DETROIT – A Nigerian man returned to court Thursday and was sentenced to life in prison for trying to destroy a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas 2009 while on a suicide mission for al-Qaida. As the hearing started, U.WASHINGTON – Estimates of the number of graves potentially affected by mix-ups at Arlington National Cemetery grew to as many as 6,600 on Thursday, as the cemetery’s former superintendent blamed his staff and a lack of resources for the scandal that forced his ouster.
John Metzler, who ran the famous military burial ground for 19 years, said he accepts “full responsibility” for the problems.
But he also rebutted some of findings of Army investigators. And he suggested cemetery employees were to blame for mix-ups because the system used to track grave sites relied mostly on a complicated paper trail.
“Personally it is very painful for me that our team at Arlington did not perform all aspects of its mission to the high standard required,” he told a Senate panel.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, chairwoman of an oversight panel on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee, said Thursday that her investigation has revealed far higher estimates of the number of graves affected.
Metzler said any problems that popped up over the years were quickly fixed and suggested he was surprised by the findings of the Army’s Inspector General.
“The notion that you would come in here and didn’t know about it until a month ago is offensive. You did know about it, and you did nothing,” McCaskill said.
