we must take aggressive steps to remove this tarnish from our national landmark and to renew the promises made to our military families and to the american people. thank you, madam chairman. >> senator tester. >> thank you for having this hearing. it is an understatement to say it's truly unfortunate we even have to be here today. when you talk about burying our loved ones, it's a pretty basic act it's gone on since the beginning of mankind. when you talk about burying our war heroes and the people who served this country so well in a place like arlington national cemetery, i can just tell you from my perspective, this is not only totally unacceptable, it is a black eye that, quite frankly, needs to be dealt with in a way to make things right as soon as possible. whether it is a lack of information technology, whether it's a lack of contracting oversight, i hope we get some insight that that today. but what's happened here in a very basic ceremony and there are -- i'm going to be interested to hear what the excuses are because i can't figure it out in my head. this isn't putting a man on the moon. there's nothing really mystifying about burying our loved ones and keeping track of them and making sure that the ones are in the grave that are supposed to be here. here's the upshot of this. the upshot of this is i've got a lady who works for me, does my natural resource work in montana and happens to be out here. she was actually raised out in this neck of the woods and her father was buried in arlington cemetery a couple of years ago. her mom is still alive. she's out here this week. she called up her mother and said i think i'll go over and visit dad's grave in arlington. to which her mother's response was, do we really know if he's in that grave? this is a true story. that's the upshot of this. i look forward -- i think, madam chair, we've got mr. metzler here today, i believe that's correct. i don't know if we've got mr. higginbotham here today or not. i certainly hope so. but hopefully we will get some sort of understanding what went on here and some solutions on how to fix what i think is a problem that should have never ever -- we should not be here today. this should never ever ever have happened so thank you for hearing me, madam chair. >> thank you, senator tester. our first panel if you would join us at the witness table. our first panel is john c. metzler and thurman higginbotham. we will do seven-minute rounds of questions and we will after this panel we have a second panel of officials that will testify and it is the custom of this committee that we have our witnesses sworn in and so if you all would stand and i will administer the oath. do you swear that the testimony that you will give before the subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> i do. >> mr. metzler is the former superintendent, thank you, gentlemen. you may be seated. john metzler is the former superintendent of arlington national cemetery and thurman higginbotham is the former deputy superintendent of arlington national cemetery. and we will defer to you all for your opening statements. >> good morning, madam chairman. members of the committee. as the committee is well aware i was the superintendent of arlington national cemetery for the last 19 years. prior to arlington i had 17 years' experience with the department of veterans affairs and their cemetery system and also served six years of earlier government service including one tour of active duty in the army with one tour in vietnam as a helicopter crew chief with the 1st aviation brigade. over my 42 years of service to our nation, my respect, admiration and gratitude to our men and women in uniform and their families has only increased. i hold them in the highest regards. personally it pains me that our team at arlington did not perform all aspects of its politician to the highest standards required. as a senior government official in charge of the cemetery, i accept full responsibility for all my actions and the actions of my team. and i want to express my sincere regrets to any family who may have these failures may have caused them pain. as you evaluate these issues it is important to fully appreciate the complexity and bredth of the operation at arlington national cemetery. they are unique and extraordinary. this complexity and bredth has only increased during my tenure. of the more than 300,000 burials that have taken place over the last 146 year, one-third took place during my tenure. there are only two or three large private or department of veteran affairs cemeteries in the world that have the complexity and comparable volume of funeral that is arlington does each year, 6,000 or 7,000. none of these cemetery, however, require the attention for ceremonial coordination and support that is routine at arlington cemetery. none of these cemeteries have 3,000 nonburial ceremony tass are conducted regularly at arlington. none of these cemeteries have records that go back over a hundred years and finally, none of these cemeteries have over 4 million visitors who tour the grounds each year. activity at this level is sensitive and important. and it requires constant attention to action. there are no time-outs or do-overs. funeral services continue to be a vital and are conducted, excuse me, in all circumstances. we conduct services at arlington cemetery on 9/11 and the day after. during this recent record snowfall in which the federal government was closed for four consecutive days arlington cemetery continued with its burial schedule. it is undisputed that the overwhelming majority of funeral arlington national cemetery have been completed successfully without error and to complete satisfaction of the families. i do not highlight this point to excuse any possible findings that may have occurred. i understand that each burial service at the cemetery must be conducted as close as possible to zero defect every time. i understand that the complete burial -- excuse me. i understand that completing that burial is a significant event for each family involved. there has been an enormous amount of good that has been accomplished for tens of thousands of families and each time the funerals were conducted correctly at arlington. i know the army is working hard to correct the i.g.'s finding and the cemetery will improve its operation. during the last 19 years that i was the superintendent we did not receive the funding that was needed and the dedicated staff of the cemetery was reduced by 35% from 145 when i arrived to 95 today. of these 95, approximately 35 people are performing administrative tasks. those