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Congress Continues to Analyze What Went Wrong at Arlington National Cemetery

Reports of mismanagement at Arlington National Cemetery left quite a mark for many veterans, advocates and politicians. As the issues at Arlington Cemetery came to light over the last two years, people's unease with the situation grew. Some members of the US Congress have recently spoken out and reprimanded those involved. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo) accused Arlington's management of creating a "culture of incompetence" and went as far to call that culture corrupt.

The two top officials in charge of Arlington were replaced last year. Rep. Coffman, however, holds responsible many more people much farther down the chain of command. According to him, the problems were created by multiple "echelons of support leadership" failing to provide the services with which they were charged.

Testifying in front of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va) called out Army Secretary John McHugh and Army Inspector General R. Steven Whitcomb for not giving the cemetery's' problems the attention they deserved.

Some of the issues at the national cemetery included mismarked and unmarked grave stones. In addition to some veterans being buried in the wrong graves, millions of dollars were thrown away on failed contracts attempting to transfer the cemetery's paper records to digital format.