[MSN] Krumpets With Medici Conspiracy's Peter Watson

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Krumpets With Medici Conspiracy's Peter Watson 
Monday, 20 November 2006, 8:36 pm
Article: Suzan Mazur  

(formatted text plus photographs available at:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0611/S00363.htm)




Tea & Krumpets With Medici Conspiracy's Peter Watson

By Suzan Mazur
 
The Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side was the designated meeting
spot, in the bar made famous by Ludwig Bemelmans' mural of Manhattan,
Carlyle's very own Euphronios masterpiece. Bemelmans' was packed at 5:30,
and I ran into US News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman, who was
happy to see me thinking I was his date. Medici Conspiracy author, Peter
Watson, arrived soon after. And Peter and I settled in at a table beside one
of Bemelman's bankers on the wall. 

Watson's wife, a pretty, petite woman, who works as a "business getter" for
Christie's auction house giving lunches and dinners for customers, also
stopped by briefly to say hello. 

But it was far too noisy to talk about antiquities conspiracy at length, so
Peter and I agreed to meet for tea later in the week a bit further down
Madison Avenue at the Lowell Hotel.

Peter Watson is an intense man. He studied at Tavistock Clinic in the UK for
two years under primal scream psychiatrist R.D. Laing and for a time served
as European Editor of Psychology Today. Among 13 books - he's written one
called War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology, another,
The Modern Mind, and the more recent one, A History of Thought and Invention
from Fire to Freud.

But he's also been writing about art conspiracies for a quarter century,
first for the London Observer and London Times, as the paper's New York
correspondent. The art stories began with a quest to find a stolen
Caravaggio painting and led to publication of his book, The Caravaggio
Conspiracy. 

Watson next took on a scandal at Sotheby's in London, involving the
auctioning of looted Italian vases, and turned that into a book, Sotheby's:
The Inside Story. 

ADVERTISEMENT
Sixty Minutes interviewed him and produced a segment based on the Sotheby's
scandal. And both the Caravaggio and Sotheby's books have been features on
British television.

Watson's newest book, The Medici Conspiracy, carefully presents Italy's push
to rein in the ring of antiquities smugglers who've looted half the
country's Greek & Roman culture. The organization, or "cordata", allegedly
includes a couple of Americans: art dealer Bob Hecht and former Getty
curator Marion True - both now on trial in Rome. Dealer Giacomo Medici, who
rounds out the conspiracy and who Watson names the book after, has already
been sentenced to ten years for antiquities trafficking and awaits his final
case appeal in January. 

Since I've also written about antiquities and Hecht et al., beginning with a
report for The Economist in 1987, Peter and I thought it would be productive
to have a dialogue.

He was in New York, invited by the group, "Saving Antiquities for Everyone",
to speak at their awards ceremony the previous night in Chelsea. With the
speech over, Watson was relaxed, ebullient and ready to chat about Medici in
between munches of English scones and tea sandwiches. He was off the next
day to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving to talk more about books with one of his
best friends while his wife plays bridge, which he said "she does very
well". 

Will a film be next? Watson says he doesn't like writing screenplays, but
that he's quite happy for people to buy The Medici Conspiracy book for a
film. "I know how to write books," he says. "I enjoy writing books. Books
are my natural idiom." 

He also likes the life of moving between his homes in London and the south
of France. "I don't want to disturb that too much", he said. 

Watson removed his jacket for the meeting, revealing a red striped shirt. As
we sipped tea in the mirrors of the Pembroke Room, he still seemed a tad
under the influence of a first-time meeting earlier in the afternoon with
the provocative former director of the Metropolitan Museum, Thomas Hoving --
the man who bought the Euphronios vase from Bob Hecht for $1 million dollars
in 1972. 

My interview with Peter Watson follows: 


TRANSCRIPT BEGINS

Suzan Mazur: You make the case early on in the book, establish the
importance of what the Italians have been doing in terms of reclaiming their
ancient art. You highlight the Etruscans having the "earliest urban
civilization in the north Mediterranean" and say they were as much
"founders" of Western civilization as Greece and Rome. That they were
excellent at science and technology, for instance, and built stone arches,
paved streets, aqueducts and sewers, which the Romans are sometimes given
credit for. 

