July 5, 2009

Lock them up and throw away the key

Prison is too good for these people -- they need to be marooned somewhere in the distant arctic with a supply ship visiting them once/year to bring canned food. Bad canned food. From The Huffington Post:
National Archives Gone Missing: Lincoln Civil War Telegraphs, Photos Of The Moon, And More
National Archives visitors know they'll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building's magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won't find the patent file for the Wright Brothers' Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.

Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including:
  • Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln.
  • Original signatures of Andrew Jackson.
  • Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
  • NASA photographs from space and on the moon.
  • Presidential pardons
Some were stolen by researchers or Archives employees. Others simply disappeared without a trace.

And there's more gone from the nation's record keeper.

The Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, is conducting a criminal investigation into a missing external hard drive with copies of sensitive records from the Clinton administration. On the hard drive were Social Security numbers, including one for one of former Vice President Al Gore's daughters.

Because the equipment also may include classified information, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, calls it a a major national security breach.

Brachfeld has documented thousands of electronic storage devices, including computers and servers, that have gone missing over the past decade from the National Archives and Records Administration.

Grassley, who has demanded an accounting of all missing items, said the loss of historical documents "robs our nation of its history and is completely unacceptable."

The Archives' stewardship of the nation's records has been questioned before. In a well-publicized incident, former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, took documents from the Archives in the fall of 2003 while preparing, along with other ex-Clinton administration officials, for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission.

In September 2005, Berger was sentenced to two years of probation, 100 hours of community service, a $50,000 fine and loss of his security clearance for three years.
They have a list of other 'tards who were caught and the punishment is a fscking slap on the wrist. The worst punishment was two years in jail. There may be a low "cash value" to some of these items but they represent our nations DNA and are, in that sense, invaluable. The National Archives is holding these items in trust for the Citizens of the United States and the safeguard is their responsibility. If they are failing, they need to be audited deeply. Here is the list. Here is one of the pieces -- a one out of five Museum proof of a Frederic Remington statue cast in Silver given to Bush41. It weighs 70 pounds. This is not something you casually slip into a jacket pocket.
ghwb_remington.jpg
I realize that the National Archives take care of a huge amount of materials and that this loss represents only a fraction of a percent but still, any loss is tragic and the idea that people are specifically targeting valuable items means that there is rot in the ranks and a thorough housecleaning needs to be done... Posted by DaveH at July 5, 2009 6:20 PM
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