Matthew Bogdanos | |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | "pit bull" [1] |
Allegiance | United States of America |
Service/ | United States Marine Corps |
Years of service | 1980–88, 2001–05, 2009–10 (active) 1988–2001, 2006–08 (reserve) |
Rank | Colonel |
Battles/wars | Operation Desert Storm Operation Enduring Freedom Operation Iraqi Freedom |
Awards | Bronze Star [2] National Humanities Medal |
Other work | Assistant D.A., author, boxer |
Colonel Matthew Bogdanos is an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan (since 1988), author, boxer, and a retired colonel in the United States Marine Corps. [3] [4] Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bogdanos deployed to Afghanistan where he was awarded a Bronze Star for actions against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In 2003, while on active duty in the Marine Corps, he led an investigation into the looting of Iraq's National Museum, and was subsequently awarded the National Humanities Medal for his efforts. Returning to the District Attorney’s Office in 2010, he created and still heads the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, “the only one of its kind in the world.” He had previously gained national attention for the prosecution of Sean Combs, who was acquitted of weapons and bribery charges in a 2001 trial stemming from a 1999 nightclub shootout. [5]
Bogdanos attended Don Bosco Preparatory High School in New Jersey and later Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor's in classical studies from Bucknell and a degree in law from Columbia University Law School. He also has a master's degree in Classical Studies from Columbia University and another Master's in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College. [6] [7] [8]
Bogdanos is one of a set of twins born and raised in New York to a Greek father, Konstantine, and a French mother, Claire. He is one of four children. [9] Growing up he waited tables in his parents' Greek restaurant, Deno's Place, in lower Manhattan.
Bogdanos enlisted into the United States Marine Corps Reserve in January 1977, while still a freshman. During his military service, he served as a military lawyer at Camp Lejeune for three years before joining the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in New York in 1988 and becoming a homicide prosecutor. [10] [6] Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bogdanos returned to full-time active duty. [11] [12]
In 1996, Bogdanos led a counter-narcotics action on the Mexico–United States border, he was active during Operation Desert Storm and served in South Korea, Lithuania, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kosovo. [12] In 2001, he was part of a law enforcement, counter-terrorism team deployed to Afghanistan, where he was awarded a Bronze Star for actions against Al-Qaeda for, according to the bronze Star citation, "seizing unexpected opportunities and relying on his personal courage often at great personal risk.
In March 2003, he was promoted to colonel and deployed to Iraq as head of the team. During his stint in Iraq, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was sacked and thousands of valuable antiquities were stolen. [13] [14] For over five years Bogdanos led a team to recover the artifacts. Up to 2006, approximately 10000 artifacts were recovered through his efforts. [4] [15] Antiquities recovered include the Warka Vase and The Mask of Warka. [2] [6] Bogdanos wrote a memoir, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures, which he co-wrote with William Patrick. The book chronicles his efforts to recover the missing Iraqi artifacts. [11] In November 2005, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush for his efforts to recover the artifacts. [4] [16] [17] He has also received the 2004 Public Service Award from the Hellenic Lawyers of America, the 2006 Distinguished Leadership Award from the Washington DC Historical Society, and a 2007 Proclamation from the City of New York, among other awards. [14] [18] Deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 with NATO counter-insurgency forces, he was released back into the Marine Reserves in September 2010, and returned to the District Attorney's Office. [12]
In 2006, he tried to form a New York task force to prosecute antiquities trafficking. He was initially rebuffed by his immediate bosses at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. When Cyrus Vance Jr. became District Attorney in 2010, he authorized Bogdanos to prosecute antiquities trafficking, but with no additional resources assigned. For the next six years, he and Special Agent Brenton Easter, a federal agent with Homeland Security investigations, worked dozens of cases, including one of the largest seizures of stolen antiquities in U.S. history, more than 2600 idols valued at more than $143 million and seized from renowned New York dealer Subhash Kapoor who is on trial in India and awaiting extradition to New York. By 2017, Bogdanos and Easter were making so many antiquities trafficking cases, that Bogdanos was sleeping in his office. When supervisors alerted District Attorney Vance, he approved the creation of the first-of-its-kind Antiquities trafficking Unit consisting of prosecutors, federal agents, New York City detectives, and specialized analysts. Since then, the Unit has grown to 16 personnel. Since 2010, Bogdanos and his team have convicted a dozen traffickers, seized more than 4000 antiquities valued at more than $200 million, and repatriated more than 2000 antiquities to almost two dozen countries. Among the seizures was a golden first-century-B.C. Egyptian coffin that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had acquired for $4 million and was made famous when Kim Kardashian posed for a photo next to the coffin at the 2018 Met Gala. [19] [20]
As a Senior Trial Counsel in the District Attorney's Office, Bogdanos still prosecutes homicides, what he describes as being "connected to the worst moment in people's lives." In 2015, Bogdanos successfully convicted pharmaceuticals executive Gigi Jordan for poisoning her 8-year-old autistic son, Jude, by forcing him to ingest hydrocodone, ambien, and Xanax, washing them down his throat with orange juice and vodka. Jordan was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 2019, Bogdanos convicted Roderick Covlin of murdering his wealthy wife, Shele Covlin, for her money. Covlin tried to frame his 9-year-old daughter for the murder, but Bogdanos successfully disproved that defense. Covlin was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. [21] [22]
Bogdanos is also a former middleweight boxer with almost 30 amateur fights and is still boxing, with a record of 10-2 since his 40th birthday. Along with another Assistant District Attorney, fellow U.S. Marine officer Al Peterson, he co-founded a Charity Boxing Foundation called Battle of the Barristers that has raised more than $1 million for wounded veterans and children at risk. [23] [24]
Bogdanos has four children with his wife, Claudia Tuchman Bogdanos, a lawyer at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. One of his sons, Michael, is also a Marine Infantry Officer. [25] [26]
1st Row | Defense Superior Service Medal w/ 1 oak leaf cluster | Bronze Star | ||
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2nd Row | Defense Meritorious Service Medal | Meritorious Service Medal | Joint Service Commendation Medal | Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal |
3rd Row | Joint Service Achievement Medal | Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal | Joint Meritorious Unit Award w/ 3 oak leaf clusters | Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation w/ 1 service star |
4th Row | Selected Marine Corps Reserve Medal w/ 3 service stars | National Defense Service Medal w/ 1 service star | Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal | Afghanistan Campaign Medal w/ 1 service star |
5th Row | Iraq Campaign Medal w/ 3 service stars | Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal | Global War on Terrorism Service Medal | Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal |
6th Row | Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon w/ 2 service stars | Navy & Marine Corps Overseas Service Ribbon w/ 4 service stars | Marine Corps Recruiting Ribbon | Armed Forces Reserve Medal w/ 4 mobilizations |
The Don Bosco Preparatory School graduate chose Bucknell University, and joined the Marines on Jan. 15, 1977, the second semester of his freshman year. 'They left me alone during the school year,' Bogdanos said. 'In the summers, I went to Officers Candidate school.'
