From the Los Angeles Times

Missing Iraq antiquities haunt experts

About half of the 15,000 items either stolen or otherwise unaccounted for have been recovered, but the gaping hole in history remains on the fifth anniversary of the looting of Iraq's National Museum.

By Johanna Neuman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

1:25 PM PDT, April 8, 2008

Five years ago, looters ransacked the Iraqi National Museum, stealing centuries-old artifacts that celebrated Iraq's role as the cradle of civilization. Some headlines at the time exaggerated the size of the damage -- erroneously reporting 170,000 items missing. Investigators later discovered that some important artifacts -- including gold jewelry from Nimrud -- had been hidden at Iraq's Central Bank since the Persian Gulf War in 1990.

Today, investigators say that about 15,000 pieces were either stolen in the wake of war or went unaccounted for in the months and years before the conflict began. About half have been recovered. But the impact of the thefts -- amulets, Assyrian ivories, sculpture heads, ritual vessels and cylinder seals -- is still being felt in art circles and black markets throughout the world.

"The numbers can't tell the whole story," said U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney who has made the hunt for antiquities his specialty. "These things remind us of our common beginnings."

Interpol has been on the case, as has the FBI, where a new top 10 art crimes list has reported some early successes, including recovery of eight cylinder seals.

"We are still looking for this material. It's still important that we recover it if it is out there," said Bonnie Magness-Gardner, an archaeologist and art theft program manager at the FBI. "This material represents the rise of civilization in the Western world."

Bogdanos says there are as many reasons to steal antiquities as there are people -- "money, lust, a misguided sense that they are preserving Iraqi culture . . . cultural hatred, heritage used as a weapon . . . every base or self-deceptive motive you can imagine."

Much of the treasure is recovered in the Middle East, he said.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the looting, the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center is hosting a panel discussion Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington. Called "Antiquities Under Siege," the panel will examine what director Lawrence Rothfield calls the continuing crime of eroding the history buried in the desert of Iraq.

"The FBI and Interpol are working on this, but with a staff, in the case of Interpol, that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that staff responsible not just for Iraq but for combating all illicit trafficking in cultural goods worldwide, they need help," said Rothfield, who also questioned why the Pentagon did not include international arts organizations in its postwar planning until early 2003. "Had they been at the table [from the beginning] they might have been able to hammer home the likelihood that the museum would be attacked by looters as soon as the regime fell."