12/21/05
|
North
Carolina FBI Agents with
recovered
Bill of Rights
|
This
was no Hollywood drama—it was the
real thing.
Two
years ago, our agents in Raleigh got an
unexpected tip: two Connecticut antiques
dealers were trying to sell the nonprofit
National
Constitution Center in Philadelphia
a priceless piece of U.S. history—a
supposedly original, hand-drafted Bill of
Rights commissioned by President George
Washington in 1789. Their asking price?
A cool $4 million.
The
document, the agents learned, was one of
just 14 made shortly after Congress proposed
the first ten amendments to the Constitution
(President Washington kept one copy for
the federal government and sent one to each
of the 13 states by horseback for their
review and ratification). The artifact for
sale was actually North Carolina's copy—it
had been stolen from the state capitol in
1865 by Union soldiers passing through Raleigh
in pursuit of retreating Confederate forces
and later sold to a family in Ohio.
Our
agents had to act fast
and discreetly.
The dealers had given the Constitution Center
a short deadline to accept the deal and
suggested there were interested buyers overseas.
The dealers also hinted that they might
destroy the document if law enforcement
got involved.
After
some research, our agents determined the
document was probably authentic. They quickly
secured a civil seizure warrant from a federal
judge to claim the document. But how could
we get our hands on it without jeopardizing
its safety?
Our
answer: set up a sting. An agent in
Philadelphia, an art expert, posed undercover
as a knowledgeable millionaire philanthropist
offering to buy the document on behalf of
the Constitution Center. At a meeting arranged
by the center, the agent gave a broker a
check for $4 million. The broker then called
a courier, who arrived with the Bill of
Rights in a cardboard box. Once the document
was verified as real, the agent secured
the Bill of Rights and other agents swept
into the room, served the seizure order,
and secured the treasure.
But
who actually owned it? The document
had surfaced for sale before, but North
Carolina refused to buy it, arguing it was
stolen property that rightfully belonged
to the state and was not a spoil of war.
With no legal precedent to back its claim,
North Carolina was unable to get its treasure
back. It wasn't until the 1970s that case
law first established that public ownership
of records can never be broken. This past
August, a federal judge ruled that the document
belongs to North Carolina, and it was presented
to the state in a ceremony later that month.
For
the FBI, solving any investigation is a
pleasure. But the agents who worked
the case said it was especially satisfying
to restore this historic and precious document
to its rightful owner
and along the
way, to actually hold an original copy of
the Bill of Rights in their hands. "It
was like touching history," one agent
said. And helping to make history, too.
Resources:
FBI
Art Theft website