 
[The Etruscans were also apparently somewhat of a mysteriously erotic
culture, which Watson doesn't say in the book. LINK]
Then you describe the Greek vase painters - particularly the brilliant
red-figure artists of the 6th-4th centuries BC, who were their day's
Michaelangelo, Raphael and da Vinci and produced paintings of a quality "the
world would not see again until the Italian Renaissance." You mention that
these vases - red-figure as well as black-figure - were placed in Etruscan.
tombs. And then you note that maybe as many as 100,000 of these tombs -
Etruscan and others - were robbed by Bob Hecht, Giacomo Medici and the
organization, the "cordata". 

Would you pick up there and comment further on the destruction, which
resulted in a loss of half of Italy's Greek and Roman culture?

Peter Watson: It began with the discovery of Giacomo Medici's archives
[following raids by the Swiss and Italian authorities] and three senior
archaeologists being assigned to those archives. It was a first for these
archaeologists to have the leisure to examine so many objects. 

Normally archaeologists can only see these things for a day or two when they
come up for view prior to an auction. When other people are jostling to see
them. When you can only get a few minutes with some of the objects. Or if
they come into a gallery, you can go and have a quick look. Whereas with the
Medici material, the archaeologists were let loose amongst all the objects
and were able to link many of the objects, as we show in the book, with
specific tombs.

There was that quote from Gilda Bartoloni [an Etruscologist at La Sapienza
University, Rome] where she said that normally an average archaeologist
would be lucky to come across two important tombs in a career. But that in
Medici's warehouse there was material from about 50 important tombs. The
archaeologists basically know what an average tomb consists of. So it's
possible to work out from the number of objects that are there, how many
tombs have been plundered. On the ground, like we saw when we were in
Foggia, in Apulia, are the pits the tombarolis make. So the archaeologists
have some idea of the scale of damage.

Let's just stick to the world of classical archaeology for a minute. The
world of classical archaeology is a finite field. We know there are roughly
speaking 16,000 Cycladic sculptures in the world. We know that there are so
many thousand Apulian vases, black figure attic vases, etc. It is a finite
world that can be measured. 

So this is how they arrived at the conclusion that 100,000 tombs have been
looted. The calculation can be made from what is known, from the number of
tombs that have been properly excavated over many years. According to Ric
Alia's research [Archaeologist, Boston U] , for instance, one vase on
average is found in every nine tombs. So the dimensions are known.

Suzan Mazur: How much progress do you think the Italians have made so far in
reversing this?

Peter Watson: According to Daniela Rizzo [Archaeologist, Villa Giulia
Museum, Rome], the latest information is that digging is down by half. And
the Carabinieri art squad, who've been seizing objects, say the quality of
seized objects has collapsed. Now whether this is just a temporary thing or
it's more than that remains to be seen.

Tom Hoving was just saying he thinks it's a major sea change. And last night
I heard that the one of the key galleries has asked to be released from its
lease because they're closing down. Because the bottom's dropped out of the
market.

Suzan Mazur: How many people in the cordata, of the names in the
"Organigram", have you tracked down and talked to?

Peter Watson: Hecht hasn't talked to us -- to me or to Cecilia Todeschini,
who worked with me on the book as researcher and translator. Medici I talked
to but he wouldn't talk to us. Gianfranco Becchina wouldn't talk to us. I
talked to George Ortiz. Frida Tchacos wouldn't talk to us. Eli Borowsky's
dead. Nikolas Koutoulakis is dead. A score of people listed [tombaroli] I
didn't talk to.

Suzan Mazur: You worked with the Carabinieri. They were your main source?

Peter Watson: In Italy we worked with Paolo Ferri [Public Prosecutor],
Daniela Rizzo [Archaeologist, Villa Giulia Museum, Rome], Maurizio
Pellegrini [Document Expert] and Roberto Conforti [Head, Carabinieri Art
Squad].

Suzan Mazur: But you're of the opinion, obviously, that Medici is the key
guy. You've titled the book , The Medici Conspiracy. Or do you think it was
Hecht?

