Memory Hole: Justice Roberts' Missing File

[Hissyspit]

From: "The Memory Hole" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: MemHole > Report: Justice Roberts' Missing File
Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 2:01 AM

The Memory Hole
http://www.thememoryhole.org/
Russ Kick, publisher and editor
09 May 2006


>>> Please forward this email to all interested parties. <<<

The following material has been added:

*** National Archives' Investigation into Missing Papers of Chief Justice John Roberts
exclusive: Previously unreleased report on criminal investigation into disappeared "Affirmative Action Correspondence" file from Roberts' tenure as associate counsel to President Reagan
http://www.thememoryhole.org/

http://www.thememoryhole.org/nara/roberts.htm

>>> On 17 August 2005, the Washington Post reported:

A file folder containing papers from Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s work on affirmative action more than 20 years ago disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after its review by two lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department in July, according to officials at the library and the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Inspector General of the National Archives launched a criminal investigation, which ended in late September 2005. The investigation was inconclusive to say the least, as the Inspector General still has no idea "whether the missing file was taken intentionally, unintentionally, or lost."

However, the report does add some new information to the mystery. For example, in contradiction to the Washington Post's article, the administration lawyers did have unsupervised access to the documents at some points:

While the researchers were reviewing the files an archivist was in the room with them except when the researchers made conference calls to the White House. During those occasions the researchers were left alone in the office with the records for periods of up to 30 minutes.
This report has not been previously released. It was supplied in paper form to Washington, DC-area researcher Michael Ravnitzky by the National Archives and Records Administration. All redaction is, of course, NARA's doing.

Be sure and click the link to go read the archival material.