Iraq - Raiders of the Lost Art
July 2003 - 17’30”
REPORTER: Olivia Rousset
Three months ago Iraq's national Museum was looted and thousands of priceless relics stolen.
STEVE MOCSARY: Bring it to me. These are old discarded gold coins. They are not in perfect condition so they are not on display.
Acting as detective at the museum is this American task force - made up of treasury, FBI and other federal agents.
Steve Mocsary is an American customs agent investigating this crime against history.
STEVE MOCSARY: This is a huge area, it's the biggest vault in the downstairs area in the museum and it is virtually untouched. The only area is the corner in the back where all the valuable gold coins, amulets, pin wheels and those are the like that were taken.
So we know that area was specifically hit by the looters and hasn't been touched since then, and because of that, we are processing the area as a crime scene and we have got the army CID unit in there - that's Criminal Investigation Division - and they are processing the area for fingerprints and other items of evidentiary value.
As yet, no one knows who the thieves were, or even how much was stolen. The agents believe the looters had inside knowledge, so today they're fingerprinting the museum staff.
STEVE MOCSARY: Somebody had specific information to go to that location. It is obvious, because no other spot in this magazine was touched.
If the American forces had secured the museum a week earlier, the tragic events that unfolded here may never have happened.
NEWS ARCHIVE: The US is now guarding the entrance to Iraq's national museum. But the damage has already been done.
Televised scenes of the empty museum and the grief of the museum staff became a symbol of America's failure to protect the country it had occupied.
Reports had as many as 170,000 artifacts stolen.
The Americans are now stressing that the damage is not as bad as first reported. Colonel Matthew Bogdanos is in charge of the investigation.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS, US MARINES, INVESTIGATOR: What we found fortunately was that that was a gross and perhaps irresponsible exaggeration on the part of those individuals making those reports.
In fact, what we find are numbers significantly below that. I do want to stress though that numbers really cannot possibly tell the entire story. The loss of a single piece of our shared heritage is an absolute tragedy.
When the dust settled it became clear that most of the pieces had been put away for safekeeping. But the museum itself was trashed, and there are still thousands of relics missing.
DONNY GEORGE,DIRECTOR,IRAQ MUSEUM: At the beginning when I saw this destruction that was in the museum and these pieces that were taken, I felt that my life was finished. I felt that's it.
Donny George is the deputy director of the museum, he has worked at the State Board of Antiquities for 25 years.
To George, the museum and what happened to it is personal.
DONNY GEORGE: It's something like a shrine, even for me.
Sometimes when I have a spare one or two hours I just come from my office and just walk here or sit and wonder at these pieces.
Now it's very hard now to see this destruction of the museum. And one of the major damages of course for the museum is what they have taken from here. Here was the Warka vase. This alabaster vase from nearly 5,000 years ago depicts the Sumerian philosophy of life. And it was on this stand. It is a priceless piece.
Someone who understands the importance of this collection is Dan Potts, a professor of archaeology at Sydney University. He has come to Baghdad to offer Donny George his support.
PROFESSOR DAN POTTS, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: I think most people have no idea what Mesopotamia was all about. They may know a little about Greece, a little bit about Rome, but they have no real understanding, even though they hear the term 'cradle of civilization' bandied about, they don't really get the point that this was the place where the first cities arose, where writing was invented, where the first legal codes, first mathematics, first empire, all sorts of things - first irrigation system, and you know it's an unbelievable 4,500-5,000 years of urban society.
This is the first time Potts has been able to see many of these relics, which weren't easily accessible during Saddam's time.
PROFESSOR DAN POTTS: So this is what the throne room in the big apartments of the Assyrian palaces would have been like. These larger than life size figures in a pictorial relief all around the room in order to shock and awe the visitors, the official visitors, coming to see the Assyrian king.
No doubt then about who was master of the world, that's for sure.
These are more than just an artifact, these are really seriously important pieces of art and craftsmanship, from 5,000 years ago or 5,500 years ago, some of this material.