staffing losses were to be outsourced by private contracts. as experience has shown, however, that approach does not always result in the most efficient or effective solution. there are no substitutes of having dedicated taff in the important areas such as government technology and contracting. none of which i had during my tenure. further, issues can be minimized and eliminated with both funding and staffing requirements to do this important work. in any event i know the army is committed to doing whatever it takes to make things right now and in the future. as difficult as it is to conclude my lengthy service under these circumstances i will always value the opportunity i had to be superintendent of arlington national cemetery and i am prepared to answer your questions as best i can. thank you. >> i want to tell you, mr. metzler, how much we appreciate you being here today. i'm sure this is not a pleasant experience for you, and it means a great deal that you are here and that you are standing and willing to answer questions on behalf of the committee and committee staff we appreciate it very much. >> thank you. >> mr. higginbotham, do you have an opening statement? >> no, ma'am, i do not. i would like to after consultation with counsel i will assert my fifth amendment rights to any and all questions that the committee may ask. >> i appreciate the fact that you are asserting your right, but procedure rally it will be necessary for us to ask you some questions and you to assert that privilege in response to those questions in order for us to make the record that is appropriate going forward. >> yes, ma'am. >> so we will be asking you some questions and you will then have to decide as those questions are asked if you wish to assert the right. if you do assert the right, repeatedly, a few times, then we will make the necessary steps in the record to reflect that you have done so. >> thank you. >> do you have any question, mr. higginbotham in that regard? >> no, ma'am. >> then we will begin questioning and let's start with you, mr. metzler. let's be clear. how long were you an employee at the cemetery? >> i was an employee there -- i was an employee there for 19 years and 6 months. >> and on what date did you retire? >> july 2nd, 2010. >> who did you report to in the army? who was your boss? >> my direct report was commanding general of the district of washington. >> all right. and was there any other report you had other than the commander of the district of columbia? >> yes, ma'am. i reported to the assistant secretary of the army for civil works on budget and policy issues and to the assistant secretary of the army from manpower and reserve affairs on eligibility issues and exceptions to policy and to the chief of media on any media-related issues. >> okay. and who reported to you at arlington national cemetery? >> the deputy superintendent, the historian, my secretary and the chief financial officer. >> okay. so you had -- your secretary. you had the deputy. you had the historian and who was the other? >> the chief financial officer. >> cfo, okay. mr. higginbotham, how long were you an employee at the cemetery? >> after consultation with counsel i will assert my fifth amendment. okay. you can ask the question again, ma'am. >> how long were you an employee with the arlington national cemetery? >> i started at arlington in july 1965 and had a break in service to attend mortuary school and returned in 1977. >> when did you become the cemetery's deputy superintendent? >> 1990 i believe it was, yeah. >> and what date did you retire? >> july 3rd. >> mr. higginbotham, what were your responsibilities as deputy superintendent? >> well, i was an assistant to the superintendent in his responsibilities. >> and so did you take your direction directly from him? >> yes. >> were there things that you did independently of his direction? >> i had decision-making, you know, for supervisors that worked for me, yes. >> who -- who reported to you at the cemetery? how many direct reports did you have? >> we had three divisions that reported to me, facilities, administrative and operations. >> mr. higginbotham, it's pretty obvious if you read the record that you and mr. metzler just didn't get along. is that a correct statement? would you argue with that statement? >> not in my opinion. >> that you did not get along -- >> no, we did get along. >> you did get along. >> yes. >> so the fact that there was a report that was done as early as 1997 saying that there was real -- in fact, 1994 i believe even after you all had -- after you had been deputy for only a few years, two different types there was an assessment of what was going on in arlington and in both instances they said that there was a great difficulty between the two of you, that you did not have a good working relationship, that morale was low because of it and in fact you were counseled, the record says you were counselled as it relates to our ability to work with mr. metzler. is that not accurate? >> partially. i think if we go back to when mr. metzler arrived at arlington in i believe it's 1991, i was already the acting superintendent because the prior superintendent had quadruple bypass surgery and he decided to retire, okay. i applied for the job as superintende superintendent. i was told that i was not eligible for the position because i was 22 days short of time and grade, you know, to move the one year in grade at the lower grade. i think coming in a new -- a new individual, you know, i had no animosity toward mr. metzler whatsoever, he was new to arlington, although, you know, he had lived there years ago. his management style was new to me. i had worked under previous, you know, superintendent and we both had the same feeling about arlington to do the right thing, you know. we were like a corporation. he had 51% and i had 49 so any decisions we made were ultimately, you know, his decisions, but i don't feel that that report accurately reflected -- i think it was more of the staff perception that we didn't get along. >> all right. let me -- before my time running out on the first round i want to establish something for the record before we go any further. mr. metzler, what was the first date that you knew that there were problems with the location of burial remains at arlington national cemetery? >> with the i.g. report, ma'am. >> no, i want to know when was the first date -- forget about all the reports. forget about -- i want to know that day when you're in your office and you receive information and you have a sinking sensation that you may have a problem about where bodies are