Crisis in the Red Sea; The Looting of Cambodia | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

Global trade has been severely disrupted in the Red Sea by a dangerous militia in Yemen that the US Navy is trying to stop. When was the last time the US Navy operated at this pace for a couple of months? I think we should go back. to World War II, where there are ships that are in combat, when I say combat in which they are shot at, they are shooting at us and we shoot back at them for a year. 60 Minutes has been investigating the theft of Cambodian cultural heritage. heritage thousands of sacred stone, bronze and gold artifacts from religious sites across the country, leaving empty pedestals where gods and deities once stood, we find some of them on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, how these looted treasures got here and they will ever be returned. we're about to return several of them, all of them I can't say I'm Leslie Stall I'm Bill Whitaker I'm Anderson Cooper I'm Sharon Alansy I'm John Wory I'm Cecilia Vega I'm Nora Odonnell I'm Scott Pell those stories from tonight on 60 Minutes after Hamas launched its deadly terrorist attack on Israel last October and Israel began its relentless war in Gaza in response, President Biden warned Iran and its proxies in the Middle East to stay out of it, one of those groups decided instead that everything was Among that group is a Yemeni Shiite militia known as the Houthis.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, but its 1,200 miles of coastline enter and exit the Suz Canal, the main shipping route between Europe and Asia, is responsible for $1 trillion a year in global trade, as we reported. for the first time in February, when the Houthis began attacking commercial ships in solidarity with Hamas. President Biden faced a

crisis

in the Red Sea and sent the US Navy into its first major fight of the 21st century. Yes, the left turn around our report begins not in the water but in the air, where from a US Navy reconnaissance plane 500 feet above the Red Sea we saw the types of commercial ships that the Houthis have attacked and American warships sent to protect them 6 we are not going to let the hoodies hold this straight hostage Vice Admiral Brad Cooper is the deputy commander of the US military in the Middle East after October 7 as the main Navy officer in the region who ordered the Fifth Fleet into an area it normally sailed through.

How many sailors are there now in the Red Sea? Yes, we have about 7,000 uh right now, so it's a big commitment that makes the Red Sea one of the most important waterways in the world. 15% of the world's trade flows exactly through the Red Sea, so keeping these wild waterways open is essential. It is a fundamental commitment that the United States has from a strategic perspective. Maintain the free flow of commerce. The Red Sea is about the size of California. in the north, the Suez Canal, in the south, the 20 m wide straight known in Arabic as Babel MB or in English as the Gate of Pain. 7 months ago, nearby was where the Houthis hijacked a Japanese charter ship built to transport cars. who posted this video Since then, according to the Pentagon, the Houthis have launched more than 100 attacks and the US Navy has shot down more than 150 drones and missiles fired by the militia that controls a third of Yemen, including the capital SAA, as Houthi attacks intensified in December. and J January, the world's largest container ship companies made the decision to bypass the Suz and go around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, adding up to a month of voyage time and a million dollars in fuel, I believe, to Europe said US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. 60 Minutes in February, the deviations represent a risk for the global economy and in the short term that will affect Europe much more than it will affect us.

Tesla andol was forced to suspend some European production in January due to supply chain disruptions. there are still ships passing through Suz, mostly smaller regional carriers that are willing to take the current Red Sea risks, how much does that count in terms of that traffic? Has it been reduced by half? It has dropped on any given day, sometimes by 40%, but it is clearly flowing and I think in many ways it is flowing because of the defensive umbrella that we put over the southern Red Sea. Without a doubt, the official name of that defensive umbrella is Operation Guardian of Prosperity.

It is a coalition of more than 20 nations that includes the United Kingdom, but most of the ships, planes and firepower come from the United States. When was the last time the US Navy operated at this pace for a couple of months? I think we should go back to World War II, where there are ships that are in combat. when I say we are in combat where they shoot at us and we shoot in response, initially the Iran-backed Houthis stated that they would only shoot at ships linked to Israel in support of the Palestinian people and to force a ceasefire in Gaza their ultimate political goals Just as their actual objective appears to be less precise, they have fired on ships linked to dozens of nations.

