Missing (Baghdad) museum artefacts found safe in vaults

The Straits Times ^ | May 8, 2003 | The Straits Times

[FairOpinion]

WASHINGTON - More than 700 artefacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the National Museum in Baghdad have been recovered by teams of investigators in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday.

Some of the missing works were stored in underground vaults before the United States-led invasion of the country.

The US investigators located the vaults over the past week.

They forced them open, revealing hundreds of artefacts that had apparently been stored there to protect them from being damaged in a US assault.

The find included ancient jewellery, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said.

The discovery of so many valuable artefacts would support the view of Iraqi museum officials and American investigators who have said that while many irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the museum during the fall of Baghdad last month, the losses were less severe than thought.

Earlier this week, a top official of the British Museum, Mr John Curtis, said his Iraqi counterparts had told him that they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in the months before the start of the war, storing many of the most precious artefacts in secure hiding places. -- New York Times

[FairOpinion]

The priceless treasures, which were never missing in the first place ( except the ones looted by Saddam way before we got anywhere near Iraq)

Where are the apologies from all the liberal media, which ran the story on the front pages for weeks, blaming the US troops for not protecting the Baghdad museum from looters?

[FairOpinion]

Here is a more detailed article from the San Francisco Chronicle about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/08/MN252517.DTL

Secret vaults yield Iraqi artifacts
Museum staff hid them for safety, but some antiquities still missing

Philip Shenon, New York Times Thursday, May 8, 2003

Washington -- U.S. investigators searching in Iraq have recovered more than 700 artifacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the collection of the National Museum in Baghdad, some of them stored in underground vaults before the U.S.-led invasion, American officials said Wednesday.

The investigators located the vaults in Baghdad over the past week, including five within the museum complex, and forced them open, revealing hundreds of artifacts that apparently had been stored to protect them from damage in the war. The finds included ancient jewelry, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said.

The discovery of so many valuable artifacts would support the view of Iraqi museum officials and U.S. investigators who have said that while many irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the museum during the fall of Baghdad last month, the losses were less severe than thought.


SECURE HIDING PLACES
Earlier this week, a top official of the British Museum, John Curtis, disclosed that his Iraqi counterparts had told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in the months before the start of the war,

storing many of the most precious artifacts in secure hiding places.

The teams of investigators -- U.S. Customs agents working with American soldiers -- did not provide a detailed inventory of the items found in the underground vaults this week, nor would they say if the artifacts included any of the 38 high-value items that had been confirmed missing by museum administrators.

But they did offer a partial list of the items recovered by investigators before the vaults were forced opened this week, including a vase reported to date from the fifth century B.C. and a broken statue of an Assyrian king from around 900 B.C. Both were handed over to U.S. forces by Iraqi citizens in the last month.

The United States has offered amnesty to Iraqis who turn in looted objects from the museum and other archaeological collections.

The officials offered few details on the 39,400 ancient manuscripts from the museum collection that were also reported found. Officials said the U.S. investigators have been uncovering the artifacts and manuscripts so quickly in recent days that there has been no time to try to determine exactly what much of the material is, or its value.

"The recovery of these items was the direct result of a superb, cooperative effort between U.S. law enforcement, the U.S. military and the Iraqi people," said Michael Garcia, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

The department said in a statement that investigators had found evidence in some of the vaults that "certain select high-value pieces" had been stolen from the storage sites.

Officials said that an Iraqi museum curator who was taken to one of the vaults in Baghdad in recent days had fainted on discovering that some of the most valuable items stored there before the war had vanished, apparently stolen by someone with access to the vault.

U.S. officials said the new Homeland Security Department, which took control of the Customs Service earlier this year, dispatched several agents to the Middle East in the weeks before the war, in the hope that their expertise would be valuable in searching for Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and in tracking down assets of Saddam Hussein and his family and associates.


MISSION SHIFTED TO ARTIFACTS
After the first reports of looting at the museum, long recognized as possessing one of the Middle East's largest and most valuable archaeological collections, the customs agents shifted their focus to the hunt for those artifacts.

U.S. investigators have complained that their work has been hindered by a lack of cooperation from museum workers, who have been unable to provide a full inventory of the museum's collection, and by uncertainty over how many objects were on open display when the looting began. U.S. officials say there is a growing suspicion that insiders within the museum's administration were to blame for much of the thefts.

