Collin Powell removed from Arlington cemetery
Executive summary
Claims that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth removed Gen. Colin Powell from Arlington National Cemetery’s online “Notable Graves” list are false: Arlington officials and media fact-checkers report that Powell’s page remained and that roughly 40 pages were temporarily hidden then restored amid a wider website update tied to Pentagon directives [1] [2] [3].
1. What actually happened on the Arlington website
In mid‑March 2025 internal links and subcategories on Arlington’s “Notable Graves” pages — including pages highlighting Black, Hispanic and women veterans — were temporarily delinked or led to errors, and observers documented missing biographies such as those for Colin Powell and other notable figures; Arlington’s public affairs office later said content was being restored and that no service members had been permanently removed from the Notable Graves section [4] [5] [2]. PolitiFact reviewed the situation and reported that Powell appeared on the cemetery’s online list as of March 25, 2025 and rated the claim that Hegseth removed Powell False, while noting about 40 names had been temporarily removed then restored [1].
2. Why social posts said Powell was “removed”
Social posts and some news outlets linked the delinking to a broader Department of Defense effort to purge DEI‑related content after new executive orders and Pentagon guidance, and screen captures of broken links and altered URLs circulated widely; that context — plus the visible absence of certain subcategory pages — led many to conclude high‑level political removal of specific names such as Powell [5] [6] [4]. News organizations including the BBC and local papers described that internal links to biographies were missing and that Arlington was “scrubbing” or updating educational materials, which produced the appearance of targeted deletions even as officials worked to restore pages [4] [6].
3. Who admits responsibility and what evidence exists
Arlington’s statements placed the action in the frame of compliance with Department of Defense instructions and presidential orders to update content, and they emphasized restoration and that no permanent deletions occurred; multiple outlets report the removals were tied to Pentagon’s broader website reviews rather than an explicit, lone act by Secretary Hegseth naming individuals to be erased [3] [2] [1]. Leaks and reporting by historians and outlets such as Task & Purpose and the Associated Press documented that the Pentagon flagged thousands of photos and pages for review, and local reporting named specific pages that briefly failed to load — but the sources provided do not include a public, documented directive signed by Hegseth explicitly ordering Powell’s removal [5] [6] [1].
4. How reporting diverged and why the narrative hardened
Some outlets and opinion pieces framed the episode as an ideological purge that “erased” minority veterans, amplifying screenshots and specific missing pages to argue intentional racial or gendered targeting; other outlets and fact‑checkers chose a narrower reading that emphasized temporary technical removals and subsequent restorations, producing sharply different public impressions [6] [5] [1]. The practical result was a conflation of two linked truths: the DoD ordered content reviews tied to DEI guidance, and that certain notable biographies — including Powell’s — were briefly inaccessible; whether that amounts to deliberate erasure depends on whether one reads the administration’s compliance effort as targeted censorship or routine content management under a new policy, a judgment the available reporting does not settle conclusively [3] [4].
5. Bottom line and open questions left by the reporting
The verified bottom line is that Gen. Colin Powell remains buried at Arlington and his Notable Graves entry was present on the cemetery website after restorations; claims that Pete Hegseth personally removed Powell from the site are false as stated in PolitiFact’s review and by Arlington’s public affairs responses [7] [1] [2]. The reporting does, however, document a Pentagon‑wide campaign to review and delink DEI‑related content, and it leaves unanswered exactly which internal orders or decision‑makers triggered the temporary removals — an evidentiary gap in public reporting about who within the chain of command initiated each specific delink or archive action [5] [3].