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Friday, June 11, 2010

BP Refuses to Provide Oil Samples to Scientists Investigating Underwater Plumes


by Marian Wang, ProPublica - June 8, 2010 4:57 pm EDT
Getty Images

The giant deepwater plumes of oil in the Gulf of Mexico have been confirmed by the government [1], but one thing the testing couldn’t confirm was that the oil below the surface is definitively from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (The other possibility is the plumes are the result of natural seepage.)
According to a lead scientist involved in the testing, an oil sample from the BP well would have helped ID the origin of the plumes, but BP refused to provide any samples [2], reported the St. Petersburg Times. “I was just taken aback by it,” said the scientist, David Hollander, who’s a professor of chemical oceanography at the University of South Florida. “It was a little unsettling.”
This is hardly the first time [1] we’ve heard a scientist claiming that the oil company has stood in the way of efforts to obtain better information on the Gulf disaster. Ira Leifer, a scientist on the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group told McClatchy that “we’re still waiting [3]” for BP to hand over data that would yield a more accurate flow rate estimate. We’ve also noted that in May, scientists stood ready to help measure the Gulf gusher, but BP turned down their offers to help [4].
I’ve left messages with BP and have not received a response. I’ll update when I get one.

Army Probes Arlington Cemetery Burial Scandal


 
 
The U.S. Army is promising to make things right at Arlington National Cemetery after it discovered more than 200 remains had been either mis-identified or misplaced. The scandal has marred the reputation of some of the country's most sacred land.
So far, the Army investigation has uncovered 211 cases where remains were either mishandled, mis-identified, left in unmarked graves, or buried improperly.
"There is simply no excuse and on behalf of the United States Army and on behalf of myself, I deeply apologize to the families of the honored fallen resting in that hallowed ground who may now question the care afforded their loved ones," John McHugh, secretary of the Army, said Thursday.
In one case, the Army buried the remains of a 26-year-old Air Force veteran on top of another service member -- and then moved her remains without telling family.
"The families who hear this story are not going to have peace of mind or confidence that their loved ones are exactly where they're supposed to be," said Dorothy Nolte, sister of a buried vetetan. "It is disgraceful --they deserve better. Everyone of them deserves better."
Arlington is among the nation's most hallowed burial sites. More than 300,000 people have been buried there with military honors including troops killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and past conflicts going back to the Civil War.
McHugh said he's forcing the cemetery's two civilian leaders to step aside, and he has appointed a new chief to conduct a more thorough investigation.
The move was little consolation for whistleblower Gina Gray.
"They should have been fired years ago and they definitely should have been fired today," Gray said. "This is not a win for the Army. This is an embarrassment for them."
The new investigation could literally unearth thousands of mishandled cases. Thus far, only three sections of the cemetery have been reviewed -- there are 70 in total.

What's trashed at Arlington National Cemetery

Many personal mementos of dead soldiers are being thrown out -- a stark contrast to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

