Archives ex-intern pleads guilty to theft

A former intern at the National Archives and Records Administration in Philadelphia yesterday pleaded guilty to stealing rare government documents - most having to do with the Civil War.

Denning Mc-Tague, 40, of Philadelphia, could face six to 18 months in prison when he is sentenced July 12. U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell released McTague yesterday on $25,000 bail pending sentencing.

Eric Sitarchuk, McTague's attorney, declined comment.

McTague, a collector who operates a business that sells rare maps and manuscripts, was charged last month with theft of government property.

The feds said McTague stole 164 documents last summer from the regional office of the Archives while he worked there as an unpaid intern, and then sold some of the purloined items on eBay.

Court papers filed by the feds said McTague would ask Archives volunteers to let him know about interesting documents, then would slip the documents inside a yellow legal pad and place the pad in his backpack before leaving the Archives building in Center City.

All but three items have been recovered. They included mostly orders, letters and telegrams to the Frankford Arsenal about supplying guns, gunpowder and swords to troops.

McTague put 150 items up for sale on eBay and netted about $30,000 from the sale of approximately 75 stolen documents, officials said.

The stolen documents included a telegram from the War Department about President Abraham Lincoln's burial train and a letter from J.E.B. Stuart, a Confederate general and famous cavalryman in the Civil War.

The feds said in court papers that the Stuart item, which was recovered, was appraised at more than $5,000.

But U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said yesterday that the documents are really priceless.

"They tell the story of our nation and are incapable of having a price. These crimes are significant thefts against all of us," he said.

McTague had been responsible for arranging and organizing documents in a specific area of the Archives for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

The feds were able to crack the case against McTague thanks to the help of two brothers in Gettysburg, Dean and Jim Thomas, said Paul Brachfeld, inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Brachfeld said the Thomas brothers, who own a publishing company that specializes in books about the Civil War, spotted on eBay one of the items McTague had pilfered and alerted authorities.

Brachfeld said the Thomases had recognized the document as one they had seen at the Archives.

"We don't have the investigative resources to cover the whole nation," Brachfeld said, "so we rely on American citizens like the Thomases to be our sentinels and trip wires."

This is the second major theft of documents from the regional Archives to be prosecuted by the feds.

In 2002, a federal judge sentenced a former curator of the Archives here, Shawn Aubitz, to 21 months for stealing documents with an estimated value of $258,000. *