DONNY GEORGE: It's a great loss.
Donny George says the US Army had a list of sites to be protected during the war - and that the museum was second on this list.
DONNY GEORGE: I believed so much that if the American forces were here they would protect the museum.
There might be some people, looters coming from the neighbourhood. For that we were prepared. But as for the museum and with the American forces around and it was looted, that was something we never had in mind really.
While the looting of the museum was under way, the American forces had their tanks across the road. When resident archaeologist Mehsin Kadhem saw the crowds of looters gathering at the gates, he went to the soldiers for help.
MEHSIN KADHEM (Translation): I used a singlet and a stick to make a sort of flag, as a symbol of peace. I said "Look at the crowds". He said "I know, something will be done now". Only 15 minutes later the museum was broken into.
REPORTER (Translation): How many days later did the Americans enter the museum?
MEHSIN KADHEM (Translation): Heavens, it was a week, after one week.
REPORTER: Many say that the US Army could have done more to protect the museum.
COLONEL MATTHEEW BOGDANOS: Are any of those people engaged in the fighting? Are any of those people ever engaged in the fighting? Are any of those people here to see how the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard violated international law by creating firing positions in the compound? Those questions are borne of ignorance, usually from someone in the comfort of his living room.
The Americans maintain that firing from the building had held them back.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: This was a battleground. Would you like your 19-year-old brother to come here and defend against this in order to protect some antiquities? I don't think so.
It is our responsibility to protect them, but it is our greater responsibility to protect human life. This was combat. OK, we're done. Thank you. Do you have anything else?
Donny George stayed at the museum for much of the war and insists the fighting was over before the looting began.
DONNY GEORGE: If there was any kind of firing on Thursday how would hundreds of people gather in front of the museum? Just to come and enter the museum?
If there was real fighting still on Thursday here. If I were them I would have brought my tank in here without waiting for an order. Because a museum is beyond any kind of orders, you see.
It's not just protecting one building. It's protecting one building that contains symbols and artifacts that belong to the humanity. This was not Saddam's museum. It was the museum of mankind.
Looting continues throughout Iraq despite the presence of coalition forces.
This morning, Colonel Bogdanos received a call about looters in the museum's manuscript centre.
SOLDIER: Two guys stay with the car, secure this building and go on back inside. Dave Watchman, secure the front.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: We were informed a few moments ago that there were individuals in this museum attempting to loot it. So we got here and whoever was here had gone when we got here.
Fortunately, a group of concerned Iraqis had already taken the welfare of the manuscripts into their own hands.
Usama Nasser who is in charge of the collection, put 50,000 manuscripts away for safekeeping in this bomb shelter before the war.
USAMA NASSER (Translation): These manuscripts have two kinds of value. The material value as transcribed artifacts, and the cultural value as vehicles of science, knowledge, literature - and all that Arab thinking has produced.
They represent a cultural continuity linking the nation's generations from 1,400 years ago until now.
Nasser wouldn't let me in to see them. He is hesitant even to let the US troops near these treasures.
USAMA NASSER (Translation): The local residents here have very strong ties to their cultural, historical, Islamic, Arabic and other roots and they decided the manuscripts shouldn't go anywhere. They told the Americans, the American forces, that they'd protect the shelter with their bodies and souls. And now they are guarding the shelter day and night.
Local residents of this affluent suburb have already thwarted three looting attempts by firing at the thieves and burning their car.
AHMED KAZEM: Some thieves came to this place and they try to broke the door inside, so that they faced them by force and they shot them.
Along with Usama, Ahmed Kazem a schoolteacher, has arranged for the local community to guard the manuscripts rather than have American troops in their neighbourhood.
AHMED KAZEM: This is a nice place, a nice city. You understand? And we are afraid that there are many problems will happened if there are American soldiers here.
So we said we don't need any security. We will protect these treasures.
Back at the museum the employees are frustrated with the slow progress of the investigation.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Please, we are doing what we can, if you have any information about where any of the other items are.
