 The government formed a restitution committee to report on which works should be returned; government archives were opened up to research into the provenance of works held by the government.Hubertus Czernin, the Austrian investigative journalist, undertook extensive research in the newly opened archives and published a story about the theft of art by the Nazis; with the subsequent refusal of the Austrian state to return the art or to acknowledge a theft had taken place, Czernin described the situation as "a double crime".Altmann, then living in the US, hired E. Randol Schoenberg to act on her behalf.