The Houthi official motto is God is great death for the United States, death for Israel, a curse on the Jews Victory for Islam, although their slogan may not be new. , their weapons and tactics are, according to Admiral Cooper, the Houthis are the first entity in the history of the world to use anti-ship ballistic missiles, they have never fired on ships, no one has ever used them, no one has ever done it. used an anti-ship ballistic missile certainly against commercial ships and much less against US Navy ships. Admiral Cooper took us inside the Fifth Fleet Command Center at Naval Headquarters in Bahrain.

I think there is a sense that the Houthis are some kind of ragtag terrorist. group, yes, yes, yes, that can have a meaning and it will be a false meaning, and it would be reckless to consider that, you know, 10 years of being supplied by the Iranians with very sophisticated advanced weapons, they have hit some ships, all of those . targets How many of them are aimed at US naval assets? The overwhelming majority in recent months have been directed at merchant ships flying an international flag. A small percentage of them are directly at US Navy ships. What kind of damage would one of those anti-ships cause?

Ballistic missiles do on a commercial ship, well let's go here, this is exactly what it looks like the Houthis attacked it and you can see in practical terms what the damage was. The Houthis also have cheap Iranian-designed attack drones in their arsenal, such as the 15t-wide one. Samad, with a range of up to 1100 thousand, some of its anti-ship ballistic missiles look like the Iranian weapons seen here and can hit targets at a distance of up to about 300 thousand if there is an anti-ship ballistic missile launch, this ballistic missile traveling at about Mach 5 around 3,000 mph how long is there between a Houthi launch and then it could hit a US ship if it gets close to them?

Now just sit in the destroyer captain's seat on that ship. You have between 9 and 15 seconds to make a decision that they are going to shoot down that, it is intense talking to one of those destroyer captains deployed in the southern Red Sea. We took a 5 mile helicopter ride from the USS Dwight D Eisenhower to the USS Mason where we met Commander Justin Smith. The destroyer is one of four US warships in the area that have shot down 20 of the Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles. How quickly can you watch them in 1 to 2

minutes

and give me that decision space to give me 9 to 15 seconds?

As the captain of this ship, what will my actions be, you made it seem like it's a long time, 9 to 15 seconds doesn't seem like a lot, it seems very small in a very short duration, huh, but my crew has that competition ready. In order to participate we learned that so far the Navy has fired more than 100 of its standard surface missiles that can cost up to $4 million each. in the ship's combat information center or cic we can be attacked anytime, anywhere, that's where Commander Smith showed us a video of the USS Mason doing exactly that. Here he sees an interception.

A quick explosion follows showing a successful engagement with the weapons systems. that you have on board here and specifically the standard missiles, those are expensive weapons and you're using them to shoot down $10,000 drones. It's worth it? I don't think you put a price on the safety and defense of our sailors on board. you have to be right 100% of the time, they only have to be right once we are at 27 knots to close one day before our visit to the USS Mason, about 100 million away, another American destroyer needed its weapon of last resort , a defensive cannon called Sea Whiz to shoot down a Hothy cruise missile that was a mile away and approaching quickly.

Most American warships have one of these weapons systems seen here in the exercises. Eisenhower's USS Dwight has two of her on that ship with her 5,000 sailors and more than 75 aircraft. The group's commander, Rear Admiral Mark Migz, told us that the Houthis have proven to be resourceful adversaries. There are intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones that the Houthis are launching. How did you see them used when we first came to this area? uh we would detect the Drone and then all of a sudden you know 10

minutes

later or 5 minutes later there was an attack in other words a ballistic missile was launched or a cruise missile was launched and over time we have deduced that they are obviously using these drones to perfect their targeting solution Since the war in Israel and Gaza began, other Iranian-backed militias have attacked US forces in Jordan, Iraq and Syria with at least 175 attacks that injured 183 service members and They killed three.