This is the second article in a special Salon investigation of America's renowned cemetery.
A few days after Memorial Day, I walked across the sprawling, plush lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. I headed toward Section 60, a remote area of the famous burial ground, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. Gina Gray, former public affairs officer at the cemetery, had testified that mismanagement at Arlington had resulted in callous treatment of personal mementos and artifacts left on grave sites in Section 60. The sun was out after several days of rain. As I approached the gravestones, I saw that Gray was right.
Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.
Arlington's poor treatment of the mementos and gifts -- testaments to the personal cost of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East -- appeared to stand in contrast to practices at other cemeteries. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs 130 cemeteries across the country, asks people not to leave items other than flowers on the graves. But when it does find those items, it collects and holds them for 30 days in case the family wants to claim them. Across the Potomac, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial maintains a much stricter policy. It collects virtually everything, down to the last cigarette, left at "the wall." Every item is then recorded and placed in a climate-controlled warehouse, often visited by historians and researchers.
The parents I met in Section 60 were stunned to hear that grave-site artifacts often end up in the trash. Karen Meredith's son, Lt. Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq in 2004. She and her family regularly lavish Ballard's Arlington grave with flowers, potted plants, flags and other mementos. "Our goal was to have the most decorated grave," she said. She told me about her Section 60 acquaintances who leave silk roses on Valentine's Day and Peeps on Easter. On Mardi Gras, another family decorates headstones with beads. This Memorial Day, Meredith and another family whose son was killed in Iraq raised a glass of champagne to Ken. "Ken would have loved that," she said. "That is a way to celebrate his life." They left the champagne glassed behind.
I later showed Meredith a photograph of Ballard's grave after the rains, heaped with dead flowers and crumpled flags. She was distraught. "It looks like they used Ken's grave as a repository of crap," she said. "It makes me sad. People leave things that are really meaningful." Jean Feggins, whose son, Albert Markee Nelson, was killed in Iraq in 2006, had a similar response when I told her I had seen mementos from Section 60 being hosed off grave sites and piled into trash heaps. "They are throwing out people's photos and letters?" she exclaimed. "That is very insensitive. I'll bet people would not leave that stuff if they knew. They really should archive those treasures -- and that really is what they are to the families that leave them."
So why were artifacts left on the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers being treated so poorly? "The photos, letters and signs are picked up when they become weather-worn and unsightly, similar to how the flowers are picked up once they've wilted," cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst wrote me in an e-mail. "The medals, badges, religious items and other mementos are saved and kept with our historian."
I asked to meet with the cemetery historian. Two days later, Horst met me at the information kiosk underneath the arching glass-paneled ceiling of Arlington's air-conditioned visitor center. She was with the mustachioed historian, Tom Sherlock, who has been working there since the 1970s. "Maintaining Arlington is a sign of respect, maintaining these grounds pristinely so that they are not cluttered," Horst began.
Horst led us into the basement of the visitor center and into a windowless conference room. There, spread out neatly across an average-size conference table, were dozens of military awards and coins, a clutch of rosaries, a soldier's jacket, a U.S. Army Ranger flag, and two or three pieces of artwork made by children. It was everything, Horst explained, the cemetery had collected since 9/11, or in nearly eight years.
"Is this it?" I asked, thinking about the huge volume of material I had seen during my walks through Section 60. Sherlock nodded.
He said the workers who care for Section 60 turn in some of the material to him, and Sherlock collects the rest on his own. He stores it all in his office. During our discussion, the process of what to save and what to toss out seemed surprisingly ad hoc and arbitrary, based more on Sherlock's personal sentimentalities than preserving history.
"My sensitivity is to any armed forces decorations, such as the Bronze Star here," he said, gesturing to the award on the table. He said he also saves "flags, like uniform flags, or anything that is a religious icon, regardless of what it is."
Horst and Sherlock said the rest of the material gets thrown in the trash. "We don't save, like, teddy bears or those types of things," Sherlock noted. "Birthday balloons -- we don't retrieve those. Or an open can of beer. There have been lots of things like that."
I didn't see many of the items that I recall from Section 60 that, according to Sherlock's criteria, should have been saved. I only saw one "KIA" bracelet, for example, in Arlington's collection, though I'd seen several atop the graves during my treks.
Horst added that the cemetery also throws out cards, photos and letters because they get wet in the rain. "We don't want to pick stuff up too early off the graves," she said. "Think about the stuff that has been blown between graves. How do you know where it came from? The notes that are left, and then it rains, become unrecognizable." In Section 60, she recalled, "I've seen a mug of hot chocolate. You know, do you save a mug? You can't save the hot chocolate."
She continued. "We went out there after Memorial Day and there was a birthday package. We let it go for a few days and it had gotten wet and the crews picked it up. Tom and I both felt very uncomfortable opening it because we thought, Maybe it is something we need to save? We opened it and it was just a wooden block." They threw it out.
Horst defended the cemetery's practices. "This is not an ill-intentioned policy," she said. "We are not trying to wrong people. We are not trying to throw away history. We do make an effort here. We are not throwing rosaries away. We are not throwing [uniform] patches away. I guess we can't claim to catch all of it," she acknowledged.
Sherlock admitted that preserving and recording everything might create "a very valuable tool for the American people." But he added he would want to discuss the idea with families that visit Section 60.
"Is that something you have explored?" I asked.
"No," Sherlock said.
I asked Sherlock whether he had ever visited the facility in Landover, Md., that holds the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection. He had not.
I contacted Rick Weidman, director of government relations at Vietnam Veterans of America, who has walked through Section 60 himself. For families and friends of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the section "has become their Vietnam Veterans Memorial," he said. "That is where people go to square away their feelings about their comrades who got blown away." He was surprised to hear that some of the memorabilia he had seen at Section 60 was thrown out. "This is a major hole that needs to be filled," he said.
At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection in Landover I stared at one lone cigarette. Since 1986, the National Park Service, which manages the Vietnam memorial in Washington, has collected all of the artifacts left at the wall by mourners.
But a cigarette?
Duery Felton Jr., the Vietnam collection curator and a Vietnam veteran himself, had been leading me on a tour of some of the artifacts preserved from the wall. Each piece -- no matter how mundane it might appear at first glance -- is collected nightly to protect it from the elements. It is then recorded, placed in labeled blue boxes and stacked on 15-foot shelves in a climate-controlled warehouse.
Felton and I now stood in a room off of the main storage area, where some of the collection is on display in tall glass cases. Felton stood next to me, looking through his wire-rimmed glasses at the cigarette. "There are a lot of subtleties to this collection," he noted.
I must have looked confused or incredulous. The value of saving a single cigarette was clearly lost on me.
"Look closely," Felton said quietly.
I peered in at the cigarette. Someone had taken a pen and written on it in tiny letters, "It ain't wet. It ain't broke."
Felton waited. He could see this didn't help me much. He smiled. Then he explained the sensation of patrolling the jungles of Vietnam, completely soaking wet, for weeks on end. You felt like you would never, ever be dry again. "A dry cigarette was worth a million dollars," he explained.
As Felton and I walked slowly through the Vietnam collection, it was easy to see that some items screamed a message loud and clear. One person left at the wall a bamboo tiger cage of the type used to hold American POWs. But some objects whispered in a language decipherable only by those who served in Vietnam, like that cigarette. The significance of others can only be imagined. Someone left a bag of M&M's, potentially remembering the occasional use of the candy as a placebo by medics when supplies ran out, Felton explained. A can of Budweiser, a can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli and a pack of cigarettes is labeled in commemoration of "the great feast of August, 1967."
In the Landover facility, shelves are overflowing with everyday items. There are safety pins from a baby's diaper, birthday and Christmas cards, watches, dollar bills with notes scribbled on them and even toilet paper. (Dry toilet paper also came at a premium in the wet jungle.) A baseball is labeled: "In memory of Richard Allen Brekken, December 14, 1945 – January 6, 1999." There's a bottle of sand from Vietnam, chewing tobacco, a can of Spam and the AK-47 bullet that killed a soldier named Henry Lee Bradshaw on August 12, 1968. Teddy bears rest forever in glass cases.
"This is tangible evidence of the effect of Vietnam on the psyche of the public," Felton said. "Most of this collection is also a reflection of the evolution of social history, the history of the everyday person."
In fact, staff at Felton's facility manage a total of 40 historic collections in the Landover facility. Those include items owned by Frederick Douglass and Clara Barton, and artifacts from Ford's Theater and the Antietam battlefield. But Felton said the facility receives more requests from researchers for access to the Vietnam collection than the other 39 collections combined.
Gary Patnosh is co-director of the Jersey Explorer Children's Museum, which currently displays more than 100 artifacts on loan from the Vietnam collection. "That collection teaches more than anyone can imagine, he said. "Certainly it teaches people to think about the past and think about a war. But it teaches folks what it is like for a mother to lose a son or a sister to lose a brother, or how somebody had wished they had said something and they did not."
Patnosh said students often find the seemingly mundane objects left at the wall to be the most provocative. Among the items he features in the Jersey Explorer Children's Museum is a broken home plate from a baseball diamond. "Maybe it was for coming home," Patnosh said. "Maybe he played ball. Maybe his father played ball. Who knows? But there is magic in that home plate."
Some of the most moving items in the collection are photographs and letters. Numerous photos show young soldiers clad in green, mostly men, smiling out from under metal helmets. Sometimes deceased men are circled or labeled in the photos by an unknown hand. In many letters, people are talking to the dead. "For twenty two years I have carried your picture in my wallet," one veteran wrote in a letter, placed alongside a photo taken off the body of an enemy Vietnamese soldier. The photo shows the Vietnamese soldier, in uniform, posing with a girl.
"I was only 18 years old that day that we faced one another on that trail in Chu Lai, Vietnam," the veteran continued in his letter to the dead Vietnamese soldier. "Why you did not take my life I'll never know. You stared at me for so long armed with your AK-47 and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life, I was reacting just the way I was trained, to kill V.C. or gooks, hell you weren't even considered human, just gook/target, one in the same. So many times over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect. Each time my heart and gutts [sic] would burn with the pain of guilt."
Another letter reads: "Sorry about leaving you on the chopper pad. Wish I had stayed and missed my flight to the world. Should have gone to the hospital with you. I didn't know you was hit that bad. Never once did I think you wouldn't make it."
As I read those words, I could not stop thinking about the countless letters I'd seen on the graves in Section 60 over the previous weeks. What war stories had been lost forever? What words from a father to a son or wife to a husband were sitting in some landfill? What meaningful personal artifacts had been relegated to the Arlington trash bin?
Arlington National Cemetery superintendent John Metzler took exception to my questions. "I am a Vietnam veteran. I served a year in Vietnam," he said. "There is a tremendous difference between a memorial, such as the Vietnam memorial, and an operating national cemetery like Arlington. We are doing close to 7,000 funerals a year. We are an active cemetery, which means we are excavating graves, we are conducting services, we are closing graves, we are doing sod and seeding, we are refilling graves and we are doing all kinds of maintenance activities in order to maintain the appearance of the cemetery."
He pointed out that Arlington posts regulations that ask families not to leave items other than flowers on the graves. But even when they do, he said, he was being extra mindful of them.
"In Section 60, I have made a conscious decision because of the sensitivity of what is in Section 60 right now -- our young men and women who have passed away in our nation's current wars -- to leave things on there a little bit longer," he said. "Even things that aren't supposed to be there, we leave for a period of time, and then pick them up. It just would not be practical from an operation standpoint to try to collect everything, to warehouse it or to leave it on the graves for an indefinite period of time."
In contrast to the upset families I had spoken to, and the neglected and trashed memorabilia I had seen, Metzler said, "The comments I get from the families are overwhelmingly thankful of the maintenance of the cemetery, of how people are treated here and how they are received by Visitor Center staff or my employees out in the cemetery."
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(Research assistance by Christopher M. Matthews and Josh Loewenstein)

