WASHINGTON - A number of scandals at Arlington National Cemetery, including one in which a service member's body was buried on top of another, are costing the top two administrators their jobs, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Army Secretary John McHugh is set to announce Thursday that he will replace Arlington National's superintendent, John Metzler, and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, after accusations of poor management and an investigation that Higginbotham had illegally hacked into the computer files of a former Arlington employee.

Over the past couple of years, officials said, some of the 300,000 graves at Arlington were improperly marked and in some cases bodies were buried in the wrong graves.

In 2008, an Air Force master sergeant was buried on top of a staff sergeant already in the grave, but the error wasn't discovered until the widow of the first service member buried there complained to authorities that someone else's headstone had been placed on her husband's grave.

Both Metzler and Higginbotham have come under heavy criticism for not creating a computer database of gravesites. Records of the hundreds of thousands buried at Arlington National are still kept in paper files.

Kaitlin Horst, Arlington National's spokesperson, declined to comment on the situation. She said all scheduled funerals at the cemetery would still be held.

While Metzler announced in May that he intends to retire on July 2, Department of Defense and Army officials say both he and Higgenbotham are being forced to step down.

Officials say McHugh also will announce Thursday that he is creating a new position to oversee operations at Arlington National.

Metzler, 62, has worked for the government for 42 years. He is the son of John C. Metzler, Sr., who preceded him as cemetery superintendent.

In a Marine Corps Times story on Thursday, Metzler responded to the charges against him. he said.
"Nobody here is doing anything malicious,"
"Sure, mistakes get made . . . Does anyone run a perfect organization?"