The Homeland Security Department said that its teams in Iraq had recently identified other storage areas in the vicinity of Baghdad that are believed to contain artifacts from the museum. Officials said the investigators are following up on reports that many artifacts are stored in several vaults beneath the headquarters of the Iraqi Central Bank in Baghdad.

In his comments earlier this week in New York, Curtis, the British Museum official, who is the curator of its Near East collection, said it appeared that the vast majority of the looting at the National Museum in Baghdad had not taken place in its display halls but rather in its basement storage rooms, where more commonplace objects were kept.

[FairOpinion]

Here is a more detailed article from the San Francisco Chronicle about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/08/MN252517.DTL

Secret vaults yield Iraqi artifacts
Museum staff hid them for safety, but some antiquities still missing

Philip Shenon, New York Times Thursday, May 8, 2003

Washington -- U.S. investigators searching in Iraq have recovered more than 700 artifacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the collection of the National Museum in Baghdad, some of them stored in underground vaults before the U.S.-led invasion, American officials said Wednesday.

The investigators located the vaults in Baghdad over the past week, including five within the museum complex, and forced them open, revealing hundreds of artifacts that apparently had been stored to protect them from damage in the war. The finds included ancient jewelry, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said.

The discovery of so many valuable artifacts would support the view of Iraqi museum officials and U.S. investigators who have said that while many irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the museum during the fall of Baghdad last month, the losses were less severe than thought.


SECURE HIDING PLACES
Earlier this week, a top official of the British Museum, John Curtis, disclosed that his Iraqi counterparts had told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in the months before the start of the war,

storing many of the most precious artifacts in secure hiding places.

The teams of investigators -- U.S. Customs agents working with American soldiers -- did not provide a detailed inventory of the items found in the underground vaults this week, nor would they say if the artifacts included any of the 38 high-value items that had been confirmed missing by museum administrators.

But they did offer a partial list of the items recovered by investigators before the vaults were forced opened this week, including a vase reported to date from the fifth century B.C. and a broken statue of an Assyrian king from around 900 B.C. Both were handed over to U.S. forces by Iraqi citizens in the last month.

The United States has offered amnesty to Iraqis who turn in looted objects from the museum and other archaeological collections.

The officials offered few details on the 39,400 ancient manuscripts from the museum collection that were also reported found. Officials said the U.S. investigators have been uncovering the artifacts and manuscripts so quickly in recent days that there has been no time to try to determine exactly what much of the material is, or its value.

"The recovery of these items was the direct result of a superb, cooperative effort between U.S. law enforcement, the U.S. military and the Iraqi people," said Michael Garcia, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

The department said in a statement that investigators had found evidence in some of the vaults that "certain select high-value pieces" had been stolen from the storage sites.

Officials said that an Iraqi museum curator who was taken to one of the vaults in Baghdad in recent days had fainted on discovering that some of the most valuable items stored there before the war had vanished, apparently stolen by someone with access to the vault.

U.S. officials said the new Homeland Security Department, which took control of the Customs Service earlier this year, dispatched several agents to the Middle East in the weeks before the war, in the hope that their expertise would be valuable in searching for Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and in tracking down assets of Saddam Hussein and his family and associates.


MISSION SHIFTED TO ARTIFACTS
After the first reports of looting at the museum, long recognized as possessing one of the Middle East's largest and most valuable archaeological collections, the customs agents shifted their focus to the hunt for those artifacts.

U.S. investigators have complained that their work has been hindered by a lack of cooperation from museum workers, who have been unable to provide a full inventory of the museum's collection, and by uncertainty over how many objects were on open display when the looting began. U.S. officials say there is a growing suspicion that insiders within the museum's administration were to blame for much of the thefts.

The Homeland Security Department said that its teams in Iraq had recently identified other storage areas in the vicinity of Baghdad that are believed to contain artifacts from the museum. Officials said the investigators are following up on reports that many artifacts are stored in several vaults beneath the headquarters of the Iraqi Central Bank in Baghdad.

In his comments earlier this week in New York, Curtis, the British Museum official, who is the curator of its Near East collection, said it appeared that the vast majority of the looting at the National Museum in Baghdad had not taken place in its display halls but rather in its basement storage rooms, where more commonplace objects were kept.