MAN: We don't know where are they.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: I know. That's what...please, please. That's what we are doing day by day. We are looking, we are searching, we are trying to find everything to try to return them to the Iraqi people. Listen to me.
As a major part of their investigation the task force have started an amnesty program - encouraging the return of looted relics - often in exchange for payment.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: As you are undoubtedly aware the process of recovering stolen art and antiquities can take decades.
How often does a Van Gogh turn up after 40 years, or a Rembrandt after 100.
So far, around 1,000 items have come back. But perhaps of even greater concern than what has happened at the museum is the current plunder of archaeological sites throughout Iraq.
Donny George is inspecting some of these illegally excavated relics now being sold to the museum under the same amnesty program.
DONNY GEORGE: Do we know what site this came from?
But the majority will probably end up on the international art market.
Now George is slowly putting the collection back together - albeit with some gaping holes.
DONNY GEORGE: As for me as an archaeologist - to lose one piece, that's about more than 5,000 years, that was crafted by an Iraqi, by a Mesopotamian in this land, and we had it here, and it was displayed in one of the galleries and thousands and thousands of people used to come and see that piece, and now I believe one of these very important pieces no-one will see them again.
The toll now stands at 32 major artifacts missing from the gallery floor, along with thousands of pieces from the storerooms.
DONNY GEORGE: I would say there is no money in the world can buy these things. But, you know, I feel that these pieces would be insulted if you put a price or a figure for them. They are priceless pieces. You can never buy these things.
Incredibly, some of these major pieces have been recently returned to the museum, including the famed Warka vase.
With much fanfare the museum opened last week for just one day to showcase some of the recovered items.
DONNY GEORGE: The wounds are little by little healing. I myself really don't like to open these wounds always. But as I said I am a positive man. I would always like to forget for a while what happened. Because if we just stand and blame each other, the Iraq museum will not come up again.
Reporter/Camera
OLIVIA ROUSSET
Editors
JOHN BUCK
844 Grading
ANDREW COOKE
Subtitles
JOSEPH ABDO
July 2003 - 17’30”
REPORTER: Olivia Rousset
Three months ago Iraq's national Museum was looted and thousands of priceless relics stolen.
STEVE MOCSARY: Bring it to me. These are old discarded gold coins. They are not in perfect condition so they are not on display.
Acting as detective at the museum is this American task force - made up of treasury, FBI and other federal agents.
Steve Mocsary is an American customs agent investigating this crime against history.
STEVE MOCSARY: This is a huge area, it's the biggest vault in the downstairs area in the museum and it is virtually untouched. The only area is the corner in the back where all the valuable gold coins, amulets, pin wheels and those are the like that were taken.
So we know that area was specifically hit by the looters and hasn't been touched since then, and because of that, we are processing the area as a crime scene and we have got the army CID unit in there - that's Criminal Investigation Division - and they are processing the area for fingerprints and other items of evidentiary value.
As yet, no one knows who the thieves were, or even how much was stolen. The agents believe the looters had inside knowledge, so today they're fingerprinting the museum staff.
STEVE MOCSARY: Somebody had specific information to go to that location. It is obvious, because no other spot in this magazine was touched.
If the American forces had secured the museum a week earlier, the tragic events that unfolded here may never have happened.
NEWS ARCHIVE: The US is now guarding the entrance to Iraq's national museum. But the damage has already been done.
Televised scenes of the empty museum and the grief of the museum staff became a symbol of America's failure to protect the country it had occupied.
Reports had as many as 170,000 artifacts stolen.
The Americans are now stressing that the damage is not as bad as first reported. Colonel Matthew Bogdanos is in charge of the investigation.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS, US MARINES, INVESTIGATOR: What we found fortunately was that that was a gross and perhaps irresponsible exaggeration on the part of those individuals making those reports.
In fact, what we find are numbers significantly below that. I do want to stress though that numbers really cannot possibly tell the entire story. The loss of a single piece of our shared heritage is an absolute tragedy.
