cartome.org

23 April 2002

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.