[FairOpinion]

Here is a more detailed article from the San Francisco Chronicle about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/08/MN252517.DTL

Secret vaults yield Iraqi artifacts
Museum staff hid them for safety, but some antiquities still missing

Philip Shenon, New York Times Thursday, May 8, 2003

Washington -- U.S. investigators searching in Iraq have recovered more than 700 artifacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the collection of the National Museum in Baghdad, some of them stored in underground vaults before the U.S.-led invasion, American officials said Wednesday.

The investigators located the vaults in Baghdad over the past week, including five within the museum complex, and forced them open, revealing hundreds of artifacts that apparently had been stored to protect them from damage in the war. The finds included ancient jewelry, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said.

The discovery of so many valuable artifacts would support the view of Iraqi museum officials and U.S. investigators who have said that while many irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the museum during the fall of Baghdad last month, the losses were less severe than thought.


SECURE HIDING PLACES
Earlier this week, a top official of the British Museum, John Curtis, disclosed that his Iraqi counterparts had told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in the months before the start of the war,

storing many of the most precious artifacts in secure hiding places.

The teams of investigators -- U.S. Customs agents working with American soldiers -- did not provide a detailed inventory of the items found in the underground vaults this week, nor would they say if the artifacts included any of the 38 high-value items that had been confirmed missing by museum administrators.

But they did offer a partial list of the items recovered by investigators before the vaults were forced opened this week, including a vase reported to date from the fifth century B.C. and a broken statue of an Assyrian king from around 900 B.C. Both were handed over to U.S. forces by Iraqi citizens in the last month.

The United States has offered amnesty to Iraqis who turn in looted objects from the museum and other archaeological collections.

The officials offered few details on the 39,400 ancient manuscripts from the museum collection that were also reported found. Officials said the U.S. investigators have been uncovering the artifacts and manuscripts so quickly in recent days that there has been no time to try to determine exactly what much of the material is, or its value.

"The recovery of these items was the direct result of a superb, cooperative effort between U.S. law enforcement, the U.S. military and the Iraqi people," said Michael Garcia, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

The department said in a statement that investigators had found evidence in some of the vaults that "certain select high-value pieces" had been stolen from the storage sites.

Officials said that an Iraqi museum curator who was taken to one of the vaults in Baghdad in recent days had fainted on discovering that some of the most valuable items stored there before the war had vanished, apparently stolen by someone with access to the vault.

U.S. officials said the new Homeland Security Department, which took control of the Customs Service earlier this year, dispatched several agents to the Middle East in the weeks before the war, in the hope that their expertise would be valuable in searching for Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and in tracking down assets of Saddam Hussein and his family and associates.


MISSION SHIFTED TO ARTIFACTS
After the first reports of looting at the museum, long recognized as possessing one of the Middle East's largest and most valuable archaeological collections, the customs agents shifted their focus to the hunt for those artifacts.

U.S. investigators have complained that their work has been hindered by a lack of cooperation from museum workers, who have been unable to provide a full inventory of the museum's collection, and by uncertainty over how many objects were on open display when the looting began. U.S. officials say there is a growing suspicion that insiders within the museum's administration were to blame for much of the thefts.

The Homeland Security Department said that its teams in Iraq had recently identified other storage areas in the vicinity of Baghdad that are believed to contain artifacts from the museum. Officials said the investigators are following up on reports that many artifacts are stored in several vaults beneath the headquarters of the Iraqi Central Bank in Baghdad.

In his comments earlier this week in New York, Curtis, the British Museum official, who is the curator of its Near East collection, said it appeared that the vast majority of the looting at the National Museum in Baghdad had not taken place in its display halls but rather in its basement storage rooms, where more commonplace objects were kept.

[Guillermo]

This will make it in the back pages of the NY Times and Washington Post, if at all.

It will also be totally ignored by the wackos who were saying "The US military managed to secure the oil fields, why didn't they secure the 170,000 priceless treasures?"

[Petronski]

Those poor twisted leftists...what will they bitch about now?

[arielb]

these artifacts are not worth risking the life of one American soldier. Instead of whining "why didn't the military prevent the looting???" the elitists and archeologists should've risked their own lives to protect these ancient relics

[MizSterious]

And where the heck are the apologies from Freepers?