buried at arlington national cemetery, what year did that occur? >> i never had that problem. >> so you're saying that you never had any inkling that there could be an issue with a location of remains at arlington national cemetery until june of this year? >> until the i.g.'s report. any time an individual, any time a family member, any time an employee brought an issue to my attention in this regards, we looked at it immediately. we stopped what we were doing and we went out to the field and we validated anyone's concerns. >> wait a minute. so you -- you're saying that when there was an issue, you went out and you saw that there was a concern or you found that it was not valid, the concern was not valid. >> i found that either the concern was not valid or there was an explanation that went along with it. there would be oftentimes where family members, let me restate that. from time to time family members would contact the cemetery and tell us they could not find their loved one and we would find out that they were in the wrong burial section or that they had referenced a tree or some other permanent structure in the cemetery and that structure either had been removed or they were just in the wrong location so we would go out with them and we would show them how to find their loved one's grave. that was a problem at any cemetery that expands and continues to grow, people pick up landmarks and don't use the numbering system on the back of the headstones. >> but you're saying that until the i.g.'s report came out in june, you had never been made aware of an instance where a headstone was marked wrong, a body was mislocated, an urn was found buried in the same location as other remains, that there were more than one body in one grave, that an urn had -- >> no. >> you never had any ineconomy nation? >> no, i did have inclinations of those on a one-to-one basis but every time one was brought to our attention, we corrected those issues, whatever that issue was or we annotated the records to fix the problem. >> okay, so you knew there were problems, you're just saying as they came along you fixed them? >> yes, ma'am. >> and when was the first date you knew that you had at least one problem that had been validated as to location of remains at arlington national cemetery? what year was that? >> i don't know. i mean, this is an issue, the way you're asking the question that could happen virtually any day in the cemetery operation where someone could come in and ask a question that you would have to go out and look at. >> i'm not saying that somebody can't find something and you help them find it. i'm saying that when you looked into it, you realized that a grave was mismarked or there were multiple bodies buried there or that the body wasn't in the location that you thought it was in and you weren't sure where it was. i'm talking about those situations. when -- what year did one of those situations come to your attention? >> well, i think the one situation that we were talking about where a remains was buried in a grave and unmarked came to our attention about a year ago. we had an issue during the development of land development 90 referred to as ld-90, this was the last 40 acres of the cemetery in the process of developing that land, this was a fill area where soil had been reposited there for probably 35 years so the soil was started to be distributed over this 40-acre land mass and in the process of doing that, two urns were discovered. >> when was that? what month and year was that? >> ma'am, i'm guessing. i don't recall the month and year but i would say it has to be at least five years ago that that came about. >> okay. that's -- and we will -- and i will have the same question for you, mr. higginbotham, on my next round but my time is over and i want to be respectful of my colleagues so, senator brown. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. metzler, you noted in your opening statement that the majority of the burials are done successfully. i didn't fall off the turnin truck yesterday. i would think a cemetery of this prestige that 100% of them would be done successfully and that's why we're here is the fact that they're not being done successfully and that we owe it to our families and our soldiers to get it right and with all due respect, once again, there are many cemeteries throughout this country that have the foresight and courtesy to make that extra effort to automate the systems, identify properly where people are buried so that people and family can have closure. i guess my first question is, can you clarify for the record what your responsibilities specifically were in terms of who was responsible for identifying properly the grave sites. whose ultimate responsibility was that, yours? >> ultimately it is mine as the superintendent, yes. >> and when the i.g. investigation report detailed the problem that existed for a period of over 18 years and i'm presuming it's the time that you were there because you've been there for quite a while, it also noted that the relationship between you and the deputy, how much do you think the relationship between you and the deputy affected or contributed to the documented problems at the cemetery? >> i don't believe it contributed at all. mr. higginbotham and i met daily in a staff meeting. we would meet periodically two or three times a day either in his office or in my office. we would confer on anything that was unusual or different. we would often go out to the cemetery together to look at issues that were going on in the cemetery. i mean, we had a very professional relationship that interacted each day with each other. we had the same common goal here on automation. we wanted to see the cemetery automated as quickly as possible. >> well, i noted here in actu actually a national -- arlington national cemetery article where you called him a visionary when it came to technology and trying to -- paraphrasing, implement the technology plan and then you said that's not a word that should be tossed around lightly and the funds were -- were provided. what's the status of the so-called technology at this point? where are you? how many graves have been identified? what's the status of the i.t., the systems, et cetera? >> there are approximately 60,000 graves that are automated right now since around 1999 with the use of the v.a. system b.o.s.s., and then our continuation of the interment, the iss system. we have a system that we're trying to develop to improve the iss. we're on our second generation. we're trying to get to the third generation, which would make this system an inter