From time to time while working in the records, NARA staff find documents that provide new perspectives on events through which they lived.  I recently had that experience. I remember well the terrible humanitarian disaster that befell local populations as Yugoslavia ripped itself apart during the 1990s.  I remember, too, how many commentators expressed surprise [...]

Today’s post is by National Archives Volunteer Bill Nigh. This is the sequel to his earlier post. _____   In my first post, I briefly described the volunteer project based on the records of the U.S. Secret Service  (Record Group 87).  I stated that this organization began its presidential security mission following a presidential assassination, but its [...]

Today’s post (part one in a two-part series) is by National Archives Volunteer Bill Nigh. When I was assigned my first volunteer project, one associated with the U.S. Secret Service (Record Group 87), I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Like many my age, I picture the Secret Service agent climbing on the rear deck of [...]

Jazz great Dave Brubeck died on December 5, one day short of his 92nd birthday.  Since then, there have been many retrospectives – in print, on television, on radio, and on line.  Almost all of those remembrances mention the goodwill tour of Poland and the Far East that Brubeck and his quartet made in 1958 [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. I would wager that few NARA staff members, especially those hired during the past five years, and most researchers are familiar with the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) nor its website: www.archives.gov/iwg. The website contains a wealth of valuable information not [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. Seventy-years ago, on November 9, 1942, forty-nine year old Allen W. Dulles arrived in Bern, Switzerland to head up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operations in Switzerland.  Dulles was lucky to be in Switzerland.  His train passed from Vichy France into Switzerland only minutes before the Germans [...]

The past Saturday, I was visiting the Florida Keys and took a bike tour of parts of Islamorada, a village which spans several islands. The meeting place for the tour was a memorial to the victims of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane located near mile marker 82 of U.S. Route 1. Our guide was very knowledgeable [...]

70 years ago today, Japanese Americans at the Tule Lake Relocation Center celebrated a harvest festival by wearing costumes. At the Tule Lake Relocation Center, later the Tule Lake Segregation Center, over 24,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned because of suspected disloyalty to the U.S. government under Executive Order 9066.  Starting in 1943, Tule Lake became a [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. The National Archives holds a substantial quantity Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records. And in the forthcoming years even more records will be accessioned.  The FBI case files contain  a variety of documentation, including FBI agent reports; teletype-messages; prosecutive summaries; accounts of interviews and physical surveillance; letters; memorandums; [...]

Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher. Nancy Yeide, head of the Department of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C., in December 1997, began doing provenance research on the NGA’s holdings to ascertain whether any of the works of art had provenance problems.  In the wake of the revelations [...]