In his sworn statement to an Army officer conducting that investigation, Higginbotham alleges that when he learned of the problem in 2003, he went out and saw the casket in that grave and told Metzler about it at that time. “I did witness a casket in the grave,” he noted. “I also told Mr. Metzler what happened on the same day.”

Notably, Higginbotham added this about his alleged discussion with Metzler back in 2003: “I also informed him that we probably have a thousand or more typographical and missing data errors out there.” He alleges that Metzler then responded that “he did not agree that we had that many.” It isn't clear from Higginbotham’s statement whether those typographical or missing data errors likely translate into more burial mix-ups, or referred to more trivial record-keeping problems.

Metzler remembers differently. In his sworn statement, the superintendent claims that the “site was covered back by staff and not reported to me until 20 July 2009.” Metzler said he first heard about the grave July 20, when Salon alerted the cemetery and the Army.

The Army investigation found that without hard evidence, this disagreement boils down to a "he said, she said" situation. “Based on conflicting sworn testimony, the absence of any written documentation, and lack of eyewitnesses to a conversation that may have taken place between the deputy superintendent and superintendent, the (Army) could not confirm if the superintendent was informed of this discovery in 2003,” according to the report.

This is the second time Metzler has claimed that Higginbotham failed to inform him of burial mistakes at Arlington that would seem difficult to forget. Salon reported on Nov. 1 that last year Arlington accidentally buried an Air Force master sergeant on top of an unrelated staff sergeant already in that grave. The cemetery did not realize the error until May 2008, when the widow of the staff sergeant discovered the master sergeant’s headstone above her husband’s grave.

In that case, Higginbotham admitted through an Army spokesman to learning about that error in May 2008 when the distraught widow complained to the cemetery. Metzler, however, said he never heard anything about it until Salon brought that issue up with cemetery and Army officials on Oct. 23, 2009. 

At 62, Metzler is a genteel mustachioed man who served a tour of duty in Vietnam. He’s known for cultivating close relationships with members of Congress and the military. While it is easy to find families of veterans buried at Arlington who complain that the cemetery can be dismissive of their various concerns, Metzler is known to be extremely charming face to face. He lives on the cemetery grounds in housing provided to the superintendent and where he lived with his father, John Metzler Sr., who also served as the cemetery superintendent.

The statements from Higginbotham during this months-long Salon investigation also raise troubling questions. With respect to that master sergeant’s burial in the wrong plot, Higginbotham had claimed that the cemetery had informed the master sergeant’s family that Arlington had rectified the problem by digging up and moving her remains. In fact, the master sergeant’s family did not know about the burial error or efforts to fix it and learned the whole story from Salon. (Metzler recently wrote the master sergeant’s family a letter apologizing for failing to alert anyone.)

Salon also reported yesterday that this recent Army investigation into the discovery of unknown remains back in 2003 contains statements from workers who told the Army about the discovery of similar, unmarked remains in yet another plot just this year. The Army does not appear to have questioned Metzler about this latest set of mystery remains, according to Metzler’s sworn statement. (Cemetery officials think they know the identity of all the mystery remains now, but continue to resist any effort to dig in the dirt to make sure.)

The officer did ask Higginbotham about this latest error. In this case, however, it was Higginbotham who claimed ignorance. “I do not recall being made aware of this situation or what action was taken by (cemetery) staff that day,” Higginbotham said. Higginbotham added that if he did go out to see those unknown remains this year as he did in 2003, he would have told Metzler. “If the situation required my presence at the site,” he said, “then I would have informed the superintendent.” 

“Have there been any other discoveries of casketed remains in what could be considered unoccupied, unmarked gravesites?” the investigating officer asked the technician, who was under oath. The Army released that sworn statement Nov. 13, along with the rest of the investigation.

