Do we now call it “The Great Gardner Museum Hoax rather than Heist?” How can it be that the FBI, which is called the world’s best investigative agency, shows itself so inept? Nothing else properly describes its investigation of Gardner Museum heist. One can only believe it Is because it has an insatiable need for publicity that it loses its sense of direction?
The FBI announced a couple of years ago that it knows the identity of the thieves who stole the Gardner art work. Strangely It refused to identify them. Others have told us who the FBI is tracking. So has the FBI with its diggings.
It seems the FBI believes some low life stiffs who hung out at an auto yard in Dorchester stole it and then gave it to their other hoodlum friends. The FBI has no forensic evidence to back this up. It is mainly following a trail of lies by braggarts. The event was first imagined by famous art thief Myles Connor who told them he knew who did it but in the same statement showed he had no idea who did it.
Periodically we read about the FBI being hot on the trail of the thieves. Papers like the Boston Globe which carries the FBI’s water (so that it gets leaks from it) blindly perpetuates the con. This again was shown by its most recent article of last week about Bob Luisi a drug dealer now selling his new religion.
The FBI’s big, big problems is that it thinks like lawyers and accountants who were the people it hires. That worked out all right during J. Edgar Hoover’s time since it did not get involved with street wise guys. The agents were mostly paper pushers.
In the early Sixties Hoover got pushed into having to go after the real gangster types, not the go it alone cowboys like Baby Face Nelson or Pretty Boy Floyd. It was charged with chasing organized crime and later added to its portfolio drug dealers and other bottom dwelling creepsters. These were people who wallow and thrive on sleaze. .
You still can not be an FBI agent if your degree is from the college of hard knocks. That is the only place where you can learn to deal with these guys when you have not grown up in their neighborhoods. In a futile attempt to make up for this deficiency the FBI decided to become partners with some of these bottom dwellers by creating the Top Echelon Informant Program. In that they entered into long-term relationships with some felons who would provide them information about what was going on in the sties of corruption. As we have seen when you lie down with the dogs you get up with the fleas.
The FBI hoped its agents would learn from the street people. Not being part of that milieu they fail to understand the old adage: “there is no honor among thieves” meant that what information they would receive would be that which benefited the crook giving it. It would have no relation to the truth.
In the underworld those who do best are those with the least scruples: those willing to turn on their friends whenever their interest dictates. These people are professional liars. There is no way to tell whether their information is true without substantial corroboration. These people have no moral compunction which dissuades them from the lying which is as necessary to their lives as breathing.
The usual agent stands before this type as a hayseed standing before a skilled Three Card Monte dealer. The outcome often is like we just saw in the Chandler Levy case. A jail house informant to get a better deal for himself testifies the defendant confessed to his involvement in a crime. Later it turned out it never happened and he made it up. There is no way of knowing how many people are doing time based on that type of hearsay evidence which cannot be rebutted. (continued tommorw)
OK I guess there was not a specific formal press conference to announce the robbers were dead last August 7th as I had posted. Peter Kowenhoven made those statements that day in reply to a reporter’s questions. I still think a case can be made that the statement was put out there with purpose and planning and for the reason I suggested.
I think as far as the investigation goes with the Gardner Heist, the key is to look at what people do and not what they say. Keeping the press and public accurately up to speed on the latest twists and turns of the investigation is a non-priority it seems.
One year ago on 8/6/15 the Gardner Surveillance video was released by the office of US District Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/boston/news/press-releases/historic-footage-connected-to-gardner-museum-burglary-released-public-assistance-sought
Then, the very next day, a completely separate press conference was held, with different people, by the FBI, announcing that the suspects were dead.
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2015/08/07/fbi-says-gardner-museum-heist-suspects-are-dead-ap.html
Since 2013, Investigators have been saying they know who did it and every name they threw out there was somebody who was dead. It was so ingrained that the Globe reported on 12/28/15 (incorrectly) in a story called “Latest search for Gardner paintings came up empty” that:
“The Gardner thieves have never been publicly identified, although in 2013 the head of the FBI’s Boston office said at a press conference that the agency knew who had pulled off the robbery and that both men were dead.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/12/27/search-suffolk-downs-for-gardner-museum-masterpieces-came-empty/H1iiRlZopLFfxOkM9Nm41J/story.html
So why, when everyone already thinks they are dead, does the FBI go through the trouble of holding an additional press conference to say the suspects are dead right on the heels of, and muddling up the message of the U.S. Attorney’s press conference on the previous day?
I believe it’s because they hit pay dirt right away, that the individual in the video came forward. My theory is that in exchange for full cooperation they agreed to refrain from identifying the individual publicly, and further, to say that the people who committed the robbery are dead.
Since that time it has been lights out. There was no dog and pony show for the video release. Gardner security director Anthony Amore went on Jim Braude the following week, but the appearance was probably booked very soon after the Ortiz press conference and Amore also had a new book which had just then come out.
Besides that there has been nothing. There was a CBS Good Morning Double segment on 12/6/15 but that was probably done because Anne Hawley was about to leave her position as head of the Gardner after 26 years, a post she had held since shortly before the Gardner Robbery.
The “video” was only discussed, during the CBS segment, on the question of to what extent it raises suspicions about the security guard Rick Abath. The effort to identity the mystery visitor in the video is not even mentioned.
On 8/7/15, After announcing the robbers are dead, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge in Boston Peter Kowenhoven said: “So now the focus of the investigation is the recovery of the art.” Why does Kowenhoven say “now”? They had been saying this exact thing for over two years.
I think they know everything about the robbery now, much more than Anthony Amore lets on these days, which is barely anything if you’re depending on google news, though he has answered questions in the past year for articles in Boston Magazine and the Weekly Dig. (Don’t use google news to find them.)
Investigators have shown absolutely zero interest in what the public may know about who did it or where the paintings might be for over a year.
So now it seems, the focus of the investigation really is the recovery of the art, armed with whatever information you might get from one or two of the people directly involved. And knowing for sure that knowing what they know is not fully sufficient to get the paintings back.
“…1 of 4” in the title. Or “…First of Four,” if you like.