FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010
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Army starts criminal probe into burial problems at Arlington 6
arlington from A1
“aware of questionable practic- es,” she said in a statement. Con- don said eight sets of remains were buried under a headstone that read “Unknown,” and ceme- tery records showed that only one set of remains was to be buried there. Grey would not discuss how
the remains might have ended up in a single plot or what particular laws could have been violated, saying “that will be determined as we move forward with the investigation.” Army regulations state that
burials at national cemeteries “are considered permanent” and that absent a court order, disin- terments require the approval of the topArmyMemorialandCasu- alty Affairs official and “all close relatives of the decedent.” Anoth- er law requires all graves in national cemeteries to have an appropriate marker. The revelation comes after an
Army inspector general’s report, released in June, that cited wide- spread problems at the cemetery, including more than 200 un- marked or misidentified graves and at least four urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area for excess dirt. One of those urns was reburied
under a headstone marked “Un- known,” the report says. Citing the ongoing investigation, offi- cials would not say Thursday whether the eight sets of cremat- ed remains found in October were in that same “Unknown” grave site. The report says that the urns
could have been unearthed by accident when ground crews, un- aware that someone else was buried there, went to dig a grave. Cemetery experts said it ap-
pears that the urns were merely reburied in a mass grave. “I think the likely scenario is they discovered these [remains]
Congress tells television advertisers to pipe down
BY JIM ABRAMS TheHouse passed a bill Thurs-
day that would prevent television advertisers from abruptly raising the volume to grab viewers’ atten- tion. The House bill’s sponsor, Rep.
Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), said it was her own “earsplitting experi- ences” that got her involved, re- calling how the ads “blew us out of the house” when she watched television, already set at a high volume, with her parents. But she said her office has also
gottenmanymessages ofsupport. “We can protect people from needlessly loud noise spikes that can actually harm their hearing,” she said. Under the legislation, now
heading to President Obama for his signature, the Federal Com- munications Commission would be required within one year to adopt industry standards that co- ordinate advertising’s decibel lev- els to those of the regular pro- gram. The new regulations, ap- plying to all broadcast providers, including cable and satellite, would go into effect a year later. “It’s not like the consumer has
any choices,” said Mark Cooper, director of research at the Con- sumer Federation of America. “It’s a case where it’s very difficult for consumers to express their sovereignty.” The FCC has been receiving complaintsfromconsumerssince the 1960s about jarring sound bursts when commercials come on, but the commission currently does not regulate program or commercial volume. Instead, it reminds viewers that newer TVs come equipped with circuits de- signed to stabilize volume differ- ences or advises people that one solution is aggressive use of the mute button on the remote. The legislation would force the
industry to abide by its own rec- ommendations for audio stan- dards as devised a year ago by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, an organization of broadcasters. Dick O’Brien, director of gov- ernment relations at the Ameri- can Association of Advertising Agencies, said his group supports the bill because “we fully under- stand that advertising works best when it engages consumers, not alienates them.” He said enforc- ing volume guidelines already proposedbythe industry “in itself should make the viewing experi- ence of the American public a much more user-friendly one.” —Associated Press
on
washingtonpost.com A cloud over prestigious burial ground
Background on the controversies at Arlington National Cemetery, forums and photo galleries are available at
PostLocal.com.
and rather than do due diligence and try to assess who they were, they tried to put them in an unmarked grave,” said John Fitch, a senior vice president at the National Funeral Directors Association. “I think the whole
notion of how the cemetery was mismanaged over this period of time certainly lends credence to the notion that there was very little responsibility for making sure everyone was buried in the right place.”
The latest discovery follows a
series of revelations in August, in which one grave site at Arlington was found empty, another con- tained the wrong remains and a third had two sets of remains, only one of which matched the headstone’s name. Those problems were likely
caused by human error, officials said. But the burial of eight re- mains in a single site “is very suspect,” Grey said. Since the IG’s report, cemetery
officials have learned that two more urns were found in 2005 in the same dirt pile as those de- tailed in the report. In October, Condon spoke with
a cemetery contractor who in 2005 came across two other urns that had been unearthed. Tim Langowski, of Frederick, told WTOP radio that he was clearing brush when he found the urn. When he looked inside, Lan-
gowski found a plastic bag “that had a small letter and also a
picture of a girl that was a cheer- leader for a hockey team,” he told the station. “She was wearing a blue and white uniform.” Two weeks later, a backhoe
operator found yet another urn, Langowski said. The urns, he said, were turned over to “the proper authorities.” A cemetery spokeswoman said
those two urns are believed to be among the eight found in the single grave site in October.
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