Audacity is a really great freeware program that allows you to edit and compress your audio files. It's easy to install and get started. If you need to compress the files to mp3 format you'll need to download LameLib as well, also incredibly easy to install.
I started by simply opening the file and normalizing the entire contents. This made it louder and created a bigger range for the tones with in. However it caused the background static to be way too loud so I selected a portion of static, and audacity and had remove the background noise. The only problem with that was the resulting high pitched tones at the loudest points in the file. Using the fft filter I managed to remove the less desirable pitches and the resulting file sounded clear.
I'm looking forward to playing more with the Audacity program, as it seems capable of performing all different types of functions to edit sound.