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The Battle of Baghdad, also known as the Fall of Baghdad, was a military engagement that took place in Baghdad in early April 2003, as part of the invasion of Iraq.
The Iraq Museum is the national museum of Iraq, located in Baghdad. It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq, a recent phenomenon influenced by other nations' naming of their national museums; The Iraq Museum's name is inspired by the name of the British Museum, however. The Iraq Museum contains precious relics from the Mesopotamian, Abbasid and Persian civilizations. It was looted during and after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Despite international efforts, only some of the stolen artifacts have been returned. After being closed for many years while being refurbished, and rarely open for public viewing, the museum was officially reopened in February 2015.
James Terry Conway is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general who served as the 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Among his previous postings were Director of Operations (J-3) on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commanding General of 1st Marine Division and I Marine Expeditionary Force, taking part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the First Battle of Fallujah.
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.
Gregory Raymond Kelly is an American conservative television anchor, television host, and retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He is the host of Greg Kelly Reports, on Newsmax TV. He was previously the co-host of Good Day New York on Fox 5 NY WNYW, with Rosanna Scotto, from 2008 to 2017.
Archaeological looting in Iraq took place since at least the late 19th century. The chaos following war provided the opportunity to pillage everything that was not nailed down. There were also attempts to protect the sites such as the period between April 9, 2003, when the staff vacated the Iraq Museum and April 15, 2003, when US forces arrived in sufficient numbers to "restore some semblance of order." Some 15,000 cultural artifacts disappeared in that time. Over the years approximately 14,800 were recovered from within and outside Iraq and taken under the protection of the Iraqi government.
Thieves of Baghdad is a non-fictional account written by Col. Matthew Bogdanos about the quest to recover over a thousand lost artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad after the country's counter-invasion.
Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict. The term "looted art" reflects bias, and whether particular art has been taken legally or illegally is often the subject of conflicting laws and subjective interpretations of governments and people; use of the term "looted art" in reference to a particular art object implies that the art was taken illegally.
The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Donny George Youkhanna was an Iraqi-Assyrian archaeologist, anthropologist, author, curator, and scholar, and a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in New York.
The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) is a nongovernmental civil society organisation (CSO) dedicated to research, capacity building, and training in relation to cultural property crime and protection. The organisation was founded in 2009 by Dr. Noah Charney, an art and art crime historian and author.
Mohammad Ghani Hikmat was an Iraqi sculptor and artist credited with creating some of Baghdad's highest-profile sculptures and monuments and was known as the "sheik of sculptors". He is also known as an early member of Iraq's first 20th-century art groups, including Al-Ruwad and The Baghdad Modern Art Group; two groups that helped to bridge the gap between tradition and modern art. He was also instrumental in recovering many of Iraq's missing artworks, which were looted following the 2003 invasion.
The Bassetki Statue is a monument from the Akkadian period in Mesopotamia. It was discovered in the 1974 during road construction near the site of the village Bassetki for military purposes. The pedestal contains an inscription in Akkadian, indicating that the statue once stood in the doorway of a palace of the Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin.
The Mask of Warka, also known as the Lady of Uruk, dating from 3100 BC, is one of the earliest known representations of the human face. The carved marble female face is probably a depiction of Inanna. It is approximately 20 cm tall, and was probably incorporated into a larger wooden cult image, though it is only a presumption that a deity is represented. It is without parallels in the period. It is in the National Museum of Iraq, having been recovered undamaged after being looted during the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Eberhard W. Kornfeld was a Swiss auctioneer, author, art dealer, and collector based in Bern.
David Locke Hall is a highly decorated former Assistant United States Attorney, Naval Intelligence officer, and author.
Shelby White is an American investor, art collector, and philanthropist. She serves on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation.
Apsara Iyer is an art crime investigator and the 137th President of the Harvard Law Review. She is the first Indian American woman to be elected to that position.
Gianfranco Becchina is an Italian antiquities dealer who has been convicted in Italy of illegally dealing in antiquities.
A Manhattan D.A. recalls his investigation of the Baghdad museum looting
An eclectic colonel who once prosecuted P Diddy - and lost - is now hunting down Iraq's lost antiquities