National Archives and Records Administration

• 1. The Fire at Suitland

  ›

  The National Archives and Records Administration did not save the newsreels. On the 7th of December 1978, more than 12.6 million feet of film burned in a storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. The reels had been donated by Universal Pictures and were stored in vaults specifically designed to resist fire. The film was nitrate stock, among the most combustible materials ever used in cinema. Not much survived. NARA exists to prevent exactly that kind of loss. Since its founding, the agency has confronted theft by insiders and outsiders alike. It has faced political pressure to restrict what the public can see. It has grappled with the question of what records survive when those in power would rather they disappeared.

  2324

• 2. The Long Campaign

  ›

  J. Franklin Jameson spent years urging Congress to create a central repository for federal records. He worked alongside the American Historical Association, arguing that the existing system was causing irreparable damage. Before 1934, every branch and agency of the federal government maintained its own documents. Records were lost, damaged, and destroyed with no centralized accountability.

  Congress created the National Archives Establishment in 1934 to address this problem. R. D. W. Connor was chosen as the first archivist of the United States. The agency initially operated independently. After a recommendation by the first Hoover Commission in 1949, however, it was absorbed into the newly formed General Services Administration. Full independence came with the Records Administration Act of 1984. By 1985, the agency had taken its current form as NARA.

  Among the archivist's less obvious responsibilities is the authority to certify constitutional change. When enough state legislatures ratify a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, the archivist has the power to declare the threshold met. That declaration makes the amendment official. The archivist also maintains the official record of each state's ratification vote.

  NARA's grant-making arm, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, has awarded roughly 4,500 grants since 1964. Recipients have included state and local governments, universities, public archives, and nonprofit organizations. The Office of the Federal Register is another branch of the agency. It publishes the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the United States Statutes at Large. Through these publications, NARA serves as the official channel through which federal law and regulation reach the public.

  192018229

• 3. Vaults and Exhibits

  ›

  The National Archives Building stands north of the National Mall on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. The neoclassical structure, known informally as Archives I, houses the agency's most famous holdings. Inside the public museum, visitors can examine the Charters of Freedom. These include the original Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. Beginning in 2026, the Emancipation Proclamation joined that permanent display.

  A sister facility opened in 1994 near the University of Maryland, College Park. Known as the National Archives at College Park, or Archives II, it handles a large share of NARA's research holdings. The Washington National Records Center is also located in the Washington metropolitan area. It functions as a warehouse for records still under the control of the agencies that created them. Agencies pay a yearly fee for storage there. Once a record's retention period ends, it either transfers to NARA's permanent legal custody or is destroyed.

  Across the country, NARA administers fifteen presidential libraries and museums and maintains fifteen research facilities. The agency's online catalog contains over 160 million records, spanning the period before the republic's founding through the present day. Those digitized records represent only a fraction of the total collection. The full holdings encompass over 13 billion pages. Of everything the federal government creates, only two to three percent is ever judged to have sufficient historical or legal value. That small share is preserved permanently; the rest is eventually destroyed. NARA also transmits Electoral College votes to Congress and examines certificates of ascertainment for proper legal form and signature.

  In April 2019, an unknown person set fire to an exterior wall of the National Archives Building using a homemade incendiary device. Firefighters extinguished the flames before the structure or its contents were damaged.

  In 2023, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, signed into law by President Joe Biden. It included provisions of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, giving NARA sixty days to begin establishing a new collection. That collection would consist of records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence. It was a category of records that had never previously had a permanent home in the federal archive.

  131541167

• 4. Opening the Vaults

  ›

  Census records are among the most frequently requested materials at NARA, with the oldest entries dating to 1790. Those records often contain names, addresses, and the names of family members. Federal law restricts access to all personal data for seventy-two years after collection. Prior to that point, agencies may access only aggregate statistical data. The newest unrestricted census became available in April 2022, covering the year 1950. The 1960 census is scheduled for public release in April 2032.