Top Arlington National Cemetery leader out


John Metzler retires after Salon reveals bungled burials, missing remains and Army probes into those reports


Wikipedia
John Metzler, Jr. (R) and George W. Bush
Arlington National Cemetery Superintendent John Metzler Jr. has announced his retirement, after almost a full year of revelations about burial mistakes and contracting irregularities at the storied burial grounds. Metzler announced his retirement on Tuesday, effective July 2, in an email to cemetery employees. Metzler, 62, has been in the job for 19 years, since January 1991. His father, John Metzler Sr., served as Arlington Superintendent as well.
In the email, Metzler does not say why he is retiring, but notes the decision comes “after 42 years of federal service” in various government positions. He says he and his wife will move to Pittsburgh to spend time with his seven grandchildren. Metzler grew up in the on-site caretaker's house he now occupies as superintendent.
The move comes after weeks of rumors that Army Secretary John McHugh had had enough of the problems at the cemetery on Metzler’s watch. Starting last summer, Salon uncovered systemic burial problems at Arlington with tragic results: unknown remains popping up in supposedly empty graves; service members mistakenly buried on top of one another; an urn fished out of the dirt landfill there; hundreds of missing headstones in one historic section; and a rash of contracting blunders and fiascos as cemetery management tried to clean up the mess.
The Army late last year launched a sweeping inspector general investigation into all of those issues as a result of the Salon reports. That investigation is ongoing.

