Why are key Iraqi records at Stanford?

[Robbien]

The documents were seized shortly after the fall of Baghdad by Kanan Makiya, an Iraq-born emigre who teaches at Brandeis University and heads a private group called the Iraq Memory Foundation. Despite protests from the director of Iraq's National Library and Archives, the documents were shipped to the United States in 2006 by Makiya's foundation and in June deposited with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University under a deal struck with Makiya.

The move was criticized in both countries. The Society of American Archivists said seizing and removing the documents was "an act of pillage" prohibited under the laws of war. Iraq's acting minister of culture, Akram H. Hadi, issued a statement in late June expressing the Iraqi government's "absolute rejection" of Makiya's deal. The documents "are part of the national heritage of Iraq," the statement declared, and must be returned to Iraq promptly.

. . .

How did one man get possession of the entire Baath Party archives?

Makiya is best known not for his foundation or his 1989 book "Republic of Fear," but for his crucial role in persuading Americans - particularly leading journalists - to support a war to overthrow Saddam. "More than any single figure," Dexter Filkins wrote in the New York Times in October, Makiya "made the case for invading because it was the right thing to do." Makiya was an ally of Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, and gained fame for a face-to-face meeting with President Bush two months before the U.S.-led invasion during which he said American troops "will be greeted with sweets and flowers."

Shortly after U.S. troops took Baghdad, Makiya and some associates discovered the documents in "a labyrinthine network of basement rooms under the Baath Party's regional headquarters," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Makiya told a Chronicle reporter in January that he received permission from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq at the time, to move the documents to his parents' home in Baghdad. In 2005, Makiya's foundation reached an agreement with the U.S. military to move the documents to the United States, and they finally arrived at Stanford in mid-June.

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http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_10156510

[ikojo]

1. Condi has said she will be returning to Stanford. Perhaps they are

there so she doesn't have to move them again. Makes the process of shredding evidence much easier.