  Since 2005, NARA has held annual genealogy fairs featuring guest speakers and research workshops. These events are free of charge and open to participants at any skill level. Partnerships with Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and Familysearch.org have expanded the number of digitized genealogical sources available online, including ship passenger lists and military records. NARA's stated goal is to eventually offer free access to all digitized sources through the National Archives Catalog. Naturalization records and vital records containing extensive personal data remain restricted. Individuals seeking those files may apply under the Freedom of Information Act, depending on their verifiable relationship to the subject.

  In 2010, NARA and the University of Virginia Press entered a cooperative agreement to create Founders Online. The site would serve as a free public database of papers and letters from seven of the nation's early leaders. Those leaders were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. The site launched in 2013 with 185,000 digitized and annotated documents. University presses at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale contributed to the project alongside Virginia. Together they drew on fifty years of scholarly annotation work in founding-era papers.

  A partnership with Google, announced in 2006, aimed to digitize and make NARA's video holdings available online for the first time. On the 10th of January 2007, the agency and Fold3.com launched a digitization project together. It was designed to provide access to approximately 4.5 million pages of documents previously available only on paper or microfilm. In July 2007, NARA announced a deal to offer its Universal Newsreels collection for purchase online. The collection spans 1929-1967 and was made available through CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon. On the 18th of June 2009, the agency launched a YouTube channel to showcase archived films and promote events. That same year, a Flickr photostream made portions of the photographic holdings available to the general public.

  In 2011, archivist David Ferriero launched the Citizen Archivist Project, an online crowdsourcing initiative. Volunteers transcribe and tag digitized records in the NARA catalog, increasing the descriptive data available for researchers. Thousands of participants have contributed since the project's launch, working through curated sets of documents called Missions.

  The drive toward open access has not, however, been uncontested. A program of quiet document withdrawal, revealed in 2006, showed how sharply the push for openness can conflict with institutional secrecy.

  5458727080

• 5. Restricting the Record

  ›

  In March 2006, the archivist of the United States disclosed a memorandum of understanding at a public hearing. It had been negotiated between NARA and various government agencies. That agreement authorized the quiet reclassification and withdrawal of certain documents from public access in the name of national security. Its terms were designed so that researchers would not notice the withdrawals. An audit found that more than one third of documents removed from public access since 1999 did not contain sensitive information. The program was originally scheduled to end in 2007.

  Executive Order 13526, issued in 2010, created the National Declassification Center. Its mandate was to coordinate declassification practices across federal agencies and to review records in NARA custody. Despite that effort, a 2022 report by the National Security Archive found that NARA's budget, adjusted for inflation, had not increased since 1991. That stagnation had occurred despite an exponential growth in the volume of electronic records created by the federal government.

  In December 2019, NARA approved record schedules for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These schedules permitted the agency to destroy certain documents once they were no longer needed for business purposes. The materials included files on detainee sexual abuse and assault, death review records, detention monitoring reports, detainee escape reports, and segregation files. Several organizations filed suit. These included Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the American Historical Association, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In March 2021, a federal judge for the District of Columbia ruled against NARA. The court found that the agency had failed to evaluate the research value of the records and had not addressed significant public comments.

  In January 2020, a Washington Post reporter noticed an image of the 2017 Women's March in the archives' public exhibit. The image had been digitally altered. Protest signs had been blurred. The agency initially defended the edits as an effort to avoid political controversy, then acknowledged it had been wrong to make them.

  NARA's Office of Government Information Services was charged by Congress with reviewing Freedom of Information Act policies across the federal government. It also works to resolve FOIA disputes between federal agencies and requesters. Its existence reflects a recognition that access to federal records often requires an independent mediator.

  The archive's confrontation with political power, however, would grow more direct. The next challenge came not from institutional policy but from the behavior of a sitting president.

  2526308682

• 6. Presidential Records

  ›

  After the 2020 presidential election, NARA intercepted forged certificates of ascertainment submitted by Trump allies in seven states. Those individuals were attempting to overturn the election result. The agency rejected each one.

