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The Scandalous History of Arlington National Cemetery

by Kathy Benjamin - May 27, 2012

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/128128#ixzz1x26vNwb2

Recent Problems
In 2010, Arlington was back in the news for unbelievable mismanagement. After a year-long investigation, Salon found that over 200 graves had been mismarked, and in some cases more than one body was buried in one grave. Those in charge refused to cooperate with the investigation, even after some family members complained that new headstones had appeared at the site where their relatives had been buried.

Record keeping was shoddy at best, with up to half of all files from recent years lost or misplaced, and millions of dollars had been misappropriated, with some outside contractors being paid twice for one job.

When bodies were exhumed to make sure the right soldier was in the right grave, it became clear that many had been grossly and disrespectfully mishandled. One man discovered this when he was forced to dig through his son’s coffin himself in order to find an arm bearing an identifiable tattoo. At least four burial urns had been emptied into a landfill. While Arlington officials claimed that clerical errors resulted in bodies being buried on top of other bodies, the original discarded headstones were later found in a nearby stream.

Arlington National Cemetery is 624 acres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_National_Cemetery