Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 2. maj 2012 / Time Line May 2, 2012
Version 3.005/02/2012
Classified Records Said to be Missing from National
Archives
By Steven Aftergood,
Secrecy News, Federation of American Scientists Project on
Government Secrecy, Volume 2012, Issue No. 41.
More than a thousand boxes of classified government records are
believed to be missing from the Washington National Records Center
(WNRC) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA),
a three-year Inspector General investigation found.
But there are no indications of theft or espionage, an official
said.
An inventory of the holdings at the Records Center determined that
81 boxes containing Top Secret information or Restricted Data
(nuclear weapons information) were missing. As of March 2011, an
additional 1,540 boxes of material classified at the Secret or
Confidential level also could not be located or accounted for, the
Inspector General report on the matter said. Each box can hold
approximately 1.1 cubic feet or 2000 to 2500 sheets of paper.
The missing records "represent an ongoing failure at WNRC to
protect some of the most sensitive information produced by the
Federal Government," wrote NARA Inspector General Paul Brachfeld in
a 2009 letter to the Acting Archivist.
The IG report on the matter implied that it could constitute a
violation of the Espionage Act, citing "alleged violations" of the
espionage statues including prohibitions on "gathering,
transmitting or losing defense information" (section 793),
"disclosure of classified information" (section 798), and
"unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or
material" (section 1924).
The results of the Inspector General investigation were first
reported today in "Secret files missing at National Archives" by
Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times, May 2.
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