Chaos at Arlington Cemetery: Mismarked graves, dumping of urns

Arlington's buried secrets
Contractor in Arlington fraud scandal arrested 
Cremated remains dumped in Arlington landfill

Grave offenses at Arlington National Cemetery


A criminal investigation and allegations of misplaced bodies and shoddy care have roiled the famous burial ground


Reuters/Larry Downing
A U.S. Army soldier visits the gravestone of Army Sergeant Ryan P. Baumann, 24, of Great Mills, Maryland, in Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, July 4, 2009. Baumann died in August 2008 in Afghanistan.
This is the first article in a special Salon investigation of America's renowned cemetery.
An elegant white sign at Arlington National Cemetery informs visitors they are inside "our nation's most sacred shrine." Run under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, Arlington is the final resting place of John and Robert Kennedy, Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Earl Warren, and the nation's military royalty from the Civil War to the Iraq war. More than 4 million people visit Arlington every year to tour the legendary grave sites, which include those of "Maltese Falcon" author Dashiell Hammett and big-band leader Glenn Miller, and watch a specially trained U.S. infantry soldier march silently in guard of the Tomb of the Unknowns. Arlington shelters the remains of more than 320,000 service members and holds nearly 30 new funerals a day. As visitors head out into the sacred grounds, the cemetery asks, "Please conduct yourselves with dignity and respect at all times."
Behind the pristine lawns, the dignity of, and respect for, Arlington National Cemetery are tattered. An Army investigation this year found that the de facto boss of the cemetery, Deputy Superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, made false statements to Army investigators as they probed what they later classified as wire fraud at Arlington — a female employee's computer had been tapped into without authorization, and she had been impersonated online. An internal Army memo and an interview with a former Army employee also suggest that high-level Army officials knew for months about problems at Arlington but failed to act. Three former public affairs officers have recently testified under oath about a hostile work environment at Arlington. One was fired after speaking out. The other two quit in disgust.
Sadly, Arlington's internal problems have materialized on the grounds themselves. Despite nearly 10 years and countless dollars spent on computerizing its operations, the cemetery still relies mostly on paper burial records that in some cases do not match the headstones. "There are numerous examples of discrepancies that exist between burial maps, the physical location of headstones, and the burial records/grave cards," the cemetery admitted in a 2008 report to Congress.
And in a relatively remote area of the cemetery, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest, personal mementos placed on graves are left out to rot in the rain for days, ruined by workers with power washers, or thrown into a trash bin.
"The aesthetics of the cemetery are deceptive," says Gina Gray, an Army veteran of eight years who served in Iraq and who was the cemetery's public affairs officer in early 2008, before she was fired over a clash with her boss. "To the naked eye, it is a place of sacred beauty and a tribute to our nation's heroes," says Gray, who has been rehired as an Army contractor at Fort Belvoir, in Virginia. "But if you scratch below the surface, you will find that it's really just window dressing. They've put these pretty curtains up to hide the ugliness on the inside."
At the center of the chaos is Higginbotham, Gray's former superior and a focus of the Army investigation. While cemetery Superintendent John Metzler is the titular head at Arlington, Higginbotham runs the show, say current and former employees. A tall and imposing man, Higginbotham has worked at the cemetery since 1965. He started as a security guard and worked his way up to deputy supervisor in 1990. In his current position, he has earned a reputation for running the cemetery with an iron fist. (Higginbotham declined to talk to Salon.)
One of Higginbotham's failures, say employees, has been his inability to rectify disturbing discrepancies between burial records and information on headstones. For years, Arlington has struggled to replace paper-and-pen burial records with a satellite-aided system of tracking grave locations. "My goal is to have all the gravesites available online to the public, so people can look up a grave from home and print out a map that will show exactly where the gravesite is," Higginbotham told Government Computer News in April 2006. Such systems are standard at other cemeteries, like the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, nearly identical to Arlington in age and size. Yet an effort begun in 2000 to set up a similar system at Arlington remains unrealized.
In 2004 and 2005, Arlington conducted a pilot project to check burial records against headstone information on 300 graves. "The accuracy of interment records and maps that track reserved, obstructed, and occupied graves were proven to have errors," the project found, according to Arlington National Cemetery budget documents. "For example, gravesites that were marked as obstructed were actually available and information listed on grave cards and burial records were not consistent with the information on the actual headstone."
The problems continue today. In 2008, Arlington National Cemetery issued a progress report to Congress on the computerization project. "The current way of doing business is mostly manual, complex, redundant and inefficient," cemetery officials noted, acknowledging continuing discrepancies among burial maps, headstones and burial records.
Gray says her conversations with groundskeepers suggest the discrepancies and confusion might not stop at the grave's edge. "They told me they've got people buried there that they don't know who they are, and then they've got the wrong headstones over the graves." She adds: "I told several Army officials — in one instance, a two-star general — but nothing was ever followed up on." Salon heard the same claims from current and former cemetery employees, who asked to remain anonymous.
Arlington officials insist that there are no cases at Arlington where headstones do not match the remains beneath. "We are not aware of any situation like that," says cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst.
Gray, who was fired, has a gripe against the cemetery, to be sure. But her complaints against Higginbotham triggered an investigation that exposed criminal acts that question the Army's oversight of Arlington.
Higginbotham fell under the eye of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command in October 2008, when Gray reported to investigators that somebody had tapped into her e-mail account. But the trouble between Gray and Higginbotham began months earlier, in April 2008, just a few days after Gray landed her job as public affairs officer. During the high-profile funeral of a decorated officer killed in Iraq, the deputy superintendent tried to move the media 100 yards from the funeral, making coverage all but impossible. Gray pushed back, stating that Army regulations did not bar the media from a funeral when families agreed to the coverage.
Gray's insistence on fair access for the media turned into an embarrassment for the cemetery — and for the Army — when the Washington Post wrote about the tussle. Journalists trying to cover the funeral were "separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves, and staring into the sun and penned in by a yellow rope," the Post wrote. Gray, the paper added, "pushed vigorously to allow the journalists more access to the service yesterday — but she was apparently shot down by other cemetery officials."