When the dust settled it became clear that most of the pieces had been put away for safekeeping. But the museum itself was trashed, and there are still thousands of relics missing.
DONNY GEORGE,DIRECTOR,IRAQ MUSEUM: At the beginning when I saw this destruction that was in the museum and these pieces that were taken, I felt that my life was finished. I felt that's it.
Donny George is the deputy director of the museum, he has worked at the State Board of Antiquities for 25 years.
To George, the museum and what happened to it is personal.
DONNY GEORGE: It's something like a shrine, even for me.
Sometimes when I have a spare one or two hours I just come from my office and just walk here or sit and wonder at these pieces.
Now it's very hard now to see this destruction of the museum. And one of the major damages of course for the museum is what they have taken from here. Here was the Warka vase. This alabaster vase from nearly 5,000 years ago depicts the Sumerian philosophy of life. And it was on this stand. It is a priceless piece.
Someone who understands the importance of this collection is Dan Potts, a professor of archaeology at Sydney University. He has come to Baghdad to offer Donny George his support.
PROFESSOR DAN POTTS, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: I think most people have no idea what Mesopotamia was all about. They may know a little about Greece, a little bit about Rome, but they have no real understanding, even though they hear the term 'cradle of civilization' bandied about, they don't really get the point that this was the place where the first cities arose, where writing was invented, where the first legal codes, first mathematics, first empire, all sorts of things - first irrigation system, and you know it's an unbelievable 4,500-5,000 years of urban society.
This is the first time Potts has been able to see many of these relics, which weren't easily accessible during Saddam's time.
PROFESSOR DAN POTTS: So this is what the throne room in the big apartments of the Assyrian palaces would have been like. These larger than life size figures in a pictorial relief all around the room in order to shock and awe the visitors, the official visitors, coming to see the Assyrian king.
No doubt then about who was master of the world, that's for sure.
These are more than just an artifact, these are really seriously important pieces of art and craftsmanship, from 5,000 years ago or 5,500 years ago, some of this material.
DONNY GEORGE: It's a great loss.
Donny George says the US Army had a list of sites to be protected during the war - and that the museum was second on this list.
DONNY GEORGE: I believed so much that if the American forces were here they would protect the museum.
There might be some people, looters coming from the neighbourhood. For that we were prepared. But as for the museum and with the American forces around and it was looted, that was something we never had in mind really.
While the looting of the museum was under way, the American forces had their tanks across the road. When resident archaeologist Mehsin Kadhem saw the crowds of looters gathering at the gates, he went to the soldiers for help.
MEHSIN KADHEM (Translation): I used a singlet and a stick to make a sort of flag, as a symbol of peace. I said "Look at the crowds". He said "I know, something will be done now". Only 15 minutes later the museum was broken into.
REPORTER (Translation): How many days later did the Americans enter the museum?
MEHSIN KADHEM (Translation): Heavens, it was a week, after one week.
REPORTER: Many say that the US Army could have done more to protect the museum.
COLONEL MATTHEEW BOGDANOS: Are any of those people engaged in the fighting? Are any of those people ever engaged in the fighting? Are any of those people here to see how the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard violated international law by creating firing positions in the compound? Those questions are borne of ignorance, usually from someone in the comfort of his living room.
The Americans maintain that firing from the building had held them back.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: This was a battleground. Would you like your 19-year-old brother to come here and defend against this in order to protect some antiquities? I don't think so.
It is our responsibility to protect them, but it is our greater responsibility to protect human life. This was combat. OK, we're done. Thank you. Do you have anything else?
Donny George stayed at the museum for much of the war and insists the fighting was over before the looting began.
DONNY GEORGE: If there was any kind of firing on Thursday how would hundreds of people gather in front of the museum? Just to come and enter the museum?
If there was real fighting still on Thursday here. If I were them I would have brought my tank in here without waiting for an order. Because a museum is beyond any kind of orders, you see.
It's not just protecting one building. It's protecting one building that contains symbols and artifacts that belong to the humanity. This was not Saddam's museum. It was the museum of mankind.
