MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on what this investigation could look like, we've called Ronnie Walker. He spent 20 years on the FBI's art crime team and is now president of the Art Legacy Institute - that's a nonprofit - founded with other former investigators to help artists protect their work from misattribution and theft. Good morning, Mr. Walker. Thanks for joining us.
RONNIE WALKER: Good morning.
MARTIN: Based on your experience, any theories about who would do something like this? Like, Eleanor said, it's not like you can wear these to a party. They're too well known.
WALKER: It's going to be a group of individuals that are financially motivated. So what we're hoping is that their motivation is to ransom these items back intact and not break them up and sell them, which is probably the more typical thing that would happen.
MARTIN: If you're on a team investigating this, what's your - what are your first steps?
WALKER: First steps are just to get a better understanding of what happened in that eight minutes, collect the evidence that was left behind, start reaching out to my sources and the community, and then continue doing publicity to make sure that the thieves have no place to hide.
MARTIN: You've worked undercover. You were telling me that you posed as a buyer to recover lost artwork in the past. That was one of your missions. Is that an option on a case like this?
WALKER: You hope it becomes an option. That's going to mean that the authorities have an opportunity to seize these things. But more times than not, the recovery is going to come through good citizens making observations and reporting them to authorities.
MARTIN: And as Eleanor was also saying, that - well, as you've pointed out, these jewels are different from other objects that have been stolen from museums, like paintings. They don't have to be intact to have value. What if the thieves dismantle them? Is there still any opportunity or any option to recover them?
WALKER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, what we have here are eight historically important objects, but they're made up of over 8,000 gemstones. If they break these up and dismantle them and sell them piece by piece, that's 8,000 opportunities for law enforcement to get their hands on them.
MARTIN: And what if they've left the country? What then?
WALKER: They probably have. And...
MARTIN: You think so? You're pretty sure about that?
WALKER: I would think so. I think it's a very likely scenario, and the French authorities have great relationships with their counterparts in the region, as well as in the United States. If they find their way to the U.S., the FBI will be involved.
MARTIN: So, we just heard some rooms at the Louvre had no security cameras at all. Some really popular rooms were only partially covered by cameras. The alarm went off when the thieves left, not when they entered. Are you surprised by that? Is that level of security typical for a museum of the Louvre's caliber?
WALKER: It's not uncommon. Museums, especially historically important museums that have been around for as long as the Louvre have, you know, didn't have state-of-the-art security when they were built, and upgrades can be expensive, and budgets are always tight.
MARTIN: This kind of theft is often glamorized. I'm kind of thinking about how many movies I've seen where a theft like this is glamorized. But I have to say, it's a gut punch, isn't it? And I'm just wondering if you could sort of shed some light on - maybe some people think this isn't that big of a deal. Like, nobody was hurt. But could you just, in a minute or so we have left, could you just talk about what it means to have something like this stolen, particularly from a place that is meant to be enjoyed by the public?
WALKER: It is. It's a theft against the French people, but it's also a theft against all of us. I took my daughter to this museum. We looked at those gems. And, you know, her daughter someday - her children may not have that same opportunity. It's an important piece of our collective history that's now lost.
MARTIN: And that is Ronnie Walker. He's a former FBI agent who specialized in working undercover to recover stolen art items, and he's now president of the Art Legacy Institute. Ronnie Walker, thanks so much for talking with us and sharing this expertise with us.
WALKER: Thank you.
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