This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
April 18, 2006
A group of more than 214 filmmakers, historians and students have objected to the Washington, D.C.-based Smithsonian Institution's deal with Showtime Networks. In a letter sent Monday to the well-respected public institution, they asked the Smithsonian to reverse a policy included in the deal that could limit access to the Smithsonian's archives and experts.The Smithsonian announced a deal with Showtime last month requiring any commercial documentaries that rely heavily on S
Source: CNN
April 18, 2006
Germany said Tuesday it would help clear the way for opening records on 17 million Jews and other victims of the Nazis, a major step toward ending a long battle over access to a vast and detailed look into the Holocaust.German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country would work with the United States to assure the opening of the archives, which are held in the German town of Bad Arolsen, and allow historians and survivors access to some 30 million to 50 million doc
Source: KWTX Waco Texas
April 18, 2006
Police and fire sirens wailed early Tuesday morning as San Francisco commemorated the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. The sirens were turned on after a moment of silence honoring those who died in the quake. As many as six thousand people died, although most estimates place the death toll from the quake and the ensuing fires at 3,000.
Other memorials, a parade and an earthquake conference were among events scheduled during the day.
San Fra
Source: NYT
April 18, 2006
The National Archives signed a secret agreement in 2001 with the Central Intelligence Agency permitting the spy agency to withdraw from public access records it considered to have been improperly declassified, the head of the archives, Allen Weinstein, disclosed on Monday.Mr. Weinstein, who began work as archivist of the United States last year, said he learned of the agreement with the C.I.A. on Thursday and was putting a stop to such secret reclassification arrangeme
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
April 18, 2006
During his life and career as a muckraking journalist in Washington, Jack Anderson cultivated secret sources throughout the halls of government -- sources who passed on information that allowed Anderson to investigate and write about Watergate, CIA assassination schemes, and countless scandals. His syndicated column, Washington Merry-Go-Round, earned him the enmity of the corrupt and powerful -- so much so that during the Watergate years, associates of Nixon had discussed assassinating the colum
Source: BBC
April 16, 2006
In 1926, pioneering film-maker Claude Friese-Greene travelled from Land's End to John O'Groats. His unique film - one of the first in colour - reveals not only how life has changed, but what remains unaltered.
Source: Stone Pages
April 17, 2006
The economy in this small, nondescript pocket of rural Bengal is booming. And not due to a miraculous leap in agricultural yield but the highly lucrative business of smuggling priceless antiques, including ivory and gold objects, and exquisite terracotta art, out of the country. Located 40 kilometres northwest of Calcutta (India), Chandraketugarh is a treasure trove of antiques, some dating back to 650 BCE. These are being dug up by locals who form the first link in international gangs of smuggl
Source: Arizona Republic
April 18, 2006
A 10-person team of archaeologists on Monday carefully unearthed part of a Hohokam village found by workers during light-rail construction in Tempe.
The scientists found an undisclosed number of human remains and the plaster floors of five dwellings. They also found signs of prehistoric domestic life: part of a woven mat, pottery shards, stone tools, beads and shell ornaments that were used for jewelry.
Source: ABC News
April 18, 2006
Prosecutors are investigating whether nearly 300 antiquities seized from a villa on a remote island last week are connected to an ongoing dispute between the Greek government and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the culture minister said Tuesday.
Last week's discovery was one of the biggest illegal antiquities cases in recent years, and police suspect international smuggling rings were involved, Giorgos Voulgarakis said. However, he said there was n
Source: Wa Po
April 18, 2006
Washington writers Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin have won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" on a day when historical topics dominated the Pulitzer awards for letters.
Geraldine Brooks won the fiction prize for her historical novel "March," which is set during the Civil War. Harvard historian Caroline Elkins won the general nonfiction award for "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of
Source: Wa Po
April 18, 2006
BAD AROLSEN, Germany -- Boxed away in a former Nazi SS barracks in this central German town is the core of one of the largest collections of historical documents from World War II. All told, the archive contains 50 million records that list the names of 17.5 million people, including concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers and other victims of the Third Reich.
For 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross has used the documents to trace the missing and the dead, e
Source: The Washington Post
April 18, 2006
Boxed away in a former Nazi SS barracks in this central German town is the core of one of the largest collections of historical documents from World War II. All told, the archive contains 50 million records that list the names of 17.5 million people, including concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers and other victims of the Third Reich.
For 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross has used the documents to trace the missing and the dead, especially those of the H
Source: NYT
April 18, 2006
As the recent coupling between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks continues to roil the documentary film world, more than 215 filmmakers, television executives and academics have signed a letter demanding that the Smithsonian, a publicly financed museum, not only reveal financial details of the joint venture but also abandon it.
The signers of the letter, delivered yesterday to a Smithsonian official, include the filmmakers Michael Moore (''Fahrenheit 9/11''), R. J. C
Source: The Boston Globe
April 18, 2006
Andrew Goldberg realized how powerful a word could be particularly a powerful word like "genocide" when he got a call, several years ago, from a PBS station in Fresno, Calif. A studio full of Armenians, answering phones for a pledge drive, had been watching his 2001 film "The Armenians: A Story of Survival." When a Turkish scholar acknowledged that his country's massacre of Armenians was genocide, the room burst into applause.
For decades, the Turkish government
Source: NYT
April 18, 2006
BABYLON, Iraq — In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what's just ruined.
Crumbling brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sand castles at the beach.
Famous sites, like the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, are swallowed up by river reeds.Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roug
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
April 17, 2006
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) today released a second newly declassified Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the withdrawal of government records from its public collections.
National Archivist Allen Weinstein said that he discovered the existence of the second MOU, which was signed by the Central Intelligence Agency and NARA in October 2001, only last Thursday and that he immediately sought its declassification. Another MOU on document withdrawal, signed
Source: dailypress.com
April 16, 2006
Jamestown Rediscovery curator Bly Straube sits wearily at her desk, surveying the stacks of reference books that have grown up over the past few weeks to surround her.
At least half a dozen jumbled piles encircle the small cleared space where she writes, with some reaching 10 or 12 volumes high. Scattered in between and around the floor of her U-shaped workstation is an even greater number of folders, articles and reports, all of them focused on such things as the rings, buttons, bu
Source: Washington Times
April 17, 2006
Cana, the village in Galilee where the Bible says Jesus changed water into wine, has been excavated by archaeologists in a crash effort to uncover its ruins before they are pulverized by local building contractors.
The site is situated at Karm-a-Ras, a picturesque slope dotted by olive trees planted in the 14th and 15th centuries. It overlooks a lush agricultural expanse, part of which may eventually become an archaeological park.
Source: WaPo
April 17, 2006
The proud new owner of the Confederate belt plate embossed with an eagle held out his treasure on his dirt-caked palm. It was the prize find of a three-day relic hunt called Diggin' in Virginia, one of a new breed of organized digs in the history-rich state. More than 200 relic hunters in camouflage hauled metal detectors up and down the hills of a Culpeper County farm one weekend this spring. They'd paid a couple of hundred bucks each -- and cleaned up."You pull a Mini
Source: The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
April 17, 2006
Who's buried in John Paul Jones' crypt at the Naval Academy? Some say the grand state funeral at the Naval Academy on April 24, 1906, for the father of the United States Navy may have been held over the wrong body.Some say the grand state funeral at the Naval Academy on April 24, 1906, for the father of the United States Navy may have been held over the wrong body.
According to Washington College history professor Adam Goodheart, who wrote about Jones in the Apr
