Washington Partial remains of some people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were cremated and dumped in a landfill, according to a Pentagon report released on Tuesday that raised new concerns about the military facility handling most of America's war dead.
Officials at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary in Delaware gave a biomedical waste disposal contractor unidentified human remains recovered after a passenger jet was flown into the Pentagon, killing 184 people, and another plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 40 more.
The contractor incinerated the remains and disposed of them in a landfill, the Pentagon report said. Neither the contractor nor the location of the landfill was identified in the report, and it wasn't immediately clear how many sets of remains were handled in this manner. Nor was it clear whether the remains were of September 11 victims, hijackers or both.
The disclosure is the latest blow to the once-respected Dover mortuary, which has been rocked since last fall by charges of gross mismanagement, lost body parts from dismembered corpses, and reprisals against employees who sought to warn higher-ups about problems.
Review
News 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.
It was not previously known that some September 11 remains were handled the same way. But questions remained on Tuesday as to whether passengers from the Pennsylvania crash were even sent to Dover.
The Pentagon report was issued by a panel created by Defence Secretary Leon E. Panetta to review the Pentagon response to the scandal.