“Yes,” the technician answered. The technician then divulged that in January of this year, workers also went to bury someone in grave 1186 in section 42 of the cemetery – supposedly an empty grave – only to find another unmarked casket there also. “There was a casket in the plot that the operator had excavated when preparing for the daily funeral at site 1186,” he told the officer. (The Army blacked out most of the cemetery workers' names in the report.)

Five days later, the officer interviewed another cemetery employee involved in burials. “Do you have any knowledge of equipment operators discovering a casket in section 42 in January 2009?” the officer asked, referencing the grave that was supposed to be empty at that time. “Yes,” the employee responded.

The officer asked what the employee saw in that grave, 1186, after workers had begun digging in the supposedly empty plot. The employee responded, “A half open grave with a casket.”

In other words, the Army launched an investigation following Salon’s report on the unknown remains in grave 449, and in the process discovered another case just like it, this time in grave 1186. The investigating officer then studied both graves, according to a copy of the report released by the Army on Nov. 13.

This article is the first to report on the mix-up with that grave, 1186. The cemetery also claims in the Army investigation to have figured out the identity of the remains in that grave, 1186, as well as the identity of the remains in grave 449 – without lifting a shovel.

Although other large cemeteries years ago implemented computerized systems to handle burial records and track grave locations with precision via satellite, Arlington has failed to do the same despite a decade of effort and spending nearly $6 million, mostly on a small band of shady contractors. Instead, the cemetery relies on a flurry of paper records to track nearly 30 burials a day. Paper goes missing, people familiar with cemetery operations claim, and so do some remains and headstones.

When Salon first began asking about these issues last summer, the cemetery argued that while paper records are sometimes amiss, the confusion stops at the grave’s edge, and all remains are in their correct place. Salon then began proving the existence of unknown remains at the cemetery. The cemetery has since admitted that there are unknown remains and that other burial mistakes have been made, but characterized those as rare aberrations. The Army opened this internal investigation in response to Salon’s reporting.

The most recent example reported in Salon was that the cemetery in January 2008 accidentally buried an Air Force master sergeant on top of an unrelated staff sergeant and did not realize it until the widow of the staff sergeant discovered the master sergeant’s headstone above her husband’s grave in May 2008. In that case, the cemetery dug up and moved the urn for the Air Force master sergeant into a new grave without telling the next of kin anything about the mix-up or the new grave -- despite telling Salon on the record that the family had been notified. The family learned the whole story from Salon. (This incident was not included in this Army investigation.)

The unknown remains in grave 449 reported by Salon last summer seem particularly scandalous for Arlington, because of the cemetery’s response when it discovered them back in May 2003: Officials covered up the unknown remains with dirt and grass and walked away, leaving the grave unmarked until Salon confronted the cemetery six years later.

This new Army investigation report shows a similar response by cemetery officials in the case of the remains uncovered early this year in grave 1186. In this case, as well, officials covered that casket with dirt and grass. The report blacks out the name of the cemetery official who instructed workers to simply “close the gravesite” in response to the discovery. The cemetery then prepared a paper record for that grave that read, simply, “obstructed,” according to the Army investigation.

There are other similarities to the unexpected remains in grave 449 first reported by Salon and this new one, 1186, that popped up in the Army investigation. According to the investigation, the cemetery now says it knows the likely identities of the remains in both grave 449 and grave 1186. Notably, the cemetery claims it figured out the identities of the remains not by digging up and identifying the remains in those caskets, but for the most part by looking at the burial records from surrounding graves and surmising the likelihood that remains from one of the surrounding graves likely ended up in the wrong spot. The cemetery insists that no one should be disinterred to be sure of the identity of the remains. The Army investigation said family members likewise opposed disinterring the remains.

The cemetery’s explanation of the identity of the remains in grave 449, which Salon wrote about last summer, is complicated. The cemetery told the investigating officer that in May 1980, workers were supposed to bury the wife of an Air Force lieutenant colonel in grave 549. Workers were then supposed to bury her husband, the lieutenant colonel, in December 1988 on top of her in the same grave, 549. (Stacking family caskets in one grave is a common practice at Arlington to preserve precious space.)

