Rural residents are most fearful, but public safety agencies at every level can take a lesson from this study |
| Federal Signal has released the 2011 edition of its annual survey of public safety concerns among Americans. Despite the increased security measures implemented in the ten years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the elimination of much of the leadership of al-Qaeda, most Americans feel less safe than they did ten years ago. Young adults ages 18-24 are the most fearful for their personal safety. When asked “Ten years after the 9/11 tragedy, do you feel that public safety and emergency preparedness has improved to the point where you feel safer in your day-to-day life?” Responding in the negative were 64 percent of the group. Americans in other age groups were more evenly divided on the question, with slightly more people in the 25-34, 35-54 and 70+ groups feeling safer, and 54 percent of the 55-69 age group feeling less safe. Almost 60 percent of the people answering “no” to this question lived in suburbs or in rural communities. Slightly more than half of those in small (fewer than 100,000 people) and large cities said they did feel safer. Almost 90 percent of Americans believe there is a need for improvement in public emergency awareness or communication. People living in small cities were the most satisfied with public emergency awareness, while those in rural areas saw the most need for improvement. Given the expansion of public safety presence in nontraditional communications media such as the internet, Facebook, Twitter and text messages, it’s interesting that people still don’t believe they are getting enough information. Moreover, 34 percent said they felt that public safety was not a priority in their community. The perception that recent natural disasters have not increased attention to preparedness for these incidents is very high for young adults 18-24, with 90 percent saying that their communities were not heeding the warnings of such events. The other age groups surveyed were more at ease with emergency preparedness, with between 46 percent and 60 percent approving of their community’s efforts. As before, people living in cities felt better about preparedness than people living in rural areas. A full 77 percent of Americans believe that additional community resources or communications will have a positive impact on public safety awareness. More than four in ten Americans believe their employers are not making safety response and planning a priority. Rural respondents were least satisfied with their employers’ preparations, while those in small cities were most satisfied. Only 4.2 percent of Americans feel safest at their workplace. Young people 18-24 feel safest at work, while people 55 and older feel the least safe. Communications infrastructure is more important than ever before, as 57 percent of Americans would fall back on multiple communications methods if they were denied cell phone or landline voice calls. It’s unclear from the survey whether the respondents realized that, without cell or landline networks, most other communications channels would be cut off as well. People cited text messaging, social media and email as alternate ways of staying in touch during an emergency. What, if anything, does this survey mean for public safety agencies? First, it’s clear that emergency service organizations need to blow their own horns about their preparedness for emergencies. It may be that communities are better prepared than their citizens know, and that knowledge will not only make them feel safer, it will also make it easier for them to protect themselves and work with public safety when a disaster strikes. Police, fire, and EMS departments should improve their social media profiles. It costs nothing to post a crime alert to Facebook or tweet word of a street closure on Twitter. Use of these communications conduits improves public perception and reminds citizens that you’re protecting them, even when they don’t see it. Finally, this underscores the importance of having a contingency plan for the loss of cell and landline communications, and making that plan known to your community. If people are expecting to be able to send and receive email and text messages in an emergency, they are more likely to panic when those channels are denied to them. People need to understand the realities of weathering a disaster, so they can better prepare for it. |
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10 years after 9/11: Americans feel less safe than ten years ago
» The Pink Slip President - Big Government
In the abysmal economic climate America presently finds itself in, almost no one is immune from unemployment, because joblessness threatens everyone. While Barack Obama duffs around on the golf course, one can’t help but wonder if he fully grasps the fact that, thanks to his own incompetency, the potential to be dismissed from his highly sought-after job is more than a distinct possibility. 
If America is the employer, and if polls are the equivalent of a job evaluation, Obama is definitely on probation. In fact, Obama’s discharge papers are already filled out and tacked to the White House door. Rather than respond to the threat by working toward winning the title of “Employee of the Month,” the President is doing everything one should never do when unemployment is a looming likelihood.
Knocking around on the beach when he should have forgone the down time and chosen to stay on the job, the president doesn’t seem to be concerned that within the next year he might find himself in line with unemployed Americans who are stimulating the economy by collecting jobless benefits.
The truth is, the President interviewed and was hired to a position he had no business applying for in the first place. By electing Barack Obama as President of the United States, America might as well have asked a plumber’s apprentice to do surgery on the nation’s inner ear canal with an auger.
