me the letter. it was dated i believe the year 2008 when they were responding in 2011. and they didn t even have scott s name correct. they called him robert which was his father s name. and that propelled you into action? that got you mad enough to take action? yeah. that s when i began reaching out to, at the time, congressman rush holt. we decided the best course of action was for his office to question d.o.d. legislative affairs while i continued to ask the questions at dover air force base mortuary, and not surprising to either of us at the time, he received much different answers than i was receiving from dover mortuary, and then eventually, we kind of were at a standstill where they were not going to give up any more information. at that point we decided to bring it out into the public. and that is sort of where the story about scott kind of finishes and where my story kind
Volunteers with the organization, Comstock Lode Quilters for Quilts of Valor, along with members of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Sierra Nevada Chapter #989, presented 96 hand-made quilts to honor
as we re just half hour now before midnight in kabul which we expect that final deadline for the u.s. withdraw from afghanistan. although she would not confirm that s the deadline. there s sensitivity at this critical juncture to speak with specifics about the details. notably, the white house press secretary saying the president will follow up with the country, will speak directly to americans about this moment in the coming days. did not specify when. i was struck though as we heard through the course of the briefing a number of questions about the president s meeting yesterday when he went to dover air base for that dignified transfer, a moment where we saw transfer cases of the 13 lost in that suicide bombing last week brought back to the u.s. and transferred to the dover
places, a mortuary. where the men and women who return if war are laid to rest. two of the seven killed in a helicopter crash in iraq. the report he spent months in that secret dover mortuary where cameras are not allowed and he conducted access for his new book. he sat down with us to explain this most private and sacred of moments. it takes a very particular person to work at dover. the thing that they explained to me is families don t even realize, and they don t believe it until they see their son or daughter. so mortician there s spend 14 hours rewiring someone s jaw, and then smoothing it over with clay because they want to let a family see their son or daughter one last time. there is a newsroom dover where
troops? reporter: well, jenna this is the type of story that should rock this building and should cause heads to roll at the air force. i remember when secretary gates found out three years ago that the dover mortuary was taking the cremated remains of servicemembers and cremating them in a pet cemetery mortuary. that it appears was just the tip of the iceberg. what has been revealed in an investigation by the washington post is that the air force, which runs dover mortuary, was essentially taking the remains of 274 military personnel as you mentioned. the parts of those, those who had been killed between 2004 and 2008. there were more than 1700 fragments that were cremated and sent to this king george landfill in virginia, essentially a trash dump. the revelations came about after a four-year investigation by the widow of sergeant scott smith. he was in a bomb disposal unit. had been killed in july 2006