Fabricating and planting evidence

As we struggle to get our National Archives interested in preventing the theft of Civil War (and other) documents, Britain is moving ahead combatting a new problem:

The introduction into the record of forged material.

Given the scope of evidence abuse prevalent in the writing of Civil War history, that seems like a frighteningly real threat to me.

As I've said before, Tom Rowland discovered during his research that the McClellan Papers have been ruined as an archive. So much is missing, so much is misplaced that it now pays only to use the Microfilm of the papers made in the 1970s.

The possibility that lax staff will allow "hand-made" documents to join the historic ones - to then await "discovery" - is not one that we can ignore.