Could U.S. Have Prevented Iraqi Looting?

April 17, 2003 -- In Baghdad today U.S. Marines took charge of what was left of a looted bank, hauling bags of cash away for safekeeping. Elsewhere in Baghdad, it's too late.

Hospitals have been ransacked, irreplaceable antiquities have been stolen or destroyed and valuable intelligence documents have been trashed. Angered that the U.S. military didn't work to prevent the looting of Baghdad's national Museum of Antiquities, three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee have quit in protest.

"The tragedy was not prevented, due to our nation's inaction," said Martin E. Sullivan, one of the advisers. He said that American scholars had given the State Department information on the location of Iraqi museums and historic sites, and the president has a "compelling moral obligation to plan for and try to prevent indiscriminate looting and destruction."

In Washington, the FBI announced today it had sent agents to Iraq to assist in recovering stolen antiquities.

"We are firmly committed to doing whatever we can to secure these treasures to the people of Iraq," FBI Director Robert Mueller told a news conference at the Justice Department. One official said there will be about 25 FBI agents in Iraq on that task.

Art Thieves Sneak In

Iraq boasts an estimated 10,000 ancient archaeological sites, and the region, known 6,000 years ago as Mesopotamia, is valued among archaeologists as the cradle of civilization. The government-owned Iraq National Museum hosted some of the world's most prized collections of ancient and Islamic art.

Art experts and historians say that professional thieves have used the looting as cover to steal irreplaceable items from the Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections in Iraq museums and libraries. Already, the items are appearing on the black market.

"It looks as if part of the theft was a very, very deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "It really looks like a very professional job."

Gibson was among 30 art experts and cultural historians who were commissioned by the United Nations to assess the damage to Iraq's heritage after the war.

Too Little, Too Late?

But critics are wondering why nothing was done to protect the sites from looters to begin with. The former director of operations at the Pentagon says the speed of the regime's collapse made protecting national treasures more difficult.

"In hindsight, we would have put more military police units and more civil reconstruction units into the flow," said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, now an ABCNEWS consultant. "It was not predictable at the time we were putting the plan together.

Yet, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinsheki warned in February that stabilizing Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, something the civilians at the Pentagon scoffed at.

When the United States intervened in Haiti in 1994, planning had been under way for months to police the cities and train local police in peacekeeping. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, was in charge of reorganizing Haiti's police department.

"We did have a structure that was able to go into Haiti fairly quickly after the military entered Haiti," Kelly said. "Obviously that is not the case right now in Iraq."

In fact, the administration is only now getting around to recruiting law enforcement professionals to work with local Iraqi police officers.

So far, the State Department has only 26 people training to go to Iraq, and they will not be there anytime soon. The first two law enforcement professionals from the United States will not be there until the end of next week.

Pentagon Defensive on Looting

In the meantime, the Pentagon is confident that the violence in Iraq will abate, and officials are defensive about what has already occurred.

"We didn't allow it to happen," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It happened."

His advisers agree.

"I think there is a natural period of conflict, this chaos often following the collapse of a regime, and when it was a regime as brutal and sadistic as this one, it's likely to be worse," said Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board who recently announced his resignation as chairman.

Whether the worst is over still has many Iraqis concerned.

Martha Raddatz at the Pentagon contributed to this report.