SEC accused of destroying records.

• Position: FEDERAL RECORDS

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been accused of systematically destroying thousands of "matter under inquiry" (MUI) documents related to investigations of Wall Street misdeeds for almost two decades. MUIs are the SEC's enforcement division's preliminary look into potential violations of securities law at financial institutions. These sometimes lead to formal investigations, but the files in question had not become formal investigations and had been closed.

SEC lawyer Darcy Flynn, who helped manage the commission's records, specifically said the SEC destroyed more than 9,000 MUI files over a 17-year period, in violation of federal law. The destroyed files included records involving Bernard Madoff and several major Wall Street firms that later were scrutinized for their role in the 2008 financial crisis, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, and Bank of America, according to The New York Times.

Flynn first made the allegations within the agency in 2010, which spurred a July 2010 letter to the SEC from Paul Wester, the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) director of modern records, about what appeared to be "an unauthorized disposal of federal records." The letter asked the SEC for a written report and to ensure that no further destruction occurred.

Samuel Waldon, assistant chief counsel of the SEC's enforcement division, responded that the Division was not aware of specific instances of the destruction of MUI records, but he couldn't say with certainty that none had been destroyed over the previous 17 years. Waldon's letter also assured NARA that no MUIs would be destroyed while...