Greek American seeks Iraqi loot
BAGHDAD – He’s a «drop-and-give-you-20» push-ups Marine with a master’s degree in classical studies. He’s an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. He has crisscrossed the planet to pursue criminal suspects, from Sean «P. Diddy» Combs to Osama bin Laden. Now, in the blistering heat of postwar Iraq, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos – infantryman, scholar, amateur boxer and one-time waiter at his father’s Greek restaurant – has found the case that draws on all his wide-ranging expertise: tracking down the looted treasures from Iraq’s national museum. As head of the US team investigating the plunder, he has led military-style raids to retrieve priceless antiquities, then used his classics background to identify some of civilization’s earliest artifacts. But when developing a source, he finds himself asking the same questions as when he’s in the district attorney’s office, a job to which he’ll return when his stint on active duty ends. One Iraqi source even asked him for cab fare – the same euphemism used by his American drug informants when they want payment for information. «Talk about flashbacks,» Bogdanos, 46, said in the dusty museum library now doing double duty as his team’s command center and home in Iraq. Bogdanos makes his way through postwar Baghdad quoting everyone from Cicero to samurais. He seems to operate at twice the speed of the world around him and wants to talk about all he’s done – then worries about seeming vain. Returning from a raid, he drops to the ground to do three sets of push-ups, 135 in all, before answering questions – out of breath from the exertion – from the steady stream of journalists turning up at the museum gates. Bogdanos grew up in New York’s lower Manhattan, where his family owned a Greek restaurant. From age 7, he worked with his twin brother taking turns busing tables and doing schoolwork. «Table No. 1 at my Dad’s old restaurant was the homework table,» he said. «People who were really good at a subject would get a glass of wine or a baklava on the house for helping us with our homework.» Today he practices law before judges and among attorneys who knew him then – and maybe helped him with his math homework. He never thought he’d be one of them. «A lawyer was the guy who came in, ordered steak and didn’t leave a good tip,» he said. He attributes his lifelong interest in the classics to his parents, who had him reading Homer’s «Iliad» and «The Odyssey» at age 12. «It was ‘The Iliad’ which did it,» he says. «’The Odyssey’ is the greatest adventure story ever told, but there is no comparison to the sense of honor and duty in ‘The Iliad’.» It’s clear that those ideas mean a lot to him. But asked why he enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 20, he has but one reply: «Because it’s the Marines.» Despite his parents’ emphasis on education, Bogdanos never planned on college. He dreamed of becoming a professional boxer. His three brothers followed their father’s footsteps into the restaurant business, and Bogdanos figured he would do the same. «The Marine Corps changed that,» he says. The Marine recruiter persuaded him to apply to Columbia University. Not one to do things halfway, Bogdanos followed a bachelor’s degree in classical studies with a master’s in the same field and a law degree. In law school, he interned with the late judge Harold Rothwax, a New York legend of sharp tongue and tough sentences. «From the moment I stepped in his courtroom, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,» Bogdanos said. «You would have to take me out kicking and screaming.» After two years as a Marine lawyer, he left active duty in 1988. He joined the district attorney’s office the same day. While remaining in the Marine reserves, he has prosecuted subway muggers and teenage killers, but no case has drawn such sustained attention as Combs’ 14-month trial in a 1999 nightclub shooting. The rap impresario – then «Puff Daddy,» now «P. Diddy» – was acquitted of weapons and bribery charges. Bogdanos readily brings up his involvement in the case, only to express his distaste at the media frenzy it produced. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he was called up to join the forces hunting for Al Qaida and Taliban suspects. While he wouldn’t talk details, his efforts won him a Bronze Star and a promotion. His commitment was understandable. «I lost a lot of friends that day,» he said, «and that’s all I’m going to say about that.» He was similarly reticent about his family, though he allows that his lengthy assignments have made him miss them deeply. «I have missed my daughter’s birthday the last two years,» he said. Then emotion crosses his face and he asks to change the subject. Bogdanos was already in Iraq searching for banned weapons and investigating terrorist funding when he was enlisted to lead an investigation into the disappearance of artifacts from Iraq’s national collection during the looting after Saddam Hussein’s ouster. Finding the golden harp from the ancient Sumerian city of Ur in pieces on the floor of the museum’s restoration room was «heartrending,» he says. But every day, more artifacts are returned – often by strangers who turn up at the museum’s gates and hand things back no questions asked. «Just seeing the stuff is really remarkable,» he said. «The recovery of a single piece – the oldest recovered bronze bowl in bas relief, or a single pot with burned red ochre on it – that’s worth it.»