The theory cemetery officials told the Army investigator is that workers probably buried the wife in the correct spot, 549, in 1980, but mistakenly buried her husband in an adjacent grave, 449, in December 1988, instead of in 549 with his wife. The unnamed investigating officer seems to treat this theory with some skepticism in the Army report. “It is possible that either of them could have been mistakenly interred in grave 449,” the officer says about the husband and wife who should have been together in grave 549. The officer adds that this theory is only a “possibility.”

Although the Army released the investigation results on Nov. 13, it was actually formally completed on Oct. 7. Sources say it was shared with the cemetery superintendent, John Metzler, soon after completion.

Metzler was apparently rattled by the investigating officer’s concerns. He subsequently hired a team of geo-archaeologists from John Milner Associates, of West Chester, Pa., to study the two graves, 549 and 449, using ground-penetrating radar and an electrical-resistance sounding device. According to the geo-archeologists’ findings, which the Army released to Salon, there is likely only one casket each in graves 449 and 549. This would seem to reinforce the plausibility of the cemetery’s theory.

The geo-archeologists warn in their report, however, that while they think there is only one casket in each grave, they can't be certain: “Since geophysics is a non-invasive method, archeological excavation or ‘ground truthing’ of anomalies is typically recommended for a more complete assessment.”

But when the Army released the investigation report, it appears Metzler’s work with ground-penetrating radar had satisfied investigators that no digging was needed to confirm the identity of any remains. “Cemetery records, the [Army] investigation, and the non-invasive geophysical analysis of the grave sites strongly indicate that a husband and wife, who died years apart and should have been buried in the same gravesite, were instead buried in adjacent graves,” an Army spokesman, Col. Dan Baggio, said in a statement when the Army report was released on Nov. 13.

According to the investigation, the cemetery also knows the identity of the other set of remains, in grave 1186, which came to light during the investigation into the remains in grave 449. The cemetery told the Army investigating officer that three caskets, a family, were buried right next door in grave 1185. The cemetery argues that one of those three caskets was buried too far to the right – so far that it ended up in the wrong grave, 1186.

The investigating officer said paper records do show that one of the caskets next door was “farther off-set to the right than normal.” The officer characterized the cemetery’s argument that the grave was so far right it ended up in the wrong plot as a “logical explanation” with no further discussion about digging up the remains in 1186 to be sure. The Army made no statement about this grave when the investigative report was released on Nov. 13.

Interestingly, the Army report adds that the cemetery superintendent, Metzler, ordered the paper burial records for that grave, 1186, altered on Aug. 21, 2009, a day that the investigating officer was at Arlington conducting interviews. The report says Metzler had the burial records that simply said “obstructed” replaced with a more complete explanation. The new burial record says, “Gravesite obstructed by casket from grave 1185.” It adds, “Card updated Aug. 21, 2009 by (blacked out). Reviewed by John Metzler.”

Although the Army released the report on Nov. 13, nobody in the media has written about the contents except Salon. On the day the Army released that investigation, Nov. 13, Secretary of the Army John McHugh also announced a new, broader investigation into burial snafus and poor record keeping at Arlington. The Army inspector general will conduct this next probe.

“As the final resting place of our nation’s heroes, any questions about the integrity or accountability of (Arlington’s) operations should be examined in a manner befitting their service and sacrifice,” McHugh said in a statement. He directed the Army inspector general to spearhead this new inquiry.

The Army on Friday also released the results of a previous inquiry sparked by Salon’s first report on the unknown casket quietly covered up in 2003. The Army says “non-invasive geophysical analysis … strongly suggest[s]” that the unknown casket is either a husband or a wife who died years apart that should have been buried together in a nearby grave. (Spouses are stacked together in one grave at Arlington.)

