Kyle Jahner/MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
Director of the Army National Cemeteries Program Kathryn Condon, center, responds as House Armed Forces Committee hammer leadership’s progress in reforming the cemetery that had been embroiled in controversy. Cemetery Superintendent Patrick Hallinan, left, looks on.
WASHINGTON — The new management of Arlington National Cemetery came under fire Thursday at a House hearing on accountability at the nation’s most famous burial ground, a landmark embroiled in controversy since last year’s scandal over misplaced remains unveiled incompetency in the cemetery’s management.
The Inspector General and the Secretary of the Army, which oversees Arlington, did not attend the hearing. Instead Kathryn Condon, the director of the Army National Cemeteries Program, and Patrick Hallinan, the cemetery’s superintendent, received the brunt of the ire.
“It must be frustrating for you to not have the people above you take this issue at Arlington seriously,” said Armed Services Committee Chairman Ryan Wittman, R-Va. As Condon tried to assure him that they did, Wittman interrupted: “I hate to say this, but words fail in this situation. Obviously they had something better to do today than make sure that Arlington is beyond reproach.”
The scandal broke open in the spring and summer of 2010, when it was found that the cemetery had as many as 200 gravesites that were inaccurately marked, had buried multiple urns in the same plot, used archaic paper cataloging systems and could not account for $4.5 million of $5.5 million allocated to a new electronic mapping and IT system that had seen little progress.
Condon, in her initial testimony, documented progress creating an electronic database and improving accountability at Arlington. She also described the overwhelming difficulty of building a new foundation of infrastructure and procedure.
But Representatives remained unimpressed. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., in particular blasted the witnesses. The Marine Corp veteran said the prior management created a “culture of incompetence if not corruption,” but did not excuse shortcomings he saw in the update.
Condon’s responses were generally short, restrained and light on specifics, focusing on the major obstacles at a cemetery long mismanaged. Coffman, unmoved, ripped her for trying to “explain away” the current shortcomings.
“You don’t honor the veterans of the families by leaving people in place that have disgraced their memory. You get rid of them and you bring in people that have integrity, that independently perform their job and understand the sacred nature of that ground,” Coffman said, bringing up the possibility of transferring control to the Veterans Administrations, which oversees other national cemeteries.
“What I’m hearing today is that you don’t get it,” he said. “Maybe there needs to be another change in leadership.”
The representatives also questioned accountability for the turmoil, bringing up the possibility of criminal charges. So far, no charges have been brought in connection with the debacle. Then-superintendent John Metzler was replaced after having held the position since 1991. He resigned, Wittman stating that he was under the assumption that it was “forced retirement.”
Wittman pushed the issue, twice bringing up the possibility of criminal investigation and pushing for a date where he could expect an update on the Inspector General’s investigation. He was ultimately told that if criminal action was found it would be turned over and given no concrete information on the investigation.
Ret. Air Force Col. William Koch testified about how his wife, buried in early 2006 at Arlington, was found to be in the wrong grave when another woman, concerned over the location of her husband, dug up his casket in the plot next to Jean Koch’s. The wooden casket did not match the metal one her husband had been buried in, and Koch was later told it was his wife’s.
“I don’t want revenge, I want justice,” Koch, who lives in Raleigh, N.C., told the panel. “I was in shock at first, then I got angry. This is our country. It’s not something we should be putting up with.”
He held up photos of his wife’s grave-site with the flowers he had placed there on several occasions. He will tomorrow visit the site, knowing the true location of his wife, for the first time.
“I just hope something good comes out of this,” Koch said after his testimony. “That was my goal.”