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Subscribe to RSSThe disclosure that unidentified remains from the 9/11 attack were buried in a landfill was a small part of a larger report on problems at the military's mortuary at Dover, Del. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
Updated at 8:38 p.m ET: For the first time, the Defense Department acknowledged Tuesday that some cremated remains of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were dumped in a landfill, conduct the White House called "unacceptable."
The disclosure is just two paragraphs in an 86-page report released Tuesday by an independent task force reviewing operations at the military's mortuary at Dover, Del.
 M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. |
In a contentious briefing for reporters at the Pentagon, retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the panel, tried to keep the focus on steps the military was taking going forward, saying the 9/11 findings were only a minor part of the task force's work.
Asked repeatedly for more information, he said, "We did not spend a great deal of time and effort and energy" on the matter, adding forcefully: "It's my report, but it's not the focus of the report."
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta formed the task force in December after an investigation by the Air Force, which runs the facility, found that some remains of U.S. military personnel weren't handled "in accordance with procedures."
The Air Force acknowledged that it had disposed of the incinerated remains of at least 274 service members in the landfill before it ended the practice in 2008. At the time, officials said records went back only to 2003.
But the independent panel found that the practice went back at least to 2001, and it discovered that "several portions of remains" recovered from the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon and at Shanksville, Pa., also ended up in a landfill:
Prior to 2008, portions of remains that could neither be tested nor identified, and portions of remains later identified that the [family or other representative] requested not to be notified of (requesting that they be appropriately disposed of) were cremated under contract at a civilian crematory and returned to [Dover]. This policy began shortly after September 11, 2001, when several portions of remains from the Pentagon attack and the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, crash site could not be tested or identified.
These cremated portions were then placed in sealed containers that were provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor. Per the biomedical waste contract at that time, the contractor then transported these containers and incinerated them. The assumption on the part of [Dover] was that after final incineration nothing remained. A [Dover] management query found that there was some residual material following incineration and that the contractor was disposing of it in a landfill. The landfill disposition was not disclosed in the contractual disposal agreement.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, said they hadn't yet had a chance to review the entire report.
Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo/Defense Department
'It's my report, but it's not the focus of the report,' retired Gen. John Abizaid, chairman of the review panel, insisted.
"This is new information to me," Donley acknowledged when asked about the 9/11 victims by NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski. Schwartz, asked the same question, replied, "That's what I'm saying."
In a statement Tuesday night, the White House said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the findings and was determined that "these types of incidents never happen again."
Calling the report's details "unacceptable," the White House said, "The United States has a solemn obligation to compassionately and professionally care for fallen service members and their families, and those we tragically lost on 9/11."
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who has sought answers to what happened at Dover since last year, said the report bore out what he believed all along.
"I suspected, as Gen. Abizaid's panel has now confirmed, that these practices had been going on for many years. Even remains from the 9/11 terrorist attacks were treated in this way," Holt said in a statement to msnbc.com.
"The Department of Defense needs to engage in some real soul-searching," Holt said. "How is it possible that, for years or even decades, no one at Dover recognized how profoundly inappropriate these practices were?"
'Commanders in name only'
Abizaid told reporters that the Air Force's complex command structure led to the problems by creating "commanders in name only."
But "this was not just an Air Force problem," he said, adding that the entire U.S. military "needs to understand this is a 100 percent no-fail mission."
For one thing, he said, the Dover facility should no longer cremate fallen troops, because "we think it's a bad idea for DoD to be in the cremation business" in the first place.
The Dover facility is the first point of entry for U.S. service members who are killed or die overseas. It first came under investigation in 2010 after employees complained about how some cases were handled.
Investigators said last year that they had found no evidence that anyone intentionally mishandled the remains, but they concluded that the mortuary staff failed to "maintain accountability" with some remains.
"The standard is 100 percent accountability in every instance of this important mission," Schwartz said at the time.
"We can, and will, do better, and as a result of the allegations and investigation, our ability to care for our fallen warriors is now stronger,” he said.
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This makes me want to vomit. I wouldn't want my dog treated like this.
So you're telling us that George W. Bush's Pentagon did this while putting up a false, patriotic "front"?
I honestly am not surprised in the least!
correct answer = yes.
Your tax dollars at work!
The thing that needed to be dumped in a landfill was the governments 'Official Story of 9/11'. What a load of crap.
Does anybody still wonder why this country can't win a war in Iraq or Afghanistan? Absolutely positively UNBELIEVABLE!
well it was on bush's watch. they talk so highly of all the heroes of 9-11 --how they would avenge these dead heros. bull -sh-t. we haven't heard the last of the bush years screw-up's. hey ever heard of DNA.
Even if they could not be identified that does not mean you throw them in the garbage.
