Librarians and archivists demand US return of stolen Iraqi documents

Some 43,000 to 55,000 boxes, amounting to over 100 million pages, were seized from Baghdad by British and American forces in April 2003. These included, according to the Associated Press, “memos, training guides, reports, transcripts of conversations, audiotapes and videotapes.” At the urging of Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte posted a few hundred on a military web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” in March 2006.

The documents were removed from the Internet in November 2006 after the New York Times informed the government that it was publishing an article that alleged that the documents contained sensitive information on Iraq’s pre-1991 nuclear program, sparking a momentary crisis for the Bush Administration.

At the time, little of the controversy around these documents centered on the illegality of the United States holding, accessing, and publicizing material that was the property of the Iraqi people.