Gray locked horns with Higginbotham in the following weeks. In June, she pursued an equal employment opportunity complaint against the cemetery. She claimed discrimination based on "race, sex, age and reprisal" (Gray is white and Higginbotham is an African-American) and a hostile work environment. The cemetery fired Gray a few weeks later — a story that again made its way into the Post. "Putting her foot down and getting the boot," read the headline.
The cemetery blames Gray for poor job performance. Its termination memorandum claims she failed to follow instructions, communicated poorly with superiors, and behaved disrespectfully to those superiors. Cemetery officials cited e-mail traffic prior to Memorial Day in 2008, in which Gray seemed intent on the use of Army public affairs specialists to interact with the media on Memorial Day, rather than the cemetery staff preferred by Gray's bosses.
In her sworn testimony in the fall, as part of her equal opportunity complaint, which is still pending, Gray stressed "an elitist mentality among cemetery officials.'' Kara McCarthy, who held Gray’s job at the cemetery from early 2007 until March 2008, also testified. She said Higginbotham and other top officials at Arlington "could do whatever the hell they wanted, and they did, because they had been getting away with it for years." McCarthy said she also left the cemetery after a year because of the "hostile work environment."
In his testimony, Higginbotham describes himself as in charge. "The day-to-day operation of Arlington National Cemetery is my responsibility," he said. He stated he had little interaction with Gray and less to do with her termination. "I had no direct involvement with her on a day-to-day basis," Higginbotham said under oath. "I was not involved in this." He added that Gray was "not subjected to a hostile work environment."
As it turned out, Higginbotham had been worried about Gray, fretting in an e-mail that he could be the victim of a "conspiracy." He was apparently determined to learn what he could about her.
In October, a friend of Gray's who had worked at Arlington e-mailed Gray's Army account to say hello. An hour later, the friend received an e-mail with Gina Gray's name on it. "I see you've moved on," the e-mail read. "A lot of drama going on at ANC." The note was signed, "GG." Yet Gray had been locked out of that e-mail account since the day she was fired in June. She had not sent it.
"I felt sick," Gray says, when she heard about the e-mail impersonating her. "I felt like somebody had broken into my house and gone through my things." Gray alerted the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.
Army agents first questioned Higginbotham on Oct. 16. The Army did authorize a search of Gray's computer, but before that, Higginbotham said, "no one used her computer until they received authorization." Higginbotham added that access without permission would have been impossible, as a special card and password were needed to get into Gray's computer. "No one used her computer until after they received authorization," he reiterated, according to the Army report.
But the Army soon found reason to doubt that Higginbotham was telling the truth. It discovered an e-mail written to the deputy superintendent dated June 27, 2008 — the day Gray was fired and before the Army authorized access to Gray's computer. It was from Bobbie Garrett, who worked for a contractor favored by Higginbotham, called Alpha Technology Group. The e-mail sent to Higginbotham, and one of Higginbotham's subordinates, read: "I was able to access Ms. Gray's computer. I changed her domain account to be able to log in with the username and password. To login to this PC, use the following: Username: gina.gray. Password: PublicAffairs11**."
Army agents learned Higginbotham had also ordered Garrett, the contractor, to remove Gray's hard drive and send it out to a private company to mine for information. But an Army official involved in authorizing access to Gray's e-mail said he "never authorized anyone at ANC [Arlington National Cemetery] to pull the hard drive from Ms. Gray's work computer." When Army investigators attempted to interview Garrett, Alpha Technology Group told them Garrett had resigned, adding, "Mr. Garrett was supposedly in Ohio visiting his sick mother" and was unavailable. Alpha Technology Group did not return Salon's phone call or e-mail to the company's director of public relations.
Army investigators uncovered further evidence that Gray's computer had been broken into without authorization. They found an e-mail from Higginbotham discussing Gray with an Army official, in which Higginbotham had attached "the list of persons that she bcc'd." That list, investigators noted, must have come "from someone logged into Ms. Gray's email account."
Lori Calvillo, who also worked as a public affairs officer at Arlington and quit under "hostile" circumstances, testified in Gray's employment hearing that Arlington officials had also hacked her computer. "They did the exact same thing to me," she said. (The computer analysis conducted by the Army states that it was "possible Mr. Higginbotham routinely reviews employee's email when he deems necessary.")
Why didn't Army officials in Higginbotham's e-mail chain — including Col. Jerry Blixt, the garrison commander at Fort Belvoir, and William Koon, an attorney at the Military District of Washington, which oversees the cemetery — recognize that Gray's computer had been breached? In fact, the Army had been aware of complaints about a "pattern of workplace … hostility" at Arlington, as a July 2008 Army memo states, months before it launched its Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) investigation. In June, Gray had met with Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, then the commanding general of the Military District of Washington, to explain the problems. So why did the Army wait months to investigate? "The Army viewed the allegations associated with the cemetery very seriously, as we do any such allegation," Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman said. "Allegations of a criminal nature were referred to, and investigated by, CID."
In the conclusion of their report, Army investigators declared Higginbotham "made false and misleading statements to agents from this office, regarding access to Ms. Gray's email account and government computer." The report said agents could not determine precisely who impersonated Gray online but called the act "wire fraud."
Higginbotham has had a share of personal challenges. He came out of Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings in 2002. In the case, a judge did not excuse Higginbotham for a debt associated with "a death or personal injury caused by the debtor's unlawful operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated" in 1990. Today he is also the chief financial officer of Roads Inc., an organization of African-American funeral professionals, where he lists himself as "Dr. Thurman Higginbotham," although he doesn't hold a university Ph.D. or medical degree.
Currently no legal action against Higginbotham is expected. On April 23, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia declined prosecution based on the Army's findings. The report adds, however, that "civilian report of disciplinary action is pending." Superintendent John Metzler would not say whether Higginbotham faced any disciplinary action. "The privacy act prevents me from discussing actions on individual employees here at the cemetery," Metzler says. Higginbotham declined a request for an interview.
During the Higginbotham investigation, a different kind of crime arose at Arlington. But this one had little to do with the law. In her sworn testimony, Gray criticized the cemetery for disposing of artifacts left in Section 60, where soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. "They throw away things that are left at the gravesites — cards, letters," Gray said. "They don't save anything."
Tomorrow: A visit to Arlington's Section 60, where history ends up in the trash, and to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, where history is carefully preserved.

