Draft records recovered
A worker accused of tossing them is fired.
ST. LOUIS - An employee of a genealogy website who was working at the federal records center in St. Louis County was fired for allegedly throwing out draft-card information, a federal administrator said.
Bryan McGraw, director of the National Personnel Records Center, said his staff recovered all the papers, some of them from a trash can. The March 12 incident prompted the federal agency to halt contract work by Ancestry Inc., at five sites.
McGraw said the man was part of a 13-person Ancestry team that, since August, has been scanning the center's collection of about 49 million draft cards from the World War II era. The company offers the information free through its website.
Ancestry has worked with the National Archives and Records Administration since 2008.
McGraw said the employee apparently had been warned about productivity by his supervisor and tried to dispose of a pending stack of supplemental papers that had been attached to individual draft cards. McGraw said another person found some of the records on the employee's desk and others stuffed into a latex glove in a trash can. Some archives workers use gloves while handling documents.
The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington is allowing Ancestry to resume work at two sites, but not yet at St. Louis. McGraw said the U.S. Justice Department was looking into the case of the fired employee.