[MSN] Guilty plea in theft on historic scale. A book publisher tipped officials to stolen documents that were being sold on eBay.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Guilty plea in theft on historic scale
A book publisher tipped officials to stolen documents that were being sold
on eBay.
By Edward Colimore
Inquirer Staff Writer

SARAH J. GLOVER / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Leslie Simon of the National Archives points out one of the recovered
documents - a telegraph sent May 4, 1865, the day of President Abraham
Lincoln's funeral. All but three - written in 1862 and valued at $180 - of
the stolen documents have been found.
> More photos:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20070405_Guilty_plea_in_historical_thef
t__sale.html

Gettysburg, Pa., book publisher Dean Thomas was browsing through Civil War
documents for sale on eBay in September when he noticed something familiar
about one of them.
He went to a folder at his house and found a photocopy of the same document,
which he made at the National Archives 20 years earlier. It had the same ink
blotches and smudges.

"I thought the archives was either having a sale or it was stolen," Thomas,
58, said. "And I knew the archives wasn't having a sale."

Thomas later found other archives documents and phoned the archives
inspector general's office. Two agents were dispatched to Gettysburg the
same afternoon.

The chance Internet encounter by Thomas, a Civil War aficionado, resulted
yesterday in a guilty plea by Denning McTague, 40, a summer intern at the
archives who smuggled 164 Civil War-era documents from the Philadelphia
branch and began selling them on eBay.

While helping the archives prepare a presentation for the Civil War's
sesquicentennial, McTague tucked the rare records into a yellow note pad,
which he then placed in his backpack.

The letters, telegrams, invoices and other documents were valued at $30,000
by appraisers and considered priceless by historians. One of the letters,
appraised at $5,000, was written on April 18, 1860, by J.E.B. Stuart, who
gained fame as a Confederate cavalry general.

Another letter, from the secretary of war, announced the death of Abraham
Lincoln to the Army in Pennsylvania. Other letters were written to the
commander of the Frankford Arsenal and focused on munitions and supplies.

McTague waited a few weeks after he left the summer job to begin selling the
items, federal investigators said. He had sold about 70 by the time the FBI
showed up at his home in Philadelphia with a search warrant. Agents found
the documents and records of eBay transactions.

Yesterday, many of the documents, with fine engraved letterheads and
handsome handwriting, were spread out on a table at the U.S. Attorney's
Office.

"This is property that belongs to the people of the United States and is
meant to be preserved, not sold to the highest bidder," said U.S. Attorney
Patrick L. Meehan, who called McTague's theft "a significant crime against
all of us."

Three items - written in 1862 and valued at $180 - have not been recovered.

"We're in a history-laden area," Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan L. Fields,
the prosecutor in the case, said in an interview. "If anybody is going to
get this, we're going to get it."

McTague is scheduled to be sentenced July for theft of government property.

"People used to go to brick-and-mortar shops in Gettysburg to move
historical documents," said Paul Brachfeld, inspector general for the
National Archives and Records Administration. "Now, you can go on automated
sites like eBay to sell. Everybody can become a dealer. . . . I don't know
how many of our documents are being trafficked."

Brachfeld, who investigated the theft of terrorism-related documents by
President Bill Clinton's national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger,
said his small staff watches over 37 facilities that have 3,000 employees
and billions of records.

He was glad to get some help from Dean Thomas and his brother, Jim, in
Gettysburg. Dean Thomas said his brother originally pointed him to the
document that led him to call authorities.

"They are the real heroes. They are exactly what we are looking for: People
who because of their knowledge of historic federal records can identify
those that have gone into the public domain, that have been stolen,"
Brachfeld said. "Then we can prosecute those responsible. We need people to
contact us, to be our American sentinels."

EBay postings also led police to Shawn Aubitz, a former curator at the
archives in Philadelphia, who stole hundreds of documents in the 1990s. A
National Park Service worker spotted a historic federal document on eBay
that he suspected was stolen. Aubitz received a 21-month prison sentence.

In the recent case, Thomas said he had recognized only by chance a letter
written to the Frankford Arsenal about new gun cartridges. Soon, he
identified eight National Archives documents for sale.

Andy Waskie, a Temple University professor who teaches Civil War history and
languages, said many institutions have instituted more stringent security
rules and installed cameras in the last 20 to 25 years.

"You have to be vigilant," he said. "In this day and age, we have to protect
documents of great historical value for future generations."


Contact staff writer Edward Colimore at 856-779-3833 or
ecolimore at phillynews.com. To comment or to ask a question, go to
http://go.philly.com/askcolimore.
 
Find this article at: 
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20070405_Guilty_plea_in_historical_thef
t__sale.html