  During Donald Trump's first administration, the challenge of preserving official records became unusually personal. The president repeatedly tore up, flushed, and otherwise discarded official documents. White House and NARA archivists worked to reconstruct and reclaim the destroyed materials. Multiple former staff members reported that Trump asked to retain certain records. Those records were legally required to be transferred to the archives at the end of his term.

  After leaving office in January 2021, Trump delayed transferring his records to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act. In February 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the National Archives had found classified documents in materials from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. Those materials had arrived at NARA in boxes. Following further investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.

  Trump's second administration brought immediate changes to NARA itself. In February 2025, Trump fired archivist Colleen Shogan. Deputy archivist William J. Bosanko became acting archivist but soon announced plans to resign, along with several other staff members. On the 16th of February 2025, Trump announced that Jim Byron would serve as senior advisor to the acting archivist, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Byron sent an email to NARA staff stating that the agency was "strategically examining its operations agency-wide." He wrote that the goal was to ensure NARA made the best use of taxpayer funds and aligned with its mission and congressional statutes. The reorganization reportedly included approximately one hundred layoffs. On the 26th of March 2026, Byron announced his last day would be the 3rd of April 2026. The White House confirmed Edward Forst as acting archivist on that date.

  A different category of threat to the historical record has run parallel to these political conflicts. Throughout the archive's history, people with authorized access to its collections have occasionally removed original documents and kept or sold them.

  3631384244

• 7. Theft from the Stacks

  ›

  In 1987, Charles Merrill Mount was arrested for stealing four hundred documents from the National Archives. Among the stolen items were three letters signed by Abraham Lincoln. Mount kept additional documents in a private safety deposit box. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

  Leslie Waffen had spent forty years working in the National Archives sound and video branch. In 2011, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and two years of supervised release for stealing nine hundred and fifty-five recordings. Among the stolen materials were the original recordings of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and the 1948 World Series. He had placed the items for sale on eBay, which led to his identification.

  Also in 2011, Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff were arrested for stealing ten thousand documents from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. The collection included reading copies of speeches Roosevelt had delivered, his personal edits, handwritten additions, and his signature. Jason Savedoff was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison. Barry Landau received a seven-year sentence.

  A third case from 2011 involved a different kind of fraud. Thomas Lowry confessed to altering the date on a presidential pardon signed by Abraham Lincoln, changing the year from 1864 to 1865. By altering that single digit, Lowry hoped to make the document appear to be Lincoln's last official act before the assassination. He was permanently banned from the National Archives. The statute of limitations protected him from criminal prosecution.

  Shawn Aubitz, a curator at the National Archives, pleaded guilty in 2002 to stealing dozens of documents and photographs during the 1990s. He had taken presidential pardons and posted them for sale on eBay. Aubitz was sentenced to twenty-one months in federal prison and ordered to pay seventy-three thousand dollars in restitution.

  Sandy Berger was charged in 2005 with unauthorized removal of documents from the National Archives. Berger had served as national security advisor to President Bill Clinton. The documents he removed covered the Clinton administration's handling of the 2000 millennium plots. He was sentenced to one hundred hours of community service and fined fifty thousand dollars, and he lost his security clearance.

  Howard Harner was also sentenced in 2005, receiving two years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine for stealing one hundred documents. Harner's collection included materials signed by Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, and George Custer. He admitted to cutting the signatures off the documents to sell them individually.

  In 2006, Denning McTague, an unpaid intern at the National Archives, was sentenced to fifteen months in prison and fined three thousand dollars. McTague had stolen one hundred and sixty-four documents, including the Frankford Arsenal records, and was caught after listing them for sale on eBay.

  The Archival Recovery Team was established in 2006 by NARA's Office of the Inspector General to investigate document thefts and recover stolen records. Since its creation, responsibility for non-law-enforcement recovery activities has shifted to the NARA Office of the Chief Operating Officer. That change marks the pursuit of stolen materials as a permanent function of the agency rather than an emergency response.

  9193959464