“Of course, the difference is that hospitals are working to save lives, and the distinction should be obvious,” said Varner, who is also the chief executive of Cypress Lawn, a large cemetery and funeral home near San Francisco.
Also Thursday, Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the Air Force to review the independence of its inspector general, the agency that conducted the 18-month investigation into the Dover mortuary.
“The Air Force cannot address major failings in leadership and management with half-hearted corrective action and the assignment of limited individual responsibility,” she said.
McCaskill pressed her request at a hearing of the military’s service chiefs on Thursday. Addressing Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force’s chief of staff, she said she was concerned that the assignment of responsibility had been limited.
Schwartz challenged McCaskill’s suggestion that the Air Force had not sought to hold people to account.
“There clearly were unacceptable mistakes made,” he said. “Whether they constitute wrongdoing is another matter entirely. And when you look at a situation like this, you look at the facts of the case, as an attorney might, you look at the context in which the mistakes occurred.”
He noted that the senior military officer at the mortuary had received a letter of reprimand — usually a career-ending punishment for an officer.
“This,” Schwartz said, “is not a trivial sanction.”
Two civilian supervisors at the mortuary have received a demotion in their pay grades and have been reassigned to other jobs.
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