Arlington Cemetery official retires amid probe

Arlington Cemetery official retires amid probe of botched contracts, site problems

By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Arlington National Cemetery's deputy superintendent has retired before Army officials could compel him to meet with a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee investigating contracting irregularities, including more than $5 million paid to a series of minority-owned start-up companies that failed to produce a digitized system for cataloguing remains.

Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery's longtime second-in-command, submitted paperwork last week to make his retirement retroactive to July 2, the week Army officials were notified that congressional staffers were seeking to interview him regarding dozens of botched contracts.

Higginbotham had been placed on administrative leave last month pending disciplinary review after Army investigators found more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of grave sites with headstones not recorded on cemetery maps, and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area with excess grave dirt. Investigators found that those and other blunders were the result of a "dysfunctional" and chaotic management system, poisoned by bitterness between Higginbotham and the cemetery's superintendent, John C. Metzler Jr.
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Arlington Cemetery official retires amid probe
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