Word: war
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Anyone can access most federal agency records under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act. Over the years, however, some library buffs have taken it upon themselves to liberate certain documents. After Brooklyn artist Charles Merrill Mount attempted to sell a collection of rare Civil War manuscripts including three Lincoln letters to a Boston bookstore in 1987, suspicious staffers alerted the Feds. Mount was arrested, and a search of his Washington safe-deposit box revealed some 200 Civil War-era papers, mostly pilfered from the National Archives. Before releasing him on bail, a U.S. magistrate barred Mount from the Archives...
...electronic imaging monitoring system created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-the same folks who send rockets to the moon. On view in the historic Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom, they are also rigged to plunge into an underground vault at any hint of vandalism, fire or even nuclear war. (Read "On the Trail of Pilfered History...
...that can manage nearly 400 researchers at once. An electronic archive is in the works. Among the documents open for perusal by anyone aged 14 and up are military records, naturalization records for generations of immigrants, slave ship manifests and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Japanese surrender documents from World War II-even the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, emblazoned with the signature "Bonaparte." Some of the holdings have recently been hauled out as political ammo: Hillary Clinton's First Lady schedules, for instance...
...apparently not much of a deterrent. In 2002, Archives employee Shawn Aubitz was sentenced to 21 months in prison for stealing, among other documents, 71 pardons signed by 10 presidents. Virginia antiques dealer Howard Harner got two years in 2005 for walking off with more than 100 Civil War-era documents from the Archives; fewer than half have been found. That same year, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's former National Security Adviser, was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and fined $50,000 for filching five copies of classified documents from the National Archives shortly before he was scheduled...
...following year, a 40-year-old National Archives intern stole 160 Civil War documents-including an official announcement of President Lincoln's death-and sold about half of them on eBay. Possible motivation? He told his psychiatrist he was angry the internship was unpaid...