![]() But Buttery doesn’t share his buddy’s suspicions. Elmore later started a small business, since closed, helping veterans obtain their records. Louis that helped thousands of former service members find jobs and obtain benefits. Hunt’s Army record was “impacted by the fire”and partially reconstructed,” Levins says.įollowing the fire, Buttery and Elmore helped launch a non-profit veterans service center in St. Levins says there is no definitive list of what was inside the vault in 1973, but that the files of Liddy (Army) and Hunt (Army/Navy) are very much extant. Howard Hunt, leaders of the so-called “plumbers” who broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington hotel, were both veterans. “Anything that he said to any of us, we all took with a huge grain of salt.” (The Associated Press has learned the man’s name but could not locate him or determine if he is still alive.)Įlmore, 75, can’t help wondering if the fire might have been connected to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. ![]() “He wanted attention,” Elmore says of the man. “The fire was way too big, way too fast," he says.Įlmore was one of five people who reported the alleged smoker’s admission to the FBI, but he never believed him. One person who still thinks it might have been arson: Elmore. Some veterans have even suggested to Levins that the government set the fire “`so they wouldn’t have to pay my benefits." (Technically no longer a vault, NPRC has an area in the stacks "with greater security controls which contain Specially Protected Holdings.) Ron Hubbard served in the Marine Reserves and Navy, and those files now reside in the “vault” area. Although the Air Force records destroyed began with “Hubbard, James,” L. One theory Levins has heard is that the fire was started to destroy records connected to Church of Scientology founder L. Kennedy gangster John Dillinger and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer actors Jimmy Stewart and Burt Lancaster even Adolf Hitler’s nephew, William, and a Navy mascot named Billy Goat.īut there are some who will never accept that it was an accident. In addition to the personnel files of all veterans working at the center, as well as those of close relatives who served, the vault held the records of “persons of exceptional prominence” or, as it’s sometimes put, from “the famous to the infamous” - former presidents like Dwight D. The sixth floor was also home to what is commonly referred to as the VIP or - as Elmore has heard some call it - “secrets” vault. 1, 1964, with names that began after “Hubbard, James,” were lost. For the Air Force, it’s estimated that files for 75% of personnel discharged from Sept. The flames consumed 80% of Army personnel files for people discharged between Nov. ![]() But Army and Air Force records suffered most. Some files were lost from every branch of the service. Six of the incidents were classified as suspected arson, three “identified with careless smoking or disposal of smoking material.” But arson was already front and center.Īn investigation found there had been 11 fires in the two and a half years leading up to the conflagration. The search for a cause would be daunting. So much water was poured on the fire that holes had to be knocked in the outer walls to let it drain eventually, bulldozers were hoisted onto the fifth floor, and what was left of the top story was shoved off the side. It had burned so hot that steel-reinforced concrete columns on the sixth floor buckled, portions of the collapsed roof slab supported only by file cabinets. The fire was not declared officially extinguished until the morning of July 16. Neither he nor two other custodians who later joined him on the freight elevator reported smelling smoke “or seeing any signs of fire,” the report said. ![]() According to a GSA investigation, janitor John Staufenbiel was the last person known to have been on the sixth floor. ![]()
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