New York Times Editorializes on National Archives Security Problem

Here is a taste of the editorial:

Last month, the National Archives banned an amateur historian who did what should have been unthinkable: He doctored the date on a valuable Lincoln document. Now the archives has found that it has a more widespread problem, with underhanded “scholars” and sneak thieves making off with American treasures to sell on the black market to history buffs.

“We have people alone with images and artifacts all the time,” Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general of the archives told The Washington Post. “The thieves all say how easy it was,” he said, describing recent efforts to better secure archives and track down missing items.

Among the items known to be missing are Lincoln telegrams from the Civil War, patents for Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the Wright brothers’ flying machine, target maps for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the “only known copy” of the Potsdam Declaration signed by President Harry Truman at the end of World War II, and more.

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