[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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