A Virginia National Guard sergeant accused of stealing World War II-era dog tags from the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland has pleaded guilty to a theft charge.
Robert Rumsby of Fredericksburg, Virginia, entered a guilty plea to one misdemeanor count of theft on Friday, according to Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Robert Hur's office. Rumsby is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 22 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas DiGirolamo at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, Murphy said.
Rumsby told investigators he took dog tags that belonged to four U.S. airmen killed in plane crashes in 1944, according to a criminal complaint.
Rumsby's wife is the great niece of one of the deceased airmen. Rumsby said he gave that airman's dog tags to his wife's grandmother as a Christmas gift and gave another airman's dog tags to a relative of that serviceman, the complaint says.
Rumsby isn't the first visitor to be accused of stealing from the National Archives facility in College Park. Antonin DeHays, a French historian and author, was sentenced in April 2018 to one year in prison after pleading guilty to stealing at least 291 dog tags and other relics, most of which he sold on eBay and elsewhere for a total of more than $43,000.
The College Park facility stores thousands of dog tags that were seized by the German Luftgaukommandos, which prepared reports on Allied aircraft crashes during World War II.
National Archives staff were investigating possible thefts of artifacts in January 2017 when they discovered that dog tags belonging to World War II aviator Theodore Ream were missing from a box Rumsby had accessed several weeks earlier, according to the criminal complaint. Rumsby's wife is the great-niece of Ream. Investigators recovered Ream's dog tag from a shadow box at the grandmother's home in Chesapeake, Maryland.
In 2015, Rumsby also accessed a box that contained dog tags for three airmen who died in a July 21, 1944, plane crash. When investigators questioned him in April, Rumsby retrieved the dog tags for two of those airmen from a shelf in his home and said he had given the third dog tag to a relative of that airman, the complaint says.
Rumsby was quoted in an April 2018 article in the New York Times about civilians volunteering to identify the remains of soldiers in U.S. military cemeteries. The article said Rumsby, a former Army lieutenant, had spent years indexing unknown graves from World War II.
Rumsby is assigned to the Virginia National Guard's 116th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. National Guard spokesman A. A. "Cotton" Puryear said Rumsby's unit leaders were tracking the criminal case.
"Once his case has been heard and a decision is reached, his unit leadership will determine the approach action to take," Puryear wrote in an email last month.
TOKYO (AP) — The American envoy to the United Nations called Friday for countries armed with atomic weapons to pursue nuclear disarmament as she visited the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, Japan.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who became the first U.S. cabinet member to visit Nagasaki, stressed the importance of dialogue and diplomacy amid a growing nuclear threat in the region.
“We must continue to work together to create an environment for nuclear disarmament. We must continue to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in every corner of the world,” she said after a tour of the atomic bomb museum.
“For those of us who already have those weapons, we must pursue arms control. We can and must work to ensure that Nagasaki is the last place to ever experience the horror of nuclear weapons,” she added, standing in front of colorful hanging origami cranes, a symbol of peace.
The United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. A second attack three days later on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more people. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II and its nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.
Nagasaki Gov. Kengo Oishi said in a statement that he believed Thomas-Greenfield's visit and her first-person experience at the museum “will be a strong message in promoting momentum of nuclear disarmament for the international society at a time the world faces a severe environment surrounding atomic weapons.”
Oishi said he conveyed to the ambassador the increasingly important role of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in emphasizing the need of nuclear disarmament.
Thomas-Greenfield's visit to Japan comes on the heels of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's official visit to the United States last week and is aimed at deepening Washington's trilateral ties with Tokyo and Seoul. During her visit to South Korea earlier this week, she held talks with South Korean officials, met with defectors from North Korea and visited the demilitarized zone.
The ambassador said the United States is looking into setting up a new mechanism for monitoring North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Russia and China have thwarted U.S.-led efforts to step up U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile testing since 2022, underscoring a deepening divide between permanent Security Council members over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
She said it would be “optimal” to launch the new system next month, though it is uncertain if that is possible.
The U.N. Security Council established a committee to monitor sanctions, and the mandate for its panel of experts to investigate violations had been renewed for 14 years until last month, when Russia vetoed another renewal.
In its most recent report, the panel of experts said it is investigating 58 suspected North Korean cyberattacks between 2017 and 2023 valued at approximately $3 billion, with the money reportedly being used to help fund its weapons development.
The United States, Japan and South Korea have been deepening security ties amid growing tension in the region from North Korea and China.
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, shake hands during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, shake hands during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, right, speaks to Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, second right, as they wait for a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, right, walk to meet Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, talk prior to a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, prepare to talk during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
