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Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 20:33:13 -0400
From: Deborah Natsios <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Gov't. Sues to Halt Kennedy Map Sale
Sender: Deborah Natsios <[log in to unmask]>



Deborah Natsios <[log in to unmask]
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http://nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Kennedys-Cuba-Map.html

April 22, 2002

Gov't. Sues to Halt Kennedy Map Sale
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:51 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The federal government sued Monday to stop a Web site
operator from selling a Cuban missile crisis map used by President Kennedy
and civil rights documents that may have been improperly removed by
Kennedy's personal secretary.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Ward temporarily blocked the sale until a
hearing scheduled for next week.

Gary J. Zimet, operator of the site, has advertised being the exclusive
seller of a map and its original envelope identified as, ``Cuban Missile
Crisis Map With JFK's Handwritten Annotations Indicating Locations of
Russian Missile Sites October 16, 1962.''

A message left for Zimet was not immediately returned Monday.

In its arguments, the government said Evelyn Lincoln -- the personal
secretary who worked for the White House on Kennedy's papers until July 1964
-- also compiled annotated and handwritten notes for the President Kennedy
Library Corp. until at least 1972.

The map and civil rights documents were donated to the United States in
February 1965 for deposit in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the
government said.

``It appears that Evelyn Lincoln improperly removed the map from the custody
and control of the United States'' and later gave, sold or bequeathed it to
Robert L. White, a private collector of Kennedy memorabilia, the lawsuit
states. It did not suggest that Lincoln, who died in 1995, had done anything
criminally wrong.

``Whatever path the map may have traveled, it nevertheless falls squarely
within the deed of gift and rightfully belongs to the United States,'' the
government wrote.

In February, Moments In Time Inc. began advertising the map, prepared by the
CIA, as having been given to White by Lincoln. Zimet is asking $750,000 for
the document.

Zimet posted on his Web site a copy of a letter signed by White that reads:
``This was saved, in its original envelope, by the personal secretary to the
president and my close friend Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln. I acquired it from her in
1995.''

The government lawsuit also demands the return nine of documents, six with
holograph notes by Kennedy, all related to the 1962 enrollment of James
Meredith at the University of Mississippi. He was the first black student
admitted into the school, sparking rioting in which two people were killed.
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