Radio Historian Pulls The Plug On Archives Thief

By Nancy K. Crevier

J. David Goldin of Sandy Hook thinks of himself as a collector of radios — he has nearly 1,000 vintage radios filling shelves in multiple rooms of his home, from floor to ceiling — and a collector of classic cars. The former Grammy Award-winning record producer and radio engineer for the Mutual Broadcasting System network, WOR, NBC, CBS, and numerous smaller radio stations thinks of himself as a radio historian and a student of radio shows. He does not think of himself as “Sherlock Holmes,” a title he unwittingly donned this past week, thanks to national news coverage of the sentencing of Les Waffen in Washington, D.C., the former head of the recorded sound and film division of the National Archives, and a trial that came to be due to Mr Goldin’s inquiring mind.

Mr Waffen pleaded guilty at the May 3 hearing to the theft of thousands of recordings that had been donated to the National Archives. Among the 960 out of 6,000 recordings in question that the government seized from Mr Waffen’s Maryland home and requisitioned from buyers across the nation who had purchased recordings from “hi-fi_gal” on eBay, is the one recording that lit up Mr Goldin’s internal “ON AIR” signal.

It is the one and only recording of a 15-minute interview by Dave Driscoll of WOR radio in New Jersey, on December 10, 1937, with the famed Yankee baseball giant Babe Ruth. Having owned that original radio transcription and having donated it to the National Archives, along with nearly 10,000 others in the mid-1970s, Mr Goldin was puzzled when he saw the transcription listed for sale by “hi-fi_gal” in September 2010.

What began as an innocent inquiry to the National Archives as to their disposal of his donations turned out to be the undoing of a longtime and trusted employee in the theft of the country’s treasures, and has led to national news coverage from the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and an interview on All Things Considered with National Public Radio host Robert Siegel. In what Mr Goldin declared to be an “exclusive and final, I hope” interview with The Bee, Tuesday, May 8, he recounted the tale that has given him and his wife Joyce “more than our 15 minutes of fame.”

As a collector of radios and recordings, it is Mr Goldin’s habit to check eBay each evening for new offerings. He is particularly interested when he sees a radio transcription offered. The 16-inch diameter, lacquer-dipped aluminum discs from the early part of the 20th Century are fairly rare. On one particular September night in 2010, not only did he recognize the Babe Ruth record, he realized, “I used to own it! My first reaction was puzzlement. There couldn’t be two recordings.”

Because of the manner in which the metal transcriptions were cut, only one at a time, and his familiarity with the Babe Ruth interview, he knew that the WOR recording had been aired only once, on only one radio station. There was just a single copy, ever.

He concluded that for some reason the National Archives was disposing of some discs. If so, he decided he wanted the recordings he had donated returned to him. When he wrote the letter to the National Archives inquiring as to the reason this transcription might have been released, “It never, ever occurred to me that someone was swiping them.”

A Quick Response

Almost as quickly as the letter hit the bottom of the mailbox, though, the Goldins found themselves fielding questions from the National Archives archivest-investigator. The National Archives does not give away any transcriptions, they were told, and requested documentation that Mr Goldin had donated to the National Archives.

“David is a meticulous record keeper,” noted Ms Goldin, “and it really paid off this time.”

He came up with the tax documents that listed his donations, and the signed receipt from the National Archives. He suggested to the investigator that they check for other recordings. “I told him others would be missing… and they were.”

Mr Goldin credits his wife with encouraging him to follow through on the exploration of how the record had come into the hands of “hi-fi_gal.”

 “She said I had to, because that Babe Ruth record and all of the others belong to the country, to you, and to me. When these things are stolen, they are stolen from everybody,” Mr Goldin said.

But rather than subpoena eBay to find out who was behind the “hi-fi_gal” handle, Mr Goldin suggested to the investigator that he buy another record from that seller. When he received the order, he used a reverse address directory to uncover the true identity of the seller.

“I was shocked,” he said, “to find it was Les Waffen.” Mr Waffen had handled Mr Goldin’s donations 36 years earlier.

The inquiry generated a huge amount of interest. “The federal government enforcement people became involved, once it was discovered a crime had been committed. They took away two truckloads of stuff from Waffen’s home in Maryland,” Mr Goldin said.

Of the many recordings Mr Waffen had sold over a period of ten years, Mr Goldin was the only one who had recognized and questioned the sale of recordings on eBay as belonging to the National Archives. It was due to his ability to prove his donations that convinced the judge to grant federal officers the warrant to search Mr Waffen’s home.

“The main source for recordings are government agencies, and most is not valuable or interesting to the public,” explained Mr Goldin. “Of the ‘good’ stuff, like radio recordings, a vast number have come from NBC, a smaller amount from ABC, films from Universal reels — and from myself,” he said. So, he was most likely to be the one to recognize the rare offerings on eBay, and it was only because of his regular perusal of eBay that he even came across the Babe Ruth transcription.

“Mr Waffen was not a good marketer, he had to keep a low profile,” said Mr Goldin. That particular recording, he estimates, could have sold in the neighborhood of $5,000. “Hi-fi_gal” sold it for $34 and change.

The Goldins traveled to Washington, D.C., for the hearing last week, at the request of the National Archives archival-investigator, even though Mr Waffen’s plea of guilty meant that they did not have to testify.

“I felt for the guy,” said Mr Goldin, who emphasized that he felt no anger toward Mr Waffen. “He admitted his guilt, he said he didn’t think the records were that valuable and was very repentant. He seemed sincere to me, and I felt sad. Forty years in government service, and the guy made a bad mistake and kept making it. I think,” said Mr Goldin, “my greatest emotion is disappointment. The guy in charge of these records was stealing what he was supposed to protect.”

What has become of the original Babe Ruth transcription, Mr Goldin is not sure. It was purchased on eBay, and he assumes that the government contacted the buyer and retrieved it. Part of Mr Waffen’s sentencing is that he will make restitution to all who bought from “hi-fi_gal” — including the $14 to Mr Goldin for the purchase that brought him down.

Mr Goldin hopes that the record is now back in the National Archives, where it belongs.

Fan Mail

The national attention to this case has garnered Mr Goldin a fair amount of fan mail from those who believe, as did he and his wife, that the National Archives is a treasure trove that belongs to all Americans. Included in the mail one day this week was a very special letter.

“We got a letter of thanks from Linda Ruth Tosetti,” said Ms Goldin, thanking them for the recovery of an item related to her grandfather — Babe Ruth.

“I’ve had my moment of glory,” said Mr Goldin on Tuesday afternoon. He is happier showing off the colorful first Regency transistors high on a shelf or one of the radios featuring the 1939 New York World Fair, or tossing a felt fedora on top of a vintage radio, transforming its wood and cloth features into an angry visage. He would rather show off the glass Depression-era radios, the unique camera radio, or fiddle with the “Walton” radio in his dining room, so-called for being the one used in the 1970s television show of that name. He would rather spend his time pointing out to guests the record albums that border every room of the house, testaments to his success in business.

He is happy, he said, to be done with the media frenzy and detective work, and back to his true calling: recording the thousands of transcriptions stacked in his basement and browsing eBay for new additions to his collections.