Operation Santa History

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Every year, millions of children around the globe send a letter to Santa Claus asking for what they want. Most of these children do not expect a response, but some do get one due to Operation Santa through the United States Postal Service. There are similar programs in various countries, but the one in the United States does something extra with the letters the postal service receives. Operation Santa allows for the fingerprinting and DNA collection of children to expand the databases of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to solve future crimes. Fingerprinting has been used in and accepted by most courts as evidence since 1892, but the storage of them was close to nonexistent and databases would be far off in the United States (“History of …show more content…

Hitchcock was also born in Ohio, and during his time as the Postmaster General, he wanted to crack down on mail fraud, reduce the amount of money that the postal service lost annually, and revolutionize the way mail was delivered by including airplanes in the service. Also, Hitchcock initiated Operation Santa in 1912 (Miller Center). Operation Santa officially allowed for postal workers to open and respond to the letters sent by children to Santa Claus. Interestingly, the first post office to respond to a letter was the General Post Office Building which was built in 1912 and later renamed to the James A. Farley Post Office Building (“James A. Farley Post Office …show more content…

President Taft has been the only person in history to hold the highest positions in both the judicial and executive branches of the United States of America (“William Howard Taft”) which allowed him to have the power to tip the scales and make his job as a lawyer easier while he was President. Having experience as a lawyer and being pressured to impress his parents, his wife, and stand out from his siblings, William Taft strived to find something that would be his legacy. When he appointed his Postmaster General, Frank Hitchcock, he knew that he had found someone with the same goals. Hitchcock wanted to crack down on mail fraud, so to know exactly who had sent a letter and where it was going would reduce the number of cases dramatically. Also, Hitchcock wanted to reduce the amount of money lost by the postal service. The reduce losses could have been directed to pay for more employees and the silencing of anyone who knew the truth behind Operation Santa and allow for its