And as further luck would have it, in his first month with the bureau there were two museum thefts.
Wittman tells us how he felt lucky that his first position was to be paired with a man in the property crimes squad in Philadelphia, a man who had more than a passing interest in investigating art crime. When he finally landed a job as agent, there was not as yet an FBI Art Crimes Unit. His neighbor was an agent and his favorite TV program was The F.B.I. Wittman tells us that even as a child he had been interested in working for the FBI. Wittman calls it a memoir, and I suppose that is the more accurate term as there is very little having to do with his life other than his FBI career. In talking about this with friends, I called it an autobiography. In his final case, Wittman called on every bit of knowledge and experience in his arsenal to take on his greatest challenge: working undercover to track the vicious criminals behind what might be the most audacious art theft of all. The museum janitor who made off with locks of George Washington's hair just wanted to make a few extra bucks, figuring no one would miss what he’d filched. The appraiser who stole countless heirlooms from war heroes’ descendants was a slick, aristocratic con man. The smuggler who brought him a looted 6th-century treasure turned out to be a high-ranking diplomat. The art thieves and scammers Wittman caught run the gamut from rich to poor, smart to foolish, organized criminals to desperate loners.
After all, who’s to say what is worth more -a Rembrandt self-portrait or an American flag carried into battle? They're both priceless. Closer to home, he recovered an original copy of the Bill of Rights and cracked the scam that rocked the PBS series Antiques Roadshow.īy the FBI’s accounting, Wittman saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities. The breadth of Wittman’s exploits is unmatched: He traveled the world to rescue paintings by Rockwell and Rembrandt, Pissarro, Monet and Picasso, often working undercover overseas at the whim of foreign governments. The rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation’s first African-American regiments. The headdress Geronimo wore at his final Pow-Wow. The Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement. In this memoir, Wittman relates the stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid. Rising from humble roots as the son of an antiques dealer, Wittman built a twenty-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his career for the first time.
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