Peter Watson: I think you can't really have one without the other. Medici's
role was more interesting and less known. I think Becchina has a less
interesting role. But may turn out to be even more interesting.

I mean I don't know whether you can say it, but Becchina had an interest in
a cement company in Greece, which is also a construction company, Herakles
cement. And they're building a major road across Greece. And, of course,
this is a wonderful way of turning up material.

And Becchina may have an added dimension that Medici doesn't have. There's
also the fact that Becchina comes from Mafia country. So he may be connected
in a way that I don't think Medici was.

Suzan Mazur: You don't think Medici was.

Peter Watson: I don't think Medici has anything to do with Mafia. No. He's
not used any Mafia lawyers. He's not known to have had contacts.

Suzan Mazur: What of the rumors that Hecht had his connections.

Peter Watson: I don't believe in these rumors. People are always trying to
make things more than they are.

When I did the Caravaggio book, for instance, there was a definite
possibility that they were connected. And I'd taken a large advance from the
publishers. And Doubleday said, if all these people are Mafia, then we're
not going to publish the book. It's too dangerous. Even for us. 

They published Gay Talese's book on organized crime. So they asked him. And
he said, "Can you remember the lawyers and I'll tell you if they're mob
lawyers?" 

And we found out that a couple of these people had been charged and were due
to stand trial. We found the name of the lawyers. And they weren't mob
lawyers. So we went ahead and published. It was quite safe. So I don't think
it's very useful to say everybody's connected unless you're absolutely
certain. And I don't think Medici was and I don't think Hecht was.

Suzan Mazur: Why and when did you first become involved with tracking looted
art?

Peter Watson: It goes back to 1979 when we were on strike at The Sunday
Times in London. There was a big dispute between the printers and the owners
- Thompsons. And Thompsons, in order to take on the unions, suspended
publications for eleven months. And the journalists were not party to the
dispute. So we were in the position of being paid and having to turn up
every day at work with no newspaper. We had to go through the motions in
case the dispute was resolved.. 

But the paper didn't come out for eleven months. So a few of us thought we
would spend the time writing books. At that time there'd been a spate of art
theft. Antiquities, paintings, and so forth. I wanted to write a book about
it and I went to see the Italian minister in the Department of Culture whose
job it was to get back stolen art. 

And he said to me, "Don't write a general book." He said, "I don't trust the
Italian police. Why don't you and I collaborate and try and get it back --
the most important missing painting, which is the Caravaggio?" 

That led to my book, The Caravaggio Conspiracy, which came out in 1983. I
didn't recover the Caravaggio, but I did recover six other paintings that
were smuggled.

We had an amazing piece of luck in journalistic terms anyway. The smuggler
turned out to be a Catholic priest who was at the Vatican's mission to the
United Nations. That got headlines. So I got very interested in stolen art
then. And then I started writing for The Observer.

I came here for a couple of years as the New York correspondent for the
London Times and then when Murdoch took over, I resigned and went back to
work for The Observer. 

It was then in November 1985 - one of my contacts was Brian Cooke at the
British Museum - and we used to meet twice a year for lunch and discuss what
was happening in archaeology and so forth. And he said - "I've got a story
for you. Sotheby's is selling a whole bunch of smuggled art, looted vases."
And that's how it started.

Suzan Mazur: Did you have any idea that your work would become the
centerpiece of a movement about not only saving antiquities but in a sense
saving what's human in all of us during one of the darkest chapters of war
and dehumanization in world history?

Peter Watson: I wasn't aware that it was the centerpiece.

You know when I met Brian Cooke, two things happened. He's a very quiet man.
He had no idea it was going to take off. And then, of course, the crucial
thing happened, which I suppose was when I called Sotheby's to get a comment
on this and I had to speak with Felicity Nicholson, who was the head of the
Antiquities Department.

Suzan Mazur: She must have been a character.

Peter Watson: A piece of work.

She said, I don't think anyone ever knows where antiquities come from. But
the point was that when I'd rung up the department, a man had answered the
phone. And he put me through to Felicity Nicholson. I didn't know who he
was. But he knew who I was. Because at the time the phone call came through,
he was on his lunch hour and he was reading The Caravaggio Conspiracy.