Admiral Migz told us that so far only the USS Eisenhower has been attacked. Focused on the Houthis in the southern Red Sea since January 11, their aircraft have been regularly attacking their SS launches in Yemen, as have American destroyers. The US also carried out a cyber attack against an Iranian spy ship that was collecting intelligence in and around the Red Sea, but the Houthi attacks keep coming, could the Houthis do this without Iran's support? No, for a decade, the Iranians have been supplying the Houthis, they've been resupplying them, they're resupplying them as we sit here right now, look, we know this is happening.

We are advising them and they are providing information on objectives. This is very clear. Are there members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Elite Corps who are actually on the ground in Yemen providing intelligence and targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? The Corps is inside Yemen and they are serving side by side. on the side of the Houthis by advising them and providing them with specific information, so what have we done to degrade that capacity? Yes, that will obviously end up being a political decision. Our role right now is to simply be prepared and continue to be aggressive in the exercise. our right to self-defense we conducted these offensive US airstrikes against these people.

Targets in Yemen risk escalating this conflict. Yes, I don't think so, we are targeting those platforms that attack us if we looked at the calendar from October. Seventh, the advance of American forces into the Red Sea and yet they continue to respond, they continue to appear opportunistic in their response, it is the US Navy, the Fifth Fleet, the actions that have an effect, it is very Of course we are degrading their capacity and each one of them. The day they try to attack us, we are eliminating and disrupting them in significant ways and I think there will be an impact on how long this lasts.

Well, I have a pretty clear end in mind and that is the restoration of the free flow of Trade and safe navigation in the southern Red Sea four months after our report was first issued, the Houthis continue to attack in the Red Sea until now With two cargo ships sunk and the second just last week, overall shipping traffic is still about half of what it was. Was it before the attacks began what is the secret weapon in USS Eisenhower morale is the most important thing on 60 Minutes overtime.com the theft of Cambodia's cultural treasures, thousands of gold and bronze sacred stone artifacts from religious sites across the country could be the largest Art theft in history began almost a century ago when Cambodia was colonized by France, but in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, amid genocide, Civil War and political turmoil ,

looting

became a global business, largely run by a Briton named Douglas Latchford. part for himself, but much of what his gang of thieves stole from Latchford and then sold to wealthy private collectors andsome of the most important museums in the world, as we first reported in December.

The Cambodian government has spent the last 10 years trying to track him down. Everyone comes down and brings their history and heritage. Huge home with its towering spiers is the glory of Cambodia. It is almost a thousand years old. It is one of the largest and most extraordinary religious temples in the world and is spread across 400 acres originally built to honor the Hindu god Vishnu. It was later converted into a Buddhist temple and remains a place of worship today. You can wander here for weeks lost in a labyrinth of ancient stone corridors and sacred chambers, but the scars of the sacking of Run Deep have severed the heads of many statues. stolen bodies and empty pedestals Mark where the gods and deities once stood, in some only the feet remain, it is worse in the rest of Cambodia, the 4,000 temples of Cambodia almost all had been looted.

This is 100 miles northeast of Anor Wat on a remote mountain called Sandu. Badly beaten by the band of looters, they found gold, they found statues, they found many, many things. That's Brad Gordon, an American lawyer who has been working for the Cambodian government for 10 years tracking down its stolen treasures. He brought us to Sandok with his team of researchers, archaeologists. and art scholars, this is so cool in the crumbling Temple Court, few remains remain, mostly empty pedestals scattered among the stole trees. It's amazing to me how many things are scattered on the ground. Ground, yes, it's like a cemetery with a pedestal.

We've all seen these footless statues in museums and I don't think people realize that the feet were cut off because to steal them, that's the easiest way to get them out of the ground. pedestal and we know that when looters came to places like this, the first thing they took were the heads that were the easiest to grab and then maybe they came back and took the Torso, but they weren't very careful, so they left pieces for Cambodians , these statues are not just works of art, they are sacred deities that contain the souls of their ancestors to whom they ask for guidance and pray.