[FairOpinion]

Sorry for the triplicate of the additional article, it looked like it didn't go and I clicked on it a couple more times.

[MizSterious]

And where the heck are the apologies from Freepers?

[chainsaw]

But,..But...But...Peter Jennings said they were stolen, bush should have seen to it that they were protected. You know Peter the twit is never wrong. </sarcasm>

[arielb]

these artifacts are not worth risking the life of one American soldier. Instead of whining "why didn't the military prevent the looting???" the elitists and archeologists should've risked their own lives to protect these ancient relics

[Petronski]

Those poor twisted leftists...what will they bitch about now?

[MizSterious]

Honest, I only hit the button once! Apologies!

[FairOpinion]

"And where the heck are the apologies from Freepers? "
---

I think we'll have a long wait for that.

In the meantime I found a good editorial:

The Non-Pillage of Baghdad
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7699

By Wall Street Journal Editorial
The Wall Street Journal | May 7, 2003

"It is very common for the first information following a crisis to be wrong, and when I say wrong, I mean wrong."

So spoke Ronald Noble, the Secretary General of Interpol, at a conference yesterday in Lyon, France, devoted to the recovery of stolen Iraqi artifacts. The context for Mr. Noble's remarks is the incredible reduction in the estimate of the number of artworks lost in the ransacking of Baghdad's National Museum.

The claims have gone from 170,000 items first reported to the 30 to 40 that British Museum curator John Curtis confirmed missing at a press conference Monday in New York. Mr. Curtis's figure roughly tallies with that given by the Marine colonel investigating the looting.

And therein lies a story that always had another agenda attached to it. The initial reports coming out of Baghdad quoted the weeping deputy director of the museum, who blamed the Americans for allowing the destruction of "170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years." A segment of the press corps eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of George W. Bush's victory quickly took up the theme.

It wasn't long before the American liberation of Iraq was likened to the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. How typical, they sneered, for a Texas Republican to protect the oil fields (which will help feed Iraqis) while leaving the heritage of Western civilization naked.

But the latest news now appears to confirm what the Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov reported from Baghdad three weeks ago: Most of these works had been secreted away in anticipation of an attack. Moreover, as Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Lyon conference, the theft of Iraq's treasures was carried out by organized criminals who knew what they were looking for. Surely one key question is who at the museum might have helped. (Hint: It wasn't Donald Rumsfeld.)

Perhaps the biggest problem here is that the Iraqis didn't keep very good records, something Western museums, with the help of Unesco, are now trying to correct. None of this is to deny the terrible damage that did occur, the priceless bits of Iraq's heritage that have been stolen or destroyed -- or the many thousands more works that might be confirmed missing when curators finally go through the storehouses.

It is to say, however, with Mr. Noble that the key to restoring Iraq's museum will be to start dealing in information and facts, not "rumors and anecdotal stories."

[LauraJean]

Ha just what I thought when this story first came out. ha ha ha, pardon me this isn't a ''gloat free'' zone I hope. I think I'll gloat some more ha, ha, ha.

[randog]

Instead of whining "why didn't the military prevent the looting???" the elitists and archeologists should've risked their own lives to protect these ancient relics

Better yet, why didn't the "human shields" protect the museum?

So many questions, so few answers.

[steveegg]

Where are the apologies from all the liberal media, which ran the story on the front pages for weeks, blaming the US troops for not protecting the Baghdad museum from looters?

Want to bet that this isn't even mentioned in tomorrow's fishwraps?

[FairOpinion]

"I think I'll gloat some more ha, ha, ha. "

---

I'll help.
But unfortunately by this ridiculous non-story, the liberals did manage to divert attention from the glorious liberation of Iraq, which was their intent.

We liberate Iraq, liberals whine -- on the front pages of newspapers -- about non-existent looting of artifacts.
We win the war with minimal casualties, Bush declares victory and thanks the troops, liberals whine that he landed in a jet, not a helicopter, and why did he go there in the first place.

Do I detect a pattern here? Liberals seem to be at a total loss of issues, aren't they?

Ooh, and the other day I also saw and posted an article that the "humanitarian crisis" the liberals were whining about in Iraq, also doesn't exist, as verified by the Red Cross.