Some Troops in Wrong Graves at Arlington?

To be buried in Arlington National Cemetery is one of the highest honors reserved for America's fallen troops.

But, reports CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, one former Arlington employee is charging that authorities there are having trouble tracking some of the graves.

There are 330,000 troops buried at Arlington, Dozier notes, and for their loved ones, the cemetery is the last link to the husbands, wives, mothers or fathers they will never see again.

Yet, Dozier said, some families who come to the cemetery may be paying their respects at the wrong grave site.

Gina Gray, the ex-Arlington worker, told CBS News "Where people are buried is not matching the head stones, because they're using a paper record-keeping system, despite the fact that they've spent millions of dollars trying to automate the system."

Arlington's leadership has been promising Congress to fix it since 2000, according to Gray.

She says she reported the continuing problems with record-keeping to the cemetery's then-commander, Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, last year.

"Two days later," she said, "I was fired. And nothing happened."

Gray is now suing the Army.

Arlington authorities admitted in a report to Congress last year that, "There are numerous examples of discrepancies that exist between burial maps, the physical location of headstones, and the burial records/grave cards." But they say they're "on target to implementing" a new, computerized system to address the problem.

Mismatched headstones aren't the only worry for the families whose loved ones are buried at Arlington, says Salon.com investigative reporter Mark Benjamin.

He's been photographing the graves at Section 60 -- where troops from Afghanistan and Iraq are buried -- since Memorial Day.

"I've watched as the elements have washed ... artifacts off the graves," Benjamin said, adding that personal mementos placed on graves are left in the rain for days, ruined by workers with power washers, or thrown into trash bins.

Technically, visitors aren't supposed to leave these photographs, letters, or flags at Arlington. But other war memorials have found a way to make allowances.

Mementos at the Vietnam War Memorial are carefully catalogued and saved, Dozier said, as a mark of respect to both the living and the dead. But it's not that way, she said, at Arlington.

Benjamin said, "Everything is left to rot out in the elements and then scooped up by workers and, except for a few exceptions, it's all thrown in a black dumpster."

Amy Neiberger-Miller's brother, Christopher, is buried in Section 60. She told Dozier this isn't how she thought her brother would be taken care of.

"It's concerning and even alarming to hear these kinds of things are going on," she said. "At the same time, our family is still tied to Arlington in a very deep and personal and almost spiritual way, because my brother is buried there."

Arlington Cemetery cancelled an on-camera interview with CBS News because, it said, of Gray's pending legal allegations.

But spokesperson Kailtin Horst told CBS News, "The difference (between) a memorial and a cemetery is the fact that we're hosting 27-30 funerals a day, we're so active and engaged in maintaining the cemetery, with maintenance, mowing and hedging around each stone."

Cleaners, she said, "are told to clean the headstones and remove everything from around them. Someone goes through the graves to remove certain items like religious items, military décor, before they do the actual cleaning. The rest of the stuff is supposed to thrown away, such as things that becomes unsightly, greetings cards that have been weathered and you can't read them, photographs where images are no longer recognizable, flowers that have died off etc."