by Nancy Moses
In 2010, Goldin was trolling on eBay for more radio shows to add to his collection when he noticed something odd: there, for sale, was a sixteen-inch disc with an electronic transcript of a fifteen-minute interview of baseball great Babe Ruth hunting quail in New Jersey in 1937. “That’s funny, I thought,” he told me. “I had the exact one, and there’s only one in existence. I acquired it in 1967 when WOR’s news director was cleaning out a closet and gave it to me, along with a pile of other recordings.”
Babe Ruth on a quail hunt was among the ten thousand recording discs that Goldin had donated to the National Archives. He figured if the National Archives were selling the discs he had donated, he wanted them back. So, he wrote to the archivist of the United States and the legal department of the National Archives, alerting them to the fact that the tape was being offered for sale on eBay and, if the Archives were de-accessioning it, asking to have it back. About ten days later, he received a call from the investigative archivist in the Office of the Inspector General, who asked Goldin how he knew it was the same disc. Goldin was well prepared to substantiate his claim with a copy of the Babe Ruth recording taken from the disc he had donated, a tax return from 1976 with an itemized inventory of the donation, and the receipt he received upon the delivery of the Babe Ruth disc to the Archives, signed by a young archivist named Leslie Waffen.
The next call came from a federal marshal, asking Goldin if he knew who hi-fi_gal was. Goldin said he didn’t, but he offered to find out. He then went onto eBay and purchased a disc from hi-fi_ gal. A couple of days later, a package arrived with a return address in Rockville, Maryland. Goldin looked it up in a reverse directory and was shocked to discover that hi-fi_gal shared an address with Leslie Waffen.
“I had a good relationship with Les Waffen,” Goldin sighed. “But I don’t really know him personally. He had invited me to the Archives, and I’d spoken to him on the phone a couple of times. He seemed like a nice guy and very knowledgeable, small and mousy, your typical archivist type. I saw him at his sentencing and he said he didn’t blame me for turning him in.”
Goldin pressed a couple of keys on one of his computers, and out came a printout of nineteen listings for Babe Ruth in the Radiogoldindex Master Catalogue. Number 15377 was titled, “Quail Hunt at Forked River, New Jersey. December 10, 1937,” with the following description:
Using short wave equipment, this is a radio quail and pheasant hunt with Babe Ruth, among others. Many birds are shot out of the air. This is O.K. if you’re out in the woods, but lousy radio. Babe Ruth. Fifteen minutes. Audio Condition: Excellent. Complete.
“Why would a radio station save such a strange item?” I asked.
“There are any number of reasons,” Goldin said. “Maybe because it was a delayed broadcast, perhaps for a legal reason like protecting it from a possible suit by Babe Ruth. Maybe advertisers wanted to listen to the program to hear how their ads sounded.”
And, while you and I might be more interested in the radio show than the disc it’s recorded on, to Goldin, these metal recording discs are actually important artifacts.
“Why is an original of a painting more valuable than a copy?” he asked rhetorically. “You can see a picture of the Sistine Chapel on your computer, but that’s not the same as seeing the real one. I’m interested in the original bone, not the plaster cast. Who’s to judge what’s important, anyway? As a historian, I’m like a vacuum cleaner, trying to collect everything connected to radio.”
“Les Waffen didn’t need the money,” Goldin continued, shaking his head. “He had a pension, he had a beautiful house in Maryland. He sold the Babe Ruth disc for only thirty-eight dollars on eBay. I think he had a compulsion. As far as I’m concerned, it’s forgive and forget. I didn’t feel like a hero. I actually felt like a whistle-blower because I was ratting someone out.”
My next stop was the National Archives, to find out how someone could walk out the door of a federal government facility with four thousand discs over a ten-year period without getting caught. I secured an interview with the archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, booked a train ticket, and boned up on the Archives.
The National Archives and Records Administration, known by its initials NARA, was established in 1934 to deal with a serious problem: the records of the federal government were at risk. At the time, every federal agency was responsible for maintaining its own records, with mixed results. Some documents were stolen, some were lost, some misfiled, and others ruined by water, fire, sunlight, and bugs. When the National Archives assumed responsibility for federal recordkeeping and the first archivist of the United States was appointed, there wasn’t even an accounting of how many government records actually existed and how much space would be needed to house them. The archivist had to guess—he guessed 374,000 square feet of storage—but he was way off. Almost as soon as the building based on the architect’s original design was completed, records began to fill the building’s interior courtyard, doubling storage space to more than 757,000 square feet. Over time, the federal government grew, first with the New Deal, then World War II. Within twenty-six years, the headquarters building was full.
