A former high-ranking National Archives and Records Administration official pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing hundreds of sound recordings from the Archives and selling them on eBay.
Leslie Charles Waffen, 66, pleaded guilty in federal court in Greenbelt to embezzlement of government property.
Federal prosecutors said they found 955 sound recordings when agents raided Waffen’s Rockville home in October 2010. The recordings were worth at least $30,000, according to his plea agreement.
Waffen was the chief of the Motion Picture, Sounds and Video Recording branch of the Special Media Archives Services Division from 2005 until June 2010. He worked at the Archives since 1969.
The sound recordings found in his home were donated to the Archives in 1975 and 1976, according to the plea agreement. Between August 2001 and October 2010, he took some of those, including a 1937 Babe Ruth voice recording, and sold them on eBay, the plea agreement says.
“This case is especially egregious because the defendant was a high-ranking government employee who violated his obligation to protect historical records that belong to the National Archives and Records Administration,” Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, said in a statement.
The division Waffen led maintained the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination, and he was quoted in a 2004 New York Times article about the unit’s efforts to preserve an audio recording of the killing.
Waffen was charged in the theft case last week. He could face up to 10 years behind bars when he is sentenced on March 5.