With all do respect for those that lost loved ones in such a tragedy I extend my condolences. I can't comprehend their sorrow. That being said, the next time you drive by an accident scene on the highway and you observe them cleaning up the residue and flushing the blood into the ditch there could be some similarities. Just a thought and I mean no disrespect but there are reasonable limitations of what can be done.
This story is ongoing. What I would like to ask is, Our President feels it is necessary to apologize to foreigners over the burning of some books that were being used as tools to kill our troops but doesn't feel it's necessary or appropriate to apologize to the American people and the families of those citizens and servicemen/women? Whose president is he?
The cremated remains of the soldiers being dumped in a landfill is a total crime that all administrators involved should be held accountable for. As for the remains left in the debris of the destroyed buildings you need to get real about, it would be impossible to try and get every little bit of human remains out of all the rubble.
Yet scientists can look over an archaeological site that was used some 5 thousand years ago by humans - and tell what their diet was, and how much they migrated, ages of people based on length of a femur, sex based on bone length measurements, DNA from teeth - but today, using current technology - we can't even be told the truth regarding 9/11. Go figure.
Ha, ha Saxon, good comment, but would that be a toothless chicken, as opposed to a chicken that has teeth?
what a shame that these brave and good people are treated this way,thrown into a landfill like trash.i wonder just how bad their families feel right now knowing this.how wrong can this be?we have a president who is kissing the ass of people who killed them,obama can kiss my ass too.
Just goes to show you how UNCompassionate our Country really is to the Fallen. Wow, they just thru them out like a piece of trash, they were Human Beings!
The U.S. government is good for three thing, taking kickbacks, bribes and lying. Almost forgot, disposing of human remains like GARBAGE! Court martial these morons! Clearly this was totally inappropriate and if they had to be told it wasn't, they should be put in a box and kept away from intelligent human beings.
These mortuary workers are lazy, incompetent, and overpaid scumbags. I say we bury their families in a landfill and see if they think it's appropriate. So OUTRAGEOUS and it's "not the focus of the report". My god what's wrong with these people?!
So if the government is good at LYING........why do you believe that they told you the TRUTH about 9/11?
Very interesting that this started taking place in 2001 which GWB become president. Just one more thing to add the the GWB disasterous Admin.
so who cares if some rubble got tossed in a dump people do it daily to all you people grow up and get a life people die every day get over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! maybe they want some scrap money to pay some tax returns LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!
I do not understand what the outrage is about-- we are talking about fragments here, not even moderately sized identifiable portions of a person. What do you think happens to your gall bladder when it is taken out? Do you call up the mortician and have a service for the finger you cut off with the saw? Do the families of organ donors want the organs back or inquire into how they've been handled if the recipient passes on?
Come on, this is one of those stories whose only point is to whip up outrage against the military.
Really; the Pentagon admits to something stupid. Does this idiotic general understand that for 50+ years we are still trying to find remains of American soldiers killed in WWII; from Korea, Viet Nam, and on and on? So now the Pentagon says they have put cremains in a landfill--for God's sake if you know you have ashes of a human being who likely can not be identified, then at least put the remains in a dedicated memorial lot. there are one hell of a lot of people who got no closure from this World Trade disaster; would it be too hard to suggest a memorial to those who were as innocently killed as those who fought for our freedom. Fire this Jerk--only bad thing is there are probably 100 just like him ready for their next star. Better yet, disallow his burial rights in Arlington.
This proves it: Life really is absurd.
This is old news that was suppressed almost as soon as it was revealed shortly after 9/11.
Bastard bastard, U.S.a.
I have a feeling they dumped the identified bodies to hide evidence.... because (fill in the blank- trust me it's not that hard unless you live in a bubble)
Frankly, (and I know my post will not be popular), when we have left this mortal coil, what happens to our remains is irrelevant. How many people really visit a cemetery very often? Many people have their ashes scattered and who knows where they land? What do you do with unclaimed ashes? How many people have seen old cemeteries or gravesites whose tenants no longer have living family? Many are abandoned with trashed sites and vandalized headstones. I am sure that those who have died really don't care where their remains ended up. We make such a big deal out of things that are really not important. Take care of the living and move on. If there is an 'ever after' we will meet our lost ones again. None of us will care about the bodies we left behind.
Sad but probably unavoidable. Having anyone in government state that this will never happen again is ludicrous. There is no oversight in the private nor the public sector that can insure this not repeating itself in some limited or grand scale. Unfortunate to be certain; unavoidable, no.
And I'm supposed to be PROUD of our country? Think not. We're being used to financially supply a new infrastructure to this cuounty while 25% of American children are in poverty status? BLOW IT!
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The U.S. is not the bad guy. The U.S. did not kill thousands of people on September 11th, 2001.
If remains ended up in the land fill-whatever.
I'm sure Muslim Extremists would just love us pointing fingers and arguing over body parts.
I'm sure those loved ones, who's remains were "dumped".....would rather we focus on the real enemy and not how we made mistakes when dealing with this never before imagined situation.