Nobody noticed or cared about Obama’s lack of qualifications because out of nowhere a seemingly elegant oratory genius touting “Hope and Change” showed up at the interview. Candidate Obama had all the buzzwords down pat and said all the right things the right way. The nation was so captivated, no one bothered to call his old employer, do a background check, or question his shady friends or palpable inexperience.
It’s only now that America is slowly coming to realize that Barack Obama might not have been the best choice for the job. After filling the position, one of the President’s responsibilities was to institute policies that stimulate the creation of new jobs, and he claimed to have a laser-like focus on doing just that. Yet, over the past three years, the only thing Barack Obama has successfully done is break the all time record for the number of golf games played by a sitting president.
As the economy and job market continue to deteriorate and a lock is about to be put on the door of the greatest nation in the world, Obama, while still immersed in intensive on-the-job training, has been commissioned to present and implement a plan to address unemployment and the country’s economic future.
Instead of meeting the target and throwing himself on the mercy of a nation running out of patience, the President placed America on hold and decided it was a perfect time to take a much-deserved summer break. The ultimate non-vetted employee skipped out for ten days, leaving a stunned America staring open-mouthed at an empty podium.
In a shaky job market, the last thing a person fortunate enough to have a job should do mid-discussion is push away from the conference table, point to their watch, and announce to the group, “Sorry guys, I really have to run, it’s time for my vacation.” Yet that is exactly what Barack Obama did.
With no job plan to speak of, the President chose instead to fly around on a company-funded plane, play lots of golf, munch on buttered corn and Cape Cod lobster rolls, and relax for a couple of weeks while the winds blow and the earth shakes below the nation’s feet, both literally and figuratively.
Obviously, the President is unaware or could not care less that when a person’s career is on the line, they should make an extra effort to arrive to work early, perform their job with renewed vigor and diligence, and be both accommodating and cooperative. What is perplexing is how Obama’s response to the possibility of being unemployed is the opposite of what people do when they’re worried they may be fired.
Barack Obama’s chichi vacation may have sealed the deal and his temporary employment contract is not likely to be renewed. Obama may be enjoying family time on Martha’s Vineyard right now, but when the President returns to Washington he may be astounded to find out that the mail bin that was just sitting outside the Oval Office door last week has been placed inside and awaits him filling it with the contents of his desk.
The President acts as if he’s immune to being sent packing a la Jimmy Carter and that without ramifications he can fritter away time doing the equivalent of spending the work day with his feet up on the desk, laughing hysterically while having non-work-related discussions on the company phone.
It’s either that, or Barack isn’t worried, because after he returns from vacation he may have plans to rip up the pink slip and refuse to leave the position even after his four-year contract is up.
» The Pink Slip President - Big Government
Blacks' dilemma with Obama (OneNewsNow.com)
Blacks are discovering that what a man or woman does -- their actions -- is what matters, not the color of their skin.
It seems ridiculous to point out that this was supposedly the point of the civil rights movement. Purge racism from America.
But blacks themselves have been the ones having the hardest time letting it go.
It is not hard to understand why black Americans were happy that a black man was elected president of the United States. It was kind of a final and most grand announcement that racism has finally been purged from America.
But for the highly politicized parts of black America this was certainly not the only message. Because for the highly politicized parts of black America, the point has always been to keep race in American politics.
For black political culture that dominated after the civil rights movements, the point was not just equal treatment under the law, but special treatment under the law. Plus the assumption that more black political power -- defined by more blacks holding office -- would mean that blacks would be better off.
In other words, post-civil rights movement black political culture embraced an agenda exactly the opposite of what the civil rights movement was about. Its agenda was to get laws and policies that were not neutral but racially slanted and to put individuals in power based on their race and not on their character and capability.
So, according to the script of this political culture, election of a black man as president meant more than an end to racism. The conclusion had to be that if the man holding the highest political office in the nation was black, it must follow that blacks would be better off.
Now blacks have a dilemma. We have a black president and blacks are worse off. Not just a little, but a lot worse off.
In the words of longtime Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., "Our people are hurtin'."
Blacks now grapple with two possible conclusions.
One, our black president is a traitor to his race. Our struggles put him in power and now he's not taking care of his folks. He's become, in the words of left-wing professor and activist Cornel West, a "mascot" of Wall Street.