From one building on Pennsylvania Avenue, the National Archives has now grown to more than forty facilities nationwide, including regional archives, federal records centers, presidential libraries, the Federal Register, and the National Historical and Publication Commission. What we think of as “government records” has also expanded, now including not only pieces of paper but reels of film, maps, photographs, technical drawings, artifacts, video, audio recording discs, audio tapes, and billions of machine-readable data sets.[6] The Archives is responsible for a mind-blowing twelve billion items, and our current complement of 275 government agencies continues to churn out more every minute.
It was steamy and overcast on the August day when I took a train to Washington for my meeting with David Ferriero.[7] On the way down, I read the “Victim Impact Statement” that he had submitted to the court at Leslie Waffen’s sentencing, a litany of damages resulting from Waffen’s theft of many “unique and irreplaceable materials with a cultural, research, and educational value far outweighs their monetary value, materials lost not only to this generation of researchers, but to scholarship long into the future.” By stealing so many discs, he had compromised the integrity of the Special Media collections “that Mr. Waffen claims to have worked so hard to build and preserve.” In addition, Waffen had damaged the reputation of the National Archives and he had betrayed and upset his colleagues. Ferriero asked for a stiff prison term, because of the crime’s impact on the National Archives and as a message to others about the serious nature of the offense.
David Ferriero, with his square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair, reminded me of a president of a good liberal arts college. He greeted me in the archivist of the United States’ spacious and patriotically decorated office with its gorgeous view of downtown Washington, and we began talking about insider crime.
“Studies by the FBI claim that 75 percent of thefts in research institutions and libraries are insider thefts,” he told me. “The fact that some of the material stuff isn’t processed is the reason why some can walk out the door. There are no records.”
Ferriero told me that archives are especially susceptible to theft because so much of their collection is so easy to hide. Think, for a moment, about how easy it would be to hide a sheet of paper. The other problem is the sheer volume of material. When documents are accepted—accessioned—by the National Archives, they are placed in an area to be processed, which means they are inventoried and coded so that researchers can locate and use them. But the staff can’t keep up with the all of the processing that all of the new material requires, so some items must wait. According to Ferriero, the National Archives has control over groups of records, but not over individual items, because there are simply too many of them.
I asked whether Leslie Waffen’s theft was an unusual occurrence at the National Archives.
“I hope so,” said Ferriero. “This is a man who was on the staff for forty years. He was the senior person in the Motion Picture, Sound and Video Branch. He was responsible for gifts, so he knew what items were coming into the collection. The staff used to joke, ‘That’s Les taking his work home with him.’ I’ve worked in a number of other libraries. When I came to the National Archives, I found that it was the first place where my bags were not inspected when I left the building. Now, all bags are checked. Even mine.”
I asked what a recording disc of Babe Ruth on a quail shoot was doing in the collection of the National Archives and learned it was a part of Goldin’s gift that had never actually been processed, so no one noticed that it was missing. But Waffen “took all kinds of things,” said the archivist. “These are unique materials, in many cases one of a kind, in many cases irreplaceable, so it’s depriving future generations of documentation that demonstrates how decisions were made, our history, firsthand accounts of our history. The Archives was established so that the American people would be able to hold the government accountable for its actions, to learn how decisions were made, to learn from the past. Any material taken deprives the government of being able to do that.”
Although the National Archives is often approached about donations, it seldom takes them. It’s only responsible for the records of the federal government, and if someone has a government record they’re trying to sell, it likely should not be in their hands. “We try to encourage them to give it back to us before we take legal action,” said Ferriero.
Since Waffen’s crime was discovered, the National Archives has buttoned up its security. It has sponsored a public meeting on security, established a holding protection team to evaluate security and train staff, and an archival recovery team that looks for stolen materials. “We’re being very public about these things, to shift perceptions. These security problems are nothing new: I’ve been dealing with them my entire career,” he sighed.
“What do you think Waffen’s mind-set was? Why did he do it?” I asked.
“Waffen’s mind-set?” Ferriero repeated. “That one is real troubling, because he wasn’t making a lot of money. He was charging ridiculously low sums for what he was selling. He and his wife set up a business, and she handled the business side of the operation. I don’t understand the incentive.”
Insider crimes leave their mark. National Archives staffers are proud to care for the national records and believe strongly in preserving the integrity of their profession. When a crime by one of their own is discovered, they wonder how to make sense of it.
Ferriero continued, shaking his head. “Waffen had colleagues here for forty years; they feel guilt, a sense of betrayal. People here have a passion for the mission, to make sure the holdings are here forever. There is a huge wake of survivor guilt when these things happen. It’s very sad.”
After our interview, the archivist of the United States escorted me down long hallways to the entrance to the National Archives’ Great Rotunda, a majestic granite and marble shrine. I joined a line of quietly chatting tourists in jeans and backpacks and followed along as they climbed three steps to stand before the iconic Charters of Freedom. We stopped reverentially before the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I imagined these treasures as the epicenter of vast highways of government documents extending from this building on Pennsylvania Avenue to forty others across the nation.
