Air Force mishandled remains: Report

Federal investigators said Tuesday that the Air Force mortuary in Delaware that cares for America’s war dead was responsible for “gross mismanagement,” including losing human body parts twice in 2009, according to the Washington Post.

The year-long investigation by the Air Force Inspector General, the Secretary of the Air Force and the Office of Special Counsel also reviewed allegations by whistleblowers of poor inventory controls and lax supervision.

The three officials found to be at fault, including the former Dover Air Force Base mortuary commander, were disciplined but not fired, The New York Times reported.

According to the AP, the inspector general found no violations of law or regulation — though the Office of the Special Counsel took issue with some of that finding — but he did note top-level failures.

“The ultimate requirement here is to fulfill our professional and moral obligation to ensure that our fallen are treated with the reverance and respect they deserve,” said Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force Chief of Staff, according to the Washington Post.

The Washington Post reported:

Three civilian whistleblowers who work in the mortuary filed complaints last year alleging 14 specific instances of wrongdoing by their supervisors, from endangering public health to losing a dead soldier’s ankle to sawing off a deceased Marine’s arm bone without informing his family.

The whistleblowers also complained that the Dover mortuary permitted an Army hospital in Germany to ship fetal remains in re-used cardboard boxes back to the United States for burial instead of in more-dignified aluminum transfer cases.

The case is similar to an Army investigation last year that found that Arlington National Cemetery had misidentified remains of the military’s dead, “dug-up urns that had been dumped in a dirt pile and botched contracts worth millions of dollars,” according to the Washington Post.