This is incredible. They were all looted. Yes, all LEDs. All these heads. The head was cut off. Yes, Forong Sak Cambodia. The culture minister is in charge of the government's efforts to locate its stolen gods. We met her in a closely guarded warehouse not far from Anor Watad, where more than 6,000 pieces from temples across the country are stored for safekeeping, each sculpted by a craftsman from an ancient Chim Empire that lasted more than five centuries and spanned Cambodia. , Thailand and Vietnam, so the statues have souls, the statues are living, of course they are, and we think we can talk to them, they will hear, they will see what they do. you want, what you see, what you do in your life, in your home, outside, in society, they are also watching, they are watching everywhere.

Fang Sak's entire family was murdered in the genocide that began in 1975 when CH Rouge, a radical communist group, took millions of Cambodians into labor camps, some 2 million people, almost a quarter of the population. population was massacred or starved, the CH Rouge lost power in 1979, but fighting and instability continued for decades, leaving Cambodia's temples unprotected and vulnerable as easy targets for unscrupulous antiquities dealers. like Douglas Latchford, who is Douglas Latchford, I would say that he was, in many ways, the mastermind behind the biggest art heist in history, the biggest art heist in history, yes, in terms of scope and multitude of sites in the world. crime and the enormous number of statues that were taken.

Latchford lived in Thailand, an enigmatic British businessman who began collecting in the 1960s. He seems to have had two great loves. Cambodian Antiques and Bodybuilders sponsored Bangkok's largest bodybuilding competition, the Latchford Classic. How would you describe it? It was extremely misleading. I think in many ways it was. ruthless, but he hid that behind this incredible façade of charm, Latchford presented himself as a scholar and protector of Cambodian culture, a reputation he burnished by donating sculptures to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and other prestigious institutions. He also published three books

full

of the best examples of Cambodian antiques, many of them it turned out that Latchford had stolen them, he was using the books as sales catalogues, you know, he was handing them out, he was using them to sell pieces and he understood a certain psychology of collectors who if they see something in a beautiful book they think it's legitimate are you doing the transcription right now those books have been an invaluable guide to Brad Gordon and his team helping them compile a database of thousands of lost artifacts, many of them which they didn't know existed until Latchford posted photos of them, Gordon's team got their big break when they met this man in 2012.

He was a former Chim Rou child soldier and leader of a gang of looters. His name was D Duck. That first meeting. He didn't really know who we were. I had met him, you know, I knew, I knew that he was important, um, I knew that a lot of people told me that he was the best and I knew that they were afraid of him, why were people afraid of him? You know, over the years, he had killed many people. Day Duck had worked for decades supplying Douglas Latchford with thousands of treasures and was surprised to see them again in Latchford's books.

He kept opening the book and going back to the cover, going over it, touching it and saying, I know this, I know this. one, I know this one and when he says he knew this one it means he helped loot them, um, that's what we'll learn later, yeah, the golden day duck became a key confidential source for Gordon's team, they gave him a name in lion code to protect his identity and followed him to dozens of temples where he confessed what he had found and how he had stolen it. He told us: "I'm going to transfer to you everything that's in my head.

I'm going to tell you everything, every secret." You felt that his memory was very good, it was precise, it was incredible. He remembered the size of everything measured against his body. He used his arm to show us how long a statue was. Why do you think he wanted to cooperate? You know he felt tremendously. guilty of many things he had done in his life, the killings, the

looting

and we offered him a path of redemption a way to do something really good at the end of his life recorded hundreds of hours of testimony from lions, he explained how gangs of the lutters spent weeks in remote temples using shovels, chisels, metal detectors, even Dynam to find and unearth treasures, dozens of men hoisted heavy stone statues onto ox carts before transporting them across the border into Thailand and into hands by Douglas Lashford.

The lion never met Lashford. but I had sent him pictures of artifacts he could choose from, we heard them say Oh, we had to go to this Tempo and take a picture and then send it back, you know, my senses, I was shopping, I had a list that Lutters knew. priorities like these that came from a temple complex called COC. The statues there had a distinctive style that Latchford loved. It was however a dangerous business, most of the lutters only made enough to buy food for their families and the Fights between rival gangs were common and people were killed.

Do you look at these antiques as statues of blood? uh they sure are blood antiques every time I see a statue I think about who died to get this out of the ground or get it out of a temple and to move it. It was here, so much of this looting was done in the shadow of war, the shadow of genocide. It was this 500-pound COC sandstone warrior that appeared in a Soube auction catalog in 2011 that put Douglas Latchford on the radar of US authorities. feet were missing and the price was estimated between 2 and 3 million dollars.

When it appeared on the market, there were several archaeologists and several people who immediately recognized that the source of the statue was a specific temple in Cambodia, it came from COC, that's right. Until he retired last September, JP Labat was a special agent in Homeland Security's cultural property, art and antiquities unit. A team from the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York traveled to Cambodia to inspect the site where the statue had been removed. And then the base was still there with the feet still on the ground and then they were able to match that base and the feet to the statue and that was enough evidence to take the statue off the market right after years of legal disputes SES finally agreed to send this Warrior stolen back to Cambodia.

A welcome home ceremony was held and investigators were able to trace its original sale to Douglas Latchford, who was asked about his repatriation in a German documentary in 2014. Is It a Good Day? for Cambodia or it's a bad day for the Art Market if these things are coming back it's a good day for Cambodia it's a bad day for the Art Market law enforcement in New York was closing in on Latchford but he claimed prosecutors They had been fooled their imagination had run wild they had watched too many Indiana Jones movies, as far as I know there is no such thing as a smuggling ring and I certainly don't belong to any smuggling ring.

The attempted sale of this statue in 2011 was that turning point in the unraveling of Douglas Latchford. I would say yes, that case put more focus and attention on it and then efforts were doubled to really peel back the onion and investigate the activities of Lford, the testimony of former looters was found. by Brad Gordon and his team was instrumental to the US Attorney's case against Lashford how weird it is to have looters access to the people who actually stole this stuff 10 20 30 years ago I don't know of any other case where that happened and U It is quite remarkable that looters actively help a team of researchers recover artifacts that they helped firsthand get out of the country.

Douglas Latchford was eventually charged by US authorities in 2019 with smuggling, wire fraud, conspiracy and other charges, but he died before he could do so. being tried Brad Gordon eventually convinced Latch's family to return his personal collection of stolen treasures. Among the first pieces to arrive home in 2021 was this statue of COC, a lion weakened by cancer, he came to inspect it at the National Museum of Cambodia to verify that it was the same one. one that he dug out of the ground and then turned to me and said that's the real statue, you know, it was an extraordinary thing to see and just his relationship, it was living for him, do you think he was happy to be back?

Happy to know that he had done something good, the lion died a few months later, but the secrets he revealed continue to bring statues back to the National Museum of Cambodia. Masterpieces that left the country long before these school-age children were born. Does the return of these statues help these gods? some to heal, yes, to recover the soul of the nation, the soul of the nation, it is not only for me, but for my entire family, who died during the war and fell for all Cambodians, there are still many more statues and stolen Cambodian artifacts in museums and private collections around the world as we return to Cambodia's fight to recover those looted relics.

It has taken more than 10 years for a team of Cambodian investigators led by Brad Gordon, an American lawyer, to document the theft of thousands of ancient statues and relics by a British man. collector named Douglas Latchford, as we reported last December, managed to recover some of what he stole, but many of Cambodia's greatest treasures are still hidden in the mansions of millionaires and billionaires and hidden in plain sight on display in some of the most prestigious in the world the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one of the most important collections of Cambodian antiquities in the world, but many of the best pieces on display here in Southeast Asian art are stolen like this one and this one also passed through the hands of Douglas latchford lashford sold it to the Met in the early 1990s he donated it Do you think people who visit the Met know that they were looted?

I think most people walk through the M and have no idea, those are blood antiques, they have no idea what the story is behind those pieces, they don't know the temples where they came from, they don't know the people who were murdered to bring them here, the dirt has been removed, there's a little note that says where it came from, if people believe what's on that little note, no, absolutely not, last year we went with Brad Gordon to see where it came from. in Cambodia the collections of the Met and other museums actually come from. This is incredible.