So he knew who I was. And this, of course, was James Hodges, who listened in
to my conversation with Felicity and realized that she was feeding me a pack
of lies. That she knew exactly where the antiquities came from - that they
came from Giacomo Medici in Switzerland and Robin Symes next to Medici's
office in Switzerland.

So that always stuck with him. And then years later, when he had his hand in
the till at Sotheby's, he was hoping to persuade them not to prosecute him
if they found out why he'd stolen all these documents. And they just said
no. You're trying to blackmail us. You're going to court. And so he turned
to the press.

And the one person he knew because he'd been reading my book was me. So he
brought me all the Sotheby's documents. So that is the chain of coincidence.

Suzan Mazur: Do you keep in touch with him?

Peter Watson: No I don't

Suzan Mazur: Is he okay now? I know he was in jail.

Peter Watson: He got nine months, which means in England he served about
five. All but the first two weeks in an open prison. You're let out during
the day and you have to be back by 4:00pm. It's really designed for people
who've been in prison for a long time to help them get used to the changed
world they're eventually going to be released into. 

But a number of white collar criminals go there more or less straight away
when there's no violence and where they probably won't do anything again.
And he was classified as this.

I don't know whether you read the Sotheby's book. But I went down to see
James at the open prison. He had to share a room with a rapist. While he was
there, the big scandal of the prison was -- I hope this doesn't offend you.
- it was so awful.

The currency in the British prison system is tobacco. One man had got into
such massive tobacco debt that he could never repay it. And so it was
discussed as to whether he was going to be murdered or whether he could
repay this debt. He owed a tobacco debt to four people. And the solution was
found. 

His wife was smuggled into the prison. And she fellated the four creditors
and the guard who'd done it. James told the story in a mixture of
embarrassment and disgust and surprise and humiliation that he was amongst
all this.

Suzan Mazur: The psychic damage. . .

Peter Watson: Can you imagine the circumstances that would lead the debtor
and his wife to do such a thing? Just imagine the humiliation. The rough
life. 

James was affected by prison. Whether it's open or not - it's still prison.
His wife is American - came from just outside Washington, D.C. And as soon
as James got out, he went to America. He would have got out in 1995. And he
worked for a head hunter company. And he's still there. Ten or eleven years
later. He's been promoted. So he's okay. He's essentially an honest man who
had a moment of weakness.

Suzan Mazur: How dangerous has it been for you to report this?

Peter Watson: Not at all.

Suzan Mazur: Did Silvio Berlusconi's push to give "freelance antiquities
diggers" the green light to dig up the Italian countryside for a commission
from the State ever have a chance of winning support with the people?

Peter Watson: I can't imagine anything Silvio Berlusconi could do could ever
be approved of by anybody.

Suzan Mazur: Why is it that the financiers of the antiquities galleries and
the big banks that launder the galleries' profits from the sale of looted
art are not made accountable? Why Hecht and not his backer, Jonathan Rosen?

Peter Watson: I think that's a very good question. We made the point in the
book with the ivory head of Apollo, valued at $50 million. That was security
for a loan for Robin Symes with Credit Suisse First Boston, I think. And
it's true that these banks are just unfamiliar with, I think, it's fair to
say in this case, unfamiliar with the fact that antiquities are probably
looted and they just get them independently valued. Probably from somebody
from an auction house. And that person should come under criticism too
because that person will know that the stuff has been looted, and all their
concern is that they're lent 45 cents on the dollar usually.

So they're well covered if the loan goes bad. But this is one of Dick
Ellis's points that once we know who the banks are. 

Hill Samuel is a bank in London that lends on a lot of art, but, of course,
most of the art they'll lend on is culture - it's straight up. Paintings
that are coming up for auction. And there's no problem with the provenance.
And they treat antiquities as works of art because they're sent to auction.
And they don't know any more than that. But the specialists do. And so they
should come under criticism. 

Larry Kaye (antiquities lawyer for the Turkish and Egyptian governments)
made this point that more and more companies should be aware that they're
actually conniving in an illegal chain of events.

