Word: brachfeld
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have a problem," says Paul Brachfeld, a former Secret Service agent who's the Archive's inspector general. Just how big the problem is, however, is something nobody really knows. The National Archives has about 10 billion documents that take up 28.4 million cubic feet in three dozen facilities around the country, plus another 543,000 assorted artifacts like paintings and mementos. "We don't know what's missing here because we don't know what we have," Brachfeld told TIME. "We obviously know we have the Declaration of Independence. But there is such a volume of documents here that...
...received - both from the coalition and from other people phoning in leads - reports on a total of 610 suspicious documents for sale, which have helped investigators retrieve 19 documents that had either been stolen from the Archives or never made it to the repository in the first place. And Brachfeld revealed to TIME that his investigators are probing a separate "major case," in which "almost a hundred documents" are believed to have been stolen by a National Archives employee. Brachfeld would not discuss details of that case because "it is awaiting prosecution...
...Brachfeld says reputable document dealers have cooperated, alerting his office when sellers come to them with questionable papers. "They don't want to be party to trafficking in stolen material," he says. Often, though, it can be difficult even for seasoned dealers to determine what's been stolen. No more than 3% of the documents the federal government creates are important enough for the National Archives to retain them. And the Archives itself wasn't created until 1934. Before that, individual federal departments kept their records and many of the agencies were sloppy, letting retired officials take the important ones...
...Operation Historic Protector is a small initiative at the moment. Brachfeld has only two of his 16-member staff assigned to it, and so far the Office of Management and Budget has refused his request for funding increases to beef up the team. But he says he hopes to build up his force along with a network of outside artifacts experts around the country who will tip off his agents "every time they find something suspicious. And we swoop down...
| 1 |