Arlington National Cemetery scandal leads to shake-up

by Steve Handelsman, NBC Newschannel



ARLINGTON, Va. - It's a square mile of hallowed ground across the Potomac from Washington.
Arlington National Cemetery is the resting place of more than 320,000  Americans, many of them war heroes.
Now a Pentagon investigation has uncovered troubling problems with the plots and record keeping.
Unmarked gravesites, improperly marked graves and improper handling of cremated remains were all found.
At least 211 mistakes have been documented so far.
Two are in Section 60, an area reserved for those lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Salon.com revealed the scandal, detailing how in 2008 Air Force Master Sgt. Marion Grabe's cremated remains were mistakenly buried on top of other remains.
Salon reporter Mark Benjamin found the pattern of bad record keeping and improperly disturbed graves.
"Arlington officials went to bury a service member in what was supposed to be an empty grave.  And guess what?  There was already somebody there," he explained.  "They didn't know who it was, and they covered it up with grass and they walked away."
Arlington's superintendent John Metzler has been reprimanded and will step down.
His deputy was fired.
Secretary of the Army John McHugh apologized on Capitol Hill Thursday and vowed to make immediate corrections.
A new team will take over to fix the mess. 
They might have to X-ray gravesites and even dig up coffins to get a perfect roll call of Arlington's heroes.

 

200 graves misidentified at Arlington Cemetery

Probe found some graves where the bodies were misidentified
By Jim Miklaszewski
NBC News
updated 7:46 p.m. ET, Thurs., June 10, 2010

Video

  Offenses at Arlington lead to change of command
June 10: Two administrators at Arlington National Cemetery have lost their jobs following accusations that mistakes and poor management violated the nation's most sacred oath to its fallen. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
Nightly News
WASHINGTON - A number of scandals at Arlington National Cemetery, including one in which a service member's body was buried on top of another, cost the top two administrators their jobs, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
Army Secretary John McHugh announced that Arlington National's superintendent, John Metzler, would be relieved of his duties and that his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, would be placed on immediate administrative leave, pending further investigation.
McHugh told a Pentagon press conference that the investigation found 211 graves where there were problems of misidentification or improper record keeping. There also are claims that Higginbotham had illegally hacked into the computer files of a former Arlington employee.
Over the past couple of years, officials said, some of the 300,000 graves at Arlington were improperly marked and in some cases bodies were buried in the wrong graves.
In 2008, an Air Force master sergeant was buried on top of a staff sergeant already in the grave, but the error wasn't discovered until the widow of the first service member buried there complained to authorities that someone else's headstone had been placed on her husband's grave. 
Metzler and Higginbotham have come under heavy criticism for not creating a computer database of gravesites. Records of the hundreds of thousands buried at Arlington National are still kept in paper files.
"We found nothing that was intentional, criminal intent or intended sloppiness that caused this. ... But of all the things in the world, we see this as a zero defect operation," Whitcomb told reporters Thursday.
The Army said it plans a more thorough investigation of the questioned grave sites under the new management.
Kaitlin Horst, Arlington National's spokesperson, said all scheduled funerals at the cemetery would still be held. Family members with questions are urged to call the cemetery at 703-607-8000.
The Army is investigating whether Higginbotham made false statements to service investigators. Higginbotham, who ran the day-to-day operations at the cemetery, has been accused by former employees of creating a hostile work environment and breaking into their e-mail systems.
Higginbotham is on administrative leave, pending further review.
According to a defense official familiar with the case, who discussed the details on condition of anonymity, Higginbotham won't face criminal charges because of a lack of evidence. But, the official said, the Army will ensure he never works at the cemetery again.
While Metzler announced in May that he intends to retire on July 2, Department of Defense and Army officials say he is being forced to step down with a letter of reprimand that blames him for failing to rein in Higginbotham's mistakes.
Taking their place will be Kathryn Condon, a former civilian head of Army Materiel Command who as executive director will in charge of fixing any burial errors. Patrick Hallinan, a director with the Veterans Affairs Department, is temporarily being assigned as the cemetery's superintendent.
McHugh also announced the creation of an independent advisory commission that will be led by former senators and Army veterans Max Cleland and Bob Dole. 
Metzler, 62, has worked for the government for 42 years. He is the son of John C. Metzler Sr., who preceded him as cemetery superintendent.
In a Marine Corps Times story on Thursday, Metzler responded to the charges against him. "Nobody here is doing anything malicious," he said. "Sure, mistakes get made . . . Does anyone run a perfect organization?"

Focus on Boom June 10

JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — An oil skimmer, a participant in the Vessels of Opportunity Program, offloads bags of oiled sorbent boom onto a larger vessel in Barataria Bay, Grand Isle, June 10, 2010. Skimming vessels, many of which are converted fishing and shrimping boats, provide one type of weapon used to combat the oil mid-ocean and help minimize the shore impact. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Caleb Critchfield.