And if one had an art squad that had more interest in antiquities and had
more people and had a particular attitude, then they might well on occasion
do a tour of the banks to say: "Are you aware? Please be aware. And you
should not lend on these things."


I mean if Tom Hoving is right and there's a sea change, maybe this is
another way to progress the sea change by having the antiquiities police.

Suzan Mazur: Do you think it will be easier for other source countries now
to proceed to reclaim their looted past - if they choose to do so - because
of the Italian effort or will they need to find their own smoking gun, an
organization chart, an "Organigram" of their own? 

Peter Watson: I think it will be easier but it's not quite a completely open
door.

Suzan Mazur: Are they going to have to have their own Organigram?

Peter Watson: They are going to have to have a certain element of proof -
yes. They can't just say, "That's Greek, therefore it's got to come back."
Or, "That's Egyptian." You've got to find some chain.

Suzan Mazur: You've written an op ed for the LA Times in which you say that
jail may not be the best approach for the Italians who're now prosecuting
Marion True. Can you say more?

Peter Watson: I think the argument was that if she confessed all and sort of
filled out the complete picture of how the illicit trade works, then that
would be more useful than putting her in jail. More helpful. And that the
best way would be for a deal to be done with the court in which exchange for
a non-custodial sentence would reveal everything. And what we actually said
was that in our view that would be a preferable solution to just putting her
in jail and never really knowing everything. That was our argument.

Suzan Mazur: So that's what she's beginning to do.

Peter Watson: Tom Hoving had an interesting take. He thought that she
started to clean up the act at the Getty at exactly the same time as the
raid on Medici's warehouse. That Medici called her and said this is the
beginning of the end Marion - you'd better start cleaning up your act.

Suzan Mazur: What about Hecht and Medici? What happens to them?

Peter Watson: I think that whatever Marion has done, she's only been doing
it since 1985 at the earliest. Whereas, Hecht and Medici have been doing it
since the 1960s. So I think that they're completely different cases.

And I think that Medici's sentence of 10 years is no more than he deserves
and that a definitive conviction of Hecht - although he won't go to jail -
would be a useful deterrent to others. 

I'm not sure what the Italians will do. I expect Hecht to be found guilty.
Whether they give him a nominal long sentence and say, "If you were younger
this is what you'd get." Or whether they'll give him a mammoth fine which
he'll never pay because he hasn't got the money.

Even Tom Hoving was just saying that apparently he's a spectacular gambler.
That's why he fell out with Jonathan Rosen. Jonathan Rosen came in one day
and found half a million dollars missing from the books.

And I think, the Italians have slightly made a rod for their back. They have
charged people with conspiracy. I think that's why they've confined it to
Marion and Hecht. Because as I understand it, under the Italian law, a
conspiracy to be a conspiracy has to be three people doing the same illegal
activity at least three times. [emphasis added]

One of the things that Hoving did confirm just now was where you have the
chapter on the fragments and some of the orphan fragments. I write it as a
mystery. 

He confirmed it. He said this is exactly what happens with fragments. There
you have a form of conspiracy, but whether, under the Italian law the same
thing was being done on three separate occasions. . . The personnel keeps
changing. So now it's a matter of whether the conspiracy exists. And this
may be why Jonathan Rosen wasn't targeted or maybe he won't come anyway.

I mean it looks a bit silly to keep trying people in their absence. Whereas,
the Italians knew their man with Hecht. They knew Hecht couldn't resist
coming in for the fight. [emphasis added] Scoop: "Bully Bob" Hecht And The
Euphronios Questions And they knew that Marion couldn't avoid it because for
her to be convicted it would look very bad.

Suzan Mazur: You really think that's why Hecht went to court? He couldn't
resist the fight?

Peter Watson: Yes. There's one section in his memoir. I do mention in the
book where in his memoirs he says I like these objects. I've never caused
anything to be smuggled. Not encouraged. And he did get that woman to fly in
from Switzerland with $40,000. He did actually encourage people to smuggle
things.

