Barry Landau, a presidential historian and collector of political memorabilia, admitted in court "to stealing thousands of documents treasured for their national and cultural significance from historical societies and libraries stretching from Baltimore up the East Coast," the Washington Post reports.
The FBI found 10,000 papers and "objects of cultural heritage" during searches of Landau's apartment in New York and traced 4,000 of the items "as being stolen from libraries and repositories throughout" America.