Or, two, that the man's performance reflects his views and his capability, not his race. He's not delivering for anyone. Blacks are hurting more because they were already in worse shape when Obama got elected. Bad policies hurt the weakest the most.
And it happens that the bad policies that have always failed are the big government liberalism that has defined modern black politics.
With further thought, blacks might realize it's this same flawed idea -- that growing government and electing black politicians would make blacks better off -- that explains why blacks have remained disproportionately "hurtin".
Take the Congressional Black Caucus itself. The average poverty rate in Black Caucus districts is almost 50 percent higher than the national average. Yet, these black politicians have 100 percent re-election rates.
Maybe a real bonus that will have come from electing a black president is that blacks will take seriously Martin Luther King's dream that we judge men by their character and not their color.
The Civil Rights Movement took blacks to the edge of the Promised Land. But political activism can only remove barriers to freedom.
It's up to the individual to embrace freedom and take on the personal responsibilities that go with it.
Maybe blacks will realize that they should blame Barack Obama. Not because he is black, but because he is a liberal -- and because he has grown government to the point where the oxygen necessary for freedom and prosperity is being squeezed out of our nation.
Blacks' dilemma with Obama (OneNewsNow.com)
After long struggle, MLK has home on National Mall - Nation - TheState.com
WASHINGTON — On the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, a towering memorial will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a man of peace among the many monuments to wars and presidents in the nation's capital. The road to this weekend's dedication, however, has run through hurdles of all kinds - not unlike the long struggle over King's legacy itself.
Since King's death, there have been financial worries at the King Center in Atlanta, and legal fights over the use of his image and words and over control of the civil rights organization he co-founded.
Many people wanted to help shape King's bricks-and-mortar legacy as well, the first memorial for a black leader on the National Mall. There were skirmishes over who would sculpt King's likeness, where the granite would come from and who would profit from the mammoth $120 million fundraising effort as the family demanded a licensing fee to support its Atlanta priorities.
Sculptor Lei Yixin, of China, center, is interviewed by a Chinese television crew in front of his sculpture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the soft opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, Monday, Aug. 22, 2011. The memorial will be officially dedicated on Sunday.
- Jacquelyn Martin /AP Photo
Overall costs for the memorial rose over time, and the government demanded tougher security amid threats of domestic terrorism, dragging the project 15 years from the time Congress authorized it in 1996 and 27 years from when King's fraternity first proposed it.
Lesser hurdles have halted others who aspired to build monuments on the mall.
"We have persevered," said Harry Johnson, a 56-year-old Houston attorney and Alpha Phi Alpha member who for the past 11 years led an effort that culminates Sunday with a massive ceremony featuring President Barack Obama. "Even though we've had dark days and dark clouds, we were able to always see a silver lining in the sky, knowing, understanding and believing it was always going to happen."
One of the darkest days was 9/11, Johnson said, because the memorial foundation was set to go public with its fundraising campaign but had to put plans on hold as the country recovered. Then came the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, plus an economic downturn, all of which made raising donations even more daunting.
Race, too, was a factor in the struggle over how the memorial would be conceived.
The surprise selection of a Chinese sculptor for King's statue in 2007 eventually drew protests. A black painter launched a petition to try to force a change, saying black artists should have first rights to interpret the memory of the man who did so much for his fellow African-Americans. A bronze sculptor from Denver complained he was pushed aside. Human rights advocates chimed in, saying King would have detested China's record on civil liberties.
Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., 62, who oversaw the design process for 15 years, concedes he may have been naive to think others would easily see the power of sculptor Lei Yixin's concept and the mastery of his work.
"Politics can actually change the color of your lens ... and some of the comments were out of ignorance," Jackson said.
Still, the memorial foundation maintained King was inclusive of all people and never wavered from the selection of a Chinese sculptor. Jackson said he tried to insulate Lei, even as a federal arts panel criticized the design as too "confrontational."
Early tours of the memorial by church leaders and civil rights veterans gave Jackson a sense of affirmation he made the right choice.
King's likeness rises a full 30 feet to watch over the memorial landscape. The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner stands with his arms crossed, carved from a "stone of hope," looking toward the horizon. The central theme is King as a symbol of hope emerging from a boulder - a "mountain of despair," as King said in his 1963 "Dream" speech.
