Sadly Tod, I haave also been involved with the workings of the FRC system
and because of records we have had stored there in the past (we have since
removed ALL holdings for the FRCs) I don't share your optimism.

To me this is one of those "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and
LOOKS like a duck, it likely IS a duck" stories.

Whether they are lost in the sense of WILL NEVER AGAIN BE FOUND or WERE
STOLEN or HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED due to an 'accounting accident', the
fact remains when the random audit took place they were unable to locate them.  

They may have been sent to the wrong Agency (yep, our PHI records were and
we received CONFIDENTIAL records that belonged to others), the 3rd part of
the carbonless form saying they were checked out may have fallen off the
shelf, they may have been put back in the wrong seat, someone may have had a
'dyslexic moment' and entered the wrong number in the database... but the
fact remains Federal Records entrusted to a service provider CANNOT BE
LOCATED.  'Missing' in this sense is the same as LOST. 

What if this was a commercial service provider storing loan, medical or
legal documents and they couldn't find the boxes... if one were a private
party who had a contract with them to provide services would they accept
"Sorry, that box is missing... it's NOT LOST.. we just can't account for
it!"  If the files were critical to a legal case, or a home ownership claim,
or someones health... I think it wouldn't be simply excused.

Some of what was missing here was described (maybe mistakenly) as being
related to NATIONAL SECURITY... and CLASSIFIED... the continued inability to
not locate this information could be critical to the Agencies it belongs to.
 And the WNRC is NOT housing "archival materials" with Permanent retention
periods that have served out their business needs and will seldom be
recalled for use- it houses less active WORKING records for Agencies, and
they bill back for their services.

The series of articles on this cite two previous audits (1998 and 2004) with
no mention of resolution of those audit findings.  Whether the currently
reported volume INCLUDES all or a portion of those missing boxes is unknown.
 The fact remains that after 14 and 8 years respectively, the status of
those 'missing' boxes remains unresolved, and seemingly insufficient
measures have been put in place to ensure the problem stops.

For 8 years, I ran a commercial records center- never had this type of
volume, but I never lost any of the boxes entrusted to me by my clients.  At
my current place of business, we have run a record center since 1958 with a
volume of over 40k CF and have never lost a box.

Larry
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