March 5, 2002


Bureaucrats Seize Framed Papers from Ayn Rand Heir's Office Wall

MARINA DEL REY, CA -- A three-year battle between the United States government and Dr. Leonard Peikoff, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, ended with a Federal agent entering Peikoff's home, cutting two original Rand manuscript pages out of their frame, and handing them over to the Library of Congress, Tuesday's Los Angeles Times reports.

Peikoff, who donated eleven boxes of papers he inherited from Rand to the Library of Congress in 1991, kept the first and last handwritten pages of her novel The Fountainhead as a memento, replacing the originals with photocopies -- a fact made known to the Library in 1991 by an appraiser.

In 1998, however, after Peikoff joked to the Times that the pages were stolen, Library officials demanded that he hand them over as government property. When Peikoff refused, the Library threatened to sue him for $1.1 million.

After a lengthy struggle, Peikoff finally capitulated earlier this year. I'm 68 and a heart patient, he said in the Times article, and could not accept the prospect of being further weakened physically by the stress, and perhaps even bankrupted in a fight against what is now, it seems, a virtually omnipotent government.

Rand, an ardent champion of individual rights, often warned of the government's increasing arbitrary power. When asked what she would have thought of the current situation, Peikoff replied: Ayn Rand, I feel sure, would have said: 'The whole case is another outrage by looting bureaucrats so drunk with power that they must possess and flaunt even the very pages in which I have denounced them.'

Dr. Leonard Peikoff is available for interviews. Video of the seizure is available.

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Donor of Ayn Rand Manuscript, U.S. Are Not on the Same Page
Dispute: Giver saved a portion of 'The Fountainhead' manuscript as a memento. It is seized.

   By BOB POOL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ayn Rand wrote the book on the chasm between personal happiness and a heavy-handed government. Leonard Peikoff illustrated it.

That's how Rand fans say the empty picture frame on Peikoff's wall figures into the fight over two pages of her original handwritten manuscript of The Fountainhead.

Federal officials seized the pages after Peikoff joked that he stole them from the Library of Congress. Peikoff, a writer and philosopher, was a lifelong friend of Rand and is an expert on her philosophy of objectivism, which teaches that individuals--not the government--are the key to the development of a healthy society. He inherited the scrawled first drafts of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and two other books when she died in 1982.

Eleven years ago he donated the manuscripts and other Rand papers to the Library of Congress. For sentimental reasons, he said, he kept the first and last pages of The Fountainhead and sent photocopies to Washington with the remainder of the manuscript. Peikoff displayed the original pages under a spotlight on the wall of his Irvine home.

The groundbreaking 1943 novel helped define Rand's philosophy. Part of that doctrine contends that man's pursuit of self-interest requires government's willingness to step out of the way.

But it is Peikoff who said he was forced to step aside when a government agent showed up at his front door in January. The official cut Rand's manuscript pages from his picture frame and confiscated them as federal property.

The irony of the seizure is not lost on Rand devotees.

Ayn Rand, I feel sure, would have said: 'The whole case is another outrage by looting bureaucrats so drunk with power that they must possess and flaunt even the very pages in which I have denounced them,' Peikoff said.

Yaron Brook, head of the Marina del Rey-based Ayn Rand Institute, agreed. Ayn Rand portrayed the government as never happy with the power it has. The bureaucrats always want to take more.

Peikoff, 68, became acquainted with Rand in 1951 after reading The Fountainhead as a 17-year-old.

It had changed my life, he said. I took the train from Winnipeg, Canada, and went to her house in Chatsworth to meet her.

Soon, he was among those who would have 10-hour philosophical discussions with the Russian-born author.

Rand embraced Peikoff's work when he began interpreting her philosophy in his own writings. Eventually, she wrote the introduction and reviewed each chapter of his book on objectivism, The Ominous Parallels. It analyzed the philosophical causes of Nazism and their parallels in contemporary America.

Peikoff's decision to donate Rand's papers to the Library of Congress came after he was hospitalized in 1991 with a heart attack. Years earlier Rand had talked of sending them there. So Peikoff had an assistant load 11 boxes of manuscripts, proofs and other documents and ship them off--minus the original first and last pages of The Fountainhead.

Peikoff said he later sent a private appraiser to Washington to attest to the value of the Rand papers and to tell officials that two of the Fountainhead pages were copies. The appraiser reported back to him that the library didn't care, Peikoff said.

But in 1998 Peikoff was interviewed for a Los Angeles Times Magazine article about a resurgence of interest in Rand's work. The interviewer spied the framed manuscript pages on the wall and was taken by the famous opening paragraph written in Rand's own hand: Howard Roark laughed.

Peikoff explained that he had given the 2,158-page Fountainhead manuscript to the Library of Congress. But I stole the first and last pages, he added with a laugh. The throwaway line was included in the lengthy magazine article published Aug. 16, 1998.

Library officials weren't laughing when they read the piece. They demanded the missing Fountainhead pages, claiming them to be property of the U.S. government.

When Peikoff refused to turn them over, officials threatened to sue him for $1.1 million--the amount the library had spent in storing, archiving and preserving the manuscript in the belief it was the complete original.

Peikoff scoffed at the claim. If library officials had even looked at the documents, they would have noticed the obviously photocopied pages and the appraiser's report, he said.

After he hired a lawyer, library officials offered to let Peikoff temporarily keep the two pages, provided that he post a $30,000 bond and place a sign on his home's wall beneath the frame reading: On Loan From the Library of Congress. He declined.

His lawyer told Peikoff that he probably would win the lawsuit, but warned that the outcome was far from certain under the theory of promissory estoppel that courts often use in cases involving gifts.

I'm 68 and a heart patient and could not accept the prospect of being further weakened physically by the stress, and perhaps even bankrupted in a fight against what is now, it seems, a virtually omnipotent government, Peikoff said. I capitulated ... this was the payment I received from the Library of Congress for my gift.

Library officials denied being heavy-handed. They said Peikoff signed an instrument of gift giving the government ownership of Rand's papers and a letter confirming that he had sent the complete materials.

The library did not know that Dr. Peikoff had kept two pages of the manuscript. The library relied on Dr. Peikoff's presentations that the manuscripts were complete, officials said in a federal court complaint.

But George Houle, a West Los Angeles rare book expert who traveled in 1991 to Washington to appraise Peikoff's donation, said he informed officials that two of the Fountainhead pages were photocopies.

The appraisal made note of the fact they were facsimiles, Houle said. His remark about 'stealing' them was clearly flippant. He didn't go to the Library of Congress and steal them.

Houle said he was surprised by the library's treatment of the Rand papers during his inspection trip. The librarian had them in a cardboard box. She almost spit on them. She was not a fan of Ayn Rand. She made some disparaging remarks about Ayn Rand, Houle said.

Library of Congress spokeswoman Helen Dalrymple denied that the librarian mistreated the Rand materials or looked upon them with disdain. The library had sought Rand's papers for years, Dalrymple said. And Houle did not tell her colleagues of the photocopies, she said.

Dalrymple asserted that Peikoff's treatment of the two pages he withheld was not the best, however.

From being in the frame the ink had faded and the paper had turned a different color, she said.

Peikoff, meantime, vowed to never again give anything to the Library of Congress. And he said he has given up on ever seeing his beloved manuscript pages again.

At his desk beneath the empty picture frame he is writing a book on the relationship of philosophy and physics.