landfill disposal practice was never reviewed or
mentioned. Chu, now president of the Institute for Defense
Analyses in Alexandria, declined to comment.
Private contractors hired by the Air Force to handle the
remains' incineration and disposal of the residue said they
were unaware that they were transporting the ashes of dead
troops. Records show that the Air Force hired the contractors
to dispose of medical waste and did not specify that cremated
body parts were included.
MedTrace Inc. of North East, Md., had Air Force disposal
contracts between 2004 and 2007, records show. Don Holland, a
manager for the company, said his employees picked up boxes
of sealed containers from the Dover mortuary.
``They were certified as medical waste that had been
properly treated--that's it,'' Holland said. ``We don't go
looking at what's in there. It's sealed.''
MedTrace took the items to an incinerator in Baltimore,
according to state records in Delaware, where the mortuary is
located. Holland declined to discuss the incineration and
which landfill his company used.
Lisa Kardell, a spokeswoman for Waste Management, which
operates the King George landfill, said the firm has no
record of a contract with MedTrace for the years 2003 through
2008.
She said that Air Force officials have not returned calls
over the past two weeks from her company's attorneys, asking
which haulers would have been handling the Dover materials
and the disposition of the ashes.
``Obviously, we would be opposed to taking cremated remains
of our servicemen and servicewomen and putting them in our
landfill,'' Kardell said. ``But it sounds like a lot of us
were pulled in unknowingly to this unfortunate situation with
the Air Force,'' she added.
``It's a moral thing,'' said Jeff Jenkins, the manager of
the King George landfill. ``Someone killed overseas fighting
for our country,
[[Page H1160]]
I wouldn't want them buried--any part of them--in the
landfill.''
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