GRAND ISLE, La. – Two boats, both participants in the Vessels of Opportunity Program, back up stern to stern allowing the oil skimmer to offload bags of oiled sorbent boom collected by the ship in Barataria Bay, Grand Isle June 10, 2010. Skimming vessels, many converted fishing and shrimping boats, provide one type of critical tool used to combat the oil mid-ocean and help minimize shore impact. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Caleb Critchfield.


JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — Containment boom and sorbent boom block a patch of oil from reaching an island populated by brown and white pelicans and many other species of birds in Barataria Bay, Grand Isle, June 10, 2010. Containment boom is used to block or contain oil slicks and sorbent boom is selectively permeable so that it absorbs oil and not water. Boom is a defensive measure used to help prevent the oil from invading beaches and environmentally sensitive areas. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Caleb Critchfield.

Controlled Burn June 9


OFF THE LOUISIANA COAST---The Premiere Explorer of Venice, La. stands by near a controlled burn of spilled oil from in the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico June 9. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer First Class John Masson.

Lawmakers welcome Main Street lobbies

Credit unions had more influence on financial regulation than Wall Street.

Lawmakers aren't afraid to admit that they consulted at least one bank lobby during the financial regulation bill.
Credit unions, the nation's smallest financial institutions, organized an effective grassroots campaign during the debate to ensure that they would not have to suffer for Wall Street's mistakes.
As the House and Senate started to reconcile their versions of financial regulation Thursday, the Washington Post   reported on the lobby:
Credit union members have submitted 375,000 e-mails, letters and phone calls over the past two weeks, and about a thousand credit union executives are swarming Capitol Hill this week.
Wall Street may have more money to lobby, but the article states that lawmakers preferred to listen to this smaller group:
Again and again, big banks have been outpaced by small-town interests, proving that even when it comes to overhauling financial regulation, politics really is local.
Community bankers, auto dealers and other Main Street businesses have won exemptions from proposed new regulations by repeating a mantra not available to big Wall Street firms: We didn't cause the crisis.
Lawmakers were more sensitive to these groups' concerns because they have a presence, and represent votes, in every congressional district.
Credit unions aren't done lobbying yet on financial regulation. They continued to meet with lawmakers Thursday over an amendment to limit the fees merchants charge when consumers swipe their credit and debit cards.
The small banks say they will lose out if Congress tries to curb the profits generated by those fees.
-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org

A chance encounter on the Gulf Coast with a BP engineer

I’d pulled over to the side of Highway 1 in Grand Isle, La., to film one of the many angry signs local residents have put up across this island. “Cannot fish or swim” this one read. “How the hell are we supposed to feed our kids now?”

Photo: William Brangham
A vehicle pulled in behind mine and a man stepped out to snap a picture of the same sign.
I gestured at it and said something about how if I lived here, I’d likely feel the same.
“Yeah, me too.” he said. “But I’m on the other side of this one.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m a drilling engineer for BP.”
BP has barred its employees from talking to people like me without authorization. I explained who I was, but asked if he’d be willing to talk on background about life inside the company in the middle of this crisis. He was reticent at first, but soon seemed eager to vent.
He described dozens of rank-and-file BP workers like him who were “just sick to death” about what was happening.  He said they were desperate to get the leak under control and were working round-the-clock shifts to get it fixed.
“I’m not complaining,” he said. “it’s our job to fix our own mess.” His real anger seemed directed at the managers who he said had single-handedly ruined a company, and a place, he clearly cared a great deal about. He seemed distressed about the damage that was being wrought along the Gulf Coast: “Many of us come here for vacation. Some of the guys live here themselves … It’s just horrible.” He just shook his head when I asked about the way the company had handled the aftermath of the spill. He gestured at the big yellow sign on the side of the road. “We deserve that.”
I asked about recent allegations that BP routinely skirted safety rules, and while he said he’d heard the accusations, he said he’d not witnessed those things himself.
He also said that BP’s move in recent years into alternative fuels (part of its official makeover from “British Petroleum” to “Beyond Petroleum”) wasn’t all corporate spin.  Sure, he said, the research was probably based more on money than on environmental concerns, but “a lot of folks in the company took that mandate really seriously. We wanted to be out ahead of the competition. We wanted to be the ones to find new energy sources.”Clapping his hand on the hood of his gas-guzzler, he said: “These can’t be the future.”
By the end of our conversation he seemed dejected. “This [the oil spill] is all anyone’s gonna remember us for.”
As he was leaving, I asked if I could get his number in case I had questions down the road. “I can’t.” he said.  “My name in your notebook is not a good thing for me.”