Looting continues throughout Iraq despite the presence of coalition forces.
This morning, Colonel Bogdanos received a call about looters in the museum's manuscript centre.
SOLDIER: Two guys stay with the car, secure this building and go on back inside. Dave Watchman, secure the front.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: We were informed a few moments ago that there were individuals in this museum attempting to loot it. So we got here and whoever was here had gone when we got here.
Fortunately, a group of concerned Iraqis had already taken the welfare of the manuscripts into their own hands.
Usama Nasser who is in charge of the collection, put 50,000 manuscripts away for safekeeping in this bomb shelter before the war.
USAMA NASSER (Translation): These manuscripts have two kinds of value. The material value as transcribed artifacts, and the cultural value as vehicles of science, knowledge, literature - and all that Arab thinking has produced.
They represent a cultural continuity linking the nation's generations from 1,400 years ago until now.
Nasser wouldn't let me in to see them. He is hesitant even to let the US troops near these treasures.
USAMA NASSER (Translation): The local residents here have very strong ties to their cultural, historical, Islamic, Arabic and other roots and they decided the manuscripts shouldn't go anywhere. They told the Americans, the American forces, that they'd protect the shelter with their bodies and souls. And now they are guarding the shelter day and night.
Local residents of this affluent suburb have already thwarted three looting attempts by firing at the thieves and burning their car.
AHMED KAZEM: Some thieves came to this place and they try to broke the door inside, so that they faced them by force and they shot them.
Along with Usama, Ahmed Kazem a schoolteacher, has arranged for the local community to guard the manuscripts rather than have American troops in their neighbourhood.
AHMED KAZEM: This is a nice place, a nice city. You understand? And we are afraid that there are many problems will happened if there are American soldiers here.
So we said we don't need any security. We will protect these treasures.
Back at the museum the employees are frustrated with the slow progress of the investigation.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Please, we are doing what we can, if you have any information about where any of the other items are.
MAN: We don't know where are they.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: I know. That's what...please, please. That's what we are doing day by day. We are looking, we are searching, we are trying to find everything to try to return them to the Iraqi people. Listen to me.
As a major part of their investigation the task force have started an amnesty program - encouraging the return of looted relics - often in exchange for payment.
COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS: As you are undoubtedly aware the process of recovering stolen art and antiquities can take decades.
How often does a Van Gogh turn up after 40 years, or a Rembrandt after 100.
So far, around 1,000 items have come back. But perhaps of even greater concern than what has happened at the museum is the current plunder of archaeological sites throughout Iraq.
Donny George is inspecting some of these illegally excavated relics now being sold to the museum under the same amnesty program.
DONNY GEORGE: Do we know what site this came from?
But the majority will probably end up on the international art market.
Now George is slowly putting the collection back together - albeit with some gaping holes.
DONNY GEORGE: As for me as an archaeologist - to lose one piece, that's about more than 5,000 years, that was crafted by an Iraqi, by a Mesopotamian in this land, and we had it here, and it was displayed in one of the galleries and thousands and thousands of people used to come and see that piece, and now I believe one of these very important pieces no-one will see them again.
The toll now stands at 32 major artifacts missing from the gallery floor, along with thousands of pieces from the storerooms.
DONNY GEORGE: I would say there is no money in the world can buy these things. But, you know, I feel that these pieces would be insulted if you put a price or a figure for them. They are priceless pieces. You can never buy these things.
Incredibly, some of these major pieces have been recently returned to the museum, including the famed Warka vase.
With much fanfare the museum opened last week for just one day to showcase some of the recovered items.
DONNY GEORGE: The wounds are little by little healing. I myself really don't like to open these wounds always. But as I said I am a positive man. I would always like to forget for a while what happened. Because if we just stand and blame each other, the Iraq museum will not come up again.
Reporter/Camera
OLIVIA ROUSSET
Editors
JOHN BUCK
844 Grading
ANDREW COOKE
Subtitles
JOSEPH ABDO