Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff are free on bond

Presidential historian Barry Landau addresses the staff of Google -- and flubs some facts about the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and Presidential recordkeeping -- as part of the Authors@Google program, Mountain View, California, 25 February 2009. Does anything about this man -- his face, his voice, his mannerisms -- seem familiar to you? If so, start checking your registration logs and reviewing your security videos.

On 9 July, Barry Landau, a noted collector of Presidential ephemera and author of The President's Table: Two Hundred Years of Dining and Diplomacy, and his research associate, Jason Savedoff, were arrested after staff at the Maryland Historical Society observed Savedoff take an historical document, conceal it in a portfolio, and remove it from the research room. The Baltimore Police discovered approximately 60 documents in a locker assigned to Savedoff.

The arrest of Landau and Savedoff sparked an investigation into their activities and a sweeping search of Landau's apartment. A host of disturbing things came to light:

• Savedoff was apprehended in a Maryland Historical Society restroom and was flushing a document down a toilet as he was taken into police custody.
  
• Only some of the documents in Savedoff's locker were held by the Maryland Historical Society. Others are the property of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Connecticut Historical Society, and Vassar College.
• Investigators found a 1780 letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Paul Jones in Landau's apartment. The letter is owned by by the New-York Historical Society.
• Landau and Savedoff visited the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, which is part of the NARA system, in December 2010 and allegedly stole signed copies of seven speeches that Roosevelt delivered. Four of the speeches were later sold to a New York dealer for $35,000.
• While a guest at the home of Betty Currie, President Bill Clinton's former secretary, Landau may have taken a book of speeches bearing Clinton's signature.
• Landau's claims of working for various Presidents -- including claims made in the Authors@Google speech embedded above -- are, in all likelihood, exaggerations or outright falsehoods.
  

On 28 July, Landau and Savedoff, who also face state charges, were indicted on charges relating to the theft of materials from the Maryland Historical Society, Roosevelt Presidential Library, and the New-York Historical Society. Savedoff, a dual Canadian-U.S. national, was released on bond in late July, but Landau remained in federal custody while investigators combed through the masses of ephemera in his Manhattan apartment.

Last Friday, a Federal court judge allowed Landau to post bond and return to his home -- provided that he submits to electronic monitoring, does not use the Internet, does not sell any assets without first securing approval to do so, and cannot have any contact with cultural heritage institutions or his co-defendant.

At the hearing, prosecutors noted that they found a vast array of other questionable items in his apartment. They have traced over 200 of them to repositories in five states and Washington, D.C., and possibly, Cambridge University. Many others are, in the words of a prosecutor, "not the kind of things that are accessible — legally accessible — on the open market": letters written by Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Antoinette, Sir Issac Newton, Ludwig von Beethoven, and a host of prominent scientists, artists, inventors, writers, and political leaders.

If Landau is indeed guilty -- the evidence is damning -- we may be looking at a criminal career that spans decades and continents. Dozens of repositories may ultimately find that they have been victimized. All of us should be mindful of the possibility that other smiling, cupcake-bearing career criminals may be out there . . . and that they may visit our own institutions sometime soon.

Given that providing access to our holdings is one of our core responsibilities, keeping our holdings 100 percent safe from theft is never possible. However, there are lots of things that we can do to discourage casual thievery and insure that the more determined criminals get caught, and you might want to check out the following resources:

• The Society of American Archivists (SAA) regularly offers a first-rate archival security workshop
• Library and Archival Security is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to security matters
• Some strategies and tips from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration's new Holdings Protection Team are available here and here.
  
• If you're going to the SAA annual meeting in Chicago in a couple of weeks, Session 705, Theft Transparency in the Digital Age: Stakeholder Perspectives will highlight new Web-based tools that archives can use to deter thieves, share information, recover materials, and garner support from researchers.