posted 10-26-2012 05:21 PM               

Bob Simon reports on this alarming trend -- and the conman now serving seven years in prison for the largest theft of historic artifacts in U.S. history -- in a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Some of the items are back where they belong, like the Hindenburg recording and the space photos. Recovering the stolen artifacts is the job of people like Mitch Yockelson of the National Archives Archival Recovery Team. "We're missing the Wright Brothers patent. That would thrill me to no end to recover the patent for the Flying Machine of 1903," Yockelson tells Simon. Nobody knows when it was stolen. "We discovered it was missing in 2003."

The armed recovery team, which chases stolen artifacts along with the FBI, was formed by the National Archives' Inspector General Paul Brachfeld. With a rise in thefts in libraries, historical societies and in the 44 separate archives throughout the country, it was time. "Every institution now that has collections is threatened. We all know that there is a major threat and it's getting larger," says Brachfeld.

posted 10-27-2012 05:33 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Larry McGlynn:
He has been sentenced to 18 months in jail.

---

posted 10-27-2012 08:20 PM               

It's really easy (or it used to be) to walk off with something from places you'd never think. I did research for a friend in DC on a non-space-related book and was handed stuff on unimagineable historic importance and could have walked off with it. I'm surprised it hasn't happened more often than it has, really.

posted 10-29-2012 01:23 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by p51:
Amen to the not long enough comment. If you steal anything like, you're stealing from ALL of us, as a culture, collectively.

---

Sadly it will go on. You only have to look around to see stuff pillaged from Iraqi museums/archives and, more recently, the Cairo museum was compromised during civil unrest. ANY form of cultural pillaging, national or international is ignorance and criminality combined.

posted 10-29-2012 01:51 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by gliderpilotuk:
Sadly it will go on.

---

Still, it was downright frightening to know at one point I was holding a very important document from FDR's administration and knowing that nothing was preventing me from just standing up and walking out with it, and that I could have used an assumed name and they'd never have found it later unless I tired to sell it or showed it to someone who'd tell the right people about it.

Does anyone recall that guy at the Smithsonian years ago who was stealing WW1 airplane parts? He'd represent the museum (he was well placed at the museum and wasn't lying about that) to vets and families and would 'accept donations' of sections of fabric from WW2 fighters, then would keep or sell them. It went on for a long time before he was caught.