Instead, the Army says, the pair was somehow placed near each other in separate graves. This seems unlikely, since it would have required engineers to dig in the wrong spot to bury the second spouse right near the previous spouse’s headstone -- which would have showed the correct grave location. It would also require engineers to go and bury the second spouse and not notice that the first spouse wasn’t in the grave already. The Army said it will not exhume the unknown casket and perform a DNA analysis to be sure of the identity of the unknown there. Instead, they will simply order a new headstone.

McHugh also ordered the inspector general to look into why the Army did nothing but cover up the unknown with dirt and grass from 2003 until 2009, when Salon revealed the problem.

On Jan. 28, 2008, the cemetery interred Grabe's cremated remains in the wrong plot, on top of the casket of another deceased service member. The Army then moved Grabe's remains without requesting permission from Nolte, her next of kin -- despite cemetery regulations urging efforts to obtain permission from family -- but later claimed to Salon that it had notified the next of kin. The official who moved Grabe without family approval is the same official who may bear primary responsibility for the poor record keeping at the cemetery, which has already resulted in at least one "unknown" grave, as previously documented by Salon, in a cemetery that is supposed to have no new "unknowns." And the mistake is part of a pattern of errors at the cemetery, where several current and former cemetery employees tell Salon there may be a large number of similarly misplaced remains.

Arlington has more than 300,000 graves. Some cemeteries of similar size began tracking grave locations and burials years ago via electronic records and satellites. Despite paying nearly $6 million over the past decade to a clutch of contractors with ties to cemetery managers to create a similar system, Arlington has almost nothing to show for the money. As a result, the cemetery still tries to track around 30 burials a day with paper records and more than 100 paper maps. Preventable mistakes occur, current and former cemetery staff say.

In Grabe's case, the cemetery buried her urn in Grave 2133 in Section 67, a stretch of grass on the southern edge of the cemetery near the Pentagon and, fittingly, with the shining, curving spears of the Air Force Memorial rising up into the sky in the background, just off the cemetery grounds. It would have been an apt resting place for the 63-year-old former nurse who enlisted in the Air Force in 1963.

In a paperwork foul-up, however, cemetery officials forgot that a staff sergeant named Doe had previously been buried in Grave 2133 of Section 67. (Doe is a pseudonym; Salon knows the individual's name but is choosing not to use it.) His casket was 7 feet down, and engineers did not even see it when Grabe's urn went in the same spot, buried under 3 feet of earth. The cemetery buried Grabe directly on top of the unrelated staff sergeant.

Arlington then placed Grabe's headstone above her remains, leaving Doe beneath her, unmarked. (It remains unclear what happened to Doe's headstone. Perhaps it never arrived at the cemetery in yet another foul-up.)

That's how it stayed for four months. It might have been like that forever, current and former cemetery staff say, just like many other mistakes. Most of the errors are invisible to the naked eye, buried beneath the straight lines of perfectly aligned headstones that imply a military precision to the burials at Arlington despite disarray under the ground.

Salon recently reported on another case where the cemetery went to bury someone, only to find unknown, unmarked remains already in the grave. The cemetery kept that quiet for six years, leaving those remains unmarked under just a patch of grass until Salon exposed it. The cemetery's solution was to place a stone marked "Unknown" on the grave -- effectively creating a new unknown soldier, in an era when DNA testing has made such a designation obsolete -- rather than dig up the grave to identify the occupant.

In Grabe's case, however, it was the relative of someone buried at Arlington who noticed a problem. On May 15, 2008, Staff Sgt. Doe's widow visited her husband's grave, 2133 in Section 67, but found Grabe's headstone there. In a panic, she visited the Arlington visitor center, where workers could not explain the situation. By the time she reached the cemetery's nearby administrative offices, the widow was in "full boil," according to one official familiar with the events of that day.

Cemetery and Army officials say they immediately dug up Grabe and moved her that day or the next, though this mistake, like others, has been kept quiet. This is the first time the error involving Grabe's remains has been made public.

The Army, which oversees Arlington, confirmed the account assembled by Salon. "In May of 2008, Arlington interment officials were alerted to a potential discrepancy -- what appeared to be a mismarked headstone," by a member of the staff sergeant's family, Army spokesman Dave Foster confirmed in a statement to Salon. "A study of the records and graves found that there was an unintended burial of cremated remains in that same plot," he wrote. "The situation, once discovered, was rectified immediately," he added. " Master Sgt. Grabe's cremated remains were relocated to a new grave, 2130-1 with family notification, and new headstones were ordered" for both graves, Foster said.

Foster claimed that despite the foul-up, the cemetery did the right thing: Officials moved Grabe, ordered new headstones, and the "family notification" meant that the officials alerted Nolte, Grabe's sister, of the error and the new location of her sister's remains. Nolte, after all, is Grabe's official next of kin.

"Wrong," Nolte told me in a telephone interview from her home in Burns, Tenn. Nolte is adamant that no one at the cemetery alerted her of the burial error or that her sister's remains had been dug up and moved. "There was no phone message. No mail. No e-mail. There was nothing," she explained. "Nobody notified us of anything like this."

The first Nolte heard of the cemetery moving her sister's remains, she says, was when Salon called her in mid-October. She maintains a file of all the material and correspondence from Arlington -- even an old, unused cemetery parking pass -- in a file in the house she has lived in for 13 years. Nolte's file still shows her sister buried in Grave 2133, where she was mistakenly placed above Staff Sgt. Doe.

Failure to alert Nolte isn't just insensitive; it's an apparent violation of cemetery policy, which requires the cemetery to "obtain family or representative permission, as the superintendent or deputy superintendent deem necessary or appropriate" before moving remains. It certainly would not have been difficult to ask Nolte. Salon found her with one phone call.

John Metzler is the cemetery superintendent and Thurman Higginbotham is the cemetery deputy superintendent. Both men have been there for years. Higginbotham is the official responsible for steering millions of dollars to contractors in the protracted and so far unsuccessful effort to computerize the cemetery's record keeping.

According to Foster, the Army spokesman, it was Higginbotham who learned about the Grabe error in May 2008. Higginbotham, Foster wrote, "undertook immediate corrective action" by moving Grabe and ordering new headstones. Foster says Higginbotham is also the cemetery official claiming that Nolte, Grabe's sister, was alerted when the cemetery moved Grabe's remains. "The deputy superintendent indicated that family notifications took place regarding this situation," Foster said.

The fact that Nolte is so adamant that she was never notified is not the only anomaly in this case. Foster says that while Higginbotham admitted he learned of the Grabe mix-up back in May 2008, Metzler told the Army he knew nothing about any of this until I alerted the cemetery and the Army on Oct. 23. "The Arlington Superintendent [John Metzler] indicated to us that he learned of the situation on Friday, October 23rd," Foster wrote.

That is odd, since Arlington's own regulations dictate that to move remains requires "the express, prior approval of the superintendent" -- meaning Metzler.

Those rules also require that within 10 days of moving remains, the superintendent must write up a memorandum describing the "specific reasons" for the move. Salon requested a copy of that memo last week. The Army says it is still looking for those documents. The rules also require that corrected copies of the new burial records be sent to the next of kin, in this case, Nolte.

Nolte, of course, says she never got those records. It is just more insult to injury, she says. "She spent 26 years in the Air Force that she loved so much," Nolte lamented about her sister. "My, oh, my. What a mess."

According to a cemetery source with intimate knowledge of Arlington's record-keeping problems, the mess is bigger than one misplaced master sergeant. " I hope you understand that the [Grabe] story," said the source, "while real, indicates that there may be thousands of these problems that they don't know about."

"What about the goof-ups that don't have a loved one who knows where to look and what to look for?"