Visitors pass through a narrow opening in the "mountain" to symbolize the struggle for civil rights before entering an open plaza. They won't discover King's statue right away. Designers intend for waterfalls to draw visitors to either side of the plaza to first see curving granite walls carved with 14 quotations from King, none of which is from the "Dream" speech - organizers said they wanted to focus on some of King's powerful but lesser-known words, such as his Nobel acceptance remarks and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Originally, Jackson planned to fill the plaza with magnolia, pine and crepe myrtle trees to tie the landscape to the son of Georgia. Later, he learned Washington's famed cherry blossoms reach full bloom each April at the time when King was assassinated, so the design was changed to include 185 cherry trees.
The granite for King's statue was chosen because when lit at night, it lends a brownish tone to King's likeness. The stone, however, only exists in China, Jackson said; some wanted it to come from the United States.
King's statue stands taller than other human figures on the mall, though it does not seem overwhelming, said Thomas Luebke, an architect who serves as secretary to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an agency that approved the design. The memorial to King puts him squarely between those of Thomas Jefferson, who espoused ideals of equality but was a slave owner, and Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves in the Civil War.
"It's nicely situated between the Jefferson and the Lincoln Memorial, so it's part of that conversation," he said. "That corner of the mall has started to have a little bit of a theme about the ideas of our democracy between Jefferson, (Franklin D.) Roosevelt and now King."
Eventually, Jackson hopes to add King's voice to the visitor's experience by introducing iPads or other devices with educational features and recordings of speeches while people walk through the plaza.
"Dr. King came along right at the height of the television era," he said. "So we can take advantage of that."
Soon after King's assassination in 1968, his widow, Coretta Scott King, established the King Center in the basement of the couple's Atlanta home to preserve his legacy. Now located near King's birthplace, a national historic site, it has become one of Atlanta's most popular tourist attractions. Though Coretta Scott King did not live to see the King Memorial become a reality, her relentless efforts were the catalyst for such a project, said their daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, especially given the country's feelings about her father during his life.
"He was one of the most hated men in America. He was considered an enemy of the government," she said. "And here we are 40-something years later, and he's being honored in this way by our nation. ... So it certainly speaks to the magnitude of some of the progress that we've made in the area of race relations."
The family has guarded King's memory closely. While Coretta Scott King was an early champion of the memorial, the family's efforts to seek fees from its fundraising briefly stalled the effort in 2001.
Later, the family secured an $800,000 licensing deal for use of King's words and images in fundraising for the memorial. After The Associated Press revealed the unusual arrangement in 2009, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III said they weren't aware of the details. They said the deal was mishandled by their brother, Dexter King, but was meant to benefit the King Center, which has struggled with funding for repairs at the site where King is entombed.
At the time, Intellectual Properties Management, an entity run by King's family, told the AP that proceeds it receives would go to the King Center out of concern that fundraising for the monument in Washington would undercut the center's donations. Some donors and scholars still bristled at the deal.
King's family has sued media companies for using the "I Have a Dream" speech without permission. Lawsuits also have been filed among the siblings over control of the estate.
Infighting and leadership troubles also have hobbled the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King helped found following the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and played a major role in fighting segregation. Martin Luther King III was president from 1997 to 2004.
In 2009, Bernice King was elected president but eventually declined to take office over differences with the board. Some called for the group to disband. This month, the group named King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., as its president.
For all the troubles from concept to construction, King's contemporaries said the memorial captures his message for a new generation, and it has drawn tears for many when they saw it for the first time.
Congressman John Lewis, who met King as a teenager and is the lone surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, said the statue is the best likeness he's ever seen.
"He's not looking down, he's looking straight ahead," Lewis said. "Dr. King was an emancipator, he was a liberator. He liberated not just a people. He liberated a nation. His ideas, his message of peace and love are still liberating people. I think people will come from all over the world to be inspired to go out to act, to do something."
When the Rev. Harold Carter, pastor of Baltimore's New Shiloh Baptist Church, saw King's statue for the first time, he was awestruck.
"Oh, God. You got him," Carter said, looking up to King's face, along with more than a dozen other pastors from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia who helped raise more than $1.5 million for the project from their congregations.
"This is a king among presidents," said Joe Ratliff, pastor of Houston's Brentwood Baptist Church, who was with Carter's group. "That's what I think every time I see it."
Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who was an aide to King, has taken multiple trips to track the monument's progress.
