Salon has uncovered further evidence of grave offenses at Arlington National Cemetery. It is now clear that the cemetery, which is managed by the U.S. Army and calls itself "our nation's most sacred shrine," lost track of the identity of remains buried in a grave, and covered up the disturbing discovery for six years. New information also casts doubt on Army statements about when the Army learned of criminal misconduct by a top cemetery official.

Last week Salon reported allegations by former and current employees that headstones and graves do not match in some cases. The article noted internal cemetery documents over the past several years that revealed "information listed on grave cards and burial records were not consistent with the information on the actual headstone." It documented an expensive, 10-year-old effort to computerize operations at Arlington -- a feat cemeteries of similar size and age have achieved relatively quickly and cheaply.

Arlington admitted to the paperwork problems but insisted the confusion stopped at the grave's edge. When asked -- "Has the cemetery ever dug a grave only to find there is already someone there, though the grave is unmarked?" -- cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst responded, "We are not aware of any situation like that."

But Salon has discovered evidence to the contrary. In 2003, Arlington workers dug into the ground at Grave 449 in Section 68 -- the cemetery had paperwork that said the grave was empty -- to bury somebody who had recently died. They came across remains already interred in that grave. There was no headstone. Soon after the discovery, workers filled out a grave card (obtained by Salon), generally used to note information about each burial site, with an urgent note to colleagues: "do not DO NOT USE!!! CASKET IN GRAVE REMAINS UNKNOWN."

Since Arlington does now know the identity of the remains in Grave 449, there is no way of knowing when the burial occurred. Arlington tends to bury service members who pass away at around the same time in the each section. The graves in Section 68 are generally from the late 1980s through 2008, suggesting the original burial occurred in that era.

In response to a query about Grave 449, Arlington admitted the error. "The identity of the remains in Grave 449 in Section 68 is unknown at this time," Horst admitted. "Arlington National Cemetery officials have known about this situation since 2003, when in the process of preparing for a burial, a casket was discovered in Grave 449 in Section 68," she added. "At that time, a review of records took place to locate the corresponding documents. The files could not be matched and as a result, the card you have described was filed. Following your inquiry this morning, a search for corresponding records in the paper files was conducted and again, proved inconclusive."

A few days after Memorial Day, I walked across the sprawling, plush lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. I headed toward Section 60, a remote area of the famous burial ground, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. Gina Gray, former public affairs officer at the cemetery, had testified that mismanagement at Arlington had resulted in callous treatment of personal mementos and artifacts left on grave sites in Section 60. The sun was out after several days of rain. As I approached the gravestones, I saw that Gray was right.

Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.

Arlington's poor treatment of the mementos and gifts -- testaments to the personal cost of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East -- appeared to stand in contrast to practices at other cemeteries. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs 130 cemeteries across the country, asks people not to leave items other than flowers on the graves. But when it does find those items, it collects and holds them for 30 days in case the family wants to claim them. Across the Potomac, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial maintains a much stricter policy. It collects virtually everything, down to the last cigarette, left at "the wall." Every item is then recorded and placed in a climate-controlled warehouse, often visited by historians and researchers.

The parents I met in Section 60 were stunned to hear that grave-site artifacts often end up in the trash. Karen Meredith's son, Lt. Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq in 2004. She and her family regularly lavish Ballard's Arlington grave with flowers, potted plants, flags and other mementos. "Our goal was to have the most decorated grave," she said. She told me about her Section 60 acquaintances who leave silk roses on Valentine's Day and Peeps on Easter. On Mardi Gras, another family decorates headstones with beads. This Memorial Day, Meredith and another family whose son was killed in Iraq raised a glass of champagne to Ken. "Ken would have loved that," she said. "That is a way to celebrate his life." They left the champagne glassed behind.

I later showed Meredith a photograph of Ballard's grave after the rains, heaped with dead flowers and crumpled flags. She was distraught. "It looks like they used Ken's grave as a repository of crap," she said. "It makes me sad. People leave things that are really meaningful." Jean Feggins, whose son, Albert Markee Nelson, was killed in Iraq in 2006, had a similar response when I told her I had seen mementos from Section 60 being hosed off grave sites and piled into trash heaps. "They are throwing out people's photos and letters?" she exclaimed. "That is very insensitive. I'll bet people would not leave that stuff if they knew. They really should archive those treasures -- and that really is what they are to the families that leave them."

So why were artifacts left on the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers being treated so poorly? "The photos, letters and signs are picked up when they become weather-worn and unsightly, similar to how the flowers are picked up once they've wilted," cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst wrote me in an e-mail. "The medals, badges, religious items and other mementos are saved and kept with our historian."

I asked to meet with the cemetery historian. Two days later, Horst met me at the information kiosk underneath the arching glass-paneled ceiling of Arlington's air-conditioned visitor center. She was with the mustachioed historian, Tom Sherlock, who has been working there since the 1970s. "Maintaining Arlington is a sign of respect, maintaining these grounds pristinely so that they are not cluttered," Horst began.

Horst led us into the basement of the visitor center and into a windowless conference room. There, spread out neatly across an average-size conference table, were dozens of military awards and coins, a clutch of rosaries, a soldier's jacket, a U.S. Army Ranger flag, and two or three pieces of artwork made by children. It was everything, Horst explained, the cemetery had collected since 9/11, or in nearly eight years.

"Is this it?" I asked, thinking about the huge volume of material I had seen during my walks through Section 60. Sherlock nodded.

He said the workers who care for Section 60 turn in some of the material to him, and Sherlock collects the rest on his own. He stores it all in his office. During our discussion, the process of what to save and what to toss out seemed surprisingly ad hoc and arbitrary, based more on Sherlock's personal sentimentalities than preserving history.

"My sensitivity is to any armed forces decorations, such as the Bronze Star here," he said, gesturing to the award on the table. He said he also saves "flags, like uniform flags, or anything that is a religious icon, regardless of what it is."

Horst and Sherlock said the rest of the material gets thrown in the trash. "We don't save, like, teddy bears or those types of things," Sherlock noted. "Birthday balloons -- we don't retrieve those. Or an open can of beer. There have been lots of things like that."