Suzan Mazur: His rapport with women is very peculiar. I think he's got a
fear and dislike of women. He uses women. Puts his wife up to calling Hoving
about the Euphronios. Drags his daughters into the business and puts them in
key roles at Atlantis Antiquities.

Peter Watson: That's very interesting. You may be right.

Suzan Mazur: Hecht's a very nasty character.

Peter Watson: Everybody says that. Hoving said that he was expelled from the
American Academy in Rome for stabbing somebody with a spike. As journalists
we used to have a spike on the desk. All the stories that didn't get
published were spiked. That's what we used to say on Fleet Street. Hecht
picked up one of these and stabbed somebody in the side.

Suzan Mazur: It's amazing that he hasn't been stopped sooner just for his
physical attacks and attempted physical attacks on people. He's threatened a
number of people - including me. His reputation as a bully goes back to his
college days in the 30s and 40s at Haverford, ironically, a Quaker school
outside Philadelphia. .

What do you think will happen to the other New York dealers as a result of
the Italian trial?

Peter Watson: I told you about one of them asking to be released from their
lease and closing down the shop.

Suzan Mazur: What about Dr. Jerry Eisenberg?

Peter Watson: I think Eisenberg has got his problems. Let's put it like
that. We'll soon see if the market really has been impacted, we're sure the
rents are not going to go down are they?

Suzan Mazur: You mention in the book two Japanese antiquities dealers. One,
Noriyoshi Horiuchi, who you say was known to have purchased fakes, may be
the unidentified "Japanese dealer" who bought Herbert Hunt's Roman Bronze
nude at Sotheby's in 1990. 


 
Roman Bronze youth. Photo: Sotheby's
It was the most expensive piece on sale and had been exhibited at the Met,
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and elsewhere. However, it sold way below
estimates of $800,000-$1.2 million for $539,000 (including tax). Hecht and
Rosen told me and journalist Ozen Acar the piece was a fake. 

You say Horiuchi started buying for the Miho Museum in Shigaraki in 1991.
But he may have been at Hunt Sotheby's and picked up the nude Bronze since
he had been buying antiquities since the 1980s.. It's possible the piece is
now in the Miho.

Peter Watson: It easy enough to check. It went below estimates.

Suzan Mazur: Way below. Have you been to the Miho?

Peter Watson: No, but Colin Renfrew has. [Watson says Cambridge's Colin
Renfrew is the greatest archaeologist of his generation.] The Miho's
apparently a spectacular museum. Have you been?

Suzan Mazur: No. But a lot of the antiquities are unprovenanced, I
understand.

Peter Watson: All of them. There's hardly a single provenance there. They
are good, however.

Suzan Mazur: You say in the book that Miho bought a lot from Gianfranco
Becchina. 

Peter Watson: Well Becchina was part of this group of four dealers in Geneva
who became the creditors of Horiuchi. Horiuchi basically became their agent
in Japan because he owed each of them so much money and there was no
prospect of him paying. So basically they had the objects. And they had the
buyer with lots of money. Which is a wonderful situation to be in if you're
a dealer.

Suzan Mazur: You pay tribute to Met Ancient Near East expert Oscar
Muscarella in your book. How much of a lightning rod has he been in all of
this? He early on challenged the theory that the Sarpedon Euphronios was not
a looted piece, etc. [Scoop: Antiquities Whistleblower Oscar White
Muscarella] 

Peter Watson: Oscar is - I was going to say, a maverick scholar. But I don't
think that's true. He's a traditional scholar, whose main loyalty is to
scholarship. He's a fly in the ointment - that's what a scholar does. And
he's a hands-off, gentle man. His position inside the Met - telling a
different story against great adversity - is a heroic thing to have done and
he's paid the price financially. He's now, after being something of a
pariah, become something of a hero. 

Suzan Mazur: Are you thinking about now kicking off your shoes after the
Medici book?

Peter Watson: No, I'm writing another history of ideas book. I've been asked
by a British publisher to produce two thrillers set in the art world, which
is what I'm going to do next year. And I've just written a love story.

Suzan Mazur: Is there anything more that you'd like to say?

Peter Watson: I like your dress.