"The first time I saw it, I broke down and cried," Young said. "It's so beautiful. It's such a fitting statement.
"You know, he was always self-conscious about being short. ... Now he's a giant of a man. Isn't that something?"
Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/08/23/1943629/after-long-struggle-mlk-has-home.html#ixzz1VrsZvPyg
After long struggle, MLK has home on National Mall - Nation - TheState.com
Getting the "F" word out of disaster - Chicago Homeland Security | Examiner.com
August 20, 2011 In September, America will mark the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Eighth Annual National Preparedness Month, an awareness campaign designed to remind all Americans to prepare for catastrophic events, whether the cause is natural or man-made.
In 2008, several states including Illinois and Wisconsin reported detailed accounts of conflicts when trying to work with FEMA. Wisconsin's Emergency Management had a number of difficulties utilizing FEMA’s Public Assistance Program for mitigation purposes. Victims affected by the floods in Chicago and other Illinois and Wisconsin towns said they felt the SBA application process was intimidating and/or misleading.
Getting the "F" word out of disaster - Chicago Homeland Security | Examiner.com
INTERESTING STATISTICS!!!
"There are actually two messages here. The 1st points out the incredible benefits of Universal Healthcare and is very interesting; the 2nd is absolutely astounding - and explains a lot.
1.A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization.
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist
who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U..S. 12%
England 02%
Canada 06%
Check this last set of statistics!!
2..The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet.
Here are the percentages.
T. Roosevelt.................
Taft......................
Wilson....................
Harding...................
Coolidge..................
Hoover ......................... 42%
F. Roosevelt.................
Truman....................
Johnson...................
Nixon.....................
Ford......................
Carter....................
Reagan....................
GH Bush......................
Clinton ......................... 39%
GW Bush......................
And the winner is:
Obama................... 08%
This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in a job not supported by tax money!
That's right! Only eight percent---the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what's best for GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, and you and me?
How can the president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he's never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And when it's the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers? They've spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." They should have been in an employment line.
Pass this on! We'll NEVER see these facts in the main stream media.
"One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." Plato
Delusion Defiance Downgrade - Moneybomb
In 2007, the federal deficit was $160 billion. Today, America is borrowing nearly that much each month.
That level of spending is worse than unsustainable - it's delusional. But rather than identifying programs that can be cut, Obama is busy creating costly new entitlements like his signature socialized medicine plan.
DEFIANT DERELICTION OF DUTY
Obama promised to "change Washington," but when presented with a rare opportunity to do just that - he chose to support the failed status quo. Even though 66 percent of Americans supported "Cut, Cap and Balance," Obama dismissed this plan as a "symbolic gesture" and pledged to veto it before he had even seen it.
Worst of all, Obama never offered his own plan - nor did he submit even a single penny of savings in exchange for the largest debt increase in American history.
That failure of leadership is inexcusable under any circumstances. It's particularly galling coming from a president who only four years earlier chided Washington for "shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren."
A DISASTROUS DOWNGRADE
Rather than accept responsibility for his failure to lead, Obama's administration lashed out at Standard and Poor's for its historic downgrade of America's credit rating. Obama also blasted the Tea Party for creating "gridlock" in Washington, while once again calling for massive tax hikes on America's job creators.
That's the last thing our struggling economy needs right now.
The results of Obama's failed economic policies are painfully clear. Unemployment remains chronically high, economic growth has ground to a halt and over the last four months alone the U.S. stock market has shed more than $3.3 trillion of its value.
That's Obama's record - even if he refuses to take responsibility for it.
Delusion Defiance Downgrade - Moneybomb
Fitzgerald: Barack Obama, The New York Times, that Iftar Dinner, and the rewriting of history - Jihad Watch
Dinner, and the rewriting of history
"The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan --- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago." -- Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the "Annual Iftar Dinner" at the White House
Really? Is that what happened? Was there a "first known iftar at the White House" given by none other than President Thomas Jefferson for the "first Muslim ambassador to the United States"? That's what Barack Obama and his dutiful speechwriters told the Muslims in attendance at the 2010 "Annual Iftar Dinner," knowing full well that the remarks would be published for all to see. Apparently Obama, and those who wrote this speech for him, and others who vetted it, find nothing wrong with attempting to convince Americans, as part of their policy of trying to win Muslim hearts and Muslim minds, that American history itself can be rewritten. A little insidious nunc pro tunc backdating, to rewrite American history. And that rewrite of American history has the goal of convincing Americans, in order to please Muslims, that the United States and Islam, that Americans and Muslims, go way back.
