INSIDE WASHINGTON: Archives' Record-Keeping Lapse

This image provided by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) shows the first of...

This image provided by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) shows the first of the three-page patent application #821,393, dated May 21, 1903, submitted by Orville and Wilbur Wright to the U.S. Patent Office for their Flying Machine. This and many other historical items that that the Archives once possessed are missing; some were stolen by researchers or rogue Archives employees; others simply disappeared without a trace. (AP Photo/U.S National Archives Records Administration)

(AP)

National Archives visitors know they'll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building's magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won't find the patent file for the Wright Brothers' Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.

Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including:

—Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln.

—Original signatures of Andrew Jackson.

—Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

—NASA photographs from space and on the moon.

—Presidential pardons.

Some were stolen by researchers or Archives employees. Others simply disappeared without a trace.

And there's more gone from the nation's record keeper.

The Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, is conducting a criminal investigation into a missing external hard drive with copies of sensitive records from the Clinton administration. On the hard drive were Social Security numbers, including one for one of former Vice President Al Gore's daughters.

Because the equipment also may include classified information, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, calls it a a major national security breach.

Brachfeld has documented thousands of electronic storage devices, including computers and servers, that have gone missing over the past decade from the National Archives and Records Administration.

Grassley, who has demanded an accounting of all missing items, said the loss of historical documents "robs our nation of its history and is completely unacceptable."

The Archives' stewardship of the nation's records has been questioned before. In a well-publicized incident, former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, took documents from the Archives in the fall of 2003 while preparing, along with other ex-Clinton administration officials, for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission.