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Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos with William Patrick

“Marine Col. Matthew Bogdano’s resume would put Indiana Jones to shame.” —US News and World Report

The New York tabloids call him “the pit bull” for his relentless prosecution of high-profile defendants like Sean “Puffy” Combs. He’s an assistant D.A., a spit-and-polish Marine, a trigger-puller on counter-terrorist missions from Afghanistan, a competitive boxer—and a dedicated classics scholar. So when Matthew Bogdanos discovered that the Iraq National Museum had been looted during the battle of Baghdad, he immediately embarked on a mission to recover the stolen antiquities. Accompanied by a select group of men chosen from his special-ops, interagency task force, Bogdanos set off across the desert without official sanction, risking his career and his life in pursuit of this priceless international treasure.

Thieves of Baghdad takes the reader into the rich culture, the colourful characters, the double-dealing, and the derring-do that Bogdanos encounters as he tries to sort out once and for all what actually happened during the chaos of the Baghdad invasion, exactly how the thefts took place, and how the most notable objects were retrieved. Bogdanos and his team go on raids and negotiate recoveries, blow open safes and mingle in the marketplaces to track down leads. The reader is introduced to an assortment of rogues and villains, a full-figured spy, and, in one cafe, a punch-drunk Iraqi heavyweight with whom the colonel puts n a comic sparring match so that his partner can meet unobserved with a notorious arms smuggler. He gradually earns the trust of Iraqis eager to preserve their cultural heritage—and then stuns the world by unearthing the most sensational treasure of all, the Gold of Nimrud, more than 1,000 pieces of gold jewellery, precious stones and ornaments often called “Iraq’s Crown Jewels.”

A mixture of police procedural, treasure hunt, wartime thriller, and cold-eyed assessment of the international black market in stolen art, Thieves of Baghdad also explores the soul of a truly remarkable man: a soldier, a father and a passionate, dedicated scholar.




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Matthew Bogdanos has been an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan since 1988. He holds both a law degree and a master’s in classics from Columbia University, as well as a master’s in Strategic Studies from the Army War College. Upon his release from active duty, he returned to the D.A.’s office to head New York’s first antiquities task force.