Read the rest of the story here. Fitzgerald: Barack Obama, The New York Times, that Iftar Dinner, and the rewriting of history - Jihad Watch
Prosecutor urges judge not to release historian - Entertainment - TheState.com
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan K. Gauvey approved the release of Barry Landau, 63, to his Manhattan apartment with GPS monitoring, but put the release on hold until another judge hears an appeal from prosecutors Friday afternoon.
Landau and his assistant, 24-year-old Jason Savedoff, are charged with stealing valuable historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society and conspiring to steal documents from other archives. The historian would use different routines to distract curators and had sports jackets and overcoats altered to allow him to stash documents inside large pockets, Assistant U.S. Attorney James G. Warwick said.
The two New York men were arrested in the historical society's library in Baltimore last month after arousing employees' suspicions, according to court documents.
Landau pleaded not guilty on Thursday. Savedoff has yet to enter a plea.
Warwick told the judge that the pair had some 80 documents. About 60 were from the Maryland Historical Society, including papers signed by President Abraham Lincoln worth $300,000 and presidential inaugural ball invitations and programs worth $500,000. The other documents were from the Connecticut Historical Society, Vassar College and the National Archives, Warwick said.
Investigators have twice searched the apartment Landau shared with Savedoff but are concerned that if Landau is released he could destroy documents elsewhere, Warwick said. Landau bragged that he had a storage space in the Washington, D.C., area where he had 30 times the number of paintings, documents and artifacts that he kept in his apartment - which Warwick described as "wall-to-wall" memorabilia.
"If we don't get to them first, they may be lost forever," Warwick said.
Landau's attorney, Andrew C. White, said that his client doesn't have any other repositories for documents and memorabilia, and if he said as much, it was only to boost his image.
A search of Landau's apartment last month turned up thousands of documents, Warwick said. National Archives workers have been cataloging the documents, and have determined so far that 200 belong to institutions, including Swarthmore College, the Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, Columbia University, the New York Public Library, Vassar College, Cambridge University, University of Vermont and the Library of Congress.
"These are priceless relics of history," Warwick said. "They're no longer available to the public. They've been converted for Mr. Landau's personal financial gain."
Warwick offered a peek into a "complex bundle of lies and deceit" he said the government has been uncovering. Investigators were told that Landau would offer to reframe paintings he admired in people's homes, and then return high-quality reproductions he commissioned and keep the originals, Warwick said.
He also said Savedoff would use identification stolen from wallets at a New York gym to distance himself from Landau when they visited archives.
During a July 12 search of the apartment, investigators could only take documents they believed were stolen, but they photographed the items they left. They were later told Landau shredded historical documents that he had more than one copy of to enhance the value of the remaining documents, Warwick said.
When investigators returned Tuesday, Warwick said the shredder had been moved and cleaned out.
Landau's attorneys informed prosecutors that an attorney would remove some paintings to sell to pay for Landau's defense, but Warwick said other items, including photos of famed pilot Charles Lindbergh, were missing when investigators returned on Tuesday. There was also fresh paint on one wall, perhaps meant to disguise the removal of other items, he said.
Warwick said the historian, even while in jail, tried to get another person to take the blame for the thefts, offering to pay for a psychiatric defense. Landau made 91 phone calls while in state custody, and while Warwick said no evidence of obstruction was found during those calls, Landau also had visitors, the prosecutor said.
The men were indicted by a federal grand jury last week, accused of stealing and selling historical documents that included a Benjamin Franklin letter and speeches by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They also face state theft charges.
The federal indictment charges the pair with stealing a Franklin letter from the New-York Historical Society in March; the letter was written to John Paul Jones in April 1780. Landau and Savedoff are also charged with stealing a set of signed inaugural addresses from the FDR presidential library in December and later selling some of them for $35,000. Some of those documents are still missing, Warwick said.
Savedoff was released last week on $250,000 cash bail and will stay at a Baltimore area apartment.
Prosecutor urges judge not to release historian - Entertainment - TheState.com
Review & Outlook: Bill Clinton Does 'Jim Crow' - WSJ.com
Review & Outlook: Bill Clinton Does 'Jim Crow' - WSJ.com