This seven-story pyramid is. It is over a thousand years old and rises from the jungle in COK, northeastern Cambodia, one of dozens of temples and what was once the capital of an Ancient Empire K. Literati have been all over this site for decades . Douglas Ired loved statues. in love with beauty in love with art the statues here have a distinctive style that he especially lovedand perhaps the most famous statues in that distinctive style that Latchford stole from COC were nine stone warriors who were once arranged together in a battle scene today. seven have been returned to the national museum in a panom pen, including this £500 sandstone sculpture, it is the one SES tried to sell in 2011, they are back on their original pedestals, their ankles reunited with feet cut off by lutters, this It was itself, this is at Christie's Simon Norton Simon Museum habou is the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Culture of Cambodia.

He is working with Brad Gordon to recover the two COC statues whose empty pedestals sit at the museum. So, you know what they're supposed to be in? We know you know it. what is supposed to be here and you know what is supposed to be here among nine sculptures, we have seven and now only two are missing. One of those missing sculptures was discovered in the glossy pages of an architectural digest in 2008, this mythical army commander and a surprising number of others. The stolen works were all together in the Palm Beach mansion of the late billionaire George Lindaman and his wife Freda.

Ancient Cambodian treasures were on display in the living room of an incredibly rich American family in Florida while people drank cocktails and the What always strikes me is how many people witnessed it and kept silent and continue to keep silent. silence today. Lindaman spent approximately $2 million building the collection with the help of Douglas Latchford. Freda Lindaman did not respond to our request. for an interview but in CET we showed the house to two former looters who think this house is a beautiful house they said it looks like it belongs to a king the former lutters pointed out another statue in Lindaman's room they said they helped steal this reclining figure from the Hindu god Vishnu.

They said it was taken from the ground at this exact location in late 1995. You are 100% sure that you and others took it from here in 1995. Yes, I'm sure they did too. They identified several other statues that they say were stolen and that appear in books published by Douglas Lashford. They say they found this copper statue using a metal detector. This is, yes, they dug it out of the ground here in 1990. JP Labat, former Homeland Security special agent. Found photos of the statue covered in dirt on Douglas Latchford's computer. Latchford sold it to the Met in 1992 and it is still on display here.

You can access some of L's emails. Yes, and there are detailed stories in there about how he obtained parts because he was reassembling them and repairing them, that they were cleaning off the dirt and scabs, that they were freshly pulled from the ground, which were new pieces that he would describe in his emails as needing a level of restoration before he could attempt to sell them. Douglas Latchford was charged in 2019, but died before he could be tried. However, federal prosecutors in New York continue to track the artifacts looted from him; They believe at least 18 of them ended up at the Met.

I am very involved in our work on provenance. Andrea Bayer is Deputy Director of Colle and Administration at the Met. The Met has said they will return the objects based on a rigorous review of the evidence. The rigorous review of testing that was performed before purchasing these parts does not seem sufficient. The Met had a don't ask, don't tell policy, they wanted to grow their collection and no one really asked where it came from. Many people in the art world had the feeling of protecting great objects that were champions. of being destroyed we no longer feel that way under pressure 10 years ago, the Met returned two statues called Kneeling Assistance that had been donated to them by Douglas Latchford in 2013, when you returned the Kneeling Assistance, did you investigate the other items that Douglas Latchford had brought to this museum.

I don't know the answer to that question. I can only pick up the story several years later, when Doug Douglas Latchford was indicted in 2019, when we immediately proactively went to the US Attorney's office and offered our

full

cooperation. I can pick up the story in 2013 because a spokesperson for The Med said that no special effort would be made to verify the provenance of any other work donated by Douglas Latchford. Why wouldn't the Met want to investigate everything else than Douglas? Latchford had brought to this museum. I can't speculate on why that didn't happen, but no one investigated all the other articles that Douglas Latchford gave, that I know of.

