An eyewitness report of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, audio from the 1948 World Series broadcast and a recording of a live interview with Babe Ruth were supposed to have been in holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, part of the agency’s vast collection of materials available to scholars and the public.
Instead, those sound recordings and thousands of others made their way to the home of Leslie Charles Waffen, the former chief of the Archives’ Motion Picture, Sounds and Video Recording Branch, and some eventually wound up on eBay.
Waffen, 67, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Greenbelt to a year-and-a-half in prison for stealing and selling the historical items.
“You take our history if you take the things that sustain our history,” U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte said in handing down the sentence, which was at the low end of the guidelines range.
Agents have identified a total of 4,806 Archives sound recordings that were either seized from Waffen’s Rockville home in an October 2010 raid or sold by him on eBay, court records say. The items were worth more than $83,000, according to prosecutors.
Waffen, who had worked at the Archives since 1969, said the thefts were “fueled by a sense of self-importance” and a belief that the Archives’ rules “did not apply to me.”
He said he became obsessed with sound recordings and wrongfully believed he was disseminating the items to the public by selling them online.
“My professional responsibility gave way to my personal obsession,” he said.
Other stolen recordings included a memorial service and Mass for Ruth, a 1937 Shakespeare adaptation and a talk show featuring Joseph McCarthy.
Prosecutors and Archives officials said the thefts were particularly egregious because Waffen was supposed to serve the public.
“The defendant betrayed the trust that was placed in him, and he did so because of greed,” prosecutor Arun Rao said. In a letter to the court read by Messitte, David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, wrote that the Archives’ “central trust has been eroded” by the case.
Michael Fayad, Waffen’s attorney, argued that the value of the stolen items was only between $30,000 and $70,000 and many of them were not of much historical significance.
Kurt Nauck, a vintage record dealer who appraised the recordings, acknowledged that some of the recordings were copies, not originals, but said the haul overall was valuable.
“Many of these recordings are the only copies known to exist today,” he said in court.