“Our founders conceived of America as a constant dialogue between leaders and citizens,” wrote presidential historian Michael Beschloss in the seventy-fifth anniversary publication of the National Archives. “What better symbol is there of this principle than the National Archives?”[8] Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns called it “the great gift of our accumulated memory—our good words as well as our terrible deeds.”[9] Cokie Roberts, the political analyst, said, “Our history isn’t always pretty but it’s often provocative. And only with records can we know it accurately.”[10]
Back home from Washington, I reassembled the pieces of the story. Waffen was able to steal 4,800 audio discs because they had never been processed. Because he was the person who had accessioned them, he knew where to find them; because no one was checking bags, he could take them without being detected. His role as a supervisor was an advantage: it gave him the clout to accession items and determine their relevance to the mission of the Archives, to decide which ones were important to process first and which would never make the cut. I kept thinking of those billions of documents under the stewardship of David Ferriero and how easy it would be for a researcher or a staffer or even a supervisor to steal some of them.
Leslie Waffen’s theft of 4,800 original historical audio discs was a big deal. But exactly how common is insider theft? The FBI has said it represents 75 percent of all theft in research libraries and special collections, but where were the facts? Archivists and librarians tend to be gentle people, unwilling to believe one of their own could be a predator; so, no one really knew for sure—until a team of three librarians from Texas A&M University decided to find out.[11]
The team began its work by defining an “insider” as someone with “an intimate knowledge of the physical layout of the facility where materials are stored and a position of formalized trust within the institution, either as an employee or recurring visitor known to regular staff and with access to areas where collection materials are housed.”[12] They then collected publicized incidents of theft for the years 1987 to 2010 and coded them in their Library Theft Database. For about 180 of the 340 cases they collected, there was sufficient information to draw conclusions about the nature of the theft and identity of the perpetrator. Then they analyzed the data.
Their research revealed that insiders perpetrated 33 percent of known library thefts.[13] More surprising, only 10 percent of the insider thefts were by staff professionals. Most of the rest were by nonprofessional, temporary, or informal members of the staff. One hundred and eighty cases over twenty-three years is a tiny sample, to be sure. And, as an official at the National Archives pointed out, college libraries and federal archives follow different security procedures. Still, the Texas A&M study does suggest that Les Waffen, as a director of a major division of the nation’s most important archive, was not your usual suspect. No wonder so many were stunned by his crime.
At this point, most of my questions about Les Waffen had been answered. I knew what he stole, how he stole it, and how he was caught. One question remained. Why did he do it? There’s a sizable body of literature about why employees steal from companies: some do it to make up for low wages, others to get even with companies and managers who treat them coldly. In some places, stealing is part of the workplace culture. Others steal for the thrill of beating the system. Most thieves are interested in making extra money they may or may not need. None of these seemed quite right for Les Waffen. He didn’t seem to be the kind of person who was angry with management, since he was held in high regard by his colleagues and promoted to the top of his field by the National Archives. Money didn’t seem to be a motive, since he sold discs for significantly below market value. Theft as part of corporate culture certainly didn’t fit, since stealing is the antithesis of the culture of a collecting institution. Waffen didn’t seem fit the mold of an insider criminal in business. Could it be something else?
I turned for clues to Les Waffen’s own words, from the “Open Letter to ARSC Colleagues” that he published in the Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List. Waffen had served as president of this professional society and been instrumental in crafting archival standards and practices. Now, he was writing a mea culpa to his colleagues.[14]
“As reported on this discussion and in the media the last few weeks,” he wrote, “I was accused of stealing sound recordings from the National Archives. I have now accepted a plea agreement and pled guilty to the theft and conversion of government property.” He apologized to his professional colleagues, accepted responsibility for his actions, said he
was cooperating with authorities, and went on to explain, “[T]he sound recordings found in my possession after I retired or the ones I sold were not (in my opinion) unique or of significant historical value to [the National Archives and Records Administration]. Most were copies, or even copies of copies, of discs that were appraised by me and others on the staff and considered to be duplicative, excess, or rejected because the content did not meet criteria and guidelines for inclusion in the holdings. In other words, they did not document significant federal government agencies’ activities or functions and were not worthy of permanent retention or preservation.” He concluded by admitting he had lost “archival perspective and judgment,” but was nevertheless proud of his accomplishments as an audiovisual archivist over his “career of forty-one years.”[15]
I then consulted an authority. Beulah Trey is an industrial psychologist whose practice focuses on ethical behavior in the workplace. I was sure she would be able to find the crux of Waffen’s motivations.
“Hmmm,” she said after I had read her Les Waffen’s mea culpa. “There’s something about Waffen’s story that sounds like a slippery slope.”
Many criminals, she went on, begin by committing a small crime, then another, then another. They find themselves able to justify the crime to themselves as something that does no harm. Over time, the criminal’s defenses dull and their crime becomes routine. They take a first step into crime and slide down a slippery slope.
