By Richard Sisk
The War Report

Dover Air Force Base mortuary officials sawed off the arm of a slain Marine without the permission of the family to allow an open casket funeral that the family didn’t want.

The stunned family of Sgt. Daniel Angus, speaking out for the first time through their lawyer on the mortuary scandal, said the casket at their son’s funeral remained closed as they had wanted, and the Air Force never told them that the arm had been severed.

Mark O’Brien, the lawyer for Kathy and William Angus of Thonotosassa, Fla, told the Washington Post that “To find out nearly two years later that there were after-the-fact excuses made to at best justify, or at worst cover up, a terrible decision to cut off their son’s arm without their permission is a slap in the face to them and to all other fallen Marines.”

In 2009, Sgt. Angus was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan and his remains were brought to Dover, the entry point for troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heat from the blast fused his left arm to his torso, and the mortuary officials sawed it off to make the body fit in the casket for a viewing.

But the parents said they had told the Air Force that it would be a closed casket funeral. “Mr. and Mrs. Angus feel that everyone involved in the decision to dismember their son without permission, or involved in the aftermath of covering it up, should be immediately terminated from their positions and investigated for criminal wrongdoing,” O’Brien said.

Lt. Gen. Darrell D. Jones, deputy chief of staff of the Air Force, told the Post: “We had reason to believe we were acting in the manner they (the parents) requested and are truly saddened to learn this may not have been the case.”

The gruesome mistakes in the handling of Sgt. Angus’ remains were the latest disclosures in the growing scandal over missing body parts and “gross mismanagement” at Dover that have been the subject of investigations by the Air Force and the Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency that hears whistleblower complaints.

Three mortuary officials – two civilians and a military officer – have been disciplined but not fired. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has demanded “full accountability” for what went wrong at Dover, and has ordered a separate review by an independent panel of the abuses.

But that review suffered a setback over the weekend when Dr. Richard Carmona, the head of the panel and the former surgeon general of the U.S., quit  to run for senator from Arizona. A Pentagon spokesman said that Panetta “will name a replacement very soon. The Secretary believes that the panel’s independent review will strengthen our nation’s commitment to the treatment of America’s fallen heroes and to their families. That’s a sacred obligation.”

(Photo: Air Force team transfers remains at Dover Air Force Base earlier this year. Air Force photo by Roland Balik.)