[Southack]

U.S. Department of State
Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs
Washington, DC
May 20, 2003

FACT SHEET
STATUS OF WRANGEL AND OTHER ARCTIC ISLANDS

No negotiations regarding the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary have occurred since 1990, when the U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement was signed. The negotiations that led to that agreement did not address the status of Wrangel Island, Herald Island, Bennett Island, Jeannette Island, or Henrietta Island, all of which lie off Russia's Arctic coast, or Mednyy (Copper) Island or rocks off the coast of Mednyy Island in the Bering Sea. None of the islands or rocks above were included in the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and they have never been claimed by the United States, although Americans were involved in the discovery and exploration of some of them.

[Right Wing Professor]

So some State Department weenie says the US has never claimed the five Arctic islands, wheras Jesse Helms says the US did, and directly quotes from the logbook of the USS Corwin to prove it. Helms also quotes extensively from other sources to show the US has claimed some or all of the five islands at various times from 1881 to 1973.

Hmmm, whom to believe? One of the most distinguished conservative Senators in our histroy, or some unnamed federal bureaucrat?