Army Secretary John McHugh has punished the top two officials overseeing Arlington National Cemetery over allegations of mismanagement, including burying a service member’s body on top of another, FOXNews.com reported Thursday.
After releasing the results of an investigation of Arlington that found problems with keeping track of some burials, McHugh announced Thursday that the cemetery’s superintendent, John Metzler, will be under supervision until he retires next month. His deputy, Thurman Higgenbotham, has been placed on administrative leave.
McHugh, who ordered the investigation in November, called the report “deeply troubling” and “unacceptable.”
Metzler, 62, announced this week he is retiring July 2 after working for the government for 42 years, the last 19 at Arlington. He’s said the allegations of mismanagement were not as bad as had been reported.
Both Metzler and Higgenbotham had come under heavy fire for keeping records of the hundreds of thousands buried at Arlington National in paper files instead of creating a computer database of gravesites.
In 2008, a master sergeant was buried on top of a staff sergeant already in the grave, but the error wasn’t discovered until the widow of the first service member complained to authorities that someone else’s headstone had been placed on her husband’s grave, NBC News reported.
McHugh also announced he was appointing a new executive director with total supervisory powers over the cemetery.
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