The Met is not the only major museum with looted Cambodian artifacts, but its collection is one of the largest in the world. Last year the museum announced it would create a research team to examine the provenance or acquisition history of all of its collections. It has been 10 years since Douglas Lashford was proven to have handed over stolen property to the Met in order for the Met to establish this provenance team. Why is it taking 10 years? It was a slow process. I grant you that it was a slow process, but I think the fact that we are now fully committed and fully cooperative is our only answer.

This really is a moment of reckoning and we are ready to do whatever is necessary now, to write down whatever is wrong, but four years ago, when Douglas Latchford was indicted by prosecutors, you created a team to verify the provenance of every Lashford. We absolutely start the work, we start to dig deeper at that moment and it is not easy. I mean, the fact that we don't have a lot of information has to do with the fact that it's very difficult. There is information for federal prosecutors. There is enough information for federal prosecutors. accuses Douglas Lford of robbery, looting, trafficking and contraband items.

How many more tests do you need? You haven't returned any of the items related to Douglas Latchford since he was charged, four years ago he almost returned a number. Of all of them, I can't say that that interview took place in September, two days before we went on air. Prosecutors announced that the Met would return 13 antiquities that came through Douglas Latchford, but the Met will not return this statue that was specifically cited. In the indictment against Latchford or in this one that Latchford sold to the Met in 1992, Cambodia's Culture Minister called the Met's announcement a first step and says she looks forward to the return of many more of our treasures.

Shouldn't museums have thought twice before buying things? that were leaving Cambodia during the genocide, the Civil War and decades of conflict and this question you raise is really the crux of what we are fighting: he acquired pieces from a known smuggler who used a team of looters that the government has interviewed and taken um statements, they have emails that refute information about their own provenance at the museum. You have items in the museum that were named in the Latchford indictment that are still there, so these pieces should go back there. There is no doubt that it is the right thing to do last September.

The Lindaman family, whose collection was displayed in an architectural overview, reached a settlement with federal authorities and voluntarily agreed to return 33 stolen treasures. In a statement to the New York Times, Lindaman said that he had purchased these items. from dealers who we assumed were reputable we were saddened to learn how they came to market in the United States why the lindamans agreed to return their collection to Cambodia the pieces were jty um I think they finally woke up to the fact that lford was dirty, his collection was All looted pieces, it was obvious, so they decided to hand them over.

We took a look at what Lindaman's collection was shortly after closing the deal. It was stored in a warehouse in upstate New York, a nation. living gods and ancestors waiting to be taken home this is like a whole wing of a museum a wing of a museum that only the lindaman and their friends had access to if the lindaman hadn't published this in an architectural summary in 2008. I think there is a good chance that maybe we would never have found it we always say that the gods want to come home we feel that the gods have spoken today they want to come home while one of the largest boxes was opened waiting anxiously were M Kung tang and Tida long two members of Brad Gordon's research team this would be their first look at the mythical Army Commander taken from COC they were probably the first Cambodians to see him since Douglas Latchford stole him over 50 years ago here's a look in his eyes and on his face It is much larger than I expected.

Its presence is extraordinary. I did not expect to feel this way. Even the commander seemed to be smiling. Then it was time to see the rarest piece in Lindaman's collection. The Cambodian team knelt in reverence. As the Hindu god Vnu was unpacked despite all the fuss, he seemed undisturbed reclining in a cosmic dream. When this statue reaches Cambodia, it will be welcomed as one of the most important Cambodian artifacts ever returned. Two Cambodian artifacts donated by the Lindaman family to the Met are still available. On display this month, the Cambodian government presented a list of 49 antiquities held by the Met that they claim were stolen and want recovered, so when you look out and see all that green, what do you think I see?

Money that leaves the United States here. Craziness. You are noticing the lack of information and misinformation on your own social networks. This is the world we are assimilating and we can make impacts and try to improve it. Is this a battle of rich versus poor, part of it is black against white, part of it is if you're not willing to protect a place like this, so what are you willing to protect? Go to me, go to three 1 2 3 wow I want a strong America I want a proud America