Despite his pleas, Wittman writes, FBI officials refused to wrest control of the investigation from Fred because of the historic reluctance of those at FBI headquarters to overrule the decisions of the agency’s local supervisors. French authorities also weakened the thrust of the investigation by mandating that a French intelligence officer work undercover with Wittman and by refusing at one key point to allow one of the two intermediaries to enter France for a meeting because he was a fugitive wanted in France on another crime.
“Bureaucracies and turf fighting on both sides of the Atlantic had destroyed the best chance in a decade to rescue the Gardner paintings,’’ Wittman writes. “We’d blown an opportunity to infiltrate a major art crime ring in France, a loose network of mobsters holding as many as 70 stolen masterpieces.’’
Despite his criticisms of the investigation, the key question that emerges from Wittman’s book is whether the lead was a legitimate one. Did the French intermediaries — a fugitive accountant named Laurenz Cogniat and his associate, identified only as Sunny — have real ties with Corsican mobsters and did those mobsters have control of the paintings? Or was the pair just trying to pull a scam on Wittman, who had told them that he was able to put up millions to buy the Gardner paintings?
Wittman says he believed he was on track to recover the Gardner paintings after French police told him that they had spotted Sunny meeting with Corsican mobsters in Marseilles and Sunny had been heard on wiretaps speaking of “frames for Bob.’’ Wittman’s undercover name was Bob Clay.
But while the three met repeatedly over a two-year period in France, Spain, and in the United States, Wittman had trouble focusing the intermediaries’ attention on closing the deal for the Gardner paintings. Wittman dropped out of the case in early 2008 when Sunny approached him to see whether he was interested in buying four paintings that had just been stolen from a museum in Nice. Wittman turned the lead over to another FBI undercover agent. Sunny was subsequently arrested in the deal, ending Wittman’s hopes of using him as a conduit for recovering the Gardner paintings.
Wittman ends his book recounting a wistful conversation he had with Pierre Tabel, then the chief of France’s National Art Crime Squad, about their efforts over the previous two years to recover the Gardner paintings.
“Pierre,’’ Wittman asks him, “Do you think we had a chance? For the paintings?’’
“Absolutement,’’ Tabel responded. “We have a good idea who has them. We know to whom Sunny was speaking. But now that we arrest Sunny . . . the case is gone. We will not have this chance again for many years.’’
REFERENCES:
Newspapers- The Boston Globe, “FBI Seeking Commuter Help in Art Heist,” 03/16/2010
The Boston Globe, “Turf War May Have Ruined Gardner Heist Lead,” 04/04/2010
The Isabella Gardner Museum Heist/CNN
FBI website
www.boston.com
The Art Law Blog
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claireshana on 
fallenone on 
How interesting! The largest art heist in history!?! I think the security guards on duty that night was also “in” on it. I really enjoy the articles written by this author.