In 2008, BP Touted New Tech To Measure Oil Flow

| Fri Jun. 11, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

For seven weeks, BP has insisted that measuring exactly how much oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is a daunting—perhaps impossible—task. The depth of the well, and the volume of natural gas emitting from it, has made the flow rate "very, very difficult to estimate," BP has said, while its chief operating officer has emphasized the "huge amount of uncertainty" surrounding the question. But back in 2008, the company was singing a very different tune. In an in-house magazine, BP bragged about sophisticated technology it had developed to measure precisely the flow of oil and gas through pipelines.
The August 2008 issue of Frontiers, BP's technology and innovation magazine, includes a lengthy feature, titled "Listening to the Flow." The article boasts of the company's "expertise [in] flow measurement." Determining how much oil and gas is flowing out of a pipeline is "tricky to do," the article says. It explains that BP had developed a technology called sonar-based flow metering, in which the flow of hydrocarbons is measured using sonar sensors placed inside a pipe. This technology is "proving its worth in the company’s operations around the world," the article says, noting that BP "has pioneered the introduction of a new and very useful tool into the wider oil industry."
According to the article, BP tested its technology in 2004 on a wet gas pipeline in Alaska and had already introduced around 45 sonar meters to oil fields. The company's research and development program manager told the magazine that BP planned to use the devices on underwater wells, too.
Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have also developed acoustic technology. BP initially invited them to the site of the spill in early May, one scientist told a House panel last month, but then rescinded the invite. The Woods Hole team is now working on estimates as part of the government flow rate team.
In the early weeks of the catastrophe, BP said 1,000 barrels of oil were leaking from the well each day. Then, the oil giant went along with a later government estimate of 5,000 barrels per day. That, too, proved to be understating the matter. The government's latest assessment is 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day, but the upper range could be as high as 50,000 barrels per day. Meanwhile, BP says it's siphoning up to 15,000 barrels of oil daily. Given that oil is still pouring into the ocean, this only serves to verify that the spill is far worse than BP—and the government—originally let on. BP's earliest estimates would have us believe that a total of around 2.2 million gallons of oil had entered Gulf waters. According to the new, upper-end calculation from the flow rate team, that total could be as high as 109.2 million gallons.
There's a reason the oil giant is being so cagey about the spill's true size. The amount that the company will eventually have to fork out in civil penalties will be determined by how much oil they've dumped into the Gulf. On Thursday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called on BP to grant independent scientists direct access to the spill site in order to figure out the flow rate.
Of course, if BP's technology is as ground-breaking as that 2008 magazine article would have us believe, the oil giant should be perfectly capable of undertaking this complex calculation itself. Where's that cutting-edge research now?
Image from Frontiers, August 2008. Image from Frontiers, August 2008.

South Carolina needs help


I'm really beginning to think that Kathleen Parker is the last best thing to come out of South Carolina. We've seen the ugliness that enveloped Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. The boisterousness of Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R). And the literal wanderlust of Gov. Mark Sanford (R).
Now, from literally out of nowhere, comes Alvin M. Greene, the Democratic nominee for Senate. He barely campaigned. Aside from his campaign filing fee, Greene spent next to nothing. He was slapped with a felony obscenity charge from last November for allegedly showing porn on his computer to a fellow college student and then asking to go back to her room. Greene, who grabbed 60 percent of the vote, is so unlikely a candidate that House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) thinks he's a stooge for the GOP. The state's Democratic Party chair is urging Greene to withdraw from the race. He refuses.
I'm the Democratic Party nominee...The people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina.
The people of South Carolina have spoken all right -- and it's gibberish.

Business group sees body blow to 'card-check' in Lincoln win

By Michael O'Brien - 06/09/10 06:40 AM ET
A key business group saw a body blow for "card-check" legislation on Tuesday night in Arkansas.

The Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI), a group opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a piece of union-organizing legislation favored by organized labor, seized on incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln's victory over the state's lieutenant governor in a closely contested Democratic primary.

"A massive investment on the part of union bosses, which they will not be able to duplicate in other races, resulted in a loss for Big Labor’s poster-child candidate, producing a general election where both nominees will oppose [EFCA]," WFI Director Katie Packer said in a statement.

Lincoln eked out a 52-48 percent victory over Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D) last night after labor groups had spent around $10 million to unseat the centrist senator, who had angered unions over her opposition to the card-check bill, as well as the public option in healthcare reform.

The move pitted labor, usually a Democratic constituency, against the party establishment, which had backed Lincoln as the better general-election candidate against challenger John Boozman, a Republican congressman in the state.

WFI pointed out that Halter had refused to answer questions on EFCA throughout the race, despite his heavy union backing. While there is a sizable labor movement in the state, it is also the headquarters to companies like Wal-Mart, which has fought back against unionizing its employees.

Halter's ambiguity on the issue, along with Lincoln's win, helped signal the death knell for card-check, WFI argued.

"Blanche Lincoln’s victory, coupled with Big Labor’s failure to get its candidate to endorse their top legislative priority even after spending millions of dollars, speaks volumes to how far [EFCA] has fallen in the last year and serves as an unambiguous victory for those who oppose forced unionization," Packer said.

Svanberg CEO of BP

Letter to CEO of BP from Obama Administration

President Obama will participate in a portion of the meeting.

Republicans 'You Cut' Eric Cantor




EricCantor May 10, 2010Republican Whip Eric Cantor introduces YouCut, a first-of-its kind initiative designed to change the culture of spending in Washington to a culture of saving.

Learn more at: http://www.republicanwhip.house.gov/y...
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  EricCantor May 20, 2010YouCut: The First Week's Vote. Learn more at: http://republicanwhip.house...

  


EricCantor May 28, 2010YouCut: The Second Week's Vote






EricCantor June 09, 2010YouCut: The Third Week's Vote

Congress people announcing the winning you cut winner



EricCantor May 18, 2010 — Congressman Tom Price Announces The First YouCut Winning Item

 

EricCantor May 25, 2010 — Congresswoman Michele Bachmann Announces The Second YouCut Winning Item






EricCantor June 09, 2010 — Garrett and Hensarling Announce This Week's Winning YouCut Proposal

Gibbs:

 No complaints about Obama 'kick ass' line

By Jordan Fabian - 06/09/10 05:19 PM ET

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that he has heard no complaints about President Barack Obama's comment that he is trying to figure out "whose ass to kick" for the BP oil spill.
CNBC anchor Becky Quick called the comment unpresidential on Tuesday, a claim that was echoed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) on Wednesday.
"No, I’ve not heard any regrets about the language," Gibbs said.
In an interview with NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday Obama said "[I] don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar — we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
He was responding to Matt Lauer's request to respond to those who say he should stop talking to experts and start "kicking butt."