The Archival Recovery Team of the

National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...

(NARA) investigates documents and other items that have been lost or stolen from NARA, utilizing news,

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition e ...

houses and websites, collector shows, and tips. Operating as part of NARA's

Office of the Inspector General In the United States, Office of Inspector General (OIG) is a generic term for the oversight division of a federal or state agency aimed at preventing inefficient or unlawful operations within their parent agency. Such offices are attached to ma ...

, they have had some notable successes in recovering items like presidential pardons from

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union A ...

and

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

and a

Frederic Remington Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United Sta ...

bronco statue given to George H. W. Bush.Craig Smith,
Special agents hunt down America's national treasures
," ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'', 3 July 2011. The Archival Recovery Team was created in 2006 by the Office of the Inspector General after thefts by NARA employees and researchers occurred. In August 2015, responsibility for non-law enforcement recovery activities was transferred from the Office of the Inspector General to the NARA Office of the Chief Operating Officer. There is considerable challenge in monitoring the National Archives, which contain more than ten billion letters, maps, reports, videos, and audio recordings, hundreds of thousands of artifacts, and 6.7 billion electronic files. A comprehensive item-by-item inventory has never been performed because of this size, so even recognizing that items are missing is difficult. , the team has recovered over 7,000 items.

Notable recoveries

* In October 2011, the residence of Leslie Waffen, the department chief of audio and film, was raided and two trucks of material were recovered. * In March 2016, the patent application for the Wright brothers "Flying Machine" was recovered after being missing since approximately 1980. * In April 2018, historian Antonin DeHays sentenced to 364 days in prison for the theft of government records and ordered to pay more than $43,000 in restitution to the unwitting buyers who purchased the stolen goods from him.

References

External links

Office of the Inspector General
{{authority control National Archives and Records Administration