Some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were cremated and placed in containers provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor, and then they were incinerated and placed in a landfill, as the New York Times says.
“The practice of landfill disposal was also used for some unidentified remains of war dead, a fact first disclosed late last year. The practice has since been stopped and the ashes are now put in urns and buried at sea,” the Times adds.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that was driven into the Pentagon by terrorist hijackers, admitted she was confused by the report. She said, according to local media, she attended a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery where unidentified 9/11 remains were buried in an engraved casket.
“They were treated with great respect and great ceremony,” Burlingame said. “The Department of Defense was exceedingly sensitive and treated those unidentified remains with great respect. … I would want to know more.”
The report doesn’t cite how many of the victims were disposed of in this manner.
The Pentagon isn’t taking this news lying down. Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a news release that the Pentagon is continuing to assemble records about the disposal of the remains, The Hill writes, and “that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has directed officials to give a briefing to the Sept. 11 families in the next few weeks.”
Retired Gen. John Abizaid, who led the investigation, believes this gross misconduct occurred due to a “dysfunctional, isolated chain of command” at Dover.
This isn’t the first time military remains were discarded this way; reports in November revealed that partial remains of at least 274 American military personnel were incinerated and discarded in a Virginia landfill prior to 2008, the Chicago Tribune notes.
Bloomberg describes Dover Air Force Base as the main U.S. entry point for the remains of thousands of troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
